by D.L. Morrese
~*~
He approached the village at dawn. It was much as he remembered it. There was still no road as such leading to it. There were a few more buildings, but they were much the same as those built before them. The greeting he received from the canine welcoming committee was also familiar. He exchanged obligatory sniffs and proceeded on toward the house he shared with a boy half a century ago.
An elderly man sat outside sitting in a spindle-backed rocking chair. An aged dog lay sleeping on the ground next to him. The dog lifted its head and gave a drowsy “Woof” before laying it back down.
“What is it, Boy?” the old man said.
“MO-126 recognized the voice immediately. It was older, of course, but it was Kolby’s, and if the dog’s name was actually “Boy,” it was clear his imagination for names had not improved over the years.
Kolby caught sight of MO-126 and stared at him a moment in disbelief.
“Laura! Come out here,” he called over his shoulder.
“What is it, dear?” she said. She must have mellowed some with age.
“Doesn’t he look just like Doggy?” Kolby said, pointing. “You remember Doggy, don’t you?”
“Of course I remember Doggy, you daft old man.”
Maybe she hadn’t mellowed all that much, although she did ameliorate her statement with a kiss on his cheek.
She squinted. “But my memory’s better than my eyes. Come here, Doggy,” she said, kneeling and urging him to approach.
MO-126 tried not to wag his tail and failed. He did manage to restrain himself from running to her. He went to her, but he tried to make it seem that he was uncertain about the wisdom of it.
She scratched his ears with both hands in more of a hug than a pet. “The spitting image,” she said.
The old man leaned down stiffly and stroked the android dog’s head.
“I had a dog like you, once,” he said, misty-eyed in recollection. “Best dog I ever knew.” He turned to the old dog lying next to him. “No offense, Boy.”
The old dog seemed to take none. A wheezy snore provided its only response.
Suddenly, Kolby gasped for air and coughed several times. MO-126 was no healer, but his sensors were capable of determining the man’s temperature, heart rate, and, even estimate his blood pressure. He was not well. The years had taken their toll.
“Is Grandpa all right, Granny,” a boy about ten years old asked Laura.
“I always thought so,” she said, “but his lungs probably have a different opinion. Go fetch him a cup of water, will you, Jax?”
“Sure, Granny. Be right back.” He ran through the door he left open a moment before.
“I’m fine,” Kolby said when he got back his breath.
His wife offered no comment. Obviously, she knew otherwise and that her husband did as well.
“He does look like Doggy,” Kolby said. “I wonder if they’re related. Maybe a great, great, whatever grandson, or something.”
“As I recall, you said Doggy never showed an interest in…making puppies.” She smiled and winked.
“Well, maybe he was, you know, discreet about it,” he said with a return smile that showed missing teeth and receding gums.
“Where do you suppose he came from?” she asked.
“Doggy or this handsome fellow?” he replied, still petting MO-126.
“Either or both,” she said. “It just seems odd. One day Doggy shows up out of nowhere and attaches himself to you, and now another dog who looks like him does much the same.”
Oh-oh, MO-126 thought. I shouldn’t have come.
Their grandson returned with a cup of water for Kolby. He must have heard at least some of his grandparents’ conversation.
“Can I keep him?” he said. “I know Mom and Dad won’t mind.”
“I don’t know, Jax,” Laura said. “He might belong to someone. Besides, I’m not the one who can say yes or no. That’s your parents’ job.”
“So that’s a yes, right?” the boy said.
He really is cute, the android dog thought. He looked a bit like Kolby at that age except Jax’s head and ears were better sized for one another. MO-126 found the boy’s offer tempting, but another cough from Kolby and Laura’s bemused expression reminded him of two very good reasons why it was not a good idea. One exceptional dog coming out of nowhere was simply a lucky coincidence. Two in the same family separated by half a century would be a mystery begging for an explanation. Superstitious people, in their never-ending quest to provide easy and invariably wrong answers, might provide one that would cast suspicion not only on himself but on Kolby’s entire family. Those who saw demons in every shadow and witches behind every door were not common around here, but there were some, and they could be loud and dangerous. He did not want to bring that kind of scrutiny down on Kolby and his kin.
Also, there was the personal element. He could do nothing to help Kolby now. Age had taken him. He would not recover from it, and his grandson would soon suffer the same fate. The corporation had warned the androids who worked in the field about becoming emotionally attached to primitives, and perhaps they were right. He knew his ability to approach this situation calmly and rationally was impaired. The fact that the human aging process was perfectly normal and natural mattered to him not at all at the moment.
He backed away reluctantly. Jax moved to run after him, but Laura stopped him.
“Let him go,” she said. “He probably just wants to go home.”
Home, MO-126 reflected as he left the village. Where is that, now? Where did he fit? The NASH units must have gone through experiences like this several times. How did they handle it? Maybe they didn’t. He might be the last Corporation android on the planet still functioning.
For five hundred of their generations he had been around humans. He watched them live and work for the corporation, and he witnessed some of what they accomplished and failed to accomplish on their own. He still felt optimistic about their long term future, but he could do little to help them. His canine form limited his options. If he had a partner, like in the old days, they might be able to work out some way to be useful, but he could not do it alone, and he knew of no others.
This was getting depressing. He needed a vacation from his retirement.
He headed toward the mountains and the hidden entrance of Hub Terminal Ten. Any one would do, but this was the closest.
Another night arrived with a cloudy darkness by the time he got there. He retuned his audio receptors for greater sensitivity, but he heard nothing other than the rushing river and the songs of insects and frogs. Occasionally, one of the latter would make a snack of one of the former, but he heard nothing to indicate there were any people nearby.
He sent the silent signal to open the outside portal to Hub Terminal Ten. The door, which appeared to be a natural, stone cliff face, lowered to form a bridge over the narrow river flowing with icy water from the mountains. It was too swift to swim and too wide to jump, for a human.
He paused to empty his fuel tank in a manner that appeared quite natural for any normal dog. He did not intend the act to have any philosophical meaning, but he supposed it could be seen that way, if anyone was watching, which no one was. Another futile gesture, then. He would be running on his backup battery from here on.
The bridge began to lift back into place as soon as he entered the dark, cave-like chamber. Once it sealed behind him, a dim light came on. Other than this, the cave appeared natural.
He sent another signal and a concealed door in the far wall opened to a lighted corridor with floors, walls, and ceiling made of a gray ceramic material. The outer entrances of the hub terminals varied to suit the surrounding landscape, but from this point, all shared the same standard layout.
His claws clicked on the textured floor and the sound echoed in the corridor. He saw no indication that anyone had been here in a while. The place held a certain tomblike feel, and he felt a twinge of guilt. His failure to report the development of a phonetic alp
habet two thousand years ago may have precipitated the end of the project, but he shook off the feeling. He retained little affection for the corporation, and project termination was inevitable eventually, anyway. At best, he accelerated it by only a few centuries.
A low panel in one wall slid open and a general-purpose maintenance robot zipped out. The squat, gray automaton resembled a large, headless turtle on hidden rollers more than it did any other living creature. It ignored him and began cleaning the floor. The robots would follow their last instructions until instructed otherwise, which, with the PM no longer functioning, would not happen any time soon. They would probably continue keeping the place clean and performing standard maintenance for thousands of years to come.
He glanced at the main access panel, a large black rectangle embedded in the wall to his left. A tiny green light in the lower corner showed standby power available. He expected it would be. He should have no trouble calling for a transport pod.
He turned to do so when another idea occurred, a sort of contingency plan just in case. He considered it a low cost investment in an unlikely future, or perhaps more like a message in a bottle.
He reversed direction and went toward the corridor to his right. The three doors it held were all closed. The far one at the end of the hall was the maintenance bay. Each of the nineteen major hub terminals on the continent included one. He’d gone to them for routine checkups and maintenance several times, but this was not what he wanted now. The two nearer rooms across the hall from one another were the storeroom for trade goods and the equipment room in which the humanoid androids kitted up for field missions. What he wanted should be in one or the other, and he sent the signal for them to open.
The shelves of the storeroom were still stocked with pottery, glass, hardware and other things the trade androids used to offer in exchange to humans. He found sheets of gondhide vellum and a charcoal stick in a box next to another containing ink, canvas, and paint.
He scrawled a quick note on the vellum with the charcoal. It would have been so much easier if he had proper hands with thumbs, but he didn’t, so he held the sheet steady with two paws and grasped the writing stick in his mouth. The result wasn’t neat, but it was legible.
After a few failed attempts, he managed to fold the vellum. He picked it up with his mouth, which was unfortunately the best method he had. He needed just one more thing. He doubted one would be here, but there should be some in the main equipment warehouse.
He returned to the first room and called for a transport pod. A musical ‘ping’ a couple minutes later announced its arrival. One of a pair of sliding doors opposite the exit toward the outside opened to the pod. The one waiting was the smallest of the various models that existed. Its single seat was designed for humanoids, but this was just a minor inconvenience of being a four-legged creature in a two-legged world. He got in and signaled his destination. The panel in front of him provided a time of arrival, and the small vehicle accelerated into the main tube.
An hour later, the transport pod door opened to the warehouse, and service lights came on automatically. Filled racks of various kinds of equipment stood in straight lines between stone columns. The spare and repair parts stored here were intended to sustain the remnants of the decommissioned project, including those sentient androids who chose to retire in place. If the fabrication centers still functioned, any parts used would be replaced. MO-126 suspected they no longer did. The Mark Seven Project Manager caused considerable damage to the project infrastructure before it finally shutdown. The hub terminals were intact, but he doubted many of the deeper facilities were. The fact that the shelves were full probably meant that the maintenance robots had not used many parts yet. Fortunately, the shelves were well organized, and MO-126 soon located the power converter he hoped to find here. It was not a large piece of equipment, but it was essential. He could not be restarted without it.
His initial plan was to find a nice spot in either a maintenance bay or even inside a packing case for long term storage in a fabrication center, but he had one mouth and two things to carry now. He could probably figure out something to compensate for his lousy, thumbless design, but there was little point. Here was as good a place as any.
He set down the power converter on the floor near the doors to the transport system. He dropped the sheet of vellum next to it and then found a reasonably comfortable way to lie on top of them so that an overambitious maintenance robot would not try to return them to their proper locations on some shelf. All set. Just one more thing to do.
The android dog closed both eyes and triggered his shutdown protocols. In a few seconds, he would be little more than a lumpy rug in front of the door. Under on paw, he placed a note with only two words in large, crooked letters—‘WAKE ME.’
~END~
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