The Boy at the End of the World

by Greg Van Eekhout

  The rodent paused. Its whiskers twitched.

  Come on, thought Fisher. You must be as hungry as I am. Don’t you want some berries? What could be more delicious than half-rotted berries?

  He squeezed his fists to contain his anticipation when the rodent darted beneath the trap. And he squeezed his fists tighter in frustration when the rodent stuffed the berries in its cheeks, turned, and darted away to safety without triggering the trap.

  “Ah,” said Click, waking up. “You have devised a deadfall. Traps such as these are a very effective way to obtain food.”

  “But mine didn’t work.”

  “Perhaps traps are more complicated than they appear.”

  “Was there a personality profile that knew about traps?”

  “There were several,” Click said. “The Trapper profile, and the Hunter profile, the Carpenter profile—”

  “But instead, I got the Fisher profile.”

  Click whirred. “It was an accident. I had intended to imprint you with the Forge profile, but my fingers slipped during the attack.”

  The next afternoon, as Fisher braided grass stalks together to make a net, he saw something flying overhead. He watched the black dot circle below the wispy clouds. The thought of parrots still made him fear the sky.

  “Is that a bird?”

  Click waved Protein’s trunk away, foiling the mammoth’s attempt to smell his head. “I can’t tell,” he said. “It is too far up.”

  The object flew in a slow, very unbirdlike way, leaving behind a thread of vapor.

  “It’s a machine,” said Fisher.

  Click watched it a while, whirring and hissing. Then, “Yes, I believe so,” he said.

  The robot’s face and voice never conveyed emotion, but Fisher thought the soaring thing scared him.

  They hunkered down in the tall grass and waited for the flying machine to pass out of view.

  And they kept walking.

  Fisher’s feet crunched over morning frost and brittle grass. The night cold seeped into his bones, despite his fires. Even Click moved more stiffly than usual. Only Protein seemed unaffected. He continued to amble along, eating roots and leaving a legacy of dung.

  On the twentieth day out from the cave, they came to a river. This was nothing like the streams and the brooks they’d followed so far. Standing up on the elevated banks, Fisher pushed hair off his forehead and looked down the broad course of mud-brown water, several hundred feet across. The current didn’t appear very strong at first, but then Fisher watched a sizeable tree branch speed down the river. He wouldn’t want to try swimming in that.

  But he definitely did want to climb down the steep embankment and try his hand at fishing. The fish in a river this big must be huge!

  Almost as if the river had heard his thoughts, the back of a great creature curved from the water. Water glinted off its greenish-black flesh, covered with moss and barnacles. It shot a spray of water and mist from a hole in its back before diving back below the surface.

  Fisher’s mind raced through the catalog of creatures he’d seen dead in their pods back in his Ark.

  “That’s a whale!” he shouted. “A river whale! Click, this river … it’s the Whale Road!”

  Fisher now spotted multiple blasts from blowholes. One whale rose almost straight up from the water, poised for a moment like a dark, majestic tower, then came down with a booming splash.

  “Look at the size of those things,” Fisher said. “There must be tons of protein on them.”

  “Interesting,” Click said. “These whales appear to have evolved the ability to survive in freshwater environments. Either that, or the salt content of the Mississippi has increased. Adapting to changing environments is how species survive while others go extinct. A great many species did go extinct before the Arks were built. The builders saved specimens of many, but many others were lost. Only those able to adapt, and to do so very quickly, would have survived.”

  “You called the river the Mississippi. You know its name?”

  “Based on my basic geography programming and the distance and direction we traveled from the Life Ark, yes. The Mississippi River was one of the North American continent’s greatest waterways, an artery of trade and commerce that enabled humanity to tame this wild land and expand the reach of civilization—”

  “Click, you’re talking weird again.”

  “Perhaps. But if I am right, then where is the Great Arch? It should be near.”

  Fisher feared that if there’d once been such a thing—whatever it was—it had long ago collapsed into ruins.

  “Let’s walk down the banks. Maybe we’ll find it further south.”

  The terrain grew more difficult. They navigated a crumbly ledge not much wider than Protein, with a steep climb on one side and a sheer drop to the river below on the other. Soon, they’d be faced with two choices: pick their way dangerously down to the river, or turn back. As far as Fisher was concerned, that was no choice at all.

  The walls plummeted to the river’s edge. A lot of junk had washed up below: jumbled driftwood, piles of masonry, even the rusted hulks of old machinery.

  Fisher glanced at his crude iron rod of a spear. He’d made it from junk. Junk was treasure. And maybe there’d be signs of the Stragglers’ passing. He definitely needed to get down to the river. But the way was far too steep for Protein. Even Click would have a hard time getting down there, with his stiff limbs.

  “I’m going down,” Fisher announced. “You and Protein can stay here.”

  Click peered skeptically over the ledge.

  “It looks like a very treacherous climb. I strongly advise against it.”

  “But there’s stuff to salvage,” Fisher said. “There could be things I can use to make better weapons. Plus, we’ve come all this way to find out where the Stragglers went. I might find clues down there.”

  “Or you might break important bones. The risk outweighs the possible benefits.”

  “Look, Click, you said I have strong survival instincts, right?”

  “Yes,” the robot conceded. “It was included in your personality profile.”

  “Okay. So, if I want to do something, it can’t really be all that dangerous, right? Or else my survival instinct would tell me not to do it.”

  “Your survival instinct also tells you to sometimes put yourself at risk if there is something to gain. Otherwise, you would never wade into a pond to catch frogs. You would never climb a tree to collect bird’s eggs. Some risk is necessary.”

  “Right, that’s what I’m saying: if I don’t climb down to the river—”

  “However,” Click interrupted, “instinct can also lead you into harm’s way. Moths are drawn by instinct to light. You have seen them burn themselves in the flames of your campfires. In a time when there were more humans, risking yourself might have benefited the community. But now, if your risk results in injury or death, there is no one to take your place. Humanity will be extinct.”

  The climb suddenly seemed more dangerous, nothing but crumbly mud with few handholds.

  “Well, thanks a lot, Click. Now I don’t know what to do.”

  “In that case,” said the robot, “you must follow your heart.”

  “What? What does that even mean?”

  “I do not know. It is something humans used to say to one another. I thought it might be helpful.”

  Protein dropped dung.

  Fisher took a breath. He got down on all fours and backed up to the edge of the cliff. While Click continued to protest, Fisher began creeping down.

  Around halfway, he realized he’d made a grave mistake. He counted seven times when he was absolutely certain he was going to die, and he lost count of the number of times when he was only pretty sure he was going to die. By the time he reached the bottom, sweat glued his clothes to his skin, his palms were scraped and bleeding, and his muscles were on fire.

  But he’d made it.

  “I’m all right!” he called up to Click. “I surv
ived!”

  No response.

  The river was much louder down here. All the racket of rushing water was probably swallowing his voice.

  He hadn’t been out of Click’s earshot since the robot saved him from the rat. Why did it feel so strange to be alone now? It even felt odd to be this far from Protein.

  Well, Click would know he was okay once he climbed back up—though right now he didn’t even want to think about how hard that would be—so the sooner he did what he’d come down here to do, the better.

  He began picking through the gravelly patch of beach and discovered treasure right away: a flat wedge of metal. He could sharpen it on a rock and lash a wooden handle to it, and he’d have a knife.

  He found a stiff piece of wire split into three sharp points, just perfect for gigging frogs.

  After a few more minutes of searching, he started to wish he could just stay down here. There was so much washed-up junk, from lengths of nylon rope to sheets of plastic. He could fashion good shelters and plenty of weapons and tools.

  But that wouldn’t get him any closer to the Stragglers or the Southern Ark.

  After tossing aside a couple of rusted barrels, a bit of bright yellow buried under more junk caught his eye. He dug through a pile of plastic bottles and soggy moss to uncover an artifact of some kind. It was a sign, at least twelve feet high and twelve feet across, in the shape of the letter “M.” Or a pair of arches.

  Was this it? The Great Arch?

  Fisher cleared away more junk and muck and exposed a message, written in yellow plastic letters below the arches.

  “Billions and billions served,” he read.

  Fisher had no idea what that could mean.

  He wished Click was here now.

  “What have you found?”

  Fisher let out a startled yip and spun.

  Click and Protein stood a couple of yards away.

  “How did you get down here?” Fisher asked, astonished.

  “Protein found a safer path downriver. I am pleased to see you survived your harrowing and foolhardy descent.”

  “It wasn’t so bad,” said Fisher. It was the first lie he ever told, and it was a rather obvious one.

  The mammoth snorted.

  “Anyway,” said Fisher, “I think I found the Great Arch. There’s writing under it too. Could be a clue to where the Stragglers went.”

  Click examined Fisher’s find and whirred for a moment.

  “I have an entry for this item in my memory modules,” Click said. “It is a relic that would have been considered ancient, even when the Ark was built. It is a sign for a fast-food restaurant.”

  Then Click had to explain what a fast-food restaurant was. In the old times food was so readily available that humans competed with one another for the privilege of serving it. Whoever sold the greatest quantity of food was considered the winner.

  Fisher had a hard time wrapping his thoughts around the idea of there being so much food that people didn’t have to hunt and scrape to find it.

  “They must have been very healthy,” he concluded.

  “Actually, the amount of food and kinds of food they ate made them unhealthy.”

  Fisher shook his head. His life was so different from the way humans had lived that he couldn’t believe he was part of the same species.

  “It is very doubtful that this is the Great Arch the Stragglers spoke of,” said Click. “If there was such a thing here, it is long gone, crumbled to dust and faded into the sands of time. We have reached a dead end.”

  Fisher said nothing. His eyes swept over the debris-strewn beach, the logs of driftwood, the plastic barrels, the plastic sheets, and lengths of cable.

  “No,” Fisher said, “we haven’t reached a dead end. We’re going to keep going.”

  He looked downriver, where the water swirled and kicked up clouds of spray.

  “And we’re going to need a boat.”

  Fisher knew about boats. He knew about boats the way he knew about fishing hooks and nets, or the way a Trapper or a Hunter would know about deadfall traps. Sorting through the beached junk, he pulled aside logs of white cedar and poplar and cottonwood of similar lengths, ten to twelve feet long, and arranged them side-by-side in the shallows. If he built his raft on dry land, he’d have to shove it into the river, and he wasn’t strong enough to do that by himself. Click would try to help, but the robot lacked physical strength. And Protein generally wasn’t interested in doing anything that didn’t involve food.

  With his makeshift knife, he sawed through plastic pipes. He tied one length to the front of the raft, another to the back, and a third diagonally across. This would give the raft stability. Then, with every scrap of nylon he could find, he lashed the logs with the tightest binding he was capable of. Fishing skills made him good at knots, and he was confident his bindings would hold. Styrofoam blocks and plastic barrels provided even more stability, and he used the last of the plastic pipes to form a crossbeam and mast. His sail came from a sheet of stiff plastic trimmed into a square. When turned in the correct direction it would catch some wind.

  As the sun set and the river blazed with shimmering orange, he stepped back from his creation and appraised his work.

  “You think a Forge could have done any better?” he asked Click.

  “I think I shall reserve judgment until I’ve seen it float.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Fisher loved being on the water. Standing at the sail, he lifted his face into the quick wind and barked commands to Click at the rudder. The raft handled the current of the Mississippi well, and they made good progress down the river.

  Protein stood unhappily before Fisher near the middle of the raft. The stabilizer pontoons helped keep the raft steady, but Protein still had to remain almost motionless at the middle or else his weight would tilt the craft. He made sad lowing sounds at Click, as if the robot would somehow feel sorry for him and force Fisher to abandon this waterborne mission, and the more Click ignored him, the sadder the mournful notes that came through his trunk.

  But Fisher had no intention of giving up his raft. Traveling over water seemed even more natural to him than walking. The word fun formed in his mind. He almost asked Click the purpose of fun, but decided to simply enjoy the sensation instead.

  Not that he wasn’t attending to survival needs. He’d fashioned a fishing pole and mounted it on the back of the raft, and a hook made from a piece of wire trailed behind on a thread of nylon. His world consisted of junk, and by using junk, he had changed his world. That’s what the human animal was best at: forcing the environment into new shapes. If Fisher could do that, he would survive.

  Midway through the first day on the river, Fisher’s fishing pole jiggled. He ran to the back of the raft and touched the taut line.

  “Got something!” he exclaimed. He began pulling in the line by hand, slowly. If he tugged too hard, he’d risk tearing the hook right from the catch’s mouth.

  “Keep your hand on the rudder,” he told Click. “And watch out for logs and junk.”

  “You are imprinted with boating skills,” Click said. “I am not. My programming does not include steering a raft down a fast river and trying to avoid obstacles.”

  “Well, I can’t steer and fish at the same time, so you’ll have to do more than you’re programmed for.”

  “I shall try. Do you want me to steer around that big tree branch we’re headed for?”

  “Yes!” Fisher screamed, just as the raft barely missed a floating oak tree.

  Once the tree was safely behind them, Fisher scowled at Click and turned his attention back to his fishing line. A foot-long fish lurked just below the surface. It was as wide around as Fisher’s calf. Sunlight gleamed off silver scales. Fisher could almost taste it.

  He drew the line in another inch, and then another.

  Patience.

  A great boiling commotion engulfed his fish. Green tails thrashed. Dozens of slender jaws lined with needle teeth ripped his fish to shre
ds. The feeding frenzy was over before Fisher could pull in his line, and the skeleton of his fish sank in a milky cloud of blood and fleshy flakes.

  “What has occurred?” asked Click, having only the sounds of frenzied splashing and Fisher’s cries of profanity to go by.

  “Crocodiles,” said Fisher. “Tiny ones, like piranhas. Like, piranha-crocs.”

  “Ah. I would advise not falling into the water, then. If you did, your survival would be most unlikely.”

  Protein’s head shivered unhappily.

  Fisher edged away from the side of the raft and returned to the sail, mourning the loss of his fish. Now he’d have to catch some more bait. Maybe he could spear one of those piranha-crocs. There must be something in the river that ate them. Everything that ate was eaten by something else.

  A flicker of movement caught Fisher’s eye. Five little piranha-crocs were clawing up the right-front styrofoam stabilizer.

  Fisher grabbed his spear and rushed the crocs. Leaning precariously over the edge of the raft, he poked at the snapping little monsters to knock them off.

  “Your survival is in imminent jeopardy,” Click advised from the rear of the craft. “Try not to fall in the water.”

  “Why would I try to fall?” Fisher shouted back.

  Distracted, he didn’t notice until too late that a squadron of crocs had boarded the middle of the raft. Their tails flicked and their yellow eyes gleamed as they opened their long jaws and hissed. Two of them broke off from the rest and darted toward Protein.

  The mammoth shivered and flared his ears. Dodging Protein’s stomping feet, the sleek crocs crawled up his flank.

  “Get off him!” Fisher screamed, charging.

  Half a dozen crocs cut off Fisher’s path. They converged on him in a snapping swarm and scrabbled over his feet and up his legs. Pain lanced his flesh as their teeth sunk in, puncturing cloth, tearing skin, biting away meat. He grabbed tails and flung crocs away, but now his bare hands were in range of their teeth. A croc bit into the web of flesh between his thumb and forefinger, and Fisher yowled.