by Nick Ryder
“I don’t know.” I cursed. “Just don’t open the door, I think the water might be dangerous, and I don’t want to flood the whole place.”
The water was rising rapidly enough to kill off a bunch of the rabbits, though. Soon there would be none left.
“Ego,” I called. He was in my head all the time, apart from the one moment I needed him. “What can we do to stop the water?”
“We can turn the water off at the source,” he said. “That’ll stop it in the whole facility.”
“That’s not ideal. Can we turn it off somewhere nearby? Block the pipes leading to just this little bit?”
“Good idea,” Ego said, and I didn’t know whether he was being facetious or genuine anymore. “I can close the pipes on just this floor.”
“Do it.” It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do for now. I just needed the water to stop rising.
The water stopped rising. “Can we drain it away somehow?” I asked him.
“There’s no way to get anything in,” Lisa said. “It’s completely blocked up. We’re going to have to figure something out.”
I left the rabbit room and returned to the camera in the corridor outside so I could see the girls. They were stood in a huddle, silent.
“We’re going to have to isolate this corridor and open the door so you can get in,” I said. “The only way we can fix the pipe is either by you doing it, or making it dry enough for the robots to get in there.”
“You said it was electrified,” Marie said. “Won’t it hurt us?”
“Yes.” I wanted to pace. The best alternative I had was to flick rapidly through the cameras available to me. Room after room appeared in front of me, and was gone a moment later.
I was flicking so quickly that I had to backpedal to three cameras ago when my brain caught up to my vision. It was a storeroom filled with clothes, including thick rubber boots that would come up past the girls’ knees. Higher than the water level.
I returned to them in the corridor. “Follow me,” I said.
Lisa and Marie pulled on the boots without hesitation.
Elaine looked at them skeptically. “You probably don’t need me as well,” she said. “I mean, three of us is really excessive.”
“Don’t be a wimp,” Marie said, stamping her feet in the boots and posing a little, looking pleased with them.
Elaine shook her head. “I’m really not a fan of water.”
“We need your help,” I said, and Elaine sighed, sucking it up and grabbing some wellies.
“Okay, so that means we can go into the room without getting electrocuted,” Lisa said, looking into my camera lens. “But how are we going to drain the water away?”
“There’s some equipment on sub-level one for washing down the lab,” I said, flicking to that camera now to make sure my memory was correct. “There’s a suction hose in there.” It was attached to a large sink, which they pointed out when they’d traipsed through the facility in their rubber boots to find it.
I called the bots.
“They can detach it from the sink and attach it to something mobile instead.” It took more time and ingenuity than I’d expected to get something that worked. The bots could detach and reattach anything, I just had to give them the commands. The suction from the hose was part of the wall rather than in the hose itself. I had to dismantle a vacuum cleaner for the suction capabilities and then add it to a large, water tight back which I put in a trolley with high sides that looked almost like a crib. That would hold it.
“Nice,” Marie said, looking at the finished contraption and smiling at me. “I would have never thought of that.”
They wheeled it all back down to the corridor outside the rabbit room. “Is everything definitely sealed?” Lisa asked.
“Is it?” I asked Ego.
“Yes,” Ego replied.
“Then you’re good to go,” I said.
Elaine, who had seemed fine when she was watching the suction device be assembled, now stood with her arms wrapped around her and her fur standing on end. Her tail was wrapped around her middle, the end of it tucked it in her pocket for safe-keeping.
“It’ll be fine,” Marie said, laying her hand on Elaine’s arm and making her jump.
“Let’s just get it over with,” Elaine said through gritted teeth.
Lisa was the one who opened the door. Elaine stood as far back as possible and it meant she had to watch the water gushing toward her with hands pressed against the metal wall like she wanted to climb up it.
The high rubber boots worked as intended, and no one was frazzled by the electrified water. I released the tension I didn’t know I was holding.
I hadn’t realized how scared I was of watching them get hurt, and being unable to physically intervene, until they started the suction machine running and the water was drained away. None of them had even flinched—well, except Elaine—at the possibility they would be fried alive. They’d all followed my instructions without hesitation. They’d trusted that I wasn’t sending them into danger, even though I hadn’t been sure at all that my plan would work.
Once again I longed for his body, even though it was being part of the CCTV system that had allowed me to figure out the solution for this problem. It would have taken longer, but I’d have still rather walked through the facility until I found the supply room with the rubber boots and then searched again until we found the parts that made my suction machine.
I liked being in charge, but I didn’t want to just be a voice in the sky barking out instructions. I was human. I wasn’t a machine.
The water drained away in no time at all, and my girls walked into the rabbit room.
Marie gasped, standing in the middle of the room with her arms wrapped around herself, looking at the bodies of dead rabbits that had been electrocuted. “It’s so many,” she said, bottom lip wobbling. The surviving rabbits were still perched on top of their kennels, not daring to jump down even though the water was gone. Wires beneath the floor had been disconnected or fried.
“What happened?” Lisa asked, moving around the room and looking at the damage that had been caused. She seemed emotionally disconnected from the death, unlike Marie who was now being comforted by Elaine.
Elaine just seemed relieved all the water had disappeared.
“I don’t know,” I said, trying to zoom in. My view was highly restricted by my static position in the corner of the room. “Ego, do you know what happened?”
“A pipe burst,” he said.
“I know that, but do you know why?”
“Not yet. I’m running diagnostics.”
Lisa hummed. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough then.”
“Are the bots okay to come in yet?” Elaine asked. “We should retrieve the rabbits.”
“I’m not sure,” I said, worried about the still sparking floor. “We need some rubber mats to put down or something.”
The excitement of the emergency had passed, and so did my interest in sitting and watching my girls put their bodies to use. I retired to the creation screen where the plans for my own body sat taunting me. The killing of the rabbits meant that the nutrigel stores would take a hit. We had more creatures to feed than ever, and it would take some more time to get the numbers of rabbits back up to where they had been.
My body had encountered yet another setback; it couldn’t be the priority. This at least gave me more time to perfect it, I tried to tell myself, but the combination I’d made was already so close to what I wanted. Fiddling with tiny aspects was just annoying me more than captivating my interest anymore.
I returned to the camera that sat at the top of the facility, hidden behind the solar panels, and looked at the bleak desert.
Soon I’d be out there exploring it myself.
Chapter Six
Ego’s diagnostics didn’t return anything informative about what had happened to the burst pipe. It was just a malfunction, the AI said. “Shit happens,” he chirruped, irritatingly. I concluded t
hat we just needed to keep the few bots we had on better schedules for maintaining the facility.
Right now they only really did things when they I gave them instructions, except for the few triggers they had for being motivated to action, like a large enough rabbit stepping on one of the pressure sensors. I spent the next couple of days coming up with a proper schedule to program into the robots. They would constantly be running maintenance, checking on the physical aspects of the facility that Ego couldn’t be aware of.
In that time the girls ran wild outside, following Cara and keeping up to date on her movements, and no doubt trying to find out more about the people who had attacked Cara and her group, despite my precise instructions to stay away from them until we were stronger.
They took out some of the creatures we’d created sometimes, but Lisa wasn’t fond of doing that. It meant she had to restrain herself because she was in charge of the animals and responsible for making sure they stayed nearby and didn’t get into any trouble.
I knew she liked being able to run free, to go wherever she wanted without worrying for more than just her own safety.
We were alike in that way. I understood responsibility, I wanted it, even, but not all the time.
Flicking through cameras in the facility, stuck in my own head, I waited for the girls’ return. I’d be closer to them, emotionally, if I had a body. They talked to me, they listened to me, but there was no intimacy in our relationship like the girls had with each other.
They came back late into the night, carrying nothing with them but not looking injured either. They were in high spirits, bantering back and forth about a near miss Elaine had had with a dangerous lizard. I missed that kind of relationship, joking about work like that.
“Nothing interesting to report,” Lisa said when they got back to the laboratory. She just assumed I was there waiting for her, because where else would I be? Sitting and watching the empty facility, or following the girls? “Cara is back at the village, there are no signs of the other tribe. No new specimens to add to the collection.”
“Thanks,” I said, trying not to sound too sullen.
“We should really make contact with Cara now she’s back at the village,” Elaine said. “She’s still a bit injured, and the fighting will probably start up again soon between people in the village. Now is the time to make sure she remains our ally.”
“We need to stop spending all day outside and start working on the facility,” Marie replied, settling down into a chair and cleaning sand from the end of her tail. “We haven’t built any more traps since I last mentioned it.”
“Sol can handle the traps while we’re gone,” Lisa said, and I rankled at the fact she was giving me instructions. “There is a new enemy nearby and we need to find them.” She was stood in the corner of the room, peering into the incubator that housed the eggs she’d brought back from the desert. She spent a lot of time just watching them, waiting for them to hatch.
“I told you to stay away from them,” I interrupted. “We’re not strong enough.”
“Yes we are,” Lisa replied, and there was none of the deference she should have had when speaking to me.
“We’re not going outside for a while.” I said, snap decision made. “Marie is right, we need to bolster the facility. That’s our priority for the next couple of days.”
Indignation and pleasure both spread through the girls. Elaine and Lisa protested together, while Marie’s ears twitched with satisfaction. She gave me a sly smile.
I’d been reluctant to make a decision coming down hard on either one side or the other until now, but my short temper was stopping me caring about pitting the girls against each other. Keeping them on the same team, the only allies I was completely convinced were on my team, had been a priority.
But I didn’t care right now. I didn’t want them going outside because it made me feel like shit. Apart from that, Marie’s plan was the best out of all of them, I was sure of it.
In a couple of days maybe my body would have started gestating and then I wouldn’t be so bitter about their freedom. That, and the facility, would be much stronger when all three of us had put our heads together to think about how we could protect it.
“I really think—” Lisa said, fingers resting on the warm glass of the incubator.
“Lisa I’m serious about this,” I replied. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t find out what’s going on with the other tribe, or to keep an eye on Cara or reach out to her at some point, but I’m not willing to do it while the facility is this vulnerable.”
Lisa was still visibly annoyed, but Elaine looked like she was almost asleep where she stood. Marie shuffled a little closer, as if ready to grab her if she fell.
They changed the topic, talking about the ongoing effort to replenish the rabbit population and the temporary boost in the amount of nutrigel thanks to the reclaiming of the dead rabbits in the flood.
There was enough for me to make a body there, but it would use up every bit of the nutrigel we had, pretty much.
“I’m going to bed,” Elaine said, stretching. “I’ll try and convince you how wrong you are to write Cara off so easily tomorrow, when I can see straight.”
She left the lab with Marie in tow. They walked close together, chattering quietly. I followed them, leaving Lisa to stand by the incubator.
I was surprised when they both went into Elaine’s room. They changed into the makeshift pajamas they’d created out of old military uniforms at opposite ends of the room and then crawled into bed together, spooning. Elaine was the big spoon, curled around Marie’s dainty body.
I watched them with my mind racing with all the possibilities—and images—of what they might have been doing in bed together.
But it didn’t look sexual. They seemed like they’d purposely avoided looking at each other when they were getting changed.
It was just for the human contact, I realized as I watched Elaine snoring softly. Marie was still awake, staring straight ahead and not making any affectionate movements toward Elaine.
I might not have a body, but I wasn’t the only one struggling with the lack of normal contact with people. We’d all had lives. Maybe they’d had boyfriends or girlfriends. Relationships. Friendships. Family. I’d been a bit of a loner. I’d tried the girlfriend thing, but my job didn’t lend itself to long term relationships. I didn’t want to be one of those guys constantly worrying about what his wife was getting up to back home.
But we’d never talked about their lives before I put their brains into human-hybrid bodies. I didn’t know who or what they’d left behind.
And every fiber of my non-existent body burned with the desire to join them in that bed, to feel skin on my skin.
I had to leave them to fall asleep and returned agitatedly to the laboratory where Lisa was leaning against the wall looking at the birds nest and the eggs inside.
“Are you happy here?” I asked her.
She jumped. It was the first time I’d managed to surprise her with my sudden appearance. Everyone was feeling lethargic tonight.
“Yes,” she said.
“You don’t miss life before this?”
“Of course I do.” She frowned. “Don’t you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t miss the situation I was in… not exactly. I like the challenge of being here. But I miss having a body. I miss having my freedom.”
“Your body will be ready soon,” Lisa said, folding her arms and giving him a rare smile. “And I’m looking forward to it. I should go to bed too, though.” She stretched, showing off her lithe and powerful body.
I held in a sigh. “Night, then.”
“See you in the morning.”
But I didn’t sleep, not really. I went into a daze more than anything, a daze where sometimes my imagination took over and I could dream.
At least when Ego wasn’t poking his mind in where it wasn’t wanted, anyway.
Chapter Seven
The next couple of days passed quickly
. When everyone got down to the task at hand—making the facility a military fortress rather than just a science experiment—they sped through it. Everyone had ideas, and we had enough nutrigel to put them into action.
I cancelled the schedule of maintenance I’d given the bots just days before and set them to work putting some of our plans into action.
Marie was glowing. Her ears twitched constantly as she bounced around the facility looking at corridors and rooms to see what they could put there to stop invaders. I followed her the most, watching her tail twitch with pleasure as she examined the traps I’d already laid.
She wasn’t very good at actually coming up with ideas herself, but I was happy just to watch her be happy.
She repeatedly looked up into whatever camera she was nearest to and beamed at me, thanking me for giving her plan a chance.
“I always feel like they listen to me the least,” she admitted. She was sitting in the middle of the rabbit room, with the big fluffy beasts hopping around her. One was in her lap, nuzzling into her stomach as she stroked its huge ears. “I’m the youngest, you know? Even though I was the first person you brought back to life, they don’t give me much credit for it.”
“You’re all equal.”
“Well we’re not. Lisa is in charge. She should be in charge, she’s best at it. She can get the other animals to listen to her, and we can’t do that.”
“But that doesn’t mean she can ignore you. You’re on the same level as Elaine and Lisa.”
She beamed at me again, revealing pointed canines that were put completely to waste by the nutrigel they relied on for nutrients. “I really can’t wait for you to have a body, you know?” she said, frowning at the rabbit she stroked hopped from her lap to go and hop around the room. “Why isn’t it gestating yet?”
“It’s going to take a lot of nutrigel for it to gestate.”
“And?” she asked, snatching another bunny and nuzzling her face into its back as it struggled to get free. “It must be the most important thing in the world to you. Just start it. We can make do with whatever nutrigel we have left. We’ve got all these fluffballs to send to the slaughterhouse.”