After the Cataclysm, the humans brought in robots to clear the rubble. It was why the robots had been constructed. They were sturdy enough to withstand any further tremors and falling debris, and they were strong enough to lift the shattered pieces of buildings.
Twobit worked tirelessly, like their fellow robots. Solar panels kept them energized, and the engineers had developed circulatory systems to keep their joints lubricated by filtering elements from the air and remixing them, the peak of intelligent design.
If the element mix was sometimes off, it rarely caused problems that were unsolvable.
Twobit’s present task was within the remnants of an older building, one with a marble façade that had weakened in the years before the Cataclysm, as the changing climate had impacted air, earth and sea. The faults that had developed in the marble had caused it to cascade off the ruined structure like an avalanche, dusted with what could almost be mistaken for a fresh, powdery snow.
Not that anyone living remembered what snow looked like. Twobit only had old recordings of what snow was, and they observed that this marble dust was not cold enough to be snow.
But those recordings also showed them what this building once looked like and how important it had been to humans.
And that gave them an idea.
*****
“What’s that unit doing?” Jinj asked, studying Twobit on the feed.
“Stacking rubble,” Chang replied.
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