An Improbable Journey - Day 3

He sat like that so long, head in hands, brain spinning at a thousand clicks a second that Aru finally nudged his leg after some minutes had passed. Corwin looked up with a classic thousand-yard stare.

“I really wish I could remember what I did to get this kind of treatment,” he said finally. He couldn’t come up with a single thing he could’ve said or done that warranted what amounted to a death sentence. Death sentences can be repealed, he told himself firmly.

The text on Aru’s display had updated. “I can’t help with that.”

“No, I guess you can’t. But maybe there’s something you can help with.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “How many people are stationed on-world?”

“None.”

He sighed. “That’s about what I figured. Not many people would want to work somewhere like this.” He’d been lucky to end up in a scrap region. In areas designated for bio-waste, he’d have been far less comfortable. Maybe he’d even have been dead already. “You organize the scrap as it comes in?”

“Yes.”

The haphazard piles around them didn’t look terribly organized, so he took a guess. “And this is the receiving area?”

“Yes.”

“Okay then. Two things. First, is there anything around that I can eat?” He was starving, he realized. “And second, where do you keep the ship wrecks?”

There was a long pause before the display updated this time. “Food you can eat: Maybe. Ship wrecks are located several hundred kilometers away to the south.”

Corwin frowned. Several hundred kilometers was a long trip. But on the other hand, a maybe on the food was better than he’d hoped, given that the world was uninhabited except by bots. “What do you mean by ‘maybe’ there’s food?”

The response was much quicker. “Wrecked star ships often have many things left aboard after transport to Haruna. Most food would be inedible. There may exist emergency ration packs that could have survived.”

“Sounds better than eating this,” he said, grabbing a handful of reddish dirt or rust or some combination of the two and letting it run through his fingers. “How can I get there?”

“I’ll have to take you.”

Corwin nodded. “Guess you have to have some sort of vehicle that can move stuff around to do a job like this.”

Aru tweeted the affirmative. “Transport chassis is en route. ETA: 2 minutes.”

He sat back to wait and reviewed his plan, such as it was; it was really more of a distant hope, he thought. Corwin was a pilot, not a professional mechanic, but nobody flew the stars without learning enough about ships to perform emergency repairs. If he could find a ship that wasn’t too badly damaged, he might just get off this rock. Problem is ships don’t usually end up in places like this if they aren’t that bad. He tried not to think about that any more.

After two minutes, as promised, Aru’s transport chassis arrived. It was a powerful, bulky repulsor-truck with a flat bed. Corwin looked to the cabin by habit, only to find there wasn’t one. “Um, I hate to ask the obvious question, but … am I going to have to ride on the back?”

The answer was disappointingly quick. “Yes.”

An Improbable Journey - Day 2

He paused, unsure what exactly to say to this little … creature. He’d dealt with plenty of robots, but this one looked antiquated. It also looked very patchwork, as though it had been through a great many upgrades and overhauls without much consideration for preserving its outer appearance.

“You’re an old one, aren’t you,” he said, amazing himself with how well his mouth worked. He was shaking it off, though speaking was still painful. It let loose a series of questioning beeps in reply.

He blinked and frowned. “No vocalization module?” He crouched down; it backed off, and he eased up. “Hey, hang on, I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Do you have some sort of readout?”

It trilled a brief affirmative—it sounded affirmative anyway—and rolled forward on its treads. There was a display on top of the unit, though it was so dirty and scratched it was hard to distinguish from the rest of it without looking closely.

“Ugh, that’s going to be tough to read. Let me clean that off for you.” He reached into a pocket of his jacket, bringing out a handkerchief. The little bot backed off a few inches, paused, and slowly crept back forward.

“If I wanted to hurt you, I could have by now. Relax,” he smirked, wiping away the worst of the dirt and dust. It helped a lot. The display read, “My vocalization module was removed 76 years, 7 months, 23 days ago.”

His eyebrows rose. “76 years? No wonder you’re so dirty. It’s a wonder you’re functional at all. Why was it removed?”

The text updated quickly. “I was assigned to waste handling duties. Vocalization was an unnecessary power drain. Thank you for the aesthetic enhancement.”

He chuckled. “No problem, little guy. Why’d they assign a bot as small as you to waste handling?”

The display updated again. “Modular design. I autonomously interface with the necessary apparatus physically or by remote interface.”

“Handy,” he said, and meant it. Such technology was hardly anything new, it’d been around since the dawn of time as far as anyone knew, but it was rare that bots were able to make use of it autonomously. “Oh. I guess we haven’t been introduced. I’m Corwin.” Instictively he wanted to put his hand out for a shake, but he had to content himself with waiting for a reply.

The update was swift; “A.R.U.W.D. Autonomous Remote Unit Waste Disposal.”

“THAT’S your designation? I guess I can call you Aru.” He took a longer look around at the environment he found himself in. It was a dump alright, large enough that he could see no end to it in any direction. The gigantic piles of refuse made it difficult to judge any more than that.

“So tell me Aru, you’ve been here more than 76 years. Where exactly are we? And how long have I been here?” As he spoke, he stretched arms and legs, gritting his teeth against the mild pain he felt.

He knelt down to inspect Aru’s display. It read, “Sector 351/165 of Waste Disposal Colony Haruna. I learned of your presence here 18 standard hours ago.”

Corwin’s mouth dropped open. “Haruna!? 18 hours!?” He suddenly found himself sitting, holding his head in his hands. After a few moments an inquisitive beeping began, but he was in shock. They hadn’t just driven him off and dumped him in a junkyard. They’d shipped him to a junkyard planet.

An Improbable Journey - Day 1

Who landed a freighter on top of me? were the words that slowly coalesced in his mind as consciousness stole up on him and robbed him of peaceful blackness. What came out of his mouth sounded a lot more like “Graahhbhrugh” to his ears, though whether it was his mouth or his ears that were malfunctioning, he couldn’t say.

He blinked a few times, but either his eyes weren’t behaving themselves either, or it was very dark. He struggled to remember how he’d gotten here, wherever and whatever here was. Remembering stuff seemed safer and less painful than trying to move around blind.

He’d been out drinking; that part he didn’t have to remember. The taste of his mouth told him that much. A fuzzy image came to mind of sitting alone until he’d been approached by …

He wasn’t sure who they were, but they’d been rough characters. That’d account for at least some of the hurting going on. Everything after that was a dizzy blur. There’d been a lot of fists flying, a few of them his, the rest of them flying his way. After that there’d been some bumpiness and movement, and then he’d been flying. No, falling. Yeah, falling.

And now he was pretty certain he was laying somewhere in the dark.

He tried blinking again a few times and it helped, or at least it seemed to. Everything looked dark gray now instead of black, anyway. And the nearby sound of crunching gravel confirmed his ears still worked.

He wondered for a moment if he should be worried by that sound; he hadn’t noticed it before. But it didn’t sound like anything big, so he gave it a pass.

“No’ goin’ ge’ anywhe layi’ ‘ere,” he mumbled. Okay, his mouth sort of worked. And his jaw hurt, a lot. He shifted an arm, and found it in one piece. Encouraged, he moved the other, and his legs. So far so good.

The crunching gravel sound had paused, and a curious series of beeps and electronic squeals took its place. He couldn’t see the source; everything was still grey. He tried turning his head.

He’d been staring at a great gray pile of… he had no idea of what. It was definitely big and pile-like. Metal scrap, mostly, he thought. Turning his head revealed more piles, and more, and more after that. But the change in perspective gave him enough contrast to recognize what he was seeing, and there was more there than scrap, and more colors than gray. He shuddered a bit and focused on finding the source of the sound.

He pushed himself up with his hands and got to his feet; to his relief, he wasn’t feeling that bad. Definitely sore from head to toe, and he definitely had a wicked headache, but nothing he couldn’t handle.

He looked around properly, seeing nothing but more and more piles of discarded crap. “They dumped me in a dump.” It wasn’t till he’d turned around to check behind him that he found what must’ve been the source of the odd sounds.

It was a robot; a tiny one, as such things went, no bigger than a breadbox, and it bore a striking resemblance to one. He knew that, he suddenly remembered, because he’d always loved museums and ancient history.

It was flatish and broad, with belts of treads to either side that let it navigate the junk piles. It had no other appendages that he could see. It was rusty in spots, and had a couple of dark swiveling camera ports that served as eyes. It backed up, almost apprehensively, when he fixed his eyes on it.

The Fast and the Dead - Day 38

They tried to run, but the water was thigh-high. Claire put on some speed and reached the boat, scrambling in while Ben struggled to keep up. “Get it started!” he yelled. The dead were converging on them, more and more approaching from either side.

The first one grabbed his arm just as he was reaching out for the side of the boat, the water up past his waist. He jerked his arm away, nearly pulling the thing onto him, its mouth gaping open. He stumbled back, shoving it away. More were crowding in close.

Desperately he surged toward the boat, gripping the sides and pulling himself halfway over. Cold, wet hands grabbed at his legs and shoes; he kicked and shoved, trying to use them to get in to safety faster. One of the hands got a solid grasp on his good ankle.

Claire slammed an oar into the thing’s head, knocking it away. It didn’t let go, but Ben pulled himself free. “I couldn’t make sense of that thing!” Claire screamed.

He wasted no time replying, clawing his way to the engine while Claire beat the oncoming dead back like so many weeds in a field.

The water was thick with them. Franticly he primed the motor, jabbed what he thought must be the starter, and it roared to life. Claire stumbled and nearly fell as the boat began moving slowly ahead. Claire shoved the second oar at him as they moved, and together they shoved and bashed any that got too close.

Ben steered them into deeper waters; they were picking up speed but too slowly to stay where they could be reached. From below they began to feel heavy impacts; more of the dead, still in the deeper waters, unseen but still coming for them. The heavy impacts gave way to softer scraping. “They’re reaching up for us,” Ben said with a shiver. Dead fingers outstretched from the deep.

Finally the water was too deep and anything below couldn’t reach them. Looking over the side, they could see them though. Pale, lifeless faces, staring up hungrily, slowly following them.

“Where to from here?” Ben had been thinking an island. Now he wasn’t so sure.

“I don’t care,” Claire said, staring back at the ruins of the once-great city. Pinpricks of light glinted off the buildings as the afternoon wore on. Broken glass? Or camera lenses? Even in death, the city had a million eyes. “Anywhere but here.”

END

The Fast and the Dead - Day 37

Yesterday’s entry. It’s a bit late, but I did get it written!

Claire walked right up to the edge of the water and stood, staring at the boat. Ben trailed behind, trying to put his finger on the source of his unease. There was nothing around them but long-overgrown grass and trees and benches that were falling apart. The water was blue, and if not exactly clear, was at least shallow enough that they could reach the boat without swimming.

A can of gas was sitting in the boat, visible from shore. Sunlight glinted off the glass of the boat’s windscreen. He snapped his fingers. “That’s it!”

“What’s it?” Claire looked as if it was starting to bother her too, but hadn’t yet seen what was right in front of them.

“It’s clean. It’s as if it’s new. It’s right in front of us. Why? And how? It can’t have been here long. It looks like it was left here specifically for us.”

She frowned, nodding, and turned back the way they’d come, or started to. “What’s this?” She jogged back to a particularly thick bunch of grass where a small non-descript light gray box sat. Ben painfully limped over to join her. “It’s a camera. Another one.”

It looked like any of a thousand security cameras you’d see in any store, or would have in the world before. This one had been hastily installed and was pointed right at the boat. It wasn’t even secured to the ground; a cable ran loose into the grass where they found some sort of power pack.

Ben’s head was reeling; he couldn’t believe it. “It’s the damn shows. They’ve been watching us the whole way, the whole time.” They must’ve gotten intrigued when they survived the massive horde the previous day. Beating impossible odds always drew attention on the broadcasts.

“We got popular. They had to expand their coverage. They herded us into that funnel last night, and now this. I hope it was entertaining; I’m done being the star of the show. Let’s get out of here.” He said that last right into the camera.

“Can we trust it? I’ve never seen anyone just sail off into freedom before.” She was eyeing the boat apprehensively now. An ending nobody had ever seen before, or … what?

“Do you want to try going back through all that?” Ben was already wading into the water, splashing loudly as he limped. Too loudly, he thought.

“Ben!” Claire cried out, running and splashing in after him. He saw it; matted, stringy hair emerging from the water maybe 20 meters off to the side. The dead didn’t breathe; they could walk anywhere there was land, whether or not it was covered by water.

Another, and another became visible. They were farther out where it was deeper, attracted closer in by Ben’s careless noise.