vN The First Machine Dynasty(30)

"It's OK," Amy heard herself telling Junior. "We have the reader. We can just look this up. I'm sure it happens to everyone once in a while; there must be something."



Bluescreen, the reader told her. There was a technical term, but this was the real word that real people used. Bluescreen: slang. The state a defective von Neumann-type humanoid enters when unresponsive to external stimuli such as light, heat, electricity, food–



"Food!" Amy rolled up the reader and stuffed it in one pocket. She popped open the cupboards and dug out the rest of the vN food. Only three bars of the stuff were there. She ripped open the first wrapper, pried his jaws wide, and crammed the food down inside. She stood back and waited. Nothing happened. As an afterthought, she reached over and closed Javier's mouth.



Instantly, his eyes opened. He struggled with the food for a moment, choking it down, then opening his mouth for more, fishlike. His eyes fluttered closed again as Amy eased more out of the wrapper and past his teeth. "Haven't you eaten at all?" she asked.



Of course he hasn't. He wasted all his resources repairing you and feeding his iteration. And that was before being thrown in a cage – how do you think the bounty hunters caught him? With a butterfly net?



Amy ripped open another bar of food and snapped off a section. She opened his mouth with two fingers and stuffed it inside. "I'm sorry, Javier. I didn't mean for this to happen."



He groaned. Amy fed him more. Occasionally his eyes would open, but they closed again just as quickly, and soon the food was all gone. She checked the cupboards again, but that only confirmed what she already knew: there was nothing left. And Javier still hadn't really woken up. Biting her lip, she withdrew Rick's reader, unfurled it, and located the garbage dump on the map. Expanding her view, she estimated the distance and the time it would take. The map had no details on its security, but in truth she didn't really want to know. Knowing would only make it harder. Putting away the reader, she looked over at Javier.



"Just try to rest, OK?" Amy said.



Carefully, Amy lifted Javier's wrists and wrapped his arms around Junior. She rose from the bed and dug around in Melissa's clothes for a pair of socks. She watched Javier as she rolled them on. Finding a pair of old cowboy boots, she wormed her feet down into them and wiggled her toes. Last, she tied her hair back and zipped herself into a dark hooded sweatshirt.



How very ninja of you, Portia said, when Amy saw herself in a mirror. They'll never catch you, now that you're dressed appropriately.



Amy forced herself to ignore the voice inside her head, and instead focused on Javier. She lifted his legs so that he was completely on the bed, and pulled a blanket over him and his son. "I'll be back soon."



She locked the door behind her, and started walking.





5



The Hard Part





Amy followed the ruts in the road. It was dark and she stumbled at first, but then the constant grind of the feedstock's compiler led her forward, and soon violet-tinged light penetrated the trees. She left the road then, taking cover in the undergrowth. The smell of the place hit her next: rust and battery acid and the dry dust smell of old plastic slowly turning beige. A hollow feeling spread through her limbs: hunger. Her steps picked up and she drew nearer to the fence. It was at least twenty feet high and it hummed. Old signs pocked with buckshot warned about the dangers of high voltage.



At the front of the dump was a small, squat structure the colour of wet cat food. It had its own fence. Amy guessed it was a guardhouse of some kind. In the game her mom had shown her, you always had to decommission the security in places like that before gaining access to the feedstock from the compiler. It was tough, though, and you were likely to get hurt: in-game, the guardhouses had electrified roofs and the dumps had botflies equipped with thermal vision, and these were linked to fence-mounted turrets full of puke rounds. Amy looked at the fence. Sure enough, there were slender guns mounted on every second fence post. Puke rounds sat clustered under them like plastic beehives.



You could always run. He's not worth it. You know he's not.



Amy shook her head. "He didn't have to save me before, either, but he did."



Amy decided to walk the perimeter. It would give her a better sense of where the best garbage was, assuming the security drones didn't find her first. She could see them darting among piles of scrap metal that glistened with yellow anti-theft acid coating. Kneeling, Amy dug a small hole in the ground and coated her hands with dirt. She wished she had mud, instead. It wouldn't really stop the burn once she stuck her hands in the garbage, but it might delay it for a while. She'd have to rely on her mods to take care of the rest.