Kyla marched through the sprawling greenery of the California countryside, the chill of early spring making her wish she’d grabbed a coat from the hov. Gnarled trees were sparsely scattered around the green, inconveniently far away from each other. She skidded down a short hill to the nearest tree and knocked. It sounded like wood. “Not this one,” she called.
Up the hill on the side of the road, her mother stood by the hov, keeping lookout, her sniper rifle set on the hood of the hov, her head on a swivel. “Keep looking,” she called without looking at Kyla.
Kyla waded through the tall grass, grateful that her boots would guard from any ticks, and pounded on the next tree. “Not this one, either.”
“You don’t need to announce every one.”
“Just thought you’d want to know.”
Kyla wandered from tree to tree, hitting each one to find out that it was made of wood.
Weirdly, there was no one else here. It was rarely crowded, since these spots were often designed to be out of the way, but she had expected to find someone around here, either to find or leave a message. Or at least spare her the chore of looking for the right freaking tree.
Ten minutes later, she was starting to lose track of which trees she had checked when the one in front of her made a startling thud thud against her knuckles.
“I found it!” she called.
“Knew you could do it.”
Kyla circled the tree, searching up and down the trunk. It took her three times around to finally spot a long, straight slit towards the base, and another minute to find the latch that opened the compartment. The hinges creaked as the door swung open, revealing a small, dusty tablet sitting upright in a metal cubby. Kyla stepped aside so the black solar panels lining the tablet could catch the light. The tablet slowly booted up.
The desktop was a mess, but that was expected. No one ever wanted to stick around long enough to organize the thing. Kyla checked the network connection. Off. Good. That explained why it was still here.
She opened a list of all files by date. Nothing jumped out at her.
“I can’t find the announcement thing,” Kyla called out.
“Keep looking,” Naomi said.
Kyla grumbled and refined her search to “Rick.” The screen was slow to respond to her touch, but the list of recent entries from or about people named Rick was muddled with dozens of messages she wasn’t looking for.
Android bots spotted near Santa Marina—
Ricky, we’re still looking for you—
Mom, it’s Richard. Dad didn’t make it—
Heading to settlement near Richmond. Hope to see you—
Daughter is sick, need penicillin. Please ask for Rick at Concord settlement—
“There are too many Ricks,” Kyla complained.
“Try his full name.”
“What’s his full name?”
“Ricardo William Frederico Garcia.”
Kyla paused. “His middle name is Fred?”
Naomi smirked. “Billy Fred, technically.”
“Rick Billy Fred Garcia.” Kyla giggled as she scrolled. “Ricky Billy Freddy.”
“He will not be happy I told you that.”
“He’s such a hick.”
“Focus, please.”
Kyla refined her search, and the list of entries shortened. The third one was what she wanted: a large paragraph set in chunky font and animated borders filled half the screen.
“‘West Coast Trade Caravan heading to Merced National Wildlife Refuge,’” she read aloud. “‘Planning to stay for about two weeks. Best prices in the state’ blah blah. I don’t see anything more specific.”
“Keep reading,” Naomi said.
Kyla groaned and kept reading.
“He says they’re west of the cropland?” Kyla called.
“That’ll work,” Naomi said. “Let’s go.”
Kyla hurried across the field and back to the hov, jumping into the passenger seat. She watched her mother lift her rifle from the top of the hov and lower her smart lens over her eye to do one more sweep of the area before getting in the driver’s seat.
“Can I drive?” Kyla said.
“No,” Naomi said, hitting a button to close her door. “You’re on lookout.”
“But I suck at lookout.”
“Which is why you need practice.” Naomi hit a few buttons on her steering wheel and the console. The engine hummed to life. The hov lifted a few feet off the ground as the hov plates underneath turned on. Naomi eased her foot on the pedal, and the back propellers pushed them forward, back onto the road.
This was a classic paved highway, made of old concrete instead of the more hov-friendly magnetic streets that were typical of cities. It was utterly abandoned, no one else on the road except for the occasional abandoned vehicle.
Sensing a wave of impending boredom, Kyla slipped her tablet from the door compartment and turned it on.
“Kyla,” Naomi said. “I need a lookout.”
“I am looking out.” Kyla opened her recent file—a three-dimensional sketch of a dual barrel grenade launcher—and slipped her digipen from its pocket on the side of the tablet. She noticed immediately that the barrels were too big; together they would never fit on one shoulder. She could try to shrink them. Or she could redesign them so they went around the users head, like a horned backpack. She opened a new canvas and started sketching.
“You are not looking out,” Naomi noted.
“Hey Mom, you think there’ll be a Tharabrand capacitor at the caravan?”
Caravans were the closest thing to shopping trips that Kyla had to look forward to, but most were little more than traveling markets, offering food or clothes or scanners—the basics for survival.
But Ricky Billy Freddy’s caravan was famous for its more eclectic products: gadgets, parts salvaged from defeated bots, chemicals concocted in makeshift labs, inventions made from the aforementioned materials. Kyla had once dreamed of being such a vendor among their ranks, but that ship had sailed years ago.
“A Tharabrand capacitor,” Naomi echoed, raising an eyebrow.
“I know they’re rare, but what do you think the odds are we’ll find one?”
“About the same as me letting you have one.”
“But think of how much power you could pack into a single shot.” Kyla aimed an imaginary blaster out the windshield and whispered, “Byoosh.”
“What kind of ammo would you be shooting?” Naomi said.
“Radar guided grenade launcher, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Naomi said. “And what kind of grenade are we talking?”
“Chemical. Nitric acid in one, hydrazine in the other. Launch them at the same target and boom. Separate barrels to prevent an accident of course.”
Naomi stared out the windshield for a solid five seconds. “I cannot think of a messier way to take out a bot.”
“Thank you.”
Naomi sighed.
“EMP tags are boring,” Kyla said. “And they take too much energy.”
“But you need a Tharabrand capacitor for this idea.”
Kyla paused. “I mean, it doesn’t have to be a Tharabrand.”
“I’m going to have to say no.”
“But it could be so good,” Kyla said. “You could down a whole platoon of androids with just one shot.”
“I thought you were looking to sell this time around,” Naomi said.
“I am!” Kyla twisted around to look at the mess that was the back half of their hov: crates full of weapons and weapon parts, clothes, rations, a couple broken tablets, a broken pair of hov boots Kyla hadn’t managed to fix. She had inspiration to work on her special piece right now, but her mother had a strict No Weapon Modifications in the Car policy.
“Kyla, turn around please. You’re still my lookout.”
“An awful idea, actually,” Kyla said, but she sat back in her seat and looked out the window. More green rolled by, the clouds parting to reveal a bright blue sky. A flock of geese were startled from a pond as they drove by.
Nothing around here that looked like trouble. No surprise, since Naomi took great pains to avoid Network towers, but that didn’t mean there weren’t autonomous bots around. Naomi drove fast, her head aimed forward but her eyes constantly scanning.
They crested another hill, revealing a city in the distance: a collection of rectangular buildings and needle-like towers stood out from the otherwise curved landscape. Kyla reached for her goggles on the floor and waited for the zoom function to load. “What city is that?” she asked.
“Um, I’m not sure. I think it’s Fresno.”
Kyla stared out at the cityscape. Once upon a time, cities had been the center of human life; Kyla had seen movies about it. The sea of people milling around sidewalks and shops, streets were packed with so many cars and hovs that they needed streetlights to tell them how not to hit each other. Homes stacked on each other in towering buildings, fighting for space. Always something to do. Always someone to see. Never alone because it was literally impossible. Naomi always said she preferred the quiet, but Kyla suspected her mother was just sparing her feelings. Cities seemed so good at being Not Boring.
Kyla pulled up a different file on her tablet, this one a slideshow of New York City in its prime. Bright advertisements, people walking. A few hovered some inches above the ground in designer hov boots. A couple sat at a table outside a coffee shop, receiving their order from an android.
What a crazy idea, living with androids. Looking at these photos felt like watching toddlers hobble around carrying guns. How did no one in the photo realize something terrible was about to happen?
Kyla didn’t know the details of the Turn—the day the bots marked humanity as the enemy—but no one really did. Those who were old enough to remember had their own version of events, but the general story was always the same: androids of every make and model rounding people up and snapping their necks. Kyla had seen footage of that too.
She looked out the window again. The cityscape was nearly out of sight now, the buildings just vague shapes in the distance.
Movement along the field caught her attention.
An Automated harvester marched slowly down bushy rows of lettuce. Even without her goggles, Kyla recognized the distinct, triangular shape: a wheeled vehicle roughly the size of a van collected crops into a large bin in the back.
“Mom,” she said. “Farm bot.”
Naomi straightened. “How many?”
“Um, one. I think.”
“Where are your goggles?”
“Um . . .” Kyla looked around her seat. “I just had them.”
“Kyla.”
“What? They look terrible on me. And they make red lines around my eyes. Ah, I found them.” She pulled them out of the door pocket next to her and held them in front of her face. As soon as the googles loaded, the screen marked the machine with a red dot. “Yep, one.”
“I see it.”
“Are we near a Network tower?” Kyla asked.
Naomi checked the map on the hov console. “I don’t think so.” Without satellites, bots relied on Network towers to remain connected to each other. Sometimes entering the radius of a tower signal was unavoidable, but Naomi was usually willing to add days or week to their travel time to avoid them. Bots rarely left the radius, but those that did always responded to humans the same way. Even farming equipment.
“Should we take it?” Kyla said.
“Let’s see if it notices us first.” Naomi sped up.
Kyla watched out the window, letting her goggles tell her how far the machine was. One hundred eighty-seven yards away, but traveling at a leisurely seven miles per hour. No one knew why bots would think a farm growing food for humans was worth maintaining, but there was a lot about bots no one understood.
Kyla tapped the frame of her goggles, and the image zoomed in. The machine was old and rusted in places, slightly tilting to one side as a hov plate sparked in the corner dangerously. Perhaps the bot had been doing this for twenty-plus years, unaware that the world had ended. It might not have gotten the memo to kill humans.
The road continued so that they would pass directly in front of it.
The machine turned and sped up, leaving its path between lines of lettuce to head straight for them.
“Whoa! It’s fast.” Kyla’s goggles clocked it at eighteen miles per hour.
Naomi sighed and slowed down. “ETA?”
Kyla hit her frames in a different spot. There was a slight delay before a small timer appeared in the corner of her vision. “Three minutes and eighteen seconds.”
Naomi brought the hov to a stop and turned off the engine. The hov plates set them down gently as they both hopped out and went around to the trunk. Naomi grabbed her rifle case and pushed another toward Kyla.
“Aww.” Kyla frowned at the case. “Why can’t I just blow it up?”
“Because I want lenses.” Naomi opened hers and began assembling it. “And maybe some wiring.”
“Rick’ll give you those for free.”
“He did once, and it’s not nice to ask.” Naomi checked her weapon’s ammo and slung the strap over her shoulder. “Go set up on the eastern end for a Ping Pong. Quickly, please.”
Kyla opened the crate. Another rifle, this one a bit smaller but fancier, stared back at her. A supped-up .300 Cut Gear, bolt-action with a built-in suppressor, which was the important part; it reduced flash, noise, and recoil to help with aiming. The scope was literally the most teched-out scope they could find, a smart-lens with adjustable power and targeting system.
It would not be enough to make up for Kyla’s shoddy marksmanship.
Kyla assembled it quickly, running through all the steps in her mind that Naomi had drilled into her. Naomi circled left towards a thin line of trees, so Kyla began trudging up the hill towards some bushes.
Naomi had said to set up for Ping Pong. The goal was to take turns shooting to confuse the targeting system. Naomi would shoot, then as it began to search for her, Kyla would shoot, until the machine was fully disabled. Kyla didn’t like that kind of pressure. Why not just nuke the whole thing at once?
Kyla’s goggles automatically focused on the incoming threat, now about fifty yards away. Naomi would probably start shooting soon—she always started off the Ping Pong.
Kyla set up her stand and aimed the barrel towards the harvester, testing the scope, which was difficult to use with her goggles but impossible without. She hated how a gun narrowed her view, but she aimed for one of the glowing hov plates on the bot and waited.
The harvester continued its approach, heading for their parked hov. It likely didn’t have any weapons on it, but it would definitely try to run the hov over if they didn’t—
Boom.
Naomi’s first shot split the air just as a chunk of the harvester’s front plating flew off. The harvester turned and started heading towards Naomi.
Kyla aimed for the sparking hov plate towards the back and took a shot. Lettuce erupted from the ground. She tried again. The shot ricocheted off the machine’s armor.
“Oh, come on!” Kyla grumbled. The thing was faster than she expected, but it was huge. She wouldn’t be able to hit the broad side of a parked semi.
Naomi took another two shots, this time aiming for gears that crated the lettuce to the back bin. Something snapped and whined. The machine sped up, still heading for Naomi.
Kyla gritted her teeth and aimed another shot. The recoil kicked the barrel against her shoulder—her form was never great. The shot chipped at the base of the harvester’s body plating, but it wasn’t enough to distract it. Kyla groaned. If she didn’t get this thing’s attention soon, it would zero in on Naomi. Kyla shot—she missed. She missed again.
Naomi took a shot at the hov plating on the other side, causing a shower of sparks, though it wasn’t enough to slow it down. A sick knot grew in Kyla’s stomach. She stunk at this—why did her mother make her do this?
“Forget it,” she muttered. She pulled a small grenade the size of a pill bottle, hit the button on the side, and threw it.
Three. Two. One.
A bright plume of fire lit her vision like a small firework against the harvester’s hull, leaving an impressive scorch mark on the metal.
The harvester turned.
“Over here!” she yelled, crouching down behind her rifle.
The harvester started in her direction, a blinking sensor visible even from this distance. She took a shot at it and dented some metal plating.
Naomi sniped another hov plate, but the harvester remained zeroed on Kyla. Apparently the AI had decided that a bomb was distinctly more annoying that some bullets.
“Well, shoot,” Kyla muttered.
Naomi fired again, this time barely clipping the edge of another hov plate, but she wouldn’t have enough time to disable it properly. Kyla lined up another shot and fired. The armor hull dented on the side, but the thing didn’t slow.
“Oh, come on.”
The back hov plate broke off completely with another shot from Naomi, making the whole harvester tilt so its back corner started dragging across the ground, leaving shredded lettuce plants in its wake. Kyla’s goggles told her it was thirty yards away, twenty-five…
No choice. Kyla pulled another grenade from her belt and tossed it. It rolled underneath the machine. She ducked behind the lip of the hill and counted. Three. Two—
A sudden zap sound erupted like a self-contained lightning storm, quickly followed by a BOOM as the harvester slammed into the dirt. Kyla felt the ground below her shake with the impact.
She waited a few seconds, then stepped from her cover to get a proper look. The wreckage was smoking and sparking in places, with bent metal shrugging against itself as the machine sat unevenly amid the vegetable carnage. The light in the center by the scope was gone.
She looked towards her mother’s hiding spot. Though she couldn’t see Naomi, she waved and smiled. “Sorry!” she yelled. But it’s kind of your fault, she thought.
Naomi stood from her hiding spot and marched toward the wreckage. “You’re helping me look for lenses,” she called back.
Jennifer San Filippo 