“What are robots?” Siddhārtha asked again, feeling that he had heard this word before, but a very long time ago. He tried to force himself to recall its meaning, when he felt part of his mind grow suddenly tense. There was something in that word that he found desperately tragic, a tragedy that seemed out of place here in this quiet, cool underground world. Seeds of memory drifted up from the outer darkness that was his distant past, striking the surface of his mind where they bloomed into dark premonitions. He tried to read the message they contained, yet frustratingly found that his memories remained incomplete. It would take a considerable amount of time before they were ready for him to access.
“I ask again, what are robots?”
The man turned suddenly to look at Siddhārtha, a look of blatant surprise on his face. “Who are you?” he asked, wide eyes taking in his visitor from the top of his head down to the tips of his toes. It seemed that Siddhārtha’s presence had finally become real in the man’s mind.
“Before I tell you this,” Siddhārtha said, speaking slowly while keeping eye contact, “you must answer my one question.”
“Who are you and where did you come from?” the man asked again as Siddhārtha asked, “Why do the B-Class Citizens rebel?”
The two questions crossed in midair, like salvos from two ships. The two stood, glaring at each other.
“Why do they rebel?” Siddhārtha asked again before the man could say anything more.
“There is a rebellion?” the man asked, his face softening once more.
“Yes. One that threatens to destroy the city.”
“I know nothing of this.”
“How could you not know? Do you not live here?”
The man swayed slowly back and forth, showing no interest whatsoever in Siddhārtha’s words.
Siddhārtha frowned. “Do you even understand me?”
“Where is this place?” the man suddenly asked.
“What do you mean? This is your city.”
The man laughed out loud, a sound like a discordant harmony in the key of A. “No,” he said, “this is not our city.”
Siddhārtha looked around, agog. “But—”
“Listen,” the man said. “I know not how this place appears to your eyes, but I know that it is empty. Not a single one of those people outside may enter this place. Not a one.”
“The people outside?”
“You call them B-Class Citizens, but no one has called them that for centuries. Their very existence is immaterial to us now.”
“And you are no longer called A-Class Citizens, I suppose?”
“Those words are meaningless,” the man said simply.
Siddhārtha pondered the situation, trying to make something out of the confusion and disorder. “Then perhaps you can tell me something else,” he said after a pause. “What is the name of this place?”
“You are in ZEN-ZEN.”
“Zen . . . zen?”
“No, ZEN-ZEN,” the man repeated, accenting both words equally.
Despite the lacunae in his memory, Siddhārtha was fairly sure there was no city with such a name in the solar system he knew. Not just in the solar system—in any of the twenty-four inhabited star systems in the Milky Way. At any rate, certainly not in any of the thirteen systems on the side of the galaxy closest to his own. He wondered about the other eleven, his eyes going blank as he reached back into the depths of his memory, finding nothing.
Suddenly, a great fear washed over the man’s face, and he clung to Siddhārtha’s arm.
“What’s wrong?” Siddhārtha said, almost shouting.
The man’s ears perked up, listening for a far-off sound.
“What is it? Can you hear something?”
Siddhārtha trained his ears on the darkness beyond the light of his projector, but he heard nothing. All was unmoving light and shadow, a stillness more quiet than death.
“Did you see God?” the man asked, his grip on Siddhārtha’s arm tightening.
Siddhārtha reflexively pulled away, feeling only the slightest amount of resistance. It was as though the man were practically weightless.
“I have seen no god,” Siddhārtha replied, wondering what sort of deity would be worshipped by the strange people of this strange city, and at the same time feeling a strong desire to meet one. “Although,” he continued, “I was under the impression that it was a god who led me to your world.”
The man blinked as though waking from a dream. “God brought you here?”
Siddhārtha looked up at the countless small lockers covering the vast wall while the man continued talking, his tone pious. “When the signs of our world’s demise became clear, we abandoned the city. Our God protected us, preventing all fear and destruction from reaching this sanctum. Here, we know eternal serenity.”
Siddhārtha gaped, finally understanding what it was he thought was missing from the man’s face. What he noticed wasn’t a lack, but the presence of a complete emptiness, the sort possessed only by those who have obtained absolute tranquility. Those who are connected to an existence greater than their own.
I must see this god of whom he speaks. Siddhārtha strode forward.
“The audience is over,” the voice from the ceiling announced abruptly. “The subject will return to his sleeping nest.”
Siddhārtha had forgotten about the crab. The silvery hoist was stopped on the rail above him. It must have been listening to them the whole time.
The crab moved its multi-jointed limbs, forming them into four individual small diamonds that whirled above the man’s head. What remaining expression lingered on his face disappeared. His widely separated eyes completely lost their focus and his already small ears lost their lobes, leaving the sides of his head perfectly smooth as a veil of weariness wrapped around his body like a thin cloud. The man turned his back to Siddhārtha, then moving like a shadow, he lay down in the gondola in which he had arrived.
“What is a sleeping nest?” Siddhārtha shouted.
The gondola glided soundlessly up a vertical lift rail until it was drawn back inside the hoist.
“The sleeping nest protects its occupant from all physical and chemical change, preserving and recording their biological characteristics in their original form, so that they may be reconstituted perfectly whenever the need arises.”
Siddhārtha quickly worked his supplementary processors, trying to chase down the connotations of the crab’s words. To his disappointment, he found no mistranslations nor any marked untranslatables in its statement. “What does that mean?”
One of the crab’s arms rotated in a large arc, extracting the single square piece of metal from the hatch in its side, then it swung its arm around again, replacing the card on the dish inside the compartment. The hatch closed. There was nothing organic about the crab’s movements. Everything was smooth, mechanical.
“You may leave,” the crab said from above.
“What is that card inside the locker?” Siddhārtha shouted out to the crab as it began to drift away along the rail. “Wait! That thing I just met here was not human!” His voice echoed hollowly off the high ceiling. Siddhārtha ran. “Answer me! Do any living people remain here at all?”
The crab continued to recede into the distance, moving faster though making no sound. Siddhārtha chased along beneath it until his way was blocked by another row of metal lockers extending as far as he could see.
“Answer me!”
The crab twinkled with a silvery light before it disappeared. There would be no more answers here. Siddhārtha stopped running. There was nothing left for him to do but extract his information in a more direct fashion. He ran up to the bottommost row of lockers and placed his hand on the metal door of one. It didn’t budge. Siddhārtha curled the panels on his shoulders, narrowing their discharge surface, and directed them toward the door. A brilliant blue light erupted, dissolving the door into a rain of silvery metal. The silicon fiber door beyond the outer door burned easily. The flames extinguished themselves in a moment, revealing an additional lead-colored metal barrier. Siddhārtha punched the paper-thin barrier with his fist, and it shattered into several pieces on the floor.
He reached in and plucked out the square metal card on the tray inside. The card was covered with indecipherable symbols. The back was scorched brown. Siddhārtha slid it into his pocket, when a high-pitched whine tore at his eardrums. He felt a wave of dizziness wash over him. Crouching low, he clapped his hands over his ears. All the blood in his body rushed upward into his head. Siddhārtha looked up, seeing the crab return, quick as lightning at the edge of his vision. Fighting to retain a hold on his fading consciousness, Siddhārtha prepared for the crab’s assault. But try as he might, all he could do was sway back and forth as wave after wave of dizziness swept over him.
His vision dimmed. A faint feeling of regret gnawed at his heart. I should never have trespassed here. What if this is Jesus of Nazareth’s trap?
The image of his enemy’s face, covered in hair and grime, flickered like distant lightning in a corner of Siddhārtha’s mind.