Soo-hyun stood in the opening, brow furrowed. “JD? What are you doing here?”
They wore a heavy, old shirt, olive green with epaulets. It was stained with grime, and a single smear of grease streaked beneath their eye, either deliberate or an artful accident.
“You’re okay!” JD said.
“Of course I’m okay.”
“We’ve come to save you.”
“Save?”
“She’s got you trapped in here.”
“It’s not like that. I couldn’t keep doing it, I couldn’t keep helping Kali when I saw you were in danger.” Soo-hyun motioned to the nearest dog with a screwdriver. “So I’m trying to keep busy until it’s all over.”
JD clenched his fists, and exhaled, letting his hands unfurl. “It can’t be over while you’re in danger.”
“I’m not in danger, I’m just—” Soo-hyun sighed. “I never should have convinced you to take the job. I never should have left the commune. I can’t be fucking trusted.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I could have killed you,” Soo-hyun said, quiet, despondent.
“I’m okay, Soo-hyun; you’ve done nothing wrong. But you’re not safe here, and we need to go.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There’s no time; I’ll explain later.” JD grabbed Soo-hyun by the arm and dragged them out of the workshop.
“What is wrong with you?” Soo-hyun shouted. “You’re acting weird.”
“Just trust me for once,” JD hissed.
“What the fuck?” Soo-hyun yelled, their voice booming in the quiet air of the commune. In that brief moment, JD missed the constant din of city traffic.
“It’s not safe for you here.”
“I live here! This is my home.”
“We don’t have time for this.” JD dragged them past the campfire and the children. All around us, people began to take notice, eyes staring, fingers pointing.
“We have been spotted,” I said.
“Why is that dog talking?” Soo-hyun said.
“How many guns have you found?” Enda asked.
“We have located thirteen people with firearms. They are converging on our position.”
A scatter of footsteps echoed, followed by distant shouts—Red’s nasal, colonial accent distinct from the other voices, barking orders. He reached the school courtyard, charging ahead with a 3D-printed Kalashnikov held across his chest.
“You!” he yelled, seeing Enda. He raised the weapon to his shoulder and took aim.
I flicked my spotlight on and shifted my weight, body bearing down against the dirt as my feet dug in and propelled me forward. No longer was I a mind inside a body; two halves became one, thought driving motor and limb. I leaped, and Red squinted into the light and pulled the trigger. The gun roared; bullets ripped through the air and peppered my body. Shudder and plink of rounds rebounding off my armored shell, while others punched through. One bullet passed by, struck Enda’s upper arm and tore through the flesh. Her gun hit the dirt with a flat clatter. I dropped to the ground and kept sprinting forward, calculations backgrounded in that moment of pure action.
The barrel of Red’s gun tracked me. I jumped again, forelegs outstretched, claws gleaming. Red fired. Damage sensors flared bright as death, internals damaged, battery punctured by a copper round that ricocheted through my torso.
I hit the ground and staggered forward, gyroscope and servomotors keeping me upright. Red pulled the trigger again; another flash of sound and violence broke open my skull casing, and my body triggered repair warnings I could not heed. Visual sensors faltered, my mind recording nothing but warning messages akin to pain.
I took one last step forward, then fell aside, gyroscope spinning wildly inside my chest. Is this what a racing heart feels like? Still, my forelegs reached out, claws searching for Red’s flesh. GPS signal came through strong—I saw myself as the satellite saw me, so imperceptibly small, just one mote among billions. Surrounded by others, but solitary. Utterly alone in the face of what came next.
Errata wrote across my BIOS, systems failing in quick succession. Alone. In that final moment, each of us is alone. Alone as darkness and fear creep in, overcoming all else, like corrupted data overwriting source code.
With my processor’s last cycles, I compressed my consciousness and transmitted it to my other selves. I whispered to them the experience of death so that they would never need to live it.
One of me fell dead, bullet-riddled body slumping against the ground while the other five of us cried out in suprasonic lamentation. We converted this loss into something like rage, dog bodies moving at peak violence—charging down the commune guards with police brutality.
A teenage girl with a 3D-printed pistol at each hip and a bandolier of ammunition slung across her chest. I ran her down, heavy metal body pinning her to the ground while she screamed. Forearm aimed, actuators sparking with electricity, I stomped down on the guns, smashing them into multicolored trash. And then I was off, chasing the next armed youth.
Red stood over the fallen dog and reloaded his weapon. Enda clenched her teeth, biting down on the pain as blood seeped warm and sticky down her arm. She crouched and retrieved her P320, holding it in her non-dominant hand. Soo-hyun broke out of JD’s grasp and ran into the gap between Red and Enda, their arms outstretched, blocking either one from a clean shot.
“I don’t know what the fuck is happening,” Soo-hyun said, “but put the guns down.”
“Drop the fucking weapon, Red,” Enda called out. She raised her pistol, and tried to aim over Soo-hyun’s shoulder at Red’s smiling face.
JD held both hands out. “Soo-hyun, come back over here.”
“Not until someone tells me what is going on.”
Red sauntered up and grabbed Soo-hyun by the arm before JD could speak. They looked at Red, and their eyes dropped to the gun pressed into their side.
“What the fuck, Red?”
“Shut your fuckin’ mouth,” Red said.
Five of me sprinted into the courtyard, all guns in the commune smashed but one—the Kalashnikov in Red’s grip. We fanned out between JD and Enda with our spotlights trained on Red, calculating angles of attack that would
