(Photo by I Love Pixel)

Dying while on the toilet was certainly low on the list of places people would prefer to die. Being turned into a drone would have also been quite low on any list for ways their bodies could be used. Although it could be argued that Chester’s drones weren’t dead and had only been sort of dead during the conversion process, Chester himself didn’t agree with that way of thinking. The people themselves were all quite dead and all he and the other necrologists were doing was reanimating those corpses. His drones just happened to have a higher degree of autonomy and cognitive functions. They were not themselves anymore, however. They were more like robots now than anything else in his opinion.

As the first of the waiting ships began to land on the moon, the work of cleaning up the colony slowed down as expected. That was fine since it was taking Chester’s drones longer than expected to fit the Bednirs into the hab toilets. Without a person there to operate it, the Bednirs had to be fully capable of restraining and properly injecting the subject, both of which required careful attention to where the subjects limbs were in relation to all the moving parts of the Bednir. Fortunately, he had an easy location to test out each new prototype.

“Excuse the mess,” the drone told the newcomer as they made their way across the port and towards a small restroom. “We would have had all this cleaned up by now but that illness threw a wrench in everyone’s timetables.”

“It can’t be worse than the busted toilet we’ve got on board,” the other man said. “That thing hasn’t worked right the entire time we’ve been in orbit. We were running out of bio bags to store everything in.”

The drone chuckled and gave the man an understanding look. Everyone who’d spent any amount of time traveling in space knew the fear of a broken toilet. Critical systems onboard always had secondary and tertiary backups, as well as replacement components, but for some reason toilets weren’t usually on that list of critical infrastructure and that led to precisely this sort of problem.

“Well you can rest easy now,” the drone said as the two of them walked into the restroom.

A line of stalls flanked one side but all but one were marked as out of order.

“You’ve only got one working toilet?” the man asked. “Guess it’s not just the ships that have this problem.”

The drone chuckled again. “The other restrooms in the port have been repaired,” he said, “but this one was closest to where you docked. I think this restroom is on next week’s repair schedule.”

The man shrugged and stepped into the stall, closing the door behind himself.

“I’ll just be outside,” the drone said and left.

As soon as the man inside the stall sat down, the kill box activated and he slumped, almost falling to the floor before the panels on the wall behind him opened and mechanical arms slid forward, catching him and pulling him back into a sitting position. The plumbing behind the toilet shifted and turned, exposing previously hidden joints as well as the neural injectors.

The twisting, turning points of the injectors sought their way up towards the man’s neck. They poked a couple times before they hit the right spot and sank deep into his artery. A moment later, they retracted and returned to their default positions. The man was reanimated and the restraints that had been supporting him withdrew back into the wall. This was the first time the Bednir had worked without needing human intervention. There was another drone hiding inside the neighboring stall, ready to go in and correct the Bednir if necessary.

With each new ship, Chester was adding at least one new drone or node to his collection. Each one gave him a glimpse into the various ships, their size of crew and, most importantly, their destinations. Most vessels worked strictly within the core worlds but a few would venture further out into the solar system. The new drone left the restroom a few minutes later and returned to his work.

“Excellent,” Chester sighed in relief. “Now that it works, get the installation crew over to the administrators habs and begin work.”

They were running out of time before the administrators would start moving into their habs so the fact that the Bednir finally worked on its own was a major victory for Chester.

“Anyone of note on board the ship?” Chester asked the new drone now that his primary concerns were taken care of.

“We took on a new passenger from the capitol,” the drone replied. “Most of us assume they’re some government operative, though we’re not sure what they’re doing. They’re posing as an astronomer on their way to the fringe.”

“Is your ship taking them all the way to the fringe?”

“It’s on our route.”

“Why do you think they’re an operative?”

“The ship’s cook likes to go through new passenger’s belongings and he found some introductory astronomy stuff. Looked like they were studying it to be able to answer most of the basic questions people might ask them. They’ve avoided every question that went beyond the basics.”

“That’s similar to what Siecha did,” Chester mused to himself. “Why don’t these operatives have better cover stories?”

“We usually do,” Siecha chimed in. “But sometimes there isn’t enough time for the training for a specific background.”

“But why not already have some area of specialty to use for your background?”

“We do, but those don’t always align with our assignment.”

“How so?” Chester asked.

“I have a medical background,” Siecha said, “but the Solar King wanted someone to be able to get onto the Sea Star as a crew member in case the virus didn’t work and you got onto the Sea Star to escape. The only way to get me on board like that was to replace a crew member and only captains and engineers are ever swapped around that way. I certainly wasn’t qualified to captain the ship so I was sent as an engineer. This other operative is likely there to see if you get on board the first ship heading out to the fringe. Since it’s a longer trip they wouldn’t want to replace someone critical like the engineer so being a passenger is the next best option.”

“But why not have an operative who’s also already trained in astronomy?”

“There likely are ones with that training,” Siecha said, “but they’re not available right now. Most of the Solar King’s attention has been on the fringe for some time now and even before this recent rebellion there were never that many operatives near the capitol. In fact, most of us stay away from the capitol to avoid suspicion.”

“Well let’s keep an eye on them, but I don’t think we’ll be ready to leave with that ship.”

A few drones began keeping track of the operative, who stayed within the port and didn’t do much more than stretch their legs as they waited for the ship to finish unloading some cargo. The only thing of note was that the operative asked a few people if anyone else was going to be joining the ship as passengers as well. When it was obvious that no one would be joining, the operative returned to the ship and stayed there until it left the next day.

“As I said before,” Siecha reminded Chester, “I’d expect there to be someone like that on board each ship that’s going anywhere near the fringe.”

“The fringe isn’t the only potential destination,” Chester said as he remembered Quartermaster Cosa’s advice. “There’s also the Zenith shipyard. If we can get there then we can get a ship of our own.”

He’d almost forgotten about that. One of the problems with losing drones was that he also lost their memories. If he forgot something they’d told him before, he couldn’t rely on the surviving drones to remember it.

“She knew the dock master,” he reminded himself. “What was his name?”

It was useless to try and remember it. Years of disregarding people’s names while working in the Solar King’s necrology lab meant that now his mind didn’t even try to remember them. Unless he heard the name repeatedly, or made a conscious effort to remember a name, he was far too likely to forget it within a few minutes of hearing it. Perhaps he should work on breaking that habit. He certainly didn’t have the same excuse that he used to have, with the Solar King executing his fellow necrologists one by one, week after week. He might even be able to build some friendships eventually.

“Yeah,” he muttered to himself. “It’d be nice to have someone to talk to that isn’t a drone or likely to be executed at the end of the week.”

That reminded him of just how long he’d worked under those conditions. The hundreds of bright and eager necrologists he’d met, worked with, and eventually had to turn over to the Solar King for execution. A new sacrifice every week. A new face every week. It was no wonder to him that some of them tried very hard to endear themselves to him. It was that or work feverishly each week in the hopes of not being chosen.

Chester didn’t miss the sycophants he’d had to deal with over the years. They were the easiest ones to get rid of, and eventually word got around that that was the case and the newcomers were often warned not to try it. Until eventually he was left alone. Sure, they all worked together, but when they went out for a meal after work, Chester was not invited. No one had ever said it to his face of course, but they didn’t need to. They had an understanding.

Chester realized that he was crying. It wasn’t a serious cry, with loud blubbering or anything like that, but tears flowed easily down each cheek as he thought back on those days. Even now he was alone. It was too dangerous to risk revealing himself to anyone else that wasn’t one of his drones.

“It isn’t forever,” he assured himself. “I’ll get out of here, get set up someplace safe, and then, who knows. Maybe I’ll try farming or something.”

He laughed at that, knowing how bad a farmer he was, never having the patience for growing crops. Although, with a small group of dedicated workers who could do all the work for him, maybe farming wouldn’t be so bad after all.