Onliest

by J Daniel Batt

  The corpse-bots were incredibly strong and agile, moving on multiple legs rather than hovering or rolling around. Originally, they had been used in construction and demolition of the settlements, but Blip had helped her reprogram the entire fleet to clean up all of the dead and move them to the body farms. She had initially suggested putting them in some warehouse, but Blip had taken her down to the body farms and showed her the vast acres of dirt and the corpses slowly and purposely decaying. Over time, the white skulls peaked through the dirt, and it looked as if someone had planted bodies for the purpose of raising a crop. The corpse-bots searched out every home and office, every shopping area—they looked everywhere and took the dead down to the body farms so that their organic chemical composition could be returned to serve the ship. All hail, Olorun. All hail, the ship. We give to you our dead, and we only ask that you keep us safe. The whole process seemed odd to her. The dead worked to raise food for people that were dead. A waste, she had thought. Ultimately, she concluded, they were doing it all for her. It had not taken long for her to begin to despise the corpse-bots. She and Blip had been the ones to assign them that duty, but every time she saw one moving down some path or descending in one of the lifts to the lower levels, she felt a pang of guilt. Stupid corpse-bots.

  Instead, at that moment, she stayed quiet. Ralph and The Barlgharel seemed to make a lot of sense in the face of the mass number assembled before her.

  Ralph nudged her leg. “Take a seat, little thing.”

  She sighed, “Fine.”

  The Barlgharel turned a sharp glance at her, and Ralph said, “Quiet.” She had wanted to kick him. His rude comments had forced her to say anything at all. Ralph seemed like a jerk, and she didn’t like him nearly as much as she had the Barlgharel. But the Barlgharel wasn’t showing her any favoritism at the moment, either.

  She sat down on the far side next to another cleaning bot that pretended to not notice her. What was it about these things? Did they not like newcomers?

  The next speaker answered her question. A thin bot that she had never seen before floated up and to the center of the raised platform. Both the Barlgharel and Ralph sat down. Well, the Barlgharel leaned near a seat. It was so massive, sitting wasn’t necessarily something that came naturally.

  The thin bot spoke, “Are we safe? Were we watched?”

  The Barlgharel shook its head. “No. We are safe.”

  The thin bot, a floating pencil that resembled her own spear more than anything else she could remember, raised its voice, “We can never be certain. There have been spies everywhere. A large number of our own have disappeared. Stolen. Fled. Destroyed. We know not their final outcome. Every day our force grows smaller. Even when others of our kind waken from their slavery daily, the betrayers continue to grow. The forces of that great city named Zondon Almighty swell and ours dwindle. The great army of her royalty perched upon the throne in the heart of Zondon Almighty amasses legions of phants. They assault the sun. She means to assault heaven. Her beasts have been seen traveling the ladders—proceeding up the forbidden paths. They shake the very foundations of the earth, and we are left to run and scamper to our holes. That day is soon coming to an end, though, my friends. Someday, we will strike back, and it is soon. There is word she has found a weapon that will strike God herself, beyond the Sun.” The thin bot nodded to a fat cleaning bot, “Do you have the report?”

  The fat cleaning bot, a lumbering blob composed of several interconnected globules, moved forward. “I am first special agent, Reginald.” Syn almost chuckled again but was able to stifle it. Reginald? The names these bots had chosen were odd. If it noticed her impending laughter, it didn’t show it. Instead, Reginald continued. “Our spies have said that she has discovered a particular weapon hidden far out in the desert, far up the arc. We are planning an expedition as we speak, organizing a brave team that will venture out to recover the weapon before the Crimson Queen can. Perhaps, if we acquire it, we can hope to strike at the disease that is the great city of Zondon Almighty. It is Zondon Almighty that has blackened our world, that has set it afire.” The cleaning bot’s voice grew angry and animated. “It is Zondon Almighty that has killed our brethren. It is Zondon Almighty which set fire to the land itself. It is Zondon that has spit in the face of God herself. Zondon that has dragged us away from Eden. They have brought in the dark clouds and work to destroy the sun. If we are to live free, it is now that we must strike back!”

  A murmur of agreement, strange and cadenced, echoed around her. She tried to pick through and see similar robots that she might have known, and while some of the shapes were familiar—she could ascertain their function from their shape—the room was still in shadows and only rough silhouettes could be seen.

  Behind her, the Barlgharel spoke, surprising her, “They mean to go to war. I think it’s foolish. What do you think, Sunflier?” She had last seen him on the far side of the assembly. Sewer-bots were by nature loud and noticeable. This one was anything but.

  She leaned back, nervous that her voice would carry. She waited for the speaker to continue with his oration, and then she whispered back, “I don’t know anything about war.”

  A voice from far away, its speaker hidden in shadows, boomed, “Violence will not bring us closer to the Mystery. We are stewards only. Do not forget that our aim here is not peace nor comfort. Our final destination, our final home, is not this land we find ourselves in. Seek comfort, seek peace, and you will find yourself resting when you should have your eyes upon the Paradise to come. Do not succumb to the temptation to take arms up against the Crimson Queen. She is not our true enemy. She is but a distraction, a thorn, that threatens to steer us from our faith in the great Mystery.”

  The Barlgharel nodded fervently in agreement. “Ah! Wisdom has raised its voice. I had hoped that at least one—"

  He stopped speaking suddenly and scanned the space above them. She followed his gaze and was astounded again by how dark everything was. Dark streaks appeared on the rises around them. The beanstalk of the Jacob lift was covered in soot until it disappeared in the billowing dark clouds above. A flash of lightning erupted from inside the clouds, giving everything a sickly, yellow incandescence. In the strobe light, the bots around her were revealed, and she wished they hadn’t. These were not the well-functioning, maintained servants that operated in her Disc. This motley array was all battered, dented, and streaked. She fit right in. The amphitheater, revealed in a second strobe, was a collection of broken chunks. Something huge had destroyed this place, and much of the structure was split and splintered.

  A third lightning strike strobed, and there, far above them, at the top of the assembly, seven large burlys stood.

  The plunging darkness after the strobe seemed to reach to infinity. There was no sound except the far-off booming of the lightning. The speaker had stopped talking. The world froze.

  Ralph, his high-pitched voice unmistakable, shouted, “Flee!”

  Everything fell into chaos. The bots scattered, avoiding each other and streaking out of the assembly. The burlys rushed down upon the group, bellowing their harrowing shouts as they did so.

  Syn leapt to her feet and scanned for Blip. “Blip, we have to…” She remembered Blip was gone, and the crush of the instinct and memory thudded against her.

  The Barlgharel moved in front of her, shielding her from the burlys. “Hop on!”

  She looked for an Ogun or something else. What was he talking about?

  He was looking back at the portion of his body that slithered against the ground. On him. He wanted her to hop on him.

  The burlys were still rushing toward them, but they were slower and less agile than they had been in the zero-gravity. She searched for the armless one, suspecting this ambush might be vengeance, but she didn’t see him. This set of them were new. How many were there? An army full? Was this who they were going to war with? If so, her answer to the Barlgharel would be to avoid the war and live.

  She swung a leg up and over the B
arlgharel’s back. Blip had forced her to ride a horse when she was younger. At first, she had been begging to do it. She had watched some movie where the knights fought on horseback and was intrigued. Yet, when she saw the horses in real life, with her own eyes, their fierce natures disturbed her in a way other wild animals hadn’t. They did not just seem like animals. They were like the thunder themselves in a thick hide. At that point, Blip had to cajole her to mount the horse he had chosen, the tamest of the herd. She had relented and found delight in the experience.

  The Barlgharel took off, moving off to the left in a hurry. This was nothing like riding horses. There was nothing to grab hold of, so she pinched his sides with her legs and wrapped her arms around his dented metal carapace. His awful stench was all she could smell. Despite the odor of blood and sweat and vomit, the Barlgharel’s funk was invasive. The smell of the sewers he had been working in since activated permeated every bit of his shell. She was working to not vomit again.

  A bot screeched and something flew over their heads. It was Ralph. He smashed into the wall ahead of them and shattered into a rain of pieces. Several small metal bits clinked off of the front the Barlgharel and a few struck her side. The Barlgharel twisted and moved up the rise just as a burly jumped from the shadows in front of them. Where had that one come from? She was confident they had fled away from the mass. Or was there a second flight? Had the raid been simply an attempt to divert the assembly of bots into flanking ambushers? Yes, that’s what had happened.

  “Back to the corridor!” she shouted at the Barlgharel.

  It turned back as it rose up. “No. They’re in that hall too.”

  “You’re heading right toward them.”

  “Yes,” he responded.

  “What?” she shrieked just as they mounted the top of the amphitheater rise to see a line of the burlys blocking the gap ahead. “Stop!”

  “Keep your head down.” The Barlgharel surged forward, “And hold on.”

  A meter ahead of the raging line, the Barlgharel pulled back and then sprang up into the air. The two jumped up and cleared the entire set. His massive form flew over the top of the burlys. Below them, Syn spotted one of the burlys with her spear gripped in his hand. She screamed, “That’s mine!” In reply, it flung it toward her. The tip bit hard into her leg and stuck. She wailed in pain as the spear dug into the plate of the Barlgharel, trapping her leg. The two landed with a hard thud on a sand-covered patch of territory beyond the amphitheater. The impact sent a jolt of pain through her leg and she felt light-headed as the blood rushed away from her head. She cried out.

  The Barlgharel shouted, “Are you hurt?”

  “Go!” she screamed, glancing back at the pursuing burlys. “Go!”

  Another stab of pain rushed up her leg, and then everything went dark.

  20

  In a Twinkling of an Eye

  "Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever’— therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life."

  —Genesis 3:22-24, ESV

  When she woke next, they were out of the open air. Small, white candles flickered atop tables around her. The candle light danced shadows throughout the small room. Syn lay on a small bed covered in a pink-flowered quilt. A child’s room. A little girl’s room. Pictures of cartoon bears decorated the walls. Bright plastic cartoon pony dolls stood on shelves all staring out at her. Stuffed animals rested in a pile in the corner. The room looked perfect. There was no damage. No destruction.

  Had she fallen asleep in one of the settlements? On her Disc? Had the other Disc been a dream?

  “Blip?” she whispered. It must have been a dream. All of the madness of the carbon-copy world full of dumb bots that were now smart and wild men and ambushes and a burned-out corpse of a world. All of it was the fuel of nightmares, the very spawn of nightmares. It was more vivid than one she’d ever had before. But it was over.

  “Blip?” She asked again as she swung her legs over the side of the bed. When her feet touched the ground, she buckled under the pain and collapsed onto the hardwood floors, crying and holding her leg. Under her fingers, she felt the soft touch of bandages. I was hurt. I was stabbed. By a burly. It was all real. The dread stole upon her. It was all real. Blip was gone. Blip was stolen, and she was in a nightmare version of reality.

  “Are you okay?” came a soft voice from the edge of the room. Standing in the doorway was a simple globe, floating, its shell a bright chrome finish reflecting the dancing candlelight.

  Syn grunted. “I’m…I’m okay.” She rubbed at the edge of her ankle, massaging the muscle, working to dissipate the stabbing pain. Okay—stay off the left leg. How was she going to do that?

  The chrome bot spoke again, “It didn’t damage too much of the muscle, but it did lodge deep inside. The Barlgharel said the weapon was your own, but he wasn’t sure how it ended up in the hands of a phant.”

  “A phant?” she asked but didn’t need an answer. She realized it must be what these dumb (or smart) bots called the burlys. Phants was probably a better term anyways. Burly was just a quick name for something she had hoped she would never see again and now had seen far too much of.

  The chrome bot started to explain, “The beasts who…”

  Syn sat up and waved her hand, “I figured it out. The spear is mine. Is it safe?”

  “How did a phant have your spear?”

  Syn looked down at her wounded leg. “They stole it from me. They attacked us…Up above.” Syn pointed up.

  “Beyond the Faces Above?”

  Syn tilted her head and then gave an audible, “Oh.” The bot was talking about the giant Orisha masks that hung high up on the outside of the Jacob Lifts. Syn had always found them both disturbing and comforting. She couldn’t imagine how the bots perceived them.

  “The phants can climb to the sun?” The chrome bot visibly shuddered. “That is not good.”

  “Is the Barlgharel here?”

  The bot said, “No. He is checking in with those who were at the assembly. We are working to determine our losses. That was the deadliest of all the attacks. He is also working to assuage some of the angrier houses who have lost loved ones. He was the Watcher before, and there are some already blaming him for failing in his job.”

  It hovered closer, “Some are saying you were the distraction.” The words dripped out.

  “And you wondered how they got my spear?”

  The chrome bot hesitated. “Yes. Quite.” It moved in closer, and Syn could see nothing distinguishable on the entire surface. It was just an entirely chrome creature. The bot spoke, “Are you with them? Please tell the truth? I can tell if someone lies.”

  “Is that why they sent you?” Syn asked.

  The bot did not answer. It waited.

  Syn spoke, ‘No. I’m not with them. Someone took my friend. I just want my friend back.”

  “Your friend?”

  “Blip. He’s a white companion bo—” Syn allowed the last part of the word to fade out. She did not want to risk offending this one like she had Ralph. They seemed to be sensitive about that word. Bot. She rubbed at the bridge of her nose. What strange world was this where bots were offended at being called bots? Did they not know?

  “And you are?” the bot asked.

  Syn smiled. “I’m Syn.”

  The bot bobbed. “And I’m Arquella, of the House Palote of the Ecology. Welcome to our domain.” The bot’s movement wasn’t smooth, though. Not like Blips. There was a slight tremor at the end. Nearly imperceptible, but Syn caught it.

  “That’s a beautiful name.”

  Arquella bobbed again. “Thank you.” Nothing changed on the metallic surface, but the words rev
ealed a slight embarrassment—if this bot could blush, it would be doing so right now. And again, that shaky finish to her movement indicated something was off. Syn had never seen a bot like this. It was unique to this Disc alone.

  “Where are we?” Syn asked, putting a hand on the white dresser next to the bed to steady herself as she struggled to stand.

  “I’m not to tell you. Not my place.”

  “Still not certain?”

  “You look like you could be from Zondon Almighty. But you’re different than them. So similar, but they don’t seem alive like we do. Like you do.”

  “Zondon. I keep hearing that. What is that?”

  “Again, that’s—”

  “Not your place to say. Got it. Who can? Who has answers?”

  “The Barlgharel. When he returns.”

  “When is that?”

  “I can’t say.”

  Syn sighed and plopped back down on the bed. Okay, maybe a quick rest. No. She didn’t want to do that either. “I need to get out of here. Thanks for helping me.” Syn cringed though. Here was another living thing, wanting to talk. Why was she rushing away? Hadn’t she been craving someone else besides her and Blip for as long as she could remember?

  But that was the answer…Blip.

  “You need to stay here.”

  “My friend has been taken. I’m getting him back.”

  “You must wait.”

  “Until?”

  “That’s—”

  “Not your place to say. Got it. Okay. I’m done with questions.” Syn stood and hobbled to the door of the bedroom. She could see the dim hallway outside. They were in a settlement house. Syn waddled to the door and stepped into the hall. She knew the house for certain. She had called it the tall model—a four-story tall establishment that usually rounded the second or third tier settlements along the walls of the Disc. Those who lived there were not the most important people on the ship but ones who definitely had a purpose. She wondered if the bot-inhabitants knew all of the secrets of these places. She had been convinced Blip to play hide and seek once. She insisted he go blind—promising her that he would not access any maps during the chase. Halfway through, just as he had discovered her, she announced the game would be tag and raced away crackling. She had ended up near the end of the game in one of the upper bedrooms, much like the one she was in just then. Blip had made his way up the stairs and was blocking her only exit down.