A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers #2)(20)

Blue looked slightly appalled. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I would never buy something like that. It’s not intelligent, it’s just, um, just mechanical.’

Sidra continued to stare at the petbot. It stared back, eyes blinking slowly. A non-sentient program, then. Nothing but if/thens, on and off, tiny baby algorithms. She glanced over at Pepper, who was raiding the kitchen. A box of dried beetles – original five-spice blend! – was in her free hand as she dug through the cooler in search of a drink. Beetles, Sidra thought. Beetles weren’t intelligent, either. They couldn’t fly a shuttle or build an Undersea or create art. She looked again to the petbot, now seated in her lap. She stretched out one set of the kit’s fingers toward it. The bot stretched up toward them, begging to be touched. A recognition protocol, clearly. If approached by owner, then act cute. She thought back to the beetles. If approached by bird, then run away. If hungry, then eat. If challenged, then fight. Beetles weren’t considered to be much, but they were alive, at least. There were rules about how to quickly kill insects before consumption. She’d seen such things on the packaging of Pepper’s snacks: Harvested humanely in accordance with GC law. You could be fairly sure beetles didn’t understand what was happening to them, and that they didn’t suffer much, but consideration was given to the fact that they might. Did petbots come with any such ethical labelling? What was the difference between strung-together neurons and a simple bundle of if/then code, if the outward actions were the same? Could you say for certain that there wasn’t a tiny mind in that bot, looking back at the world like a beetle might?

Sidra noted that Blue was still watching her, and that his face had become one of guarded concern. He thought he’d done something wrong, she realised. She made the kit smile at him. ‘This is so very kind of you,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

‘Do you like it? If you don’t, then—’

‘I do,’ Sidra said. ‘It’s interesting, and the thought behind it is even better.’ She considered. ‘You two don’t keep pets like some Humans do.’

‘No,’ Pepper said. She sat down on the couch, in the spot nearest to Sidra’s chair, washing down a mouthful of beetles with a fresh bottle of berry fizz. ‘We don’t.’

‘Why not?’

Pepper took a long sip of her drink, watching the petbot snuggle in the kit’s lap. ‘I’m not very good with animals.’





JANE 23, AGE 10


The air outside the wall was still cold, and it wasn’t a good kind of different any more. Jane 23 pulled her arms around herself as close as she could. The little bumps on her skin were so tight they kind of hurt, and her arms and mouth were shaking. This wasn’t good. She wanted to be back in bed. She wanted to have never gotten out of it.

The Mothers hadn’t followed her. She didn’t know why. She wasn’t being very quiet. The floor crunched when she ran on it, and she’d made a lot of noise when she’d fallen down the last bit of the slope. Could the Mothers not go through the wall? Did they just not care?

She didn’t know where she was going. The scrap piles stretched way up overhead, all shadows and scary in the dark. She’d been walking for a long, long time – hours, probably – but she kept going anyway. She didn’t know what else to do.

Run! 64 had said, and Jane 23 had, until breathing hurt. Her bunkmate’s voice was stuck in her head, and she felt so dizzy and sick. She wanted to cry, but she didn’t. She was in enough trouble as it was.

Her foot hit something hard, and she fell, right smack onto the crunchy dusty floor. She yelled, scared more than hurt. She couldn’t see very good, but her knees hurt so loud, and she could feel angry new cuts on her hands. She looked back at what had made her fall. Just a piece of scrap, stuck in the floor. Just a bad piece of scrap, in her way. She kicked it. Kicking was bad behaviour, but she was already doing lots of that, and nothing made sense and they’d taken Jane 64 and it was her fault.

She kicked the scrap again, and again, and again, yelling sounds without words.

Another sound happened. Not the scrap, and not herself. A low, popping sound, kind of like a motor trying to start. It wasn’t a sound she knew, but something about it made her go real quiet.

There was a . . . something, standing not too far away. She had no idea what it was. It wasn’t a machine, but it moved. She was kind of sure it was breathing, but it wasn’t a girl, either. She looked at it best as she could in the dim light of the three bright things in the not-ceiling. The something had eyes. It had eyes, and four legs, and no arms. She couldn’t see any skin, just fuzzy soft-looking stuff all over. It had a mouth, too, and . . . teeth? Were they teeth? They were pointier than her teeth.

The something was looking right at her. It bent down a little bit, all of its legs bending back. It made the popping motor sound again. It was not a good sound.

She felt the same feeling in her legs that she’d felt when the Mother had stared at her so so angry through the hole in the wall. She heard Jane 64 in her head again. Run.

Jane 23 ran.

She didn’t look back, but she could hear the something running, too, making bad wrong sounds as it chased her. She ran fast, fast as she could, fast as she was never allowed to run during exercise time. She had to keep running. She had to. She didn’t know why, but her body knew it, and whatever that something chasing her was, it wasn’t good.