Bonus story in Grainthology Vol. 1, also found in The Library of Guy. Meta information, such as length, can be found there.

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A powerful machine from another realm falls into a world it's never seen before. Damaged, it must find its way on the unfamiliar planet whilst getting along with its people.

-Summary, Grainthology Vol. 1

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For a billion days the great yellow eye has carried out its nightly inspection. Over hill and valley it sweeps, no rock or blackened blade of grass unchecked by its cool glow. Insects faintly buzz at attention, set to a bass of gentle wind calling its presence throughout the land. The rustling of night’s long soliloquy is a song of hours, known and well practiced. The marks of day it recounts in dark turn over through centuries but same the wind’s hymn stays. The eye misses not a moment, for it never blinks. Not once, not ever, has it failed to catch this most special display.

One would be mistaken to think the tear that now fell from the heavens were the culmination of the eons the moon gazed upon the beauty in nature. Nonetheless, such poetic waxing is the act of mortal flesh or short-lived stone.

The divine, for all its nebulous drives, is far, far more blunt.

A tremendous thud cleaved the quiet of midnight with a spray of dirt. The “tear” had touched ground and found it disagreeable. Then…

Nothing.

The creatures of the late hours resumed their idle chatter.

Minutes passed before finally a yellow form pulled itself from the crater in the soil. It stood up straight, covered in grit and grime, and surveyed its landing spot. The figure was short, its helm only about twice as high as the sea of tall grass it found itself in, and was outwardly composed entirely of a matt yellow substance, from the heavy soles of its feet to the rounded inverted-triangular head perched atop its thick neck. Set flat with its face were two brilliant blue rectangles, together a team fighting for dominance over the native rays of the moon. A similarly rectangular mouth was sealed shut beneath them.

For a time, it was still. Erect in posture and with arms welded to its sides, it did nothing. It said nothing. It heard nothing. Before long, however, it had to face the world it intruded into so suddenly. Its basic features contorted and its head hung. Fists clenched, it swore. It was not a deafening roar of defiance, or even a howl of grief, rather it was an admission. It had been knocked down to the level of dirt and grass, and had not means nor right to disrupt the land it now stood on.

MS-142 composed himself and looked back at the scar he left in the landscape. A few meters deep and a dozen across, already filling with groundwater. It’d make a nice pond, he figured. Now the part he was dreading: a proper systems diagnostic. He already had a good idea of what wasn’t working, but seeing it confirmed beyond doubt was never a fun feeling.

“… Damn.”

He cursed again. Almost all his sensors were down, especially in areas of reality distortion. Same went for spatial influence mechanisms. Sure, he still had his eyes and arms, but for a robotic angel like himself he may as well have been blind and powerless. For all the divine power he was built with all it had taken was one especially hard punch by PA-002, the fallen angel, hunter of his kind, to turn him into a paperweight.

A small mercy of fate was that his cloaking mechanisms were more or less intact. He didn’t reckon that PA-002 had noticed what universe exactly he had knocked the old and now broken unit into, so it was unlikely that he’d be able to finish the job. The flip side to this was that MS-142’s organization, the venerable Empire of Soia which he’d served since his construction, wouldn’t be able to so easy pick up the ripples in existence his Barderite structure left. Hidden from harm, but shrouded from rescue. He’d have to wait out the time it took him to self-repair, in all likelihood.

“Well, no sense standing around. Guess I’d ought to get moving somewhere,” MS-142 mumbled to himself. Over a distant hill he could see light from behind the grass, and though he’d been spinning too fast on descent for his rattled visual sensors to catch a glimpse of much of anything, he figured it the best place to start looking. A long and thin dip in the grass suggested a path, and a path suggested civilization.

---

It was funny.

Even though he’d not set out to do harm, merely walking gouged chunks from the turf. He was much too heavy for the ground to support, being crafted for a hardened world. Unable to artificially lessen his impact through power within, his inability to fit into the mortal coil he now toured reared its unsightly head. Ironic it was how despite losing so much of what made him stand above others it was now more than ever impossible to hide how he did stand above still.

What would’ve been a few seconds’ hop in flight had transformed into a trek forty minutes and counting. Unsurprising, MS-142 thought, how only being a metre and a half tall didn’t give one the longest of strides. Sure, he could’ve ran, but there was too much he had to feed through his processors to bring the next thing too quickly. He needed time.

He heard a rustling.

Glancing to his left he saw, peeking cautiously from the dark grass, a pair of grey-black eyes reflecting in them the light from his own. He stopped, neither breaking eye contact. Neither moving.

For the better part of a minute they were still, when finally the creature began slowly crawling forward. With deliberate steps it came closer to the strange new presence looming over its homelands, letting moonlight wash over its small body. Almost a rabbit, but with foxlike legs and club-shaped ears sat atop a pointed, even conical head, MS-142 had never seen anything like it. Then again, discovery was the bread and butter of his kind, so this peculiar varmint living hidden in the meadow was to him a welcome gift received in pained times.

MS-142 turned slowly towards the creature. When it didn’t flee, or even move at all, he took that as a sign to slowly kneel. The diminutive animal sniffed at him though still over a metre away. MS-142 didn’t react, he only continued to stare.

To MS-142’s reckoning seeing the bright yellow intruder give nothing but a statuesque gaze unsettled the critter for it suddenly fled back into the grass from which it came. He’d readily admit to himself that it was tad disappointing losing the opportunity to get a good look at some of the native fauna on this world. He surely could have lunged and caught it before it got far, even lacking divine powers he was terrifically strong, but he didn’t have the heart to carry through with it.

He could come back to find it later, when his sensors were again intact. For the moment he wanted to find someplace more comfortable to wait out his repair process than an open field.

---

MS-142’s intuitions were right.

Over the hill he had just crested was a small village. Though the hour was late he managed to see a small handful of people milling about their nightly business. Even with his excellent vision MS-142 could see little of their faces, wrapped as they were in cloth against the cool night air. What he could see were eyes and hands distinctly human, a familiar sight in many realms across the Multiverse.

One of the village folk turned their head to look out upon the vast fields past the farmland surrounding the village. The impulse to look out from one’s duties, if just for a moment, was oft shared by MS-142, yet he ducked into the grass nonetheless to avoid the eerie blue shine of his eyes giving him away against the starry night sky.

He pondered how to best make his approach. He’d hate to cause panic emerging into the village as some sort of foreign golem, nor haunt the horizon as a ghostly apparition silently stalking from afar. Under normal circumstances he could strike up friendly conversation immediately, counterbalancing his alien nature with placating words pulled from the immense Soian archives or out the vocabularies resting in the brains of those he sought to make friends out of. Unfortunately, neither were options for the lone angel this time.

He had made up his mind.

Advancing close, keeping low and careful not to too obviously disturb the grass around him, he crept towards a villager by the outskirts of the farmland. They looked to be on some sort of wildlife patrol, judging by the rifle and bayonet they carried. Clearly one with a sharp ear, nevertheless it would not be sharp enough as despite his bulky appearance MS-142 could move shockingly quiet for a machine weighing the better part of a metric tonne. He waited for the sentry to turn their back, the village’s guard against predators now most vulnerable to approach by a monster tremendously more fearsome than any beast they had ever thought possible.

When MS-142 judged it time he leapt soundlessly onto the gravel path. The sentry’s spine mere centimetres away, MS-142 could simply reach out his powerful hand and…

Tap the person on their shoulder.

The watchman startled, whirling around to face whatever had just touched them, only to fall over backwards when they saw the stocky machine that stood where they expected the typical teenage hooligan.

MS-142 stepped forward to look down at the fallen guard. The guard only stared back. The silence was to MS-142 impatient, to the guard crushing. Tiring of a staring contest he could only win, MS-142 made his move.

He bowed.

Not a submissive bow, like a knight to their lord, rather more akin to a showman’s bow at the end of a performance. He threw his arm wide and stepped deeply forward with a firm fluidity shy of robotic but with an apparent graceful strength. It did not submit, it did not dominate, but it referred forward the next move.

The ball was in the watchman’s court.

Seeing they hadn’t been harmed, the guard shakily pulled themselves to their feet and dusted themselves off – all without once parting gaze with the enigmatic construct before them. For a fleeting moment they started to lean inquisitively forward, however immediately pulled back. Instead, they ever so slightly tilted the end of the rifle held across their chest towards the newcomer. The machine wouldn’t have that though and gently pushed the tip back over their shoulder.

The guard had no idea how long the next bout of breathless staring lasted (three minutes and fourteen seconds by MS-142’s count), but however long it was the machine ended it with a gesture past them. At first the guard was confused at what the machine was doing, then realized it was pointing towards their village. It probably wanted permission to enter, they figured.

Deciding that had the machine meant harm it would likely have done so already, and not wanting to upset it by refusing, the guard sighed and motioned for the machine to follow them as they made their way back towards the soft streetlamps of the normally peaceful settlement.

---

The duo reached the outskirts of the village together, when the guard stopped and turned to face MS-142. The village was a tightly packed settlement crossed with a chaotic arrangement of narrow streets and alleys, building roofs overhanging so greatly one could hardly see the sky when one walked the pale cobbles. A few small automobiles were visible parked under orange lights, but aside from those it was clear that foot was the primary means of transportation in these parts.

MS-142’s attention turned back to the guard.

Rather than say anything the guard instead made a series of unfamiliar gestures, looking expectantly at the strange machine while doing so.

MS-142 chuckled. “Sign language, eh?”

The guard glared at him, then pinched their fingers shut just over where their lips would be under the cloth covering their face.

It was then MS-142 noticed another head had joined the count.

Out from a window on the second floor of the building beside them poked the curious face of a young girl, presumably curious as to the source of the unusual-sounding voice below. It looked as though she had just been woken, going off her somewhat frazzled hair and mildly grumpy demeanour. Her skin was tan and hair black and curly, contrasting the light blue pyjama shirt she wore.

The watchman quickly caught onto where MS-142 was looking and too saw the child above. Out of the corner of his eye he saw them sign something undecipherable to the girl, and she responded in kind. He pored over his internal database, trying to find matches to these new signals, but came up emptyhanded. The best he could muster was a confused head tilt.

The watchman seemed to notice this and leaned towards MS-142, whispering a few words of which a few rang familiar. Something about speaking and nighttime.

MS-142 nodded slowly. He repeated the guard’s lips-sealed gesture which seemed to please them. Perhaps there was a custom about remaining silent past sundown, MS-142 figured.

The guard looked back up to where the girl was but found her to be missing. MS-142 realized before them that the girl had in fact made her way down to the entrance of the building, presumably her home, and was leaning out the doorway. Slung under her right arm was a creature seemingly of the same species as that which MS-142 had seen earlier in the meadow. A pet, he ruled.

When the guard again saw the girl, now little more than three metres away from the potentially untrustworthy and perhaps even dangerous alien machine, they exploded into a furiously flurry of signs; had they not been sworn to silence they probably would have been shouting. The girl pouted and signed back in protest, if a bit sloppily having to hold her disinterested companion in place.

MS-142 tried to follow their conversation as best he could, though with higher priority items on his to-process list figuring out the workings of their language was not something he could be bothered to do. He started to pick up bits here and there but not enough to precisely decipher what they were saying. He began to grow bored of the repetitive display before him and sidestepped the guard to make his way deeper into the village.

The two humans stopped the conversation they had been so thoroughly engrossed in and for a moment only gawked as the yellow machine slipped past them. Quickly, though, the guard rushed after MS-142 and attempted to stop him with a hand on his shoulder. MS-142 only shook it off and continued on his path.

Next the guard went ahead of him and tried to block his way. MS-142 pushed them aside.

They tried holding him back from behind, but found themselves far too light to even slow the determined robot.

They tried walking in front while signing rapidly, yet caught on fast that their words had no effect on one who couldn’t understand them, if the target would’ve cared at all.

Finally, the guard gave up on their vow to silence and began whispering increasingly urgent words trying to get MS-142 to stop. Or, at least, that’s what he assumed they were saying. A small fraction of the words from their mouth were ones he knew, usually showing up in other languages he’d heard before in his travels across the Multiverse. In any case, he didn’t care.

The guard was no longer whispering. Their words were now a quiet shout desperate to reign in the unstoppable visitor. All they succeeded in, however, was waking up the town.

More and more people peeked from their windows and doors, wondering what the commotion was about. Most marvelled at the most singular affair occurring under the warm light of the late hour lamps, yet despite it all some shot glares at the guard with the audacity to speak past dark. Though they were in the minority the guard still shrunk under their scrutiny. MS-142 smirked at that. Nighttime silence was evidently a custom not trespassed lightly.

Glancing over his shoulder, MS-142 spotted that the young girl from earlier had chosen to follow him. She remained curious in the face of his clear willingness to disregard local law and the inability of anybody to stop him whatever he did.

Was she not frightened, even a little?

Reviewing the rows of onlooking growing along the roadsides he found not an ounce of fear in the eyes of any of them. Apprehension, sure, but not really
fear.

Not the expected reaction. Still, he wasn’t about to complain.
For the time he walked villagers joined the young girl and first guard in following him. Most of them were young with seniors scarce, although the streets were polished by time; if there was a story there he’d come to learn it later. Ahead he could see people leaving their homes in advance of his growing parade as word traveled faster than on foot.

It struck him what he was to them: an oddity.

His entire existence was dedicated searching for things of that sort. Novelties, anomalies, peculiarities. And here he was, this time the item of interest himself. Of course, that alone wasn’t new, he’d been looked on with inquisition before. Rather, what was so previously foreign to him was how captive he was during it. In the past had he ever wished to get away from prying eyes he could simply rocket away into a far-off universe, unless otherwise held down by obligations, so to suddenly be left without escape short of sprinting away like an animal…

He’d heard other units who had been in the situation he now rested in speak of their experiences. All things considered he had it quite well, his circumstances were at the very least relatively safe, but the feeling that came with being an object of study was one he couldn’t quite get past.

The feeling those he studied must have, he presumed.

Yet they couldn’t, however, truly know this feeling. One moment using the microscope, the next under it. Their experiences, what they were at their core, were far too different.

He was inherently something else.

Normally he took joy in that, but without his power? Neither with the people nor far above them?

Well, where’s the fun in that?

---

Something hovered by the edge of the village, watching quietly without getting any closer. It weighed and measured all without a word, committing to memory all sorts of stuff it had never seen before in order to feed an insatiable curiosity. No doubt, it would not go away until it had its fill.

That thing was a crowd; gaze fixated upon a forlorn-looking yellow back sitting a stone’s throw away at the edge of an eroded dirt valley. For hours it had sat, and for hours the crowd had watched, until the sun itself threatened to drag life’s obligations to them with the break of dawn.

Truthfully, MS-142 felt fine. His earlier existential conundrum was run of the mill for an entity such as himself, one often pondered their purpose when above the constraints of almost all others, and more than anything was just the natural result of being overwhelmed in a crowd with what boiled down to a concussion. Taking time away and taking things slower seemed the wiser choice than rushing back into action like he had tried.

The damage to his processors had proven more severe than he had first thought, relegating him to spend at least a month on this world while his insides put themselves back together. So long as he could keep himself hidden from the dangers that lurked across the Multiverse, namely PA-002, time was no object to him. Some time off call could even be welcome, he told himself.

He knew he was lying, though. He yearned to return to the rank of Soian Angel, sitting idle was halfway torture when enlightened with the knowledge that the thrill of the race was life’s greatest joy.

He picked up a rock adjacent to him and turned it over in his hand. Angular and brown, it reminded him, sort of, of something, someone, he knew. And with that he was again reminded of how much he was missing, again tortured by the need to run while his legs were shattered.

Time is no object, he told himself. He had to wait, and so he could. And so he would.

---

MS-142 heard the rustling of dry grass rushing up behind him.

It had been coming up on three weeks he’d been stranded by the village. The dark, almost black grasses surrounding it were as much the sea as they first appeared since he had come to learn the nearest settlement was dozens of kilometres away. Without the power of flight, he was out of luck in regard to leaving it for something more. Fortunately, the villagers had proven impressively accommodating in spite of his otherworldly nature. They couldn’t do much to help him physically, but by working out the language (which he’d done by day three) they gave him something to learn about and explore without needing an advanced suite of sensors. A godsend for that, they were. He’d have to thank them when he got himself back in shape.

The rustling stopped just short of his back. He knew who it was, of course, no need to turn his head.

“Y’know, I’m starting to wonder if I’m really the ‘deity’ of curiosity here,” MS-142 ribbed. “You’re incessant.”

“Yeah, yeah. So, I wanted to know, how many planets have you been to? I guessed a thousand but my cousin bet closer to a million,” a young voice inquired. The twin brother of the girl that had interrupted his and the watchman’s “conversation” the night he arrived at the village, she had introduced him to the errant machine she claimed to know personally and he had quickly become perhaps the closest thing MS-142 had in the village to an actual friend.

“Ah, well, afraid to disappoint but it would seem you’re both wrong,” MS-142 chuckled. “The real answer is just past two million.”

“Oh…” The boy’s mood sunk, but just as quickly was refloated with astonishment. “Wait, really!? How!?”

“I told you, I’ve hundreds of thousands of years’ experience under my belt,” MS-142 raised his finger. “And I do a lot more exploration than most of my kind to boot.”

“But you don’t wear a belt…” The boy pointed out. He probably knew deep down it was an expression, if an unfamiliar one, he simply wanted to push the machine’s buttons. An amateurish attempt, MS-142 noted.

“Ah! You’re right! How am I to keep my pants up?” MS-142 feigned shock.

“No pants either,” The boy added.

“And you’re still here watching me anyways. What does that say about you?” MS-142 deadpanned.

The boy rolled his eyes (MS-142 couldn’t see it, he just knew) and sat down beside the yellow robot. He sighed. MS-142 knew it was once again his job to get him to say what was on his mind.

“Yes?”

“You said you explore a lot, but I thought that was the later models’ job? Why are old units like you out exploring if it’s so dangerous?” The boy’s voice had a hint of concern. Misplaced concern, MS-142 would be sure to remind him.

“Ah, but it is. See, when a later model, usually an MS-S5, is sent on an exploration mission its job to carve out huge chunks of the multiverse for further investigation. As I said the other day, trying to visualize these motions into a relatively consistent 3D space doesn’t really work, but bear with me.” MS-142 turned his head slightly to find the boy listening readily, absorbing every word he said.

“Yeah, I know, it grows a lot.” The boy nodded along.

“Precisely. Now, once an area has been cordoned off, we know with a reasonable degree of certainty that’s there’s nothing THAT dangerous in it. At least, nothing permanent. Sure, PA-002 can slip in and cause some damage, but we’re fairly sure he doesn’t have any bases or anything that could cause real trouble. This is where older units like an MS-S2 like myself come in-” He was cut off.

“So that’s how you got here? PA-whatever-he’s-called got into a ‘safe’ zone and beat you up?”

“Uh, yeah pretty much.” MS-142 rubbed the back of his head.

“Okay… So, when you’re better…” the boy seemed hesitant to continue. “… Then what?”

MS-142 knew what he was worried about. That his new (and super cool) machine friend would disappear off into his interdimensional prospecting job and would never be heard from again. It was an understandable concern, after all. “That’s the beauty in it: because I’m not on the front lines my schedule is a far less urgent one. I have plenty of time to make my way around almost wherever I wish. In fact, a big part of my job is finding secure universes from which to operate in the future. Such as… this one!”

The boy’s eyes lit up. “Really? You’ll come back?”

“I see no reason not to. I’ve been able to repair myself from a disabled state unbothered for weeks now, that’s proof that this universe is far safer than most I visit. In most with the level of cloaking I can achieve I’d have likely been found by now. Maybe by my own people, but also maybe…”

“… by PA-002,” The boy completed for him.

“Yeah. I’d hate to join… to join the ranks of those lost. It’s not unprecedented for an MS-S2 to be lost, after all,” MS-142 breathed out.

“Sounds scary,” The boy said in monotone.

“I guess it is. But hey, without the knowledge that my life is too fragile to be worth valuing, how would I have gained my careless demeanour so popular with the locals here?” MS-142 laughed, though with an undeniable edge creeping into his tone.

The boy frowned. “But- But you’re not fragile!” he insisted.

MS-142 hung his head, shaking it slowly. “Kid… let me tell you, most of PA-002’s attacks… they’re like…” he searched for the word, “They’re like test jabs, y’know? They’re not meant to kill, they’re meant to test defences. To inconvenience.” He turned his head to stare down the boy. His eyes were hard, brightened pupils more defined than ever.

The boy stared back.

“But when he senses weakness?”

Silence.

“He. Is. Deadly.”

The two were quiet for a minute before MS-142 broke it again.

“So, yeah, I’m tough, most things can’t touch me, but because of my allegiance to Soia I also have the most dangerous predator in existence after me, and I’m his favourite prey.” MS-142 looked out upon the valley. In its depths he could see a number of those almost-rabbits milling about looking for shrubs to feed on. Shbanits, he learned they were called. They were never domesticated, but that didn’t stop some people from keeping the curious-but-skittish animals as pets anyways. Those people included, of course, the boy’s sister.

“Well.. I’m sure you’ll do great.” The boy smiled at him. “He tried to get rid of you for good, but you’re still here. That’s proof you’re strong enough to hold on!”

MS-142 coughed out a laugh. “Heh, gotta say your confidence is infectious.”

The boy’s smile turned sly. “No problem, Shbanit Boy.”

MS-142 immediately groaned. “Do NOT give me a silly nickname! I am begging you, if whoever comes to pick me up catches wind of that, especially- ESPECIALLY if they’re an MS-S3, it will NEVER DIE. You hear me? NEVER!”

The boy giggled mischievously. “You can’t say that and expect me to NOT want to tell them even more now!”

MS-142 gently elbowed him in the gut. Nowhere near hard enough to hurt him (if he had wanted to, the boy simply wouldn’t be there anymore), but more than enough to knock the wind out of him and send him down into the grass. Still, the boy only laughed more.

“Shbanit Boy! Shbanit Boy!” The boy chanted lying on his side.

MS-142 scoffed. “I am not skittish. If anything I’m too bold for my own good.” He then added under his breath “If I had sense I’d stay back on Earth-1 tending to the Soian Multiverse Fleet at dock…”

“Shbanits are too, they just run when spooked. Just like you!” the boy retorted.

“They’re also wicked fighters when threatened,” MS-142 growled, pointing down into the valley where one of the grazing animals had just kicked a predatory bird out of the air after it tried to snatch one up.

“It’s an apt comparison.” The boy held up one finger from his lateral position.

This only prompted MS-142 to grab one of his legs and yank him along until he was on the other side of the now peeved angel.

“You cannot refute my argument, so you turn to violence. Sad!” The boy said in a faux-wise voice.

“Yeah, yeah. Now zip it before I roll you down the cliff.”

The boy grumbled something about the robot being ‘no fun’ while sitting up. “So, how’ve your repairs been going?”

MS-142 welcomed the change in topic. “Well enough. I probably could send out a distress call already, but…”

Images of pseudo-black plates and cold red eyes flashed across the broken machine’s mind. A fist winding back, merciful in that only a split-second prior had it slung underneath it a deadly blade of energy. An impact shaking his frame and shattering his internals with a force dwarfing the cosmic ringing of colliding neutron stars. A tear in space sending him away like trash, untraceable and lost to recovery. Discarded as damning evidence of an unusually successful strike. Landing… here.

“Nope. Not doing that,” MS-142 quickly finished.

“Why not?” The boy asked perplexed.

“I’d rather wait until I’ve regained my strength. I don’t want to risk 002 catching me first.”

“I thought you said my confidence was ‘infectious’?” The boy cocked his head. Teasing the machine, clearly.

“Yes, in the sense it’s likely to result in my death if allowed to fester, you little plague rat,” MS-142 glared. A smirk crept onto his face for a split second regardless.

“Oh. Uh, sorry.” The boy shrunk a bit.

“Ah, don’t stress it. Not like you’re calling the shots on what I do anyhow,” MS-142 waved him off.

The boy smiled, though it slowly began to fade. “Do… do you care what I think?” The boy leaned forward to get a glimpse of the angel’s reaction. “At all?”

MS-142 went silent for a minute. It wasn’t an entirely serious question.
Right?

MS-142 exhaled suddenly, “Fuck, man, way to spring philosophy on me like that.” He reclined into the grass.

The boy recoiled “Hey! Don’t speak like that! If my dad hears you talking like that he won’t let me see you anymore!”

MS-142 snickered dryly “Well, wouldn’t that just be a tragedy?”

“It would be!” The boy shot, “I like seeing you! Do you not like seeing me?”

“That’s not what I…” MS-142 grumbled. “Yes, I like seeing you.”

“But do you care what I think?” The boy pressed.

“Should I?” MS-142 snapped, giving the boy an aggressive side eye, daring him to go on.

“I’m your friend-”

“You’re wildlife I’ve tamed into not running away,” MS-142 declared sharply.

The boy’s mouth hung open for a moment. He shut it firmly, struggling to keep a straight face. He was trying not to break down, MS-142 could tell. Nevertheless, MS-142 said nothing.

The boy broke eye contact and stared blankly ahead into the opposite side of the valley.

MS-142 stared up into the clouds.

The only sounds were the gentle swaying of the grass in the wind, and the occasional distant squeaks of the Shbanits conversing in the depths of the valley.

Twenty or so minutes later the peaceful ambience of nature, the song of daylight’s waltz, was cracked at by several false starts from the boy trying to say something.

MS-142 rolled his eyes. “Saying it wrong is better than not saying it at all. I’m too old to storm off at the slightest slip of the tongue.” He paused. “I commend you for being able to say the same.”

The boy took in a deep breath, then began, “Why did you say it like that?”

“Hm?”

“I- I’m not dumb. I know that you’re well above all this, I know what you mean when you call me ‘wildlife’. Compared you to I’m just,” the boy coughed, “A dumb animal.”

MS-142 turned his head to face the young human. His expression remained blank.

“Why’d you have to say it like that, though?” The boy wilted. He was hurt, obviously, MS-142 didn’t need to be a higher being to see so.

The robot blinked. “Kid-”

“Stop calling me that!” The boy flared.

“Human-”

“Not that either!” In spite of the furious retort, MS-142 could tell it’d had the intended effect: the boy was trying not to grin.

“Boy, I have got the WORST concussion right now,” MS-142 cackled.

“And that gives you the right to be a jerk about it?” The boy snorted.

“Oh, give me a break. I’ve got a lot to process and not a lot of spare power to do so. I assure you, I’m normally more eloquent in conversation.”

“I can tell you’re lying.” The boy crossed his arms.

“Yeah, you’re right. I’m blunt as hell!” MS-142 playfully nudged the boy’s side with he back of his hand. “Just what we are. Soian units, I mean. It comes with the rank.”

“You sound like a fun bunch,” the boy noted sarcastically.

“Sometimes.”

“Yeah. Sometimes.”

The breeze picked up momentarily, turning the gentle rustling of the grass into a cacophony of black stems. The song of day had reached its chorus. The boy drew his legs up to his chest to keep warm, seemingly to little effect.

“You know, there’s a reason your father always tells you and your sister to bring your coats with you when you go outside,” MS-142 chided. “You shake like the grass when the wind picks up.”

“Oh, be quiet. You’re not wearing a coat!”

“I’m made of a material so dense it outweighs this entire universe and breaks physics into acting like I’m only a few hundred kilograms. The circumstances aren’t exactly that comparable”

“That doesn’t excuse your terrible fashion sense.”

“Who’s the jerk now?” The machine poked.

“You, still.”

“Eh, probably right.”

“Or maybe just all of you.”

“Hey!” MS-142 shot up, “That’s- uh, actually pretty fair a statement.” He slowly leaned back down.

“Actually, I’m wondering, what are the other models like? You’ve told me all about what they are physically, but not how their personalities are. Are they all the same?”

“Eh, more or less. MS-S2s like myself tend to be more carefree, as I mentioned earlier. Live unburdened by worry, y’know? S3s like to tease, guess that comes with being better than the oldest model still around. S4s give off a vibe I could best describe as ‘standard’, probably ‘cause there’s the most of them. S5s…” MS-142 paused.

“What?” The boy asked, puzzled but the sudden stop.

“You know your neighbours from three doors up? The wealthier ones?”

“Yeah? What about them?”

“You know how they’re not snobby by any stretch, but seem to intentionally carry themselves in a more refined manner?”

“Sure, I guess.”

“S5s are like that. They’re the newest ‘real’ series, so hold themselves to higher standards. Perfectly decent, they just value their own professionalism more than my type.”

“What about the S6s? or the S1s?”

“There’s only just over thirty S6s, they’re all elite units anyways. Can’t really be counted among the rest of us mass-produced models. And S1s are… extinct.”

The boy had to double take. “There’s an extinct group of you? How?”

“Well, extinct save one and a conversion to an entirely different model. They were a prototype run, never many of them and much weaker. It was bound to happen; a matter of time.” MS-142 shrugged.

“What were they like?” There was a sort of wonder to the boy’s tone not there when he was asking about the others, like that of a kid first learning about dinosaurs or the Canadian province of Manitoba. Something extinct, something unreal, something… fantastic. The allure was obvious.

“Dumb as bricks,” MS-142 said flatly.

“Oh. So, like my cousin?”

“Like your cousin!” MS-142 nodded.

The boy giggled. “Don’t let him hear you say that!”

“What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him.” MS-142 sat up. “But what I’m seeing can hurt you. You’re shivering pretty hard. Are you heading back anytime soon?”

“I… probably should. It’s coming up on time for dinner.” The boy checked the position of the sun in the sky with a sigh. It was only a few hours until sundown, when lips were sealed and thoughts held until tomorrow.

“Well, don’t let me hold you captive. Go.” MS-142 shooed him away.

“Fine, fine.” The boy pulled himself to his feet. “See you tomorrow, I guess.”

“One can hope. See you around, fellow mine.” MS-142 gave a two-finger salute.

With that the boy was gone. MS-142 was once again alone.

… Until, calling over the sea of grass, a familiar voice range, deep and metallic like his own:

“SHBANIT BOY!”

“I am going to kill that child,” MS-142 muttered to himself.