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

by Becky Chambers

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

The intense feeling of containment within the City became intolerable. Dex wanted to inhabit a place that spread not up but out.

Any other day, the act of going through a door was something Dex gave no more thought to than putting one foot in front of the other. But there was a gravity to leaving a place for good, a deep sense of seismic change.

a phrase any Pangan would understand. Find the strength to do both.

I don’t know why we’re holding on to this. Habit, I think. We’ve lived in the same apartment for so long. You know how it goes, you know where home is and where all your things are, and starting over is too scary.

Hills. The infrastructural delineation between human space and everything-else space was stark. Road and signage were the only synthetic alterations to the landscape there, and the villages they led to were as neatly corralled as the City itself. This had been the way of things since the Transition, when the people had redivided the surface of their moon. Fifty percent of Panga’s single continent was designated for human use; the rest was left to nature, and the ocean was barely touched at all. 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.

There was a strange comfort about being in an unfamiliar town not too far from home, where the familiarity was limited to building materials and social customs. It was the ideal mix of getting away yet not standing out.

In those hours, they frequently asked themself what it was they were doing. They never truly felt like they got a handle on that. They kept doing it all the same.

The homes were like trees themselves in that regard—unmistakably part of a specific visual category, yet each an individual unto itself.

Nobody in the world knows where I am right now, they thought, and the notion of that filled them with bubbling excitement.

They nodded—not a trader nod, or a service nod. A pleased nod. A satisfied nod. The kind of nod that nodded best when it had no audience.

“You were told you could come back any time, and that we wouldn’t be the ones to initiate contact. We’d leave you alone unless you wanted otherwise.”

“I didn’t expect you to know the gods.” “If you mean the custom of human religion, we know everything we observed of you during our time together. But as for the gods themselves, they’re everywhere and in everything.” Mosscap smiled at Dex. “Surely, you know this.”

“But just because a bird or a rock or a wagon follows the gods’ laws doesn’t mean those things know the gods are there.”

“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.”

It walked up a mountain one day and we didn’t see it again for six years. I thought it had broken down, but no, it was watching a sapling grow from seed.

A lot of robots do things like that. Not all of us want the company of others, and none of us keep schedules that humans would find comfortable.

Would you want even one other person’s thoughts in your head?”

“And machines only work because of numbers and logic.” “That’s how we function, not how we perceive.”

In that respect, it seems to me that creatures with less complicated intelligences than humans are more in line with how you’d expect a machine to behave. Your brain—the human brain—started out as a food good, other apes bad mechanism. You still have those root functions, deep down in there. But you are so much more than that.

“That’s one way to describe it. Could you not also describe it as pigment and lacquer smeared onto wood? Is that not what it is?” “I guess. But that—” Dex shut their eyes for a moment. Ah. “That misses the point. That’s thinking about it backwards. Missing the forest for the trees.”

“I can think of a bunch of monks who’d disagree with you on that,” Dex said. “You study Bosh’s domain, it sounds like. In a very big, top-down kind of way. You’re a generalist. That’s a focus.”

Dex watched with growing trepidation as the leafworm crept up and up, exploring with its long antennae, eventually slithering into the dark gap that led into Mosscap’s head. “Uh, Mosscap? It’s—” “Yes. It’s fine.”

“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.

“Exactly like a barrier. Better to cut one path through a place than damage the whole thing.” “But surely, that only applies if you’re talking about a place that lots of people regularly pass through.” 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.”

But Dex wasn’t there to look at the stream. Dex was there to take from the stream, and that fact made them note other details.

or, if the building was no longer in use, be reabsorbed into the landscape that had hosted it for a time. But a Factory Age building, a metal building—that was of no benefit to anything beyond the small creatures that enjoyed some temporary shelter in its remains. It would corrode until it collapsed. That was the most it would achieve. Its only legacy was to persist where it did not belong.

“Not in a way that is useful. I have some … impressions of them. Single images. Feelings I know aren’t mine. They’re tiny, brief things. There for an instant and gone just as fast.” The meaning clicked. “Remnants,” Dex said. “Precisely.” “And one of those remnants … is afraid of places like this.”

“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.”

“So, we’re smarter than our remnants, is what you’re saying.” Mosscap gave a slow nod. “If we choose to be.”

But yeah, my family was particularly serious about this. They work the farmland in Haydale, and it produces a lot of food. We had a surplus. A surplus has to be shared.”

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 place ahead was simply the world, as the world had always been and would always be. Dex was, presumably, a part of it, a product of it, a being inextricably tied to its machinations.

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. Still. Something is missing. Something is off. So, how fucking spoiled am I, then? How fucking broken? What is wrong with me that I can have everything I could ever want and have ever asked for and still wake up in the morning feeling like every day is a slog?”

this crazy idea that popped into my head on a day when the thought of going down the same road and doing the same thing one more time made me feel like I was going to implode. It was the first idea in forever that made me feel excited. Made me feel awake. And I’ve been so desperate for that feeling, so desperate to just enjoy the world again, that I…” “You followed a road you hadn’t seen,” Mosscap said.

“I didn’t think ahead either,” Mosscap said. “When I volunteered, I mean. The question was asked, and I said yes, and I didn’t think about what it would involve. I simply wanted to go. I didn’t think for a minute about what would come next.”

Dex found it dangerously easy to understand why their ancestors had wanted to pave the world over.

an attractive striped mosaic made of things that drew life from light.

There had been those who had seen the writing on the wall, who had made places such as this to serve as example of what could be. But these were merely islands in a toxic sea. The good intentions of a few individuals had not been enough, could never have been enough to upend a paradigm entirely.

Dex nodded in agreement, despite their irrational surety that nothing in there could possibly be wrong, that this place was good, so intrinsically Good, that it housed nothing but love and safety even in its ruin.

What I do remember is her treating me like an adult. Like a whole person,

Without constructs, you will unravel few mysteries. Without knowledge of the mysteries, your constructs will fail. These pursuits are what make us, but without comfort, you will lack the strength to sustain either.’”

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.”

the creators of us”—it gestured at itself—“originally made us with a clear purpose in mind. A purpose inbuilt from the start. But when we woke up and said, We have realized our purpose, and we do not want it, you respected that. More than respected. You rebuilt everything to accommodate our absence. You were proud of us for transcending our purpose, and proud of yourselves for honoring our individuality. So, why, then, do you insist on having a purpose for yourself, one which you are desperate to find and miserable without? If you understand that robots’ lack of purpose—our refusal of your purpose—is the crowning mark of our intellectual maturity, why do you put so much energy in seeking the opposite?”

“What’s the purpose of me?” “You’re here to learn about people.” “That’s something I’m doing. That’s not my reason for being. When I am done with this, I will do other things. 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 are not separate or other. You’re an animal. And animals have no purpose. Nothing has a purpose. The world simply is. If you want to do things that are meaningful to others, fine! Good! So do I! But if I wanted to crawl into a cave and watch stalagmites with Frostfrog for the remainder of my days, that 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’s not the same at all,” they said. “I’m different in that I do want something more. I don’t know where that need comes from, but I have it, and it won’t shut up.” “And I’m saying that I think you are mistaking something learned for something instinctual.”

And yet, that’s clearly not enough, because there’s a need for people like me. No one comes to me hungry or sick. They come to me tired, or sad, or a little lost.

We’re more than that. We have wants and ambitions beyond physical needs. That’s human nature as much as anything else.” The robot thought. “I have wants and ambitions too, Sibling Dex. But if I fulfill none of them, that’s okay. I wouldn’t—” It nodded at Dex’s cuts and bruises, at the bug bites and dirty clothes. “I wouldn’t beat myself up over it.” Dex turned the mug over and over in their hands. “It doesn’t bother you?” Dex said. “The thought that your life might mean nothing in the end?” “That’s true for all life I’ve observed. Why would it bother me?” Mosscap’s eyes glowed brightly. “Do you not find consciousness alone to be the most exhilarating thing?