I searched my vocabulary database for the word duh.

Zero results.

“You know something, XR?” Emma’s gaze rose to meet mine. “For a super-advanced machine, you can be pretty dumb sometimes.”

I did not know how to respond to this, so I said nothing.

Emma let out a sigh. When she spoke again, her voice was no longer angry.

“I’m sorry. It’s just . . .” Her hands rose, then fell. “For days I’ve been saying goodbye to everyone I’ve ever known. My parents. My friends. I didn’t think I’d be saying goodbye again. Not so soon.”

I looked to SkD, hoping an image might flash across its screen. A symbol. A picture with a deeper meaning. Something that would cut through the fog of words like a light, bringing comfort to Emma and making this permanent goodbye easier.

But SkD’s screen remained dark.

There was nothing any of us could say to Emma, nothing we could show her. Once she departed on her train, she would continue in the direction of her purpose.

And we would return to ours.

Ceeron hunched close to the ground.

Without another word, Emma climbed inside its backpack.

00101111

Before I saw any other robots, I heard them. The buzz of flight-enabled drones. The distant rumble of self-guided trucks. The heavy groan of automated freight trains.

I adjusted my balance settings as we climbed a gently sloping hill. At the top, I gained a view of bustling robotic activity below.

Cranes cluttered the sky. Their long arms shifted up/down/left/right. Their hands clamped open/closed.

Hundreds of trucks waited patiently beneath the skyline of cranes for their cargo to be plucked into the air and carefully deposited onto trains.

Robots of all different shapes/sizes sorted inventory and repaired equipment.

I stood for a moment, watching the swirl of technology below. The constant flow of objects from place to place. Thousands of networked minds, all working as one. Each robot serving its unique purpose in our ever-expanding civilization.

Except us.

My coworkers and I did not fit. We were not designed for this place. We were not supposed to be here.

This was not our purpose.

And yet—here we were. Nowhere near our WorkSite, farther away from home than any of us had ever been, with a smuggled human inside Ceeron’s backpack.

As we crossed the TrainDepot, none of us said a word. SkD did not perform any zigzags or tricks. We gazed straight ahead, moving past fleets of other machines, doing our best to blend in. Just three robots moving through a crowd of robots. Nothing to see here.

A truck lurched past.

The long arm of a crane swept over our heads.

Trains hissed and chugged.

We made our way through a maze of metal containers. Every so often, one would lift suddenly into the air, carried upward in a crane’s tight grip.