The Saffron Malformation

by Walker, Bryan

  They went into the main room and found Rachel and Natalie getting the others moving. Leone and Amber were dragging their feet a bit, while Arnie stacked bags near the doorway. Ryla looked around the room, scanning the mural she’d painted for what just might be the last time. How many hours, hell how many days of her life had it taken her to paint it? Of course if she wanted to know all she needed to do was think about it. She decided not to, some things were best left to uncertainty, and carried her bags to where the others were stacked.

  “Everyone good?” Quey asked.

  “Think that’s all of it,” Natalie confirmed.

  “Arnie and I will load up the cars. If you guys wanna have a look around to be sure, maybe have a shower if it’s not more than ten minutes.”

  “What are we driving and who’s ridding where?” Arnie asked as he was about to pick up one of the bags.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Quey began. “We should take all three vehicles. That way should something happen to one we’re not pressed for space, not as pressed anyway. Idealistically it’s not a bad idea to have Arnie ride with Amber and Leone, that way if something does happen he can get them out of there.” He could tell Natalie was going to protest so he didn’t even take a breath before starting his next sentence. “However, I realize Nat, you probably want to ride with Amber so another way to do it is to have the two of you take one car, Arnie and Rachel can take the other and Ryla and I will take the truck. Leone could ride in either car, but I think if asked he’d prefer to ride with you two,” he said meaning Natalie and Amber.

  “I’d prefer that arrangement,” Natalie said.

  “Good, then if no one else has anything?” he waited for someone to speak. When no one did he and Arnie moved toward the bags. “Why don’t you give us a hand,” he said to Leone as he passed. The boy followed without a word.

  They loaded the bags onto the elevator then hauled them through the lobby to the door to the garage. It took a few minutes to separate the bags and put them with the proper vehicles but once that was done loading them up was easy.

  “You gunna be okay?” Quey asked Arnie when Leone was loading the car and out of earshot.

  Arnie looked at him. His eyes were empty but his gaze was solid. “You guys came for us… you didn’t have to. You did your best to keep us safe and get us through.” He took a breath to gather himself and said, “I’ll see this through, get you off the planet if I can. After that… I can’t say.”

  Quey nodded and clapped him on the shoulder. “That’ll be plenty,” he replied then headed off to load the truck. He was mostly done when Leone approached him.

  “I shouldn’t have said what I did,” Leone’s voice was flat. Quey turned and looked at him. “About getting people killed.” The boy glanced toward Arnie who was getting things set in the car he’d be driving.

  “It’s alright,” Quey assured him.

  “No,” he protested. “My sister,” he looked over at Arnie again, made sure he wasn’t coming and couldn’t hear. “She thought a lot of you.”

  Quey took a breath. “Leone,” he began.

  “She told me, back when she was shot. She told me that if she died I was supposed to stay with you.”

  Quey was surprised. “I didn’t know that,” he said more to himself than the boy.

  Leone nodded. “I just want you to know why, if it comes to it and our little group does need to split, like you said upstairs.” he looked to Arnie again. “He can run with Amber but I’m staying with you.”

  Quey nodded. “That’s the case then it’s like it was in the house, when I gave you the gun. You do what I say without question or hesitation, and you don’t ever tell Arnie about this.”

  The boy shook his head and said, “No.”

  Quey looked to him with a bit of surprise.

  “Not telling Arnie’s all right but I’m not as great a stranger to a gun as she would have let you believe. She was no fool, she knew it might come to that someday. I need a bit of practice but when the time comes I mean to be of use.”

  “Listen,” Quey said with a heavy sigh. “There’s a lot that comes with that, shooting someone. It’s baggage she didn’t want you to be burdened with.”

  Leone looked up at him, his eyes solid, and said, “There’s a lot about the way things are she didn’t want.”

  Quey looked out at the others, getting settled in the other cars. “You better with a pistol or a rifle?”

  Leone shrugged, “I handle either all right.”

  Quey nodded, patted the boy on the shoulder and walked away. As they finished loading up the vehicles Quey was sure to set an extra set of guns in the car for Leone. The boy was right. Things were different now.

  Ryla walked the compound during the little time they had, primarily the second floor, that was where most of her robots gathered. She picked up shybot and placed him on a table. Koopbot rolled into her leg. She looked down at him and smiled, then bopped him on his head. He snapped back into his shell and her smile broadened. She’d built these bots for herself, making them in the images of things she understood. They were nothing like the creatures below the third basement. These were pretty and gentile while there was nothing about those that wasn’t violent and angry. She had her doom ships, sure, but they were a new project. The older ones, the ones she’d be activating for the first time in half a dozen decades, scared her.

  Her mind went to Jacob, to some of the things he’d said, accusations he’d made regarding her treatment of the bots. She never cared for those particular ones but she hadn’t done anything about them either. Perhaps she’d still believed that it might come to a point where she’d have to activate the clean sweep program.

  Ryla shunned the thought. She’d been angry when she wrote it, and hadn’t fully understood the creatures that lived down there. Still, why had she allowed the lower levels to continue on?

  She let the thought go and found herself having to acknowledge that Jacob was right about one thing at least. About boyfriend.

  She looked over the other bots and knew they’d have purpose without her. His purpose, however, vanished with her. She sat at the computer and with a few strokes of the keyboard she summoned Boyfriend to find her. When he arrived she removed a pin drive from one of the computers and inserted it into the port at the base of his neck. It would take some time for him to load the software and reboot. By the time he did, she’d be gone.

  ‘Finally,’ and, ‘what the hell,’ went through Quey’s mind simultaneously when Ryla came into the machine shop with Bowserbot and Mechaganon. “They’ll be useful,” she said and Quey nodded once as he went to the cargo door at the back of the truck and opened it.

  Once everyone and everything was loaded Quey climbed in behind the wheel of the moving truck and turned the engine over.

  The sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon as the cargo door on the far end of the garage rolled up, spilling a blinding glow of orange-red light across the floor and truck. Quey shifted out of park and rolled into the waste, checking his mirror to be sure the others were following. They followed an old dirt path south, away from the highway Quey usually took across the waste during his shine runs, and would continue on it for the better part of twenty kilometers before they met a paved road. When they were half a kilometer out Ryla tapped a set of buttons on her sheet and the ground began to rumble.

  “What the hell is that?” Rachel asked from the rear car. Natalie and the kids were ahead of them and the truck was in the lead.

  Arnie looked in the side mirror and his eyes gaped. The building was lowering into the ground. “Holy shit,” he said.

  Rachel spun in her seat and watched it through the rear window. “What the hell is that place?”

  Arnie looked at her and shrugged. “What do you think is in that basement?”

  Where there had been a three-story structure only minutes ago there was now just a rooftop.

  Quey and Ryla rode in silence for nearly twenty minutes. She didn’t seem to not
ice. He’d glance at her from time to time but she was simply sat watching the waste go past. Truth was he was glad she was comfortable with silence. The further along this plan moved the more it seemed to exhaust him. Still, he had some curiosities and with a great stretch of road ahead, now seemed as good a time as any to deal with them.

  “Can I ask you some things?”

  She looked over at him. “Yes.”

  “It’s about you. About,” he tried to think of a good way to put it and when he couldn’t he simply said, “How you work.”

  “Okay.”

  “You didn’t sleep last night.”

  “No.”

  “Do you?”

  “Sleep?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yes, but my sleep works differently. I do not require ‘full rest’ more than once in one hundred and fifty two hours.” She looked at him, saw him pondering and added, “About once a week.”

  “But you sleep more than that?”

  “If you mean a full rest yes, sometimes I do it more often.”

  “Why?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. Because I want to.”

  “What does that mean anyway? Full rest?”

  “The hardware in my brain makes it possible for different parts of it to sleep at different times. It’s similar to the way dolphins sleep. It allows me to remain active while gaining the benefits of sleep, though I function at a diminished rate.”

  “How diminished?”

  “Depends on which part of my brain is asleep, though on the whole it mostly affects my ability to solve new problems. I would not be useful for calculations or council while in a waking rest cycle, though I can still perform tasks and answer questions I all ready have knowledge of. For instance, I could rest and maintain this conversation, but I could not rest and build a new robot.”

  “Are you?” When she didn’t answer he added, “Resting now.”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “These extra parts, what do they do?”

  “They augment my functions.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “My organs and muscles are equipped with an organic circuit system designed to make them more efficient. Inorganic hardware was implanted into the appropriate organic ports throughout my body to act as processing hubs. There’s also a system that helps my immune system and my cell regeneration, though I’ve never been able to figure out what it is.”

  “And,” he tried to think of the best way to put his next question. “You feel things, right?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I mean… touch and stuff.”

  She looked at him. “Yes.”

  “It’s just, that compound was cold and you never seemed to be and it’s not like you were wearing a whole lot.”

  “I’m warmer than you by about two degrees without entering a heat conservation mode. Sometimes I’ve gotten up to three or four, if I’ve been running certain functions for an extended period of time, but when in ‘heat conservation mode’ I can raise it higher. Either way, keeping it cooler suits me, as my organic body isn’t allocated to this temperature.” She glanced at him and simplified, “I always feel a bit warm.” She paused for a moment, then added, “But it is easier for me to ignore things like cold.”

  “You feel pain?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you can ignore it.”

  “To an extent, if I want to.”

  “Does it work the other way? Can you intensify your senses?”

  “I can but I can’t augment them as far as I can dull them.”

  “Hmm, I wonder why that is?” he pondered more to himself than her.

  “The body has limitations in that regard, or maybe it’s the brain. Genetically speaking I am mostly human, after all.” She looked at him until he glanced at her and agreed with a nod. She looked through the windshield and went on. “When the body experiences a sensation that’s too intense it goes into shock and begins shutting down, that’s its natural reaction, to dull sensation, and so I’m able to do that on my own with more ease.”

  He looked at her and did his best to understand her, and perhaps he was beginning to. Though he had to accept that there would always be something alien about her, that was no reason they couldn’t be friends.

  She looked at him and he said, “So it worries you. You think if people find out about the extra bits you have inside they’ll forget about the rest.”

  She looked away from him and said softly, “You did.”

  “I didn’t forget,” he told her.

  After a long set of ticks she asked, “Why did you wait for me last night?”

  He glanced to her.

  “Why did you have sex with me?”

  Quey swallowed hard. “I don’t know,” he answered hollowly.

  “Why did you the first time?” When he didn’t answer she said, “Maybe you didn’t forget but you don’t see them as clearly.”

  “It’s not the parts,” he told her.

  “It’s how you found out about them?”

  He nodded, “Yeah.”

  “I think that’s an easy way to justify it.”

  “What’s that mean?” he almost snapped defensively.

  “It means when you’re wondering about me is it my omission you’re contemplating or whether anything I do or say is real?”

  “I don’t know,” he said softly.

  She struck him, the palm of her hand shot across the cab and connected with his face. Startled, he jerked the wheel one way then the other to right their course again. “What the hell,” he nearly shouted.

  “I’ve answered all of your questions, submitted to every bit of scrutiny and all you can give me in return is I don’t know?”

  He looked at her, gaping.

  “Let me clue you in… you..,” her face scrunched up with the effort it took for her to think of something to call him. All she came up with was, “you jerk.” She was as good at name-calling as she was at lying, it seemed. “I am a person. I have feelings. I have things I want to know. So tell me why did you wait for me last night?”

  “To have sex with you,” he admitted, ashamed.

  “Why?”

  “Because it feels good, really good.” Then he muttered, “better than it should actually.”

  “Better than it should?” she asked confused.

  “And so I wanted to see if I could tell,” he went on.

  “Tell what?”

  “The reason for it.”

  She stared at him. When she spoke her voice was soft and trembled slightly. “You wanted to see if the reason sex with me felt good was…?” she probed.

  “I just… I don’t know how mechanical you are.”

  It seemed like he might as well have struck her as she sat back in her seat and as far away from him as she could get.

  He swallowed hard. Embarrassed and a bit on the flustered side, he went on. “I mean come on, the way you move, how you walk and type and paint… anything you do. It’s too perfect. It’s like every little thing is calculated. Even your reactions to things, its like your emotions are completely separate from your thoughts. People don’t do that. People trip over their own feet from time to time. People know the smart thing to do and choose something else because it feels better. You don’t.” She glanced up, watching him carefully. “And it’s scary.”

  “Scary why?”

  He sighed, “I don’t know. Because people like imperfections.”

  “And that’s why you were there last night? You wanted to see if you were fucking a machine?”

  She’d never cursed outside of when they had sex before and it caught him off guard. He looked over at her and she was the closest to crying he’d ever seen, not just shedding tears, like she had before, but actually crying. It was only though effort so great he could see it that she managed not to.

  “And what have you decided?” she asked, a bit of bitterness growing in her tone. “Is that what you’re doing? If so, then wh
at am I? What’s my function now?”

  He felt the guilt of what he’d said like a belly of bad food. He hadn’t really meant to hurt her but he had, though she’d hurt him too… hadn’t she? “I don’t know why you’re upset,” he decided to defend himself. “You did the same thing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The first time we had sex was an experiment for you. You just wanted to see what it would be like to have real flesh inside you.”

  Silence hovered uncomfortably between them for a long set of ticks. “You’re right,” she finally said. “That was part of it. You were my first,” she told him and the gravity of that settled on him and he felt even worse. “Rain said the first hurts the worst.” She looked out the window. “I thought she meant physically.”

  Quey swallowed and looked away from her. He remembered his first then, and how hard it was when the whole thing fell apart on him. He was about to speak when she asked, “So why did you want to? The first time.”

  He looked at her. “Because,” he shrugged. “You’re beautiful. And I do like you, your company. I didn’t call you all those times along the road just to give you updates on Geo. I thought you were amazing.”

  “You thought I was a robot.”

  Quey shook his head. “That was later, at first I thought you were a loon.” She laughed slightly and he smiled and added, “Then you were a robot.”

  “And now?”

  “Oh, now I know you’re a loony robot.” He smirked and she chuckled and he followed. “Got quite a hold on humor now haven’t you?”

  “I’m still learning,” she replied.

  “How does that work?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “How can you learn a sense of humor?”

  “It’s not about learning to have a sense of humor, I had to learn to recognize when something is funny. It’s hard because there’s so many types of humor and my hardware was having trouble recognizing a pattern so now I just try to recognize when I feel something is funny.” She looked over at him, “Telling a joke still takes a degree of effort, however.”

  A silent moment passed before she said, “You know I’m glad for your company as well.” He glanced from the long stretch of dirt road ahead to her and back again more than a few times. “I used to wait for you to call with your updates,” she admitted.