Jack looks up the hill, then back at me. “f**k you, little brother,” he says. “When did you start thinking like them? I’m going to help Tiberius. It’s the human thing to do.”
I reply without much conviction, “I understand them. It doesn’t mean I’m like them.”
But deep down, I know the truth. I have become like the robots. My reality has been reduced to a series of life-or-death decisions. Optimal decisions lead to more decisions; suboptimal decisions lead to the bad dream that’s happening just over the hill. Emotions are just cobwebs in my gears. Under my skin, I have become a war machine. My flesh may be weak, but my mind is sharp and hard and clear as ice.
Jack still behaves as if we live in a human’s world, as if his heart is more than just a blood pump. That kind of thinking leads t
