Love in the Robot Dawn

by C. W. Crowe

  That's why I needed to talk to her now - to get her to be on my team, even though I couldn't tell her what game the team was going to play.

  I nudged her again. "Lucy," I whispered.

  She mumbled back sleepily, "Not now, Leo, I'm tired."

  I smiled remembering that her baby bump was now obvious when she wasn't wearing clothes. I loved the looks of it. I put my hand on it. "I just want to talk to you. It's important."

  She sighed, but I could tell from her noises that she was awake. "Go ahead then. Is it about the hat? I'm sorry about that. Sometimes it's hard to control my emotions - hormones, you know."

  It had been one of our silliest fights. We were going for a walk and it was windy and cool so I suggested she wear a stocking hat. She'd refused and told me to mind my own business and that led to the fight. We finished the walk in silence and with her hatless.

  "No, it's not that. It's . . . it's about a plan I have."

  I heard her noises spike. "What kind of plan?"

  I didn't answer her question directly. I couldn't. "I don't really like this place. It's so sterile underground and up top it's just more desert. I'd rather live in a little white house with a fence around it and with our kids playing in the green yard while we watch them from a porch swing. I'd like tall trees and a field of corn out back. I'd like neighbors who watched our kids sometimes while we watch theirs too. I'd like a little school down the street and maybe a church too."

  She was silent for a minute; her noises now buzzing. She turned over and got up on her hands and knees above me, her hands on my arms, pinning me down like she was going to do push-ups. She was a foot above me and while there was only a dim light in our bedroom, I could see her eyes, large and probing, studying me.

  "I love the sound of that too, my husband. But how would we get it? The robots would all have to decide to leave. Is that what your plan is about?"

  "Not quite," I said, a little surprised that I could get that out.

  She frowned, "Then . . . my God, Leo, then we'd have to kill all the robots - turn them all off."

  She slid down ever so slightly. "Why aren't you just coming out and telling me this directly? Is it because it's dangerous?"

  "Yes, Lucy."

  "Dangerous to me? To you? If you tell even just me, that will increase the danger?"

  "Yes. I can't say more. You'll need to trust me."

  She slid down another half inch. "I do trust you, Leo. And I love you. Okay, what do you need me to do?"

  Yes! She figured it out like I hoped she would!

  "Just do specific things that I ask. If I use the word 'plan' that means it's important. Here's one now - I want you to be on the lookout for the entry code to the lab. I need to know what it is."

  The lab was behind a thick door that was open during the day as scientists went in and out, but closed behind a keypad lock at night. I wasn't allowed in there at either time.

  "Is that it? That's all you can tell me for now?"

  "Yes," I said as she slid down just enough for the first parts of her to start to touch me.

  She kissed me hard on the lips. "You know Leo, I knew something happened soon after we got here. I could tell because you . . . it's like you grew up all of a sudden, matured a lot.

  I could feel her baby bump touching my stomach. Her hair was now long enough to run my fingers through it. As I did, I pulled her down to me.

  *.*.*

  I found her the next morning staring at herself in the bathroom mirror. "I look worse than normal, Leo. See those bags under my eyes? That's your fault."

  I smiled and she smiled back. "Here's more of the plan. We need to recruit Karen to be part of it."

  Now she shot me a glance of surprise and her lips became thin lines. I wasn't expecting this reaction because she and Karen had become good friends, almost like sisters. I think they both liked having another young female around to talk to.

  "Recruit her, huh? And how do you plan on doing that, Mr. Smith? And you can forget about using the same technique you used with me."

  That wasn't what I'd had in mind at all. I felt my face redden.

  "Well at least you can blush about it. I suppose that's something. How do you want to bring her into our little secret society?"

  "I . . . I thought you could talk to her about it."

  Lucy went back to studying her face. "I could, I suppose. What do you want her to do?"

  Karen had been offered a job too and had accepted. She was to be in charge of the cafeteria - she wouldn't have to cook, just mostly keep the place clean and organized, run the dishwasher, etc. At first she'd seemed a little disappointed, but then she'd asked Parker if she could cook something hot once in a while - like a hot lunch entree for the science staff. He'd laughed and said, "By all means, my dear. We've been taking turns laying out canned food so if you'd like to cook something hot I suspect you'll quickly become one of the most popular people here."

  I started to massage Lucy's shoulders. She liked that a lot. "I want her to volunteer to take a hot lunch of some sort into the lab. Most of them eat in there. I heard them talk about a conference room they gather in. When she's in there, I want her to describe everything she sees in the greatest detail possible. And, of course, I want both of you to try and find that lock code for the lab."

  Lucy rolled her head to the left, inviting me to massage her right shoulder. "So we're both looking for that code and she's supposed to get inside just about every day so that it becomes routine. I've got it. Anything else for her?"

  I nodded. "One more thing. Actually this is probably more for you. I'd like you to do a little matchmaking between Karen and Lieutenant Riley."

  Once again, I'd surprised her as her eyes got even bigger. "I think that spark has already started some combustion, but I'll find out. I doubt that'll be a problem."

  *.*.*

  I was almost late for the first day of my new job. I'd asked Parker specifically for this one and he'd consulted with Riley and approved me. I was going to be a guard - not in the military or in uniform like the others who had been here when the robots attacked, but just a guard that watched the desert topside, looking for anyone who might approach. The fact that Lucy and I had been the only people who actually showed up in over a year didn't matter - someone still had to keep a guard post and that someone was, today, me.

  I thought my job was perfect. First, it would keep me topside where there was less chance some stray trigger might set off my robot programming. And second, it got me in close with the people who could move freely around the facility - the military people. Who knew what tidbits I might pick up from them?

  Riley had come out with me to show me the ropes. My "post" was in the small tower beside the airfield runway. "It's only thirty feet up, but you can see almost forty miles in all directions. Don't bother to look all the time - it's not necessary. But do a sweep every fifteen minutes or so and use the binoculars if you see anything. Call in using the radio every hour regardless, so we'll know you're still alive."

  He grinned when he said that and moved to climb down the steps but I stopped him with a question, "I'm sure glad we got here to Area 51, Lieutenant. My wife and I saw hundreds of places - maybe thousands - that the robots had destroyed or caused to be destroyed. I hate the bastards. Before he left, Nick Presser told me that some robots got turned off when they tried to come here - that was before anyone knew what effect the alien ship would have on them."

  I was safe in sharing this because I'd been careful to tell Parker about the robots inside Area 51 during my interrogation. If Riley got suspicious and reported what I'd just said, Parker would tell him that they knew all about it.

  Riley nodded, "Yeah, I remember that day. We thought the robots would be friends or at least useful to us. Boy melly, were we wrong."

  "Did they take the bastards apart, piece by piece? The scientists, I mean."

  "Not right away. I think they thought the other robots would want them back, but once they were turned o
ff, they didn't even seem to remember them. I had duty in the lab one day when they did take one of them apart, but the scientists were disappointed - it was mostly just some type of white goo inside and a bunch of what looked like wires. Remember, these were the early types before they started to look like humans - mostly they were boxes or torsos with some type of grabbing appendage and spindly legs to move around on. They were butt ugly, that's for sure. I think the scientists gave up and just left the rest of them intact in case something came up. As far as I know, they're still somewhere in the lab but I haven't seen them in a long time."

  Lieutenant Riley was quite the Chatty Cathy. If he'd open up to me like this, I had great hopes that Karen would get a lot more out of him.

  I led him to the stairs. "Well thanks. Oh yeah, one more thing - the girl . . . Karen . . . the one you brought in after we got here - she's starting a new job today too and I know she's a little nervous. If you get the time, drop by the cafeteria and tell her the food she made was good. It might be terrible, but she's a good person and has been through a lot. Her brother is alive because of her."

  Riley grinned from ear to ear. "I heard about her job and was going to do that exact thing, Leo. Thanks for suggesting it though."

  With that, he climbed down the stairs. I couldn't see him, but I could hear him whistling.

  As soon as he was out of sight, I started to practice. As a twenty year old, it was long past time I should have learned to whistle.

  Chapter Forty-Nine: Falling into Place

  I would never have guessed that we'd still need information after five more months had passed. Actually, we only needed two more pieces to the puzzle, but finding them had turned out to be very difficult.

  During that time, both Lucy and Karen reported in great detail what the inside of the lab was like. Karen went in there every day now - she was welcomed because she brought with her good food that the scientists eagerly ate. As far as she could tell, they were studying details of the aliens that landed in 1955 which would likely be of little use to us. For two days, Karen had overheard arguments about whether the aliens possessed an independent intelligence as opposed to a shared intelligence.

  This was frustrating to her and to Lucy and to me. What possible relevance could this have compared to the fact that robots controlled almost all the earth; that the future of whatever humans were left was going to be as the robot's pets?

  Finally, Karen had enough. During lunch, while the scientists were enjoying a warm meal in their conference room, she'd come right out and asked them about the signal from the alien ship that kept the robots at bay. "Can we increase the signal? Point it in a different direction? Amplify it somehow? Duplicate it?"

  All conversation stopped instantly. According to Karen, they all looked away as if they couldn't meet her gaze. One of them, a man with loose skin that implied he'd once been fat answered her, "We can't. Parker ordered us not to touch that part - that globe. We lifted it out of its nest at one point over a year ago. It fit so perfectly into its indentation, we weren’t sure it would even move, but it came out easily - so easily that we almost dropped it. After that, Parker decided to leave well enough alone and we all agreed. We're safe for the moment, so why rock the boat? The most important thing is staying safe here and not trying to defeat the robots - we had meetings about it and we all agreed it can't be done. Our whole focus changed from the robots to the aliens."

  Karen reported this to Lucy and I as Cory played in the next room with a group of Star Wars figures one of the soldiers had carved for him. He was the youngest person in Area 51 and had become spoiled with all the attention.

  Lucy asked, "So they're not doing a damned thing about the . . . egg thing?" It had been hard, but I'd managed to get that information to them about the globe with the crack by drawing pictures of an egg with a flashlight inside. It wasn't really egg shaped; it seemed to be a perfect sphere, sitting in a perfect indentation that everyone called its "nest."

  "As far as I can tell, nothing." Karen's noises showed her disgust with them. Lucy had told her about our dream - our house with the white picket fence and the school where kids could go and learn without worrying about killer robots. Now that dream was her dream and the three of us were working together to make it real.

  *.*.*

  One day, I found Karen crying alone in her place while Lucy was working and Cory was playing a ball game with some off-duty soldiers. I heard her cries through my wall and ran next door, thinking that something was very wrong.

  The door was locked, but I called out to her, asking if she was hurt. In a moment, she opened the door, standing there wiping her eyes. She was still in her pajamas. “I . . . I’m okay, Leo, it’s just that . . .”

  She broke down again, sobbing, as she threw her arms around me. I led her inside and we went to the couch - Lucy and I had been here just last night having dinner with Karen and Riley. I sat in the same spot, but now Karen sat beside me. “I’m sorry, Leo. I feel like such a girl, crying my eyes out. But I have to tell someone or else I'm going to bust. I did such a bad thing.”

  “What is it, Karen?”

  “Last night I told Riley things I shouldn't have. I told him that I hated the robots and that I hated this place. I told him we had to do something - something to turn them off for good, something so that we could live like people again. I’m so sorry - I even told him about you and Lucy. About how you had a plan, but that you couldn’t talk about it.”

  I was shocked. Riley was a soldier and might well report everything to Parker. Karen saw it in my eyes. “Oh God. I didn’t plan on telling him any of that, but we’ve gotten . . . close, you know? I think I was falling in love. I even told him that. And you know what he did? He asked me to marry him - said he had a bigger set of quarters lined up that we could live in. That Parker would marry us.”

  She wiped her eyes and I noticed how red and puffy her normally perfect skin was around them. “For about a second, I was happy that he’d asked, but then it came to me. Yeah, we could live as a couple in this dusty prison. We would have something to eat and we’d have shelter and toilet paper and fresh bread until our supplies eventually ran out. You know what Lucy has been saying - we’ll start to run out of stuff within a couple of years.”

  She stood up and went to the window of her living room and looked out. “Right there, when I should have been happy at the idea of being a bride, I started to cry. I cried because the robots took away that opportunity from me. But that’s not all. They took away my mother and my father. They took away our way of life for all of us.

  “I screamed at Riley that I didn’t want to live like this - holding on while the rest of the world’s human lights blinked out one by one. I told him I hated the robots and that’s when I told him we had a plan to do something about it. That’s when I messed things up for all of us."

  I ran my fingers through my hair. How could this get any worse? I had to know. "Did you . . .?"

  "God, Leo. I told him all I knew. It's not the whole plan - only you know that - but I told him how we found the location of the globe with the crack in it and how we needed to find where they had stored the robots that were still intact. I even told him that you needed to steal one of them."

  It was bad, real bad. Karen saw it in my face and said, "I'm going to see Parker. It's the only thing I can do. I'm going to kill him - then you and Lucy can try and talk sense into the others - maybe they'll follow you."

  I'd actually considered this very idea and rejected it. It was the soldiers. On that Thanksgiving Day when the robots attacked, there had been only a skeleton crew of scientists down here, but there were quite a few soldiers. That made sense because the place had lots of top secret aircraft and things that needed to be guarded.

  I strongly suspected that the soldiers would never follow me if Parker was killed. Why would they? I was just some new guy who appeared out of nowhere and killed their leader. On top of that, I knew I couldn't even tell them about me, about my implant, about m
y plan - I knew I'd be blocked from even saying the words. To them, I'd just be a crazy guy whose ramblings were nonsensical.

  Karen pulled herself together enough to move back over and sit beside me. She reached over and took my hand, but it was just because she needed to feel that she wasn't totally alone. I think even Lucy would have understood if she'd been here.

  Just then, there was a knock on the door. It was so unexpected that Karen jumped to her feet in surprise.

  A voice said quietly through the door, "Karen, open up please."

  It was Riley.

  *.*.*

  Karen looked at me, her eyes pleading to make this all go away. Over the months that I'd known her, I'd become accustomed to her noises. Now, they were full of despair.

  I also listened to Riley's. He was only a few feet away and the closed door didn't do much to stop them from getting to me. I was a bit surprised to not hear any other humans out there. My first thought was that he'd come with a whole group of soldiers to arrest us.

  "He's alone," I said. "I think you should let him in." His noises didn't sound threatening.

  *.*.*

  Karen pushed on the corners of her eyes with the heels of her hands and went to the door and opened it. Riley stood there in full uniform, his eyes initially full of concern and then they changed to a look of surprise when he saw me.

  He was carrying a medium sized cardboard box that was marked "Contents 24 ea. Pickles, Dill."

  Riley turned his attention back to Karen. "Don't cry, Karrie," he said in a whisper. "I brought you something. I think Leo will want to see it too."

  He came in and sat the box on the kitchen table. The top wasn't sealed, so he opened it as Karen and I strained to see inside.