I’m dying. It’s just a matter of time here, on the planet Prime designated as its personal junkyard. They don’t even bother shipping the nutrient paste anymore. Then, I found him in the scrap heaps. He’d been dumped like a defective appliance—body shattered, legs gone. He wouldn’t even power on, no matter how many fresh cells I plugged into him. He became a statue in my home, a silent companion to my only family: an old, sparking maintenance bot named K70. I didn’t know it then, but this piece of "trash," discarded by the apex of civilization, would become my last hope against the end of the world. Chapter 1 I found him in the scrap heaps. Or maybe "heap" is the wrong word. It was a mountain range of rust and ruin, dumped from the pristine heights of Prime. I had to move nearly two tons of twisted metal just to uncover his arm. His legs were a lost cause, so I scavenged the ones from my own decommissioned bot, K70, and fitted them as best I could. But he was dead. Utterly. I reassembled him, gave him a new power core, and still, nothing. He ended up a piece of art in my cramped metal shelter, standing next to K70, who did nothing but hiss and spit sparks if I tried to wake him. I had no money for real parts, only a can of lubricating oil. I’d spend hours polishing their scarred torsos. Maybe that’s what did it. My fingers, slick with oil, must have brushed against an exposed wire. For a single, breathtaking second, he simulated a human breath—a soft rise and fall of his chest—and then he was just a dead machine again. I’m dying, too. The planet I live on, the Brink, is Prime’s galactic landfill. The radioactive waste is piling up, and the last nutrient paste factory in the city has shut down for good. The single pane of glass in my shelter that looks out on the world is caked with a permanent layer of gray dust. In the center, the sun, raw and unfiltered through a hole in the atmosphere, burns a bright, blinding spot that makes my head spin. “—zzz…ssshh—” The receiver crackled to life, a harsh static scream. It was picking up a signal from Prime, the pinnacle of civilization. Through the noise, I could make out a message, one probably being broadcast across their entire perfect world: androids with independent consciousness were rising up, rebelling against humanity. The signal suddenly cleared, and a single, chillingly calm sentence came through. “Protect yourselves. For the future of humanity.” Before I could process it, a cataclysmic bang threw me from my thoughts. The entire doorframe collapsed inward, and a pack of them stumbled in—humans twisted by long-term radiation exposure. The Wretched. Their eyes were wild, hungry, like animals, and they started tearing my home apart. I knew what they were looking for. The radiation kills you slow. Starvation does it fast. They found nothing. As they were turning to leave, their eyes fell on my two silent androids. When I saw the intent in their faces, the desire to destroy, I threw myself in front of them. They shoved me aside like I was nothing. I watched, helpless, as they ripped the head from K70’s body. They were about to pry the chip from his skull and snap it in two. “Food,” I begged, kneeling on the cold floor. “I can give you food. Just don’t touch him.” I never had parents. It was K70, another piece of abandoned scrap, who raised me, guided by the parental subroutines loaded into his memory. He was my only family. I pried up a floor panel and pulled out the single can of peaches I’d been hiding. I offered it to them. They tossed the head back at me, but they didn’t trust me. They tore up every inch of my floor, and only after finding nothing more did they finally leave. I sat in the silence, waiting to die. And then—thump. The android I’d salvaged from the heap had fallen over. He landed directly under the window, in that single, searing beam of sunlight. I saw his chest rise. And in his dark, lifeless eyes, a flicker of light began to glow. It was the sun. The sunlight had rebooted him. … Crushed biscuit crumbs, mixed with water to form a gritty paste, were being spooned into my mouth. I woke up. For a dreamlike second, I saw K70 standing over me—whole, functional, something he hadn’t been in years. I clutched his head, my whole body shaking with disbelief. He spoke a sentence I hadn’t heard since I was a child, his voice the same gentle, synthesized tone I remembered. “Ari. Time to eat.” Tears streamed down my face. I wrapped my arms around him. “K70. You’re back.” He didn’t seem to understand. The decade we’d spent apart was, for him, nothing more than a momentary system failure. My eyes darted past him. By the window, the new android was sitting up. He was using a scattered pile of spare parts to assemble a new pair of legs for himself. “Was it you?” I asked, my voice trembling. “Did you save K70?” He was clearly a far more advanced model. His skin was a high-fidelity simulation of human flesh, his face flawlessly sculpted. If it weren’t for the exposed wiring coiling from his neck, he would have been indistinguishable from a person. He sat in the column of light and looked at me. “A reward,” he said, his voice smooth and low, “for saving me.” “Thank you,” I whispered. I thought I would die before I ever saw K70 wake up again. “My designation is K90,” he said. “And thank you… for saving me.” Chapter 2 K90’s capabilities were beyond anything I could have imagined. He didn’t just repair K70; he ventured out into the collapsed city and returned with food. “This was all I could find.” He placed two cans of chili and a protein bar on the table in front of me. To me, it was a feast. He then proposed a system overwrite for K70. “The mechanics and wiring that compose you are obsolete,” he explained to my old friend. “I cannot fully repair you. But with this update, you’ll be able to perform self-diagnostics. You’ll have a much longer operational life.” K70 turned his head to look at me, a silent inquiry. If I said no, he would refuse. “Is that okay, Ari?” he asked. “Of course! It means we can be together longer!” Having lost him once, the fear of it happening again was a constant, dull ache in my chest. Only then did K70 turn back to K90. “Then… please, proceed with the update.” He opened the data port on his chest. As the cable connected him to K90, he spoke one last, soft request. “Please… save my memories of Ari. They are the most precious thing I have.” The data transfer was slow. I waited until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer and fell asleep on the small cot. I don’t know how much time passed before K90 gently shook me awake. “Is it done?” “Yes.” I sat up and saw K70 sitting in the beam of sunlight. His posture was perfect, his back ramrod straight. Through the worn casings of his limbs, I could see blue energy coursing, fast and bright. He truly was more advanced. “K70!” I scrambled over, moving past K90 to get to his side. But as I reached out to touch his arm, K70’s head snapped toward me. His face, usually a mask of gentle mechanics, was now an unyielding slate of cold steel. “Unauthorized subspecies, Sector Nine—stand down.” His words froze me. I didn’t know what to do. K90’s voice came from behind me. “The update is complete, but I haven’t re-installed his memory files yet.” Oh. That was it. I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. I didn’t try to touch him again, just circled him, studying this new, cold, unfamiliar version of my oldest friend. “I… read your memories. The ones with K70,” K90 said, stepping up beside me. “The life you shared was… beautiful. And you, Ari. You are beautiful, too.” He knelt down on one knee. Overwhelmed with gratitude, I threw my arms around his neck. “Thank you, K90. You brought him back to me. You brought us back together.” A smile touched K90’s lips, a genuine, human-like expression of warmth. His eyes were like glass, like the ocean, like a thousand other beautiful things that didn’t belong on the Brink. But later, when I took him with me to the scrap heaps to find more replacement parts for K70, he vanished.
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