David Gatewood - The Robot Chronicles

What had happened? Why had Bezel not been activated until now? And where was the crew? He felt lost, as if he had a parser malfunction, as if the world were one giant syntax error.

He picked his way to the far door, his bright chrome shell now a dusty gray, the ash clinging to him as it puffed up around his legs. The door was stuck open, the metal curled backward, dog-eared. Bezel slid through the opening into the frozen zoo.

The fire had extended to this vault too, but hadn’t swept the entirety. The outer shells of the nitrogen tanks were dusty with ash, but the metal appeared unwarped, the seals intact. And the control center looked untouched, although its blank, dark screens made Bezel pick up his pace.

When he saw the inside of the small glass room, he didn’t even bother flipping switches. There was an emergency fire axe buried in the far console, its red blade like a splash of blood on the clean white plastic. The power cords had all been chopped into small wedges of rubber and wire, and scattered across the floor. Bezel sank into the wobbly office chair and looked around at the dozens of silver nitrogen tanks. Now they were just tombs. No more elephants. No more dogs. No more snails or fish. All thawing, all rotting away.

He shot up again and raced to the nearest tank. Maybe it had only just now happened. Maybe there was still time to refreeze them.

He lifted the lid, hoping for tendrils of fog to curl around his chrome face. But there was no outrush of cold. The tubes were neatly stacked in their trays, but the tank was dry. Warm, even. The pressure releases had long ago let the nitrogen leak out in little puffs as it boiled away.

Bezel pulled out a test tube. Pan troglodytes . Man’s closest relative, the chimpanzee, was now just a speck of dust where tissue and living cells ought to have been. He carefully tucked the glass vial back into its rack and gently closed the tank lid.

What had Dr. Ficht called it? An ark, like the one in the story. They had escaped the flood, but the ark was now filled with corpses, with death.

Bezel turned and left the frozen zoo behind him, heading for the final vault.

The hall was clean, as if it had just been swept, and the door was closed as usual in its frame. The air was so still that Bezel could just hear the small electric hum of his storage drive and the rush of air through his heat vent. He placed a shining hand on the door panel.

Warning: Power reserve at thirty percent. Recharge to avoid loss of function.

The message cropped up in his high-priority list. Bezel ignored it and pushed on the door. It swung open, and the overhead lights flickered for a few seconds before deciding to stay on.

Tock was slumped against the far wall. Bezel hurried over to her, not even seeing the dark pods around him. It was only half of Tock, her snapped wires and drooping springs trailing over the hard floor. Her chrome body plates were scraped and punctured—probably by the axe that was now lodged in the frozen zoo’s control console.

Bezel picked up Tock and carried her to the power station in the corner of the room. He didn’t bother to stop when he passed her leg unit. With hope, he attached her to the recharge station—but then leapt back as a shower of blue sparks burst from her spine. Her lights blazed once, her head jerked to the side—and that was all.

Bezel detected ozone in the air and knew the power station socket had burned out. He slowly detached Tock and removed her storage drive, then he picked up her leg unit and laid it below her torso. The power station at the vault’s entrance had malfunctioned, and the ones in the seed repository and zoo had been destroyed. This one had been his last chance for recharge.

He looked down at Tock. His only other option seemed distasteful to him. Almost cannibalistic. Maybe he should simply shut down instead.

One of the pods pulsed with green light nearby. Bezel looked around the room, away from Tock’s shimmering right leg.

Only a single pod was lit. The others were globes of shadow filled with the delicate branchwork of bones. Bezel checked the glowing pod. It was Karen Epide, one of the interns. Doubly lucky. She had already been in Svalbard when the reactors had been hit, otherwise she would have been out there, with no ticket in, like everyone else. Now she was in the only powered hibernation pod. Maybe doubly unlucky , Bezel told himself. Why had she lived when everyone else had died?

He shook himself. It didn’t matter. What mattered was waking her up, making sure that she, at least, survived. He didn’t have much power left. A few days, maybe. Bezel glanced back to Tock. Her pack was probably full. He shook his head. It was wrong, like taking another’s last bite of bread.

The low-power warning flashed again on his priority list. He ignored it, and sat at the life support console. It seemed to have taken no damage, except that the gravity motor on Karen’s pod had burned out. The screens on the other pods were all blinking with the same date. Fifty years. Had he been inactive that long? His internal clock had glitched and reset during one of the maintenance processes. It would explain the low-power warnings. Fifty years. The pods had only been meant for ten. Even assuming her gravity motor had burned out only a few years ago, Karen’s muscles would be completely atrophied by now. She might have brain damage. The nutrient reserves ought to have run out years ago. The system must have been using the nutrients meant for the others.

Bezel’s metal fingers hovered over the keypad. Should he even begin the recovery process? What was left?

The external sensors weren’t functioning. Bezel had no idea if the radiation had fallen to acceptable levels. Or if the air was breathable. There would certainly be little for a human to consume, even after all this time. It was supposed to be his and Tock’s task: replanting the hardier stock in places that were still irradiated, helping the world rid itself of the poison. Without those trees, it could take several more decades.

His memory chip seemed stuck on a replay of the seed repository, its ash forever sliding in the drawers, a gray slush of despair. Nothing was left. He glanced at the other pod readouts. Their red blinks were a constant, warm invitation to oblivion.

She could live for decades in the vault. There was enough food, enough power, even now, to support her. But then what? He’d be gone in a matter of months. She’d be alone.

Maybe there were others. There were certainly other seed vaults. Maybe there were other human survivors too. He ignored the thought that she’d never live to reach them. His job was to protect the humans. His job was to ensure the resurgence of the natural species of Earth. She was all that was left. Without her, he’d have no purpose. He’d be better off shutting down if she didn’t recover. He had to wake her. He had to try.

His fingers punched the recovery code on the keypad. As he swiveled in the office chair, Tock’s leg glinted at him from across the room. He knew it would take months of physical therapy before Karen fully recovered. If she ever could. He wasn’t going to last that long unless he found another power source.

The low-power warning pulsed like a growl in his head. Tock’s leg twinkled, and her storage drive clacked where it hung against his chestplate. She wouldn’t need it anymore. Whatever had happened here, she had tried to defend the people sleeping in the pods. She would want him to take it. He tried to persuade himself, but his mind still revolted.

He got up from the chair and walked past Tock to the living quarters. The linens were crisp and ghosted with fold lines as he pulled them from their wrappers. The absence of dust made him uneasy, as if the date were very wrong. After Karen woke up, he was going to have to look at Tock’s data and see if he could pull anything off the life support records. It might not matter much now that everything was gone, but it would help him to reconcile the data. Anchor him. Make him “feel better,” as the humans would say. But for now, he had work to do.