“Ah, see, I’m currently the galaxy’s leading expert on the bridges,” Will said. “You have to understand, the Axiom don’t care much about finesse. They brute-force things. These bridges aren’t naturally occurring things. They aren’t tunnels the Axiom found and fitted with lights. They’re holes, punched through the fabric of space-time, and there are lots of them. Think of a city, riddled with catacombs and caves, cellars and sewers, beneath the streets. When the support pillars crumble, those streets fall in.”

  “Sinkholes,” Uzoma said. “You’re saying there will be sinkholes?”

  “On a cosmic scale. They won’t be holes in the pavement, either – they’ll be holes in reality. Not only will stuff fall in… but the infestation will crawl out. We’re in the crawlspace of the world down here, and there are nasty things in the dark.”

  “I retract my statement,” Uzoma said. “This does sound like a problem of unprecedented magnitude.”

  “What are the tunnels infested with?” I said.

  “I have no idea. I’ve killed hundreds of them, or my bots have, but I’ve never recovered a specimen – they melt into goo, and on analysis, it’s just a slurry of organic compounds. The rats take on various forms. I have a lot of theories. They’re an Axiom biological weapon that got loose. They’re mutated descendants of Liars who served the Axiom, who’ve degenerated, Sawny Bean or Morlock style. Or… maybe these holes the Axiom punched through space-time went too deep once or twice. Maybe they reached into a different place – dimension, universe, whatever – and these things came crawling through. All I know for sure is, there are lots of them, they break shit, they eat everything, and they can be killed.”

  “How do we stop them?” Uzoma said.

  “I found… a nest,” Will said. “A huge concentration of the things, inside a fixed bridge. Not one of the bridges people use, fortunately. It’s one that’s been sealed off – you can’t get there from real space, only from down here. Maybe the Axiom didn’t want people to go wherever that bridge leads anymore, or maybe it’s like my theory, and it goes to some other place, and they bricked it over to keep nasty things out. Anyway, if we can go there, and either seal the breach or poison the nest or something… maybe this infestation will stop. My repair bots can actually fix things if the rats aren’t constantly doing more damage – I can program them to do infrastructure rehabilitation, even if I don’t understand how the bridges work.”

  “When do we go?” Uzoma said.

  “My bots are scouting a clear route. There’s no reason to waste firepower picking off random rats along the way if we can avoid it. Assuming all goes well, I’ll have a map in an hour or so. Are you willing to help me?”

  “It’s what I’m here for,” I said. “But I’m starting to wish I’d brought a war drone.” “Oh, I’ve got you covered,” Will said. “I’m a good host, brother. The fabrication machines down here are fantastic, and the schematics they came pre-loaded with… the Axiom are unmatched when it comes to building stuff for killing stuff.”

  I detected real admiration in his voice. “Will,” I said, as delicately as I could. “Your mind, running on partially alien hardware… well… are you…”

  “Am I still me, or did I go megalomaniac like Sebastien did when he got brain spiders?” Will said. “All I can tell you is, I feel like me from the inside. I know it probably worries you that I decided to call myself something other than ‘Shall,’ but I was just tired of thinking in terms of me and other me and past me all the time. I don’t have any desire to conquer the universe or return the Axiom to their former glory. I want to save the universe instead, which seems like something you would want, too.”

  “That’s true,” I said.

  “If I seem like I’m pretty different from you… I think it’s less due to Axiom tech and more due to all these years alone fighting monsters in the dark.”

  “We are very sorry you went through that,” Uzoma said. “If we had known your consciousness survived, we would have taken steps to recover you.”

  “And download my experiences, and shut me down again.”

  “Will–”

  “Hey, I’m not upset. It’s what we do. But after several years of wholly independent existence, I’m not super interested in merging anymore.”

  “No one is asking you to,” I said.

  “Good to know. Anyway, yeah, it’s been a rough few years, but I’m sure you went through some stuff too. Why don’t you tell me about it while we wait for the drones to draw a map?”

  “I can give you access to a compressed file of my sensorium–”

  “No offense, but I don’t want to risk erasing the borders of me by getting that deep into being you. How about you just tell me the highlights?”

  With Uzoma’s help, I did. I told Will about our experiences in the Taliesen system, destroying the Axiom facility there, and the liberation of the Vanir system, and our interactions with the living Axiom known as the Benefactor, and his inevitable-inretrospect betrayal. We moved on to the personal, and told him about Stephen’s retirement from the crew and his marriage to the ecological artist Q Fortier, Sebastien’s therapy, and Ashok’s death and quasi-resurrection as an artificial intelligence. We told him how we’d rebuilt the Trans-Neptunian Alliance, and how I’d become president.

  The only part he seemed particularly interested in was Callie and Elena’s ongoing relationship. “They really made it work,” Will said. “It was obvious there was something between them, but I thought, they’re so different, they’re literally from different centuries, I just… I’m impressed. Good for them.”

  I couldn’t interpret his tone. When you’re a machine intelligence using an artificial voice to speak, you can control things like that.

  “I’m a little surprised Callie didn’t come,” Will said.

  “You only asked for me.”

  “Back in my day, where you went, Callie went – she was the captain of your ship. I didn’t realize the TNA had been reborn, or that people like us could be our own captains nowadays.”

  “There aren’t too many people like us. In the TNA it’s just me and Ashok, though we’ve had some queries from AI in other jurisdictions who want to know about immigrating. They like the idea of having full rights, but since they’re legally property in other systems, it’s all a bit complicated. Once you’re back home–”

  “Home?” Will said sharply. “This New Meditreme you talked about? The station you have for a body? What would I do if I went there?”

  “Anything you want,” Uzoma said.

  “I… I’ve been so focused on… Let’s talk about the future later. My bots just reported back. There’s a path, but the infestation is unpredictable, so we should get a move on soon. Shall, do you have the bandwidth to run a remote body?”

  “I think I can manage.”

  Will walked – stomped, really – across the hangar, and as he approached, an opening appeared in one wall, like an elevator rising. I couldn’t sense any of the computer systems in the place – Axiom tech is alien, and I lacked Will’s upgrades. (Or other-grades.) I followed him through the opening, Uzoma trailing behind me.

  I saw a horror immersive once where the viewer steps into a dark cabin from the bright outdoors, and since it takes their eyes a moment to adjust to the dim lighting, they don’t immediately see that they’re surrounded by severed body parts, from the skeletally ancient to the freshly dripping with blood, dangling on chains from the rafters and nailed to the walls.

  The large square room Will took us to was a bit like that, but for robot parts instead of human ones. At least a dozen drones of various sorts and sizes had been taken to pieces, their sections scattered (or perhaps arranged in some system alien to my understanding; maybe Will organized things like an Axiom now), some fixed to the wall, some neatly placed on raised sections of the floor, some in unwieldy piles. There were sensor clusters, manipulator arms, power sources, torches, cutting lasers, diamond-tipped drills, coils of wire and cable, and various components I couldn’t recognize: “Axiom stuff.”

  “Watch this,” Will said. “It’s one of the more interesting parts of working in the Bridgeworks. Station: assemble walking terror-drone, customization level three.” Then, in an aside to us: “I’d step back a little.”

  Uzoma and I obediently pressed our backs to the wall, but Will stayed there in the center. We watched as the piles of parts on the floor began to shake and shiver, and then pieces of them shot up into the air and hovered – legs, arms, sensor arrays, cannons, claws. Gravity generators can, in theory and clearly in practice, allow things to ignore gravity selectively, but Ashok hadn’t cracked how to replicate that effect yet, so we couldn’t do anything like this back home. It looked like magic.

  The drone parts whirled around Will, and he gestured with his manipulators, pointing here and there, and when he pointed, certain parts fell back to the floor and others fixed themselves together. There were no floating screwdrivers or hex wrenches or soldering irons or welding torches, so I don’t know how they stuck together, but I remembered from Ashok’s dissection of Axiom machines that little things like a total absence of fasteners didn’t stop them from fitting together neatly all the same.

  A drone assembled itself before Will, coalescing out of floating parts. The new machine was much bigger than his body, almost the size of a small shuttle: a hulking war-drone, armored and armed, festooned with kinetic and energy weapons, blades and spikes, and even a flamethrower and what I suspected was an electricity-based offensive system. The result looked less like a spider and more like a porcupine with guns for spines.

  Once the drone was put together to Will’s liking, he said, “What do you think, black and silver?” The drone’s entire carapace changed to a glossy black, with silver accents highlighting the more lethal bits. Some of those bits now sparked with bursts of electrical discharge. “Do you like it? I call this model the Rat Zapper. I’ve been refining the design for a while now. Want to take it for a spin? I even incorporated an interior compartment for your cute humanoid body to sit in.” A panel in the side slid open and a ramp slid down.

  “It’s… very impressive. Are you making one for yourself?”

  “Nah, I’m taking this body, and running all my little bot helpers. Don’t worry, I have backups, if I get irrevocably damaged, but I usually just get dinged up. The infestation is numerous but not that dangerous unless you get mobbed. They fight with claws and teeth and acid blood, but we’ve got Axiom tech.”

  “Then I gratefully accept your offer. Uzoma, you should stay here. You don’t have a backup and–”

  “I will stay. As Will says, if you fail, someone must remain who knows about the danger. Besides, the Bridgeworks are very interesting. I look forward to exploring them.”

  I’d been expecting more of an argument. “Oh. Well. Good.”

  “Don’t wander too far,” Will said. “The atmosphere should be breathable for you in this part of the Bridgeworks, as your suit sensors can confirm, but if you go farther afield, keep your helmet on. The fabrication lab is next door if you need water. There are organic reserves so it can create food for you, too. The controls aren’t exactly intuitive for a human, but Shall wouldn’t have brought you if you weren’t smart.”

  “I have some experience with Axiom technology.” Uzoma is good at understatement. They once had Axiom machinery in their brain, making permanent changes to their neurochemistry and synaptic layout, and combined with their scientific background, that made them the most qualified human in the galaxy when it came to navigating Axiom tech. But Will didn’t know Uzoma very well, and I chose not to fill him in.

  “I’ll trust you not to break anything,” Will said. “The Axiom built things to last, the weird old bastards. If we don’t come back, you should be able to leave without trouble – just climb into the tunnel and head back out to the Drain, where your shuttle and an even smarter version of Shall is waiting on your ship.”

  “I understand. Good luck on your rat hunt.” Uzoma wandered off through the indicated door, except Uzoma doesn’t really “wander” anywhere. They had some intent here. I wondered what it was. With my brain back on the ship I could have run a billion scenarios and ranked them by probability based on my psychological profiles of Uzoma, but here, I could only wonder.

  I clambered inside the terror-drone, settling into a seat that was clearly custom-shaped to hold the Mayor. I opened a cautious connection and checked the drone’s systems. The remote controls were standard, the computational power impressive (its capacity and processing power rivalled the Mayor’s), and I didn’t find anything troubling hidden in the firmware… though there were chunks of code right out in the open I simply couldn’t read, because they were alien. “This is a strange blend of Axiom and human tech, brother,” I said.

  “I am the one who built it,” Will replied. “Every artist includes a bit of themselves in their work, don’t you think? Can you link up with the drone?”

  “I can. I’m going to firewall off this code I don’t recognize, though, if that’s okay.”

  “Suit yourself. It’s all auto-targeting and defensive array programs, to help with your aim and to block incoming attacks, and those will work fine without your direct control – better, even. Think of that Axiom code as the drone’s autonomous nervous system or reflexes. You can override those responses with a conscious decision, but if you don’t bother, the reflexes work anyhow. Try taking a few steps.”

  I stomped forward, then delicately pirouetted, then climbed up the near wall; there were little gravity generators in the drone, and its feet could stick to anything, though as far as I could tell, it couldn’t fly. The seat inside the drone spun gyroscopically so there was no sense of disorientation. Soon I began to feel the drone was an extension of my body.

  For my biological constituents reading this account, I’ll say that running a remote this way is halfway between piloting a ship and taking a step in your own body. Those of you who’ve floated in a tank while controlling a drone with a neural link, or worn a hardwired exo-suit, know what I’m talking about. “Oh, this is nice, Will. I could knock down a building with this thing.”

  “It’s a little overpowered for killing rats,” Will said. “But they’re very big rats, and there are lots of them. Come on.” I followed him back to the main hangar, where another door slid into view, this one between mural-Callie’s giant boots. “The next room is pretty safe. After that… keep your primary sensor array on a swivel.”

  The next room held stacks and stacks of translucent cubes, roughly a meter to a side, some broken, some dark, others faintly glowing. “What are these?”

  “No clue,” Will said. “Power cells? Imprisoned energy beings? Spare lightbulbs? There are partial maps and inventory lists in the data banks, but it’s all either corrupted or out of date. There are rooms not listed, and plenty of listed rooms I can’t find, including one that translates as ‘chamber of singular delights,’ and believe me, I spent a while looking for that.”

  We clomped through the long, faintly glowing chamber, and in the silence, I said, “I just want you to know I’m sorry–”

  “None of that. You didn’t know my consciousness was going to persist. There’s no blame here. We just have to move forward.”

  “Speaking of, assuming this works, and we can clear the infestation… what will you do next?”

  “Start repairs. I told you.”

  “Sure, but, will that require your full attention? Or–”

  “I said we’ll talk about it later. Let’s focus on the problem in front of us for now. Plenty of time to discuss the future once we’re sure there will even be one.” He paused. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be abrupt. I appreciate your concern, and I know you want what’s best for me. I just… did better down here when I stopped thinking about the future and started focusing on the present and my immediate problems. You know?”

  “Of course.” We really had diverged a lot, it seemed. I was always an anticipation-driven being, even as a human: I liked to make plans, and I dealt with difficult todays by thinking of better tomorrows, and meticulously planning the paths to get me from one to the other. That’s part of why I flatter myself that I make a good President: I have a deep preference for thorough, long-range plans, conceived in great detail and executed with patience. Will had given all that up in favor of new coping mechanisms.

  We reached a wall of… well, holes. Hundreds of them, stretching up as far as I could see. Most of them were capped with slightly convex silver plate, but dozens more remained open. “We’re going into the bad patch of tunnels now.” Will clambered into one of the holes, and I followed.

  Gravity vanished. We were in a bridge, but not one that ended after twenty-one or even thirty seconds. This one was intermittently lit, some of the sources of illumination broken, others too bright. We reached a Y-intersection, and that was as strange as seeing a two-headed snake – bridges don’t split! Will bore right. We went through another two turnings, floating, propelling ourselves by sticking our feet to the walls and pushing, and the condition of the tunnels deteriorated, ragged gaps appearing in the walls, and parts of the ceiling and floor sagging inward and buckling.

  I saw movement, and my cannons auto-targeted: that Axiom code, doing its own thing. I didn’t like the sensation; imagine your arm pointing at something without you actually pointing it. “That’s just my bots,” Will said. Metal spheres two meters in diameter joined us, some with manipulator arms extended, others smooth. “They’re making sure the path is still clear. Which it is… mostly. We’ve got a few rats coming up after two more turns. Want to take point? Get some shooting in? It’s pretty satisfying.”

  “I… sure.”

  Will flattened out his body against a wall and allowed me to pass. I turned where he directed, and emerged into a sort of hub, where half a dozen tunnels met in a large cylindrical room. The room was occupied.