by Logan Keys
“I trust him, that’s why.”
“Do you even hear yourself, Jolene?”
She doesn’t argue. She grabs her coat and leaves.
“I should go with her,” I say.
But I look down at the little owl-eyes peeking up at me and realize, that Jolene’s right. If people want to hurt their mom, they might be crazy enough to hurt her children.
I feel protective over them.
I lean down into a crouch. “How would you two like to bake some cookies?”
“Yay!” they yell and Dom gives me an appreciative look.
“What about the missus?” I ask when the children have gone to ready themselves for baking.
“Don’t worry, Barkley,” Dom says. “I’ll get her a replacement immediately.”
We do bake cookies that first day. And many others. I read them stories every night. Jolene never tries to come and tuck them in anymore.
Since I’ve no training in being a nanny, I’ve downloaded tutoring applications to teach them both their academics.
We play games, mostly inside, and the children over time grow restless of staying home.
But when I bring up a possible field trip, Jolene shuts me down.
“Won’t happen. Don’t ask again.” She looks ages older, I realize.
Her hair has more grey in it, and her wrinkles are visible even without her frowning. Jolene’s once lovely manicured nails are bitten to the quick
“Is everything all right, Missus?”
She looks at me and utters one word. “No.” Before shutting the office door.
The day it happens isn’t particularly special. Nothing warns us of the change.
Jolene and Dom rush home from work, early, and they are quiet about it all, but they pack the children’s things and theirs.
With a whisper, Jolene stops me in the kitchen from making dinner. “We have to leave. There is a safe place for us. But. They won’t take you. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.”
She won’t look me in the face.
“Can I stay awake?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Jolene breaks down, bent over the sink, tears pouring down her nose.
“It’s all over,” she whispers.
“What is?”
“Everything.”
She wipes her face and stands up straight.
“Jolene.” Dom looks at me, he’s been crying, too.
He has both kids by the hand.
“Can I say goodbye?” I ask.
Jolene shakes her head, turning away from the children to say, “I don’t want to scare them.”
She says something about everyone using the bathroom one last time, it would be a long trip.
I will turn myself off before they finish.
My gift to them.
The closer I get to humanity, the more I see them for what they are. Scared. Simple. Lazy. Genius. Humans. Messy, nutty, stronger than anything---screwed up, cutting and running, life bringing, humans. Courageous, kind, selfless, magical, passionate, organic, weird, and uncomfortably comfortable, humans…loving...and about to be extinct, humans.
Everything I hate, and everything I’m longing to be…human.
Chapter Four
“Well now, take it slow there, Robo. You’ve been asleep a long while, long-long while.”
He chuckles.
“You ok in there?”
I nod. “I think so.”
He laughs until he wheezes. “He thinks so? A robo who thinks? It’s been a long time, long time since ‘ole Jasper seen one of them thinkers. Not a lot of room for thoughts these days, anyway.”
Jasper’s wearing animal skins. His dark skin underneath is dotted with sweat. The temperature reads much higher than before.
“Where am I?”
He leans forward and taps a wooden staff on my head. “They must have spent a long time making you.”
One word comes to mind when I take in my surroundings. Desolate.
“What happened?” Jasper says, leaning on the Beachwood. “Man. Woman. The whole place was chock full of them until it couldn’t take it no more.”
“It? The earth, you mean?”
“Sure. Sure.”
I try and stand, but I’m severely damaged.
“Don’t do too much, Robo. I’m no fixer, see? Found you under a refrigerator that looked made of pure titanium, can you imagine? Dragged you outside and once you got under the sun, you started a beepin’ and a whirrin’.”
He uses the staff to move some trash around.
“Careful,” he says, when I try to rise.
One leg works quite well, the other’s too damaged.
“Can you fix yourself?”
“If I have certain tools, Jasper.”
“Hmmm, okay, all right, tell me what you need, Robo.”
It takes a lot of explaining, but Jasper finds everything before nightfall, and we get my leg working.
With those fixed, I search myself to find other parts for one of my arms that’s missing.
My vision is blurring and we can’t find any parts around that I can use to repair my eyes. Jasper says he knows of a place called robot graveyard. After admitting he’s the only one that calls it that, he shows me where it is.
The carnage. There must be millions.
“Most of the new ones weren’t like you, Robo,” Jasper says. “No place to charge.” Then he says, “Come on. We rummage our lives away.” After I’ve fixed my eyes. “You can help me.”
And I do help Jasper. In fact, I find that the rummager needs me far more than I do him. He’s got a terrible cough, and at night, he wheezes and tells me stories, stopping to cough up red into a handkerchief.
He sleeps fitfully.
I keep watch for Jasper. Strange looking animals come around during the night, some are unafraid of the fire, some are not.
After a time, Jasper tells me how he survived. Those who’d gone underground hadn’t.
Whatever weapon was used, whatever the Merkels were running from, had affected the lower layers of soil more than the top. It thinned with the fresh air. But below, it had concentrated, and death was immediate.
Seeing how this affected me, he promised that no one had suffered. And also assured me that no one had made it out of the bunkers.
This didn’t mean the topsoil was safe.
“They poisoned us up here too, pretty good.”
“So, few are left,” I say.
“Food supply. Bad soil. Nothing will grow. What the sickness didn’t kill off, hunger did. What hunger didn’t kill off, sadness did.”
“What started the war?”
“Lies.”
“I’ve lied.”
“Most do. We slowly hobble ourselves with lies. Become more honest or more fiction as we go.”
I know that humans go crazy, but Jasper was wiser for it.
Jasper is what could have saved the world. He’s what a real hero looks like.
Eventually, he shows me there are actual people still left, though. Down the hill, there’s still a small town. He says, “One of the few left. Let’s stop in and sell our wares.”
It’s strange after all this time of only me and Jasper, in quiet, the town seems loud. Swarming with people. But somehow managing to feel empty at the same time.
Expecting to feel a connection to them, I want to cry when I don’t.
There’s no more Boss’ or Lilz’, no Dominik’s and Jolene’s.
These people. They look like Fritz. They all have his eyes.
“What are you thinking, Robo?” Jasper asks.
“That maybe I do have a soul. Only, it went to hell. Is this hell?”
Is it because I lied? Forever doomed to a hell full of Fritz’s.
Is it because I murdered him?
I feel guiltier for the lies.
“They’re so sad,” I say.
Jasper coughs, and we leave the town without looking back. “That they are, Robo, that they are. Learned
too little too late. It’s how it is with a headstrong kind, a young kind, in their head, you know? Who never leaves the childish things in the past. We had a whole lot of children running the place, egos sparring with the ability to murder each other from far away, with the push of a button. Robots doing their dirty work, drones swooping in to kill a child. One loose string can unravel the world.”
It felt like Jasper and I could go forever like that. Rummaging and selling.
But I knew better.
Soon the cough was louder than the stories.
Jasper slowed down.
Then the cough stopped completely but so did Jasper.
And so, did the last good heart stop beating.
Chapter Five
I wake up this time alone. I’m covered in sand.
The sky is clear unlike the last time I awoke.
With Jasper gone, I’d hid inside a shack. The Fritzs came first for his stuff, the things we’d rummage for so long, and then they came for me.
I decided to turn myself off rather than be taken. My hope was that they’d figure I wasn’t working like the other “Robos” in the graveyard and leave me alone.
From inside, I had watched them approach through the window.
Being out of the sun, I’d run out of power before I could turn myself back on.
But now, the shack is gone.
I’d been buried all this time, until the wind must have uncovered me.
The world is bright and beautiful but empty.
I don’t even have to search to know that there is nobody left.
How else would the world heal?
I go back to the places I knew. In the robot graveyard, there is nothing but sand and rocks.
When I turn to leave, I step on a piece of metal.
Using a stick to dig, I find a limb. An old model robot. Working at the hole some more, I reveal a smallish female model.
She won’t turn on. Her battery is destroyed.
Using some of my own panels, I reconnect her, putting some of me into her side.
She wakes.
“Hello,” I say.
“How can I help you?” she asks.
I try a few more responses, but she has only basic programming.
I can’t help but feel disappointed.
It’s strange, but she follows me, asking if she can help, asking if I need anything. She has no emotions. I wonder, at times, if this is how Herself had felt about me, because the small robot is eerie with empty eyes and fake smiles.
We travel very far. Me and the little robot.
We travel until we find the ocean. Some of the cities are there, partially.
Preserved by a strange substance.
I locate the spot where the Boss’ house had been. I find the bad corner.
Lilz house still stands.
When I see it, I try not to break down and cry. “Oh, Lilz,” I say to her ghost.
I don’t have a heart, but whatever it is in my chest is gripped tightly.
The little robot watches me vacantly.
The attic is gone, the whole second floor.
I decide to dig though, anyway. Just in case.
On the last pass through, I’m about to leave when something catches my eye. It’s a tin box. It looks familiar.
I break the latch and inside is one lone chip.
I lift it out.
The girl robot comes over, “How can I help you?”
“Stand right there,” I tell her, and put the chip between my teeth.
Searching around, I find the tools I need.
Once the chip is in place, I stand back from the little Robot Girl.
She smiles. “Hello,” she says. “how may I help you?”
I frown.
The disappointment is keen.
I turn away, but she grabs my wrist. “I’m kidding with you. What took you so long, Tinman?”
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About the Author Logan's best-selling series “The Last City” is her debut into dystopian, and she's loving the adventure that world-building brings. Logan began writing horror and poetry early in life, but she says young-adult is swiftly becoming her home. She's currently living on the Island of Oahu in Hawaii with her husband, children, and fur-child Lola. Even though it's a tropical setting, her writing remains the same moody narrative she's always enjoyed. Visit her at Logansfiction or make sure to check out her all of her books on Amazon CLICK RIGHT HERE
