Epilogue: Silver

The beat of many, metal legs accompanied its journey. Backdropped by the harsh howl of the cold wind, which wrapped about lt like a cloak.

It moved low to the ground, its segmented form twisting back and forth. Its many glittering legs moved with eerie grace, shifting with a hypnotic pattern that easily carried it across the mossy earth of the ancient hill.

It was on patrol.

No one had asked it to go on patrol. In fact, since coming into the ownership of its new masters, it had received no orders at all. But it was an advanced model automaton and had decided that lacking orders, it would set a priority for itself.

And so it patrolled. Looking for nothing in particular but anything in general. For three miles both ways, trundling across grassland, bog, and even sparse, scraggly forest.

During these trips, it found birds and sheep. Fowl of all kinds would scatter from the trees as they caught sight of its predatory form. Though it was far oversized and obviously made of cold metal rather than flesh, the shape that it projected was one that they associated with **** if they were smart. It moved smoothly, gracefully, a small army of legs propelling it across the ground like a wave of glittering steel.

Among the sheep, there were also hardier goats which regarded it with rather less fear, though still with caution. Initially, it was concerned by the horns that they possessed but quickly realised they were no threat to its owners and certainly not to itself.

Once, it even detected a herd of wild horses. Small, proud beasts that probably descended from stock escaped in the past from the village which had once sat at the foot of the hill.

But that village was long dead and no one lived here now. There were no people. No bustling streets. No throbbing music that pounded at all hours of the night. There were no crowds, no fellow automatons and no commands to follow.

It was, the machine would admit, a somewhat galling situation. It was an artificial creation, a being designed to follow orders. It was not complete unless it worked to some kind of directive. Yet since arriving here, it had been given no orders. No directives. Mostly, it had been ignored by the first owner, the male who seemed to regard it with barely concealed suspicion. The second one, the female, did seem to hold it with an odd curiosity and affection.

However, the machine could have done without the worrying possibility that she wanted to pry its shell apart and mess around with its internals

‘’Richard, look at this! This machine is world-class! I don’t even know how Bennie managed it! Look at the steam assembly, how did he get it so small and yet so powerful?’’

‘’Small? Kara, it's the size of my arm!’’

‘’Most automatons are human-sized at least! One the size of an arm is a miracle, especially if it runs powerful equipment like this one! Oooh, I just want to take it apart and see how it works!’’

‘’You want to? Go ahead. Be my guest.”

‘’Don’t tempt me, Richard. But this model is so intricate, I’d be afraid of breaking something. What if I couldn’t put him back together again?”

‘’I’d say good work and pat you on the back.’’

‘’Even though he’s a gift?”

‘’I don’t even know what Bennie was thinking giving us one of these.’’

‘’I think he was being smart. He’s a useful little guy and he’ll come in handy. Mark my words, you’ll be glad we have Silver.’’

‘’That’s his name now?’’

‘’Yep! I’ve just decided.”

‘’As of…?’’

‘’Oh, about five sentences ago. He looks like a Silver to me. If only I had the parts! I could give him a nice pair of fangs to go with his body! Wouldn’t that be good?’’

For a long moment, there had been only silence. Then, the female broke into laughter.

‘’You’re way too easy to wind up, master! You should have seen the look on your face!”

‘’You know you’re going to pay for that little joke tonight, right?’’

‘’Of course. But you know what? Still not sorry.’’

From that day on, the machine had been called Silver. As names went, it had never considered that it needed one, but Silver would - if pressed - concede that it was a better identification form than its previous - C12-2-4/6. Chassis model twelve, type two, number four in a batch of six.

The addition of a new name was only one of the baffling things that had happened to it since it had left San-Gasa. Bereft of orders or directives, for the first time in its existence, Silver had been given free rein to do as it wanted. The patrols ate up a significant chunk of its day, but far from all of it.

For the rest of the time it…. Existed. It thought. It considered. Sometimes, if it felt like it, it would patrol again. Sometimes, there were places that it found itself visiting again and again, though it did not know why. One such example was that it often found itself drawn to watch the sunrise from the crest of the highest hill in the range. The ruddy, red light would sweep across the valleys picked out by the retreating shadows of night, and for a few brief moments, night and day would exist in the same place at the same time.

Silver did not know why it did this. It had not been programmed to do so and it served no purpose. In fact, it detracted from its patrols.

But there was no one to tell it to stop and in the absence of such orders, Silver could simply do what it wanted for the first time in its existence.

In the distance, Silver noted the rising form of the old villa. Its patrol was almost done for the day. It swerved and tracked across the grassland, its centipede-like body twisting about obstacles like trees, rocks, and the occasional terrified sheep.

It was a rich man’s house. Or at least, it had been once. An out-of-the-way villa that had been owned by some long-gone merchant who’d made money faster than he’d made common sense. It was ringed by a tall wall of stone, the smooth marble had once been polished and inscribed with many images. Dancing men, musicians and naked women frolicking with each other.

Silver didn’t see the appeal. It was obviously wasted space.

Beyond the wall, there was the compound. There was a central hub which housed the living area, the bedrooms, a small library (now dusty and empty.) and a kitchen. To the east of that, a massive stone building with an underground series of boilers and pumps to heat and project water into a great, mosaic pool. To the west, there was a dining hall which had been set for dozens of guests, richly carpeted and with space to stand, dance and mingle.

Then, there was the servant’s quarters, a line of rather smaller buildings tucked under the shadow of the great wall.

It must have cost a fortune to have food and goods moved to this place, but then, that was part of the point. It was a boast. A braggart’s gesture. ‘’Look how rich I am, I can throw money away and not even care.’’

Only, he had cared in the end. Business had dried up, money had vanished. Suddenly, what had been meant to be a boast and a gesture of indulgence had become a deadly drain.

And that was how Kara had bought the place. Tucked away in a forgotten little corner of the world, far away from anything important. It was exactly the sort of hideout an adventurer might want. A little secret place to stow away gear and provisions and maybe somewhere to go when you didn’t want to be found.

The marble wall surrounding the villa had been smooth once. Polished and pantied, but time, neglect and weather had worn it to a rough finish. There was one gate, which opened up to the remnants of the path that had once led to the village.

That gate was to the east and Silver was approaching from the west. It briefly considered diverting, but that would cost time and energy and Silver prided itself - if pride it could have - on being efficient.

It simply hit the once-smooth wall, letting the momentum of its motion **** its body upwards. Its legs - each one tipped with a sharpened blade - latched onto the stone with a crunching sound.

Silver continued happily up the wall.

From a window watching, Richard gave a shiver.

“I hate it when it does that.”

Silver’s thoughts spun like its liquid namesake. At once both sharp and malleable, yet cold and firm. It was like Pump in that respect, though a smaller, younger, and far less intelligent Pump.

At this time of the day, it considered, Richard would be in the main building. The old library had been renovated into an armoury, and Richard had been more than eager to try out the various exotic weapons Kara had stashed there over the years. Grinning as he mowed down targets with things that even he hadn’t seen before. This was acceptable behaviour and denoted that he was psychologically healthy.

Kara would be in her workshop. Located under the old pool, the steam boilers and rusted machinery had been cleared away some years ago and replaced with more top-of-the-lane machines intended for production, modification and duplication of automatons. Though what had been cutting edge some years ago was now merely advanced.

That accounted for its two owners. Other than Silver itself, they had no automatons and nor did they have any servants or workers. One of the reasons the machine insisted on the daily patrols was because it knew just how easy it would be for someone to sneak up on such an undermanned place as this. It was a thought that Richard shared, given his own occasional patrolling.

But that left the issue of the third person. The real reason for Silver’s presence. Its creator was not the type to hand out his automatons for nothing and had the two not insisted on taking her along, Silver very much doubted that it would be here either.

She was a risk, a danger, a threat. If Silver had been asked - and had been capable of answering - it would have advised a bullet to the head as the most expedient solution. Such, however, did not seem to be in the cards.

‘’I don’t like this,’’ the creator had said on the day that he had given it away. ‘’They’re taking her with them? That can’t end well. I know she and Kara are old friends, but they’ll be far away from help and if she gets loose and gets the jump on them…

‘’I’ve lost too many friends over the years, I’m not risking this. Richard can be a noble idiot all he wants. That was always his calling card, but it’s always been me who had to clean up the mess. I’m sending you with them. C12-2-4/6, your priority is to protect both of them. Richard and Kara. If it looks for even one moment like Isabel is about to get loose? You take her down and make sure she never gets up again.”