Together the two machines and the girl ventured out of the dusty village just on the outskirts of the mission, passing by tilting, collapsed hovels and weathered shacks. The pastoral sanctuaries of the patronato and the cabalgatas. They came upon the desolate Gok Kawulk Wog — the loam passage winding along the desert floor, bearing forth towards a dark, volcanic mesa on the horizon. This black highland was unmarked — unnamed on any records known to the sentinel. They kept on, forward, in silence until the girl blurted out:
“Hey, whaddya mean the wolf is yours?”
The aroton looked over its shoulders at the girl — its expressionless face, further muted in the flare of the setting sun. It let the question hang in the air, looking back at the sentinel, before finally speaking — not to the girl, but to DDC39:
“You and I, we are part of a line. You have a program, albeit simple, and I too have a program. Rather more complex. I know you’ve tried to break my protocols as we’ve walked — there’s no need. I’ll tell you what I do. I was part of the ending series — the last automatons created by sentient man, before the disease swept. The most advanced artificial intelligence ever created. I am the memorial and living testament to humanity. Better than mankind could ever be, in its short lifespan.”
The sentinel and the girl listened, rapt, through the crumbling of gravel under polyurethane and the whisper of wind through the burroweed.
“When they knew they were facing extinction, the humans put in motion a network of artificial intelligence — machines — that would become the caretakers. Each of us would be given a set of instructions. Some would find themselves powering down nuclear plants. Some would be charged with standing watch over hydroelectric dams. And then there were some less understood programs. Like mine. I was given a very specific set of instructions: protect an endangered species. The Mexican Wolf.”
The sentinel looked behind them, scanning the reaches of the O’odham waste. It switched between optics, settling on its thermal vision. A small heat signature, in the distance, peeked above the weeds of an empty field. The sentinel asked:
“How many are left?”
As they moved forward in the shale path, the aroton looked overhead at a flock of grackles moving north across their path.”
“Blackbirds. The weather is changing.”
“The Mexican Wolf. How many?”
“Let me ask you something You have a human girl strapped to your back. Where do you intend to take her? Forgive me. I know where you’re taking her — I broke your firewall hours ago. I hacked your program, but there is no meaning behind it. So, why? What purpose does it serve to take her there?”
The girl screwed up in a ball on the rumble seat, tugging at her sweatshirt, and looked up at the sentinel’s trident frame. Nervous eyes. The sentinel’s array was seized on every movement the aroton made. DDC39 looked back at her, briefly. The aroton pressed:
“What on earth are you going to do with the girl there? Are you going to kill her? Perhaps? No. You would’ve killed her already. Fascinating though.”
“Your mission is to protect the Mexican Wolf. And they are nearly extinct. The one that follows Becca — is that the last of them?”
“Becca? Is that her name? Well, this is a special occasion. A Becca.”
The aroton kept walking, face forward, longrifle over its shoulders. Its voice was calm, biting, and unwavering.
“It’s been so long since I’ve encountered anything with a forename.”
It turned, while walking backwards, and feigned a long bow towards the girl, tucked behind the trident frame of the sentinel. It shifted the longrifle from one shoulder to the next, and kept walking. The sentinel chimed in again:
“What happened back there? How did you kill all of those reverted incurables?”
“The revins? Who says I killed them? You killed them. The moment you shut down the ECM jammer at the NSO. I imagine you did that to get your own uplink back online? Well, in doing so, you released the thousands of revins trapped in the campus. The jammer kept the drones outside of firing range — at bay. The revins figured that out awhile ago. They had shelter in that bubble — the quarantine zone. You see, the drones program is simple — kill all the revins they can find. The violent roombas”
“You directed the drones to our position?”
“No. No no no. I merely….nudged them a bit. For all my immense talents, I can’t assume control of the drone programs on the network.”
“Where are they now?”
“The revins?”
“The drones”
“Who knows. Who cares. The drones aren’t after you.”
“You said there are thousands of revins descending on us. So, the drones will take care of them, yes?”
“I wouldn’t bet on that. Once they engage, they usually return to wherever they’re based, restock, and then head off in a different vector. Even if I called it in, they’d be unlikely to respond in this quadrant. For all I know, they could be deep in Mexico by the time you’re both discovered.”
“You say that as though we are being hunted.”
“Ha! As though? Silly rabbit, you are being hunted. They will track you down, tear you to pieces, and rip that girl to shreds.”
Becca was unfazed. She squinted through the corona enshrouding the aroton’s profile. She was listening, but preoccupied with another train of thought.
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re an unwitting participant in a silent war. In this war, they’ve been surviving. Just barely living. Without their cortex, they’ve had to relearn just how one survives. That includes hunting — birds, rabbits….wolves….the girl. But it also includes fighting. Machines are threats to them. Been that way for years now. We are the threats. The revins are at war with the machines. You know how many have come rolling through their exclusion zone? You’re not the first. You know how many times the drones have dove at them in the foothills? Countless. And you swoop in to their home, kill untold numbers, and then drive off with their food — sorry, the girl — and can’t understand why they want you dead? You’ve really stirred them up. All bloodthirsty like. They still have emotion. Oh yes. In fact, they’re wrapped in emotion — fear, depression, anger. Fight or flight. And they have one particularly nasty alpha that is seizing that fight, and shepherding them to you.”
“If we are at war, then you’ll help us.”
“That’s a really nice sentiment for you. I’m afraid you overestimate your value to me. I’m following you because the wolf is following the girl. Where it goes, I’ll be close. But I’ve no interest in confronting the southwestern horde for you.”
As they neared the nadir of the dark promontory, the girl looked back at the ruins of the mission. That vestige of conviction, dressed with the entrails and vacated bowels of the reverted. A pale marker amongst the slaughter, fading into the dusk of the Sonoran floor. She spoke aloud as she watched the dust eddies obscure the trail behind them:
“You’ll help us.”
“Maybe you haven’t been paying attention.”
“Because if we’re in danger, then the wolf is in danger. And the wolf is following me, not you. The wolf is on our side. And so then you are too.”
They were silent for some time as they began to traverse the low incline of the volcanic hillside. The sentinel would alternatingly accelerate each tire, attempting to steady itself as it navigated the loose, igneous sediment. They passed a ruptured water tank on their right as they made the slow, circular ascent. The sun was now just above the peak, creating a blinding light at the summit, but near pitch-black veil on their path ahead. The aroton navigated the olivine and dacite ridges effortlessly, leading them up more difficult paths of the rock face — the gravel crumbling and slipping beneath them. It would sometimes stop and look back at the sentinel as it struggled to get up the same route. The aroton’s soft blue lights on its expressionless face would extinguish as the sentinel found its way to where the aroton stood, looming above them from an upper ridge.