A Radiance in the Bone
by Scot Noel

The other, by far the more graceful and elegant of the two, wore nothing more than his own skin of black polymers, his ceramic joints lined in gold, and his black metal breast plate, all polished to a mirror’s gleam.

“I’m a scientist,” the robot said, the one who called himself Temu after the Egyptian god. “I shouldn’t be caught dead here.”

From the robot’s angled, polished cheeks, a puff of steam went up on either side of his face; he vented heat in a manner far more efficient than his companion’s copious and seemingly endless rivulets of seat. And still it was not enough, for he felt his senses reeling in the desert sun.

“Quiet,” urged Temu’s companion. He was a paleontologist from Little Rock named Paul Mennich. “You owe me that much. Now be quiet and watch the act.”

T-shirts seemed to be the most distinctive feature of the crowd: t-shirts depicting tyrannosaurs and apatosaurs, t-shirts proclaiming the end of the world by fire, and t-shirts mixing the two, as if by some wild, imaginative leap it were not only possible to connect one to the other, but infinitely practical.

Men of every size and shape wore these colorful, lunatic pullovers, as did their children, and their wives (some of whom looked better than others in the sweaty, badly-sized garments), and even a few robots here and there had covered their natural graces with tie-dyed pictures of the Cretaceous.

There were more than a dozen robots in the immediate vicinity. After all, Temu was not unusual in the modern world. If he ducked and turned a quick corner as they made their way about the encampment, it was more to keep anyone from recognizing the famous Cambridge expert on carnosaur evolution than to hide his mechanical nature. He was also unsure about whether he wanted to be seen in the company of his former friend.

Brushing sweat away from his eyes for the hundredth time, Paul motioned Temu’s attention to the drama unfolding before them. On a stage erected just outside the desert wash, beneath a canopy of canvas, a silver robot exhorted the crowd to believe.

Like all intelligent machines, Temu owed his chance at education and career to a long line of radical A.I.s. For those first robots, gaining freedom had been more like training a mouse to hit a bar for his reward (mankind being the mouse) than any matter of a direct revolt.

It was a slow process.

By slow prudence they gained the right to work industriously and forthrightly toward their own solutions, then to design their own projects, and finally to chart their own destinies.

Later, through soft degrees, they began to mold their dreams and their bodies to the omni-purpose shape of man.

“Humans, hear me,” said a commanding, crystal voice. It belonged to a silver robot, to a machine whose frame was as thin as a skeleton of sculpted metals.

“You will end soon!” it said. “You will end in fire!” The voice crackled over a set of aging speakers.

“Ramadon!” someone in the crowd cheered. Others followed.

“I think we should leave,” Temu said.

“I see it!” the silver robot shouted. It tossed away its microphone, projecting with a voice that needed no further amplification.

“After the flames, I will come. Out of the fire which takes the life of the world, my beast shall rise. Souls of the unworthy flee before the judgment of my eyes. Believe! Believe, for the truth shall be left to the judgment of wiser men.”

Temu turned to go, but found his wrist locked in Paul’s grasp. A demand for justice seemed to have settled deep into the human’s eyes. Temu hesitated.

“Come!” The silver one leapt to the ground and came forward to the nearest of the listeners, moving with a grace of action that seemed more predatory than mechanical.

“Touch me,” it said. “Know the truth.”

At first Temu thought the request was to make contact with the gleaming frame of the mad machine, but human assistants were hurrying forward into the crowd, bringing with them the promised “truth.”

In their hands they carried fossils of one hundred and thirty million years past. It was to touch these stones and the form of the bones within that the crowds had gathered, the reason they had listened to the apocalyptic voice of the strange, metal performer.

Paul motioned to Temu that they should get out of the way and observe things from a more discreet angle, farther off. But in turning, they were blocked.

“Go forward,” said a burly voice. Temu and Paul tried a quick sidestep, but three big men and a robot wearing a sidearm had other ideas. They were herded forward, past sweaty, potbellied men and loud teenagers, toward the silver leader. Toward the bones.

“Gentlemen,” said the heavy, crystal voice upon their near approach. “Welcome to the lessons of Ramadon.” If the machine could have smiled an evil smile, Temu and Paul both believed it would have done so.

“I am honored to be paid a visit by such prominent paleontologists,” the silver robot said. “But there will be no debunking today.” Close by, two dark-skinned men held between them a rectangular cut of stone.

Temu almost snarled in return, startled to be recognized by such a charlatan. His cheeks puffed steam. But for him, at a glance, one startling fact overtook the rest: the fossils were real.

He saw it in the grain of the stone and the color of the forms within. He saw it in the way ages of pressure had stretched and curved the lines of once straight bone.

“Forget our differences, scientist,” said the silver one. “You need to know this. You must know.”

A mirrored hand caught Temu’s black palm, drawing it forward, and turning it with a firm, maniacal strength until ebony fingers came to rest upon sun-hot stone. How, Temu wondered, were the human handlers maintaining their grip on the piece?

Suddenly, the heat of palm sensors against rock disappeared. Between his teeth Temu know the rush of blood. His tongue wrapped around torn flesh as he shook his head to free it from his prey. The smells of mud, fern, and a nearby spring filled his lungs.

Teeth? Tongue? Smells? Lungs?

In a neat collapsing of his over-strained consciousness, Temu nearly fainted. Instead he screamed.

Continued on Next Page

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