Usu (8 page)

Usu was attempting to shake the gobsmacked Modbot into some sort of similar action but the cleaning robot's rather appropriate response was, “Now, during our wonderful time of almost dying together ad nauseam, do you recall me ever leaping anything higher than myself? Because I’ll be snogfairied if we’re going that way, and trust me, I’m pretty sure neither of us wants to be snogfairied.” Left at a loss for words, let alone the ability to say them, Usu couldn’t put up much more resistance in earnest. “Good! Then we’ll be heading to the docks like gentlemen! That is: Through a dozen doors, about three hills and then I think we can just roll downwards until we hit something. I have it on pretty good authority it’s how people used get around this area, plus or minus a few bits of genitalia, of course.”

Modbot wasn’t kidding. About an hour of walking, another of complaining about the overwhelming amount of simulated coffee shops, and another chasing down a pink piñata that had survived a fair deal better than the species that made it, they finally arrived, smashing Usu-first into a port barricade. Usu probably should have become more suspicious when Modbot tied him to his face as a 'precaution', though an accurate one it had been. Rain was there to offer him the same comfort he’d given her not so long ago through a hug that would make anyone grateful to lack bone structure while gleefully spinning him around as if the encroaching nightmare was but a fleeting dream.

“Snooow! Slow Snow! But still Snow!” She looked off to the side in Mercury’s direction with a mighty pout. “Pillow-case lady wouldn’t let me go find you, says I can’t exert myself right now, but Pillow-cases aren’t even supposed to talk!” said the oblivious girl to the stuffed rabbit before her.

Mercury was leaning against a railing in casual annoyance, obviously having expected some sort of competition from Modbot, who was rather unwisely attempting his first conversation with her. “So! You were actually built by that geezer? You’re… rather young then, I take it? Never around for the humans? Oh, you didn’t miss much, too little air for them to even scream properly in the end, which made cleaning up after them a mite bit easier, I’ll have you know!” Laughing awkwardly to himself, he subtly squashed the remnants of a completely irrelevant piñata into his incinerator.

Mercury scowled, or was constipated, things are hard to judge through an eye slit. “Manchester, yeah, he built me. I’m his 'shining star of success', considering the only other things he built are those hillbillies that pop up around the place. He’s been trying to kill me for years now though, or was that what I’ve been doing? Details. But hey, we haven’t exactly got all day if we want to get there.” She tucked a piece of silver hair back into her head wrap while briefly making eye-contact with what was beginning to resemble a sunset on prescription anthrax.

She’d long since prepared for the departure, the strangely unnatural pier beside her was aloft with water, much like the rest of the city's bottom level. Next to Mercury bobbed a large transparent yet thick and slimy ball with one large hole atop for entrance, an entrance she used rather abruptly when she dropped Rain, Usu, Modbot and her rather brash self through all at once. She traced her fingers around the edges of the hole, which sealed itself instantly and began shedding thicker and thicker slime until their slow descent into purgatory began.

I messed up Dee. I messed up really, really bad.

Snow, he… he kept telling me not to go into his workshop, but you kinda have to when someone says that right? It was amazing at first, all these bits and pieces of shinies he was taking apart to make the little woof-woofs and meows he sells, they were all sooo cute! But I wasn’t supposed to be there… I was rolling and playing before some weird papers with scribbles fell on me, and when I looked at them something happened.

Something inside me burst into a million pieces and I couldn’t move until Snow found me. I’ve never seen him cry Dee, but it’s all he could do. He never shouted at me or told me I was bad, he just kept hugging me and saying sorry.

One of those fragile pieces got much, much bigger that day.

Machinations never did quite find the same appreciation for water humans were so well known for, probably because it could kill them, but at least partially because its very nature went against their own. The tide waxes and wanes, the ocean swells, and once upon a time even birthed life. The same life that went on to make them. To all but a few, thoughts of becoming a creator were horror stories of wiped memories and fragmented thoughts. As free as they were, they remained slaves to programming, dwelling on the devil in their data and fearing the excel spreadsheet that hides under their beds.

For the few that faced demons greater still, however, it was an escape. Ironic as the steel it was built upon then, that the chronicle of Old Francisco, born from the structure once called 'Suicide Bridge', would continue to hold onto death; living patrons be damned. Dozens every day, two-fold by night. The number rose as the years did, and soon bloomed a deadly reputation to match. Those who could not take the world as it was, those who were lost without their masters, and those who had forgotten them completely. All manners entered the peaceful marina, and only one rather rude one expected to return.

If forced to pick sides, Mercury would sooner turn to genocide than suicide. She entered this watery coffin with more than a mere plan up her jumble of cloth. She’d get to the underwater laboratory, called 'The Hatchery' during its better years, and 'Holy Shit' during the present, at least by the one person aboard who actually knew where it was. Several miles west and many more down, the ruins stood brightly lit, beckoning from a sea floor awash with well-whittled bones.

Yet, they faced the initial problem of actually moving in a direction other than down, a problem becoming more and more pressing as Rain insisted she could probably have a quick lick outside the bubble and be fine. Slightly wiser in the ways of the world, Modbot did what he could to convince her otherwise. Indeed, no easy task.

Mercury, in the meantime, gently pierced the outer lining with a small rectangular device that whirred to life the instant it felt the cold embrace surrounding them.

Despite a round of shock and confusion, she hushed the group and watched the device with a nervous intensity. Finally, a stream of energy shot out from it with the kind of force that can call out a jet engine as limp and in need of erectile assistance. They had covered a tremendous distance before a crack was heard and the device shattered completely. Mercury explained the situation to the others. “We should be directly above it now, I’ve got one more of those but, well, best we save that for making our trip back a tad less of a crotch shot.” Now, they knew, came the somewhat less pleasant part.

The 'less pleasant part' was that, by design, the bubbles based their physical buoyancy on the mood of the respective suicidee. Should they truly wish to end it all, sinking was inevitable, but second thoughts or that fiendish thing we call hope, well, then it would rise to the surface and pop, giving them a few precious moments of life’s blissful struggle before promptly drowning to death. This did pose a minor problem, in thanks to Usu’s stalwart nature and Rain’s love of everything, which were surely flight risks. However, they were in luck having chosen a prototype model with a very special feature to ensure automated sinking. A large portion of the vessel changed before Usu’s eyes, transparency was replaced by opaqueness. It began flickering, and static fumbled like maggots playing tennis for a bit before a human appeared, long blond hair, a muscular frame, standing before an anesthetized crowd.

That moment, and several hundred thereafter, they would learn true terror, true fear, and true disdain as they were forced to listen a cacophony of screams and moaning playing over a video recording of Michael Bolton live in concert and on repeat. Unfortunately, all of the overdubbed shrieks and death rattles could do little to drown out his Dolby digitally enhanced voice.

They sank, and sank further still until, dazed and confused, without mental mettle or hope in heart they were sucked down within a tunnel and emerged into the dim light of salvation. The song stopped as each occupant crawled out onto the hangar's metal skirts. Even Mercury couldn’t maintain her fa
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ade, throwing up some strange black bile away from the stumbling Usu and teary-eyed Rain, who could only mumble, “Why are there bad men like that Snow? W-Why must they hurt Rain?” with an innocent pained look that could almost put her dire future at second fiddle.

The loading bay they found themselves inside of was―perhaps evidenced by the suction tunnel―not one intended for humanoid entrance, and probably even less so for that of a stuffed rabbit. The room held barely enough solid steel ground for them to regain their not-so-proverbial bearings, most of it awash with a dense water that reeked with a promiscuous blend of antiseptics and iron. A far too familiar smell to Usu, from long-gone days when blood and metal held him firmly in their grip.

Yet, despite smells or horrendous transportation methods, the facility retained a pristine quality about itself. Not a light was broken nor a sign askew. Even the laughable idea of a pressurisation chamber held them for a few peaceful hours before Modbot accidentally ripped the door off whilst ever more accidentally having it hit the automated comm speaker. Means and methods behind them now, they were inside and well on their way to making some form of progress, that is until Usu’s foot took yet another fateful step.

With one movement, a simple paranoid attempt to check around a corner before facing it, the very tile he stood upon began to emit light, spreading across the room like wildfire until, at it’s climax, the light burst, giving way to darkness. Faint mumbles echoed across the hallways as faint, ghost-like holograms began trudging along in lab coats, some arguing, some laughing, some making dinner plans. It felt alive, as alive as anyone else there at least. But it remained only a memory, a fragment of time preserved for some unknown purpose. A fragment that pulled at something inside Usu, and twisted something inside Rain. There was great sadness here, and it resonated deeply within both of them, so much so that their eyes didn’t even need to meet to know the other felt it too. This was a rather good thing, because Usu was, at the time, being held against Rain’s stomach upside down, a truly awkward position for eye contact.

Mercury was first to break the air. “Right, I know, spooky weird shit, but unless you want that princess here as a doorstop, we’ve got to spend more time moving and less gawking.”

Rain, worried far more for how Usu would take such a reality than she would, faced Mercury, squinted up into her eyes, slammed both her legs together and her free arm against her forehead. “Yes sir, Lady sir!” she proclaimed before being gone in a heartbeat. The trail of ground debris among the digital sheen wrote her path rather clearly and didn’t do the holograms passing over it much good either.

“Riiight, so they’ve gone that way, what say we go the opposite?” Mercury put forth in a rather meager attempt to maintain a fa
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ade of complete calm.

Modbot had his doubts, however. “Wait lass, you’re saying the girl and rabbit will be fine alone? I doubt Usu could defeat a kitchen counter on a good day, and the girl, well—” He was interrupted by the first giggle Mercury may have had since her mechanical life began.

“Ha, I take it you haven’t seen her in action then have you? How long would it take you to cross a state? A day?” Modbot nodded while trying incredibly hard not to think of Utah. “‘Well this girl? Minutes. I could see them approaching through the chronicle’s glass, her speed alone broke what little air remains. I’d say she’s probably the strongest here, narcolepsy aside. You, bum-chum, on the other hand probably need someone level headed around to stop you from mounting 'modules' to your… areas...”

Aghast, agape, and alliteratively abused, Modbot had little in the way of argument. Frankly speaking, he was just glad she didn’t insist on calling him Haggisballs like her father.

The group's paths diverged, yet their wills aligned. Each pair sought out Rain’s schematics, or at least those of an android like her. The Hatchery had born each and every android to ever walk the earth and there was, therefore, little doubt it held what they sought. Doubt, perhaps, at what good Modbot could do rummaging around while blindfolded to avoid his own kill-switch activating, but none regarding their prize.

Rain’s blitzkrieg was finally halted by Usu’s thirty-ninth tug on her hair; presumably attempts one through thirty-eight being sloppy pulls with little heart. This particular pull, however, was marvelous; it had firmness, grip, and just the right amount of yank to snap someone out of a self-induced flurry. They stopped just before a solid antiquated pressure door, it was built thick even for its kind and bore only the word 'Olive' neatly above a slit of blackened glass. The opening mechanism posed little trouble for Rain’s strength, yet just before the final turn she found herself hesitant and overcome with a feeling of wrongness.

Perhaps it was this feeling that manifested behind her as a small voice yelled, “Stop!” There stood a flickering image of someone much like Rain, yet considerably younger. A girl of five or six, and while a hologram like the rest, she looked intently at them both. This one wasn’t a mere memory; it was something else, something with a frighteningly strong will. She had tears in her eyes as both faced her, a small smile in response. “Th-Thank you. That place is bad,” she said, pointing directly at the door. “It gave a lot, but took so much more. It isn’t safe inside, but I… I know you need to go in. Just please be careful and…” Her image now barely holding the weight of light “...Promise you won’t get angry.” She then vanished completely. Usu searched the area where she appeared but found naught. Rain made the final turn of the wheel, clicking open with a slow hiss. Nothing scared her anymore, nothing but losing the one she loved. To save him the pain she once felt, she had to save herself. After all, he’d kept his part of a promise stronger than the very tapestry of life, she had only to keep hers.