by Oliver Higgs
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or vivid hallucinations suffered by said author, or possibly delusions suffered by the reader; the reader is free to choose whatever answer doesn’t result in a lawsuit.
Conan is the creation of Robert E. Howard and is mentioned only on account of REH’s influence on the fictional character, with no rights implied by the author.
All rights reserved.
Copyright 2014 by Oliver Higgs
This book may not be reproduced in whole or part without the permission of the author, unless remade entirely with Legos by someone wearing a superhero cape, because that would be strangely hilarious. In fact, if anyone ever does that, I want a picture of it: [email protected]
http://www.thescificritic.com
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Chapter 1.
I wake to the squeal of a dying rat. My stomach responds with an eager rumble: time for breakfast. The bars of light spilling between the boards on my window paint wide yellow stripes across the crumbling plaster on the far wall. Lectric is still huddled asleep in his makeshift bed, which means dawn can’t be far gone. Relying mostly on solar power, he tends to rise soon after the sun, eager to soak up the day’s first rays.
Grabbing my flashlight and crossbow, I climb the ladder down to the hallway that leads to the back room, find the place where the floor caved in and navigate the familiar debris into the narrow sewers below. To conserve power, I don’t click the flashlight until my boots touch bottom. Then I stab the beam into the gloom and stare wide-eyed down the corridor.
I’ve never seen anything but rats in this sewer, yet I have a lingering fear something will come charging out of the darkness; some freakish monstrosity long forgotten by the world, wondering who’s been diminishing its furry-footed food supply. Or a ghost, perhaps. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I watch for them anyway. The darkness makes all things possible.
If ghosts do exist, there’d be no shortage here. This city numbered in the millions before the Fall. But the sewers, as always, are empty, and my trap sits at the intersection ahead with a rat the size of a small dog lying dead in its entrance. My own laughter, escaping unintended, shocks me for a moment. The rats have been getting smaller lately, but this one is a beast. I should’ve known from the squeal. Once the trap’s gate snaps shut, the capacitor has a three second discharge, yet the rats are strangely silent during their electrocution. This one must’ve squealed from the gate snapping shut on its tail, and that only happens when one is too big to fit entirely inside.
I made my first rat trap in my grandfather’s store when I was seven. Our neighbor used to make these red crayons from wax and ochre, and I remember signing the underside like a work of art, my name in towering capitals: TRISTAN. I got the voltage wrong and the rat was barely dazed, but I was proud of that first effort. By now I could make them in my sleep. I almost never need the crossbow. Still, it doesn’t hurt to be prepared. There are always the monsters, after all. Always the dark.
After making sure it’s dead, I lug my breakfast out by the tail and head back up to the Library. A shard of broken glass throws back my reflection, and the level of joy on the face within seems downright absurd. Only madmen wear such faces. Then again, the whole world’s gone mad; maybe I’m just starting to fit in. Anyway, it’s a day for rejoicing. I don’t know what this guy was feasting on in the sewers, but he’s got enough meat on him for any three of his friends. A good omen. Maybe Toyota will come today.
I’ll have to reset the trap later–open the gate, set some bait, reset the pressure plate, and crank-charge the capacitor. But there’s no hurry. I’m still smiling when I toss the cleaned carcass onto the grill out back. The grill was made from that old kind of steel that doesn’t rust, even after a century of exposure. I scored it from some rubble near New Sea. Now I’ve got it propped on the brick fire-pit out back. I’ve had to range further into the ruins for wood lately, but it’s worth the effort. I’ve eaten raw rat before and it’s not much fun.
I click my little electric sparker; soon the meat is sizzling. Even now, the smell makes me nervous. The biggest predator in ten miles is probably a coyote just shy of scrawny, but if any passing travelers are ranging in from the desert, the smell might draw them too, and I don’t like strangers.
“Strangers!” I say, and someone laughs. The joke is that there are only strangers. Even Toyota doesn’t know where I live. When I go to meet him, I wait along Big Road, two miles east of the Library. His seasonal passage amounts to a kind of holiday. There aren’t many traders that come through these parts, and none I like better than Toyota.
Soon Lectric is whining at the top of the ladder. He can drop the twelve feet without damaging his hull, but he always sits there whining at the top. Stupid dog. He nuzzles my cheek with his metametal nose as I carry him down; then he scampers out back and spreads himself flat on the ground to soak up the sun. This, to me, is a hilarious position. He closes his black glass eyes and puts his chin to the ground and looks about as relaxed as any robot can. He’s scared of rats–and pretty much any organic animal, since one tried to take a bite out of his synthetic hide a while back–but he’s gotten used to the smell. I put Lectric’s body together myself in the back of my grandfather’s store when I was twelve. That was three years ago by my reckoning, the same year they burned the village. I try not to think about that.
“Gonna be good salad today, Lex,” I say. He ignores me completely, content under the cloudless sky. While the meat cooks, I go to the sunken garden I’ve hidden in the ruined half of the Library. This used to be a grand place by the look of things. Sometimes I wonder what was lost in the rubble. Given what I’ve found in the other half–the good half, where I make my home–a lot of knowledge likely went up in smoke. You wouldn’t believe how much work it was to clear the place out, churn up the ground and get it to actually grow things–not to mention keeping out the rats.
I decide to go all out today and throw some tomatoes in with the lettuce and carrots. It takes two to three months to grow good-sized vegetables from seed and the garden isn’t big enough for me to utilize it every day, but something’s different about today. I can feel it.
After a nice rat salad, I wrap the leftover meat in a leather cloth, grab my pack and head east toward Big Road. No point wasting time. Toyota’s already told me he’ll spend a night along the road up near the Headless King, but I won’t keep him waiting if he’s arrived early.
I reach the King in under an hour, Lectric trotting at my heels, but there’s nobody else in sight. The headless statue on its bronze horse sits askew amid the rubble of a fallen building, pointing vaguely skyward. The loss of his head has done nothing to daunt the unknown hero’s spirits. He looks ready to march into the sky.
This is the sixth day in a row I’ve paid the Headless King a visit. I can’t be sure about Toyota’s timing–or if he’s even still alive for that matter, but unless his trip has gone horribly wrong, I should see him one day soon.
To pass the time, I hunt the ruins. Almost everything is rubble in this part of the city. Still, you turn over the right stone and there’s no telling what you’ll find. Lectric can be helpful in that regard. He’s equipped with a built-in metal detector, so when he feels something’s worth digging for, he starts yapping excitedly. His instincts are pretty good too. He does have instincts, despite what you may have heard. Lectric’s not made of meat, but he’s as alive as any other dog and no less loyal. Today he doesn’t yap for squat, but that’s not surprising. We’re really just killing time, waiting for Toyota.
I range another mile east until I can see New Sea from the top of a familiar rubble-strewn hill. The bones of a fallen skyscraper cut a rusty gray-brown jetty two hundred feet into the water. Other broken monoliths of the dead city rise here and there, like idols of a fallen god. I can’t say why, but I’ve always found it peaceful here. Much of the dead city looks like nothing more than an enormous junkyard, but watching the rusting giants sink glacially into the lapping ocean tends to remind me instead that one little life isn’t so important in the scheme of things–and I find that comforting; it makes the losses easier to accept.
I’m about to turn away when Lectric starts whining, looking at the water.
“Coolant?” I ask.
He nods, a very human motion, and wags his stubby tail. Lectric can’t sweat or salivate. He soaks up the sun for power but sometimes the heat in the air is too much, and he has to pee coolant out of a tube between his legs. Apparently he did that when I wasn’t looking because now he trots down to the shore, stands on a broken road beneath a sign reading “Mississippi River Recreation Area” and bends his head to the water, sucking it up. It’s saltwater and I’ll have to flush his system to clean it at some point, but it’ll do for now.
Back at the Headless King, Toyota still hasn’t shown himself, so maybe I was wrong. Maybe today isn’t the day. I lay with Lectric in the bed of an abandoned truck and waste another hour reading Volume Four. It’s falling apart and a replacement would be impossible to find, so I’m very careful with it.
My eight Conan graphic novels were definitely my best find in the Library. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read them. I’m missing volumes seven, nine, eleven and twelve, but what can you do? I like a lot of the novels I’ve found about the world before Fall–books about daily struggles in a world where kids go to school and cars aren’t just old abandoned husks–but Conan has been my friend through some very dark days. His adventures in Hyboria have sustained me in a way no food possibly could.
It must be four o’clock when Lectric jumps up and stares intently up the road. He has good hearing, and soon there’s movement toward the horizon. I fumble for my spyglass. It’s an old one from my grandfather’s store, a keepsake of sorts. Through the spyglass I spot something, but for a second I’m unsure: is that Toyota?
Two white oxen are trudging along Big Road, kicking up dust that has settled over the old stones beneath the broken asphalt. They’re pulling a large wooden wagon with a black-haired man in the driver’s seat. He’s got a pair of round black goggles strapped to his head and a dusty tan poncho over a rugged gray shirt and jeans. To his right walks an armored robot, eight feet tall and gleaming black. Attached to the robot’s right forearm is a wickedly curving blade. In its left hand is a machine gun.
That same robotic guard was with him on the way north–it’s definitely Toyota. It’s the oxen that have thrown me. Putting away the spyglass, I stand up and wave and smile as he approaches, trying to make my intentions clear. I don’t want his ‘bot to mistake me for a threat.
Lifting his goggles, Toyota stands in the wagon and gives a big wave, then sits again, almost pitching forward as the wagon hits a bump. I can’t control the smile on my face as he finally rumbles to a halt in front of me. Maybe I shouldn’t be this happy to see someone I’ve only met a few times, but he’s the first person I’ve seen in three or four months and the first I’ve talked to in, I don’t know, six. Come to think of it, the last person I talked to before Toyota–was Toyota.
Browsing his wares makes me feel like a king. I’ve had dreams about things showing up on his wagon. Once I had a dream he came rolling up and my grandfather and old friends were under the tarp, and they climbed out because it turned out they weren’t burned and murdered corpses decaying beneath the ash of our village–oh no, they were fine–and they came to live with me in the Library. Dreams like that making waking hard.
Toyota hops down from his wagon and clasps my forearm, laughing. He calls me something that sounds like, “Yow Show Tchi!” though that’s not quite right. It means “Little Luck” in some god-forsaken language from a city-state far to the southwest. Toyota means it as a compliment. His own name has auspicious origins, being some kind of travel symbol from the World Before.
I first met Toyota a few months after settling in the Library. I was thirteen and he was heading north with little more than the pack on his back. He got lucky somewhere up there and came back riding a horse. Next trip, the horse was pulling a wagon. The way north is dangerous, full of roamers, radiated wastes and god-only-knows what else, so when you get a bit of luck, you don’t want to take any chances by letting it go unappreciated.
And apparently, that luck has held up.
“Toyota, look at these beasts! You trade in your horse? A bigger wagon too? Crom, what’d you find up there, man? A mountain made of gold?”
“Toyota has his tricks, eh Yow Show Tchi? What in north not in south. What in south not in north. Nobody want to cross z-line. Nasty business. Drive up price. Oh, but be careful who you bargain with, that real trick, eh? But wait, wait, you see what I find!”
I’ve heard the z-line is no joke, though I’ve never been that far north myself. I don’t range more than a day or two into the desert, always staying close enough to return to a sure source of water.
When Toyota jumps down and pulls back the dusty tarp covering his goods, I forget everything else. I’m in heaven. Almost everything he brought north has been replaced by some foreign treasure. There are a few newly made goods but a lot from before the Fall as well. Immediately I spot a dozen electrical components I know I could use; a box full of resistors, a small motor, batteries, servos for smaller robots (Lectric’s won’t last forever). But all this is nothing compared to what Toyota pulls out of a locked chest in one corner of the wagon …
A brand-new, dormant-state Tritium-Three Neural Embryo.
I breathe a curse. Toyota laughs. It’s a rarity all-right, the most advanced small-scale robotic brain in existence. Wire a Tritium-Three to any sufficiently advanced body and you’ve basically just given life to a baby robot. Give it an eight-armed body and it will learn to use eight arms–but that takes more neural space, lowering its end-state intelligence. Give it something more manageable and it will develop a complex personality with enough intelligence to rival or even surpass most humans.
Lectric uses a Spark 2100 Neural Embryo, yielding limited awareness. He can understand a few commands but not complex language. Compare that to the non-sentient variety, like Toyota’s bodyguard–highly lethal, capable of recognizing friend from foe, yet totally controlled by pre-programmed software. Lectric might be scares of rats, but at least he makes his own choices. To prove it, he peed on me one morning while I slept. I mean, it was only warm water, sure, but there was just no reason to do that.
Developing a robot through the brain-embryo method is the only known way to achieve sentience. You can’t just turn one on and load it up with data. They have to wire themselves through experience, just as a normal brain does. That’s the real secret to the life inside them.
Of course, there’s no way in hell I can afford a Tritium-Three. Well, maybe if I trade everything I have, because I do have some valuables. But an advanced brain needs an advanced body, with pain receptors and tactile support. And even if I had one, what then? I’d have an extremely advanced robot with the mind of an infant, in need of constant moni
toring. What would I say when it grew smart enough to ask why I’d created it? I was lonely? I built you for fun? Answers like that can get you killed.
So no, I will not be trading for it. Still, it’s hard to pull my eyes away.
“Amazing, Toyota. This is amazing. But I can’t afford it. I’ll take these resistors though, these two circuit boards … I like these servos but this one looks pretty beat-up. Have you tested it?”
“Yow Show Tchi, you wound my heart. Toyota test everything! He no cheat you.”
“I don’t think you would, but look at it …”
We haggle. I tell him why everything is junk. He tells me why everything is gold. I put some things in my pile and throw some things back. I’m mostly good on food but I do pick up seeds for new vegetables.
Then it’s my turn for show-and-tell. I open my pack and pull out wonders. Gold coins from the rubble of a fallen house. Fresh tomatoes from my garden. An extra canteen. Detailed toy soldiers from the World Before. An antique watch. A small hand-cranked generator, rat traps and electric fire-starters of my own design, built specifically for trading.
Then it’s a question of what should be given for what. I put together bundled proposals and we end up with a deal neither of us are quite happy with but one we can both accept. In the process of sealing the deal, Toyota offers to cook up a desert fox killed by his bodyguard for an impromptu meal. He breaks out a small grill. When the meat is done, he offers me a leg and we sit on the edge of his wagon to eat.
Toyota shows me some honey-wine made by monks in an enclave east of New Sea.
“This all they make! Very good wine. Trade to everyone who come. Oh, my wife gonna be happy to see this.”
He talks about bringing the oldest of his three children on his next trip north, but its god-awful dangerous and his wife doesn’t want the boy to go. He decides he might wait another year.
When the meal is done and our respective items have been gathered, I’m struck by a strange, fluttering anxiety. I’ve always been a loner, even back in the village, and I’m dead-sure I don’t need anyone. Ever. For anything. Still, it shames me to admit that it’s sometimes nice to talk to someone who isn’t a robotic dog. But as our business winds down, I can’t think of any reason Toyota should stay–I have nothing left to trade.