[Original Novel] Little Robot, Part 34

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As for Helper, I realized that when the laptop battery finally ran dry, she’d wake up surrounded by our corpses. Skeletons maybe, depending how long it winds up taking. Then a few weeks or months later, already near the tail end of the instruction set when she awoke, Helper would finally snap out of it.

Utterly, completely alone. Nothing left of me to hold onto but decomposed remains, tattered clothing and memories. I doubted if she could reach someplace to plug in before running out either, so at least her suffering would be short lived.

Suddenly I heard tires screech, and a familiar voice shouted “GET DOWN!” None of us reacted until the gunshots started. Madeline screamed, as did Lars, hunched over with their hands on their heads as bullets shattered the side and rear windows. I draped myself over Helper instead.

Plastic and metal arms reached inside, groping blindly for something soft to claw or crush. But one at a time they jerked backwards, limbs flailing spastically as they collapsed in a flaming heap. Only once their numbers were sufficiently thinned was I able to glimpse the gunman.

Big Red, plus three of his men. One of them stood alongside Red while the others fired from higher vantage points on the truck’s cargo bed. Blam, blam, blam. Red hammered away at the mechanical mob with a pump action shotgun while his men peppered their midsections with machinegun fire.

When the last shambler finally dropped, Madeline erupted from within the car to greet Red, tears of joy flowing freely. Lars got out slowly, surveying the honestly quite mild damage to his car with an expression of quiet horror.

“...You shot up Rhonda. There’s...there’s bullet holes. Bullet holes don’t buff out. How could you just go and-” He tried to complain more but was sternly reminded by Madeline that Red just saved our lives.

I hung back and searched Helper for damage. Other than broken glass, which I carefully swept from her legs and shoulders, she looked fine. Besides being comatose that is. I headed out to meet Red and shake his hand for coming to our aid.

When I did, I was in for a shock. Somehow it slipped my mind that I’d asked him to do this. The bed of the truck was loaded up with all my vintage robots, restrained from tipping over during transit with those stretchy, hooked bungee cords often used by movers.

I could’ve kissed the man. Forget my reservations about his compound or his lifestyle. Forget it all. For the moment his grinning, red nosed, bushy bearded face was the most glorious sight in all the world.

“Well now, just look at what y’all went and got yourselves into. Not even a day out from the lodge, either. Didn’t I say it? Didn’t I say you wouldn’t last long on your own?” It would’ve been infuriating if I weren’t so damned happy to see him.

When he asked what we were doing parked outside, I explained the situation as best I could given the man’s limited experience with computers. Behind us, his men set about carefully unloading my robots and lining them up against the entry gate.

“Don’t tell me she’s had it all this time.” I asked what he would’ve done if he’d known, especially the other night in the bunker. He stared sternly at me. “I get why you did it. Maybe I even woulda done the same in your shoes. But don’t appreciate being kept in the dark.”

I apologized, and thanked him again. For fetching my precious machines from the apartment that otherwise would’ve been their final resting place, and for gunning down the mass of robots that had us pinned inside that cramped, foul smelling car.

“Six crates.” I cocked my head and asked him to clarify. “I reckon that’s what’ll fit in the back of the truck. You can thank me with six crates of them rations instead of the one we agreed on ‘fore I knew you were keeping secrets from me.”

In no position to haggle, I eagerly agreed to the new terms and told him to come back in a few days, reasoning that either the door would be open by then or we’d have given up and headed back to the lodge.

“If you don’t mind” I added, “we could use some ammunition in case more of those things show up. We’re also real low on gas. That wouldn’t be a problem except we need to keep all that machinery powered if Helper’s going to recover.”

He shrugged. “Hmm...I guess six crates is a lot of food...sure, I’ll throw in some gas and a box of shells, but that’s pushing it. You got your robots, I saved your bacon yet again, don’t you go tacking on any more extras.” I swore up and down that we’d be square after he let me siphon enough gas to lift the needle back up to where it was before we left the lodge.

That wound up being nearly twenty gallons. Red grumbled about it but honored his end of the deal. Lars took the box of shells from him and set about excitedly loading them into the shotgun Helper showed up outside the police station with, seemingly many years ago.

Madeline and I waved as Red departed. Lars started Rhonda’s engine, which mercifully still ran like a dream despite Red’s indiscriminate application of lead earlier, then set to patrolling the area with his freshly loaded shotgun at the ready.

I wasted no time powering up the cooling system, then gradually dialed the multiplier back up to 32x in modest increments. The sun now once again hung low on the horizon. Six hours remaining.

Despite the chilly evening air, after spending nearly the whole day cooped up in that stinking hot car, it was a joy just to sit outside around a hastily put together campfire. Lars returned after a while with a pair of rabbits he’d shot.

I cringed, as I have a soft spot for critters. But not so long ago I was giving serious thought to which of us would wind up eating the other two. Rabbit meat, though not my first choice, was certainly a step up from long pig.

I elected not to watch as Lars skinned and gutted the animals. “Really? After everything we’ve seen so far, this is all it takes to make you squeamish?” I considered explaining that human deaths bother me considerably less than animal deaths before deciding against it. There’s just no way to say that where it doesn’t sound wrong.

Hunger is the best spice. I’ve spent enough time out in the wilderness, one of my precious few refuges before all this, to appreciate how fresh air and physical exhaustion coincide to make food prepared outdoors unusually delicious.

So when the scent of those rabbits cooking over the fire reached my nose, I could do nothing except follow it slavishly back to the source and dig in. I noticed Lars peering around every ten or fifteen seconds while he ate. As I probably should’ve been doing myself, but I was too busy gorging.

I admire that about Lars. You can accuse him of many things and be right about most of it, but he’s sharp as a tack. Competent, vigilant and reliable. His insufferable degree of self confidence, I must admit, is only rarely misplaced.

In retrospect, I hardly could’ve picked a better pair to survive this mess with than Lars and Madeline. When I said so out loud, Madeline smiled, but Lars scoffed. “It’s a bit early to say we’ve survived.” Ever the optimist, too.

As it got dark, discussion turned to who was going to stand watch. “What do you mean, stand watch?” said Lars. “Can either of you really sleep in the car again after what happened last night?” He had a point.

We still wound up sitting in the car just because, so long as the engine was running, it kept the interior nice and warm. Lars continually scanned our surroundings, clutching the shotgun close to his chest. No danger for the moment, but it made for a comforting sight.

We were all less cranky now that there was enough gas to keep the heater running continuously, so we joked, reflected, and argued through the night. Madeline told Lars all about her background as a war reporter and what she did before that.

I shared with both of them what little I recall of my childhood as both nodded slowly, probably thinking some shit like “that explains everything.” Then Lars reminisced about how his job at Evolutionary Robotics was the first to really pay what he considered big bucks, but he still had to pinch pennies for over a year before he could buy the muscle car he always wanted.

“You bought it that recently?” Madeline seemed shocked, but Lars confirmed it. I confessed that I was equally surprised. “Somehow I always pictured it coming out of the birth canal beside him on its own umbilical.”

Even Lars laughed. To have some breathing room like this, a moment of unencumbered levity, was an increasingly rare treat. I got so absorbed in it that I lost track of the sim. When I finally thought to check on it, at first I didn’t understand what I was looking at.

The sim window depicted Helper simply standing in place. I looked at the clock. Had it really been that long? Perhaps because I’d fallen silent all of a sudden, Lars and Madeline soon picked up on my thought process by that mysterious capacity: The one seemingly possessed by everybody in the world but myself.

“Is it…?” I hushed Lars and fiddled with the software. No error messages. Nor did it seem to be frozen. I turned my attention to Helper, waving my hand in front of her eyes in the hope of eliciting some sort of reaction.

Everything pointed to the same conclusion. That the virus finally finished executing its archived instructions. So any minute now, Helper will wake up. Any minute. I sat there anxiously studying her face for subtle movement.

Then went back to the program, tabbing through the options, looking for some other detail I may have missed. When Lars next spoke, his voice was slow, steady and gentle. “Look...there was never any guarantee it would work.” I shushed him again and returned to hurriedly searching through the software for some indication of why Helper remained inert.

When I looked over at Lars and Madeline, both watched silently from the front seat, expressions difficult to interpret but vaguely depressed or something similar. Oh ye of little faith. They’ll see, I told myself. Any minute now.

“We can bury her if you want.” I slowly turned to face Lars, corner of my mouth twitching involuntarily as I processed his intended meaning. “...We’ll do no such thing, Lars. You’re jumping the gun just a bit, aren’t you? Something’s amiss, but it’s just...it’s a speed bump. I’ll fix it. She’s going to wake up soon.”

He neither agreed nor contradicted me. Just looked on with what I took for a mournful expression as I continued ticking and unticking every option, restarting and terminating the sim over and over, unable to give up until I knew for sure I’d tried absolutely everything. Unable to accept the truth already known to Lars, Madeline...and my heart.

“You’re wrong, okay? You’re out of your depth. Robotics is my field, and I say she’ll be fine.” Lars softly replied that he hadn’t said anything. “She will wake up though” I insisted, voice now trembling. “She’ll wake up soon. She will.”

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 35!}