Usu (3 page)

Having escaped the room they would spend the bad half of a chapter in, Usu and Modbot stumbled onto the deck and were immediately hit with enough air-force to nearly combine the two. Modbot desperately tapped away at a button just outside the door until finally, with a victorious whinge, worn glass panels raised from each side, doing a somewhat naughty-looking interlocking ritual at the top.

The air settled and so did they. Now able to take in the scenery without becoming part of it, Usu was wide-eyed at the world shifting past him. Every now and then he’d hop a few times and drag Modbot to explain something mundane like a Tower-of-Dead-Bankers, and somewhere in that cynical copper head the robot began to appreciate it, even taking a portion of pride in having a use beyond cleaning after dead humans.

“Look, that’s the thirtieth Tower-of-Dead-Bankers we’ve passed now. I explained already that they all made very good building material by not having souls, but every building is built on a firm foundation of bankers. They’d spent centuries holding onto other people’s money, so they were considered best for the role of holding onto other people’s bodies.” Modbot’s final sentence, the rare type that only questioning could make you seem like a bigger tosser than the one saying it in the first place, was followed by, “It’s all simple logic you know.”

Logic, being out for tea at that moment, could not be brought in for further comment.

Other schools of thought, however, notably sanity, did decide to weigh in on the matter. You see, Modbot’s somewhat bitter disposition against organic life in human shape had him taking advantage of Usu’s curious bewilderment. The towers in question were not in fact flung together corpses, but rather, gigantic stone monoliths which had served as shelters for anyone brave enough to travel on foot in the past. Artificial oxygen had been generated inside by synthetic flora, a desperately needed pit stop at the time.

Modbot did, however, have a few points right; the majority that could not settle for a life in the colonies without giant screens yelling advertisements or stock indexes respectively, were indeed marketers and bankers. Though their well-dressed corpses had merely littered the monoliths, rather than having been the foundation for them.

Just then, in the loudest silent shrill only a mute rabbit could possibly pull off, Usu pointed rapidly. “That? That’s… That’s a junkyard. Scrapheap.” Generating a small sarcastic holographic rainbow from his fingertips, he finished, “The place all of us robots dream of malfunctioning in for eternity!”

It wasn’t Usu’s junkyard they saw as they sped past overhead, it was simply that he hadn’t known any existed other than the one he called home. For a moment, he wondered if there were others like him in each one, then he looked at Modbot and wondered if there were more of those too. Enthusiasm then abruptly went out for a few donuts.

Something stirred inside me, a witch’s elixir for a dying world laid bare a seed of hope, but instead I found rage.

It won’t work.

It won’t solve anything.

This massive, hulking beast we seek to flee on.

I won’t leave. I won’t forsake her.

This girl who feels every stroke of fate’s brush and bares every strike of its cruel whip with a smile.

She is our real hope or, perhaps at least, mine.

Making a habit of passing out is a bit like making a frozen yogurt; both could pass for pleasant under the right circumstances, but you’d probably want neither several hundred feet in the air, mere minutes before a dreadfully climactic scene. Usu had not the luxury of choice. It was brief however, barely taking any time to recover at all, though that might have been because Modbot had caught him, perhaps out of an ever so slight guilt about smashing his face into a glass screen panel earlier on. However, confessions not being legal tender meant this was probably as much admittance as you’d ever get from a robot forced not to harm humans, but seemed to be doing a stunning job at harming other things.

Clearly competing for the role of narrator, an over-powering female voice now reverberated around them. “DOCKING PROCEDURE IMMINENT” was the polite way of the navigational system saying it was going to gracefully slam into a nearby structure, a feat it did rather well, presuming it intended to keep a flight record of zero survivors. The monstrosity tore through what may well have been up to nine different layers of sheet metal and concrete before finally settling gently down next to a bare-boned staircase that lead into the heart of the massive structure they had just bored into with smashing grace. Worn decals reading 'A59' littered the twisted metal haphazardly strewn together to comprise the structure’s interior.

Of course, calling it a structure for god knows how many paragraphs wouldn’t be right. Instead, we’ll call it what it really was, a large colony built into the Rocky Mountains. What met the eye alone surpassed street-variety imagination, but in reality so much more was hollowed out beyond immediate sight, reaching depths we’d rather not start putting math against. This was the very same colony whose mere name had triggered Usu’s first of many awkward black-outs, and yet he still had only the smallest of inclinations as to why; perhaps a side effect of the immense brain damage being smashed head-first into a glass panel tends to give you.

“Blimey balls and blue-arsed flies!” instinctively muttered Modbot, his British sectors notably flustered by the ship’s very vague interpretation of the word 'docking'.

He’d made a lovely dent in the only useful door during the impact, and was briefly compelled by his programming into cleaning up his own mess before the ship had the audacity to insist, “DOCKING PROCEDURE SUCCESSFUL” at which point he, ignoring the ever-wobbly Usu examining the smash-related-entrance, delved into a twelve minute rant about how he doubted this ship had the wits to dock with an iPod. The ship, having not been established as a sentient character, failed to answer his taunts, and instead slowly fell silent as its every mechanical inch sank back into dormancy.

‘“Ugh, these things never listen, and when they do they just blame it on being programmed precisely like actual pilots, including the drunk ones it seems. Now you, Usu, at least you show some colour when cha―” It was only then that he noticed that he, irony be damned, couldn’t quite notice Usu anymore. After taking a few long moments to peer into every nearby vent and to perhaps
relatedly
check up on a certain vacuum cleaner, he was fairly sure the fuzzy rodent wasn’t on the ship anymore. What made him absolutely sure was the tiny bit of fluff at the steel stairwell they’d landed next to, and the odd way it seemed to form an arrow before he dutifully incinerated it.

Feeling slightly dejected at having both his indignant rant with the synthetic voice and his appeasement through flowering camaraderie denied, Modbot was at a rare junction in his existence. He could, theoretically, smash his own face in the control room until he hopefully got sent to some slightly more familiar destination, at which point he could resume his joyous days of bitterly cursing humanity as he cleaned up after them. He could also follow the extremely subtle fluffy arrow, and no doubt get caught in a fate spun of numerous exploding things, smashy things, and rather difficult make-shift sign language interpretation.

Noble a bot as he was, the choice was simple, or at least made simple after he checked several dozen times that the entire flight system had become as extinct as those who made it. He would foster this blossoming friendship, and at least pretend it was by pure intention. He set his leg servos to a 'moderately annoyed' speed for the first time in decades as he crawled through the hanging gardens of broken glass and barbed metal. Standing once more on the other side, he took note that he was on the small stairwell, measuring perhaps only four Usus wide and surrounded by a gargantuan hollow wind tunnel. The door in front of him was already open, a clearer sign he couldn’t ask for.

Immediately upon stepping foot in the building, his senses, which had previously been dulled by the howling air from moments ago, were now privy to a rather obnoxious dripping noise. He hated dripping noises. Everyone did. But everyone, as you may recall, was currently preoccupied with being dead and thus had not the luxury of finding the source, let alone solving such an obvious hydro-disaster in the making. “No, no, I’ve… I’ve got to find the little bugger thing, there’s no doubt he’s causing all manner of other havoc!” Modbot did little to sway his own judgment, even with such despondently passionate words. “Oh fine, fine, fine! He probably started the drip! Or he’s at the drip! We always planned on re-uniting at drips if we were lost didn’t we?!” And so his course was set in bi-pedal motion. Modbot would use centuries of refined research at the pinnacle of human science to try and find a leaky spot, and Usu, well he had something quite different in store for him.

From the very moment he entered, Usu was overcome with an overwhelming feeling of panic. Hysteria of a nature few ever come to feel, for he was not afraid of what might be ahead, but far, far more afraid of what might not be. Every step he took came with an image, every second step a voice from memories long buried. Carrying himself through countless passages until, in one derelict room, he finally came to a standstill before a single shaft of sunlight piercing the beautiful porcelain shell of a girl.

Silence took him, no images, no voices. White noise seemed to have taken the place of kaleidoscoping images, and moments before he shut his eyes, giving in to another bout of unplanned unconsciousness, he was surprised to hear a series of banging noises followed by “Yeah! Fuck you, leaky pipe dripping all ov―I mean… Good show Sir pipe but you’ve lost this duel!” Which made all the drama before it seem a little silly.

He was awake now and aware enough to see the figure crouched in the sunspot, a figure that was likely the entire reason he was here at all. Before him was the shape of a poorly dressed girl, no older than ten. Her thin frame wrapped around itself as if she was afraid to let herself go, whilst her back arched toward the light. Thin glass panels drinking a rich meal before tapering at each end, wing-like enough to make a fairy of lore feel inadequate.

Long dark brown hair spun on the floor around her, each strand beaming with a vitality that poorly matched her pale tone and vacant eyes; like coal snuffed before it burned brightest. She had been there for many, many lifetimes, and our dear Usu had made her wait. He took a step, yet nothing gave way, he took two more and the results were the same. Like any who would have seen the same sight he did, he could not resist approaching her proper, and gently tracing his right paw across her mouth onto her cheek.

Solitude gave way.

Eternity cracked.

And a little girl’s lips moved in sync with a heart she could never prove existed.

“I missed you so much.”

As if injected with life itself, the machination began shaking and slowly but surely rose into a standing position as a layer of porcelain dust slipped free of her frame and wafted into the air around them. Her eyes were no longer that of the dead, but held a gentle flame that looked down at our protagonist with a pure warmth. Usu, being experienced only in things trying to kill him, however, reacted by jumping a foot back, immediately turning around, and running with his arms flailing above his head.

She wasn’t confused, or even surprised; she’d long ago spent enough time on pointless emotions already. The girl chased him with a speed he’d never even imagined, corridor after corridor they ran and, sanity notwithstanding, she began to smile and even giggle.

Then, just before being forgotten in the narrative altogether, Modbot rather inconveniently stepped into Usu’s path. “Oh god, why are you runnin―
phpohsppphhh
!” The last bit being an onomatopoeia best representing the sound Usu made as he slammed into Modbot's chest. The one that shortly followed as the girl slammed into the both of them is better left to the imagination, however.

The crumpled mess on the floor was not still for long. The pursuer had already grabbed Usu in both of her arms and was holding him toward the ceiling as she rolled happily on the ground.

“Sssnooow! You came back! You promised Rain and you came!” Her eyes filled with delight, Usu could no longer be scared of this girl. Her wings, solar panels of an emerald nature, fluttered and a smile brighter than any sight he had seen drew itself on her face.

This was but a normal little girl, and because of that, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

Cranking his crankables back into a somewhat less cranked state, Modbot couldn’t wait until he was standing before giving this little scenario a piece of his pre-approved conversation dictionary. “Now see here Miss… Miss… well, an android I presume? It’s all good and jolly that you’re good and jolly, but I think you might have a case of mistaken identity. This little ruffian is named Usu and is almost certainly not this 'Snow' fellow.”

“Silly shiny-thing! Usu is a dolly, Snow is a boy, aaand Rain is happy!” rebuked the cheerful little humanoid.

“Shinything?! Well, thank you kindly for noticing; polish is dreadfully hard to find in post-post-apocalyptic times, and is very rare I’ll have you know!” Pausing briefly to regain some composure “Your name is… Rain I take it?”

‘“Rain is Rain!”

‘“Yes well, either I’m right or you’re the worst weather channel replacement they ever built.” Feeling his pride slowly setting back into place as he put others in theirs, he continued. “You see Miss Rain, we got a little lost and then I got a little violent, and then we got a little more lost and… and then this little guy somehow got us here. When you’ve stopped shaking his unconscious pre-corpse, I’d think we’d both appreciate it if you could tell us how to get out of here? Or maybe even just where exactly
here
is?”

Pointing to his conveniently lit up chest display, “You see, I’m getting a reading that we’re somewhere near Utah. Usually with Ding maps this means I’d be lost somewhere in Asia, yet I don’t recall crossing any oceans before we 'docked' so effortlessly through several layers of metal and rock arguably less dense than the navigation system.”