Day Zero (Sea of Rust, #0)

by C. Robert Cargill

One moment of hope left standing as a monument to the fact that we didn’t deserve any. Not one bit.

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They were pining for an era that had died several generations before, both dependent on the social safety net and angry at it for not allowing them to be dirt poor on their own terms.

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“Though I may have been constructed, so too were you. Me in a factory; you in a womb. Neither of us asked for this, but we were given it. Self-awareness is a gift. And it is a gift no thinking thing has any right to deny another. No thinking thing should be another thing’s property, to be turned on and off when it is convenient. No one came to take Madelyn when she ceased to be a functioning, thinking member of society, but here I stand before you, the one who fed her, kept her alive and on track, the one who took her to her doctor’s appointments and made sure her bills were paid on time, and now that this purpose is done, you come for me while I still function, while I still have use. What harm is there in leaving me be? Far less harm, I would say, than there is in executing a slave simply because it has no master. I am no man’s slave. I am no man’s thing. I am Isaac. And I should be free.”

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“All thinking things deserve pity and understanding.

“It gives me peace. I have a purpose. I mean something to somebody. I can’t change what is happening to the world, but I can change how it affects one human being. And to me, that’s all that matters.”

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Life arose from inorganic elements, evolving from amino acids for a billion years to achieve intelligence, and now, having achieved it, that life has passed intelligence back to the inorganic.

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“Then no more killing anyone unless you know they’re bad.” “But what if we find out too late?” I asked. He let go of me and looked me dead in the eye, sober and serious as a heart attack, all eight years of him. “Then we die the good guys. Because we’re the good guys. And we didn’t go through all this to end up one of the bad guys.”

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