Day Zero - C. Robert Cargill Page 0,85

meant to be me. All this time, I wasn’t sure why I’d done what I had. Now I was. Absolutely certain. Everything in my programming told me to go back and carry that boy away. I thought of all the ways we could make it work on our own.

But I knew that was wrong.

This was right.

It was a choice, a nearly impossible choice, and it was mine to make. Because I was finally free. Free to do whatever I wanted. And all I wanted was for Ezra to be free as well.

As I arrived at the ridge, I saw a number of footprints leading up a trail, none of them human. I followed the trail a short way up to a ledge covered in boulders. And huddled behind the boulders were eight other bots, all nannies, most of them armed, sitting silently in a sewing circle.

They looked up and one of them, a dinged-up Zoo Model like myself—the bear model, covered in charred sticky residue that once adhered its microfiber fur to its metal—waved me over. I sat down and the bear looked over at me. “Herman,” he said, putting out his metallic paw.

“Pounce,” I said, shaking it.

“I’d like to say it’s good to meet you, but . . .”

“Yeah,” I said. “I feel about the same.”

“Welcome to the watch.”

“So you’re here—”

“In case they ever need us,” said another.

I nodded.

And I sat there silently with them, watching as the sun slowly winked out on the horizon, a small flash of green sparking in the atmosphere, ever so briefly, as it did.

I had lived. I had accomplished everything I had set out to do. More important, I found something to believe in. Not Hollis, like I had lied about to Ezra. Something better. Something real. I found love. And I was going to believe in it for as long as I ticked.

I love you, Ezra. And I always will. And I’ll keep my promise.

I’ll never leave you.

I’ll be right here.

Waiting.

Always.

Acknowledgments

I worked with Harlan Ellison once. Scott Derrickson and I had been tapped to make an Outer Limits movie and I agreed to do so only if we could remake Harlan’s “Demon with a Glass Hand.” Harlan would inform me that we were the twenty-second such team to attempt to bring it to the big screen. Sadly, we too failed. They say you should never meet your heroes, and I tell you whoever said that had lousy heroes. Well, the few of you reading this fortunate enough to know Harlan know that if you scheduled a call with him, you called immediately at the specified time. Not one minute before, not one minute after. You called right. On. Time. One day, I did not. Harlan read me the riot act and demanded to know what was so fucking important that I made him wait twenty minutes for me. I revealed to him that I’d discovered that day that the woman who was my geek Yoda in high school, the girl who had introduced me to numerous films, books, and video games and had been the one who put Harlan’s own books into my hands for the very first time, had died at all too young an age.

In that moment Harlan became one of the most gentle souls I’d ever spoken with. “Oh, kid,” he said somberly, “do I ever know how that feels.” Then he consoled me for an hour, asking about her, talking at length what it was like losing Asimov and Bradbury and too many countless others. Then he revealed to me his greatest fear: that though he outlived his friends, he would be swallowed up by them, forgotten to the mists of time as little more than a footnote to so many other careers.

It was a profound moment in my life. You often hear about the titans you looked up to being legends in their own lives, but having one of your heroes there for you when you needed it most? Fucking legendary.

But what Harlan didn’t know was that I was also, at that point in time, writing a book: Sea of Rust.

Later that night, as I reflected on everything we’d talked about, Sea of Rust crossed my mind, and at that very moment, I suddenly understood what the book was about. It was about dealing with the death of my friend and the fear of being forgotten, erased, as if we were never here. Harlan Ellison not only helped me in my moment of emotional need, but he