vN The First Machine Dynasty(20)

Amy plunged her fingers into the cool sand and smiled. The last kid to play here had left behind a squat central tower with a tallish building at each compass point and a ring road connecting them. Other roads branched out from these, and they led to a smattering of smaller structures: houses, Amy guessed. Frowning, Amy sat on her haunches and tried to decide what exactly made her dislike the city so much. It was very neat and very pretty, and whoever had shaped the houses had paid great attention to making them uniform in size and placement. But the design itself made no sense; she had no clue what that big central building was supposed to be, or why it needed to be guarded by the other buildings and kept away from the homes. And if those other four buildings were places where people went to work, then they were awfully far away from the places people lived. The citizens would spend all their time on those long, rigid roads and no time at home.



With a sweep of her hand, Amy levelled the city.



"Continuing your rampage?"



Amy turned. Javier dropped out of a tree and joined her at the sandbox. He pointed at the playground. "You know, the real toys are over there."



"This is a real toy," Amy said. "I like building things."



Javier squatted beside her. "Well, right now, it looks like you're destroying stuff."



She shrugged. "I'm just making room for something better." She pointed at the fringes of the city that she'd left standing. "This was all wrong. I have to turn it inside out." She frowned. "Where's Junior?"



"Still sleeping."



"Is it OK to just leave him there?"



Javier rolled his eyes. "I don't think any bears are going to make off with him, if that's what you mean." He nodded at the sandbox. "What are you turning inside out?"



"The last kid's design. I'm going to put all the houses next to each other, with a park in the middle." She drew a circle in the centre of the box with one finger. "There. And then the houses go here," she dotted the ring around the park, speckling the sand to remind herself where the neighbourhoods would go, "and then there should be some places for people to work, so their commutes are short." She drew Ws in the sand near the homes.



Javier raised his brows. "I had no idea you had such a kink for urban planning."



Amy started building her first house. "I just wanted to make it better than it was," she said. "The old way, everyone would be on the road all the time. But this way, people get home earlier to do fun stuff."



Javier smiled. "Wow. You really can't wait to go home, can you?"



Amy's hands hovered motionless over the houses she'd just imagined. To her horror, her eyes filled with tears. She had the strangest sense that if she moved a single inch, if she so much as made a sound, the tears would overwhelm her. So she remained perfectly still and silent. She stayed this way, frozen and quiet, until Javier gently turned her face toward his with a finger. Then the spell was broken, and she blinked and the tears rolled down, and she turned away again.



"Wow," he repeated. "Just, uh… Damn. You cry just like a real girl."



Her indignation put an immediate hold on her tears. "I am a real girl."



"No, no, I mean – it's emergent. Not a plug-in. Nobody told you to start crying."



She blinked wetly. "Why would someone tell me to start crying?"



Javier shrugged. "I don't know. Why do humans do anything they do?" He stood up quickly and made for the trees bordering the playground.



Amy stared after him for a moment. Then she scrubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand and focused again on her sculpture. It looked so ugly, now. Her first house closely resembled a pile of dog crap on the sidewalk. She moved to wipe it away.



"No, don't." Javier reappeared behind her. He dumped two fistfuls of twigs and pine cones and dead pine needles in the centre of the sandbox, where she'd marked out the park.



"What are you doing?" Amy asked.



"My job." Javier picked up one pinecone with his good hand and screwed it into the sand until it stood upright. "Planting trees."



Amy smiled. She blinked the rest of her tears back. "Thank you," she said. "I was just thinking that there was something missing."



"You don't say." Javier jammed a twig into the sand in front of her little house.



Amy nodded. "You can be my landscape architect."



"You can't afford me." He sucked his teeth and shook his head. "You gringos. Always trying to make us into your gardeners."



Amy's jaw dropped. "That's not true at all! I didn't–"