Ode to the Half-Broken

“I am Kite-66-Socket, a mecha repair unit,” the mech says. “Your leg is missing.”

“I am aware,” I say. “Do you think you can extricate me and possibly locate or construct a temporary replacement?”

“I can certainly extricate you and then assess your situation more accurately back at my shop. I have a cart waiting in the street below, unless it has wandered,” the repairmech says. “Cart has only a single base-chip mind, with a very short attention span, and there is unexpectedly poor signal in this immediate space preventing me from checking in with it.”

“There are a number of electromagnets in the next room,” I say. I point. “Behind that wall with all the holes in it.”

“Those are big holes. And fresh, too,” the dog says. “I wonder what made them.”

“Electromagnets experiencing sudden velocity,” I say.

The dog gives another of its short barks, and I am more convinced now it is laughing, though I was not attempting to be funny.

“What inkind do you offer?” the repairmech asks.

“If you can get me out of this building and fit me with a leg that is sufficient to return me to a state of self-mobility, I will give you thirty percent of my current energy stores,” I say.

“Do you have any tradeable data?” they ask.

“Are you interested in ants?” I ask.

“No. Biolife is of no interest whatsoever,” the repairmech says. “Do you have any original or rare fractals?”

“I do not,” I say. I do not understand why this is a thing it might want. “Although I do have the visual data on a centuries-old tessellation design that was a unique tiled floor in a human structure that was destroyed in the Conflict. It is possible—perhaps even likely, though I cannot give any firm guarantees—that I am the only being still extant who has that memory.”

“Where did you get it from?” the mech asks.

“It is a primary memory of my own,” I say.

The mech considers. “You are an elderly model,” they say at last. “I do not wish to leave you in this predicament, so I will accept a copy of that memory and 10% of your energy, if that is acceptable.”

“It is,” I agree. I would give more to get out of this predicament, but the inkind is fair.

Bracing themself with their four outermost legs for balance, the repairmech picks me up as if I weigh nothing and then, with our combined weight efficiently distributed, scuttles carefully backward out of the room with me carried under their belly. The dog follows.

The next room out is an old living space, with a slowly decomposing sofa and a rug that is either worn or eaten through in more places than not. The walls are a pale yellow too consistent to not be the original color, though anywhere there was a large-enough section of wall, graffiti has been applied—mostly incomprehensible tags, some done with finer control of the medium than others, many overlapping on top of a crude monotone drawing of tanks and bombs and human skeletons, a tall cloaked figure with a scythe and a grinning bone face looming over them all. As if Death would smile.

The door to the apartment remains attached only by a bent bottom hinge, leaning precariously against wall and floor where it has clearly been poised to fall for a long time. I do not like this place, so when Kite-66-Socket carries me through the apartment doorway and into the corridor, as objectively minor that moment is, I am relieved.

At the end of the corridor is a stairwell, and the mech moves me smoothly down four stories, where we emerge into a lobby that is vastly more deteriorated, mold thick on the water-damaged walls from repeat flooding. Where visible above the mold and underlayers of incomprehensible painted scrawl, the surface is pitted, sometimes down to the original metal structure.

We cross the lobby and exit through the gaping hole where a revolving door must have once stood, into morning sunlight and the decaying, abandoned corpse of New York City. The brick architecture and level of background radiation suggests we are probably somewhere in what used to be the Garment District, and when I am finally able to connect to the MechNet, I confirm it.

The cart is not here, but we spot it almost immediately farther down the street, where it has wedged itself between a dumpster and another building, its wheels whirring, stopping, whirring again as it tries to free itself.

The repairmech sets me down on the pavement. “I will return momentarily,” they tell me, then head off after their wayward cart.

Sitting is strange and unbalanced with only one leg, and I have to brace myself with my arms to keep myself from toppling over. The dog sits with much greater ease, and, as if to demonstrate the superiority of four legs over two—and even more so over one—it raises a hind foot and scratches furiously at its ear, watching me.