J Batt: Onliest

Next to her, Eku gave a slight growl.

Syn eyed the tiger and added, “Either of you?”

Both the bot and Eku slowed and took their next advances with care, each cautious for their own reasons.

Syn brought her spear up.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. It’s new. I’m getting a strange pingback.”

“A bot?” Syn asked. They were inches away.

Blip’s shell shifted to green, and he began to probe the surroundings at a more precise level.

The trees opened up—the impact had been in a small park area, behind some grassy knolls. The light was scattered by the overhung boughs and deep foliage. The column of smoke rose up, stabbing the sky. Already a dozen different response bots were moving in. Each were thick cubic units with treaded tires and various attachments to deal with the different crises that might arise. Several were spraying down a bit of fire that had caught a few trees nearby—a white foam billowing around the flames. In the midst of those, a few of the square medic bots swarmed. Even though Syn was all that was left, they mobilized in response to any disaster, assuming assistance for the now-absent humans.

The center of the impact, surrounded by other bots, was a small crater, a mound of dirt blown up around it.

“Perhaps a piece of the sunstrips fell off?”

Blip gave a nod. “Maybe.”

He moved in closer and sounded a slight, high note. The other bots froze at his command. In a moment, they each backed up, clearing the space around the impact.

Syn peered over the edge, waving the thin smoke away. She gasped. Inside the crater, blackened and dented, laying in a mound of dirt, was Blip.

But Blip was next to her. She moved her eyes between the Blip bot in the crater and the Blip floating next to her. There had only been one Blip. Since the beginning and for always. There was only one Blip because there was only one Syn. He was her assigned companion. They had woken up in the crèche together and had been together since. His white face was the first thing she had seen and her first word was, “Hello.”

“Blip?” was all she could let out. Her eyes were wide, and her mouth hung open. Something clattered on the ground next to her, and she realized she had relaxed her grip on her spear. Her hand splayed open. Again, she mumbled, “Blip?”

Blip flew in to hover above the burned replica. His shell glowed green—an unnatural bright beacon against the dark verdant surroundings.

“What is going on?” Syn insisted.

“I don’t…” Blip started.

“It’s you,” Syn said, pointing at the copy of Blip in the smoldering hole.

“No, it isn’t.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t…”

“Don’t say you don’t know. There’s only one of you.” She glanced at a random disc-shaped cleaning bot. “There’s hundreds of cleaning bots.” Near her, recording and documenting the incident, was a small spherical eye-bot, its red case bright against the green foliage. “There’s tons of these.” She turned back to Blip, “But there’s only one of you!”

“I know,” Blip said as his surface turned back to white. He flew back to her, looking eye to eye, “It’s a companion bot.”

“A companion for who?”

“I don’t…”

“Don’t say that!” she cut him off.

“But I don’t!” he shouted back.

Syn knelt and reached out a hand, edging close to touch the copy in the hole. Eku growled in warning. She glanced up at Blip.

He nodded. “Try it. It won’t respond to me. You sometimes have better luck than I do.”

She held her hand above it, sensing for heat. It had come down like a star, blazing through the sky, lighting the nearby trees on fire and blasted a hole in the ground several feet deep. It was charred and smashed. But it didn’t radiate any heat. She placed her fingers on it—cool to the touch. She shook her head.

Syn was convinced it was a companion bot now. Anything else would be blazing hot—nearly on fire—but not a bot like Blip. Not a companion bot. Blip was quite unlike any other bot she had ever known. He wasn’t affected by temperature like others. He was never cold, never hot. He was the best, fastest, most intelligent bot she had known. And bots were all she knew.

It didn’t respond. She wrapped her hands around it and lifted. Like Blip, it was incredibly heavy. This one felt even heavier. She struggled to lift it from the ground. “Need some help,” she grunted.

Blip made no reply.

She twisted and waddled with the extra weight in her arms.

“Blip?” she asked, turning and placing the bot on the sidewalk, “Who is this?” And then, knowing that the only companion bot on the ship was the one assigned to her, Syn whispered, “Whose companion is this?”

Inside, a thin line of hope flared. Could there be someone else on the ship? Someone who needed a companion? Syn looked around. Was that person watching them even then? Was it someone else who believed they were alone? Syn glanced at Blip and another thought rose, a thought she never guessed she’d have. Blip knows everything. Did he know about this companion? Did he know about the other person? Was he lying?

Blip caught Syn’s gaze and looked up above them to the shining sunstrips, unaware of the far-off storm forming in her thoughts. He blinked at the sunlight piercing the treetops. There, in the center of Olorun, was the axis around which everything rotated. They called it the needle. Fastened to it were the sunstrips—bright panels creating the illusion of sunlight in this artificial world. “I… I’ve never met this bot.” He was going to say the he didn’t know, but he knew what response that would bring.

From behind her, a small chirp went up. Syn turned and peered back in the crater as she brushed the soot from Blip’s twin off her hands.

At the bottom of the hole, buried in the dirt, a small piece of red metal wriggled.

Syn bent down and reached into clear the dirt away. “An eye-bot,” she said. It had been under the bot when it hit, smashed into the earth. Syn scooped out dirt on its edges and then plucked the vibrating bot out of the soil. She brushed off its crimson surface and held it up. It opened its iris and eyed around. Without a thank you, it attempted to lift off and fly high up overhead. It managed a few inches from her palm and then dropped suddenly back down. It blinked and shuddered, attempting to rise up again. It knew one thing—fly and record, and now it couldn’t do one of those things.

Syn patted its head. “Okay, you’re a bit hurt. Calm down, and I’ll take care of you.” She sat the bot gently on the ground. “Wait there.” Syn stared at it and then back at the companion bot. “So what now?”

Blip nodded, “I’ll check records. I’ll do some digging. There has to be something to tell where he… it came from.”

Syn narrowed her eyes, “That’s all?”

Something brushed her side. She glanced down to see the red eye-bot nuzzling against her. Saying thank you. She patted it. They weren’t as smart as Blip, but they were on the level of a pet—a dog or a cat. If you show a little attention, they were pretty loyal. She had never been able to get them to do tricks, though. “Give me second, and I’ll get you fixed up.”

Blip scooted back, “What do you want me to do?”

“Are we alone?”

Blip just stared, unanswering, as if she had asked the dumbest question at the moment.

While there were still areas to comb through, in years, they hadn’t heard or seen anyone else. She knew they were alone. She was alone—the only human for light-years.

Her gaze darted downwards. She muttered, “Can we at least investigate?”

“Where?”

“The needle?” Syn stared up.