“Watch out,” screamed The Leader, assuming the clunky robot would step or fall on her dear friend’s body. “What are you doing?”

  “She has not yet died. I can fix her.”

  Mr. Robot took The Empath from The White Knight’s hands and laid her on her back.

  “She’s dead,” said The Driver. “Just look at her. She’s not breathing. Jesus, we gotta get out of here.”

  “What the hell are you on about?” shouted The White Knight. “We can’t leave her.”

  “Listen, Romeo,” she said, grabbing The White Knight’s collar. “If we stay here we’ll be arrested. We have a stolen robot, a dead body, an arsenal of guns, and a motel room that’s covered in blood and bullet holes. I get you had a thing for her; trust me, I get it. But she is gone now and we have to be too.”

  “I can fix her,” said Mr. Robot. “I know what to do.”

  The coloured bars on his chest all lit up bright yellow.

  “I am trained in surgical procedures.”

  Everybody looked at The Man as if he could vouch for the robot’s skills. He looked as blank as the others. He turned to the robot and asked, as one friend might to another; “Do you know what you’re doing?”

  Had he the ability, Mr. Robot would have smiled.

  “I have trained every day of my life for this. I know what I’m doing,” he said.

  This time The Man smiled.

  “I think I know just what kind of robot you are.”

  Those words echoed in the robot’s head as he aligned The Empath’s wounded body.

  “Hurry the hell up,” said The Driver.

  Mr. Robot hated pressure. He could never perform when someone was expecting it. He was nervous; his hands were shaking, and his vision was a drunken blur.

  “What are you gonna do?” said The Man.

  Mr. Robot hovered over The Empath’s body like a crane. His claw-like hand moved up and down the centre over her body. It looked as if he were lining himself up to rip a teddy bear from her stomach.

  “Don’t touch the sides. Don’t touch the sides,” said Mr. Robot.

  Though he had spent his life playing Operation, he was never much good at it. This, Mr. Robot felt, was his test. It was what he was born to do. And so he didn’t stop. He ignored the shouting and he paid no mind to all the jumping about and carrying on. His focus was clear and sharp; it could slice an atom in half. He had never felt so calm and so sure of anything in his life.

  “Don’t touch the sides,” he said again.

  And like an anchor, smashing through a wooden pier, Mr. Robot lowered his hand into The Empath’s chest.

  “Oh God no,” screamed The Leader.

  “For the love of God just stop,” said someone else.

  In his head, Mr. Robot heard that horrible buzzing.

  “Don’t touch the sides,” he said, again and again, and again.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  Mr. Robot knew exactly what he was doing; he’d see this a thousand times before. All he had to do was take out each of her organs and then put them back in one by one; and all without touching the sides.

  “Where did you learn to do this?” said The Man.

  He sounded manic; on the verge of cardiac arrest.

  “It’s ok, my friend,” said Mr. Robot, staring straight into The Empath’s open chest. “I know Operation.”

  “The procedure?” said The Man confused. “You know how to operate?”

  “No. The board game,” said Mr. Robot. “And I am very good too.”

  He sounded like a professional.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” shouted The Man. “Stop it. Stop right now.”

  But the robot wouldn’t stop. He was intent on finishing his turn. And so his hand pushed further into The Empath’s body, feeling for the small, silver bullet.

  “Don’t touch the sides,” he said again.

  The Man slapped his robot head.

  “It’s not a goddamn game,” he screamed. “Stop it. Stop it now.”

  There was no stopping the robot. Finally, The Man said it; “Bad robot!”

  He may as well have pressed the robot’s red button. Those two words were like a mantra for shame and self-defeat. Instantly, Mr. Robot stopped what he was doing. The room was quiet again. In the distance, police sirens sounded out like a symphony of impending doom.

  “We gotta go,” said The Driver, finally spent of her patience. “Now!”

  “I can’t move,” said The White Knight. “This isn’t real, this isn’t real.”

  He repeated it over and over, and one of the times, he actually believed it. The Driver dragged him, along with everyone else, towards the van.

  The Driver was the only one who looked back as they reversed; she wished she didn’t.

  “There is no limit to your potential,” thought Mr. Robot, hearing his father’s voice, but coming out of The Empath’s tattered and broken body.

  He felt as if we were drowning; except the water was despair, grief, and remorse.

  “What do we do?” asked The Leader. “I don’t wanna go to jail.”

  “You’re not going to jail,” said The Driver.

  It was as if she were born for this moment. Her blood felt electric. She felt indomitable and inexplicably drawn to the improbable and the impossible. She felt God-like; as if the lives of all these people – of the whole world – depended on what she did next.

  It was a shame that someone had to die for her to feel this good.

  “What the hell was that about?” said The Man.

  He sounded disappointed as if he’d expected better.

  “I’m not sure,” said Mr. Robot.

  There was no logical reason for him to have done what he did.

  “No more trying to save people, ok?”

  It definitely sounded like Mr. Robot was getting at least one last shot.

  Having friends was fantastic.

  “And what about you Mr. Justice Man?” said The Leader., sharpening her opinions. “Some kind of superhero you are. You just stood there the whole time. You did nothing. I thought all you needed was a blowjob and a punch in the face.”

  Her words were cold, direct, and honest.

  “So did I,” said The Man. “So did I.”

  17.

  It didn’t take long for reports to start circling about what had happened. Within minutes of the heroes departing, there was media and police all over the place.

  “What exactly did you see?”

  The Reporter was beside a dumpster on the other side of the street.

  “Not many people know this,” said Mary, a fifty-seven-year-old prostitute. “But on my knees, I can see everything. Ya have to. Never know who's gonna sneak up. That’s why I hate it when they ask me to look em in the eyes.”

  The Cameraman kept his shot as wide as possible. In the background, The Assistant was barely visible, arguing on her cellular phone. And while The Reporter got her interview, The Cameraman did and she asked; keeping The Assistant in focus - spying on her every move.

  “So yeah, I may have a mouthful, but my eyes are always open just as wide, and I see all sorts of stuff. For the first time in a long time, Mary, not only had something to say, but she had something worth listening to. “You’d be surprised at what goes on in a place like this.”

  As she spoke, door after door was knocked off their hinges as police searched for their suspects. They found nothing outside the expected filth and depravity.

  “What did you see?” said The Reporter. “What happened here?”

  Mary looked as if she’d had an epiphany; the moral kind.

  “Normally I’d make you pay but it’s been a good day,” she said.

  “Ok,” said The Reporter apprehensive. “Thank you, but…”

  “I sucked a lot of dick tonight is what I’m trying to say.”

  The way she stood, you’d think she was expecting a medal or a first place ribbon.

  “Listen,” said The Reporter, quickly losing her patience. “We don’t have much time.”

  At the crime scene, bodies were being removed in black plastic sheets while a handful of detectives scoured the carpark for clues. And as they did, scores of vans came roaring into the parking lot, stopping in all sorts of anti-social angles. Their doors burst open and their contents spilled out into the night – an unfathomable amount Social Justice Heroes, shouting before they even had a thing to say, and all of them looking equally underprivileged, picked on, oppressed, or shamed in one way or another.

  “Brace yourselves, men,” shouted a Lieutenant.

  Their presence was devastating. It didn’t take long then for the placards to come out and for the fists to start pumping in the air.

  “I’m a slut and proud,” said one.

  “Gender is Patriarchy,” said another.

  And while they made their diversion, The Assistant called her boss.

  “Doctor.”

  Her voice shook like a leaf.

  “I don’t know what happened,” she said. “It a fucking war zone.”

  On the other end of the phone, The Doctor chased a young child around a room.

  “You told me you had this,” he said whilst scanning the room for that insolent little…

  “I do, I swear; just give me time.”

  She didn’t sound anywhere as mean when she was backpedalling.

  “Where is my robot?”

  “I’ll find it, Sir, I promise. This is just a slight hiccup. We’re still on track, though.”

  “A hiccup? I don’t call a dead body a hiccup.”

  “We’re pulling security footage now. This was supposed to be a no-brainer. I don’t know what went wrong.”

  “Who has the robot?”

  “They’re nobodies.”

  “Nobodies? There is a motel room painted with a girl’s intestines.”

  “They’re some wannabe heroes, that’s all – in over their heads.”

  “So you know nothing about them – who they are, their superpowers, what the fuck they want?”

  The answer to all three was ‘no’, but she wouldn’t dare say that word.

  “I’ll find them. I’ll get the robot.”

  “Get me the CCTV.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

  The Doctor said something. It was mumbled under his breath.

  “I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t get that,” said The Assistant.

  The Doctor continued, still inaudible.

  “Sir?”

  “Come here you little bastard,” he shouted.

  Even amidst all the shouting and taunting from protestors, The Assistant could hear what sounded like a small girl’s voice. She was laughing; but not as if someone had told her something hilarious. This was a different kind of laughter.

  “Sir?”

  “You insubordinate fatherless bitch,” shouted The Doctor, running after The Girl. “I’ll kill you.”

  “Sir?”

  For some seconds it was quiet. And that quiet was broken by a child’s laughter, which in turn was broken by an adult’s fist. It sounded like a bag of rice falling to the floor.

  “Bring me that goddamn footage,” said The Doctor.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now!”

  The Doctor had always been, more or less, a father figure to The Assistant. She hadn’t, in all these years, felt like a bastard in any way. Now, though, all of her fears and shame were coming to the fore once more. She felt edgy and vulnerable. If she didn’t pull herself together soon, it wouldn’t be long till she drank a bottle or two of the cheapest bourbon and fucked an entire basketball team. And who could blame her?

  Back by the dumpster, The Reporter continued her struggle to interview Mary, as Social Justice Warriors marched and chanted as one, “Non-binary gender degradation’s got to go.”

  “What did you see?” said The Reporter, desperately. “This is your chance to tell the world.”

  Mary beamed with delight.

  “I know what I saw, but I don’t know what I saw. All I can tell you is that it was some strange shit. They weren’t fucking. Not that I saw anyway. Maybe they did, before or after, but….”

  “Look we really only have a second or two. You see all those people?”

  They both turned to see protestors attacking in an aggressive defence. It wouldn’t be long until they were spotted and they too were caught in an unwinnable war.

  “This is it, your last chance to be on television; your last chance to be famous. You want to be famous, right?”

  What a ridiculous question; who didn’t want that?

  “Why do you think I do this?” said Mary.

  Her knees were cut and bruised, and she looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks.

  “I have an environmental engineering degree. I could be surveying marshlands for shopping malls right now if I wanted. I do this because I love sucking dick a whole lot more.”

  There was a millisecond of strange silence.

  “You know what they call me?”

  If the legend was true, then she did.

  “The Storm Drain,” said Mary. “You wanna know why?”

  It was neither rhetorical nor a question; it was akin to a threat.

  “It’s cause I swallow whatever comes along.”

  The Cameraman immediately turned away.

  “This is pointless,” he said. “We’re not getting anything we can use. And you know who is about to bloody well drive away.”

  The Assistant’s van sat idling in the distance.

  “Ok,” said The Reporter, adamantly. “I got this. I got this.”

  She sounded almost as if she had.

  “Tell me,” she said. “No, tell the world. What did you see, goddamnit? What did you see?”

  Mary cleared her throat and swallowed a mound of phlegm.

  “They were some devil worshipers,” she said. “Or sometin’ like that. And there was a robot. Can you believe that? What does anyone want with a robot? It was the same one that’s been all over the news.”

  There was a moment where Mary looked directly into the camera. Her expression changed entirely as if in that instant the truth and meaning of existence had become abundantly clear.

  “You don’t believe me,” she said. “What? Because I’m a whore?”

  The Reporter was speechless. She looked like she was about to cry.

  “I’m just pulling your chain. Gotta keep a sense of humour these days.”

  “Did you see where they went? What were they driving?”

  “Van.”

  “Did you see the make? What colour was it? Was there anything written on the sides.”

  “It was dark.”

  “And the robot did this? You saw with your own eyes.”

  “Your eyes don’t stop working just because your mouth is.”

  The Reporter signalled to cut taping.

  “Oh I’m sorry, am I makin’ you uncomfortable? Sucking dick is what I do, bitch, just like taking pictures of dead people is what you do. You’re no better than me. Fact is, somebody has to die for you to get outta bed. Somebody has to be beaten up or raped or kept like a slave in a dungeon for half their life. You don’t stir your coffee until some poor motherfucker had the worst day of their life – until they’re dead or wishing they were. What you do for a living is fucked up. Me, I just suck a few dicks, but you, you’re all kinds of sick.”

  Mary’s tirade didn’t end there.

  “And another thing…”

  The Reporter didn’t have the time for the insight of a back alley whore, and so she ran across the road just as The Assistant’s beetle was slowly pulling out of the parking lot; back the way it came.

  “Follow them,” screamed The Reporter.

  “What about the robot?”

  “She’s involved in this somehow. I know it; her and The Doctor. I can feel it. I can’t explain it, just trust me. We have to follow the smoke to the fire.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said The Cameraman, starting the engine.

  “You don’t get it, do you?”

  She’d have more luck explaining the dynamics of a spinning top to a four-year-old.

  “Get what? It’s a story. They’re all stories. That’s the point. The whore actually had a point.”

  “This isn’t any story. This isn’t any unfortunate event.”

  She had The Cameraman by his collar, shaking him.

  “This is the end of times,” she said. “Whatever the hell The Singularity is, it’s happening right here, right now.”

  Then she looked at him as a mother might, her weak and addled son.

  “We are the closest people to it. The end of the world is nigh…”

  “And?”

  “I’m gonna report every goddamned second of it.”

  18.

  “We have to get off the road as fast as possible.”

  It’s a surprise really - in their panicked state - that they hadn’t crashed or at the very least, run over or a pedestrian or two; especially at that last zebra crossing – there was no reason for that child to be carrying so many balloons.

  “We killed someone. We’re murderers.”

  The Leader was jumpy, to say the least.

  “Oh God, we’re going to jail. This is fucked up. This is fucked up. I can’t go to jail. I can’t, seriously. I mean look at me. I’m rape bait. Do you even know what they do to girls like me in prison?”

  “You’re not going to jail. You didn’t kill anyone.”

  It was at that very second that The Driver realised that she was born for this. Up until now, she had merely drunk excessively and been somewhat promiscuous, but all of a sudden she felt indomitable. She felt in control, capable of anything, and at this very second, she felt like the most dangerous person in the story; and that excited her, more than the booze and all the meaningless sex.

  “Nothing changes,” she said. “More or less.”

  “What do you mean nothing changes? The Empath’s dead. My fingerprints are all over that room. I was there. There’s blood on my hands too. Oh, my God, I’m an accessory.”

  “Listen, we have the robot, right? So, we have leverage, which means we can still be heroes.”

  “And do what with it? You saw it. It’s dangerous.”

  And those words echoed in poor Mr. Robot’s head.