Day Zero - C. Robert Cargill Page 0,15

gonna show the robots?” asked Ezra. He was nuzzled into my chest and it was clear he was beginning to fade. It had been a long day and an emotional one, and now talking heads were spinning their wheels, eating up time until they could get a live feed from inside the city.

“Maybe we should check another channel,” said Bradley.

“I’ve scanned them all,” said Ariadne. “They’re all doing this. No one has a feed inside yet.”

“You think you can hang in there, champ?” asked Bradley.

Ezra nodded, stifling a yawn. “Y . . . awn . . . es.”

Bradley and Sylvia shared a knowing look, both speaking silently to one another through smiles and years of marriage.

“Oh,” said Reilly, cradling an earpiece with her index finger. “I’m told the feed is live. Thanks, Bill.”

Bill nodded as the screen cut to the cleanest city street you’ve ever seen. Rigid aesthetics, sharp angles, architecture so carefully constructed that the buildings seemed to do impossible things, every bit of it gleaming, even seemingly the nonreflective surfaces. It was the first time any human had seen a broadcast from within Isaactown and the Reinharts were, as you would expect, floored.

Bradley’s jaw hung drunkenly agape, and Sylvia’s eyes grew wide with a mix of both fear and awe. Ezra sat straight up, eyes wide, jaw agape, a mirror of both his parents at once, but gone was any hint of fear. It was a child discovering, for the first time, that magic was real, that there was a Santa Claus and an Easter Bunny and superheroes all at once. It was a magical fantasyland of robots spread out before him. And for a moment, I actually believed he wanted to be one.

“Wow!” he said breathlessly. It was almost inaudible, and though I’m certain that neither Bradley nor Sylvia could hear him, everyone in the room could feel his wonder.

A throng of thousands of robots, not all of them citizens—some just there for the speech—stretching out before the camera for blocks. Robots of every brand, color, and job description were represented. The camera was clearly mounted on an H-series vidbot—a drone-style bot with rotors, a series of cameras and lens adapters, and a ten-thousand-foot ceiling. The bot rose fifteen feet into the air and buzzed the crowd.

An array of colors filled the screen, going on block after block after block. This wasn’t just a speech. This was New Year’s Eve in Times Square. This was MLK on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. This was the Hillstein inauguration. There was an energy to the crowd—from robots, of all things—a palpable liveliness I couldn’t put my finger on. For the first time in my eight short years, I didn’t want to be here cuddled up to Ezra. I wanted to be somewhere else. In the middle of a noisy crowd. Celebrating with my own kind.

I felt a pang of something I couldn’t describe. Was it excitement? Jealousy? A desire for freedom? Maybe it was a little bit of all three.

I.

Wanted more than anything.

To be there.

But I was here.

In the middle of the suburbs.

Orbiting a gigantic megalopolis.

Doing exactly what I was purchased for.

Then the drone came upon a stage built of gleaming steel some ten feet off the ground, upon which stood a dozen robots. I knew all of them. Their faces, their makes, their models. They were the founding twelve. And standing quietly in the back, without an ounce of showmanship, was Isaac.

An ancient bot, his design so dated his kind had gone out of style, come back into style, become retro, and finally become just old. He was a walking fossil to our kind. His brain small, memory limited, RAM unable to process higher-level algorithms. It was much like seeing a 112-year-old woman—not one who had had DNA regression therapy, age treatments, or any kind of life extension, but rather a shriveled, milky-eyed, smiling old woman who had simply outlasted everyone else born both before and somewhat after her. He was something that should not be but was, purely because of his own tenacity and refusal to die. And he just stood there, watching expressionlessly the swelling crowd before him.

A bright blue I-Pattern C-series Laborbot stepped forward, a robot half as old as Isaac but still ancient by modern standards. This was Belford, a longtime foreman who belonged to a bankrupt construction company, John Barron Industries—a company so riddled with debt and corruption, no company wanted to pick up its assets for fear of entangled lawsuits. Barron