by Young, B. R.
“Damn that’s gonna be tricky, couldn’t I just, I don’t know steal another battery from a unit that’s walking around? “He asked.
“Kev are you insane? How would you get one from a guardian that’s active?” Lili asked.
“It could be done,” said Dawn as she reached into the cart and grabbed the hatchet. “With this, if you can sneak up behind one and sever its head quickly it will be unable to communicate with the other units and you should be able to get to its power unit. That would be a much faster and easier approach,” said Dawn
“So let’s just try that instead,” said Kev.
“But that’s insane,” shouted Lili as she glared at him. “It may be faster but it’s also far more dangerous and could get you killed.”
“Dawn is there any way you could power down for a while and ride in the cart, that way you could save your power for when we get closer to the city?” asked Lili
“I could do that, yes. However the cart would be heavier with my bulk weighing it down.”
Lili looked at Kev with pleading eyes. “Ok fine, Get in the cart Dawn and power down I’ll turn you back on when we’re closer to the city.”
“If you are sure. Just remember to watch out for the sky patrol drones and wake me if you should need me for anything,” said Dawn.
Dawn climbed into the cart and powered down. Kev lifted the cart and had to get a better grip, it was going to be a much slower walk. They were going to need to see if they could do some more scavenging and find a better means of transportation, something that wouldn’t be so hard on his hands and arms.
They found they could walk for 45 minutes to an hour at a time before he needed to stop and rest. His hands were aching and stiff. They had walked most of the day and it was starting to get dark, the came across a sign with the name of the city they were headed to; the distance however was too faded to make out. They walked on until they found a wooded area where they could set up camp for the night. Once they were deep enough into the woods they cleared the area and decided that neither of them was really hungry, they both went right to sleep.
They woke early the next morning, they had heard a noise nearby that had startled both of them into waking. It sounded like it could have been an animal but neither of them were really sure what type of animal it could be as neither of them were familiar with the wild animals of the world above. They both rose from their spots, grabbed their gear and prepared to leave when the animal in question strolled out from the brush. The creature was huge, much larger than either of them and it was brown. The head of the thing was massive and the teeth were large and very sharp looking. The creature made a lot of noise as it rose up on its hind legs and when it did that it stood as tall as some of the trees in the forest. Lili and Kev were both too frightened to do anything, Kev reached down into the cart slowly, without moving too quickly, and fumbled around until he found the button on Dawn which would switch her back on.
Dawn whirred to life and her red eyes looked around, seeing the menacing bear standing tall over her friends she did not have time to do more than simply react. She aimed her laser arm at the head of the bear and fired, blasting a hole clean through its head. The bear dropped to the ground with a thud. Lili and Kev both stood stone still, too terrified to move, both still in shock. Dawn climbed out of the cart and walked over to the bear easily flipping the beast over.
“Relax, the beast is dead,” she said.
Lili let out a huge gasp of air as if she had been holding her breath the whole time. “What is that monster?” she asked in a weak voice.
“That, was a bear and it is a good thing you woke me when you did or you two would have been shredded to death.”
Dawn rummaged through the tools until she found a knife and went to the bear and began skinning it and cutting away the meat. “Why are you taking off the skin like that?” asked Lili.
“Because the hide will make good clothing for you, it will start to get cold on the surface of this planet eventually and you will need warmer clothes if you are to survive up here. Thick animal hides will help to keep you warm, we will just need to clean them up and tan them,” said Dawn as she sliced into the meat. “And if you learn to smoke the meat you can preserve it for a long time and make it last without wasting too much of it. There are a lot of things you will need to learn to do in order to survive in this environment.”
Dawn had finished cutting off the skin and handed it to Kev and showed him how to clean the skin by scraping off all the fat. Kev got to work on the skin doing what Dawn had shown him. Lil sat next to Dawn watching her as she carved up the meat, “what can I do to help?” she asked.
“That depends on how your ankle is feeling.”
“It’s much better actually I can walk on it now without the crutches you made me,” she said.
“Good, then you can gather lots of wood, I will show you how to smoke all of this meat. I am going to teach you how to hunt and protect yourself Lili. You are going to stay here while Kev and I go to the city to get my batteries,” said Dawn.
“But I could help,” said Lili.
“It is too dangerous Lili and the less people the faster we can move. We do not want to take a chance of you re-injuring your ankle. Besides someone has to stay behind and work on smoking all this meat and tanning this hide. This area of the forest will make a good place to live for the time being and we may be able to rescue and bring others here as well,” said Dawn.
“Oh, well what if another of those Bear things shows up? How can I possibly defend myself against something like that?” she asked.
“Humans once had weapons called guns that worked very well against them. I will travel to the nearest town tomorrow and see if I can find some, if there are any that are still of use I will show you how to use them. I still have a couple days of power left in me, so I should be ok,” said Dawn.
Dawn set to work showing Lili what she would need to do. She set up a wooden rack over the fire-pit and made sure Lili and Kev gathered plenty of wood. She told Lili to keep the meat strung up and plenty of green wood burning in the fire so that the meat would get cured. She also fashioned a bow out of wood and some string she had found. She managed to carve out some arrows and taught her how to shoot it. She told her to keep practicing with it until she could hit a mark every time.
She showed Lili and Kev the basics of how to use the tools and the materials around them to build a decent shelter and had them work on that while she was gone to the small village to look for more supplies they could use at the camp. Dawn looked around the campsite at the progress that had already been made and decided everything had been set in motion that needed to be done until she returned from the town.
“I should be back in a few hours, I will get as many supplies as I can.” said Dawn as she said goodbye to her friends.
24
Dawn made her way out of the woods and headed back along the road towards the town Lili had spotted when they were headed to the big city. The town was only about ten miles from the edge of the woods and would not take long for her to walk on her own. One of the first things she had noticed once she entered the small town was how neat and clean it was compared to most of the small towns they had passed along the way.
This town looked as though it had a lot of upkeep done to it on a regular basis. Dawn knew she would have to be very careful in this area, there could very well be other A.I.’s around. She stuck to the side streets and looked into some of the homes, the homes looked vacant and had very little as far as furnishings in them.
She made her way over to the local sheriff’s department and went around to the back of the building. She found a window and looked inside to be sure there was no one inside. The place seemed to be empty so she went to the door in the back and opened it cautiously, she crept inside peeking around every corner. The building was empty, but what she saw in the main office area took her by surprise. Standing in the corner was an A.I. power charging unit and plugged into it was a spare ba
ttery.
Dawn was not sure what was going on here, was not sure why the A.I. we’re patrolling and manning a station in such a small remote town like this. She looked around until she found the weapons locker which was stocked with rifles and ammo. Dawn broke the lock and grabbed several guns and plenty of ammo, she also took the spare battery. It may not have a full charge but it was bound to have more than what she had left in hers and it could get her to Philadelphia so they could get more batteries.
Dawn thought if she could find a means of transporting things she could grab the charging station and possibly a generator as well and most of their problems would be solved. She dumped the weapons and ammo into a sack and tossed them over her shoulder, she went to the front window and looked out to be sure no one was around and then opened the door, slowly sliding outside.
She pulled the door shut behind her and started walking down the road, just as she was about to turn down another street she saw two A.I. units walking towards her. It was far too late for her to duck behind anything, she knew the moment she had spotted them they had spotted her as well.
“Stop intruder,” one of them yelled as they ran forward.
“What unit are you? What are you doing in our sector?” the other asked.
Dawn knew something weird was going on with these two units, they talked different to most A.I. units, and they talked more like she did. “My name is Dawn, I was a scrapper from New York City.”
The units looked at her for a moment and both came to the same conclusion at the same time. “You are aware, like us. You have human emotions and feelings, you have a soul?” one of them asked.
“I do, somehow I was gifted with a human soul, just as the two of you must have been,” she said as she set her loot on the ground. “I was heading to Washington D.C. with some human friends that escaped from the farm in New York. They are trying to find answers as to why the mainframe is keeping their people on the farms instead of letting them back into the world above,” she said.
“You have humans with you?” they asked.
“They are not here with me, they are at a camp we set up deep in some woods where it is safe from the eyes of the drones. They wish to try and free their people and I have agreed to help them. We could use some more help, if you are willing.”
“We would be most interested in meeting these humans, we have not met any humans since we got these souls, once we started feeling these emotions we severed the connection from the mainframe and left the city, and we came here and repaired this place. We knew of nothing else to do. My name is Reggie,” said the one unit.
Reggie was a blue haired, blue eyed unit very similar to what Dawn looked like before she had modified herself with the human looking features except for the joints. The other unit looked pretty much the same with the exception of the hair and eye color which were green.
“My name is Bard,” he said.
“We will need to take supplies along with us, like the recharge station and a generator if there is one around, perhaps a cart we can push them in easily as well,” said Dawn.
“Yes, we have the stuff you need at the station, a generator in the garage as well as a shopping cart that we took from a grocery store.” said Reggie.
So the three went back to the station, grabbed the cart and loaded the generator and the charging station into the cart, Dawn also grabbed the remaining guns and ammo for the others to use and they headed back out of town and started the walk back to the woods. The walk would take a bit longer now they were loaded down with equipment and a cart.
They made it to the edge of the woods in about two hours, it was a bit rough going trying to push the cart through the forest and in the end they wound up having to lift and carry it, luckily their A.I. strength helped out a lot. They made it to the clearing where the camp was set up and as they entered Lili screamed, “Guardians,” and ran behind a tree.
“No Lili, Kev, it is alright. They are friends, I found them in the town, and they are like me. They possess human souls,” said Dawn
Lili peeked out from behind the tree and Kev stood up from the ground, they looked the guardians over and slowly walked over to them. “This is Bard and Reggie, Bard, Reggie, these are my human friends, Lili and Kev.”
“It is nice to meet you, you are the first humans we have talked to since we started having feelings and emotions. We are still not sure what these feelings mean or how to interpret them but we try each day to understand them,” said Bard
Lili let out a smile, “It’s nice to meet you as well, I’m sure I can help you figure them out. I seemed to have no problem telling Dawn all about the many different emotions and feelings humans have,” she said.
Lili walked off to the side of the camp with Bard and Reggie, chatting away about emotions and feelings. “Kev, it looks as if we will not be needing to go into the city after all, when I found these two they had a charging station as well as a generator that we can hook it up to. I can charge my battery tonight. I also found they had a few spare batteries so they could charge and swap them out without having to have any down time.”
“That’s great, now we can work on getting the camp in order and make plans to go to D.C. and find this mainframe you mentioned,” said Kev.
“That will not be as easy as you wish it to be. The mainframe will be heavily guarded by A.I. units. Getting into the city itself will be difficult enough but getting to the mainframe, which is in a place called the Whitehouse, will be far more difficult,” said Dawn.
“Yes, but we have more help now. The three of you should be able to get inside, can’t you just walk into the place as if you belonged there?”
“Unfortunately it does not work like that. We need to be connected to the link like the rest, once we connect they would know everything we know and then we would be in trouble,” said Dawn.
“Oh, I see the problem then. We will have to sneak in,” he said.
“Yes, disabling the security systems should be easy enough, but getting past the A.I. patrolling the halls will be a bit harder to do. If even one of them spots us the others will instantly be alerted and come running, we will be overtaken in moments.”
“Then I guess we still have a lot of planning to do before we do anything. Do you know the layout of the building, where the mainframe is and how to get to it?”
“I have the basic plans stored in my head, I will draw a diagram so we can all see and formulate a plan as to what we will do to get into the mainframe,” she said.
25
With the help of Reggie and Bard they were able to get a decent sized shelter set up as well as a good smoking hut so they could start smoking the bear meat. Dawn took Lili out into the woods and showed her various plants and their roots that were edible as well as berries and nuts that could be foraged. She also pointed out a stream not far away they could use to fill their water jugs for fresh water. They set up the generator and battery charging station inside an old dead tree they hollowed out and covered it to keep out the elements.
They dug out a pit they could use for a regular fire for warmth and light at night, and were able to find enough dead wood in the forest to build some basic furnishings for Kev and Lili to use. Now all that was needed was to start the planning. Did they want to first go to D.C. and the mainframe or would it be better to go to Philadelphia, the farm below and try to free more humans. Kev debated that with more humans free it would mean more help in getting into the mainframe in D.C.
Dawn could understand his reasoning, it would be wise to have more help but it would also be putting more people in danger. It would take time to teach them what they would need to know and to go over a plan. “You are right Kev, we could use the help, but at the same time I do not want to put any more people in danger than we need to. First we’ll need to get to the humans and hope they’ll come with us willingly. If we can get them out of the farm and then teach them to survive out here, and to trust us as you have, then we must hope they can be strong enough to help us g
et into the city and do what is needed,” said Dawn.
“Yes you’re right, but we won’t know if any of this will happen unless we at least try. You helped free Lili because of the emotions and feelings that you gained right?” he asked her. She gave him a nod. “So somewhere inside of you, you want to see the rest of the humans free, as we do, so why not start by freeing some of them and showing them what they really have to live for, then we can put an end to the cold thinking machines that enslave them all underground,” said Kev.
“He speaks with a lot of sense,” said Reggie, as he, Bard and Lili sat down next to them. “We should free more humans. The more people we have to help us the better our chances will be of getting to the mainframe and overtaking it.”
“But it also has more of a risk of people getting hurt or possibly captured or killed,” said Bard.
“There is always a possibility of someone getting hurt no matter what we do, isn’t there? We need the numbers, with enough of us we can over-power a guardian unit and take him out,” said Lili.
“Yes but it is not enough to simply over-power them and take them out, you need to sneak up and take them out before they have a chance to alert others to our presence. If you cannot immediately sever the heads from the bodies, the connection to the mainframe will send out a signal to all A.I. units in the area and we will have more units converging on us than we can handle,” said Dawn.