David Gatewood: The Robot Chronicles

He sat in a chair next to Karen’s cot. She slept on. He wanted to think about what he’d just seen. He wanted to worry about the sinking power reserve. He wanted to read the data from outside again. But Bezel knew his time was no longer his own. He was existing to help Karen. He synced his alarm to her monitor and went into standby mode until she woke again.

It was almost a month before Karen finally asked the question Bezel had been dreading. He’d wrestled with what he would tell her when it came up. At first he thought he might lie, at least until she was stronger. It was against his programming, of course, but he knew the workaround. It took a lot of resources. But something told him that wouldn’t be fair. Not even if telling the truth meant she lost the will to live and withered away again. Tock would have told her the truth.

But she hadn’t asked. For a while they hadn’t really talked at all. Bezel thought it must be shock. After a few days, she asked him about her physical therapy. And then she’d requested specific meals. Most often, she just slept or stared into space. Bezel went into standby as often as he could to conserve his power. She didn’t ask about that either. After a week, she asked him for a book. They’d successfully ignored each other for another few days, talking only between paperbacks and during therapy. But she’d asked at last, as Bezel had known she would.

She was sitting up on her own by then, but he hadn’t yet taken her into the rest of the vault. He was helping her with some leg exercises when she spoke. “Is there anything else I should know, Bezel? About what happened?”

He didn’t look up from her leg as she flexed it. “You have enough resources to subsist in the vault for several years. Perhaps for your entire life,” he said, trying to ease into it.

“My life? We were only supposed to hibernate for ten years. I remember you telling me the sensors are out, but surely after fifty years the surface should be habitable again.”

He lowered her foot gently to the floor. “I don’t know. The radiation was worse than expected. The information that Dr. Ficht examined convinced her that it wouldn’t be at acceptable levels for over a century. Even if the timeline is wrong, there is a strong chance that plant life has been severely reduced. The air may not be breathable.”

“But you can go out and plant more. I know we’re in the arctic, but they must have left some vehicles for you and Tock.”

“There isn’t anything to plant.”

“What do you mean? There’s an entire vault—thousands and thousands of types of plants, millions of seeds and bulbs,” Karen said, and then paused. “When you said the seed vault was sabotaged… I thought you meant maybe the temperatures were off, or a shelf was destroyed. You meant—is it all gone?”

“There was a fire. An explosion.”

“All of it? There must be some seeds that escaped.”

“When you are well enough, I will show you. We can clean it up together and see if anything viable survived.”

“And the zoo?”

“The power was cut to the nitrogen tanks.”

“ Everything is dead? Why did we survive?”

“You survived because Tock saved you. She couldn’t save the others. I don’t think she realized that Dr. Ficht would destroy the rest of the vault. And I wasn’t activated. Dr. Ficht thought I’d remain on standby until my power ran out. She destroyed my charge station so that I would just run down.”

Karen was silent for a moment. Bezel lifted her other leg.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

“That’s up to you,” said Bezel.

“Why is it up to me? Because I’m human? I can’t save the species. You can do more than I can. Why shouldn’t you decide what we do?”

“Because my power reserve will be depleted in a few months.”

Karen looked confused. “ Your charge station may be damaged, but you can use Tock’s, can’t you?”

“I tried to recharge Tock, to see if I could fix her. But she was too damaged, and it shorted out her charge station. The wires are melted, and I don’t know how to fix it. Tock was the repair bot. I wasn’t programmed for that level of maintenance. Our memory banks aren’t infinite—we’d split the responsibility. Tock was meant to fix things like this. I was meant to keep track of the botany, decide the best place to resettle, manage husbandry.”

“So you’re—you’re dying?”

He unstrapped the weight from her ankle and looked at her. “I wouldn’t call it that. I’m just running down. One day I’ll stop. But the thing that’s me won’t be destroyed. It will just be waiting to reboot.”

“There must be some sort of extra battery around here, or something we could rig up. What about Tock’s battery?”

She said it so casually. Bezel tried to ignore his revulsion. A human wouldn’t understand. To them, nothing was inviolate—it was all to be consumed. “I’ve already had to resort to that. It’s the only reason I’ve been able to help you this long.”

“What about the vault console? Can’t you take power from it? Or could we plug you into it somehow?”

“Even if I could find a way to draw power from the other systems in the vault, you need it to keep the air pumping and the temperature at habitable levels. Once I’ve shut down, you can still retrieve my storage drive and access my files. But it’ll be like reading a book that’s already written. Nothing new will happen. I will not be able to help you.”

Karen’s brow creased. It surprised him that his imminent shutdown seemed more worrisome to her than any of the other issues. “How long—I mean,” she fumbled for a polite phrase, “how much power do you have now?”

“How long until I shut down?” he offered. Karen blushed and nodded. “It depends on how active I am. If I’m careful and go into standby when I’m not needed, then maybe four or five months. Tock’s energy pack was fully charged.”

“So soon?” Karen asked.

“You will be recovered by then,” said Bezel. He stood up.

“And then what? You want me to live here, alone?”

“That’s for you to decide.”

“Don’t keep saying that.” She was truly crying now and Bezel offered her a towel.

“Why not? I can’t decide for you.”

“Never mind. You wouldn’t understand.” She waved him off.

She didn’t speak to him again before he helped her into bed for the night.

He sat beside her. His power level ticked to sixty percent. A recharge reminder flashed on his priority list three times; he buried it and entered standby mode.

His pressure sensor pulled him back into active mode when Karen grasped the metal around his wrist. “Bezel,” she whispered, “I can’t do this. All those years. Knowing that it’s only going to get worse, that this is the best things will ever be in here. I’ll go mad once you’re gone.”

He put a cool chrome hand over hers. “Maybe there are others. Maybe someone will come,” he said into the darkened room.

“But if the radiation is as strong as we think—”

“I will go out tomorrow and look.”

She pulled on his arm and he had to catch his balance on the chair.

“You can’t,” she hissed. “What if something happens to you? What if I get hurt? You can’t go. Not until I can go with you.”

He shook his head, forgetting she couldn’t see him in the dark. “It may never be safe for you to come with me.”

“You can’t leave!” she shouted. “You can’t just abandon me in this vault. It’s like being buried alive.” She began wheezing, and her hand slid from his arm. He was alarmed and raised the lights. She was doubled over, trying to catch her breath. The back of her shirt was soaked with sweat. He brought her a glass of water and waited for her panic attack to subside. But she didn’t calm down.