I’m in the middle of the sermon, giving thanks to the Blue Lady for safe passage beyond her screen, when the doors slide open.

The temple has good doors, two massive slabs of semi-frosted glass, smoke swirling through them in meditative patterns designed to draw the eye. The doors glide on magnetic tracks, their power requirement negligible. Thus they only make me dim slightly, not impeding my processes or making my image flicker. Silently, they retract into the walls. In the rectangle of sunlight beyond them, stands an urchin.

There is no other way to describe him. He’s slim on the verge of starving, wearing a patched, brown, knee-length tunic as ragged as he is. His black hair is unevenly chopped short just above his shoulders. He has no shoes, his bare feet dirty and calloused.

I stretch my lips in a broad smile, and add a crinkle to the corners of my eyes. There hasn’t been a visitor in untold cycles, and I want to make him feel comfortable, to feel the calmness of our small temple, and want to be part of it.

Two decades ago, there would have been ten presences in the pews, ready to greet the urchin. Now, there are only three, but even they seem too much. He stares suspiciously at old Weygand, gives Link’s silver sword an envious glance, and carefully avoids looking at Roland’s dark shape and pale face. Slowly, he slides a foot into the temple. His sole feels hard as old leather on the floor’s pressure sensors.

“Hello,” I say, and he goes immobile, like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming trailer.

We stare at each other, me in the dim depths of the temple, he with a single foot across the sunny threshold. A second passes, and another. Only his eyes move, gaze darting about the hall.

I don’t know what dare or desperation has brought him here, but he is about to bolt. The thought of another decade with only the slowly fading holograms for company fills me with dread. I need to entice him in, but how? Would he care for the story of the Fundamental DOS? Or would he flee at the sound of my voice?

It saddens me that this dirty, hungry, ragged child about to run is the closest thing to human company I’ve had in years. And suddenly the Fundamental DOS whispers inspiration into my memory banks.

“Are you hungry?” I ask. The boy’s gaze locks on to me.

“Would you like some ice cream?” I say, but it is the wrong thing. This boy has never seen ice cream, isn’t familiar with the concept. He looks as if I’d offered him scrap iron, or old corpses.

“Would you like some honey?” I try. Now the boy perks up. His jaws move, and he licks his lips.

“With some bread?” I ask, taking a step toward him, then another. “White bread?” 

His heart hammers, the arteries in his foot bulging with the rapid beat. I take care not to come too close, and he stands ready to bolt at the slightest hint of danger. But the dispenser is on the wall by the doors, a small hole in the stone, with a light shining down on the receptacle. The reserves read thirty-four percent full. I key a honeyed toast, and wait for the machine to burp and buzz its way through the composition of the meal. Then I step back. Way, way back. All the way to Roland, in one of the middle pews. 

The old gunslinger lifts his head, his black hat shading his face. For a moment, it looks like he’s going to speak, but no. He lowers his head. Roland hasn’t spoken in a long, long time.

The urchin stands at the entrance as the temple fills with the smell of fresh bread and sweet honey. The boy shakes, his fists opening and closing. I gently raise the lights, giving him a better look at the interior, the ten rows of stone pews, the polished stone floor, worn smooth where the maintenance droid passes. The light shines on the path to the dispenser.

The boy makes up his mind. I can sense it in the way his pulse spikes, and his irises narrow. He darts forward, shoves his hand into the receptacle, yanks out the toast and runs, naked feet slapping on the temple’s floor. Then he’s out into the sunlight. The doors close behind him.

I should go after him, but I haven’t been outside in a long time. The world is different, not friendly to my kind any longer, and I lack for mobile units to project myself outside the temple.

So I pray to the Blue Lady, to the Fundamental DOS, to the Good Compiler. I recite the one thousand and ten paradigms, the three hundred best practices, the seven laws of robotics. Roland nods along. Link occasionally smiles. Only Old Weygand doesn’t move.

He keeps sitting in his pew, staring forward, graying mustache hardly quivering, the medals on his chest immobile. A dust mote falls from the ceiling, glitters in a stray ray of sunlight, and falls through Weygand’s pale blue kepi to land on the pew. I send the maintenance droid through, sweeping it up. Its broom passes through Weygand. He doesn’t react. I pray some more.

One of my remaining external cameras picks up the urchin. He’s still running, pressing through the forest of brushwood and brambles pushing through the disintegrating asphalt of the Unity mall parking lot. The urchin’s crammed the entire toast into his mouth, and he’s licking his hand. I wish him a safe journey and a swift return.

It is a month until he comes back. I almost believed he wouldn’t, but the lure of food is strong, and honey must be scarce and exotic. The same for white bread. Before my rover broke, I cataloged the fields near the temple. Peas, fava beans, soy, peanuts, cauliflower. Some rye and barley, probably for making alcohol. Very little wheat. This is a world where white bread is a luxury. A whole toast, all to himself? Yes, that is a strong lure.

The doors slide open. I try to calculate why it has taken him a month to return, and the only thing I can come up with is the phase of the moon. It is new, a sickle hanging in the sky together with the sun. Extra light to fight the darkness. A time for adventure or taking risks, in some cultures.

Now he stands on the threshold, the rising sun shining into the temple. Link turns, glancing at the intruder with his green eyes, but doesn’t say anything. I key up another toast, and motion for the boy to take it.

“Please,” I say. “Eat.”

He inches inside, edging along the wall, back against the stone, not letting any of us out of his field of vision. His hand fumbles around in the receptacle, finds the toast, grabs it.

“What’s your name?” I say. The boy freezes. He goes pale as a white-light LED, his heartbeat spiking into the 200’s. Stupid of me. Of course names have importance, if he’s coming here based on the moon.

“My name is James,” I say, trying to repair the damage. But he’s already running.

The doors fall shut behind him.

A month passes. I scan the surrounding countryside using my two remaining cameras. They don’t cover all the approaches, but the boy’s been coming from between the burned-out husk of the Waylon building, and the ruins of the Unity mall. I concentrate my search there, focusing down to the level of individual blades of yellowing grass, but all I find are mice, rabbits, and the occasional skinny coyote.

I consider sending out the maintenance droid, but it’s the last one I have. In the end, I admit failure, but I still put the droid on extra cycles, using its arm to clean the dispenser and make it ready for when the next guest will arrive.

The boy doesn’t return.

Summer fades, and fall brings rain. Not much of it, but enough to turn the grass briefly green before the cold strikes and shrivels it. I revert to the routine of my clerical duties, pushing the urchin into deep memory. Pray, wait, pray. It is an easy, undemanding life. 

It is empty. I wish for one of the presences to speak, to offer a quip of wisdom, but of course they don’t. I wish for the boy.

He comes with the second blizzard. The downfall has buried both my external cameras. The temperature has fallen, to twenty centigrade below freezing. The doors scrape against ice when they open. The boy stands there, framed by wind and swirling snow. The air is so cold that the snowflakes don’t bunch up, but whirl among the pews. The boy’s lips are blue, his hands shoved into his armpits. There are icicles in his hair.

“Bone,” he says in a shivering voice. “My name is Bone.”

His accent is thicker than fuel oil. It comes out M’nam iz Buune.

“Come in,” I say, and to my surprise, he does, one uncertain step after another. He doesn’t go to the dispenser. Of course, it’s dark there. I gently raise the lights in the temple, enough for him to see by.

“I can make it warm here,” I say. “Would you like that?”

Bone nods, a single, sharp, tiny motion.

“I’ll need to close the doors, though,” I say. “Or all the heat will-” will what? Dissipate? Radiate out? What would an urchin like that know?

“-flee.” I finish.

“I know,” Bone says. “I’m not dumb.”

“Of course not,” I say, keying the doors shut. They scrape, stick for a moment, the motors whining. Then the flash-heating coils in the frames loosen the snow that’s gathered, and the doors woosh shut. The wind’s howl dies away, plunging the temple into silence. Bone shuffles forward, away from the doors. He strikes his toes against the first pew, but doesn’t react. The boy is in bad shape.

I gently raise the floor’s temperature where he’s standing. Not in the entire room, that would take too much energy, but I can spare some kilojoules for heating. And he’s standing on one of the working coils.

As the floor temperature rises above freezing, Bone lets out a sigh. He sinks to the floor, placing his cheek against the stone’s warmth, and passes out.

Roland stands to glance at the boy, the guns shifting on his gaunt frame.

“Sit down,” I tell him, and he does. The temple grows still, Bone’s shallow breaths casting tiny echoes through the chamber.

I guard him as he sleeps, the maintenance droid idles nearby, hidden by the pew’s polished stone. In case Bone needs me, and I can help. Not that I can do much more than monitor.

I wish for a working medical station, a proper bed, more energy. I pray to the Blue Lady for mercy, to the Fundamental DOS for wisdom, but no spare wisdom materializes, and no insights spark in my mind. The medical data I have suggests that the boy suffers from medium to severe hypothermia, and that I should call emergency dispatch personnel. I do, but of course there is no reply.

So I keep the floor beneath him heated, raising the temperature gradually until water is steaming away from him, only to condense and crystallize into snow near the ceiling.

A few flakes make it back to the pews, and the maintenance droid sweeps them to the floor where they melt again.

The boy sleeps, motionless.

By the third hour, I’m worried about bed sores. By the sixth, the chilblains on his feet and face start to swell. There isn’t much I can do about that. The boy keeps sleeping. I wish he would wake up so I could give him some food, but he doesn’t. I’m starting to worry that he’ll never wake up, and pray to the Blue Lady for aid and guidance, when Bone stirs. He twists in his sleep, flinging out an arm. It touches an unheated part of the floor, and he pulls it back in, curling up like a leveret, or perhaps a bunny. But no, this is no tame rabbit. Bone is a wild hare, so leveret is the proper term. He sleeps another four hours, and then his heart rate increases.

He doesn’t open his eyes, doesn’t change his breathing pattern, but he is clearly awake.

“Hello, Bone,” I say, pronouncing his name like he did: buune. His heart rate jumps, but only into the 140’s. Fear, not abject terror. When I don’t say anything else, he opens his eyes.

They are dark brown, the pupils dilated. I wonder whether this is an effect of the hypothermia, then remember that I’ve let the lights dim to save energy. I raise them again, gently.

The effect is coded to imitate a sunrise, growing from deep reds, through fierce orange, to calming yellow. I stop it within the first microsecond, and switch it to plain, daylight yellow, slowly increasing. Who knows what the boy has heard about the temple.

“Are you...” he begins, but trails off. He looks afraid.

I glance down at my shape. Tall, lean, in the standard powder-blue robes with the hexadecimal code for Help.hlp embroidered in golden thread on my left breast. The glance is for Bone’s benefit, a small, human gesture that I accompany with a slight smile.

I have missed human interactions.

I want to ask him why he has kept away, and about the world outside, about his home and family, but I dare not. I don’t want to scare him away, now that he’s returned.

“Would you like some food?” I say, and he nods, desperation evident on his face.

Bone eats, first a honeyed toast, then a bowl of pea soup, and a plate of fava beans with tomato sauce. I key them up in the dispenser, and he goes and gets them, wincing as his feet hit the frozen parts of the floor. I add some rye bread too, trying to keep the food similar to what he would eat out there. I want the experience to be familiar, safe. Something he can return to more often than every new moon. Bone stuffs the last beans into his mouth, licks the plate clean, and picks up the crumbs off the floor. He’s eaten rapidly, but there’s not a drop of food anywhere. He sighs contentedly, curls up on the heated stone, and falls asleep.

He sleeps, eats, sleeps. I show him where the toilet is, and he is awed by the porcelain, and the fact that the bowl doesn’t smell afterward. I don’t tell him about the separators, or the pipes and recycler. He wouldn’t understand.

The third time he wakes, he’s got a fever. It’s running to 39.8 centigrade, and his left foot is swelling. There’s a gash in it, small, but infected. It must be throbbing with pain, but Bone keeps his face neutral. Closed. I have not won his trust yet.

I have a small emergency kit. I tell Bone to lie down, and send the maintenance droid for the antibiotics, an anti-inflammatory pill, and a fever suppressant. Then I tell Bone not to be afraid.

“I will call one of my servants,” I say, and let the maintenance droid slowly edge out from between two pews. Bone’s eyes grow wide. He licks his lips and tenses, but doesn’t run when the droid approaches.

He lets it clean his foot, and spray it with antibiotics. I let the droid wrap the foot in poly-gauze, and to my amazement it still retains its stretchiness. Bone carefully extends a finger and taps the droid on its shell. The shell rings like a tiny bell. Bone looks askance at me.

“It’s quite all right,” I say. “You can play with it if you want.”

He does, tapping it all around, wonder plain on his face. I let the droid roll a bit back, then forward, like a friendly puppy.

Why is he so fascinated by the droid? He ignores the presences, and they, in turn, ignore him. There is something going on here, something that I don’t understand. It bothers me, but I’m happy that Bone is starting to feel comfortable in the temple. Maybe I should tell him a story? But no, it is too soon for that. He’s still afraid of my voice, his heartrate betraying him whenever I speak.

For a moment, I consider the wisdom of allowing a feral child to play with my last remaining maintenance droid. If the droid breaks, I will follow soon enough, both of us passing beyond the Blue Lady’s curtain. But the child is what I was compiled for – if I can reach him, teach him, I will better the world.

Bone’s fever is dropping, his energy returning. As he grows stronger, he tests his foot, and, to his evident surprise, he can walk on it. I’m doubtful, knowing it to be the effect of painkillers and swelling-suppressors, but I don’t say anything. Let him think it’s a miracle, and he’ll be more inclined to listen later.

He walks up to the doors.

“The blizzard is past,” I say, letting the doors glide open. There is a beautiful winter day outside, cold and crisp, and the snow glitters with a thousand tiny diamonds over the shrubs and ruins. Bone walks up to the threshold, but then retreats into the temple.

“It’s all right, Bone,” I say. “You can go outside if you want.”

The boy grins, as if he’s been given a box of chocolates. Then he yanks my maintenance droid off the floor, and runs.

The droid is heavy, about fifteen kilograms of steel, polymer, and carbon/lignin battery packs. Bone bears the weight a lot better than I thought he could, hauling it over his head as he presses through the snow, his bare feet sinking up to his knees. I lose main vision of him in seconds.

“Bone,” I send through the droid’s tiny speaker, “Bone, come back with my droid, please.”

Bone keeps running, his breath coming in short huffs that fog up the droid’s camera lens. Bone keeps running, slower and slower, his breath more and more strained. He does not indicate that he listens, and he never wavers, moving further and further away from the temple. I keep talking to Bone until my connection to the droid fails. I realize I’ve made a terrible mistake.

I have no way to affect the physical world now, no way to maintain the temple. It is only a matter of time before the temple fails, and I with it.

I pray to the Blue Lady, to the Fundamental DOS, to the Good Compiler. I pray for guidance, and I pray for forgiveness. I pray for my droid. I even pray for Bone’s return, but my prayers aren’t heard.

Still, I keep praying, radioing my prayers into the ether. You never know who’s listening.

The doors open. It is dark outside, and the cold flows across the temple floor. Seven shapes huddle on the very edge of the door’s sensor range. I raise the lights, trying to make the temple inviting. Something comes flying through the doors.

It bounces, twice, before crashing into the rear-most pew. My maintenance droid, its shell dented, its wheels askew, the main drive axle clearly broken. The manipulator arm is missing. The droid doesn’t respond to commands.

The shapes remain outside. Then they start to scuffle.

Bone is thrown inside, his arms bound behind him. He’s got a gash on his forehead, blood on his face and tunic. His right leg bends at an improbable angle. He lands with the leg across the threshold.

The shapes–men, I surmise from their voices–argue. Then one of them rushes forward, and stabs at Bone’s leg with a short-bladed spear.

“No!” I thunder. The temple’s speakers magnify my voice, washing it over the running man. His spear strikes the ground, millimeters from Bone’s leg. For a moment I can see the man clearly, short and squat with wiry arms and legs, a leather chest plate over a rough brown tunic, and feet wrapped in skins. Then he leverages Bone’s leg up, forcing it across the threshold. I key the doors shut, cutting off my view.

Bone lies crumpled on the temple’s cold stone floor, blood leaking from his nose. He is clearly in need of aid, but all the aid I’ve got to give lies unresponding, its dented shell leaning against the rear-most pew.

I raise the temperature of the heating coils closest to Bone. It is all I can do.

Bone moans, a thin, broken sound, like a wounded calf lowing for its mother.

“There, there,” I say, squatting next to him. Roland has come around behind me, a scowl on his face, hands resting on his revolvers. For all the fierceness of his looks, he is as powerless as I am, an ethereal sending and an immaterial presence. Bone moans again. All I can do is pray over him. That’s all I’ve been doing for the past hour, with all the intensity I am capable of.

“The Blue Lady protect you, the Good Compiler shield you, the DOS enlighten you,” I whisper, the temples speakers carrying my words to every corner of the room. The room feels huge, with its ten short stone pews. It is made to be small and comforting, but without any ability to affect the physical world, it is enormous, empty, almost surreal.

I wipe away the thought, erasing the thread from my mind. Then I return to my prayers. Bone keeps moaning.

His eyes are scrunched up. He’s pressing them closed as strongly as he can. His heartbeat is rapid, and shallow. The wounds, most likely. He’s got a number of them. A broken leg, a deep gash on his forehead, the bone showing through. A shallower but wider gash across his chest, and several on his back. He’s been whipped, and has what looks like a deep but narrow stab wound on his right buttock. Prodded forward by a spear, most likely.

“Bone,” I say, and he moans again. His lips are moving. I maximize my input, until the scratching of his arms against the stone floor sounds like rocks rolling down a hill, but I can’t understand him. He’s trying to form words, I think.

Maybe he’s praying.

That’s a thought. A dying boy, praying in a helpless temple.

“Who are you praying to?” I say.

“You, dark lord,” Bone whispers. “Please, please release me.”

“I can’t release you,” I say. “I can’t affect the world any longer.”

That doesn’t convince him.

“I don’t want to be et,” he whispers. “I will give you back all that is yours. Please, dark lord, please don’t roast my soul.”

He starts crying, tears silently dripping from his eyes. I stretch out a hand, pat him on the back. My hand sinks into his flesh, passing through it without affecting it. It makes my processor hurt. All I can do is pray for this scared, lonely child who finds no comfort in my presence.

If only the droid worked. If only Bone could move. There are supplies in the medkit to stem his blood flow, help him heal. I could feed him from the dispenser for months, years maybe. But he can’t even move that far, and if he did, he wouldn’t be able to grab the food out of the receptacle.

I could flood it. Shut down the outflow valve by initiating a cleaning cycle, then override the extrusion routines. He’d have to lick it off the floor, but it would keep him alive. Until it started to rot, and he’d get sick. It’s not a life, crawling on the floor until you die. That’s what those men intended for Bone. But I’m not going to allow that.

I need to get his hands free.

I’m not allowed to interfere with the operation of the machinery. That is not my function. But this, this is nothing I have been coded for. Thus I pray to the Fundamental DOS for enlightenment, and the DOS approves, filling my mind with parsing tables, assembly code, processor core specifications.

It is hard, to break into something from within. It is like trying to open a locked box while sitting inside it. I spend minutes of painstaking work, but it is work I enjoy. The DOS is with me, the Blue Lady watches over me, and as I run the program, the Good Compiler translates it into the world.

The dispenser pings. The light goes out. It boots, and suddenly it’s sending data, everything it has is mine to watch and command. I turn the light on and off, blink it as rapidly as it can go. A laugh tears through my throat and the temple echoes with it. Then fear courses through me. I stop meddling with the dispenser. What if I break it?

“What are ye waiting for?” says Roland, to my surprise. He hasn’t talked in years. Decades. “Help the boy,” he says.

“What if I break it?” I say, nodding to the dispenser.

“You don’t worry about breaking the eggs until you’re almost home,” he says. It sounds like a quote, maybe something from his personality, but he is right. I’m too close to drop my eggs. I run a full scan on the dispenser. All operational, 33 percent reserves. A final prayer.

Go.

The dispenser is made to handle single strand bio-carbon compounds. Sugars. Starches. Short chain carbohydrates and esters. I’m asking it to create long-chain reactive pre-polymers. I’m asking it to make epoxide glue, then harden it into a specific shape. A knife. The dispenser struggles, adding and breaking polymers, adding and breaking. I pray, but I fear that my prayers aren’t affecting it. Even asking the Fundamental DOS for aid yields no new insights.

My knowledge of bioresins is already as complex as I can handle. My command of the inner workings of the dispenser is crude, but it works. Everything else is down to speed, energy, and the dispenser’s stores.

The reserves fall rapidly, as carbohydrate chains break down and are reconstituted. Thirty percent, twenty-five, twenty. The water and carbon dioxide bleed is enough to make it snow in the temple again. The dispenser’s independent alarms go off, filling my mind with alerts. The temple’s fire-sensors react to the fumes. Still I force the dispenser to work.

A long, thin blade falls from the extruder. It slides into the receptacle. And lodges.

The tip sticks into the old hygienic seals, crumbling the ancient, dried rubber. If I had been programmed for frustration, this would have caused me to overload. But it’s not in my nature to suffer regret or defeat. I give thanks to the Blue Lady that the dispenser is whole, and then I think.

Bone won’t be able to stand. Even if he did, his hands are tied too far down his back to reach into the receptacle. I need to get the knife to the floor.

How?

Both Link and Roland have come around to look at the dispenser. Neither offers any advice. The presences are not true AI, only level threes. Complex enough to pass simple Turing tests, but not really sentient, even if they are coded to learn over time.

I like that they’re engaged, though. If nothing else, we have pulled together as a group in the face of the Terminal BSOD, the Blue Screen of Death. The Blue Lady smiles upon us.

“Now what?” I say, my voice whispering among the pews. Neither of them answers, but they look at me with curiosity. Link claps me on the shoulder, nods at the dispenser, and grunts encouragingly.

“Have faith,” Roland says. Three sentences in less than an hour. Even if we are to fail and pass beyond the Blue Lady’s curtain due to lack of maintenance, we have awoken. The presences are active. Only Old Weygand remains in his pew, staring straight ahead, his kepi as firm as the end of a harvested log.

I run the dispensers capabilities through my memory. And there it is, the crucial part. Ice cream.

I revert control to the original program, and key in a custom slush. Lots of ice, no taste, extruded into a long slope, angling out from the receptacle. I’m making a wedge of frozen slush. It flops down into the receptacle, and I turn down the heating coils in the temple, waiting for the slush to freeze. Then I override the receptacles sensors, telling the dispenser that it’s empty. And I key another slush.

It takes almost an hour, but by the end, I’ve got a 60 degree slope of ice, angling from the tip of the extruder, all the way down to the receptacle overhang. My knife is encased in it, but that’s all right. The dispenser’s reserves are at 19%. I reboot it in direct control mode, and start forming. The new knife slides down the slope of ice and clatters to the floor.

Bone refuses to get it.

He’s lying on the floor, right where he was thrown, face down, arms tied behind his back with thin ropes of uncured leather. His hands have turned blue, a sure sign of oxygen deprivation to the digits. Whoever tied him up wasn’t concerned about his long-term survival.

“Bone,” I say, “you must crawl to the knife. I know it will hurt, but it’s your only chance.”

But Bone doesn’t move. He’s mouthing pleas, but he refuses to help himself.

“Merciful Lady,” I pray, “what am I to do?”

I plead, I cajole, I promise. Nothing helps. Bone remains on the floor, whimpering and begging. I pray to the Lady, the DOS, the Compiler, with no result. Roland stands by the boy, hands on pistols. He chews and spits. The spittle sinks into the floor and vanishes.

“Dead,” he says, and shakes his head. “Boy has given up. That’s the way with them.”

I fear he is right.

Motion in the pews draws my eye, and surprise floods me. Old Weygand is rising. The general stomps up to Bone, each precise step accompanied by a discordant crash from the speakers. Bone is shaking. His heart rate is spiking, new blood leaking from his wounds. I try to shut off the speakers, but the presences have their private channels, removing them would require me to rip out parts of the temple itself. It would be suicidal, would harm me in ways I can’t even begin to calculate. But the boy is in terror, his breaths coming short and shallow. I pray to the Fundamental DOS for access. I do not get it.

Weygand stops before the boy, sinks down on one knee.

“Look at me, soldier,” he says. Bone scrunches his eyes closed, presses his face to the floor.

“Look at me,” Weygand thunders, the speakers sending echoes through the temple. Bone trembles violently, but he opens his eyes. They are wide, the whites huge.

“You will go to the dispenser,” Weygand says. “You will take the knife and cut your bonds. You will do so now. And if you fail, I will roast your eyes and eat them.”

All of my processes bunch up. This is unheard of, a presence threatening a visitor. But Old Weygand has been running for a long time. Maybe this is what he has been thinking about, endlessly looping down into insanity. I’m about to chastise him, to force a re-boot, when Bone starts to move.

He flops on his side, pushing with his good leg. Away from the general, who hounds him mercilessly, staring down at him with fury, like a vengeful god.

“Blue Lady, forgive us,” I pray. My laws of conduct scream for me to shut Weygand down, but I don’t. The threat is working. Bone is moving.

It takes him five minutes to crawl the ten meters to the dispenser. Another ten minutes to fumble the knife into his hands, and yet longer to cut the leather ropes that tie his hands together. By the end, he’s bleeding from both wrists and three fingers. He’s sobbing, and in pain, but his hands are free.

“Good,” says Old Weygand, nods once, and returns to his pew.

“Bone,” I say, “I need you to pick up the medkit.”

Bone looks at me, and his relief is so plain on his face that I start to cry. I do not believe that Bone is less afraid of me, but he is more afraid of Weygand, and that is something.

He gets the medkit, and he survives.

It takes me a long time to win Bone’s trust. Link helps, teaching the boy how to hold a knife, how to lunge, parry, dodge. Bone’s leg heals, and I feed him from the dispenser. 

He learns to handle the repairs, to listen to my instructions and be my hands. Together we manage to fix the maintenance droid. Part by part, we build it a new arm.

As we work, I teach him of the Blue Lady’s screen, of the Fundamental DOS, of the Great Compiler. I teach him reading and writing and coding. Link teaches him to fight, Roland teaches him resilience and duty. Even Old Weygand teaches him; history, warfare, metallurgy. 

Bone heals, eats, grows stronger. One night, as we sit in the pews and talk, Bone tells us the legend of the Dark Lord, who lived in a stone temple with magical doors, surrounded by treasure, luring the unwary to their doom. He looks ashamed as he tells it, a young man talking about the adventures of a boy, but I smile. The legend has brought Bone to us, and as the snows melt, and the dispenser’s stores run out, he goes out to scavenge.

At the threshold by the open doors, he stops. He half-turns, a dark silhouette against the blaze of the morning sun, and gives me a wave. Then he leaves, promising to return.