Robogenesis by Daniel H. Wilson

seeing that same fearsome light.
    It’s sputtering like a candle in a jack-o’-lantern from the broken-out window of the farmhouse.
    I creep slow through an overgrown lawn, pushing through dead, knee-high grass toward that gaping window. The orange light calls to me. I can feel it, pulsing like radiation. It’s Rob-made and I keep thinking maybe it’s speaking, whispering something secret that makes my ears ring.
    At the window, I see. Something is real wrong with Hank Cotton.
    The big Osage man is on his knees in the pitch-black living room of the abandoned farmhouse. He’s in blue jeans and a flannel shirt, wearing some kind of pale white helmet, the toes of his work boots propped against the dust-coated hardwood floor. In his hands, he holds what looks like a cube made of black glass.
    “Praise be to you,” he says, whispering hoarsely. “Praises upon praises.”
    This man hardly looks like Hank. In the last weeks, pounds of muscle and fat have slithered off his bulky frame. He’s getting downright skinny, his skin fading like an old photograph and hanging slack and loose. Those high cheekbones that used to anchor a chubby face have started jutting out in a gaunt, skeletal kind of way.
    Something dark is running from his temple down the side of his face. It drips onto the floor quietly, like a clock ticking.
    Tap. Tap. Tap
.
    It’s not a helmet that he’s wearing. Old Hank has hauled an autodoc out here into the woods. Just the head-trauma unit. Running on one of those portable Rob batteries. Here in this hollow wooden living room, he’s got it set up and it’s working hard.
    “Praise be to you,” he whispers again, clutching the black cube against his chest. Orange sparkles of light are prickling the air in a line between the cube and the autodoc. That thinker must be controlling the surgical machine, guiding its sharp fingers.
    The autodoc has got the skin of Hank’s forehead peeled up. Two forceps holding the small wound open. A chunk of his pale white skull has been sawed away. Inside, his brain is a gray smile. Black claws pry and prod, building something. Taking instructions from the cube of metal he holds tight in his fingers.
    Hank chuckles, still whispering his praises.
    Then, the man stops speaking midsentence. Sniffs the air and closes his eyes. For a moment, all is still and quiet save for the quick grinds of the autodoc motors and the tapping of blood on hardwood. Then, real slow, Hank turns his head to face me. It is too dark for him to see me, but I feel his eyes settle on my face.
    The dagger fingers of the machine keep operating, flickering, caressing that glistening gray pinch of meat over his eyes.
    Hank smiles in the dark, lips peeling away from his teeth in a skull’s grimace. Orange wisps of communication rise up off the cube, and I get the feeling that they’re searching for me, threatening. Rising like cobras and swaying in the air.
    “Do you love him?” asks Hank, eyes half closed.
    I only stare, horrified.
    “Lonnie is the closest thing you got to a father,” says Hank. A little smile darts around his open mouth. He looks like a man who is dreaming. “You love him like you would love your own daddy. If you had one.”
    Without a face, I can’t speak. My voice is only over local radio and I don’t remember responding, but I do. The cube hears me. It can hear me and because of that, so can Hank.
    “I do,” I say.
    “Then don’t tell him,” says Hank, head still tilted to the side. The skin sags from his face and that dark line of blood moves down his temple. “I’m his best friend. Don’t tell him about the spooklight. Leave his troubled mind be.”
    Spooklight?
    Hank’s eyes are pulsing with an orange glint.
    Those gleaming wisps are floating over Hank’s face and seeping into the dark open wound on his forehead. The black cube is in his hands. It’s glowing now, forming complicated patterns. A brain box. And whatever is inside it is doing something to Hank.