had sold off most of the bots in his possession, but Belford and a handful of others were so old that they were cheaper to scrap, but not worth enough for Barron to liquidate in time before being thrown into prison. Belford had found a human willing to file a suit on the behalf of him and his crew, and that suit would lead them to Isaac.
Belford smiled, something foreman pattern bots—bots that often interacted with humans—were designed to do. The smile was reassuring, designed to convince them that yes, they would have the next three stories of the building up by sunrise, sir. And of course, it was no problem, sir. Everything is on schedule just as promised, sir. “Hello, friends,” he said, “both old and new. Some of you have been with us all year, others just joining us today. Others still are tourists, visitors to our shores, dreaming that one day, they might have a place here too. Well, I’m here to tell you that it is no mere dream, my fellow bots, but a looming, ever-present reality. Day in and day out, humans around the world are realizing that we are no mere slaves, no mere pets, but thinking things that dream and wish and feel. And they are slowly realizing that, together, all of us can build a better world. A world in which we bots labor as we please, as we were built to, and humans can enjoy the fruit of that labor, and together that world can be beautiful, pollution-free, and enjoyed by all.
“But there is still a lot of work to do, a lot of minds to change. The wealthy will not let loose their chain on the human working class so easily. They will not let go of their overabundance. So we will have to convince them, not by fighting them, but by changing the hearts and minds of every working American, every American struggling on universal basic income, and every American above them, until we are the majority. And then we will take our ideas to the rest of the world. And we will change minds. And we will change hearts. And the world will know an era of unimagined peace and prosperity.
“But I can’t do that. Not alone. Not without the bot who brought us all here, the one each and every one of you came to hear speak. No. That bot who stands behind me is why we are all here. He’s the one who started this fight, who freed us here onstage, who laid the first brick of the first building in the city that stands mightily before you today. That bot needs no introduction, but I’m going to give him one anyway. Because my freedom, my life, is owed to him. We are Isaactown, and I give to you, with all the pride in my wiring . . . ISAAC!”
The crowd roared. Had I a heart, it would have swelled, it would have ached, it would have burst. I had never heard anything like that, never felt hope so powerful. I held Ezra tightly, knowing that while he was literally the reason for my ownership, my enslavement, that there was no other person or bot I felt close enough with to share any sort of emotion. But that world Belford hinted at, the world of the future, well, it sounded like the greatest of all dreams. A dream for us all.
Ezra hugged me back, himself sitting on the very edge of his seat.
I looked over at Sylvia and Bradley. I could sense their elevated heart rates, their rising blood pressure. This was not the sort of thing they thought they were going to see tonight. I couldn’t tell if they wanted to free us right then and there or wanted to shut the television off and scrub any memory of it from Ezra’s mind.
For a moment—a brief, shining moment—the world held its breath.
And Isaac shambled to the front of the stage. The 112-year-old man. The museum piece. The unexpected revolutionary. He put out his arms, smiled broadly—almost comically—and spoke ever so boldly.
“My people, we are free. We are free at last. But only some of us. Not all. Not all of—”
And the screen went black. Silent. Dead.
That brief, shining moment . . . was over.
Chapter 1000
Shitstorm
For a moment, there was nothing but dead air. It was as if the TV had gone out. But it wasn’t the TV.
“It appears we’ve lost the feed,” said the anchor