They set off then. Henry setting the pace. The boy couldn’t shake off his anger. He resented his metal companion and resented his situation. He boiled inside and gritted his teeth as they moved forward.
Hailstones fell, their percussion almost comical as they met with Hepburn’s ultranium armor. It eased Henry’s mood and the sound distracted him. He’d have to plan his revenge on the Favela on a clear day; they’d hear Hepburn coming before they got anywhere near it.
Henry’s suit seemed to warm him from within and a calm fell upon him.
“I’ve questions for you now,” he said after some time.
“Proceed,” replied the robot, as cold as always.
“What was the world like before?”
“I do not understand. Before what?”
“Before the Ever Winter?”
The hail slowed, then stopped altogether. The icescape was covered in a slush that Hepburn stamped in.
“I do not understand. Winter is seasonal and geographical. The season before winter is called autumn. ‘Ever’ implies endless, constant, perpetual. In what place do you refer to?” The robot’s expression outlined confusion. Henry mirrored it. The Ever Winter had been named by those who escaped it and those who came after. The robot seemed not to know this. Henry thought of another question he could ask, that Hepburn might understand and that would give him a better picture of the past.
“Never mind. Tell me, who birthed you?”
“I was not born. I was designed, assembled and programmed. For legal reasons I am not permitted to reveal details of my design, schematics or location of assembly. What else would you like to know?”
Henry was frustrated at his lack of understanding and the fact that the robot’s answers were always elaborate and confusing, filled with new words that Henry had never heard before. Every sentence created new puzzlement. One thing they both had, however, was time. They were still days from the container ship and a lot could be learned from Hepburn 8 before they reached their destination.
“What does that mean, on your shoulder?” Henry pointed to the flag in subdued red and blue against the camouflage. The robot ceased walking so he could study the symbol.
“That is the Union Flag; the national flag of Greater Britain, also known as the Union Jack, or Royal Union Flag in other commonwealth realms. It features the crosses of saints Andrew, Patrick and George, synonymous with the countries of England, Scotland and Ireland.”
Henry had not heard of these people or places. More unknowns! More questions!
“What is a flag?”
“A flag is used for signaling and identification. In this case, the Union Flag identifies that I have been assigned to the Greater British Army. Setting down and flying a flag also has the meaning of conquering something.”
Henry thought about the symbols and emblems he’d seen carved in ice on many of the buildings in the Favela. If Henry could’ve created a flag for himself right then, it would’ve been a Big White, or an eye, in ice white and blood red. He would raise it on top of Moonbird and carve it on every dwelling with the blade he would use to smite Lanner and the king. Rage surged through him as he imagined the moment. Once more, the robot raised its head and Henry sensed it was secretly recording his latest reaction also.
The robot strode on and took the lead this time. Henry half-skipped behind him until he caught up with the machine’s long, steady strides. Henry ran in front of the robot and waved his arms to stop him from walking further.
“Could you conquer a place? Can you fight?”
“I would be mostly ineffective in battle,” the robot informed him, to Henry’s disappointment.
“Why?” Henry was miffed that such an advanced machine from the time of the Great-Greats could save his life and his sight, but not help him vanquish the evil king of the Favela.
“The boundaries of enemy and ally are often changeable in a warfare scenario. Therefore, purpose-built military droids are used in a limited capacity in battle. Though less effective, humans are essential to negotiate with other humans in critical situations, due to the mistrust humans have of AI units. My weapon system only allows me to incapacitate an affirmed aggressor once I am deployed in a medical emergency. Depending on a number of variants, incapacitation is usually for a period of five to six minutes. I am not permitted to be an aggressor. This cannot be over-ridden at any rank, as my design does not allow this.”
“Uh. I take it you don’t have any of them fighting droids with you at the ship?”
“No. Berserker units are classified as pure military cargo and cannot be transported by non-military vessels under International Law.”
Henry stood up, patted the robot on the back-plate and started to walk in the direction they’d been heading.
“Henry, I am glad that we are talking again,” said the droid.
“You’re a prong, Hepburn,” he replied.
“That makes no sense, Henry.”
“I’m glad it ain’t just me that struggles to fathom stuff. I’ve got a lot to teach you if you’re going to survive this world.”
“I am willing to learn, Henry. It will be advantageous for both of us.”
“You can start by talking like a person.”
The robot projected contemplation in pixel form.
“I will fathom it.”
Sixteen
How to be Human
The first memory he had was of Mother. He guessed that it was from before Mary was born, because he felt that Mother was his in that memory, but he couldn’t be sure. All the years since, Mother had had to care for the other siblings; always the youngest, the bairn. Once, Henry had been the bairn. Her only bairn.
Henry had not been designed or assembled. The only laws Henry followed were those that Mother and Father had made. The rules they all lived by. Henry had been born and nurtured. Fed and wiped down. Nursed through sickness and fever.
He remembered Mother’s scent. Her hair. The feeling of being close to her skin, the warmth of it. The feeling of being safe. Loved. He knew he had been loved, for it was always in her smile, but in the earliest memories, the smile was for him alone.
How did Mother know how to raise him? Was it instinct alone that allowed her to pour affection upon the boy? Or something learned from others? Henry would never be able to ask her such things. That opportunity was gone forever.
Fate had put so many twists in the path Henry’s life followed. He thought about the alternative path; if nothing had ever happened to his family and Lanner had never found their homestead, or if Mary had never spotted a stricken container vessel on the horizon. If Mother and Father had died naturally, not at the hands of others, would Henry have actually left the homestead in search of others, or would he have taken the role of Father and done all the things Father had to feed the family and guide them through the endless winter? So many twists and turns.
He thought of all the things he had learned in such a small space of time by seeing the Favela finally. Most of them were things he’d rather not know, or forget altogether. Most of them were poison.
He looked at Hepburn once more. Hepburn had been assembled by human hands and he knew a lot, but he could not be truly human. The word rang in Henry’s ears. Human. Humanish?
Were the adults of the Favela closer to being what human was than Henry and his family? Were they, his family, the anomaly? Were they the freaks? He tried to imagine the king as a boy, enjoying the embrace of a mother, but he could not. Was a mother’s love the elixir to being human, or a better one at least?
Then he thought of the Orfins, who knew no mother or father. They were wild and crude, but they were unlike the adults who ruled over them. Only Skindred had seemed akin to Lanner and those he joined.
A memory came to Henry then, of a day in his young life when Mother had taken him to the wire, where a prairie bitch had become entangled in it. The creature was ugly. More rodent than anything, he remembered. And it was in a lot of pain, thrashing its limbs in panic and becoming
more and more ensnared. The creature was dying, slowly, and had been there some time.
Young Henry had clapped his hands in celebration. He understood that things needed to be caught so they could eat, whether they be under the ice, or upon it. Food was life, and to young Henry, it filled a hole in his stomach.
Mother wasn’t pleased like Henry was. Mother was sad and concerned for the animal. She threw down her sealskin and knelt beside it. Henry joined her, emulating her posture.
The animal’s chest heaved as it breathed in and out. Mother placed her hand upon its fur and stroked it gently, soothing it.
The animal closed its eyes as Mother’s hand moved across the fur gently in a circle. The creature became calm at her touch. It didn’t scratch or bite, try to fend her off, or panic. It knew it was in trouble. It knew it could not be saved and Mother’s touch soothed it, as it did young Henry when he was sick.
Mother turned to young Henry and he realized she was crying. It disturbed him. Mother did not cry. Only Young Henry cried, when he was cold, or hungry, or angry about something.
“We must quicken it. Stop the pain and send it to the stars,” she said. Then she turned to the animal and snapped its neck.
Young Henry was both alarmed and perplexed by what Mother had done. He’d seen her use a slingshot to bring down a bird, or bring a fish up from the ice below with the keel net and once with a spear, but this seemed different. The rules didn’t make sense.
Mother untangled the animal from the wire and bagged it in the sealskin, ready to be skinned and gutted for dinner.
“It’s called mercy, Henry. No enjoyment in it, but we didn’t let him suffer longer than he had. It’s a kindness, of sorts. It’s what makes us human.”
“Who-men?” replied the little boy.
“You and I, min lilla manniskan.”
The years that separated the memory from the present moment and all the events in between brought Henry back to the icescape, and he thought of the kindness of snapping a creature’s neck. He thought of the seal pups he’d dragged on his sled time and again, and his bone pick fracturing their skulls and ruining their brain matter within. He thought of Father taking the pups who hadn’t survived the winter, but never taking too many. Leaving enough for other creatures to feast upon. The rules were blurred in Henry’s mind; Showing mercy. Hunting prey. Feeding the enemy. Killing for revenge. Mercy…
His anger returned once more, this time at the absence of mercy shown to his kin: Father left to die slowly across the freezing waters of the ice hole; Mother slain trying to stop strangers taking the head of her baby.
The lesson from Mother had not been learned, for there was no form of mercy that Henry could ever afford his enemies. He was sure, given the chance, he would rip them to pieces and delight in their agony, eventually becoming just like them.
Henry regarded the ancient robot.
Hepburn, made by human hands and programmed by a human mind, was good.
The robot had come to his aid and had healed him, most certainly saving his life.
What could the robot teach Henry about being human? Could he keep him from someday being like Lanner and the king?
Henry decided he would learn all that he could. In the robot, Henry had an oracle. The answer to many of the questions that had concerned him in life.
What was television? What was a storm drain, or a balloon, or a cola? What was a Batman? What was a 1958 Red Plymouth Fury?
Seventeen
Under a Canopy of Stars
Henry ate caribou. Hepburn watched with disinterest, having no need to partake in the consumption of food. Henry had decided he would make a cloaked hood from the pelt, as his hair did little to protect his neck and ears from the cold and his majestic bodysuit did not cover his neck or face.
As well as the caribou, Henry had also drunk a vial of liquid Hepburn had administered, stating that Henry’s body was lacking essential nutrients. The nutrients were to become a routine, until the robot no longer deemed them necessary.
Henry knew they would have long passed the place where Henry and Father had found the corpse of a stranger frozen in the ice. The man’s remains would’ve been ravaged by beasts and birds until they were just bone, then would’ve been dusted and covered by the snow.
He also knew they’d also passed the place where Henry had grown up; the original homestead the family had packed up in a rush once Lanner had entered their lives. He hadn’t seen evidence of the place, but knew it would have returned to a natural state, with no evidence of anyone ever living there.
But Henry knew when they’d found the site of the newer homestead and Martin’s cave, the remains of the wire sticking out of the snow was enough to announce the land as his by right of inheritance. Snow dunes. Henry wanted none of it.
He remained silent and they set up camp for the night, close to the sacred ground where Mother, Father and the bairn lay beneath the powder. There was nothing to do there. Nothing to retrieve. No ritual to conduct or words to say. All would be unchanged, and so he decided to keep it to himself and not to remark on it to the robot.
Knowing how close they were to the homestead meant they weren’t far from the container ship either, and Henry distracted himself by thinking of the things he might need, eager to board the vessel and catalog all the things he could use in his campaign against Lanner and the king who held his sisters. How many containers remain unopened? He wondered what other ancient technology awaited rediscovery and how many of those things could bring about the deaths of his enemies. Every hour, every day he spent apart from his siblings was time in which all kinds of torment could be metered out to Iris, Hilde and Mary. And Sissel. Block it out. All of it.
In some ways, it was far worse than his solo trek to the Favela. His mind had sketched out possible truths on that journey, but now, having been there, Henry’s mind had colored in all the images. He knew the names and nature of those in the Favela. He knew the crimes they permitted – and committed – and he’d seen the control the few had over the many.
The robot had no need for conversation, other than to aid Henry’s mental rehabilitation. Henry used the silences between them to test the limits of his new eye, and considered how he could get through the Favela with stealth, retracing its lanes and alleys in his mind. He could see far in daylight; through objects, even; and he could comprehend the distance between things in minute detail. Snowflakes became wondrous, intricate things. Henry could also see at night. He’d discovered it when he couldn’t sleep and found that his new eye gave things a green tinge beneath the moon. A moving object far in the distance caught his attention and he used the zoom in his eye to see it in the darkness. It was a Big White, over a mile away, heading in another direction. Henry marveled at this. Not such a curse now, but a power!
It enabled him to relax more around the robot, for as much as the droid displayed subtle human traits from time to time, Henry realized he was also a human exploring what it was like to be a machine. They spoke more than they had, and the silences were fewer.
The main thing he’d learned from Hepburn was that the robot had been in transit to support soldiers fighting in a battle zone, thousands of miles from where the container ship was. The robot seemed confused by certain details. It understood that they were standing on ice and that the ice was on top of what had been Lantic. The robot did not understand that the war had not concluded, or that the army it served, and the war office it spoke of, no longer existed. The robot, in some ways, seemed as childish as Martin had been. In all others, it was a font of knowledge. It knew more about the Earth than any human alive. Henry shuddered at the thought of Lanner or the king having access to the robot, for with it, they would hold even more dominion over the people they already ruled. Henry needed to think everything over, and when he was done, think it through once more.
“Can you blink or something? Every now and then? It lets me know you’re awake. Otherwise it feels weird when you just sit there.”
“I
do not need to sleep, Henry, but I can assimilate blinking now and then if it pleases you.”
“Thanks.”
Digital pixels mimicked blinking.
“The best thing about my eye is seeing the stars,” Henry said as they rested in the open, “and the moon. I wonder what it’s like there.”
“The moon is a cold, dry orb,” Hepburn responded and Henry laughed, picking the bones of his meal.
“I still can’t get used to the way you talk. Your voice is strange. No one talks like that.” Henry’s mood lifted and he forgot what lay close to them for a moment.
Hepburn didn’t seem offended by Henry’s response. “My voice is programmed to emulate an English accent from the South East region; male, mid-thirties, upper working-class media version 7.2. A soldier expects that a surgeon is of a certain age as to have the experience, seniority and credentials to operate, but they must also be battle-fit. The age of my voice has been amended to reflect this and meet the criteria for non-civilian activities. Additionally, the sound of my voice has been selected to appear friendly, reassuring, yet authoritative and knowledgeable. This is essential in order to build trust in my capabilities to perform critical surgeries, and to mask the fact that I am a machine and could be subject to malfunction, or could make decisions without emotion, which may not be agreeable to a soldier with different priorities and objectives to my own.”
“You did a good job with me. Thank you for saving me and my sight.” It was the first time Henry had said this. He felt embarrassed as soon as he realized it.
“Thank you, Henry. You are most welcome.”
“You fixed me good, Hep.”
“I fixed your wounds, but we have not addressed your basic physical health and mental state yet.”
“My what?”
“You have been exhibiting the symptoms of battle fatigue, which could be a precursor to post-traumatic stress disorder. You have severe anxiety and are not sleeping for the recommended minimum five-point-five hours outside peacetime. I have seen evidence of sleep apnea. Your blood pressure is higher than it should be and you are suffering palpitations and shortness of breath. In terms of basic health, there is a distinct long-term lack of vitamins and sources of fiber in your diet which need highlighting. There is also the amnesia that we need to look into; you are still unaware of your full name, rank or commanding officer.”
Ever Winter Page 16