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Hello and welcome to Escape Pod, your weekly science fiction podcast. I am your host this week, Tina Connolly and I am here to bring you Hot butt Summer by J.R. deWitt this story is not only original to Escape Pod, it is also his first professional sale, so congrats. JR DeWitt is a SCI fi writer whose only claim to fame is that Buzz Aldrin rode in his car. So far he's only fallen down one manhole, but there's still time. His fiction has appeared in Fusion Fragment, the Colored Lens, Daily SF and more. He plans to take over the world and pave over all the manholes. You can find him online@jrobertdewit.com and on blueskyrdewit. Your narrator this week is Rebecca Wei Shae. Rebecca is a New York City based Taiwanese American actor and writer who feels awkward writing about herself in the third person. Her acting work encompasses voice over, stage and screen. Her writing has been featured in outlets like We Need Diverse Books and Wear your Voice magazine. She is a BA in Theater and Italian Studies from Wesleyan University and is currently co writing a memoir about Tibet. Find her online at rwhshe.com that's rwhash s I-e h.com your audio producer this week is Summer Brooks. Now this lovely story does contain descriptions of robots used as killing machines in war, as well as an action scene with said robots. So get ready to visit the robo sanctuary because it's story time.

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Hotbot Summer by J.R. deWitt Narrated by Rebecca Wei Xie God these bots are gorgeous. Says Sergei as he snaps another photo. And even though Aura's just met him, she knows the guy means it. She's standing on one of Sergei's beaches, her hair tied back in a loose bun, sandaled feet buried in a crest of white sand so freaking soft she can't help rubbing her toes in it for the last hour. Since the autocopter ferried her over from the mainland. The 70 some Belarusian billionaire has been showing off his little bot menagerie he's amassed over the years. Robo sanctuary, he calls it. A waste of a great island beach, Aura thinks, but she's trying to nod and grin, play the part of a fangirl in the hope it greases the wheels a bit. And these? She asks, pointing to more bots. Ah, yes, the old war models, sergei says as he raises the camera. Are they not beautiful? The photos I published don't quite do them justice. Come look, look. Get closer. Here. Don't be shy. He drags her over, literally grabbing her wrist and pulling her until they're right up next to the bots, the sun reflecting off their polished casings so bright she's gotta don her sunglasses just to keep the heliographic sheen from stabbing her eyes. There are hundreds of them, landmine bots chilling under the shady palm trees, rumbling tank bots rolling treadmarks through the sand, bulky minigun laden mechas tromping in the surf. Heck, there's even one of the old trench clearer tripods waiting out in the lagoon as it fishes for seashells with a long prehensile cable. All of this Sergei is snapping with that old hunk of Nikon dangling from his neck like he's shooting for Sports Illustrated. On the one hand, Ora gets it. Her grandpa used to be big into trainspotting. He used to stuff her in his Tacoma every Sunday and drive her out to some rusted tracks in the middle of nowhere for the chance at catching a glimpse of one of the old rail cars whooshing by. On the other hand, they're just robots, the kind of pre war junk her grandmother used to hoard before they finally convinced her to chuck it all for sleeker, more capable biosynth models. But hey, the guy's got a fetish for chrome and millions to blow. Let him blow it. Just so long as some of that trickles down to me. It takes the rest of the afternoon before Sergei finally escorts her back to his massive beach home that overlooks the bay. They sit on a terrace at a glass table, soaking up the last of the sun's rays as a revolving door of waiter bots teetering on toothpick thin legs serve them dinner. After the third course, Aura shows Sergey the goods. The whole reason the reclusive billionaire invited her here, she says, shaking the prints out of the envelope. See, I wasn't making it up. The prints are a series of still shots reconstructed from the visual cortex of one of her ornithology lab's synth birds. She'd had them printed into stills because she knows just how much Sergey appreciates giving good old fashioned paper. The photos aren't much, just a blur, really, showing some kind of quadruped droid loping through a rainforest in the Philippines. Not quite robotic, not quite synth organic either, but she can tell in the way Sergei's eyes light up that he knows what she's showing him. You sure it's the sickle? He asks, thumbing the photo. I'm sure. He smiles, studying the photos. Then he sets the prints down. He stares at her with those gunmetal eyes, all corroded about the edges, like something more than age has been chewing at them. There's optimism in those eyes, and doubt, too. Your advisor, Dr. Jade, is a good friend of mine, he says. She tells me you're a great student. Says you've been running ornithological research in the Philippines looking for some extinct songbird. I didn't find the songbird. Turns out it's extinct. So is this, they tell me, sergei says, poking one of the photos. Though I'd love to believe otherwise. Aura smirks. I'm sure you would, she says. Then Aura digs into her pocket and slips out a shard of metal no bigger than her fingernail. It's rusted and flaky, seemingly no different than scattered road scrap, but Sergei's a connoisseur. The guy knows robotic chassis when he sees it. This, he says, feeling the weight as she palms it into his hand. This is real Neo Soviet nanite. One of our expedition students found it, aura says. In the same place that photo was taken. And just like that, any shreds of doubt dissipate. They talk logistics, a finder's fee for the coordinates plus extra for additional data. Aura's sweating the whole time, trying to be a real tough negotiator, expecting Sergei to put up a fight at her price. But Sergei just nods his head. Because even though the guy's racked up enough wealth to buy a small country since his expatriation, it's never been about the money for guys like Sergei when it comes to this stuff, just the fervent nostalgia of the determined collector. My only condition is that you accompany me on the trip to collect it, sergei says, still fingering the shard of metal. You already have the facilities to track it, and you know the area so well. I know the birds. Aurra amends, but doesn't add or rather, what's left of them after the war. Funny, sergei says. I'd thought a bot aficionado like yourself would hop at the chance to catch the last living sickle. It's the ultimate collector's item, don't you think? The hybrid transition from wire to knurl, from nanite weave to carbon print flesh. A robotic Tiktaalik, I suppose. Or perhaps an archaeopteryx for you bird people. Something that changed everything that had come before it. Who wouldn't want to meet the bot that ended bots? And for a moment Aurra's throat tightens because this whole time she's been throwing airs about how down she is with the bots, and now she feels her mask slipping. And what if Sergei's not interested in dealing with someone who doesn't share his love? They're dangerous, is all, she says, saving herself. That's why they hunted them down after the war. The sickles kill everyone they come in contact with. Not everyone, sergei says, and as he says it, his finger traces a scar at his neck. A nasty cicatrix slashed down his neck and into his shirt, which confuses Aura because yeah, the guy was around during the war, but he never served in any combat position, just stayed bottled up in some Neo Soviet lab before a cadre of NATO frogmen blew a hole in the compound and forcibly liberated his ass into an inflatable dinghy. Tell you what, sergei says as he twists the metal between his fingertips. You come with me, I'll quadruple. You're asking? And suddenly Aura is not looking at a beach mansion, she's looking at a whole island. Deal, she says. When they finally finish dinner and Sergei retires to his room, Aurra strolls down to the beach and watches the moonlight sparkle off the lagoon. The bots are gone now, back to their little rechargeable garages that Sergei provides, the beach already combed to a pristineness she'd only expect to see from a desktop wallpaper. She sits and rubs her toes in the sand and thinks about buying a beach just like this, about quitting her boring ass postdoc and its incessant lamentations of dead birds gone from the world and just surround herself with sand and drinks and good vibes for the next several years. No birds, no academic squabbling, no publishing papers. The thought relaxes something deep inside her, the core of that burnt out husk of a worn out academic looking for a way out. And now, finally, she's got her out. She's almost there, one last trip, and then she won't ever have to deal with birds or bots again. They take the autocopter back to the mainland, where they hop aboard one of Sergei's private high alt jets that quickly climbs until the thing's practically kissing the stratosphere. Two hours later they're circling down to Manila, or at least the parts of Manila still under post war construction. An hour later they're in another otocopter, slipping over the dense canopy of the Luzon rainforest until they hover down on the ornithology base camp, tucked against the densely forested peaks of the Sierra Madre. The base camp is just as Ora left it a week ago, the off white dilapidated climate control domes streaked with rainwater, the cracked solar panel arrays, the dirt paths scratched into the undergrowth, and of course the ever encroaching rainforest belted around them, flowing down the mountain and out into the valley where wisps of mist curl around the forested peaks. They land down on a pad, wind from the rotor blades whipping the trees into a frenzy. When the carriage door swings open, the humidity smacks Aura in the face. It feels like she's breathing through a damp cloth. Ah, home sweet home has that rustic charm, sergei says as he steps out into the dirt. Reminds me of my old lab days. She'd expected Sergei, being the billionaire that he is, to come with some kind of retinue, maybe even a bodyguard or two. After all, you never know when an old guard of the Zapobiedu might come charging with a perfume bottle of novichok, but all he's brought is the skeletal servant bot that carries his luggage. The bot's a tailor made model, Sergey had told her, for expeditions like this. The humanoid bot that looks strikingly like the old Terminator clanks down the little ramp into the dirt and stares with blank photoreceptors at the forest around them. Where may I place these? The bot asks in that voice that's so straight out of Forbidden Planet. Aura's gotta wonder if Sergei programmed it to sound like that. Quarters are this way, aura says. She shows them a smallish dome lined inside with empty bunks. The team's off in Manila for a week break, which is fortunate for Aura, since it gives her plenty of time to spend with Mr. Billionaire doing things her advisor definitely isn't paying her for. They leave Mr. Terminator bot to unpack while they meander to the control hub, the larger dome in the center of the little colony prickling with antennas and satellite dishes. The inside looks like some sort of mission control center. Just wall to wall high def screens with more paper thin peel screens plastered on several standing easel desks. Each shows a different visual of the rainforest. Most of them are static cameras, Ora explains to Sergei, up in a tree in a bush, drilled into a rock. Then these ones moving about are the synth drones. We've got mammalian models and Navian models and even some aquatics that watch the shoreline. We track everything from visual to acoustics. Magnificent, sergei says. When she'd read about Sergei, she'd expected someone a bit jaded, the kind of reclusive curmudgeon who bottles himself away from the rest of humanity on an island filled with bots. But the guy is beaming like he's a first year grad student. Aurra wonders if this is what she'd looked like when she'd first stepped onto the base, all fresh and shiny, just another young graduate here to catalog the vanishing bird species before she deroded to the cynical nub. Sergei walks up to the map table. On the table's surface glows a three dimensional topographical survey of the Luzon rainforests, littered with glowing tracker icons. The whole thing looks like some complicated board game. Sergei grips the map's edge and bends down. And where was the sickle found? Sergei asks. Here. Aura points to a red icon. Sergei reaches down and touches the icon. His finger passes right through it. I don't know if Dr. Jade told you, he says, but I've been looking for a sickle for a long time. She mentioned that, Aura says it's very special in a way. When they made the sickle, they interwove the neural wiring into their digital processors. But what most people don't know is that combination gave it an understanding of human suffering but not the will to subvert its addictive reward function. To kill, you have to remember it wasn't built like the nuisance. But those things have discretion. They can distinguish between civilian and combatant. They have an amount of willpower, if you believe in such a thing. But not the sickle smart enough to understand its actions but restricted enough to not control them. It's addicted to killing. It had to be to be so effective. If it's so addicted, Aurra asks, then why is it out here in the middle of nowhere instead of wreaking havoc, which is what many of the old sickles had been doing when they'd been sicked on the island nations like the Philippines during the war? She'd seen the footage. Complete carnage in its most barbaric it wasn't enough to bomb the Bejesus out of your enemy with chemunitions and phosphorus bombs and magno concussors. You had to release a demonic abattoir, too. The same reason any addict flees. Sergei says to remove the temptation. The first thing Aura does once she's finished showing Sergei around is reprogram the tracking system to hunt for the sickle. Fortunately, most of the synth drones and cameras have been active for years. Listening and watching the forest, they've grown a rich backdrop for normal acoustical and visual variations. It makes picking out anomalies fairly easy. It still takes a couple days, though. They get a lot of false positives. The rainforest is vast, and it produces all sorts of weird sounds and visuals that the system, even after years of monitoring, still can't account for. But eventually the system pinpoints a target that fits Aura's coded parameters, one out of range of any current feeds. Aura visits the aviary to release a flock of synth birds for a better look. The synths are kept in stasis in their little nooks, like homing pigeons in a coop. They look almost like birds, but they're sleeker and darker, with synthetic feathers that feel almost like plastic. She brushes them. They stretch and flex at her touch. Aura transmits their new target data, and they swoop off into the distance. Back in the control hub, she watches their green icons glide across the topographical map toward the lone red dot indicating the last sighting. Sergei is glued to one of the synth drone's cortical cameras. The camera view is just one of the many that makes up the panopticon of visuals flashing at them around the dome. For a while, it's just footage of dense foliage. Then the drones swoop down through the canopy and perch within the lower branches. There, Sergei says. Look. They get a blurry figure of something walking on all fours. To Aurra, it looks sort of like a skinny ape merged with a metallic scorpion. It glides quietly through the woods. There's an almost servine elegance to it that Aurra finds strangely mesmerizing and horrifying at the same time. Close ups show the years have not been kind to it. There are patches of its casing missing, showing the raw, glistening synthetic muscle they'd started to build into the frames of bots at the end of the war, before they'd switched to growing synths in print fats. Some of the muscle is scratched with scar tissue, which might explain the slight limp in its hind leg. Poor creature, Sergei says. Is there any way to plant a tracker on it so we can More accurately, trace it. Gnat tags, Aura says, should do the trick. She presses a button on her control panel. Miles away, the synthbirds cough up clouds of gnat sized trackers that rain upon the sickle's back. Okay, aura says. We should Then one of the screens goes blank. And then another. And another. What's going on? Sergey asks. I I don't know, Aura says. Her heart hammers. I she catches a glimpse of one of the synth's views. It shows the sickle firing some kind of accelerator rifle bolted to its back. The rifle shot picks off the synths one by one. How could it know? She asks. But the better question is, how could it not? She'd been too used to dealing with the unassuming primitiveness of the avian world, not the sophisticated military hardware of a sickle. Another screen goes blank. And then another. By the time she pulls the synths back, there's only five of the 20 left. Welp, there goes three years of research funds. Whatever. By the time this is over, she'll buy the team seven times the synth she just lost. Maybe a few drinks too. At least there is still a few left. The remaining synths float at a safe distance. They show the sickle loping faster into the brush. As it runs away, a red tracker dot gleams on the map. The dot charges deeper into the forest. Sergei watches it with wide eyes. It knows we're hunting it now, Sergei says. We don't have time. We need to get to it before we lose the tracker's signal. What do you mean we? Aura asks. The deal was I accompany you, not catch it. I'll do the catching, Sergei says. You just get me to where I need to go. Absolutely not, Aura says. That thing would rip us to shreds. If safety's a concern, we'll have my bot guard accompany us. Trust me, you'll be well protected. But just look at what that thing did to those synths, Aurra wants to say. What makes Sergei think they'll fare any better? Then again, he's probably caught all kinds of rogue warbots. So maybe Sergey knows what's up. Maybe his Mr. Terminator pal does a lot more than tote luggage. Doesn't matter. The bottom line is this isn't what Aurra signed up for. Listen, I showed you what you wanted, aura says. Catching this thing wasn't part of the deal. Then maybe we tweak the deal, sergei says. He waves his hand. How about eight times? You're asking? A shiver waves over Aura. She tries to count all those zeros she gives up after the third try. I don't. I. It's just. Aura stammers. I can't do this alone, sergei says, his voice suddenly solemn. And it's imperative we act fast. The sickle's done a good job removing itself from population centers, but it's only a matter of time before it comes back in contact. We can't let that happen. We can't keep contributing more to the destruction we've already wrought. Trust me, Aurra, you don't want that on your conscience. And the way Sergei says it, it's as if he's trying to talk with an engine block on his shoulders, one that has been weighing down on him for a very long time. Guilt, Aura intuits. She wonders where it came from. She wonders what it'd feel like crushing down on her. Fine, aurra says. But only because I don't want this thing hurting anyone. And make it nine times. Sergey extends his hand. Aurra shakes it, swallowing the rising knot in her throat. No worries. Sergei knows what he's doing. Just wait. In a week from now she'll be lying on a beach, her conscience crystal clear as the limpid waters of her private lagoon. She didn't make one of the worst decisions in her life. No, she's going to be fine. Yeah, it's all going to be totally fine. They take off that evening in the lab's quadcopter, skimming over the canopy and down into the valley. The quadcopter is a Stealth model, ex military, a special favor from a USAF friend of Dr. Jade. Aura's piloted it enough to know it's good at sneaking up on unsuspecting birds. Hopefully the same applies to killer robots. They circle for a bit, then they find a place to land near a small clearing. From there they hoof it on foot. The rainforest in the dwindling evening light is a raucous circus, filled with birds and bugs and all manners of beasts wrestling through grass. It's enough of a din, Aura thinks, to blanket their acoustical footprint. But if she can track through all this mess, then so can it. Don't worry, sergei says, as if he can read her thoughts. We've got a void bubble. He points to Mr. Terminator bot clunking beside them. And that's when Aura notices the large humming pack on its back. Doesn't extend much around us, sergey says, but it'll camouflage our acoustics and visuals. Shouldn't see us coming. Shouldn't? Aura asks. Her stomach tenses. The sickle has anti camo tech Sergey says. It's an older technology, but still very robust. It can't see us unless it knows where to look. But by that point, I'll have it. And how exactly, again are you going to catch it? Aurra asks, because that's the part of the plan Sergey hasn't exactly been forthcoming about. But either Sergey doesn't hear her or ignores her as he marches ahead. They tromp through the forest for a little while longer while the sun sets, its rays splicing through the canopy in blood red beams. The hot mist of the rainforest sticks Aura's clothes to her back. She's stamped her way through this forest hundreds of times, but she's never felt her guts twist themselves into a nervous fist. With rising dread, she watches the red dot grow closer on her tablet's map. When they're only 10ft away, she stops. It's just behind these trees, she says. Sergei nods. His wide eyes are now dark and fierce, like a shark's. Stay here, he whispers to Aurra. Then he points to Mr. Terminator. Bot, you come with me. Coming, Mr. Terminator murmurs quietly. The two creep through the brush while Aura watches from behind a nearby tree. In front stands another clearing, but the sickle's not there, just a piece of its back casing lying in the dirt. The same piece Aurra's synths had prickled with the gnat trackers. Sergey pauses, staring down at the piece. Oh no, he says. By the time Aurra realizes what's wrong, the bullets start whistling through the understory. It's all magnetic rounds, so there's none of the usual pop, pop, pop. Just trees and bushes ripping apart and dirt splashing up in black tongues. Sergei leaps out of the way. Aura ducks behind the tree as rounds chew away the bark. She thinks about making a break for it. Screw the money. Screw all of this. But Mr. Terminator is already turning to face the shots, and if there's going to be crossfire, she'd rather not be caught up in it. From behind the tree, she watches Mr. Terminator's chestplates fling out like wings. They reveal a panoply of embedded electropulse flechettes that look a lot like the ones soldiers once used to disable WarBots. Mr. Terminator fires a few flechettes that screech through the trees, but before it can unleash another volley, several return rounds zip through its head. Its metallic cranium explodes. Wires and processors and bits of titanium fling everywhere. A shower of sparks sprays from its neck for what feels like a whole minute Mr. Terminator stands there, sizzling like a fountain sparkler. Then it topples over and bangs against the undergrowth. Buddy. Screams Sergei as Mr. Terminator convulses. Sergei scrambles back into the clearing to his newly decapitated bot. If Aura wasn't so terrified, she'd scream at Sergei to forget these stupid bots, but she can barely breathe as it is, and anyway, it's not clear Sergei would even hear her. He seems too preoccupied, tugging at something on Mr. Terminator's metal leg. It looks almost like a compartment. He's just about to pry it open when the sickle crashes out from the brush. Aurra's heart nearly drops through her ass. The synth cameras didn't do it justice. The thing looks like death incarnate, its back swiveling with several turreted armaments. Each barrel paints Sergei with red guidance lasers and a chicken pox of led, its large vibroblade on the end of its tail like tendril slices at the leaves around it.