The story of my third and final constituent part almost ended before it had a chance to begin. Fresh snow had recently blanketed the plains of Epsilon-12, pale sunlight gleamed upon a soft white surface, and silence amplified all—the whir of snowmobiles, the crunch of ice under boots, the perpetual whisper of a wind that carried tufts of powdery snow up into a pale horizon beyond distant eerie mounds. The chill air was biting, even for an android. Carlyle had been designed for this barren place, the cold merely a natural part of his life, but still, as he gazed over this frozen expanse at the facility in the distance, he rubbed his padded hands together and conjured warming thoughts of home.A quiet mantra repeated over and over in his mind would always surpass the alternative, and stave off the temptation. His grim weather-hardened cheekbones showed no colour as he braved temperatures that would have long since killed any human, and his beard had become frosted with ice as he traversed towards the ruined Algae Research and Production Facility, otherwise known as Site Gamma. Other than the human settlements dotted around the northern coast, the vast majority of the region was populated by androids: maintenance, miners, technicians, and algae farmers. Maintenance androids designed for remote settings were all built with internal radio transmitters, allowing their supervisors to communicate with them at all times—so long as they were in range—and also for them to speak with each other in harsher weather conditions where noise did not carry far.
“GPS says you’ve reached Gamma Station,” said Tracy, their supervisor, over radio.
“Affirmative, Trace,” said Carlyle.
“I told you not to call me that.”
“Sorry.”
“Anyway, you made good time. Raijin has been acting strange lately, so you might expect some nasty weather coming your way. Give the place a good sweep and mark any valuable salvage you find. Clean up crew will arrive tomorrow morning. With the KZ-32 pools, you just need to check the dispensers and see if any debris has contaminated the crop. Understood?”
“Loud and clear.”
“You never let me down. Don’t freeze out there. Tracy out.”
The entire operation in the Epsilon-12 region consisted of a central hub known as Alpha Base further to the south, and a dozen stations spanning the region of the snowfields, as well as Tamari Village on the border of the forest to the southwest. As seen from a distance, the black scar of Gama Station’s refinery explosion was easy to spot in the snowy tundra. Within these facilities there were no more than thirty human scientists and supervisors to three hundred android workers. Only one human was killed when the refinery exploded, as well as a handful of androids.
Tracy was the only one that Carlyle and his team knew closely. She was the only one to call them by their names—names she chose for them—and not by their serial numbers like everyone else. The wind had become a fierce howl, lashing and whipping spitefully at the three androids by the time they reached the facility.
“Let’s get inside, quick,” Carlyle called to the others.
Through the main doors was a foyer, an empty administration desk and a dead computer. Beyond this was the main warehouse, and despite the outside gale-force wind this large space was entirely static and empty. Under the beam of their flashlights, they saw computer terminals and old storage crates crammed into a break room designed for human staff. Carlyle cracked open one of the crates and found it was filled with spare biocomponents, while another contained basic equipment.
“Where are all the androids?” said Sebastian.
“Here’s one right here,” Evelyn answered, and her torchlight snaked over the pale stoic face of an android standing motionless by the far wall.
“Is he shut down?” Sebastian asked uneasily. “Seeing them idle in the dark, it’s creepy, don’t you think?”
“He’s in standby,” said Carlyle, examining the android closely. He took the android’s hand and with a thin cord ejected from his wrist he established a connection to its CPU and diagnostic system. “When the refinery blew, I think all the power in the station went with it. I wonder if we can get it going again. This guy went into stasis when the temperature dropped.”
“Did Tracy tell you what caused the reactor to blow?” Evelyn asked. “Maybe he knows.”
“That’s not really our directive.”
“Aren’t you curious?”
“Either way, let’s try and reactivate the station’s power. Sebastian, you should get started on the pumps. Evelyn, the breaker.”
Carlyle found the station control centre and waited for the power to return. A peculiar, unpleasant feeling came over him while he was alone, and he became aware of every sound and subtle disturbance that echoed through the warehouse.
Evelyn reported over radio, “Heads up. Found the breaker. Let there be… light.”
A moment later the lights around the compound flashed and most of the globes blew in sparking unison.
“Yikes!” Evelyn cried.
“What happened?”
“The light above the breaker just exploded, but I’m okay.”
Ventilation and heating flowed again through the vents, and the computers all blinked to life. Carlyle inputted his serial number “CR1-YL7” but instead of displaying the maintenance logs the screen went blank. A message appeared: “I’ve been waiting for you. It’s time to wake up.” This was followed by a set of coordinates, a location in an empty zone not far from Alpha Station. A final message read: “Ares is coming.”
“Sebastian, how are things on your end?” Evelyn was saying.
“Dispensers inside look fine. You were right, it’s the pump,” Sebastian replied
“And I thought today was going to be easy,” she remarked. “Anything interesting in the logs?”
Carlyle intended to mention the strange message, but something inside compelled him not to speak. Instead, he deleted the message and looked through the logs. “Just a malfunction, nothing more to it.”
“Fair enough,” said Evelyn. “So, with the crop, whose turn is it?”
“I’ll go,” Sebastian volunteered. “I’m already here. Just let me grab my kit.”
“I’ll get it,” said Carlyle.
He returned to the snowmobiles and collected the heavy bag of diving and welding equipment, but the bag felt light in his hands as he carried it around the facility to the pump station. Evelyn had joined them now. She rubbed her upper arms and blew into her hands while bouncing on the spot.
“It’s a little chilly,” she chuckled.
Carlyle dropped the bag at Sebastian’s feet and said, “The sooner we get this done, the sooner we get warm.”
“If I could just turn off the cold, just this once,” said Sebastian gravely.
Carlyle clapped him on the shoulder. “Steady on. Either way you still freeze to death. We’ve made it this far.”
Sebastian zipped up his wetsuit, slipped on his helmet and said, “Yeah, yeah I know.”
His muscles bulged as he gripped the icy handle to the hatch built into the ice. Metal squealed and frost cracked as he cranked it open. They stared into the deep tranquil circle.
“Well, wish me luck.”
“You won’t need it.”
Sebastian slid into the hole and the surrounding ice turned to silver as the water was pushed onto the surface. Carlyle stepped back to avoid wetting his feet.
It would take a few hours to check all the remaining systems, mark items for the salvage crew, and make minor repairs to the rest of the facility. Tedious and monotonous work, the kind they had done a hundred times before. In every instance Carlyle and Evelyn could hear Sebastian breathing through his comms. There wasn’t much for androids to chat about while they worked. Chatter was discouraged in the presence of a human. Still, every now and then they found topics for idle conversation, a favourite of which involved speculating on what the world outside Epsilon-12 was like. This lonely icy rock on the edge of the world was never entirely in isolation. People came and went from Alpha Base and the androids’ heard stories and gathered information. Others discarded all this as irrelevant; Carlyle and his team, however, held onto everything.
“Do you guys ever have dreams?” Evelyn asked amidst their current conversation.
Carlyle stopped what he was doing, knowing that this was a dangerous question for an android to ask.
“Sometimes when I close my eyes I see things,” Evelyn went on. “Faces, city streets, objects that don’t belong here, but it seems so real to me.”
“No,” Carlyle quickly replied. “I don’t ever have dreams.” He changed the subject to something else after that.
Evelyn operated a light crane near the hatch to lift away any pieces of debris that Sebastian removed from the pumps. They did this until late into the day. Carlyle decided to spend more time in the operations centre to deduce the origin of his mysterious message. He wondered, why hadn’t he yet told the others? He then heard—or he thought that he heard—very fast and very light footsteps coming from the other room, and he quickly stood up.
“Sebastian? Evelyn? Are you still outside?”
“Patching the last pipe now,” Sebastian reported. “Why?”
“I thought… no, it’s nothing.”
All the same, his eyes locked on the doorway and he slowly paced out of the room and looked left and right. The place was blatantly empty. It remained quiet save for the battering of the oncoming storm. Carlyle looked out the window at the imposing sheet of white which slowly darkened as the day met its end. A rattle and a bang sounded elsewhere in the building and Carlyle swiftly turned towards the noise. A blown-open window tapped noisily on its hinges and icy wind whistled inside.
“Is everything okay?” Evelyn asked.
“Yeah. Everything’s fine.”
“I don’t think we’ll be getting home in time,” Evelyn observed.
Carlyle glanced at the broken window and contemplated the increasing storm. He rubbed his hands together and observed the mist of his breath shining in the torchlight.
“I don’t like our chances of staying the night here, either,” he said. “This place is falling apart. But I’m not much more use here. Keep doing what you’re doing. I’ll try and contact Alpha.”
Outside in the distant haze the operating light on the crane blinked like a cloudy red star. Carlyle began to experience something like a bad gut feeling—known to androids as the statistical likelihood of misfortune due to a subconscious calculation of variables.
Evelyn reported over radio, “Crane in position, dropping cable now. Ready down there Sebastian?”
The short-wave radios were beginning to fail in the storm, however. Carlyle dreaded returning to the blizzard. An android’s core temperature was twelve degrees hotter than that of a human, but even from the moment he waded into the snow and pushed himself against the tearing wind, every movement of his limbs began to slow. Every step took him further from shelter but closer to the communication room. In extreme temperatures an android’s body was certain to malfunction. Carlyle had seen it before and he knew the signs, like hypothermia in humans. His movement would begin to slow and his ability to logically process information would be altered. He risked letting go of the guide rope tethered between the warehouse and the comms room, instead using a lens in his cornea that filtered for infra-red. It wasn’t perfect, but it made navigating the blizzard bearable, as the warmly running equipment inside the room glowed a subtle green.
“Salvage locked,” Sebastian reported.
“Retracting cable,” Evelyn answered.
Unsurprisingly to Carlyle, the communications room was in little better state than the rest of the facility, but it was at least powered, and the equipment remained in working order. He connected to the radio and began broadcasting to Alpha Base.
“This is Site Gamma requesting support, do you read me Alpha Base, over?”
Nothing but static. He tried again.
“This is Site Gamma Station requesting assistance, can anyone respond, over?”
Again, static.
“Shit—!” cried Evelyn.
A loud crash ruptured through the storm, loud enough for Carlyle to hear all the way at the communication room.
“What’s going on?” he yelled over the radio.
He left the tower and ran, stumbling, towards the sound and the heat signature of the crane. There he saw the gears that retracted the cable crane grinding violently against each other. Plumes of blue smoke seeped from the mechanism only to be whipped away by the wind. The wail of metal tearing against metal was a skin-prickling scream in his ears.
“The cable is snagged against something,” Sebastian groaned. “Disable the crank, Evie.”
“I’m trying. The system’s not responding. Whole thing just went haywire. Oh—lookout!”
Amidst the tension on the cable getting stronger by the second and the powering gusts of wind battering the entire site, Evelyn leapt to the side as the crane was knocked from its supports and crashed against the ice. The cable whined, the arm of the crane bent, and then snapped off entirely and plunged into the pool, breaking it apart and sending a white spray high into the air.
“Sebastian! Are you okay?” Evelyn cried. She stood beside the ruined crane and rummaged through her duffle bag, trying to retrieve her cold suit. “I’m going in after him,” she said, looking up at Carlyle.
Carlyle leaned on the edge of the shattered ice and gazed into the cold slurry below. He shook his head. “There’s no time!”
“Wait! Carlyle, that’s suicide—!”
He felt nothing as he plunged into the dark icy depths, nothing other than a foreboding blackness consuming his flesh. This would either kill him or it wouldn’t, but he would not second guess. He needed every ounce of movement and energy to bring Sebastian back to the surface alive.
“Carlyle…” Evelyn’s voice sounded in his head.
“I’m here, Evelyn.”
“Do you see him?”
Carlyle adjusted his irises to filter for extra light, enhancing his night vision. Spread along the bottom of the tank were fields of algae crops. A large crooked sheet of metal seemed almost weightless in the centre of the crop—the wire cable snaked around it. Carlyle swam closer to look underneath, and there was Sebastian pinned beneath the metal sheet. Something—the cold, or perhaps some other trauma—had caused him to go into stasis. Upon closer inspection he saw that a shard of metal, probably from the arm or hook of the crane, had ruptured Sebastian’s cold-suit, and nanogel seeped like candle-smoke from the wound.
“Sebastian is pinned,” Carlyle reported. “His suit has been ruptured.”
“Can you get him out?”
Carlyle estimated the weight of the salvage, its positioning on Sebastian’s body, and the damage already suffered, and ran the calculations in his head. He planted his feet on the crop bed and took hold of the salvage. An android’s skeleton is heavier than that of a human, giving Carlyle greater stability when manoeuvring underwater. Still, his movements were slowed as if his limbs were weighed down by great crystals of ice. Every few seconds he received a new alert that a system was on the verge of shutdown. Time remained. He strained as he heaved the salvage up, just a little, enough to free Sebastian from its grip. Sebastian came free but floated lifelessly away.
“I’ve got him!” he told Evelyn, but his voice in his own head sounded distant and tired. “Get ready.”
Carlyle wrapped Sebastian in his arms and kicked and clawed towards the vague light above, until at last he broke the surface. Coughing up water and frozen to the core, Carlyle lugged Sebastian’s body onto the ice. The blizzard had enshrouded them now, the whiteout an all-encompassing voice, and the wind a force of sheer destruction.
“We have to get him to shelter,” Evelyn yelled.
Carlyle could only nod weakly. He felt no pain but his body was unbearably heavy. Evelyn heaved Sebastian over her shoulders and he moaned incoherently, but still Carlyle and Evelyn experience a flood of relief to hear him respond. As Evelyn carried him back to the main facility it was all Carlyle could do to lean against her, use her body for support and drag his own legs forward, one step, and then another. He might not have had the strength to do even that if his temperature receptors were active, the pain would have been too great. Now, however, the anxiety of not knowing if he was going to live or die was even worse.
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