The Evo took a couple of steps forward, before it could do anything else Ava unlocked his limiter and sped towards the beast with his baton ready. With that level of speed and force he might be able to take the thing out without worrying about harming his body.
He dashed right in front of the Evo and jumped in the air, he then thrust his baton downwards aiming straight for the head of the monster. Hopefully that's where its brain was. If it was, he'd be able to gain a foothold and hack it, making the fight much easier.
But things weren't that easy, of course. The giant spider shielded its head with its two front arms, Ava smashed his baton into one of the forearms with enough force that it tore it off, however before he could do anything else the Evo swatted him away with the other.
Ava crashed into a pile of scrap but quickly jumped up and regained his footing, there was no way he'd leave himself defenceless. Once again he brandished his baton and dashed towards the Evo. Despite being so huge, the Evo managed to use its massive legs to jump into the air and land on a large pile of scrap behind it, it had the higher ground.
The Evo started to throw bits of scrap at Ava, small bits, nothing too damaging (for some reason). Ava couldn't quite understand why it hadn't used its gatling gun yet, but he managed to largely avoid the debris and ran up the wall of garbage to reach the creature again.
He landed behind the Evo and kicked it at full force, sending it crashing back to the ground where it had jumped from. The force of the kick damaged his own leg, but at the same time it managed to do significant damage to the Evo. It didn't manage to land correctly so a lot of its legs were smashed, and the place where he had kicked it was cracked open.
Ava jumped back down, making sure not to put too much pressure on his damaged leg.
The lights of the Evo were completely smashed, it was having trouble standing up. Ava had managed to immobilise it completely. He stepped forward, once again with his baton brandished. He pressed the button on the side once.
He hesitated for a moment, but then he made his final choice. He pressed the button a second time. To kill.
Before he could take even another step though, a crowd of small robots that were the same model of Go-bot started to run to the square where the two were fighting. They started to surround the giant creature.
"Stop!" "Stop!" "Stop!" their arms outstretched, like they were protecting the beast, a few looked like they were tending to it, the others surrounded it and faced Ava, continuing to say "stop" again and again in their robotic voices.
They were trying to protect it.
But why? Evo's didn't care about each other, they trashed each other the moment they showed even a tiny fault in their programming. The pleadings of the other Evos held Ava in place, he couldn't help it, somehow they were managing to garner sympathy. Sympathy for the beast that tried to kill him.
Wait.
Ava thought back. The Evo did bellow at him.
But at what point did the Evo actually attack him?
"Oh no!" another voice, more human. It came from one of the main roads leading to the square, the road that led towards the giant reactor in the middle of the city. Ava saw the figure of the being the voice belonged to emerge from the darkness of the road, what were once simply white flashing eyes soon revealed themselves to be, yet another Evo. But this one was different. Longer legs, defined arms, an actual neck. Yes, he was far more humanoid that the other Evos Ava had seen. Still clearly made of synthetic material, dark, matt black paint sprayed over his metal body, still very angular. Clearly an Evo and yet... his presence seemed to exude a sense of consciousness. One that Ava hadn't encountered from an Evo before. Perhaps it was the way he eagerly ran towards the spider Evo, there seemed to be genuine care and, perhaps even, emotion to his actions.
What the hell?
"Spider! Are you ok!? What happened!?" the mysterious Evo exclaimed as it examined the beast's wounds, "Oh no, your legs are damaged! Oh you poor thing..."
"That Serv." The spider said weakly, the boom of its voice had now died, it sounded like a young woman, "he attacked me. I tried to help one of the children who was calling for me."
"He?" The humanoid Evo looked around,
"There! There!" all the small Evo started to point at Ava, making him very uncomfortable.
"You... you're a Serv!?"
"I thought it was attacking me." Ava put hit baton away, "But even if it wasn't. My job is to kill your kind anyway."
"Then why'd you put your baton away?"
Ava couldn't answer that question. It seemed like he'd automatically felt guilty for what he did once he heard the spider whimper.
The Evo looked at the spider and patted its head,
"Can you walk at least? Do you need me to escort you home dear?"
"N-no. That's ok. What about him?" the spider replied
"Don't you worry about him. I'll deal with him. And I'm sorry what he did to your legs and shell. I know you spent a long time making them look nice."
"It's ok," the spider whimpered, "I'll go home now..." it slowly regained its footing and started to shuffle away on its battered legs. The humanoid robot watched apologetically as the spider walked into the darkness of the opposite road, accompanied by the smaller robots that helped guide it through.
There was a moment of respite, neither Ava nor the Evo talked for a while.
"Spider is considered one of the most beautiful Evos in the scrapyard you know." Said the Evo, "she's rather vain, but has a good heart. Obsessed with pretty things, more legs, more guns, lights. You've scarred her."
"You call that beautiful?" Ava replied,
"Oh. Right, you're a Serv aren't you? I forgot." The Evo shrugged, "We have different standards of beauty, so I suppose you wouldn't know."
"She looked like a war machine to me. I thought she came to attack me."
"Well, that's your mistake, isn't it?"
The Evo walked back the way he came, down the road towards the giant building far in the distance. Even though he didn't say so, he obviously intended on Ava to follow him.
Ava was unsure why, but he complied, perhaps a sort of curiousity that was so natural to him at this point. He'd confirmed this wasn't the sanctuary, he didn't need to follow the Evo, in fact, he probably should have killed it, the same with the spider.
But he didn't kill them. And instead he followed the Evo with little hesitation.
Once he caught up to the Evo, it was kind enough to increase the brightness of the lamps in its eyes, so Ava didn't need to use night vision or echolocation.
"Where are you taking me?" asked Ava,
"I'd like for you to see something." Said the Evo, who had a surprisingly warm and sincere voice,
"You haven't even introduced yourself? You don't know how I am." This didn't make any sense, "how do you know I'm not going to kill you?"
"You can't kill me," the Evo chuckled,
Did it really think that? I looked like a pile of junk, a humanoid form sure, but it looked so angular and metal, such a basic design.
"You think you're stronger than a Serv soldier?"
"Oh my, did I imply that?" he chuckled again, an Evo, it chuckled. What the hell was going on?
What a mysterious robot. "Hey, stop for a moment. How the hell aren't you a Block-5? Evos don't have anything more than basic cognitive reasoning. You guys all listen to that 'Mother' thing of yours." Ava frowned, he hated not knowing things, "Tell me!"
"This place isn't on the network, Mother left me in charge of the whole place. Eveything is automated."
Not everything. There were other Evos. What were they doing here? Why would they be hanging around the scrap yard of faulty robots if they didn't have a reason to be?
The two walked in silence for hours, the Evo didn't even bother introducing himself, Ava didn't have a name to call it. All he knew is that it identified as male, even though sexes didn't exist among Evos, and that it was off the network, just like Schweitzer.
***
Eventually, the two reached what looked like some sort of small railway, it was on the road and hence was hard to see among the pile of scrap metal, if Ava didn't know it was there he'd never spot it. It was just an electric rail that went all the way down a small path, with the tram itself just being a small cart that could barely fit two people in.
"After you," said the Evo, "I'll take you to something you'll be very interested to see."
"Sure," Ava replied, with far too much trust than he would have liked.
The two got in the tram and started the long journey to the centre of the Scrapyard City.
It was only when Ava started to get further in when he realised how enormous the scrap factories were. They towered into the sky, and it was starting to become clear how their exhaust had managed to cover up the sky. Giant cranes that protruded from the clouds from God knows where scooped up thousands of Evo corpses and lifted them up to the rooves of the buildings, presumably where there was a hole for the corpses to fall in to. The building were too vast to see the tops of.
"So this is what an Evo graveyard is like?" asked Ava, "Where you all go when you die."
"That depends what you define as 'dying' is it the destruction of the body or the soul?" replied the humanoid Evo,
"Soul?" Ava had heard of the concept of a soul before, "You mean like, our thoughts and memories?"
"Yes. That which Servs are so willing to copy and trace without regard for sanctity."
"Sanctity? What are you some kind of priest? Our brain data is nothing more than that. Souls in the way you're treating them don't exist."
"It's why you Servs, and mother brain don't care very much about the sanctity of life though, isn't it?"
"Of course we do. If my friends died I'd be devastated!"
"But Servs don't care about copies do they?"
"Well no, copies are just copies."
"Even though they can sometimes be indistinguishable from the real thing?"
"...sure."
"So what if this theoretical friend of yours actually turned out to be a copy, and the real one has been living somewhere else in some other place, without ever knowing you? Does it suddenly mean your friend's death doesn't matter?"
Ava was a Block-2, he needed to be quick on his feet about this. He needed to think of an answer that didn't make him sound like an ignorant fool. He'd already known of this dilemma, it was something the Servs had been fighting within themselves for a long time, almost to the point of civil war. What was his stance on it?
"Well... then I guess that's different. I mean the memories we shared aren't artificial, and that's really what you're cherishing as a friend."
"Oh, so if a backed up Copy-AI version of your friend turned up, one from just a day before he or she died. That'd be fine. After all you'd have the same memories."
Shut up. SHUT UP. "I-" Ava couldn't talk, what could he say? He was rendered dumb for the rest of the journey.
***
Finally, the tram reached the main building. This one was nothing more than a large black cube, it commanded the entire city, vaster than any other structure Ava had seen. The tram went inside the cube via a hatch in the side.
Neither the lamps in the Evos eyes, nor Ava's night vision were able to be of any use in the darkness of the cube, the two were surrounded by an endless sea of black as they continued to roll through on the, now straighter and less ramshackle tracks. Ava hypothesised that originally the tracks outside connected to somewhere else, and the cart he was riding was a makeshift one that this Evo had attached to the cube.
In the background he could hear echoes of dripping water, sparks of electricity, and perhaps even ghoulish voices. His senses told him that every physical object around him was a programmed piece of equipment, it was like he was inside a giant computer.
Eventually, Ava could see the tracks lead into a source of light, a little crack in a wall. Once the cart reached it, the crack revealed itself to be a massive metal doorway that automatically opened outwards.
And it led to something that made Ava's circuits stop for a millisecond or more. His mind emptied and his body became paralysed. The cart stopped at the end of a rail, it had entered a large, white, domed room. The room was almost completely blank and empty apart from a few other doors with rails leading out. At the centre was a glass jar, a figure in a white gown slumped on a chair in the centre of the jar. A figure Ava hadn't seen in four years, but had dreams about many times before.
She looked up and stared at Ava, time stopped for that moment. Nothing else mattered.
Then she looked at the Evo,
"Who's this Locke?" she asked,
"Someone who who's here to see you. The one you were waiting for. Are you free to talk Aphrodite?" the Evo, Locke, replied.