Caesena was a cut above the other bots in the arena I had met thus far. Even at a glance I could see that the equipment she was using was of a higher quality, and her stance betrayed no obvious weaknesses either. Aguntum went all-out preparing her for this battle. Her paint was perfectly detailed and preserved, and her arm-mounted shield was brand-new.
She wasn’t going to go easy on me either. The lights turned and the bell rang out. She adopted a firm defensive stance and slowly approached me, crossing over the mid-point of the ring. I did the same. The safest option was to let her attack first and get a firm hold on what she was planning to do. I could move a lot faster with the safety features disabled in my hydraulics. Pompeii’s excellent handiwork also meant I ran very little risk of damaging a component by moving too quickly. He’d tuned them to perfection.
Caesena kept her shield in front and attacked. There were no openings in her stance. Those attacks might have been weaker because of it, but it was obvious to me that she had been studying my previous fights by adopting the strategy. I was always going to aim for the most vulnerable parts on my opponents’ body, usually slicing through a coolant line or electrical cable in the neck, arms and chest.
I replied with some speculative pokes of my own. She kept her cool and closed up, preventing me from finding an obvious weakness to exploit.
>> We’ll have to change our strategy and target non-essential areas too.
Easier said than done when she was covered in metal plates. Not only would they physically block my attacks, but there was also the risk of my blade being caught between them and her body, meaning a simple movement would wrench my weapon out of my hand. No amount of mechanical strength could overcome that leverage.
“Caesena is keeping her body tucked away behind that shield. She’s come to this fight with a new, up-armoured loadout!”
My gladius was sharp, but getting a solid cut through those metal plates was not so simple a task. With one shoulder pushed in my direction I could only strike it again and again, leaving shallow cuts in the deep-set rust. She couldn’t do that forever, but even breaking through that was no firm guarantee that the pieces wouldn’t obstruct my attacks anyway.
The first five minutes of our battle consisted of similar attempts. Caesena kept me on my toes and tried to find my openings, whilst I did the same to her. The crowd were having a good time judging from their cheers. This was a competitive fight – the kind that was seldom seen in an arena where the disparity between the top and bottom was so distinct.
We competed for position, enduring stretches where neither of us were willing to attack using our weapons. Caesena kept trying to push me to the edge of the ring so she could box me against one of the walls using her shield. I held firm and pushed back, making use of my new strength. She seemed surprised that I was capable of pushing her back like that. Not that it was going to stop her from trying over and over again until I let her do it.
She was ultimately the one who struck first. I tried to duck underneath her swing to get at her rear. In response she switched stances in an impressive display of speed, clashing against the side of my head and knocking me off-balance.
>> If she damages this head – there’s no easy way to replace it!
There were bigger problems to worry about than the aesthetic appearance of my trademark ears. Her shield struck me next, and the heavy armour I bore finally proved too much for the smaller base of my feet. I fell back into the dirt and rolled instinctually, avoiding a downwards stab that threatened to cut through my left eye and partially blind me. The crowd’s response helped me avoid her blows.
“Caesena has London on the ground, but he isn’t giving up so easily! He’s only suffered superficial damage so far!”
Caesena pushed the offensive. I kept rolling, and spotted another opportunity. My gladius flew through the air and hacked at a gap in her left ankle, cutting through one of the important lines within. Coolant and oil leaked from the severed tube and sunk into the dust below. Caesena saw what I was doing and backed away immediately rather than risk further damage.
“Oh! London swipes at her legs and scores a vital hit! Did Caesena overcook her attack?”
I tried to get back up. Caesena was not deterred by her limp. She used her other leg to compensate and attacked again now that there was some open air between us. It was difficult for her to follow through on her swing. I easily deflected it using my buckler and found my footing. She stepped back to avoid my counter-attack and lost her balance, falling backwards and rolling over onto her knees. We weren’t exactly flexible enough to spring back up like a human could in that situation.
With her back facing me, I was presented with the ideal window to damage her. I went to town, slashing at her back several times and leaving deep lacerations in the compound shell.
“London’s advantage is getting bigger by the second, can Caesena fight back and even the odds before it’s too late?” the commentator gushed.
>> This would be a lot easier if he kept quiet…
Fluids seeped from the wounds, but my last swing didn’t strike the battery that I expected to find there. A metal plate was installed between the tiny gap, just enough to keep the tip of my gladius from penetrating it and causing severe power problems for her. It harmlessly bounced away and almost got caught in the panel gap instead. Thinking better of losing my gladius, I ceased the assault and cashed out the damage already caused.
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It was at that point that my body went into autopilot. I entered a trance, no longer focusing on the finder details of what was happening, and that was a problem. Caesena started to fight back effectively, landing hits against my arms and chest and causing minor damage to the internals within. I was a passenger in my own body, watching through a pair of tinted eye lenses.
>> Focus! Pay attention, London!
>> I can’t.
>> Why not?
Was that what the humans called an ‘out of body’ experience? I was moving purely on instinct, reacting to the stimuli I was receiving so quickly that my mind couldn’t even keep up. Our fight turned into an ornate and elaborate dance. We swung and dodged, using our powerful leg hydraulics to dash around the ring.
Caesena couldn’t do it. The damage to her ankle was too much, and the extra stress caused the damaged areas to tear clean in two. She lost her footing again and rolled to a stop, kicking up a cloud of dust as she went. I clenched the gladius so tight that it felt like the joints were about to burst from the pressure.
I leapt into the air and brought the blade down against her arm. Her weapon flew and landed with a loud clatter. The lights flashed, and it was only then that I regained full control of my body. I stepped back and came to terms with that queer sensation – which was difficult when the crowd was roaring so loudly that it shook the foundations of the arena itself. To them, that was a real fight between two well-matched opponents, exciting and tense all the way until the end. We were animals in a zoo cage…
Caesena finally spoke directly to me, not in taunts or frustrated growls, but alarming words.
“Well done. If I have to say one thing, you shouldn’t trust Pompeii so quickly.”
“Why not?”
“He has his own desires, his own dreams, and Aguntum knows that. She met with him before – but she wouldn’t tell us the reason. It’s unusual.”
In the chaos of the roaring crowd her concerns were almost drowned out. She couldn’t stand there and speak with me for much longer. Rather than elaborating she turned and slowly took her leave on a broken leg. I stood alone in the ring, victorious in the first round via a significant upset.
“London demonstrates his pedigree and dispatches one of the favourites! An incredible showing of skill and strength. Long-time audience members might be experiencing a touch of déjà vu!”
Pompeii made it very clear that I wasn’t to stay still and leave the arena like I usually did. I had to give them a small show at least. I took a lap of the ring and held one arm in the air before heading for the exit. He was waiting for me.
“Excellent fight, London. I suppose when it comes down to it – it’s hard to lose a fight…”
Throwing the fight never once occurred to me when I was in the ring. It put me into a similar state of mind as the ‘real’ fights I’d experienced around Waterway. It was unlikely that Caesena would destroy my brain having won, even so, I still fought as if my life depended on it. The other gladiators glared at us as we walked back to the workshop. My mind was still focused on what Caesena said to me after the fight.
Pompeii looked over my ‘injuries’ and checked for any repairs that were needed before the next round. Time was a precious resource. Towards the end of the tournament the competitors would be fighting every day to whittle down the field. Being able to ration parts and repair damage was just as important as fighting ability.
“What did Aguntum say to you before?” I asked.
Pompeii averted his eyes, “It’s nothing to do with you, I already said that.”
“Caesena doesn’t seem to think so.”
“What the hell does she know? There’s nothing that unusual about handlers speaking to one another.”
“I’m putting a lot of faith into you, Pompeii. Don’t take that for granted.”
His reaction was strange. He wanted to reply to my statement but didn’t know how.
“Faith? You’ve never mentioned faith before. That never played into your calculations.”
“Calculations are one thing, but I cannot predict how other robots will act. What did she say to you?”
Pompeii sighed and covered his face with his hands. There he enjoyed a front-row seat to the sight of a freshly broken robot losing his ability to trust others blindly, to become another participant in the emotional barter that defined all of the rest. Was he the one who pushed me there? And had it been fermenting in the back of my mind for a long while?
>> This isn’t new. We couldn’t trust Oxford either.
That was right. I wouldn’t have the awareness to notice if it didn’t happen earlier.
“Did you think I was blindly following your orders, Pompeii? Why aren’t you answering the question?”
“Because maybe a small part of me wanted to believe that there was one bot down here who hadn’t been turned into a forsaken mess. This is what we do to each other. Stab one another in the back, lead each other on with false promises, build an environment where there’s no trust.”
“I want to get out of here for a reason. Oxford betrayed me. She wants to rip this place to pieces, and I don’t know why. I need to know. That’s the only thing I can think about.”
Pompeii shook his head, “Do you even understand what type of reputation she has? Even when she’s not selling bots into servitude to the Rusted Wall. She’s a Rampant amongst Rampants, killing, destroying, upending our normal way of life. They already know what she did at Waterway. Half the citizens are up in arms asking why her head isn’t on a spike as we speak for messing with the arteries.”
“Of course I understand. I made a fool of myself once trying to make her talk. If that won’t work – then I’ll have to find the answers under my own power.”
But I didn’t know if the answers would fill this strange void inside of my chest. Was I searching for a reason to be angry with Oxford? She was a no-good marauder who only caused problems for the robots trying to abide by the rules as best they could. Her actions had no possible value for anyone, yet I found it difficult to become upset with her rejection of me. I never knew Oxford. Back then, like me, she was an empty shell filled with strict orders and terabytes of training data.
>> Idiot. How can we feel betrayed by someone we never knew? Someone we never understood?
>> She rejected it all. Her orders, her reason for being built. What drove her to that?
>> Why do we want to know? It can’t be anything good.
Pompeii relented; “Look, I get what it’s like to have this… fixation. We all do. That’s what separates us from those bots that haven’t been booted since the Braincloud went down. It’s just – they’re normally not so destructive or dangerous. When a living creature holds its hand over a flame, they react by feeling pain and moving away. We can’t do the same. We’ll keep going and going until we get what we want, or die trying.”
“I don’t believe that’s entirely true, Pompeii. That pain is still real, isn’t it?”
He thought about his old friend, the one he promised the world and let down so badly.
“Yeah, you’re right. We might not have nerves and skin – but we’re more than capable of hurting ourselves just fine…”
“I’m not going to make the same mistake a second time. Oxford is going to answer my questions, and there’ll be no easy way out of it when the time comes.”
