Boy Robot

by Simon Curtis

  It was hard to remember exactly when he’d started the project. His focus in molecular biology leant itself perfectly to the kind of research he now knew he would devote his life to. He was going to cure cancer. He would achieve the unachievable, the highest goal known to man. He would change the world, if only for her.

  He was deep into his research and she had just gone back to work when they received the next bit of news that would change both of their lives forever: She was pregnant. They didn’t think it was even possible. The oncologists had warned her that the full-body radiation treatments had a very high chance of rendering her sterile, but he insisted she press on. She didn’t want to, at first. The notion of sacrificing her ability to create life in order to preserve her own threw her into a storm of emotional turmoil that even her diagnosis hadn’t brought upon her. He didn’t know what to do. It was her body. Her choice. He could only encourage her to do what would help her the most though, as selfish as it may have been. After all, she couldn’t be a mother if she wasn’t alive to bear a child in the first place. Those were the words that finally convinced her.

  But now, there she sat, in the very same living room in which she’d shared with him her death sentence those few years ago, sharing with him her news of life.

  This time, it was he who consoled her, for the first, and possibly the last time, as she openly wept. For all of their hardships, these tears of joy truly felt like treasures.

  • • •

  The baby was only four months old when she relapsed.

  “Leukemia.”

  The word reared its ugly head once more in their lives. A demon, once thought to be exorcised, rose from hell and clung to both of their backs with reinvigorated determination.

  “Mililani, my sweet Mililani.” Her mother cried and held her when he walked in that night. He’d been at his lab. He was always at his lab. It was the only place he felt as though he could do anything to help. Sitting there, in that cursed town house with his mother-in-law, his dying wife, and a crying baby whose presence merely pressed upon him the utter urgency of his work, only drove it home further that he was needed elsewhere. He was barely around this time. This time felt so different, and it terrified him. The zest, the vigor, the sheer determination of will with which she faced cancer the first time had faded, and something horrifying had taken their place—acceptance, and a quiet, gentle admission of defeat.

  He held her hand in the hospital, when things had truly taken a turn for the worse. There was barely any life left within her veins. He thought of her wild hair, her bronzed skin, and her smile. The woman on the bed next to him had been hollowed out by this world, like his parents were before her. Everything that mattered, every reason for living, lay next to him, dying.

  He handed her the baby for the last time and lifted her arms so that she could bear the weight. She leaned in and tried to sniff the scent from the baby’s shock of black hair. Her little ocean spirit, brought to life from a body that could no longer hold life of its own. She kissed the baby’s head and squeezed his hand with what little force she could muster.

  “Be strong, my love. For her.”

  With that, the very last breath that she would ever breathe flowed from her lungs like a somber harbor breeze, gusting out to sea, never to return.

  • • •

  The next year was a blur. Memories were out of place, if they existed at all. Great spans of darkness lingered in places where major events in the timeline of his life should’ve stood out like beacons.

  Grief has a way of clouding even the brightest sun.

  It was during this time he met Evelyn. To this day he couldn’t fully recall the exact details of their first encounter, or precisely how it came to be that she had his number and had called to talk about his intriguing advances in molecular biology. But she had called him, and they had met. Before long they had combined his research with her experience in nanorobotic technology and begun to forge a new path altogether, as a team. There were eight of them in total, including himself, cramped in a lab that felt tiny at the time, working tirelessly toward a cure.

  They believed they had found it. After decades, if not centuries, of futile human toil against the imperishable beast that is cancer, he and Evelyn stood on the edge of cracking the code.

  But they needed more money.

  As they sought funding, an unexpected ally came to their aid—the United States government. He should’ve shut it all down, right then and there. Torched the lab, went home to his daughter, and never looked back. But that’s not what happened.

  Their project was to be absorbed by a classified, technically nonexistent branch of the military. This itself should’ve been the first indication that the deal was not one that would work in his favor and would eventually sour the fruit of his labor he’d been cultivating for years. They didn’t see it that way, the others. They had funding. A bankroll that was essentially unlimited. They signed it all away and moved to Virginia.

  Their progress showed no signs of slowing. Their advancements came at a rapid pace. They leaped far beyond what anyone could’ve dreamed of accomplishing with the human cell just a few years prior, in only a few short months. The signs began to arrive, but he chose to ignore them. At least initially.

  “So these cells are impervious to disease?”

  “With this sort of regenerative ability, could they be programmed to repair physical injuries?”

  “Even lost limbs?”

  Inquiries to the nature of the synthetic cells they were creating quickly shifted to suggestions, and soon became commands.

  His protests were drowned out by reprimands, and any progress he could’ve slowed as a detractor was steamrolled by the dozens of new team members, all striving to earn favor from their bosses. Yearning for glory.

  What began as a quest to preserve life had quickly devolved into a mission to create the ultimate death, and they had succeeded.

  Glances shared with Evelyn turned into whispers. It was shortly after the first baby was born that they decided to meet in the middle of the night, in the park. They’d left their phones at home and watched for anyone who might have been following them. They were too deep into the biggest top-secret military project in the history of mankind to take any chances. They couldn’t risk drawing attention to themselves, not when so much was at stake.

  “What do we do?” he whispered, looking back over his shoulder, through the trees.

  “End it. Before we end the world.”

  “How?”

  “I’ve already started.”

  From that night on, a secret alliance was formed. Other members of the original team were brought on, people who could be trusted. Her plan was extreme—as precarious as setting the fuse on the first atomic bomb while it was still in the lab—but it was the only way out he could see at this point.

  Under the guise of an office video game club, they met every Saturday night. “8-Bit Heart” became the name of the eight-person crew who worked together in secret to prevent the apocalypse they’d been striving toward. They even went so far as to make T-shirts, emblazoned with a small, red 8-bit video game heart as their insignia, which they would wear every Friday to work. A middle finger to General Ander, right under his nose.

  She assured him the program wouldn’t kill them. It would allow them to live life as normal humans, assimilate with society. All they needed to do was follow her instructions exactly. And so they did.

  • • •

  For months they each took turns enjoying what appeared to be a much-needed leave of absence. This was the team that had been on since the beginning. They had all earned a few weeks off.

  His heart still raced when he remembered breaking into the first blood bank. He’d never done anything like it in his life. If he was caught, he would be branded a terrorist and sentenced to a life of torture in a tiny, top-secret prison the American people had never heard of, in a corner of the world no one knew existed, never to be seen again. Never to see his daught
er again.

  His leave was yet another link in a long chain of weeks spent away from her. She was the source of everything for him—his love, his reason for living, his sole reason for even attempting to make this plan work. To ensure she had a world to grow up in. It killed him that she was being raised by Mili’s mother.

  He didn’t realize at first that when she had the heart attack and died, she’d actually saved both of their lives that day. He’d had only a few days left of his leave, so everything had to be done quickly. Arrangements had been made at the hospital to get her body back to Hawaii that night, and tickets were booked for him and his daughter for that afternoon. As he buckled her in her window seat and waited for their connection in Los Angeles to take off, his phone vibrated.

  New message—Samus

  He unlocked it and read the text.

  Luigi has forfeited to Bowser. Game over.

  His thumbs slid across the keyboard, but he didn’t respond. He pulled the battery from the device and slipped both into the fabric pouch on the seat in front of him. There was no going back now. With any luck, he would have a small window of time during which he could evade arrest once they landed, but even the chances of that were slim. They’d all decided to keep an emergency kit on them at all times in case they needed to disappear quickly and quietly, and he had it on him now—a passport with another name, a bank card for anonymous accounts in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland, and twenty thousand dollars in cash. He never thought he would see the day when he actually had to use them, but now here he was, on a flight to the most remote island on Earth—an island from which he would most likely never be able to leave, unless it was in handcuffs or a coffin—hoping to evade capture by the very government he had been tasked to serve. If he could make it out, it would be by the very skin of his teeth.

  • • •

  He looked over at his daughter once again, sleeping against the window of the plane with the little golden halo encircling her head, and tried now to memorize the features of her face.

  • • •

  When Leilani Kapuani received the call, she didn’t know what to think. She raced to the airport and barely killed the engine before running inside. She spent three hours in interrogation before they would let her see her. They drilled into her relentlessly, trying to discern whether or not she knew anything about where he might’ve gone or how they might be able to find him. She didn’t know anything at all, and that was the truth. The last time she’d seen her brother-in-law was at her sister’s funeral, and they hadn’t spoken since. Now here she was at the airport, enduring a grueling interrogation while the body of her mother was taken from a plane like luggage and shipped off to a morgue, her young niece sitting in a room somewhere with people she didn’t know in a place she’d never seen before.

  Once they were satisfied that she truly knew nothing, they let her go. The girl was put into her care for the time being, under the condition that she allow them to wiretap her phone and monitor her e-mail. She conceded. The only thing that mattered was getting the girl.

  She left the airport in a state of shock, holding the girl’s hand, trying to be strong, if only for her. They’d made it almost to the car when the little girl started crying—asking for her father, wondering where he’d gone, pleading for him. She sat on a bench beside the parking structure and held the girl to her chest and kissed her forehead.

  “Oh, my baby. My sweet, sweet baby,” Leilani cooed as she rocked her niece in her arms and stroked her hair.

  “My poor darling Kamea.”

  CHAPTER 7

  ISAAK

  The energy of Tribo is severed instantly as everyone snaps back to reality. A sense of dread rises in the crowd between screams, and everyone around me scrambles to see what’s happening. From the edge of my vision, I see a small explosion—a brilliant flash of embers floating up into the air and then blinking out of existence. I can’t make out what’s going on, but more of the flashes spark up near the walls. More voices scream out. Then I see them.

  The main hall is being completely overtaken by Sheriffs. They’re pouring in from every door, scaling down the walls, filing down the steps in numbers too great to assess in the dim light. Panic erupts around me as half-naked bodies scramble and flee.

  “Everyone to the center of the room!” Malek shouts, but the din of the chaos drowns out his words. Beams of light flicker into existence from Robots around me as they stand and prepare to defend themselves. More shots ring out, and the body of a girl beside me falls to the ground.

  To my right, Radha sends a column of flame over the crowd and up the stairs, incinerating a cluster of Sheriffs before they reach the floor. Behind her, Erica and her band of telekinetics stand shoulder to shoulder, hurling back bodies of Sheriffs as they descend. The bodies of men and women, clad in black, fly toward the walls and land with painful, reverberant cracks. Two boys hold hands and thrust electric shields like the kind Azure wields toward the encroaching horde, but it’s not enough. Everyone is in a state of panic. Everything is in chaos. This is all happening too quickly.

  I watch as more and more of the light bursts explode up into the air, and realize—in horror—what they are. The Sheriffs are thrusting thin, metal rods into the temples of paralyzed Robots. Once they penetrate the brain, their bodies rapidly disintegrate and explode in a flash of light.

  I stand in a vacuum of silence as I watch more and more die around me. Young Robots—people—pinned to the ground, helpless, and destroyed.

  I begin to reach out for the energy that has saved me before when a ringing noise fills my ears and a brilliant, blue flash erupts from the middle of the room. An almost-imperceptible ripple shoots outward from the center of the hall and, as it passes over me, my tie to the energy is severed. My body collapses to the floor, as does everyone around me. Everyone except the Sheriffs.

  I am paralyzed, but fully conscious. No matter how my mind screams and pleads with my body, it will not comply. Nothing moves. My mouth, lips, and tongue are unable to speak.

  The Sheriffs flood in, now completely undeterred, and the explosions of light fire off all around me at a rapid pace. One after another, the light of Robots dying in succession fills the hall with brilliant flashes of white.

  I try to scream, but my body lies in silence.

  Next to me I see Erica, Brooke, Ivan, and all of their friends. A Sheriff stoops down beside Ivan, places the rod against his temple, and drives it home. He flashes away into nothing as other Sheriffs move to Bryan, Jessica, Dustin, and Brooke. Their bodies disintegrate before me as a Sheriff finally straddles Erica. He grabs her by her wavy black hair, and I get one last glimpse of her face—one of the only faces to show me true kindness—before he places the metal stake against her temple and thrusts it in.

  I try to close my eyes so I don’t see her body evaporate into flecks of light, but I can’t. In seconds she is gone.

  In the moments before my death, something curious happens. I let go of the panic and terror inside and accept whatever is in store for me. As a sense of calm flows through me, I feel it: the energy I felt before. A tiny thread of the connective electric tissue linking me to everyone in here.

  Without hesitation, I grasp it.

  A deluge of blazing, golden light floods through me. Every atom of every molecule of every cell I comprise bursts with radiant power and in that instant I am one with every Robot around me. There is no me, only we.

  The surge of energy pushes out of our skin and hurtles every Sheriff to the walls and up toward the ceiling in a radiant explosion. Free of the paralysis, we rise to our feet and stand as one. Our skin pulses and flickers as an unimaginable amount of power flows through us. Memory, pain, experience, love, loss pass through us, and in that moment, we know one another. We are whole, and we are powerful.

  The energy connecting us cannot be maintained much longer. It is finite and rapidly pouring from us. Then we feel them—tiny pinpricks of light, flickering candles to our inferno—surrounding
us. There lies the energy we need. Without thinking, we reach out toward the nearest source of light and take hold of it. The body of a single Sheriff standing before us collapses as her energy flows into us, replenishes us, sustains us for another moment. But we will need more. Much more.

  We will need all of them.

  The bodies of each and every Sheriff in the hall rise up and glide toward us, ensnared by our unstoppable, golden light. They come to us a herd of sheep, offering their lives in tribute, and we greedily accept. One after another bodies fall to the ground as we absorb their very life force, until finally only one remains.

  Ready to burst with our power, we hold the last Sheriff before our eyes, letting him wriggle in futile resistance before us.

  We look into his eyes and see the very same fear we have felt for so long ourselves. But we are no longer prisoners to this fear, and never shall be again. We draw him closer to our face, so close that the heat from our glowing skin begins to sizzle his, and open our mouth to speak.

  “We will live.”

  His body falls to the ground as we confiscate his light.

  A moment passes, and within seconds the energy is racing out of us. With nothing left to sustain us, we must let go. So we release it.

  The dim light of the main hall almost floors me as I am slammed back into reality. Glimpses of what just happened circle me like the nightmares I’m so used to, but this is no nightmare. This is real life.

  The harsh, white lights of the main hall come to life as I look around in horror. A heaping mound of at least two hundred bodies, clad in Sheriff uniforms, lies around the remaining Robots, circling us. Lifeless limbs jut out of the pile in gruesome contortions, and blank eyes stare at us from bodies tossed haphazardly on top of one another.