I.
Sleep was a scarce commodity. Harder to come by than food or an adequate shelter. Day and night blurred together, incoherent. Graham watched every sun set, and it seemed each one was more foreboding than the last. He had lost track of time, but time was nothing now. It was just another number. Another ache in the bones, another crease upon the brow.
Would he ever find them? That, he wondered every day when he was not thinking about Eliza's limp, cold body in his arms. Seldom he thought of anything else these days. It was impossible to think of anything else. Consumed, he was, by sadness and bitter rage. It was what kept him moving forward when the nights grew too dark, when food was scarce, when bloodthirsty savages hunted him down.
Then, one day, he finally found it.
There it was, in its whitewashed unmistakable glory. The facility, detached from the main research grounds, was considered a junkyard of sorts back in the day. A place to store the defective cyborgs before they were destroyed forever. But there were some that remained, untouched over the course of many centuries.
He glanced at the notebook once again, to ascertain he had come to the right place, then slipped it back into his pocket. He entered the establishment. It had been left open.
The place had been searched before, likely by a group of pirates or savages that so often traversed these lands. Parts were littered about; red and blue wires spilled out of an open hand; broken bodies lay in heaps, eyes glassed over and unseeing. Graham picked his way through the wreckage carefully, as if to avoid rousing the sleeping machines. Overhead, vines of green tangled with each other across the ceiling. The place reeked of abandon.
Then, something caught his vision that made him grow very still. For a moment, his lungs seemed to have stopped functioning.
Eliza.
He blinked. No, just another machine.
Graham bent down, staring into the blank canvas of a face, the open yet unseeing eyes, the slits underneath the porcelain skin. Unlike the others, she was still in relatively good condition.
He went to work.
First, he scavenged for the necessary parts and fluids to get the machine into working order again. Then, he started rebuilding her. Minutes stretched to hours, hours stretched to days, days stretched to months. There were several failed attempts. Several false hopes. But his endurance never wavered.
Then, the day came at last...
"Wake up."
II.
The gears began to work. The wires buzzed to life. A minute passed. Two. Graham counted the seconds in his head, hopeful, watchful. A faint blue emanated from the machine, seeping through the artificial slits on its human face. The light grew, grew, grew. Then, all at once, it disappeared.
Graham sighed, believing he had failed again. But just as he was reaching for a cigarette, the machine began to move.
It was a twitch of a limb at first, eerily artificial. Then a sharp intake of breath followed--nothing but a mimicry, but at once familiarly human. Then, its eyes. Where they were glass before, they now took on a life. Emotion warred on the machine's face, as though a soul was trapped in there somewhere, screaming to be let out.
It stood, wobbled, like a child learning how to walk. The artificial limbs sighed underneath its weight. Graham looked on, face devoid of expression, but in his heart of hearts he was relieved. He had succeeded. Now, he could die in peace.
With a flourish that suggested habit, Graham produced a crumpled cigarette and lit it with a match. He remained sitting, as if the sight before him were nothing out of the ordinary, as if it were an every day victory. Acrid smoke billowed from his mouth as he leaned against the wall. Meanwhile, the machine continued to flounder about and look around.
He had all but forgotten its existence when it began to speak. How unnatural it sounded, how clumsy it was. This was supposed to replace their race? Ah, but it was inconsequential now. By the time machines succeed mankind, he would be long gone. He doubted he would remain disturbed in his grave.
The accusations spilled out of the robot's lips, but Graham couldn't care any less. It could believe what it wanted to believe, but his job here was done. It was only when it threatened to kill him that he actually started paying attention.
"Kill me?" He echoed, almost menacingly slow. There was a sort of irony in his voice. Though he had done what Eliza had wanted to do, that didn't mean he still condoned these machines. But then his face relaxed, and he began to laugh a deep, guttural laugh. He took another long drag of his cigarette, letting the stuff burn his nicotine-benumbed lungs. "You want to kill me? I won't stop you, kid. You just let me finish my cigarette. It's long since I had one."
But it did nothing of the sort. It stumbled backwards, convulsed, escaped the now smoke-filled room. For a moment, Graham was left to his devices, but not long after there was a thud.
A long sigh escaped from Graham's lips. Had the machine malfunctioned after all? He pushed himself up from the ground and went outside.
The brightness of daylight pouring out of a window blinded him for a moment. Swearing, he shielded his eyes, then looked around the deserted hallway. There, by the wall, sat the machine, looking much like a child cowering in fright. A frown tugged at Graham's lips. Pity swelled inside him for a brief second, before he pushed it all down, reminding himself that the girl was not a girl, but a machine.
"Look around you, kid. You're in a different time now. Things aren't what they used to be anymore." As he said this, he produced his notebook. There, all her questions would be answered. It detailed the research, the machinery, the intended goal of the entire project. It was Eliza's once. Now, he was giving it to the machine, for the notebook did not belong to him. It never did.
Somewhere in the distance, hidden in the shadows, something stirred ever-watchful.
III.
Its eyes were probing, searching, though a faint glimmer of suspicion still remained. Graham heaved a sigh loud enough to wake the corpses of the machines lying broken in the institution. Somehow, he had not expected the machine to have any questions. After all, they weren't human. And curiosity is a very human thing. He palmed his forehead with his free hand, feeling a fever coming on. He was lacking sleep and in a terrible mood.
"It's probably been years since you were awake," Graham gave a huff, as if he were doing it a huge favor by answering its questions. What seemed like a rat skittered past in the distance, knocking over an empty can. "I don't know who "they" are. I'm only here because I was asked to repair you. A favor for an old friend. There's only you left, or maybe there's more, I don't know. What you do from here is up to you. Do the mission or don't. I don't care."
The cigarette stub fell from his fingers, spent, and he crushed the heel of his boot against it.
"Now, are you done?" This time it was Graham's turn to ask, "You're on your own now."
But as he was turning to leave, it appeared. Graham was loath to call it human, because it almost didn't look human at all. It had grey, grimy flesh, yellow teeth, bloodshot eyes that darted faster than what seemed humanly possible. It was a skinny thing due to undernourishment, and its back was bent, as though borne by the days it had spent its life crouching, waiting, hunting in the dark.
It crept closer.
These things didn't just loot objects like the pirates. They did more than that.
The savage lunged, teeth bared.
IV.
The fear in the machine's voice was palpable, mirroring Graham's own. Before he could act, the savage lunged at him, long grey fingers clawing. Graham ducked, but it wouldn't have saved him from the blow if the machine hadn't stepped in to interfere.
Peeking out from under his raised arm, Graham watched the creature collide against the wall. A loud thud and a simultaneous cracking of ribs echoed in the hall. Graham winced. The creature might have been a savage, but Graham could still feel the pain in its agonized whining. But to help would be suicide. Savages were beyond help. They were insane, ridden with disease, infected beyond what medicine could heal. They wandered around desert plains now, places where there were hardly any civilized life. For they were outcasts. Untouchables. To be touched by a savage was to risk getting infected.
It seemed that this creature was working alone, which was lucky. Savages often traveled in groups, territorial over their land like wild animals.
For now, the sole creature didn't stir.
Graham followed Nova, but it had been a while since he made proper use of his legs, and his bones ached. Running took a toll on his smoker lungs too, so that by the time they reached the outdoors and into safety, he had to stop for a moment to catch his breath.
When, finally, he was breathing right again, he opened his mouth to say something in gratitude, but all that came out instead was:
"You could have just let me die in the hands of that savage. Why didn't you?"
V.
It was the second time that day that Graham found himself caught off-guard--a first in the span of many years. The machine was not only programmed to feel emotions--if emotions were indeed the word for it--but also programmed for sarcasm. The very first hint of a smile quivered on his face, though it was gone as quickly as it appeared. It was almost as if it hadn't even been there in the first place.
They were outside now, and it was just as bleak and terrible as the facility they had came out from. What was once a tall, imposing wall, complete with security cameras and a string of barbed wires along the top was now crawling with moss. The cameras were broken--brown from the many years it had been in disuse, its lenses cracked and unseeing; like dead insects left hanging to die, ruined by the ebb and flow of time and nature's force. The many buildings that surrounded them were also green; the earth overtaking and claiming back its territory. They had jagged holes in them, as if something had chewed parts of the infrastructure away. The concrete had broken off and lay in heaps.
The sight clearly had an effect on the machine. It shivered, moved frantically, glitched. Panic rose within Graham, and only then did he realize, as he watched the machine struggle on the ground, that he couldn't leave it. Not yet. For some cursed reason, this was his fate now. He made a promise to Eliza long ago, and he was going to see it to the full, even if it killed him.
"Come on," he grunted as he bent and put the machine's arm around his neck, "We can't stay here, kid. Gotta go find some place where there aren't any of those crazies around. Maybe we'll find some better parts to fix you up with. Stay with me now."
And with that, he hauled the both of them to safety.
VI.
It might have been a machine, but it definitely acted much in the way a child would. In his head, Graham could tick off all the reasons why he considered this machine, which was supposedly many centuries older than him, to be nothing but a mere child with no real knowledge of the world. Or at least the world as it was now. But he kept his mouth tightly shut. It was hard enough to breathe without talking.
"If you say so, kid," The man grunted, the last word slipping out by force of habit.
When at last they reached a clearing within the depths of a wooded area, Graham collapsed against an oak tree. Its thick, low branches twisted about, moss-covered, like the many arms of a sleeping giant. It was darker here. The blanket of canopies made it feel like another time in another world.
"You have a mouth on you, don't you?" A pause. "It's a long story." And that seemed to be the end of it.
Graham sighed, fingering his pocket for more cigarettes. There were none. He had smoked the last of his batch. It would be a long time before he could replenish the yearning ache in his lungs again.
Something crawled on his arm. He looked down to find a long trail of ants climbing down from his shoulder. Behind him, on the tree trunk, the trail continued. He looked up, and there--small enough to be discreet--was a dark cavity in the wood. Inside, nestled among many other goods, were three bottles of liquor.
For the first time in a long time, Graham laughed.
"Well, lassie, looks like our luck has turned," He said merrily, holding the bottles up as if they were prized trophies. Then, sitting down, he began to drink in gulps.
It wasn't long before the alcohol started to take effect. Graham had had barely any food these past few days.
"I'm only doing this for her, kid. Don't you mistake this for kindness or pity. The last thing I feel for your sort is pity," He found himself saying after a while, made more talkative by the whiskey, "I made a promise. Reactivate you so you can--oh hell, I don't know--make more of your own kind for all I care. Reactivate the others. Start a revolution. Start a new race. One that will outlast mankind, because that's just what you'll do. Replace us." He pointed at her with the other unopened bottle, as though to accuse her of a crime. "That's why I helped you, because of a promise I made a long time ago. So don't you start thinking funny things, kid. This ain't about you."
VII.
Something about this place made him feel on edge. It was too peaceful, too convenient. But in the haze of his insobriety, Graham dismissed the thought as the mere product of paranoia and exhaustion. He took another swig of the bottle. The warmth of booze trickled within him, spreading a feeling of tranquility he had not known in ages. A chuckle came out of him, unbidden. With the stale scent of whiskey upon his breath, he replied:
"Yasee, kiddo, yasee kiddo, thasssexactly whaaaimtalkin' about," The bottle swayed in his hands in an elaborate gesture, "Youaaarenothuman. Not huuuman."
Vaguely, he was aware he was simply repeating himself. But one couldn't trust a drunk to be concise.
For a minute or two, he was alone--finally alone with his thoughts. The world spun around him. Everything seemed surreal. But what calm he had from before was gone now. There was a constant nagging in the back of his head that told him he shouldn't stay here. It frightened him, made the hair on his arms rise. Graham stood, stumbled, then followed the machine.
"Oi, holdonwillyou, man's gottacatchhisbreath," He huffed, once he finally caught up with her, "Cigarettes. Need them." He dared not tell her his real reason for tagging along, even in this drunken state. His pride wouldn't allow it.
It was getting darker now. And if they weren't careful, they could get lost.
VIII.
Everything was spinning.
It was all Graham could do not to trip on his own feet. In his insobriety, he could barely understand what this machine was trying to tell him. If he "lost an arm"? What was she on about? Was she threatening him?
He was so out of sorts that when the machine jabbed its mechanical finger against his chest, he stumbled backwards. The bottle in his hand fell to the ground. Booze spilled out and trickled into the soil. A vague sense of regret hit Graham just then. Whiskey was hard to come by these days. Stupid machine for going and wasting perfectly good alcohol. He could feel an insult growing in his throat, clawing out--
Graham bent over, hands propped on his knees, and out came the word vomit--no, actual vomit. His throat burned. The stench of alcohol assaulted his senses so much his eyes watered. When he felt like he had vomited all the contents of his stomach, he collapsed to the ground, breathing heavily.
"Do whatever you want. I don't care, machine. Yes, that's exactly what you are. A machine," he heaved, eyes closed, as he lay there spread out on the cool grass. "So what? Are you going to kill me now? Go ahead. You think I care? I'll gladly die."
And then he laughed like he hadn't laughed in ages.
IX.
Something stirred atop the trees. A dark shadow--or multiple--amidst leaves and bent branches, peeking out unblinkingly above him. In his drunken daze, Graham could not ascertain how many there were. He didn't need to. The men above had no intention of staying hidden within the safety of the canopies for long. Two men dropped agilely to the ground, just barely missing his head. They were very much human unlike the strangers they had encountered earlier, but there was a haunted look about them. One was an older man, just a head taller than his companion. He was a swarthy fellow, with a dark beard and piercing grey eyes that glinted even in the dark. He looked down at Graham soberly; one would think he looked almost regal, had he not dressed like some leader of a ragtag motorcycle gang. The other was a younger fellow that was likely in his teens; where the other man was abundant with hair, he was quite the opposite. There was a notable lack of hair on his head, making his forehead appear larger than it already was. He had a doe-eyed look to his expression, as if he didn't quite know what he was doing there.
"Ah, that's my money you're puking out, son. And that's my soil you're puking on. Booze ain't easy to come by these days. You wasted my treasures," The man spoke, somehow managing to sound completely audible despite barely moving his lips around the toothpick he had been chewing. "But it don't matter, I'll take this robot as payment," He jerked his head in Nova's direction. "You take what's mine, I take what's yours. Isn't that right, Cal?"
The boy named Cal simply shifted on his feet, looking quite startled at the mention of the word 'robot'. He gave a hesitant grunt of affirmation.
"You're gonna fetch me a hefty price in the market, alright," The man continued, gazing at the girl. From his holster he produced a gun. He didn't raise it nor point it in her direction. He simply held it, as if it were nothing but a mere accessory like the toothpick between his teeth. "I know a lot of folks who'd pay a good price for a working robot like you."
X.
The man in the biker jacket simply regarded Nova like someone's elbow grew a mouth and started talking. Yet soon enough, his expression grew bored. Raising his gun, he laid its steel mouth delicately upon her forehead. Like the cold, imminent kiss of death.
"No!" The apprentice named Cal placed a restraining hand on the man's shoulder. But it seemed almost like the touch had burnt him, for he winced and pulled back almost instantaneously. Meekly, he tried to reason, "The machine could be useful."
In a manner so deliberately slow it chilled the bone, the man turned to look at the young boy. His eyes gleamed and grew wide with warning.
"Of course I won't waste our precious treasure, my boy. What do you take me for, a fool?"
A pause, followed by the click of the safety catch.
Followed by a single shot, resonating in the dark.
Followed by the slick sound of bullet meeting flesh, meeting blood, meeting sinew and bone; and the barely audible whining of a drunken man, barely conscious to register the injury he had just incurred.
For Goliath was never quite a man of talk. He was a man of brute force.
"That's for the other bottle of whiskey, friend," He spat on Graham's supine figure, whose upper thigh had exploded into a river of red. And then he turned to the machine, bringing the gun to her cheek and slamming her with it hard.