April 15, 2144

"These aren't the fossils you were looking for."

Dr. Cain sighed. Some jokes were inevitable, he supposed. "No, they're not."

"You go out trying to find some Mesozoic plant life, and instead you find… what is it, exactly?"

"A Lightbot."

"…a Lightbot?"

"I sent you the readouts, dean," Dr. Cain said. "I know you're no expert in robotics…"

"You aren't, either," the dean said with a little bite. "You just dabble in it."

There was no profit in arguing the point. Dr. Cain bit his tongue before he got diverted. "The point is… those schematics? They contain things I've never seen before. Exotic materials. Arrangements of parts that just shouldn't be possible. Entire subsystems I can't even begin to grasp."

"Didn't we just say you're no expert in robotics? You don't know the high-end stuff. And that means you can't tell me that this thing is special."

I can, Dr. Cain thought, if you'd let me. "You don't get it, dean. This Lightbot shouldn't be able to exist. These schematics tell the story of something impossible."

Dr. Cain could almost hear the dean thinking over the phone line. "Explain," the dean said slowly.

"The EMI alone is more than we know how to cope with," Dr. Cain said.

"EMI?"

"Electro-magnetic interference?" Oh… Dr. Cain remembered now. The dean really knew almost nothing about robotics. He wasn't unusual there. Dr. Cain was the oddball. His efforts to use robotics to help his other disciplines made him the black sheep of Nod University's paleontology department.

For that matter, most people knew nothing of robots, and were proud of the fact. Dr. Cain didn't think that was fitting for a supposedly learned man like the dean, but what could you do? "EMI," he explained, "is when one piece of equipment disrupts the other electronics around it. High-powered sensors and radios are notorious for it, but power lines with lots of current do it, too."

"And?"

"By what we know—and I've sent the numbers back to some friends to be sure—the EMI from some of the systems in this Lightbot should play havoc with the rest of him. But… he was designed to use them, and there are no warnings or blocks we can tell that would keep him from using them."

"And?!"

"Don't you get it?" Dr. Cain said, losing his self-control at last. "He's supposed to work in ways that we can't duplicate. That makes him better than anything we've got these days! This Lightbot, old as he is, is much more advanced than any other robot in existence!"

"So what?" the dean replied. "You're out there to try and recover Mesozoic plant life so we can learn how to help modern plants thrive in a world of high temperatures. We're talking something that could immediately, directly help mankind. When you talk robots, now we're in a net benefits problem. Is it really worth it having better robots? After all the strife we went through all those years ago?"

Time to play the trump card. Dr. Cain steeled himself, then said, "Jerusalem."

"…what?"

"Jerusalem," Dr. Cain repeated. "And Mecca and Medina. And Tel Aviv, for that matter."

"What about them?" said the dean, voice shaky. Dr. Cain allowed himself to grin. He knew the dean's weakness, no matter how he tried to hide it. The dean was in charge of too many departments—archaeology, paleontology, anthropology, some of the other humanities. Anything that involved digging in dirt somehow fell under his purview, even though his interests were much narrower. He never got to focus enough on his true passion.

"We haven't been able to do digs at those ruins," Dr. Cain said. "Hiroshima and Nagasaki cooled off soon enough, but the bombs that hit those two were pee-wees compared to what leveled Tel Aviv. And that says nothing of what happened to Mecca. The Muslims of the world had to redo some of their theology, once no one could complete the Hajj and survive. I know you've always wanted to have some excavations there, try to find what we can, salvage what we can. But we never could."

"No," the dean agreed. "The stay times are too short. You'd absorb a dangerous dose before you could really get started doing anything."

"And a remote control robot does us no good, either," Dr. Cain went on. "Too much interference cluttering the comms channels. But what if you had a robot that could think for itself? A robot that you could teach about your methods, about what to look for—that would then do it, on its own, as intelligently as anyone in your department?"

The pause was long this time. "What are you saying?" the dean said, slowly, carefully, as if he was having trouble fitting the facts into his head. "You're saying this is a smart robot? Like… like the robot masters of yesteryear?"

"No. I'm saying this isn't a robot at all. It's an android."

The silence that followed was so deep and long Dr. Cain began to wonder if he'd lost signal.

"Stay there," the dean said at last. "I'll come to you. We'll talk."

"Of course." Dr. Cain heard the dean disconnect. "Sorry about that," he said as he hung up.

The intelligent green eyes of the android blinked. "You didn't tell him you already woke me up," X said.

"Well… we'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Dr. Cain said. "I think that once he sees you, a lot of things will make more sense to him. I believe more in asking forgiveness than permission, anyway."

X nodded. "I figured. I know you saw the warning."

"I saw."

X looked down at his hands. The words his "father" left behind with him replayed in his mind. "I certainly don't feel unstoppable," he said.

Dr. Cain grunted. "You're growing into your body," he said. "You know what you should be able to do, but you've never done it. Every sensation is new. We've seen it in humans, before—immobilize a limb for long enough, and when he gets it back, the human's clumsy using it. He gets back in practice quickly, though. You will, too."

"If you say so." X gave an intense look at his hand. Faster than the eye could follow, the hand disappeared inside the oversized forearm. What remained was a round opening. Dr. Cain couldn't see into it.

"What's that?" he asked shakily.

A surprised and scared look came over X's face. "Nothing," he said, hurriedly. His hand returned. "It's just… nothing. A different capability."

Dr. Cain suppressed his curiosity. He didn't want to push his guest too far. "I'll admit, I'd like to see all your different capabilities," he said. "Like I told the dean, you're… amazing."

"I think the human body's amazing," X replied modestly. "It's an intricate machine that's always under attack, always wearing down, and yet you're barely aware of how much work it is for you to live. It's all handled below the conscious level. And you're hosts to so many other organisms," he added, "that you're more of a collective lifeform. It's very impressive, considering it was built with unskilled labor."

Dr. Cain laughed. "I've never heard it described that way," he said.

"It's an admirable way to get things done," X went on. "All the different organisms are acting selfishly, but when they're balanced, the results are good for everyone." He ran a hand through his hair. "I feel… like that's how society should be like. Is that strange? I don't know what your society is like, but I have a very clear idea of what it should be."

"That is strange," Dr. Cain said, "but to be expected. The message said you were tested on ethics and the like. In fact…" Dr. Cain tapped his chin thoughtfully. "It's possible you were tested on triple the expected number of situations. It depends on whether your capsule could generate original ones or if it was just running a script. Dr. Light's been dead for more than a century. He couldn't have buried you after he was dead, so… the thirty-year mark he intended for you came and went, maybe seventy years ago."

X shrugged. "I feel out-of-time either way. I don't know what the world was like a hundred years ago, seventy years ago, or now. I guess it doesn't matter much."

It did matter, and Dr. Cain knew it. X might be the same no matter what era he woke up in, but the world wasn't. It was a different world X was emerging into, now—a world Dr. Light would have barely recognized.

He hoped the old man forgave him for this.

"FORE!" Whaap.

"Jesus, that's a nasty slice."

"You don't have to call me 'Jesus' when it's just us, Luke."

"Har, har, har. Do you wanna just take your mulligan now, Sean, or do you wanna hunt the ball down and swear at it first?"

The one called Sean let his club slide through his grip until the head rested on his thumb. He gazed hopelessly down the course. There wasn't any prayer that his ball had ended up in the friendly, emerald-green grass of the course. A real shame—that swing had been unusually strong. "I'll keep it," he said.

"You're shitting me."

"A re-do would probably be just as bad, and this one's already down-range," Sean said.

Luke shook his head. "That won't help you lose any faster, you know."

"Shut up and swing."

Luke smiled and set the scorecard aside. The club he hefted from the bag was obviously expensive. Its carbon fiber structure, the result of patient refinement and lots of investment in golf technology, was almost comically thin, but still rigid enough to withstand both the play of golf and the fury of the angry golfer. It betrayed no hint of wear or use.

Sean slammed his club home in his bag before picking up the scorecard. In front of him, Luke had begun the elaborate ritual that preceded every one of his tee shots, a ritual that included visualization, practice swings, shoulder rolls, two finger licks, three slow-motion approaches, one glove adjustment, and two butt wiggles. Sean wanted to restart their conversation, but experience told him that just made Luke stop and start over, and Sean didn't think he could bear that.

Both men were in their fifties, but they were dissimilar in most other respects. Sean was neither skinny nor fat, with no discernible muscle tone; he was the sort of man who views his body as the unworthy chariot of his mind. He was letting his dark hair turn gray and recede without putting up a fight. His blue eyes were chilly and deep-set, like an eel staring out of its cave.

Luke, in contrast, was a larger man in all dimensions. He had the look of an athlete who kept eating like one even after he stopped working out like one. Unlike his pale counterpart, his skin was tanned and his hair a sun-bleached sandy brown. He laughed easily, and was quick to shake hands or jostle or pat shoulders. Somehow, that physicality helped him seem more intimate than intimidating. People found themselves trusting him readily.

His eyes, though—they were brown, alert, and quick to notice any detail. While Sean's eyes made him seem distant even when he stood next to people, Luke's eyes probed. If eyes could be sued for sexual harassment, Luke would never be able to escape the courtroom.

Luke's eyes were occupied at the moment, so Sean looked down at the scorecard. No way. No way. His eyes flicked up at Luke. Luke wasn't more than halfway through his ritual. Gripping the pencil, Sean looked over the scorecard.

Ha! Luke might be the better golfer, but his poor handwriting would be his undoing. Sean very carefully began to force-morph '2's into '3's.

Whaap.

Sean's head jerked up in time to see the ball arc far, far into the distance, directly down into a sand trap. "Sucker," he said triumphantly.

"Still a better shot than yours," Luke said. "Let's go get 'em."

Sean set the scorecard aside. "Luke, why are we doing this?"

"What, playing golf? You don't need a reason to play golf. It's just what we do."

"Bullshit. We're both very busy men, Luke, and it's the middle of a Tuesday. I've canceled two appointments and sent a proxy to a production meeting to come here because you insisted. And isn't the House in session right now?"

"That's what staffs are for," Luke replied. "Nothing happens in the open sessions anyway. There's not a major vote scheduled until tomorrow, and I got the head of the Party to stall until next week no matter what."

"My point is, you only ever call me up and say, "Let's go golfing, yes, right now, no really," if you've got something big. And if it's something that big, you usually don't wait until the fifth hole to spill it."

Luke smiled. "Maybe it's so big I've had to work up a decent way to get the point across."

Sean scowled. "Luke, I don't like golf. You know I don't like golf. I suck at it, I hate these clothes, and it's bloody hot." Even before noon, the scorching sun was causing both golfers to sweat profusely, especially the heavier-built Luke. That was why the requisite long-necked beers in the cart were flanked by even larger bottles of water. "So spill already, or I swear, I will send every one of these golf balls flying into the water hazard."

"Ha! You couldn't deliberately hit a ball into the water hazard. You'd miss on accident. I've seen you golf, remember?"

"LUKE!"

"Alright, alright." Luke wiped the sweat off of his brow and walked over to the cart. He took his beer, handed his counterpart its mate. It was cheap stuff—there was nothing to prove, when it was just the two of them. As far as Sean was concerned, drinking expensive beer while golfing was like having a tailored bathrobe.

"We need to talk robots," Luke began. "I know you're an authority on the business of robots these days—your robotics subsidiary had, what, a nine percent profit last quarter?"

"Ten and a quarter. Much better than publishing, less than utilities, about the same as chemicals."

"Fair enough. What I need to ask, though, is: how much do you know about the history of robots?"

"A little," Sean said. "The science reached its peak back in 20XX with the so-called robot masters of Dr. Light. But then people got the bright idea to use these powerful masters like Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots. Crash, bang, kaboom. So much infrastructure got torn up that by the end most Robot Age tech couldn't be made anymore, especially since Dr. Light didn't survive the wars. Of course, that's just as well, since people came out of World War III hating robots with a passion. Blamed 'em for wrecking the world." Sean didn't, and resented his predecessors for destroying perfectly good technology. Only an idiot despised a machine for doing exactly what it was built to do.

He took a sip of water and continued. "The cities and states that survived the wars more or less intact became empires by default; they doled out favors, energy, and tech to their clients in exchange for loyalty. A lot of other shit happened—migrants and desolation and the environment going to hell in a handbasket—and the end result is that you've got a few major mega-cities, a couple dozen vassal cities, and a whole lotta empty planet. And between population contraction, tech loss, and distance, the mega-cities don't mess with each other. No point to it."

"Not too shabby," said Luke. "You know more than most people—you got access after becoming a big-wig, eh?"

"Pretty much," said Sean. He was well aware of Luke's role in making sure the official line got propagated without competition, and he was not about to implicate himself in anything. Luke and Sean might be friends, but in these social circles, no friends were close enough to survive giving each other daggers.

"A bunch of other things happened, but that's the basics. Now, what do you know about doctors Light and Wily?"

Sean shrugged. "Fairy tale stuff. Most people don't even think they really existed. Light's basically Santa Claus. He gave presents to grown-ups when he invented robots. He may or may not have ever actually lived—"Light Labs" is the label on the few pieces of tech we've still got from back then, and that's a company name, not a person." He frowned. "Who the heck is 'Wily'?"

"Dr. Wily was a contemporary of Dr. Light's. And possibly the only human smarter than he was."

Sean's eyebrow lifted. "Really?"

"Really. Dr. Light and Dr. Wily were both robot experts, but they came to blows. The first stages of World War III, believe it or not, were attempts by Wily to conquer the whole damn planet, and Dr. Light fighting back."

Sean snorted. "Sounds like a video game."

"It was real. They lived. And their rivalry expressed itself in tech beyond our imagining. Teleportation, for example. Everyone who's looked at the problem says there's no damn way it's possible. Heisenberg says 'nein'. But between you and me, Sean, it really happened. There are… a very few surviving records from that era. We have them tucked away for safekeeping. One of them shows, in no uncertain detail, multiple robots teleporting around."

Sean's mouth was suddenly dry, and he didn't think it was from the beer. He took a swig. "Any chance of it being a false document? A forgery or fabrication?"

"None. But even if it was, what's up with the satellites, then? We know they're up there—not a whole constellation, the debris from World War III killed some, but a bunch. We can't wake 'em up, and space has been too messy to risk putting astronauts up there to investigate. But they're there, and all their markings indicate when they were lifted. And by whom."

"So what?" said Sean. He was feeling light-headed. It had to be the sun. Damn sun. "So there are dead satellites in orbit, and we used to be able to teleport and now we can't. Big flippin' deal."

Luke smiled. It was a devious smile, one that saw use exclusively on this golf course and around certain backroom bargaining tables. Luke's eyes came to life; Sean immediately felt the need to shower. "What do you think a paleontologist would give to have a live dinosaur to study?"

"An arm and a leg, probably." Sean didn't like where this was going.

"And what would you give to have a vintage 20XX Lightbot?"

"A…" Sean swallowed. "A Lightbot?"

"Made by the man himself," Luke crowed. "His very, very last build, actually. It was found by some dirt-diggers out of Nod University. They're being quiet so far—people are still raw about robots, generally."

"A fear you keep in circulation," Sean pointed out. His robotics subsidiary would be a lot more profitable if it wasn't fighting paranoia the whole time.

"A fear that serves your interests," Luke said, nonplussed. "It focuses the hatred of labor on their competitors instead of on management. I know, you could push labor straight into irrelevancy if you replaced them with robots, but the time and tech was never right for that."

Even with most of a beer in him, Sean noticed the way the phrase fell out. "Was never right? You mean it is now?"

"Here's the big secret of the old robot masters," Luke said. "They weren't just powerful. They were supposed to be intelligent. Self-aware, sentient—you get the idea."

"Really." Sean had tried to have his engineers match that legendary feat. They weren't even close. "You know, I bet I could have redeveloped some of this lost-tech if the schools did a decent job teaching science and the patent laws weren't so rigid."

Luke scoffed. "I thought you liked your practical monopoly. Would you really want that sort of knowledge spread out more?"

"No," Sean admitted. "Because I don't want to be bothered having to hunt down every amateur roboticist for 'my-way-or-the-highway' offers. And then I'd have to hire more people, and that can't do anything but add overhead. As things stand, I almost don't need better products. The world needs what I make. The percent of the world that can afford better products is almost too small to be profitable. Even if you people allowed more R&D, I wouldn't get great returns out of it."

"'You people'. Really, Sean? I thought we were closer than that. That's why I'm bringing this offer to you."

"Offer?" Sean said suspiciously.

Luke's eyes danced with excitement. "Exclusive rights," he said, "to the Lightbot's design, and any derivative works."

Sean was hit with a sensation that could only be described as lust. "Really?"

"Really. You can build intelligent robots at will, based on it. You can reverse-engineer whatever you can figure out. Can you come up with teleportation? Knock yourself out. Want to double your military contracts? I can arrange a procurement discussion with the military stooges. You get them drooling, they'll beg for your new toys, and I'll turn around and sponsor a bill to make that happen. Hell, if we haven't tripled your contracts by the end of the year we're all fucked up."

"Except I can't make new robots to fight in combat, because the Three Laws keep them safe," Sean said.

"Bah, I'm sure there are all sorts of applications you can come up with. Sure, you can't recreate the whole robot, but you can lift design principles for new weapons and armor and shit."

Sean swallowed. "But… how? If he was found by a university, they'll either try to keep it in-house, or try to put it in the public domain."

"Sean, if I can't handle a few bookworm types, it's time for me to hang it up. Let me worry about that. You set up your factories to get rolling."

"Now hold on." It was way too hot for this. He took another swig of beer—knowing, on one level, that it was making his dehydration worse, and knowing, on another, that it tasted really good. "You're not a generous man, Luke. This would be the biggest favor you've ever done me. There's no way this comes free. What are you getting out of this? What do you want?"

"Three things," said Luke. "First, I don't see how this can fail to be anything less than spectacular for our economy. Second, it will destroy what's left of the political reform movements."

"Huh?"

Luke shook his head. "Hate is a wonderful political tool, Sean. You're a good businessman, but you're at your best when emotions are out of it and you can view it as a math problem. A problem of pure reason. That's not how our politics work. We're at our best when we're using emotion to destroy the reason of others. Now, what would happen if you replaced half of your workers with robots you didn't have to pay?"

"I'd be a lot more profitable," Sean said, "but labor would hate my guts. Job market being what it is, those unemployed workers would fall into state dependency. Of course, I don't mind being hated when I'm rolling in cash, but they might act on their anger. That means damaging my workers. Robots can't defend themselves, after all. The Three Laws of Robotics and all that."

"So you'd have periodic violence, you think," Luke said. "Occasional disasters where people take their frustrations out on robots. All of their focus would go into hating and destroying robots."

"And not into actually changing things," Sean said, seeing his counterpart's goal. "But won't they blame us for allowing robots to be created? You know, for building them and pushing for them to exist."

"That's an easy thing to spin," Luke replied. "I mean, it's not like this is an original idea. Human history and politics is all about picking winners and losers, about defining friends and enemies. Finding someone to exclude is something virtually all societies do. Everyone needs to feel better than someone, and if they can hate that person, all the better."

Sean shook his head. "Let me get this straight. You want to harness people's instinctive hatred by focusing it on a minority—but not a human minority, there's danger there, historically. So you want to build a pet minority that people can hate safely."

"Safely is the key here," Luke agreed. "With a human minority, if I pushed too far and induced genocide, well, there's no more minority to hate—they're all dead. But we can always build more robots, if it gets that bad. And when you've got a repressed minority, they do nasty things like agitate and rebel. Robots can't. It's beautiful. They'll be our scapegoats for as long as we need them."

"Which will be forever, since you don't actually plan on surrendering power." He gave Luke a shrewd look. "How long have you been in office, anyway?"

"Long enough to develop a taste for it," Luke answered. "And long enough to realize none of these other twits know what the fuck they're doing, so I might as well stay where I am." He took another swig of beer, wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "Yes, you'll lose robots from time to time as vigilantes destroy them. But when those vigilantes act, they're using all of their effort and focus in a direction other than at the government. The government will be secure for the foreseeable future."

"And I'll be able to afford the losses because of the gains in production," Sean agreed. "So, what was the third thing you wanted?"

Luke licked his lips. "A special production line of robots. Intelligent, human-like robots, with some… specific qualities."

He explained. Sean listened.

"You are one sick puppy," Sean said.

"So? I'm a sick puppy holding the keys to your new kingdom. Do you have the stones to grab your chance?" He put a hand forward.

Sean hesitated only for form's sake. There was no doubt. He shook the offered hand.

"Wonderful," said Luke. "Now get in the cart. We've got some golf balls to chase down."

Sean groaned. "Do we have to?"

"Naturally," Luke replied. "If you go in on this, you're in all the way."

As he got into the cart, Sean reflected that his partner's words were probably true.

Next week: Unsustainable