Mary looked at the bot, completely in shock. It took her a moment to find her voice and when she finally did, she asked, “Why didn’t they just re-open the tunnel to the farming wing. We have plenty of food. We could have saved them!” she vehemently cried.
303 said, equally shocked, “They had believed that your wing of the colony had been obliterated by the blast!” The robot bowed his head and sadly said, “If I had only known. I could have saved them all! I could have SAVED them!”
Mary walked over to the humanoid medical bot. She leaned her head against his robotic head and hugged him with all of her might. “You can’t blame yourself 303. You couldn’t have known.”
They stood like this for a while and then 303 brightly said, “Well, you just gave me the best news I have heard in over two centuries. I have humans to take care of again! I cannot wait to get to work!” 303 noticed something on Mary’s face. He tilted his head to the side and said, “What is it Mary? What did you not tell me?”
Mary slumped her shoulders and wilted before 303’s eyes. “Well, you see, the problem is our last working power reactor has failed. We are running on auxiliary power only.” With a deep sigh she added, “We only have around fifty days of power left before we all perish.”
303 stood up straight and rolled backwards a bit. “No!” he cried. “Don’t tell me that! I can’t lose all of my patients. Not again!”
Mary looked at the bot with compassion. “Well, that is why 41 is here. He is looking for a way to repair our reactors.”
303’s voice took on a note of happiness. “In that case, I shall assist him. I may be only a medical bot, but I sure that I may still be of use.”
Mary smiled at him, pointed to Tiny and said, “Well then, let’s go wake up sleeping beauty over there and go lend a hand!”
Chapter 16
Tiny’s face lit up with glee when Mary gently shook him awake. “Friend Mary!” he cried. “Mary is alive!” He stood up and grabbed Mary like a boa constrictor squeezing its prey. Mary swore her eyes bugged out of her skull from the force of his embrace.
303 laughed and said, “Please Tiny. Do not squash Mary. I only just finished fixing her!”
Tiny laughed and said, “Okay, friend 303.” He released her from his grasp. He put his hands on both of her shoulders and said, “Tiny is glad that you are okay, friend Mary.”
Mary laughed and then hugged him nearly as hard as he had just hugged her. She whispered into his ear, “I am glad that you are okay too, my dear friend.” She looked him in the eyes and said, with passion, “I can never thank you enough for rescuing me, Tiny. I was certain that I was going to die back there in the dark.” A little frown crossed her face and she said, “Why did you leave me alone? I was so scared when I woke up and you were not there.”
Tiny’s eyes teared up. “Tiny is sorry. Tiny had to go pee-pee and then he found the lights and then he went to get 41. Tiny did not mean to scare friend Mary.”
Mary hugged him, letting him know that all was forgiven. “It’s okay Tiny. It all worked out in the end.” Mary took a quick breath. “Anyway, where is 41? I want to go see him!”
Tiny’s face brightened up and he forgot his sadness of a moment ago as only he could. He smiled and said, “This way. Tiny will show you!” and then Mary, Tiny and 303 hurried to the big workshop just down the hall.
Mary screeched to a halt when she spotted 12. “Is that a different maintenance bot?” she asked Tiny with wonder in her voice.
12 turned his cameras to face her and said, “Hello there, undesignated young human female. My designation is 12. What is your designation please? Do you require any assistance?”
Mary’s jaw hung open for a second before she responded, “Hello 12, my name is Mary. I am so pleased to meet you.” She shook her head and said, “No thank you. I do not need any help at this time.”
12 nodded and said, “Very good Mary. I shall resume my tasks then. If you need any help please let me know.”
Mary bowed. “Thank you very much.” When she spied 41 across the room she jogged over to him and exclaimed, “41, you crazy robot you. It is so good to see you again!” With a big smile she added, “Thank you so much for rescuing me.”
41 stopped working and said, “I am not crazy, Mary.” He nodded some more and said, “It was my pleasure to help you Mary.” His next words surprised Mary. She did not expect emotion from a repair and maintenance robot. “It made me very happy to save your life Mary. After all, you saved mine.”
Mary laughed and said, “Well, I guess we are even then!”
41 rapidly bobbed his cameras up and down, which Mary took to be his way of expressing laughter and he said, “Indeed!”
Chuckling, Mary said, “Anyway. Why did you leave the farming wing? I was so shocked and concerned when you disappeared.”
41 nodded and said, “I am very sorry to have caused you concern, Mary. The dire situation required me to act as rapidly as possible.” He paused for a second before continuing. “I determined that nothing I did would restore one of the reactors before the auxiliary power supply was drained. After careful thought, I estimated that the only course of action with any chance of success would be to get to the technical wing and access the manufacturing and repair resources here. I studied the old colony schematics and discovered a route that would allow me to bypass the caved in area.”
Mary nodded in understanding. “I understand, 41. My only criticism is that you did not leave a message with Eliza.” She took a deep breath. “Anyway, that’s all wind through the tunnels now. What I want to know is have you found a way to restore power?” She glanced towards the lights and said, “There seems to be normal power levels over here. How is this possible?”
41 pointed his head upwards. “Remember, this is the technical wing. The humans that were trapped here were very clever. They managed to build, with 12’s help, a small reactor.” He moved his arms in an imitation of a shrug. “Too bad I can’t connect it to the rest of the colony. Even here in the technical wing, there is not enough insulated cable in storage to fabricate a power line long enough to reach all the way through the train tunnels and back to the farming wing.”
Mary sighed and with a little shudder she said, “I can understand that. That sure would be a long way to run a cable.” Mary walked over to the work table. 41 was using a lathe to manufacture a part that was unrecognizable to her. Beside the lathe, a large industrial 3D printer was busily fabricating another part. “What are you working on? Have you come up with a solution which will allow you to repair a reactor in time?”
41 pointed to 12 and said, “12 and I are working on manufacturing a machine to make a large amount of phosphoric acid.” With a note of admiration in his voice, he continued, “I found 12 here when I arrived. He had been keeping all the systems in the technical wing operational all alone since the last human passed away.”
Mary glanced across the room to the other bot industriously working at a workbench. “It is amazing that he kept functioning all by himself for so long.”
41 nodded and said, “12 was not in very good condition when I arrived. I performed a good deal of repairs on him. There were many of his parts that he could not service by himself.” 41 paused. “He would not have functioned much longer if I had not arrived. He was very happy to see me.”
Mary smiled at that. “I imagine so,” she said and then she changed the subject. “So, I want to hear about this machine you are building! You will be able to make enough acid to flush the cooling system on reactor number five? How will you get all of the acid all the way over there?”
41 nodded and said, “The machine should be done in a day. 12 and I estimate that it will take the machine three days to generate enough acid for the job.” 41 raised two of his arms in the air in a sign of frustration. “That is not the problem. We do not know how under the Earth we will be able to transport the acid all the way back to the reactor room. We have been contemplating this problem while we construct the machine. The
cooling system flush itself is trivial. The reactors are designed for periodic cooling system maintenance. The job will take less than a day, however we fear that it will simply take us too long to transport the acid to the reactor.”
303, silent up to this point, chimed in and said, “I shall begin thinking about a solution to that problem as well. I wish to assist in any way I can.”
They all stood in silence for a moment. Suddenly, Mary piped up. “Why can’t you use the tunnel from this wing to the farming wing?”
41 looked at her askance. “Surely you jest, Mary. You know very well that the tunnel is completely collapsed!”
“No 41,” she said. “You did not let me finish. What dug these tunnels in the first place? Are there any of the old digging machines left?”
With a whirr of his servos, 41 rapidly swung his cameras towards Mary. “That is an excellent question Mary! I do not know what became of the machines after their work was done. Perhaps they were disassembled for parts. I do not know. Perhaps 12 knows.”
The group rapidly crossed the room. 41 said, “12! What happened to the old tunneling machines after the tunnels were finished?”
12 stopped working and said, “Most of them were just abandoned in place. They embedded themselves into the wall of the tunnel they last worked on, far enough to be out of the way and then they were shut down and forgotten.” 12 tilted his head and said, “Why do you wish to know the fate of the old tunneling machines. How can this help our problem?”
41 fairly vibrated in place. “Is there one abandoned nearby? If we could resurrect it, perhaps we could repair the tunnel from here back to the farming wing.”
12 froze in place. “That is an excellent idea! Yes, there is indeed one nearby. The one which excavated this part of the colony is sunk into the wall at the south-eastern edge of the technical wing, however after over three centuries of abandonment, I do not know how difficult it will be to resurrect. I suspect that it will not be easy.”
Mary swore she heard a note of pride in 41’s voice when he said, “Well 12, we ARE, after all, repair and maintenance bots. Anything is possible for us, as long as we have the tools.”
Mary jumped up and down and said, “Well, let’s go check it out then!”
“Ugh,” Mary said when they located the ancient machine.
41 and 12 looked at it and simultaneously said, “Indeed.”
Tiny laughed and said, “Jinx!” The bots looked at him curiously. Mary burst out laughing and said, “No, don’t try to figure it out. Tiny is being silly.”
“Understood Mary,” said 41, in all seriousness.
They all stood there facing the tunneling machine. It was a rusted hulk, covered in badly scratched yellow paint, imbedded face first into the wall far enough so that it did not obstruct the tunnel. A thick layer of dust and dirt covered its entire surface. Rocks, which had fallen from the ceiling over the years, half-buried its front end. Its massive circular cutting face was barely visible through the rubble. The roof of the driver’s cab was badly dented from the fallen rock. It sat upon wide metal treads, which were coated with a thick layer of rust.
“Ugh,” Mary repeated. “This does not look good.”
41 moved over to the back of the machine and looked up towards the cab. “Mary,” he said, “I cannot get up to the cab. Do you think that you can safely navigate through that rubble?”
“I think so,” she said and then climbed onto the machine with the agility of a cat. She sat down in the driver’s seat and at a loss what to do next, said over her shoulder, “Now what? What should I do 41?”
41 spoke loudly to ensure Mary heard him. “There should be a large orange toggle switch labeled Main Power. Please flip it. We need to see if there is any power remaining in its power cells.”
Mary flipped the switch and with a loud click, the dashboard lit up, but only very weakly and then it slowly faded out. Mary shook her head and shouted down, “It’s dead. It only lit up for a split second and then faded out.”
41 shrugged and said, “That is not good, Mary. It will never move like that.”
Mary, ever the optimist, smiled and said, “It has more power left than you did when I worked on you and I brought you back to life.”
41 emitted a weird electronic laugh and said, “Indeed Mary. Please turn the switch back to the off position for now.” He turned to 12 and said, “We can run a cable and hook it to the charging port on the machine’s rear. Once it is recharged we shall see if it will move.”
When Mary hopped off the machine, a few loose rocks followed her. She glanced at Tiny, who was standing off to the side watching. “Tiny dear, we need your strength. Will you please pick up and move as many of the loose stones as you can that are on top of the machine here? We need to uncover it so we may work on it.” She pointed at the tunnel leading away from the cave-in and said, “Line up the loose rocks along the wall there. Don’t block the tunnel.”
Tiny laughed and said, “Yes! Tiny can help!” and began enthusiastically removing the stones that partially covered the machine. Mary shook her head in amazement at the size of the stones that he carried away with ease, as if they were the fake Styrofoam stones from an ancient video.
Chapter 17
Ryan and James were having a running argument as they walked down a tunnel in colony number eleven. Ryan threw his hands up in the air and he said in frustration, “Well, I still think that we should send an expedition to colony number seventy-six.” He looked his friend in the face and said, “Come on James, why don’t you agree with me on this?”
James shook his head. “Really Ryan, what are the chances that somebody is actually alive there? We checked the database. That colony is definitely one of the ones that took a direct hit by a nuke. There is no bloody chance that anybody is still alive up there.”
Ryan refused to accept that. “Well, how do you explain the transport vehicle then? SOMEBODY called for it. It didn’t call for itself!”
James shook his head. “I know what the logs say but I am not bloody buying it. It was probably a computer glitch. Either that or a rock fell from the ceiling and hit the console there.” With a smug look upon his face, he said, “Yeah, that bloody well has to be it.” Ryan opened his mouth to object however James interrupted him before he could speak. “Well, I believe that more than I believe that somebody suddenly appeared at a ghost colony and called for a bloody transport!”
Ryan shook his head in disgust at his friend’s stubbornness.
Both men ceased their argument as they reached the doors of a large conference room. A sign hung over the door that said, “Colony for the Continuation of Humanity Number Eleven. Council Chambers.” James took a deep breath, looked at Ryan and said, “Are you sure you want to do this, mate?”
Ryan’s face flushed and he said, “No. Not really, but we HAVE to report this. It might be important. Let’s let The Dragon Lady decide.”
James suppressed a shudder and said, “Come on then. Let’s do this before I bloody well chicken out!”
Both men stopped short and stood side by side in the double doorway when ‘The Dragon Lady’ spied them. Colony leader Martha Turner was a petite woman in her late seventies. She had shoulder length wavy, slate-grey hair and had piercing blue eyes. She held them, mesmerized by her gaze for several seconds before she spoke. “Well? To what do I owe the pleasure of a visit from our two illustrious reactor techs. Please don’t tell me that we have another problem,” she said, giving the two young men a soul-crushing frown.
Both men gulped and said nothing. Seeing the look on her face, James helpfully placed his hand on Ryan’s back, pushed him into the room and said, “Ryan here has some news that he thinks you might want to hear.”
Ryan stumbled forward. He looked daggers at his friend, turned to face Martha, cleared his throat and said, “Madam, we have detected a brief and anomalous power drain.” Ryan trembled in fear and said no more.
“Well,” Martha said impatiently, “Do I have to drag it out
of you word by word? Please elaborate!”
Ryan gulped again and said, “We were monitoring the work on reactor number four. As you know, we are doing a heat exchanger replacement…”
Martha interrupted him again. She was in a foul mood. The recent problem with the hydroponics farm weighted heavily upon her mind. “You know I am a very busy woman.” She glared at him and spat, “Please get to the point!”
Propelled by his fear of the woman before him, the floodgates opened and words began spilling out of Ryan’s mouth. “Well anyhow, that’s going fine. Almost done. Well I was doing my normal status checks. Reactor number two is running a touch hot. I said to James here that we should do a cooling system flush. He agreed and...”
Martha interrupted him again, “I swear Ryan Grey. If you don’t get to the point in the next five seconds, I am going to reassign both you and your friend here to the recycling center for a month!”
Trembling in fear Ryan said, “Well, we detected a power drain, like I said. We first thought that a power cable must have shorted out someplace.” Ryan saw the frown deepening upon Martha’s face and he quickly continued before she could issue any further dire threats. “The drain. It did not come from our colony. Somebody activated the old inter-colony transportation system.”
That got her attention. Martha’s face instantly lost its frown. “The transport you say?” and she motioned for them to come and sit down beside her. Normally she used her stony face as a mask to hide her feelings, however this time she did not try to hide her excitement. “Who called for a transport? Which colony?” she asked. “I wonder if they have any food to spare,” she thought to herself, excited.
Those Left Behind Page 9
