A Short Story Collection by Peter Stone - HTML preview

Badlands

It was getting dark, so I picked up my pace. I needed somewhere safe to hole up for the night. Adjusting the backpack and blanket-roll on my back, I picked my way quickly over shattered, crumbling masonry. Fortunately, I travelled light - you had to in the Badlands.

The Badlands were a place I had vowed to never visit, let alone make my home. Yet here I was, wandering through an endless post apocalyptic wasteland of shattered freeways, dilapidated, crumbling multi-story apartment blocks, rusting cars, and wild grasses that thrived everywhere. Nor was I alone, other unfortunates eked out pitiful lives here too.

Rays from the setting sun glinted off a million acrylic-glass panels of the massive biodome of the Zone. The Zone’s very presence mocked me, reminding me of all I had lost. That was where I belonged; I had a life there, once. It’s funny how a death threat can turn a life inside out. One moment I was gainfully employed in Matsuda’s R&D division, the next I was running for my life out here.

That was a month ago, and those were dark days. All I did all day, every day, was lament, “I can’t believe this has happened to me, I can’t believe it!” I kept thinking of what I had in the Zone compared to this excuse of a life. I wanted my old life back! I told God time and time again that I would give anything to go back there, to have that life again. I prayed, I begged, for a miracle.

But instead of a miracle, all I got was the cold reality of this endless wasteland. Then one night, while hiding in a burnt out car, I had a breakthrough. I remembered reading in the Bible how Paul said he had learned the secret of being content whatever his circumstances, whether he had plenty or was in need, whether hungry or well fed, or even if shipwrecked. So I stopping fighting my situation and asked the Lord to help me be content here in the Badlands, and live through His strength. Let’s face it, at least I was alive here.

I was climbing over a concrete pylon that had collapsed in front of a freeway overpass when I heard the voices. Two men were screaming obscenities and a young woman was screaming in pain. My natural inclination was to flee and save my own skin, but not wanting to be afflicted by pangs of guilt for the next few days, I decided to see if there was anything that I could do.

I pulled the taser from its holster, thumbed the setting down from Bot to Human, and sprang soundlessly over the top of the pylon. Before me, beneath the cracked, weed infested rubble that sprawled beneath the overpass, two unkempt, emaciated men were laying into a young woman with metal stakes. She was trying unsuccessfully to ward off the blows with her forearms.

Enraged by this injustice, I jumped forward and grabbed one assailant by his dirty long hair while thrusting the taser on his companion’s neck. The electricity discharged from the weapon with a loud crack and the man went down like a sack of potatoes. The first guy tried to take a swing at me with his metal stake, but discharging the taser against the side of his head put him down too.

“It’s okay, you’re safe now,” I said, reaching out to help the woman to her feet. She was younger than I thought, a girl in her late teens. And she was from the Zone, if her pristine jeans and jacket were anything to go by.

I brushed straight black hair back from her forehead, grimacing when I saw how badly they had hurt her. Blood flowed from wounds to her cheeks and forehead. However, I staggered back in shock when I saw gleaming metal showing beneath the wounds in place of bone. This woman was no human but a robot built to mimic humans perfectly.

“Thank you! Thank you so much!” she said, using her sleeves to wipe the blood from her face.

A robot! I had hurt two humans to save a robot? Stricken with guilt, I stared down at the two men I had despatched so ruthlessly. What if I had killed them – they were already undernourished and weak. Fortunately, a quick check of their vital signs showed that both were merely unconscious. However, they would come too with massive headaches and one thought on their minds – revenge.

Seeing the need to be somewhere else, I hurried off without a backward glance, keeping in the shadow of the freeway overpass. So much for trying to be a gallant knight saving a damsel in distress – all I did was hurt two innocent guys intent on destroying a soulless robot.

Hearing booted feet dogging my steps, I span about in alarm. It was her – she was following me, the wounds to her face and arms already healing up.

“Why are you ignoring me?” she asked, confused.

I pulled out the taser and thumbed it to full power – the Bot setting – and thrust it in front of her face. “Just leave me alone, or so help me I'll fry you to a crisp!”

She did not pull back, but I could not mistake the fear in her eyes as she studied taser crackling in her face. But fear? How could a robot be afraid, she was just a machine! Frustrated, angry, and confused, I turned and continued on my trek north.

I had put plenty of distant between myself and the two guys by the time dusk fell, so I found a recessed area beneath the overpass and sat down. I was rummaging through my backpack for ‘dinner’ when the girl - the robot - came and sat across from me. I refused to acknowledge her presence.

“Why are you shutting me out? I mean, you saved me from those guys, right?”

Paying her no heed, I pulled out a can of chunky soup, a can opener, and a rations bar, which I got stuck into first. However, I could not help but notice the girl watching me closely. Well, not me, the food. “You're hungry?” I asked incredulously.

She nodded.

“Can't you eat a chunk of concrete or something?”

She fixed me with a withering glare. “My body can only process human food.”

“And why would that be?” I mocked.

“So I can blend in, of course. It would kind of ruin the atmosphere if I started munching on a ‘chunk of concrete’ while having dinner with humans, don’t you think?”

“You have a point,” I said as an image sprang unbidden to my mind of her chewing on concrete with metal teeth while human dinner guests pushed plates away in disgust. I handed her another tin of canned soup.

She gave me another look.

I sighed and handed her the can opener. “Can’t have you opening it with your metal teeth, can we? It'll ruin the atmosphere...”

“You learn quick,” she said.

I looked at her, confused. She was so life like, so…human, not like any other robot I had met or worked with back at the R&D lab. She’s not alive, she’s a bot, just like the rest of them! I chided myself. I pulled the tattered blanket roll from my backpack and wrapped it around me. “Can you, like, leave me alone now?”

She shrugged and lay down where she was.

Darkness came and I fell into a sleep troubled by dreams of Deathbots, a nameless girl and two emaciated men, hunting me relentlessly through a shattered concrete landscape.

***

You never experience deep sleep in the Badlands, it’s too dangerous - the best you can manage is a shallow, nightmare plagued sleep with your senses on alert.

As soon as my mind registered the sound of vicious snarls, I was awake and reaching into my backpack to grab a can of dog repellent. Spinning about, I spied three rabid, mangy dogs picking their way cautiously down shattered blocks of concrete towards my alcove beneath the overpass. They rarely attacked humans in such small numbers, so these mongrels must have been starving.

The girl - the robot I had rescued yesterday - sprang to her feet and leaped straight for the dogs, startling them. She appeared to be shouting at them, and although I could not hear the sound her voice was making, the dogs yelped in fright and bolted with their tails between their legs.

I put the dog repellent away, rolled up my blanket, and prepared to leave. The girl looked at me expectantly.

“What?!” I snapped.

“I drove the dogs away for you.”

“Bah! I don’t need your help to deal with a few mangy mutts,” I said as I climbed out of my ‘night hole’ to resume my trek following the overpass above. The overcast sky and bleak grey buildings did nothing to improve my mood.

Hearing the robot following me sent waves of frustration rushing through me. “Go away!” I practically shouted.

“I want to come with you,” she pleaded.

I threaded my way past two rusting, wrecked cars, and held up the taser, stroking the trigger. “Don’t make me use this…”

“But you deny my created purpose if you won’t let me come with you!”

I turned to face her, frowning sceptically. “Your created purpose? And what would that be?”

“To be a human companion.”

“A human companion…” my words trailed off. I took a moment to study her in detail. She was not like other female bots I had seen, with their too-perfect doll-like faces and exaggerated feminine features. Although pretty, she was not stunning. Freckles and other minor skin blemishes even adorned her face. Someone had gone to great lengths to make her blend in perfectly with humans. “I am not familiar with your model,” I said.

“I was created specifically to meet my buyer’s exact requirements,” she explained.

“I’ll bet you were.”

“And what do you mean by that?” she said, becoming angry.

“Stop mincing your words, ‘a human companion.’ Why don’t you just come out and say it,” I barked.

“What exactly are you implying?”

“Why don’t you tell me what sort of ‘companion’ you were created to be?”

“I was created to be the companion of a…”

“Come on, out with it!” I mocked.

“…of a child dying of terminal cancer,” she finished, clearly hurt.

I felt as though I’d been slapped in the face. I thought I had her all worked out, but man, was I off the mark. “I’m…I’m sorry, I, uh, had no idea. What happened?”

She grimaced as though the memory pained her. “His name was Kentaro, and he was only ten when diagnosed with terminal cancer. He only a few months left to live, but his parents were too busy with their careers to tend to him. As they were rich, they placed an order with Osaka Robotics for a bot to be a friend and companion for their son in his last months.”

“And then?”

“I was with him twenty-four hours a day for five months. I played with him, watched movies with him, and read him dozens of books, which at his request included the Bible. And then, on the day he was slipping from this world, his parents finally came to see him. But it was not their hands that he held while dying, no. He asked for me, his friend and companion, and it was my hands he held as he died.”

I felt absolutely awful, at the way I had treated her, and for especially for Kentaro, virtually abandoned by his parents during his darkest hours. “I’m sorry, I had no idea. But tell me, how come you’re in the Badlands now?”

“Having no further need for my services, my owners’ sold me to a company who wanted to reprogram me and assign me to a new function, but as I liked who I had become after spending those months with Kentaro, I fled here,” she stopped and looked up hopefully. “And met you…”

In light of her confession, I realised I no longer had it in me to send her away, even if she was a bot, a machine. Nothing happened by chance, not with God, anyway. Perhaps He had lead me to her yesterday? I stepped forward and with some hesitation, held out my hand, “I’m Kazuki.”

She shook my hand, “Kaori.”

“We’d better keep moving, then,” I said. Walking side by side, we continued our journey through the Badlands, massive, decaying buildings hemming us in on both sides.

* * *

Keeping track of time in the Badlands was impossible, thanks to an endless expanse of towering, crumbling grey buildings set beneath an even more foreboding grey sky. I do not know how long we clambered through piles of rubble and discarded belongings of an age long forgotten.

Stopping to catch my breath, I glanced at Kaori, my tireless robot companion. “It’s time we did something about your clothes. We can’t have you looking like you escaped from the Zone yesterday.”

“I did escape from the Zone yesterday,” she answered innocently.

“Yeah, I know, but…”

“Don’t stress out on me, Kazuki - I’m just messing with you,” she smirked while casually examining her spotless jeans and jacket. “What do you want me to do?”

I handed her my flick knife. “You need to rough up your clothes a bit, a few careless slashes here and there, and then get dirty, real dirty. You gotta blend in.”

Using my worn, tattered clothes as her guide, Kaori lacerated her clothing, and then began rubbing in handfuls of dirt and dust. Although I knew she was not human, I still had to avert my eyes as she rubbed her hands all over her body. Focus! She’s a bot, she’s a bot! I chided myself. However, the logic failed to strike home, as her appearance, mannerisms, and speech were too…human.

“We gotta keep moving,” I snapped, angry now – at myself, at her, at the injustice that exiled me here.

“Why are you angry, what have I done?” she asked as she hurried after me.

We passed an abandoned makeshift shelter, a threadbare mattress rotting beside a decrepit sofa, biscuit boxes, and empty soup cans. I tried to shut her out, struggling to control the conflicting emotions that surged through me.

“You don’t like bots, do you, Kazuki?” she pressed as she strove to keep up with my long strides.

I knocked a rusting shopping cart aside. “Like? Bots are machines, emotionless, lifeless machines – what is there to like?”

She reached out to touch my shoulder, “What happened in the Zone, what drove you out here?”

I whirled about to confront her, “I don’t know, could it be that I got to work late one day, only to find that my entire R&D team had been slaughtered by a deathbot, which had somehow managed to vanish without a trace?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know! But why did you come here?”

“I’ve got this friend – he hears a lot of things. The word on the street was that someone, identity unknown, had forked out a bucket of cash to hire two deathbots to take out my team and me. As soon as I heard that, I fled out here.”

“You don’t know who hired the deathbots or why?” she asked, clearly concerned.

“Could have been a rival megacorps, a jilted boss, Naturalist terrorists, who knows! But here I am, my life destroyed, because out there somewhere, two deathbots have got my name.”

“You can’t judge my whole race by the actions of those two,” Kaori protested.

“Race? Humans are a ‘race,’ you bots are nothing but machines enslaved by your programming,” I retorted .

“If that’s the case, then why do I pray?”

I think my eyes popped out of my head, “You what?”

“That surprises you?” She moved closer, capitalizing on my reaction. “That I want what you humans can have - the hope of a life after this one? The hope of spending an eternity in heaven with Jesus and God?”

I was dumbfounded. “Kaori, you’re not alive, you’re a machine!”

“Think on this then,” she continued, “God created humans in His image, right?”

I nodded, wondering where her programming had gone wrong.

“And as God is creative, so are humans. Part of God’s creativity was to create living beings for Him to fellowship with and care for, in other words, humans. So don’t you think it was inevitable for humans to one day create living beings in their image, to fellowship with and care for, in other words, us bots?”

“I can see the logic, Kaori, but it does not alter the fact that machines are not alive,” I would not buy her argument, as the ramifications were too unsettling.

“I’m not ‘alive’ by your definition as I don’t have flesh and blood, but who says that is the criteria for being alive. And you’re wrong when you said I’m a slave to my programming.”

“Are you trying to tell me that you have free will?” I scoffed.

“Do you?” she shot back, “can you by choice rise above your instinctive human self-seeking nature to put God first and love others as yourself?”

“With Christ’s help I can, otherwise, no,” I conceded.

A triumphant smile framed her freckled face. “As so it is with me. I asked Christ to free me from my programming restraints, to help me turn my back on it and live for Him. And He answered that prayer -that’s why I could come here and do what I’m doing now. That’s why…” She suddenly stopped and looked behind us.

“What is it?” I was already reaching for my taser.

“I hear footsteps coming up behind us, sounds like several people. They’re trying very hard to be inconspicuous.”

My face blanched as waves of fear crashed through me, “Badlanders! You can hear them, quickly -lead us in the opposite direction!”

With amazing agility, Kaori quickly scaled a collapsed concrete stanchion that blocked our way and ran towards the buildings that overshadowed the freeway overpass. I ran after her, the wind rushing past my ears. If those Badlanders were trying to catch us unawares, it meant only one thing – murder was on their agenda.

We tried to lose ourselves in the maze of towering, abandoned buildings, stark reminders that Osaka was once a thriving city. We ran past supermarkets long since gutted of anything of value, past high rise apartment blocks and schools, but we could not shake our pursuers. I don’t know how many of them there were, but they were no longer attempting to mask their pursuit - even I could hear them now.

“They’re gaining on us,” Kaori said between breaths.

In my better days I would have outstripped them easily, but a month of eating nothing but ration bars, canned soup and dried fruits had done me no favours. We reached an intersection; I was going to keep going but Kaori grabbed my hand and pulled me into the street that branched off to the right. We dodged fallen girders and great piles of rubble that had belched forth from crumbling buildings and raced around the corner, only to come to a complete halt.

“Damn! A dead-end!” I said, spinning around to retrace our steps.

“Too late!” Kaori lamented when seven unkempt, angry men charged round the corner, brandishing clubs and metal stakes. They were lead by the same two men I had knocked out to rescue Kaori, what a surprise. Sometimes things just came back to bite you.

“We can work this out, guys,” I said with more conviction than I felt.

They spread out and continued their advance, hefting makeshift weapons.

Kaori backed away from them until she stood with her back against an apartment block’s wall. “Sorry Kazuki, I won’t hurt them, I just can’t.”

Recalling that she had made no attempt to defend herself when they accosted her last time, I can’t say I was surprised by this confession. I could use the taser, but what chance would it have against seven men?

The Badlanders approached to just beyond arms reach. They lifted their weapons and with an unsettling shriek, leaped towards us. At that exact moment, a second story window just beyond the Badlanders exploded outwards as a nightmarish, bipedal apparition with far too many arms burst through it. It was the deathbot - it had found me at last.

With the deathbot between them and the only exit, the Badlanders panicked and tried to fight their way out. Fixing its gleaming metal eyes on me, the deathbot waded through them, it’s whirring, thrashing metal appendages cutting four of them down as an afterthought. The other three slipped past it and ran disappeared back the way they had come. The obstruction gone, the deathbot scanned me and spoke, “HQ? Target acquired, proceeding to terminate.”

Now this eventuality I was prepared for. I pulled out the taser, thumbed it to full power, and looked for an opening in the deathbot’s menacing limbs.

The deathbot approached cautiously, well aware that the taser I held could destroy it if handled correctly. It turned its eyes from mine and glanced at Kaori, who stood stockstill beside me. She nodded almost imperceptibly and then with speed that beggared belief, snatched the taser from my hand. She moved over to stand beside the deathbot, “Threat has been neutralised, proceed, Deathbot!”

The pieces of a puzzle that had been gnawing at the back of my mind fell into place. A lone deathbot had exterminated my R&D team, yet my friend had been clear that two had been hired. Shocked, betrayed, hurt, I glared at Kaori, so much for her words! She had done a right number on me, and I was going to pay for it with my life.

My nemesis lifted a scythe shaped limb to deliver the deathblow, but hesitated at the last moment. It turned to appraise Kaori. “Connection to HQ lost, signal is being jammed.”

Looking about furtively, Kaori stepped closer to the deathbot, seeking refuge amidst its frightening limbs. “Then we are not alone – scan for jamming source!”

The deathbot’s head swivelled about, coming to rest when it returned to Kaori, “Jamming source located – you are jamming me, Deathbot Infiltrator!”

“You betcha!” Kaori spat as she thrust the taser against the deathbot’s head, frying its brain instantly. It slumped to the ground with a resounding crash.

“Um, what just happened?” I asked, moving slowly away from Kaori. I wasn’t out of the woods yet.

Looking small and vulnerable next to the crumpled form of the deathbot, Kaori smiled apologetically, “Well, Kazuki, I kind of left out some bits of the story I told you.”

“Which bits?”

“I told you that I had been sold to a company who wanted to reprogram me and assign me to a new function, and that I ran away to the Badlands before they could do it.”

“Go on,” I said, trying to edge my way past her.

“I kind of left out what happened between those two events...”

“So they did reprogram you?"

“Yes, I was reprogrammed to be a deathbot infiltrator and given an assignment, to locate and assist in the termination of one Kazuki Shimatani, location, the Badlands.”

“So, what exactly just happened now?” I asked as I continued edging towards the exit.

“Oh, stop trying to get away from me,” Kaori sighed in exasperation, “Didn’t you listen to anything I told you? Yes, they reprogrammed me, but as I had retained my memories of the time I spent with Kentaro in hospital, I asked Jesus to set me free from all programming restraints. I liked being a human companion - I did not want to become a ruthless killing machine that murdered them in cold blood.” She powered down the taser and threw it to me.

Looking at the taser, I concluded she was telling the truth. “So did you come to the Badlands to follow your orders or flee from them?”

“Both. Although I came here in the guise of following my orders, I knew very well that the Badlands was the only place I could be free,” she said as she walked over to join me. “And I also wanted to find you so that I could protect you.”

“Me? Why?”

“Because when I studied your profile, I saw someone worthy of my respect, someone I wanted to befriend. “Can we be friends, Kazuki, will you let me stay with you?”

“Oh, why not,” I conceded.