The Saffron Malformation

by Walker, Bryan

  The elevator was still waiting for Ryla so she stepped inside and took it to the second floor.

  Rain and Ryla

  Rain couldn’t sleep anymore, despite it being long into night. She wasn’t sure what time zone they were in any longer but she suspected that wasn’t the cause of her restlessness. It had more to do with the week she’d spent on bed rest, sleeping most days and nights away in the back of Natalie’s van. Now that she was feeling better she also found she contained too much energy so she stepped quietly from the bed, leaving Arnie snoring softly behind her, and went to take another shower, just because she could.

  It felt good to move around. It felt good to be off the road.

  Afterward she slipped into some pajama’s she found in one of the drawers in her room and went to explore. She saw a dull light glowing in the main room but when she went to it she found it was the painting of the sky glowing softly over Leone and Amber, sitting side by side playing a game on the holoscreen.

  “This is awesome,” Leone said when he saw her. She moved to join them, sitting on the other side of the boy.

  “What’s she have?” Rain asked.

  “Everything,” he replied, fingers twitching frantically as he tried to keep his character alive.

  “What do you mean everything?” she asked doubtful.

  “I literally mean everything. Even the old planet shit.”

  Rain ruffled his hair and hugged him. She didn’t know why, she just wanted to. He allowed it but when she kissed his cheek and started to nuzzle him he began to protest. “Okay, okay. Yeah, I love you too,” he said and she was satisfied.

  “There anymore of those burgers?” Rain asked.

  “I don’t think Ryla ate her’s,” Leone offered.

  Rain scrunched up her face and said, “I don’t want to take her’s.”

  “You think she eats?” Amber asked, ponderously.

  “What do you mean?” Rain asked.

  “She’s pretty advanced, she might eat,” Leone said.

  “I thought Quey said he didn’t know if she was a robot?” Rain thought for a moment, “So she is then?”

  “Probably,” Leone said with a shrug as his hand flicked to one side, keeping his character in the game at least a bit longer. “She’s definitely… different,” he added.

  She poked him and said, “Well I hope you were nice.”

  “Ou,” he protested with a laugh as the poke tickled more than it hurt, but it put his guy in jeopardy and he was certain he was nearly through the level. “I was,” he defended.

  Rain gave him another brief hug and said, “Good.” Then she ruffled his hair again and said, “You two have fun.”

  “Alright,” Leone said absently as he tried to keep his holographic character from dying… again. The game was hard.

  Rain was curious so she decided to explore and see if maybe she could find this Ryla. Maybe she’d get a read on her.

  Inside the elevator she saw the three buttons but before she pressed one she noticed something else. There was a panel below the buttons and with a bit of effort she managed to pry it open. Inside there was another set, these were marked B-1 through 3. She pondered momentarily, then decided to start by working her way down.

  The doors opened on a hall and a bitter cold rushed over her. She hugged herself inside her thick pjs’ as she saw light flickering from beyond a door ahead and to the left. Stepping forward she heard music playing softly, some sort of jazz, and went to the door and peered inside. There were tables spaced throughout the room and a bank of computers at the center where a dozen or so hologram monitors flashed long lines of data through the air then paused to calculate and continued.

  Rain stepped into the room. A small robot with a long neck and oval body crawled toward her on legs that looked like they should belong to a dog and stopped. It peered up at her with massive lens eyes. She saw the robot had been painted to look like a turtle and aside from the legs it was magnificently lifelike. Even in the pale light of the room she could see its brilliant coloring, the detail in every crevice of its shell and the personality in the slight imperfections of its coloring. She knelt before it and smiled and it backed away slightly then moved forward again, extending it’s long neck toward her.

  “Hello there,” she said and it blinked at her. Rain was amazed by the way it moved. In school she’d read about the robotics age, when the goal was to make the most lifelike robots possible. It had been a disaster. As it turned out people liked robots being robotic. They accepted lifelike qualities to a point but once it went beyond that they had a tendency to grow paranoid. This turtle robot was like that. It almost seemed alive as it addressed her tentatively, unsure of her intention. Rain held her hand out, the way she might to a stray dog or cat and waited. The bot looked at her fingers waving at him then up at her.

  “Koop-bot,” a soft voice said. Still it startled Rain and she jumped as she looked up from the robot. A slender figure draped in a thin layer of fabric was standing before an opened door with the light from a holograph flashing behind her. Rain stood slowly, the robot watching as she rose. “Koopbot Troopbot really, but that seems a bit long.”

  “Ryla?” Rain asked and the figure nodded as she stepped forward.

  “Bop his head.” The girl was smiling. Rain looked down at the robot on the floor. It was looking up at her with its big eyes, its head slightly cocked at the end of its long swanlike neck.

  She looked back at Ryla and said, “But he’s so cute, and done nothing to warrant a smack.”

  Ryla looked at Rain for a long moment then said, “You’re nice.”

  Rain smiled with a hint of a laugh.

  “Leone was nice,” Ryla added, looking back to her bot.

  “The others weren’t?” Rain questioned.

  “The others are worried.”

  “About what?”

  Ryla met her eyes and said matter of factly, “That I’m a robot. And that I’ll kill them.”

  Rain laughed and Ryla stared at her. “I’m sorry,” she said, keeping her arms strait and waving them up and down as she marched in place and added, “I just don’t see you as the evil cyborg killing type.”

  Ryla smiled at her. “I try not to be.”

  Rain laughed, “Quey told me you were learning to be funny. Look,” Rain began. “I’m so wired right now, I just spent a week sleeping and I don’t think I can take anymore of it so would you mind some company with… whatever you’re doing?”

  Ryla rocked on her heals and replied, “I wouldn’t mind.”

  “So what are you doing?”

  “Waiting for the data Quey brought me to compile.”

  Rain nodded. “Have anything to drink?” she asked.

  “As in alcohol?”

  “As in,” Rain affirmed.

  “There’s some in here,” she answered then led Rain into the lounge where she’d brought Shybot after he was finished to test his systems.

  “Woah,” Rain said, taking half a step back and tossing her hands up as if to frame the room with them. She noted the holoscreen and the bar and the small kitchen behind it and declared, “Now this is a break room.”

  “A break room?”

  “Yeah, you know, a place to kick back, have a sip and maybe listen to some tunes.”

  “Tunes?”

  “Music,” she answered pointing up toward the ceiling as if that’s where the jazz was coming from.

  Ryla smiled. “I enjoy music.” She went to the bar and touched a panel on the wall at the end. “I have everything right here.”

  Rain hurried behind the bar and stood across from Ryla, looking over the list of artists displayed on the panel. “May I?” she asked and Ryla sat back on one of the stools. Rain searched through the database until she spotted something that stopped her.

  “You like Dead Doll Dilemma?” she asked.

  Ryla shrugged with a nod.

  “They’re, like, one of my favorites,” Rain told her as she selected a song that began with an e
legant piano and built into an accompaniment of aggressive guitars and drum fills. Ryla swayed on her stool with the rhythm of the music while Rain searched the bar.

  “Hey,” she said, leaning on the bar and drumming it with her fingertips. Ryla turned to her and she asked, “Got any of Quey’s shine?”

  Ryla shook her head.

  “Awe,” she pouted, complete with sad eyes and a slump in her shoulders. “Sad.”

  “He offered some but I didn’t need any.”

  “No,” Rain agreed returning her attention to what was on the shelves behind the bar. “You have quite the selection back here as is, but…” she leaned against the bar again, head cocked and added, “Quey’s shine is fucking amazing. Don’t you think?”

  Ryla looked embarrassed, “I haven’t had any.”

  “That’s a shame,” she said. “You really missed out.” Rain went back to looking through the stash then asked, “How about vodka?” She held up the bottle and added, “Maybe you have some lemon tonic or something.”

  “I don’t drink,” Ryla said plainly.

  Rain furrowed her face as if someone had just slapped it. “You’re kidding?” Ryla shook her head. “Wait,” she said thoughtfully, “Can’t or don’t?”

  Ryla looked down for a moment then back at the girl and replied, “Don’t.”

  Rain smiled, “Then why have all this?”

  “It was already there,” she answered with a shrug.

  Rain nodded. Then she set a pair of glasses on the bar, poured a bit of vodka in each and opened the fridge where she found a bit of grape cranberry juice. She filled the glasses saying, “There, now it’s like wine.”

  “I don’t think I should,” Ryla said.

  “Why not?” Rain asked. Ryla had no answer. “Come on, at least have one with me so I won’t feel like a lush. Besides, whenever you make a new friend you should drink to them.” She lifted one of the glasses, tapped the other gently, pushing it closer to Ryla, then raised her’s to eye level and said, “To friends.”

  Ryla looked at the red liquid and decided it couldn’t hurt her, she’d seen people drink far more of the stuff than was in her glass. Hell, Quey had put an entire bottle in his belly last time he’d been around and then there was Drunky. He was a small bot she’d fitted with the alcohol intake sensor and the program that ran it. Essentially he was a robot that could get drunk if the sensor detected enough alcohol in his system. He could drink a lot, Ryla thought as she lifted the glass and Rain tapped it again before they both drank.

  “Ahh,” Rain sighed after with a smack of her lips. “That is good juice. Where do you get it?”

  “From the food depot,” she replied, taking another sip.

  “The food depot?”

  “Yes. It’s function is to keep the compound stocked with edibles.”

  “Well where does the food depot get the stuff?”

  Ryla shrugged. “It makes it.”

  Rain’s eyebrows flared as she took a backwards step. “It makes it?”

  Ryla nodded.

  “How’s that work?”

  “There’s a series of basements under this building. In the first there’s a garden and grows plants and meats. There’s a few bots that tend and harvest them and then they make all this. I don’t really need what they produce and a lot of it gets thrown away when they restock every two weeks but it’s the only purpose those bots have so I decided to just let them continue with it. Seems to make them happy.”

  Rain smiled with a chuckle. “You’re nice,” she said, pointing then took another drink. It’d been a long time and the strength of the booze was more than she was used to. She felt a tingle in her head already, the beginnings of a very nice buzz. “So how long have you been here?” Rain asked.

  “Long as I can remember.”

  A chill found Rain and she shivered slightly. “It’s cold in here,” she noted. Then she looked down at what Ryla was wearing, confused for a moment and asked, “Aren’t you cold in that?”

  Ryla looked down at her thin slip and shook her head.

  “Why do you keep it so cold?”

  “Cold is good for computer parts,” she answered with a shrug.

  Rain watched her for a moment as she sipped lightly and Ryla felt a bit self-conscious, but Rain wasn’t worried if Ryla was a robot or not. Before she’d met her there was a part of her that thought that might be the case, that the idea might have led to ill thoughts but the truth was she didn’t care. Either way, she was an interesting person and Rain would bet everything on her being harmless enough.

  Rain finished the liquid in her glass, nodding, and began making a new drink. “How about we have a seat on that cozy looking couch over there?” She didn’t wait for an answer, when she was done mixing her drink she simply started over to it and Ryla followed. “So,” she began when they were settled, “You been here all by your lonesome for long?”

  Ryla took another sip and said, “Yes.”

  Rain looked at her, sympathetically. “What happened?”

  Ryla looked down into her glass and took another, longer sip. She sort of enjoyed whatever the alcohol was doing to her and it seemed to give her what she needed to answer. “There used to be men here… and women. People who thought this place was a toy. They were mean to the robots. I was young. I didn’t understand a lot. One of the men was nice though. I think he was my father. I don’t know, maybe that’s not right. Anyway, he wrote a program for the robots. There was an argument, a disagreement I didn’t understand and then there was a fight. He was hurt and they were attacking the robots. I didn’t know what to do so I accessed his computer and initiated his program.” Ryla shrugged, taking another long sip from her glass. “I didn’t know,” she said again. “The Robots came up. The ones in the basement… there were screams. I saw blood. Then it was quiet.”

  Rain felt sobered by this.

  “They didn’t hurt me though,” she said. “They left me be. Others came after that. They were mean to me.” The drink in the glass was doing something to her. She didn’t mean to say what she was but she couldn’t stop herself. “I found that to be the case with people. If you aren’t like them or don’t try to be they’re mean. I go to the cities and they’re mean. They come to my home and they’re mean. I try to understand. I read. I watch the signal. I don’t get it. Why be mean?” Ryla shrugged, her eyes swimming slightly as she looked to Rain for that answer.

  Rain looked at her, seeing the deep sadness that had come to the surface and she leaned over and hugged her.

  Ryla was tense in her arms and so Rain tried to reassure her with words, “Its okay,” she told her. Ryla shoved her away, hard. That was when she noticed the red lights flashing, one in each corner of the room and there was a dull buzz. “Security protocol engaged,” a female voice announced.

  “Why did you do that?” Ryla asked but Rain simply sat, dumbfounded. Ryla heard the hum of the elevator, not the one they used to move about the compound but the one the things in the third basement used. The ones that were coming to her just like Bowserbot and Mechaganon would be. “Stay here and get down,” Ryla warned as she leapt to her feet and dashed through the door and into the large room beyond, a series of delicate dance steps that carried her out of site.

  Rain felt her heart race in her chest, uncertain of what had happened or what she’d done. There was the gentle hum of a machine and then the door opened slowly. Rain saw the bot roll in, the pigman on its chest holding its trident to the sky as lightning flashed on the mountaintop behind it, its open mouth full of white teeth and massive tusks. Above that was the robots head and the red light flashing atop it like a tiny hat of doom gave Rain a chill.

  Mechaganon raised one of its massive arms, training in on her and her eyes bulged. All she could think was, ‘not again.’

  The red lights flashing around the room, and more importantly the one on the robots head, stopped. Mechaganon looked at her for what seemed to be an eternity, his gun pointed true, then turned and rolled awa
y.

  Ryla burst through the doors and looked at her, eyes wild and breathing hard. “What were you thinking?”

  “I don’t… what happened?”

  “You can’t touch me!”

  “I didn’t know,” Rain said absently.

  “I told everyone about the defense protocols.”

  Rain shook her head. All she could say was, “I’m sorry, no one told me.”

  Ryla sat on the couch beside her.

  Rain sat up and looked at her. “All that because I touched you?”

  Ryla nodded.

  “They were going to kill me?” The reality of that started to catch up to her as Ryla nodded. “So, no one touches you?”

  Ryla shook her head.

  Rain found that very sad as she asked, “Why?”

  “Its not necessary.”

  “What if you want a hug or kiss or… what if you just want to.”

  “Why would I?” she asked with a shrug.

  “Because people need it sometimes,” Rain said gently. Ryla looked up at her and smiled a little. “And someone might want to touch you.”

  Ryla looked at her. “You want to touch me?”

  Rain smiled. “Yeah. I like to hug my friends, but not just me. I think Quey might welcome it as well.”

  Her brow furrowed, “Yeah, I know all about that.”

  Rain smirked, “He’s that obvious hu?”

  She nodded. “I’ve caught him trying to look at my eyes too.” Rain smiled as she thought how cute that was. Then Ryla continued and her smile faded. “He thinks you can’t do eyes. He’s wrong though, you can. Eyes are easy enough. He probably thinks you can’t because boyfriend doesn’t have eyes but that’s just because… well he’s sort of in progress right now.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  “Yeah. I have a boyfriend, just like the girls in the shows. He’s not done though. I can’t seem to get him right. But its not the eyes,” she assured Rain. “Its skin. You can’t do skin. Not really. I mean, you can get it to look alright but it never feels real.”