“Even if we did agree with you, Banner,” General Ross was saying, “we still don’t have a way to fight them.” He reclined in his chair, looking smugly up at my father.

“We do now, gentlemen,” came the reply. “No, don’t interrupt me,” he said, holding up his hand for effect. The medals on his dress uniform flashed as he moved, seizing my attention. Those old symbols from a fallen empire meant nothing to me, but their shininess had a certain appeal, nonetheless. “It has taken us three years to build it.”

“Build what, Stephen?” The elder councilman was now leaning forward in his chair.

I watched the scene develop from the back of the room. The leaders of the human resistance meeting like this marked a turning point in the war. If my dad convinces them to join forces with us, we might stand a chance against the enemy. This was the pinnacle of our efforts.

Stephen Banner spoke softly, yet his words possessed a power not unlike the object of which he spoke: “A bomb, sir.”

After a pause, during which the room was silent, he continued: “Tomorrow my son will detonate the bomb at the robot headquarters in Turing, and we’ll prove to you that this enemy can be defeated.”

Several councilmen eyed me, dismissing me as nothing more than a child.
“Who authorized this attack?” Ross asked.

“Those things took my wife, sir, and I will not let this council interfere with our plan.”

“We aren’t sure Elizabeth’s dead,” another man said, using my mother’s name as if he knew her intimately. I made a note to ask about him later.

“God damn it!” my dad roared. “She’s dead. Those machines…they…all we wanted was to raise Alan…he’s all I have left.”

I was smart enough not to fall for this maneuver, but the room fell quiet again. If it took exploiting me to unite the tribes, well, fuck it. Nothing else had worked so far.

“Look,” a man I knew as Uncle Greg chimed in, “the robots have taken our families, our cities, and our dignity.” Here he turned to look at General Ross. “Maybe we humans are on our way out, but I think what Stephen’s trying to say is—”

“Shut up, Donnelly,” Ross barked. “We know what he’s trying to say. Stephen, you’ve got one shot at this. But if you bring those things down on us, those nanobots or whatever the fuck they’re called, then God help you.”

I tried not to laugh at the elder’s antiquated perception of the divine. God’s dead, General Ross, or else he’s a robot.

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