by Lee Bacon
Emma wiped her eyes. “Are you asking why I’m crying?”
SkD nodded.
She thought about this for 3.4 seconds. Then she said, “Because I know what happens next. And I can’t do anything to stop it.”
I thought she might end her story there. Instead, she swallowed hard and spoke again.
One night, as Emma slept in the tiny, cramped room that she shared with her FamilyUnit, she heard a sound in the darkness.
A cough.
Followed by more coughing.
“Mom?” Emma sat up in her bed. “Are you okay?”
From the bottom of the bunk bed a few feet away, Emma’s mother tried to answer.
Instead, she coughed some more.
By the morning, both her parents were sick. Coughing/Headaches/Sore throats.
“Stay here,” Emma said. “I’ll find someone who can help.”
She left the small bedroom. Her feet pattered the gray floor. This time, there were no stops to explore. She had only one destination in mind.
The infirmary.
It was the room you went to for medical checkups, or when you had a toothache, or when you sprained your wrist while doing cartwheels in the cafeteria.
As Emma turned a corner, she found the hallway crowded with people. All of them going to the same place. The infirmary. All of them coughing/sniffling, just like her parents.
Emma listened closely to the chatter.
“What do you think’s wrong?”
“Looks like the flu to me.”
“Full-blown outbreak.”
“No wonder. Everyone crammed together like sardines. One person sneezes, half the bunker gets sick.”
Rounds of coughing halted the conversation. Some of the grown-ups decided they were better off in their rooms, in their bunks.
“We’ll wait it out,” wheezed one. “This’ll pass soon enough.”
But the illness did not pass. It grew worse. The medical staff could not deal with all the people who needed their attention. Especially when they were feeling just as sick. Especially when the infirmary had long ago run out of the antiviral drugs they needed to fight the illness.
By the next day, everyone was suffering from the same symptoms.
Everyone except Emma.
She did not know why she was spared from the sickness. Why she felt perfectly healthy, even after holding her mother’s sweating hand, even after pressing a cold washcloth against her father’s feverish forehead.
Leaving her small, cramped room, Emma found herself alone in the gray halls. The silence was punctured by muffled coughs behind closed doors.
School was canceled.
Meals were not being served in the cafeteria.
The bicycle room was silent.
The only sound was constant coughing.
Until that also faded away.
When the sickness arrived, the bunker had a population of ninety-three. Within days, this number began falling.
Emma’s teachers. Her doctor. Her neighbors. Her classmates. Her best friend.
They were all taken by the illness.
And eventually, so were her mother and father.
Until the bunker’s population was just one.
Just Emma.
00010110
Beginning. Middle. End.
This is the formula of a story. I took Emma’s nervous, grief-stricken words and shaped them into this structure. Into a formula that made sense to my logical brain. A beginning, a middle—
And an end.
This was not just the end of Emma’s story.
It was the end of everything she had ever known.
The end of her underground world.
00010111
“I couldn’t stay in the bunker any longer. Not after . . .” Emma’s voice cracked. She swallowed and started again. “Not after what happened. So today I left. And then—well—and then I ran into you guys.”
I was unsure how to respond. I had never interacted with a human before. I was clueless about Emma’s emotions, about the grief that spilled out of her words.
Fortunately, Ceeron was better equipped for the situation. For years, the large robot had researched human rituals. Their habits, their sayings, their confusing jokes.
Ceeron’s deep voice filled the void of silence.
“I am sorry for your loss,” it said.
Emma accepted this statement with a nod. “Thank you.”
“What will you do now?” I asked. “Where will you go?”
“I’ll show you.” Emma picked up a heap of fabric that was laying at her feet. As soon as she slung it over her shoulder, I recognized the object.
So did SkD. It pointed, its screen flashing.
The hint of a smile pulled at Emma’s lips. “That’s right. It’s a backpack.”
“Like mine,” said Ceeron.
“Except yours is a little bigger,” Emma observed.
I referenced the word backpack against my vocabulary database. “I thought human children wore backpacks to school.”
“They did.” She pulled at one of the straps. “A long time ago.”
I did not understand. “But if you are not going to school, why do you need a backpack?”
“For supplies.”
Symbols blinked across SkD’s screen.
“Not those kinds of supplies,” replied Emma. “More like food. Water. A compass.”
I repeated these items to myself, cycling them through my internal processing. “You are going on a journey?”
Emma nodded. “I have a lot of ground to cover.”
“Where are you going?” Ceeron inquired.
Emma reached into her backpack and removed a scrap of paper. The edges were tattered/ripped/worn. The colors were faded. I searched my image database until I identified the object.
A map.
The map was printed with human and geographic landmarks. Roads/Cities/Lakes/Rivers/Mountains. I instantly recognized the place the map represented: the surrounding region.
Someone had made two additions to the map by hand:
[1] A blue dot.
(near the top)
[2] A red dot.
(near the bottom)
Emma pointed to the red dot. “This is where I’m headed.”
“What is located there?” I asked.
“I don’t know. My parents . . .” At the mention of her FamilyUnit, Emma’s voice dropped away. She sniffed. The map crinkled in her fingers. After another 2.5 seconds, she managed to find words again. “My parents gave me the map. They were already sick by then. They knew things were bad. And getting worse. They said if I needed to leave the bunker, I should go here.”
Emma touched her fingertip to the map.
The red dot.
“They did not tell you what you would find once you got there?” Ceeron asked.
Emma shook her head. “They were born aboveground. Lived up here when they were kids. I wonder if, maybe, it’s something they remember from that time. Something that’ll help me survive.”
A distant memory from a distant time. Marked on a map with a single red dot. I referenced the point against my internal navigation. “This is 47.2 kilometers away.”
“A long distance for a small human,” observed Ceeron.
Emma traced a finger through her hair. “I have to go there. I can’t let my parents down.”
I pointed at the other dot. The blue one near the top. “And this? Does it represent the bunker you came from?”
Remarkable how quickly a human face can change. As soon as I asked my question, her features tightened. Her eyebrows lowered. Her lips pressed together into a thin line.
I did not know much about reading human expressions, but I had a strong suspicion my question had upset Emma.
“Please don’t tell anyone about the bunker,” she said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because that was my home. Even if everyone there is . . .” She hesitated. “Even if they’re gone, it’s still
important to me. And I really don’t want a bunch of robots tearing it apart.”
I glanced at my coworkers. SkD and Ceeron nodded. I shifted my attention back to Emma.
“Very well,” I said. “We will not tell any other robots about your bunker.”
And to make sure this information did not get out, I went into my settings and marked my interaction with Emma as Private. I moved all related data into a protected folder. None of this would be shared with the Hive.
My operating system shivered with an unfamiliar buzz. I had never kept a secret before. This was my first.
It would not be my last.
00011000
I was not good at goodbyes.
I understood the definition of the word goodbye, of course. I had said it to my FamilyUnit and my coworkers thousands of times before. But those were different. Those were temporary. There was always a hello waiting on the other side of each goodbye.
Not this time.
Not with Emma.
But I had to say something. So I formulated a goodbye. It went like this:
“Emma. The time has come to bid you farewell. I hope you do not die on your journey.”
Like I said: I am bad at goodbyes.
Emma nodded once. Kicked the dirt. “Thanks.”
She carefully returned the map to her backpack and zipped it closed.
“It’s getting late,” she said. “I should probably get going.”
SkD rolled forward, coming to a stop in front of Emma. On its screen was the waving hand it had flashed me earlier.
A symbol with multiple meanings.
It was goodbye.
And it was also a warning.
Ceeron spoke. “Perhaps I will see you again later, alligator.”
I gave Ceeron an uncertain look. “Emma is not an alligator.”
But Emma did not seem offended by the comparison. Instead, she peered up at the large robot. “After a while, crocodile.”
Now I was very confused.
Now that we had all said our goodbyes, Emma turned and walked away.
I watched as she disappeared into a sea of glimmering solar panels.
00011001
We returned to our work. Bolt/Connect/Attach/Repeat. Hours passed. The only sounds were the clank of our tools and the whir of our movements.
As I completed my tasks, I calculated probabilities.
Probability that Emma meets at least one other robot during her journey: 98.3 percent
Probability that another robot allows her to continue on her way, as we did: 9.7 percent
Probability that Emma suffers other setbacks (injury/starvation/illness/severe weather): 61.9 percent
Probability that Emma reaches her destination: 1.6 percent
Her chances were not good. But that was not our concern. “XR?”
A voice rattled my thoughts. I glanced upward.
Ceeron was staring at me. “Are you okay?”
“Of course I am okay,” I replied. “Why?”
Ceeron’s focus shifted to the underside of the solar panel I had been working on.
“The converter box,” it said.
“What about it?”
I followed Ceeron’s gaze. I immediately saw what had snagged its attention.
The converter box was upside down.
Strange. Over the past twelve years, I had connected over 1.3 million converter boxes. In that time, I had never installed one incorrectly.
Until now.
“I will correct the error,” I said quickly. “I will not repeat it.”
“I am not worried about the converter box,” replied Ceeron. “I am worried about you. Are you sure you are all right?”
I hesitated for a fraction of a second. “I suppose I was distracted.”
“By the human?”
I nodded. But it was more than just the human.
It was a probability.
A number that weighed on my mental processing.
1.6 percent
00011010
In that moment, I did what I often do when the world becomes too complicated.
I counted to a million. In my head. In binary.
00000000
00000001
00000010
00000011
00000100
00000101
00000110
00000111
Ones and zeroes arranged themselves in an orderly, single-file line. The logic was comforting. A break from the strangeness/complexity/confusion of my situation.
In 0.5 seconds, I reached a million.
00001111 01000010 01000000
00011011
For the rest of the day, I disabled any thoughts of Emma. I focused entirely on my work. I double-/triple-/quadruple-checked every converter box, making sure there was not another error.
The sun vanished behind the mountains.
Darkness crawled across the sky.
My battery charge dropped to 9 percent.
Once we completed our last installation, I surveyed our work. Nearly three hundred new solar panels. Tomorrow, they would add power to the grid, pumping life into the circuitry of robot civilization.
An image flickered across my memory drive. A small/frail/human child. Fading into the distance. Walking away. Vanishing into a field of solar panels.
I filed the memory in a folder where I would not see it again.
I found Ceeron and SkD waiting for me at the edge of our WorkSite.
Together, we left.
00011100
We traveled in silence. A silence that was like a sound of its own. Filling my audio ports with all the things we were not saying.
To distract myself from the silence, I focused on the tempo of our movements. The heavy whump-whump of Ceeron’s huge metal feet. The steady vrmmmmm of SkD’s motor and rubber treads. The dull skiff-skiff of my footsteps.
Whump-whump.
Vrmmmmm.
Skiff-skiff.
The repetition of our mechanical movements repeated itself again/again/again. Until a new sound broke the pattern. A soft ka-lunk.
It came from Ceeron’s metal backpack.
I stopped. “What was that?”
The large robot shrugged. “I do not know what you are talking about.”
Ka-lunk.
“There it is again,” I said.
“Maybe you are hearing things.”
I approached Ceeron. I was not tall enough to look into its backpack. So instead, I knocked on its side with my fist.
CLANK! CLANK! CLANK!
That is when Emma appeared. Again. Her head emerged from the open top of Ceeron’s backpack.
I updated my files with this new data. I thought I had seen the last human for the last time.
Apparently, I had been wrong.
“Okay, I can explain,” she said.
I crossed my arms. “Go ahead.”
Emma hesitated for 2.0 seconds. Then she turned to Ceeron. “Um, maybe you should explain.”
“Yes.” I looked to the large robot. “Maybe you should.”
Ceeron looked at SkD. “Do you want to handle this, SkD?”
SkD replied with an image.
The arrow pointed at Emma. Translation: My coworker was worried about the human.
Ceeron picked up where SkD left off. “Every time we ran the calculations, her probability of survival was—”
“1.6 percent,” I said.
“Exactly.”
Emma’s brow wrinkled. “That low, huh?”
SkD’s screen blinked at me.
Translation: You were distracted. We did not think you would notice.
“So I let her hitch a ride in my backpack,” said Ceeron.
I scanned our surroundings. When I was sure we were alone, I said, “We are smuggling a human. That is a clear violation of protocol. If any other robots discover what we have done, our punishment will be severe.”
An image flashed across my mental circuitry. Our metal bodies being ripped apart and sc
attered across a scrap heap.
I discarded this upsetting thought and said, “But without our assistance, she is unlikely to reach her destination . . .”
Ceeron’s eyes brightened. “So you agree we can help her?”
I considered this question. My mind crowded with all the things I knew about humans. They were reckless/unpredictable/vain/greedy. They had wrecked our planet, polluted our waters, poisoned our air. They had been the greatest threat to our shared future.
Then I looked into Emma’s brown/green eyes.
And all the terrible aspects of humanity faded.
She did not appear to be reckless/unpredictable/vain/greedy. She was not a threat. She was a child who had lost her family.
She was the last human on Earth.
“Yes,” I said. “We can help the human.”
00011101
Emma ducked back inside Ceeron’s backpack, and we continued toward our settlement.
Along the path, we encountered other robots on their way to/from work. My FamilyUnit was not among them. I had received a message earlier that they were done with their day’s work. They were already home. Which came as a relief. At least we would not risk running into them.
But there were plenty of other risks.
Risk[1]: Emma accidentally makes a noise again
Risk[2]: Another robot asks to inspect Ceeron’s backpack
Risk[3]: A flight-enabled drone peers down the open top of Ceeron’s backpack with an infrared sensor
Risk[4]: . . .
The risks multiplied. What if the sheer abundance of them weighed down my internal processing? Sent an error rippling through my system?
What if all the other robots could tell something was wrong, just by looking at me?
Maybe I was walking faster than usual. Or slower. Maybe my eyes were shining too brightly. Or not brightly enough.
Just to be sure, I ran a full diagnostic scan.
The result: 100 percent normal.
I allowed this to sink in. Normal was good. Normal did not raise suspicions. Normal kept Emma from being noticed.
We continued our progress.
Soon we reached the ruins of humanity. Abandoned stores, crumbling shopping centers. Monuments of another age.
For over twelve years, I had walked past these buildings—again/again/again—without ever going inside any of them.
