by J. S. Morin
Charlie halted the tour in an instant and met her gaze. Though his features were different, the dull glow of Charlie’s robotic eyes reminded Eve of Creator.
Eve glanced away. “Where are your puzzles? I’m hungry.”
Charlie straightened as if Eve’s question had struck him a physical blow. “Good Lord. Food. How could I overlook something so fundamental? But what’s this about puzzles? You can’t eat those…”
“I’ll solve any puzzle you like,” Eve promised.
Eve could no longer ignore that digestive juices were eating away at her stomach lining. Mentally she prepared herself for the worst Charlie could place before her: conundrums, ciphers, logic boxes, regression algorithms. Eve was ready to disprove a paradox to get a meal.
For a time, Charlie just stared at her. Was he trying to think up a particularly devious challenge for her?
“No,” Charlie said at length. “I believe you're quite enough of a puzzle already. But you make a good point. The problem is, I don’t have food here. I can’t remember the last time I needed to eat. Actually, there are some biological functions we’re going to have to account for. I’ll find you some water—that’s something I’ve got, at least. But I’m going to need to figure out the rest. If you have to… excrete… just take the elevator topside and use the bushes.”
Eve nodded. It was a logical plan. “And food?”
“Well, if you can solve the puzzle of where to find human-digestible food on short notice, I’m open to user input. Actually, strike that. Just… make yourself at home while I figure it out.”
Make herself at home? If Eve knew her way back to Creator’s lab, she’d have headed there already. But the events since she was whisked away were a blur in her memory. She’d have to ask Creator about that. Likely there was a chemical imbalance in her brain that affected short- and long-term memory.
In the meantime, without more detailed instructions, Eve crossed her legs and sat where she was.
“No. Don’t just sit there like a lump. There’s a whole world you know nothing about.” Charlie took Eve by the hand. She allowed Charlie to tow her into the room with the computer terminals scattered everywhere.
The nearest screen lit with a welcome message at Charlie’s touch. A cheerful blue background gave way to a prompt at the bottom of the screen. A blank line begged for text input.
With a gentle prod, Charlie herded Eve in front of the console. “Ask it anything.”
“Like what?” Too broad or open-ended a set of parameters was a recipe for chaos. A choice among billions of options was no choice at all.
Charlie put a hand to his forehead, covering his eyes. “Aren’t you the least bit curious about this world?”
Eve nodded. Of course, she was.
“Have there been questions you’ve failed to ask because they seemed inconsequential, or you didn’t want to bother or offend me?”
“Why are you helping me when Toby22 wouldn’t?” Eve asked. “Did I offend him? If I offend you, will you pass me on to someone else?”
Charlie knelt down. She was taller than him this way. He seemed less intimidating, which made no logical sense. He had the same mass and knowledge as before. Relative height shouldn’t have mattered, but somehow Charlie diminished as she looked down at him.
“Toby was scared,” Charlie murmured. “You are paramount. You don’t understand that yet, but someday you will. There will always be someone to take care of you.”
The illusion of harmlessness evaporated as Charlie stood. Once again, he was tall and all-knowing.
“Why were there humans a long time ago but not now?” Eve asked.
Charlie swept a hand at the terminal. “Go ahead and ask it.”
“I’ll need a stylus.” Creator had always given her one when it was time for her to use a terminal.
“Use your finger. It’ll work just fine.”
Eve was about to protest when it occurred to her to try, just to see what happened. She tapped in her question, and the terminal responded as if her finger were a stylus.
“This is wonderful,” Eve beamed. “I feel like Creator!”
Creator never needed a stylus. All the terminals in the lab responded to Creator’s touch and some even to her voice. With her computer inputs, Creator could even download data directly if she wished. Eve couldn’t imagine doing that. If Eve’s finger could be a stylus, who knew what else she could accomplish?
“Well, don’t go getting overexcited. Ask all your questions, and I’ll be back as soon as I figure out how to feed you.”
Eve listened to Charlie’s footsteps as he departed. A door slid open somewhere in the distance. It closed again, and the sound of footsteps cut off.
Eve was alone. She breathed a sigh and felt the tension ease from her shoulders. Alone was how she belonged.
Creator wasn’t always a comforting presence; Charlie was still an enigma. But Eve was content with solitude. It was her natural state, just her and the tasks she had been left.
It was kind of Charlie to leave her a task. Eve had worried that he would leave her without instruction, which was a recipe for trouble. Settling in, Eve exercised her newfound power to communicate with a terminal all on her own.
WHY WERE THERE HUMANS A LONG TIME AGO BUT NOT NOW?
She remembered to word the query just as she had to Charlie. If she had formed the question improperly, surely he would have mentioned that before telling her to use the terminal.
The terminal didn’t answer directly. It didn’t respond as Creator did, with a straightforward answer. Instead, the screen flooded Eve with words and pictures. Video, audio, and every imaginable form of data spread out for Eve’s perusal.
It was a story, but one strangely told.
Eve flitted from one piece of information to another, struggling to assimilate it all. There were pictures of humans—creatures more like Eve than Creator but in endless varieties.
People trapped within the screen had long, multiple names. Many of them spoke the only language Eve knew, but others jabbered incomprehensibly. Some were different sizes or colors. They wore outlandish clothes, sometimes with words scrawled across them carrying phrases and slogans Eve couldn’t grasp.
At length, Eve stumbled across a simple text summary. Her quest for answers started there.
On July 29, 2065, mankind had their first encounter with extraterrestrial life. All attempts to communicate met with failure.
The alien ship broadcast mathematical patterns across every radio frequency imaginable, but no meaningful dialogue could be established. On August 9, 2065, hundreds more alien vessels arrived in Earth orbit. All attempted communication ceased.
With the imminent invasion of Earth at hand, the governments of every nation united and launched a preemptive attack. Our only weapons against them were an aging arsenal of nuclear warheads. But Earth’s supply of such devices was insufficient.
On December 7, 2065, the last human died.
Eve stared in fascination. Even without understanding everything, there was a scope and gravity to the grim pronouncements.
Continuing her search, Eve opened other terminals and found they were equally amenable to her finger as an input device. Keeping the original summary on display, she cross-referenced, filling in the missing pieces her mind wasn’t able to reconcile.
WHAT ARE NUCLEAR WARHEADS?
The terminal went into great detail describing the earliest known versions of such devices. The underlying physics made sense to Eve, though the concept of optimizing a subatomic chain reaction for uncontrolled exothermic energy release was bizarre.
How would someone even test such a ludicrously dangerous system? She tapped her follow-up question into the terminal, and it answered matter-of-factly exactly how humanity had done so. It even showed the result of early live trials on cities known as Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
She could picture it now. Extraterrestrial creatures in unfamiliar vehicles orbited Earth. Humans were scared. Nations used their govern
ments to attack using nuclear fusion energy releases. Eve was still missing pieces.
WHAT IS GOVERNMENT?
This entry was far broader than she had expected and encompassed her next search as well, which would have been for “nation.”
Old humanity organized themselves and created rules—sometimes for themselves and other times to impose on others. It seemed like they had tried every organizational system that could have ever conceivably worked and some that were doomed to failure from the outset. They’d divided themselves into so many different groups…
There had been so many humans. Eve’s “nation” search included population totals, and the numbers were staggering. Before the extraterrestrials arrived, there had been 10.3 billion of them.
Creator hadn’t invented Eve; she was a mere echo of billions just like her. But that had changed.
WHAT IS JULY 29, 2065?
The computer showed her an entry that explained the Gregorian calendar, a method for marking the passage of time based on cyclical orbits of the Earth around the sun.
Creator had taught Eve orbital mechanics, so the repeatable and mathematically consistent basis of the calendar made sense. The other references to August 9 and December 7 now made sense as well. They described the events of humanity’s last days over the course of 131 days from the time they first encountered extraterrestrial life.
Eve had never heard the word “extraterrestrial,” but she knew the roots: beyond Earth. Humans had been wiped out by creatures from the stars.
Fingers flew as Eve entered query after query. She could hear the sound of her own breath as it quickened.
When had all this happened? Eve had seen from the pictures that the Earth looked nothing like the city Charlie had taken her through. It had been packed with buildings, people, vehicles, and roads.
A search for the Arc de Triomphe showed it at the heart of a sprawling city. How long had it taken to come to its current state?
WHAT IS TODAY’S DATE?
This answer, unlike all the others, was simple, factual, and brief: June 21, 3090.
Eve gasped. Her species had been dead a thousand years.
Chapter Six
Evelyn38 breezed into Lab 14 carrying a crate of glass bottles filled with milk. A merry clatter accompanied her every step, drowning out the grating of servos that were years past wanting a replacement. Behind her, the lab door whooshed shut and locked with a satisfying clack of magnetic bolts.
“Eve!” Evelyn38 shouted. “Eve14, come out this instant.”
It had been quite a coup to get cow’s milk diverted to her lab when she was only supposed to be working on chimps. But the effort to convince Jocelyn87 to sidestep the Agricultural Appropriations Committee and give her a small supply had been worth it. It was high time Eve14 grew accustomed to more standard human fare. Better the milk went to a real girl than those sorry excuses for humanity at the Scrapyard.
But Eve14 wouldn’t be drinking anything if she didn’t come out of hiding. The milk was warming by the second.
“Eve14, I am in no mood for games.” Evelyn38’s voice pitched higher.
This wasn’t like Eve14 at all. Evelyn38 had squelched the petty rebelliousness that crept into even the most carefully nurtured teenager. Was Eve14 hurt? Maybe she was just engrossed in a puzzle. That happened occasionally.
Still carrying the clattering crate with her, Evelyn38 made a search of the lab. Her first stop was the food dispensary. But the puzzle terminal was dark; Eve14 wasn’t trying to unlock a lunch. Dusty old protocols for emergency first aid flitted across Evelyn38’s field of view.
“Eve?” Evelyn38 called out as her pace quickened around the lab.
Was Eve14 in the crawl tunnel of the obstacle course? No.
Could she be hidden behind the table of the encephalographic scanner? In theory, yes. But she wasn’t there.
Had she crawled into the clothes cleaner? Thank goodness, no.
Glass rang against glass as Evelyn38 lugged her ill-won milk around the lab in a vain search for Eve14. It never occurred to her to set down the crate. During Evelyn38’s frantic search, the crate was forgotten amid a torrent of error codes and worry subroutines.
“She’s gone,” Evelyn38 said aloud for no one to hear but herself. She had searched every millimeter of the lab. There was nowhere left for a 16-year-old human girl to hide.
The crate slipped from robotic fingers gone limp. Glass shattered. Evelyn38 didn’t care. Her Eve14 had been kidnapped.
Chapter Seven
Charlie7 came back to find Eve14 curled up on the floor, sobbing. A quick perusal of the multiple open terminals was enough explanation as to why.
Perhaps allowing Eve14 unchecked access to the Earthwide database wasn’t the wisest course of action. But the gulfs in the girl’s knowledge base came up short in Charlie7’s morality algorithm. No good had ever come of blind ignorance, especially the sort that had been carefully and deliberately cultivated. Eve was too bright and well educated in other aspects for her utter lack of historical education to be an accident.
Kneeling beside her on the floor, he laid a hand on her shoulder. Eve shrugged him off with a jerk.
Where was a puppy when he really needed one? He had jokingly suggested getting her one, but perhaps it shouldn’t have been in jest. There wasn’t a human with a soul who couldn’t be cheered up by the enthusiasm and unapologetic joy for life of one of those little creatures.
While Charlie7 emitted a mild warmth due to servo motor activity and electrical resistance, he lacked the living essence of another creature. His touch couldn’t comfort her.
Given what she had just shoveled into her mind, Eve would need a great deal of comforting. War. Aliens. Nuclear weapons. The passage of a millennium. A barren Earth. Death.
It hadn’t occurred to Charlie7 that the factual end of biological life would have been kept from her. But she had terminals open to a variety of sources that described cultural beliefs about death and what lay beyond.
Death wasn’t the sort of subject a young girl should learn alone at a computer terminal.
Charlie7 reached out to touch Eve14 but stopped short. His obsolete human instincts warred with an internal database of adolescent psychology he’d just downloaded. “Eve? It’s OK. I found someplace where we can get you a proper meal.”
Eve14 caught her breath between sobs. “Why?”
Charlie7 pulled back, perplexed. It was a non-sequitur question. “No, you don’t understand. You said you were hungry. I’m going to take you to where we can get food.”
Her reddened eyes looked up into Charlie7’s. Eve14 sniffled. “Why did Creator make me? I’m just going to die like all the others.”
If human contact were beyond his ability, Charlie7 would have to try logic.
“Human life is precious. We robots have human minds. We remember, to varying degrees, what life was like back then. We miss it. We miss you. Earth was meant to be filled with humans. Your kind might have died out over a thousand years ago, but before that, you carried on from one generation to the next. Now that the bottle has been opened, the genie can’t go back inside. There will be more of you, and once there are enough, you won’t need geneticists to carry on. Humanity is self-perpetuating.”
“I just want to go home. I want to forget. I was happier not knowing.”
Charlie helped Eve up to a seated position. “Don’t say that,” he scolded. “Fools once said that ignorance is bliss. It’s a tempting lie, but it is a lie. Humanity created my kind through striving for ever-greater knowledge. They applied it, and here I am today. When biological life on Earth was wiped out, we robots survived. We rebuilt. We restored. We’re putting things back the way they belong. None of that would have been possible if we wallowed in ignorance. Science is mankind’s greatest gift. Science is mankind’s second chance.”
Eve14 took a shuddering breath. Charlie didn’t know how long she’d been crying before he found her, but she had reached the limit of her tears. “It hurt
s.” Eve14 hugged her arms tight to her stomach.
“That’s mostly the hunger talking, I’d wager. You’ll feel better after a good meal.”
Chapter Eight
Charlie7 piloted the skyroamer across the Atlantic Ocean while Eve14 huddled under a blanket. He’d modified it to maintain constant internal pressure for Eve14’s sake, but there hadn’t been time to design, fabricate, and install a full suite of environmental controls.
Even at supersonic speeds, the trip was going to take over four hours. Eve had stopped complaining, but he knew she had to be tired and hungry, not to mention cold.
For his first day babysitting a live human, Charlie7 was doing a horrible job.
“So, you like puzzles, eh?” Charlie7 asked, trying to distract the girl from her hunger.
“I suppose,” Eve14 replied. “Creator never asked me whether I liked them. But I think I do.”
Charlie7 had a puzzle of his own, and he didn’t know whether Eve14 would help him willingly. There was no robot designation Creator, but someone had made Eve14.
The tidbits Charlie7 had gleaned thus far gave him serious reservations about Eve14 going back, even if the poor girl was homesick. Stockholm Syndrome, they’d called it. Whether Eve fit the technical diagnosis or not, she’d clearly adapted to living under the thumb of a controlling, oppressive robot.
“So, your creator made you do puzzles before giving you food?”
“No,” Eve14 replied with a grimace. “The food dispensers worked automatically.”
Sure, they did. No automated system was responsible for its actions. It was just a matter of who’d programmed it. Of course, Charlie7 was doing a swell job of preoccupying Eve14. He tried to change the subject.
“And you did calisthenics and ran and so on?”
“Oh, yes. I must keep in proper working order. Typically, after my daily workout, I would take a reading of my vital signs. I don’t have the proper equipment here, but I am often able to render a rough self-diagnosis. For example, my current blood glucose level is dangerously low. I have an elevated heart rate. I am suffering from mild dehydration. I have—”