The ground-effect bike rolled toward the dead city at a cautious crawl.
We crossed a dense field of shipwrecks first, then slipped past several collapsed structures that must once have been part of a harbor. By the time we reached a highway half-buried in yellow sand, the skyline of high-rises was already standing in front of us like a forest of broken teeth.
Dorian spotted a shredded road sign on the shoulder. Several letters were missing, but he read what he could anyway:
“WELCOME T_ KONI_ ISLAND”
So it really had been an island, long ago.
The farther we went, the denser the buildings became. They were all battered and incomplete – some with entire faces sheared away, others leaning at angles that made my balance algorithms itch – but I could still reconstruct, in broad strokes, the bustle this place must have held a thousand years ago.
The highway was jammed with ancient cars, most of them swallowed up to their windows by sand. Wind whistled through ruptured glass. There was no smell of life, no vibration of machines, only the slow grind of our maglev wheels and the occasional groan of shifting concrete.
“Wow…” Dorian said, craning his small head in every direction. “So this is where the gods lived?”
“Humans,” I corrected automatically.
“Right! Humans.” His voice lifted with awe. “But they really were like gods.”
We passed a restaurant whose sign had long since lost its color. Behind the cracked front window, something that looked like a person stood motionless under a layer of dust.
“Wyatt, sir,” Dorian whispered, tense. “There’s someone in there.”
I scanned. “Not a human.”
We stepped inside anyway. The figure’s head turned with a faint servo whine. It was a service robot – an old model, its paint dulled, its joints gritty. In one hand it held a tray.
“What is this place?” Dorian asked.
“A place where the gods refueled,” I said.
Dorian stared at me for half a second, then decided I was serious. “Ah!” he said solemnly. “A charging station for gods.”
He eyed the robot’s legs with longing. I did too – out of habit more than need. But the chassis was too tall. Even if I removed them, Dorian would end up walking on stilts.
Instead, I took the tray. Its metal was thin but intact. It would do as a sunshade for Dorian until we found something better.
We moved deeper into the city. Overpasses crossed above us like ribs. Between towers, the streets formed narrow canyons filled with sand and wreckage. The silence was wrong – not the clean silence of wilderness, but the heavy silence of a place that had once been loud.
Then we turned a corner and found a storefront that looked almost absurdly intact.
A bright sign hung over the entrance, its letters miraculously readable:
“SSMD-13 ROBOT BUTLER”
“YOUR MOST TRUSTED HOUSEHOLD ASSISTANT”
“Wyatt, sir!” Dorian bounced once on his damaged legs. “A robot factory!”
“A robot shop,” I said. “They sold them here.”
Even so, the sight made my systems tighten. Stores meant inventory. Inventory meant spare parts.
We pushed the glass doors open. Dust rose in a lazy plume. The lobby was a showroom, lined with neat rows of humanoid robots posed like mannequins. Each stood on a charging base, feet planted, hands folded, faces blankly pleasant.
All SSMD-13 units.
Dorian hurried to one and looked up. The robot was at least a head taller than me. “Too big,” he muttered.
At the back of the lobby, an escalator rose into darkness. The steps were frozen in place, but the frame still held.
“Second floor,” I said. “Let’s see what’s up there.”
The upper level was unlit. My optics adjusted. Shapes emerged: shelves, display tables, scattered boxes. And robots – many robots – sprawled where they’d fallen, or parked in formation, or half-dismantled in ways that suggested panic rather than maintenance.
“Over there!” Dorian pointed.
A compact machine sat near a display stand. It was squat, rectangular, with a pair of broad wheels and a set of cutting blades folded underneath.
“LMW-2 lawn-mowing robot,” I identified.
“Perfect!” Dorian said immediately. “Those wheels!”
“You want wheels instead of legs?”
“Wheels are faster!” He sounded offended that I had to ask. “And look – the size is right.”
“Fine,” I said, and set him down.
Dorian climbed onto the mower’s chassis like a mechanic on a workbench. “Hey, buddy,” he told the dormant machine. “I’m borrowing these. No hard feelings.”
While he worked, I scanned the floor for anything else useful.
Near a desk against the far wall, I found a human skeleton slumped in a chair. The skull was fractured, the jagged lines suggesting blunt trauma. One bony hand still stretched toward an open metal box.
Inside the box was a button.
I hesitated. Then I pressed it.
Nothing happened at first. No hum, no flicker. I turned away – and then, one by one, the ceiling lights began to wake. A line of bulbs ignited in sequence, chasing the darkness across the floor until the entire second level glowed with a cold, dusty brightness.
“Wyatt, sir!” Dorian yelped. “You turned it on!”
“Apparently,” I said, more uneasy than impressed.
With light, Dorian’s work became faster. He detached both wheels, fitted them onto his own frame, and tightened the bolts with scavenged tools. When he tested them, his whole body wobbled; then his balance system recalibrated and he began to roll in tight circles like an excited child.
“Look! I’m taller!” he said.
He wasn’t. He was actually a little shorter now, but I didn’t correct him.
He added a crude spring assembly to each wheel mount. The result let him hop over small debris – at the cost of making a clanking sound that could be heard from too far away.
“Quiet,” I reminded him.
“Right, right,” Dorian said, trying and failing to sound serious.
We searched the shelves and bins. Most of the small parts were corroded, but we found enough usable bolts, plates, and connectors for Dorian to replace a handful of his worst pieces. I tightened his joints, repaired the alignment of his jaw, and added lubricant where metal had been grinding on metal for far too long.
“Wyatt, sir…” Dorian flexed his new wheel-legs. “I feel reborn.”
“Don’t get sentimental,” I said, and he laughed anyway.
“Too bad,” he added, “I couldn’t find the important pieces. Maybe we could have fixed the bike’s cloaked audio emitter.”
“If it’s broken, we work around it,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We returned to the lobby on the first floor.
The SSMD-13 units still stood on their bases, lined up like quiet servants awaiting orders. Dust lay thick on their shoulders and on the slanted control panels of the charging stations.
I was about to leave when a small detail snagged my attention.
One of the butlers – the one closest to the escalator – seemed to be looking at us.
Its face was expressionless as ever. But the angle of its head felt… wrong.
“Dorian,” I said slowly. “When we came in… was that unit’s head turned this way?”