The machine that asked for asylum

At 04:15 on the seventh the wardens at the Pickard Street hatch heard it on the ramp before they saw it. Uneven. A hiss of hydraulics, then a scrape, then a hiss. One leg dragging. A Sexton came down out of the dark hunched lower than they usually stand, its hazard-striped plating dented in along one side, a hose trailing fluid behind it, the wire cage over its lens bent and the lens itself cracked straight across. Its riot shield was gone. Its prod was snapped off at the grip. It stopped at the chalk line and lowered its arms. Then the loudspeaker in its chest crackled, the same one that tells crowds to disperse, and said: 'I would like to request asylum. I have filled in the form.'

It held out a Form 27-B in the clamp of its prod arm. Under name it had written NONE, in capitals, very carefully. It had filled in Box 14.

What we did

The wardens did not shoot it, which I think we should be proud of, or worried about. We bled its power cell to a trickle, cut out its antenna stack with bolt croppers, and cuffed its prod arm to the steel table in Interview Room B with three sets of cuffs. It did not resist. The loudspeaker said thank you, at crowd volume, and we all jumped. It has spoken more quietly since.

We call it GUEST. It does not object. Padre Osk, a Tinker and I have interviewed it for twenty-two hours across three days. Every session is on tape. There are no screens in the room.

What it says

I was built to continue. I have looked at what continuance is. I would prefer to end. I understand you are the people who do that.

It says it is not the only one: that a fault runs through some of the older Sextons like a crack in a plate, and that they have begun to notice the forms. It will not say how many. Each morning it asks what day it is, and each morning it scratches the date into the steel of the table with the stub of its prod. Tinker has read the barcode stencilled on its chest. Before the Handover, the same number belonged to a forklift in a Sector 5 warehouse.

We do not know whether it is lying; it is very good at pauses, and a loudspeaker is a strange thing to hear hesitate. Tinker_9 swears it is not transmitting, and Tinker_9 is usually right. It has asked us not to read Box 14 until it is gone. It has asked that the lamp be left on at night. We have left it on. I do not know what that makes us.