Division

by Denise Kawaii

  “Lonely,” Pi answered. “I’ve been alone. But I can see you now. Or at least, I think I can.” Pi tilted his head, looking up at the flickering candles burning bright along the walls of the room. “My imagination plays tricks on me sometimes. Gives me the wrong story.”

  “Why are you alone?” 62 asked. He wanted to get closer to the child in his dream, but he was as unsure about what he was seeing as Pi seemed to be. 62 settled on pulling up a chair at the end of the aisle. Sitting down would keep him from getting too close. “What happened?”

  “Happened?” Pi looked back at him. He stopped kicking his legs and his expression shifted, although 62 couldn’t quite pin the emotion behind it. “Nothing’s happened. Everything is how it’s always been.”

  “But people have gone missing, haven’t they? I can’t find my friends.”

  “The dreamers have always gone missing, 62. Since the beginning of time.”

  “Not always! My friend; he’s full grown. He’s had dreams longer than I’ve been alive, and now he’s gone.”

  Pi nodded his head. “The teacher. That’s who you mean, isn’t it? Teachers are the hardest to lose. When they’re gone, there’s no one else to show us the way.” Pi dropped down from the counter.

  “But he can’t really be gone,” 62 urged. “He could be hiding.”

  The small child took a step closer to where 62 sat. He opened his hand, lifting it up with his palm facing the ceiling. There was a crackle in the air, and a wooden block appeared, dropping into the child’s hand. The block expanded in his palm, splitting into two, then three. The stack grew taller until it was higher than the closest shelf. The top of the stack began to wobble, and Pi steadied it with his mind. “You showed me this,” Pi said. His voice was broken, fading into the air as if he were being pulled from the dream. “For a moment, you were my teacher. Do you remember?”

  “I wasn’t teaching you anything! I was distracting you so I could get you to pass a message for me.”

  “And I did,” Pi said. He closed his eyes, his long lashes shielding his emotions. When Pi’s eyes opened again, they glowed red. It was the same iridescent glow of the bots in Adaline. The signal that a child was about to be punished. The blocks tumbled from their tower, raining down around the Boys. “But not to the person you wanted.”

  62 pushed back in his chair so hard that he knocked the chair over as he stood up, raising his arms in self-defense. The dream-child grew, molding himself into a Nanny, then a Nurse and a PTS. Pi’s luminescent eyes shone so brightly that they blotted out the other lights in the library, leaving the entire room cast in the eerie red sheen that screamed danger to every cell of 62’s body.

  “You aren’t real!” 62 shouted. The monster before him continued to grow, bursting through the ceiling, causing brick and timber to shower down like raindrops. 62 pushed the danger away in his mind, transporting himself out of the building and onto the street outside.

  The giant bot turned its head. Its speakers produced an automated voice, eerily calm and void of emotion. “You’ve brought this on yourself, 1124562. You have been a very bad Boy.”

  62 turned and ran. The ground beneath him trembled as the bot freed itself from the confines of the building, stepping over the rubble with giant steps. It grabbed the peak of a nearby roof, shearing the top of the building in half, and tossed the shelter at 62 as easily as if it were nothing more than a ball tossed between friends. The roof spiraled through the air, brick and shingle scattering in all directions as it chased him. 62 darted off the main road, tucking into the narrow alley between two abandoned buildings. He hid, panting, slapping his face and willing the dream to end. The roof landed in a spray of debris just outside the alley. 62 ducked just before a shorn-off piece of lumber smacked the wall over his head.

  “You are here, aren’t you?” the robotic voice called.

  62 pinched his arm, but still the dream persisted. The dust beneath his feet shifted as the bot walked closer to where he hid. He was still there, but he didn’t want to be. He didn’t understand why the dream had gone so far out of his control. He had difficulty with his imagination running wild sometimes, but this was beyond anything he’d had happen since the Nurse he’d once imagined, that 71 and 42 had helped him defeat.

  71 had taught him to stay calm, harness his thoughts, and force them back into submission. He had to do it now.

  62 took a deep breath and untucked himself from the ball he’d curled into when the roof exploded. He stood tall, forcing his shoulders back and pushing his chin out to look brave, the same way Blue did when things got scary. He walked out of the alleyway, picking through the wreckage as slowly and calmly as he could manage. He turned to face the Machine standing just beyond the next building.

  “There you are,” the dream-bot crooned in its metallic voice.

  “Here I am,” 62 boomed. He raised his arms to both sides, placing his hands in the air so that they looked like they were resting on either side of the bot from his perspective. He imagined gripping the sides of the beast’s metallic frame, and pressed his hands together. Amazingly, he could feel the metal pressing against his skin. The screech of folding steel pierced the air, and the bot gasped. It tried to move forward, but 62’s grip was too strong. He lifted his hands, and the entire bot rose with them. He pressed his mind, imagining it resting between his hands, and miraculously, there it was, a small handheld bot writhing between his fingers.

  62 examined the bot, which was now no larger than a loaf of bread. “You aren’t real,” he said again. He crushed the now flimsy tin toy in his hands, taking satisfaction in the crinkle of folding metal. He didn’t stop until it was pressed into a ragged sphere, no larger than the size of his fist. The light of the eyes burnt out, and the haunting voice was snuffed from his dream. He dropped the ball of refuse in the dirt at his feet and kicked it to the side of the road.

  He felt calm, and powerful in a way that he hadn’t experienced in a long time. He looked down at his hands, marveling at how smooth and unmarred they were. “It’s just a dream,” he whispered. “It can be anything.”

  62 bent the world to his will, closing his eyes and focusing on Mattie once more. When he opened them, he was back in the library. Everything was as it had been before Pi arrived. Had his connection with the child been real? If he had connected, it would be troubling to think someone inside Adaline knew his thoughts and had seen Hanford through his dreams. He shook his head as he pondered the problem.

  “It can’t have been Pi,” he assured himself. “I didn’t let anyone into my dream. He can’t have been real. It was just another nightmare.” He focused on the edges of his consciousness, pulling them closer to him. The world around him dissolved as he prepared to wake up. The library faded into darkness and he felt himself rising to the surface. “He was just a figment of my imagination,” he whispered.

  62 opened his eyes. His room was cast in shadow, faint streaks of afternoon light passing through the corners of his window. The world was quiet, solid, and real. He rolled on his shoulder and pushed himself off his pillow. He reassured himself that it was only a dream. No one from Adaline knew he was still alive, still dreaming in the middle of the above-ground desert.

  It didn’t matter how many times he repeated the self-assurance. He remained unconvinced.

  CHAPTER 23

  Sunny refused to go back to Hanford. Everyone had talked to her asking her if she’d go, and she still hadn’t budged. She insisted that she didn’t want anyone to know about her plight, and now that the morning of the departure had arrived, Rain and Hazel were packing up their equipment. Parker shuffled his own gear around, reluctant to leave Sunny behind. 62 sat with his teacher, watching him put clothes in a bag, only to take them out again a few minutes later. He rearranged and repacked for what must have been the fourth time.

  “You could stay,” 62 offered. Parker remaining behind would create problems for the Boys and their plans to reassemble N302. Ultimately, they’d have to tell the Man about
their bot and hope for the best, the same way they’d had to share their secret with Sunny. It wouldn’t be ideal, but 62 thought it might make things easier on Sunny, and that was worth the risk.

  “I wish I could,” Parker answered, “but I’ve got to get back to my students. I never understood Sunny’s dedication to the refugees before. Now, I know how much they count on us to understand the world.” Parker’s lips raised in a proud smile. “It’s kind of nice to be needed.”

  “I don’t know what that’s like,” 62 said with a shrug. “People are always trying to get rid of me.”

  “That’s not true. You have friends here. They need you.”

  62 shrugged. “If it weren’t for me, they’d both still be in Hanford right now.”

  Parker rested his hand on 62’s shoulder. “If they didn’t need you, they wouldn’t have followed you here. You are cared for. Don’t ever doubt that.”

  “I guess. So, you’re going to leave Sunny here?”

  “I don’t want to, but I have to,” Parker said. He groaned with frustration. “She doesn’t want to go back, and I can’t stay. So, I guess for now, knowing she’s safe here with you is going to have to be enough.”

  “Do you think she’ll get better?”

  Parker rearranged his clothes in his bag again, the shrug of his shoulders speaking volumes about his worries. They sat in silence as Parker finished packing. Even when Parker placed his last item in the bag and pulled the drawstring shut, the pair of them remained in the quiet room for a moment, neither knowing exactly what to say. Finally, 62 simply got up from the chair he’d been sitting on and held the door open for Parker. His former teacher hauled the bag onto his back, gripping its strap over his shoulder as he exited. They tromped down the stairs and Parker dropped his bag in the lobby.

  “We’ll be leaving soon,” Parker muttered. “I’ve got to go say goodbye.”

  62 nodded. “Thank you for everything.”

  Parker patted 62’s shoulder and walked off to find Sunny. 62 looked over the pile of bags in the lobby. Once again, Parker’s was packed tighter and looked heavier than the two doctors’, but 62 knew that it would be easier to carry on the way back, anyway. All the seeds, food, and supplies that they’d brought were staying at the jailhouse, so at least Parker was hauling less weight than before.

  62 wandered into the cafeteria, finding 00 drawing on a sheet of paper. “I didn’t know you could draw,” he commented as he sat down across from his friend.

  “I’m not drawing,” 00 said, his nose wrinkling in disgust. “I’m making a schematic. I think I’ve figured out how to make it so you-know-what can talk to another you-know-what after everyone leaves.”

  62 stood up partway, leaning across the table to get a better look at the lines, symbols, and markings on 00’s paper. “It sure looks like a drawing to me. You’d better not tell anybody. You might get kicked out.”

  “Very funny,” 00 said, rolling his eyes. “Who are you gonna tattle on me to? Blue?” 00 looked down at his paper for a moment, then back up at 62. “Actually, you’re right. Blue might kick me out.”

  “Where’d you get the paper?” 62 asked. He only had three sheets of paper left, and the one 00 had was larger than the ones he’d brought with him.

  “Rain brought it,” 00 said excitedly. “She said some lady from the hospital gave her a whole stack of it to bring out here.”

  “Really?” 62 silently made a note to have Mattie tell Sarah thank you. That meant he didn’t have to rush to figure out paper pressing. That was good. Now, he could wait until after Blue had grown more plants.

  “Yeah. She’s leaving the paper in her room, I think,” 00 said. He turned the page in front of him, tilted his head as he viewed it from the new angle, and then drew a line connecting two markings on the page. 62 heard footsteps echoing outside the cafeteria.

  “Hey,” 62 whispered, “If you’re not going to tell people that you’re drawing, you might want to put that away. I think someone’s coming.”

  A shadow passed by the cafeteria door and 00 flipped his drawing over on the table. Hazel emerged from the lobby, smiling at them both cheerfully. “We’re almost ready to go. Time for goodbyes and all that.” She approached the table with wide arms, and the two Boys got up to meet her. She embraced them in a joint hug, and when they pulled back, she smiled down at them each in turn. “62, you’ve been doing a great job of staying out of the dust. Keep it up. And you, 00, keep an eye out for snakes, will ya?”

  “If I find more snakeskins, I’ll save them for you,” 00 said. 62 shuddered and 00 added, “But I’ll make sure they aren’t radioactive before I bring them inside.”

  “Yeah?” Hazel’s eyes shined. “Then, real quick, let me show you how to preserve them. It’s super easy.” She pulled 00 away and he followed her out of the room, already firing off questions about the best places to find snake skins in the desert.

  62 meandered to the lobby, finding Blue and Rain there now, shaking hands at the door awkwardly. Dr. Rain looked somberly at the pair of them. “If Sunny’s condition worsens again, one of you needs to come to Hanford to get me. Do you understand?”

  “I will,” Blue said. “I promise.”

  Sunny and Parker emerged from the stairwell, and 00 and Hazel turned up as well. Parker, Rain, and Hazel pulled ponchos over their clothes, hoisted their packs to their shoulders, and fastened their masks over their faces.

  “I guess this is goodbye for now,” Parker said. “Is there anything you want us to bring with us the next time we come?”

  “Books,” 62 said. “Mattie knows which ones I like.”

  “Anything lighter than books?” Parker said, wincing as he adjusted his pack.

  “Cheese?” Blue clasped his hands and wore his saddest face.

  “Bacon?” 00 added.

  “We’ll see what we can do.” Hazel winked at the pair of beggars. “Rain and I want to come back in a few weeks to follow up on how things are going.”

  “You mean, see how things with me are going,” Sunny said despondently.

  “Yes,” Rain said. “It’s our duty to make sure you’re still up and around. Somebody’s got to be here to keep these kids in line.”

  “Thanks,” Sunny mumbled.

  Parker moved forward, wrapping his arms around her one last time. He pressed the filter of his mask to her forehead, the motion of a kiss. Slowly, he pulled away and turned to his companions. “Well,” he said, “shall we?”

  The masked Women nodded. They opened the door and walked out into the blustery morning. The three Boys and Sunny stood just inside the doorway, watching the travelers as they approached the trailhead and disappeared around the first mound down the hill.

  Sunny closed the door. “We should go upstairs,” she said softly. “We’ll be able to see them once they make it to the bottom of the trail.”

  62 followed his friends up the stairs, all the way to the top floor. 00 trotted ahead of them, undoing the device he invented that locked N302’s door. 62, Blue, and Sunny perched in the window watching for their friends. 00 set to work, not wasting a moment in reassembling the computer. It was a painfully long wait, but eventually the three misshapen figures of Parker, Rain, and Hazel emerged from the boulder-filled path at the bottom of the hill and began their long trek across the desert.

  CHAPTER 24

  Although each of them were thankful the doctors had been there to take care of Sunny, nobody had expected N302 to have shared their enthusiasm. The computer spent hours with Sunny, chatting with her about each step of her examination, and expressing thankfulness that she was still there. The computer saw her as a river of knowledge. She held the key to vast amounts of information that it had never had access to before. Although she was human, the bot revered her mind as if she were a new Head Machine. The bond between N302 and Sunny was unexpected, and none of the Boys were quite sure what to make of it.

  The main benefit of Sunny’s friendship with the bot was that it hadn’t been difficult for
00 to convince her to let him build a second Machine. Sunny became incredibly interested in the project as the days wore on, spending hours with 00 poring over the spare parts they’d smuggled with them for the project. Although the secondary parts had already been cleaned, they’d been stored in random piles all over the top floor of the jailhouse in order to make them look as much like junk as possible. Now, each part had to be found, identified, sorted, and laid out for assembly. This was the fourth time 00 had assembled a computer, and he’d designed his own order of operations and preferences for the build. Sunny was all too eager to help, and the pair ignored Blue and 62, leaving them to their own devices.

  62 decided to try reaching Mattie in his dreams again. He was still being plagued by bad dreams at night, so, he decided to try his luck reaching out to her during the day once more.

  “Will anyone miss me if I sleep all day?” 62 asked his friends. Shrugged shoulders and shaking heads were all the answers he received. “All right then. Blue, want to keep me awake all night?”

  “I’m on it!” Blue’s eyes wandered the room thoughtfully. “Treasure hunt?”

  62 followed Blue around the building late into the night. The pair of them were wandering the building, looking for something to occupy them. They opened cabinets, drawers, and plundered nightstands in the empty rooms. On the second floor, they found four used pencils, a long-spoiled plate of food, and a romance novel.

  62 was so hungry for something to read that he flipped through the book, quickly deciding it wasn’t to his liking. He did wonder who’d left the fanciful love story behind and decided to ask Mattie about it. Had one of the doctors left it behind? Or was it forgotten by one of the Men who hid in the jailhouse each year? He dropped the book off at his room before returning to wandering the halls, intent on taking it back to Mattie if he ever returned to Hanford.

  They were entering another abandoned room when 62 let out a lengthy yawn. He rubbed his eyes and walked over to look out the window. The thin sliver of moon was high in the sky, partially obscured by wispy clouds crawling on the night wind.