Bulletfoot One

by Marshall Rust

  "The day we stop learning is the day we die," Windchime said as if on cue, and Jessica13 mouthed the words as he said them. "Whether it's because we stop learning and are killed as a result of the mistake, or because we die and therefore cannot learn anymore. One thing you need to learn more of is to improve your tracking skills. You should have been able to keep your eyes on the tracks I left."

  "This soil doesn't keep tracks very well," she pointed out, took a step into the sandy soil of the hill, and lifted her foot only for it to come down and cover her tracks.

  "It's still visible," he replied, "and you can see it. With that said, yes, this soil isn't good for much. Even the tough plants that are able to grow in this land are struggling. I doubt it was ever used for anything like farming. Nothing would grow here."

  "Would the humans in the past have ever lived in this area?" she asked curiously.

  The man shrugged and returned to his work, but Mini began to pull up relevant data from where he had it stored.

  "A great many human civilizations were centered in locations with little merit if one only considered the fertility of the soil," he pointed out in his soft, feminine voice which was still comforting despite the fact that she knew it came from the wrong voice modulator. "Some settlements grew in what were essentially uninhabitable areas simply because rivers and springs provided a water source.

  "The ancient city of Las Vegas was only one example. Of course, there were those for whom the lack of appeal of the desert or other inhospitable region was considered an advantage. This was possibly because they wanted to avoid the general populace—whom they believed would avoid the area—either because they wanted solitude or because they had other more nefarious intentions that would have been considered less than seemly in more heavily populated areas. Ironically, though, many of these settlements thrived and became bustling cities, perhaps because their existence alone made them appealing."

  "The locations that had no appeal thrived because people thought someone living there made them appealing?" Jessica13 asked. That didn't seem right to her, but then, there were a lot of things about the Cities-That-Were that she still didn't understand. Most of how people lived back when they had so much more was foreign to her, having lived in a bunker where every drop of water was contained and recycled, and nothing was wasted.

  She had seen areas where they had left the water flowing out in the open so it would all evaporate into the atmosphere and generally be lost. Of course, it would rain after a while and replenish it that way, but they couldn't be sure about when or where that rain would come from.

  Humans were odd, odd creatures in those times. She realized that she still had so much to learn and reminded herself that adversity had changed the way people lived. Perhaps she would have been the same had she lived a hundred or so years earlier.

  Windchime finished working on his mech, climbed into it, and followed her up the side of the hill toward the top.

  "How many people do you think lived around these parts?" Jessica13 asked after they’d proceeded for a while in silence.

  As it turned out, even with the extra limbs, the hybrid Windchime had put together still struggled to reach the top. Its lighter, leaner build seemed to dig its boots a little deeper into the sandy soil rather than provide a flatter surface to offset the weight a little like Mini did. Each had their own peculiarities, and it meant they made similar progress.

  "Not many, given the soil," he responded when she turned to look at him at the top. "They would have used this area to farm other animals—the kind they ate in larger numbers since they're the only ones that could survive on the greenery that lives around here."

  "Why would—" she started to ask but shook her head. It sounded wasteful to feed animals they would simply eat, but waste seemed to define what she had come to expect from how people lived then. Still, she was a little reluctant to voice it. A part of her knew her upbringing had been sheltered and her beliefs shaped by what she’d since discovered were lies—or at least some of them were lies. She hadn’t had much time to sift through them all to decide which were or weren’t.

  "Why would what?"

  She shrugged. "It seems a little wasteful, is all. If they had paid a little more attention to the soil, they could have made it more fertile. It would have meant they could grow more food to feed more people."

  "I think the point was less about the amount of food and more about the quality," Windchime explained as they began their descent. "I don’t know too much about it, but humans aren’t meant to only eat plant-based food. Meat and animal products like…milk, which I heard they got from cows and maybe goats, have nutrients we need that we don’t get from plants. We eat as healthy as we can, but plants can’t replace what animals provide."

  She frowned as she considered this. “So what we eat isn’t really healthy?”

  “Well…like I say, I don’t know too much, but I wouldn’t say it’s not healthy. Maybe less healthy is closer to the truth. We could have more kinds of nutrients available if we had animals, and it might be less wasteful to let them eat the vegetation than trying to make the soil more fertile.”

  Jessica13 nodded because it made sense, even though a part of her still struggled to move past her rigid perceptions of what was wasteful and what wasn’t. If they had the resources, why not use them to generate more quality food—the kind that would apparently nourish them better—while they continued their existing strict food management?

  "It still seems wasteful, though," she commented, “although maybe it’s because we have no animals and it seems wasteful to use them for food if we did.”

  "I think our problem is we believe waste was a way of life back in the day," Windchime replied and hopped lightly down the short distance remaining to reach the bottom before she did. "We think those who were the most wasteful were seen as better off, or something."

  "That's not entirely inaccurate," Mini interjected. “But many people in what we could call the last days became more conscious of waste and worked hard to avoid it. Not everyone simply abused the resources and made no effort to manage them.”

  Jessica13 let him take control and jump them beside Windchime. The man scrambled out of his mech again, landed with a grunt, and remained crouched as he studied the soil in front of him.

  "What are you doing?" she asked. While she knew it was relatively safe to be out of the mech but old habits didn’t simply vanish overnight. She still felt more comfortable in or on the Minato, and no amount of curiosity would change that.

  "I’m inspecting the soil."

  "I thought you already said it was no good."

  He looked at her and ran his fingers across his clean-shaven jawline before he picked up a fistful of the dirt beneath his feet. "One can never be too sure. Besides, there is something to be learned from what we're looking at. Where we started out, everything was denser and greener and more supportive of life. Out here, it's more open, which would indicate that we are moving in the right direction."

  "What is the right direction?" she asked and peered at the soil as if it would somehow reveal an answer.

  "I'm actually not sure about that," Windchime admitted. "Hammerhand likes to cite the experts and admins from his time—whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean—and say a change in the landscape means we're headed in the right direction, and damned if I don't believe the old bastard."

  She scowled at the man. "Well, if you don't know what it means, where would the right direction take us?"

  "Well, that depends whether you believe the old myths of Citta del Mar," he said. "Hammerhand talks of it like he's been there and honestly, I have to say I believe the man. Or want to believe him, anyway."

  Jessica13 narrowed her eyes. "I've never heard of that. Mini, do you have anything in your records?"

  "Negative," he replied quickly. "I have no records of the location or the myth, but my records are about a hundred years out of date. I have endeavored to update them, though."

  "What's
so important about this Citta del Mar?" she asked her companion.

  "It's been the mission of the Knights Mechanica to find it and reveal its location to the people still living in this area," the man explained. His voice took on almost a reverent tone as he brushed the soil from his hands so it caught the wind and spread into the grasslands ahead of them. "We know of it as a place of plenty, a land where the soil is rich and fertile and where people have begun to grow our society toward its former glory. It’s a land that holds to the old world, with strong and healthy plant life, fields, parks, and entire cities of people living out in the open without fear of Skyfall or pirates."

  "Have you ever seen it?" Jessica13 asked, unable to keep herself from being swept up by the wonder in the man's voice.

  "No," Windchime admitted. "But I will see it one day. That's where Hammerhand is leading us."

  "It would appear that Citta del Mar is a modern twist on the old Promised Land myth," Mini said. "A place where all is good in the world and all the evils are a thing of the past. Where there is peace and plenty for all."

  "Are you saying it doesn't exist?" she asked, careful to keep this part of the conversation between herself and the AI.

  "While the possibility that such a place might exist is impossible to dispute, the more logical explanation is that it is the result of hopeful and wishful thinking," he pointed out. "People who dream of such a place talk of it and the talk spreads to perpetuate the myth. If it does, in fact, exist, the likelihood of it living up to such lofty standards is equally unlikely."

  Jessica13 scowled. She wanted to think there were places in the world where people didn’t barely subsist in bunkers and scavenge to stay alive. There were enough reasons to think it, the Knights Mechanica themselves being only one. And if the thought of it was what kept them moving and helping people, she could see no reason why it was a bad thing to believe in it.

  "Well, we'll keep searching for it," she told Mini. "Like you said, there'll always be a chance it does exist."

  "You know I can tell that you're talking to your AI, right?" Windchime pointed out.

  "From my body language. Yes, I know." She laughed. "Tinker likes to tell me every time like he doesn't do it himself."

  "Well, yes, he is a crazy character, to begin with, so it would make sense that he sees the oddities in others but never himself." Her companion chuckled. "But all that aside, it’s odd to see a mech making all the gestures that would be expected from a conversation but never actually delivering on the conversation part of it."

  "Well, in that case, you simply have to know there is a conversation but not with you," she countered.

  She wasn't sure why she challenged the man, although he had to know it wasn’t intended as ill-will. It was more or less her style of speaking to someone. Any of the Knights would have been able to confirm that.

  "Well, then, what is the AI saying that it doesn't want to tell me?" Windchime asked.

  "Well, it's he, for starters," Jessica13 said with a chuckle. "And he merely wondered how reliable the stories of Citta del Mar might be. I told him that simply because it wasn't in his records didn't mean it didn’t exist. Many things happened in the past hundred years or so while he wasn’t activated."

  "Well, you never got around to actually saying that," Mini said and it sounded like he was grumbling.

  "I don't know. In a world like ours and growing up like we did, it’s nice to think and dream of a place that found a way to put itself together again," the man said, and she thought she could hear a hint of a smile in his voice. "There are streams and clean drinking water. People don’t live in cramped quarters or out in the open, scavenging and scraping to survive. There’s no longer a need to repurpose and retool goddamn everything. Obviously, you still can if you want to, I guess, but it wouldn't be a requirement for survival."

  "A place where parts are new instead of a hundred years old would be interesting," she admitted with a soft laugh.

  "The Knights Mechanica have taken a beating lately," Windchime continued. "We're not what we used to be, and in a place like Citta del Mar, we would have something like a base. Somewhere we could come out of our mechs and settle in, rest, and recharge before we head out and help people again. Some might say it's not the worst thing in the world, but to my mind, I don't think we have any other choice. We'll die out here otherwise."

  Jessica13 nodded. "I guess I can agree with that. It would take one hell of a lot to bring the Excalibur Hammerhand rides down, though."

  "Drip by drip, water cuts through stone, not through force but through persistence," he said. "Eventually, we might see that the chipping away at his armor and his will brings Hammerhand down, and the world will be the poorer for it."

  "Is that from the Great Prophet Sagan?" she asked.

  His mech shrugged. "I don't think so. It might be, but I saw it scribbled onto a piece of aluminum back in the day like your Live Free or Die Hard chest plate there."

  "It's a phrase that stuck with you, I understand, exactly like the dream of finding Citta del Mar. Honestly, I like the idea of it and I might start hoping for something like that myself."

  He chuckled at her sudden exuberance. "I have to admit, hearing you say that helped to reaffirm my faith and hope of finding it. It is out there. Even if we have to build it ourselves to make it true."

  "I do believe the term he is looking for is a self-fulfilling prophecy," Mini pointed out.

  "Let us have this, okay?" she retorted and laughed.

  "What?" Windchime asked.

  "I'm talking to the AI again," she admitted.

  He smirked. "Ah… Well, I'm not sure if an AI is capable of hope. I have been told it is almost uniquely human and there is no coding in the world that can account for it."

  A quick scan of Mini's files crossed the HUD. "That's not untrue, I suppose. Hope is a difficult thing to quantify, although it could merely be expressed as wanting something to happen to the point of almost expecting it."

  Jessica13 smiled and ran her fingers along the inside of the cockpit. It was a tender, affectionate gesture she made more and more as she watched Mini's capabilities as an AI expand and grow. She wasn't sure if there was any kind of limitation to what the AI could do, but it was something she was interested in perhaps finding out someday.

  Absently, she swiped her mech's arm at some of the taller grass stalks nearby as they walked. A few minutes later, both of them paused suddenly and listened intently. It wasn't often that any outside communications came in, mostly because very few people had radios. Those who did tended to not transmit out in the open for fear of attracting the attention of folks who didn't have their best interests in mind.

  Now, however, a transmission came through clearly. That usually meant they were either ignorant of the dangers involved or desperate enough not to care.

  The commlink pinged three times in short bursts, quickly followed by three more long bursts and three short ones again. After a quick pause, it repeated the pattern over and over again.

  "What is that supposed to mean?" Jessica13 asked.

  "Didn't they teach you Morse code in that bunker of yours?" Windchime asked.

  "No."

  "Fair enough. They didn't teach it to me there either."

  "Morse code was a character encoding scheme used in telecommunication that renders text characters as standardized sequences of signals of two different durations called dots and dashes," Mini explained. "The name is derived from the inventor of the the telegraph—the telecommunication device that used it—who was Samuel Morse."

  "So what they're transmitting are letters?" she asked.

  "Yes, two letters under a three-letter coding—SOS," he continued. "These are usually used in this manner as a distress call, although the meaning of the three letters has been lost to time."

  "Is someone calling for help?" She directed her question to Windchime.

  He nodded. "It sounds like it. Are they sending it to all open channels or is it directed to someo
ne in particular and we were simply caught on the wavelength?"

  "It's being broadcast on three different wavelengths, and those are only the ones accessed by our radio," Mini said and extended his voice to the outside speakers.

  "So, they're looking to cast as wide a net as possible," the man said. "What do you think? Is it a trap or someone who genuinely needs help?"

  Jessica13 took a deep breath before she replied. "Either way, shouldn't we go there to make sure? Either someone needs our help or we can make sure no one else falls into the trap."

  "Good thinking." He nodded and connected to the line to it. "You have reached the Knights Mechanica. State your troubles and whether we can help you."

  She wasn't sure what the answer to something like that might be. Her first interaction with the Knights had been them telling her to stay off the radio lines for her own safety which, as it turned out, was a little late. She was already being hunted and needed to keep herself alive by calling for them so had been in a desperate situation.

  Maybe these people were too.

  The repeated SOS message came to a sudden halt. Maybe they hadn't expected anyone to answer or perhaps they didn't want the Knights Mechanica to be the ones to help them.

  "Please," a man through the line a moment later. "You must help us. We are being attacked by a group of mechs and there's nothing we can do to stop them."

  "What kind of mechs?" she asked. "How many are there?"

  Another short pause followed. "We're not sure what they are. The leader is big, though. It looks dangerous and is covered in mismatched fabrics—like a cloak, or maybe a shawl, and it’s full of soot and dirt."

  Windchime turned his mech to face Jessica13 as the description continued. "Does it have a helm that looks like the face of an owl or some kind of bird of prey?"

  "Yes," the man responded urgently. "Yes, and he has a spear—like a lance, but it has an electrical charge that disabled all the mechs we have for our own defense. Please, can you help us?"

  Her companion made no answer and instead, cut the communications quickly. "Shit. Shit, shit, shit!"