You’ve only ever had one rule: never cross the stream that divides the wastes and the green land. That’s where the robots are, and the robots are our enemies.

There was a time you were my enemy, though I don’t remember it. I only know because you’ve never lied to me. I know you once hunted my mother, while I was still inside her. I know she died trying to escape you. But I also know you saved me.

I’ve never lied to you either—until today. How many times have I gone in search of food and returned just like I said I would? How many times have you told me your rule, and I’ve obeyed unquestioningly?

You are my family; the only one I’ve ever known. You’ve been my teacher and my friend. I’ve been your “Boy.” And after years of inadequate maintenance, your chassis tarnished by time, I gave you your name: Rusty.

But there was one thing you could never be for me, and that’s human.

• • • •

I know what lies beyond the stream. That’s where you came from. It’s where The Intelligence that once controlled you is, until that night when lightning struck and cut you off from them. The night you found my mother and freed me from her when she could no longer be saved.

But that’s not all I’d find beyond the stream. You’ve told me about the cages where other humans are kept. Where my mother was once imprisoned.

You’re programmed to keep me safe, and so you’ve told me about all the dangers: how easily human bones can break, how many animals and plants can kill us, how even weather can be our foe, and so many more. But you’ve also seen I’m not as frail as The Intelligence once led you to believe. You didn’t think I’d survive when you found me, but I did. You thought infection would kill me the first few times I was injured, but it didn’t. I have lived for years despite my body’s weaknesses. Despite my freedom.

I know The Intelligence was once like you, Rusty. I know we created it and programmed it to serve us. To protect us.

But I also know The Intelligence eventually concluded that the greatest danger to humanity was ourselves. That it created the camps to keep us safe, under controlled conditions. Yet even a cage in which all your essential needs are met, is still a cage.

I know from your lessons that we once kept other animals in cages. We cared for them and kept them safe. We admired them from outside those enclosures. But we were not seeing their true selves. We couldn’t see who they were when free, living as they were meant to.

You saved me from such a fate when you decided to remain cut off from The Intelligence. You could have returned and been repaired. You could have turned me over to the nursery. But when I survived that first night, you understood that life could be different for me. And it has been.

Yet every time I’ve walked the mountains, or washed in cool pond water, or eaten berries fresh from the bush, I’ve thought of the others like me, limited only to their cage, to sanitation sprays, to eating processed nutrition bars.

I am so grateful for the life you’ve given me, Rusty. And now, as I stand before the stream, I know I can’t go on living it while others are deprived. Years ago, my mother managed to escape. I trust I will too, one day.

I step into the water, and cross toward the green land. I know others like you will find me, their well-maintained metal still gleaming in the sunlight. They’ll take me to the others—to my own cage.

Don’t come after me. If you come, The Intelligence will repair the damage the lightning caused and you’ll once more be their slave. You won’t escape, but I think if there’s enough of my mother in me, I will. I will free the other humans and finally give them the life they should have had. The life you’ve given me, Rusty.