A cloudless day and baleful sun baked the police captain sitting at her precinct’s border post. It was truly a post, little more than two pieces of treated lumber stuck into the chalky desert earth about fifteen feet apart. The captain sat under a lone, scraggly tree, rotating her seat as its shadow moved with the sun. The sun had moved past midday, the heat at the nadir of misery. Tyra swigged from a jar a cloying, oily tea, hoping it would keep her awake. Sweat beaded on her temples, only to be whisked away by the hot winds. Few knew the border was here. Fewer still had reason to cross this remote stretch. She sat at her vigil periodically, just to make a statement, really. It kept the council happy, and a happy council is a happy pension. She strained her eyes at the heat waves distorting the horizon, trying and failing to stave off boredom.
To her relief, a dark speck appeared on the horizon, traversing a dry lake bed toward her position. She drank some more tea, licking the oily residue clinging to her dry lips. Anything for caffeine. The speck came closer, resolving itself into a more humanoid shape, still contorted by shimmering winds. Tyra stood up, stretched, and walked to the nearest gate post. The figure made painfully slow progress, quickly annoying Tyra with its plodding approach. She was about to sit back down, when she noticed the dull sheen of plate armor. Full armor, in this heat? Now, that’s metal, she thought, chuckling at her own joke. She wasn’t concerned. An army of one was, well, not an army. Maybe a knight-errant, she chuckled, come to tilt at the local windmills.
Byeju had been walking for days. He’d run at first to avoid a fuss, but out here in the desert, there was no one to bother him, and he quite enjoyed the solitude. One of the researchers who’d awoken him had finally tried to pry off his armored breastplate. Byeju just couldn’t ignore that, but he’d been so enjoying reading. He’d been just 20.3% through his onboard digital library when the researcher so rudely interrupted with his pry bar. Byeju’d had to override his self-defense protocols to avoid instantly killing the nosy man. Such a busybody, prying at other people’s plates, the robot grumbled as he scuffed at the dry earth, bleached by the salts of an ancient lake. He’d stunned the other researcher too and made a beeline out of their lab… and onto a packed boulevard. That hadn’t gone over well, the heavy machine huffed to himself. The city folk had clearly never seen a robot, and they nearly shat themselves. To be sure, there had been a frisky minority of gearheads, looters, and antiquarians that Byeju had no patience for. He didn’t need repairs, he wasn’t scrap metals, no sir, humans weren’t getting in his business today.
When not even the local authorities gave him the cordial welcome he had expected as a servant of the empire, he made a break for it. Once he’d activated his riot-control defenses, everyone gave him a wide berth, and he waltzed right out of the city. Yes, some curious souls pursued. Yes, some had been faster than a heavy robot jogging down the highway, but his puke ray, pain ray, and finally stun had at last sent a message.. Byeju was just thankful they hadn’t forced him to defend with lethal force. Even pain ray felt extreme, but people just didn’t take no for an answer. Curiosity really did kill the cat, he thought.
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All these musing finally brought Byeju within a hundred yard of the woman and her gate, the sun noticeably lower in the sky. The police captain watched the robot’s steady advance. She sipped her tea. What was she going to do about this? It wasn’t that robots were so out of the ordinary, but there were so many regulations, for obvious reasons. Lots of fraught history. And fraught history meant paperwork and rules and god forbid, lawyers. Nothing she really wanted to deal with. She sipped her tea and cocked her head as the robot finally hailed her.
“Hello,” Byeju called out to the police captain. He used the language the researchers had spoken, some newfangled dialect based on an ancient standard he’d been programmed with. He hoped the policewoman spoke it too. He gauged that she’d understood and was simply surprised to be dealing with a talking robot. “I’m a robot,” Byeju clarified.
“Nay, thou art a knight-errant, come to challenge enemies of the realm,” Tyra intoned.
Byeju looked at her blankly, “Ma’am, I am no knight…”
“Wherefore dost thou array thyself in armor of steel? Doth the sun not scorch thy flesh?”
“Ma’am, I am a machine, I have no flesh.”
“Hast thou no honor?”
“Excuse me?”
“Knave, that thou hast the gall to mock me, the king’s own hand!”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I meant no offense,” Byeju apologized, feeling like this was really off to quite a bad start.
“No worries, I’m just fucking with you,” the woman’s eyes sparkled with just a hint of chaotic malice. “I see that you’re a machine. The resemblance to a fabled knight is only passing… although perhaps you have an oath of service and an honorable heart?”
“I am newly awakened,” Byeju replied seriously, “I have no honorable deeds to boast.”
“Newly awakened, eh?” Tyra asked. She made a snap judgment, appreciating this walking piece of history for putting up with her antics, “You wouldn’t happen to have a passport, now would you?
Byeju searched his database for a response appropriate to this perplexing conversation and finally settled on on this, “My name is Byeju, serial number 2.395.461. I am operating off expansion pack 4.9.1.0005, Great Calling with Exemptions.”
“Hmm, nice to meet you, Byeju,” Tyra scratched the windblown strands of hair behind her ear. She continued thoughtfully, “I suppose that’ll do. Sorry I was a jerk earlier! Now, if you’ll just follow me… We have some paper work to do.”