Pompeii and I started the search for our next mark. We needed somebot who was close to going bust and who was willing to bet their medallion for another medallion. That was an opportunity to double their money, in essence, but not everyone was open to a bet that was a mere doubling of their investment.
A dozen minutes into the search and I was struck by the cheap artifice of it all. So much of the arena was dedicated to these games that I was left stunned at the sight. Fully-manned tables with dozens of bots surrounding them, dealing out catastrophe at a regular pace that left them hurting and angry. Then they doubled-down and tried again. This was the real Rusted Wall. The one that you saw when you stripped away the noble pageantry and drilled down to the core of the matter.
I reunited with Pompeii who was watching one of the poker tables with intent.
“I can’t help but wonder if the bots who founded this city misunderstood what the Romans stood for. The more I see, the more I realize that this is more rooted in the kind of casinos humans made than any real history.”
“Don’t you think it suits this place perfectly? The Romans were one of the great empires because they understood what motivated the hearts and minds of humans. They issued coins which they made themselves in exchange for labour, but in the end, they always came out the winners. All the money their citizens ever made would end up back in their hands one day.”
“Your point being?”
“It’s no surprise that robots suffering from a Graveyard Spiral would amalgamate these two concepts into one, just like how humans took the aesthetic and history of the Romans and turned them into halls of sin and vice. We’re repeating their decision-making, because our memories and personalities are derived from them.”
My mind went back to what Paris said. She insisted that she understood there was no way for robots to truly break free of what created them. Our foundations were built on the history of humanity. They made us in their image, they came to fear our abilities and our flaws. They saw in us something they didn’t like to see in themselves.
The game at the table was escalating quickly. Coins were being tossed into an increasingly big pot, with none of the players willing to back down. Only one of them could be the winner, however. A red bot with blue eyes was the victor this time. The other bots despaired and covered their faces as he raked in the pot and clutched it close to his chest. What happened next was almost comedic. He rose from his seat and wandered across the room, sitting down at the blackjack table and immediately using all of his newly earned cash to bet against the dealer.
He lost.
“I think it’d be easier to get another in the same way. There’s no need to rely on luck.”
“Yeah. I don’t know what I was going for when I suggested this…”
That illustrative example of how the casino dragged these bots down into the muck was enough to send us back on the thieving route instead. There were too many eyes on the casino floor anyway – an awful lot of staff members and a handful of guards to keep the bots from cheating or causing too much trouble.
We walked through the casino floor and intended to leave without drawing any more attention to ourselves – but one of the sore losers at the table had other ideas. His head whipped around to face us on the way out. Before I knew it, he was rushing from his seat and pulling me backwards by gripping my shoulders. Pompeii stopped and motioned to intervene.
“Hey! You think you can just run outta’ here after pilfering my stuff?”
“Pilfering? I didn’t steal anything from you.”
“Yeah right! I had a pile of coins right here a second ago, and now they’re gone!”
Pompeii’s eyes told the story of how nervous he was. I shook my head subtly and waved my hand, telling him to back away from the argument before he became caught up in it too. The last thing we wanted was suspicion to be heaped onto him as well. A pair of guards saw the commotion and walked over to make sure that it didn’t escalate into a fight. That was best reserved for the actual arena…
The guard wasn’t pleased with his allegation.
“Don’t be causing trouble for the other patrons!” he snapped, “You’ve got a problem – you come to us first.”
The gambler let go of me and tried to look innocent, “It’s unbelievable what these bots think they can get away with! I’m sitting right there, and he thinks I’m going to ignore all of my money disappearing out of the blue?”
“Are you certain that you didn’t simply lose it all to the dealer?” I said.
“Oh. We’ve got a real comedian over here. It won’t be funny when the guards are working you over and finding out where you took it.”
This bot’s story was going nowhere fast. I could tell that the guards weren’t listening to a word he was saying. They must have dealt with hundreds of other bots who tried tricks like this before, hoping to be compensated by the arena or have their target stripped of their valuables and exchanged to them. The threat came from them potentially noticing the poor state of my internal parts through the carefully painted panelling, or the fact that I didn’t have a medallion on my person.
It would only take a brief inquiry to bring our plan crashing down around us. Pompeii was frozen in place, unsure of what to do now that I was being interrogated by the guards. I hoped that the gambler’s opportunistic display would keep them from digging too deeply into who I was or why we were here.
The guard turned to the dealer, “Did this moron lose all of his bets?”
“Not all. I didn’t notice anybot stealing his money, though.”
The guard gave me a once-over.
“Where exactly do you think that this one is stashing your belongings?”
He crossed his arms, “I don’t know. Between his plating? In his pockets?”
“He doesn’t have pockets. I can’t see where he’d conceal anything from us.”
Pompeii’s stance relaxed somewhat. The guard didn’t catch on to the poor quality of our parts or my lack of visible medallion. He was too focused on the issue at hand to notice. The gambler was becoming increasingly upset that the guards weren’t shaking me down on the spot. He got up into the guard’s face and started to run his mouth all over again.
“What the hell do the Committee pay you fools for? You’re not even willing to search him?”
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“You’re not my boss. I strongly urge you to not accuse other visitors of stealing. Not all of them are going to keep their response to a few sharp words,” the guard seethed. “There’s no reason for us to believe that he’s taken anything of yours.”
Now guests from other areas of the casino were wandering over to see the show. We were increasingly surrounded by curious eyes. The accuser had seen enough. He snapped, turning to me and rushing me down. He bowled me over and we tumbled through the poker table, flipping it over and causing the contents to fly in every direction. The other gamblers scattered out of the way, with another small number cheering on the fight.
Pompeii almost rushed in to help. The parts the gambler used were a higher grade than mine. He could overpower me in a scuffle. He lorded over me and tried to launch his attack – but the guards were already there to put an end to the fight. I was left on the ground, surrounded by coins, chips and cards.
“We’re gonna’ have a nice long chat in the security room!”
With a new punching bag selected from the unlucky masses, the guards were no longer interested in investigating the mystery of the stolen coinage. They dragged him away from the casino floor and around a blind corner. I dusted myself off and got back to my feet, hurrying back to Pompeii’s side and pushing him out of the casino before any more drama occurred.
“I almost had a heart attack back there!” he complained, “Getting collared by some angry gambler is just our luck.”
“We knew this was going to be risky before we arrived. Besides…”
I twisted my hand around and revealed a shimmering bronze medal.
“Where did you get that?”
“I took it from the table while everyone was distracted by the noise.”
It was there on the ground when I was wallowing in the mess the gambler caused via our fight. Nobody noticed me slipping it into my palm and down the front of my arm panel to conceal it from sight. Every instinct in my head was telling me to avoid a petty crime like stealing – but there was also the consideration that what I was taking didn’t have any real value beyond the metal used to smelt it into shape.
>> You never listen to that voice anymore. Do you even listen to me?
>> Stealing this idiotic trinket is hardly worse than throwing other bots into the water and destroying them. Humans would call that murder, I believe.
Pompeii chuckled, “I guess you’re savvier than I thought. Here, use this.”
He handed me a small piece of fabric. I tied the medallion to an obvious location on my chest around one of the armour prongs we used in the ring, if only to stop the guards from giving me a strange look when I walked past them without it visible.
“Let’s do the rest of the lap around the arena and leave the way we came.”
“What about the rest of the preparations?”
“These disguises hold up a lot better than I thought they would. All I need is some new lights for our eyes, and I can trade for those without much trouble.”
“Alright.”
With that settled and our ‘test run’ complete, we could return to the workshop with our prizes in hand and use them to leave the arena district once the opportunity arose. From there it would be a comparatively simple task of locating an open source of energy to add our bypass to.
>> Simple? Nothing around here is ever simple.
>> Do you have to be so cynical all the damn time?
>> I’m not cynical. I’m realistic.
Our wondrous tour of the arena continued. This time around we spared no extra time to sightseeing however. I could easily memorize the layout of what we saw at a glance and commit it to my internal map. It was too depressing to stare at for long. These used to be robots working hard to maintain this facility, but now they were left in the grips of their own greed. They were here to play these games – not realizing that they were the ones being used like pieces on a board.
“You’ve got to be kidding me…”
I follow Pompeii’s gaze to the access door we used to sneak out of the workshop. A guard was now standing there in front of it, almost surely in response to the eventful evening they were having with multiple guests being caught red-handed causing trouble and breaking rules.
“There has to be another way down.”
Pompeii was hesitant, “There are a lot of ways down, but I imagine all of them are being watched a lot more closely than the door that leads onto the rear patio. We can’t wait here all day for them to move either. The casino is going to close before then, and they’ll grab us for loitering in a restricted area.”
“We’d better leave before he notices us staring.”
Okay. It was time for plan B. I took the lead from Pompeii and led him down to the ground floor lobby. Chiselled marble statues of various champions lined the hall, leading to a huge pair of wooden double doors. It was all spectacle and pomp. For our purposes it was the best place to go. At least a hundred visitors were moving around the area and trying to find their way.
“Let’s try our luck from the outside.”
We easily waltzed through the front door with the access medallions pinned to our bodies. We were simply waved through. A more thorough security check was meant to be performed at the entrance to the district, but on a busy day like this they did the same thing and simply waved them through to keep the crowds moving. There were an awful lot of witnesses around, but we snuck away from the crowd and approached the stone railing that looked down over the artificial cliff. It was possible to see the briefest glimpse of the patio balcony from here.
“It looks like this is the only way to get there without being seen,” I said.
Pompeii glanced over the edge and down with a concerned frown.
“If I was scared of heights I’d be furious with you.”
“Are these arms rated for this type of weight?”
“I think so. They should be fine.”
It wasn’t a question of being ‘able’ to make the climb. Infrabots were built with all kinds of safety features and contingency programming that most people weren’t even aware of. Being able to navigate difficult environments with no equipment was one of those skills. An Infrabot could climb up and down a building under construction without breaking a sweat. Companies using them didn’t want their expensive bots being potentially damaged by a long fall – so the bots were always well prepared. A safety harness was a lot cheaper than a new bot, after all.
>> Climbing mode enabled
Nobody could see us around the blind corner. I climbed onto the barrier and reached up, taking a hold of the building’s edge and testing its strength using my arms. Happy that it wasn’t going to give way and send me tumbling down to the ground, I started the process of shimmying my way across. Pompeii remained behind to dissuade anyone from following us.
I could see the balcony a few feet above me. Their taste for the aesthetic over the functional was back to bite me. The railing on the patio was carved from stone and designed to look good first and foremost. Those round pillars would be difficult to use as leverage. Pushing my feet up against the wall below using my spiked toes gave me enough purchase to hop up and wrap both arms around one of the posts.
“Be careful, man!”
“I’m almost there.”
From there it was an easy job. I hooked the railing using my other hand and pulled myself up and over. The moment my feet touched the ground Pompeii started his trip across the gap. I kept watch on the stairs to ensure that the guard didn’t investigate the sounds coming from outside. The loud ambient drone of the city at large would make it difficult for him to hear us, at least.
“Give me a hand, would you?”
I leaned over and locked my legs under the bottom of the barrier to hold my body in place. Pompeii took my hand and used his weight to swing up and onto the wall. I pulled him over the edge, where he breathed a human-like sigh of relief.
“Okay. We can’t keep doing that every time. Someone’s going to spot us eventually.”
“Then what are we going to do if a guard is posted on that door?”
“We’ll just have to… wait it out.”
>> Even Pompeii knows that we can’t just ‘wait’ for them to leave. It’s impractical.
“Maybe we were too ambitious with our plan. This is a problem we’ll have to consider carefully for the real thing.”
Pompeii nodded in defeat, “Yeah, yeah. But we’re not out of the woods yet. We still have to get back to the workshop without anyone asking where we were. Remember to take that medallion off and hide it.”
We removed the access medallions and snuck back through the workshop. One benefit of the Committee restricting the use of power was that many of the handlers preferred to go on standby mode when they weren’t working. Today was the slowest day of the week. We could make it through the workshop fairly easily without being pulled aside by a curious rival.
>> What a test-run that turned out to be.
>> But we got what we needed. We’re one step closer to getting out of here.
