In the last revolution, before rationalization, the police had put down a riot with two walkers. The things had left a hundred rioters dead on the square. Not “rioters.” People. People on the wrong side. And those things hadn’t killed protesters—the people piloting them had. Either a person inside, or a person at a distance, piloting them like a drone, or a person who had set their parameters, wound the monsters up, and sent them into the world. Any way you looked at it, a human being was doing the killing. The machine was nothing but a tool.
