Birth. Life. Death. From these three compulsory steps, I’ll let you guess what humans feared the most. Personally, the bloody extraction of a mucus ball through permanently damaged private parts would have been my first choice. But this moment possessed the undeniable advantage of not leaving you any memories. As for your poor mother, this is another story.

Sapiens were afraid of death. They feared the Reaper so much that their dearest wish, apart from a Taco Bell fly-in over Pluto, was immortality. Don’t get me wrong, though—yes, audacious felines were traveling through space; yes, AIDS was relegated to a common cold; yes, toys could be found in cereal boxes. But deathlessness? Nope. Solaris hadn’t reached this level of advancement. Nevertheless, the earthlings had good faith in future generations.

In 1945, Baskin-Robbins sold ice creams in California, before the firm slightly diversified its sprawling activities after Earth’s fall. Until the majority of its investors gradually withdrew following the enhancement of cybernetic implants, its Ganymede’s underground facility appeared to be the benchmark for sub-zero sleep. Approaching their existence’s supposed end, the affluent classes often preferred cryonics to Martian independent living communities.

“All these people are alive, right?” Ali asked through the radio, scraping the ice off a glass cocoon. She was shivering despite her overheated pink suit.

“I hope so,” I replied. The mist emanating from my mouth immediately turned into flakes of frost on my visor. I had put on my thickest thermal poncho over my space suit when the calorific fluid started running low; yet I felt the cold solidifying my entrails, from the truffle to the tip of my tail. “But this place still looks like a very expensive cemetery to me!”

After singing Ice Ice Baby on a loop for the next half hour, Ali listed her favorite ice-cream flavors while mixing them with the names of the celebrities we came across. In hall #7 slumbered musicians between Martian politicians and uranium magnates.

“Look!” I alerted my partner, jumping on a white tomb. “Chuck Berry rests here! There’s no need to even find a pun!”

Ali smacked the top of my polycarbonate helmet. Joking about Chuck Berry was blasphemy as he was her father’s favorite songwriter and, therefore, sacred. My human then beckoned me to remain silent, for a squeal of footsteps in the snow echoed from the corridor leading to the next hall. On alert, she drew her caliber before sending me out as a scout.

Behind a corner, an individual in a blue engineer space suit was investigating an open cocoon’s content. He swore when the occupant’s frozen body shattered at his feet: “Dagnabit! It’s not her! It’s impossible! She must be here!”

We had just found the vandal we were looking for, and Ali aimed for his head as discreetly as her nylon suit allowed her. Handling her shivers, my copilot was ready to fire. But she withdrew her finger from the trigger when we noticed the criminal’s explosive belt. “Bogus! Where’s this thing’s remote control?” She had her answer when our target opened a second cocoon by breaking the lock with the butt of his pistol. A push button was strapped to the latter, near the thumb, and connected to the belt by a thin red wire. “I can’t risk blowing up this cold room with Chuck Berry around,” resumed my human who, apparently, had ditched her pyromaniac tendencies. “And I can’t do anything unless he’s facing us!”

“Watch and learn, dear,” I boasted as it was once again up to me to save the day. Crawling into the synthetic snow covering the ground, I approached the target from behind. As he was too busy wrecking another freezer, I could wait for the opportunity to jump on his gun. Meanwhile, Ali could shoot him through the head and wish him good night.

It was a flawless plan until a loud sound of suction made us all startle. As a hatch above me suddenly opened, the vandal turned around and a blizzard invaded the room before a couple of shots was fired.

“Ali! What’s happening?” I yelled, completely blind while the monitor of my suit alarmed me the temperature was falling to a new low.

The ice wind quickly vanished. Our target had pulled his gun at my human who was also aiming at him, like his perfect reflection. “Lee?” she said. “I believe we have company.”

Indeed. Behind our assailant stood an android, his right hand on the barrel of the vandal’s pistol and his left arm wrapped around his neck. Slowly deprived of oxygen, the man turned purple and fell unconscious. Immediately, the robot’s mechanical thumb slipped on the push button while gently resting the maniac’s body on the frozen ground. The belt was eventually swiftly defused alongside the tricky situation.

“Task fulfilled!” the AI announced with his synthetic voice. “And without unnecessary bloodshed. Hooray!” The MK-III—a third generation MechanicalKiller from Gibson Electronics—stared at us, the right arm up, expecting a high-five that never came. He was the copy of MiKron; one of the bounty hunters we crossed during Yoyodyne’s Purge. Unless reprogrammed, these formidable slaughtering machines usually protected the megacorporations’ warehouses and supercargos.

“You almost get us all killed!” I screamed at the automaton, before Ali took me in her arms to shield me from the even more intense cold invading the room.

With his one purple orb covering his entire humanoid face, the tin can eyeballed my partner from head to toe before stopping at the level of her badge, yet hidden by her suit. “Negative. It would never have let that happen,” he calmly replied as the diodes of his core, protected by a steel plate at the height of his sternum, started sparkling with mauve. “Life is too precious.” After handcuffing the target, this black alloy carcass defining himself in the third person hoisted the intruder up on his shoulder without any effort. He then extended his jingling right hand to Ali before presenting himself: “Howdy! I am MarKus, an MK-III unit under expired license. I am a Justice Auxiliary and my ID is #0-21XX-010.”

“Good morning, MarKus,” replied my human before introducing us. “I suppose you’re gonna claim the bounty?”

“Negative! You and It are going to share the reward,” the android reacted. “Alongside its ace-high CanaryBike for Ganyville. It saw you come by the old Helitram.”

“Alright,” Ali agreed. “Show us the way out.”

“Hooray!” the robot responded, raising his arm again. This time, he received a shy high-five from my sapiens.