The Boy at the End of the World

by Greg Van Eekhout

  “Can you climb?” Fisher asked, ignoring him.

  “I cannot. The disassemblers disconnected my left-knee servos.”

  Scout-drones, strikers, disassemblers—how many different kinds of gadgets were there?

  With a grunt, Fisher hoisted Click over his shoulder. “I need both arms to climb, so you’ll have to hold on.”

  “Very well,” said Click. “How is this?”

  “Too … tight … can’t … breathe.”

  “Ah. Is this better?”

  Fisher coughed. Maybe his instinct and reasoning had both been wrong, and he should have left the robot to his own fate.

  He began climbing down a tree, inch by painstaking inch. “What are we up against?”

  “It is actually quite interesting,” Click began, as if they were passing time in front of a campfire. “During my hours of captivity, I monitored my abductors’ communication signals. They transmit in a familiar language. It is very similar to the one I used to communicate with other machines at the Life Ark.”

  “You mean … the gadgets are from the Ark?”

  “No, there were never any machines such as these in the Ark.”

  “So, what does it all mean?”

  “I do not know, Fisher. It is an intriguing mystery.”

  Their route became too overgrown to pass. Instead, Fisher followed a beam toward the edge of the building, looking for another way down. Several floors below, the muddy river rippled like a brown sheet.

  “What did the gadgets want with you, anyway?” Fisher asked.

  “Spare parts,” said Click. “From what I could tell, the scout-drones scour the area for mechanical salvage and bring it to the disassemblers, who take useful parts away somewhere else.”

  “And the strikers?”

  A cluster of flying machines rose in front of them. They hovered in air, all sharp protrusions and grasping arms.

  “Ah, yes,” said Click. “The strikers. They are here.”

  The whine of the strikers’ engines changed pitch, and they came forward, cautiously, as if trying to judge what Fisher would do.

  Fisher was pretty sure what they would do. It wouldn’t be nice.

  “Drop me,” said Click.

  “What?”

  “I am a burden and I am jeopardizing your survival. Drop me.”

  “I’m not going to drop you. You’ll smash on a steel beam or get tangled in the plants or hit the water and sink.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Oh, just shut up.”

  Click hissed.

  The strikers extended their claw arms. Tiny turrets swiveled around and aimed little gun barrels at Fisher. When red targeting lasers converged at a point on Fisher’s chest, he knew there was only one thing to do.

  He sucked in a deep breath and jumped.

  Missiles whizzed past his ears as he and Click plummeted. He hit the water hard but managed to hold onto Click. Sinking fast under Click’s added weight, he kicked until his tortured legs brought him to the surface. The raft was just a few yards away, rocking as the mammoth stomped and snorted.

  Sputtering, Fisher managed to load Click aboard. But that gave the strikers time to target him again. Little missiles splintered the logs right in front of Fisher’s face. He ducked under the water and paddled downward.

  Missiles drew bubble trails through the murky water. The water slowed the strikers’ projectiles, but they could still hurt Fisher. At least down here, he had a chance.

  All he had to do was hold his breath.

  Forever.

  After considerably less time than forever, Fisher’s bursting lungs drove him back to the surface.

  Something came up with him. Something huge. Fisher’s skin prickled with electricity as a serpentine monster surged up from the muddy deeps and broke into open air. Gobs of water flew off its shimmering skin.

  Knowing his fish, Fisher instantly identified it as a type of knifefish—specifically, an electric eel, grown to a colossal twenty feet long. Its back skimmed the surface, drawing the attention of the strikers. They erupted with bursts of missile fire but only managed to graze the eel’s back. The eel thrashed and retreated beneath the surface.

  Gadgets with missiles or giant electric eel. Either seemed more than capable of killing him, and with only his scrap-metal knife, he didn’t like his chances.

  The eel stayed close to the surface, swimming back and forth like a giant letter “S.” Humans weren’t the eel’s usual prey, but eventually it would decide to vary its diet.

  A thought arrived in Fisher’s head. One way of catching fish was dropping a live electrical cable into a pond and electrifying all the fish. Turn off the current, gather the dead fish, quick and efficient.

  “This will never work,” Fisher muttered, putting his head down and swimming toward the strikers. He’d be shot or electrocuted or eaten for sure.

  With a flick of its body, the eel went in pursuit, breaking the surface. And that made it a target again. The strikers fired their missiles. Red blotches exploded in the eel’s orange belly. It convulsed in fury, madly whipping its tail into a striker. Fisher’s skin tingled with a billion pins and needles as the eel discharged bioelectric energy. The striker exploded in dozens of parts, which zinged like bullets into the other strikers. Gadget parts kerplunked into the river.

  Fisher allowed himself a weak laugh of triumph. But his problems were far from over. Wounded, the eel churned and flopped about. Blood turned the muddy brown water to rust-colored froth. Its mighty tail came down on the raft, and Fisher watched in horror as the logs came apart and sent debris scattering over the river.

  Had he just witnessed Click being destroyed and Protein killed? But as the great eel grew still and sank below the surface, Fisher spotted his companions.

  Click lay facedown on Protein’s back, which rose like a little furry island. The mammoth’s trunk poked from the water like a snorkel.

  Fisher used his last dregs of strength to paddle over to Protein. He grabbed two fistfuls of hair and hauled himself up onto the mammoth’s back, beside Click.

  “Mammoths can swim?” gasped Fisher.

  “Apparently so. This is consistent with elephant behavior.”

  Fisher’s head dropped with exhaustion, the pungent reek of wet mammoth fur filling his nostrils. He wanted so badly to sleep, to surrender to exhaustion. But he kept his eyes open and watched the skies for more gadgets.

  The machines had hunted Stragglers.

  And now, Fisher was sure, they would be hunting him.

  CHAPTER 12

  They hid in the mud.

  Snatchers, the kind of gadget that had abducted Click, skimmed down the river, their propellers kicking up rooster tails of brown water. Patrolling scout-drones buzzed angrily above mangrove trees.

  Click said the gadgets could sense infrared energy—heat—so covering themselves with cold mud helped Fisher and his companions conceal the warmth rising from their bodies. Not that Fisher had any body warmth left. He clenched his jaws to keep his teeth from chattering.

  He couldn’t spend the rest of his life hiding like this. He’d never find the Southern Ark this way, and the possibility of finding other humans had become as important to him as surviving.

  Of course, he couldn’t survive long hunkered down in river mud either. Hypothermia could prove more dangerous than the gadgets. Also, he just flat-out refused to live like a newt. He’d lost his boat, his spear, and his knife. Somehow, he would have to use his environment to make new weapons. And then he would teach himself to kill gadgets.

  But first, he must exercise patience.

  Finally, an hour after he heard the last gadget go by, he crawled out of the mud.

  “Let’s get you walking again,” he said to Click.

  Nudging aside Protein, who kept trying to gift Click with useless, meager roots, Fisher examined the robot’s knee.

  “Do you see anything damaged?” Click asked, not flexible enough to check for himself.

  “
Looks like there’s a little wheel missing. And there’s a little copper plug thing that’s not plugged into anything.”

  “Ah, yes. The gadgets appear to have taken one of my radial extenders and a lower nerve conduit.”

  “You really need those?”

  “Do you need your kneecaps?” Click asked.

  “Probably.”

  “Then I need my radial extenders and lower nerve conduit.”

  “Well, I don’t think I’m going to find replacement parts around here, unless you can tell me how to build them with sticks and mud.”

  Click whirred a bit, then clicked, then hissed. He seemed very unhappy about this development.

  “Very well,” Click said, finally. “You must find a way to reconnect my femoral support rod to my lower radial strut.”

  “How?”

  “An aluminum span-connector would do, though I’d prefer one of carbon-composite—”

  “Click? No aluminum here. No carbon-composite. We have to work with what’s around.”

  “Ah,” Click said. His head dipped forward. “Unfortunately, robot parts do not grow on trees.”

  Fisher bent to look more closely at Click’s knee.

  “So, this bit here needs to be attached to this thing there?”

  “Unless you would prefer to carry me, yes.”

  “Hmm,” said Fisher.

  “Or, of course, you would be well advised to abandon me here in the mud—”

  “Shut up. I’m thinking. Hmm. Hmm.”

  “You are making repetitive noises,” Click said with a click.

  But Fisher ignored him. He took some of the roots Protein was eating—also ignoring Protein’s grunt of protest—and sawed them against a sharp-edged rock until he was satisfied with their lengths. By braiding a thick strand of root with some thinner ones, he created a somewhat-stiff, somewhat-flexible rod, and this he used to bridge the missing part of Click’s knee. He tied it in place with the very best knots he’d ever tied.

  “I am doubtful—,” Click began.

  Fisher hauled Click to his feet. “Just test it.”

  Click bent and flexed his leg. “Basic mobility is better than none,” he concluded.

  “You were never more than basically mobile anyway.”

  They kept moving south, any way they could. Sometimes that meant trudging through mud along the river. Sometimes it meant splashing through bogs. Sometimes it meant hanging onto Protein’s back as the mammoth paddled through deeper marsh waters. And often it meant hiding from gadgets.

  Sunlight seldom broke through the clouds anymore, so using Click’s broken eye as a fire-starting lens no longer worked. Instead, Fisher picked up every dark rock along the route and banged it against every other rock. And after four miserable days of cold, raw fish for dinner and shuddering nights, with only the heat radiating from Protein’s body for warmth, he found two stones that made sparks when struck together. Flint.

  His first fire in days felt like a sunny embrace. But he only kept the fire alive long enough to cook his food. With gadgets still in the area, even a few minutes of fire was almost too much risk.

  He’d noticed that wood freshly broken from trees was sometimes sticky with resin, and that the resin burned long and slow, so he coated the tips of some sticks in resin to serve as small torches. These gave off very little heat but provided a small halo of light around which he could experiment with more complicated deadfall traps. He still hadn’t managed to catch anything with one.

  “Who do you think built them?” Fisher asked Click as his rather complicated assembly of rocks and twigs collapsed under its own weight.

  Click knew Fisher wasn’t talking about traps. He was talking about gadgets. It was not the first time Fisher had asked.

  For a long time, Click didn’t say anything. He merely processed, his head humming away. “I do not have a theory at this time,” he said finally. “There were no such machines in the Ark, and none in existence outside the Ark when it was sealed. And the Stragglers had no more access to technology than you do now.”

  Fisher picked a bone out of a charred piece of catfish. “But the gadgets are related to the Ark in some way. You said the signals they transmit—the language they use when they talk to each other—was similar to the one you and the other Ark technology used.”

  “Yes,” Click said, whirring and humming and clicking. “It is … troubling.”

  They continued on at first light. Fisher found a round stone with one sharp edge, and it served him as a hand ax. And when he came upon a gnarly tree branch to strap it to, he had a new weapon.

  Freshwater whales sometimes swam beside them, communicating in squeaks and whistles and deep bass notes that Protein responded to with his own rumbles. Their presence comforted Fisher. For one thing, whenever they were around, it meant there were fish to catch. He started to feel a little less like prey.

  The Mississippi picked up speed again. There were more rapids to detour around. More places where Fisher could fail to survive. There were days of rain that melted the riverbanks. On these days, Fisher built leaky shelters of tree boughs that let in as much rain as they blocked out. During one downpour, Fisher stared balefully out into the dim showers while Protein frolicked in the mud, rolling around and making splooch sounds with his trunk.

  Over the course of several nights’ stops, Fisher built a slingshot from a Y-shaped piece of tree branch, smoothed by untold years on the river. Threads of stretchy fabric from the waist of his tattered pants formed the band. A sacrificed square from his sleeve formed the pocket. He took the idea of the slingshot from his knowledge of spearguns, though the final result wasn’t much like a speargun. In his spare time, he practiced launching stones with it until he could hit the occasional small lizard or bird. It wouldn’t do anything against a flying striker gadget, but it helped keep his belly full as he made his way south. He refused to starve before giving himself a chance to find the Southern Ark.

  “What will be at the end of river?” he asked Click as they walked the narrow banks.

  “It will grow swampier, eventually becoming a delta that empties into the Gulf of Mexico. But we have hundreds of miles left to go.”

  So when they reached the river’s end only a few hours later, Click could only whirr with surprise.

  Instead of flattening out into the sea, the river ended in the roar and mist of a waterfall, hurtling from a broad precipice. Ocean waves pounded rocks hundreds of feet below.

  “I think the gadgets broke your geography programming,” said Fisher.

  Click hissed. “Animals evolve over time, and land changes over time. But do not underestimate the impact of human activity. Sea levels must have risen due to the melting of glaciers and polar ice caps. Destructive farming practices may have eroded the soil away.”

  Fisher climbed a rock and looked out over the edge. If there was land out there, it was beyond the far, blue horizon. His thoughts danced with visions of fish and mollusks and sea mammals, and of the boats he might build to venture out over the shimmering sea.

  But more immediate concerns pulled him back to earth.

  Any evidence of the Southern Ark would be lost underwater.

  Or maybe not.

  Down the sides of the cliff were grayish-white protrusions. Fisher thought they were rocks at first. But the longer he gazed at them, the more they looked like ruins.

  “Our search isn’t over yet,” he said, rejoining Click and Protein. “But it might take a little climbing.”

  Fisher was wrong. It took a lot of climbing. Click and Protein followed and mostly slid between boulders. They came so close to the falls that spray dripped from their bodies. Below, the sea roared.

  About a hundred feet down they came to a weathered concrete shell, like a tunnel leading into the cliff. Fisher expected it to be full of collapsed rubble, but the glow from three of his resin-coated sticks revealed nothing but clear pathway ahead.

  His breath quickened, and not just from the exertion of the climb
. Maybe these ruins were only another place where humans had lived and died ages ago. But this could also be the place at the end of the river the Stragglers sought: the Southern Ark. This could be the place where he would finally come to face-to-face with other living humans.

  “If this is an entrance to the Southern Ark, we must proceed with great caution,” said Click. “We should expect defense systems, and we should expect them to treat us as intruders.”

  “Well, we haven’t been shot yet,” said Fisher.

  Click hissed. “Again, Fisher, I ask you to reconsider. Against great odds, you have survived over the course of months, after traversing many miles and facing difficult circumstances. You have succeeded. I am concerned that continued risk puts your success in jeopardy.”

  Fisher licked his lips. He looked into the robot’s remaining good eye. His own reflection stared back at him, dark and lean and scratched. He was surprised how fierce he looked to himself. He was no longer the soft thing he’d been when he became born. He was no weak animal.

  “You know I have to go in. You know there’s no point in me surviving if I’m the last one left.”

  “I know,” Click said, after a whirring pause. “My most simple programming tells me to protect you. And my more complicated programming tells me to allow you risk. It is difficult.”

  “I know,” Fisher said, understanding. “I know how it is.”

  They entered the tunnel.

  It was very much like a cave. Mushrooms clustered around the bases of stalagmites. The moist, hot stink of guano clogged Fisher’s nostrils. But as they continued deeper in, the stone walls and ceiling gave way to some smooth, featureless material that felt like hard plastic.

  “Plasteel,” said Click. “Resistant to wear and damage. Structures made of plasteel can last for hundreds of thousands of years.”

  “Why wasn’t my Ark made of plasteel?”

  “It is difficult to manufacture,” Click said. “The builders of your Ark no longer possessed the resources. If this is indeed the Southern Ark, its builders appear to have retained more advanced technologies than the builders of yours.”