Time Was by Steve Perry

fortunate ones only a few dozens yards away from them.
    That made her angry.
    Angry as hell.
    It also made her feel both grateful and sad that she wasn’t wholly human—but she never wished to be wholly robotic.
    Human beings with their petty squabbles, their greed and avarice, their duplicities and lusts and perversions and—
    â€” stop it , she thought.
    This was a burden all of the I-Bots had to contend with, each in their own time, in their own way.
    Neither wholly human nor wholly mechanical.
    Outsiders, wherever they went.
    Outsiders, forever.
    But sometimes, when she watched the privileged at the Taft laugh at the hopeless denizens on Cemetery Ridge, Killaine thought that maybe, just maybe, being forever an outsider wasn’t so bad, after all.
    She was pulled from her thoughts by a sound coming from the morning shadows behind Zac’s door.
    A soft, sad sound.
    Wet, full of grief.
    She stepped up to Zac’s door and gently, silently, pushed it open.
    Just a tad.
    Zac was sitting in an old kitchen chair, looking out the side window of his room.
    He was crying.
    Very quietly.
    Killaine felt something stir deep in her core, and she suddenly thought about a line that the Tin Man had said in The Wizard of Oz: “I know I’ve got a heart now, because I can feel it breaking.”
    He looked so alone and lonely.
    And Killaine didn’t quite know what to do.
    Psy–4 had once told her: “I always know what his mood will be by where I find his chair in the morning. Front is good. The side . . . isn’t.”
    She never really understood that until now.
    If he had been facing the front window—which looked out on the beautiful architecture of the glittering buildings of Cinnamon Road—then Zac had been thinking about the future, about Possibilities, Newness.
    Even Hope.
    But if he was looking out the side window—down onto the dirty, shabby, ruined Cemetery Ridge—then he’d been lost in the past, in Loss, Regret, Sadness, and—worst of all—Guilt.
    â€œZachary?” she whispered.
    Zac started, nearly jumping to his feet.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she said, stepping into the room and closing the door behind her.
    â€œI didn’t mean to scare you.”
    â€œYou didn’t,” he croaked hoarsely. “Well, not too much, anyway.”
    He made no attempt to wipe his tear-streaked face.
    After hesitating a moment, Killaine walked over, stood behind his chair, and softly placed her hands on his shoulders.
    His muscles were rock-solid with tension.
    â€œHow long have you been awake?” she asked.
    â€œOh, I . . . I don’t know. A while.”
    She gave a small, melancholy laugh. “Perhaps I’d best rephrase the question then: Have you been to sleep at all?”
    â€œYes. For a little while.” He reached over to rub the back of his neck, but Killaine pushed his hand away and began to massage his shoulders.
    â€œWhat wakened you?”
    â€œA dream.”
    â€œWas it a very bad one?”
    Silence.
    She felt his muscles tense under her fingers.
    Then: “Yes, it was. I dreamed about Grandpa, and Dad . . . and Jean.”
    â€œJean,” repeated Killaine.
    Jean Severn, the only woman Zac Robillard had ever loved.
    Jean Severn, whose parents, along with James Creed and Benjamin Robillard, Zac’s grandfather, had helped to lay the foundations for the science of Fundamental Robotics that eventually led to the creation of the robotic brain and, ultimately, the I-Bots themselves.
    Jean Severn, killed in Bolivia by the same fanatics who had also killed Zac’s grandfather.
    Jean Severn, who was resurrected by her killers when her brain was placed in the body of the Iron Man, a robot programmed for destruction by those who still held to the twisted principles of the Third Reich; Iron Man, a robot Zac had helped destroy. And with Iron Man, he’d destroyed the last essence of the