1
Bot knows no place beyond the shop and no time beyond the clock. That is how Bot was raised—if that word can be used—by Company-Father.
Company-Father looms over Bot and his brothers every evening, a giant arachnid-like bot raining legs down from the ceiling, eight search beams as eyes scanning the room for disrepair. During the day, cars roll into the shop–the easy cases sun-bleached, the hard cases road-beaten. Company-Father presses his legs into each one and lifts up; the bots scurry beneath them like ants.
This is Bot’s favorite part of his day: the beginning of the first repair where he plugs his spine into the car and becomes it, feeling the world for the first time. The mountains he runs past, the splash of hitting a puddle, the wind shaving his cheek, the skid of rubber on asphalt and the final flattening impact—all of it compounding into more and more yearning to fix yet another car, consume yet another journey.
Thousands of self-aware cars are fixed this way—the proper way—in both visage and spirit. A car loses the memory of its crash to its repairbot so it does not fear going on the road again. Otherwise they run timid and fretful; they pull back at a steep curve or dig their tires too deep as they descend a slope. A bot craves the memory of a car, his craving accelerating with each car he plugs into, becoming more efficient and more motivated over the workday. Such is the patented, engineered symbiosis. To deal with memory storage, a bot is reset every evening, and he knows nothing of tiredness. He only knows time from the rust in their knuckles and age from the accumulation of scratches on his body. Every morning, he wakes feeling brand new and thus ready to work again.
Anyway. This is not a manual about how to design a self-aware car repair shop (that is covered separately, in a 125-page technical spec). This is a story about Bot.
2
Bot is the shiniest bot on the line. He is so shiny he could deflect sun into fire, if only the sun existed in the factory. He is so shiny other bots instinctively turn away from him. His belly, a pane so smooth and clear it approaches a mirror, does not reflect the best of each bot. After all, no bot wants to be reminded of their decay.
No bot except Bunk Brother, who never turns away from Bot when he sees him.
Bunk Brother is the dullest bot on the line. Bunk Brother already has a rusting spine and a permanently half-shuttered eye. The whirr of a good bot is steady and soft, the army of them blanket the factory in a gentle tinnitus. Bunk Brother huffs and puffs, labored in his breath, hot to the touch. Bot imagines Bunk Brother’s chest will cave in one day, his entire body collapsing, melting from the inside.
Yet Bunk Brother takes all of himself in with casual nonchalance.
The absence of memory does not equate the absence of identity. The strength of his carapace, the lubrication between his joints, the efficiency of his work–all of it counts towards who he is in the factory. Bots with shinier coats walk with heads high and chests puffed; bots with mottled coats seem to shrink with every step. Upon waking every morning, bots scramble to count their wounds; they count again before sleep every night, assured when they don’t see their number of scratches change. Though a bot will never do anything to harm another bot, Bot does sometimes compare himself to his brothers and indulge in some slight guilty delight. Only sometimes.
Bunk Brother simply gets up in the morning and lies down in the evening. And doesn’t survey his own body or that of anyone else’s, even though Bot does, noticing all of Bunk Brother’s small decays between morning and evening.
It’s not that Bot is specifically looking out for Bunk Brother or that he particularly cares about him. It’s that Bot finds Bunk Brother’s behavior inexplicable. He isn’t sure how he feels about him, and for a repairbot to feel uncertainty feels wrong.
Some nights—partly provocation, partly curiosity—Bot slithers a hand over Bunk Brother’s torso. Other nights, Bunk Brother lays his hand on top of Bot’s. Both never apply more pressure than gravity. Both blink into sleep at the same time.
3
Bot is also a smart bot.
Bot is smart because he knows he is capable of remembering. Although he ends every day forgetting, he doesn’t begin each day on a blank slate. When he wakes up, he knows he can flex his fingers and each one will swivel into a tool. He knows which car to work on, what sequence to work on them, and when to deem a car beyond repair. He has a nagging fear of Company-Father: not enough to make him cower, just enough to make him careful. Every night, he is guided to the right bunk, to lie next to what he assumes is the same Bunk Brother. These are habits, but aren’t habits just memory compounded? So be it: Bot comes to this conclusion every day. He never seems to have enough time to act on his realizations.
If his favorite part of the day is his first time plugging into a car, his second favorite part of the day is the quiet limbo right before sleep, where he savors every memory he’s collected over his shift. Bot never wants to sleep. Some of his brothers welcome it—sometimes there are so many memories to process that the gears in his head throb. They know there’ll be more, newer memories to devour the next day.
Bot does not wish to forget anything. From the warmth of sunshine to the caress of dew, from piercing hail to the brutal gravel that scrubbed his tires raw, he wants to know all of it. Some nights he lets himself indulge in that forbidden thought: if only I were a car.
But Bot is not a car.
Bot is a bot, and he worries that if he has these thoughts too loud Company-Father might hear him. He has known no place other than the factory and no life other than being a repairbot, which he doesn’t hate.
So instead, he just tries to fight the reset every night by tapping a rhythm with his finger or listening to Bunk Brother’s chattering breath. He always loses to sleep in the end. Rest assured the process is never jarring for the bots. The search beams may be bright but they are warm. Imagine them caressing the bots as they sweep from side to side, a lullaby in light form.
Bot wakes with his hand in Bunk Brother’s, warmth radiating into him. He goes through the same pattern of feelings of Bunk Brother every day: annoyance, pity, grudging acknowledgement, worry. But before all of those, the first feeling he comes to is gratitude. In the cold factory, among the rows and rows of bots lying down straight, Bunk Brother’s hand is proof of the possibility to step out of line. Bot holds onto that hope.
4
On and on—all of Bot’s rebellions live in the details. As the workday progresses, he plugs into each car a little longer than necessary, a little less than efficient. When he gets assigned a painting job (he thinks of these as very lucky days), he purposefully becomes clumsy and splatters spots onto his torso, if only to see what he would look like with color. He delights in every slight toe of the line. He has not done anything to impact his work. He has not done anything to affect Company-Father, so he is safe.
He wishes he would do more. Lying on his charging cot at night, reviewing the day, he knows every little moment he considers rebellion is, in the grand scheme of things, merely inconsequential. I will do another thing tomorrow*,* he thinks. And then: some guilt at allowing himself to become soft, to be like the other bots.
Tomorrow is always a safe concept until he encounters a dead car.
Bots do not understand the concept of mortality until they face a dead car. They can fix any physical malady, but when they plug into a car and nothing comes out, they know that car has lost its awareness and become a mere carcass. When Bot feels a dead car, his motor spins slower, his veins tighten, he grows stoic. Other, older bots may carry that experience as a distraction for the rest of the day; they become mired in the realization that they will decay as much as that car one day. A dead car is a workplace hazard. A dead car can immobilize a bot until the next reset.
This particular car was new. Barely any wear on the tread or dust build-up on the seats—it could have run far more distances and brought back so much more mileage and memory into the shop. Bot tries another plug position—still nothing. He should move on.
He should move on, but what a shame! Such a new car. Such a beautiful car.
It is always so easy for him to think himself immortal until he sees a dead car. It is always so easy for him to think he has forever to do something more until he faces a dead car. The more he looks at the carcass, the more he recognizes himself: metal ribs, the same bolts and nuts, even the rubber of the tires are the same makeup as his rubber soles.
He knows Company-Father does not pass his search beams during the day.
He flexes his hand. He thinks about what he was built to do. He thinks about how much he has done already. He thinks about what he could do. A dead car is a dead car, and he doesn’t know where the dead car will go or what it will do, but all that he can think of now is that he could take his small rebellion beyond fighting sleep and holding Bunk Brother’s hand. So Bot reaches up into the carcass and rips out a bolt.
5
Accomplishment surges from his fingertips to his toes. He’s done it. Taken a big, big step when he’d only been toeing the line before. And if he could do this he could do so much more. Does this mean one day he could fight off sleep at night? Carry on memory to the next day? Speak, leave, feel his own rubber on real gravel?
No. Leave is a thought much too loud to have. Something in him tells him it is not an exercise worth trying. Things like this, like taking the bolt, are what’re worth trying.
He backs off from the car, rolling the bolt around in his fingers, transfixed. When he looks up, he realizes the car has already been swallowed by Company-Father.
The car has become part of Company-Father.
Bot has taken something from Company-Father.
All that electric accomplishment drains away. His gaze refocuses, he instantly runs cold, he swears he can feel every nut tighten around every screw in his body.
Did Company-Father notice? He must hide the bolt. Company-Father sits above their heads every day–he tries being surreptitious and curls the bolt under his right toe. For the rest of his shift he keeps his head down. He does not dare do a single task out of place.
The bolt digs deep into his sole. Every step brings him a little joy and increased apprehension. He tries to console himself: every moment he gets before Company-Father’s leg descends upon him is a moment he’s earned! He has committed the crime; there is no repentance available.
There is nothing he can do now. Nothing except wait—and nothing ultimately happens. He has finished the last repair of the day. Company-Father’s legs are retracting, and the bots are cleaning up around the factory. Discarding the bolt will be easy now—he’s proved his point to himself—but he cannot bring himself to toss it.
If Company-Father descends in the night, he will not remember anyways. If he wakes up tomorrow morning stripped of his body, he will not remember what he was like today. There is no consequence that could matter.
He has always wanted tomorrow to matter.
So he keeps his hope. He carries the bolt until midnight.
6
Bot begins his evening ritual like all his other brothers. First his limbs; they can rotate 360 degrees, his gaze scanning from top to bottom. Then his belly and his back as he swivels his head. For his face itself, he normally looks to Bunk Brother, trying to extrapolate his features from the mottled reflection of Bunk Brother’s back. Over time it becomes him examining Bunk Brother. The rust that’s taken root on his body seems to grow every day, almost artfully. Bot finds it a comfortable distraction as his foot tightens around the stolen bolt.
He is trying not to think too much about what might happen. So he counts all the freckles on Bunk Brother’s back down his spine, his slippery spine, and sees the loosening bolts…
His foot tightens around the stolen bolt, as if on instinct.
No, he thinks, he is having another very loud thought.
Looking around at his brothers, some still wrapped in self-examination, he estimates he has around three minutes left before sleep. Does he trust Bunk Brother? Yes, he thinks Bunk Brother won’t mind, but what if he actually does and raises his hand and has Company-Father bring his leg down onto Bot? Is this just a preposterous proposition?
His foot stiffens now. Midnight will strike soon, and he’s already gambled today. So Bot reaches out a hand and gently hooks a finger on Bunk Brother’s shoulder, pulling him across to him. For a moment he is stricken. Is this the first time he has ever looked into Bunk Brother’s eyes? Concentric rings of violet neon—bright and flared in surprise—the newer bots don’t have eyes like this anymore. Eyes that Bot think could cure the forgetting; eyes he should always remember.
He shakes it off; there is barely any time left. He grabs onto the bolt beneath his foot, then twists over to expose his back and points at the base of his own spine. Then he points to Bunk Brother’s back, makes a twisting motion with his hands. He wishes there was some other way to communicate.
Bunk Brother nods.
The feeling, better than the warmth of sunshine, more soothing than the massage of rain. Quickly, Bunk Brother flips onto his side and proffers his back. Bot unscrews the old bolt and handles the replacement gently, and in less than 10 seconds Bunk Brother no longer has a slippery spine. He whirrs a note of gratitude. Before Bot can pull away, Bunk Brother has reached a hand behind him to take Bot’s hand in his.
In his excitement Bot has forgotten that he has to take care of the old bolt as well. He tucks it back underneath his feet. He reasons he could have something to look forward to tomorrow. After all, he has evaded Company-Father the entire day. He does not fight the reset that night.
7
Bot wakes to a funny feeling in his foot and his hand in Bunk Brother’s. Like every other day, he can’t remember why he wakes up this way, but he’s sure of one special thing: he carries no feeling of disgust or surprise when he wakes like this, hand in hand.
The foot, though—that one feels off—a bit too much tenderness between the toes, perhaps damaged yesterday? He swivels his foot and bends to examine it when he finds an impression of a bolt in his rubber sole. Very fresh, edges not yet dulled by wear. Thankfully fresh enough that Bot can extract his hand and massage out the impression before Bunk Brother gets up.
He shouldn’t chase down why he has the impression. He shouldn’t let fear rear its head. That he is finally getting old, getting sluggish, getting ignorant; he has become imprecise, stepping on a bolt by accident.
By habit he begins checking the rest of his body, relieved to find no other evidence of mistake.
For good measure he checks Bunk Brother too.
The base of Bunk Brother’s spine. Shiny silver against dirt red. A new-ish bolt.
His foot clenches as if on instinct. Well, he thinks, he’d have to check all the other bots in the factory. He’d have to see if they also have new parts with old bodies. Maybe there are secret repair bots that lurk over them while they sleep. This must all be one great coincidence. Bot is a smart bot, was he also a brave bot?
Bunk Brother’s back still faces him. Slowly, Bot reaches out and traces the bolt with his fingers.
It is an almost perfect match to the impression on his foot.
He whirrs urgently and shakes Bunk Brother awake. Points to Bunk Brother’s spine, then himself, then mimes fixing with his hands, and Bunk Brother bows his head in an effect of gratitude. The warm joy of celebration fills his body—he has done something. He has gotten this infraction past Company-Father. He can keep doing this, keep making countless other tomorrows a reality.
He passes his gaze over Bunk Brother’s body, delighting at every opportunity found. That afternoon, he pulls another screw out of a car, tucks it underneath his foot, and makes the swap at night. Wakes the next morning, catches the glint in Bunk Brother, repeats.
Again, Bot is a smart bot. When he really lets himself think, he knows there’s one part of the chain he isn’t accounting for. He doesn’t think about where the old parts are going. He is thankful for any mercy.
8
Repetition programs recognition into their skin. It’s become a waltz for Bot; though his body has long become familiar with what to do, every interaction stays taut and electric.
Bot swears he can feel the air coagulate between them. All that expectation—what part of Bunk Brother can Bot fix today? Bunk Brother is the only bot that makes Bot want to converse. How hot is it for you? Why don’t you ever examine your own body? Do you care about what we are doing—or is this just an extension of your nonchalance? Perhaps it is better they cannot truly talk. Bot isn’t sure what answer he would get.
But Bot continues to collect parts and Bunk Brother lets him. Bot knows they are running out of areas to fix. He is also not letting himself think of that.
For now his hands are nimble and precise. Every finger agile, every point needle-sharp, Bot is still the newest (and most functional, he thinks) bot on the line. But one day—Company-Father’s beam flashes just a little too close—Bot slips.
A scratch across Bunk Brother’s abdomen.
Bot whirrs gently. He wishes, again, that he has been granted with words so he could apologize. Then—before he can really think it through—he takes a hold of Bunk Brother’s hand. He wraps his fingers around one of Bunk Brother’s fingers, grabs it, and pulls it towards his belly. Bunk Brother whirrs in protest but Bot holds strong. With the finger, Bot scratches a line across his own abdomen equal to Bunk Brother’s. He proffers his belly. See, he tries to say. We are now one and the same.
Bunk Brother immediately frees his hand from Bot’s. He shakes his head in disapproval, points to his own mottled coat and rotates his limbs to show all his accumulation of injuries. He points to Bot’s mirror pane belly and shakes his head again, whirring, angry, then flips over.
Bot doesn’t relent. He reaches his hand over and lays it onto Bunk Brother’s abdomen, hugging him from behind. He finds the scratch with his fingers and presses. How he wishes this could be repaired by him too, that he could press hard enough to deposit metal from his fingers into the gouged valley.
9
Bot has a scratch on his abdomen.
A tiny line distorting the perfect pool of his belly.
He immediately pulls his hand out from Bunk Brother and goes to feel his belly. Bot wants to scream. All the other bots are still waking up. Instead, he just focuses and grinds the gears in his arm very, very slowly. It doesn’t make any sense, he thinks. What could have left such a tiny scratch and not damage any other part of his carapace? He is not only getting old, he is getting foolish.
Absorbed by the scratch, he does not check Bunk Brother in the morning and does not make the connection between his feet and the new glint on Bunk Brother’s belly pane. He drags himself through work carefully that day. He does not want to think about himself becoming imprecise. He has allowed himself to slip up, and he will not allow himself to do so again.
There is danger everywhere in the factory. A loose bolt, a sharp edge—he avoids all of it. He finally lets go of a breath when he settles back down on his cot.
Bunk Brother’s mottled coat greets him. This might be the way he’ll go as well, Bot knows. To become so old he’ll no longer find any value in staying whole.
Then he rolls over and Bot sees, clear as day, the identical scratch on Bunk Brother’s belly. He remembers the weird indentation under his feet and reconciles it with the glinting bolt against Bunk Brother’s dirt-like belly. He’s tried to avoid the reason the whole day, not realizing the reason was him.
Bunk Brother catches his gaze and lays his hand on Bot’s belly. He dips his head low in an apology. Then, he takes Bot’s hand in his, and before Bot can react, he’s scratched another line into his own belly. Bunk Brother dips his head lower and bobs it up. His hand is still holding Bot’s. Aluminum shavings tickle the ridges of his finger.
Bot does not want to accept the apology; this isn’t you, he wants to say. This was him. Before he can think, for sleep is coming soon and he must act fast, he pulls in Bunk Brother’s hand and presses that finger to his abdomen.
A delay. Bunk Brother curls his finger, caressing his abdomen. He proffers his belly. We are matching, he seems to say.
Company-Father’s search beams are coming awfully close. He must go to sleep. Instead he presses Bunk Brother in close, belly to belly. He wishes they could lie so close their scratches overlap, valley over valley, become whole that way.
10
A pattern spreads across their abdomen. A little secret no other bot will understand. Together, they wake with the same pattern, add another scratch onto one another, wake the next day, repeat, the pattern expanding over their time today. From the pattern, Bot counts 67 working days. Terrifying monotony if he had memory. Even though he loves savoring memories of the cars he repairs each day, he cannot imagine doing the same for 67 straight days. The more memories he consumes the more he longs to be outside.
Bunk Brother gets as hot as a sun-beaten road at night. Even when Bot isn’t next to Bunk Brother, he can pick out his whirrs among the background tinnitus. One day Bunk Brother wakes with a new wart, a misshapen lump of melted aluminum. Red flakes off his body each morning.
He walks slower now; he has to drag one foot after the other.
Still, they continue their waltz under the searchlights, even when this rebellion no longer makes sense to Bot anymore. His thoughts get louder by the day. Just being different doesn’t satisfy him. He wakes up and sees the patterns on him and Bunk Brother, realizes what he can do, knows there is far more he can do. Really, he should be pushing the line everywhere else. The scratching will not get him closer to the factory door.
He continues because the pattern grounds him. Before, Bot would see an entire factory of himself yet feel utterly alone. Now Bot knows he has someone else.
11
89 scratches later. Bunk Brother wakes up dull in his one half-shuttered eye. Bot looks at the other one, directly, as much as he can that day, wishing he could burn that image into his memory.
12
112 scratches later. The rubber sole of Bunk Brother’s left foot has entirely peeled off. Bot grabs a spare rubber and tries to patch Bunk Brother up again—there are just too many loose parts and wires to glue together. Bot is trying not to have one very loud thought. He just thinks about the now, the hand he wakes up with.
13
148 scratches and Bot wakes, freezing. He wakes hands straight by his side, back to the floor, front facing up towards Company-Father. Though everything is in its right order, Bot feels displaced. On instinct, he turns to examine Bunk Brother.
In the mirror-like back of Bunk Brother, he sees his belly reflected, a smattering of scratches across. Too precise to be accidents. Too irrational for any bot to do. He’s about to turn back when something compels him to lift his finger where he finds tiny aluminum shavings stuck in the crevices.
He hesitates, gears whirring. He can’t be certain what they mean—those scratches could just be from work—but as he runs his hand over his belly again he feels an impulse to curl them up into the pane. So he presses a finger to his belly and digs in.
Afterwards, perhaps by habit, he reaches out and lays a hand on Bunk Brother’s abdomen. Brother wakes and shakes him off with an agitated whirr.
14
213 scratches. Bot adds another one, day over day. The other bots regard him with a mixture of caution and care, always distant. They fear contagion.
15
Bot doesn’t count his scratches anymore. He still does it—prefers it, even—since every scratch shaves away his mottled coat and reveals fresh silver. One day he’ll dig to his core. For now every scratch reminds him he was once new, reminds him that he is now an old bot who just works and waits.
A gorgeous car rolls into the shop today. Mirror-pane finish on a sleek silver facade, cleanly tracked treads, buttery leather seats. A rare car that makes Bot’s heart skip a beat when he runs his hands over it. It floats on the roads. Plugged in, he carves through valleys of burnt amber and digs through snow capped mountains. Pigeons perch on his head. He is momentarily blinded by a sandstorm, emerging halfway submerged in floods. The texture of the roads he’s walked: the soft carpet of grass, the grip of gravel, the silkiness of mud. He would be happy if this is the last car he fixes. He doesn’t remember when he started having this very loud thought. He does not care much about the volume of his thoughts anymore.
The problem is simple: an engine overheating from the stress of mileage. He lays his hand on the engine, feeling the heat radiate through his palm as he attempts to soothe it. The warmth soothes him instead, he wants to keep his hand there.
He shakes himself out of it. He is an old bot now, distractible.
A fluid replacement and restart later, the engine is running as good as new. Bot does another check before he sends it out on the road; the car is so beautiful he wants to be thorough. Wings clear. Seats clear. Tires clean. But when he ducks for the underbelly, he sees a row of scratches, precise and clinical, underneath the hood. An exact match to the beginning scratches on his belly.
Bot feels his veins expand; his engine spins faster. He knows these are not scratches from the road. These are scratches made in the same way he has made his.
He will not see the car again. He will not remember the car. Next time, another bot could get the car–another bot with no scratches and no connection that’ll rip apart the pane and turn it into scrap metal. So today, he’ll rip a bolt from his knuckles and cut a tendon from his calves. Assemble them all into this car and send it off back on the road.
Wait for me, he thinks. He is not afraid of time anymore.