“There’s a lineup,” Walter said.

“What do you mean, there’s a lineup?” Marigold replied.

“Just that. A few hundred meters down the road, there are about a dozen creatures lined up at some kind of checkpoint.”

“That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

Marigold rubbed her eyes and blinked several times. It had been over thirty hours since she had seen a bed. They had walked through the night. She and Walter had renounced her claim of sanctuary a second time—a very confusing ordeal for the guards who had never heard of someone declaring and relinquishing sanctuary on the same day—and headed off down the Old Road in search of Maxwell.

Most of the creatures Walter and Marigold met on the road were in wagons and had no desire to stop and talk to fellow travelers. When Walter tried to stop one, the shrouded figure on top encouraged her hastelings to speed up and cackled as Walter jumped out of the way at the last minute. They knocked on the doors of the homes that popped up along the roadside, but the creatures were wary of unexpected guests, and when they asked if they had seen anyone strange, the creatures invariably shook their heads, not sure what could be stranger than a frog and demon knocking on their door in the middle of the night. The path forked off to the left and the right, made detours to old, abandoned enclaves, or simply terminated at dead ends. They would have to hope Maxwell did not head down one of those roads.

Walter was his typically twitchy bundle of nerves, scanning every shadow and asking about Marigold’s leg incessantly. She wished he would stop. It didn’t matter that her leg was turning a neon shade of purple, nor did she have time to focus on the sensation of a hatchet chopping away at her thigh with every step. She could worry about the injury later.

When Marigold tired of Walter’s worries, she sent him on scouting missions. He would unfold his wings and soar into the air for a few minutes. This gave Marigold a few minutes of quiet and a chance to walk for a while without trying to hide her limp. Inevitably, however, Walter would return, dejected and shaking his head. It was on the last of these trips that he told her about the line.

And there it was, just like Walter said it would be. An improvised checkpoint had been set up by the Ægency. A set of pylons sat across the road next to a small Ægency Æroship. Marigold wondered what the presence of the ship suggested down here, so close to the Hollows. Beside it was a small dome tent just a few feet off the road. A muscular tabby cat was patrolling the line.

“This is bad,” Walter asked.

“Stay calm. They’re looking for a human, and we don’t currently have one with us.”

Marigold and Walter came to a stop at the back of the line. Marigold could not stand lines. She could force herself through any calamity, but she was not good at standing and waiting.

“Everyone, please have your ID ready,” the cat shouted from the front. She had just stopped questioning a family of four and was moving on to the rest of the line. There was a moan of discontent from the crowd.

“I don’t have any ID,” Walter whispered. “Everything I have is back in the Junction.”

“Shh, it’ll be fine. There are plenty of creatures in the Backend without proper ID, especially down here,” Marigold said.

The inspection didn’t take long, but it was longer than Marigold would have liked. One by one, the cat scanned the other creatures’ documents and ushered them through. At last, Walter and Marigold reached the front of the line, and the cat looked up at them.

“Hmm,” she said, narrowing her eyes at Marigold and Walter. “You two together?”

“Oh, well, you know we’re just friends,” Walter replied, laughing nervously. “Not that we couldn’t be, of course. I should be so lucky. But no, not together, just friends.”

Marigold looked over at Walter and narrowed her eyes.

“Are you traveling together?” the cat asked.

“Oh, right, that kind of together, yes, traveling together, as friends, good friends, perhaps a picnic later.”

The cat shook her head.

“ID,” she said.

"I’m afraid we don’t have it on us today, officer,” Walter said. “You see my colleague and I just decided—”

"No IDs means you come with me,” the cat said. “New rules. Everyone without ID gets questioned by the robot.”

“The robot?” Marigold asked.

“Oh, ho. Just wait until you see what it has in store for you.”

The cat motioned for the two of them to follow.

“You chumps are in for it now,” the cat said. “These robots don’t mess around.”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

She entered the tent and grabbed a metal pole by the door. Walter flinched as if he was in for a flogging, but the cat used it to turn on a switch. The lights flickered for a few moments and then buzzed to life. There was nothing in this room but white walls and a simple table. The cat motioned for them to take a seat.

“I only wish I could be here to see what they do to you. You better hope you’re not who I think you are.”

The cat was purring as it walked out of the room.

Walter immediately started to bounce his leg.

“Just stay calm,” Marigold said. “They don’t know anything.”

The door swung open again, and a robot from the spa rolled into the room. It had the same wooden frame and purple display, but this one had a single eye instead of the usual smiling face. It rolled around the table to size them up.

“Two more for questioning, I see. You really should have your ID on you, you know?”

“I know, sir. We’re very sorry about that and we’ll make sure to have our ID on us from here on out,” Walter said.

The robot ignored this and continued to wheel around the table.

“Let’s see what we have here, a demon is it? Name?”

“Wal—uh, Walton. By the way, very nice wood panelling, sir.”

“Walton, is it? Funny name for a demon, though I suppose you’re not much of a demon.”

“No, sir, not at all, sir, a very poor excuse for a demon.”

Marigold noticed something strange in the robot’s tone. It didn’t sound like the ones back at the spa. Its voice was higher, less robotic, and more irritating.

“And then we have a frog, a big, clueless frog.”

“Excuse me?” Marigold said looking down at the robot.

“A frog with an ugly apron and probably no real friends. What’s your name amphibian?”

“What is this?”

The robot let out a cackle.

“It can’t be,” Walter said.

The robot did a spin and took a bow.

“IT? How?” Marigold asked.

“Your old friend took me back to Ægency headquarters and plugged me into their computers, but there was something there waiting. That thing you ran into in the library, the Scholar, they’ve taken over the entire System. They tried to take me over too, but they only burned away my connection to the vacuum cleaner, and I escaped into one of the robots.”

Marigold tried to make the connection in her head between their confrontation with the Scholar and this latest turn of events. The creature must’ve escaped, but after that, she couldn’t imagine what had happened.

"Does the Scholar know you’re talking to us right now?” Walter asked.

“They would if they knew how anything worked, but they’re too busy gorging themselves on information. It allowed me to hide in the shadows.”

“And why all of this?” Marigold asked. “What do they think they’re doing?”

“They’re taking over the Backend, mobilizing a huge number of robots. They want to find Maxwell, but that’s only the start. Once they have him, they’ll start processing the universe, which, by the way, is the kind of stupid plan that only an organic masquerading as a machine would attempt.”

Walter rubbed his scaly face. “As if we don’t have enough problems.”

"One thing at a time,” Marigold said. “Right now, we need to find Maxwell.”

“I knew you were going to say that,” IT said. “Lucky for you, I know exactly where he is, or rather, exactly where he was about five minutes ago. I just spotted him sneaking into one of the few facilities around here with a security camera.”

“Which one?” Marigold asked.

“In the old names, I think it used to be called the Intermittent Sea. Now it’s called Storage 0251.”

Marigold was already nodding before IT finished. “I know the place, but it’s far.”

“It is, isn’t it? Good thing I stole the key to the cat’s Æroship.”

IT held out a key and Marigold took it.

“Alright, you’ve done well, robot,” Marigold said. She couldn’t suppress a thin smile.

“Was that a compliment?”

“I suppose it was.”

"Do you want to hear about how I deleted the recording of Maxwell from the servers too?”

"Alright, alright. That’s enough,” Marigold said. “Let’s go.”

Marigold and Walter followed IT out of the small administrative tent. The cat was waiting outside and looked up at them expectantly.

“It’s not them,” IT said.

"Too bad. I could’ve sworn that was the frog in the picture.”

“We all make mistakes,” IT said. “Anyway, I’m going to have them sign a few documents I left on the ship and then let them go.”

“Did you work them over at least?” the cat asked.

“You know it.”

The cat cackled. “Hope we didn’t ruin your picnic,” she said.

The cat was still laughing to herself as IT led them first at a walk and then at a run toward the small triangular flying ship marked with three Æs. IT made a show of opening the door and loudly narrating its search for the documents. While it was busy, Marigold ripped out the special seat that assisted the cat with driving and settled into the driver’s seat. There was only room for one, so Walter crammed his gigantic frame into the tiny backseat, and IT jumped up beside him, surprising both Marigold and Walter, who were used to the far less mobile functions of the vacuum cleaner.

“You can fly this?” Walter asked.

“More or less,” Marigold said.

The cat at last seemed to notice what was going on. “Hey, what are you doing?” she called out. “Wait up.”

It was too late. They were already moving away from the ground and into the sky, leaving the cat behind shaking her tiny fists.

*Side Note VI*

Many in the Backend derided the Treatise Treaty, so named for the insistence that the Solitary War could only end via a rational and logically rigorous philosophical dissertation. The treaty was obtuse, incomprehensible, and had virtually no articles pertaining to war and peace that anyone other than the drafters could understand. This was, however, not surprising, considering that a group of bureaucratic demons and academic monsters hammered the whole thing out over several months. The treaty begins with a lengthy examination of war as an abstract concept reified by certain underlying notions of justice, legitimized violence, and the calculus of suffering, before dovetailing into a digression about more quotidian conflicts and whether the notion of an abiding tranquility is itself a paradoxical and, yes, even oppressive concept. It was only after several revisions by now long-forgotten editors, who scanned the document, rolled their eyes, and got to work, that the document finally included concrete articles relating to what would and would not be permitted in the new universal order of things.

Chief among these provisions was a non-interference clause relating to the World Cauldron. Only if the flame of reality was untouched could both sides agree to continue sharing this half of the universe. Of secondary importance was a promise by the victors to never intrude in the Hollows or interfere with its governance.

When the Scholar violated this promise, sending reams of robots along with their more organic minders down into the Hollows, residents were more than outraged. They saw it as a declaration of war. It was only because the robots quickly revealed their new ability to process creatures on the spot that even the most ruthless members of the Hollows ran inside whatever served as their home and locked the door.