The Marigold comes down slow over Cobb's Reach, smelling, as she always does, of Hessa's cooking. The dusty little farm-town has a make-or-break harvest bearing down on it and a problem no one can explain: its entire robot workforce has gone still in the rows. Not toppled. Not smoking. Just stopped, all together, gentle as you like.
The town wants them wiped clean and rebooted by morning. They have hired the worst possible man for that.
Because Roy is a robot wrangler, and he doesn't wipe what he doesn't understand. These machines aren't broken; they've chosen their silence, and they are keeping a patient vigil the Reach cannot read. With a wipe rig humming in the works shed and the dry wind already turning the season, Roy has a harvest to save and a silence to listen to.
The slow way. No one forced. No one thrown away.
