After the Winter (The Silent Earth, Book 1) (39 page)

Stirring those strange feelings was not the arm itself, but what I knew lay hidden further beneath the sand.

Trembling, I reached down and curled my fingers around the cold metallic hand. Some part of me imagined it suddenly coming to life, a crushing grip yanking me down inexorably into the cool darkness beneath. I closed my eyes, calming myself. Steeled myself for what was to come.

I pulled gently at first, but it didn’t budge.  It was either extremely heavy, well buried, or it was snagged on something else below.  I scooped at the sand with my free hand to try to uncover it, but every load I shifted seemed to be filled in by another from above.  I braced my feet,
clasping both hands tightly on the arm, and pulled again with all my might. I felt it move, ever so slightly, then move again, and all at once it came free, the broken body of a synthetic sloughing out of the sand, sending me sprawling backward with my hands still entangled in its own.

It lay staring up at me, sightless.

Even before I’d brushed the sand away from its face I knew. The milky eyes and the crushed left side of the skull were distinctive and all too familiar.

“Max?” I whispered, horrified. As my fingers brushed at his face his head lolled to the side, and what seemed like a river of sand gushed out of his gaping mouth. His eyes dull, body still, there was not a trace of life within him. “Max,” I said, forlorn. “What happened to you?”

I shifted back and looked down across his sand-choked frame. Little rivulets of silt cascaded away from him and through the vicious rents in his skin. There were so many cavities within him that he looked like he’d been completely hollowed out and his insides turned to dust. His left arm was draped across his torso, bent at an awkward angle and disappearing at the wrist inside his own chest.

“Oh, no...
Max
.”

Delicately, I probed at the hole in his solar plexus with my fingers and began to ease his hand outward. I could see evidence of his breastplate being bent aside, the synthetic muscles there crudely torn and hacked. Sand that had rushed into the cavity spilled out, and as his hand came free I could see the three remaining fingers clasped around a dull little disc surrounded by dozens of strands of filament. His power core.

I could piece it all together so easily. Max had tried to escape the city, or just thrown himself at the mercy of the wasteland, crawling out here into the open ground where he’d been consumed by a sandstorm. Trapped underneath the mass of sand, he had finally found his crevasse. Faced with spending the rest of his days in an impenetrable darkness, he had done the unthinkable - piercing his own skin and muscle with his bare hands, he had bent apart the alloy of his chassis, digging inside himself and ripping out his own core. A ghastly, unimaginably torturous ordeal that could only be likened to a human stabbing inside their own chest in order to cut out their heart.

“No, Max,” I said through gritted teeth. Suddenly my own problems seemed remote and unimportant. “You didn’t deserve this.”

I shook my head helplessly, rueful of the tragic circumstances that had led to his demise. I saw so much of him in myself. It was so easy for me to understand how it would have felt to expire out here in the nothingness, with no one to notice I’d gone or to acknowledge my passing. I couldn’t be angry with him for giving in, for finally finding the courage to end it. In a way I was glad that his suffering was finally ended.

Now it was done.  It was over, and there was nothing I could do to change what had happened.  I couldn’t turn back the clock and prevent him coming out here, nor could I take back any of the things I’d said.  But there was one thing I
could
do.  And that was to show him that at least one person had cared that he’d lived and that he’d died.

I gripped his hand and heaved, swinging him part way around. I looked up at the city to get my bearings, then heaved again. He was so heavy. This was not going to be easy.

I struggled with his inert frame for hours, dragging it along through the sand one step at a time, lunging and straining, striving to reach solid earth.  Not once did I consider giving up.  I would rather have continued to lug and pull at him until I tore myself in two than to leave him
behind again. I would do this right. This one thing, this tiny and insignificant gesture - this would be something to look back upon with pride.

When I reached asphalt I released my grip on him and slumped to the ground. My muscles were crying out for rest, but I wouldn’t listen. I got back up and trudged off, finding my way back through the city to retrieve the wheelbarrow. While I was there at the apartment I scooped up the copper coins that were spread out around the courtyard and placed them in my pocket. Up in the apartment I went through his things, but there was nothing else I could find that might signify something to him. Looking back on it, worldly possessions had meant nothing to him anyway. He hadn’t needed them in life, and he sure as hell wouldn’t need them in death.

As I left, I positioned the chair neatly in front of the window and gently closed the door, its shattered edges resting crookedly against the door frame. Descending to the courtyard for the last time, I gathered the wheelbarrow and got moving.

I wove my way back across the ruins, realising I should have marked my way. I spent an extra hour searching up and down streets where I thought I’d left him, bouncing, shoving and carrying the wheelbarrow through the debris. All of the streets in this part of town looked the same. There were no buildings intact, so the place was reduced to row upon row of disintegrated brickwork. Eventually, I found him again, lying on his back, motionless amid the clutter, just as I’d first seen him all those months ago. Gathering my strength, I secured my hands under his armpits and levered him up off the ground. It was an awkward process. The barrow kept slipping aside and falling over as I attempted to slide him into it, and in the end I was forced to wedge it into a corner, from there half lifting, half rolling him up into the tray. Once I had everything balanced I began to push it along the road again, careful to avoid bumps where possible.

It was late in the afternoon by the time we arrived at the foot of Ol’ Trembler. Leaving him in the barrow, I searched the area for anything I could use to dig into the earth. I came back with a jagged piece of wood and an iron rod, poor tools for the job, and began to hack at the ground. It was difficult work, and I ended up using my fingers and hands as much as the other tools, scraping and scratching and scooping away dirt as I made a shallow trench. The earth was cooler the deeper I dug, and the smell of it pungent, but not in an offensive way. The work seemed to get harder the further down I went.

Finally, I decided the hole was deep enough. With as much care as I could manage, I brought Max down out of the barrow and dragged him into the pit. I eased his left hand out of his chest, laying it by his side, the power core still clasped between his fingers. He lay there silent and still. Peaceful.

To see him there reaffirmed to me that I was doing the right thing. It just seemed appropriate.

I pushed and scraped at the earth I’d displaced and he disappeared gradually from my view, once again swallowed up by the darkness. The task of putting the dirt back in the hole was almost as difficult as it had been taking it out. I wondered if perhaps this was just my mind and body reaching the limit of its endurance. How much exertion could I put myself through? I’d staggered around in the desert for weeks without rest. I’d climbed the immense heights of Ol’ Trembler and back down again. I’d hauled Max’s mighty frame across the sand and ruined city streets. I’d thrust these blunt tools into the hard earth. It was a wonder I had anything left.

When it was finally done I straightened, shaking and covered in muck. I lifted my gaze from the little mound of earth to look up at the form of Ol’ Trembler soaring above.

“I hope this is what you would have wanted, Max.” I lifted a heavy arm to the sky. “One day when she comes down, you’ll be buried in her ruins.”

I didn’t have flowers or a fancy headstone to lay on the grave, and, in reality, he would never have wanted that. Instead, I scattered the copper coins over the mound. They were really the only things he’d owned. It seemed such a sad little gesture, but, I decided, better than nothing.

“I’m thankful to have met you, Max,” I said sorrowfully. “I’ll remember you. For what it’s worth, I’ll remember you.”

With that done, I turned to walk away. I only made half a step before crashing heavily to my hands and knees. I was spent. I had nothing more to give. On all fours, I stared at the ground, trembling. I tried to push myself back up, but couldn’t. That weight on my shoulders felt like an insurmountable burden. The trembles became shudders. I was shaking so hard I thought I might fall apart. I didn’t know what was happening. Was I finally going to die? Was this what it felt like when the body and mind caved in, with nothing more to give? Were these the final tremors of a dying machine?

No.  I wasn’t dying.  I was weeping. 

Weeping
.  Was it even possible for a synthetic to weep?  Did we have that in us?  There were tears falling from my eyes, streaming down my cheeks.  I didn’t even know that I’d been built to do that, but I was crying nonetheless.  Sobbing and making wordless sounds of anguish,
giving in
to the feelings inside of me instead of trying to push them away.  For the first time, I allowed myself to accept my emotions as
real
. I allowed myself to grieve - for Zade, for the human life I thought I’d lived, for this ruined and hopeless world and everything in it. For all those wretches still struggling through the wasteland. For Max.

Slowly, scrubbing the tears from my face, I crawled to my feet again and looked down at the grave, at Max’s final place of rest.  What had I said to him once? 
Our time isn’t running out anytime soon
.  But it
was
.  It
was
running out.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  Every second was another grain falling through the hourglass, another star fading from the sky, one that could never be replaced.  For Max, time had already run out, much sooner than he ever expected.  There was no way for him to change his path now.

I’d always thought I had forever to wait for the world to bring me what I wanted, to shape itself to the contours of this entity I perceived as me. But I didn’t.

The realisation came to me, not like a bolt of lightning, but with a tingling in my skin that started in my toes and worked its way up my body until it rippled across my scalp. It was like a thousand tiny butterflies gently alighting on my skin, their wingtips fluttering against me. It
rippled across me, quickly gone, but in its wake a kind of warmth spread through me - not the kind that radiated down from the sun, but something that came from within.  A warmth that emanated outward from me, from my spirit.  From my soul.  It was not the product of circuitry or silicon, alloy or electrons.  It was something else, something unlike anything I’d ever felt before, a sensation that transcended these machine components of which I was made.  Something that must surely be
human
. An epiphany.

My creators had made me more human than maybe even they realised.  I was imperfect.  Flawed.  I could doubt, and suffer and struggle and lose my way, just as any man could.  I could even cry.  And as that understanding came to me, washed over me like a warm summer breeze, I came to realise something else about myself.  Something that in all this time of reflection I had never understood until now. 

I could also
believe
.  I could hold that belief aloft like a flame in the darkness and let it light my way, allow it to illuminate the road ahead of me. 

I could still find the right path in the time I had left.

I’d been given a chance at life.  Maybe it wasn’t the kind of life I’d once seen for myself, or the one I’d expected, but it was a life nonetheless.  Another chance to experience this amazing, terrible, awe inspiring world. 

I was never going to become human.  I knew that now.  But standing there over Max’s final resting place, looking back at all the things I’d been through, all the joy and the pain, the hope, the dreams, the sorrow... I understood that, in all the ways that really mattered, I already
was
human. 

I arched my back and stood straight. I stood proud. I was purged, renewed. I finally understood who I was.

I turned to face the setting sun, no longer feeling adrift in an endless wasteland. I knew where I was going, and I knew what I had to do.

Epilogue

The journey home was like discovering an entirely new world. I didn’t see the ruin and the loss, the heartache of the land in quite the same way. It was still there, still plain to see, and it always would be. I’d keep it in my heart as a reminder of where I’d come from, the wreckage from which I’d emerged, but it didn’t own me anymore. It didn’t define me. I was outside of it, and I could see the world now for what it was: an opportunity. Where I’d once seen devastation I now saw potential. I’d been given the chance to help make things right, and now, after all these years, I was ready to take it. That attitude bore me across the wasteland like a wind at my back. I only had to extend my arms and allow it to carry me.