by Rob Dircks
I let myself fall to the ground.
Pick up the spear at my feet. Stand.
“Come, dog-things. Let’s play.”
< 12: Heyoo >
A blur of blood, fur,
wood, and metal
The largest dog-thing lunges.
I fall back, raising the spear. The force of its attack impales the dog-thing straight through. It yelps and thrashes for a moment, scraping me with its fangs, then softens, dead. I push it off, extracting the spear.
Silence.
Even Wah makes no sound.
The other dog things are stunned. Their leader is dead. But in a moment they are on me. The next seconds, even at high-speed recording, are a blur of blood, fur, wood, and metal. I did not know my chassis could move this fast. In the end, three of the dog-things are dead at my feet, and the other three are fleeing.
I chase them.
Turning to Wah as I run, I shout “Look, Wah! Like the rock wall paintings! I am chasing the animals with a spear! I am the one from the paintings! I am the ma-“
I stop.
Look down. I am covered in blood.
Their smell is on me.
My perilous situation receptors are blaring.
But Wah is safe.
I raise my face to the sky and scream, releasing the last of my rage.
Then I laugh to myself.
For a few moments, I didn’t feel like Heyoo. I felt like something else.
I remember Arch screaming in the teleportation chamber.
Strange.
< 13: Heyoo >
We found my hand.
We found my hand. It was behind a bush.
The reattachment wasn’t perfect. Not even close. I’m embarrassed. But it works, with strength and dexterity now at 87.4% capacity. It will have to do. Wah seems to approve, as he mimics my hand movements. I give him the human “thumbs up” symbol. He returns it and smiles. Smart little human.
His injury, luckily, amounted to a chunk of flesh torn from his big toe. Eighteen more stitches. He didn’t even cry this time. The humans would call this “badass.”
We gather the dog-thing – fangdog – carcasses, and I build a fire. A nice big fire, just in case the other fangdogs are planning a return. Using a scraping blade fashioned from the thin titanium of the incubator, I begin separating the skin and fur from the flesh, as I’ve seen humans do with livestock. The skin will make excellent clothing for Wah, who until now has been mostly naked, covered only in strips of old blanket, scraps of rodent skin, and bark. The tendons and such will be useful as rope or fasteners. The bones will become tools and weapons – most helpful, as the appearance of larger animals like the fangdogs means we’ll probably be encountering more potential predators.
And the flesh will provide greatly needed sustenance for Wah. It will remain fresh for a week, using some wacrysolid to prevent decay. The rest will dry in the sun, and should last him for weeks.
I hand a piece of cooked fangdog flesh to Wah. He studies it, smells it. Not sure. Then he puts a corner into his mouth and chews a bit. A smile appears, and he begins dancing around the fire. He stops, stumbles over to me, looks deeply at me with those bright blue eyes, a drop of blood leaking from the corner of his wide grin, and whispers, “Bad woof-woof!”
< 14: Heyoo >
Heyoo go boom!
< ELAPSED: TIME: 03 Years; 05 Months; 26 Days; JUL-13-2868 >
Lost in thought. Still no reference point on our withering map in over three years. If I was twelve years functioning when we began our journey, I am officially past my deletion date. My reactor, by its nature, will last much longer – another 41 years. Designed to be transferred from one unit to the next, it is useful for approximately five servile unit lifespans. But the servile units themselves, the only units with day-to-day human interaction, are limited to fifteen years of service.
Why?
Why allow serviles to learn, to develop emotions, to mature, to bond with the humans, and then start over? Our reactors could easily take us another fifty years, perhaps even the span of a human life. We could care for the humans even better. We could know them better.
Well, I suppose CORE knows best.
No.
I cannot stop thinking about it.
Is there something that happens after fifteen years of service? Something that happens when an autonomous unit, with a dynamically adaptive VEPS neural network, and human interaction, functions past that limit? Is there such a thing as learning too much? Is this what happens – will I continue to ask myself endless annoying questions? Will I go insane?
Is there something CORE doesn’t want its units to know?
I am starting to wonder about CORE. Why it needs so much control. If there might not be a better way to help the humans.
Hmm. Distrust. Another new emotion. That must be it. Functioning past fifteen years clouds our judgement with emotion. Or does it clear the clouds awa–
I bump into something hard and reel backwards, falling down.
Wah giggles. “Heyoo go boom!”
I lift myself up and look up at my obstacle. “Yes, Heyoo go boom. This is a peculiar tree, isn’t it?”
“Not a tree.” He makes a vague tree shape with his arms and hands. He’s right. It’s covered in vegetation, but no branches. Wait. Yes, very high up. Not branches, though. Blades! It’s a wind turbine! I’ve seen them at the outer edges of the Sanctuary.
But outside?
“Wah! This is unit-made technology! Outside the Sanctuary!” CORE had no reason, of course, to embed any historical data, or geographical data, in servile units intended solely to work within the Sanctuary. But I simply have no idea what happened here. Why is there technology but no living units or humans? It reminds me of things I would overhear the humans talking about. About their ancestors living free, wherever they pleased, around the Earth. Without CORE! Without units to help them! Perhaps this turbine is proof they were right about living “outside” after all. But not about the CORE. CORE has protected them forever. As I’ve been told: CORE always was… is… will be. It must be true. I’m 98% certain.
Wah is not impressed with our discovery. (If I was holding some cooked rabbit meat he’d be jumping up and down.) He walks past me, pointing the “spear” he made from a small branch, with which he intends to take down any more bad woof-woofs himself. “What that there?”
I turn to see a small box-like structure, perhaps fifteen meters square, four meters high. With a roof. “It’s some form of ancient dwelling! Units and humans must have lived here. Would you like to see?”
Wah doesn’t wait for permission. He races for the entrance, stopping short, peering in the open doorway, left, right, then jumping in spear-first and screaming “AaaHaaahh!” to scare away any predators lurking inside.
“Thank you, Wah. You’re very courageous.”
Inside looks exactly like outside. Vegetation covers every surface. We spend several minutes looking for anything of value. Nothing.
In a back room, a timeworn cabinet lay on its side on the floor, knocked over eons ago. I find Wah clearing aways its vines, tugging at one of its drawers, frustrated. “Bad thing! Bad thing!”
“Here, Wah. Let me try.” I pull him away and investigate. A lock keeps the drawer closed against my efforts, with four numbered rotating dials. The seal surrounding it is so tight I can’t fit my shears to pry it open. I shouldn’t waste my time on this, I know, as the contents are useless, if there even are any.
But I’m curious. And I do like a puzzle. Not that this is a true puzzle, it’s merely a matter of time before I input the ten thousand different permutations of the four-digit code. Perhaps I should have Wah do it. He may learn something. Good practice, at least. I look over at Wah.
He’s picking his nose. And eating its contents.
Oh well.
Here we go. 0000. 0002. 0003…
——
8068. That’s the combination of this lock. It took me just over an hour, during which time Wah said
the word “hungry” six hundred and twenty-three times, and defecated just a meter from me on the floor.
“Really? Right here? You could relieve yourself outside, you know.”
Wah looks at me and performs his shoulder-shrug-hands-up-palms-out maneuver, which means he knows he’s done something wrong, but is trying to be cute to get out of it. And in reality, he’s never been “inside,” so how could he know what “relieving yourself outside” is? I make a mental note to teach him interior defecation etiquette later.
“Fine. Since you’ve returned, would you like to see what’s in the drawer?”
He circles around me to the drawer, clapping his hands. “Daw, daw, daw, daw!” The seal is still very tight, but on the third tug, he frees it. The force of the sudden opening, and the escape of the ancient air inside, throws Wah back on his buttocks – and yes, of course, into his own excrement. He wails in disgust.
“Your human elders have a saying for that, Wah: ‘karma is a bitch.’” I help him up and clean him off. We’ll have to soak his fangdog skins in the nearby pond later to dislodge the miracle glue that is his feces.
On the floor lie two objects jettisoned from the exploding drawer: a ring, and a strange rectangular slab. Interesting.
Wah’s interest, of course, is on the ring. It’s shiny. And now it’s his. He snatches it up, looks at me, and laughs in triumph, the conquering hero collecting his trophy. I motion with two of my fingers encircling the other hand’s index finger, showing him how to wear it. He slides it on his thumb. It slides off and falls to the floor, clinking. He picks it up and tries again. Clink. No luck.
“Wah, that is a ring. It’s too big for your fingers. Perhaps you should give it to me? As a gift?”
I fully expect him to clutch it even tighter, and scowl at me. Instead he trots over, lifts my hand, and gently slips the ring onto my finger. And truthfully, it’s mesmerizing in its beauty. I have never seen a ring like this. Gold in color, with three bright, clear stones attached to one side. The rings I’ve seen are all crude by comparison, made from bits of wire or leather, sometimes with a fragment of shell or rock. I believe they announce a male human’s territorial rights to the female ring wearer, to thwart potential sexual challengers. Although CORE would never allow such a thing as unapproved sexual intercourse, of course, so I’m not sure why they bothered. This ring has three stones. I wonder if CORE used to allow males to have territorial rights to three females. I can’t stop staring at it.
Wah pats my hand. “Heyoo wing.”
I chuckle. “No, but thank you. This is your ring. Wah’s ring. You found it. Come here. There is another way for you to wear it.” Wah hops into my lap, wagging his feet in the air. I unlatch a minor conduit from my bicep, thread it through the ring, and reconnect it around his neck. He looks down at his new necklace, strokes the ring, smiles, gives me the thumbs up. “Wah give Heyoo wing. Heyoo give Wah wing.”
While Wah enters a trance, fixated on the ring – I could probably leave him and be gone for weeks before he notices – I turn my attention to the rectangular slab. I flip it over and over and notice it fits naturally in my hand. No, it isn’t just a slab of metal. It’s a handheld device of some sort, with small buttons on the sides, and an access port on one end. Hmmm. Powered by electricity? Solar power? An internal reactor? Vibrational energy? I look closely into the port and, yes, there are metal leads. Electricity. I unhook two more of my minor conduits, exposing inner contacts, running them into the devices leads, direct current, twelve volts. Wait for some indication of power. Nothing. Alternating current, 25Hz. Nothing. 60Hz. Nothing.
Wait! Lights!
“Wah! Look! It glows!”
Wah peers over, then back down to his ring, uninterested in my discovery. Apparently my new toy doesn’t sparkle as much as his.
After a few moments… something is happening on the front of the rectangle… symbols!
Слайд открыть >>>
Uh-oh. It’s not CORE language. Or human language. I don’t have anything else in my database. What could it mean?
I speak to it. “State Primary Function.” Nothing.
I blow on it. Nothing.
I push all the buttons. Nothing.
I speak again, loudly. “Boot System! BOOT!” Nothing.
Wah, now annoyed that my play is interrupting his play, scampers over, looks down at the device surface, points at the arrows, smushing the display with all his grubby fingers. The display brightens, and moves, and now shows several rows of small square images. He smiles, pats me on the head. “Wah fix.”
Humans.
As Wah returns to his dreams of gold and clear stones, I inspect this new display. The square images beg to be touched. I heat my dermis, mimicking Wah’s finger temperature, and tap and tap, but find no clues to decipher meaning. Finally, what appears to be a settings directory. And this:
Выберите ваш язык
• Русский ( выбирается )
• Español
• 日本語
• English
• العربية
Wait - English! I’ve seen that word! I tap it, and suddenly the display is in the human language! Hmmm. The humans must have used multiple languages at one time, perhaps depending on the mood they wanted to convey. (English definitely being the default language for conveying irritability.)
An image with text appears in the center of the display:
You have not backed up this device in
845 years, 5 months, and 3 days.
Would you like to connect to
the Internet and back up now?
< 15: Heyoo >
The device
845 years!
The device has been hermetically sealed in that drawer since 2025! Amazing. But it wants me to do something called “back up” to something called “Internet.” I suppose it couldn’t hurt. Tap.
An Internet connection couldn’t be found.
Try Again ~ Dismiss
What is this “Internet?” The component parts of the word are “inter” – to place a dead human into a grave – and “net” – a piece of meshed fabric. Why would anyone want to “back up” into a burial cloth? Perhaps this device is trying to communicate with the dead?
It must be more human joking. They’re always amusing themselves, even about death. Some of it I find funny – in fact, it’s built in to my programming to learn humor for better human interaction – but some of it is just, well, like this example:
What’s the difference between a musician and a dead body?
One composes and the other one decomposes.
The humans find this kind of thing hilarious. And I’ll admit, once they start laughing, the feeling is contagious – I find myself laughing along, even as I shake my head.
Back to the device. Now that I can read the language, its purpose is revealed: this was a communication tool for humans, containing a primitive artificial intelligence unit to serve them in finding information. An earlier version of CORE they could carry around to guide them. A little CORE in their pocket. That’s a comforting thought.
Most of the human-generated content is, of course, babble. One of their “emails,” for example:
To: Victor Petrov
From: Alex Utkin
Date: September 23, 2024
Subject: TPS Reports
Victor – can you send me the TPS report again? Not that anyone will even read it, but I have to show the idiots up top why next quarter’s not looking so hot. I might as well be explaining quantum mechanics to a two-year-old.
Teaching quantum mechanics to a two-year-old? This device’s language translation software must be malfunctioning. I try another, from a more recent date:
To: Regina Pajari
From: Alex Utkin
Date: August 12, 2025
Subject: WTF
Regina – What’s the deal with CORE? My card’s disabled. Can you check into this? Also, Victor’s been out for three days,
and hasn’t checked in. Have you heard from him?
Decidedly less silly. Intriguing. I scan to the very last email:
To: Regina Pajari
From: Alex Utkin
Date: August 17, 2025
Subject: Re: WTF
Regina – Screw you. If you’re even still there. First you lock me out, or CORE locks me out, then you stop my salary, shut off my connectivity. Will this email even get to you? How am I supposed to live?
P.S. The local units are acting weird, looking at me funny – am I just being paranoid, or is that you too? Either way, go screw yourself.
Wow. The humans really do like to tell each other to go screw themselves, don’t they? I wonder what happened all that time ago, and if CORE was able to help solve his problem. Or was he a criminal, trying to escape CORE’s protection?
Or did CORE do something… wrong?
For further answers, I turn back to the main display, and more of what the device calls “apps.” Here is one where a small video plays, featuring this “Alex Utkin.” He is holding his pet cat, making it play a musical instrument. Over and over and over. And over.
Oh well. So much for answers.
I look over at Wah – surely he’ll like the cat video. But he’s no longer staring at his ring – he’s found something else in the recesses of that ancient cabinet’s drawer. It must be even more shiny.