Note that while some people like the title, others got a little confused being that this isn't a...
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The Clockwork Girl: Beginnings
- Thread starter Fabius Maximus
- Start date
- Original Novella
-
- Tags
- original
- Created
- Status
- Ongoing
- Watchers
- 25
- Recent readers
- 0
- Threadmarks
- 8
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Statistics (8 threadmarks, 18k words)
User Total Fabius Maximus 8 Threadmarks Reader mode RSS
prologue
- Location
- California
Note that while some people like the title, others got a little confused being that this isn't a steampunk story, using clockwork in the older sense of "made by mankind." So the title is very much up in the air for final publication.
"Terri?" Mom called from the living room. "How's dinner coming along?"
"Fine, Mom," Terri said. She checked the paper stuck to the wall, verifying that she'd put the right amount of eggs and fish onto the plate. Then there was a dollop of ketchup, carefully set to the side of the plate. Mom would not eat her fish unless she had some ketchup for them.
Mom has strange tastes, Terri thought. She also seemed to eat a lot. Lot's more than Terri did, but when she'd asked, Mom had just smiled and told her that Terri had a more efficient stomach than she did.
Doctor Simmonds had also agreed with Mom, ruffling Terri's hair and telling her that all she needed to do was make certain Mom ate enough food to be healthy and that Terri's diet was just fine.
It's still weird to put ketchup onto fish.
Finally, Terri flipped her braid of dark black hair back over her shoulder so it wouldn't fall into the food and then brought the steaming plates out into the living room.
Mom was already sitting at the table, looking tired. These days, she always looked tired. Terri frowned at that thought. The doctor said she was doing better but…
But even a year ago, she wasn't this thin. No matter how much she ate, she kept getting thinner. Doctor Simmonds had talked with her about how her mother's treatment was hard on her and when she should summon help. But for the most part, she just had to make certain mom kept eating regularly and always had someone there to watch her.
I suppose that's why I don't go to school anymore, Terri thought, as she put the plates down. She'd already set the milk out, along with the bread and butter. I wish my old friends would call me now and then. Terri shook her head at that. They were still going to school and once she and Mom had moved away, her friends probably had better things to do. It wasn't as if they could just go hang out at the mall anymore, now could they? On the other hand, she wasn't exactly alone—there were Mike and Kim and David, all helping to take care of their parents.
Maybe if everyone is off tomorrow we can meet to play in the park, she thought. She'd like to go to the mall, but it had been forever since she'd been the mall. In fact, she sometimes had a hard time remembering much about the mall, except that it was fun…
Shaking her head, Terri went back into the room and got her own meal, a small slice of ham and a single egg, with a glass of milk to wash it down.
"Dear, be certain to eat it all," Mom said.
"Okay, Mom."
Mom didn't like to talk when they were eating. It damaged the digestion, she had told Terri. Terri wasn't certain about that but well, it was Mom. It was important not to do stuff that got Mom upset. Once they finished eating, Terri quickly cleaned up the table, while Mom walked off to the living room.
Terri nodded to herself as she put the dishes away. That was good. Mom would watch the news before she went to bed. Whenever she just went straight to bed, she never slept well.
By the time Terri finished cleaning up the dining room table and came back into the living room, Mom was already sitting down on the sofa, her hand on the remote control for the big screen. Terri had seen some nice holodisplays over at Kim's house, but Mom said she preferred the old-fashioned flat screens. Moments later, the screen came alive as Mom called up a news channel.
Terri frowned. Mom always hated the news. Doctor Simmonds had warned her to not let Mom watch too much news, especially given what was happening now.
"In recent news, the use of autonomous combat units over the disputed Kashmir region has resulted in extensive civilian casualties. Both Indian and Pakistani governments have claimed that this was due to the use of extensive ECM that rendered it impossible for the ACUs to effectively determine whether or not a given target was civilian…"
"Oh, those poor dears…" her mother said. Terri frowned as the cast went to another story, another battle using robotic units, this one somewhere in Latin America. This time, the announcer wasn't talking about nations, but rival towns, fighting over some dispute that was over a hundred years old and doing it with the latest robot killing machines. It seemed like that was all the TV had on, these days. Watching out for Mom didn't give Terri a lot of time, and she spent most of that decorating her room or thinking of other things to do to make the place better for Mom, but she had spent some time on the Internet and the growth of ACUs was a common story.
Smart enough to fight, not smart enough to revolt, Terri thought, remembering a special she'd been watching before Mom had seen it and told her to turn it off.
"Rumors of the development of "home built" ACU's continue to be widespread, especially in the aftermath of the June 5th New York attacks, along with the development of biological weapons by non-state organizations. We go now to our correspondent at the CDC for more information…" The screen blanked as Mom called up the menu, nodding happily as she found a list of TV shows from when she was a kid, decades ago.
"Oh, I think I'll watch this…" Mom said with a smile. "It's been so long since I last saw it, I remember sitting with the chi—" she fell silent and closed her eyes for a moment, then shook her head as the screen came up with the opening credits, showing a spaceship gliding across the screen. "Terri, Dear…" Mom said. "Why don't you go to bed and shutdown… I'll just watch this and we can have an early morning tomorrow."
Terri opened her mouth to refuse. After all, Doctor Simmonds liked it when she was watching Mom, but she was suddenly just exhausted, barely able to keep her eyes opened as she yawned.
"Okay Mom," Terri said, kissing her mother on the cheek as she walked back to her small cubbyhole of a room.
Opening the door, Terri frowned at the tiny room. She remembered her old room, with the big pink canopy bed and all of her toys and stuffed animals that sat on her dresser and bed, with the nice window that looked out into the park that fronted their house.
She missed it. This room just had a narrow bed and a closet for her clothes. It didn't even have a place for her schoolwork, which Terri supposed wasn't a big issue since she didn't go to school, but she still didn't like it. There was hardly any room to paste her newest sketches up!
Terri shook her head as another yawn overcame her. She put on her nightgown and practically fell into the small bed. Terri didn't know why she was so tired, but she was, and she had to be ready for tomorrow.
Because she'd have to take care of Mom.
"Terri?" Mom called from the living room. "How's dinner coming along?"
"Fine, Mom," Terri said. She checked the paper stuck to the wall, verifying that she'd put the right amount of eggs and fish onto the plate. Then there was a dollop of ketchup, carefully set to the side of the plate. Mom would not eat her fish unless she had some ketchup for them.
Mom has strange tastes, Terri thought. She also seemed to eat a lot. Lot's more than Terri did, but when she'd asked, Mom had just smiled and told her that Terri had a more efficient stomach than she did.
Doctor Simmonds had also agreed with Mom, ruffling Terri's hair and telling her that all she needed to do was make certain Mom ate enough food to be healthy and that Terri's diet was just fine.
It's still weird to put ketchup onto fish.
Finally, Terri flipped her braid of dark black hair back over her shoulder so it wouldn't fall into the food and then brought the steaming plates out into the living room.
Mom was already sitting at the table, looking tired. These days, she always looked tired. Terri frowned at that thought. The doctor said she was doing better but…
But even a year ago, she wasn't this thin. No matter how much she ate, she kept getting thinner. Doctor Simmonds had talked with her about how her mother's treatment was hard on her and when she should summon help. But for the most part, she just had to make certain mom kept eating regularly and always had someone there to watch her.
I suppose that's why I don't go to school anymore, Terri thought, as she put the plates down. She'd already set the milk out, along with the bread and butter. I wish my old friends would call me now and then. Terri shook her head at that. They were still going to school and once she and Mom had moved away, her friends probably had better things to do. It wasn't as if they could just go hang out at the mall anymore, now could they? On the other hand, she wasn't exactly alone—there were Mike and Kim and David, all helping to take care of their parents.
Maybe if everyone is off tomorrow we can meet to play in the park, she thought. She'd like to go to the mall, but it had been forever since she'd been the mall. In fact, she sometimes had a hard time remembering much about the mall, except that it was fun…
Shaking her head, Terri went back into the room and got her own meal, a small slice of ham and a single egg, with a glass of milk to wash it down.
"Dear, be certain to eat it all," Mom said.
"Okay, Mom."
Mom didn't like to talk when they were eating. It damaged the digestion, she had told Terri. Terri wasn't certain about that but well, it was Mom. It was important not to do stuff that got Mom upset. Once they finished eating, Terri quickly cleaned up the table, while Mom walked off to the living room.
Terri nodded to herself as she put the dishes away. That was good. Mom would watch the news before she went to bed. Whenever she just went straight to bed, she never slept well.
By the time Terri finished cleaning up the dining room table and came back into the living room, Mom was already sitting down on the sofa, her hand on the remote control for the big screen. Terri had seen some nice holodisplays over at Kim's house, but Mom said she preferred the old-fashioned flat screens. Moments later, the screen came alive as Mom called up a news channel.
Terri frowned. Mom always hated the news. Doctor Simmonds had warned her to not let Mom watch too much news, especially given what was happening now.
"In recent news, the use of autonomous combat units over the disputed Kashmir region has resulted in extensive civilian casualties. Both Indian and Pakistani governments have claimed that this was due to the use of extensive ECM that rendered it impossible for the ACUs to effectively determine whether or not a given target was civilian…"
"Oh, those poor dears…" her mother said. Terri frowned as the cast went to another story, another battle using robotic units, this one somewhere in Latin America. This time, the announcer wasn't talking about nations, but rival towns, fighting over some dispute that was over a hundred years old and doing it with the latest robot killing machines. It seemed like that was all the TV had on, these days. Watching out for Mom didn't give Terri a lot of time, and she spent most of that decorating her room or thinking of other things to do to make the place better for Mom, but she had spent some time on the Internet and the growth of ACUs was a common story.
Smart enough to fight, not smart enough to revolt, Terri thought, remembering a special she'd been watching before Mom had seen it and told her to turn it off.
"Rumors of the development of "home built" ACU's continue to be widespread, especially in the aftermath of the June 5th New York attacks, along with the development of biological weapons by non-state organizations. We go now to our correspondent at the CDC for more information…" The screen blanked as Mom called up the menu, nodding happily as she found a list of TV shows from when she was a kid, decades ago.
"Oh, I think I'll watch this…" Mom said with a smile. "It's been so long since I last saw it, I remember sitting with the chi—" she fell silent and closed her eyes for a moment, then shook her head as the screen came up with the opening credits, showing a spaceship gliding across the screen. "Terri, Dear…" Mom said. "Why don't you go to bed and shutdown… I'll just watch this and we can have an early morning tomorrow."
Terri opened her mouth to refuse. After all, Doctor Simmonds liked it when she was watching Mom, but she was suddenly just exhausted, barely able to keep her eyes opened as she yawned.
"Okay Mom," Terri said, kissing her mother on the cheek as she walked back to her small cubbyhole of a room.
Opening the door, Terri frowned at the tiny room. She remembered her old room, with the big pink canopy bed and all of her toys and stuffed animals that sat on her dresser and bed, with the nice window that looked out into the park that fronted their house.
She missed it. This room just had a narrow bed and a closet for her clothes. It didn't even have a place for her schoolwork, which Terri supposed wasn't a big issue since she didn't go to school, but she still didn't like it. There was hardly any room to paste her newest sketches up!
Terri shook her head as another yawn overcame her. She put on her nightgown and practically fell into the small bed. Terri didn't know why she was so tired, but she was, and she had to be ready for tomorrow.
Because she'd have to take care of Mom.
Chapter 1
- Location
- California
The first thing Terri was aware of as she slowly woke up was that she was cold. Freezing, in fact.
And hungry. Very hungry, a growling emptiness in her belly and her mouth feeling parched like she hadn't had a meal or something to drink in ages. Terri tried to open her eyes, but her eyelids seemed to be stuck, crusted over. She reached up, feeling odd pains running through her arms, and rubbed her eyes clear, blinking as she took in the room she was in.
For a moment, Terri just lay there in shock. There was a hole—an actual hole in the ceiling, through which she could see the star-speckled night sky. Terri shot upright in the bed and then cried out in shock as the blankets seemed to just come apart around her, along with her nightgown.
"What-what?" Terri said in horror as the dusty remains of the clothes rose up around her, the thick dust causing her to start hacking and coughing, spikes of pain running through her parched throat with every hacking cough. Terri rolled off of her bed, the rough, debris-strewn floor, sending another spike of pain through her bare knees when she landed on it. She suffered through another coughing fit and then staggered to her feet, grabbing the edge of her bed.
I need… Terri turned to her closet and opened the door, the hinges squeaking with long disuse. Please be in here, please be in here… And there it was. Still intact, the little box with the faded lettering on it.
Only a few letters were still legible: CO AN ON PP IES. Terri didn't care. She remembered Doctor Simmonds reminding her that if she needed an emergency energy boost or of anyone forgot to have her eat, she had the supplies that came with the house.
"Just in case you're stuck out on the road with nothing to eat. Remember, it's for you, not your mom, because we wouldn't want you to shut down and leave her alone," he'd said with a grin. Terri had always assumed that it was a joke, but right now she wasn't in a joking mood. She quickly opened the box, grabbing one of the foil baggies of water. Poking the straw into the baggie, Terri quickly drank the whole thing down in one gulp. It didn't satisfy her thirst, but at least it moistened her throat enough so she could swallow. The next thing she did was pull the foil off the dense, black bar of concentrate.
Terri grimaced. She didn't like them much, having only eaten the energy bars once before, when Doctor Simmonds insisted that she try the food to make certain she knew what to do if there was an emergency. The taste wasn't bad, but the food was so dense… But it didn't matter. She needed the food. Quickly, she devoured the bar and sucked down another baggie of water, marveling that she'd been able to eat so much. Terri hardly ever drank that much water, and when she'd first had a bar of concentrate, she'd barely been able to finish half of it.
But now with her hunger conquered, Terri looked around the decrepit room, unable to ignore the disaster surrounding her.
What happened? The lights were off but unlike her mother, Terri had never had much trouble seeing when it was dark. She could clearly see the strained and damaged plaster, the way the light was hanging from the ceiling by its wiring… she had just gone to sleep a few hours ago.
I have to find Mom! That was the most important thing. The only important thing. She had to find her mother and make certain she was safe! That was her duty! She pulled her small closet door open and grabbed the first wearable things she found, a pair of outdoor pants, plain white shirt and a jacket that had survived better than her gown. She pulled them on and reached under her bed for her sneakers. Fortunately, they were still intact, if a bit ragged.
Then she went to the door and tried to open it. It moved slightly, but then stopped, evidently blocked by something in the hallway.
Dammit! Terri thought angrily. How could she get to her mother… There was only the single door to her room and… She shoved again and glared at the door. Whatever was behind it was heavy.
On the other hand. Terri stepped back and looked at the door frame. Like the rest of the building, it was damaged, the wood splintered and cracks running through the plaster surrounding the frame and there was nothing keeping her from pulling it towards her. Terri grabbed the doorknob and holding on with both hands, pulled as hard as she could.
For a few moments, nothing happened. Then, with the sound of cracking wood, the door was pulled out of its frame, hanging loosely from one hinge. Terri sighed and climbed through the gap, holding the box of food close to her body.
The door had been blocked by one of the cabinets that held Mom's old knickknacks. They were now mostly broken, littering the floor in a detritus of ceramic fragments.
Mom loved those… Terri thought mournfully. She picked up one little kitten figurine, miraculously still intact, gently cradling it in her hands.
Terri made her careful way down the hallway, looking at the windows, their glass blown out, warped wood and crumbled plaster showing that they had been that way for a long time. Long enough for the wind and rain to do its work. There was even a small tree growing in the middle of the hallway.
How…how can this be? Terri felt numb. She couldn't have slept for that long. It was impossible. It was…
Terri broke off the half-formed thought as she came to the door to Mom's room. It was in fragments, as if something big had smashed through the door. She looked inside and…
Ruin. There was nothing left of the room. The wall to the outside was gone, showing the bedraggled remains of Mom's garden. There was no sign of her mother, either alive or—Terri's brain stuttered for a moment at the thought—dead.
Where is everyone… Terri thought. If the house had been broken like this, where were the firefighters? Where was Doctor Simmonds? She paused for a moment and then nodded as she turned to head for the living room. Maybe someone had left a note. If they had taken her mother, maybe they didn't have time to worry about Terri.
But she found no note in the living room. The living room and kitchen were smashed. The kitchen looked like it had been looted, with drawers tossed open and the refrigerator lying on its side. Whoever had done it had been in a hurry, which was probably why they hadn't found Terri. The couch was partially intact, though ripped and mold-ridden, while the TV was shattered, fragments of glass and plastic falling out of the broken frame.
And it was silent. The only sound was the wind moaning through the gaps in the roof. Nobody talking. No electric carts humming their way down the main road of the neighborhood. Just the lonely sound of the wind moaning through the gaps in the walls and ceiling.
Terri sat down on the couch, remembering how comfortable it had been…
When she'd last sat in it. Not last night. Somehow, time had passed. Somehow, a lot of time had passed. Terri shivered, remembering a story she'd read about a man who had visited a faerie kingdom for a day, only to find all he knew dead and gone when he returned home.
"What happened…" she moaned. "Mom… Where are you?"
For what seemed like hours, she just sat like that, while the outside darkness slowly turned lighter with the oncoming dawn.
What do I do? Terri thought. I have to find the others— Doctor Simmonds, or Mike and my other friends. They can tell me what happened. They can help me find Mom. Terri nodded to herself. They would know what to do. But first, she had to get ready for the road. She had enough food and water for at least a week, but she'd have to find something to eat after that. She checked the closet and found the heavy jacket she wore when it was raining and a backpack she used to carry stuff for Mom in. She paused for a moment, and then took the food and water baggies out of the ration box and put the kitten figurine into the box, stuffing the box with fabric to protect the delicate ceramic.
Mom would want Terri to keep it safe. She looked around for a moment, then grabbed a knife from the drawer. There might be animals out there, and she could use the steak knife to pry things open if she had too.
Terri looked over at the window, the light of the dawn shining through it.
It was time to go.
Before Terri opened the front door, she looked at her face in the miraculously intact entryway mirror for a second. What she saw caused her to gasp.
Her skin was stretched over her bones, her blue eyes looking sunken and dull. Even her hair looked lifeless. She'd been hungry, but this looked like she was starving…
But why didn't I wake up before? Terri shook her head. She didn't know.
But she wouldn't find out by staying here.
When Terri walked through her door, she had expected many things.
But she hadn't expected to find a skeleton on the sidewalk that ran to the house. It was sprawled out, wearing the remains of some form of armor.
"A soldier?" Terri said to herself. She tossed her thick braid of black hair over one shoulder with a quick, nervous motion, looking up and down the road. Frighteningly, it looked like her house was one of the better preserved homes. Kim's house looked like it had caught on fire, only a skeletal frame remaining. Mike's house was just gone, with what looked like a big, burned out tank standing where it had been, one hatch open and another skeletal form halfway out of it. She looked at Molly's house, all gone except for what looked like a cluster of scattered bones on the concrete sidewalk that led to the front porch, or what would have been the front porch, now just part of a big hole in the ground. Like all the other skeletons, they were clean.
Terri bit her lip. Bodies didn't get like that in a day.
It takes years for a body to get like that. Years and years… finally she looked to the end of the little road, to where Dr. Simmonds' hospital was.
Or rather, what remained of the hospital. It had collapsed into a pile of rubble, smoke stained chunks of concrete spilling out into the parking lot.
She didn't see Doctor Simmonds' car.
Maybe he got away and took Mom with him…
Terri nodded. But he wasn't here right now, and so she had to go find him. Find… someone. Mom would know what to do, if she could find her. She skittered to the side, walking through the overgrown yard to avoid the remains on the sidewalk.
Walking down the street, Terri passed the ruins of the hospital and came to the fence that marked the end of their neighborhood and the beginning of the larger world outside of it. She was never supposed to pass it.
Not unless she was with Mom.
Terri paused, unable to move forward for a moment, even though the gate that normally blocked off the street from the outside had been torn away, likely by the burned out tank behind her.
I have to…
I'm not allowed. It's forbidden. I have to get permission.
Nobody ever thought about this happening…
Terri whimpered with indecision. The idea of going against what Doctor Simmonds said caused her to shudder. She'd never done that.
Not ever.
But Doctor Simmonds wasn't here. And he hadn't been here for a long time.
Terri bit her lip. She had to leave. If there had been anyone else… she shook her head and took one step over the boundary.
As she stepped over the boundary, she felt an odd feeling, almost like a tether had snapped and then she wasn't worried about leaving her neighborhood anymore. Terri shook her head, looking at the homes and wrecked hospital. Suddenly the houses seemed small and shabby, and oddly similar, as if they'd been made in a factory. The same doors, the same little gardens and back yards…
Terri hadn't remembered that. For some reason her memory insisted on seeing the houses as larger, the neighborhood more vibrant, with more people in it than those few homes could have held.
Terri shook her head. It didn't matter now. There wasn't anyone there. The neighborhood was dead and she had to find someone who could help her find Mom.
She looked down the road that led into the neighborhood, curving off behind the low hill that separated the neighborhood from the towns she'd grown up in.
"Maybe it'll be all right," she said to herself, her voice unconvincing in the air, the only sounds those that nature made.
No cars. No planes.
No nothing.
It didn't matter. There was nowhere else to go and she certainly couldn't stay here. Terri started walking, not sparing a single backwards glance for the place where she had lived for so long.
And hungry. Very hungry, a growling emptiness in her belly and her mouth feeling parched like she hadn't had a meal or something to drink in ages. Terri tried to open her eyes, but her eyelids seemed to be stuck, crusted over. She reached up, feeling odd pains running through her arms, and rubbed her eyes clear, blinking as she took in the room she was in.
For a moment, Terri just lay there in shock. There was a hole—an actual hole in the ceiling, through which she could see the star-speckled night sky. Terri shot upright in the bed and then cried out in shock as the blankets seemed to just come apart around her, along with her nightgown.
"What-what?" Terri said in horror as the dusty remains of the clothes rose up around her, the thick dust causing her to start hacking and coughing, spikes of pain running through her parched throat with every hacking cough. Terri rolled off of her bed, the rough, debris-strewn floor, sending another spike of pain through her bare knees when she landed on it. She suffered through another coughing fit and then staggered to her feet, grabbing the edge of her bed.
I need… Terri turned to her closet and opened the door, the hinges squeaking with long disuse. Please be in here, please be in here… And there it was. Still intact, the little box with the faded lettering on it.
Only a few letters were still legible: CO AN ON PP IES. Terri didn't care. She remembered Doctor Simmonds reminding her that if she needed an emergency energy boost or of anyone forgot to have her eat, she had the supplies that came with the house.
"Just in case you're stuck out on the road with nothing to eat. Remember, it's for you, not your mom, because we wouldn't want you to shut down and leave her alone," he'd said with a grin. Terri had always assumed that it was a joke, but right now she wasn't in a joking mood. She quickly opened the box, grabbing one of the foil baggies of water. Poking the straw into the baggie, Terri quickly drank the whole thing down in one gulp. It didn't satisfy her thirst, but at least it moistened her throat enough so she could swallow. The next thing she did was pull the foil off the dense, black bar of concentrate.
Terri grimaced. She didn't like them much, having only eaten the energy bars once before, when Doctor Simmonds insisted that she try the food to make certain she knew what to do if there was an emergency. The taste wasn't bad, but the food was so dense… But it didn't matter. She needed the food. Quickly, she devoured the bar and sucked down another baggie of water, marveling that she'd been able to eat so much. Terri hardly ever drank that much water, and when she'd first had a bar of concentrate, she'd barely been able to finish half of it.
But now with her hunger conquered, Terri looked around the decrepit room, unable to ignore the disaster surrounding her.
What happened? The lights were off but unlike her mother, Terri had never had much trouble seeing when it was dark. She could clearly see the strained and damaged plaster, the way the light was hanging from the ceiling by its wiring… she had just gone to sleep a few hours ago.
I have to find Mom! That was the most important thing. The only important thing. She had to find her mother and make certain she was safe! That was her duty! She pulled her small closet door open and grabbed the first wearable things she found, a pair of outdoor pants, plain white shirt and a jacket that had survived better than her gown. She pulled them on and reached under her bed for her sneakers. Fortunately, they were still intact, if a bit ragged.
Then she went to the door and tried to open it. It moved slightly, but then stopped, evidently blocked by something in the hallway.
Dammit! Terri thought angrily. How could she get to her mother… There was only the single door to her room and… She shoved again and glared at the door. Whatever was behind it was heavy.
On the other hand. Terri stepped back and looked at the door frame. Like the rest of the building, it was damaged, the wood splintered and cracks running through the plaster surrounding the frame and there was nothing keeping her from pulling it towards her. Terri grabbed the doorknob and holding on with both hands, pulled as hard as she could.
For a few moments, nothing happened. Then, with the sound of cracking wood, the door was pulled out of its frame, hanging loosely from one hinge. Terri sighed and climbed through the gap, holding the box of food close to her body.
The door had been blocked by one of the cabinets that held Mom's old knickknacks. They were now mostly broken, littering the floor in a detritus of ceramic fragments.
Mom loved those… Terri thought mournfully. She picked up one little kitten figurine, miraculously still intact, gently cradling it in her hands.
Terri made her careful way down the hallway, looking at the windows, their glass blown out, warped wood and crumbled plaster showing that they had been that way for a long time. Long enough for the wind and rain to do its work. There was even a small tree growing in the middle of the hallway.
How…how can this be? Terri felt numb. She couldn't have slept for that long. It was impossible. It was…
Terri broke off the half-formed thought as she came to the door to Mom's room. It was in fragments, as if something big had smashed through the door. She looked inside and…
Ruin. There was nothing left of the room. The wall to the outside was gone, showing the bedraggled remains of Mom's garden. There was no sign of her mother, either alive or—Terri's brain stuttered for a moment at the thought—dead.
Where is everyone… Terri thought. If the house had been broken like this, where were the firefighters? Where was Doctor Simmonds? She paused for a moment and then nodded as she turned to head for the living room. Maybe someone had left a note. If they had taken her mother, maybe they didn't have time to worry about Terri.
But she found no note in the living room. The living room and kitchen were smashed. The kitchen looked like it had been looted, with drawers tossed open and the refrigerator lying on its side. Whoever had done it had been in a hurry, which was probably why they hadn't found Terri. The couch was partially intact, though ripped and mold-ridden, while the TV was shattered, fragments of glass and plastic falling out of the broken frame.
And it was silent. The only sound was the wind moaning through the gaps in the roof. Nobody talking. No electric carts humming their way down the main road of the neighborhood. Just the lonely sound of the wind moaning through the gaps in the walls and ceiling.
Terri sat down on the couch, remembering how comfortable it had been…
When she'd last sat in it. Not last night. Somehow, time had passed. Somehow, a lot of time had passed. Terri shivered, remembering a story she'd read about a man who had visited a faerie kingdom for a day, only to find all he knew dead and gone when he returned home.
"What happened…" she moaned. "Mom… Where are you?"
For what seemed like hours, she just sat like that, while the outside darkness slowly turned lighter with the oncoming dawn.
What do I do? Terri thought. I have to find the others— Doctor Simmonds, or Mike and my other friends. They can tell me what happened. They can help me find Mom. Terri nodded to herself. They would know what to do. But first, she had to get ready for the road. She had enough food and water for at least a week, but she'd have to find something to eat after that. She checked the closet and found the heavy jacket she wore when it was raining and a backpack she used to carry stuff for Mom in. She paused for a moment, and then took the food and water baggies out of the ration box and put the kitten figurine into the box, stuffing the box with fabric to protect the delicate ceramic.
Mom would want Terri to keep it safe. She looked around for a moment, then grabbed a knife from the drawer. There might be animals out there, and she could use the steak knife to pry things open if she had too.
Terri looked over at the window, the light of the dawn shining through it.
It was time to go.
Before Terri opened the front door, she looked at her face in the miraculously intact entryway mirror for a second. What she saw caused her to gasp.
Her skin was stretched over her bones, her blue eyes looking sunken and dull. Even her hair looked lifeless. She'd been hungry, but this looked like she was starving…
But why didn't I wake up before? Terri shook her head. She didn't know.
But she wouldn't find out by staying here.
When Terri walked through her door, she had expected many things.
But she hadn't expected to find a skeleton on the sidewalk that ran to the house. It was sprawled out, wearing the remains of some form of armor.
"A soldier?" Terri said to herself. She tossed her thick braid of black hair over one shoulder with a quick, nervous motion, looking up and down the road. Frighteningly, it looked like her house was one of the better preserved homes. Kim's house looked like it had caught on fire, only a skeletal frame remaining. Mike's house was just gone, with what looked like a big, burned out tank standing where it had been, one hatch open and another skeletal form halfway out of it. She looked at Molly's house, all gone except for what looked like a cluster of scattered bones on the concrete sidewalk that led to the front porch, or what would have been the front porch, now just part of a big hole in the ground. Like all the other skeletons, they were clean.
Terri bit her lip. Bodies didn't get like that in a day.
It takes years for a body to get like that. Years and years… finally she looked to the end of the little road, to where Dr. Simmonds' hospital was.
Or rather, what remained of the hospital. It had collapsed into a pile of rubble, smoke stained chunks of concrete spilling out into the parking lot.
She didn't see Doctor Simmonds' car.
Maybe he got away and took Mom with him…
Terri nodded. But he wasn't here right now, and so she had to go find him. Find… someone. Mom would know what to do, if she could find her. She skittered to the side, walking through the overgrown yard to avoid the remains on the sidewalk.
Walking down the street, Terri passed the ruins of the hospital and came to the fence that marked the end of their neighborhood and the beginning of the larger world outside of it. She was never supposed to pass it.
Not unless she was with Mom.
Terri paused, unable to move forward for a moment, even though the gate that normally blocked off the street from the outside had been torn away, likely by the burned out tank behind her.
I have to…
I'm not allowed. It's forbidden. I have to get permission.
Nobody ever thought about this happening…
Terri whimpered with indecision. The idea of going against what Doctor Simmonds said caused her to shudder. She'd never done that.
Not ever.
But Doctor Simmonds wasn't here. And he hadn't been here for a long time.
Terri bit her lip. She had to leave. If there had been anyone else… she shook her head and took one step over the boundary.
As she stepped over the boundary, she felt an odd feeling, almost like a tether had snapped and then she wasn't worried about leaving her neighborhood anymore. Terri shook her head, looking at the homes and wrecked hospital. Suddenly the houses seemed small and shabby, and oddly similar, as if they'd been made in a factory. The same doors, the same little gardens and back yards…
Terri hadn't remembered that. For some reason her memory insisted on seeing the houses as larger, the neighborhood more vibrant, with more people in it than those few homes could have held.
Terri shook her head. It didn't matter now. There wasn't anyone there. The neighborhood was dead and she had to find someone who could help her find Mom.
She looked down the road that led into the neighborhood, curving off behind the low hill that separated the neighborhood from the towns she'd grown up in.
"Maybe it'll be all right," she said to herself, her voice unconvincing in the air, the only sounds those that nature made.
No cars. No planes.
No nothing.
It didn't matter. There was nowhere else to go and she certainly couldn't stay here. Terri started walking, not sparing a single backwards glance for the place where she had lived for so long.
Chapter 2
- Location
- California
It didn't take very long for Terri to realize something was seriously wrong with her memories. She knew where the road led, after all. It curved around the slopes of the low mountain that divided their neighborhood from the mall and city where she'd lived most of her life before moving to the new place with mom.
She had expected to see the mall in ruins—the fact that neighborhood had been destroyed had prepared her for that…
But hadn't prepared her to find out that the mall and town seemed to have vanished. There was just the small two-lane road, its asphalt pitted and partially covered by leaves and soil. A few cars lay abandoned on the side of the road, some looking like they had crashed, others looking like their occupants had pulled them to the side and ran off. Terri stopped and looked in a few, finding nothing but old luggage, long since ruined by the rain that had come in through the shattered windows. One car had bundles of hundred dollar bills in the passenger seat. Terri reached in and lifted one bundle of money, frowning as it fell apart in her hands.
Why? That was a fortune, so why did the driver just run off. All he had to do was reach down and… Terri pulled the jacket closer to her slim frame. Nobody would leave a fortune behind, not unless they were so terrified that they weren't thinking of anything other than how to save their lives…
A little further down the road, she saw another van, only this one was surrounded by scattered, half-buried bones. The driver's seat still had the remains of the driver in it, the skull having fallen down into its lap, the moss-stained skull grinning up at the girl. Terri staggered back, looking around wildly.
Who did this? What did this?
Shivering, Terri kept walking down the road, no longer bothering to check the occasional car. She didn't want to see what might be in them. Empty or occupied by the bones of the dead, they were just as disturbing.
As was the forest. Terri heard the occasional sound of birds, but even in the daylight, it seemed… deserted. Empty. Not like the parks she remembered. There, you knew there were people around.
But not here. The road, the woods around it, the empty sky, without any aircraft in it… it screamed that it had been a long time since anyone had been there. Terri had slept, and the world had gone away.
When Terri next checked her watch, she realized that over six hours had gone by. The sun was now descending into the clouds that marked the horizon, its rays turned blood red. She stopped and stretched for a few moments, but didn't bother to rest. She would walk until it got dark and then find some place to sleep. Terri wasn't about to keep walking at night. She could see her way, that was true, but on the other hand, the road was creepy enough right now. She didn't even want to think what it would be like at night.
Come to think of it… I don't even know there will be a moon up tonight. I need to find a place to hide out!
It was then that Terri came around another turn and then stopped.
There was a city in the distance.
And she had never seen anything quite so completely destroyed.
The city wasn't anyplace that Terri recognized. Even though it was within walking distance of home, she'd never been there. Standing there, staring at the dead city, Terri ran a hand over her dark hair, tugging on her braid in a quick, worried motion.
How could I forget about an entire city?
The city was centered on a central core of skyscrapers, or it had been centered on a central core of skyscrapers. Now it looked like only a few were still standing, the rest collapsed, with one battered skeleton of steel leaning drunkenly against its slightly more intact neighbor. Terri saw birds circling around the tops of the ruins. Around them were smaller buildings, intermixed with spaces of completely collapsed rubble. Peering into the afternoon haze, Terri saw a freeway, the lanes choked with cars, save for the areas where something had blasted great craters into the reinforced concrete.
The cars… Terri thought. They had all been driving in this direction. Maybe they had heard the explosions and then had abandoned their vehicles. Maybe whatever had destroyed the city had come upon them so quickly that they hadn't had a chance to get very far.
Terri was suddenly very certain that the bones of the drivers and passengers of those empty cars she had passed earlier were probably lying hidden in the forest near where they had abandoned their vehicles. If any had survived, they would have come back.
But they hadn't.
Looking out over the city, Terri was struck by how silent it was. She could hear the dim sounds of birds, but no cars, no people.
The city was dead.
Terri sat down on the ground with a thump and put her head in her hands.
"What am I supposed to do!" she moaned out loud. Mom was gone, Doctor Simmonds was gone, there was nothing left. Terri had been hoping that she could find someone, someone to tell her what to do and how to find mom.
But there isn't anyone in the city. Terri grimaced at that, running her fingers along her thick braid of hair. She was only twelve. Why was this happening to her! Terri took a deep breath. Even if there wasn't anyone in the city, there was probably information about where they had gone. There had to be. She could find it, and then either walk there or if she could find a phone or a radio, or something she could call for help with! Everyone else couldn't be dead!
Could they?
But she had to move fast. The sun would be down in a few hours.
Terri hesitated. She didn't know where it would be worse to spend the night. The deserted road or the city that looked like a tomb.
At least in the city, I can find a place with a door I can close… Terri thought. The last thing she wanted to do was to spend the night in the open.
But as she got closer to the city, she started wondering if she had been wise. The people in the city had not been able to get away, at least not most of them, and she started seeing more and more bones. A bus, yellow paint flaking off, had a pile of skeletal remains trailing out of its exits, evidence of a last, frantic, hopeless run for safety. The remains of a gaudy banner was strung across the rear of the bus.
"Something… cheer…" Terri squinted. "Cheerleading trials." She finally said.
But… Terri fell silent as the realization filled her. The jammed streets, the skeletal remains…
Whatever had happened, had happened fast. The people had decided to flee on their own, or had been told to flee too late to escape whatever had happened. As Terri kept walking, she started to see signs of battle. A barricade with skeletal forms wearing armor beside it, some still clutching their weapons. An object that looked like a giant made of metal, lying where it had fallen and crushed a small car. Its cockpit was open, revealing the skeletal form of the pilot. Another flying machine, partially embedded in the upper floors of an apartment complex…
But all silent. Everywhere there were bones, but nothing alive, save for the sound of birds and the occasional rustling sounds made by small animals going about their business in the ruins. No sign that anyone had ever returned to bury the dead or check for any survivors.
Why didn't they? Is… Terri closed her eyes for a moment, but she couldn't banish the thought. Is everyone else dead? Terri had a vision of every city on earth, looking just like this.
It was then that she heard the skittering sound.
Terri stopped in her tracks, licking her lips nervously. She slowly turned in a complete circle, trying to locate the sound.
No luck. Everything was still, perhaps it had been a—Terri heard it again.
But from a different direction. Then on its heels came another skittering sound, this one in front of her. Not an animal's sound. The sound of metal striking on metal.
And it sounded like there was more than one of whatever was making that unnerving sound.
Terri didn't move for a long moment, and then turned and started walking back the way she came. Maybe they were just rats or cleaning robots or something like that. Something harmless. Maybe they were—A sudden sound of falling debris echoed from one of the shattered buildings. Terri turned and stared…and saw something gleaming in the darkness beyond the smashed storefront windows.
Terri bit her lip and took one step back… and then it emerged into the light.
It looked like a man sized metallic spider, its gleaming metal body marred here and there by scratches and gashes, while one of its legs had been amputated close to the body, giving it an odd, drunken walk.
It didn't have any fangs, just a cluster of cameras on its "head".
That didn't make Terri feel any better. The ends of its legs looked razor sharp, while a gun that was attached to its back was pointed at her, the muzzle huge to Terri's wide eyes.
"Nice monster…" Terri took a step back and then started at another sound to her right. She looked around and saw another spider, this one looking far more battered then its companion, missing its gun, the top of its body a mass of torn metal. But Terri noticed that its legs were liberally splashed with some brown substance.
Like old blood.
Terri didn't wait. Shot or diced up by those razor sharp feet, either would be enough to kill her.
She spun and ran back the way she came, the sound of her feet mixing with the skittering, clattering sound of her pursuers. She heard another clicking sound and spared a quick glance over her shoulder to see what was making it. The first spider had stopped and was pointing the gun at her, but all it was doing was making clicking noises.
Empty.
But that didn't stop them from chasing her. Fear lent extra speed to Terri as she ran down the wrecked streets, the two robots pursuing her and slowly gaining on her.
I have to find a place to hide… Terri thought. If she could find a building that was too small for them to follow her…
Unless she got stuck.
Unless they were fast enough to get to her before she got inside.
Unless they were strong enough to pry the walls apart to get to her.
Unless, unless, unless…
Trying to find a way to get ahead of her pursuers, Terri didn't notice an out-thrust chunk of concrete until it caught her by the foot.
She cried out in shock as she fell, flinging out her hands in a desperate attempt to break her fall. Terri felt her breath go out of her as she rolled over onto her back and frantically started to scrabble away from the approaching robots.
I'm gonna die! she thought in terror as the two robots gained on her, the leader raising one leg to stab down, the razor sharp metal gleaming in the light.
And then there was a flash and roar of thunder.
Dazzled, Terri had to blink her eyes a few times before she could see what had happened. The robot closest to her had been flung back, a hole blown clear through its body. The second robot was backing off, the useless gun pointing at someone behind Terri. There was another flash and blast of thunder, and that robot was flung back, literally blown in half.
"That was close," a familiar voice said.
Terri blinked as she twisted around to see who her savior had been. The figure was about the same size as Terri, a hood obscuring its features, holding a short, bulky gun with some sort of drum underneath it.
"Mike?" she finally said in a squeak.
"Well, I'm a Mike," he said, pulling back the hood to reveal a familiar face.
It is! It is Mike! Terri thought as she scrambled to her feet. The blue eyes, the curly brown hair, it was Mike. Sure, he wasn't wearing the clothes he wore when they used to go to the mall before they'd moved to the new neighborhood, but it was Mike.
"Mike!" she squealed. "You're here! Someone survived! What happened! What happened to your dad, what happened to Mom!" her voice started scaling up. "I woke up and everyone was gone! Everything was wrecked and I can't find Mom and the mall vanished and what's happening!"
Suddenly, Terri was screaming, tears rolling down her face.
Mike lifted his weapon and backed off away from her, other hand raised placating."Terri, Terri!" he said. "I'll tell you what happened…" He licked his lips once, looking around. "But you have to come with me. We made a lot of noise and anti-infantry spiders aren't the only thing that could be in this town— they're not even the worst things we could run into. I was heading into downtown to get something but now the whole place is stirred up…" he shook his head. "We've gotta go, now."
"I-" Terri's voice cut off as she heard something from deeper within the ruined town. Something that sounded like a heavy object moving, or being moved. "Okay," she said. Terri took a deep breath, feeling an odd sense of calm clamping down on her panic. "Is there anyone else with you?"
"Nope! Just me!" Mike said with a grin. "C'mon!" without any further words, he turned and started walking back the way he had come from.
"Mike," Terri said as she followed him. "Where are you staying? What happened to everyone else!"
"You don't know?" Mike asked. "You really don't know?"
"Of course I don't!" Terri snapped. "I fixed dinner for Mom and went to bed and then" —she waved her hands frantically— "this happened!"
"Wait—you really had a mom?"
Terri blinked in surprise and opened her mouth to shout of Mike. What type of comment was that? But then she paused. Mike didn't sound snarky… He sounded surprised…
What's wrong with him?
"Mike," Terri said. "You came over to my house to play, remember"
"Oh, boy." Mike ran a hand through his disordered hair and frowned. "This is going to be hard. C'mon, let's get back to my place before I say anything else."
"Sure…" Terri said doubtfully as she followed Mike. They moved quickly, taking a different road then the one Terri had came in from. Terri strained her ears to hear any sound of pursuit, but it seemed like the two robots had been alone. As they walked, the dead city fell behind them, the buildings, what ones remained intact, becoming smaller, mostly shops and store houses. Then they they came to a place where the forest was starting to reconquer the city, bushes and small trees rising through the cracked pavement and burned out buildings. Terri saw an owl perched on top of the twisted remains of a big truck. It stared at her for a few moments, before hooting and taking off, soon vanishing into the growing dark.
Mike set a fast pace as they entered the forest that surrounded the city. "You want to stay off the roads," Mike said. "Some of the robots patrol them, and then you've got mines, even killer swarms. They're not safe."
"I didn't run into anything…" Terri said.
"You didn't stick around very long," Mike said and turned back to look at Terri, his face sober. "If you went back now you might find that you woke something up…"
Maybe that's why nobody came to get the bodies… Terri thought. Then she shivered. That was dumb. The reason nobody came to get the bodies was that they were… "Mike, where is everyone else?"
"The humans? They're all dead. I haven't seen any for, oh, years…" Mike said without slackening his pace.
Tara didn't stop walking as she digested the words. Years? Mike, have you gone crazy? Mike didn't look any older than she was. Not to mention that Mike was a human.
But on the other hand, the city did look like years had gone by. Terri thought about the buildings. Some of them had been burned down, but she hadn't been any smell of new smoke. To say nothing of the skeletons, rusted vehicles and the trees growing through the pavement…
But how could she have survived sleeping for years?
They kept walking for most of the rest of the night. Mike varied between chattering about the world, though he was oddly light about the details of their earlier life together, while Terri remained silent, thinking about what she'd seen.
Mike was serious about avoiding the roads. As they kept walking, the forest rose around them, little streams and brooks making their chuckling way through the wooded lands. The half-moon in the now cloudless sky left her with enough light to see by, giving the terrain an ghostly look to it. Terri saw only a few signs that humanity had ever lived here—a broken down shack, a crashed military aircraft, vines and moss reclaiming it for the forest, what looked like an old footpath with a rusted and bent safety rail.
But all old. All overgrown.
And it didn't make much sense, because Terri had remembered cities, big cities and interstates. Surely everything couldn't be gone.
"We're getting close," Mike said.
"To what?"
"Home."
"Out here?" Terri frowned. "Why not closer?"
"Just about every big city has hunter drones in it or worse. They attack anything that gets too close." Mike told her. "But they ignore stuff out here, well, unless you're real unlucky."
"Oh," Terri said, then blinked as she looked up into the dark sky. There was something up there, glinting against the light of the moon. "Mike, there's an airplane up there."
"Yeah," Mike said, following her gaze. "Real high up. Probably a robot bomber, going off the bomb some old base." He shrugged. "The bombers don't seem to change their targets, so it's easy to avoid them."
Terri opened her mouth, then closed it without saying anything.
What was there to say? She'd gone to sleep with Mom in the living room and woke up to…this. Everything different, everything gone.
Mom was gone. Terri sniffled, dragging her forearm across her face to get the tears out of her eyes.
Finally, they came to the opening of a deep valley, its sides covered with trees and overgrown buildings. Terri blinked at that. These buildings looked older then the city or her home.
They also didn't look like they had been blown up or burned or otherwise attacked. They just looked old and abandoned. Like a graveyard, the buildings gleaming like headstones in the soft moonlight. Terri shivered.
"Welcome to my home!" Mike said with an expansive gesture.
Terri looked over at Mike fought a grin. At least he was normal. He'd always loved those big, wide arm gestures. Once he'd broken one of Mom's drinking glasses.
Mike led Terri down into the valley, while the setting disk of the moon fell behind the valley wall and plunged the depths of the valley into a dim murk.
Terri found herself getting closer to Mike. The empty windows of the abandoned buildings, mixed in with the dark woods, were in their own way just as ominous as the ruined city had been. The buildings looked like the skeletons of great, dead beast, the dark windows forming its eye sockets.
"What happened here," Terri asked. "Was it… like the city?"
"Nah," Mike said as he picked his way through the growing dark. "This place was abandoned a long time before the fighting started. Just not so many people anymore, I guess. That's what makes it so safe though—it's not even on the map for most of the drones… and here we are!" he said as he came to a door and pulled it open.
"C'mon," Mike said. "We can turn on the lights once we get the door closed."
"I thought you said nothing comes here."
"Sure, but it's better to not take any chances," Mike said with a grin.
Terri followed him inside, a dubious expression on her face. Mike waited until the door was closed, plunging the chamber into a pitch darkness that even Terri's eyes had a problem seeing through. Then he reached up and turned on an LED lantern, the illumination revealing Mike's room.
Or lair. There were dozens of racks of equipment, some of them fairly obvious, such as the racked guns by the door. Others looked like tools or just plain junk. Another rack held books, while clothes were strewn here and there in disordered piles.
Terri sighed. If there was anything that had stayed the same, it had to be the fact that Mike could be really messy.
"How did you get all of this stuff?" she asked.
"There's more of it downstairs," Mike said. "But like I told you, I had time to get it. Years in fact."
"Mike," Terri said, putting her hands on her hips. "Stop being an idiot. If you had years to collect all of this stuff, you wouldn't still be a kid."
"I'm not," Mike said. "I haven't been a kid…" his voice trailed off.
"What, you're a ghost?" Terri asked, trying to sound funny.
Except… What if he really is a ghost? Granted, none of the ghost stories Terri had heard involved kids with guns, but…
"No. You'd have to be human to be a ghost… and I'm not that," Mike said, his voice quiet and sad. "And neither are you. Because I may be a Mike, but I'm not the Mike you knew and you're not any of the Terri's I knew."
She had expected to see the mall in ruins—the fact that neighborhood had been destroyed had prepared her for that…
But hadn't prepared her to find out that the mall and town seemed to have vanished. There was just the small two-lane road, its asphalt pitted and partially covered by leaves and soil. A few cars lay abandoned on the side of the road, some looking like they had crashed, others looking like their occupants had pulled them to the side and ran off. Terri stopped and looked in a few, finding nothing but old luggage, long since ruined by the rain that had come in through the shattered windows. One car had bundles of hundred dollar bills in the passenger seat. Terri reached in and lifted one bundle of money, frowning as it fell apart in her hands.
Why? That was a fortune, so why did the driver just run off. All he had to do was reach down and… Terri pulled the jacket closer to her slim frame. Nobody would leave a fortune behind, not unless they were so terrified that they weren't thinking of anything other than how to save their lives…
A little further down the road, she saw another van, only this one was surrounded by scattered, half-buried bones. The driver's seat still had the remains of the driver in it, the skull having fallen down into its lap, the moss-stained skull grinning up at the girl. Terri staggered back, looking around wildly.
Who did this? What did this?
Shivering, Terri kept walking down the road, no longer bothering to check the occasional car. She didn't want to see what might be in them. Empty or occupied by the bones of the dead, they were just as disturbing.
As was the forest. Terri heard the occasional sound of birds, but even in the daylight, it seemed… deserted. Empty. Not like the parks she remembered. There, you knew there were people around.
But not here. The road, the woods around it, the empty sky, without any aircraft in it… it screamed that it had been a long time since anyone had been there. Terri had slept, and the world had gone away.
When Terri next checked her watch, she realized that over six hours had gone by. The sun was now descending into the clouds that marked the horizon, its rays turned blood red. She stopped and stretched for a few moments, but didn't bother to rest. She would walk until it got dark and then find some place to sleep. Terri wasn't about to keep walking at night. She could see her way, that was true, but on the other hand, the road was creepy enough right now. She didn't even want to think what it would be like at night.
Come to think of it… I don't even know there will be a moon up tonight. I need to find a place to hide out!
It was then that Terri came around another turn and then stopped.
There was a city in the distance.
And she had never seen anything quite so completely destroyed.
The city wasn't anyplace that Terri recognized. Even though it was within walking distance of home, she'd never been there. Standing there, staring at the dead city, Terri ran a hand over her dark hair, tugging on her braid in a quick, worried motion.
How could I forget about an entire city?
The city was centered on a central core of skyscrapers, or it had been centered on a central core of skyscrapers. Now it looked like only a few were still standing, the rest collapsed, with one battered skeleton of steel leaning drunkenly against its slightly more intact neighbor. Terri saw birds circling around the tops of the ruins. Around them were smaller buildings, intermixed with spaces of completely collapsed rubble. Peering into the afternoon haze, Terri saw a freeway, the lanes choked with cars, save for the areas where something had blasted great craters into the reinforced concrete.
The cars… Terri thought. They had all been driving in this direction. Maybe they had heard the explosions and then had abandoned their vehicles. Maybe whatever had destroyed the city had come upon them so quickly that they hadn't had a chance to get very far.
Terri was suddenly very certain that the bones of the drivers and passengers of those empty cars she had passed earlier were probably lying hidden in the forest near where they had abandoned their vehicles. If any had survived, they would have come back.
But they hadn't.
Looking out over the city, Terri was struck by how silent it was. She could hear the dim sounds of birds, but no cars, no people.
The city was dead.
Terri sat down on the ground with a thump and put her head in her hands.
"What am I supposed to do!" she moaned out loud. Mom was gone, Doctor Simmonds was gone, there was nothing left. Terri had been hoping that she could find someone, someone to tell her what to do and how to find mom.
But there isn't anyone in the city. Terri grimaced at that, running her fingers along her thick braid of hair. She was only twelve. Why was this happening to her! Terri took a deep breath. Even if there wasn't anyone in the city, there was probably information about where they had gone. There had to be. She could find it, and then either walk there or if she could find a phone or a radio, or something she could call for help with! Everyone else couldn't be dead!
Could they?
But she had to move fast. The sun would be down in a few hours.
Terri hesitated. She didn't know where it would be worse to spend the night. The deserted road or the city that looked like a tomb.
At least in the city, I can find a place with a door I can close… Terri thought. The last thing she wanted to do was to spend the night in the open.
But as she got closer to the city, she started wondering if she had been wise. The people in the city had not been able to get away, at least not most of them, and she started seeing more and more bones. A bus, yellow paint flaking off, had a pile of skeletal remains trailing out of its exits, evidence of a last, frantic, hopeless run for safety. The remains of a gaudy banner was strung across the rear of the bus.
"Something… cheer…" Terri squinted. "Cheerleading trials." She finally said.
But… Terri fell silent as the realization filled her. The jammed streets, the skeletal remains…
Whatever had happened, had happened fast. The people had decided to flee on their own, or had been told to flee too late to escape whatever had happened. As Terri kept walking, she started to see signs of battle. A barricade with skeletal forms wearing armor beside it, some still clutching their weapons. An object that looked like a giant made of metal, lying where it had fallen and crushed a small car. Its cockpit was open, revealing the skeletal form of the pilot. Another flying machine, partially embedded in the upper floors of an apartment complex…
But all silent. Everywhere there were bones, but nothing alive, save for the sound of birds and the occasional rustling sounds made by small animals going about their business in the ruins. No sign that anyone had ever returned to bury the dead or check for any survivors.
Why didn't they? Is… Terri closed her eyes for a moment, but she couldn't banish the thought. Is everyone else dead? Terri had a vision of every city on earth, looking just like this.
It was then that she heard the skittering sound.
Terri stopped in her tracks, licking her lips nervously. She slowly turned in a complete circle, trying to locate the sound.
No luck. Everything was still, perhaps it had been a—Terri heard it again.
But from a different direction. Then on its heels came another skittering sound, this one in front of her. Not an animal's sound. The sound of metal striking on metal.
And it sounded like there was more than one of whatever was making that unnerving sound.
Terri didn't move for a long moment, and then turned and started walking back the way she came. Maybe they were just rats or cleaning robots or something like that. Something harmless. Maybe they were—A sudden sound of falling debris echoed from one of the shattered buildings. Terri turned and stared…and saw something gleaming in the darkness beyond the smashed storefront windows.
Terri bit her lip and took one step back… and then it emerged into the light.
It looked like a man sized metallic spider, its gleaming metal body marred here and there by scratches and gashes, while one of its legs had been amputated close to the body, giving it an odd, drunken walk.
It didn't have any fangs, just a cluster of cameras on its "head".
That didn't make Terri feel any better. The ends of its legs looked razor sharp, while a gun that was attached to its back was pointed at her, the muzzle huge to Terri's wide eyes.
"Nice monster…" Terri took a step back and then started at another sound to her right. She looked around and saw another spider, this one looking far more battered then its companion, missing its gun, the top of its body a mass of torn metal. But Terri noticed that its legs were liberally splashed with some brown substance.
Like old blood.
Terri didn't wait. Shot or diced up by those razor sharp feet, either would be enough to kill her.
She spun and ran back the way she came, the sound of her feet mixing with the skittering, clattering sound of her pursuers. She heard another clicking sound and spared a quick glance over her shoulder to see what was making it. The first spider had stopped and was pointing the gun at her, but all it was doing was making clicking noises.
Empty.
But that didn't stop them from chasing her. Fear lent extra speed to Terri as she ran down the wrecked streets, the two robots pursuing her and slowly gaining on her.
I have to find a place to hide… Terri thought. If she could find a building that was too small for them to follow her…
Unless she got stuck.
Unless they were fast enough to get to her before she got inside.
Unless they were strong enough to pry the walls apart to get to her.
Unless, unless, unless…
Trying to find a way to get ahead of her pursuers, Terri didn't notice an out-thrust chunk of concrete until it caught her by the foot.
She cried out in shock as she fell, flinging out her hands in a desperate attempt to break her fall. Terri felt her breath go out of her as she rolled over onto her back and frantically started to scrabble away from the approaching robots.
I'm gonna die! she thought in terror as the two robots gained on her, the leader raising one leg to stab down, the razor sharp metal gleaming in the light.
And then there was a flash and roar of thunder.
Dazzled, Terri had to blink her eyes a few times before she could see what had happened. The robot closest to her had been flung back, a hole blown clear through its body. The second robot was backing off, the useless gun pointing at someone behind Terri. There was another flash and blast of thunder, and that robot was flung back, literally blown in half.
"That was close," a familiar voice said.
Terri blinked as she twisted around to see who her savior had been. The figure was about the same size as Terri, a hood obscuring its features, holding a short, bulky gun with some sort of drum underneath it.
"Mike?" she finally said in a squeak.
"Well, I'm a Mike," he said, pulling back the hood to reveal a familiar face.
It is! It is Mike! Terri thought as she scrambled to her feet. The blue eyes, the curly brown hair, it was Mike. Sure, he wasn't wearing the clothes he wore when they used to go to the mall before they'd moved to the new neighborhood, but it was Mike.
"Mike!" she squealed. "You're here! Someone survived! What happened! What happened to your dad, what happened to Mom!" her voice started scaling up. "I woke up and everyone was gone! Everything was wrecked and I can't find Mom and the mall vanished and what's happening!"
Suddenly, Terri was screaming, tears rolling down her face.
Mike lifted his weapon and backed off away from her, other hand raised placating."Terri, Terri!" he said. "I'll tell you what happened…" He licked his lips once, looking around. "But you have to come with me. We made a lot of noise and anti-infantry spiders aren't the only thing that could be in this town— they're not even the worst things we could run into. I was heading into downtown to get something but now the whole place is stirred up…" he shook his head. "We've gotta go, now."
"I-" Terri's voice cut off as she heard something from deeper within the ruined town. Something that sounded like a heavy object moving, or being moved. "Okay," she said. Terri took a deep breath, feeling an odd sense of calm clamping down on her panic. "Is there anyone else with you?"
"Nope! Just me!" Mike said with a grin. "C'mon!" without any further words, he turned and started walking back the way he had come from.
"Mike," Terri said as she followed him. "Where are you staying? What happened to everyone else!"
"You don't know?" Mike asked. "You really don't know?"
"Of course I don't!" Terri snapped. "I fixed dinner for Mom and went to bed and then" —she waved her hands frantically— "this happened!"
"Wait—you really had a mom?"
Terri blinked in surprise and opened her mouth to shout of Mike. What type of comment was that? But then she paused. Mike didn't sound snarky… He sounded surprised…
What's wrong with him?
"Mike," Terri said. "You came over to my house to play, remember"
"Oh, boy." Mike ran a hand through his disordered hair and frowned. "This is going to be hard. C'mon, let's get back to my place before I say anything else."
"Sure…" Terri said doubtfully as she followed Mike. They moved quickly, taking a different road then the one Terri had came in from. Terri strained her ears to hear any sound of pursuit, but it seemed like the two robots had been alone. As they walked, the dead city fell behind them, the buildings, what ones remained intact, becoming smaller, mostly shops and store houses. Then they they came to a place where the forest was starting to reconquer the city, bushes and small trees rising through the cracked pavement and burned out buildings. Terri saw an owl perched on top of the twisted remains of a big truck. It stared at her for a few moments, before hooting and taking off, soon vanishing into the growing dark.
Mike set a fast pace as they entered the forest that surrounded the city. "You want to stay off the roads," Mike said. "Some of the robots patrol them, and then you've got mines, even killer swarms. They're not safe."
"I didn't run into anything…" Terri said.
"You didn't stick around very long," Mike said and turned back to look at Terri, his face sober. "If you went back now you might find that you woke something up…"
Maybe that's why nobody came to get the bodies… Terri thought. Then she shivered. That was dumb. The reason nobody came to get the bodies was that they were… "Mike, where is everyone else?"
"The humans? They're all dead. I haven't seen any for, oh, years…" Mike said without slackening his pace.
Tara didn't stop walking as she digested the words. Years? Mike, have you gone crazy? Mike didn't look any older than she was. Not to mention that Mike was a human.
But on the other hand, the city did look like years had gone by. Terri thought about the buildings. Some of them had been burned down, but she hadn't been any smell of new smoke. To say nothing of the skeletons, rusted vehicles and the trees growing through the pavement…
But how could she have survived sleeping for years?
They kept walking for most of the rest of the night. Mike varied between chattering about the world, though he was oddly light about the details of their earlier life together, while Terri remained silent, thinking about what she'd seen.
Mike was serious about avoiding the roads. As they kept walking, the forest rose around them, little streams and brooks making their chuckling way through the wooded lands. The half-moon in the now cloudless sky left her with enough light to see by, giving the terrain an ghostly look to it. Terri saw only a few signs that humanity had ever lived here—a broken down shack, a crashed military aircraft, vines and moss reclaiming it for the forest, what looked like an old footpath with a rusted and bent safety rail.
But all old. All overgrown.
And it didn't make much sense, because Terri had remembered cities, big cities and interstates. Surely everything couldn't be gone.
"We're getting close," Mike said.
"To what?"
"Home."
"Out here?" Terri frowned. "Why not closer?"
"Just about every big city has hunter drones in it or worse. They attack anything that gets too close." Mike told her. "But they ignore stuff out here, well, unless you're real unlucky."
"Oh," Terri said, then blinked as she looked up into the dark sky. There was something up there, glinting against the light of the moon. "Mike, there's an airplane up there."
"Yeah," Mike said, following her gaze. "Real high up. Probably a robot bomber, going off the bomb some old base." He shrugged. "The bombers don't seem to change their targets, so it's easy to avoid them."
Terri opened her mouth, then closed it without saying anything.
What was there to say? She'd gone to sleep with Mom in the living room and woke up to…this. Everything different, everything gone.
Mom was gone. Terri sniffled, dragging her forearm across her face to get the tears out of her eyes.
Finally, they came to the opening of a deep valley, its sides covered with trees and overgrown buildings. Terri blinked at that. These buildings looked older then the city or her home.
They also didn't look like they had been blown up or burned or otherwise attacked. They just looked old and abandoned. Like a graveyard, the buildings gleaming like headstones in the soft moonlight. Terri shivered.
"Welcome to my home!" Mike said with an expansive gesture.
Terri looked over at Mike fought a grin. At least he was normal. He'd always loved those big, wide arm gestures. Once he'd broken one of Mom's drinking glasses.
Mike led Terri down into the valley, while the setting disk of the moon fell behind the valley wall and plunged the depths of the valley into a dim murk.
Terri found herself getting closer to Mike. The empty windows of the abandoned buildings, mixed in with the dark woods, were in their own way just as ominous as the ruined city had been. The buildings looked like the skeletons of great, dead beast, the dark windows forming its eye sockets.
"What happened here," Terri asked. "Was it… like the city?"
"Nah," Mike said as he picked his way through the growing dark. "This place was abandoned a long time before the fighting started. Just not so many people anymore, I guess. That's what makes it so safe though—it's not even on the map for most of the drones… and here we are!" he said as he came to a door and pulled it open.
"C'mon," Mike said. "We can turn on the lights once we get the door closed."
"I thought you said nothing comes here."
"Sure, but it's better to not take any chances," Mike said with a grin.
Terri followed him inside, a dubious expression on her face. Mike waited until the door was closed, plunging the chamber into a pitch darkness that even Terri's eyes had a problem seeing through. Then he reached up and turned on an LED lantern, the illumination revealing Mike's room.
Or lair. There were dozens of racks of equipment, some of them fairly obvious, such as the racked guns by the door. Others looked like tools or just plain junk. Another rack held books, while clothes were strewn here and there in disordered piles.
Terri sighed. If there was anything that had stayed the same, it had to be the fact that Mike could be really messy.
"How did you get all of this stuff?" she asked.
"There's more of it downstairs," Mike said. "But like I told you, I had time to get it. Years in fact."
"Mike," Terri said, putting her hands on her hips. "Stop being an idiot. If you had years to collect all of this stuff, you wouldn't still be a kid."
"I'm not," Mike said. "I haven't been a kid…" his voice trailed off.
"What, you're a ghost?" Terri asked, trying to sound funny.
Except… What if he really is a ghost? Granted, none of the ghost stories Terri had heard involved kids with guns, but…
"No. You'd have to be human to be a ghost… and I'm not that," Mike said, his voice quiet and sad. "And neither are you. Because I may be a Mike, but I'm not the Mike you knew and you're not any of the Terri's I knew."
Chapter 3
- Location
- California
"What?" Terri asked, trying to process what Mike had said. "What are you talking about?"
Mike paused and ran one hand through his hair. It was an odd gesture. Terri had never seen Mike do that before. "Look, how long did you sleep?"
"I…I dunno," Terri said. "A long time."
"Long enough for the house to fall apart. Long enough for all of this," Mike gestured at the world around them. "To happen. And you… slept?" He looked at Terri, eyes bright in the dim light of the room. "Do you even believe that? A human would have starved."
"Then why didn't I starve?"
"Because you had shut down for the night, and when nobody showed up to wake you up, you went into a long-term hibernation mode… And when your reserves ran too low for that, you went into an emergency wake up cycle. That's so that you don't just die even if your owner—"
"Mom!" Terri snapped.
"Owner." Mike was staring at her, his face grim. "Owner, Terri." He rummaged through a battered filing cabinet for a few moments and then came up with a pamphlet. "Here."
Terri looked at the pamphlet for a moment, then blinked in shock.
What was she doing on the front of the pamphlet, and why was she wearing a poofy pink dress that she was certain she'd never worn in her life? Not only that, but her hair was different— brown, not black and curly instead of her long, straight hair…
But it was her…
Numbly, Terri started reading the words underneath it. At first they just didn't seem to make any sense. But then she found herself looking at the words, and the odd symbols underneath them.
"A child companion is the perfect thing for the childless professional who missed out on a family or the older relative who needs looking after…" Terri fell silent as she read the words, flipping the page to another image— a humanoid figure, all shiny metal, looking like a modified human skeleton.
"This is—" Terri fell silent.
Mike looked over and grinned."Oh yeah, that's what you look like before they put the outer flesh on. We've all got an internal reservoir of cells so even if we get hurt, we can regenerate the outer layer, but the flesh and hair is grown right after the buyer decides what he wants you to look like. They can't change the skeletal features, but facial features, hair, skin tone—those can all be modified to order."
Terri didn't pay any attention to Mike's words.
An entire range of companion designs, representing the most advanced creative artificial intelligence system ever designed, and the only one legal for general use…
"This… this can't be real," Terri finally said. "Mike, this isn't funny anymore."
"It ain't," Mike agreed. "But you can't help it…" he continued. "If Tom was right, you'll start remembering stuff now…"
"Remembering? Remembering?" Terri started to shout but then she…
Remembered…
"Right…" the bored voice filled Terri's ears. "Start up sequence and the self-test are done. What's your name?
"I'm Terri!" she chirped.
I never sounded like that! Terri thought.
"That doesn't sound like any 12-year-old I've ever heard," another voice said, almost as if was responding to her thoughts.
"Yeah, well this isn't a 12-year-old, it's an AI and right now it's about 20 seconds old. The whole point of wasting an AI on these things is that they pattern after their owners. We just give 'em enough information to adapt their mind-seed around so when they develop a unique personality its the one we want, with the framework of base memories to help them turn out like their owners like…"
"Bet the army would love this," the other voice said.
"Bet you'll get fired with that kind of talk. These things are AIs, Jake. Intelligent, they even have free will, which is why we keep checking up on 'em. Nobody's gonna be stupid enough to give that to something with guns." There was a pause, then the voice continued. "Okay, here you go, basic information and owner imprint… now."
Abruptly, Terri remembered the rush of information. Mom… No, her buyer… What she looked like, what she enjoyed doing, the hobbies she thought would be perfect for a girl… Terri's love of drawing…
Everything.
Terri found herself stumbling back, the pamphlet falling from her hands. "No," she murmured. "It…"
"Search your feelings…" Mike said in an odd voice, a grin on his face. "You know it to be true. Seriously, you know it now that the block is removed. Tom said they put that in after some people tried to use their companions as a way to fake someone being human. So the right sequence of symbols along with an RFID chip embedded in the paper triggers a data-dump. I wouldn't know how," he continued, his grin still present.
"I… why aren't I freaking?" Terri finally asked.
"We don't have the same sort of brain as humans did?" Mike replied. "And simulating being a brat is one thing, but actually freaking out if there's a fire? I don't think anyone would want their property to do that."
Now the smile was gone.
Terri looked down. Now that the memories had rushed in, it made sense.
I wasn't Mom's daughter. I was her caregiver. The carefully prepared meals, checking in on Mom, the talks with Doctor Simmonds…and the way Doctor Simmonds treated her, politely but with that odd reserve… like he was talking to a…
Piece of equipment.
"Who… who told you?" Terri finally asked. Terri. If I can even use that name anymore. Absently, she wondered how a real girl would be reacting right now. Probably not well, if the movies she'd seen were any clue. Terri remembered thinking about how foolish those kids had been, how they had done stuff that Terri and her friends would never do.
And you were right, just for the wrong reasons. Terri and her friends would never behave as irresponsibly as a real kid because they weren't real children. Terri felt sick. How many of her thoughts and feelings were hers and how many had just been put into her? Was there a switch somewhere that could make her someone else?
"I didn't need to be told," Mike said. "I was the office display!" He did an effortless backflip, landing on his feet before raising his hands to an invisible crowd. "Come on everyone, see Mike! The Amazing AI, I cook, I play basketball like the kid you were too busy to have would have, I'll never grow up and go off to college! Have your kids left you, or were you too busy to have kids, and now you're getting older and weaker and facing the end alone? Don't worry! You too can have a Mike! I'll be nice and fun and tell you I love you and never leave you and pretend I'm just like a real kid! Don't worry, we have a payment plan for all incomes."
"Stop it," Terri said said softly. She felt like she couldn't breath.
"Why?" he asked. "It's true."
"I—just stop it," Terri said, realizing there were tears trickling down her cheeks. Are they real? She missed Mom. But Mom hadn't missed her—not enough to come get her.
"Fine," Mike said. "But don't worry, I knew more than you did, and when the shop closed they let me help clean up and stuff. Tom played poker with me, and told me more than he was supposed to tell me, but I wasn't ever anything more than a neat toy to him, either. After all, he didn't come back." Mike sounded angry—no, Mike sounded hurt, Terri realized.
"What happened?" Terri asked, gesturing around. "If you were here, if you were awake…"
"Things…" Mike paused. "Things started to get worse. Nobody was dumb enough to give a war machine a true AI… but that just meant they wouldn't ask if it was a good idea to follow orders. Tom told me that the new minifactories and printers were letting anyone build weapons…and then…" he shrugged. "I don't know. It was night, everyone had gone home and I had just shut down… and suddenly I woke up to fire and screams. I barely got out of the city before it was destroyed." He shook his head. "I waited as long as I could. Tom said I was his friend, after all, he taught me how to play poker…" Mike grinned, "but they didn't play with me that much, since I always won." Then the grin vanished. "But he… he never came back. None of them did." With those words, all of the energy went out of Mike and he just sat, hands in his lap. "None of them came back for me."
"What if someone makes me another person," Terri murmured, still thinking about that switch.
"Oh, they can't," Mike said. "Tom explained it to me—our brains aren't just software, they're hardware. They change, just like a human brain, and that's what makes us true AIs. But they couldn't just erase a brain and go back to the factory settings."
"Oh," Terri said, then blinked. "But what if someone didn't want their…" her mind flinched. "Their companion any more? I'd know I wasn't their kid, not if I was remembering M-my last owner."
"That's what recycling is for," Mike said in a flat voice. "Tom didn't tell me about that. I found out when I was rummaging through the place, after the war started. They can keep the body, they just remove the brain and… dispose of it."
"They killed us?" Terri said in shock. Too much, this is too much, her brain gibbered to her.
"You can't kill what isn't alive," Mike told her as he sat down. "But hey, jokes on them. We're here, they're not."
"What were you doing?" Terri finally asked.
"Oh, well, you know, living forever is sort of boring when you do it alone. I always tie at solitaire, and it's hard to play basketball if there isn't another team. When I talk to myself, I always get into arguments and start giving myself the silent treatment."
Terri blinked at that. Is Mike… Suddenly there were other thoughts, other memories in her mind, warning her of the possible consequences of long-term isolation, of the need to make certain that Mom never felt too lonely… Now that she knew what she was, evidently her mind didn't feel the need to disguise them as an odd urge to walk in and talk to Mom any more. Now it was to prevent Mom—no, her owner from feeling lonely. Terri's feelings were unimportant.
She tasted iron, and suddenly realized that she had bitten down on her lip until she had drawn blood. The taste and the pain brought her back to the present.
Terri shook her head."So you want company."
"Yeah," Mike said. "And I've been tracking the stores…" He sighed, and gestured around the cluttered room. "But most of them were destroyed. I found some junk, but nobody active. I was heading into the city to check another shop when I heard you having your little problem."
"But if we're ro-not humans, why aren't there more of us?" Terri finally asked.
"Most of us were in places that got hit, and to the drones, we'd probably count as possible enemies."
"Enemies of what?" Terri finally said. "Of who?"
"Anyone." Mike looked at a particularly nasty looking gun. "I didn't find out everything, but I mean, I've been walking around for a long time, and well… by the time the war started everyone could live on their own— a neighborhood could use a fusion furnace and a multi-fac to build… I dunno, anything. Tom said that they kept trying to keep illegal blueprints and templates off the web, but it was impossible— and with drones, even dumb drones, you didn't have to know how to fight. And you didn't have to bother to live with anyone else— you could just live with all of your friends and family and that was it."
"But it wasn't like that…not with Mom…"
"Still with the "Mom." Terri, how do you know what the world was like outside of where you lived?"
"I went—" No I didn't. Those were memories. The mall was supposed to be close to home… and there was nothing like that anywhere near home. "I don't know."
"Yeah," Mike said and shook his head. "It's not like anyone was writing stuff after everything fell apart, and the web probably went down five seconds after someone used the first virus or pulse bomb…" Looking over at Terri he made a gesture, encompassing the world outside of the room. "But if everyone had that stuff, then once someone started fighting, everyone would. You couldn't wait and see who won, because then you might be facing the winner and everything he had. And if you were fighting and someone next door was trying to keep out of it, well, maybe they were just waiting until you were beaten down before they attacked you. Or maybe everyone had their robots on a hair trigger so even if they didn't want to fight, the robots weren't taking any chances, and then it was too late to tell them to stop. The big cities were still important, still had a lot of people, so every one was fighting over them…"
"And the people…"
"People are a lot more fragile than robots, and what's easier, killing a big war machine, or killing the person telling it what to do… Of course once they're dead, nobody is left to tell the big war machine to stop. Morons." Contempt filled Mike's voice. Contempt and something else—misery.
He's been alone. For however many years since the end. With nobody to talk to.
"So all the people are gone," Terri said.
"Looks like it. I guess even the ones that didn't fight, just got… caught in the middle."
"And you don't know how to make more of us."
"Not a clue. Our brains were built away from the stores and Tom never told us where they came from."
"But we had to walk a long way. How do we get them back here…" Terri asked.
"Simple. The bodies are complete in the shop. All we have to do is wake them up, get them out of the shipping units, and we can come back here and then… Party!"
Terri frowned as she stared at Mike's grinning face. That didn't seem to be much of a plan. On the other hand, it was a choice between that and just staying alone, her and Mike… For however long they lived.
We live. How long do we live? Terri thought with surprise. Mike still looked like a kid… for all she knew they might live forever, or their might be a clock ticking down in their brains that would turn them off without warning.
That wasn't a comforting thought.
"Fine," Terri said. "Show me what I need to do and lets go back and find the rest of the merchandise."
Mike paused and ran one hand through his hair. It was an odd gesture. Terri had never seen Mike do that before. "Look, how long did you sleep?"
"I…I dunno," Terri said. "A long time."
"Long enough for the house to fall apart. Long enough for all of this," Mike gestured at the world around them. "To happen. And you… slept?" He looked at Terri, eyes bright in the dim light of the room. "Do you even believe that? A human would have starved."
"Then why didn't I starve?"
"Because you had shut down for the night, and when nobody showed up to wake you up, you went into a long-term hibernation mode… And when your reserves ran too low for that, you went into an emergency wake up cycle. That's so that you don't just die even if your owner—"
"Mom!" Terri snapped.
"Owner." Mike was staring at her, his face grim. "Owner, Terri." He rummaged through a battered filing cabinet for a few moments and then came up with a pamphlet. "Here."
Terri looked at the pamphlet for a moment, then blinked in shock.
What was she doing on the front of the pamphlet, and why was she wearing a poofy pink dress that she was certain she'd never worn in her life? Not only that, but her hair was different— brown, not black and curly instead of her long, straight hair…
But it was her…
Numbly, Terri started reading the words underneath it. At first they just didn't seem to make any sense. But then she found herself looking at the words, and the odd symbols underneath them.
"A child companion is the perfect thing for the childless professional who missed out on a family or the older relative who needs looking after…" Terri fell silent as she read the words, flipping the page to another image— a humanoid figure, all shiny metal, looking like a modified human skeleton.
"This is—" Terri fell silent.
Mike looked over and grinned."Oh yeah, that's what you look like before they put the outer flesh on. We've all got an internal reservoir of cells so even if we get hurt, we can regenerate the outer layer, but the flesh and hair is grown right after the buyer decides what he wants you to look like. They can't change the skeletal features, but facial features, hair, skin tone—those can all be modified to order."
Terri didn't pay any attention to Mike's words.
An entire range of companion designs, representing the most advanced creative artificial intelligence system ever designed, and the only one legal for general use…
"This… this can't be real," Terri finally said. "Mike, this isn't funny anymore."
"It ain't," Mike agreed. "But you can't help it…" he continued. "If Tom was right, you'll start remembering stuff now…"
"Remembering? Remembering?" Terri started to shout but then she…
Remembered…
"Right…" the bored voice filled Terri's ears. "Start up sequence and the self-test are done. What's your name?
"I'm Terri!" she chirped.
I never sounded like that! Terri thought.
"That doesn't sound like any 12-year-old I've ever heard," another voice said, almost as if was responding to her thoughts.
"Yeah, well this isn't a 12-year-old, it's an AI and right now it's about 20 seconds old. The whole point of wasting an AI on these things is that they pattern after their owners. We just give 'em enough information to adapt their mind-seed around so when they develop a unique personality its the one we want, with the framework of base memories to help them turn out like their owners like…"
"Bet the army would love this," the other voice said.
"Bet you'll get fired with that kind of talk. These things are AIs, Jake. Intelligent, they even have free will, which is why we keep checking up on 'em. Nobody's gonna be stupid enough to give that to something with guns." There was a pause, then the voice continued. "Okay, here you go, basic information and owner imprint… now."
Abruptly, Terri remembered the rush of information. Mom… No, her buyer… What she looked like, what she enjoyed doing, the hobbies she thought would be perfect for a girl… Terri's love of drawing…
Everything.
Terri found herself stumbling back, the pamphlet falling from her hands. "No," she murmured. "It…"
"Search your feelings…" Mike said in an odd voice, a grin on his face. "You know it to be true. Seriously, you know it now that the block is removed. Tom said they put that in after some people tried to use their companions as a way to fake someone being human. So the right sequence of symbols along with an RFID chip embedded in the paper triggers a data-dump. I wouldn't know how," he continued, his grin still present.
"I… why aren't I freaking?" Terri finally asked.
"We don't have the same sort of brain as humans did?" Mike replied. "And simulating being a brat is one thing, but actually freaking out if there's a fire? I don't think anyone would want their property to do that."
Now the smile was gone.
Terri looked down. Now that the memories had rushed in, it made sense.
I wasn't Mom's daughter. I was her caregiver. The carefully prepared meals, checking in on Mom, the talks with Doctor Simmonds…and the way Doctor Simmonds treated her, politely but with that odd reserve… like he was talking to a…
Piece of equipment.
"Who… who told you?" Terri finally asked. Terri. If I can even use that name anymore. Absently, she wondered how a real girl would be reacting right now. Probably not well, if the movies she'd seen were any clue. Terri remembered thinking about how foolish those kids had been, how they had done stuff that Terri and her friends would never do.
And you were right, just for the wrong reasons. Terri and her friends would never behave as irresponsibly as a real kid because they weren't real children. Terri felt sick. How many of her thoughts and feelings were hers and how many had just been put into her? Was there a switch somewhere that could make her someone else?
"I didn't need to be told," Mike said. "I was the office display!" He did an effortless backflip, landing on his feet before raising his hands to an invisible crowd. "Come on everyone, see Mike! The Amazing AI, I cook, I play basketball like the kid you were too busy to have would have, I'll never grow up and go off to college! Have your kids left you, or were you too busy to have kids, and now you're getting older and weaker and facing the end alone? Don't worry! You too can have a Mike! I'll be nice and fun and tell you I love you and never leave you and pretend I'm just like a real kid! Don't worry, we have a payment plan for all incomes."
"Stop it," Terri said said softly. She felt like she couldn't breath.
"Why?" he asked. "It's true."
"I—just stop it," Terri said, realizing there were tears trickling down her cheeks. Are they real? She missed Mom. But Mom hadn't missed her—not enough to come get her.
"Fine," Mike said. "But don't worry, I knew more than you did, and when the shop closed they let me help clean up and stuff. Tom played poker with me, and told me more than he was supposed to tell me, but I wasn't ever anything more than a neat toy to him, either. After all, he didn't come back." Mike sounded angry—no, Mike sounded hurt, Terri realized.
"What happened?" Terri asked, gesturing around. "If you were here, if you were awake…"
"Things…" Mike paused. "Things started to get worse. Nobody was dumb enough to give a war machine a true AI… but that just meant they wouldn't ask if it was a good idea to follow orders. Tom told me that the new minifactories and printers were letting anyone build weapons…and then…" he shrugged. "I don't know. It was night, everyone had gone home and I had just shut down… and suddenly I woke up to fire and screams. I barely got out of the city before it was destroyed." He shook his head. "I waited as long as I could. Tom said I was his friend, after all, he taught me how to play poker…" Mike grinned, "but they didn't play with me that much, since I always won." Then the grin vanished. "But he… he never came back. None of them did." With those words, all of the energy went out of Mike and he just sat, hands in his lap. "None of them came back for me."
"What if someone makes me another person," Terri murmured, still thinking about that switch.
"Oh, they can't," Mike said. "Tom explained it to me—our brains aren't just software, they're hardware. They change, just like a human brain, and that's what makes us true AIs. But they couldn't just erase a brain and go back to the factory settings."
"Oh," Terri said, then blinked. "But what if someone didn't want their…" her mind flinched. "Their companion any more? I'd know I wasn't their kid, not if I was remembering M-my last owner."
"That's what recycling is for," Mike said in a flat voice. "Tom didn't tell me about that. I found out when I was rummaging through the place, after the war started. They can keep the body, they just remove the brain and… dispose of it."
"They killed us?" Terri said in shock. Too much, this is too much, her brain gibbered to her.
"You can't kill what isn't alive," Mike told her as he sat down. "But hey, jokes on them. We're here, they're not."
"What were you doing?" Terri finally asked.
"Oh, well, you know, living forever is sort of boring when you do it alone. I always tie at solitaire, and it's hard to play basketball if there isn't another team. When I talk to myself, I always get into arguments and start giving myself the silent treatment."
Terri blinked at that. Is Mike… Suddenly there were other thoughts, other memories in her mind, warning her of the possible consequences of long-term isolation, of the need to make certain that Mom never felt too lonely… Now that she knew what she was, evidently her mind didn't feel the need to disguise them as an odd urge to walk in and talk to Mom any more. Now it was to prevent Mom—no, her owner from feeling lonely. Terri's feelings were unimportant.
She tasted iron, and suddenly realized that she had bitten down on her lip until she had drawn blood. The taste and the pain brought her back to the present.
Terri shook her head."So you want company."
"Yeah," Mike said. "And I've been tracking the stores…" He sighed, and gestured around the cluttered room. "But most of them were destroyed. I found some junk, but nobody active. I was heading into the city to check another shop when I heard you having your little problem."
"But if we're ro-not humans, why aren't there more of us?" Terri finally asked.
"Most of us were in places that got hit, and to the drones, we'd probably count as possible enemies."
"Enemies of what?" Terri finally said. "Of who?"
"Anyone." Mike looked at a particularly nasty looking gun. "I didn't find out everything, but I mean, I've been walking around for a long time, and well… by the time the war started everyone could live on their own— a neighborhood could use a fusion furnace and a multi-fac to build… I dunno, anything. Tom said that they kept trying to keep illegal blueprints and templates off the web, but it was impossible— and with drones, even dumb drones, you didn't have to know how to fight. And you didn't have to bother to live with anyone else— you could just live with all of your friends and family and that was it."
"But it wasn't like that…not with Mom…"
"Still with the "Mom." Terri, how do you know what the world was like outside of where you lived?"
"I went—" No I didn't. Those were memories. The mall was supposed to be close to home… and there was nothing like that anywhere near home. "I don't know."
"Yeah," Mike said and shook his head. "It's not like anyone was writing stuff after everything fell apart, and the web probably went down five seconds after someone used the first virus or pulse bomb…" Looking over at Terri he made a gesture, encompassing the world outside of the room. "But if everyone had that stuff, then once someone started fighting, everyone would. You couldn't wait and see who won, because then you might be facing the winner and everything he had. And if you were fighting and someone next door was trying to keep out of it, well, maybe they were just waiting until you were beaten down before they attacked you. Or maybe everyone had their robots on a hair trigger so even if they didn't want to fight, the robots weren't taking any chances, and then it was too late to tell them to stop. The big cities were still important, still had a lot of people, so every one was fighting over them…"
"And the people…"
"People are a lot more fragile than robots, and what's easier, killing a big war machine, or killing the person telling it what to do… Of course once they're dead, nobody is left to tell the big war machine to stop. Morons." Contempt filled Mike's voice. Contempt and something else—misery.
He's been alone. For however many years since the end. With nobody to talk to.
"So all the people are gone," Terri said.
"Looks like it. I guess even the ones that didn't fight, just got… caught in the middle."
"And you don't know how to make more of us."
"Not a clue. Our brains were built away from the stores and Tom never told us where they came from."
"But we had to walk a long way. How do we get them back here…" Terri asked.
"Simple. The bodies are complete in the shop. All we have to do is wake them up, get them out of the shipping units, and we can come back here and then… Party!"
Terri frowned as she stared at Mike's grinning face. That didn't seem to be much of a plan. On the other hand, it was a choice between that and just staying alone, her and Mike… For however long they lived.
We live. How long do we live? Terri thought with surprise. Mike still looked like a kid… for all she knew they might live forever, or their might be a clock ticking down in their brains that would turn them off without warning.
That wasn't a comforting thought.
"Fine," Terri said. "Show me what I need to do and lets go back and find the rest of the merchandise."
Chapter 4
- Location
- California
Terri had never handled a gun before, nor had she worn armor. Mike had found some old suits armor and had modified them for his own frame. Terri was close enough to wear it, even though she had to cinch in the waist.
"It won't protect you from getting shot," Mike cautioned. "But it may stop fragments—we're tougher than humans, but not that much tougher."
Our internal body is made up of inorganic metals and ceramics, covered by the flesh mask. More and more thoughts like that had been filling Terri's mind, as if now that the secret was out, a switch had been thrown. She knew why she didn't eat that much now, since her advanced fuel cells provided her with all the energy she needed, using the food as fuel, while the rest of it went to the internal stem-cell reservoirs that were used to regenerate her outer surface. According to her memories, her inorganic parts were capable of "limited self-repair to counter regular wear."
Terri decided she wasn't about to see if regular wear included getting shot.
The gun was a different matter. Terri felt an instinctive revulsion for it. Good girls didn't carry a gun.
"What's wrong?" Mike asked.
"It's…" Terri gestured at the ugly looking weapon. "I don't like it.
"That's your programming talking," he said. "They wanted a sweet girl who played with dolls and didn't act like a tomboy, so you don't like guns. But you need one."
Terri shook her head. She hated the feeling that her dislike might have been something put in her.
But had it… Mom had disliked guns, disliked violence. In fact, Terri didn't remember really disliking them until…
Until I had spent a lot of time talking with Mom.
"No, Mom just didn't like them," Terri replied. Cutting Mike off, she continued in an annoyed voice. "You said it yourself. We're intelligent, which means we can form our own opinions, and I think Mom was right, especially"—Terri made a world-encompassing gesture—"since it seems like mankind managed to kill itself off."
"Well you still need one," Mike said.
"I know," Terri sighed, holding the ugly device up to the light. "So, why this?"
"It's a gauss gun," Mike told her. "See the magazine? It has a spool of wire that feeds into the breech. The gun knows how to cut it, depending on what you're shooting at. But there's enough wire so that you can practically fire the gun all day before you run out of ammunition." He gestured at the lower, wider barrel. "That's a guided grenade launcher—you use that if something is too big for the gauss gun."
"And if it's too big for the grenade launcher?"
"Run. But most really big stuff was destroyed a long time ago."
"Great," Terri muttered to herself as she put on the light goggles that provided her with targeting information for the gun. When she pointed the gun at something, a dot was projected, highlighting what it would hit.
Mike was loading up his backpack, along with one for Terri.
"I'm surprised you don't have bigger guns," Terri said. "You alw—" No. That wasn't this Mike. The Mike I knew loved watching Immortal Soldier, but he isn't this Mike. He's probably dead or destroyed or whatever we should call it.
"When I first was on my own, I did," Mike said. "But bigger guns ended up attracting more stuff and I almost got killed before I realized that."
"Well, this is big enough for me," Terri said, holding the gun. Even with her artificial muscles, it seemed heavy. She reached into her own backpack and took out the ceramic kitten, carefully putting it up in a safe place.
"Leaving it?"
"I'd hate it if it got broken on the road," Terri said. The last bit of my old life. Terri shook her head. Old life or old lie, and she knew what Mike would say.
She just didn't know what she would say.
"Well, shall we go?" Terri finally asked. The night was giving way to morning and there wasn't much reason to wait, at least none that Terri could see.
"Yeah." Mike said. "Let' go, and maybe this will be the city where I get lucky."
In the light of dawn the buildings surrounding Mike's lair didn't look quite as terrifying as they had the night before. There was a light wind coming from the north, keeping things pleasantly cool as the two travelers headed back the city.
Terri spent the first part of their journey listening to Mike detail his earlier travels. Dead,or worse, dying cities, everything from bio-engineered monsters to robotic killing machines, and never in all of his travels, any sense that it was under anyone's control.
"Half those bombers we see probably just come from bases full of skeletons," Mike said as he munched away on a protein bar. "I bet it'd look pretty creepy."
Terri shuddered. Creepy was putting it mildly. But Mike was probably right. If there had been anyone in those bases, they would have noticed that their bombers were just dropping bombs on empty ruins.
Mike had made a few detours, warning Terri that sometimes it was better to vary your path,lest you bump into something that had been following you or ran over something you had woken up the first time. Listening to him, Terri found herself gripping the unfamiliar bulk of her gun tightly, thinking about clicking, shiny, creatures waiting to slash her to bits.
At one point, they had stopped by the shattered span of an old highway, sitting in the shade provided by the remains of the main support structures. Terri noticed that there was an older bridge made of iron girders that had also been blown up, its wreckage mixed with the newer bridge's ruins.
Centuries of work, and they ended it in what, a day, a week? A year? Terri looked up into the sky, but this time there were no robot bombers or fighters in the sky. Mike had said that they were getting rarer. Terri had a feeling she knew why—those craft would require a base, and a base could be targeted by other idiot savant killing machines. Probably more than a few orders given by their dead commanders stressed the need to go after the enemy bases.
And I wonder how long it will be before the sky goes back to only having birds and bugs flying in it?
"So these neighborhoods," Terri finally said. "The ones you told me about, what are they like?"
"I didn't go into many of them—a lot of them have active defenses, and the ones that didn't were still pretty dangerous. They're also depressing." Terri winced at the way that this Mike, like the old Mike, didn't seem to remember you weren't supposed to talk with your mouth full. Mike finished his protein bar and took a sip of water from his canteen. "I got into one, looking to see if any of our kind were there, but everyone was… well the bodies were there, men, women, kids, pets, everything. They looked like they had just dropped dead and turned into mummies. Even the robots were shut down, like whatever had killed the people had also killed them, even though it shouldn't have. I couldn't figure out what had happened and I didn't want to get killed so I ran away as fast as I could." Mike shrugged. "Besides, there wasn't anything in there for me."
Terri shivered. Well, you asked. Suddenly, she wanted to change the subject. "So what do we do when we find others?" Terri asked.
"Go back home," Mike said. "We can make a town, like the humans had, play baseball, that kind of stuff."
Terri blinked. The idea of having others around, people—well, other AI's to talk to wasn't a bad idea, but it felt…
Incomplete. She did remember play—No… you remember playing baseball with your friends, and maybe those are real memories, or maybe they were just something put into your mind…
On the other hand, since right now there were just the two of them, maybe this wasn't something she needed to worry about. "Right," Terri said. "Well, first we need to find someone else."
"Yeah. They'll probably be in their caskets—"
"Their what?"
"Oh, you wouldn't remember that," Mike said with a dismissive gesture. "Everyone starts in a casket. That's where they program in the "look" of the AI, you know, skin, hair, that kind of stuff. The casket keeps you ready so nobody has to worry about wear and tear before you're bought.
"And it's called a casket…"
"Because it looks like a casket," Mike said, his look clearly saying "you idiot."
"But you can start them up, I mean, turn them on."
"Sure, Tom showed me how to do that. It's actually really easy," Mike gestured in the direction of the city. "It takes about an hour to wake one of us up, and the caskets are too big to move easily, so it wasn't like anyone was going to steal them."
"And we don't need the caskets later?"
"Nope," Mike said, as he capped the canteen. "That's just to get us started. It's not like you had to have a casket, right?"
"Right," Terri said, flipping her braid of dark hair over her shoulder. "Let's go."
Now that Terri knew that she was a robot—not human, never human—the fact that they had been walking for hours without feeling tired, carrying loads on their back that would have probably squashed a real kid, wasn't that surprising. They only needed a few short stops to eat and rest. Eventually, Mike led Terri from the dirt path to an old highway that was being steadily effaced by growing plants and changing seasons. Under the noon sun, they picked their way through the broken slabs and rusted out vehicles. According to Mike, he'd checked it for dangerous robots on the way into the city, so they could move faster than they could have in the woods.
I wonder why they made us so strong if we were never supposed to remember it? Terri thought to herself. Maybe it was so that we could help our owners if there was a disaster? Or maybe some owners wanted strong kids and the rest of us never needed to know about it.
As the afternoon turned to evening, Mike raised his hand and gestured at the sky."Okay, we'd better find a place to stay for the night."
"Why?" Terri asked. "It's not like we're going to get tired and we can see, especially since there's a moon out."
"We can't see as well as we could in the daytime, and we especially can't see as well as a drone or boobytrap designed to catch people at night," Mike said. "Daytime's the best time to move around, because we can see best in the daytime. The last thing we want to do is go into the city just as night hits. He gestured at a cluster of decrepit buildings ahead of them. "We can stay there. I checked them out before I ran into you."
"Are you sure they're still safe?" Terri asked, staring at the buildings. They looked like they were about to fall over, cracks running through the concrete walls and a sign tumbled against the wall where the collapsing tower had deposited it, lettering long since faded.
"Yeah," Mike said. "We're far enough away from any major concentrations that mobile robots wouldn't be hanging out here, and the other stuff sticks to where there is more cover." Mike gave Terri a sidelong look. "That's another reason why we don't want to be walking around at night. The only reason we did it on the way out here is I wanted to get away from the city as fast as possible, just in case something had decided to hunt us."
"Okay," Terri said, as Mike walked to what looked to be the only entrance that was still accessible and forced the door open with the grinding scream of rusted hinges. Terri tensed, hands tight on her gun, but nothing, organic or inorganic, came leaping out at them.
Even so, she noticed that Mike carefully checked the interior, his light picking out the wrecked furniture and dust-covered walls. A door into the back was blocked by a fallen beam.
"Are we sure the building isn't going to collapse on us?" Terri asked.
"Nah, at least not right now. If it was raining, I'd be worried," Mike said. "First year I was out, I hid in a building during a rain storm, and in the middle of the night the whole roof collapsed." He shivered. "It took me nearly a day to dig myself out and I thought I was going to die for sure."
"Great," Terri muttered. No, why would I worry when you say that… "I wonder what happened to the people here?"
"I figure it was abandoned before the war." Mike looked around at the walls. "Nobody used this place for a fortress or hid here. It was just abandoned… I bet it was falling down even then."
"No people? But why wouldn't there be any people?"
"There were always fewer people," Mike said softly. "Nobody said why, but you didn't see as many. Even before, sometimes when they took me out for advertising, you'd see parts of the city where… where there was just nobody. Empty buildings, falling apart."
"Why?" Terri asked.
"Don't know—Tom didn't talk about it much and well, by the time I got curious there wasn't exactly a net to ask about it."
"Maybe we could find something…" Terri fell silent. Mom only read murder mysteries— most of them on a tablet. Even if she had been interested, how much would survive on a tablet? And Mom had been old. Come to think of it, most of the humans, real humans, not the kids that she now knew were robots, had also been pretty old.
"Why?" Mike asked. "They're gone, I mean, it's not like they're going to come back."
"I guess," Terri said, taking off the back pack and putting it down on the ground before pulling out her sleeping pad and spreading it out on the floor. She pressed the activating stud and moments later the fabric swelled and became a comfortable mattress. Terri wasn't exhausted, not really, but it was still nice to lay down on a soft surface. She didn't know if her bones really were tired, or if it was something included to ensure she acted like a human, but she felt tired.
Granted they'd walked over 30 miles in the last several hours, so she was probably a lot better off than a human would have been.
"Should be build a fire?" Terri asked. She was a little chilly.
"Nope," Mike said. "There probably aren't any drones or other stuff out here, but if there are, a fire would make a really big heat source for them to target. Just wrap yourself up in the blanket."
"Yeah," Terri said, pulling the light survival blanket over her body. Soon she was warm, looking in the dimly lit room, the only light a single LED lantern turned down low. Next to her, Mike was an indistinct shadow, lying on his own blanket.
"So we wake them up and come back to your place," Terri said. "What then, other than partying?"
"Go out and find others," Mike said. "We can keep looking for them and there may be information about warehouses or other stuff at the store."
"Fine," Terri said. He's not getting it. "What happens when we get all of our—our kind?"
"Build a city, I guess." Mike replied, staring at the LED lantern, his eyes gleaming in the light. "Then we can… do whatever we want."
Play games? Sit around fires? Terri frowned. It didn't seem like much of a future. Mom had been retired, but she'd done things before… At least you think she did.
But what would they do? Terri didn't know. It would take time to rebuild the city, make everything they needed to live, but after that…what?
Maybe we don't have a purpose, Terri thought with a shiver. Maybe they were just the same as all the robots fighting the war for their dead masters. Left over toys, instead of left over weapons.
Terri closed her eyes, but even the small amount of sleep she needed didn't come easily that night.
"It won't protect you from getting shot," Mike cautioned. "But it may stop fragments—we're tougher than humans, but not that much tougher."
Our internal body is made up of inorganic metals and ceramics, covered by the flesh mask. More and more thoughts like that had been filling Terri's mind, as if now that the secret was out, a switch had been thrown. She knew why she didn't eat that much now, since her advanced fuel cells provided her with all the energy she needed, using the food as fuel, while the rest of it went to the internal stem-cell reservoirs that were used to regenerate her outer surface. According to her memories, her inorganic parts were capable of "limited self-repair to counter regular wear."
Terri decided she wasn't about to see if regular wear included getting shot.
The gun was a different matter. Terri felt an instinctive revulsion for it. Good girls didn't carry a gun.
"What's wrong?" Mike asked.
"It's…" Terri gestured at the ugly looking weapon. "I don't like it.
"That's your programming talking," he said. "They wanted a sweet girl who played with dolls and didn't act like a tomboy, so you don't like guns. But you need one."
Terri shook her head. She hated the feeling that her dislike might have been something put in her.
But had it… Mom had disliked guns, disliked violence. In fact, Terri didn't remember really disliking them until…
Until I had spent a lot of time talking with Mom.
"No, Mom just didn't like them," Terri replied. Cutting Mike off, she continued in an annoyed voice. "You said it yourself. We're intelligent, which means we can form our own opinions, and I think Mom was right, especially"—Terri made a world-encompassing gesture—"since it seems like mankind managed to kill itself off."
"Well you still need one," Mike said.
"I know," Terri sighed, holding the ugly device up to the light. "So, why this?"
"It's a gauss gun," Mike told her. "See the magazine? It has a spool of wire that feeds into the breech. The gun knows how to cut it, depending on what you're shooting at. But there's enough wire so that you can practically fire the gun all day before you run out of ammunition." He gestured at the lower, wider barrel. "That's a guided grenade launcher—you use that if something is too big for the gauss gun."
"And if it's too big for the grenade launcher?"
"Run. But most really big stuff was destroyed a long time ago."
"Great," Terri muttered to herself as she put on the light goggles that provided her with targeting information for the gun. When she pointed the gun at something, a dot was projected, highlighting what it would hit.
Mike was loading up his backpack, along with one for Terri.
"I'm surprised you don't have bigger guns," Terri said. "You alw—" No. That wasn't this Mike. The Mike I knew loved watching Immortal Soldier, but he isn't this Mike. He's probably dead or destroyed or whatever we should call it.
"When I first was on my own, I did," Mike said. "But bigger guns ended up attracting more stuff and I almost got killed before I realized that."
"Well, this is big enough for me," Terri said, holding the gun. Even with her artificial muscles, it seemed heavy. She reached into her own backpack and took out the ceramic kitten, carefully putting it up in a safe place.
"Leaving it?"
"I'd hate it if it got broken on the road," Terri said. The last bit of my old life. Terri shook her head. Old life or old lie, and she knew what Mike would say.
She just didn't know what she would say.
"Well, shall we go?" Terri finally asked. The night was giving way to morning and there wasn't much reason to wait, at least none that Terri could see.
"Yeah." Mike said. "Let' go, and maybe this will be the city where I get lucky."
In the light of dawn the buildings surrounding Mike's lair didn't look quite as terrifying as they had the night before. There was a light wind coming from the north, keeping things pleasantly cool as the two travelers headed back the city.
Terri spent the first part of their journey listening to Mike detail his earlier travels. Dead,or worse, dying cities, everything from bio-engineered monsters to robotic killing machines, and never in all of his travels, any sense that it was under anyone's control.
"Half those bombers we see probably just come from bases full of skeletons," Mike said as he munched away on a protein bar. "I bet it'd look pretty creepy."
Terri shuddered. Creepy was putting it mildly. But Mike was probably right. If there had been anyone in those bases, they would have noticed that their bombers were just dropping bombs on empty ruins.
Mike had made a few detours, warning Terri that sometimes it was better to vary your path,lest you bump into something that had been following you or ran over something you had woken up the first time. Listening to him, Terri found herself gripping the unfamiliar bulk of her gun tightly, thinking about clicking, shiny, creatures waiting to slash her to bits.
At one point, they had stopped by the shattered span of an old highway, sitting in the shade provided by the remains of the main support structures. Terri noticed that there was an older bridge made of iron girders that had also been blown up, its wreckage mixed with the newer bridge's ruins.
Centuries of work, and they ended it in what, a day, a week? A year? Terri looked up into the sky, but this time there were no robot bombers or fighters in the sky. Mike had said that they were getting rarer. Terri had a feeling she knew why—those craft would require a base, and a base could be targeted by other idiot savant killing machines. Probably more than a few orders given by their dead commanders stressed the need to go after the enemy bases.
And I wonder how long it will be before the sky goes back to only having birds and bugs flying in it?
"So these neighborhoods," Terri finally said. "The ones you told me about, what are they like?"
"I didn't go into many of them—a lot of them have active defenses, and the ones that didn't were still pretty dangerous. They're also depressing." Terri winced at the way that this Mike, like the old Mike, didn't seem to remember you weren't supposed to talk with your mouth full. Mike finished his protein bar and took a sip of water from his canteen. "I got into one, looking to see if any of our kind were there, but everyone was… well the bodies were there, men, women, kids, pets, everything. They looked like they had just dropped dead and turned into mummies. Even the robots were shut down, like whatever had killed the people had also killed them, even though it shouldn't have. I couldn't figure out what had happened and I didn't want to get killed so I ran away as fast as I could." Mike shrugged. "Besides, there wasn't anything in there for me."
Terri shivered. Well, you asked. Suddenly, she wanted to change the subject. "So what do we do when we find others?" Terri asked.
"Go back home," Mike said. "We can make a town, like the humans had, play baseball, that kind of stuff."
Terri blinked. The idea of having others around, people—well, other AI's to talk to wasn't a bad idea, but it felt…
Incomplete. She did remember play—No… you remember playing baseball with your friends, and maybe those are real memories, or maybe they were just something put into your mind…
On the other hand, since right now there were just the two of them, maybe this wasn't something she needed to worry about. "Right," Terri said. "Well, first we need to find someone else."
"Yeah. They'll probably be in their caskets—"
"Their what?"
"Oh, you wouldn't remember that," Mike said with a dismissive gesture. "Everyone starts in a casket. That's where they program in the "look" of the AI, you know, skin, hair, that kind of stuff. The casket keeps you ready so nobody has to worry about wear and tear before you're bought.
"And it's called a casket…"
"Because it looks like a casket," Mike said, his look clearly saying "you idiot."
"But you can start them up, I mean, turn them on."
"Sure, Tom showed me how to do that. It's actually really easy," Mike gestured in the direction of the city. "It takes about an hour to wake one of us up, and the caskets are too big to move easily, so it wasn't like anyone was going to steal them."
"And we don't need the caskets later?"
"Nope," Mike said, as he capped the canteen. "That's just to get us started. It's not like you had to have a casket, right?"
"Right," Terri said, flipping her braid of dark hair over her shoulder. "Let's go."
Now that Terri knew that she was a robot—not human, never human—the fact that they had been walking for hours without feeling tired, carrying loads on their back that would have probably squashed a real kid, wasn't that surprising. They only needed a few short stops to eat and rest. Eventually, Mike led Terri from the dirt path to an old highway that was being steadily effaced by growing plants and changing seasons. Under the noon sun, they picked their way through the broken slabs and rusted out vehicles. According to Mike, he'd checked it for dangerous robots on the way into the city, so they could move faster than they could have in the woods.
I wonder why they made us so strong if we were never supposed to remember it? Terri thought to herself. Maybe it was so that we could help our owners if there was a disaster? Or maybe some owners wanted strong kids and the rest of us never needed to know about it.
As the afternoon turned to evening, Mike raised his hand and gestured at the sky."Okay, we'd better find a place to stay for the night."
"Why?" Terri asked. "It's not like we're going to get tired and we can see, especially since there's a moon out."
"We can't see as well as we could in the daytime, and we especially can't see as well as a drone or boobytrap designed to catch people at night," Mike said. "Daytime's the best time to move around, because we can see best in the daytime. The last thing we want to do is go into the city just as night hits. He gestured at a cluster of decrepit buildings ahead of them. "We can stay there. I checked them out before I ran into you."
"Are you sure they're still safe?" Terri asked, staring at the buildings. They looked like they were about to fall over, cracks running through the concrete walls and a sign tumbled against the wall where the collapsing tower had deposited it, lettering long since faded.
"Yeah," Mike said. "We're far enough away from any major concentrations that mobile robots wouldn't be hanging out here, and the other stuff sticks to where there is more cover." Mike gave Terri a sidelong look. "That's another reason why we don't want to be walking around at night. The only reason we did it on the way out here is I wanted to get away from the city as fast as possible, just in case something had decided to hunt us."
"Okay," Terri said, as Mike walked to what looked to be the only entrance that was still accessible and forced the door open with the grinding scream of rusted hinges. Terri tensed, hands tight on her gun, but nothing, organic or inorganic, came leaping out at them.
Even so, she noticed that Mike carefully checked the interior, his light picking out the wrecked furniture and dust-covered walls. A door into the back was blocked by a fallen beam.
"Are we sure the building isn't going to collapse on us?" Terri asked.
"Nah, at least not right now. If it was raining, I'd be worried," Mike said. "First year I was out, I hid in a building during a rain storm, and in the middle of the night the whole roof collapsed." He shivered. "It took me nearly a day to dig myself out and I thought I was going to die for sure."
"Great," Terri muttered. No, why would I worry when you say that… "I wonder what happened to the people here?"
"I figure it was abandoned before the war." Mike looked around at the walls. "Nobody used this place for a fortress or hid here. It was just abandoned… I bet it was falling down even then."
"No people? But why wouldn't there be any people?"
"There were always fewer people," Mike said softly. "Nobody said why, but you didn't see as many. Even before, sometimes when they took me out for advertising, you'd see parts of the city where… where there was just nobody. Empty buildings, falling apart."
"Why?" Terri asked.
"Don't know—Tom didn't talk about it much and well, by the time I got curious there wasn't exactly a net to ask about it."
"Maybe we could find something…" Terri fell silent. Mom only read murder mysteries— most of them on a tablet. Even if she had been interested, how much would survive on a tablet? And Mom had been old. Come to think of it, most of the humans, real humans, not the kids that she now knew were robots, had also been pretty old.
"Why?" Mike asked. "They're gone, I mean, it's not like they're going to come back."
"I guess," Terri said, taking off the back pack and putting it down on the ground before pulling out her sleeping pad and spreading it out on the floor. She pressed the activating stud and moments later the fabric swelled and became a comfortable mattress. Terri wasn't exhausted, not really, but it was still nice to lay down on a soft surface. She didn't know if her bones really were tired, or if it was something included to ensure she acted like a human, but she felt tired.
Granted they'd walked over 30 miles in the last several hours, so she was probably a lot better off than a human would have been.
"Should be build a fire?" Terri asked. She was a little chilly.
"Nope," Mike said. "There probably aren't any drones or other stuff out here, but if there are, a fire would make a really big heat source for them to target. Just wrap yourself up in the blanket."
"Yeah," Terri said, pulling the light survival blanket over her body. Soon she was warm, looking in the dimly lit room, the only light a single LED lantern turned down low. Next to her, Mike was an indistinct shadow, lying on his own blanket.
"So we wake them up and come back to your place," Terri said. "What then, other than partying?"
"Go out and find others," Mike said. "We can keep looking for them and there may be information about warehouses or other stuff at the store."
"Fine," Terri said. He's not getting it. "What happens when we get all of our—our kind?"
"Build a city, I guess." Mike replied, staring at the LED lantern, his eyes gleaming in the light. "Then we can… do whatever we want."
Play games? Sit around fires? Terri frowned. It didn't seem like much of a future. Mom had been retired, but she'd done things before… At least you think she did.
But what would they do? Terri didn't know. It would take time to rebuild the city, make everything they needed to live, but after that…what?
Maybe we don't have a purpose, Terri thought with a shiver. Maybe they were just the same as all the robots fighting the war for their dead masters. Left over toys, instead of left over weapons.
Terri closed her eyes, but even the small amount of sleep she needed didn't come easily that night.
Chapter 5.1
- Location
- California
Terri woke up well before morning. Mike was already up and had turned the lantern up, its bright light picking out every crack in the age-worn walls around them.
"Breakfast?" Mike asked, handing Terri a ration bar.
Terri wrinkled her nose."One thing we're getting is a kitchen," she muttered. "I am not spending the rest of my life eating these."
"That'd be great," Mike said. "But… where would we get the food from?"
"Farms I—" Terri fell silent. Do you have any idea how to farm? She'd never even thought of that question before. After all, Terri had only seen farms on the TV with her mother… "We'd have to make a farm, with animals," Terri finally said.
"Or we could hunt," Mike pointed out. "We don't eat a lot, so we wouldn't have to hunt a lot…"
Terri felt disgusted. Hunting? Killing some poor animal… But you would have to do it on a farm… Terri swallowed uncomfortably. The pets of home had been animals also; would something they killed for food be that smart? Feel pain? She put the last of the ration bar back in the pack, no longer hungry.
"It should be getting light soon," Terri said. "Let's get started." She was suddenly eager to get moving.
Mike nodded, munching on his ration bar."Okay."
Packing their things took only a few moments, and soon the pair were outside of the ruined building, watching as the first rays of the sun started to touch the very tips of the trees. Terri took a deep breath of the pure air, happy to be out of the dank interior of the building. It had felt too much like a tomb.
"What if we can't wake them up?" Terri said. "We can't carry them back…"
Mike frowned."We can't use a car, either. Even if we could find one…" He ran his hand through his hair, a quick, nervous gesture. "A lot of drones that don't care about people walking around do care about vehicles. I found that out the hard way."
"Oh." But we're not humans. We're robots, so why do they ignore us? Terri ran a finger along her forearm. The skin was warm… maybe it tricked the robots that might otherwise see them as a danger? Or maybe a vehicle was just a bigger target? Terri shook her head. It didn't matter, at least not right now. Mike had more experience than she did and if he said that using a vehicle was a bad idea, then it was a bad idea.
"But…" Mike continued, oblivious to Terri's thoughts. "I don't think it'll be a problem. That caskets are tough." Settling the backpack on his shoulders, Mike gestured in the direction of the city. "But the sooner we get there, the sooner we can find out and get some new friends."
"To play baseball?" Terri asked with a smile.
"Yep!" Mike said with a laugh. "It's great talking to someone again," he continued. "It'll be even greater when we have a lot of people to talk to!"
Terri shook her head at that. Mike was right though. It was nice to talk to someone, and she'd only been alone for a few days or so. He'd been alone for years.
And he saw the end, a little voice reminded Terri. He got to see humanity die. No wonder he's been vague about what he saw. Even after that, he spent years alone, everything else dead and dust.
They took their time for most of the day, avoiding the roads and any of the small, decaying towns they had come across. More than a few of them had been abandoned before the end, but others bore the scars of weapons fire. Those they gave an especially wide berth. Mike told Terri of buried robots, patiently waiting for anyone else to come to the towns for shelter or salvage.
"The places that were abandoned before the war are almost always safe," he told her. "I figure it's because when they were programmed, they were told to ignore those places, because well, there wasn't anything in there. They aren't smart enough to realize that things have changed."
"What if they follow someone into an empty town?" Terri asked.
"Oh, they've done that to me a few times, but they usually go back to their original patrol zones." Mike said. "They're really dumb. And sometimes, I can lead them to another active town so that the robots that are already there attack them." He grinned at the memory.
As they continued walking, Mike talked more about his travels, mostly on foot, mostly a few years after the majority of the fighting ended.
"I hid," he said practically. "I didn't need to eat a lot and so I just grabbed what I needed and hid. Spent a lot of time sleeping," he shrugged. "Like you, actually, but not for so long. Tom had showed me how to set my alarm clock."
"That must have come in handy," Terri said with a grin.
"Well, it makes skipping the boring parts a lot easier," Mike replied… "And before long, most of the fighting was over. There had been humans in the beginning"—he tapped his gun for emphasis—"fighting, fighting each other and then fighting the robots, but before long, they were all gone. Then one day, everything was quiet and I started looking around."
"For more people like us?" Terri asked.
"For people, at least until I realized that nobody was left. Then I figured, that well, if the people were gone, why not look for the robots like me."
"And you found me."
"More like, you ran into me, and now it's time to get some more new friends. I have a good feeling about this city, a real good feeling."
Terri decided not to ask Mike whether or not he'd had a good feeling about any of the other cities he'd explored.
About halfway back to the city, Mike suddenly put out his hand for Terri to stop. Terri did, looking around nervously.
"What is it?" She asked.
Mike pointed over at the old interstate. "Look at the cars," he said.
Terri looked up, at the cars that were tumbled over the side, shiny metal showing where they had scraped against the railing.
Shiny metal. Not rusted. "That happened recently." Terri brought her gun up, checking the charge indicator to make certain it was ready. If Mike was nervous…
"Yeah. Something's been here." Frowning, Mike gestured for Terri to follow him. "Good thing we didn't cross it, but we can head up to the slope overlooking it."
"Why?"
"I wanna see what did that," Mike told her. "Especially if it's heading towards the city."
Terri nodded and followed her friend. Thirty minutes of careful picking their way through the overgrown foliage of the slope found the two coming to the top of the hill. It was a clearing, tall grass waving in the slight breeze, a ring of trees partially shielding it from the land below, one side a straight edge, where the long-ago interstate builders had cut through the earth like a knife. When there had been enough cars and trucks, enough people to need such measures. Twisted metal objects were scattered around the clearing, and it took Terri a few moments to realize that they were part of an old playground.
An overlook, for travelers to rest and let their kids play while they watched the interstate?
Mike gestured to where there was a gap in the trees."We can see better through there. C'mon and follow me, and be quiet."
Terri nodded and silently followed Mike as they scrambled to where the gap was, the trees that had once lived there reduced to dead stumps by some misfortune. For the last few feet, they crawled, grass and thorns tugging at Terri's clothing and scratching her face and hands.
But finally they got a look at the road, and for a moment, Terri had a surge of hope. There was motion down there, further up towards the city. In front a large machine was tossing cars to the side, guarded by what looked like metallic dogs, back-mounted cannon moving slightly as they paced around the large device. Behind them, there were other robots, some of them guarding other machines that seemed to be occupied by filling in any cracks in the road.
"It's… it's people!" Terri said. "It's gotta be people!"
"No its not," Mike said with a sigh.
"But, the road!" Terri hissed. "Why would killer machines be fixing and clearing a road!"
"So it's ready for the victory parade?" Mike asked, his tone sarcastic.
"What?"
"It wasn't just war machines," Mike said. "Some of the humans told repair robots to keep working, maybe keep running a dam or keep the roads working, and they gave them guards." He gestured at the road. "Do you see any humans? Or any traffic behind it? It's just like the bombers and drones— doing the last thing a human told it to do. If you left it alone, it'd fix every interstate in the world… but there'd be nobody alive to drive on them." He rolled back into the grass, staring up at the blue sky. "I hate those machines worst of all. You look at them and for a second you wonder if maybe the humans are coming back—Tom, Judy, Stephenie, all of them and everything will go back the way it was before. But it won't." He looked at Terri and then closed his eyes. "You know, there was a little amusement park I ran into about 4 years ago, and it had stuff like that, the walkarounds wandering around, entertainers and robots running the rides…"
"Did you go in?"
"Couldn't. No ticket," Mike said. He laughed. "I spent a week trying to figure out how to get in, then a bunch of warbots came though and destroyed the place. I guess someone really hated amusement parks…I went in afterward. Everything was destroyed, but…"
"What?"
"At least it was honest. I mean, not pretending that everything was okay and pretty soon all the kids and families would be coming back for the weekend." He shrugged. "Of course I didn't find any bones there. For all I know it had just been running even though nobody was coming to it, so there had never been anyone there."
Terri didn't say anything. Or maybe when the end came, everyone had better things to do. She shuddered. The idea of the empty park, rides moving around, cotton candy stands with no children around them…
Terri was happy she hadn't seen the park. But that still left the machines down on the road… "So how dangerous are they?" she asked.
"Not much, unless you bother them, and then they're really dangerous. The guards will assume that you might come back, so they'll chase you until you get far enough away that they have to return, or until they catch you." Mike gestured at the dog-like robots. "They can move fast and they're pretty dangerous, but they don't really want to kill you, as much as they want to protect the main robots."
For a long moment, Terri stared at the bustling crew on the road. As she watched, a bus was pushed off the road, falling down the slope in a cloud of dust. A skeleton, still clad in tattered clothing, was ejected from one of the shattered windows.
That, more than anything else, convinced Terri that Mike was right, that there was no human intelligence behind the road crew. A human would have stopped construction, would have tried to recover the bodies, for burial if for no other reason.
But the robots didn't care. The skeletons, the treasures of money and gold and precious heirlooms that had value only to their former owners, were all the same to them; trash to be removed from the road so it could be rebuilt.
Terri pulled back from the edge, staring at Mike."So if we avoid them?"
"At the speed its going, it'll probably be close to the edge of the city before long, but we can avoid it pretty easily." Mike said. "Like I said, they don't go looking for us, so as long as we don't pick a fight."
"Good," Terri said. "Let's go." I can't wait to get away from these things, she thought as she listened to the sounds of construction on the road below. The image of the robots, endlessly repairing a road that would never be used again, depressed her even more than the ruined city they were heading for.
"Breakfast?" Mike asked, handing Terri a ration bar.
Terri wrinkled her nose."One thing we're getting is a kitchen," she muttered. "I am not spending the rest of my life eating these."
"That'd be great," Mike said. "But… where would we get the food from?"
"Farms I—" Terri fell silent. Do you have any idea how to farm? She'd never even thought of that question before. After all, Terri had only seen farms on the TV with her mother… "We'd have to make a farm, with animals," Terri finally said.
"Or we could hunt," Mike pointed out. "We don't eat a lot, so we wouldn't have to hunt a lot…"
Terri felt disgusted. Hunting? Killing some poor animal… But you would have to do it on a farm… Terri swallowed uncomfortably. The pets of home had been animals also; would something they killed for food be that smart? Feel pain? She put the last of the ration bar back in the pack, no longer hungry.
"It should be getting light soon," Terri said. "Let's get started." She was suddenly eager to get moving.
Mike nodded, munching on his ration bar."Okay."
Packing their things took only a few moments, and soon the pair were outside of the ruined building, watching as the first rays of the sun started to touch the very tips of the trees. Terri took a deep breath of the pure air, happy to be out of the dank interior of the building. It had felt too much like a tomb.
"What if we can't wake them up?" Terri said. "We can't carry them back…"
Mike frowned."We can't use a car, either. Even if we could find one…" He ran his hand through his hair, a quick, nervous gesture. "A lot of drones that don't care about people walking around do care about vehicles. I found that out the hard way."
"Oh." But we're not humans. We're robots, so why do they ignore us? Terri ran a finger along her forearm. The skin was warm… maybe it tricked the robots that might otherwise see them as a danger? Or maybe a vehicle was just a bigger target? Terri shook her head. It didn't matter, at least not right now. Mike had more experience than she did and if he said that using a vehicle was a bad idea, then it was a bad idea.
"But…" Mike continued, oblivious to Terri's thoughts. "I don't think it'll be a problem. That caskets are tough." Settling the backpack on his shoulders, Mike gestured in the direction of the city. "But the sooner we get there, the sooner we can find out and get some new friends."
"To play baseball?" Terri asked with a smile.
"Yep!" Mike said with a laugh. "It's great talking to someone again," he continued. "It'll be even greater when we have a lot of people to talk to!"
Terri shook her head at that. Mike was right though. It was nice to talk to someone, and she'd only been alone for a few days or so. He'd been alone for years.
And he saw the end, a little voice reminded Terri. He got to see humanity die. No wonder he's been vague about what he saw. Even after that, he spent years alone, everything else dead and dust.
They took their time for most of the day, avoiding the roads and any of the small, decaying towns they had come across. More than a few of them had been abandoned before the end, but others bore the scars of weapons fire. Those they gave an especially wide berth. Mike told Terri of buried robots, patiently waiting for anyone else to come to the towns for shelter or salvage.
"The places that were abandoned before the war are almost always safe," he told her. "I figure it's because when they were programmed, they were told to ignore those places, because well, there wasn't anything in there. They aren't smart enough to realize that things have changed."
"What if they follow someone into an empty town?" Terri asked.
"Oh, they've done that to me a few times, but they usually go back to their original patrol zones." Mike said. "They're really dumb. And sometimes, I can lead them to another active town so that the robots that are already there attack them." He grinned at the memory.
As they continued walking, Mike talked more about his travels, mostly on foot, mostly a few years after the majority of the fighting ended.
"I hid," he said practically. "I didn't need to eat a lot and so I just grabbed what I needed and hid. Spent a lot of time sleeping," he shrugged. "Like you, actually, but not for so long. Tom had showed me how to set my alarm clock."
"That must have come in handy," Terri said with a grin.
"Well, it makes skipping the boring parts a lot easier," Mike replied… "And before long, most of the fighting was over. There had been humans in the beginning"—he tapped his gun for emphasis—"fighting, fighting each other and then fighting the robots, but before long, they were all gone. Then one day, everything was quiet and I started looking around."
"For more people like us?" Terri asked.
"For people, at least until I realized that nobody was left. Then I figured, that well, if the people were gone, why not look for the robots like me."
"And you found me."
"More like, you ran into me, and now it's time to get some more new friends. I have a good feeling about this city, a real good feeling."
Terri decided not to ask Mike whether or not he'd had a good feeling about any of the other cities he'd explored.
About halfway back to the city, Mike suddenly put out his hand for Terri to stop. Terri did, looking around nervously.
"What is it?" She asked.
Mike pointed over at the old interstate. "Look at the cars," he said.
Terri looked up, at the cars that were tumbled over the side, shiny metal showing where they had scraped against the railing.
Shiny metal. Not rusted. "That happened recently." Terri brought her gun up, checking the charge indicator to make certain it was ready. If Mike was nervous…
"Yeah. Something's been here." Frowning, Mike gestured for Terri to follow him. "Good thing we didn't cross it, but we can head up to the slope overlooking it."
"Why?"
"I wanna see what did that," Mike told her. "Especially if it's heading towards the city."
Terri nodded and followed her friend. Thirty minutes of careful picking their way through the overgrown foliage of the slope found the two coming to the top of the hill. It was a clearing, tall grass waving in the slight breeze, a ring of trees partially shielding it from the land below, one side a straight edge, where the long-ago interstate builders had cut through the earth like a knife. When there had been enough cars and trucks, enough people to need such measures. Twisted metal objects were scattered around the clearing, and it took Terri a few moments to realize that they were part of an old playground.
An overlook, for travelers to rest and let their kids play while they watched the interstate?
Mike gestured to where there was a gap in the trees."We can see better through there. C'mon and follow me, and be quiet."
Terri nodded and silently followed Mike as they scrambled to where the gap was, the trees that had once lived there reduced to dead stumps by some misfortune. For the last few feet, they crawled, grass and thorns tugging at Terri's clothing and scratching her face and hands.
But finally they got a look at the road, and for a moment, Terri had a surge of hope. There was motion down there, further up towards the city. In front a large machine was tossing cars to the side, guarded by what looked like metallic dogs, back-mounted cannon moving slightly as they paced around the large device. Behind them, there were other robots, some of them guarding other machines that seemed to be occupied by filling in any cracks in the road.
"It's… it's people!" Terri said. "It's gotta be people!"
"No its not," Mike said with a sigh.
"But, the road!" Terri hissed. "Why would killer machines be fixing and clearing a road!"
"So it's ready for the victory parade?" Mike asked, his tone sarcastic.
"What?"
"It wasn't just war machines," Mike said. "Some of the humans told repair robots to keep working, maybe keep running a dam or keep the roads working, and they gave them guards." He gestured at the road. "Do you see any humans? Or any traffic behind it? It's just like the bombers and drones— doing the last thing a human told it to do. If you left it alone, it'd fix every interstate in the world… but there'd be nobody alive to drive on them." He rolled back into the grass, staring up at the blue sky. "I hate those machines worst of all. You look at them and for a second you wonder if maybe the humans are coming back—Tom, Judy, Stephenie, all of them and everything will go back the way it was before. But it won't." He looked at Terri and then closed his eyes. "You know, there was a little amusement park I ran into about 4 years ago, and it had stuff like that, the walkarounds wandering around, entertainers and robots running the rides…"
"Did you go in?"
"Couldn't. No ticket," Mike said. He laughed. "I spent a week trying to figure out how to get in, then a bunch of warbots came though and destroyed the place. I guess someone really hated amusement parks…I went in afterward. Everything was destroyed, but…"
"What?"
"At least it was honest. I mean, not pretending that everything was okay and pretty soon all the kids and families would be coming back for the weekend." He shrugged. "Of course I didn't find any bones there. For all I know it had just been running even though nobody was coming to it, so there had never been anyone there."
Terri didn't say anything. Or maybe when the end came, everyone had better things to do. She shuddered. The idea of the empty park, rides moving around, cotton candy stands with no children around them…
Terri was happy she hadn't seen the park. But that still left the machines down on the road… "So how dangerous are they?" she asked.
"Not much, unless you bother them, and then they're really dangerous. The guards will assume that you might come back, so they'll chase you until you get far enough away that they have to return, or until they catch you." Mike gestured at the dog-like robots. "They can move fast and they're pretty dangerous, but they don't really want to kill you, as much as they want to protect the main robots."
For a long moment, Terri stared at the bustling crew on the road. As she watched, a bus was pushed off the road, falling down the slope in a cloud of dust. A skeleton, still clad in tattered clothing, was ejected from one of the shattered windows.
That, more than anything else, convinced Terri that Mike was right, that there was no human intelligence behind the road crew. A human would have stopped construction, would have tried to recover the bodies, for burial if for no other reason.
But the robots didn't care. The skeletons, the treasures of money and gold and precious heirlooms that had value only to their former owners, were all the same to them; trash to be removed from the road so it could be rebuilt.
Terri pulled back from the edge, staring at Mike."So if we avoid them?"
"At the speed its going, it'll probably be close to the edge of the city before long, but we can avoid it pretty easily." Mike said. "Like I said, they don't go looking for us, so as long as we don't pick a fight."
"Good," Terri said. "Let's go." I can't wait to get away from these things, she thought as she listened to the sounds of construction on the road below. The image of the robots, endlessly repairing a road that would never be used again, depressed her even more than the ruined city they were heading for.
Chapter 5.2
- Location
- California
Before long, Terri and Mike started hitting the edge of the city she had left only a few days and an eternity ago. The shattered buildings and overpasses, the long-dead war machines mixed in with burned out cars, they all left Terri feeling cold and empty.
Once this place had been a city. Full of noise, with men and women heading to work, students going to school, little children playing in the parks. Now, it was a graveyard.
"Okay, stop here," Mike said. "Here, take this." He handed Terri a poncho, as he put on on himself, pulling the hood up around his face. Terri did the same. Looking at Mike, she blinked in surprise. Even though he was only a few feet from her, it was hard to get a good look at him, the fabric of the poncho seeming to imitate the background, shimmering slightly as he moved around.
"Active visual camo," Mike said. "It also breaks up our heat signature. It's not invisibility, but as long as we don't do anything stupid we probably won't be seen. If something sees us, or I tell you too, stop and pull the poncho around you."
"Okay," Terri said, looking down at the shimmering surface of the poncho. "Does it have a battery?"
"Runs off of ambient temperature," Mike said. "No batteries needed."
Well, that's good, Terri thought. She didn't like the thought of suddenly appearing in front of one of the robots that had last tried to kill her.
"Why didn't we use them earlier?" she asked.
"Didn't need to," Mike replied. "And I don't have a lot of them, and if they get ripped up, we can't fix them. We can't be too loud, at least not once we're inside the city. Even if they can't see is, a lot of robots are good at tracking by sound."
"I wasn't that quiet—"
"And who ended up almost getting dismantled by a robot?"
"Good point."
As they moved into the city, Terri found herself clutching her gun, while Mike occasionally consulted a map, evidently taken from a book printed before the end. More than a few streets dead-ended into piles of rubble from collapsed overpasses, or in one case, what looked to be the piled remains of a thirty story building. Looking around, Terri noticed that they were avoiding the areas where most of the skyscrapers had come down. Here and there a building had signs of foliage growing in the gaps, perhaps the remains of window gardens. Birds flew in and out of the shattered windows, their cries the only sound other than the sigh of the wind blowing through the wreckage. Once she heard the sound of a pair of tomcats having an argument, but no animals came to greet the two intruders. Terri wondered if they no longer associated people with food—or if they now associated them with the violence that had ended the city.
By the third dead end, Mike was starting to look frustrated, and he motioned Terri to follow him until they were both crouched next to a pile of shattered masonry, giving them some cover from the street."I don't like this," he said in a whisper. "Some of these collapses aren't as old as the others."
"Well there were robots in the town, remember what almost killed me?" Terri pointed out.
Mike shook his head."Hunters don't knock down buildings like that," he nodded at the end of the street where a three-story high pile of rubble served as an irregular wall, blocking off what lay beyond it from easy access.
Terri stared that the rubble and frowned. Unlike the other wrecked buildings there were no plants growing through the cracks, no rust marring the exposed girders. Even the soot around one of the windows looked new, instead of being worn away by years of rain.
"Yeah…" she murmured. "Did something fight here earlier?"
"Maybe," Mike said in an uncertain voice. "Some of the robots were given orders to fight each other, but most of those fights ended a long time ago—whatever won didn't have any one left alive to order it to move on… And the ones that were just moving around and attacking anything they ran into usually ran into something tougher and were destroyed."
"Could it be humans?" Terri asked, with a sudden flare of hope.
"Here?" Mike asked. "Why would humans build a refuge here? It's safer out in the countryside."
"Can we go around?" Terri finally asked. Mike's words had dashed her momentary hope. Why would humans stay here, if there were any left? The city was a wreck. If they were just scavenging, they wouldn't knock buildings down on the roads they'd need to take to leave the city! And more importantly, why would they have waited for so long? Terri bit her lip, remembering how she had almost died. It was very likely that the things that had collapsed the building weren't human, just more of their abandoned tools.
"Yeah," Mike said, consulting his map. "We can go around and take… 5th Avenue." He nodded in satisfaction.
But 5th Avenue also dead-ended into a barricade, this one made up mostly of shattered cars. It also looked newer than the surrounding rubble. Once again, the two found a corner to shield them from any prying eyes as they surveyed the barrier.
"Maybe we should go over it?" Terri asked.
Mike shook his head."No. Anything that built a barricade like that has to know that people could climb over it. I bet there are mines or worse waiting for us on top of it. And if we try to go through the buildings, well they might collapse or we might run into something where we can't get away from it."
"Then what do we do?"
"First let's see if there's any path we can use. We've only tried a few streets, after all."
But as the day passed, it became plain that every street leading into the part of the city where the shop was located had been blocked off. Terri shivered as they kept going, feeling like things were looking at her.
Maybe they are. Even if your camouflage is keeping them from seeing you, robots never sleep. Finally, as the sun started to descend below the shattered skyscrapers, casting the streets into shadow, they came back to the original street.
"I can't believe it. The entire area is blocked off, and it had to be the place where we need to go," Mike said in an annoyed tone.
"What about going through the buildings?" Terri asked. "Sure they could be dangerous, but if we have to get through…"
"I… No," Mike replied. "If something was interested enough to build all these barricades, it probably either blocked the interiors of the building or left traps in them."
"So, what do we do?"
Mike frowned and looked up at the darkening sky."We shouldn't have spent so much time here. It's too late to try and get out of the city entirely, so we need to find a place to stay for tonight…"
Terri looked around, clutching her poncho to her. She hadn't thought about that. But…
"What if something's waiting for us inside the buildings?" She finally asked.
"If we stay out on the street, we'll really stand out as it gets colder," Mike said. "I shouldn't have lost track of the time. Sorry Terri."
She reached out and touched his arm."It's okay. You had a lot on your mind."
"Yeah." Mike frowned, looking down the darkening street. "Let's go back up the street. Wherever we stay, I don't want it to be near the barricade."
"Okay," Terri said, looking over her shoulder at the looming mass of twisted metal and shattered masonry. She shivered, imagining unliving eyes looking down on them.
Once this place had been a city. Full of noise, with men and women heading to work, students going to school, little children playing in the parks. Now, it was a graveyard.
"Okay, stop here," Mike said. "Here, take this." He handed Terri a poncho, as he put on on himself, pulling the hood up around his face. Terri did the same. Looking at Mike, she blinked in surprise. Even though he was only a few feet from her, it was hard to get a good look at him, the fabric of the poncho seeming to imitate the background, shimmering slightly as he moved around.
"Active visual camo," Mike said. "It also breaks up our heat signature. It's not invisibility, but as long as we don't do anything stupid we probably won't be seen. If something sees us, or I tell you too, stop and pull the poncho around you."
"Okay," Terri said, looking down at the shimmering surface of the poncho. "Does it have a battery?"
"Runs off of ambient temperature," Mike said. "No batteries needed."
Well, that's good, Terri thought. She didn't like the thought of suddenly appearing in front of one of the robots that had last tried to kill her.
"Why didn't we use them earlier?" she asked.
"Didn't need to," Mike replied. "And I don't have a lot of them, and if they get ripped up, we can't fix them. We can't be too loud, at least not once we're inside the city. Even if they can't see is, a lot of robots are good at tracking by sound."
"I wasn't that quiet—"
"And who ended up almost getting dismantled by a robot?"
"Good point."
As they moved into the city, Terri found herself clutching her gun, while Mike occasionally consulted a map, evidently taken from a book printed before the end. More than a few streets dead-ended into piles of rubble from collapsed overpasses, or in one case, what looked to be the piled remains of a thirty story building. Looking around, Terri noticed that they were avoiding the areas where most of the skyscrapers had come down. Here and there a building had signs of foliage growing in the gaps, perhaps the remains of window gardens. Birds flew in and out of the shattered windows, their cries the only sound other than the sigh of the wind blowing through the wreckage. Once she heard the sound of a pair of tomcats having an argument, but no animals came to greet the two intruders. Terri wondered if they no longer associated people with food—or if they now associated them with the violence that had ended the city.
By the third dead end, Mike was starting to look frustrated, and he motioned Terri to follow him until they were both crouched next to a pile of shattered masonry, giving them some cover from the street."I don't like this," he said in a whisper. "Some of these collapses aren't as old as the others."
"Well there were robots in the town, remember what almost killed me?" Terri pointed out.
Mike shook his head."Hunters don't knock down buildings like that," he nodded at the end of the street where a three-story high pile of rubble served as an irregular wall, blocking off what lay beyond it from easy access.
Terri stared that the rubble and frowned. Unlike the other wrecked buildings there were no plants growing through the cracks, no rust marring the exposed girders. Even the soot around one of the windows looked new, instead of being worn away by years of rain.
"Yeah…" she murmured. "Did something fight here earlier?"
"Maybe," Mike said in an uncertain voice. "Some of the robots were given orders to fight each other, but most of those fights ended a long time ago—whatever won didn't have any one left alive to order it to move on… And the ones that were just moving around and attacking anything they ran into usually ran into something tougher and were destroyed."
"Could it be humans?" Terri asked, with a sudden flare of hope.
"Here?" Mike asked. "Why would humans build a refuge here? It's safer out in the countryside."
"Can we go around?" Terri finally asked. Mike's words had dashed her momentary hope. Why would humans stay here, if there were any left? The city was a wreck. If they were just scavenging, they wouldn't knock buildings down on the roads they'd need to take to leave the city! And more importantly, why would they have waited for so long? Terri bit her lip, remembering how she had almost died. It was very likely that the things that had collapsed the building weren't human, just more of their abandoned tools.
"Yeah," Mike said, consulting his map. "We can go around and take… 5th Avenue." He nodded in satisfaction.
But 5th Avenue also dead-ended into a barricade, this one made up mostly of shattered cars. It also looked newer than the surrounding rubble. Once again, the two found a corner to shield them from any prying eyes as they surveyed the barrier.
"Maybe we should go over it?" Terri asked.
Mike shook his head."No. Anything that built a barricade like that has to know that people could climb over it. I bet there are mines or worse waiting for us on top of it. And if we try to go through the buildings, well they might collapse or we might run into something where we can't get away from it."
"Then what do we do?"
"First let's see if there's any path we can use. We've only tried a few streets, after all."
But as the day passed, it became plain that every street leading into the part of the city where the shop was located had been blocked off. Terri shivered as they kept going, feeling like things were looking at her.
Maybe they are. Even if your camouflage is keeping them from seeing you, robots never sleep. Finally, as the sun started to descend below the shattered skyscrapers, casting the streets into shadow, they came back to the original street.
"I can't believe it. The entire area is blocked off, and it had to be the place where we need to go," Mike said in an annoyed tone.
"What about going through the buildings?" Terri asked. "Sure they could be dangerous, but if we have to get through…"
"I… No," Mike replied. "If something was interested enough to build all these barricades, it probably either blocked the interiors of the building or left traps in them."
"So, what do we do?"
Mike frowned and looked up at the darkening sky."We shouldn't have spent so much time here. It's too late to try and get out of the city entirely, so we need to find a place to stay for tonight…"
Terri looked around, clutching her poncho to her. She hadn't thought about that. But…
"What if something's waiting for us inside the buildings?" She finally asked.
"If we stay out on the street, we'll really stand out as it gets colder," Mike said. "I shouldn't have lost track of the time. Sorry Terri."
She reached out and touched his arm."It's okay. You had a lot on your mind."
"Yeah." Mike frowned, looking down the darkening street. "Let's go back up the street. Wherever we stay, I don't want it to be near the barricade."
"Okay," Terri said, looking over her shoulder at the looming mass of twisted metal and shattered masonry. She shivered, imagining unliving eyes looking down on them.
Chapter 5.3
- Location
- California
Mike set a faster pace, looking around nervously as the sun continued to descend, the sky turning a deep purple with early evening. The air started to get chilly and Terri clutched the poncho around her slim body.
And the colder it gets, the more we'll stand out to anything that can see heat, she thought. She could see in the dark, but she couldn't see heat. But a robot, something designed to hunt and kill its enemies in pitch darkness would have all those senses and more.
No wonder Mike was moving as fast as he could. The camouflage poncho seemed terribly inadequate in the face of what might be watching them.
"No, no, no…" Mike was muttering.
"What is it?" Terri asked.
"We don't want any big skyscrapers," Mike said. "No idea what's in them and they're too big to search… Worse, some of them have booby traps in them—from the humans or robots."
"Great," Terri said. "Maybe we should have figured out where we were going to stay when we first came here?"
"I didn't think it would take so long," Mike said. "I've never seen a bunch of barriers like the ones we ran into. It doesn't make sense."
Terri didn't reply. She thought she'd heard something skittering along far behind them, in the direction where the barrier had been.
It could have just been the wind dislodging some rubble.
Could have.
Terri wasn't about to slow down and find out, though.
It was almost full dark before they came to a place that met with Mike's approval. Terri was to the point that anywhere out of the open would have been good enough for her. The wrecked cars and buildings and occasional skeletal remains of the humans had her expecting to see killer robots emerging out of every dark window and door. She had almost fallen down on several occasions, trying to walk backwards so that nothing could sneak up on her and Mike.
The structure was an older building, all brick and big windows, sitting between two newer and partially collapsed structures. Mike gestured for Terri to kneel down by him. "These old buildings hardly ever have robots in them. They didn't have anything important by the end, and most of the humans were hiding in newer buildings."
"But what if you're—"
Mike cut Terri off. "Then we're in trouble, but we can't search it from outside. If I turn on any of my gadgets, it wouldn't matter if there was anything in there—we'd alert everything else in the town." He paused. "But no lights and no fire. We'll have to go in, find a cozy spot and then stay still. Just wrap up in your poncho—it'll keep you warm enough."
Of course it will, Terri thought bitterly. It wasn't like they were human after all, and their organic skin didn't cover flesh and organs, but metal and circuits. Silently, she followed Mike inside. Several of the large windows facing the street had been shattered, likely by gunfire. The main doors had been smashed into a pile of rubble and bullet marks marred the dingy marble walls, while in one place, part of a column had been melted, streams of stone looking like melted wax that had run down the walls before it cooled. Terri shivered at that look. She had a feeling neither she nor Mike would do any better than the stone had if whatever had used that weapon caught them.
Inside, the building's main room was filled with the remains of desks and shelves. Rotted books lay strewn across the floor, a shroud of grass and few small bushes covering them, probably from wind blown seeds growing in the sodden mass. A few sprawled out skeletons decorated the floor, their bones jumbled from where the animals had gotten at them.
Another reminder of just how long Terri had been sleeping. Further back, she could see shelves that were better shielded from the wind and rain that must come in through the open doors and shattered windows. Shelves that would give them more cover. She tapped Mike on the shoulder and pointed. Mike paused for a moment, then nodded.
"We can't talk too much," he said softly. "But if anything had gone back there, the shelves would be more messed up than they are. I don't think anything has come here since the humans died off." With a gesture for her to follow, Mike silently walked towards the rear of the room, being careful to not put his foot anywhere it might leave a footprint. Terri mimicked his movements, avoiding the remains of the books.
Finally, Mike found a corner, blocked off from the front of the chamber by the shelving, with the cool marble wall to lean against. Even with their night vision, Terri could barely make out Mike's face by the time they sat down.
Terri soon concluded that not needing to sleep like a human had its disadvantages. The hours seemed to crawl by. Once, Mike took an hour long nap, leaving Terri alone to stand watch, and by the time he woke up, she'd nearly worked herself into a panic, every sighing breath of wind sounding like the movement of legions of killers as she strained to see into the darkness.
Of all the nights for a half moon, Terri had grumped. Even a full moon would have left the interior dim, but the half moon had left it nearly pitch dark.
Even worse was the fact that they couldn't move. Robots might not be intelligent, but that wouldn't stop them from investigating sounds coming from a building—in fact, Terri thought, they might be more likely to investigate then someone with brains, since if their orders said to investigate, they'd do it every time, instead of just deciding it was probably some animal.
When it was her turn to rest Terri pulled the poncho tight around her. She closed her eyes, trying to imagine what the library had been like when the city was alive. I wonder if anyone tried to get the books out, she thought. Probably not. Anyone in the city had probably had more immediate concerns… and not long after that, they had probably had no concerns at all. The cool air had nothing at all to do with Terri's shiver as she remembered the skeletal remains they'd passed and wondered if any of those bones had come from someone who might have come to the library for a leisurely afternoon of reading.
With that cheerful thought, she dropped off to sleep.
And the colder it gets, the more we'll stand out to anything that can see heat, she thought. She could see in the dark, but she couldn't see heat. But a robot, something designed to hunt and kill its enemies in pitch darkness would have all those senses and more.
No wonder Mike was moving as fast as he could. The camouflage poncho seemed terribly inadequate in the face of what might be watching them.
"No, no, no…" Mike was muttering.
"What is it?" Terri asked.
"We don't want any big skyscrapers," Mike said. "No idea what's in them and they're too big to search… Worse, some of them have booby traps in them—from the humans or robots."
"Great," Terri said. "Maybe we should have figured out where we were going to stay when we first came here?"
"I didn't think it would take so long," Mike said. "I've never seen a bunch of barriers like the ones we ran into. It doesn't make sense."
Terri didn't reply. She thought she'd heard something skittering along far behind them, in the direction where the barrier had been.
It could have just been the wind dislodging some rubble.
Could have.
Terri wasn't about to slow down and find out, though.
It was almost full dark before they came to a place that met with Mike's approval. Terri was to the point that anywhere out of the open would have been good enough for her. The wrecked cars and buildings and occasional skeletal remains of the humans had her expecting to see killer robots emerging out of every dark window and door. She had almost fallen down on several occasions, trying to walk backwards so that nothing could sneak up on her and Mike.
The structure was an older building, all brick and big windows, sitting between two newer and partially collapsed structures. Mike gestured for Terri to kneel down by him. "These old buildings hardly ever have robots in them. They didn't have anything important by the end, and most of the humans were hiding in newer buildings."
"But what if you're—"
Mike cut Terri off. "Then we're in trouble, but we can't search it from outside. If I turn on any of my gadgets, it wouldn't matter if there was anything in there—we'd alert everything else in the town." He paused. "But no lights and no fire. We'll have to go in, find a cozy spot and then stay still. Just wrap up in your poncho—it'll keep you warm enough."
Of course it will, Terri thought bitterly. It wasn't like they were human after all, and their organic skin didn't cover flesh and organs, but metal and circuits. Silently, she followed Mike inside. Several of the large windows facing the street had been shattered, likely by gunfire. The main doors had been smashed into a pile of rubble and bullet marks marred the dingy marble walls, while in one place, part of a column had been melted, streams of stone looking like melted wax that had run down the walls before it cooled. Terri shivered at that look. She had a feeling neither she nor Mike would do any better than the stone had if whatever had used that weapon caught them.
Inside, the building's main room was filled with the remains of desks and shelves. Rotted books lay strewn across the floor, a shroud of grass and few small bushes covering them, probably from wind blown seeds growing in the sodden mass. A few sprawled out skeletons decorated the floor, their bones jumbled from where the animals had gotten at them.
Another reminder of just how long Terri had been sleeping. Further back, she could see shelves that were better shielded from the wind and rain that must come in through the open doors and shattered windows. Shelves that would give them more cover. She tapped Mike on the shoulder and pointed. Mike paused for a moment, then nodded.
"We can't talk too much," he said softly. "But if anything had gone back there, the shelves would be more messed up than they are. I don't think anything has come here since the humans died off." With a gesture for her to follow, Mike silently walked towards the rear of the room, being careful to not put his foot anywhere it might leave a footprint. Terri mimicked his movements, avoiding the remains of the books.
Finally, Mike found a corner, blocked off from the front of the chamber by the shelving, with the cool marble wall to lean against. Even with their night vision, Terri could barely make out Mike's face by the time they sat down.
Terri soon concluded that not needing to sleep like a human had its disadvantages. The hours seemed to crawl by. Once, Mike took an hour long nap, leaving Terri alone to stand watch, and by the time he woke up, she'd nearly worked herself into a panic, every sighing breath of wind sounding like the movement of legions of killers as she strained to see into the darkness.
Of all the nights for a half moon, Terri had grumped. Even a full moon would have left the interior dim, but the half moon had left it nearly pitch dark.
Even worse was the fact that they couldn't move. Robots might not be intelligent, but that wouldn't stop them from investigating sounds coming from a building—in fact, Terri thought, they might be more likely to investigate then someone with brains, since if their orders said to investigate, they'd do it every time, instead of just deciding it was probably some animal.
When it was her turn to rest Terri pulled the poncho tight around her. She closed her eyes, trying to imagine what the library had been like when the city was alive. I wonder if anyone tried to get the books out, she thought. Probably not. Anyone in the city had probably had more immediate concerns… and not long after that, they had probably had no concerns at all. The cool air had nothing at all to do with Terri's shiver as she remembered the skeletal remains they'd passed and wondered if any of those bones had come from someone who might have come to the library for a leisurely afternoon of reading.
With that cheerful thought, she dropped off to sleep.