by Mark Russo
“Is it safe to walk around here? Do we risk electric shock?” the tall guy asked.
“No, Arno. The power generator we used here was too heavily damaged. Just look out for broken metal bars. We used those for reinforcing the concrete,” I said.
The students rushed to start their job. In no time, both were searching the remnants like eager rescue dogs. Paul convinced his friend to lift a large window frame.
“So, what are we looking for?” James asked by my side.
“We need a long cable for conducting the electricity to our house. We also need … you know what? I have an idea.”
“I’m all ears.”
“All this concrete and plasterwork, do you think your skills might lift it?”
James’s eyebrows rose again, but this time, he established a long eye contact. “Let’s give it a go!”
We approached the heap of debris, maintaining a distance from the students to keep them safe. My friend used his rockjet skill, and a couple huge concrete blocks levitated.
“Is that all you can do?” I asked.
“Hey, I didn’t want to scare you, robot hearth.”
The next time he used the ability, a lot more rubble rose.
“Nice. Keep it there. I just found something we could use.”
We did that many more times, and we got fast and efficient at it.
One of my hands was wrapped onto a circuit breaker that had gotten stuck in the ground when the guys called us.
Paul, visibly incapable of containing himself, waved both his arms at us. They had found something they defined as amazing while searching for food supplies.
James and I followed Paul as he leaped from a piece of rock to a chunk of an old table. He pointed at something wedged under a large piece of the white cornice that used to tower many meters from the ground on the school facade. James approached the object and almost tripped into it.
Something clicked somewhere inside my head, and I spaced for a second. I didn’t need to see that object from a closer distance; I already knew what it was.
“What do we do with this? Is it any good?” Paul asked.
James squinted at me, needing my help to answer.
“Yes, we can bring it. I think it’s one of Valu’s toys. I’ll try to make it work once we’re back,” I said, trying not to reveal my true thoughts.
“Cool. Are we done here?” James asked.
“Not really, but we can’t carry all we need in one go. Let’s go to the refuge and return with more people,” I suggested.
The rest of the day passed smoothly. We worked side by side as my information processing cores gauged the enormity of our fortunate discovery.
*****
Later that night, when all the humans were asleep, I wasn’t. There were some upsides in not having circadian rhythms. I left the house and entered the toolshed on the side of the building. My motion detection sensor didn’t register any activity around me; no one had heard my footsteps yet.
The object we had found earlier that day was still on the table. It was a large metal prism with smooth sandblasted surfaces; I could lift it with no problems, but, for a human being, it could prove difficult. I touched the box’s center slot, and it reacted immediately. Four streams of light ran from underneath my hand, making the box’s edges gleam in a soft yellow light. I stayed there for a full minute to complete the first part of the process. Once I was done, I left the shed, intending to return later that night. There was a technical downtime the connector needed before the next step.
As soon as I left the shed, I met someone. “Busted,” he said.
“What?”
“What were you doing in there, hon?”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you, but, if you really want to know, I can share. My body is not like yours. It needs maintenance. Do you want me to dig into the details, Vagras?”
“Please, no. Let’s talk about anything else. Wait, I might want to ask you something else.”
We walked a little down the path away from the house. I did not want people to wake up.
“You know those guys who kidnapped me and Valu, the science group?”
“I heard about them, yes.”
He spent over ten seconds to find the right words. “What do I have to know about them? Can we trust they will help us?”
“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
He shook his head, wrinkling his nose.
“Okay. Here’s all I know about them. They work closely with the army, but they are not a part of it. They don’t always see eye to eye but need to cooperate.”
Vagras crossed his arms. “How do you know all that? I was with them for three days, and I didn’t understand the first thing about them.”
“Because of Valu. They go back a long time, not in a good way. Can I ask you something myself? What are you doing here, in the middle of the night?”
He stuttered a few half words but stopped. “Can’t sleep. This new suit is too tight.”
“That is interesting, because I cannot sleep by design.”
He eyed me as if I was discussing something completely inappropriate.
“I talked with James earlier today. If that generator of yours works, do you think you might build one for the flying people too? This gesture might smoothen stuff between you guys.”
“Sure, I can try to do that. Listen. I must go back to finish handling a certain thing. Try to get some sleep, flying men.”
That time he smiled, almost. He took flight and disappeared in the blackest of nights.
I waited a minute to ensure he wouldn’t come back then returned to the shed. As I expected, the connector’s blinking lights announced it was ready, and I could move to the second step of the process. I placed my hand on the slot, and the device surfaces slid laterally then swiveled on their axis and disappeared somewhere inside the object. The connector shrank, revealing yet another different colored layer.
Several almost inaudible clanking sounds preceded a change in the device lights, turning them green. The core was ready, and it connected to my central unit through the volfram fiber in my arm. “Research. Identified: X88-LG, humanoid automaton. Hold your hand still as your coordinates are being detected.” The core’s message reached my elaboration unit in the form of images, and sound projected to my haptic retinas and synthetic eardrums. “Location detected. Departure sequence started. Control of the operational requirements. Departure sequence failed. Impossible to connect to mothership Alpha. Migration protocol suspended.”
I withdrew my hand from the connector as it returned to the shape of an unremarkable metal cube. Finished here, I returned to the house and sat in a corner. The standby mode triggered after five seconds of idleness. My limbs, back, and neck stiffened to maintain the standing position I had chosen for that night. My almost sleeplike state was not bound to last long. More sound-like stimuli reached out to me; good thing I was the only one who could hear it.
“Vaim, this is mothership Alpha. Do you copy?” I used my embedded communication systems in a way I hadn’t for years.
“Yes, I copy,” my digital neural network transmitted.
“Very good. You must wait and keep your position. You may not share the details of your mission for any reason. We suggest you turn down your human mind and behavior emulator by ten percent.”
I did that immediately. “Done.”
“Excellent. We suggest you continue cooperating with the humans as you’ve done so far. We’ll contact you as soon as we’re ready to leave.”
“I understand.”
“Perfect. You can return to your idle state now.”
Finally, my eyelids dropped and stopped my central units from processing the visual stimuli from the room. My internal cores capability usage dropped to the bare minimum. All joints in my body clicked, securing my position and my balance.
I received no further messages that night.
16
James
The light bulb blinked twice before tu
rning on. When it did, a weak yellow light touched the room’s four walls. The next night wouldn’t have been as dark as those before it. I went downstairs then outside, passing a few more old wall lamps. The day was slightly foggy but not as gloomy as the day before; a couple of sunrays stroked the tall grass on the side of the house.
A hand landed on my shoulder from behind me.
I turned rapidly. My heartbeat quickened.
“See? The lights are working,” Vaim said, keeping his hand on my shoulder for way longer than normal.
“You startled me. Yes, some are, but some others are gone.” I stepped backward, ending our prolonged body contact.
“We can’t do much about that. I’m sorry. We don’t have new lightbulbs, and it would be too complicated to build new ones.”
We walked to the generator and listened to its mild whirring sound.
“So, the generator is up and running. Did you talk with Paul? He said he can take care of the plumbing,” I said, feeling uncomfortable to make eye contact with the robot.
“Yes, I did. I made myself available in case they need help.” His arms ran along his body in the most rigid way I had ever seen.
“Are you okay? You seem weirder than usual.”
“Yes, James. I’m fine. Thanks for asking. Now, please excuse me. I have something to do. Bye.” Then he just left.
My gaze followed as he entered the woods. I would have gone after him if Akko hadn’t stopped me.
He cleared his throat while waiting for me to notice him. His height was not helping.
“I assume you have something to say to me.” I crossed my arms.
“You are correct. Now please, stop whatever you’re doing and follow me.” He did not give me a chance to reply and walked away slower than usual—his most convincing move he could have used.
I followed Akko as he took the path down the mountain to the small valley where we had first landed using Vaim’s flying balloon.
He took a smaller mountain trail on the side of the main one almost completely hidden by the vegetation. We’d been there before and not for the most pleasant reasons. He kept forward, ending his march where I least wanted him to.
The Grand Master wedged his stick in the mossy soil and waited for me to reach him.
“Okay, what happened?”
He didn’t answer but pointed at the graves.
“What? I won’t touch those.”
“Oh, you can trust me. A nice surprise is waiting for you in there.”
I glared at him and barely managed not to shout.
Akko’s face relaxed, but his short arm still pointed at the tombs. “Look more attentively, James. I came to tell you as soon as I found out.”
I still didn’t know how to react to his words and pushy attitude.
“Okay, I’ll show you myself. Watch closely,” he stepped onto a grave.
I almost punched him for the second time that minute.
When he pushed his stick in the tomb’s fresh soil, I shouted at him with all the air my lungs contained.
His facial expression did not change. He lifted his prod and showed the tip, the part he used to torment the dead.
I expected it to be dirty, maybe covered in blood, but it wasn’t. “What does this mean?”
“It means no corpses are here. I checked it. I moved the soil and got my hands dirty. Look for yourself if you don’t believe me.”
I dropped on my knees and dug with my bare hands. Internal commotion grew tall as I expected to touch something different from wet soil and small stones, but it didn’t happen. I did the same on the other tomb, forcing Akko to step away. My head spun and my blood slowed in my veins. “What? What’s all this?”
“Those two guys? The one who went crazy and killed the other? They never existed, James. Someone is playing us.”
I got goosebumps, and a long, paralyzing shiver ran down my spine. “Why are you telling me?”
He looked straight into my eyes. “I’m sure you’re the real James. I’m not sure about the others. I’ll ask you a question now. Did you notice anyone else acting weirdly? Every detail is worth considering.”
My thoughts ran round and round. “I think one person was behaving oddly today. How do I know I’m talking to the real you, by the way?” I was having difficulty breathing.
“You know I’m the real Akko.”
“Prove it. Tell me something only we know.”
Again, he established a prolonged eye contact. “The crazy old lady was wearing a gray dress and a long, ragged wrap coat.”
My cheeks rose as I attempted a smile. “Okay. I believe you. How did you realize I’m the real James?”
“You got angry when I asked you to interfere with the dead. If you were not real, you would have behaved differently.”
I sat on a pile of wood by Akko’s side. “And what about these? How did you know they were not real?”
“I feared we were being victims of mind control, all of us, so I ran some tests. It’s good you are sitting down.”
Akko paced. “I asked myself a question. What were those two guys’ names? I could not remember. I had the feeling I had known them for a very long time, but I could not remember.” He paused to stare into my eyes, an activity he seemed to enjoy. “So, I asked the students. No one remembered their names. I wanted to ask Emma, but I decided not to burden her with this too.”
“Then you came here. You checked for yourself.”
“Exactly. At first, it all seemed fine. There really was a smaller path on the side of the road, as my memories suggested, and when I got here, I found the graves.”
I was almost hypnotized by his pacing.
“Something was off. These graves were not those I had in my mind, so I dug. No one is buried in there. There never was, James.”
I buttoned my jacket all the way up, as the temperature in the shadows of the trees decreased. “Where does that leave us? I mean, what do we do?”
“Nothing for now. Keep your eyes open. Whoever is doing this is trying to break us. We won’t let that happen.”
“Okay,” I said as I turned and took the first step to head to the hut.
“Wait! Who were you referring to when you said someone was acting weird?”
“I’ll look into it right now. Let’s talk this evening. Meet me here after dinner.”
*****
The noise of the stone board brought me back to the present, as I almost took a wrong turn. I reached the house and had barely laid my feet on the ground when someone was already talking to me.
“James, we cleaned all the plumbing. The water will not reach all the rooms, but most. We just need to fix a couple things at the well.” Paul sighed.
I noticed his t-shirt was torn in multiple places, and he was slightly bleeding from a small cut near his collarbone. “You guys seem to work really hard. Do you know you’re bleeding?”
He looked down but couldn’t see the wound hidden by his chin. “I’m sure it’s nothing serious. I’ll clean it later. Will you join us at the well? We might need your help.”
“Sure thing. Did you see Vaim? I need to talk to him.”
“He left with that flying man, Milan, maybe twenty minutes ago. He said he’d be back in the early afternoon.”
“Okay, I’ll talk to him then. Meet you at the well.”
“Great.” Paul climbed the narrowest of the paths around our house, the one leading to the well.
Before climbing it myself, I looked around. Akko’s words were still echoing in my mind. Emma, maybe thirty meters away from me, was still training her students. The lines on her face seemed more relaxed than they were in the last days. It had to be her, the real one.
Among the trees behind me, I heard several people talking and working. Spades hit the ground, making room for the plumbing we needed so much. I couldn’t tell how many people were there.
I surveyed the area for Akko, but I did not see him. I’d better not let my thoughts run wild in my mind. I faced the upward path, u
sed my hand to grasp some thick tree roots protruding from the brittle soil and lifted myself. I followed the guys’ voices, treading carefully as the stones grew bigger and pointier. A few steps ahead, partially hidden by a vegetable curtain of leaves, was the well.
The guys all became very noisy when they saw me. Arno offered me a sip of his beer, and I accepted. I really shouldn’t have, as my mouth cringed because of it.
The shortest of the group, if I remembered correctly, was named Cody. He was gruffly trying to handle the spade, barely lifting any gravel at all.
“Cody! Will you let me, please?”
His eyes brightened his dirty face. He climbed on a tree to make way for me.
A simple rockjet cleared the way for them to lay the pipes.
Again, they all cheered. Paul and Cody rushed to get the tubing and placed it in the duct I had just created.
While they were busy, I asked no one in particular, “Hey, do you remember those guys who had that incident?”
They stopped what they were doing and eyed me.
“What guys?” Paul rubbed his nose with the back of his hand.
I cleared my throat, hoping I would get a better understanding of my question. “Do you remember what happened after Laura’s funeral?”
“We came back here. I cooked those canned beans. They had been in that can so long they tasted like aluminum,” Arno said, and the others chuckled.
“Yes, I remember that. I was just messing with you guys.” It would have helped if my laughter came out as stilted.
Arno changed the topic, asking for help in placing a drainpipe in the well.
The others gathered around him.
I took a moment to watch them as my thoughts rushed faster than ever.
17
Vagras
When Vaim was done, the lightbulbs on the truss at the center of the camp turned on.
For a second, everyone remained silent; someone whispered here and there, some others walked closer. A loud handclap came from the corner and rapidly propagated to everyone.
Vaim stood and bowed in the crowd’s direction.
“What do we do next?” I asked him as he enjoyed the standing ovation.
“We check that everything works fine. Follow me.” He walked past the commotion and approached the main tent—the one where no one was allowed, the one where Anya and Andrew slept.
