Dark Humanity

by Gwynn White

  She’s never heard such a word before, but it makes her wonder if it’s something to do with howling, or maybe someone being loose somewhere—?

  "What's that?" Sidney says.

  "You know, like a—like a dream. You saw things that weren't there. Maybe your body was tired from the travels."

  That gives Sidney pause, and she swallows her words. The structure seemed real enough, she thought. She had been hungry before, thirsty, tired. She'd never had a hallucination a day in her life. What if Amelia's right, though? Then, did she also dream of Petra? The raider?

  Sidney never dreams—or at least if she does, she never remembers the dreams the moment she wakes up. When she was younger, she'd wake from a scary dream some times. Nayne used to tell her to look for certain colors around her in the world. She told her if there was never any hint of red, she was probably in a dream. Her dreams when she was a child were usually creamy, in pastels and light shades she rarely saw in the real world of Allenda. She'd noticed there wasn't ever any red.

  She looks around the room now—there's a red lamp shade, small hints of red in the tablecloth. This is definitely not a dream, she decides.

  Now, she tries to recall her time with Petra. There were reds around them then.

  But what about the structure? The baby she saw was in a cotton sky-blue onesie, with tiny white ruffles on the edge of its sleeves. Not that she was keeping an eye out for it then, but she doesn't recall having seen anything red in there.

  So—maybe—

  Or could this also be a lie, she wonders? She’s sure Amelia lied about the snake, what else?

  Something simply doesn’t feel right.

  Her nayne always told her to trust her instincts. When she’d asked what those are, Nayne had placed her hand on Sidney's sternum and said, "What does it feel like in here? Does it tell you to turn left or right? Does it tell you to run? Does it tell you to stay put? Listen to what this tells you, over anything or anyone else. Trust your instincts."

  Right now, her sternum tells her she needs to find a way out of here, that the food is well and good but she needs to go, to continue on her journey, to find Petra. Maybe not the raider, but definitely Petra.

  So when she takes a step back, she's surprised when she's blocked by a solid form in her path—maybe a wall. Amelia's eyes narrow slightly, though the smile on her face stays.

  "What are you so afraid of, child?" Amelia asks Sidney's retreating form. "Don't you want to have a family—again. Didn't you have a family before?"

  Of course she did, but this—

  "I need to go," she says to Amelia. "I need to make my way—somewhere else. But—" She recalls Nayne's words that it always pays to be polite, "even in this world where there are far less people than ever intended, even if you only ever come across one other person for the rest of your life, be kind."

  "I thank you for your generosity," Sidney says, "for offering me a bed and food. It was very—nice of you."

  Amelia's head tilts to the left as she takes in Sidney's words. "I should find offense," she says, "that you seem so keen on leaving. I mean—what is out there? Savages and dust. You'd prefer that to what we have to offer you here? What's the matter with you?"

  Sidney doesn't know, and hardly has the right words. Still, she wants to leave and it doesn't look like Amelia will allow her to. Why?

  She turns to the table of food again, as Amelia picks up a plate and places chunks of meat and berries and vines of heavy green grapes on it until the grapes cascade over its side. Sidney gulps, imagining how fresh and juicy and filling those would be.

  Amelia walks up to her, pulls up a chair and leaves it out, waiting for Sidney to sit in it. She places the full plate in the spot in front of the chair.

  "Well," she says, "I won't insist on you staying if you're so keen to leave, but it would be irresponsible of me to allow you to go without enough food. Look at you," she says as she points at Sidney's figure.

  "Why you're nothing but skin and bones. We can't allow you to go on your journey without some food in you, now can we? That's not the Allendian way."

  That much Sidney knows. Allendians welcome travelers into their homes "like Bedouins of old," her nayne would say. Though the words never made sense to Sidney, the sentiment was clear. Allendians take care of each other, feed each other, keep each other healthy.

  Which is why her instincts right now make little sense.

  Still, she doesn't want to be rude—the lady seems nice enough. She'd feel better if she'd had her knapsack though.

  "Where's my—what I mean to say is, may I please have my knapsack?"

  "What is that now?"

  "My knapsack? I’ve had it since I was three years old. It contains all my worldly possessions." Nayne's words again, making the bag sound like it was this big important thing, which in a way it was—it still is.

  "We did not find such a thing," Amelia says as she points to the table again, indicating that Sidney should sit.

  She frowns, knowing she’d had it on her back when she was bitten. She wouldn’t have left it behind. Still—

  Finally, she reaches the chair and plops herself down on it. There's no harm, she reckons, in having a few things on the plate. Though she's famished, she knows from experience to not just gorge on anything. It wouldn't take long for it all to come right back up again if she were to do that.

  So she reaches for a grape, plops it into her mouth and relishes in the taste of the thing. Within minutes though—sensibilities be damned—she's shoveling more food into her gullet than she knows she can handle.

  She thought she was famished—this is an entirely different type of hunger, one where she knows she's never eaten a feast like this, and suspects this might be the one and only time it will ever happen in her lifetime.

  So she keeps chewing and gulping down food, more and more until there's hardly a scrap left on the plate.

  Amelia stays quiet the entire time until she's done. Then, a slight giggle from her has Sidney turn around sheepishly.

  "You're a tornado of a child, aren't you little Sidney?"

  Sid doesn't know what a tornado is, she's never seen one—it's not like Allenda has storms within the domes, but she's seen her share of sandstorms outside the dome’s protective glass, over the years. She wonders if tornadoes are anything like that.

  When she replies to Amelia's quip with a loud burp that echoes and resonates in the room, Amelia laughs out loud and takes a seat next to her.

  "Now that you've eaten. Now that you know this can be your every day for the rest of your life, do you still wish to leave?"

  Sidney's stomach gurgles as if to say nay. She wonders why she was reticent at first. Now she knows, there's no way she wants to head out there again.

  Why hunt down a vault of food when this place clearly has its own? Why risk bumping into hordes of raiders when this place looks like it's been kept up and untouched by raiders forever? They haven't found it yet. Maybe it's so well hidden, they never will.

  "I reckon you want to stay," Amelia says in agreement with her thoughts. "And I'd be so happy if you were to stay. You can make a great part of our family. So—that's settled," she says, not waiting for Sidney's response. "We'll take care of you--you're now one of us! Welcome!"

  The 'we' and the 'you' has Sidney stumped since Amelia's the only person she's seen in several hours. Other than the pictures on the walls, there is no other indication that there is even anyone else around but them.

  So when she turns around to see another Amelia turn the corner, she screams.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Petra

  The scream is undoubtedly from Sidney, of this Petra is sure. So she runs around the woman, turns and faces a room where Sidney stands beside a table covered with dozens of plates of food. She eyes it all, analyzes the situation, and concludes Sidney is not in immediate danger.

  Still, she keeps her scanners on as she notices a woman with brown hair and a long blue dress, dark blue eye
s sparkling out from under a thin fringe. She is identical to the one that Petra and Henry had met out at the front. The woman in a matching white dress who now walks into the room further, to stand beside her—clone?

  "Petra!" Sidney yells as she runs up to her and stops short of hugging her. "How did you get here? What's going on? Who are these people?" She steps back momentarily when she notices that Henry is also in the room.

  "I haven't a clue," Petra says, keeping her eyes on the clones. "This is not a typical Allendian home."

  "Of course not," says the woman in the white dress. "Goodness knows Gideon is not a big fan of Allendian homes. This one is built to resemble Victorian homes of old, on a planet far from here. Gaea, I believe they'd called it once."

  "Earth," Amelia says, as she nods her head. "It was called Earth closer to its end, wasn't it? Gideon is a big fan of their architecture there."

  Petra watches them chatter and, still sensing no immediate danger, looks over at Sidney who's clutching her hand as if she means to crush it.

  "Child," Petra says, "why did you scream?"

  Sidney points at the woman in white. "I thought that was Amelia but I knew she was already in here. Who are you—what are you people?" She points at one woman, then the other. “How can this be possible?”

  Amelia smiles and holds the other woman's hand in hers. "We're not monsters, Sidney," she reassures. "We're twins. This is my sister Rinna."

  Twins. Petra has heard the term before but knows this is also not a typical Allendian phenomenon. In fact—

  "You should not exist," she states matter-of-factly as only a robot can. "Twins—the making of twins—is unheard of in Allenda. How are you possible?"

  "We're not your typical Allendians, are we?" Rinna states as she smiles knowingly at Amelia. "Allendians are made in tubes, but we were made in a more—natural—manner."

  To that, Petra frowns, an act which she'd perfected from her old programming.

  "You are illegal," she says, to which the twins turn back around and smile at her.

  "Oh," Rinna says, understanding in her eyes. "You're one of the—sister!" She stares into Amelia's eyes now. "She's one of their 'hunters'—she's not even human at all! I wondered how you two managed to break down the front door."

  "They broke—?" Amelia says. "How dare you break anything of ours. Who gave you permission to come in here anyway? Those of—your kind—are not welcome here. You need to leave. Immediately."

  Petra scans again, feeling Sidney tug on her hand, as if to move her out of the room.

  But Petra's programming is clear. Illegal Allendians such as these two need to be brought in and let more important Allendians determine their fate.

  So she recites the law.

  "Amelia and Rinna, you are hereby held in contempt of Allendian Law. You will be reprimanded accordingly. Consider your home seized."

  Then she turns towards Sidney and Henry. "Kindly leave the premises, for I must conduct a thorough search and shut it all down until it's time for their trial."

  Before Sidney can move though, the twins are already running. Amelia runs towards the north end of the room and disappears around the corner. Rinna turns in the opposite direction and jumps down what looks to be a hole in the floor that closes back to normal as soon as she's out of sight.

  With that, Petra urges Sidney and Henry to get out immediately. She has work to do, and can not be distracted by trying to keep them safe too.

  Despite Sidney's objections, she pushes her until they're both on the steps outside the home. Then she turns to the rest of the house and begins.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sidney

  The first thing Sidney does the moment they’re out the doors is retch aloud and vomit up most of the food she’d eaten in the house. She’d fought the urge to while inside, but the queasiness does not ease up.

  The raider offers a small flask of water, but she pushes him away. The last thing she wants are his raider cooties.

  Still, a few minutes later, after they’ve moved far enough away from the vomit, and she feels like she can breathe again, she tests her throat out with a simple, "What is she doing in there?"

  She's not addressing the raider, but he answers anyway. She still stays far enough away from him, but he seems less—scary—somehow. He’s cleaned himself up along the way, shaved off the nasty beard. She knows that’s not an indication that he’s safe, but also knows Petra would have taken care of him by now if he’d done anything wrong.

  "I don't know, kid, but whatever it is, it ain't good. Her kind are supposed to protect Allendians from—things like that."

  "But I don't understand," Sidney says. "What are twins anyway? I mean they look exactly alike. That's not right." She fights another bout of nausea and takes the deepest breath she can.

  Nayne had always told her, all Allendians are their unique individual selves, no Allendians were ever alike. That was the Allendian way—so these two—

  "It's not," he agrees, "and that's why she has to hold them prisoner in the house until their trial."

  “What are they?” she asks. “What are twins? How can there be two copies of the same person?”

  “I don’t know how they broke that law,” he says, “all I know is that it’s illegal in Allenda.”

  Everything Sidney knows about the people of Allenda tell her that trial will not happen immediately, if ever.

  The re-emergence may never happen in her lifetime, Nayne had said. It was supposed to happen already, but it hasn't, and it won't for as long as there are still people on Allenda's surface who are ill—people like her, but she tells herself not to worry about that right now.

  The raider steps away from the house and makes his way closer to the edge of the woods beyond. The last thing Sidney wants to do is follow a raider into the woods, but she walks further away from the front door too, while they wait for Petra to do—whatever she needs to do to keep the twins imprisoned.

  "It's amazing," he says after a few minutes. "I mean how did they manage to hide this here for so long without anyone finding them? What sort of tech do they use, I wonder—" and he rambles on but Sidney stops listening.

  She doesn't care what they use to hide, she just cares that it's taking Petra an awfully long time in there just to keep them put. A part of her wants to go back inside, but without her knapsack and the things in it.

  "My knapsack!" she says as she stands and stares up into the windows, wondering which room she'd woken in. "I think it might still be in there! I need it." Amelia had said they didn’t find it on her, but Sidney’s instincts tell her it’s another lie.

  He raises an eyebrow as if to question her sanity.

  "Surely you don't mean we need to go back in there, kid? Coz that's exactly the last thing we should be doing right now."

  "It has all my—everything I own in this world," Sidney says. Her voice is shrill now, trembling. She doesn't care if she's being nuts, all she knows as she runs through the hole in the door is that she needs to find that knapsack.

  She doesn't even hear him calling after her, she's already running up the stairs, down the hallway with all the picture frames in it, meaning to get to the bedroom with the warm covers and breezy window.

  She doesn't even know if the pack is there, but there is no better place to start looking.

  But it doesn't matter, she thinks, as she runs into the room, and turns around until she sees the bag's dirty bottom peeking out from under the bed. She reaches for it, and three things happen at the same time.

  First, she confirms her instinct that Amelia had lied to her about the bag, she'd pretended there wasn't one when they'd found her. Why did she lie? What else did she lie about?

  Second, a sound behind her makes her turn so fast her neck snaps, but there's no one there.

  And third, she realizes she's been trapped right along with the twins when a foul-smelling sheet drapes over her head and she passes out from whatever chemical it’s doused under.

  Ch
apter Twenty-Five

  Petra

  Her analysis tells her the twins are the only two in the entire house, and she can hear their hearts beat strong enough to get a general idea of where they are. She decides to follow the twin in the white dress first, Rinna.

  She's under the dining room somewhere, in a spot Petra is aware she can't reach except through the same hole Rinna had disappeared.

  There's no obvious knob or indication of how the floor shifted so she kneels down and feels for the notches around the floor where the hole had appeared. Easy enough.

  She allows three nails to grow two inches each, then slots the hard enamel into a seam in the floor. Any Allendian who tries such a thing would come away with bloody fingers. Petra's nails are built from the same thing she is—the same silver powder of which all Allendian bots are built.

  She easily pulls up a portion of the floor, rips it out with hardly any effort with one hand, and throws it across the way.

  The hole is barely big enough for her to fit through, and she can't see a thing through it. Still, she can hear the heartbeat though it sounds as though it's heading further away now. She stands up to her full height, then steps forward and drops down the hole.

  The drop only lasts four seconds, and she lands easily on cold cement ground. It could be a basement but that matters not.

  It's pitch black in the hole, not even a light from a crack, nothing. Petra's not a bot built to see in the dark, but she follows her ears. The twin is to her right, maybe twenty feet away, so she turns and walks purposefully to the right. She only stops when she slams into a cold wall of sorts, behind which the heartbeat is moving even farther away. She splays her fingers out to feel, but the wall doesn't stop. Baring her nails again to rip a portion of it does nothing—there isn't a seam in the wall, no crack, nothing. Just cement like the ground under her feet.

  Then she turns to walk in the other direction, but is met with another slab of cold wall. Not one that was there earlier. In fact, she senses that it's moving in closer, pushing her against the other side. The heartbeat behind the wall is drowned out by a loud cackle as the twin confirms what Petra now knows—she's been trapped in some sort of mechanism.