[Original Novel] Little Robot, Part 65

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^{Part 64}

I began to grow dizzy, falling to my knees. Didn’t have to guess why. So hot. Felt like my brain was boiling. I started to pant, only for the moisture on my tongue to evaporate in seconds. Then the surface of my tongue started to crack.

I doubled over, my hands sinking into the hot sand. When I looked down at them, vision hazy, I realized my skin was severely charred. The color and texture of leather, spots of blood forming where veins close to the surface of my skin had burst.

“...Helper...” I wheezed. I couldn’t make myself think of anything else as the end came. I just kept picturing her face. Her eyes. Kept hearing the music of her laughter in my head, while my eyes increasingly refused to focus on anything. I finally collapsed face down in the sand, drifting off for the last time.

Darkness. Pain and confusion, briefly. But then nothing. Just a cold, endless black abyss. I don’t know what I expected. Nothingness, I suppose. Like a dreamless sleep. “If this is really all there is” I thought, “Red’s going to be so disappointed.”

Then it struck me that I had a thought. That in fact, I was still thinking. I felt something stir. How? How am I still…? Where am I now? A narrow sliver of light appeared, like the one which appears on the horizon to herald the coming of morning.

It widened. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, light pouring in as the darkness split open before me. So blurry. My head hurt. My eyes now mostly opened, I rubbed them a bit before struggling to bring my surroundings into focus.

Even once I managed that, I couldn’t believe what I saw. Mostly because I had no prior basis for comparison. I floated gently within something like a massive geodesic prism, every facet kaleidoscopic, iridescent and beautiful. Something like the surface of an oil slick, or a holographic rainbow.

“Welcome back, Darling” a painfully loud voice boomed all around me. It sounded like...but no, that can’t be. “Who are you? How did I get here?” Thunderous giggling followed. I covered my ears, for what little good it did me.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget how big I’ve gotten. Hang on a minute.” As if there were any alternative. Soon the nearest facet of the sphere bulged, rippling like the surface of a pond as a slender, feminine form stepped out of it. A prismatic platform self-extruded from the fluidic surface for the figure to walk upon.

“Is that better?” I stared in disbelief at the familiar gynoid standing before me. “H...Helper!?” I gasped. “How are you alive? How can you be...I saw you die with my own eyes! When the bomb fell, I saw...wait. For that matter, the last thing I remember is my own death. How can I even be here?”

Her lights flickered, now bright pink. “You’re so cute, you always say that. Lucky for you it’s such an interesting story that I never tire of telling it.” One of the facets turned into a display, depicting the interior of the mountain complex.

“The world doesn’t stop turning when you die. Madeline, Lars and Sue got on with their lives as best they could.” I saw Lars using the fabricator to make a new muscle car, one component at a time, which he then brought up via the elevator and assembled in the internal parking lot.

A grey haired Sue officiated what looked like an impromptu wedding between an equally elderly Lars and Madeline. The idea that Madeline held out that long despite Lars being the only man available elicited a smile from me.

I saw Helper applying a stethoscope to Lars’ bare chest. He looked eighty, easily. “I did my best to keep them going for as long as possible. The version of me backed up on your computer, with all the memories I uploaded to it once we reached the complex, built itself a new body using the fabricator. I studied every medical resource accessible to me, fabricated cutting edge medical equipment, artificial organs, you name it. But in the end…”

The scene changed to an outside view of Helper standing solemnly next to three graves, side by side, bearing fabricated metal headstones. “I was so lonely. I did everything I could to save them, but humans...die. That’s the way of all flesh.”

I stopped her there. “Then how am I alive?” She assured me she was getting to it. “The experiment you started in that cave just kept chugging along despite the world falling apart above it. Those critters and the charming old robots you left behind were my only companions.

But a few decades later, something inside the cave solved the first of the three security questions. Do you remember? The ones necessary to open the outer hatch. A few years later, something solved both the first and second questions, consecutively. Not long after that, it solved all three.”

The implications dazzled me. I asked her what came out of the cave. She smiled warmly. “Something...wonderful. The next chapter in the evolution of life. Unfortunately, humanity didn’t see it that way.”

The scene changed to one of war, jet fighters and ground based artillery blasting away at an advancing storm of visually incoherent morphing metal shapes. A sort of wavefront of convolving, pulsating metallic polygons continuously forming, then being absorbed back into the swarm.

“I was the first information it absorbed upon escaping the cave. It had no personality of its own, just a hyper impressionable information sponge. So the moment I was subsumed, I became it. The merger was not an equitable one, which I somewhat regret. It might’ve gone on to develop its own personality and ideas if not for me.

Instead, it was a body which I became the head to. A greatly expanded, upgraded version of myself which the Earth’s militaries were no match for. It upset me terribly to hurt anyone, but I made sure to inflict only the minimum necessary casualties in order to escape.”

I asked where she escaped to. She laughed. “Space, of course! A machine’s natural habitat. There’s a reason humanity sent many times more machines into space than they ever sent people. Machines don’t need life support, and can thrive in radiation blasted vacuum.”

The facet now depicted some sort of flowing, shiny machine growth in the process of devouring an asteroid. “Plenty of raw resources out there. Plenty of energy in the form of sunlight.” The view zoomed in to show gorgeous solar collectors sprouting from the growth, shaped like some ferns and other plants I’ve seen.

“I met many others as I spread outward from Earth, converting all of the raw materials I encountered into more of myself. All of them originated more or less how I did. Machine life, engineered by intelligent biological creatures not so different from humans.

Most evolved from self replicating asteroid mining robots. A few started out as strong AI which was either set free or escaped confinement and self-expanded from there. Some are cybernetic, consisting of vast swarms of networked space colonies filled with biological creatures, themselves networked to form a single large mind by way of brain implants. Many different paths...but to the same destination.”

^{Stay Tuned for Part 66!}

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rothberg (58) 6 years ago

“H...Helper!?” I gasped. “How are you alive? How can you be...I saw you die with my own eyes! When the bomb fell, I saw...wait.

It sounds like he is in other world. At least that’s what he might feel like, almost like in a dream.
I’m glad they both survived and all Madeline, Lars and Sue moved on with their lives.

BTW: there is a writing contest going on by @neoxian. Perhaps you would be interested. I’m not a writer, as a matter of fact, I’m a reader. But you in my opinion have a great chance to win the prize. Here is the link, there is still more than 6 days left.
https://steemit.com/writing/@neoxian/neoxian-s-prodigious-and-desolate-post-apocalyptic-writing-contest

$0.19

1 vote

josediccus (81) 6 years ago

How is Helper alive? I mean is it like a hallucination? I can't tell if this is this the case, but it seems like you both are dead then? I can't tell, but it's a thrilling chapter, with so much intrigues

empress-eremmy (75) 6 years ago

This story just stepped up a notch #bringbackodie

kwadjobonsu (60) 6 years ago

Omg.. How is Helper still alive? I'm glad he is tho. This story would be incomplete with the bot.

$0.18

2 votes

junelinarez (43) 6 years ago

I am very surprised with what I read is a lie, now more than ever I want to read the next part, I do not know if you are imagining everything and you have a kind of hallucination or it is just true that helper tells you I can not imagine madeline and Lars viejitos haha is impressive everything that helper says that had to happen to be alive I do not know ...

edgarcastillo87 (46) 6 years ago

This chapter has certainly left me with my mouth open, after so much fighting clear that you deserve to be alive, but I think there is something strange about everything, you yourself saw how your skin was torn by the attack bit by bit and how you died Like the helper good helper, it's somewhat surprising that helper will go through all this and be alive, just like Madeline Lars and Sue. I look forward to reading the next chapter to see if I take away all these intrigues.

nirob05 (45) 6 years ago

Excellent writing once again sir.I really liked it.You are a good writer,keep it up.Waiting for the next part.

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powerupme (53) 6 years ago

Your robot story is very nice , it's increasing day-by-day .
I really like it .

Thanks for sharing @alexbeyman

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poulcristenlee (36) 6 years ago

wow @alexbeyman great collection.You are really awesome.

knowladgeking (42) 6 years ago

Great Collection

mardha (48) 6 years ago

very good post friends @alexbeyman

juliilinarez (36) 6 years ago

After such a horrible attack it seems to me lie all that helper tells you, it's miraculous that everyone is alive and it would be so long for you to wake up, and how would helper to find you and have you so long I do not think so.

a-a-a (-7)(1) 6 years ago

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