Delta Ray

Chapter 1

Delta's voice was calm as he spoke. "So that's it. The Queen has no idea how to make your species survive."

Ray looked up at the moon, full and brimming with light. "As far as I know."

"That would be sad — you being gone."

Ray nodded and drifted off the branch of a dead oak tree, moving closer to Delta.

Delta the robot sat on a wooden bench overlooking the city of Avalon. The ground was grey and metal. Dead and withered trees bulged out of solar panels covering the dirt.

A heavy breeze passed through Ray. "Don't get emotional on me, you hunk of scrap metal. I'm not going to leave. Even if the colony abandons earth, I'll stay."

"You may not have a choice." Moonlight flashed across Delta's eyes, a metallic blue.

Delta looked at Ray, through her, down at the giant city of Avalon, towering hives of light and metal. In the distance, traffic weaved through the sky like swollen fireflies. "Avalon now covers ninety-two percent of this continent," Delta said. "Thirty square miles of marine life is all that's left — and the tar water is making quick work of that. Soon, everything on earth will die, giving you and your kind nothing to feed on. Wraiths are losing this war. You won't have food to last the month."

Ray curled her smoke wisps inside herself until she was just a ball in the air. She turned and flushed a deep purple. "When did things get this bad — " her voice trailed, "killing life for the sake of it...This is my home! Bots can't keep ruining it."

"Home." Delta let the word linger in the air like something rotten. He stood from the bench. A heavy wind beat at the folds of his faded trench coat. He stuffed his metal hands into his pockets. The perfect XI unit, his frame was smooth and glossy opal. An I-042 motherboard glowed a deep blue inside his chest. Delta was the type of high-profile bot whose wires didn't crunch when he moved, a bot whose eyes were made of yellow jewels. Everything about him seemed otherworldly, from the barely visible wires that spread through his body like veins, to the personality that seemed to know, yet question, everything.

"You're still determined, then?" Delta asked. "Even after everything wraiths have done, you still think your kind deserves to stay on earth?"

Ray took a deep breath — steady. "I never ate your creators, Delta."

Delta's antennae stood straight up. His voice had an edge. "Don't play dumb. Even if it wasn't you, your kind devoured them. When the Creators dwindled in number, you tried to breed them like cattle. And when that failed, desperate to quench your hunger, you ended the human race."

"I didn't mean to get into this." Ray felt like disappearing into the clouds, falling away with the breeze.

"It doesn't matter," Delta said. "When this war ends — when the bots have won — I just need you to know we were justified."

"Why do you need me to know that?"

"One side is going to win. You're different than the other wraiths, but one small puff of smoke can't stop a two-century war."

He was right. There were no clouds out. What would one puff of smoke change in an endlessly black sky? The stars were bright and alive — she would only be a blot on an otherwise perfect night.

"Do you hate me?" Ray asked.

Delta was silent for a moment. "No." He sat back down. "Far from it — if that's possible for a bot. But because you're a wraith, you can't see the holes in your thinking."