MARKI5578 Part 18

Thirteen days passed before I worked up the courage to leave my travel partners. We were in the middle of a desert on a road that was almost completely buried under sand and dirt. The plant life I had become used to seeing was replaced by short green trees. I had taken it upon myself to inspect the first one we came close to. The plants were covered in spikes and some had bright red flowers at the end of their branches. Smaller, less significant versions of those plants were randomly scattered around as well, but there was no part of this terrain that provided natural shade aside from the flat top rock formations.

There were a few towns that we had passed, but the only signs we found were scattered rubble. Nothing was left standing and had been mostly covered with dirt. The heat caused me to stop for as long as possible in any shade I could find. I noticed that the other mechanicals were not experiencing as negative a reaction to the heat as I was.

We went between two of the raised rock formations. I didn't want to call them hills or mountains by the way they stuck out from the ground. The thin crevasse provided plenty of shade and I could tell there was a cooling breeze lightly moving between them. While the others exited the shade, I found myself reluctant to move and watched them continue walking. They didn't seem to notice my absence.

I took the moment to step back into the cooler part of the open top cave and sit. I could tell the metal parts of me on the inside had been hot enough to melt the plastic coverings. The power in my battery didn't seem to be created for this kind of weather. I was concerned about wires or other parts of me melting. That would make charging in the future impossible without modifications and I did not want to think about losing complete movement like B34I9 had in their legs.

I watched the sky through the crack in the rocks above me. The day had just began and the sun had not yet completed it's halfway mark in the sky. Over the course of our travels I had been learning how to read the time by watching the sky. During the day, the sun was the most obvious indicator. At night, the moon and stars provided clear indication of the cycle.

I continued to stare at the sky in complete motionless. I watched the sun pass over the opening and shine it's light on me briefly before disappearing again. There were a few flying creatures that kept dashing over the rocks. They were the biggest creatures I had seen yet. When the sky began turning a dull shade of purple, I heard someone walking towards me. I could tell it was C6372N by the weight of each step.

They did not see me until they turned the corner, but when they did they quickly bent down towards me. I finally turned to look at them.

“What happened?” they asked.

“I am resting.”

They grabbed my arms and then my face, examining me for damage. I pushed them away before they could go further.

“Are you okay?”

“I am not injured. I think,” I said. In that moment I honestly wasn't sure.

“The others are waiting for us. We need to go.”

“It's too hot,” I said.

“It won't be too hot now. The sun is going.”

I stood up and slowly followed them. They were walking faster than me at first, but slowed down and allowed me to walk next to them. When they had spoken to me earlier I realized that I had been programmed to interact, which I had not been doing for almost fifteen days. Despite my resolve to keep from talking to any of my captors, the opportunity grabbed me.

“Where are the others?” I asked.

“Hibernating next to a line of those strange plants while I find you.”

“Are they running low on battery again?” I didn't think they would have run out sooner than they originally did.

“No, we should all have plenty of energy to reach the destination, if the city is actually there.”

I looked up. The moon was barely a cut in the sky. The absence of it's light allowed the rest of the stars to shine brighter than I had ever noticed. Not having any vegetation to cover the view was also helpful.

“You don't really think we would leave you, did you?” the giant asked.

“What other reason could you have for me, if not the extra energy.”

“If we only wanted you for that, we would have removed your battery outside of the city of Tower,” they explained. “What you are assuming does not make sense.”

“Then what are we doing?”

“Making it to the other city.”

“Why?”

“What are you trying to ask?” they said, finally reaching a point of frustration.

“What is the purpose of making it to this city that we are not sure exists? If it does, we will only continue being the same. Waiting for our next objective. Why are we going there and why am I part of this? Why did you come back for me?” My voice had been quiet and stable, possibly not matching the intent of my words, but the giant seemed to understand.

“The rest of us are going because we want to know about the gods. Our current purpose is to find this information. I decided many years ago that I would do whatever I could for this.”

“Will learning this information change anything?” I asked.

“I think your personality might be effected by something,” they said. “Hopefully when we find this place, there will be something to fix that.”

The conversation had not helped my state of mind any, so I decided to change the topic and ask what I had been wondering since the energy transfer.

“Please don't take offense, but I have a question. I didn't want to ask them directly, or YT119U, because of our last conversation. Why did we charge B34I9 when you could have carried them this entire way? That energy would have been saved and they would not have had to experience being broken like they are.”

“You are not made the same way that we are,” the giant answered. They did not offer more information so I kept pushing.

“How would a prolonged hibernation for any of you be any different from me doing so?”

“Do you remember waking up in the scrap yard?”

“Yes. I have talked about it before.”

“Do you remember anything before that?”

“No,” I said, done with the obvious questions.

“I don't know how you function or what protocols or programs are hidden inside of you, but there are similarities to your beginning and what would happen if we were to hibernate for too long.”

“Explain further,” I demanded.

“We were built to only exist under Tower's control. If we go into a prolonged hibernation without being directly connected to their system, a program will start to delete files. We cannot go into a full power down before that process is finished, either. Powering down completely would automatically trigger that program.”

“What purpose does that serve?”

“If we are discovered outside of the city after we have finally run out of energy, there is no chance of another being finding information. It will all be gone. By the time we are discovered. Or at least that is the theory.”

I wondered why Tower was so concerned with keeping information to themself. The more I learned about them, the more intimidating they seemed.

“So if we were to power them down and turn them back on later, they would be a blank slate?” I asked.

“They might not even have the programs to be turned back on.” C6372N stopped and held their hand out toward me. I hesitated, but gave them my hand anyway. They lightly held it. “I'm sorry. About everything we've done to you. I did lie to you before, but it was to protect both you and the others. Please forgive me and come with us?”

I took my hand back and tilted me head forward. “Yes, of course.”

We caught up to the other two the next morning. B34I9 was sitting next to the spike covered plant and examining a flower that had been picked from it. YT119U came towards me as soon as they noticed us approaching. They stepped with quickness, but it was not out of excitement.

“Where were you? Do you think this behavior is appropriate?” they spoke with the same threatening undertone as our last conversation.

“I was overheated. I had to stop.”

“You could have discussed this with us,” they said. “Is there any damage?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Were you trying to get away from us?” the tiny crippled blue mechanical said with their usual amount of charisma.

“Let's just continue walking,” the giant said, picking them up.

“Was he just melting in the sun?”

The giant did not answer them and took the front. The leader looked me over before continuing with them. They stayed next to me to avoid losing me again, occasionally grabbing my hand. They had told me to alert them if I noticed myself malfunctioning. The gesture of concern helped me keep up with their speed, although I knew it was probably just a command to prevent wasting more time.

The desert stretched for a few more days until more vegetation began covering the ground. There were even different types of trees appearing, but nothing close to a forest came up. There were a few more cities and a river that we passed over without resting. We had not experienced rain since the desert and the lack of green vegetation made it apparent that water from the sky was not something to worry about.

“We are almost there. We can start looking for that city now,” B34I9 said. They were getting low in power levels again, but their excitement was still noticeable. Less than an hour after their proclamation, we noticed a bizarre arrangement of buildings. We went to it and looked around. The buildings were obviously repaired with lesser materials after they had deteriorated. Someone had to have come back to live there at some point.

We spread out and looked everywhere over the small rebuilt city. We resorted to yelling out for attention when we couldn't find other mechanicals and regrouped in the center where there was a working fountain shooting water into the air.

“This is the place,” B34I9 said. “This is correct. I remember images of this place that they showed me.”

“Maybe Tower visited them,” YT119U suggested. The idea was discouraging. I could tell the other two did not want to accept the idea. They kept looking around in hopes that something would greet us. To my surprise, something did come to us.

There were five of them. Some kind of organic quadruped. They reminded me of the surveillance mechanicals Tower had created, only they were covered in something new. They had prominent snapping jaws filled with sharp teeth, which they made sure to show us.

“Hello?” The giant tried to communicate with them. “We aren't here to cause trouble.”

One of the organics made a sharp noise and they all ran toward us. They attacked us swiftly and grabbed onto out limbs, making a horrible noise as they did so. One of them was on top of B34I9 and gnashing at their chest. I shoved the organic on my arm to the ground and snapped something inside of them. They screamed and struggled to back away. The plastic on my arm was cracked and half of it fell off with the hit. I ignored it and grabbed the one on the small blue mechanical by the back legs.

After I got them onto the ground, C6372N came towards me and reached toward the animal. It got free of my grip before they reached us and darted off to a distance. The rest of the organics had also retreated. Their disinterest grew and they ran behind a building where the injured one had fled.

We gathered around B34I9. They sat themself up and were examining their chest. It had scrapes from the teeth, but was otherwise perfectly fine. Before we could decide what to do next, there came a stranger.

“Who are you?” they asked. Their appearance was vastly different from ours, but I recognized them as a mechanical. There were plants poking out from their arms. The sight was more bizarre than the creatures that had just attacked us.

“We are from the city of Tower,” YT119U said. They put themselves between the stranger and the rest of us.

The stranger's head had a very detailed series of mechanics in it. The parts of their head moved while examined us. For some reason I understood that they were threatening us with their expression.

“That much is obvious, but why are you here? Were you sent to finish us?” they accused.

“I knew your friends. I met some of you before. They told us to come here,” B34I9 said. They used all their abilities to get to the leader's side to confront the stranger. “They said we would find answers here. Is that true?”

I looked at the small blue mechanical. They were less intimidated than I was, even though they would easily be broken by the large sturdy machine staring us down. They said a few names until the stranger loosened their posture. They had no weapons that I could see, but I wasn't entirely sure if that meant anything.

“You knew them?” they thought about something. “If you will all remain in this square, I will return for you. I shouldn't be more than a day.”

Our leader put their hand on B34I9, who was about to collapse. “We will wait.”