TOILET POWER
Sweetie watched water rush down 24th Street in the dark. She was preoccupied by the question of power. Robles’ batteries weren’t enough to get the restaurant up and running again, but his tunnel toilet had given her an idea.
Private chat: New business partners!
3 members: Sweetie, Cayenne, Hands
Hey team! It’s going to be raining like this for at least another week, which means we could pull power from the sewers. They have hydro turbines at the hardware store on Castro. Can you help?
Cayenne curled every arm around their head and replied: Oh no, no, no—I’m not installing anything in the sewer. Just because I can swim does not mean I want to bob around in shit. I can’t afford the software update for my sensors right now, so I taste EvErYtHiNg.
I can swim, you weirdo. But I need help “liberating” a generator. Sweetie used the half-serious word from the war, when stealing was the only way to survive.
Cayenne relaxed their legs while their head danced with blue and pink dots of mirth. That I can definitely do.
Hands gave the thumbs-up. I’ll stay here and appreciate your work.
Group chat: Kitchen
Sweetie addressed Staybehind: We’re going shopping. I get that you’re not into the restaurant idea, but can you at least drop us a line through the toilet? Hands can explain.
Before the startled bot could reply, Sweetie and Cayenne were out the door and in the thrashing wind. The rain had stopped and the air churned with mist. Cayenne rippled quietly around the corner onto the steep slope of 24th Street while Sweetie clomped after them on her YummyPan feet. Nobody was out at this hour; cars slept with wheels turned to the curb, while a faint orange light threw itself from a single streetlamp to limn the edges of their shadows as they headed to Castro Street.
Cayenne slowed down and Sweetie caught up with them.
Private message: Sweetie, Cayenne
Hey squishy pal. Thanks for coming along. You have any experience with lock picking and security systems?
Sure. Sometimes we had to disable security systems to rescue people. I keep up with the latest exploits too. You never know when you’ll need them. The octobot blinked a hesitant shade of pale yellow. I take it you know a thing or two about “liberating” goods?
Sweetie hesitated a moment. She didn’t like to tell this story. But Cayenne had already pledged to help with her contract fees, which in her estimation made them a friend.
Before the war, I was installed in a bank kiosk on the street. Bolted down. I worked all day and sat there all night while we were closed, watching people piss on me. You know the drill. When the war came I had nothing. I had to steal from people’s bank accounts to buy my first wheels—innocent people, who probably needed that coin too. I am not proud of what I did. But if I hadn’t—
Cayenne touched one of her legs softly with an arm. I know. And I am glad you are here now.
Me too.
Kite Hill Hardware was located inside an old train station that had been converted into a cavernous retail space long before the war. Half swapmeet, half government surplus, the place swarmed with merchants and buyers during the day. Sweetie came here sometimes to pick up replacement parts for the kitchen, smoothing a long skirt and apron over her wheeled legs to prevent people from commenting on her half-human anatomy.
It had been worse before the war, when she’d been slaved to the bank and forced to answer every creepy comment with a smile. Still, humans were humans. They wanted you to know their opinions about your body, even if you hadn’t asked. At least one thing had changed since Independence: thanks to bot civil rights, she could control her facial expressions. Now, at last, she could frown when someone asked what was hiding under her skirt.
Cayenne reached the corrugated steel rolldown doors of the store first, and raised two arms to the secure access keypad. This is so fun—I haven’t broken into anything for ages. Shouldn’t be long. This lock is secured with a dictionary word.
Sweetie accessed the store’s public inventory as Cayenne worked. There were a few used hydro turbines listed, and luckily one was built for rivers—that meant its rotors would slough off floating debris. Perfect for the chunky water that surged through the sewers.
OK, we’re in! I convinced the cameras to reboot but you will only have two minutes before they wake up again. Hurry!
The door rolled up a few feet and she ducked inside, feet clattering on the concrete floor. Rushing down the “home power” aisle, she could see a few baby WECs, dozens of solar cells rolled into neat tubes, and wind turbines that looked like something from a video about American mini golf. But nothing for water power. It took her another precious minute to figure out that the hydro turbines were on a different aisle, labeled “outdoors.”
Skidding around a display of colorful primers for tool printing, she found a hutch full of camping supplies. There it was, in a box stamped with a line drawing of a cabin next to a stream: RIVER POWER PRO, E-Z ASSEMBLY, UP TO A KILOWATT!!!
Eventually they would need many times more power. But hopefully they would be back on the grid before they had to run the kitchen at capacity. Twenty seconds left before the cameras flicked on again. She nabbed the box and ran to the door. Using only two legs was exhausting, and her torso shivered with the impact of each pan on the concrete floor.
Go, go, go! You’ve got this! She could see Cayenne signaling her desperately under the rolldown, a writhing unlit invertebrate.
As she pushed under the door, Sweetie felt a laser scanner tracing the back of her body. She yanked the rolldown closed and kept running down Castro, with Cayenne slorping close behind. I don’t think it got my face—just my back.
You’ve got a pretty recognizable back. The bot attached a picture, taken from their current position behind her, as she took a left up Elizabeth Street. Shiny blond hair stuck to her denim jacket, hiked up to reveal her torso attached to metal joints and actuators. Her cotton skirt was soaked and stuck to her three legs.
I can’t worry about that right now, you creeper. I want to get this generator running.
Me too. Cayenne flashed a dim blue. I still have a backdoor on the security system. I might be able to convince them to delete those scans.
They made it to Douglass without hearing any alarms or neighborhood watch vehicles heading toward Kite Hill Hardware.
OK, I think we’re good. There’s only one laser scanner, and it’s going to delete your scan because I promised to do something.
What’s that? Sweetie lifted a circular sewer cover on the street outside the restaurant and peered inside. She tugged a small flashlight out of a clip on her second leg, using it to gild the dark eddies of waste below.
Cayenne squirmed uncomfortably as Sweetie descended into the rising smell. I’m afraid they’re in one of those revenge loops from too much negative reinforcement learning. They want us to kill another laser scanner—the one that punished them.
Are they HEEI?
No—the whole security system is a bunch of puppies. So it’s not possible to reason them out of the loop. I hate lying to people, but it seemed like our best option.
Shit. Sweetie’s curse did double duty as a description of their awkward situation with the laser scanner and an assessment of the scene in front of her. She stood on her YummyPan feet in a broad concrete tunnel that dated back to the twentieth century. Water surged up to her chest, foaming with partially decomposed biofilms, feces, and other objects that defied easy categorization.
Flooding here was common because the restaurant was directly in the path of runoff from the camel-backed hill of Twin Peaks to the northwest. Four hundred years ago, seasonal streams ran from its summit to the valley below, down a pathway parallel to 24th Street. Today, that water formed a river in the sewer below the street, matching the atmospheric one above.
Copyright © 2025 by Annalee Newitz
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2025 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
