Warden

of kilometers on the open plains but was vastly restricted in the ruined cities courtesy of the interference caused by the buildings. Speaking of those buildings, they appeared on the map as white outlines that slid past as she moved, so that her indicator remained at the center at all times.
She returned her attention to the streets and watched the bordering skyscrapers suspiciously. Her gaze drifted to Horatio. She felt a strange kinship to the robot, more-so than Will. Perhaps because she felt more like the machine, than the man.
“Horatio, do you have a human brain?” Rhea asked.
The robot chuckled. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m all AI.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Horatio said. “You’ll find humans who’ve transferred their brains to robotic bodies like my own, because they can’t afford the more human-like synthetic bodies. But for the most part, if it looks like a robot, it’s probably housing an artificial intelligence.”
She nodded. “That concept seems familiar to me.”
“We’ll get your memory back yet,” Horatio said.
“Don’t get her hopes up,” Will told the robot.
She walked on in silence.
Ahead, the road became blocked by the collapse of several buildings. Gizmo guided the party into a side street.
Will, Horatio and Rhea marched between the two buildings, which were separated by a street containing four lanes and two wide sidewalks. The trio weaved between the debris of personal vehicles that littered the road. Most were land-based, with rotten wheels, but there were a few aerial craft among the lot, judging from the broken wings.
She gazed at the hulking skyscrapers that bordered on either side, their shattered windows like hollowed out eye sockets. She wondered if anyone waited to waylay them inside those buildings, namely the bandits Will had spoken of earlier.
“What happens if we’re attacked?” Rhea asked.
Will shrugged. “Then we do all we can: take cover and fight back.”
“That will be kind of hard, without a weapon,” she told him.
“I don’t see how taking cover is hard,” Will said. “Duck behind one of the vehicles.”
“I meant fighting back,” she said.
He ignored the comment.
She kept a wary eye on the bordering buildings and the alleyways between them but didn’t spot anything. She supposed Gizmo would alert them anyway if the drone picked up something.
She glanced at Will. “How did you become a salvager?”
“Sort of fell into the work,” Will said. “I was just a kid when half the world’s cities were destroyed. I was one of the lucky ones, living in a spared city. But I tell you, the crime and poverty that followed… man, wasn’t easy. My parents started salvaging to survive, and when I was older, I took over the business. I built Horatio from spare parts acquired over the years, and Gizmo, too. When you look at those two robots, and my backpack, you’re looking at all my worldly possessions.”
“I’m not actually one of his possessions,” Horatio said. “You see, it’s illegal to own self-aware AIs. That’s tantamount to slavery.”
“True that,” Will agreed. “Horatio follows me of his own free will.”
“I wouldn’t quite say I follow him,” Horatio countered. “We’re partners. Will sold me a fifty percent ownership stake in Hoplite Industries. We split all the revenue we make in this business.”
“Half the world was really destroyed?” Rhea said.
Will nodded. “Yeah. We called it The Great Calming.”
“A strange name,” she commented.
“Dude, they were strange times,” he countered.
“So, when you say half the world, you’re talking the north half, or the south half, or…”
“It was random,” Will explained. “Spread across the globe. New York was razed, but Jersey City spared. Los Angeles bit the dust, while San Francisco remained untouched.”
“What happened to the fallen cities?” Rhea asked.
“No one really knows,” Will told her. “Most people blame Ganymede.”
Rhea gave him an uncertain look. “Ganymede?”
“Jupiter’s seventh closest moon,” Horatio explained.
Will nodded. “We were at war with the Ganymedeans. Earth was running out of water, and we invaded Ganymede to get at the oceans stored beneath the frozen crust of the moon. The Ganymedeans didn’t like that and fought back with everything they had. One morning the people of Earth woke up to massive detonations: they weren’t nuclear, just conventional explosions, even so it was enough to utterly raze the cities in question. Billions died. Our population was reduced by half. That solved the water crisis, at least temporarily, buying us a few more centuries.
“No one really knew where the explosions came from. There weren’t any missiles or other detectable forms of attack. That said, there are many theories… the most popular being that elite teams of Ganymedeans dispersed across the globe and planted charges in the weeks prior to The Great Calming. The theory is supported by videos shared on the streaming sites that depict Ganymedeans caught slinking into the different cities. Some people say those shots were staged or are simply convincing deepfakes. They support the next most popular theory, which is that Ganymedes had developed some sort of new, trans-dimensional weapon that allowed them to bridge space, teleporting the bombs directly into our cities. I guess we’ll never know.”
Rhea sidestepped the fender that had fallen from a burnt-out vehicle next to her path. “Why not?”
Will shook his head. “There’s nothing left of the Ganymedeans. In the aftermath of The Great Calming, the High Council stirred the people of Earth into a frenzy. Enrollment in the armed forces of the member countries went up tenfold, as did military spending. The industries of the world shifted as we switched to war economies, and we created machine monstrosities like nothing ever seen before. With our renewed army, we destroyed the Ganymedeans, all of them, to the last man, woman, and cyborg. You’d think we would have gained something from all that: access to the water supply we so direly sought. You’d hope. But that wasn’t the case. Because of the logistics involved in maintaining such a faraway base, we soon lost Ganymede to Europa.”
“I’m surprised we’d give up, just like that,” Rhea said. “Considering the price we paid to acquire that moon. And