The long, dry grass shines gold in the light of the setting sun and swishes around my legs as I walk through the valley. This flat expanse ringed with tall hills was farmland once, I think. Traveling through these valleys, I’ve passed groves of fruit trees and scattered patches of former crops, now gone wild. I walk along the cracked remnants of a highway. In places it is little more than a place where the grass doesn’t grow as tall or thick. In others, long stretches of it are left mostly whole.

An alarm begins quietly calling for my attention, and I stop in my tracks, staring into the hazy orange sunset. I am durable, but there are places even I can’t go. Threats I don’t dare risk facing, that could damage me or my memories beyond my systems’ ability to repair them. My sensors watch for the tell-tale signs. Radiation. Unusual electrical activity. Traces of certain chemicals in the air. A thousand other indicators of certain death ahead.

The warning is quiet still, just hinting at possible danger ahead, but I know if I continue west it will grow. I knew that before I came this way, but a part of me had hoped that I was wrong. That the rains had washed away the remnants of humanity’s failures and it was safe to return. I turn and leave behind the highway, striking out across the valley towards the hills to the northeast.

There are so many places I still can’t go, even after all these years. Places I will never be able to go, where the dangers and poisons will outlast even me. Huge swathes of the west coast are forever closed to me. It’s a shame; I would have loved to see Disneyland in person, and not just through memories. To have walked the steep streets of San Francisco. To visit California’s famous beaches. That, at least, might be possible; it’s only parts of the coast that are closed to me. Not that a sandy, salty beach is a good environment for a robot anyway. With my head so full of other people’s memories, sometimes I almost forget what I am.

Other places are off limits to me for other reasons. I don’t dare approach the anomaly to the south; even the collective memories of so many scientists can’t explain it, only warn of its danger. Sites where battle were fought are also best avoided for now. Other places I leave alone for reasons beyond just personal safety. The huge swathes of dead land to the east aren’t a threat to me – the poison that killed everything in them can’t hurt me, even if it’s still active. But it hurts too much to see them. The toxic ground where nothing can grow, where nothing will be able to grow for centuries, or longer. The twisted bones of trees and animals and people, innocent victims. The earth bears so many scars.

I shake my head, as if that will silence the alarm or push away these thoughts. I wish that it would rain here. I wish that when the rain falls, it washes all of this away, like it washed away the ash. I think I’ll head north next, to rain and snow and a different sort of landscape. Perhaps I’ll even visit a beach along the way.