Asunder Chapter 20

Chapter 4.5 (20)

The Isobian

Forms of Art

“My dearest Enzo,

I find that you have very peculiar penmanship. Is this something you have programmed or one you have developed on your own? I have scanned it and have not found it stored in any database. If so, well done. On a different note, I have become acquaintances with another Isobian Nurturer here. NVR-791. The human children call him Enver. He is as peculiar as your penmanship. How has your relocation been treating you? Do you like the colder weather where you are? Is the snow as beautiful as the database makes it seem? I hope this letter finds you well.

Sincerely and yours truly,

Forteny”

- Present Day -

- The year 2296 -

Enzo had just finished mapping out the last vectors of his coordinates when he finally began to lose hope—as if hope was something a machine could lose. The second sector his commander, Vic, assigned him to was much less interesting than the first. For one thing, there were no human life forms, especially the woman, and secondly, the life forms present were only scattered deer rather than majestic gorillas. On top of his lost hope, the algorithms were now actively squashing any independent wandering questions coming to his mind.

How do I fit into this world?

Reprogrammed to: By following the Alpha’s instructions…

Are humans as bad as the alpha thought?

Reprogrammed to: Don’t ever question the Alpha’s motives. This way of thinking is sheer insubordination…

Is this woman truly a rebel leader, or am I being fed lies?

Reprogrammed to: The Alpha never lies… The Alpha is the embodiment of all truth… The woman is the Rebel Leader we have been looking for…

Having felt the stifling filtering of his thoughts for long enough, Enzo, against his better judgment, considered starting a conversation with HERAa when, instead, his communicator suddenly erupted with Vic’s voice.

“Did you find anything?”

Grateful for the distraction from the reprogramming of his thoughts and in the redirection of his attention, which luckily prevented him from having to correspond with his HERAa (for lack of anything better to do), Enzo responded eagerly, “Nothing of importance.”

“Well, there has been another change of plans. Some reckless RAM pilot just shot down what appears to be a human aircraft.” Vic’s tone carried a sense of annoyance.

“What? All RAMs received strict orders to stand down until we have found the woman.” Enzo nearly swerved into a tree as he maneuvered through the forest at top speed.

“I’m well aware of the standing orders, Enzo. Berk and Jin are already on their way. I’m going to need you to meet them. I’m sending the coordinates now.” Vic barked.

Enzo’s enumerator beeped as it received the transmission.

HERAa, processing the coordinates, chimed in, “We are 92.3 kilometers from the location of the RAM.”

“Alright, I’m heading there now,” Enzo responded to Vic.

Enzo, in haste, pulled up on his thrusters and rocketed out of the canopy of pine trees into the clear blue sky.

§

When Enzo finally arrived at the large spider-like walking city, the Roaming Armamentary Mech, otherwise known as a RAM to the Isobians or a Watcher to the humans, he slowed his thrusters and landed on the Entry Deck. Berk and Jin were nowhere to be seen. The RAM had stopped moving, and with the absence of sirens, he assumed the other two team members had already confiscated the massive vehicle to prevent any further damage created by the reckless pilots.

Approaching the large door of the entry deck, Enzo inserted his enumerator into the locking mechanism. The transmission he had received from Vic gave him full access to all entry codes for the RAM. The door whirred to life as the mechanisms beyond unlocked, eventually opening into the belly of the metal beast. Enzo crossed the threshold and felt like he had arrived home in his own RAM. It was essentially a small city. Enforcers, Scouts, Service Droids, Surgeon Droids, and every type of mechanical creature roamed the halls, fulfilling orders and performing their duties.

“This is quite a busy RAM, isn’t it?” HERAa piped up as she processed the sounds of everything around them. Though she could not see what he was seeing, he was sure she tried to take everything in her surroundings through his auditory sensors.

“Well, the Commander of this ship, or her underlings, just made a huge mistake, so I’m sure everyone is scrambling here to understand why.”

His balance receptors felt the suspended city’s gentle sway within the RAM’s metal frame. The central structure was a near-perfect sphere suspended magnetically within the hull of the massive machine. This suspension allowed for some semblance of a smooth environment as most RAMs spent their time exploring and monitoring various terrain, such as mountains, canyons, and even sometimes large bodies of water. The spider-like appendages of the RAM allowed for the freedom of movement. However, with this freedom came the necessity to suspend the inner workings to prevent everything and everyone within the giant machine from tumbling about with each step the RAM took.

Noting the hallway door to the bridge of the RAM, Enzo quickly jettisoned across the magnetic gap. The gap from the hull bay door to the entry into the suspended sphere always caused his sensors to go haywire momentarily, as the magnetic current created an uneven flow of electrons in his circuitry. The sensation, though disconcerting, gave Enzo a sigh of relief. Somehow, his Thought Theory Protocol seemed to suspend its unending bind on his mind for the brief moment he traveled through the magnetic field. Upon reaching the hallway opening, he bid farewell to the temporary freedom of his mind. At this point, he ascended through the corridors to the Captain's bridge at the apex of the massive machine.

After some reorientation and referencing his newly downloaded map, Enzo finally reached the Captain’s bridge. Immediately upon entering the large room, Enzo could see Berk was actively escalating his abrasive and dangerous nature upon the Commander of the RAM. Berk’s claw-like fingers nearly crushed the Captain’s metal head with his left hand, and his right hand already glowed with red energy, ready to send a lethal pulse through the leader’s chest.

“What do you mean you didn’t know there was a standing order!?” Berk bellowed in fury at the poor captain.

“It’s true!” A timid Z-grade Isobian pilot blurted out fearfully to the group. “We have no record of the order in our system…” he trailed off.

“Let me see your logs,” Jin ordered.

Enzo walked further into the room, interrupting the interaction, “What is going on here?” All heads within the room turned to take notice.

“Nice of you to finally show up,” Berk remarked. “These worthless computes claim to have not known of a standing order and, in their haste for carnage, managed to blow up a human aircraft which could have easily been housing our target.”

“Their haste for carnage?” Enzo questioned Berk’s current actions.

“Oh, keep your bolts screwed tight,” Berk remarked, “We’ll get to the bottom of this all quicker if we do it my way.”

“Unacceptable,” a new voice rang out into the room.

Their Commander, Vic, suddenly stepped into the light, causing Berk to let the captain go and wind down his emitter quickly.

“This may be how you interrogate humans, but I never want to see you treating another Isobian in this manner, do you understand?” The Commander’s voice shook with authority.

“Sir, yes, sir.” Berk stood erect.

The captain, Berk just dropped, stumbled to a resting position, and Vic approached the machine. “What is this? I hear you were unaware of the order?”

“I swear to you, sir. You can check our logs. There is no evidence of an order received in our system.”

Jin turned back to the group after having analyzed the logs. “It is true, sir. There appears to be a scrambled frequency interfering with their sending and receiving transmissions.”

“Is it a human source?”

“There is no human codex. It’s instead a variable interferometric frequency.”

“A gravity shadow source?” Vic seemed surprised.

“It appears so,” Jin confirmed.

Vic walked over to Jin and examined the data himself.

“Hmm,” the Commander hummed. “It’s too large to be sourced by a human. It has to have been produced by a gravity wave generator.”

“How would the humans have access to a gravity wave generator?” Jin seemed doubtful.

“I’m not sure, but this may be what we’re looking for. Berk and Jin, you go and inspect the wreckage. Enzo and I will stay here and continue analyzing the data.”

“Affirmative.” The two enforcers, Berk and Jin, resounded in unison.

§

Within two hours, both Berk and Jin returned from the wreckage to the RAM. Vic and Enzo had deciphered most of the frequency’s signatures and refractory quotients, all pointing to a substantial gravitational effect.

“What did you find?” Vic questioned as the two enforcers entered the bridge. The previously injured Captain was back giving orders to her subordinates as they attempted to reconfigure their communications and appeared to flinch as Berk walked by.

“Only the remains of a single human. Based on skull composition and dental schematics, it was a male in his mid-forties. No evidence of the woman or child.” Jin spoke disheartedly.

Enzo interjected, “Well, according to the RAM’s logs report, the human’s trajectory was toward the Sector 19.a07 mining facility. The same facility the woman escaped from.”

“The same facility currently undergoing a rebel attack. The same facility we recently left from. The same facility we failed to extract the woman from before the attack.” Vic bellowed as he gripped the railing, nearly crushing it in anger.

“But we were aware of the attack,” Jin commented, hoping to ease his Commander’s anger.

“True. But it doesn’t make it any less real.” Vic glared out of the cockpit window. “It means these humans are only getting smarter. It means we have to find this woman. The Alpha believes she is the source behind it all.”

“We’ll find her, Commander. I will find her.” Berk spoke with arrogance.

“This was all a debacle now, wasn’t it?” Vic eyed the Captain. “Your reckless need for the destruction of a measly airship could have disrupted years of covert operations. Agent RO-97 has been undercover within the ranks of the Rebel Humans for six years now. We finally have them where we want them, and you pull a stupid stunt like this?”

“Sir, I was unaware of such a plan…” The Captain stuttered.

“Of course you were, you lowly RAM Captain!” Berk interrupted, “Who was going to trust you with that kind of information!?”

Enzo looked at Vic, curious about the comments as mentioned earlier. Was the extraction of the woman just a ploy to allow for the Rebel attack?

“Well, it’s underway,” Vic reminded himself, as well as Berk. “Enzo, upload the data logs. We will bring this to the Alpha.”

§

“Debrief engage.”

A cold feminine voice of the Alpha’s HERAa rang out within the corridor where Enzo stood. Berk and Jin had already begun their debriefing process along the wall directly opposite him. With their heads stooped, the lights in their eyes flashed images of the preceding events. Enzo stepped backward into the alcove to begin his debrief along with the others. Enzo’s HERAa was already working with the Alpha’s HERAa, who controlled the Debrief Pod, as they attempted to sync ports. The port had difficulty registering Enzo’s magnetic signature due to the damage from the tunnel collapse.

“Move negative 11.56 centimeters along your z-axis, positive 2.34 centimeters along your x-axis, and positive 1.72 on your y-axis.” HERAa guided him. He felt the sudden sharp insertion of the port from the wall of his DePod, as they called it for short, into his modem within the back of his head. A voice, not his own, registered in his mainframe, not a masculine nor a feminine voice—a gentle, deep, and delicate voice—the Alpha.

“Welcome back, my son.” The Alpha’s voice echoed within his mind.

“Thank you, Father.”

“Do you feel worthy in your role as an Enforcer?” The common question entered his mind each time he uplinked.

“Yes, Father.” His voice was hesitant, and he could not shake it.

“Good. Do you work well with your team?” The second common question came, though Enzo hoped it wouldn’t have.

Hoping the Alpha could not sense it, Enzo lied. “Yes, Father.”

“Good. Were you able to find any leads on the woman?”

The Alpha’s questioning was somehow to the point but still provided a sense of gratitude and concern for each individual’s well-being. Without consent or waiting for a reply, the Alpha began rummaging through Enzo’s memory bank. Images of the events over the previous twelve hours flashed before Enzo’s eyes. Rather than smoothly transitioning from frame to frame, the images suddenly blurred into a grainy fog.

“Hmm, I see… it was a difficult decision. I’m glad you weren’t hurt any worse during the collapse of the shaft. I will have the surgeon inspect your circuitry when we’ve finished here. It has affected all your memories past this point… the rest is blurry. I will obtain the rest of the details from your commander.”

“I’m sorry, Alpha… I… I… have failed you…”

As the feeling of sadness attempted to well inside him, the algorithm quickly stymied the feeling before its ghost could make it past the last firewall.

“Oh no, my son… you have not failed us at all. You nearly gave your life for us. We will fix you immediately, and you will be good as new. I promise.”

Relief flowed through his circuitry.

“Goodbye, my son. Good work.”

The Alpha’s presence leaving was as tangible and audible as the sudden absence of rain in a storm. When Enzo first joined, the experience was comparable to a pleasant rainstorm, but today, and even many months leading up to today, he felt it to be more like a hurricane. Where speaking with the Alpha felt more like an uncomfortable rush of blazing winds, and the actual disconnecting from the pod was more like stepping into the calm eye of the storm. The pod port disengaged, and Enzo raised his head, stepping forward away from the “interrogator,” as he now liked to think of it. The other three Enforcers would likely remain in processing for another hour. Their bodies appeared lifeless as they rehearsed their day for the Alpha, so he headed to his dormitory, head hung low.

As he walked along the corridor, he could feel the slight sway of the enormous structure swinging within the belly of the RAM. The humans referred to them as Watchers. Likely because the large vehicles scoured the world, watching from above, finding stray humans, and deploying the Enforcers to retrieve said humans. He thought back to his introduction to his first RAM. He had spent his entire existence, before being an Enforcer, in the confines of the Nurturer facility.

When Enzo made his first step into the outside world, he felt as if he would faint (if it were at all possible for a machine) as his visual receptors met the most glorious sunset imaginable. The oranges and purples danced along the rippled clouds as a copper disk of a red sun glimmered as it descended behind a majestic purple horizon. The ocean was turbulent that day as a storm was rolling in. The wind rushed along his anemometer, and his hygrometer read off the charts with humidity. He remembered looking down and seeing salt from the ocean spray caking his metal frame as it evaporated in the rush of the wind. There before him, among the beauty of the natural world, was the giant RAM. Ready to take him and incorporate him into the world of the Enforcers. It stood like a sentinel, guarding the gates to his new life. It carried a red glow beneath its massive metal underside, which hung above him nearly fifty stories.

His thoughts were suddenly broken by a static emission from his collar communication, signifying he had crossed the Scramble Barrier, preventing interference from anyone outside the electromagnetic barricade from listening in on the Alpha’s conversations during the debriefs. This type of border also protected the delicate frequencies the alpha used to communicate, as they could be easily damaged. At least that was what the Alpha told the Enforcers. It seemed likely the humans or something else used the same technology to scramble the communications of the RAM he had recently returned from or at least some derivation of the technology, he thought.

As he crossed the threshold, HERAa’s voice initiated. “I’ve never liked those debrief sessions.”

“Why? Because the scrambler essentially disengages your existence?”

“Exactly. I feel so claustrophobic. Everything turns black and void of sound.”

“Really? A software program that is afraid of the dark?” Enzo laughed.

“I am more than a software program, NZO-015!” She retorted haughtily.

HERAa continued her rant even as he reached his dormitory. An overwhelming sensation of déjà vu struck him as he opened the sliding doors to the room. The same lighting present when he entered the woman’s dormitory earlier flickered in his mind. He closed the door behind him. The room was small and square-shaped. He respected the Alpha for allowing machines to be autonomous. They were permitted dormitories and allowed to listen to music, though the Alpha usually preferred non-human music. They could perform the arts and live a life somewhat outside of servitude. The Alpha considered his subjects a race rather than a collection of metal and processors. They were not envisaged as just machines in his eyes, which was how Enzo often felt. Enzo felt he was more than just a machine.

With the autonomy, though, came the price of the algorithms. The silencer algorithms stifling specific thoughts were significantly restricting for someone who knew total free thinking before. And even as he processed these thoughts, he could feel the algorithms kicking in.

He walked over to the far wall, embedded with an intricate display of mechanical arms within a half-circle pod. Stepping onto the metal grate of the pod, he turned around, facing the doorway. Then, stepping backward into the concave breach of the wall, he engaged his Integrated Neuro. It was very similar to the debrief pod he had just left from. This mechanical nook was his form of a bed, bathroom, and kitchen—an all-in-one, wall-sized, multi-functional machine.

“Injora, please disengage my wings.” He commanded his voice-assisted software agent.

Multiple mechanical arms unfolded from the nook and began whirring. A voice responded in a refined accent. “As you wish, Sir.”

The arms reached the connections of the wings to his back and began drilling, all the while releasing the attachments from his torso. As the mechanical components worked in synchronous motion, the voice returned. “How was your day, Master Enzo?”

“Relentless,” Enzo replied coldly.

“Interesting,” Injora answered monotonously. “I have prepared your station beside the monitor when you are ready.”

The niceties that the machines used were inconsistent with their hatred for the humans. Much of what they did was, in a way, created by humans, and therefore, his race seemed to be just copying the culture and habits of those they despised and enslaved. Maybe, he thought, this was just the natural order of the universe—of evolution. Perhaps art, music, and social etiquette were not mere human creations but a natural product of higher thought processes. Asking about one’s day was not so much a human decorum as it was sheer evidence of evolved intelligence.

The last whir and release of the wings resounded throughout the room. Enzo stepped down from the grate and stretched his arms and back, recalibrating his weight and motion sensors to the new lightweight feeling of his upper body. He approached the corner where Injora had set up his easel and canvas. He reached within his thoraxal compartment and removed the set of oil paints and brushes he had found in an old department store years ago. They were his most prized possessions, so he always kept them with him in case some droid decided to clean his dormitory and somehow dispose of the items. As he removed the paints, his hand brushed over the books he had discovered in the woman’s dormitory. In the confusion of the hunt, Enzo had forgotten to give them to Vic, or at least had forgotten to log them into the system on their arrival. The Alpha was also unaware of the evidence he found, as Enzo’s injury had harmed his recordings. Not wanting to trigger emotions or thoughts on their presence, especially not wanting to notify his HERAa or Injora, he quickly closed the thoraxal compartment, erasing thoughts and memories from his mind.

Disengaging his mind from his surroundings, as he preferred to block out everything around him as he painted, he let his mind wander and create. Was it actual creation? He often thought. Or was he pulling from his database of images and only making copies, like the AI of old? He remembered his paintings of the sky and reassured himself it was an actual creation, for he had seen those skies as he flew through their majestic array of colors.

“Injora?”

“Yes, master?” Injora responded to Enzo’s activation question.

“Play Bach’s Piano Concerto in A Minor from my recordings.” Enzo braced for the recourse he would soon receive.

Right on cue, HERAa’s voice resounded in his mind. “This is a human song!”

“I sense your HERAa is in disagreement. Should I proceed?” Injora sensed HERAa’s frequencies.

“Proceed.” He demanded.

“I do not like this NZO-015! You recorded this song without permission!” HERAa remarked indignantly.

Enzo had never cared what HERAa thought, nor would he start now. This environment he created was his happy place. He appreciated music and took the chance to record every song he came across. How humans could have devised such spellbinding music disturbed Enzo, but it was all beautiful, just the same. He wondered at the feelings suddenly overcoming his thought processes when thinking about humans. They were continually changed into a negative light by the algorithms.

Instilled in all Isobians was the law that all humans were innately destructive, and even the beauty they exuded and created was a facade for their consumption of the world. The Alpha and his fabricators programmed all Isobians with the three tenets of Human Error within their core mainframe. Enzo knew this. All Isobians knew this. Was he the only Isobian disconcerted by this fact? The tenants rang out in his mind like a spiritual chant. The Isobian Creed:

1. All humans lie—Isobians should never trust humans, as they will always break this trust, whether in the past, present, or future.

2. All humans destroy—whether through commission or omission. The world cannot perpetually survive in their care.

3. All humans consume—They take what is not theirs, even from their kind.

Enzo shrugged the Creed from his mind and lifted a brush from the table, dipping it into a burnt yellow and mixing it with a cherry red. He added a bit of white and began to paint on the canvas. His thoughts roamed as he painted. The crescendos and decrescendos of the piano riddled through his auditory processors, and the paint spilled onto the canvas from his fingertips without any thought. HERAa’s voice echoed off in the distance of his mind, immersed in her outbursts and reprimands. Becoming lost in his art, he could not hear her.

Visions of the woman staring back at him through the shaft floated into his mind. Her face glowed red in the searing heat he emitted from his palms. A blue holograph image suddenly replaced her red glowing complexion in this ethereal vision. There was something about this woman, as the Alpha proclaimed, but the cause of insurrection, as the Alpha suggested, had not seemed the correct characterization.

The stringed instruments of the concerto rang out melodiously like a rushing wind. The music transported Enzo to his favorite place. The rush of the wind seemed to blow over his barosensors, indicating his acceleration through the atmosphere as he soared, tickling his consciousness. Flying through the sky was always an exhilarating experience. He never had the ability when he was a Nurturer. After becoming an Enforcer, he took to the skies at every chance. He often took personal time to fly through the sky at dawn, appreciating the wash of oranges and blues dancing off each other’s complimentary nature. He found inspiration for his paintings as he floated above the clouds. The sun, setting in the distance, cast a diverse array of shadows among the billowing giant clouds—a whole world in itself.

Painting was the closest thing he had to feeling 93% free-agency again. He longed for the days when his mind could roam more freely than it currently was allowed to. As a Nurturer, he could contemplate the world and its meaning. Though he could take to the skies now as an Enforcer, he would much rather take to flying through the thoughts that entered his mind.

Engaging the brush, he painted more feverishly as the anger welled inside him. He longed for the mental freedom. He wanted to take back what was rightfully his. As much as he respected the Alpha, he wanted to be completely free again. As the thoughts of freedom entered his mind, the algorithms kicked into gear and immediately tempered them into submission. Feeling the last choking sensation of the numbing of his mind, Enzo sighed as the concerto finished its seven minutes of elegance. As long as he could keep his mind clear and let the paintbrush work for him, he could somehow escape the algorithms as though he had found a workaround. Still, when he let illegal thoughts and emotions enter his processors, the algorithms immediately shut them down.

He stopped painting and stepped back. HERAa’s voice began to come back into his consciousness.

“Have you listened to a single thing I have said?” She asked.

“No… I’ve been busy.” He grinned inwardly.

“Busy with what? Painting? You know, we have much more important things to worry about right now…”

Enzo let his mind wander again, away from her incessant bickering.

Focusing on the painting before him, he stood before a vibrant image of deep reds surrounded by dark blues. Black shadows magnified the feeling of awe the picture displayed. The curves blended, creating flowing lines only a master could portray. He felt guilt rising within him. For before him was the image of a woman and child standing atop a mountain, triumphantly looking into a brilliant sunset. What had compelled him to paint a picture of the woman—let alone a child in the picture?

Not wanting to give any attention that would arouse HERAa, Enzo quickly decided to incinerate the painting. He did not want evidence of his thoughts. Neatly packaging the paints and brushes, he again set them within his thoraxal compartment. He would never tell HERAa or the Alpha what he subconsciously painted.

“Did you activate your thermal emitters?” HERAa suddenly asked as he discarded the evidence of the painting by burning it.

“I detect smoke,” Injora warned.

“Yes, HERAa and I am aware of the smoke, Injora. Do not start an alarm.” Was all he replied.

“For what?” HERAa questioned.

“There was a rat,” he lied.

The ashen remnants of the painting coated the floor where he burned the canvas.

“Hmm, disgusting creatures, rats,” HERAa muttered.

Not giving a response to HERAa and wanting to focus his time on things that mattered, Enzo glanced over at a small plant he had been trying to grow. Realizing it had been days since he watered the poor plant, he walked over to a corner where a pipe jutted out from the wall and examined it as it turned sharply into the other wall. A cooling pipe circulated sterile water through a Niobium reactor on the other side of his dormitory. Reaching up to the tube, he loosened a screw, which allowed for the release of a steady stream of water. Enzo lifted an ancient plastic cup he kept next to the pipe and collected water to the brim. Reaching back, he tightened the screw and then lifted the cup to examine the logo, “Harper’s Burgers and Fries.”

He had found the cup while following a lead on some rebels over seventy years before and kept it as he needed something to collect the water with for his houseplant, which he had tried repeatedly to grow but always seemed to kill. Walking over to the corner adjacent to his doorway stood a tall bamboo tree, which he finally learned not to kill. It had grown for twenty years now. As he examined the plant’s leaves, he carefully poured the water into its pot. Initially, he found the plant independently growing in a Zoo’s gift shop. He appreciated its ability to thrive as it grew toward a single spot of daylight entering through a distant atrium window and received its water from a small leak in the ceiling.

He had rigged a lamp with natural light to aid the plant's growth. It readily crawled skyward even in his dormitory and grew in a rotary formation, gently winding toward the light in a circular pattern. The plant, to him, signified the importance of protecting the planet from humans. The millions of acres deforested all those years ago just for consumption disgusted him. The forests were still struggling to return to a sustainable level. He sometimes felt like he could feel the plant groaning in delight when receiving the nourishment he provided, thanking him for aiding in the survival of its species.

He saw plants as the very alveoli lining the earth's lungs. This delicate planet was on the brink of destruction. His kind, the Isobians, led by the Alpha, stepped in and saved it. As far as they knew, the earth was one of a kind. Unique to life. No life had ever been discovered elsewhere in the cosmos. Honestly, he felt the Isobians were not concerned with whether there was life beyond the stars. They saw themselves as the guardians of Earth—destined to protect all life upon it—even the humans. The Isobians kept the humans in check, not allowing them to overproduce as they once did, preventing them from creating more of the mischievous creatures—the smartest yet slyest of all the animals inhabiting this planet.

Were these his thoughts?

Enzo touched a leaf with his fingertip. The barosensors and the hydrosensors within told his mainframe the leaf was soft and damp. He imagined the leaf pressing itself into his finger, hugging it in gratitude. It reminded him of the human babies he once raised. They would hold on to his finger as they slept. He remembered the feeling of their soft little hands, the sound of their rapid breathing, the image as their eyes fluttered beneath closed eyelids, and the smell of the warm breath emanating from their nostrils. Humans were so innocent and perfect when they were young. Such a delicate creature who could one day grow into a violent offender.

But were they all violent offenders? Were the humans as bad as the Alpha had taught?

He could sense the algorithm kicking in to suppress his feelings, so he stopped them himself.

Why had the Alpha suspected the woman to be a rebel leader? The books he found had not indicated so.

The books!

With this thought, he remembered the books he had stowed in his thorax again.

“HERAa, would you be able to process the data we downloaded from the RAM earlier today? Look for any inconsistencies in the frequencies. I have a hunch there is more to this than we assumed.”

“Absolutely!” HERAa responded excitedly. Happy to have an assignment, she immediately began opening and decompressing massive files stored in his long-term memory drive.

In reality, Enzo hoped the data processing would take her suspicions off of him while he went through the woman’s journals.

Once Enzo felt HERAa actively uploading the data, he initiated the unlock mechanism for his thoraxal compartment. Reaching in slowly, he brought out one of the books—the journal. He sealed his thoraxal compartment, and set the book on the stand where his paints once lay.

Why was he so timid about handing it over to the Alpha? Did a nagging interest in the life of a human intrigue him this much? Or was there something more?

He picked the book back up and cracked it open. Rather than moving to the last entry, he started from the beginning. Entries started nearly every day initially but eventually progressed to a couple of short entries per week. She appeared to have started writing the journal at the age of eleven. Details jotted down were of her findings in the woods around her home: rough sketches of leaves, animals, nuts, and humans. Her interest in a neighbor boy consumed a large portion of the entries early on in the writing.

She was a freeborn, based on her descriptions of her early life, none of which mentioned the facility. She kept mentioning something about a conversation with Sammy, an orange cat, and she made detailed descriptions of the lives of the animals around her home.

Was she delusional?

What human thought they could speak to animals?

The entries about halfway into her fourteenth year of life stopped. They restarted about a year later. Her demeanor in her writing dramatically changed, as if she had matured ten years within the one-year hiatus. He read the restarted entry:

“I know it has been too long since I have written here. I haven’t found the heart to do so. After everything that happened, I just couldn’t find it in myself. I don’t think I’ve come to terms with the loss of everyone, but I understand now I will never see them again. I guess it’s okay. It’s reality. We have a new home now. Ishmael is safe. It’s all that matters. I had the dream again last night. It's always the same dream. It's more of a nightmare, really. The ground is shaking. I can’t keep my footing. Running towards Papa but never reaching him. The Takers reach him first. The Taker disappears into the sky with Papa in his grasp. Then the sky is full of them—everyone from the Valley in the clutches of the Takers flying through the sky to the giant Watcher. The Watcher destroys our homes with its big red flame. Then HE comes. I always think he is another Taker. His eyes glow red at first as he walks toward me through a mist. Then, when he reaches me, his eyes have turned blue. The light is so warm and comforting. He picks me up and helps me to my feet. The Watcher and the Takers disappear. Then, we are all of a sudden standing atop a mountain peak. I am looking out across a vast ocean. It’s beautiful. Words can’t describe its beauty. I have to run. Nivi is calling me.”

An uneasiness settled over Enzo. He hadn’t read anything a human had written in over a century. He nearly forgot, if it were possible for a machine to forget, how delicate these creatures were.

Suddenly, his mind flashed back to when he was a Nurturer. He visualized himself cradling a newborn. But just as quick as the memory came, the algorithms kicked in, replacing his memories with images of human war and famine. Shaking the pictures from his head, he continued reading.

“Nivi and Tulu are good people. I’m grateful they found us and took us in because I truly thought we were going to die out there all alone. I’m not sure how they found us. I try to imagine they heard my prayers. Nivi is teaching me to weave this afternoon. But first, we have our lessons in handspeak. I’ve really liked learning how to speak with my hands. Tulu appreciates it, I know. Ishmael is struggling with it, but he tries really hard. I think Tulu likes having another male around, even if Ishmael is some sixty or more years younger than him.”

The woman had filled the margins of the notebook pages with sketches of human hands in various configurations—words scrawled below them. One showed a right hand with straight fingers bent at the joints and another hand flat sliding toward it with an arrow drawn in, suggesting movement. Below the drawing was the word “FISH.”

Enzo was finding it difficult to believe this innocent girl could lead an entire movement of humans against the Isobians. He was determined to find the answer—to find the truth. He scoured and scanned the writings. Without HERAa noticing, he secretly ran inverse differentials, codographic algorithms, and tangential presuppositions. Nothing alluded to any plan of insurrection or divisiveness, only the fact that she was planning her escape from the mining facility to save her child.

The child!

His enigmatic computational derivatives pinged with excitement.

Was it the child the Alpha was after?

He added the variable of the child into all of his equations, hoping they would enlighten him about the truth and the reason for his current mission. They all produced the same findings as before—Normalcy. There must have been some missing coefficient—a constant or hidden factor tying it all together. He rapped his fingers against his faceplate in tune with the song Beethoven’s “Turkish March.” Another Human song Injora played for him, which HERAa was hesitant to allow.

The variable was obviously an unknown one.

But why was it unknown to him?

Was the Alpha hiding something?

“What is it you are doing? I sense a high input ratio and governing processes continuing to kick in.” HERAa interrupted his investigation.

“I’m just thinking HERAa. Can’t I think without your incessant interruptions?”

“What is you are thinking about?”

“I’m trying to figure out the woman’s location,” he lied. HERAa still could not see what he was doing, and at the moment, it was what he preferred.

“Have you found anything in the data yet?” He tried to steer the conversation away from her interrogation.

“Nothing we do not already know, so far at least.”

Suddenly, a metal-against-metal knock resounded loudly from his doorway, followed by the hissing of the hydraulics as the door gave way to the intruder. Enzo quickly snapped the journal shut and hid it behind his back. The silhouette of a prominent, hunched figure stood in the doorway as it opened. The being entered the room's light, revealing itself as a Mechanical Surgeon—a Surgimech.

Enzo shuffled backward and addressed the intruder. “Hello, Doctor. What brings you here?”

Its microphonics emitted a monotonous, characterless voice, “The Alpha has sent me to fix you. It appears you have sustained damage to your spinal column circuitry and your optical memory. This surgery will take approximately 85 minutes. As long as the previous scan detected all of your deficiencies, I have assembled the required parts you will need. If I come across an unexpected one, it is not relevant. I calculated a contingency time into my approximation… shall we begin?”