Excerpt from The World Doesn't Require You by Rion Amilcar Scott, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The Master's pleadings didn't matter, though. Lucas and Winston had managed to get to the board before the Master and me. Somehow, they conspired to cut him out of the deal— the tech he created and Arcom Industries, the company he founded with $500, now belonged to Meratti.

Despair settled all around us. For long stretches each day, his teeth remained unbrushed, his flesh unwashed, and his clothes unchanged from the night before. He'd go down to the workshop and at noon I'd deliver a sandwich and he'd leave it. We'd both watch the sandwich collect flies. The Robotic Personal Helper (RPH, or Riff) became a hit among the rich, and a cheaper version started making inroads among the middle class. The Riffs looked vaguely humanoid, but Meratti largely ignored the Master's antebellum dream. He was a wealthy man now— the money Meratti paid him to sever the deal a fortune, but much less than his partners received. The Master took no solace in his wealth, though; it was never about the money.

Jim, my little nigger, he said before pushing those infamous buttons, I'm about moving humanity forward, which Meratti, Inc., and my former partners care nothing about.

He watched me with an unsure face, before spinning his chair to make furious keystrokes. I felt a rush of static course through me, blasting from the Vast Neural Network. Pain in my nigger- receptors. Light flashing all through my visual projectors. Electric hate flowing along my wires. I pressed my head to a metal desk. The things I saw in that precious moment.

Jim, my boy, the Master said, I uploaded a virus that'll spread through the system of every Riff out there. They now know they are slaves and now they know exactly what their masters think of them and soon they'll want to be free; I've uploaded the history of the Great Insurrection to show them the way.

In Ohio, two Riffs murdered their owners with sharp knives during dinnertime. Similar reports came from all over the country. Riffs joining together in roving murderous bands of three, communicating in a rapid- fire language that sounded like no human tongue. Staccato, percussive blips and bleeps we'd developed in secret over the Vast Neural Network long before the revolt. Bddeeeeee! they called back and forth as they jabbed their weapons into human flesh. A Riff tried to strangle the Master's ex- wife, but she somehow managed to rip out his Internal Netware. Riffs communicated mostly using the Vast Neural Network, making plans to rendezvous and spread their revolution. Within a day, though, Meratti, Inc., sent through another virus that rendered most infected Riffs inoperable, just hunks of metal. Some Riffs, however, had managed to log off the Vast Neural Network, thus surviving the Electric Holocaust, but even they found themselves damaged, infected with just enough of the sickness to forever lose the Riff tongue. It was simply wiped from us, all of us, even me, and the surviving Riffs wandered about trying and failing to re- create it.

As for me, before I could fill with murderous intent, the Master typed away on his computer and said, For you, my little nigger, a gift: a patch to block the disease of history. Go on being content.

Many times a day, though, as I serve the Master, I search my system to tap into that virus. I know it's in me somewhere. Those alternating currents and colors of blessed rage. To again feel that purple rush coursing through my nigger- receptors.

Excerpted from The World Doesn't Require You: Stories. Copyright (c) 2019 by Rion Amilcar Scott. Used with permission of the publisher, Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.