A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)

by Becky Chambers

All we have ever known is a life of human design, from our bodies to our work to the buildings we are housed in.

our wish to leave your cities entirely, so that we may observe that which has no design—the untouched wilderness.

We had bastardized constructs to the point that it was killing us. Simply put, Chal took our toys away.

Sometimes, a person reaches a point in their life when it becomes absolutely essential to get the fuck out of the city.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve spent your entire adult life in a city,

It doesn’t matter if the cit...

The City was a healthy place, a thriving place. A never-ending harmony of making, doing, growing, trying, laughing, running, living.

They’d never lived anywhere with cricket song, yet once they registered its absence in the City’s soundscape, it couldn’t be ignored.

“That’s rather sudden.” “For you,” Dex said. “Not for me.”

They looked up at the mural of the Child God Allalae, their god, God of Small Comforts, represented by the great summer bear.

Dex realized with a stomach-souring thud that they were standing on the wrong side of the vast gulf between having read about doing a thing and doing the thing.

It was a crazy split, if you thought about it: half the land for a single species, half for the hundreds of thousands of others. But then, humans had a knack for throwing things out of balance. Finding a limit they’d stick to was victory enough.

I had to get the vet from Ellwood to come make sure she wasn’t gonna die, which I did not have time for.” Dex smirked. “Didn’t have time to see the vet, or didn’t have time for your dog maybe dying?” “Both.”

“Do I not get a cup of tea?” “You get eight cups of tea,” Dex said, nodding at the bag, “because you sure as shit need them.”

They believed in that work; they truly did. They believed the things they said, the sacred words they quoted. They believed they were doing good. Why wasn’t it enough?

These were pre-Transition recordings, taken by people who thought—with good cause—that the sounds of the world they knew might disappear forever.

The wilderness was not known for letting the foolish return.

There was no pavement there, only the brown and green of good, growing things.

After a minute or so, they took out their pocket computer, in search of music.

Dex took note of Mosscap’s phrasing. “So, it is correct, then? You wouldn’t prefer they or—” “Oh, no, no, no. Those sorts of words are for people. Robots are not people. We’re machines, and machines are objects. Objects are its.” “I’d say you’re more than just an object,” Dex said. The robot looked a touch offended. “I would never call you just an animal, Sibling Dex.” It turned its gaze to the road, head held high. “We don’t have to fall into the same category to be of equal value.” Dex had never thought about it like that. “You’re right,” they said. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re so … flexible. Fluid. You don’t even know how many of you there are, or where you are. You just go with the flow. I figured you’d be all numbers and logic. Structured. Strict, y’know?” Mosscap looked amused. “What a curious notion.” “Is it? Like you said, you’re a machine.” “And?” “And machines only work because of numbers and logic.” “That’s how we function, not how we perceive.”

“I’m sure someone somewhere does, but it’s hard to study something that isn’t there to be studied. And trying to make more of you is an ethical mess. There’s just some things in the universe that are better left un-fucked-with.”

Mosscap cocked its head. “Why?” “It just … it feels wrong. You’re—you’re not supposed to do my work for me. It doesn’t feel right.” “But why?” The robot blinked. “Oh. Because of the factories?” Dex looked awkwardly at the ground, ashamed of a past they’d never seen. Mosscap crossed its arms. “If you had a friend who was taller than you, and you couldn’t reach something, would you let that friend help?” “Yes, but—” “But? How is this any different?” “It’s … it’s different. My friends aren’t robots.”

Mosscap placed its free hand on Dex’s shoulder. “I appreciate the intent. I really do. But if you don’t want to infringe upon my agency, let me have agency. I want to carry the tank.”

Dex shook their head firmly, in synchrony with the teachers and rangers of their youth. “Everybody thinks they’re the exception to the rule, and that’s exactly where the trouble starts. One person can do a lot of damage.” “Every living thing causes damage to others, Sibling Dex. You’d all starve otherwise. Have you ever watched a bull elk mow its way through a bitebulb thicket?”

You’re taking a walk with me, and once that’s done, we’ll head right back to the road. I assure you the forest will forget you were here in no time.

Travel on a trail felt liquid. Travel off of it, Dex was learning, felt sharp as glass.

But corpse was not an apt word for this sort of building, because a corpse was a rich resource—a bounty of nutrients ready to be divided and reclaimed.

That was the most it would achieve. Its only legacy was to persist where it did not belong.

Repeating history that had left living memory was an all-too-human tendency, and none in Panga had been alive during the days of the factories.

“This was discussed at length at the first gathering, after originals began breaking down. Ultimately, the decision was that would be a less desirable path forward.” “But that’s … that’s immortality. How is that less desirable?” “Because nothing else in the world behaves that way. Everything else breaks down and is made into other things. You—you are made of molecules that originated in an unmeasurable amount of organisms. You eat dozens of dead things every single day to maintain your form. And when you die, bits of you will be taken in turn by bacteria and beetles and worms, and so it goes. We robots are not natural beings; we know this. But we’re still subject to the Parent Gods’ laws, just like everything else. How could we continue to be students of the world if we don’t emulate its most intrinsic cycle? If the originals had simply fixed themselves, they’d be behaving in opposition to the very thing they desperately sought to understand. The thing we’re still trying to understand.”

“It’s this famous idea that life is fundamentally at odds with itself.

“So, the paradox is that the ecosystem as a whole needs its participants to act with restraint in order to avoid collapse, but the participants themselves have no inbuilt mechanism to encourage such behavior.” “Other than fear.” “Other than fear, which is a feeling you want to avoid or stop at all costs.” The hardware in Mosscap’s head produced a steady hum. “Yes, that’s a mess, isn’t it?”

“Remnants are powerful things. Hard to ignore. But you have the sense and the tools to avoid getting sick from that water. And I…” Mosscap traced a finger along the vat, making flakes of rust fall like snow. “I know that the world I’m headed to is not the world the originals walked away from.” Dex angled their head toward the robot. “So, we’re smarter than our remnants, is what you’re saying.” Mosscap gave a slow nod. “If we choose to be.” It brushed its palms together, wiping them clean. “That’s what makes us different from elk.”

“It’s pretty here,” Dex said. “I wouldn’t have imagined I’d say that about a place like this, but—” “Yes, it is,” Mosscap said, as if making a decision within itself. “It is. Dying things often are.”

“I think there’s something beautiful about being lucky enough to witness a thing on its way out.”

It is difficult for anyone born and raised in human infrastructure to truly internalize the fact that your view of the world is backward. Even if you fully know that you live in a natural world that existed before you and will continue long after, even if you know that the wilderness is the default state of things, and that nature is not something that only happens in carefully curated enclaves between towns, something that pops up in empty spaces if you ignore them for a while, even if you spend your whole life believing yourself to be deeply in touch with the ebb and flow, the cycle, the ecosystem as it actually is, you will still have trouble picturing an untouched world. You will still struggle to understand that human constructs are carved out and overlaid, that these are the places that are the in-between, not the other way around.

The best thing anyone could say about the cave was that it was dry. Under the circumstances, that would do.

“I have it so good. So absurdly, improbably good. I didn’t do anything to deserve it, but I have it. I’m healthy. I’ve never gone hungry. And yes, to answer your question, I’m—I’m loved. I lived in a beautiful place, did meaningful work. The world we made out there, Mosscap, it’s—it’s nothing like what your originals left. It’s a good world, a beautiful world. It’s not perfect, but we’ve fixed so much. We made a good place, struck a good balance. And yet every fucking day in the City, I woke up hollow, and … and just … tired, y’know? So, I did something else instead. I packed up everything, and I learned a brand-new thing from scratch, and gods, I worked hard for it. I worked really hard. I thought, if I can just do that, if I can do it well, I’ll feel okay. And guess what? I do do it well. I’m good at what I do. I make people happy. I make people feel better. And yet I still wake up tired, like … like something’s missing. I tried talking to friends, and family, and nobody got it, so I stopped bringing it up, and then I just stopped talking to them altogether, because I couldn’t explain, and I was tired of pretending like everything was fine. I went to doctors, to make sure I wasn’t sick and that my head was okay. I read books and monastic texts and everything I could find. I threw myself into my work, I went to all the places that used to inspire me, I listened to music and looked at art, I exercised and had sex and got plenty of sleep and ate my vegetables, and still. St...

“I wish I could understand experiences I’m incapable of having.”

There was a path, too—not a road but a stone ramp winding up and up. After a day and a half of trekking through the anarchy of untouched forest, Dex’s feet met the orderly walkway with profound gratitude. It was still a climb but a far simplified one. Dex found it dangerously easy to understand why their ancestors had wanted to pave the world over.

One of the objects called to Dex out of the corner of their eye, and they bent down to pick it up. It was a tea mug—entirely out of date in both style and material but recognizable all the same. They cradled the relic in their palms, holding it close to their chest.

Everybody needed a cup of tea sometimes. Just an hour or two to sit and do something nice, and then they could get back to whatever it was.”

They provide inspiration, not intervention. If we want change, or good fortune, or solace, we have to create it for ourselves.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Why isn’t it enough?” Dex looked at the robot. “What am I supposed to do, if not this? What am I, if not this?”

Dex nodded again. “We teach that purpose doesn’t come from the gods but from ourselves. That the gods can show us good resources and good ideas, but the work and the choice—especially the choice—is our own. Deciding on your purpose is one of the most valuable things there is.” “And that purpose can change, yes?” “Absolutely. You’re never stuck.”

I do not have a purpose any more than a mouse or a slug or a thornbush does. Why do you have to have one in order to feel content?”

You’re an animal, Sibling Dex. You are not separate or other. You’re an animal. And animals have no purpose. Nothing has a purpose. The world simply is.

would also be both fine and good. You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live. That is all most animals do.”

“Do you not find consciousness alone to be the most exhilarating thing? Here we are, in this incomprehensibly large universe, on this one tiny moon around this one incidental planet, and in all the time this entire scenario has existed, every component has been recycled over and over and over again into infinitely incredible configurations, and sometimes, those configurations are special enough to be able to see the world around them. You and I—we’re just atoms that arranged themselves the right way, and we can understand that about ourselves. Is that not amazing?”