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Hello? Hello? Is anyone in there- can you hear me?
Sleep. He remembers sleep. And somewhere, he remembers a potato battery.
Are you gonna open this door? At any time? Hello?
Soggy bedsheets, damp and soaked in sweat. A cracked ceiling clothed in mold.
Fine, no, it ain’t a problem; it ain’t like I’ve got, you know, ten thousand other test subjects beggin’ me to help ‘em escape. Y’know, it ain’t like this place is about to explode, or anythin’.
Test?
He leaps up from the bed, consciousness soaring though him. The bed beneath him is warped impossibly around his body; the edges have browned considerably.
Oh, just OPEN THE DOOR! No, that’s too aggressive, uh- Hello, friend! Why not open the door?
Friend?
He looks down at his legs which seem to be supporting him, impossibly. He thinks it has something to do with the boots covering his feet, as his knees feel a bit like mush.
But yes, the door.
He sets his feet forward, one in front of the other. It seems instinctual, though he has no memory of doing so before. Come to think of it- he doesn’t have much of a memory of anything.
Anyone in there? Hello?
He stumbles to the door, clenches his fist around the handle, and pulls.
Staring at him with one startlingly blue light is… something. It’s made of metal, and- is that an apple sticker on its side? And how does he know what an apple is, or what a sticker for an apple would even look like?
“Aaugh!” the thing says, and oh, it’s male. He can imagine what a female voice might sound like, and somehow he knows that this isn’t one. “Oh, my god. You look terribl- umm. Good. Looking good, ha.”
The thing- robot?- slides forward into the room, suspended by a curving metal rail that spans his ceiling. He walks back with it, watches it stare at him.
“You okay? Ain’t you- don’t answer that, actually. I’m sure you’re fine. Plenty of time to recover, all that. Jus’ take it slow.”
He coughs, looking around the room. Clearly it’s old and worn; the wallpaper is peeling, the windows are cracked, the bed’s disgusting. He looks around for a shower, but there doesn’t appear to be one anywhere.
“All right, Spark,” the thing says, and he blinks, looking at it. “You’ve been in, uh, suspension for a pretty long time, so, um. You might have a tad bit of, um. Brain damage.”
He looks around the room, frantically- is there anyone else here? Can he find some sort of doctor? What’s going on-
“Hold on, now Spark, don’t be alarmed- wait a second- actually, because- if you do feel alarmed, then that’s probably a good thing to feel if you’ve got brain damage- is any of this gettin’ through? Can you understand me?”
He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Frustrated, he tries again. He moves his foot an inch to the right and-
Is propelled about a foot in the air.
“Okay,” the robot- because it is indeed a robot- says. “What you’re doin’ there is jumpin’. You just… you just jumped. But, uh, don’t mind that. Say apple. Aaapple.”
He opens his mouth.
“Aaahh.” The sound is slurred and uncomfortable. His throat rumbles with disuse and his tongue is too big, in the way.
“Simple word, ain’t it? Apple.”
“Aaah?” he tries again, but can’t seem to do more than that.
“Ay. Double pee-ell-ee.”
“Ahh.”
“Right, okay, you know what- that’s close enough. Hold on, now, Spark.”
The robot slides out of the rail and up to somewhere he can’t see. The whole room jolts suddenly, sending him careening to the floor. He braces himself with surprisingly strong arms, and gets to his feet again, races to the door.
And sees a forest of bodies.
o0O0o
The robot’s name, he learns, is “Jed.”
“Short for Jedediah, but you don’ got to say that bit.”
“Aah?” he says, staring at the robot hovering in front of him. It’s a bit disconcerting to know that the entire being of this robot is literally in his hands, but he’s getting used to it.
“Oh- uh, it’s a little long.”
He shrugs.
“JEDEDIAH,” the robot says, proudly. “Jacobs Emotion-Digitalized Electric Dampened-Intelligence AI Humanoid.”
He squints at it. “Jeh,” he says.
“Ain’t got a clue who Jacob’s supposed to be,” the robot admits, rolling its eye. “Hey, maybe he’s the one that invented me! Imagine that!”
“Huhh,” he says.
“Can’t hear you none too well.” Jed’s eye fizzles down a little, dimming. “Come again?”
“Huhh,” he repeats. “Mmn?”
“Oh, right. Humanoid.” Jed brightens again. “See, it’s actually supposed to be without that part. But I looked through all those test subjects, an’ not a one of ‘em spelled ‘Jedediah’ like that. So. I added the last bit on.”
He smiles.
o0O0o
They’re going to escape, Jed says. They’re going to crawl their way through the abandoned test chambers and find a way out of this place.
And for a little while, they do.
But as they’re forced up through the tube, flipping switches on and on and on and on, he can’t stop the horrible sinking feeling in his gut. And neither, apparently, can Jed.
“Okay, no, don’t worry- don’t worry!” he stammers, looking down at all the buttons. “I’ve got it, I’ve got it, I’ve got it- this should slow it down! No, uh, that’s makin’ it go faster. Uh oh, Spark- don’t panic, all right, stop panicking, I can still stop this- Ah! There’s a password!”
He watches as Jed, attached to the rail of the thing, tries frantically and fails to deactivate the machine they’re currently turning on. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen when all of these switches are turned on and they make it to the top, but he knows it’s nothing good.
“Okay, all right. All right, listen. New plan. Act natural, act natural. We ain’t done nothin’ wrong- hello!”
“Oh. It’s you.”
Cold dread fills him, and it’s that voice. At once, he knows it and he knows that he should feel nothing but fear at the sound of it.
“You know her?” Jed whispers, as he stares up at the frosted yellow machine rising towards them.
“It’s been a long time. How have you been? I’ve been really busy being dead. You know. After you murdered me.”
“You did what?”
He can’t speak to tell Jedediah to be quiet, so he just holds him in the air, staring up at-
“Aauh!”
They’re both lifted up into the air underneath opposite mechanical claws. He reaches out instinctively towards Jedediah, but they’re too far away.
“Oh, no, no, no- nononononono-”
The claws clamp down and at once Jed’s eye fizzles down from its shining blue into a dull gray. The arm tosses Jed onto the ground as if he’s nothing.
“Juh!” he yells, flailing his legs underneath the arm. “Juh- Jud. Jed!”
“Okay, look. We both said a lot of things that you’re going to regret. But I think we can put our differences behind us. For science. You monster.”
He can do nothing but stare down at the broken looking sphere on the ground below him as he’s carried up, up, and out.
o0O0o
He makes it through eight test chambers before he sees-
“Jed!” he yells, as he soars up from the jumping pad. Behind a frosted plane of glass, the robot blinks in surprise.
“Hey, you can speak! That’s great- look, I’m all right-”
He lands back down on the pad and jumps up again.
“-you ain’t gonna believe what happened! There I was, just lyin’ there- I mean, you thought I was dead, but-”
He falls back down, jumps again.
“-a damn bird- eh? Yeah, nah, I couldn’t believe it either. An’ then the bird-”
He lands back down, but miscalculates his landing and soars forward into the rest of the test, newfound hope soaring alongside him.
o0O0o
Three chambers later, he finds Jed again.
“Hey, Spark! I found some bird eggs up here, dropped ‘em into the door thing. Shut it down, hey? You know, I-AAGH!”
He watches as Jed’s chased off by what he can only assume is a bird- and it looks to be massive, judging by its shadow.
“-BIRD, BIRD- okay, that’s. That’s probably the bird, ain’t it? That laid the eggs. Wow.”
“Jed,” he says, happy to show off his newfound word. Jed blinks, apparently snapping back to attention.
“Right, sorry, Spark. The point is, we’re gonna break right outta here. Soon, I promise, I promise. I just gotta figure out how. To break us outta here.” His eye swivels to the right before he can say anything else. “Here she comes- keep testing, and remember. You never saw me!”
With that, he’s gone again and the sound of SaC’s voice drifts closer and closer.
He presses on.
o0O0o
Six chambers later, and he spots Jed once again.
“Hey, Spark!” The robot seems oddly chipper for their predicament, and he can only attribute that to one possibility. Jed’s found a way out. He races over and beams up at him.
“How’s it going?” Jed doesn’t wait for an answer. “Look, I talked my way onto the nanobot work crew that’s rebuilding this shaft. They’re really small so I- ah- I know, Angus. No. I’m on break, wheel horse. Break, on break.” Jedediah rolls his eye and turns back to him. “Just hang in there for five more- what? Cassius, you ain’t firin’ me for that- five more chambers, then I swear I’ll get you out. Hang in there, Spark.”
He can’t keep the smile off his face as he forces himself through the rest of the chambers.
o0O0o
And then, at last-
“Oi, mate!”
Jedediah’s there. The corner of the test chamber’s been ripped back, and the little sphere is hanging there, waiting for him. Blue eye and all.
“Ah’m speaking in an ahk-cent that’s beyond her range o’ hearing!”
He thinks it’s supposed to be British, but he really can’t tell.
“Ah no Ah’m early, but we have to go right now!”
He sprints through the gap in the chamber and onto the metal rails. There’s no logical way to run, so he doesn’t think as he just tears along through the walls.
“Okay, Spark, quick recap,” Jed says, and how does a robot manage to sound out of breath? “We’re escapin’! That’s what’s happenin’ now, we’re escapin’. You’re doin’ great, Spark, just keep running-”
He slides on the metal and almost misses a turn around a corner, almost falls down into the bottomless looking pit below them-
“Quick word about the future plan’s I’ve got- we’re gonna shut down the turret production line, turn off the neurotoxin, then we’re gonna confront her- again, though, uh, for the moment- run!”
The turrets catch up to them halfway through, but somehow, impossibly, he avoids the bullets, makes it across another bridge, jumps into the lift, and-
“We made it we made it we made it we made it…”
-sinks down onto the floor of the elevator.
“I’ll meet you on the other side!” he hears, and laughs to himself, arms trembling from adrenaline, gun resting in his lap.
o0O0o
“Fantastic, Spark, you made it through- well done, great. Now, follow me. We got work to do. At least she can’t touch us, down here…”
They wander around through the tunnels and manage to do all but the last of Jed’s planned points. They sabotage the turret manufacturing center, making sure to replace the model turret with a reject, and cut through all the pipes of the neurotoxin generator. And once it’s done, all they have to do is ride the tube straight to SaC.
“I knew this would be fun,” Jed says, looking through the glass at their surroundings. “They told me it weren’t fun at all- an’ you know what, I believed ‘em. Lovin’ this, though. An’ we ain’t even seein’ the whole of it. This is just the top level, y’know.”
He smiles. “Jed,” he says.
“Can’t you say more’n that?”
“Jed.”
“Try apple again.”
“Aaah. Puh.”
“Now put ‘em together.”
“Aah, puh. App. Luh. Appl.”
“There, you see, you’re getting it.”
“App. Luh,” he repeats.
“Close enough. Hey- what’s your name, Spark? I don’t think I ever found that out.”
His name? Does he have a name? He shrugs.
“Jed,” he says.
“Hey, now, that’s my name. Ain’t yours.”
“Jed.”
“Mine.”
He smiles. “Aah, puh. Appuh.”
“Your name ain’t apple.”
“Apple.”
“Hey, there you go!”
He glows with pride.
“You sure you ain’t got a name?”
“Nuh.” He shakes his head and shrugs. “Nuh, mm.”
“I’m sure you’ve got a- oh, no.”
The stream of light connecting them is drifting apart. He reaches out to catch Jed, but it’s too late- and now they’re in separate streams, separate tubes. Jed’s rising up, up, and away as he sinks steadily down.
“Aggh, I’m going the wrong way!” Jed cries. “Look, you just- you get to her, I’ll find you!”
He looks up helplessly at Jed’s retreating form before heading down towards his fate.
o0O0o
Her room is so much bigger than he remembers.
Not that he actually really remembers it at all- there are faint glimpses, but nothing more than that. But still, it’s massive.
“I hope you brought something more than a portal gun this time,” SaC says, as he walks out into the room. “Otherwise, I’m afraid you’re about to become the immediate past president of the Being Alive club.”
The turrets come to kill him but explode on themselves instead- as he’d planned- and he aims a triumphant smile up at SaC.
“I suppose we could just sit here and stare at each other forever until somebody drops dead. But I have a better idea- it’s your old friend.”
Jedediah?
“Deadly neurotoxin.”
His heart sinks as SaC makes some comment about holding his breath. He knows he’s got nothing to worry about, not now that he knows it won’t work. He doesn’t move, just keeps staring up at SaC, waiting.
Sure enough, the toxin doesn’t come.
What does come, however, is-
“Jed!”
“Gah- uh- hello!” Jed falls to the bottom of the container, battered and charred but alive. Well. As alive as a robot can be, anyway.
“I hate you so much.”
“Warning: Current Core at 80%. Alternate Core detected,” the announcer’s voice says, echoing around the room.
“Oh, that’s me they’re talkin’ about!” Jed exclaims. He aims the gun and picks Jed up, races to the center.
“To initiate Core Transfer, please deposit Substitute Core in receptacle.”
“Do what it says,” Jed pleads, looking down at the receptacle. “Plug me in, I’ve got an idea-”
“Don’t do that.”
“Spark, please, you gotta listen to me-”
He slams Jed down into the receptacle.
“Substitute Core accepted. Substitute Core: are you ready to start the procedure?”
“Yes!”
“Corrupted Core: are you ready to start the procedure?”
“No!” SaC cries.
“Oh, yes you are!” Jed crows.
“No, no, no, no, no, no-”
“Stalemate detected. Transfer procedure cannot continue.”
“Yes!”
Jed panics, then. “Pull me out, pull me out, pull me out pull me out pull me out-”
“Unless a Stalemate Associate is present to press the Stalemate Resolution button.”
“Leave me in, leave me in, leave me in-”
He finds the button and, after transporting himself behind it and evading the shields-
“You’re not authorized to press that button.”
“Spark, come on, press it!”
“Do not press that button.”
“You gotta trust me, Spark, please-”
-slams his hand down.
o0O0o
“Check me out, partner!” Jed swirls around the room and he laughs, following him. The panels of the room wave as he moves, seeming to bow. On the floor lies SaC’s abandoned head, yellow glow gone.
“We did it!” Jed calls, stopping his circle and lowering himself down.
He smiles. “Jed.”
“Yeah, that’s right. It’s me- I’m gigantic. Call me Gigantor from now on, all right? Ha!”
He laughs.
“Right, oh, right. That escape elevator, gotta call that. Hold on- there we go. Elevator called. It’s on its way.”
He sits down on the ground and just looks at the ceiling. They’re done, they really are. It’s all over; they’re free.
The elevator slows to a stop behind him and he stumbles in, sits down against it. It rises slowly, stopping at the ceiling.
“Check this out,” Jed says gleefully. “I’m a damn genius- I can- woah, Spark, you’re tiny. You’re so small and I’m so… so gigantic. I’m huge!”
Jed laughs.
And laughs.
And it’s not over yet. Not by a long shot. He watches in horror as SaC taunts him over and over again, as Jed seems to grow bigger with every word.
“I ain’t no moron- I ain’t gonna be manhandled by someone like you!”
“Jed,” he says, voice small.
“Now who’s tiny? Now who’s tiny? Could a tiny little moron do this? Could a tiny little MORON! PUNCH! YOU! INTO! THIS! PIT? Could a tiny robot do that?”
The glass below him breaks.
“Jed,” he says, and he falls.
o0O0o
He really doesn’t care much about SaC. But, unfortunately, she’s his best chance of getting out of this damn place. So he rescues her in all her potato glory from the crow and takes her with him as he wanders around the old laboratory. It’s dank and barely lit, but he follows the sound of the old owner- whose name appears to be Teddy.
The new voice is strangely pleasing; after all, he’s heard nothing but Jed and SaC for a long, long time. He savors every chance he gets to hear the man speak.
So she hadn’t always been SaC. Once she’d been Sacagawea, faithful wife to Teddy. And he’d loved her too much.
He almost feels sorry for her.
o0O0o
He imagines space is lonely.
o0O0o
One night, while tending to the cows and making sure they’ll be warm through the night, a young farmer named Larry finds a half-alive man collapsed in front of the water tray.
When he wakes, they ask him his name. He says “apple.” They ask him where he’s from. He says “Jed.”
He doesn’t say anything else.
o0O0o
He learns that the future is actually a pretty nice place.
The farmers take pity on him and let him stay as long as he helps out. And so he does; his hands get calloused and bruised, he learns to shave, he cuts his hair back. The farm is a nice, quiet place. There are no turrets hiding in the grasses for him to avoid. There are no glass walls surrounding him. There is no voice above telling him what to do. He can just be.
And after days upon days of living in the lab, he savors it.
They teach him how to speak, slowly but surely. They bring back books from the city and he reads them eagerly, devouring the words, repeating them to himself, constructing sentences. But even when he can think in English and talk in complete sentences, he doesn’t like to. His throat feels better when it’s still.
But he can, and that’s really the only thing that matters.
“Hey, uh,” Larry says, one day. “We’re delivering some stuff into the city today.”
He’s used to this. They trust him to look after the farm while they’re gone; he stays and enjoys the silence. And by the end of the day, they return with a truckload of spoils from the city. So he nods to show he understands.
“You could come along today, if you want.”
He blinks.
“Nicky twisted his ankle this morning,” Larry explains. “He’s staying home. So I thought you might like to come along. We’re gonna leave right about now, so. If you don’t want to come, no worries. I just thought you might like a change.”
A change? Yes. A change is good. He’s far too used to repetition. He nods enthusiastically, looking over Larry’s shoulder to the truck. It’s old and rusty and anything but white. It’s perfect.
The ride to the city is long, but he doesn’t mind. They start off on a dirt road driving out of the farm, and join up with another road leading off to the east. He watches as the rows and rows of crops slowly turn into grass, and the grass becomes speckled with buildings. They join onto a bigger, paved road, and they ride it into the jungle of buildings.
He stares out the window at it all, amazed. The truck has wheels, of course, and around them are countless others. But above them, he can see people traveling above the ground in containers- they aren’t cars, surely- that don’t touch the ground. They speed off to unimaginable places, leaving everyone behind.
The sky is a rich blue, drowning out whatever clouds that try to inhabit it.
He tears his eyes off the sky and focuses on the city once more- the city full of people, full of life. He’s never known so many people before; it’s incredible.
“This is gonna take a while to sort through- some of it got mixed up on the ride here,” Larry tells him, after they park the car in front of a gigantic building. “Shouldn’t take too long, but it’ll give you some time to look around, here.”
Alone? They trust him alone in the city?
“Anyway, here’s some money.” Larry hands him a few bills, folded up. “I always get Nicky something when I’m here; you go buy yourself something nice, all right?”
He nods. And then, because he knows he should-
“Thank you.”
Larry pats his shoulder. “Good man. Be back here in two hours; we should be good to go by then.”
He wanders through the city, looking for a bookstore. Maybe somewhere he can find something useful- like- oh, what did Larry call it?- a Dictionary. Or maybe a Psy-clo-paedia. He wants to learn about the world, see what he’s been missing.
He finds an old, run down place that looks as if it’s squished into the space between two other stores. When he pushes the door open, a little bell tinkles above him.
“Hello!” someone greets, and he looks up to see a young woman at the counter. “Welcome- goodness, it’s been a while since someone’s come in here.”
“Hi,” he says, closing the door behind him. The bell tinkles again.
“My name’s Amelia,” the woman says, holding out her hand as he walks closer. He takes it. “And I own this place- it’s not much, but the monthly Small Independent Business checks they send in help me along. I just wish more people still read the paper versions- of course, now it’s all digitalized, you can hardly blame them-”
“I’m looking for a,” he says, and tries to remember the word. “A fictionary.”
“Fiction section?” Amelia asks.
“No,” he frowns. “Ficitonary. Fictio- Dictionary!”
“Oh!” Amelia nods, jogging out from behind the counter. “Let me just see, I think we’ve got something around here- oh, for the love of- Hawk, this is not the time!”
He looks down to see a large ginger cat swirling around her feet. He’s only seen cartoon images of cats before. He bends down and slides his fingers over the cat’s backside. It seems to lean into his touch and nuzzles his hand.
“Aww, she likes you.” Amelia ducks behind a shelf and searches for a dictionary.
“Kitty,” he says, scratching the cat behind the ears.
“Yep. Kitty Hawk. But I just call her Hawk.” Amelia pops back out, holding a worn looking brown book. “Dictionary,” she says, handing it over. He flips through the pages and searches the words, recognizing some, glossing over others. It’s perfect.
Now for the other one.
“Ssss,” he starts, frustrated. “Sssky. Sky-luh-peh?”
“Didn’t hear you right, cornrow.” Amelia smiles. “Sorry, I can’t speak much other than English.”
He shakes his head. “I can’t speak well,” he explains. “Just learning. Um. Book?”
“You’re lookin’ for a book.”
He pets the cat, which is pressing its head up against his thighs. “Yes. Book. Sky-luh-peh.”
“Loupe?” Amelia giggles. “What, that erotica writer?”
He shakes his head. “Sky-luh-pah. Sky-low-peh?”
“Oh!” Amelia falls down on her knees and turns to the shelf she’d gotten the dictionary from. “Encyclopedia?”
“Yes!”
He pays for the books easily with the money- it’s got numbers on it, so he doesn’t have too hard of a time figuring out which bills to give her- and makes to leave, but-
“Hey, now, stranger,” she calls. “If you wanted to stay and read, I won’t stop you.”
“Stay?” he repeats.
“Yeah, course! We got some beanbags in the back, an’ I’m sure Hawk would more’n love to join you.”
Between his legs, the cat makes a feeble mmmurp, rubbing up against his foot.
And so he stays. He reads through the dictionary first, and makes it halfway through the B words before switching to the Encyclopedia. They’re both heavy, but he doesn’t mind. He likes the weight.
The encyclopedia is fascinating- it’s dated to have been published in 2133, a year he’s pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to be alive in, and it’s full of information about the world. He flips to the S page, because it’s right about in the center.
Space Exploration, he reads, is the ongoing discovery and exploration of celestial structures in outer space. In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, space was limited to companies with surpluses of money to be spent on developing the technology necessary. But with the Haley Craft and Jacobs Space Suit, developed in 2077 and 2083 respectively, space travel was stable enough to become affordable to the public. It became publicly funded again in 2086, due to the popularity grown between these two commodities.
The Haley Space Craft (nicknamed both Haley Craft and HSC for its inventor, Mina Haley) was developed and eventually marketed in 2077, and is credited as being the first spacecraft ever to have left earth’s atmosphere and returned with minimal damage, creating a safe and sustainable means of interstellar travel.
Beside the description is a diagram of the Haley Craft, which details its size and number of passengers.
For more information on the HSC’s development, please turn to the Haley entry.
He reads on.
The Jacobs Space Suit (nicknamed JSS and named for its inventor, Meghan Jacobs) was invented and mass produced in 2083, after the rise of popularity in the Haley Craft. This suit contains features not found in previous space suits, including a sustainable air circulation system, increased mobility, and an advanced mid-space movement system. This suit and its mass production system enabled free mobility in space.
Combined with the HSC, the JSS’s popularity rose along with the accessibility of space travel. Without either of their existences, programs such as the Youth Space Program (YSP) and the International Community for Interstellar Protection (see ICIP for more information) would not exist as they are today.
He folds over the corner of the page and closes the book.
o0O0o
They rotate out who goes to the city after that. It becomes every other week, and every time he goes to the city, he stops by Amelia’s bookstore. Sometimes he doesn’t read, he just helps her sort through books. There isn’t much to actually sort, seeing how hardly anyone really comes by, but he likes the atmosphere.
Larry always gives him some money, and he takes to spending it on food for them to share. She likes hot dogs, he learns, while he himself discovers he has an affinity for what are called crepes. Sometimes she’ll close the shop for an hour and they’ll go see a movie or explore the city together. Sometimes he sits and reads and pets Hawk. Sometimes Amelia isn’t there and he spends the day alone.
He works his way through his dictionary and encyclopedia, and begins to talk more and more. He learns to cut his hair the way he likes it, he learns how to catch the bus into the local town a few miles away from the city if he needs anything. He buys cookbooks from Amelia’s and ingredients from town so that he can make a cake for Larry’s birthday. He learns and learns and learns and he cannot stop thinking about space.
o0O0o
I have to test. All the time. Or I get this… this itch. It must be hardwired into the system, or something. Hurts somethin’ terrible. But when I do test- oh, corkscrews, nothin’ feels better. It’s just… why I gotta test. I gotta test.
So you’re gonna test. An’ I’m gonna watch. An’ everythin’s gonna be just. Fine.
He wakes without breath to the sound of a buzzer, something’s gone wrong, something’s gone horribly wrong, Jed, Jed, Jed-
The cow in the field moos again, and he squints against the sunlight on his face.
“Hey,” Nicky says, and he jolts completely awake.
“Uh. Hi.”
“You didn’t wake up this morning, but I convinced dad to let you sleep in.” Nicky grins. “Long night?”
“I was reading.” He looks to the floor beside his bed, where the Encyclopedia is lying, face down, pages splayed. He picks it up and closes it properly.
“Anyway, mail’s just come.” Nicky hands him a white envelope. “There was something for you.”
He looks at the envelope, which reads:
My favorite customer
Following the header is the farm’s address. The return address in the corner bears Amelia’s name.
“She sent me a letter?” He frowns and slides the top flap open.
“Ooh, have you got a girlfriend?” Nicky teases. He’s eighteen, but that doesn’t mean he can’t still act like a little kid.
“She’s a friend,” he says, shrugging and reading over the letter. “And… and she wants me to work for her.”
o0O0o
As he rides the bus into town (and out of town, and away towards the city), he thinks.
Yes, Jed betrayed him. Yes, Jed had been prepared to kill him. And yes, he’d left Jed in space.
But, he thinks, had it really been Jed’s fault? SaC had been fine once she’d been separated from the main system, hadn’t she? So Jed had just been corrupted, right?
Let go! Let go! I’m still connected; I can pull myself in, I can still fix this!
He closes his eyes, curves his arm around the handles of his bag. The heaviest things in it are his books. The gun hardly weighs anything.
Oh, no, change of plans- hold onto me, tighter-
He leans his head against the glass window, staring at the sky.
Grab me, Spark, grab me grab me GRAB ME-
The sky is blue. The sky is so blue, it hurts.
o0O0o
He lives above the bookstore, along with Amelia. They both agree that the simplest way for her to pay him is rent. He works, she pays the full rent. So he gets another job down at the crepe stand a few blocks away to pay for food and other such things.
Some nights he wakes to the memory of You’re at my mercy- and I don’t have any! You’re at my nothing, you’re at my lack of mercy!
Some nights he wakes to the memory of Careful, now, Spark- try to jump across.
He doesn’t know which is worse.
o0O0o
“You sure do spend an awful lot of time looking at the sky,” Amelia says, one night. He stares at the stars, at the satellites.
“The sky is...” He searches for an adjective that could possibly describe what the sky means. “Free.”
Yeah. Jed’s free, now. Free.
“I always wanted to be a pilot,” Amelia says, handing him a beer. They look outside the window. The curtains brush against one another with the evening breeze. “But not in space. Space is…” She trails off, waving her hand.
He laughs.
“Bet you’d love to go to space,” she says.
“Go?” he repeats.
“Yeah.” Amelia nudges his arm. “If you love the sky so much, you should go up there sometime.”
“I… lost someone,” he says, quietly. “The sky reminds me of him.”
She smiles. “Maybe the sky can help you forget.”
He shakes his head.
“No.”
“Or,” she says, “maybe the sky can help you remember.”
He sets the beer bottle down and rubs his sleeve over his eyes.
“I don’t want to remember.”
o0O0o
But he does. He remembers every day, every second. He remembers when he looks up and sees the blue sky. He remembers whenever he sees apples being sold in the supermarket. He remembers every few weeks when Larry drives into the city to drop off his crops and get his money.
And after a while, remembering isn’t enough.
“One ticket, please. Adult.”
The woman behind the counter stamps a pass and slides it under the glass.
“Gate 36D,” she says, taking his cash and collecting change. “Don’t forget to rent a JSS, only twenty three dollars.”
“I’ll take one,” he says, nodding. The lady takes his ticket back and stamps it again, on the other side.
“Thanks for flying with Endeavor,” she says, giving him the ticket again.
It seems the miracle of space-flight has somewhat worn off, as his gate’s nearly empty. It makes sense- they’re only flying up and down, not to and fro. There’s nobody anxious to get anywhere, there’s no reason to be pushy. It looks like it’s just him and another couple of people on this flight.
He’s never ridden on a plane before- let alone a rocket. He watches, fascinated, as the craft leaves earth and rockets into the sky, up until the earth is no longer an endless plane but a sphere in an abyss. They fly closer and closer to the moon, until they’re about halfway between there and earth. The craft stops, and they float.
“Your JSS,” the flight attendant says, tearing him away from the window. She hands him a dress bag, inside of which he can only imagine his space suit is waiting.
“Your suit comes equipped with an emergency transmitting device,” the woman says, smiling cheerfully as she addresses the rest of the crew. “If for any reason the spacecraft becomes unable to transport you, simply open the flap and press this button. An emergency crew will be notified right away. Your spacesuit has a timer, which will notify you when there are ten minutes before takeoff.”
He zips the suit up and inspects it. The thing has an option to play radio- but no headphone jack. Interesting.
“You’ll have approximately three hours here; enjoy your stay!”
He and the two other passengers are led to the back of the craft, helmets and suits on. The helmet, he learns quickly, acts as a set of headphones, relaying everything the captain says.
So he sets off.
It hasn’t been too long, has it? Only a few months. More than a few months. Has it been a year? God, he’s lost count.
He scans the space around him for any sign of the robot, but there doesn’t appear to be anything other than faint stars. The moon and the earth circle around them, and the sun blazes far, far away.
He turns to the nearest radio station and hears the faint strains of Edith Piaf’s Non, je ne regretted rien echo in his helmet. The sound of someone singing, compared to the ultimate vastness of space, it twists his stomach in a way he doesn’t quite understand.
Ni le bien, qu'on m'a fait
Ni le mal, tout ça m'est bien égale
“-take it all back-”
What?
The strains of French music come back again, glossing over the voice, the voice-
He raps his knuckles on his helmet, frustrated.
“-honestly- do- could take it all back-”
It’s him. It’s Jed- and he’s close enough to be picking up Jed’s signal with the radio in his helmet. He taps it again, looking around frantically.
“-and not just- stranded- space-”
Nothing, he can’t see anything. There’s just empty space out here. They’re trapped between the moon and the sun and the earth and he’s never going to see Jed ever again, of course he isn’t, why did he even come out here in the first place?
“-if I ever saw him again- d’you know what- say?”
He closes his eyes against the void.
“I’d say… I’m sorry, Spark. Sincerely. Sorry I was bossy. Sorry I was monstrous. And. And I’m genuinely sorry, Spark. I am. I am.”
It’s probably not even live. It’s probably a signal Jed sent out long, long ago. Sent out to whoever might be out here, listening. And no one’s picked up on it, not until now.
He bumps up against someone- likely that couple. Maybe this is supposed to be their honeymoon, the idiots. He turns around, ready to shout them into another planet, but it’s not them.
It’s a small, battered and charred sphere, and it begins to drift away at the contact. Stricken with sudden panic, he grabs at its handles and pulls it close. It’s dead, it looks like. Out of power and iced over. The eye in the middle isn’t even open, but he knows that if he forced the panels covering it apart, it would be a dull grey, nothing more than a lightless lightbulb. And on the side is a worn sticker, with a picture of an apple.
It’s Jed.
“I wish I could take it all back,” he hears, in the exact same inflections he’d heard not a minute ago. “I honestly do, I honestly wish I could-”
He shuts off the radio.
Jed, in his arms, is a wreck. His white paneling is coated in black grease and scrapes. His handles are intact but flaking apart, black covering chipping away to the metal beneath. He doesn’t so much as twitch.
He takes Jed back to the spacecraft, knocks on the door.
“Sir,” he hears the captain say, through his helmet. “You can’t take unidentified objects into the spacecraft.”
“I know,” he says, looking down at Jed. “But this is- this is my friend.”
“That’s a space rock.”
“It’s not- he’s a robot.” He lifts Jed up a little. “And I lost him a long time ago.”
“Well, now.” The doors open and he drifts in, carrying Jed. “How’d he get all the way up here?”
“It’s a long story.”
The door closes behind him and as they turn the gravity on, Jed becomes considerably heavier. He hefts the robot through the entryway and sets him on a chair, looks him over.
If anything, Jed looks worse.
“Well, well, well,” the captain says, coming up behind him. She whistles. “That pal of yours looks like he’s been through hell’n back.”
He sighs. “Yes.”
“We’ll have to account for his extra weight when we reenter- though it’d be easier if we could lighten our weight to even out the difference a little. Is there anything you brought on that you can eject?” she asks. “Anything heavy?”
“My books,” he says, instantly.
The captain nods. “We can replace them, son.”
He shakes his head. “It’s fine.”
Once he gets Jed back up and running, he won’t need his books anymore. Because he’s going to fix Jed up. Everything is going to be fine. Jed’s going to be fine.
I’m sorry, Spark.
o0O0o
He calls in sick the next day and devotes all the time he can to fixing Jed. There isn’t a whole lot he can do, but he tries nonetheless.
Amelia asks him if he needs anything- some dinner, some tea, coffee- but he sends her away.
He tries everything- there are various ports underneath a panel on Jed’s back, but only one of them connects to any cord he can find, and even when he plugs it in, nothing happens. There’s nothing he can do, plain and simple.
He makes it to sunrise before eventually succumbing to exhaustion.
o0O0o
And again, the sun brings him back to consciousness.
He yawns, sitting up and looking down at the mess of a robot below. He heaves Jed up from his lap and sets him up on the windowsill, so the sun hits his back. There’s still a plug stuck in his side, so he reaches back and yanks it out.
I’m sorry, Spark.
He yawns again, scratching at his stubbly chin.
“Well, Jed,” he says quietly, gripping the left handle of the robot. “I guess I’m sorry, too.”
“Sorry? For what?”
“Gah!”
He leaps back in surprise at the sound of the voice, but forgets to let go of the handle. Jed comes crashing down with him and lands on his chest.
“Spark!”
He sits up and rolls Jed off his lap. The robot blinks up at him, eye bluer than ever.
“How- how-” he stammers.
“All I needed was a battery charge, eh?” Jed rolls his eye. “Fixed me right up, you did- how in the hell did you find me, anyway?”
He blinks.
Jed’s light dims down, shooting to the floor.
“Spark, I… right, I’ve been thinkin’ ‘bout this for a while, actually. Had a lot of time to think while I was just up there. In space.”
He coughs.
“Right, right.” Jed nods his eye. “Sorry, right- what I wanted to say was- was- I remember when we were friends.”
“Jed.”
“And- and- wheel horse, I’m so sorry, I don’t know why I did what I did, an’ all I can think about is how I shouldn’a done any of it, and-”
“Jed.”
“Spark, there weren’t a day- well, you can’t really tell day from night out there in space, but I had a watch built in so I knew how long I spent out there, well, until I wore down, o’ course, but that ain’t the point- there weren’t a day I spent out there that I didn’t think o’ you an’ how I treated you an’ how I should have treated you and-”
“Jed.”
“Spark, I’m so sorry.”
Jed looks up at him with that big glowing eye and he knows at once that he forgives him.
“It’s all right,” he says, nodding.
“You can talk?”
“Yes. I learned.”
“Oh, Spark, that’s fantastic- you can say apple, right?”
“Apple.”
Jed laughs in his arms and he hugs the robot to his chest.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” he says. “And I forgive you.”
“You do?” Jed blinks up at him. “Really?”
“I do.”
“Oh.” Jed dims, brightens- dims again. Then brightens. “You have a name yet?”
And it’s the first time anyone’s mentioned it. Come to think of it, Amelia had never asked him for his name. Neither had Larry. Nor Nicky.
“My name,” he repeats, quietly. “My… name.”
“Yeah, course. I mean, I’m Jed. You’ve gotta be something.”
“I don’t.” He frowns. “I don’t remember.”
Jed doesn’t seem bothered by this. “It’s been ages- you’re tellin’ me you haven’t picked out a name yet?”
He shakes his head.
“We’ll just have to think of one for you, won’t we? I mean, I can’t just go around calling you Spark forever, now can I?”
“No,” he agrees, nodding.
“Hmm. Name. Thinking of a name.” Jed’s eye narrows, then expands. “You know, you were the last test subject left, there. I mean, when I was checking through ‘em all. There were eight thousand of em, and you were the last one.”
“Eight?” he repeats.
“Yeah.”
“Octo,” he says, experimentally. “Octoria. Octovio. Octavion.”
“Octavius?” Jed suggests.
“It sounds nice.”
“Good choice, Spark.”
“Octavius it is.”
Eventually the sun will fall again, then rise. He- Octavius, now- will have to return to work. He’ll talk to Amelia about Jed, he’ll sort through books, he’ll cook a meal for an irate customer late to their job. When the sun rises again, he’ll get up and leave Jed behind, and then come back. When the sun rises, he’ll continue on with his life.
But for now, they talk.