A dusty track spooled out into the gathering twilight as the policewoman lead the robot pack to her “unofficial HQ,” which she explained was her boyfriend’s bar.
“It’s so late, there’s no point in going back to the station,” she added, looking at the war machine trudging through the quiet desert scrub land. Byeju’s heavy footfalls scared birds off the surrounding thorn bushes, sending them wheeling into the darkening sky.
“It’s no difference whether I do my paperwork there, or at the bar. At least at the bar, we’ll have company, and I get my tea,” she swished her near-empty canteen of tea meaningfully at the robot. Actually, there were a lot of reasons to hit the bar, her boyfriend least among them. Cedric, her clerk, however, was one. Her practically lurked at the station. So fussy. And boring. He’d transmute a single signature into an hour of bureaucratic hell. True alchemy that.
“Can’t drink, can you?” she asked as she refocused on the conversation at hand, proffering the dregs of her canteen at Byeju.
“No, I’m not equipped for taste,” the robot sighed, startling another bird. He considered for a second, “Not to reveal proprietary data, but as you’re a law-woman… I don’t have chemical sensors.”
“Chemical sensors?” Tyra asked.
“Taste and smell,” the robot translated, realizing that Tyra hadn’t understood. He hesitated and then divulged another obvious, but still ‘proprietary’ piece of information, “I’m also immune to pheromones.”
“Huh?”
“Mind control chemicals!”
“Well, there goes my brilliant plan of feeding you to the witches.”
“Witches?”
“Yeah, they get you with mind control chemicals, and they love munching on metal,” Tyra elaborated. “I owe the witches a couple favors.” She saw Byeju give her a wary side-eye. She guessed he was readying some hidden weapon.
“I’m kidding,” she clarified, “Witches don’t eat metal. They’re humans after all.”
“Oh,” Byeju said, still keeping his stun ray charged. “Indeed, I have no records of humans eating metal… except as vitamins: magnesium, potassium, manganese…”
“Yep, and witches use all those for spells! Enough… manganese will turn a grown man into a frog…” Tyra played along. “And potassium, don’t get me started… that’ll turn a robot into a stinky fart.”
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Byeju was pretty sure the policewoman was still joking, but all this talk of witches had put him on edge. For her part, Tyra enjoyed pushing the robot’s buttons. Plus, it helped her figure out who she was dealing with: an ancient fucking war bot… worried about witches scrapping it for alchemical ores? She suppressed a mischievous smile and tried to adjust course. Back to the basics! “So where are you from again?”
“Old Saghrad, 4th Ward,” the robot replied. It really was risky for rare and collectible machines to be so open about their provenience, but Byeju didn’t know better. Tyra knew that much at least, and his frankness surprised her.
Even so, she had no idea what this “Old Saghrad” was. Tyra had studied a bit when she joined the police academy, law, criminology and such, but history… so boring. Like Cedric. Just thinking about history made her choke on plumes of imaginary dust from the page of seldom read tomes. She coughed lightly and tried again, “OK, when were you made?”
“Year 1,100, ma’am,” the robot said and considered, “And that was 803 years ago!”
“That makes no sense,” Tyra frowned, “we’re in the year 3,445.”
“1903.”
“By whose calendar?”
“Old Saghrad, Reconciliation Decree #1.”
Tyra sighed, this really wasn’t going anywhere. ‘Old Saghrad this’ and ‘1903 that,’ Tyra couldn’t make heads or tails of Byeju’s story. Maybe her boyfriend would know. This was a lot more in his wheelhouse. And if he didn’t, well, he’d know someone who could look into it. Byeju really was an exceptional find – 800 year-old tech – if he was to be believed, and Tyra should have reported him to her section chief. But section chiefs meant paperwork, and paperwork meant Cedric, and they’d have to confiscate Byeju. That was only natural. And Tyra was making a new friend. And no section chief was going to confiscate her friends.
As dusk thickened around them, Tyra and Byeju finally plodded over the crest of another desert hill. Down below, in a shallow valley beside a wash with its thin line of trees, lay a tiny hamlet. Just a cluster of buildings really, with a single dusty main street shining pale in the twilight. Ellis, her wealthiest constituent, had been arguing for years to have it paved, but the Mayor insisted that was pointless. And not even Ellis cared to test the Mayor’s patience.
Byeju followed Tyra’s pointing hand to her precinct, a unique little cluster of earthen domes. Not an imposing edifice, nor a monument to Law and Order, but an architectural quirk from a bygone age. A piece of living history, just like a certain robot. He’d be right at home. At least the thick earthen walls kept the summer’s heat out. Whoever had raised these earthen domes, they certainly hadn’t had a police station in mind. Cedric suggested the complex had housed tax collectors during a mining boom. Lira, her second-in-command, insisted it had been a hashish smuggler’s hideout. Ara, the station’s junior officer, fantasized that it was a “theater for eldritch blood rites.” Tyra prayed for that one, she really did.
Still looking at her little domain, Tyra leveled her tried-and-true personality test at the robot. “So, what does it look like to you?” she asked squinting down at the earthen domes in the deepening night.
“Dinosaur eggs.”
“Huh? You can’t be that old? Can you?”
“Not to divulge privileged information, but I forgot to tell you we had dinosaurs in Old Saghrad?” the machine turned toward her, his emerald eyes glittering.