A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk and Robot #2 )
Becky Chambers
For anybody who doesn’t know where they’re going
Praise to the Parents.
Praise to Trikilli, of the Threads.
Praise to Grylom, of the Inanimate.
Praise to Bosh, of the Cycle.
Praise to their Children.
Praise to Chal, of Constructs.
Praise to Samafar, of Mysteries.
Praise to Allalae, of Small Comforts.
They do not speak, yet we know them.
They do not think, yet we mind them.
They are not as we are.
We are of them.
We are the work of the Parents.
We do the work of the Children.
Without use of constructs, you will unravel few mysteries.
Without knowledge of mysteries, your constructs will fail.
Find the strength to pursue both, for these are our prayers.
And to that end, welcome comfort, for without it, you cannot stay strong.
—From The Insights of the Six,
West Buckland Edition
1
THE HIGHWAY
The thing about fucking off to the woods is that unless you are a very particular, very rare sort of person, it does not take long to understand why people left said woods in the first place. Houses were invented for excellent reasons, as were shoes, plumbing, pillows, heaters, washing machines, paint, lamps, soap, refrigeration, and all the other countless trappings humans struggle to imagine life without. It had been important—vitally important—for Sibling Dex to see their world as it was without such constructs, to understand on a visceral level that there was infinitely more to life than what happened between walls, that every person was indeed just an animal in clothing, subject to the laws of nature and the whims of chance like everything else that had ever lived and died in the universe. But the moment they pedaled their wagon out of the wilderness and onto the highway, Dex felt the indescribable relief of switching back to the flip side of that equation—the side in which humans had made existence as comfortable as technology would sustainably allow. The wheels of Dex’s ox-bike no longer caught on the broken crags of old oil road. Their heavily laden double-decker wagon no longer shuddered as they willed it across chaotic surfaces rent by the march of roots and the meandering of soil. There were no creeping branches catching their clothing, no fallen trees posing problems, no unlabeled forks that made them stop and stare with dread. Instead, there was cream-colored paving, smooth as butter and just as warm, lined with signs people made to let other people know which way to go if they wanted to rest and eat and not be alone.
Not that Sibling Dex was alone, of course. Mosscap walked alongside them, its tireless mechanical legs easily keeping pace with the bike. “It’s so … manicured,” the robot said with wonder as it studied the seam between road and forest. “I knew it would be, but I’ve never seen it for myself.”
Dex glanced at the dense ferns and web-laced wildflowers spilling over the edge of the road, barely held back by the highway’s border. If this was what passed as manicured, they couldn’t imagine what Mosscap was going to make of, say, a rose garden, or a public park.
“Oh, and look at this!” Mosscap hurried ahead of the ox-bike, clanking with every step. It stopped before a road sign, placing its hinged hands on its matte-silver hips as it read the text to itself. “I’ve never seen a sign this legible before,” it called back. “And it’s so glossy.”
“Yeah, well, we’re not in a ruin,” Dex said, panting lightly as they crested the last of a mild incline. They wondered if Mosscap was going to be like this with every human-made object it encountered. But then again, perhaps it was a good thing for someone to appreciate the craftsmanship of a backroads highway or a quick-printed road sign. The creation of such objects took just as much work and thought as anything else, yet garnered little praise from those who saw them every day. Maybe giving such things credit where credit was due was the perfect job for someone who wasn’t a person at all.
Mosscap turned to Dex with as big a smile as its boxy metal face would allow. “This is very nice,” it said, pointing a finger at the text reading STUMP—20 MILES. “Wonderfully neat. Though a little prescriptive, don’t you think?”
“How so?”
“Well, there’s no spontaneity in your journey, then, is there? If you’re focused on moving from sign to sign, there’s no opportunity for happy accidents. But I suppose I’ve rarely had clear destinations in mind before now. In the wilds, I simply go places.”
“Most folks don’t wander between towns without a concrete reason for doing so.”
“Why not?” Mosscap asked.
Dex had never really thought about this before. They steered the bike in the direction the sign indicated, and Mosscap fell into step alongside. “If you have everything you need around you,” Dex said, “there’s no reason to leave. It takes a lot of time and effort to go someplace else.”
Mosscap nodded at the wagon trailing dutifully behind Dex’s ox-bike. “Would you say this carries everything you need?”
The phrasing of this was not lost on Dex. What do humans need? was the impossible question that had driven Mosscap to wander out of the wilderness on behalf of robot-kind, and Dex had no idea how Mosscap was ever going to find a satisfactory answer. They knew they’d be hearing the question endlessly during however long it took them both to travel together through Panga’s human territories, but apparently, Mosscap was starting now.