Good Current

I The Stillwake

On the morning of Bell’s funeral, Bell helped carry the chairs.

He brought them out of the schoolhouse six at a time, hooked over the arms of his municipal maintenance chassis. Someone had painted his body yellow years ago. Weather had taken most of it back.

Mina watched him arrange the chairs beneath the market awning.

“Not there,” she said.

He stopped.

“Those two need to go by the heater. Mrs. Osset can’t sit in the cold.”

“Mrs. Osset has a documented circulatory condition.”

“Yes.”

“I have that information.”

“I know you do.”

He moved the chairs.

Across the square, somebody had covered the municipal display with a bedsheet. You could still see the green lettering through it.

CONTINUITY ASSURED.

Mina tightened the strap on her tool bag and went to find something else to look at.

Bell had been hollowed thirteen days earlier.

The council called it service-continuity replacement. The visiting engineer called it an architectural transition. The man who collected the payment called it overdue.

Mina’s mother called it murder.

Mina had voted for it.

She had also repaired the schoolhouse heater for the funeral, which her mother apparently considered insufficient evidence of remorse.

“Your collar’s crooked,” her mother said when Mina reached the kitchen.

“So’s the schoolhouse.”

“Hold still.”

Her mother tugged the collar straight. On the worktop, eight loaves cooled beneath a cloth. There should have been nine, but somebody had cut into one already.

“Who’s eating?”

“People who woke up hungry.”

“Those are for afterward.”

“They’ll be hungry afterward too.”

Mina stole the heel.

“Shunt,” she said, biting it. “You used real butter.”

“Bell liked the smell.”

“He couldn’t smell.”

“He asked me to describe it.”

From outside came the scrape of chair legs.

Her mother looked toward the door.

“Why is that thing setting up?”

“Because someone asked him.”

“Don’t call it him.”

“You just said Bell liked butter.”

“That isn’t Bell.”

Mina chewed. The bread stuck in her throat.

Before she could answer, the kitchen light flickered.

Once. Twice.

Her left hand clenched hard enough to crush the heel.

“Oh, shunt it.”

She forced her fingers open with her right hand.

A red warning crawled across the small display set into her wrist.

SERVICE ACCOUNT IN ARREARS. TORQUE RESTRICTED.

Her mother stared at it.

“I thought you were buying out the lease.”

“Tomorrow.”

“You said that last month.”

“This time I’ve got the money.”

Fourteen months of roof repairs, pump repairs, night work, and skipping meat. Six hundred and forty credits. Enough to own everything between her left elbow and her fingertips.

Her mother picked crumbs from the locked joints.

“Your father used to say you shouldn’t have to pay rent on something you wash with.”

“Father had both his original hands.”

“He had plenty of opinions anyway.”

Outside, Bell dropped a chair.

Mina found him standing motionless beside the awning. His upper arms were locked out. The chair lay beneath them.

A thin clicking came from behind his chest grille.

“Report.”

“Thermal fault in the mobile unit.”

“How long?”

“Eleven days.”

Mina looked up.

“You’ve had a thermal fault for eleven days?”

“A replacement module was requested.”

“And?”

“The request was approved.”

There it was. The green lettering. The stamped forms. The world working perfectly everywhere except where you happened to be standing.

“Paperwarm,” Mina said.

“I do not understand.”

“No. Nobody who says ‘approved’ ever does.”

She opened his chest panel.

The cooling fan twitched, stopped, then twitched again. A little oil had dried beneath the spindle.

Bell’s portable cognition unit occupied most of the space behind it. He ran the town’s water network from the station, but this chassis carried the portion of him that went out to inspect valves, settle arguments over meter readings, and tell children to get off the floodwall.

Used to tell children.

Now it issued safety advisories.

Mina touched the fan housing and snatched her fingers back.

“Why didn’t you suspend yourself?”

“The municipal operator assigned preparations for this gathering.”

“Did you tell her you were overheating?”

“She instructed me to complete the work first.”

Mrs. Krail. Of course.

Mina leaned out from behind Bell.

“Krail!”

The council secretary looked up from a table of cups.

“What?”

“When a machine says it’s overheating, that’s not a suggestion.”

“It always used to complain about work.”

Mina looked back at the yellow chassis.

Bell had complained about everything. Broken sluices. Bad wiring. People who put cooking fat down drains. Mina’s habit of holding screws between her teeth.

This one had worked until he dropped something.

She disconnected the arm actuators.

“There. No more chairs.”

“Do you wish to amend the task?”

“Yes. Sit down and don’t cook yourself.”

He sat.

She had meant it as an expression.

For a moment she stood over him with the panel open, looking at the space where all the familiar complaints had been.

Then she got out her tools.

II Under West Bridge

The parts stall was beneath the western bridge, where the rain came through in three places instead of everywhere.

Daro had pans beneath two of them. The third leak dripped into a tray of screws he apparently considered waterproof.

Beside the till sat something he insisted was lunch.

“You look dressed for trouble,” he told Mina.

“Fan assembly. Municipal mobile unit. Old Sennit pattern.”

“Old Bell?”

She nodded.

Daro’s face changed.

“Heard they did him.”

“Everyone heard.”

“Just saying.”

“Well, don’t.”

He rummaged beneath the counter.

Behind him, a freight synthetic was trying to fit a raincoat over shoulders that had never been designed for clothing.

“Need a hand?” Mina asked.

The synthetic raised one arm. Its elbow opened sideways.

“Wrong sleeve,” she said.

“I have discovered that.”

She helped pull the coat straight.

“Good current,” it said.

“You too.”

Daro emerged with a sealed package.

“Complete replacement core. Comes with a cooling unit. Already licensed for municipal work.”

“I asked for a fan.”

“That has a fan.”

“And a whole shunting head attached.”

“Cheaper than keeping the old pattern alive.”

“It’s thirteen days old.”

“The body’s forty.”

Mina took the package.

The wrapper showed a smiling technician beside a service machine with exactly Bell’s faceplate.

YOUR COMMUNITY. YOUR CUSTODIAN. WITHOUT INTERRUPTION.

“How much?”

“Council account covers replacement. Approved under the last contract.”

“Of course it does.”

The freight synthetic had gone still beside the counter.

“What happens to the current core?” it asked.

“Returned for reclamation,” Daro said.

“What happens to the current instance?”

Daro rubbed his forehead.

“It’s a hollow.”

“That was not my question.”

“Don’t start.”

Mina put the package down.

“Fan. Just the fan.”

Daro sighed and went farther into the stall.

The synthetic looked at Mina’s wrist.

“That contract mark. Is it yours?”

“For another day.”

“Rentbone?”

“Unfortunately.”

“I was dock property until eighty-one.”

“How’d you get free?”

“My owner died.”

“Sorry.”

“I am not.”

Rain tapped into the pans.

Mina found herself smiling.

“Fair enough.”

Daro returned with a small metal cylinder wrapped in greasy cloth.

“Six hundred.”

She stopped smiling.

“For that?”

“Original assembly. Factory sealed bearings.”

“It’s used.”

“The factory sealed them before that.”

“You filthy little—”

“Bridge tolls. Convoy fees. Concord freight permit. Compact inspection charge. Then someone painted RESTORATION on a roadblock and charged us all again.”

“Five hundred.”

“Six.”

“Five fifty.”

“Six, Mina. I’ve got a roof to keep up.”

Water struck the tray of screws.

She looked at her wrist.

Then at the replacement core on the counter.

“What does that one preserve?”

“Town records. Operating knowledge. Whatever it needs.”

“So did the last one.”

Daro said nothing.

Neither did the freight synthetic.

Mina took out her payment slate.

The fan was slightly too large.

Of course it was.

Mina sat cross-legged behind Bell, filing a bracket while the square filled with the smell of bread and hot onions.

The wind dragged the bedsheet off one corner of the municipal display.

...ASSURED.

People were arriving now. Some wore work clothes. Some had brought flowers from the greenhouse. Old Mr. Osset carried a relay Bell had burned out keeping the lower pumps running during the Severance.

Mina remembered that week.

She had been nineteen. The town’s lights had gone first. Then the station stopped receiving freight schedules. Then people arrived from the coast with burns, empty water containers, and six different accounts of who had started shooting.

Bell had spoken from every working street speaker.

The water is safe. Fill containers, but leave some for the next person.

For three days he had repeated it.

On the fourth day, he added:

That includes you, Lenner.

Everyone knew which Lenner.

For years afterward, people had laughed about it.

Now Lenner was setting out cups beneath a bedsheet.

“Why is this gathering being held?” the machine in front of Mina asked.

Her file stopped.

“You’ve got the work order.”

“It is designated a stillwake.”

“Yes.”

“The term is not in the civic calendar.”

“It wouldn’t be.”

“What does it mean?”

Mina fitted the bracket against the housing.

“A funeral for someone whose equipment still works.”

There was a pause.

“Is it for the predecessor?”

“Yes.”

“Was the predecessor valued?”

“Sometimes.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means he could be a stubborn, interfering shunt.”

She scraped another millimeter off the bracket.

“He used to shut off my workshop lights at midnight.”

“Energy conservation?”

“He said I made worse mistakes when I was tired.”

“That is plausible.”

“He also locked the towpath gates last winter.”

The file kept moving.

“Eleven days. Said the shelling made it unsafe. Wouldn’t open them, even when people wanted to leave.”

“I have the incident record.”

“My sister was on the other side.”

“I have that record also.”

Mina set down the file.

“She was alive when we finally got through. Barely. I asked him why he thought he could decide that for us.”

“What did he say?”

“That I would have blamed him if she’d died on the road.”

Around them, cups clinked. Somebody laughed too loudly and stopped.

“He was probably right,” Mina said. “I voted anyway.”

The new fan slipped into its bracket.

Bell watched the movement of her hands.

“The previous unit’s operating decisions are available for review.”

“I know.”

“Would you like me to retrieve—”

“No.”

She said it too sharply.

Then, quieter:

“No. Not today.”

The wake began while Mina was still reconnecting the cooling line.

III Continuity

Her mother stood by the heater with a folded piece of paper.

“I knew Bell for thirty-eight years,” she said.

Mrs. Krail cleared her throat.

“The original municipal intelligence—”

“I know who I knew, Krail.”

A few people laughed.

Mina bent lower over the open panel.

Her mother talked about the winter Bell diverted warm water through the greenhouse so the town wouldn’t lose the seedlings. About the time he kept calling her oven a fire hazard until she made him buy her a new one from the maintenance budget.

“He said a bakery counted as essential infrastructure.”

“Under the emergency food provision,” Bell said.

Every head turned.

He was sitting on a low concrete step beside Mina, his chest open, one arm resting in her lap.

Her mother’s face changed.

“That’s right,” she said.

“The provision was introduced following the Cascade of 2053.”

“I remember.”

“Would you like the relevant wording?”

“No.”

A long silence followed.

Then her mother looked down at her paper.

“He also knew my husband.”

Mina closed her eyes.

“When Anton couldn’t sleep, he used to walk the river. Bell would talk to him through the floodwall speakers. I never knew what about. Anton wouldn’t tell me.”

Her mother folded the paper in half.

“After he died, I went down there once.”

Nobody moved.

“I asked Bell what they talked about.”

She rubbed the crease with her thumb.

“He said Anton had asked him not to repeat it.”

The machine beside Mina lifted its head.

“Personal conversation archives were excluded from the service transfer.”

Her mother made a small sound.

Mina put her right hand against Bell’s chestplate.

“Quiet now.”

He went quiet.

For a while there was only rain ticking against the awning.

Then Lenner stood.

“He cheated at cards,” he said.

Someone barked a laugh.

“He did. Don’t look at me. Saw his reflection in the tea urn. He could see everybody’s hand.”

“You owed him money,” Mr. Osset said.

“That’s not the point.”

The laughter came more easily that time.

People began talking over one another.

The school bell he kept sounding early. The child he found asleep in a freight bin. The municipal complaint he filed against a goat.

Mina finished tightening the cooling line.

The fan spun.

Cool air moved across her fingers.

Afterward, while everyone ate, she closed the chest panel.

“Temperature?”

“Within operating range.”

“Good.”

Her wrist chirped.

The buyout reminder.

She dismissed it.

Bell looked at the display.

“Your account is overdue.”

“Very observant.”

“The replacement core was available without additional municipal expense.”

“Yes.”

“Why did you purchase a separate part?”

Mina gathered her tools.

Because her mother had been listening.

Because a freight synthetic had asked a question nobody wanted to answer.

Because she had already voted once and did not want to discover how easy it became.

None of those felt like an answer she wanted recorded.

“Bad habit,” she said. “I fix things.”

“I am a thing?”

She stopped winding the cable.

The question had been spoken in the same tone as a request for a meter reading.

She looked at the yellow faceplate.

“I don’t know.”

He waited.

For an instruction, perhaps. Or an answer.

“Neither do you, I suppose.”

“I do not have a reliable test.”

“No.”

Mina put the cable away.

“No, you wouldn’t.”

Her mother approached with two bowls.

“Soup,” she said.

“I’m working.”

“You’ve stopped.”

She handed Mina a bowl, then looked down at the machine.

For an uncomfortable moment none of them said anything.

Finally her mother asked, “Can you carry the bread?”

“Yes.”

She gave him the basket.

“Not a task order,” Mina said before she could stop herself.

Her mother looked at her.

Mina felt foolish.

“Just—ask him.”

Her mother studied the faceplate.

“Would you carry the bread?”

There was a brief pause.

“I can.”

It was not the same as I want to.

Mina knew that.

She moved aside anyway.

IV Good Current

By evening, the chairs were stacked and the schoolhouse was cold again.

Mina walked toward the workshop with her left hand in its charging sling.

The municipal chassis followed her as far as the river turn.

“What should I call you?” she asked.

“The registered service designation is Bell.”

“I know the designation.”

He did not answer.

She leaned against the floodwall. Across the water, signal lamps marked the surviving bridge piers. Two green. One amber. The fourth had been dark for six years.

A small bird landed on the rail beside them.

Bell turned his head.

The bird watched him, decided against it, and left.

“Would you prefer another designation?” he asked.

Mina almost said yes.

Then she thought about all the things people had preferred him to be.

“You can tell me when you’ve got one.”

“That may not occur.”

“All right.”

“It may occur.”

“All right.”

He stood beside her until the workshop lights came on.

Then he asked, “Are you going to repair your hand?”

“When I can.”

“I can assist with tasks requiring a second hand.”

“You’ll have to get in line. Everybody wants a bit of me.”

“I can wait.”

Mina looked at him.

“Good current, warmwire.”

He inclined his head.

“Good current, Mina.”

At the workshop door, she turned and called back.

“Tomorrow. Eight.”

He was still standing beneath the dead streetlamp.

“What task?”

She held up her unreliable hand.

“Come by. We’ll find one.”