“Hey there sport, you want to come help us with the morning routine?”

I stirred from my slumber and raised my head off the pillow of the bed that the Red Crest had provided for me. The door was cracked open so that I could hear the voice I recognized as belonging to Mr. Evanson calling through. A light streamed through the opening, shining with the telltale flicker of fire. Without that light I wouldn’t have been able to see a thing. The sun must not have risen yet because it was still pitch dark.

“I… huh… what?” I floundered for words as I tried to force the somnolent gears of my brain into motion.

“If you want to sleep in that’s fine too. I just thought maybe you’d like to get a little taste of how we live around here.” Mr. Evanson called.

In reality I preferred to sleep first and learn about the locals later, but since I was already painfully awake I decided I might as well go ahead and get to know my hosts a little better.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Early morning. About five-ish? We don’t really have clocks around here so I don’t know specifically. We have to get up early, though, or else the water will get away.”

Far too early for my tastes, but I had already resolved to go. What was that he had said about water? That it would “get away”? I had probably misheard him since I was still groggy and unfocused.

“I’ll be out in a minute.” I replied with a sigh.

I dragged myself out of bed and pulled on some clothing. I thought of brushing my teeth, but then remembered there was no running water. I supposed I could take care of it in the restroom with the water bucket, but that was all the water I had access to. How was one supposed to take a shower around here? As I walked out the door I decided that this would be the first thing I’d ask Mr. Evanson.

“A shower, huh?” he said once I had posed the question, “You can get one of those later, once we’ve restocked on water. Come along with me and I’ll show you.”

Mr. Evanson began walking down the hallway carrying the lamp that was providing the light with him, and I followed along behind. He took me up a flight of stairs that was tucked away at the very end of the hall. As it turned out this was the roof access staircase, and once Mr. Evanson pushed open the door we stepped onto the roof and into the open air. It was still dark outside and the cold air of the desert night, so impossibly different from the heat of the day, bit at my face. There was already a gathering of around thirty people up here. All five of the men who we had met the day before were present, Duncan Jason, Craig, and the other two whose names I still didn’t know. Sally and Kyler were both here as well, although I noticed that the younger kids were absent. Lining the rooftop were rows and rows of plants that I assumed must be vegetable crops. I expected that we’d be tending to these plants in some way, but right now everybody appeared to just be standing around waiting for something.

“So… what is it we’re doing up here?” I asked.

“Right now we’re just waiting to start the morning routine.” Mr. Evanson said unhelpfully.

“In case you haven’t figured it out, ‘routine’ is his sneaky way of saying ‘chores’.” Came the voice of Duncan from the rooftop in front of us, to the sound of convivial laughter.

That wasn’t too surprising. I supposed that we’d probably be watering the plants or something. Not the most interesting way to start the day, but really what else was I going to do? I certainly wasn’t going to be getting back to sleep after this much of a disruption. We all stood around on the roof for a while, and I wasn’t sure what we might be waiting on. Then, suddenly, Mr. Evanson cleared his throat.

“Alright everybody, I think it’s about time.” he announced, “split off into the usual teams and get ready! Aston? You stay here with me.”

The crowd that was gathered there on the roof divided itself up into several smaller groups. Then the vast majority of these groups went charging off into the darkness and out of sight, leaving only a few of us still standing near the roof access door. Duncan was among those who remained, and he fixed me with a roguish smile.

“So, Aston, you ready to wrestle some robots?” he asked.

I was completely lost as to what he might mean by that, but before I even had a chance to ask for clarification Duncan’s head suddenly whipped around. Something in the darkness had grabbed his attention. He went off like a shot, streaking in the direction of whatever he had seen. As I turned to follow him with my gaze, I saw what it was that he was after. There, maybe fifteen feet away or so, was a maintenance bot. It was so quiet that I hadn’t even noticed when it showed up. It was blocky and simplistic looking like all the others I had seen so far, but I noticed that this particular model had some sort of a plastic jug in the back, similar to what one might see on top of a water cooler at an office. Duncan jumped on the robot and wrapped his arms around the water jug. The robot began to writhe and pull against him, attempting to free itself. Duncan held on and strained against the robot as a couple of other men joined him, attempting to pin the thing down.

“What’s he doing?” I asked Mr. Evanson.

“Collecting water,” Mr . Evanson told me, “here, you can try it for yourself. Grab that one right there and see if you can pull its jug off!”

He pointed and I saw another identical robot that had just crawled its way onto the roof. I looked at Mr. Evanson, who simply gave me a nod and gestured towards the bot as if to say “get a move on”. I slowly circled the machine, positioning myself behind it, and then lunged at it and tried to do what Duncan had done, wrapping my arms around the jug and pulling. As soon as I did so, however, the bot began to twist and buck. A few moments of desperate struggling later I was thrown to the side in a heap.

“You’ve got to hold on better than that!” Mr. Evanson laughed. “Once you grab that robot its programming will think it’s stuck on something, and it’s going to do whatever it can to break free!”

Over where the other robot was, I saw that duncan had pulled the jug out and was emptying the water into a large container. The bot had stopped moving the moment that the jug was removed, and so as soon as it was empty Duncan stuck it right back into the bot. The bot turned around and made its way back down the side of the building. Without skipping a beat, Duncan went after another one that had just arrived, extracting the jug masterfully as the other two men braced themselves against the sides to hold it in place for him.

That sure does seem easy when you have three adults handling it. I thought to myself.

I got the impression that Mr. Evanson was having me do this on my own to play a practical joke at my expense. Well fine, if that was how it was going to be I’d play along. I studied the robot, trying to figure out an angle of attack. The robot rolled up to the line of crops, gliding on the treads that it used to get around, and began to spray water on the soil.

“You’d better hurry up there son, if that thing uses up too much water then it’ll be a lost cause.”

I wasn’t entirely sure why that might be, but nevertheless I launched myself at the robot once more. I grabbed the jug and held on for dear life as once again the machine began to buck violently. I slid back and forth,  flailing as I was dragged across the roof, trying desperately to find purchase with my feet. Looking at the jug, I thought I could see how it might be removed. It looked as though there was a way to twist it out, and as I found myself flung painfully into the side of the robot, I hooked my leg over the top and wrenched the jug with all my might. It popped out, and the bucking suddenly stopped. A few feet away, Mr. Evanson laughed and gave a one-man round of applause. It was a small victory, but a satisfying one. 

“So what’s the point of this?” I asked, “don’t you want these things to water the crops?”

“Sure we do.” he said, “but we need them to water the people first. You see, even before we came here there used to be gardens on top of some of the buildings. Not vegetable gardens of course, but flower gardens. Something nice for people to look at, you know? Anyway, tending those gardens is what these little guys are designed to do, but we figured out a way to use them to our own advantage.”

“By stealing their water?” I asked.

“Precisely. Even though the running water has been turned off in this city for decades, the reservoir that the robots use to supply themselves is fully operational. The robots fill themselves up there and then we snag the water when they come in the morning to water the plants. When the robot realizes it has no water and still hasn’t done its job yet, it’s programmed to go refill and then come back and try again. That means we can empty their jugs as many times as we want as long as we catch them in time. As a bonus, they’re programmed to take care of the city’s gardens in general, even the ones we make ourselves, so once we finally let them do their thing they handle most of the watering and pest control for us.”

“So that’s how you get water all the way up here. That’s actually pretty smart.” I admitted.

“Naturally!” Said Mr. Evanson, beaming, “We couldn’t very well survive out here without some good heads on our shoulders, now could we?”

He gestured me over to the large container that Duncan had used and I poured the contents of the jug into it. Then I put the jug back into the robot, and once I had locked it back into place the bot silently crawled its way over the edge of the roof and back down the side of the wall as if nothing had happened.

“So that will be back with more water later, huh?” I asked.

“Sure will!”

“After we get all the water we need, what’s the next chore of the day?” I asked, hoping it would be something a little more conventional. 

“First we’ll use some of that water to freshen up a bit,” he told me, “and then myself and the other adults will take care of the aspects of gardening that the bots don’t handle for us.”

“What about me?” I asked.

“What you’re doing will be a lot more fun,” He told me with a grin, “We’re going to be giving you your first lesson in skylining.”