Broken Things (17 page)

Cody walked back to his bedroom, the promise of continuing
his dream beckoning him back to his sheets. He heard Neil scurrying through the
house, trying to pass off his mess. He knew Angel would eventually deal with
it, she always did.

Just as he settled back into the warmth of his sheets, Neil
stuck his head in the doorway. “Is she in here?”

“Get out of my room.”

“Because if she’s not, I don’t think she’s home.”

Cody sat back up, any promise of resuming his neighbor
fantasy slipping away from him. Neil continued to stare expectantly, waiting
for him to do something. Not for the first time he questioned his decision to
let the boy stay. Neil created a risk, if anyone ever bothered to follow the
kid, or if he ever brought attention back to him for his unethical acquiring of
android parts. Still, the benefits the boy provided outweighed the risks.
“Where would Angel go? She’s afraid to leave the house.”  

Groaning loudly to let Neil know just how much of an
inconvenience this was, Cody climbed back out of bed, sliding his feet into his
slippers. He went room by room with the boy on his heels, but there was no sign
of her.

Finally he stopped in the kitchen, and noticed next to a
stack of dirty dishes and an empty pizza box his notebook lying open on the counter.
Had he left it that way? It hung open to his notes on the new kid, Josh.

Now that had been a messed up kid. His arms and legs had
scars as though he’d been tied behind a truck and dragged. The damage to his
head implied serious physical trauma as though someone had beaten him severely.
Cody understood him wanting to go home. Every owner was imprinted in the mind
of their child. That was part of the bond. Unfortunately, it only worked one
way. Owners didn’t feel the same attachment. Maybe they had with real children,
but Cody didn’t know anything about that kind of psychology. No matter how real
the children seemed, how real their programmed emotions, people were never able
to consider them as anything other than a toy. Though there existed laws to protect
real biological children (that didn’t exist), it didn’t apply to androids, and
there would never be a law that said you couldn’t break your own toys.

But the damage done to Josh had destroyed his value. Nobody
would ever take a kid like that.

Cody didn’t much care for children either, but he loved what
he could make them do. He could use them to do things that he couldn’t, thanks
to his own program, Cain. It allowed him to give them personality traits that
the other Kidsmith programmers had avoided, things that made the kids more fun.
There were other programs that did the same thing, android hacks that made
unpredictable chaotic children, but they didn’t have his background. 

“Did you bring Josh back?”

“What? No. He bailed on me.”

Cody eyed Neil with suspicion. Neil folded his arms across
his chest and stared defiantly back. Maybe he’d put a bit too much chaos into
Neil. “Why wouldn’t he come back? He wanted that upgrade pretty bad. That seems
a bit out of character.”

The boy shrugged. His expression dared Cody to accuse him of
anything.

“Whatever. I wonder if Angel went after him?”

“Angel? Why would she care?”

Because I gave her a maternal personality.
He didn’t
say that out loud. Neil might be an android, but he would still tease him. He
didn’t need a flashback to his own childhood caused by a miscreant kid.

That had to be it, a kid had come along that needed help and
it had overridden her mild agoraphobia. He’d have to increase its severity.
Still, it wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye on her. He grabbed another tablet and
typed in her registration number.

It couldn’t locate her.

“What’s this?” he mumbled. He typed it in again, just in
case his fat fingers had made a mistake. The same answer returned: ‘
Can’t
Locate Subject’
. Somehow she’d gone off the grid.

Had she erased her identity? The thought sent a chill
through his body. What if she told somebody about him? What he liked to do? She
was like a walking diary of all his habits and fetishes. She had no reason to
keep his secrets.

But if she were going after Josh, she’d have to be tracking
him. Yes, Angel did know his secrets. She would be able to track a kid as
easily as he could. If she had gone after Josh, he just had to find him first.
Then he’d get his Angel back. If he couldn’t trust her after this, then she
would spend her nights sleeping in the closet with his other girls.

Part 4

1

The map application on James’ tablet led Josh across the
foothills. He had to crawl through a barb wire fence once, but otherwise there wasn’t
much else to hinder him. James had seemed nice, and had even fixed his arm, but
he couldn’t help but feel manipulated, which meant that he wasn’t any different
from everyone else he’d encountered.

He had no illusions that James wouldn’t be able to find him.
The man had somehow managed to find him once already. However it would be that
much harder for him if he avoided the roads.

The foothills were covered in sagebrush, making his travel
difficult. He could barely see in the minimal light that the city below him put
off, glowing like a distant ocean of candles. Finally he realized that he could
use the tablet as a flashlight. It didn’t work great, but it kept him from
tripping over the flora immediately in front of him. From somewhere distant
came the short yips of a coyote, but he could no longer hear the sounds of the
city.

His destination wasn’t too far away. Two miles from the city
limit was the Ada County Landfill. Next to that had been built another landfill
designed for the disposal of androids. A Kid Cemetery.

He hadn’t been asleep when James had left the workshop, or
not too deeply at least. He’d been thinking, mostly. If he needed kid parts,
why not get them from old broken ones that didn’t need them anymore? If he
could find Kid Cemetery, he could get the part himself, and take it back to
Cody. If Cody wouldn’t upgrade him (thanks to Neil) he’d find someone that
could. He’d heard the door shut, and realized that he had a single opportunity
to leave.

Josh’s parents had rarely let him use their computer tablet,
but he still knew how to look things up on it. He’d snagged James’ tablet and
used the voice recognition to find Kid Cemetery, or officially, the Kidsmith
Hazardous Waste Disposal Repository. Only the official website and the maps app
called it that. Even online, people referred to it by its other moniker, or Kid
Pit.  

Sitting around waiting for the monster had to be the worst
plan ever. James didn’t know what he was messing with. Even now, moving across
the desert he felt as though it was right on his heels. James claimed it was an
adult android. Why would anyone make it a monster though? Did they hate kids so
much that they needed to make one to hunt them?

The monster was probably designed to hunt down abandoned
kids. Hopefully once he got home it would leave him alone. If not, his dad
would know what to do.

Soon a glow beckoned from just beyond the next rise. As he
got closer, he no longer needed the tablet’s light to guide his way. He crested
the hill, finding a chain link fence blocking his route, stretching out beyond
sight in both directions. Atop the fence, security lights illuminated the
perimeter. 

Josh slipped his fingers through the fence and stared
beyond. Featureless gray buildings stood as inert sentinels, watching over their
eternally sleeping charges. A road separated the fence from the buildings,
rough tire tracks in its dirt surface a testimony of life, but he saw no other
signs. He didn’t see guards or security of any type, but cameras hung from the
corners of the buildings, like silent guardian eyes.

He couldn’t see any broken children lying around. The
facility surrounded what looked like dozens of small hills that rose even above
the buildings. They were shadowy silhouettes beyond the brilliance of the
security lights. Maybe that meant that they buried all of the broken parts.
That made sense, for a cemetery.

Tentatively he climbed the fence. At the top, three lines of
barbed wire were strung to prevent people from getting in. He kept his head low
and kept tight to the metal bar that comprised the top of the fence, and his
small frame passed easily beneath it, without even snagging. This place didn’t
worry about kids getting in.

Or out.

Within a few feet of the ground, he dropped down easily. He
looked behind him, but the darkness was absolute, as thick as a wall. If
anything were out there, he would never see it. He glanced up at the security
cameras, but they watched impotently. No one came to challenge him. He walked
cautiously across the dirt road and into the shadows between the buildings.
Every step he took crunched in the gravel, but he supposed no one here expected
to see a kid walking about.

All of the windows were dark. He walked up to the nearest
door and tried the handle, and found it locked. He walked further into the
landfill wondering what he would find. Did they store the children in a crypt,
like a mausoleum? Maybe they were buried, each placed reverently within the
earth. He walked cautiously. He didn’t want to step on any graves. If his
future had gone differently, he might’ve joined them yesterday. Only luck had
saved him from this fate.

Josh reached the hills, still looking down, mindful of each
step. He walked deeper still, yet he found no graves. Graves would be bad
anyway, he didn’t have a shovel. There weren’t broken parts or children lying
about either. Maybe he needed to go back and try more of the doors. Soon the
hills blocked out the lights at his back. He hesitated, unsure of his next
step. Turning the tablet back on, he used the screen as a flashlight. Gaping
before him stretched a gigantic trench, almost the size of a small canyon. He
couldn’t make out how far it stretched, or how wide.
Kid Pit.

A few more steps and he would’ve fallen in. The drop wasn’t
too bad, maybe ten feet, but still more than he wanted to fall. He leaned down,
trying to use the light to see the bottom. Everywhere he looked lay dark
shapes.
Bodies
, he realized suddenly,
that’s why they call it Kid Pit
.

He shivered. He stood upon a precipice overlooking the dead.
It hadn’t truly sunk in as to what he would find. He’d hoped it would be parts,
but not contained still within the fragile shells of the children. How many of
them could there be?

“Hello?”

Josh nearly jumped out of his skin. The voice had come from
his left and he turned so fast he nearly lost his balance. The thought of
falling into the pit with the other children made his heart skip a beat. He
flashed the tablet’s light about, but there were only the hills.

And the hills were arms and legs and heads and bodies…
stacks and stacks of children. Blissfully ignorant, he’d been walking among
them all along. He staggered and his foot slipped. He reached out and fell
against the hill of children behind him. He pushed himself away, desperately
trying not to continue to touch their still, lifeless bodies. Their skin was
cool and soft to the touch, as though they only slept.

He scanned wildly about, trying to see who (what) had
spoken. There were so many discarded children, so many broken and thrown away.
How many? His mind couldn’t fathom the numbers he saw. How many mountains of
children?

There were all ages, boys and girls, from broken infants to
broken pre-teens, his age. They were all his brothers and sisters, products of
Kidsmith, novelties, mockeries of life, all extinguished.

“
Help me
,” said the voice again. It was weak and
distant, as though it struggled to say the words. It was androgynous, it
could’ve been anyone. Josh sat still, afraid to answer the ghost of the piles,
the disembodied voice of thousands upon thousands of children. The silence
stretched as though they waited for his answer. The wind picked up, whistling
through the artificial valley, as though the android landscape breathed out one
last melancholy sigh.

Maybe they’d made a mistake. Maybe someone had thrown away a
kid that wasn’t broken! He steeled himself to face his fears. On trembling
knees, he half crawled toward where the voice had come from, trying to hold up
the tablet’s light, yet unable to get to his feet. His legs couldn’t support him.
He couldn’t imagine what would go through one’s mind, discarded here, no one to
help you out, nobody even around to hear your call.

“Where are you?” His own voice came out high-pitched and laced
with fright. He couldn’t fake being brave, but neither could he run away when
there could be another child trapped here.

“
Here
,” came the voice, “
Help
…”

“Okay.”
Please don’t be a ghost, please don’t be a ghost,
please don’t be a ghost…
He reached the mound, but there were so many empty
eyes, so many still limbs. He shone the light up and down through the bodies,
but none of them responded. “I can’t find you.”

He waited but the voice didn’t answer again. He forced
himself to look closer. There was a sadness to each child, their expressions
reflected what he felt in his heart. Some had the back of their heads opened,
robbed for parts. Others had signs of mistreatment, bruises and scars. Still
others looked healthy, as if they were here by choice, to rest in the arms of
their brothers and sisters. None of them rotted. None of them looked
malnourished. Other than the abuse they’d suffered, they looked perfect, frozen
forever in time.

“Are you there?” he asked a little louder, “Is anyone still
alive?”

The mound rippled. Here and there it shifted. Suddenly an
arm shot out and grabbed his wrist. A little dark-haired girl, maybe ten,
lifted her head and cried, “
Help us
!”