Awakening

by Hayden Pearton

  *

  The light of dawn is said to be the best alarm clock in the world, however, it went unnoticed by the two sleeping figures lying far below. The sun was already high in the sky when Maloch finally awoke from his sleep-mode. As per his programming he ran a pre-operation systems check, which went as follows:

  “Analysing structural damage... seventy percent. Compounding likelihood of critical systems failure... moderately likely. Computing power levels... ninety-three percent power retained. Engaging emotion engine... successful. Caution, emotion emulation is unstable. Extreme emotional states not advised. Proceeding with local environment scan... scanning... scanning... scan complete: no immediate threats detected. One human detected, serial number... KINGSTON.”

  It was then that Maloch noticed that something was wrong with his companion. Still asleep, he directed his sensors towards the immobile hermit.

  “Status... unresponsive, unconscious, minimal brain activity detected. Pulse dropping. Heart-rate... low and arrhythmic. Medical intervention advised. Resuming start-up procedure. Weapons status... R. Hand weapon unlocked. L. Hand weapon locked. Attempting to unlock LSR... necessary power would deplete core and limit functionality. Proceed? Unlock attempt terminated. Re-plotting course to oasis... eight hours travel time estimated, allowing for lessened mobility caused by additional weight. Pre-operational check complete. Booting up in three, two, one.”

  Maloch sat up with pre-programmed rigidity, still sluggish as the last of his sub-systems booted up. He glanced around, noting Kingston's shrivelled figure by the cave entrance. The man did not respond when Maloch called out his name, nor did he say anything after being gently shook. Using a sensor embedded in his palm, Maloch scanned the old man from head to toe. A few seconds of calculation revealed that Kingston had serious internal bleeding and minor head trauma, most likely from the rough plane crash.

  Even without looking Maloch knew that he was in no position to treat Kingston. The old man’s only help lay elsewhere, so that’s where he needed to be. There was no point in waiting around any longer. Maloch bent down and scooped up Kingston's unnaturally light body, cradling it in his massive arms. He thought of his programming, of the countless built-in commandments that forced him to act in humanity's best interests; and then he carefully thought up a statement that would excuse him from helping the dying human in his grip.

  It was fool proof, like anything he came up with, as it took advantage of several loopholes and sub-clauses that would prove his innocence if he was ever tried for negligence… or homicide. Not that there was anyone capable of accusing him, given the current state of humanity. Having covered his bases in terms of accountability, he set off towards the distant oasis with a lumbering gait.

  Maloch initially had trouble traversing the soft sand, as Kingston's added weight meant that his feet sunk in deeper with every step. To pass the time, Maloch took to scanning and cataloguing every interesting or unusual thing he found, reasoning that one never knew what could become important later on. Additionally, he set to fixing the smaller cracks and fractures in his outer hull, using a miniature blowtorch stored in his thumb. Igniting the gas, he began to weld shut all of the breached areas he could reach, before setting to work on some of the larger injuries. The large dent in his chest panel required a tricky manoeuvre involving a suction hose and a 0.01 percent sonic burst, but he somehow managed to avoid blowing himself apart.

  After doing what he could for his external damage, he turned to his internal woes. His core generator had a small crack running through the equator that had steadily been growing larger, which was remedied by directing a swarm of nanomachines to solder the crack on a microscopic scale. He was reluctant to do so, as every re-mech was given a limited number of the handy machines. They were notoriously difficult to mass-produce and had a tendency to expire after a handful of jobs. Still, it was necessary, as a malfunctioning core would spell the end of him, as it provided everything from his processing capabilities to his power management.

  Having set the minuscule robots to work, he turned to his extremities, where he soon found a hydraulic leak from a tube that led to his left leg. It was fixed with a directed spark from another finger, the spark partially melting the tube and then sealing the tiny hole without trace. The only other damage he registered was to his skeletal chassis which would eventually compromise his structural stability. That, however, would have to wait until he reached a certified re-mech repair station, as he lacked the necessary items with which to fix it.

  Another troubling affliction was the damage done to his memory banks, which left him with partial, unconnected memories that did not follow one another in a logical order. Even this malady was nothing compared to damage done to the emotion engine, which governed his ability to emulate human emotions whilst simultaneously restricting his range of emotions to manageable levels.

  While he could do nothing about his emotion engine, he could at least try to recover some of his less fragmented memories. He set a back-up CPU to coding a program that would do just that, and reviewed his available memories while he waited. His earliest memory was waking up in the now defunct Carçus City, surrounded by three humanoids who had asked him several strange questions. Back then, he had chosen to follow them, despite knowing nothing of their intentions or motives. Even now, Maloch still did not know whether or not he had made the right decision that day. He attributed it to what humans called ‘shock’; that is, his newly awakened system had been unable to make correct decisions at the time and had merely gone along with their suggestions.

  Once he had decided to accompany them, his commandment programming took over, rendering him incapable of denying their requests, no matter how much personal risk they entailed. He had been battered, broken and tossed around without so much as a single word of protest, which was something he had grown accustomed to in his long life of servitude. Crossing a structurally unsound sky-bridge, falling down an elevator shaft, using up all of his power to jump-start an escape vehicle. To most re-mech, these actions would have been carried out in a complacent and reserved manner, but to Maloch, they just sounded wrong no matter how he phrased them. For him to question his programming meant that the damage to his emotion limiters must be worse than he originally thought.

  Before he was able to continue on this particular line of thought, an alert popped up on his HUD, notifying him of the program's completion.

  “Do I really want to do this? What will happen to me if what I see contradicts my actions up until now? How will I know how to react?”

  Before he could persuade himself to stop, he activated the program, watching its pulsing progress bar inch ever closer to 100% completion. It seemed to take an age, as the program manually went through each damaged memory and attempted to recover what it could. It was a slow, arduous process that would have tested the patience of an ordinary being to its limits. But Maloch was no ordinary being, he was a re-mech, and the ability to wait for long periods of time for a future event was practically built into his base code.

  “Memory recovery successful. Percentage of memories recovered... five comma three percent. Beginning memory playback in three, two, one...”