‘The onboard aeai took over,’ Rai said, his voice startling as a firecracker inside his helmet. Then the village went black and silent and Sanjeev was blinking in the ugly low-energy neons of the Kali Cavalry battle room, Rai gently unfastening the clips and snaps and strappings.

That evening, as he went home through the rush of people with his fist of rupees, Sanjeev realised two things; that most of war was boring, and that this boring war was over.

~ * ~

The war was over. The jemadar visited the video-silk wall three times, twice, once a week where in the heat and glory she would have given orders that many times a day. The Kali Cav lolled around on their sofas playing games, lying to their online fans about the cool exciting sexy things they were doing, though the fans never believed they ever really were robotwallahs, but mostly doing battle-drug combos that left them fidgety and aggressive. Fights flared over a cigarette, a look, how a door was closed or left open. Sanjeev threw himself into the middle of a dozen robotwallah wars. But when the American peacekeepers arrived Sanjeev knew it truly was over because they only came in when there was absolutely no chance any of them would get killed. There was a flurry of car-bombings and I-war attacks and even a few suicide blasts but everyone knew that that was just everyone who had a grudge against America and Americans in sacred Bharat. No, the war was over.

‘What will you do?’ Sanjeev’s father asked, meaning, What will I do when Umbrella Street becomes just another Asian ginza?

‘I’ve saved some money,’ Sanjeev said.

With the money he had saved, Godspeed! had bought a robot. It was a Tata Industries D55, a small but nimble anti-personnel bot with detachable free-roaming sub-mechas, Level 0.8s, about as smart as a chicken, which they resembled. Even second-hand it must have cost much more than a teenage robotwallah heavily consuming games, online time, porn and Sanjeev’s dad’s kofta pizza could ever save. ‘I got backers,’ Godspeed! said. ‘Funding. Hey, what do you think of this? I’m getting her pimped, this is the skin-job.’ When the paint dried the robot would be road-freighted up to Varanasi.

‘But what are you going to do with it?’ Sanjeev asked.

‘Private security. They’re always going to need security drones.’