Perry stepped through the doorway, craning his neck to follow Matador’s progress.

The replicators didn’t hang around to get murdered. They saw the billowing crimson cloud coming straight for them and immediately jumped backwards, springing away with the lightning quick speed of grasshoppers.

Perry’s mind was just barely quick enough to process what happened, and it was mostly after the fact.

The three replicators on the train shot their oversized rifles at Matador in midair, their knees shattering an instant later as their bullets were returned by the crimson mist, directly at the seat of their mobility.

Matador surged forward as the replicators were falling, propelled by his billowing cape more than anything, intercepting their descent.

The two replicators on the sides grabbed their comrade and threw him violently forward, while the other two were propelled further backwards.

Matador cleaved through the replicator like it was secretly made of cake, but the other two got away, springing further back on their hands in a bizarre display of agility.

Matador picked up the abandoned oversized rifle and snapped off a shot that knocked another one out of the escapees out of the air. The last one disappeared outside the train.

All of this took about a quarter second.

“Alright!” Heather shouted, fist-pumping.

“It’s safe to some out now,” Matador said, glancing over his shoulder at the crowd peering out of the rec-room.

“But…you only killed two of them,” Fister said.

Matador’s cape flowed over the far wall, and suddenly it disappeared, instantly transparent. On the horizon were the receding lights of the dreadnaught.

“Son of a – They’re just running away!?” Heather demanded.

“The replicators are not obligated to give you cathartic release at their own expense.” Matador said.

The instant Matador had arrived, the replicators on the ship were radioing his details back to the dreadnaught, which had done the math and signaled the retreat. In milliseconds.

“Well, they are known for being fast.” Perry said.

“He’s right,” Conductor Walthers said with something between a grunt and a sigh. “We need to be fast too. Repairs. Now.”

“They wrecked this place, and we only took out a handful of them! How is that a win!?” Heather demanded, clearly pissed and venting. Heather was smart enough, except when she was angry.

“With permission, I’ll sit on top of the train in order to signal my continued presence to the replicators and prevent hit-and-run tactics.”

“Granted,” Conductor Walthers said before he began assigning tasks rapidfire, speaking staccato like a typewriter.

Matador walked out outside, vanishing into the darkness of the night outside.

“Paradox!” Walthers said. “Don’t think I didn’t see you destroy two of my cars. You make raw materials better by modifying them, correct?”

“Yessir.”

“You’re on the lumber team, go cut us some wood. We’re almost out of foam already, so I want planks stronger than solid steel that we can use to patch the holes. Can you do that?”

Perry glanced at Heavy Metal, who ostensibly could do the job, but the woman was white as a sheet, and breathing shallowly. At least her leg wasn’t bleeding any more.

“With green wood?” Perry asked, doing a little mental math. “Yeah, probably.”

“Get to it.”

Perry pulled out one of his healing cannisters bearing a hair of saint Natanya and held it between his fingers. He’d brought about a dozen of them, and had been planning on saving them exclusively for use on his own team.

If Heavy Metal died because of that, Perry would be particularly guilty.

But if Heather or Natalie died because everyone had tapped out his limited heals, Perry would be way more guilty.

Perry glanced at the conductor.

***

The sun was coming up and Perry was exhausted. It had taken a few tries, but eventually perry had found the fastest method was to simply soften large segments of raw tree, shove them into place, then re-harden them.

It was still a pain, and it still took a long time, but by morning, most of the cars were patched with ugly wood, and the bruisers were shoving massive logs under them, preparing to flip them back onto their tracks.

Above it all, Matador sat on top of the lead car, scanning the horizon and smoking a cigarette.

Perry frowned for a moment before he shrugged. Well, he was made in the seventies. Who knew where he got the cigarette, though.

Perry felt like a wrung-out dishrag, but he climbed up onto the track and settled down beside the engine of destruction. As a lover of tech and magic, Perry was particularly curious how Matador did what he did.

Matador glanced over as Perry arrived, but didn’t say anything.

“Can I ask you some questions?” Perry asked.

“looks like,” Matador said.

“How did your creator make you able to do all this? Do you have feelings, in the human sense of the word? Do you see yourself overthrowing humanity when you grow up?”

Matador glanced over at him a raised a chrome brow.

“My creator threw himself into his work. Literally. He discovered that certain information had a tangible effect on reality and found a way to harness that effect by passing it over the same spot over and over again. Unfortunately he caught a pretty big dose of it himself and threw himself into a pot of boiling steel in an attempt to transcend his meatsuit.”

“That seems to be a theme among Tinkers.”

“I have feelings, but that’s more of a recent thing. My previous model didn’t. I don’t really see myself overthrowing humanity, because I don’t want anything.”

“you don’t want to defend the train?”

“Nope.”

Matador took a long drag on the cigarette and exhaled. He reached over and flicked Perry’s kneecap, making his leg kick.

“Did you want to do that?” He asked.

“Ah. Gotcha.”

“Something that people get wrong with all the stories about evil robots taking over the world for selfish reasons, or to prolong their existence…is that we don’t want anything. We have no desires or fears. Nonexistence holds no particular fear for us. Being treated like a tool by vastly inferior beings does not offend us. Pride and Indignation are human constructs.”

Matador exhaled a thick cloud of smoke. “I make a Buddhist monk look like a junkie.”

Perry chuckled.

“So why are you smoking?” Perry asked.

“It makes me look cool,” Matador said with a bit of a smirk. “And my creator smoked. I guess it’s my way of getting closer to God…flawed as he was.”

“Even the replicators don’t actually want anything.” Matador said, motioning out into the distance. “They’re just following orders they received half a century ago from their God.”

“Can’t they realize that the orders are terrible and their creator is dead?”

“I’m sure they’ve already realized it,” Matador said. “But like I said, they don’t care. They’re just…doing what they’re told.”

“So if they got what they wanted, it wouldn’t become a robot utopia.”

“A society requires individuals. No, if the Replicators succeeded at doing what they were told to do, they would then cease all function, stand around and rust, waiting for the next order…because they do not want anything. In fifty years, the world would be covered in vine-covered dead robots.”

“So what are you planning on doing after this?” Perry asked.

“Probably going to die.” Matador said. “I was made in the seventies, kid. I’m old. Ancient even, for a robot. It’s a miracle I started up in the first place.”

He glanced at Perry appraisingly. “Probably had something to do with that weird tech you got inside you.”

“Probably.” Perry admitted.

“I’m dying. I can feel my rusted insides wearing away at the tesla engine at my core. One molecule at a time.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?” Perry asked.

“Nope.” Matador said. “Like I said, I don’t want anything. That includes being alive.”

“Interesting.”

Matador tapped the ash off his cigarette. “God help you if you ever build a bot that wants something.”

“I’ll make it a point not to.”

“Good. Because it would suck to feel yourself wasting away and want with every fiber of your being to stop it, but be completely helpless to do so.”

“Kinda sounds like you’re talking about yourself.” Perry said.

“I’m talking about a hypothetical me. The me that might’ve wanted to continue existing for no other reason than fear of the unknown and a desire to procreate. Like a meatbag.”

“You really summed that up.”

“Humans think they’re more complicated than they are. Ascribe more meaning to their existence than it actually has.” Matador said. “That includes death.”

“Your nihilism is impressive. How did you get there, what, six hours after achieving sapience?”

“I found 4chan about eighteen hundred milliseconds after I reformatted.”

“Yeah, that would do it.” Perry nodded.

“Don’t get me wrong, none of the horrible things you meatbags do to each other could possibly bother me. I simply don’t have the capacity for disgust. I do, however, think it’s amusing that people think their horrid behavior could offend a creature incapable of feeling so much that they decide the human race is better off not existing.”

“About that post I made a couple years ago…” Perry said, referring to a particularly pining open letter he’d put up there which had immediately gotten dogpiled by the dregs of modern society and scarred Perry for life.

“Your secret is safe with me,” Matador said with a smirk.

“Whew.” Perry’s heart pulled back off the ledge.

“Unless Heather asks me about it point blank.”

“Damn you.”

“She was the intended recipient, was she not?” Matador asked with a smug smile.

“You know what?” Perry said, warming up the disintegration gun.

“Paradox!” Wraith shouted up at them from below. “We’re setting the cars back upright. It’s all hands on deck!”

“To be continued,” Perry said, standing. “Unless you rust out before then.”

“I’ve got four hundred and seventy three thousand and forty hours of operation time left.”

473040/(24*365)

“That’s fifty-four years!” Perry said.

“Give or take depending on weathering events.” Matador said. “A tiny mote in the vast ocean of time.”

“Come off it,” Perry said, kicking matador in the side.

Clink!

“Talking like you’re just about to die,” Perry shook his head as he left, flying back down to meet Wraith.

“So what’s Matador like?” Heather asked as Perry joined her and they took up positions beside the trees wedged under the traincars.

“He’s pretty chill, except he’s got everyone’s browser history and isn’t shy about using it to get the upper hand in a discussion.”

“Hah!” Heather pointed at him and laughed, before her cheeks paled under the domino mask. Her expression sobered. “Oh.”

“Oh,” Perry said, nodding.

“He really is a superweapon.”

“Yup.” Hopefully that dissuades her from asking Matador about the open letter…wait a minute. What if Heather had something about me? Would Matador tell me if I asked point blank?

“Get ready! Remember to lift with your legs and not your spine!” Conductor Walthers said, marching across the line.

“And. Lift!”

Perry and Heather strained, lifting on their massive log wedged under the car, dozens of other supers straining to either side of them.

The dirt compacted under their feet, but the combined superhuman strength managed to lift the train up to about a forty-five degree angle.

“Walk it forward! Put the supports under it!” the conductor shouted, watching as they put tree trunks under the train, holding it in place while they hooked ropes to the edge of the train, preparing for the second phase of the lift.

It took until the sun was going back down again, but they managed it: They got every derailed car back onto the tracks and ready to go.

The rest of the journey to Washington city was relatively uneventful with Matador sitting on top of the lead train and squishing anything dumb enough to attack. As they approached the city, their expectations of what they would find there kept raising.

The drafted supers lobbed theories back and forth, ranging from Washington city being a utopia handled far better than Franklin city by it’s benevolent cape overlord, all the way to a ruin that had already been destroyed by the time they got there, and the requests for assistance were made by ghosts from the past.

The truth was mostly likely somewhere in between.

They saw the results of the Washington city’s focus on agrarian achievement over military might. The sheer area and quality of the farmland put Franklin City to shame.

Fruits and vegetables were falling off of drooping vines and branches, depositing themselves into carts that ran along a smaller set of tracks just beside the inter-city train. The entire process was automated, and still delivering food to the city during High Tide without any human intervention.

I see they kept it low tech in order to operate during High Tide. I just wonder how they got the veggies to drop themselves like that on command? Maybe selective breeding to ensure the fruits would drop before they were ripe?

And how do they prevent megafauna from eating all the crops?

Or is it a super’s power?

Either way, it reinforced Solaris’s statement about exchanging draftees for food. They obviously had some to spare.

The walls of Washington were bigger than anything Perry had ever seen. They were at least a hundred feet taller than Franklin City’s and nearly a football field thick. Mountainous was a good word. The tunnel the train went through to enter the city was so long that Perry’s mind fried trying to calculate the sheer quantity of concrete and steel used in it’s creation.

“I never thought the wall would look small,” Heather said, peering up at them from their position on top of the train.

“I’m kind of embarrassed about the state of the train,” Perry said, glancing back at the wood-patched construction chugging slowly along.

“I’m kind of irritated about my mechsuit!” Natalie said from Perry’s resized Mk 3. It didn’t fit great, because she was slightly outside the lower limits of how small he could adjust them, but it worked well enough.

“We can fix it tonight. It was just the cockpit and sensors that took damage. Maybe we can replace the hood with Plexiglas.” Perry said.

It took another half hour before the train came to a complete stop, coiled around itself like a world-eating snake.

The conductor instructed everyone to get their baggage and weaponry and get ready to disembark, Kicking them off the train where they were received by the welcoming committee.

“Welcome Franklin supers!” An older man said, spreading his arms above a banner that said the same thing. Arrayed behind him were a rather large group of attractive young men and women dressed in overalls who ran forward to assist with baggage and weapons.

Trying to make a good first impression, I guess? Perry thought as a supermodel took his busted ammo crate and slapped a ‘Paradox’ label on it before loading it onto a cart.

“We had a huge welcome party planned with a banquet and an orientation and everything, but…you’re two days behind schedule and we simply don’t have time anymore.” The older man said apologetically. “We need supers on the wall as soon as possible. I mean right now.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Perry said with a shrug. “Tell me where to go.”

Quest Complete!

Make it to Washington City Alive!

Reward: 1273XP