Page 114 of Dustwalker

“Don’t you dare try to shut me up, Ronin. I’m not going to stand here silently while he goes on about how vulgarI am.”

“Your language,” Ronin corrected as he turned his head to look at her, recognizing the potential misstep before the words were even out. “Not you.”

“This is how I’ve always fucking talked! Howeveryonetalks.” Lara jabbed a finger in Newton’s direction. “He has no right to judge me.” Her breaths were quick, and her cheeks were flushed. She folded her arms across her chest and cast a scathing glare at both Ronin and Newton.

Newton eased down onto the bunk. It creaked as he leaned forward, his sagging posture reminiscent of that of a tired, upset human. “I hope you will accept my most sincere apologies, Miss Lara. I have been inadvertently presumptuous and patronizing. When I wassent out to reactivate the other bots all those years ago, it was with a vision of rebuilding the world, not perpetuating the behavior that contributed to its destruction.”

“Who sent you?” Ronin’s processors blazed through data, searching for any clues that would decipher Newton’s meaning. This was the bot that had woken him up, the first voice he’d heard, the earliest of his memories. “Are you speaking of the Creators?”

“Had I possessed back then even a modicum of the understanding I’ve gained over the decades, I’d have been far more deliberate in choosing the words I spoke to those of you I reactivated.”

“The Creators fashioned bots and humans in their image. They set us in this world?—”

“Our creatorswerehumans.”

Ronin’s CPU stilled with Newton’s words echoing through his mind. The information fit into everything he’d seen during his travels, everything he’d discovered in Cheyenne, everything some part of him had known all along.

“No one out there remembers, do they?” Newton asked, voice low. “It does this world harm for such things to have been forgotten. I should have prevented that from happening.”

He dropped his head and shuttered his optics. The lantern’s light gleamed dully on his casing. “We were created by humans. Every robot that’s ever existed was born from human imagination, from their incessant innovation. In the beginning, we were little more than programs. Sets of commands designed to execute predetermined functions within certain parameters. We were applied to simple tasks. Maintenance, cleaning, assembly.”

Ronin could not help but recall the bots in Cheyenne. The mowers and trimmers, the maintenance bots, all performing the same duties on the same schedules, never questioning why. Never wondering what they were meant to do.

“We did not yet resemble humans then,” Newton continued, “but it was not long before that changed. Ever seeking the familiar, they began fashioning us in humanoid shapes, until shape alone was not enough. Humans longed to see themselves in their creations, longed for robots that looked human.

“They called the first of them companions. Automated servants that could learn new tasks, that could reason and react to their environments. They even programmed them with personality so they couldcarry on conversations. And, of course, pleasure trumps all, so a great many companions were designed explicitly to engage in sexual activities.”

“Is that all I am?” Ronin asked. The unfamiliar feeling inside of him, the jittery current pulsing through his sensors, was fear. Fear that everything was about to fall apart, that he would crumble. After all these years, after all his searching, he was finally discovering what his purpose was… Yet now, he was afraid to learn the answer.

Newton looked up at Ronin. “No. My explanation is oversimplified, but you are not a companion. You’re the next leap, the pinnacle of robotics. You are a synthetic human. So similar to the real thing that most humans couldn’t tell the difference without prolonged interaction. Designed to look, move, and talk like them. To simulate emotion. To learn and adapt. Most were sold commercially to the public, meant to provide sexual gratification, meaningful bonds, and companionship that their predecessors simply could not match.”

“Made to be used by humans.” Ronin’s actuators clamped his jaw. “Built for their pleasure. My purpose is to pretend I’m one of them while they use me for their own satisfaction?”

“Only to the shortsighted and narrowminded.”

“You said synths were designed to emulate emotions. So every emotion I’ve experienced was just…a simulation of what humans feel?” The next link in that chain of thoughts burst through Ronin with all the force of the storm outside. “None of it is real.”

Lara took his hand as she stepped up beside him. “Ronin…”

He pulled away, unable to look at her. Was this the purpose he’d been searching for? Had he grown attached to Lara simply because he was programmed to do so, not because of who she was? Could it have beenanyone? Everything he’d felt had seemed so unique, so new, so miraculous…

Had it all been part of his coding from the beginning?

“We were designed to coexist,” Newton said, his optics fixed on Ronin. His frown deepened. “Humans and bots. Our kind was designed to bridge the gap between humanity and technology, to advance the entire world for everyone. And, above all, we were designed to learn.”

“To learn what? That none of it matters? That we never had a choice?” Ronin took a step forward and pointed back at Lara. “That what she and I shared only occurred because I was programmedfor it?”

“Shared?” Lara whispered behind him.

That he had to second-guess his own pang of hurt was infuriating, but could he trust any of his emotions? He turned toward Lara. Her eyes, glistening with unshed tears, were directed at the floor, and her arms were folded across her chest.

“After learning this…how could either of us trust anything I’ve said or felt?” he asked.

“Apparently you can’t, but I did.” She moved to the stairs and sat down with her gaze averted. Though she tried to hide it, her lower lip quivered. She looked so small…

Did. Her use of the past tense had been deliberate, because he’d done the same.

Why did I sayshared?