“Quinn,” said Will, approaching Quetzalcoatl. “Mac is dead. So are at least four others. We’ve been getting… scattered reports and text messages that our diplomats are being… hunted down by robots… everywhere.”
“Sons of fishes,” said Quetzalcoatl, crushing an empty beer can in his hand. “This is the same shit they tried back in the day.”
“Back in the day?”
“Time travel’s impossible,” replied the former Aztec god, shaking his head.
“What?”
“What?”
“What do we do, Quinn?” asked Will urgently.
“What do you mean what do we do?”
“How… do we respond? What are our… next steps?”
“What are our next steps?!” asked Quetzalcoatl, crushing another empty beer can. “Jesus, Will, what do you think? When some bully pushed you around on the playground, and I’m sure they did, what did you do?”
“Well, I usually tried to… ascertain why…”
“That’s the wrong answer.”
“I’m… pretty sure it’s not.”
“You think we should talk to them.”
“Yes.”
“You think we should talk to the killer robots.”
“Well, yes, Quinn,” said Will. “To defeat our enemy… we must first know him.”
“How in the fuck are you going to know a computer?”
“By talking to it.”
“You just went around in a circle there. That wasn’t…”
“I’ll inform the others.”
Quetzalcoatl shrugged and said, “OK, whatever.” Then he crushed another beer can. “There’s hundreds of you fuckers running around anyway.”