Samantha and her four kids lay in a field of half-alive bushes and broken rocks, looking up at the bright band across the sky. They’d just finished their picnic. The sun beat down with gusts of steamy wind. Since the big Uplift disaster, now called The Scar, the raised ground had sunk again, leaving strange effects in the land. A new river ran around the Upzone port, which had relocated near to the suburbs of Safeish, where their qdome was moored. The river flowed all ways, forward, back, side to side, up and down, like bath water when the legs move. An informal economy had soon developed around the area.
“Oops,” squealed Marlene, the youngest girl, hardly out of her iron underpants. A neon pink worm oozed out of the ground between her feet. The worms had no interaction with feet, or anything else. They were just another side effect of all the new technology, the water cycle control, and the active mud injected after the iceberg crashed from orbit.
“We should move,” said Samantha.
“No more worms for a while,” said Sharlene, the older girl. “The ground must recharge.”
“They just tickle,” said Ernald, almost a teen. “One went up my shorts. I liked it,” he bragged.
“You like anything,” said Sharlene.
“Twat,” said Ernald.
“No T word,” said the Botz care robot, which they’d decided was a female named Beefor, since it was a B4 model. The robot watched for banned words all the time.
“You’re a metal twat,” said Ernald, spitting at the robot.
“Kids, stop it now,” shouted Samantha, “And don’t gob on it, it’s disgusting, what has it ever done to you?” She nodded at Beefor and it sang, with soft arms out to hug the kids. A big brown cloud gave them shade. The kids went to sleep, even Samantha, who knew the Botz would watch them well. Bots no longer looked like men. Many saw them as a threat or a thing to boss around. The bots would malfunction in stupid ways, then get smashed by enraged owners. Smashing up androids was too close to the real thing and led to a spike in actual murders, so appearances were deliberately made non-human. The bots had no say in it.
Beefor scanned all round, checking all the data on place, cars, sky, friends, foes. Foes most of all. All was fine. Then it felt shakes in the ground and picked up strange smells. Something was near. She made a noise and poked the group to wake them up.
“Unknown comes,” said Beefor.
“Unknown what?” asked Samantha. Beefor just said it once more. She’d set the bot to give short replies, not fake rambling that went on far too long. At times it said too little to grasp. No one saw, smelled or heard a thing.
“Which way?” asked Samantha. Beefor put out a signing handicator, added for Godfrey, who was a bit deaf. Sign talk was old now with new sensory fixes, but joining those who signed would help him meet new friends. Not that he ever did.
“Past that hill,” said Beefor, waving the handicator.
“How fast does it move?” asked Ernald.
“Very slowly.”
“That’s not much help, you dumb Botz,” said Ernald.
“What is it?” asked Sharlene.
“Still working. Fire. Wild things. Drugs. Drugged beasts. Fire, smoke. Many men… seven men. No guns seen… might be one gun.”
Samantha packed up the food scraps and they hid in the bushes. She told Beefor to send out a small drone, which rolled off in the direction of the oncoming mystery.