Chapter Ten

The automaton sat completely still, a thick bundle of wires dangling from the panel at the back of his head. "To begin with, I'm going to do a preliminary scan of your memory," Fai explained, accessing one of his computer's analysis programs. As clunky as the machine had been when he'd finally gotten it into working condition, it had nonetheless contained some useful software. Though not specifically designed to handle Clockwork Automatons, it had programs which would allow him to access most of Syaoran's databases.

The automaton said nothing, though the slight tension of his shoulders belied his anxiety. It seems his emotional network has survived well enough, Fai thought, running the analysis. Maddy leaned closer, eyes fixed on the screen as the program isolated points of interest, including software updates—mostly from before the Departure—notable events which Syaoran had archived, and spikes in emotion beyond the usual baselines. Fai watched the results pile up and considered which algorithms were likely to yield the information he needed to determine whether Syaoran was a threat or not.

"You really did spend three hundred years in that facility, huh?" Maddy said, glancing away from the monitor to look at the automaton.

"I had no reason to leave. I thought I was doing what needed to be done for the good of the world."

"It is a very stable pattern," Fai murmured to himself. "There are a few disturbances, but those are minor compared to the recent spikes in your emotional network." Hardly unexpected, considering what a shock it must have been to encounter a group of our size after so long alone. "I'll have to compare those to your personal logs, but of more immediate interest . . ." He typed in a short sequence, which reduced the list to software updates only, though the other files continued to pile up in the background. "You gave yourself several software updates over the years."

"Is that significant?"

"Possibly. Maddy, would you say that it is unusual for an automaton of Syaoran's caliber to manipulate their own programming?"

She seemed startled by his question, requiring several false starts before answering. "It, well . . . Yeah, it's unusual, but it's not unreasonable that a Clockwork Automaton would be equipped to do so. Most processes that other automatons would receive through software updates would actually be handled by the learning programs in a Clockwork Automaton, but there would be some things that would require actual coding to fix."

"Such as?" he asked, already knowing the answer.

Maddy hesitated, eyes flickering to Syaoran before she squared her shoulders and answered. "Removing the prohibitions against violence would be the greatest concern, but there are others. For instance, personality modding might require a software update. Without it, a personality change would require months of conscious alteration of behavior, if not years. It's like . . . It's like when an addict decides to quit using. Sure, it can be done, but it requires a lot of willpower and, most of the time, a complete restructuring of your daily life. You have to cut ties with anyone who uses drugs, stay away from places where you might be tempted, take up some new hobbies to fill the void. For someone who could rewrite their personality, a software update would be much easier."

It was an apt metaphor, Fai decided, although he doubted this automaton had anything resembling a drug problem. Automatons did not develop addictions in the same way humans did, as the way their bodies were structured eliminated chemical dependency as a factor. There was still a psychological angle, of course, but without the influence of peers, media, or other contributing factors, the possibility of Syaoran being an addict was unlikely. In any case, he wasn't looking for an addiction—he was looking for violent tendencies.

He clicked through the later software updates to see what had been modified. Forty-eight years after the Departure, Syaoran had received his last software update from the company which had created him—a mass update from light-years away, sent to all surviving Clockwork Automatons. From the looks of it, the update was meant to add a few additional safeguards and protocols to help the automatons cope with their long lifespans. After that, there were six minor updates which listed Syaoran himself as the programmer, the latest of which had occurred almost exactly one year ago. In fact, that update had taken place only a few days after . . .

Fai paused, studying the screen more closely. "That can't be right."

Syaoran began to turn his head, then stopped abruptly when the movement threatened to pull the wires out of his control panel. It was Maddy, however, who spoke first. "What is it?"

"Give me a moment." He pushed away from the computer, riffling through a sheaf of silicon pages upon which he'd handwritten most of the notes he'd made since he'd woken up from cryo-sleep. He retrieved the very first of his logs—the booklet which was really more a journal now than a collection of useful notes. The first entry detailed the day he'd emerged from his long slumber and released the rest of the survivors from their own cryo-pods. After that, there were several entries detailing the day-to-day life of the camp as they organized themselves and began scavenging for what they needed to survive.

After another minute of perusal, he came to the entry he was looking for—a page-long journal he'd written the day they'd first encountered the waste management drones. They had not been hostile then, and as Fai skimmed the entry, he remembered his wonder at finding functional automatons of any variety so long after the Departure. That discovery had presented two possibilities. The first: that the rest of humanity had returned to Earth, as promised prior to the Departure. The second: that there were still fully operational automatons capable of manufacturing the drones they had encountered. Fai had rushed back to the base camp to relay the news, hoping that his discovery would allow them an opportunity to reconnect with a piece of their old lives. That hope had made it all the more crushing when, upon their return a handful of days later, they had found themselves under fire from the very robots they had been so overjoyed to discover.

Fai looked at the date of the entry, then looked at the date of Syaoran's latest software update. The two were the same.

"You have been silent for some time," Syaoran said. "Do you have a question with which I may assist you?"

Fai forced his voice to remain carefree, despite the panic flailing in his stomach. "No, just thinking. Madiha, would you go and see if you can find that old projector we dug up a few months back?"

"Why?"

So that you won't be within shooting range if this goes badly. "It might be useful for displaying any conclusions we make for the rest of the camp. A visual aid will be more compelling than our word alone, even if both are equally valid."

Maddy hesitated, and he could almost hear her thinking that it would be easier to have everyone simply look at the screen, rather than devoting time to syncing the projector with their systems and creating a presentation. But, after an uneasy moment, she nodded. "Sure. Be back in a few."

He watched her walk out of the tent, then counted to ten to ensure she wouldn't be within earshot. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he turned to Syaoran. "Relying solely upon your conscious memory, without accessing any of your other databases, can you tell me when your last software update occurred?"

"I had to update myself fifty-two years, three months, and twenty-one days ago in order to sync myself with the facility's databases, which I had updated after water damage ruined some equipment."

"You haven't made any other alterations to yourself since then?"

"No."

"Have you received any updates or data packages from anywhere else in that time-frame?"

"No. The last was a few decades after the Departure, when the humans sent a mass data-dump to all surviving Clockwork Automatons." He paused, his features settling into a look of dull confusion. "I am afraid my intuitive abilities have waned since the Departure. Your heart rate and hormone levels indicate that you are afraid, but I do not understand why."

Fai took a breath, looking at the systems analysis to determine the truth of the automaton's words. As far as the computer could tell, Syaoran believed his statements. Yet that was not the story told by the other scans Fai had run, and the inconsistency raised an alarming question:

If Syaoran had not altered his own programming, who had?

The tent flap burst open, and Fai flinched, thinking that Maddy had returned already with the projector, but when he looked up, he found Kurogane standing in the entryway. "Oh, hell," he said, seeing Fai's expression. "What is it?"

Calm. Steady. This doesn't have to mean what you think it means. He cleared his throat, but could not quite to sound cheerful. "Well, Kuro-sama, it appears our automaton has been remotely hacked."

The man's dark eyebrows slanted. "Hacked? By who? We've been looking for months—there's no one within a hundred miles of our camp, and definitely no one with that kind of technology. Who could be—" He broke off as the answer occurred to him, his face paling even as his hands clenched into fists. "Tell me this isn't what it sounds like."

"I wish I could," Fai said, his own voice sounding distant to his ears. "Unfortunately, it appears we may not have this world to ourselves for much longer."

Syaoran's eyes darted from Fai to Kurogane and back again. "Am I correct in understanding this means the Return of humanity is imminent?"

"Shit," Kurogane growled, half-raising his fist before remembering that, with the exception of the canvas from which the tent was made, every piece of equipment within punching range was irreplaceable. With obvious effort, he relaxed his fist, turning to Fai. "Find out what exactly what they changed when they hacked him. I need to talk to Kamui." He stalked out of the tent before Fai could think of an appropriate quip. Which, given Kurogane's state of mind, was probably better for both of them.

"I do not understand," Syaoran said, the pitch of his voice fluctuating in puzzlement. "If the Return is imminent, it means the planet has sufficiently recovered to become a viable human habitat once again. It means that the descendants of those who left during the Departure will soon return to share their knowledge and resources with yourselves and any other survivors."

Fai lifted his head, saw the obviously baffled look on the automaton's face. In contrast to the occasional difficulties showing emotion, he now seemed to be overemphasizing them, to the point where his expression appeared a caricature of real confusion. How deteriorated must those systems be, after three centuries without anyone to talk to? Any human would have gone insane after a few years of isolation. Fai had taken an introductory course on psychology before settling on his major in college, and he knew that a person's social skills began to degrade significantly after only a few weeks without human contact. An automaton would have safeguards against that, but even so, it was a miracle Syaoran could function in any capacity around people—remarkable that he could emote at all.

It was no surprise, then, that he could not understand the obvious fault in his logic. Fai looked at his feet. "I am afraid you have an unrealistically optimistic perspective on the goodness of humanity."

"Humans are social creatures," Syaoran said. "Their ability to cooperate and coexist with one another allowed them to survive despite being physically inferior to the species with which they competed for survival."

"You don't understand." Fai returned his attention to the monitor, opening the file on Syaoran's latest "software update." A window popped up displaying several folders, each packed with hundreds of files. It took only a cursory glance to confirm that this was far from an amateur hacking job. "It's true that most people, given the choice, will work for the benefit of their society. But there's no such thing as a society where everyone is treated equally. There will always be a lower class. There will always be criminals. There will always be people left behind. Even the healthiest society cannot be perfect."

Thinking, he examined several files more closely. Definitely a professional job. "Famine, sickness, lack of resources . . . Most people believed that these were relics of an age before modern scientific understanding. We had cultivated the land, brought the very forces of nature under our control. We could build structures which touched the sky. We could rewrite our own genetics to make ourselves smarter, or stronger, or more attractive. We could even create machines which matched our intelligence, while also instilling in them a sense of devotion, even love, for their creators."

"I wish I had been able to see more of the old world," Syaoran said quietly. "It sounds amazing."

"It was." Fai closed his eyes, a hundred regrets threatening to drown him. "And that was exactly the problem. How easy would it be to look at everything we had accomplished and reach a little too far? To take that last step and bring about our own destruction? We had conquered nature in a hundred different ways, used our superior intelligence to create marvels which even our most recent ancestors would have deemed wondrous. Humanity had always been arrogant, but as society progressed, we became dangerously so, and when the world we had abused and manipulated so thoroughly began to fight back, we told ourselves that we could tame it, just as we had countless times before. And when we failed to tame it, we chose to abandon it."

"Hence the Departure," Syaoran said, nodding slightly in understanding. "But if the Return is to occur soon, that means the planet has once again been deemed healthy enough to support human civilization. This world can be reclaimed and cultivated once more."

"Yes," Fai agreed, folding his hands in his lap.

"Then why do my sensors indicate you are experiencing distress?"

"Because we're the ones humanity left behind."