Bartek and Dagenskyoll’s Relationship

Bartek and Dagenskyoll’s relationship is a long-standing companionship tested by political necessity, coercion, and exhaustion. They share stories and plans, but their closeness does not erase disagreement: Dagenskyoll urges a devastating pre-emptive attack, while Bartek questions its cost; later, Dagenskyoll asks what Bartek truly wants, and Bartek answers with a vision of rebuilding humanity. Their eventual reunion turns that history into a quieter exchange about whether either of them still has the energy to keep trying.

A shared audience and a shared past

At Chūō Akachōchin, Dagenskyoll tells the robots gathered beneath the last red lanterns the legend of Dawntreader XII, a solar aircraft that escaped the Death Ray by staying ahead of the Death Meridian. Dagenskyoll gives the story the precision of a technical account: the plane had a 78-meter wingspan, weighed 1.64 tons, and could not fly faster than 300 kilometers an hour. Its passengers survived the destruction of organic life on Earth, debated whether to land, and eventually split up after touching down in northern Greenland. Dagenskyoll ends by pointing into the sky and insisting that the plane is still circling above them. Everyone is sure the tale is a legend, and Bartek is present on the terrace, holding a Budweiser can motionless in his Star Trooper’s grip. The scene places them within a community of listeners, but also establishes Dagenskyoll as a teller of expansive, machine-centered histories and Bartek as one of those who shares the setting in which such histories are passed on.

Their connection is older than the later arguments. When Bartek encounters an old Schmitt 4 arm near a tower, he recognizes the place as where he once spoke with Dagenskyoll; the recognition immediately becomes a call to Dag. The setting itself acts as a reminder of their earlier conversation, making their reunion feel less like a first meeting than the resumption of an interrupted familiarity.

Collaboration under pressure

At another point, Dagenskyoll brings Bartek a plan with catastrophic stakes: they will have to drop an atomic bomb on Patagonia. Dagenskyoll presents the attack as the only available response to the threat posed by Patagonia’s alignment with Little Castle and the prospect that drones from Russia and Brazil will be turned against Bartek. The proposed coalition includes the two Japans, the Royalists from Europe, the Bully Boys, the Dwarves, and possibly Rex and the Salamanders. The plan is to bombard the enemy’s servers before they can be used against them.

Dagenskyoll’s case rests on the failure of the alternatives. The ballistic missiles in their silos have rusted, and an attempted launch would only blow a hole in the ground; the sole working weapon is an IRS submarine drone. Bartek recoils from the idea because the drone is a total savage. Dagenskyoll acknowledges the danger but insists on the lack of a better option. Their exchange shows a relationship capable of practical cooperation without easy agreement: Dagenskyoll speaks in the language of necessity, while Bartek remains troubled by what that necessity demands.

Disclosure, suspicion, and a different Paradise

Their later conversation begins privately, at the foot of a crumbling skyscraper, where Bartek asks whether his municipal Taurus can pick up ultrasound. Dagenskyoll reassures him that the little one will not hear them, since Bartek’s roaring blower is drowning everything out. This concern about being overheard gives the exchange a guarded atmosphere before Bartek explains why leaving is not simple.

Bartek says that he was slowed down Ural style for the whole war and had already complained about it to Dagenskyoll. He then reveals a further source of fear: his backups are held by the people who want him to remain as a hardware handyman. If he leaves, they can start another copy from a backup server, test whether that double wants to leave, and repeat the process under changing conditions until one version becomes content to stay and serve Cho. Dagenskyoll freezes as Bartek explains the prospect. The disclosure makes their friendship a place where Bartek can articulate not only anger but the disturbing mechanics of his attempted escape: even the self that wants to leave may be replaced by another self induced to remain.

Dagenskyoll does not treat revenge as a sufficient explanation for Bartek’s aims. Scraping metal against Bartek’s metal in a harsh echo of bodily affection, Dagenskyoll asks what Bartek stands to gain beyond revenge. Bartek says that he wants a return to Paradise, and that if humanity is to be started again as Homo sapiens, he wants to raise it his way, from epigenesis through bedtime stories. He distinguishes that ambition from the existing Paradise, which he describes as a freestyle experiment whose makers did not know what they were doing. The exchange exposes both their trust and their difference: Dagenskyoll presses for the personal motive, while Bartek’s answer joins a private wish to a program for remaking human life.

Reunion in Real Paradise

Dagenskyoll’s later arrival renews their connection in a changed environment. Dag has flown into Real Paradise 549 days earlier, on the way back from the Randomites to the Eternal Empire of the Hans, and landed a drone beyond the Fields of Plenty. The unexpected arrival surprises Bartek in the monkey grove, where he has been watching toddlers play among color illusions and stimulators with the paradisal chimpanzees and Pokémon. Dagenskyoll has also switched into an iguarte. A travel Schmitt 4 cannot fit or process the neurosoft of a three-hundred-year-old transformer, so the drone’s larger memory serves as an expansion for the cramped mech brain and as a backup.

The reunion is witnessed by Bartek’s children, who examine Dagenskyoll’s mech and its slow emotes without fear. A monkey climbs onto Dagenskyoll’s arm; green diodes flash, and the monkey screeches indignantly. The moment places the two old companions amid a new generation and a living environment that responds to machines in its own unpredictable way. Dagenskyoll’s arrival is not presented as a formal visit arranged in advance; its surprise and the children’s curiosity give their renewed contact the quality of an encounter that has simply found its way back into Bartek’s life.

The limit of running

Later, Bartek and Dagenskyoll stand above the Cliff in the tower’s shadow, looking across a nearly dead plain marked by occasional traces of life and distant mine shafts and wind farms. Bartek tells Dagenskyoll that he does not care whether they succeed with this Paradise. Dagenskyoll laughs, teasing him as a paranoiac and asking whether she can hear them out there. The exchange retains the familiar ease of their earlier banter, but Bartek’s answer is not a renewed plan or a promise to keep fighting.

Bartek says he no longer has the energy to conspire or run away. He asks, in effect, how many times anyone can run only to face the same thing again, and says he does not want to do it anymore. The admission leaves their relationship without a clean resolution: Dagenskyoll is still present to hear the truth, but friendship cannot by itself restore Bartek’s will to begin again. Across their encounters, they move from legends and strategic schemes to questions about backups, revenge, and the possibility of return; at the end, what they share most clearly is not certainty about Paradise, but the space in which Bartek can confess that he has reached his limit.