There is no afterlife, but we can strive to make this life exceed the wildest dreams and imaginations our ancestors had of what comes after.
Arnon D’Bvaym
KAYLA LED WESTLEY in a straight line, forcing him to drive through underbrush in several locations, but she didn’t seem concerned about noise or leaving a trail. She pointed out footprints as she walked, showed the stabbing marks that she said were evidence of the trunk, then kept moving. At one point Kayla stopped and stared for a long, long moment, then turned and said, “The tracks split here. These coming in this way, that’s our rozie. Those going out that way—Zed.”
A moment passed. 64Bit was just about to open his mouth to recommend they follow the dead rozie’s footprints, when Kayla tore her gaze from Zed’s path, leading them closer to the mountains and the other set of tracks. Kayla slowed as they travelled farther, as the ground became harder and rockier and showed less and less signs of the dead rozie’s movements.
While Kayla tracked and Westley drove, 64Bit tentatively looked within himself for the part that sensed rozies again. He didn’t have to sift through physical and emotional sensations to find it, unlike usual: he was immediately filled with a heavy pull downward, as if hands were clawing up from the dirt to drag him under. 64Bit shuddered and pinched himself, drawing his mind back before he entirely fell under its spell again. Whatever they were doing, they were not leaving the area of the factory.
“Lovely day,” Westley commented to no one in particular. “Bright sun. Nice breeze. Would be even better if there were some birds about, but that doesn’t ruin anything.”
64Bit shook his head. Westley’s indefatigable optimism didn’t make any sense to him, but it did help him pull out of the darkness he was feeling. 64Bit looked upward at the blue sky. “I used to pray to do that,” he muttered.
Why had the Creator left from 64Bit’s heart and mind? Or had 64Bit left Him? Was the loss the result of circumstance?
The ATV rolled to a stop. 64Bit looked down and saw that they were on the edge of the forest, near the thinning tree line. The ATV was facing a slope that rapidly steepened as it climbed the mountain, its sides littered with boulders.
“Trail is gone,” Kayla said. She looked disappointed with herself. “So maybe an entrance is nearby, or this area is just horrible for tracking. Technoboy, your map say anything?”
64Bit pulled up the data dump from the Binary. There were corridors that extended far from the body of the factory, leading down to all levels of it. One very high corridor he saw could represent a mountain entrance. 64Bit then reviewed the memory from the rozie, and finally shrugged. “I’m not sure. The memory was greener and leafier, so maybe we should follow the forest. But it’s possible there’s an entrance here. It’s hard to tell without a way to match the map to terrain.”
“Let’s take a look,” Westley said. “Just for a little while. If there’s one here, we should find it quickly. How hard could a big, metal door be to spot?”
“You’d be surprised,” Kayla said, but she walked forward anyway, into a field of boulders. She looked over her shoulder as she did so. “Split up, but stay within hearing of each other. Westley, you go farther down. Technoboy, stay in the middle. I don’t think you’ll find anything, but you’ll be better between us to jump in if a rozie shows up anyway.” Then she disappeared behind a boulder taller than she was.
Westley looked back at 64Bit and winced. “She’s got to be mad at you about something. Have you had time to think about why she’s so angry? I’ve got some guesses, but they’re pretty generic.”
64Bit stared at where he had last seen Kayla, quickly running through his memories. One from before they had reached Fort stood out, when Kayla had told 64Bit that she wouldn’t hold Richard’s death against him. “I think she lied to me. Or she lied to herself,” 64Bit said. Then, in response to Westley’s confused expression, 64Bit added, “She promised not to blame me, for Richard’s death. I had the staff, but I couldn’t actually do anything to rozies then. He, uh . . . he didn’t know that. Kayla thinks he might have survived, if a few things had been different.”
“Oh.” Westley stared off, then eventually said, “We should get going. I’ll drive you to the edge of the field.”
Rocks crunched as they drove, then 64Bit jumped off the ATV and watched as Westley drove away, Westley’s eyes scanning up and down the boulder field as he did so. 64Bit turned and looked around him at the rocky terrain, stones and boulders of every shape and size, most a dull purple or rust color. Lichen covered many of the rocks, making them patchy in color and texture.
As 64Bit scanned the ground and walked forward, only barely feeling the rocks under his feet, he was grateful that he wasn’t still in his slippers. The thick, tall sides of his hiking boots helped keep him from rolling an ankle several times.
After searching around a bit, looking at the ground and the sides of boulders while poking at suspicious things with the tip of his staff, 64Bit found a huge boulder that had a gently sloped side and protrusions that would make good handholds. He stuck his staff into the straps on the side of his backpack and climbed slowly, careful not to pull on his mechanical finger. It had only had a few days to heal to him—technomancers healed very quickly, but all the same, he didn’t want to risk pulling it out and was displeased with the amount of work he had put it through already.
On top of the boulder, 64Bit sat and looked around. He could see Westley, just hopping off the ATV, but Kayla was nowhere to be found. He whipped his head around when he caught movement at the corner of his eye screen, but it was just a robin flying overhead.
A cloud inched by. To 64Bit, it looked like a face, but he couldn’t quite decide whose face. The natural rolls of the cloud could be wrinkles, turning it into the master, or an open-mouthed smile, turning it into Cortex, while the poofy bottom of the cloud could be a beard, turning it into Khalil, or a large chin, turning it into a caricature of Richard.
“I found something!”
64Bit looked over and saw Westley standing on a boulder, waving a large stick in the air. He hopped to the ground and trotted toward Westley, arriving just a little before Kayla.
“Look at that,” Westley said, pointing down. 64Bit followed his finger and saw, partially under the boulder, a square plate with rusted edges. It bulged upward in the middle, and on its face it had a cracked screen with numbered buttons below.
Kayla slapped 64Bit’s shoulder. “There’s your door from the rozie memory.”
64Bit shook head. “No, what I saw was a door, upright, facing outward, not up. But the screen and the number pad looked very similar.” 64Bit pulled up the vague rozie memory and tried to focus on the pad and the numbers the rozie tapped. He repeated the motions on the plate before him. Its cracked screen lit up and the plate shifted as if to move sideways, squealing loudly as it did so, but it moved only an inch and got stuck against the boulder. After a moment of failing to open, it slid back into place and the light on the screen turned off.
“Well, I don’t know what put this boulder here, but judging from that, the cracked screen, and the rust, this hasn’t been used in a while,” Kayla said. Her face cracked into a rare smile. “That means we found our entrance, if we can just get it open.”
“I tried pushing the boulder, but it won’t budge at all,” Westley said. He smacked the boulder with his palm. “Solid as a rock, ha ha.”
64Bit looked at the ropes on the side of Kayla’s backpack, then back at the ATV. “Shouldn’t be too much of a problem, if these ropes are strong enough—and long enough to go around the boulder and attach to the ATV.” His heart hammered in his chest as he looped the rope around the boulder so it wouldn’t slip, then handed the rope off to Kayla for tying. The more he looked at the plate under the boulder, the more he thought of how many rozies must be crawling around underground. Based on descriptions of rozie factories in the master’s notes, he imagined claustrophobic corridors, instruments of torture, dead ends. He grit his teeth and forced those thoughts out of his mind. He couldn’t let them paralyze him.
“Start slow,” 64Bit said. Westley nodded. “I’ll wave my hands when you can stop.”
Westley started the engine and the rope tightened, then vibrated as Westley slowly pressed down on the gas. The ATV engine began to growl.
“It shifted slightly,” Kayla said, standing next to the boulder. 64Bit looked at Westley and nodded. Westley pushed the ATV harder, kicking up rocks, dirt, and dust as the wheels spun and dug in their efforts to move forward, then stuck, caught on something, an underground rock, 64Bit assumed.
The rope creaked. The engine growled. The boulder shifted a few inches, the ground crunching under it as it did so.
Then the rope snapped. Westley shot forward with a yelp, hitting the breaks and sliding across the dirt. Kayla shouted and pushed against the boulder as it shifted back toward its original position, but she was powerless to stop it from rolling.
“No!” Kayla growled, slapping the boulder.
Lips pressed tight, 64Bit approached to assess the situation, then pointed at the earth around the boulder. “No, look—it’s still farther than before. And the angle of the bottom is shifted, so maybe the plate can slide under it. We don’t need it all the way open—just open enough for us to crawl through.”
Kayla nodded, breathing heavily. “It better open. I was just about to tear the ground apart.”
64Bit punched the code as Westley returned to them. The metal plate slid sideways again, squealing, as it moved inch by inch until it pressed against the boulder and stopped. 64Bit winced and looked around, alarmed. Nothing could miss that sound—any rozie in the area should be lurching toward them right now.
“Seen a concerning lack of rozies, actually,” 64Bit muttered to himself. Somehow, realizing how alone they had been, save for the dead rozie and a near-encounter with Zed, made 64Bit even more nervous. They were on the edge of Id’s factory— where were the rozies?
This time, the plate didn’t slide closed again. It sat, halfway open, revealing a dark, dusty tunnel.
“Wish we had a light,” Westley said, sticking his head into the hole and looking around. “It’s pitch black down here. I bet I could slap myself and not know who did it.”
Kayla looked at 64Bit and grinned. “Good thing we have a living flashlight.”
64Bit grimaced, but knelt to get closer to the hole and commanded the port in his forehead to activate. Nothing happened. 64Bit concentrated harder, then tapped the glass port, wondering if something had been damaged by the electric discharge from the giant particle battery explosion in Fort. “It’s not working!”
“Really?” Kayla said. “Well, I guess you’re going in alone, then. You’re the only one here who can see in the dark.”
64Bit felt pressure in his chest. “I’m not a scout.”
“It looks like a tunnel—there’s only one direction to go. Just walk ahead and see if there’s a dead end or something, if this is our way in. Then come get us. Westley and I will keep an eye out up here, make sure the entrance doesn’t close up. Besides— judging from the dust on the walls, nothing has been down there in months or years.”
64Bit stared at the hole. What little light leaked in revealed stone walls, but no floor or ladder. He could easily imagine the boulder shifting as he lowered himself into the earth, pinning him against the side and crushing the life out of him. He could also see himself dropping into the hole and just falling. 64Bit shivered and did his best to stop thinking as he dropped his backpack and lowered his legs into the underground entrance. He kicked around and found some footholds carved into the wall; with a sigh of relief, he used those until they ended, still leaving his head and hands above ground. 64Bit kicked around again, hoping to find the ground or another foothold, but his foot found only walls or air. 64Bit looked up at the other two, hoping for support, but Westley was looking elsewhere and Kayla looked impatient.
“Hold my hand,” 64Bit said, praying that Kayla would agree. “Just in case.” Kayla gave 64Bit a hard look, then took a deep breath. She reached down to grab 64Bit, her eyes a little softer than before. Hanging on to Kayla, 64Bit let go of the side. He felt a moment of weightless terror, then landed on the ground only about a foot below. 64Bit looked around, but the slanted light that broke past the boulders into this tunnel just revealed a small patch of wall and nothing else. 64Bit let go of Kayla’s hand and commanded his night vision feature to activate. Fortunately, unlike his flashlight, that still worked.
“What’s down there?” Westley asked.
“I’ll get a better look in a moment. Someone hand me my staff.” Westley did so, and, after gripping it firmly, 64Bit began to walk forward, feeling the ground ahead of him with the staff.
The tunnel grew in clarity for 64Bit as the light from the small entrance diminished. The tunnel ran ahead, sloped downward, and then turned about thirty paces away. The walls and floor were roughly hewn and thickly covered in dust—64Bit looked back and easily saw his footprints on the ground, black holes that trailed in a line behind him. Running his fingers along the wall left them covered in dirt. A slight stir in the air brushed dust into 64Bit’s nose and he sneezed. He then froze as the sound echoed down the hallway.
Nothing materialized out of the dark. 64Bit let out the breath he had been holding. He wished that he could try and sense nearby rozies, but the feeling of standing above a boiling grave made his skin itch whenever he thought about it. He wasn’t willing to risk incapacitating himself.
“It’s a tunnel,” 64Bit said. “Not sure where it goes. It bends in on itself, so I’m going to peek around the corner before suggesting whether or not we keep investigating here.”
64Bit couldn’t clearly hear a response, but thought he caught Kayla’s voice say “—moving?” He shook his head—he was sure that Kayla was mocking his slow progression, and he didn’t feel the need to apologize for his nerves. In a world full of deep darkness, there was as much room for the cautious as the bold. Maybe even more so, if only because the cautious lived longer.
The dust that covered the ground made 64Bit’s steps soundless as he walked forward. Large motes of dust in the air crossed his vision, appearing as large, white spots that appeared and disappeared suddenly, often making him flinch. By the time he reached the corner, 64Bit felt ready to turn around and run back toward the tunnel entrance to tell Westley and Kayla he’d found a dead end, but he steeled himself by imagining the master, alive, somewhere within the rozie factory, in desperate need of 64Bit’s help. His feelings were still in conflict: love for the old man, anger at what he had done. But with this grim resolve, 64Bit had the strength to go on a little farther.
64Bit rounded the corner and found that the tunnel continued downward into darkness, going farther than he could see. He would have to go much farther down this tunnel before he discovered anything substantial.
“And I’m not doing that alone,” 64Bit muttered. “No need to be like Kayla and disappear for hours with no explanation.” He turned around and began shuffling back toward the surface. He was startled when he saw a tall, lean figure drop into the tunnel, stumble as it landed, and then run toward 64Bit, a backpack slung on each shoulder.
“We saw the rozie!” Westley said loudly, the echo of his voice making it harder to understand him.
“Zed?” 64Bit whispered. The stump where his mechanical finger met his hand began itching. The rozie had them earlier, then disappeared—why was he here, why now? 64Bit looked at the tunnel entrance and saw Kayla fall through, land with a little more grace than Westley had, then start running. She held one hand forward as she ran and rested the other on the wall beside her, leaving a long line on the dusty wall. Her caution reminded 64Bit that she and Westley couldn’t see, and he narrowly dodged out of the way by pressing himself against the wall as Westley bulled past him.
“Bit? 64Bit, where are you?” Westley shouted.
“Stop running! You’ll hit the wall at the end!” 64Bit replied. He heard another thump, someone dropping into the tunnel, and looked back at the tunnel entrance, his legs shaking.
A shadow had fallen over the entrance to the tunnel, but 64Bit saw Zed clearly in night vision. Colored in shades of green, gray, and black, with a black-green streak across his face where the bloodstains were that made it look like his mouth was open in a demonic grin, Zed stood like a destroying angel. He opened his mouth and growled, “Do you want to die? Stop running, now!”
Kayla reached 64Bit, striking him with her outstretched hand. “Westley? Bit? Doesn’t matter—run!” She shoved hard, making 64Bit stumble backward and land on his bottom. Kayla ran past him, oblivious to the fact that 64Bit was sitting on the ground and leaning against the corridor wall in a daze.
64Bit rubbed his head—he’d knocked it against the wall when he was pushed over. He opened and clenched his hands to give himself something to feel, to ensure that he was alive and functional. He saw Zed at the entrance to the tunnel, holding his hands up and saying, “Stop! You don’t fit!”
But who . . . ? 64Bit wondered. Then his mind refocused and the answer became clear as crystal—the trunk was forcing its way into the tunnel, its legs scrabbling against the wall as it did so. “The indestructible demon trunk,” 64Bit moaned as he pushed himself to his feet and began stumbling back down the hallway, one hand on each wall to help keep his balance. Clear tracks in the dirt revealed that his companions had rushed past this same area, and handprints at the end showed that they found the wall, turned, and continued to follow the tunnel around the corner. 64Bit heard a loud crunching sound behind him but didn’t stop to turn and look; he kept running, following Westley’s and Kayla’s footsteps.
It was only after he lost sight of the turn in the hallway behind him that 64Bit remembered his weapon, the only weapon he had, something that could drive Zed away as they fled down the tunnels. In the deep darkness, with nowhere to go but forward, 64Bit clutched his hands tightly and realized that both were empty. “My staff?” he whispered.
Where was the staff?
Copyright © 2023 by David Ludlow
Boo Ludlow 