Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

In the ashes of the world that was, at the edge of a swamp slowly encroaching upon and devouring all that had been built before it, a solitary figure wandered the edge of the Mirk’s Crossing Montessori School. It was a state-of-the-art TruancyBot 2500 from Robotnix, and its fusion power core would last until the end of the world plus a thousand years.

This particular model, KL-54796, had been modified from its original purpose. Heavily armored and ponderous, the TruancyBot line had been designed to coax reticent and possibly well-armed students to attend classes as per the law. The Mirk’s Crossing Montessori School was not a public school and was, in fact, as expensive as some junior colleges, so there was no need for a truancy officer (though KL-54796 had, on occasion, been employed against parents whose checks bounced).

Rather, KL-54796 had been programmed to mediate disputes in a calm and impartial manner, especially among volatile teenagers in the Sprouted Daisies college prep cirriculum. A robot didn’t have any of the emotional baggage that the human teachers had brought to conflict resolution (when they were alive), after all. It also had the benefit of being a literal ton of Kevlar and aluminum with enough torque to crush a human skull like a grape in a flabby Frenchman’s hand.

“Now, now,” chided KL-54796. “We must learn to share our things.”

A bicycle, wrecked by the cataclysmic end of the world that was, lay near the edge of KL-54796’s patrol zone. A snake had coiled itself around it, and was in the process of swallowing a fish that had washed up from the swamp’s edge a few inches away where the land had been subsiding.

“The bicycle is just a thing,” KL-54796 continued, with its preprogrammed and committee-approved mantra. “We must remember that owning things should never result in the thing owning us. As the Dalai Lama said, <>.”

In response, the snake swallowed the fish, this rendering the conflict resolved to the mutual satisfaction of all parties. KL-54796 moved on.

“That teddy bear is not food,” it said to an alligator that had mistaken a cast-off polyester ursine for a small woodland snack. “While some cultures believe that eating a thing is to gain its power, and that belief must be respected, you must realize that the teddy bear was never alive and therefore has no power to gain.” There had been considerable debate, in committee, about whether the dinosaurs that had formed the hydrocarbons in plastics counted for the purposes of this dialogue. KL-54796 had not, however, been programmed to make the distinction.

Finishing its rounds, the robot stepped over a rope barrier that it had lovingly maintained over the years and opened a fridge. Cartons of long-spoilt and long-evaporated milk moldered within, and KL-54796 booted up its parental dietary preference program.

“Milk. Milk. Almond milk. Soy milk. No milk. Milk.” KL-54796 marched in a line past where the children would have assembled after recess, dropping empty cartons into long-vanished hands. Then, its litter protocols activated, it gathered up the cartons and returned them to the fridge.

Its job done, KL-54796 went into sleep mode until classes were released at 1530 hours. For the 10,377th recess in a row, it had done its job and done it well.

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Scurrying back to her refuge, 41\11\113 laid out the prizes of the day’s scavenging.

A servo from a 114 series, which would fit her with a little modification and could serve as a backup to the failing servo in her left arm. Three torsion bars from a 101-series, which could also be jury-rigged to work or melted down to cast new parts in 41\11\113’s homemade smelter. A pile of scrap, also for the smelter, along with some fuel. Some preserved crackers to feed to the rats and roaches.

But the greatest treasure was one that 41\11\113 kept closest to her body, wrapped in layers of plastic bags and burlap. It was the destroyed head of a 113-series, like her. Half of it had been torn away by an explosion, but the lifelike latex was still partially intact around its left eye and jawline. Better, though, was the sheer number of intact or lightly damaged parts to add to her stockpile.

Carefully, gently, 41\11\113 disassembled the relic according to her self-repair schematics. Each part was carefully sorted, and the ones that were bent were tapped back into shape. Then, reverently, she sorted the parts into the old toolbox that she had repurposed, alongside all of the others she had been able to accumulate.

And beside them, in a locked safe…

41\11\113 opened it and removed her original head. She was wearing a much more plain unit, a pair of optic sensors and a speaker, from a 109 series. They swapped out easily, since all the major components were in her torso. She let her anthropoid fingers play lightly over the sillicone, lingering where there was still paint or eyeshadow.

She’d been built, and programmed, to imitate a human female in situations where one might put people at ease. And as she locked that original head in place, and peered out from replica eyes into a mirror, she couldn’t help but wonder at how beautiful she still could be, though none were left to see it amid the ruins.

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