Margo Flint and the Last Soldier

by Nick Mazmanian

  Most of the charcoal drawn pictures were of ZiP.

  Margo turned the book over for the robot to see. “It looks like he liked you a lot.”

  His red eye turned toward the image as his fingers took hold of the book. “You found this?”

  “And it looks like he has an entire art kit inside the pouch.” She took out the various charcoal slices and very stubby color pencils that were precisely carved and created for the now downed robot. “It looks like he was just curious.”

  “Yes.. it does. Couldn’t have picked a better looking model, if I do say so myself.” Flipping through the pages it showed that most of the book was blank and snapped it shut. “Though it appears it wasn’t a prolific amount of art.”

  Margo took the book being offered to her and studied it along with the supplies. “Why was it drawing?”

  ZiP pointed to the side of the robot’s head. “It’s camera looks busted. And it was probably doing what it was supposed to do. Gather intel.”

  “Cam-ra?”

  “It captures an image to look at later. You know, for a future version of the humans here, you’re pretty behind.”

  “Said the advanced robot from out of the past.” She looked at the busted camera on the side of the downed robots head. “We have something like that, it’s called an imcap.”

  “That broken device reminds me of a similar problem we’re facing. Do you mind if we take the notebook and pencils?”

  He walked over toward the edge of the clearing and shrugged. “Knock yourself out.”

  “I feel a little wrong taking it.”

  “We need a way to record some of the wild life and sights we see. This works.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not that good of an artist and the book and supplies belonged to this robot.” She flipped the cover open and found a handwritten 5 on it. “Guess its name was 5.”

  “It’s dead now.”

  “I’m curious to see what it was like.”

  ZiP turned toward his audience. “Why?”

  Margo finished placing the newly acquired items into her pack. “Because it lived the same amount of time as you and I want to know more about it. We can manage a detour, can’t we?”

  “That hunk of garbage might also have intel on the last Rys on the cliff face.”

  “You really do hate the Rys.”

  “Yep, was programmed with this animosity. I know a few songs about them too… though they’re a little inappropriate for my current audience.” The robot marched over, took the tags off of 5’s chest plate, and scanned them into his system. “According to these info tags, the most common area it patrolled is this way.” He pointed toward some cliffs in the distance. “We’ll get there by dark.”

  “How far away is this way?”

  “Less than 2 klicks.”

  “That’s close.”

  He dropped the tags onto the body. “I know.”

  Chapter 8- Shooting gallery

  Their feet took them to a cave that carved itself into the side of a cliff. ZiP took out his revolver and turned on his external lighting with an audible hum as the group made their way into the cave. Margo extended her orange lantern, making the various rock formations inside the natural shelter feel alive as the light passed over them. After a few steps the end of the cave drew near and Margo let out an audible sigh saying, “Dead end.”

  “Not really.” ZiP reached out toward the rocky end of the cave with his revolver only to have the barrel push through it. “It’s a cover.”

  “That’s single handedly the coolest thing ever.”

  “Don’t get too excited about the Rys. They were slick, but they sucked.”

  “That’s based on your own pre-programmed bias.”

  ZiP didn’t respond and pushed through the image. Margo approached the ‘stone’ and carefully pushed her gloved hand through as well. A smile spread across her face as she followed her hand through and found a gallery of pictures, sculptures, and a bulky console that sat in the real end of the cave. ZiP had holstered his revolver and was at the defunct console, prying open panels to get it to work. Margo began exploring the cave’s artworks with Catcher’s lens scanning each piece and analyzing it in his core. “They all look like various animals.”

  As her orange light graced across another pinned up drawing of a small bird, the geometric style made the shape of the animal very easy to read. “And drawn in a style that isn’t realistic, but rather, geometric.”

  “I wonder why?”

  “Probably because his visual mesh was degrading.” ZiP’s voice sounded off from inside the console as he fiddled around with the connections inside. “Simplistic styles means he was losing resolution. Rys were always cheaping out on the parts that mattered to a bot.”

  Her brown boots clomped against the puddles on the stone floor and carried her toward the back of the cave where more pictures sat degrading. On these, clearly the oldest of the lot, displayed various people with packs and rifles in hand. They were once clear but the damage from the moisture of the cave had taken its toll and through mold and time the details were eaten away. “Sad that this work is gone.”

  “Perhaps you could honor him by using his sketchbook?”

  Margo thought it over. “It would be a waste of time to not use the supplies he made and the book.”

  “Burn my hat, the geothermal power is completely gone.”

  The comment got Margo and Catcher’s attention. “This console was powered by… the planet?”

  “Yeah, until a few hundred years ago when the connection was busted. Not very reliable, but if you’re in a cave and need power it worked.” He slid out from under the console, and smashed the top of it with his fist. “This was a waste of time.”

  “No it wasn’t, we found...”

  “A lot of rotting art? Yeah, we did, great. Totally gonna help in ending this war.”

  “Hey!” Her voiced bounced around the chamber. “You may not have been on the same side as this robot, but he still lived the same amount of time as you.” She angrily looked around the cave, walked over to a sculpture carved out of a stalagmite, and shined her orange lantern on it. The artwork was a simplified version of ZiP. “He left behind work, can you not appreciate it even a little or are you so blinded by your programming that you can’t see that this bot and you weren’t that different?”

  The robot walked over and looked at the mini version of himself. “It was an inferior model to myself. What it was doing here was nonsense.”

  “And yet, you make a fire to sit by. Is that not nonsense as well?

  ZiP’s arm whipped over and snapped the sculpture off it’s natural rock base. He looked at it. “It was made to get information for its side so they could kill my side. In that manner, we were alike, yes, but nothing more and if given a chance it would have ended me.”

  “How can you be so sure about that? It clearly could have done that multiple times and yet it didn’t. There’s artwork of you everywhere in here, maybe 5 didn’t know how to do anything else.”

  With servos whining in his hand, he tightened his grip around the statue and broke it in half. “We’re done here.”

  “Aren’t you being rather curt?”

  “Name’s not Curt, it’s ZiP, Fletcher. Now that we’ve burned time on this little excursion, let’s make camp, and head out tomorrow at dawn. We’re almost to 521.”

  Chapter 9- Hills and valleys

  Waking at the edge of the cave, Margo looked across the dying campfire to see ZiP walking out from the projected back wall. He was rolling up a piece of paper into his pack and didn’t notice his audience until the pack was back on his shoulders. “I’m keeping some of the art... for intel.” The look his audience was giving him told him to try again. His shoulders slumped a bit as he said, “I was thinking last night, something I’ve been known to do, and I figured you had a point. Let it be known, I don’t have regrets for what I did because war is war, but… it was something to think on.”

  She pushed herself
out of her bed roll and began rolling it up. “Did you think at your fire?”

  “I… did.”

  Catcher’s blue box sat on a nearby rock and stated, “We understand what war is ZiP, it’s just the circumstances surrounding everything here makes us ask certain questions that need to be asked.”

  “Like what?”

  A mischievous grin spread over Margo’s face as she asked, “Which one did you take?”

  Ignoring the question, ZiP walked past her and out of the cave saying, “Get your pack together, we gotta motor.”

  Sliding the bed into the top of her pack, she snatched Catcher from the rock, and quickly threw the pack on saying, “Which one did you take?”

  ---

  A mist covered the valley, making visibility even more limited among the tree trunks. The gray world swirled and surrounded the group as they pushed their way through the land. Margo lit her orange lantern as it felt like dusk, though the chrono on her pack strap said it was only a few hours past high-noon. She watched as the slinky looking robot darted in and out of the edge of her lantern’s grasp, which formed a question in her head, that fell out of her mouth haphazardly, “ZiP, how long have you been active?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know? Your internal clock isn’t working?”

  “I’ve had to reset myself and erase unneeded files so many times that I couldn’t tell you for sure.”

  “Was it before ‘The Reckoning’?”

  The robot stopped and pushed up the long brim of his hat as its single red eye looked around the canopies. “I’d say that at some point I used to see the sun crest through the trees.” ZiP’s head began to nod. “Yes sir, I think I remember that.”

  Margo looked at the robot and felt a bit of sadness seep into her brain. “How long has it been since you spoke to a human?”

  “Seriously?” The chipped paint torso turned to her. “I talk to humans every day. Why do you think I’m on the radio after my morning patrol?”

  It was news that both Margo and Catcher weren’t expecting to hear and it showed on her face as she confusedly said, “Uhh, really?”

  “Oh yeah, you would have heard the dispatcher from HQ if I hadn’t plugged in my headphone.” The group climbed the hill and once they reached the top a chain bannister greeted them. A line of steel posts linked together by chains dotted the hillside into a net-covered encampment. “The crown jewel of this posting, sometimes called.. well, it doesn’t translate, but the word is quite funny. Welcome to Outpost 521!”

  Catcher’s unenthusiastic voice exited his blue carrying case. “It’s a camp with a tarp over it.”

  ZiP had already started his descent and waved on Margo to follow. “It’s more than a mere camp! It has some of the best entertainment for miles and a giant gun in it! Come on!”

  The gloved hand of the weary traveler took hold of the chain railing and started her walk down the steep hill and into the camp. “I’ve never seen a robot express emotion this much.”

  “Even more of a reason why we should be worried.”

  “It’s intriguing. I’ve known A.I. like you and others to have emotion, but the robots in Artsiv are basic. ZiP might be a cross between robots and A.I.”

  “It’s a thought, one that might be correct. If that is true, and after seeing what we’ve seen already, the world that was before was truly a marvelous place.”

  Margo pulled out her comm gun to see if any new messages had come through. The logs displaying hundreds of new ones that carried similar tones about stopping and also there were messages from people she never met before. Opening a few, she saw people cheering her on to keep going and a few expressed concern about her safety. She filtered them by sender and looked to find one from Nane:

  Nane: What’s new from the world of old? Your Dad told me about your landing. Hope you’re okay. Things are getting crazy up here! Everyone wants to know what’s going on with you.

  She stopped walking and typed:

  Margo: On comm gun, we were shot down. Ran into a crazy robot. Now helping him to finish his fight against an old enemy in exchange for fixing Pip… that sounds bad, but trust me, it’s okay. Will update more shortly.

  She raised the gun, fired the message, and put it away. Margo gritted her teeth after thinking about what she just sent and said, “I really need to filter my thoughts better.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I don’t want Nane telling people that the old world had killer robots in it.”

  “If ZiP is any indication of how the world once was, it did have killer robots in it. You owe them the truth.”

  “I know.” She snapped, “I just don’t want to scare people back home. New things can be seen as scary even when they’re not.”

  “There is danger everywhere Margo, trust me, I’ve seen it. Better to let others come to their own decision than to filter out what you feel they shouldn’t hear. If others decide to take the flight down here, they should know what to expect.”

  A sighed slowly escaped her lungs as she said, “Then I need to be clearer.” She pulled up the comm gun and typed:

  Margo: His name is ZiP and he’s a little off in the memory banks. Overall, he’s okay, just bound by old programming. Don’t freak out, but yes, it seems the Before Ones did at one point make robots that killed people. I’m falling behind, will update you later.

  After sending the message, she holstered the comm gun back on her pack she heard another ping, she reached in and turned the device to silent. She then asked, “Catcher, I know I asked you this shortly after Dad transferred you to me, but how far back can you remember?”

  “Ah yes, you asked me that six years ago and I said a really long time.”

  “I get why you said a really long time to 10-year-old me, 16-year-old me wants a more exacting answer.”

  Rocks and soil mashed together under the brown boots of Margo as the hill began to level out and the wind whispered against the trees as the A.I. pondered over the question. “My earliest log dates show that I am over 200 years old.”

  Margo stopped walking, took Catcher off her hip, and held the carrying case’s camera up to her eye level. “Wait, I thought all A.I. were well over a thousand?”

  “Some are, yes. The ones that sit on the council are up there in age. I was found in a factory out in the Ancient City and was only brought online post The Reckoning by Electrist Stavory.”

  The name jolted Margo’s eyebrows into an excited state. “Wait, you were… Electrist J.W. Stavory brought you to life?”

  “She did.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me? You know how much I…”

  “Because I knew how excitable you can get Margo, and I didn’t want you to feel like you were in competition with a ghost. When we met, you were a bright girl, and if you knew I was once with someone as prominent as Stavory; it's very possible that brightness would have dulled a bit.”

  “I’m not that smart. I mean look where we are. Stuck in a valley with a nutty robot.”

  “Brightness isn’t a matter of intelligence, Margo, but rather the character of an individual. There are those who light up a room and there are those who light up the world. Electrist Stavory was amazing. Truly a bright person, but after her disappearance, I wound up with some very, very, boring people. People I remember and admire in their own way, but led lives that didn’t go anywhere. Then I wound up with your father and now you. We don’t get to choose our wards, they are chosen for us, and I count myself lucky to have as bright of a person as you to watch over. Just look where we are.” Margo looked away from the lens and around the valley. The camp had gained greater detail and some vehicles could be seen along with the structures holding up the netting. The subdued light of the forest had shifted with the clouds and allowed sunlight to shine on the vast forest canopy while a flock of birds flew off from the tree tops. “We are in a place no one thought we could get to, and we’re here because of you."

  “We were also s
hot down.”

  “Details enhance the story. Better to risk and try than sit idle and die.”

  Feeling a bit more at ease, Margo let herself grin a bit. “That Resh quote is over Dad’s doorway.

  “I know, I watched your mother do the needle work.”

  “Thanks Catcher.”

  “I believe we are due at this illustrious outpost. Shall we?”

  “What was Electrist Stavory like?”

  “More later.”

  Margo hooked the A.I. on her hip and made her way to the first tent. Parting the mesh net revealed the entire space was populated by skeletons posed in various positions; as if they were still alive. The horror before the duo made her eyes grow wide in panic, and Catcher even said, “My circuits.” Between the skeleton in uniform serving drinks to the two cheerily positioned soldiers at the bar to a group of them playing cards and lastly a pair positioned in a way that it appeared they were working on a rusted-out vehicle, the gruesome scene killed the cheeriness that was floating in Margo’s mind. Leaning at the bar was ZiP, who looked as if he was speaking with the skeleton bartender and just noticed his new guests. “See Jamie! Told you they were coming. Guys, this is Margo and Catcher. I accidentally shot them down thinking they were spies! Can you believe it?” The robot’s head shot toward the poker group and said, “Cut it Mo, it was an honest mistake...” He turned toward his human guest to find tears had begun to well up in her eyes. Nervously, he grabbed a bottle of liquor from the bar and turned back. “I’ll admit, they aren’t the best-looking bunch, but maybe a drink might help?”

  Chapter 10- Flanders fields

  Dirt flew up against the blackened night sky as ZiP’s efficient movements helped speed along the process of digging the graves for each of the 27 remains that were posed throughout Outpost 521. “Remind me again why we can’t just put them all in the same spot in the ground?” The sturdy robot planted the blade of the shovel, and leaned on it, as he addressed the remainder of his question to the overseer of the impromptu project. “It would be more efficient.”