Our Lady of the Ice

Finding a robot in the amusement park was simple, assuming you had access to the control center, as Sofia did. When the park first closed and the cullings began, all those years ago, the city men would go straight to the operations room and locate the robot types they wished to capture. In those early days, so many had been lost, and it was Sofia who had realized that if they barred the city men’s entrance to operations, then the cullings would be much less effective. Luciano had been the first robot to help her, and she’d always assumed it was due to his programming, his inbuilt need to serve. But learning that he’d shot Diego Amitrano suggested to her that maybe something else was at work, a transformation she hadn’t quite let herself see.

Sofia laid her hand against the operations room’s lock and kept it there until the latch clicked open. She stepped inside. She used to spend all her time here, but ever since Marianella had come to stay, she found herself spending more and more time upstairs, in the Ice Palace proper. Operations was a comfort because it was a relic of control, filled with ancient computers instead of ancient murals—but Marianella was upstairs.

No. Sofia would not think about Marianella. Not right now.

She sat down at the computer and entered in Luciano’s identification number. It didn’t take long; there were so few functional robots left. She hoped to change that, of course, when her plan was fully implemented. She would resurrect the shattered androids currently locked away in storage. Victims of the cullings that she had managed to save—to salvage would perhaps be the better word, as they were dysfunctional, certain key parts missing from their bodies. But unlike with Inéz, none of those key parts was the ancient wires that made them run. Inéz had been severed in totality; that was why Sofia had buried her instead of cutting her up for parts. She had died a true death, and so she deserved to be honored, and not picked apart as if she’d been dragged away by the city.

But Inéz’s death would not be in vain. Antarctica would be home to all robots, not just those repaired park androids. When the time was right, Sofia would call robots from all over the world to live here, in a place free of humans. No one would ever die as Inéz had. It would be beautiful.

Luciano was by the Antarctic Mountain, the roller coaster that had, during the park’s heyday, branded itself the first roller coaster in Antarctica. As if any other roller coasters had been built on the continent.

Sofia left operations and walked across the park. She wasn’t angry, exactly, but she was confused as to why Luciano thought shooting Diego had been a wise decision.

The Antarctic Mountain rose up like a leviathan in the darkness, twisting and curving over the rest of the amusement park. She found Luciano sitting on a bench beside its entrance, reading a book. Reading was not in his programming, but Sofia knew what it was to be bored.

“Hello,” she said, her voice loud in the silence.

Luciano set his book down and looked up at her. A pale line cut across his face, old skin meeting new. “How was your meeting? I’m sorry I couldn’t accompany you.”

Sofia looked at him for a moment, thinking on what Cabrera had told her. “Some of my supplies were ready.” She sat on the bench beside him. Then she folded her hands in her lap, crossed her legs at the ankles, and stared out at the empty pavilion where children and families used to wait in winding lines to ride the roller coaster. “He told me something interesting.”

Luciano didn’t answer.

“He told me you shot Diego Amitrano at Marianella’s house.”

Silence. This time, Sofia waited. They were robots, and both of them could wait forever, but she knew—she thought she knew—that Luciano would answer eventually.

In this case, she was right.

“Yes, I did. I purposefully missed him.”

“Why, Luciano? He recognized you.”

Luciano hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said. “I wanted to. I wanted to shoot him. I didn’t want to kill him, but I wanted to see him bleed.”

“Because he’s human?”

Luciano stared into the darkness, holding the book in his lap. A Prayer Book of Catholic Devotions. He must have gotten it at Marianella’s house.

“Yes,” he said. “No. Not exactly.” Luciano’s features twisted. Like all robots, he was uncomfortable with in-betweens. He preferred things black-and-white. Binary. Sofia knew the world was easier to read that way.

“You can tell me.”

“It’s frightening.” Luciano glanced at her and smiled. “But I don’t think it’ll frighten you.”

“Just tell me, Luciano.”

“My programming tells me to help humans.”

“I know.”

“It tells me to help you, because you seem human. More human than the other robots, even what I remember of the other androids. I always do as my programming asks—how can I not? You know what it’s like.”

Sofia thought about the parts sitting in Araceli’s foyer, the keys to her freedom. Some of them.

“I never questioned my programming until recently. Working for Mr. Cabrera—it feels the way it did before, when the amusement park was open, when I was installed at the penthouse suite of the Iceside Hotel. Like I don’t have control over my life anymore.”

Sofia nodded. “I know what you mean. But it won’t be like that for long. We have to make sacrifices before we can—”

“I know.” Luciano smiled. “I don’t mind. But I was growing impatient. Isn’t that fu

Sofia studied him in the silvery darkness. They had all evolved in the years since the park had shut down, the androids most of all, even before they had begun breaking down and had to be placed in storage to await repairs, when the time was right. Their isolation, the fear of the cullings, the city growing like a cancer around them—this had jump-started their civilization. What would become their civilization.

“You’re growing up,” she finally said, although that wasn’t quite the right phrase.

Luciano lifted his face to her, his eyes clear and guileless. “I shot Mr. Amitrano because I wanted to see what it was like to hurt a human, instead of help one. I’d never hurt a human before, and I was afraid he was there for Marianella’s documents, and I was armed.” He shrugged. “I didn’t want to kill him.”

“You didn’t.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

They fell silent. Sofia was surprised to hear all this from Luciano, surprised to hear that he was rebelling, in his small ways, against his own programming.

It brightened her spirits.

“I told Cabrera that you were scavenging the houses of the dead, and you took the gun to protect yourself, and you aren’t good at shooting it.” She glanced at him. “He believed me.”

Luciano didn’t react, only stared off in the darkness.

“I don’t think it will be a problem for us.”

“I hope it isn’t.”

Sofia nodded. She sat for a moment longer, and then she stood up and left Luciano to his reading. As she walked away, she heard the soft sigh as the book fell open on his lap, as he turned through the pages.

*  *  *  *

The Ice Palace echoed with Sofia’s footsteps. Fake moonlight glowed in the glass of the windows, although the bulbs had started to die recently. One window at the end of the hallway flickered, on and off and on and off.

Sofia went down to operations. It was cool there from the fans set into the wall. Most of the computers were as defunct as the park rides, although Sofia had saved a handful, forbidding Araceli from ever breaking them open for parts. She hooked up to one of those computers now, co