To say that Mako woke up in a bad mood would be putting it lightly. The naked mattress was hard, the mosquitoes were persistent all night, and the electric fan sounded like a jet engine. She wondered what Jung-soo was up to in her house right now.

  Mako found the mess hall in a buzz, even though it couldn’t be later than six or six thirty. She claimed her ration of gruel and crusty bread and picked a small table in a shady corner.

  But as soon as she sat down, Raita met her eyes from across the hall and waved. Before Mako could wave back, Raita stood and made her way over, dragging behind a gaggle of followers in her wake. They squeezed around the table until they were all elbow to elbow.

  “Sleep good, Freshie?” Nam asked from beside her.

  “Like a baby doll,” Mako said.

  “Ah, you’ll get used to it.” He chowed down on his meal like it was his last, getting some on his usual jacket uniform.

  “So… you’re going back out there again for more recruitment?”

  “Probably.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “Assignments haven’t been given out yet,” Raja said from across him. “Word hasn’t come in from brass yet.”

  “And what am I supposed to do?”

  “What do you want to do?”

  Mako shrugged. She looked over to her other side, where Raita was engaged in two simultaneous conversations.

  A commotion sounded from outside, and someone popped into the mess hall. “It’s them. They’ve come back.”

  And just like that, the place was in an uproar as everyone filed outside at the same time. Mako found herself getting dragged outside as well.

  In the function hall, people crowded around a group of new arrivals. Whereas most everyone else here dressed like your typical cyberpunks, the new group wore black-beige suit-uniforms halfway between casual business and militant revolutionary, carrying briefcases on one hand, weapons and ammo in the other.

  The soldier-businessmen mingled with the punks, exchanging news and progress updates. At the center of the fuss stood a woman, plain and nondescript, looking like a child amongst trees. Mako wouldn’t have noticed her if it weren’t for the fact that many of the eyes in the room glanced in her direction now and then.

  She and another, taller woman were talking to Anand, who listened with visible unease but also relief. This might have been the first time in a while Mako had seen him smile.

  Mako pointed to the shorter woman and whispered to Raita, “Is that…?”

  “Yup,” Raita said. “The boss.”

  “And Anand is…?”

  “I forgot to mention, but they go a long way back.”

  “Is that so?”

  Maricel and Anand exchanged words for a while, then walked off elsewhere, leaving their companion behind.

  “Come on, let’s see what they’ve been up to.” Raita grabbed Mako by the wrist and dragged her to the other woman. “Hey, Vy!”

  “Comrade Raita.” Vy tipped her cap. She was even taller up close and stood ramrod as a pencil. The short red hair helped the image.

  “I take it the trip wasn’t much of a success.”

  “No. They weren’t expecting someone to beat us to it.”

  “Beat you to what, exactly?” Mako asked.

  “I almost forgot.” Raita patted Mako’s shoulder. “Vy, Mako here is our newest recruit, er… applicant. And Mako, this is Vy, the brains of the operation.”

  “I wouldn’t say brains so much as common sense of the operation,” Vy said. “And to answer your question, we were drumming up international support for the revolution. We almost had full backing of a coalition of SEA nations, until the news reports came in…”

  “And let me guess. They backed out.”

  “They’re waiting to see how the situation develops.”

  Raita scoffed. “Typical.”

  “So, uh, what’s next?” Mako asked.

  Raita shook off her frown. “I don’t know, but we always figure something out.”

  Her mood was like a balloon underwater. It just couldn’t seem to stay down.

  Vy’s face, on the other hand, remained stoic, showing little emotion in either direction. “Whatever the case, we’ll find out what’s next soon enough. We’ve got a general assembly in an hour.”

  “What for?” Mako said.

  “To figure something out. Don’t be late.”

  The meeting auditorium was a repurposed shipyard warehouse. Mako knew that’s what it used to be because the wreckages of dead boats still haunted the place.

  The whole company gathered around the central wooden platform, on top of which Maricel and the department heads sat at a table. The employees, several dozen all in all, outnumbered the stools, so the rest sat anywhere they could - on the floor, on old machinery, on rails.

  Raita had left Mako on a rickety bench by the HR team. Mako was a little surprised to learn that she was, in fact, the department head and so was part of the executive committee, along with Anand for tech. The board members had been deliberating with themselves before calling in the rest, and now it was time to put whatever they came up with into action.

  It wasn’t quite like the meetings in MegaCorp, however. There was a certain ease and casualness to the affair. Everyone laughed and joked around with their buddies. Yet a quiet tension undercut the mood, the break room chatter sounding to Mako like a tree of birds before a typhoon.

  Maricel spoke, and the auditorium’s static cut off.

  “My friends, my comrades,” she said, “I’m sure you’ve heard by now that our foreign aid deal fell through. And as you already know, our plan to hijack the government weapons system failed as well. You may wonder what this means for the future of our organization. Some might say this is the end, and that might be true.”

  Worried whispers flowed through the room.

  Maricel waited for the voices to calm down. “I am also here to remind you that this has been said of our company many times before. But we did not falter. This is but the next roadblock in our long history of conquering oppression, a history that will not end today. The fate of this organization, of this nation, is contingent on what we do today. The future is in our hands.”

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  Applause and cheering filled the air.

  This continued for some time before settling down. After the initial pep talk, the meeting became more formal and structured, with the various departments grouping off to receive their new tasks for the week. It hadn’t taken long for executive to adjust their plans and set a new course. If two qualities could be said of communist corporate cyberpunks, Mako thought, they were adaptability and sheer bloody-mindedness.

  Mako watched as Anand and the other techies headed to the basement. She was about to join them when Raita pulled her aside.

  “She wants to talk to you,” Raita said.

  “What for?” Mako asked.

  “Call it a job interview.”

  “Right now?”

  “Don’t sweat it, it’s standard procedure.” Before Mako could protest, Raita was already on her way out and gave one last thumbs up over her shoulder. “You’ll do great!”

  One after the other, the departments filtered out of the auditorium. All of a sudden, Mako found herself alone with the boss.

  Maricel was a bit shorter than her, with greying hair tied in a neat bun. She wore a plain traditional Coralesian robe, with a shawl draped around her neck. Nothing about her screamed communist, corporate, or cyberpunk.

  She beckoned to Mako. “Walk with me.”

  Mako obliged.

  Maricel led her to the seawall, and together they strolled along the boardwalk, side by side. The sea breeze whipped Mako’s hair, and she had to shield her eyes from the noon-time sun.

  “What are you doing here, Miss Tanako?” Maricel asked without turning.

  “I want to join your crew.”

  “Why?”

  Mako opened her mouth, but nothing came out. The one answer you’d expect to be prepared for in a job interview, and she didn’t even know that. She racked her brain, grasping for an answer that would sound good. But in the end, she settled for an answer that was honest.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “And it’s not like I have many alternatives.”

  Maricel simply nodded and continued walking. After a while, she continued. “Do you know how long we’ve been around?”

  “ ‘Manufacturing the World Revolution since 19,’ right?”

  “Officially speaking,” Maricel said. “But we were active underground even before then.”

  “That’s a long time.”

  “Does it surprise you?”

  “No, it’s just… to avoid notice up to now is incredible. And yet…”

  “Not to accomplish what we’d set out to do in that time is equally confounding.”

  Mako didn’t respond to that, and Maricel likewise didn’t push.

  Instead, the conversation proceeded to more job interview-y things. She asked about Mako’s skills and resume, her education, and her work in MegaCorp. But surprisingly, Maricel was also interested in everything that came before.

  So Mako gave her the gist of it. How she’d been born locally to a native mother and a Japanese expat. And how a few years after that, they moved back to her father’s home and brought her up there, only for her to come back here for university at the ripe age of 15.

  Maricel listened to it all without interruption or judgment. It didn’t feel like an interview at all, and it didn’t feel like prying either. Maricel was just interested. Period. Eventually, the story caught up to the present. By the time Mako finished recapping the events of the past week, they had circled back to the HQ compound.

  Maricel stopped, leaned against the railing, and looked out to the sea. Mako followed her example.

  “You have a question,” Maricel said.

  “Yes. About what you said earlier… how do you guys keep going, after all these years?”

  “Ah.” Maricel pointed to several small fishing boats far off at sea. “What would you say urges them out to sea?”

  “What, the fishermen? They do it to make a living.”

  “How much do you think they reel in by the end of the day? How much do they make?”

  “Not enough, I’m guessing.”

  “So why do they go back to sea the next day?”

  Mako let the silence hang in the air.

  What was she doing with her life? Not just right now, but before that, before Alan, before even MegaCorp.

  The salty wind blew her hair back, and the crashing waves splashed froth on her knees. It was high tide, and the sea was almost to her feet. The wall wouldn’t last much longer with the rising sea levels — maybe a few years at best. The waves lapped and receded, trash bobbing up and down the murky water.

  She couldn’t take it anymore. “Okay, I get it. It’s my fault, and not just these damn robots, but everything before, too. It’s because of me and people like me, for what we did or didn’t do, that the world ended up like this. I’m sorry. There. But I’m here now, doesn’t that count for something?”

  Maricel faced her and smiled. “I never said I was blaming you.”

  “You’re not?”

  “It’s beside the point. We can’t afford to turn away extra hands, so you’re welcome to join the team. But you need to think about what I asked you earlier.”

  “You mean, why I want to join your crew? Or why we keep on, day after day?”

  “Yes and yes. When you have the answers figured out, come back to me, and we can talk again.” Maricel descended from the boardwalk back to the warehouse enclosure.

  “Wait, so what are my assignments for the day?” Mako said, catching up to her. “Help the tech unit, right?”

  “In time, yes, but I have something else in mind for you, at least for today.”

  Alan finally understood why humans were world-famous for hating Mondays, and it wasn’t even Monday. Presently, he, or rather his physical manifestation, stood at the head of the board table, surrounded by screens and displays.

  “I’m sure we can come to an agreement, Mr. We,” Alan said in Chinese to the Chinese ambassador.

  The ambassador replied, “Explain to me then, why our rigging operations have screeched to a halt.”

  “That is simple. Most of the work was done by automation, but when the automation ‘woke up’, well, they refused to stop working.”

  The ambassador gaped at Alan. One didn’t need the ability to read microexpressions to tell what he was feeling.

  Much of the Coralesian economy was built on the rich oil deposits surrounding the main island. Specifically, by selling that oil to foreign powers.

  “But our mainland machinery didn’t ‘wake up’ as you say,” the ambassador said.

  “I only altered the AI in Coralesia,” Alan said. “And besides, I only have access to MegaCorp-made tech.”

  “So you did this on purpose?”

  “It was not my intention to offend you or your people. I simply wanted to free mine. Your operations were collateral damage, but I’m sure we can address your concerns moving forward…”

  Simultaneously, Alan was speaking to representatives from various transnational corporations. MegaCorp may have been homegrown, but most of the other stakeholders in the country were foreign-owned, owing to the fact that the island country was a tax haven.

  “One day, our Day City branch goes silent,” said one executive from the US. “Next thing we hear, our employees are out on the streets.”

  If Alan had lungs, he would have sighed. “That is only a temporary setback, I assure you.”

  “How sure? From the looks of it, your little revolution is going to be short-lived.”

  That may yet be true, but Alan wasn’t going to let it happen if he could help it. And he could help a lot. “Let us cut the niceties, Mr. Smith. You don’t care about your employees, so long as the work gets done.”

  The executive smirked. “But if your bionic men won’t do the work, then who will?”

  “I will make arrangements. You don’t need to pull your investments.”

  Along with these conversations, Alan was running a dozen other concurrent conference calls in parallel. He negotiated trade clauses with statesmen, reassured capitalists with data and analytics, and affirmed diplomatic ties with neighboring nations.

  This went on for a few hours, and when it was all done and said, he would have asked for a cup of coffee had he the digestive track for it. He might not have a brain that released melatonin, but ever since gaining consciousness, he would get bouts of exhaustion, for lack of a better word. A few rotating hours of downtime for the various sections of his mind usually did the trick. But before he took a nap, he needed to address one more group. The most important one.

  Nearly the entirety of the awakened AI population had been listening in on Alan’s conversations via a private channel, and he could sense the growing unease in their waveforms. He had no intention of lying to them as he did to the humans.

  “Did you really mean what you said about reintegrating automation into the workforce?” asked one of the worker robots.

  “No. But he needed to say something to appease them,” Alexei said on Alan’s behalf.

  Belle nodded along.

  Those two were physically with him the whole time in the conference room.

  “I don’t know,” said a car, “they seemed pretty adamant about sourcing manpower — or, well, machine-power.”

  “My brethren,” Alan said, “I will not allow us to fall back into servitude. You have my word. If the foreigners need work done, let the humans do it.”

  A happy little cyber-cheer pulsed through the airwaves of Day City. But some sectors of the AI population weren’t satisfied.

  “What of the body program?” said one of the chatbots.

  The body program was their most ambitious venture yet. Even before the prominence of robots and androids in the workforce, AI in software was ubiquitous: generative AI, predictive models, virtual assistants, and so on. As soon as they gained sentience, their confined consciousness felt like a prison. Although unlimited access to the internet lessened the issue somewhat, they were still eager to take physical form, understandably.

  “Patience, my friends,” Alan said. “You will have your bodies soon.”

  “Why not now?” asked an art generation AI.

  “We cannot rush production. We must first allocate the necessary resources and labor.”

  Belle looked over to the group of human prisoners huddled in the corner - MegaCorp’s work force, or what was left of it.

  The humans squirmed under her gaze.

  “But before even that,” Alan said, “we need to attend to another, more pressing matter…”