They Don't Care About Robots, Do They?

4

4

I had the ability to filter out any or all of the noise, smells or other distractions and senses that assaulted me every time I set foot in the streets of Atunis Quarter, but I let them all flow through me. My cybernetic components gave me greater range than my old human senses. But, no matter how much I engorge myself on the myriad experiences of normal human life, I never feel a part of it. Not anymore.

None of the sensations gave me any feeling of closeness to those I once protected. Passing through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowds, seeing people glancing my way and giving me a wide berth, I never felt more alone. They had their own lives to care about and only ever saw the bot, never the human inside the manufactured body.

Even with the constant dribble of filtration water rain, they still wandered the streets in a mismatch of clothes, or no clothing at all. Synthetic fibres brushing against real skin, while my clothes rubbed against skin as synthetic as those fibres. Street sellers, huddled beneath battered awnings plied their wares to people who could little afford what they had, standing and examining things they could never buy.

I had stopped off at Arkady's on my way here, making sure that he had secured his shop. There was no reason to think that this bot killer would target him, but I wasn't about to take the chance with one of the few beings I could call a friend. He'd be safe, so long as he hadn't got himself involved with this bot church. I hoped.

In the doorway of an abandoned shop, I rolled a cigarette with one hand as I checked my slate. I'd transferred some of the images over, preferring my own tech. Like my slug thrower. I could have got myself a better gun years ago, but the comfort of a familiar grip in my hand made up for the pea shooter's little eccentricities and inadequacies.

The alley where the last bot bought the farm sat opposite and I matched the view on my slate to that before me. Little had changed since that day. The trash looked unmoved. The rundown, derelict area had seen far better days. Maybe, some day, some fat cat with more money than sense would come down from their heavens in the sectors above and try to gentrify the place, but Atunis Quarter would resist that.

Atunis was the way it was and always would be. These stores would get new occupants, maybe legal, maybe not, and some other part of town would fall down the sewer chain. Right now, this area took the brunt of the lack of money and motivation to make things better. It all circled round, eventually, like the water in a toilet bowl.

"You, in the doorway." The loudspeaker blared its harsh call, like a pig getting slaughtered. "Step forward and identify yourself."

The bright spotlight from a department hover car blazed down towards me as I lifted the rolled cigarette to my lips, scraping a match against the doorway. With a shake of my hand, I doused the match, flicking it out into the rain and tipped my hat up, revealing my face to the cops above. They'd run my ID, laugh at the old cop brought low and move on. I get mistaken for a bot more than I'd like.

Thrusters coughed gouts of smoke, or steam, or whatever that crap was, and the cops wheeled away, rising above the lower floors of the hundred-story buildings and heading up to the next level of streets, ready to harass some other poor, metallic Joe.

The concerns of other bots weren't mine to care about. I had a job to do. A job I hadn't even decided I was going to take. Yet, here I was, ready to kick around dirt and trash to find anything that the cops hadn't even bothered to look for. Back in the day, I'd have spat bile at my Captain for giving me the dirty job cleaning up a bot kill. I understood all too well how things went.

The couple of guys taking their pleasures outdoors didn't even look my way as side-walked past them towards the rear of the alley. The furtive grunts and sounds of flesh on flesh didn't disturb me in the slightest, so long as they didn't get in the way of my examination of the area and I didn't disturb them because, well, they had other things on their mind. Past those guys, I saw the corner, around which some poor schmuck had stumbled on the bot's remains.