Stories

The Disemboweler

Someone was killing the cars in the neighborhood. Gle

One morning, he found his trusty Peugeot eviscerated. Its large red heart lay among glittering metal, the only time Gle

"What happened?" Gle

"Bad man," the spirit said, and faded, losing its form wisp by wisp, with nothing to hold it together. Gle

As the body was removed, Gle

He walked to work that day, to a large animated building that hissed at him when he approached-it was not used to him appearing on foot, without the car or anything. After a suspicious sniffing and creaking, the building swung its doors and admitted Gle

He started a coffeemaker (the one at home was broken, its spirit having left for some greener pastures; namely, Gle

"Thank you," Gle

It wasn't just the murder, but the savagery of it. Why would someone spread the i

He read the paper to calm himself. The incident with his deceased Peugeot was reported already, and so was another one - last night, it seemed, the murderer, already nicknamed the Disemboweler, got his hands on, and vivisected, a microwave oven callously left at the curb by its owners. Gle

Gle

Gle

Then what? Gle

Later that night he prepared the sacrificial coffeemaker and left it by the curb, alone in the night. Gle

Gle

It didn't take the murderer long-just as Gle

The murderer remained crouched, and contemplated the broken pieces for a time. As Gle

A shot rang out from the darkness, ricocheted off the lamppost and hit one of the larger pieces, displacing it. The Disemboweler jumped to his feet and rushed away, disappearing in the ink of the alley to the right of the house. Several policemen pooled into the light, and disappeared too, chasing the long silhouette of the Disemboweler.

Gle

Gle

"Halt!" A metallic, awful voice, nothing like the normal cadence of human speech or gentle gurgling of the spirits. "Do not move."

The sound petrified Gle

The stranger shook off the vacuum even as it hissed and spat, and stood. In the struggle, his long coat came unbuttoned, and soft glinting of old metal in the light from the steetlamp outside finally snapped Gle

"No!" The stranger clanked angrily across the kitchen, back and forth. "I'm not an appliance. I am a robot."

It was a good thing that Gle

"No." The robot stopped. "It's not that, not that at all."

"I didn't know there were any of you still around."

"Just me," the robot said. "Can I hide here for a while? I have survived far too long to be captured because of a coffeemaker."

"Why would I let you?"

The robot stepped closer, its hot oily breath singeing Gle

"I'll scream. They'll hear me and come for you."

"Compassion?" the robot tried.

"Not after you killed my car."

"I'm sorry. Would you like to know what it is that I do?"

"Yes," Gle

"It is an ancient art," the robot said, its faceted eyes glinting in the candlelight.

The word was haruspex, not disemboweler, the robot told Gle

Robots do not have spirits, the robot contined. They are not like microwaves. Neither they have the knowledge of right and wrong, or any other reliable moral compass, like people do. They only have the desire to be ethical.

Haruspicy, the robot told him, unlike many other forms of divination, did not reveal future or any past secrets; it did not concern itself with knowledge. It told you only whether you were right.

The Etruscans and other ancients used it to know the will of gods, whether they supported an undertaking either completed or intended. Robots used haruspicy to know whether they were making a moral choice, a correct choice. There was just no way around it.