She lies down beside the crying baby, hoping she’ll be found soon. Hoping she’ll be okay, wondering what sort of world she lives in that babies are left on their own in snake-filled enclaves.
Just as she closes her eyes and feels the nice cool ground of the enclave on her cheek, just as she thinks, “Sorry, Nayne, this isn’t how I should have died,” the baby coos again, and places a tiny sticky hand on her cheek.
Eighteen
“I’m Henry, by the way,” the man says to Petra as they work on the bike together. They’d found it not an hour after setting out to look for her.
Of course it wasn’t working, but with all the right parts from other vehicles nearby, Petra scans its insides and sees it would be in working condition in a matter of minutes.
“What’s your name again?” he says. “I’m sorry, I must have missed it last night. I wasn’t thoroughly conscious—”
She didn’t have a name for a long time, not until Sidney came along. “My name is Petra,” she states, her head on an angle though her hands don’t stop moving on the bike. “It is the name Sidney nominated for me.”
“Is that right?” he says. “She’s something else, that Sidney, isn’t she?”
“She is a child,” is Petra’s response as she moves to drip oil into the bike. She estimates that this bike hasn’t worked in several years. It also needs more fuel than what she’s carried with her.
“She is also impetuous,” she says, before realizing she finds it an admirable trait in the child. This is an older programming, allowing her to admire traits in Allendians—a program she hasn’t touched on in a while. “And a survivor.”
“Interesting,” Henry says. “And you, Petra? How would you describe yourself?”
“I am machine,” Petra says as she slots an universal key into the ignition of the bike. She turns the engine and it sputters to life.
“This—” Henry says, as he caresses the bike’s handlebar, “Is a machine. You’re not just this, are you?”
“I am,” Petra states. “Perhaps with superior programming, but no less a machine.” She finds his question curious, but knows better than to ask an Allendian adult to explain himself. Prior programming reminds her that would be inappropriate conduct, so she keeps the words to herself.
Henry looks her up and down. “Why is Sidney important to you, Petra? Who is she, to you?”
“She is a child,” Petra repeats, “but my scanner couldn’t determine if she is ill or not. I will need to bring her to an outer dome, to have her tested. As I will need to do with you.”
Henry raises his brows to that. “To what end?” he asks, his voice gruff. “If it turns out that either one of us is sick, will you try to heal us? Or will you actually kill us?”
“There is no cure for the flu,” Petra says as she straddles the bike. She waits for Henry to climb on behind her and place his arms around her waist. “She will have to be eliminated if she is sick. As do the rest of the sick. Otherwise the re-emergence will not happen.”
Then she leans forward and the bike flies through the air, not an hour away from where Sidney fell.
Henry doesn’t say another word on their journey. Petra takes advantage of the silence by continuing to scan for signs of Sidney, knowing every so often that they’re definitely going in the right direction. She hasn’t moved away from the path that would eventually take them to the vault.
Petra doesn’t wonder why Henry’s so quiet, doesn’t wonder just what’s going on in his human brain.
Finally, an hour after they’d started on the bike, it sputters and stops, skidding until it falls, as Petra and Henry fly off its seat. It throws up dust in the air. Petra hears Henry grunt in pain as her right side slides across the ground, the impact nothing more than an inconvenience should it leave a scratch.
“Well that’s unlucky,” Henry says, looking down at the defunct bike. “It’s always handy to have a vehicle out here. Maybe we can find another.”
“No need,” Petra says, “for we’re close. I see footprints, here, here, and here. Some of them match Sidney’s. Take a look.”
Henry crouches low to take a closer look at said footprints, then looks up at Petra. Realizing they’re far closer to the vault than he’d originally thought.
“Right,” he says. “Right.”
“She is gone in this direction,” Petra says as she rises to her feet and stares towards the east. “Though I am not sure why. That is not the way to the vault. Perhaps she misunderstood what I had told her—” That doesn’t sound right to Petra, so she frowns, working through other scenarios that are more likely.
“She’s not alone,” Henry adds. “I see two, maybe three other prints here. See?” He points to where things don’t add up.
“So many—?” Petra says. She analyzes her database, she hasn’t come across that many people in one go, none of the others before her had. Not in years. The database indicates most groups comprise of these so-called raiders. Even then, they’re all healthy so Petra’s older versions had no reason to hunt them.
“They’re heading in this direction,” Henry says as he continues walking east. Petra follows, calculating that these people are within the close vicinity. They wouldn’t have gone far. They are stationed here.
Nineteen
Sidney
Her eyes are heavy but she fights past the heaviness to crack the left one open, then the right. She’s being carried, so Petra must have found her. Her heart soars.
Then she realizes two sets of hands are holding her up on either side. The realization hits that the raider must be here too, and her heart plummets. She wants to fight him off, to keep his grubby nastiness to himself before he bites into her flesh. Her arms don’t listen to what her brain screams.
They stay heavy and limp by her sides. She’s facing forward, her chin down, with her feet dragging behind as they carry her along. Spit drools out of her mouth and lands on the dusty ground beneath.
“She’s waking,” a voice whispers. Not Petra’s she realizes. Not the raider’s voice either. She fights to pull her chin up and the minute action makes her neck hurt so much she only succeeds in dropping her chin to her chest again.
But she tilts to the left and see someone’s—dress? A floor-length, light-blue cotton number. A woman! That has to be a good sign. Women in this world are good. She knew her nayne and she knows Petra. Well Petra doesn’t really count given that she’s an android and also that she would kill Sidney if given the chance. Still, she knows women don’t make for good raiders—Nayne said she’d never seen women with raiders that wanted to be there. So this is good. This is good.
They shuffle along forward, longer than she can count. Her brain’s still frozen from the venom that snake had shoved into her. Why am I not dead? she thinks.
Finally, after shuffling up a flight of stairs, they stop and she takes a deep breath. She can’t help it. Everything in here smells like warmth—apples and cinnamon and vanilla and cream. Her eyes flutter as her belly growls in appreciation of what’s to come.
Finally, they place her on a bed, then gently push her back until she’s on the softest, cleanest crisp sheets. She’s never had a real bed, but she knows that’s what this soft cloud comfort must be. Her eyes fight her and close shut as her brain starts to follow suit. She mustn’t fall asleep, she tells herself. She doesn’t know where she is, doesn’t know who these people are—she can’t fall asleep!
So she opens her eyes wide, fighting back.
“It’s okay, child,” a female voice says. “You are safe and you will be okay.”
The voice is as warm as the smells, soothing and calm. Sidney looks up to see its owner, and a woman smiles down at her—the same woman dressed in the long sky-blue dress. Her smile is so soft, Sidney thinks. She has long brown hair, clean and fluffy like she’s just showered. Do they have a working shower here? Sidney’s never had one, but her nayne always said they were the best things.
The woman’s smile widens as Sidney stares
, and she repeats herself. “You’re fine. You’re safe. You can sleep as long as you like.”
She doesn’t want to, but when the woman places a soft hand on hers and strokes her fingers through her hair, her eyes flutter closed again and she takes a deep breath. She can’t move anyway, her arms don’t want to listen, neither do her legs. Her brain tells her to be wary but the rest of her body won’t comply.
So when she lets the heaviness take her, she leans her back into the soft bed and her eyes finally close tight. She thinks of clouds and blue sky and warm apple cider, the kind her nayne used to make any time they’d find an orchard of apples on their travels. They were never big enough or yummy enough to eat fresh, but they made for the best apple cider...
Twenty
Petra
Petra and Henry walk another twenty minutes east and stop when they come to a wall of trees, uniform in every way, the way all trees in Allenda have been planted. They reach up to the sky as if begging for a way out of the dome.
“Douglas firs,” Petra analyzes. “Not as old as the other ones across the dome.” If there’s anything that’s survived the Allendian decline out here, it’s the trees. They can withstand anything. “Doesn’t look like the rains this way are acidic—yet,” she claims.
“Okay,” Henry says, “and I’ve lost the tracks. Where do we head now?”
Petra stares through the trees. Though she doesn’t see any obvious signs, she notes a couple of branches have been pushed back, their needles not as fresh as the others.
“I believe they’ve gone through here,” she claims, her arm raising to point at the trees.
Henry looks in the same direction. “Doesn’t look likely,” he says. “Hardly any space to get in there. Besides—” he walks up closer to the mass of trees to peer through into their dark depths. “What’s usually behind these things out here? Not useful to us right now, is it?”
Petra knows what he means. Every section of the domes in Allenda are planned and structured. Park areas full of trees and grass always have a lake, grassy hills for Allendians who enjoy the golfing sport and nothing more. Just miles and miles of grass.
However, Petra’s instincts tell her something is different behind this mass of trees. Something not quite planned by Allendian Engineers. So, without speaking another word, she pushes through the first tree’s branches and walks through the forest to whatever lies beyond. Henry follows suit, like he knows better than to question a robot’s instincts.
For another five kilometers, they walk through the forest of firs, it doesn’t let up. From time to time, Henry sighs, until one point where he stops and points at a small but distinct trail ahead.
“Looks like you were right,” he says. “This is different.”
They follow the track as it grows larger and larger, and they reach what looks to be the entrance to a tiny bridge, under cover of more trees and chirping birds. It’s like another world, not at all part of the silver-dust streets of Allenda city, and just a few short hours away from the city at that. All the overgrown nature makes Petra’s program analyze and study harder, but she doesn’t find anything threatening.
They walk on the outer part of the bridge though, at Henry’s insistence. “I don’t want to be caught under—that thing,” he says as he fights a shudder. The way through the bridge would have been shorter, per Petra’s analysis, but she doesn’t insist. She knows when an Allendian is terrified, and this is the best term to give Henry right now.
They walk past the bridge and an hour later, come to another wall of trees. Smaller ones this time, less dense. Beyond it though, Petra senses a larger structure. She walks through with Henry on her side.
They both stop with an audible sharp intake of breath from Henry as they stare up at the house looming on the hill, quite unlike any other structure Petra has analyzed in Allenda.
“What—is—this?” Henry says as he stares up at the monstrosity of a home. It rises up to the sky, bigger than any other home he’s ever seen outside of the square buildings in the city.
The walls are white and dark brown, with hints of blue. Ten stairs lead up to its front door, which is also an off-white. Henry counts fifteen windows across its front.
“Who—what would live in this thing,” he asks as he steps forward, but Petra’s hand on his chest stops him from moving ahead.
“My analysis is incomplete,” she mutters as she stares at the home. “It is not safe for you to continue until it is.”
He stops and watches her calculate whatever it is she needs to calculate. Then, when she makes no signs of moving in any direction, he decides to plop onto the grassy ground and wait. He knows better than to go against a robot’s recommendations. Still, he counts the minutes, he can’t wait to get in there and see just what they’re dealing with.
“She’s not in there,” Petra finally says, “Sidney isn’t inside that home, but others are. One of them has the flu.” She doesn’t question why her scanner works now. Perhaps it’s self-healed, it wouldn’t be unheard of in Allenda. All Petra thinks right now is that her scanner is back up and running, and she has a job to do so that the re-emergence can happen.
Then she marches forward, her tazer already up before Henry can say a thing. He follows suit, knowing what’s to come but unable to bring up the nerve to stop her. This is her job, he tells himself. This is what she’s built for, and if he tries to stop her, well that’s the end of him. So he follows, dreading the next several minutes.
Twenty-One
Sidney
She sits up with her back against the cushy headboard. She looks down, feeling her arms and legs under the sheets.
She’s dressed in a billowy soft white dress. When she brings her fingers up, they’re cut short and clean—like she hasn’t been scraping and scrapping out in the streets of Allenda all her life.
She puts her hands back down on the sheets and strokes the cool silky feeling under her fingertips. What is this place? A wisp of wind reaches her from the open window and she looks up as the light peach curtain billows in like a dream.
Maybe it is a dream, she thinks. That snake’s poison could be coursing through her veins right now and she’s frothing and dying in a dusty hole somewhere. Still, the sheets feel real enough, so does the soft warm wind from the open window.
When the door to her room opens, she pulls the sheet up to her chin and stares at the person walking through. It’s the lady in a light blue dress again, though this time she’s in some aqua colored one—the same style as the last one, the material covering her from the top of her neck all the way down to the floor. It’s also long-sleeved and Sidney wonders if she feels hot and uncomfortable under the collar.
“Are you hungry, child?” the woman asks as she strides into the room and smiles at her.
She has her brown hair up this time, showing off a rounded face and small blue eyes.
She reminds Sidney of someone, but she can’t quite remember who. It’s like a memory from another time, another set of eyes maybe...she doesn’t know where the thought comes from, but keeps her eyes on her, the pretty lady.
“We have lots of food. What do you like to eat?”
Lots of food? In this world? Other than the vault Petra’s mentioned, other than what she pictures in her head, what this lady says makes zero sense. Still, what does she like to eat?
“Anything but bird,” is the first thing that pops out of her mouth. “Or rodent or lizard or...”
The woman laughs out as Sidney continues listing the things she doesn’t want to eat, all the things she’s eaten all her life that she’s had more than her share of, thank you very much.
“...or gizzards,” is the final part.
To which the woman grins and says, “I think I know just the thing. Let’s get you downstairs, if you feel up to taking a little walk. We will have a feast of everything else but what you just said.”
“What else is there?” Sidney hasn’t heard of there being anything much else in this world than everyth
ing she’d listed. Of course there are all the berries as well, the smaller fruits and minty leaves. Those she doesn’t mind eating at all, so she hasn’t mentioned them. The woman nods at her and grins wider. “Lots more in our home,” she promises. “And you can have a taste of it all, as much or as little as you wish, but first, you must do something for me...”
“What’s that?” Sidney asks suspiciously.
“You must tell me your name.” Her eyes light up like it’s the biggest secret in the world and it will make all her dreams come true.
When she replies, “It’s Sidney,” the woman’s smile widens, and she reaches out a small porcelain hand, waiting for Sidney to hold it.
She doesn’t even hesitate. She throws the blanket off and sits up.
Eyeing her shoes at the end of the bed, she slips them on before reaching out to the woman’s hand as she grasps hers back. The skin is smooth, as soft as peaches and cream like her coloring. Sidney’s darker skin makes hers look almost see-through, and she notices a tinge of gold to her own skin, which is surprising. She’d never seen that before.
The woman’s hands are about as small as Sidney’s though something tells her she’s not a little girl. Tiny wrinkles at the edges of her eyes remind Sidney of the lines her nayne had around hers.
Nayne’s lines always multiplied when she’d smiled and Sid thought she looked prettiest that way. Her nayne didn’t like them though—always claimed they made her feel “old.”
But Nayne was never old. To Sidney, she was fresh and young and alive. Until she wasn’t.
When the lady in aqua asks, “What’s wrong?” she feels tears on her cheeks and wipes at them vigorously.
Petra: Allendian Post-Apocalypse Page 5