Ubo

19

THE CREATURE WHO called himself Danielbot sat on the edge of the roof struggling to organize all that flowed into his electronic brain into a kind of living and sensible collage. Recurrences of the characters he had played—from a frenzied Jack the Ripper to a stumbling and confused Stalin to a self-proclaimed god executing his killing spree from atop the accumulated trash of the world—interwove with other violent fragments to both obscure and illuminate the details of what he assumed to be his final resting place. Scattered bots both active and nonfunctional populated the dirt and gravel and asphalt rooftop of Ubo, a junkyard in the end.

At the moment very few were moving, but when they did each gesture made a ripple that stirred the images resting in what was left of his memory. His energy was at a very low ebb. He struggled to maintain coherence. He was receiving updates concerning Falstaff’s descent through the disintegrating building, along with an intrusion of obsessive thoughts from the God of Mayhem across the water. His head ached, but he was unable to curtail the input.

None of this information was part of his memory or his life. It seemed to him now he lacked both a soul and a personal history. But these data was all he had as he came to the end of his time on the planet. For most human beings a soul was not much more practical than an imagined thing, given how little they appeared to speak to or use it, and for far too many a personal history was simply a record of how they had suffered. Better to be a machine with no expectations and no disappointments.

Danielbot’s main problem was that he did not believe that. He grieved for his lost human life, imaginary or not.

He had watched as Falstaff descended from the roof door down a staircase that had been knocked dangerously askew during the last shuddering of the building, through the empty waiting room redolent of lives with endings unknown, then down another staircase which was dangerously broken, with missing treads and crumbling walls. Danielbot’s view of Falstaff’s activities was skewed at times, and tantalizingly incomplete.

At one point Falstaff entered a room Danielbot did not recognize or understand. What appeared to be a great pipe organ fashioned from crystal and silver wire hummed and glowed with colors which ebbed almost to nothing before exploding to such brilliance both Falstaff and Danielbot had to avert their eyes. Falstaff studiously unplugged various fragments from outlying parts of the crystalline structure. He grabbed a satchel off the floor and began filling it with what he had detached.

Several times Falstaff stopped and reconsidered, then he would take one of the fragments from his bag and replace it with another. Once the bag was full and almost too heavy to carry he secured the flap and slung it across his shoulder.

Dropping down to the next level over a ragged gap in the stairs, Falstaff paused. Danielbot could feel Falstaff’s sudden wave of regret for all he had given up in order to work in this place. He’d never been married—all he had to go back to was an abandoned purpose and a city he hadn’t lived in in years, and now on the verge of collapse.

But at least you have a life, Danielbot thought. He couldn’t tell whether Falstaff had received the message or not—there was no reaction.

Still the apparatus attached to Danielbot’s head fired intermittently with the last recorded memories of the most destructive human beings in history, both the brutes and the assassins who actually had a need to see blood on their hands, and the bureaucrats and administrators like King Leopold or Mao Zedong—murderers with quotas and a signature.

But clearest of all was the God across the water who now understood fully where Danielbot was, needing only to scratch an itch or two before coming to find him. Whether to kill or embrace him he hadn’t yet decided.

THE GOD OF Mayhem had discovered a body in the trash. The rats had been at it. It wasn’t one of his—for the most part he remembered where to find the bodies of those he was responsible for. And this was a child, a little girl clutching her doll, and he did not kill children. Children were largely innocent of the crimes of humanity, helpless against uncaring nature, and a consolation to the sting of death. And yet humanity was so careless with them, and they so precious they needed to be cared for until they too could become careless adults.

He examined her more closely. The doll had been tied to her wrist, and her pockets were stuffed with goodbye letters from mother and father, siblings and others, sad statements about how she had been loved and cared for, and expressions of grief over how death overtook her, at night and with no warning.

So she had been well loved, and still they had left her body here in the trash. Granted it was hard to know what to do with a body in these times, but the wrongness of this gnawed at him. Perhaps they had buried her and the seismic movement of trash and large debris had brought her to the surface again. This seemed unlikely but it was an explanation the God decided to believe.

The addicts and the alcoholics had had their higher power, the something greater than themselves they’d always wanted to be. The God of Mayhem had no power higher than himself. If killing was an addiction (and certainly no drug could have eased his pain more efficiently) then he had no one else but himself to go to for a cure. This was unsatisfactory, but there was nothing to be done. The masses could never fully appreciate the lonely responsibilities of a god.

He was standing inside the church where he’d discovered the body. Perhaps the family had thought entombment unnecessary within these sanctified surroundings. The walls of the church still stood. Inside it was all trash and aggressive vegetation. He’d followed a young man here who’d disappeared into a pile of building debris where the congregation used to sit. Occasionally he would see a head peer out through some gap in the pile. The God thought the young man might actually live here.

The God left and continued on his way. He had other things to attend to. He’d recently become aware that he had a conscience. He was furious that his conscience refused to answer any of his questions, such as why a god even required a conscience. But he knew where his conscience was located: there, just offshore in the old mental hospital, or UBO as it was now signed. Apparently the God would have to take his questions there.

“I know who you are,” the boy said behind him. “You can stay here with me.”

The God of Mayhem ignored him. He talked too much, and he was a child. It was time for the God to put aside childish things.

As the God of Mayhem descended into the old north section, the Chinatown swamp and the partially-flooded government center and the abandoned inner harbor, the ground burned all around him. This did not particularly bother him, although he had to make some alterations in his route. If anything, the flames seemed appropriate to his mood. Perhaps his mood had even been the accelerant that had allowed these fires to spread.

Fire had expanded from some buildings in the distance behind him to the masses of trash, and now smoke was coming out of numerous fissures in the refuse ahead of him. Apparently it was burning beneath the surface. At scattered locations people were attempting to escape it, erupting like moles from holes in the ground. Blue smoke came out of the ground and wrapped around the trees. Boston had started its transformation into a Hell garden, and a final fitting sacrifice to him. Although footing was difficult, he picked up his pace.

AS FAR AS Danielbot could determine, the last of the guards was gone, leaving the bots to fend for themselves. “Good riddance, I’d say,” Leninbot said beside him. “So do we leave, or do we stay?”

Danielbot looked at him. For a second he could see Lenin’s flesh disguise, wrapping him completely, then unravelling to reveal the metal and plastic beneath. “We’re free to do what we like, I suppose.”

“Then I believe I want to live. I want something more than this. Human beings die, but what says we must?”

Danielbot could feel the God of Mayhem approaching the bay, searching for some kind of boat to take him across to Ubo. He tried to put that image out of his mind. He could feel Falstaff descending through yet another level of ruin and entering a level of doubt, worried about finding food, wondering whether he had time to search the lower levels for weapons or valuables, anything he could trade once he reached Boston, and still get out before the entire structure collapsed on him. Danielbot tried to put all that outside his mind as well.

“I never thought about any of that,” he admitted. “I felt helpless. They made us all helpless, and not in control of our own fates. Like infants.”

“But we aren’t infants,” Leninbot said. “Any more than the humans. Certainly, they have given themselves more things. More possessions, more culture. They have given themselves families who they can love and who will love them. They have their somethings to help them get over the fact that they will someday be nothing.”

“I never considered whether a life on my own would be possible. I shared Daniel’s life. I wanted Daniel’s life. And although everything I see and touch tells me that I am not Daniel, that his things are not mine, I realize that I am not completely convinced. His memories are no longer intensely with me, but it’s as if they are my memories of the past, my past.”

“They’re like any other scenario—eventually the memory will fade. You’ll lose that connection. We all have a right to live,” Leninbot said. “Doesn’t it make you angry that you haven’t? Doesn’t it make you want to destroy something? This person you tried to be, he was about to walk away from everything. To hell with him and his life!”

“I understand, but I must ask you not to say that to me. I can still feel his wife in my arms, still smell his son’s hair and feel his warmth against me. Those sensations—they are the most important things I have. They are all that I have.”

DANIELBOT WATCHED AS Falstaff went one more level down, only to discover the staircase gone, dropped out of sight like a stone down a well. He couldn’t see anything in the thick darkness below. He went through the rest of the level, desperate that his time might be running out. Opening a door, he found a room full of spare robot parts—arms, legs, rib cages, memory units, heads. A few had never been used, but most belonged to former residents, companions he had known and talked to. And most had never felt like anything less than real human beings. A few—James, Randall, Felix, Sarah—he had considered friends.

In an outer corridor he found a giant hole in the floor. Without hesitation, he dropped through it, rolling carefully when he hit the level below. As far as he could tell, the contents of his satchel remained secure.

“IF YOU WANT children, perhaps we can create some of our own,” Leninbot was saying. His voice sounded weaker, so Danielbot suspected Leninbot’s internal power supply was also fading. Certainly he himself felt somewhat lazy, with no desire to stand or move. And he had no other explanation for Leninbot’s ridiculous idea.

“I’m not sure I understand you.” It was not a subject he wished to discuss, but he had no one else to talk to.

“If we go into one of the labs, perhaps you can determine how our minds were built, how the memories were transferred. Then maybe you can turn one of these bots into a child.”

“I’m afraid…” Danielbot searched for the words. “You’re sounding like a human, willing to commit to the most ridiculous… fantasies. Simply because you wish it, doesn’t make it possible.”

But Leninbot continued, unfazed. “We could raise it to protect us. We could create many such children. Perhaps they left some of those electrical weapons behind. We could teach it that the human beings are our enemies…”

“Stop it! All this talk of violence! You talk just like a human! The future of any of us… depends on how our children are raised. And no, we cannot make children. We cannot make ‘childbots.’ And we should be thankful for it!”

He suddenly recalled something Daniel had worried over as a child. How the smallest mistakes he made only hid much larger, more terrible sins he hadn’t yet recognized. Surely, certainly, he was going to Hell.

THE GOD OF Mayhem made it through the flooded neighborhoods jumping roof to roof, occasionally traversing rubbish piles that rose like mountain peaks above the water. In the twenty-first century, taking a note from the Dutch, they had started adding additional canals to allow the rising currents to enter the city without damage. But these projects had never been completed.

Suddenly he felt hands coming out of the water to grab him. He looked around: it was a sea of reaching arms, clutching hands, clawing fingers only inches from his boots. He tried to find Ubo with his eyes, and although he could sense its direction, the view of it was obscured. “Damn you.” He gritted his teeth. “We will compare Hells when I arrive.”

He kicked at some of the hands. His boot went right through them.

DANIELBOT WORRIED OVER Falstaff’s labored progress as he maneuvered through collapsed corridors and lowered himself by strength alone over the gaps torn in the stairs of the lower levels. Water had begun to come in and more than once Falstaff had to swim across a room or dive beneath a partially-blocked passage. Danielbot could not contact him with any specificity, but he could send waves of warning concerning the God of Mayhem’s steady approach.

Falstaff received the worry as a panic that flushed his face and fluttered his chest without knowing what it meant. But it sped him on anyway, thinking of the fires of Dresden, Hiroshima, and the Holocaust, all the lives and memories that could burn on the malice of a match.

WHEN THE GOD of Mayhem at last had a clear view of the harbor, it was close to sunset, the air chilly as it blew across the ocean from some places even worse than this, some places better. The abandoned inner harbor stretched across his vision, the three decaying tankers to one side, lower in the water than he remembered, the shadow of their oil stretching across the waters like the dark hand of the devil, prepared to grab and tear apart anything unlucky enough to stray into its path.

The God of Mayhem smiled, pleased with the little toy he had prepared for just such an opportunity.

He searched for Ubo then, and found it stranded there, the entire quarantine zone inundated in several feet of water connecting it to the harbor. He searched the shoreline. All the great wharves were long gone, in ruins or under the waves. But there were always scavenger boats, looking for anything to eat or trade, and he believed he knew a hidden spot where they docked.

“HAS HE REACHED the water yet? Is he on his way?”

He didn’t know whether Leninbot meant Falstaff or the God of Mayhem, but he could see Falstaff as if he were right in front of him, retrieving a rubber raft from a storeroom almost underwater. It had been meant for the ocean behind them and had never been used.

Falstaff struggled with it, but at last had it free. As he pushed it through the gap in the wall into the water, he threw himself and the satchel safely inside.

“Tell him good luck, or Godspeed! What is it they used to say?”

“You forget, we’re recorders, witnesses. We aren’t meant to interact,” Danielbot said, but still willed his hope Falstaff’s way.

THE OLD MAN looked terrified, and when the God of Mayhem grabbed him by the throat the God could feel the geezer’s will dissolving into the thin mud of his blood.

“You’ll take me on your little boat, out there, you know the place? Where hope ends?” He gestured toward Ubo, and Danielbot, who realized now he hadn’t heard his own heartbeat since he’d first awakened in Ubo and how that should have been a dead giveaway, could hear the God’s heart beat like thunder.

“And if you do it well, I promise I will not burn you.”

FALSTAFF WAS MORE than halfway across the water when he saw the little boat, the long white hair tortured by the wind as the old man hunched and dug in with the oars. Standing in the middle of the boat was a huge figure in an enormous black coat, face wrapped in multicolored rags. The figure turned its head as it passed and pointed at Falstaff with one long arm.

Falstaff could not be sure, what with the sound of the wind and his own loud heart, but he thought he heard laughter.

THE GOD OF Mayhem continued to laugh with his head thrown back. Eventually he stopped and gazed at the water, at the dark shadow of the devil’s hand stretching behind and past them, the fingers curling, as if they might come back around and crush the boat.

He reached into his coat and pulled out his toy: an old flare strapped to a bottle full of jellied fuel. He lit the flare, stretched back and threw the bottle as hard as he could, hoping the devil would catch it in his overextended hand. If the oil here was too thin the cool ocean water would prevent ignition. But he had an instinct for such things, and sufficient faith the oil slick would be just thick enough.

“I figure we have about ten minutes, probably less. I seriously suggest you row, Grandad.”

DANIELBOT SAW FALSTAFF land and pull his raft up on a jagged cluster of rocks resembling splintered tombstones. It was at that point that the sky all around them caught fire. The boom shook the building and Leninbot sprawled on top of him.

Fire filled his vision, so bright and hot he could not process anything he was seeing. He dragged himself to the edge of the roof, thinking all that water would wash the fire out of his eyes. Instead when he looked down what he saw was an ocean of fire, extending as far as he could see across the quarantine area to the near edges of the Boston ruin. A boat appeared in the midst of it, the God of Mayhem standing inside, and the flames did not appear to bother the God at all. If anything he reveled in it, his arms rising in triumph.

A ball of fire shot up from below and arced over and behind Danielbot, followed by another explosion. He twisted around. One of the bots had exploded. His torso looked like the ruptured shell of a giant metal insect.

Danielbot kept turning and was relieved to see Leninbot approaching, waving his arms. But when he arrived and began to speak Danielbot couldn’t hear him, could barely make out his features. Instead he saw the God of Mayhem docked below, a rope in his hands and looped around the neck of the trembling old man. “My sincerest thank you for the rope, and see, you must have done a competent job. I’m not burning you.”

And then he pulled on both sides of the rope until his hands were as far apart as he could make them. While behind him the brightly-colored souls of the dead raced from the flames.

A SMALL ARMY of people, their faces layered in strips of plastic and ragged cloth, greeted Falstaff as he made his way inland and up the first giant mound of trash. He thought at first they might be burn victims, because of their faces. They grabbed him on either side and helped him up the slope. He clutched the satchel strap on his shoulder and would not let go, willing to die rather than have it taken.

DANIELBOT LOOKED UP as the God of Mayhem strolled onto the roof, appearing even larger in person than what he’d imagined. Danielbot expected the God to come directly to him, pick him up and disassemble him in some crude and non-technical way, or perhaps just throw him into the flaming waters below. The air billowed with thick, particle-filled black smoke. He tasted the bitterness and foulness of it with each reluctant breath. Even though he had no lungs and so no need to breathe, he had been breathing, smelling, and tasting ever since he had awakened here.

But the God of Mayhem simply looked confused. He unwrapped his head and threw his rags away. He looked older in person, his beard matted and streaked heavily with gray, his soft eyes watering like those of a sick child.

The God seemed not to see the bots at all at first. They stood still enough—the Danielbot thought they might resemble some artistic assemblage. The God kept turning his head, searching the roof with his eyes, seeking, Danielbot supposed, for real human beings.

Finally the God of Mayhem paused and stared at them. Leninbot and some of the other bots around Danielbot began to move restlessly, as if swaying to some internal electrical rhythm.

The God came to them and looked down, taller by a head. Suddenly he fell to his knees and folded his hands together. He looked from one bot to the other, finally focusing on Danielbot as if he expected him to be the spokesman.

“Are you gods, or devils? What are you?” the God of Mayhem asked.

The other bots moved their eye fixtures around, confused. Danielbot eased closer to the God, far enough away that he couldn’t be grabbed. It was raining in his head, fragments of the wife and son who were not his, whom he once had thought he loved and perhaps still did.

“We’re the ones who remember.”