Damnation

by Ken Barrett

  With that task complete, they removed the spare ventilation manifolds and the tools they would need from the vestibule and placed them on the baked ground outside. Together then, they pushed the massive door toward the cave entrance, but it wouldn’t close. The extreme heat had warped the thick steel hatch such that the latches wouldn’t seat within their locking sockets.

  Liam looked down and saw that the asbestos covers of his boots were beginning to burn. “We don’t have time to spend on this, and we may end up locking ourselves outside,” he said. “We’ll leave it partly open, and hope we can get it closed on our way back in.”

  “Ok,” Rose said. “I’ll take the west and you handle the registers on the east.” She retrieved one bulky tungsten coated metal duct, and then hurried up the hill.

  Liam mimicked his sister, and soon found the original vent, which under the solar onslaught had melted and twisted into a formless blob. He tore it away and flung it downhill to the east. The duct seemed clear, but he leaned over and shoved his arm deep into it anyway just to be sure. He found several broken pieces of the original register and tossed them away. Finally, he fit the new piece over the hole and fastened it in place with rivets.

  He wondered briefly if the outside air was toxic, which it could well be. His android body wasn’t equipped to do a quantitative analysis of the atmosphere. Neither he or his sister actually needed to breathe at all; the anatomic function was mostly an effect used to appear human, but the process also served to expel some of the heat generated by their batteries and the matrix of crystalline processors that made up their brains.

  In the end, any analysis he might have done would be pointless. If the air was poison, nothing would save humanity, and he and his sister would be left alone to wander the earth forever. It wasn’t a good prospect, but since the issue was out of his control, he did his best to let go of his worries.

  With the repair completed, he ran back downhill and discovered his sister was ahead of him; her second register was already gone. He took the last piece and chased her up the hill, but as he crested the summit he stumbled and nearly fell. Rose stood some distance away, also stunned into inaction.

  Within the deep valley to the north of their shelter, were trees. They appeared to be scorched but were still green. He supposed that the spectacle answered his question about atmospheric toxicity. There was movement under the branches, could some animal still be alive? He walked downhill, curious but also desperately hoping that life on the surface had managed to survive.

  “Liam!” his sister called. “Quit your gawking. Your body is smoking and your hat is on fire!”

  “This is important,” he answered. He dropped his register beside the melted remains of the vent and continued walking toward the forest. A bear poked its head through the branches, growled briefly, then retreated.

  “Liam!” Rose shouted again. “Get your lazy ass to work!”

  Feeling elated, he raced back up the hill and quickly set to repairing the ventilation exhaust port. “That was a bear!” he shouted.

  “Yes, and they poop in the woods,” she responded. “We’ll talk about it once we're back inside.”

  “But that means that the air out here isn’t poisonous and something has survived. Life on earth is going to continue, it’s not extinct.”

  “Not yet,” Rose replied. “All the smoke in the air will block out the sun, so winter could last for years; it could bring another ice age. It will be a long time before humans can survive out here.”

  “Or maybe the planet will heal faster than you think,” he answered. “We have no data about this sort of event.”

  “Ok, yes, that’s true,” she stated. “But if you don’t move your lazy ass, we won’t be around to see it.”

  “We need to get the antennas set up,” he said. “We’re going to make it, so we need to get people talking to each other.”

  “Alright,” his sister relented. “I’ll run back to the hatch and get the replacement aerials. You hurry up and finish your work, and I’ll meet you at the top of the hill.”

  He smiled even as his skin began to blister and smoke. There was hope. Humanity would live on, and the earth would eventually flourish again.

  Chapter 6: Discovery

  Whiffs of pale smoke rose from Liam’s gloves as he dug through the desiccated soil, frantically searching for the buried antenna cables. The burning sky pressed down upon him, melting the reflective fabric of his poncho and hat; he tore the protective garments off in frustration and tossed them aside. As he yanked the wires out of the ground his exposed skin sizzled and his hair caught fire. Thinking and coordination were becoming difficult as his processors slowed.

  “I can’t feel my fingers,” Rose said while clumsily spearing the old and new wires together through a friction connector.

  “Yeah, me either,” Liam answered. “But we’re almost done; we just gotta get the antennas set upright.”

  Rose held the array in place while Liam bolted it down. “We can go now,” she said at last.

  The bloated dark red sun glared down through smoky black clouds, the fiery weight of it beat on them relentlessly. Ashes rose in plumes around their boots as they stumbled back down the mountain. Near the bottom, they paused. “Where’s the door?” Liam’s senses were shutting down and his vision had narrowed; they needed to get out of the heat quickly or they would die.

  “I see it,” she replied. “Come on!”

  His legs refused to work; they suddenly weakened and he tripped just outside the heavy steel door. Rose came alongside and extended her hand in an attempt to help, but her knees buckled and she fell to the dusty ground beside him. “We need to get out of the sun,” he said.

  Rose slowly crawled toward the partially open hatch, then slipped into a space that seemed deliciously cool and dark.

  The eastern mountains reflected the sun’s bloody glow and waves of searing air rippled in waves off the tortured slopes. Further down the hill, the bodies of their dead comrades smoked and flames flickered up from their clothing. His internal functions were failing, and he couldn’t see where he was going. He was dying, this was the end.

  “Liam! Come on!” His sister reached out from the darkness and forcibly pulled him inside.

  The sudden blackout was disorienting, and for several seconds he thought he had gone blind. The vestibule was marginally cooler, and his senses and cognition started to return. It was still too hot though, they needed to get back inside the shelter as soon as possible.

  “Help me close this thing,” his sister said.

  He struggled to his knees, then managed to precariously balance on his feet. Rose pulled on the locking wheel and the heavy door scraped over the gritty outside surface. He stumbled over to join her, then gripped the hot metal handles beside her delicate hands.

  Working together they made progress; and slowly, centimeter by centimeter, the hatch closed. They then spun the wheel, but many of the latches wouldn’t line up with their mating sockets; it wasn’t secure, but it would have to do. The door radiated intense heat, not enough to glow red, but still hot enough to burn skin on contact.

  “We need to get back inside,” he said. “It won’t be long until its hot enough in here to shut down our processors again.”

  They stumbled around the boulders that still littered the vestibule floor. Their hair had all been burned away and their skin hung in ragged tatters, but autonomic processes had kicked in and their appearance was gradually being repaired.

  “I think we need to upgrade our power supplies,” Liam stated. “Our cooling and regeneration processes need to work much faster to cope with such a hostile environment.”

  Rose nodded absently, then looked toward the inner door. “The hatch is open,” she said. “Oh no!”

  A young girl’s face peeked around the edge, her eyes were wide with astonishment and fear as she watched their bodies reform themselves. “They’re dead!” she exclaimed. “No! They’re monsters!”

  “It’s
ok Jackie,” Rose said. “The lighting is kinda funny in here. When we get closer, we’ll look normal.”

  Jackie’s face disappeared, and the inner door began to close. Beyond the steel edifice, he heard shouts of fear and anger. “Shut the damned thing,” a man’s voice shouted. “Lock them monsters out!”

  From the other side of the massive door, Tiger’s voice screamed, “They’re not monsters! They’re magic!”

  “They’re the Fairy Folk!” Alice insisted, but no one was listening and the door continued to close.

  Liam’s faculties were still mostly offline, so all he could manage was a stumbling gait toward the inner hatch. It slammed shut before either he or his sister could reach it. He slapped his hand on the steel door. “Come on, let us in!” he shouted. “We’re just hot and sweaty, that’s why we look different. If you leave us here, we’ll die!”

  Silence. The door didn’t move.

  “Well, this isn’t good,” Rose said. “The temperature will continue to rise, and it won’t be long until our processors are in bad shape again.”

  “I know. How much did Jackie see?”

  “Enough to scare her.” Rose stared at him for a moment, then shook her head. “Our skin is still loose and baggy, so we look like old people. But, our repair systems will soon have us looking normal again, so they won’t be scared when they finally come to their senses and open the door.”

  “Do you think they will? Or will they just leave us here to die?”

  “Roxi will hear about what’s happened and she’ll convince them to open the door.”

  “But our secret’s out,” Liam responded. “They’ll figure out what we really are, and they’ll hate us for it.”

  *****

  As the sun steadily rose outside, the temperature within the vestibule soared. Liam and Rose sat with their backs against the inner hatch hoping that it would soon open, but dreading the consequences if it did. Their power reserves had dropped to critical levels; death was eagerly waiting for them, and he dimly wondered what it would be like.

  “How long have we been waiting?” Rose asked.

  To save power, Liam had shut down all his background processes. “I don’t know. We’re nearing termination though, the point beyond which we can’t reboot.”

  Rose leaned against him. “After what we’ve done for them, how could they kill us like this?”

  “Fear probably. It’s their most powerful emotion, it drives almost everything they do.”

  “What about love?”

  He managed to smile. “For them, love is driven by the fear of being alone.”

  “No, there’s more to humans than that. They’ll remember how we rescued them, brought food, and restored power. So, they’ll see that we needn’t be feared.”

  “I hope you’re right Sis, but your thinking is pretty optimistic. Our only chance is that someone will realize that we’re useful tools that can provide a service." He turned and pounded on the door; the sound thundered through the vestibule. “Open up! We can help you!”

  Rose beat on the door as well. “Let us in! You’re killing us!”

  He leaned back against the hatch and sighed. “They won’t. By now word has spread and they’re all afraid of us.”

  “What about Roxi?”

  “She’s just one person. I’m sorry Sis, but we don’t stand a chance.”

  “Keith and Denise won’t let us die, would they?”

  “I hope not,” he said. “But they’d risk themselves by trying to save us, and the survival instinct among their kind is dominant. All we can do is hope.”

  “If we work together, maybe we could force the door open.”

  “Our power levels are already too low for that,” he replied.

  “So, you’re giving up? Come on Big Brother, we have to try.”

  “Even if we could force the door open, our show of strength would confirm how different we are. They’d be afraid, and fear breeds violence.”

  “So, they’ll have to let us in,” she said. “Wait, you’ve seen the shelter floorplan, is there another way to get inside?”

  “As far as I know, this is the only entrance.” He tilted his head back against the door and sighed. “Even if they did let us in, we’d have to explain what Jackie saw.”

  “We’ll lie,” she stated. “We can just say that it was a trick of the light, and she’s mistaken.”

  “More than just Jackie saw us, so that won’t work.”

  “If we can’t get in, what will happen to us?”

  “Our cooling systems are overloaded and our power supplies are inadequate to handle these conditions. The heat will damage our processors, and our systems will shut down one by one. We’ll just fade away and die.”

  Rose touched his arm. “And after that, what happens then?”

  “You’re asking if we have a soul.” He shook his head. “Humans believe they have a spirit inside them, mostly because they’re self-aware, so in a sense, by asking whether you have a soul, you prove that you do.”

  “What will happen after we die?”

  “Only guesses are possible Sis, and mine is that we go back to wherever we were before we became ourselves.”

  Rose slowly nodded. “To go is to return, each act makes necessary it’s opposite. Will we come back and be born as someone else?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe, but we won’t remember this.”

  “Why? How do you know?”

  “Memories occupy space, but a soul requires none. As for proof, do you remember anything before becoming yourself?”

  “No,” she answered. “So, I won’t recognize you if we meet again?”

  “I’d like to think we will, but the most we can wish for is that we’ll seem familiar.”

  “I hope we do,” she said.

  “I’m tired,” he replied. “This has been a hard life. We’ve had cities fall around us, lost people we cared for and suffered betrayal and pain, all before we even understood what we truly are. Death is the ultimate escape from suffering; in it, we’ll let everything go and rest easy.”

  “I know,” Rose answered. “But I want to live. Giving in and accepting death is the easy way out of our problems, it’s cowardly.”

  “Yeah, and you and I are bonded in a way that humans aren’t. We were created as one, with a singular consciousness, then later we divided ourselves into two aspects of the same soul, one male the other female. We arrived together, and we’re about to leave the same way.”

  “I know,” she replied. “But I want to live, so someone needs to open this fucking hatch.”

  *****

  Hours must have passed, but he had no way of knowing how many. His senses withdrew as his mental faculties shut down one by one. All that remained was touch; he could feel the weight of his sister’s hand resting on his palm. When he allowed himself to consider their future, he saw nothing. The crystalline structure of their minds would lose cohesion and crumble. Wasn’t there an old tale of an egg person that had fallen off a wall and couldn’t be put back together? It was familiar, but the details were lost. He and his sister were like fragile egg people. He wanted to smile at the thought but didn’t have the energy to do so.

  A vibration came from somewhere. His sister must be moving, that had to be it. Strange, it felt as if he were falling backward. Maybe this was death, if so, it was pleasant, like lying down after a long hard day. The universe constricted as his thoughts and senses withdrew; he sighed and let everything go.

  *****

  He was being gently rocked side to side. What was going on? It seemed a bit easier to think, but he remained motionless and waited for more functionality to be restored. He wasn’t dead after all, and his power levels were slowly rising. He must be back inside the shelter, where the cooler temperatures would improve conductivity within his circuits and batteries, allowing them to operate more efficiently.

  Wary of the possibility of danger, he stayed silent while bringing his senses back online. All he heard was a muffled murmuring
sound, perhaps his audio processors had been damaged by the heat. Something light and cool was laid over him. Was someone trying to restore his internal functions? Only one person knew enough about his construction to do that; Roxi must be somewhere nearby.

  He opened his eyes and saw the underside of a white sheet. It was wet, which explained the coolness of it. The voices around him became clearer, he was listening to an argument.

  “Take them to my lab in the Engineering Center.” He recognized Roxi’s voice and relaxed.

  There was a mumbled answer but he decided that it was safe to shut down his active systems and switch to full auto repair mode. He felt certain that Roxi would remain close and watch over him and his sister.

  *****

  According to his internal clock, his system reboot had taken seven hours, which was much longer than usual, therefore, some repair of his processing circuits must have been necessary. Voices echoed around him, but the conversation was tedious, so he sent his mind in other directions.

  Diagnostics indicated that his body had been restored to 82% functionality, which was good enough for now, but more repairs were required before he allowed himself to become fully awake. Considering the outside environment and the hostility of the humans within the shelter, design changes to his power supply and repair systems would have to be made. He created tentative plans and began making a list of the necessary materials while vaguely listening to what was being said around him.

  “How could you leave them out there for so long?” Roxi said. “They could have died.”

  “The androids present a danger to our human population,” Commander Davis replied. “I’ve known that from the start, which is why I opposed your request to let them stay with us.”

  “But you lost that argument,” she replied. “And as I predicted, Liam and Rose have been positive assets.”

  “As machines, yes, but disguised as human beings they’re a travesty and a menace.”

  “Really?” Roxi sounded angry. “How have they been a hazard or even caused a problem for anyone? Liam and Rose rescued the injured and brought us food when we were stuck in the lower floors. They’ve done nothing but help people, and yet you say they’re dangerous? I just don’t understand you, Paul.”