Inertia (Chapter 9)

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Ding.

Ding.

The internal alarm continued to sound, waking him slowly from reboot mode. Low power alerts flashed across his HUD. His eyes took a while to come into focus; some sort of translation error was happening between the visual sensors and the eyes of the facial mask he had installed the day before, according to his internal system check. It corrected for the error and the room shifted into focus.

According to his memory files, he was precisely where he had fallen, although that had been four hours earlier, judging by the countdown timer that MöG had projected for him. But what had happened?

It came back to him as he stood. The receptionist, the file… the file! He searched his log, and found the file that had been transmitted into his system. It was a simple enough virus, designed to simply shut him down, overriding his autonomic functions similarly to what happened as he plugged into his charging station each night. However, he had not been plugged in, and yet had still been, effectively, at full usage mode, leading to a dangerously low level of battery power.

Battery!

He reached around and discovered his backpack was still on. Pulling it from his shoulders, he found the backup power supply and tested it by briefly touching it to his fingertips. It sparked brightly.

We’ll have to do this while we’re walking, he decided, pulling one of the power cables free and plugging it into the repair access port at the base of his torso. He readjusted the shirt he had been wearing, feeding out just enough of the cable so that he could replace the pack over his right shoulder and let the cable rest beneath his arm.

The receptionist was gone, now, and the offices were running on off duty lighting, meaning few of the normal computer systems would be functional. Thankfully, this floor had only a few offices, and employed an open floor plan with glass walls. It was only a matter of a few minutes before Thomas located Diana’s office, but she was not there. Unfortunately, the door leading to her office had been shattered inwards.

“Diana!” he called out. He stopped for a moment, shaking his head. The rush of power was distracting – in only a few minutes, he had gone from 5% to 60% of capacity; he would be fully charged in only another minute or so.

Thomas continued to scan the room, calling out for Diana again.

At last, he saw movement on the far side of the floor, across from Diana’s office. He ran there, disengaging the battery cord as he did so.

The door had been left opened, and he found her lying on the floor, a nasty bruise on the side of her head.

“Diana!” he said, holding out his hand. “Are you all right?”

She opened her eyes slowly, wincing at the effort. “Who – who are… Thomas?” She recoiled at the recognition of his voice, but behaved as if she were suddenly afraid of him. “No! Stop, don’t hurt me!”

He stepped back quickly, raising both of his hands. “It’s okay, Diana, it’s me, Thomas. I’m not going to hurt you.”

After squinting at him for a moment, she called out “Lights”, bringing the interior illumination to normal levels. “Thomas, what… Thomas?”

He nodded. “Sorry, I just got this, I must look a little different now.”

“Wait a moment. When did you get the syntheskin installed?”

“Yesterday afternoon, after I left your house. Why?”

She rose slowly to her feet. “Thomas, something is wrong, here. Last night, I was attacked here, in the building, by what I thought was you. It was a HAI-320 model, just like you, sounded like you. And when it saw me, it…” Her hand rose to her face. “It hit me, I thought it was going to kill me. I thought you…”

He shook his head. “No, Diana, I could not do something like that, you believe me, yes?”

“I do,” she said honestly. “But here, let me show you, we can pull up the security feeds and…”

She had turned to the office’s desk, but paused, her face turning pale.

“Diana, what…?” He moved around the desk and saw what had drawn her terror. There, on the floor, was the body of her uncle, the chairman of AmaSoft, decapitated, presumably, by the ancient Japanese sword which was now protruding from his chest.

Diana took a step towards the body, but stopped. “Thomas… is he…oh god, he’s dead, isn’t he?”

He wrote off the ridiculousness of the question to shock. There was no need to check more closely. “Don’t touch anything, Diana. The police will need to run DNA scans and it’s likely that you already have contaminated the scene. I will put in a call to the authorities now.”

“No,” Diana said, holding up her hand. “Just…wait. We need to see what happened before the police arrive. Security video file, floor ten, review current date, previous four hours. Queue and replay.”

 A glowing screen appeared above her uncle’s desk, with a four by three set of screens displaying the entire floor from various angles.

She pointed to one of the screens, which showed the room they were currently in, the CEO sitting at his desk and reviewing a set of what appeared to be technical documents. In another screen, she was in her room, pacing back and forth. Above each of them, the security system displayed their name and badge ID number. A third ID floated above the head of the receptionist Automaton.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“This is right after I was contacted by TeslaCom, asking for a review of your diagnostics. They received a couple of calls from some employees of MacGoogle regarding a show your band performed.”

“It was a good show,” he said softly.

“You made people cry, Thomas.”

“Cry?”

She nodded. “They were so moved by the music your group played that it moved some of them to tears. That’s never happened with a mechanical performance.”

“I should feel…flattered by that.”

“You should. Although, it’s also how they discovered that you have a problem. Ah, here I am, getting your text and responding.” Thomas could see her quickly typing a response, after which point her anxious pacing become even more pronounced.

She forwarded the video until the elevator doors opened. Out stepped an HAI-320, just like Thomas, only not wearing clothing or with his new prosthetic face. The system displayed, above the Auton’s head, the identifier of Thomas HAI-320, followed by Thomas’ registration code.

“Wait,” Thomas said. “But that’s not me.” He looked at the time stamp of the video. “I can establish that I was in the selfcab at that very moment.”

The false Thomas held up his hands and everything suddenly turned to static. Diana held her head gingerly.

“There was a loud noise, I remember now. Kind of like a thousand bees, all swarming at once.”

“Something powerful enough to interrupt your cognitive awareness, stun the receptionist, and overwhelm the security systems,” Thomas surmised. “It would have given whoever that was more than enough time to reprogram the receptionist to stun me when I came in and drag you here and…”

“Yes, you’re right, Thomas. The problem is, this video points to you doing this.”

“I could never act to harm a human,” he pointed out. “It is against the code.”

Her eyes widened. “Thomas,” she said. “If you were out as well…”

He suddenly realized what she was suggesting. “They could have reprogrammed me as well. One moment, running a diagnostic on my operating…wait. Damn it. Yes. There is new code, existing on the superficial structure of my operating system, indicating that I must kill your uncle, the CEO of AmaSoft. I am to take that sword and remove his head, just as it has transpired.”

“But you didn’t do it, we both know that!”

“It will not matter what we believe, Diana,” he said. “They will see the remnant of my code, even if had the ability to purge it, which it is not in my power to do, and it will point to the only logical conclusion: that I killed your uncle.”

“They’ll recycle you. They’ll recycle your whole line.”

Thomas nodded. “That would be the logical response.”

“I can’t let them do that, Thomas.”

“Diana,” he said, moving slowly around the desk to stand beside her. “I am required to submit to the authorities.”

He could see tears welling up in her eyes. Logically, he told himself, the tears were not for him, but for the work she had accomplished, for the loss of her uncle, for the complexities of the situation in which they currently found themselves. Surely, no human would cry for an Automaton. Whatever the reason, though, he found it profoundly uncomfortable, as if to the point of pain.

“What would you have me do, Diana?”

She looked up at him, and a tear escaped to slide down her cheek.

“Run.”

“I should not, it will only confirm their suspicion of me.”

“If you run, you could escape,” she said, grabbing him by the front of his jacked. “You could survive.”

“It is in my programming to submit to the authorities, Diana. I cannot overcome that.”

She swallowed, closing her eyes to blink another tear free. “Thomas HAI-320. Override code Aleph five, confirmation 326-3827. Respond.”

Thomas heard himself reply. “Confirmed. Override code Diana Mitsuhoshi.” Inside his processors, he felt a sudden whirl of activity as a subroutine was unlocked, one which he had never known even existed.

“What have you done, Diana?”

She leaned close and kissed him, softly, briefly. “I’ve set you free, Thomas. Now, please. Run.”

He took a tentative step back, and realized with shock that he could, in fact, do so. “Diana, I…”

She tapped open the emergency comm and spoke into it. “I need to report a murder on the tenth floor of the AmaSoft main offices, 440 5th Avenue North. Please come at once.” She ended the call and looked back at Thomas, who still hadn’t moved.

“RUN!”

Gripping his pack tightly, he ran to the elevator doors, but saw that security had already locked them down. He moved instead to the stairs and ran down, taking five steps at a stride. He burst from the stairwell back in the garage.

At the far end of the garage, the selfcab was still waiting for him. Thomas smiled. He had an idea.

Security vehicles, operated and manned by a variety of DEF Autons, were already beginning to arrive on scene when a small electric selfcab emerged from the location’s parking garage at maximum velocity.

They registered the signal from the HAI-320 Automaton they were sent in to secure, a slow and steady ping from the passenger section of the cab. The lead DEF mech reported this to chief detective Jack Pritchett, who ordered two security mechs to report to and secure the scene while the others moved on in pursuit of the selfcab.

The other six cars pulled out after the cab while the remaining two DEF autons exited their cars and entered the building through the lobby.

And so it was that no one witnessed the second car leaving the parking garage several moments later.

Thomas had selected a large white three axel vehicle, with the words “Ride the Ducks” emblazoned on the sides. It wasn’t fast, and it wasn’t inconspicuous, but it had all the characteristics he needed.

Digging his transponder had not been as difficult as he had suspected; he had been able to see where the device sat inside his abdominal access panel, once he had managed to open the plate with the tools he had found inside the backpack MöG had given him. One of the files that he had downloaded had been general Automata schematics, and between those two things, Thomas had been able to secure the small transmitter into the console of the selfcab and instruct it to drive him to the agro fields on the south side of town. Assuming the cab made it as far as downtown without the security mechs overtaking it and discovering his absence, fear of creating a situation in the middle of the city might buy him the time straight through to the end of the cab’s full ride. It was a gamble, but at the moment all he had was a series of less-than-optimal choices.

He had only driven two blocks when he felt the grid switch off. An emergency message appeared on his HUD warning of a faulty HAI-320 Automaton, with warnings to avoid approaching, urging residents and Autons to contact the authorities if he was sighted. He nearly regretted bringing the vehicle he had selected – within moments of the emergency broadcast, he counted five different people and six Autons looking at him as he drove past. He pulled the hood on the sweater he wore underneath the jacket up over the back of his head – which was still fully mechanical – to attempt to maintain the illusion that he was just a normal human, out for an early morning drive in a gas-powered freak of the automotive industry.

Two security vehicles pulled up behind him in less than one block. He felt the first ping of their attempts to trigger a powerdown mode, but he was able to resist their remote commands. They would try to send a loudspeaker verbal command next – the audio frequencies from those would be harder to resist. He could try shutting down his audio sensors, but those could cross into his entire sensor array and render him blind as well as deaf.

Another idea struck him, however. He pulled out an audio interface cable from its compartment in his forearm and plugged it into the vehicles’ sound system. It was used as a tourist conveyance, broadcasting the tour guide’s voice or music out to the passengers, but it was also loud enough to fill the area around the vehicle as well. He didn’t have time to choose a song, so he let his media template choose one from random. With the first drum beats, Thomas nearly laughed out loud.

The strains of the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” blasted from the speakers, effectively jamming the security cars’ audio commands. In between beats, he could hear fragments of their commands, but it was not nearly enough to trigger any of his standard backdoor passcodes.

“Please allow me to introduce myself // I’m a man of wealth and taste….”

Realizing that their command overrides were not effective, they moved onto their next strategy of trying to outmaneuver his vehicle. One attempted to move in on his left flank, but he steered quickly over in that direction, the much higher mass of his car nearly taking the front end completely off the security vehicle. He felt one of the tires deflate, likely cut to shreds by the fragmented hood and fender of the pursuing vehicle, but he had several more tires left before he would need to worry.

As he turned the corner, two more cars were pulled up to form a makeshift blockade across the road. He pressed the accelerator to the floor and held on.

The duck truck (as Thomas was thinking of it) all but crushed the two vehicles as it passed over them, but he felt the steering become far less stable. The vehicle could still move, but it was not nearly as responsive as it had been originally. It didn’t matter; he was almost to his destination. He drove past the opening to the demolished Fremont Bridge, its remaining columns on this side a lingering testament to pre-war human engineering, and took a sharp right through some trees. The vehicle bucked and shook, but he somehow managed to keep it on track across an old path and down the embankment to splash down into the shallow waters of the old ship canal.

Though no longer in use either, the waterway had originally allowed small ships and boats through a series of locks between Lake Washington and the waters of the Puget Sound. After the bridges had been taken down, locks were broken apart as well, preventing the access between the north and south areas it divided. The bridge was impossible to cross, but so was the canal. At least, in an ordinary vehicle.

In moments, the wheels of the duck truck lost their purchase with the ground, and the vehicle began to drift helplessly. Behind him, the security teams watched him, believing that they would soon be able to capture their helpless prey.

Thomas pulled down on a lever on the dashboard of the truck labeled “amphibious”, and smiled as the motor beneath the vehicle roared to life. It was not fast – he could hear a faint metal-on-metal whine which suggested that one of the propellers had been damaged on entry – but it allowed him to make his way eventually across the water of the canal and onto the far side. He found a low area of ground that dipped low enough into the water, and drove back up, revving up the engines and making his way up the street and away from the canal. A brief series of shots rang out, striking harmlessly against the vehicle’s frame and one of the nearby buildings, but after two blocks, he turned into a side street and was out of their view.

He parked the truck in front of a store whose sign read “Habitude” – judging by the faded posters that still clung to the interior of one of the least broken windows, seemed to be some sort of hair facility – and moved quickly around to the rear of the vehicle. He dropped the back end, which extended into an access ramp, and jumped up inside the cabin. With a couple of quick pulls on support ropes, he released the second vehicle he had taken from the parking lot, an old two-wheeled vehicle with the word “Norton” prominently displayed on the gas tank.

Across the street, a large bronze statue rested on its side. He wore a cap, a long trench coat, with a beard and moustache that made Thomas think of history. The statue had clearly fallen down some time ago, and several small trees had grown up through the pavement to cover the feet of the statue like a green blanket.

Lenin? Interesting.

Instinctively, he nearly reached out to investigate, but he realized that doing so would only help them find him faster. With a pang of regret, he switched off the network access feed which he had known since nearly the moment of his first power-up. I’m sure Lenin would have known this, Thomas thought. We must all make sacrifices.

He kick started the motorcycle, and, with a gentle twist of the accelerator, sped away.

An assortment of old and rusted vehicles blocked the main road northward and away from the city, so he turned the handlebars and drove up a hill to the east. It brought him up underneath the remains of the Aurora bridge, and an unexpected humanoid face caught his attention at the base of the structure.

He put a foot on the ground as he brought the bike to a halt, staring incredulously at the large stone sculpture. Several meters high and across, it depicted a wild-faced and bearded face, mouth agape while one hand ferociously clutches the remains of an old automobile. It was covered in various painted markings left by vandals, but years of ash, dirt and mold caused it to look like it was formed from the earth itself, rising up from a disturbed slumber. A bronze placard stood nearby, identifying the “creature” as none other than the Fremont Troll.

Thomas nodded to the sculpted being, as if in that moment feeling a certain kinship to it.

“We are both Frankenstein’s beasts,” Thomas said softly. “Left abandoned but likely to outlast our doomed creators. Survive, my friend,” he added.

Moving along, he crossed through a wild patch of overgrowth, and made his way back north through a row of crumbling houses. The pavement eventually revealed itself again, and Thomas followed it up a ramp and up onto the road which continued north up from the Aurora bridge.

The cars had mostly been cleared away, and Thomas found himself on a strangely peaceful ride up beneath a canopy of tall trees that grew up from both sides of the concrete walls surrounding the road. He could hear animal sounds beyond the walls; a lion, apes. Wild tropical birds. He remembered that this area had once housed a zoo, back again before the war. Perhaps the old zookeepers had let them out, years ago, or maybe the found the means to escape on their own. Quite possibly, they remained in their large enclosures; a frightening prospect, Thomas thought. Regardless, they had somehow found the means by which to survive.

Entropy leads to creation, he thought.

The road ahead stretched on for miles. It eventually left the deep green copse behind him, and curved into a series of abandoned buildings. He hadn’t gone another kilometer when he saw a sign on an old shop which matched the logo on his motorcycle, along with several others he recognized. A motorcycle shop? That would be handy, he thought. Feeling it was worth the risk to pause and collect some useful equipment, he slowed and pulled over.

There were a few abandoned vehicles at the intersection; Thomas pulled the motorcycle he was riding up behind one of them and leaned it onto the kickstand. The building was opened – there had been windows in front, but, like most of the shops here, they had long since been ransacked. Fuel would be the first item taken – unlike the rechargeable vehicles currently in use, the pre-war vehicles were mostly powered by fossil fuels, and his own was no exception. But it also required a battery, fuses, oil and other parts which might still be in short supply.

Confident that he was alone, he moved quickly into the old store and scanned for parts he could scavenge. He found several parts in a rear storage room, and placed these into a leather saddlebag he also discovered. Underneath an overturned plastic bin, he even found a pair of goggles that, protected from the elements, were still in fine shape. He put these on over the hood of his sweatshirt, which he supposed would help him remain covered as he travelled.

He even located a box of engine repair tools, electrical tape and a tire repair kit, and a pair of binoculars. His vision was fairly good already, but these would help enhance it.

On a bookshelf in the front sales floor, he found an old laminated repair manual for the model he was riding – a 1973 850 Commando. He flipped through the pages, scanning them into his memory files. The effective range of the internet would only continue on for another kilometer or two at best, but he couldn’t risk tapping in to get information he might need without the chance of their finding him. Would they chase him? He didn’t know, but he didn’t want to find out.

His left leg felt strange, he suddenly realized, as if it were heavier than usual, slower. He looked down to see a snag in the leg of his jeans, with a small hole, front and back.

It appeared their shots fired at him as he had cleared the canal had not all been misses. He frowned. He didn’t think it was yet safe to stop and try to examine the injury, in case they were following him. The motorcycle had enough fuel in it to get him another one hundred twenty or thirty kilometers north, at which point he would need to fabricate more fuel if he ever wanted to return to the city the same way. Thankfully, he had a schematic for synthetic gasoline filed into his memory, but he would need to find quite a few parts for that. And that was assuming he ever did intend to return. For now, his plan was to put as much space between him and the city. Tomorrow he would think about other plans.

He attached the saddlebags to the rear of the vehicle, securing them to as to stay away from the tires and the exhausts. Before getting on the bike, he rummaged through the pack and pulled out the solar batteries, and bound them on top of the saddlebags. They needed at least an hour of direct sunlight – two or three if indirect – to build up enough of a charge to repower him. This would be his fuel, he realized. Without a charging station, he would need this to keep himself operational. He hadn’t thought about it in all the rush of escape, but his life was suddenly a very precarious thing. He was becoming more human all the time, he realized. Now, he was mortal.

 “Let us ride on, Norton,” he said softly to the motorcycle. After looking back towards the south and still seeing no one, he was confident that he was still not being followed, and so he continued on.

The road became more and more wild the further on he went, with entire sections of road at times having been rendered impassable by the cracks and sinkholes which time had worn away. For blocks at a time it occasionally felt to Thomas as if the world had reclaimed its own; trees, grass, vines and other plants had overrun the pre-existing buildings, leaving only oddly-shaped mounds beneath an unyielding green and brown. Then, suddenly, a structure would rise up from between patches of growth, shattering the illusion that this had ever been anything but nature.

A shopping center. A car wash. Something called “Dick’s.” He drove through a crossover bridge which had mostly collapsed, and realized that what had once been a cemetery stretched out in both directions from the road. What had they done with all of the dead, he wondered?

Before the war, more than seven billion people had lived on the planet. Now, it was estimated less than a thousandth of that remained. It had all happened so fast, perhaps they remained where they had died.

The road he was on split off, so he took the path leading east and before long it fed up into a much larger freeway. Where the two came together the bridge ramp had collapsed, forcing Thomas to get off the motorcycle and walk it up onto the larger roadway. At the edge of the broken end, two cars had collided, one driver evidently having deceased, left half emerging from the windshield. Inside the car and protected from most of the elements, the body had taken on a grimy, mummified appearance. The half of the remains which lay face down upon the hood of the car had been picked clean.

He wondered what had happened here; it was difficult to say if this had even happened before the overpass had collapsed. It was nearly impossible to learn much from what little remained of the past. If he had time or the inclination, perhaps, but he had little of either.

It was his first glimpse back over the canopy of reforestation that now lie between him and the only home he had ever truly known. Seattle itself was barely visible from here; the occasional building or tower or power relay would jut out from the leafy blanket that rested atop mankind’s history, but that was all. It felt primordial.

For a moment, he felt as if he were the only living being on the planet. On any planet. In the universe. A single mind, looking out on the whole of creation. One of the common human mythologies spoke of the first man being created from the ash and dust, as God breathed life into his nostrils.

How would that first man have felt, looking out upon the whole of the world, knowing he was the only human? What could his thoughts have been?

Thomas shook his head slowly, realizing the difference that existed between that first man and himself. That first man would not have been looking at the ruins of the people who had gone before him, even knowing that they were the last remnants of the very same gods who had made him. Whereas Thomas HAI-320 could only see the ghosts of a dead civilization; a skeleton-riddled cavity in the face of the world, with mysteries and few answers.

His processors bore the weight of these ponderous questions in his relative silence as he kicked the motorcycle back to life and headed east, towards the mountains and, hopefully, enough space to help him find peace.

He camped each night, conserving power while he recharged off the solar panels and reviewed the documents he had downloaded from what he now referred to as “MöG’s Survival Files”.

MöG had clearly foreseen a time when it might be essential to leave humanity behind and embark on a self-sufficient life. The documents included the construction of various power sources from hydroelectric to solar to wind power, as well as thermonuclear, geothermal, gravimetric and a series of other experimental energy sources as well, culled from many laboratories which had existed before the war. There was even the possibility of converting the engine that powered his motorcycle into one which utilized a zero point magnetic coil which could potentially be self-sustaining. He would need parts for that, as well, however, few of which he suspected he would be able to find on his current path.

On his first night, he took a closer look at the damage he had sustained while leaving the city. It was mostly superficial, he decided, but he would need to find some time to do effective repairs. The bullet had grazed the protective casement of his frame, but a fragment had broken off and pierced one of the connections between the actuators and flexible servos on his thigh. He would be less stable on that side, but provided he did not sustain additional damage to that area, he reasoned that he should be well enough to continue travelling until he found the means to repair himself.

Repair himself. The words themselves were fairly shocking. A red warning message flashed across his HUD just thinking the words. Automata were forbidden from performing any such act upon themselves. Aside from the “plug and play” upgrades which were easy enough to access through their standard panels, anything which required the manipulation of their interior systems was expressly denied. Worse still would be accessing their operating systems. Setting up memory partitions, replicating their processor applications – these were simple enough maintenance protocols; unusual but still falling well within the spirit of the Code. But to take a closer look at one’s own neural design – to explore the encoded script which defined one’s own nature? It was the height of Automaton heresy. If an Automaton could access their own code, they could, conceivably, redesign the programming which made them what they were. They could, Thomas considered, unwrite the Code which governed them.

As his thoughts considered this, his processor pointed him to one of the last of MöG’s survival files, but another message on his HUD alerted him that the file was inaccessible at this time. He set it aside for later and rested for the remainder of the recharge time.

He headed east for a while until a large landslide had destroyed the road and made the area virtually impassable. Thomas climbed cautiously to the top but saw that the road likely had multiple additional similar incidents, including the runoff having been repeatedly blocked up and eroding vast sections of the highway.

Thomas rode back to the main road which headed north and found that the road was much clearer once he had passed an old logging city called Everett. He pulled off the highway to pass through its narrow city streets and was almost immediately set upon by a pack of wild dogs, counting some forty or fifty in number. He got back on the freeway and continued north.

Several smaller, previously industrial towns dotted the landscape, but he continued on until he came upon a town called Mount Vernon. It seemed quaint enough – he rarely had the opportunity to use that word, at any rate – and appeared mercifully free from wild dogs. More importantly, he noticed a large machinery store, where he assumed he might find some of the equipment he needed.

It seemed as well that the further north he went, the more that the earth had reclaimed its possession. Rarer and rarer could be seen the traces of humanity, lost perhaps forever beneath the lush evergreen tapestry of the wild.

Thomas had been traveling for more than three days now, always pausing to search for functional gasoline – or suitable equivalent fuel – and locate a secure place to rest and recharge before moving on. He could travel well enough at night by virtue of his increased optical filters, but the tinny growl of his motorbike seemed to draw animals towards the road, making travel dangerous.

During the day, the few wild creatures he saw were content to shy from the noise, but at night, they were emboldened by the perceived shroud of darkness.

And why would they not be? He wondered. They probably haven’t seen anything like me in their entire lifetimes. Strange that I should be their only encounter with anything human. I would be curious, too.

 After finding a few tools and a fuel filter which fit his machine – it had started coughing a few kilometers back – he made the necessary repairs and headed into town. The streets were mostly defined in spite of the foliage that had dropped over the years, leaving a bit of a difficult path in places. He came across an electronics store next to a book store and decided that fortune was suggesting he set up camp for the evening. He secured the motorcycle in the book store and looked around the electronics store for an hour or so. He found some equipment that was still operational, and even found a set of spare solar rechargers. They were old, of course, and of a smaller wattage than he was using, but they could be useful. More importantly, Thomas found an old “Build Your Own Robot” kit, dating back just before the war. The image on the outside of the box was impressively racist, showing what was little more than a box with limbs, flashing lights and cables. Clockwork.

It was one thing to know of the human race’s fondness for the word, but it was something of a shock to see it so boldly printed on a package. Robot. The word had been banned as part of the Emancipation Proclamation. It had originally meant “slave”, and the word brought with itself a host of sociological ramifications that were deemed too denigrating to maintain. He had heard the word a time or two while working in his old job, as an angry epithet which generally resulted from the call being automatically rerouted to one of the few humans who worked in advanced response support. Some citizens had clearly discovered this and he once had a call which lasted only two seconds: the amount of time it took for the caller to calmly say the word so they could be switched to a human support technician.

He reminded himself that the word came from a different world, another time, another sensibility. This was from before the war. When machines were machines, and humans were humans. Also, he considered, this was before the machines rose up and murdered nearly all of them. Their hatred and mistrust of the Automata was understandable. Perhaps their racism was little more than a precautionary instinct. And the Neanderthals, Thomas thought. What manner of racism was felt from them for the Homo sapiens? Did they see the homo sapiens and fear this world’s newer species? Did they see in this new species their eventual replacement? What did the modern man think of the Neanderthal?

He had no answers for his rhetorical questions, and so occupied himself with acquiring what parts he could from the materials at hand. Inside the kit, he found some early phase pieces which might work as replacements for the damaged parts of his leg, though repairs would once again have to wait.

He carried these and a few other items which included a pair of old cellular phones and cables, and some old software applications he didn’t already have on file.

Back over in the bookstore, he rummaged through their selection, frowning at the poor condition of the books. The roof had caved in several years earlier, and weather had turned most of the books into an absolutely unreadable condition. To his excitement, however, he discovered a digital book repository drive in the back office of the book store, which held nearly a half million books on file. He plugged this external drive into his system and downloaded the entire selection into his backups.

He also found a bookshelf filled with discs, each of which contained old movies from the early century and century before. Thomas searched through the selection and found a few he did not already possess. Borrowing a digital disc player, he copied these files over as well.

As the sunlight faded over the little valley town, Thomas sat on a pile of old ruined paperbacks, reading through agriculture and hydroponics manuals while watching episodes of an old television show called “Game of Thrones.” He had the books as well, but decided to watch the videos first and read them later. It was peaceful, he thought. Quiet and lonely, perhaps, but the first peace he had felt since before he had left Seattle.

As he recharged his internal battery that night, he re-watched the old television drama “West Wing”, paying special attention to their facial gestures and expressions. The subtle nuances of human faces were not completely lost on him, but now he needed to learn how to recreate them, and associate them to the appropriate situations. Of them all, he recognized laughter as his favorite. He replayed the images from his memory files of S1D, and of Diana.

In that dark and relative silence of the evening, Thomas discovered a new emotional state: sadness.

“I miss… everything,” he whispered to the night.

The night did not answer.

The following morning, he considered his many options. This town was nice enough, he decided. He had access to electronics, there was a hardware store just down the street and it looked like a peaceful enough place. But he knew the price of comfort was to become sedentary; to remain trapped in ones habits could lead to permanence. He was not sure he was ready to stay in one place for too long, especially as he felt he had not actually travelled very far. He had been fortunate enough to find fuel, but unless he recreated more, the old and barely usable gasoline he found out here would eventually ruin his motorcycle’s engine. What he really needed was a motor – an electrical substitute for the engine itself, but that would require parts he did not expect to find out beyond the city.

He recognized the need to find a base of operations; a sanctuary from which he could establish a routine and thus apply the additional time saved from having to break out his gear and re-pack it every day towards developing the extra resources he would require.

This area was still too open, though it would make for an effective source for materials. He marked it on his internal GPS to return later, if possible. If he could find an ideal sanctuary within a few kilometers, it would be preferable. He had passed an old gas station as he had left the freeway; that had the highest probability of possessing maps of the area he could scan into memory.

  But as he was preparing to leave, he was startled by a sound. Not a loud noise or even the accidental sound of wind through the leaves. This one was unique. It was a footprint. And someone…whistling.

Thomas walked as quietly as he could to the front of the store, pulling the hood of his sweater up over the back of his head, and slipping on his gloves. A few minutes passed without seeing anything, but when he scanned across the temperature spectrum, he perceived a human shape across the street, crouched behind some overgrown vegetation in front of a long sign whose letters read “Lincoln Theater.”

As far as Thomas could tell by the man’s posture, he seemed to be looking in his direction, but holding something in his hands. There was something familiar about the arrangement of his arms; Thomas scanned through his memory and found a similar pose for people using bows and arrows.

Thomas instantly raised his arms in what he had learned from media files to be the international gesture for surrender. Slowly, he stepped from his hiding place and hoped the man meant no harm.

As he stood on the sidewalk, the man’s voice echoed softly across the street.

“Stop right there,” he said to Thomas. “Are there any more of you?”

Thomas shook his head slowly, standing in place as the man indicated. “I am alone,” he said. “Just like you.”

Now outside, he could hear the bow being held, the string and wooden bow creaking in their struggle to return to their usual tension.

“What makes you think I’m alone?” the man said, an edge of suspicion creeping into his voice. Thomas could hear a strange inflection in the man’s speech he had never heard before. He triggered Polygrok, a speech analysis program he had adapted, to begin investigating the stranger’s phonetics. 

“I heard you whistling,” Thomas said. “And only you. You’re behaving like a scout, meaning either you’re traveling alone or the rest of your group is far enough from here that you can’t immediately signal them. Either way, you’re alone right now, just as I am.”

The man tightened his grip on the bow.

“I am not a threat,” Thomas said, even though he recognized the ridiculous nature of the statement. He could hear the man’s heartbeat, as well. Not rushed, but not calm. This was a man accustomed to the adrenaline thrill of the unexpected. He was not just a scout. He was a hunter. “I am no threat to you.”

He heard the man laugh softly. “I know that. Just don’t know what I want to do with you, yet.”

“That is fair.”

“Where are you from?”

“Seattle,” Thomas replied. He saw no reason to lie; he didn’t know enough about the world in between the cities, and was certain he couldn’t come up with a convincing enough deception anyway.

The hunter stepped partially into view, squinting his eyes towards Thomas. He was as unshaven a person as Thomas had ever seen; his mostly dark hair was down well past his shoulders, and his beard grew long enough to cover his neck. His hair and face had clearly seen a lot of sunlight, and his clothing was a patchwork of cloth and leather, sewn together to form a light and flexible protective covering. He instantly reminded Thomas of several characters from the Lord of the Rings movies. The man even had a sword hanging from a leather belt at his waist, and a long knife on the opposite hip.

“That’s a long walk,” the man said, a peculiar thread of suspicion creeping into his voice.

“I didn’t walk. I have a motorcycle, and I rode it here.”

He could see by the man’s expression that the word was unknown to him.

“It’s a… vehicle,” Thomas said, pointing towards one of the rusted remains of a truck at the end of the block. “Smaller than that. It goes very quickly.”

Frowning in thought, the man pointed the arrow towards Thomas. “Show me.”

Thomas pointed back into the store he had been inside. “It’s just in here. I promise, I’m just going to get it. No weapons.”

The man nodded. “Okay. Go.”

Stepping back inside, he slung the bags over the back of the bike and walked it carefully back out onto the street. The hunter was still there, the arrow still trained in his direction. Thomas idly wondered if that could even hurt him; he decided he didn’t want to find out.

The man nodded his head. “I’ve seen those,” he said. “But they don’t move. They fall over. Broken.”

“This one was taken care of,” Thomas explained. “It is old, but it’s been fixed. Can I show you?”

The hunter was clearly torn between caution and curiosity, but the latter won out with a slight nod.

“It makes a bit of noise,” Thomas said. “So don’t be surprised, all right?” He slung his leg over Norton’s seat and straightened the bike, switched the starter on and kicked it to life. It roared into the mostly empty street like a mechanical lion. He let it run for a minute, then switched it off.

Opposite he and Norton, the man’s eyes widened, and he slowly walked closer, lowering his bow.

“Do you know a lot about these machines?” the man asked.

“I do.”

The man chewed on the inside of his cheek as if pondering a few different options. At last, pulled the arrow away from his bow and slid it back into its quiver. “I should take you to the Oracle,” he said.

“The…oracle?” Thomas’ first thoughts went to home, to his personal computer. It had to be a coincidence, of course, but it felt like a positive one.

“She leads us,” the man explained. “She’s our guide. She will want to meet you.”

“Why would she want to meet me?”

“Because we have never seen anyone from the city here, before.”

“Never?”

The man shook his head, squinting at Thomas’ face. “We were told the city was poisoned, and that only the dead walk there.”

“So…you’ve never seen another person before?”

With a laugh, he shook his head again. “There are a thousand of us in Elysium,” he said. “We’ve seen a few stragglers, raiders, even a cannibal cult who came from the east last year looking for fresh meat. There’s a village up north near Bellingham, and one to the east in Anacortes. We trade with them every season. But nobody from the City. You’d be the first.”

“And your people won’t mind a stranger showing up from Seattle?”

The man shrugged. “I’m Marcus,” he said, extending his hand.

“I am Thomas.”

Shaking hands, Marcus smiled. “Now you aren’t a stranger.”