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About Jason D. Morrow
Books By Jason D. Morrow
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Prototype Exodus
By
Jason D. Morrow
Edited by Beth Morrow & Emily Simpson Morrow
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2016 Jason D. Morrow
All rights reserved.
Books by Jason D. Morrow
The Starborn Ascension
Anywhere But Here
Away From The Sun
Into The Shadows
The Starborn Uprising
Out Of Darkness
If It Kills Me
Even In Death
The Marenon Chronicles
The Deliverer
The Gatekeeper
The Reckoning
1
The cave was a mystery even to the villagers who inhabited the small bit of land next to it. Few ventured into the earth’s deep belly, and those who did never made it far before turning back. The spirit of exploration and discovery had fled the villagers long ago, despite their nomadic endeavors in recent months. Traveling through the desolate wilderness had taken its toll, and the people were ready to settle for good.
Bernard held an old flashlight in front of him, the orange beam dim and nearly burned out after years of use and jostling in his bag. In this thick darkness, however, it was all the light he needed as he took careful steps over loose rocks and unpredictable terrain. He felt free to point the flashlight in any direction he needed because his sole companion didn’t need the light. In fact, he didn’t need a lot of things each of the villagers required.
Bernard wasn’t quite sure how far the two of them had traveled, maybe a mile, maybe more. He was tired, but he didn’t want to stop. This adventure through the dark corridors excited him more than he liked to admit. Really, just getting away from the duties of leading the villagers was enough to get him excited, but the prospect of discovering what may rest within the depths of these caverns made his imagination run wild. And he knew that he shouldn’t let his imagination run too wild considering he was searching for something specific. According to his travel companion, Des, old geological reports noted a giant water reservoir in this area deep within the caves. The trek would be a challenge, as would be figuring out a way to utilize it this far from the village. But Des would help them figure it out. He always did. If it had not been for him, their futures would be bleak.
Bernard often forgot that Des was a robot. So did most of the villagers. It was apparent in a glance that he was not like them. Yet, without hesitancy, each villager would say Des was a person, and with no uncertainty, equal to them all. His silver body, though made of metal and wires, was overlooked. His voice no longer sounded strange to them even though it echoed deeply, obviously produced from an electronic speaker. He stood taller than any of them, and his strength surpassed them all, but they did not fear him. The villagers accepted him as they would another human. This was not done through ceremony. There was no act that made him officially one of them. Somewhere, over the course of the last year, it had just happened.
It hadn’t always been that way. The first time Des had encountered them they had been afraid. Bernard had been afraid. None of them had ever seen a robot. None of them knew why he had been created. Some even wondered if he was a weapon left over from the old world—a survivor of the nuclear holocaust that had destroyed most of civilization more than a hundred years before. The robot assured them that he wasn’t—that he’d only been created four years ago by a woman named Hazel Hawthorn.
Some believed him. Others didn’t. Bernard wasn’t sure at first. But the robot had fed him some story about a war hundreds of miles away—a fight between people who called themselves the Mainlanders and the Outlanders. The story sounded strange as Des told it to him, but Bernard found no reason to think the robot was lying.
“Why us?” Bernard had asked. “Why do you want to stay?”
“I can help you,” Des had told him.
“But why?”
Bernard remembered the way Des stared at the ground, his expression showing that he was deep in thought. His facial features were so lifelike, his emotions as apparent as any human’s.
“Because I’ve been alone for four years,” he had said. “I’ve explored these lands for so long. I think it’s time I settled and helped someone.” He further explained that he never slept. Never ate. And this meant he could be a dedicated worker. All he wanted was to be treated like everyone else. To be a part of something good.
Though he had still been skeptical, Bernard took his words for what they were and discussed the possibility with the village elders. Most of them expressed the same skepticism as Bernard had, but when they came out of the meeting, they spotted Des in a distant field of corn, pulling off ears that were ready to be shucked and stored. His hands moved with lightning speed, and by the time Bernard had reached the field, Des had already filled five large baskets. It didn’t take much persuasion to allow him a short stay with the village. In time, the villagers learned to accept him and eventually welcome him.
Now, it would seem strange for Bernard to not have Des around. He was a valuable ally, but over the course of a year, he had become more than that—a friend. Not only to Bernard but to everyone, though the two of them had been through a lot together. Des had helped all of them make it to where they were now. Not long ago, the villagers had been forced to leave their dwellings due to lack of water. They wouldn’t have had enough to use for the next year’s crops. The villagers would have starved.
Des changed all that, and now Bernard found himself deep within the caves that they hoped would be the villagers’ salvation. According to Des, there was enough water down here to last generations. But having it and getting to it were two different things. He and Des had talked about this a lot, but the situation was clear: the villagers had to find water or die. And Bernard knew that if they had to move deep into the caves in order to stay alive, they would. But Des told him that wouldn’t be necessary. There were ways to get a pump system going.
“You know how to do that?” Bernard had asked.
“With the proper tools, we can figure it out,” Des had told him.
So, each of them (nearly 500 people) packed what was needed and made their trek across the wilderness in hopes of finding this sustainable place.
Now that they were here, it was up to Berna
rd to make sure it worked. All eyes were on him, and if they didn’t get the water they needed, there would be a new village leader in no time. Worse than that, there might be no more villagers at all.
These were desperate times. Survival wasn’t easy out here on the plains. If it wasn’t animal attacks, it was sickness. If it wasn’t sickness, it was weather that threatened them. Bernard didn’t even want to think about rival villages either. Though they were few and far between, encountering another village never meant anything good. It fact, it most certainly meant blood in the end. That was why they avoided other people at all costs. Out here on the plains, there was no reasoning with others. It was kill or be killed. Land and food belonged to those who could survive the longest. Those who didn’t earn the right to live, didn’t.
So far, Bernard and his villagers had earned life. All that could change in a day. A moment. This was a fact that shook Bernard to the core. The responsibility of all those people was his, and he never let that leave the front of his mind.
They had given him that responsibility rather freely. Bernard was young at thirty-two. He didn’t carry a commanding presence. He didn’t tower over others. He wasn’t necessarily stronger than anyone. He didn’t even consider himself particularly handsome, though he didn’t suspect any woman of the village would reject him based on looks alone. There was no discernible quality to Bernard that he could point out that would make him a good leader. The only thing that came to mind was simply that he wasn’t afraid to act—never afraid to voice his opinion. And often times, his opinion had been right. The villagers grew to trust him. They seemed to trust him more than he trusted himself. The longer he and Des tiptoed through this dark cave looking for water, the more he wondered if he had made his first serious blunder as their leader.
“How much farther do you think?” Bernard asked. With one hand he held the flashlight toward the deep corridor, its orange beam too dull to cut deep enough for him to see as far as he would like. The rocky floor seemed endless.
“It’s hard to say,” Des answered, stepping cautiously next to Bernard. “The data I have suggests that it’s close, but that doesn’t mean it is.”
A chill ran down Bernard’s spine as an icy breath of air blew past him. He was suddenly aware of how alone the two of them were. He turned and shined his light onto Des. His fully metal body gleamed against the light, his face more dull due to the rubbery, skin-like substance that covered an armored frame. His eyes were blue and seemed so human. Bernard often wondered who could have designed him. He knew a name, Hazel Hawthorn, but that didn’t give him much insight as to who she was. Des didn’t like to talk about where he came from. Just that there was a war and that he had needed to leave. And he never forgot to mention that he only wanted to look forward. But that didn’t stop Bernard from asking anyway.
“What if we don’t find any water here?” Bernard asked. “We have a lot riding on this.”
“Are you losing faith?”
“I am,” Bernard answered. “We were supposed to be at the reservoir already.”
“I know,” Des said. The robot looked down at the ground, seemingly in thought.
Des’ expression unnerved Bernard so much that he had to turn away and start walking again. Every moment not moving was a moment wasted. It scared him to think there might not actually be water here. Such a miscalculation would go far beyond losing his place as village leader. They had enough water on reserve to last them a few more months at best. But finding water carried new problems as well. If this reservoir was as big as Des predicted, and the villagers settled the land just outside the caves, it would become contested territory. Other nomadic villagers would see the prosperity Bernard and his people had and would want it for themselves. Bernard was prepared to allow peaceful people to come, but he feared there wouldn’t be many of those. War was inevitable in the wilderness. He and his people would have to stare into the eyes of death regardless of what he and Des found today—if they found anything at all.
Bernard had once asked Des about the possibility of taking the villagers to this place called Mainland, but Des didn’t entertain the thought. At the time he’d said that there was too much turmoil going on. He questioned why Bernard would want to leave the crops, the land they already inhabited. Since then, the land had become uninhabitable and it was clear that Des had no intention of leading them to Mainland.
But Bernard trusted Des. He had to. Yet trust can only go so far when speculation enters the mind. A hint of speculation can overtake one’s thoughts like a virus that spreads too quickly. Because Des was so closed off to the idea of even the mention of Mainland, it made Bernard think there was something more to it. Was Des a wanted fugitive? Had he done something wrong in his past that he was trying to escape? Maybe he hadn’t done anything wrong, but there was no question that Des had been trying to escape something. Bernard only pressed it a few times, but he never got a definitive answer.
The two continued on for another thirty minutes, mostly in silence. Bernard’s thoughts drifted from one place to another, his fears wafting in and out of his mind. He thought about mentioning the possibility of moving the villagers to Mainland again, but decided not to. This wasn’t the time to discuss it. Maybe if they didn’t find water—he might bring it up then.
It was difficult for Bernard to think of Des as only a robot. Yet past the machinery, past the wires and metal, was a program—a very complicated program that must have taken years to develop. So complex was Des’ programming that it was indistinguishable from a real person. When he was around Des, days would go by without Bernard ever considering the fact that he wasn’t technically a person. Actually, Bernard almost didn’t believe it. Something inside his mind told him that Des was a person despite how he was made. Des was alive. Des was like a human. Des had a soul.
Perhaps such thinking was silly. Bernard knew the reality. But his brain and his heart were opponents—his heart telling him that Des was a real friend and a person to be trusted, his head telling him that such a relationship could end in disaster. Confiding too much in an object was dangerous. Machines can malfunction. Things can go wrong. But wasn’t it the same for people? The fact that Des didn’t have a heartbeat and didn’t breathe like the rest of them, shouldn’t change anything, should it?
Bernard couldn’t and didn’t let thoughts like these get in the way. Despite the dangers in this world, Bernard looked forward to the future. A world would emerge where people came together again. Not everyone would be out for themselves. Nuclear wars wouldn’t exist. Things might not ever be like they were a century before, but no one alive had firsthand experience of that life anyway. And none of them wanted the world to be like it was before. Something had gone so wrong that humanity had reached the point of decimation. No. The world needed a different kind of way. People were dispersed now but they could come together peacefully. Such a future wasn’t impossible.
The light in Bernard’s hand didn’t shine brightly enough to see very far ahead, but he could see an unusual amount of dust sprinkling from the ceiling in front of them. He covered his mouth as he breathed in slowly, trying to keep his breath shallow.
He was about to ask Des what he thought about the dust, but before the words came to his lips, he heard a low rumbling through the cave. The rumbling turned into shaking. The dust particles turned into small pebbles, pelting him in the back as he covered his head with his hands.
“Get down!” Bernard yelled.
Little pings echoed throughout the passageways as pieces of rock landed on Des’ metal frame. Des crouched low and pressed his hand against the ground. A concerned expression showed on his face. Bernard wanted to call out to him and ask what was wrong, but the rumbling grew louder and sound wouldn’t carry.
Des looked up at Bernard sharply. The rocks falling all around them were bigger, and the earthquake shook the cave more violently. Des jumped toward Bernard, but a boulder landed between them. Bernard stared at the rock, terrified that it could have crushed
his entire body and was only feet from doing so.
Des scooted around the large rock and got up next to Bernard. The robot yelled out something that he couldn’t hear. Bernard shined his flashlight in Des’ face and stared at the robot’s lips as he screamed a second time. “Run toward the entrance!”
Bernard didn’t hesitate. In caves like these, even the smallest seismic shift deep within the earth could make the whole thing collapse. Each step he took was determined. He made his way toward the entrance even though it was more than a mile away, yet he didn’t know if a short sidestep to the left or right would mean the end. Rocks fell all around him, each one just inches from crushing his skull. He knew the closer he got toward the entrance, the less likely he would be trapped in the crumbling cave. He wanted to look behind him to see if Des followed, but he didn’t dare. The robot could more than take care of himself.
Bernard’s legs burned from his sprint over uneven terrain, but they gave out when a sharp pain shot through his head. He tumbled to the cave floor, his flashlight flinging in front of him. He knew he’d been hit by a rock. It was hard enough to break the skin, but not so hard to knock him unconscious. For that he was grateful. His left hand reached behind his ear and came back wet with a thick liquid. He felt dazed by the blow, but he was aware enough to get back up.
His legs wouldn’t move. With the faint glow of his flashlight on the ground, Bernard was able to see behind him. When he saw what kept him from moving, he felt his stomach turn.
A large rock sat on top of his leg. Surprisingly he couldn’t feel it. Maybe he was in shock. Maybe the rock had severed a nerve. All he knew was that he wasn’t only pinned, but his leg was crushed. He was losing blood quickly as well. Streams poured from the back of his head and around to his cheek. He tried in vain to pull himself forward. Hopefully his leg would slip out or part of it would stay behind. Whatever got him out from under the rock, it didn’t matter.
He searched for Des, but the robot was probably struggling as well. The rumbling didn’t stop, but instead grew louder, and the shaking more violent. More rocks came down, and for a brief second, Bernard wondered if the entire cave was about to collapse in on itself, swallowing him and Des whole.
Prototype Exodus (Prototype D Series Book 2) Page 1