Robots of Avery Five.

Chapter 10

“Arrange a press conference. Li Jie of Singapore, the creator of the metabolic pill has died,” Alexander heard a man say.

He looked down at his hand. It was the hand of a child. He was holding the red packet with bright golden characters on one side of it.

Li Jie’s last wish was to see his grandson. As soon as the paper material touched the boy’s fingers, the old man took his last breath.

But the founder did not wear a hospital gown or had machines hooked to his body. He seemed to rest on a bed full of flowers in a bedroom of silk and incense.

Then the bedroom light turned off, and the memory ended. The boy-turned-man began to feel intense pain on the right side of his body. He opened his eyes and screamed out the top of his lungs.

He kicked his legs while many hands held him down. The veins and ligaments on his right arm felt like they were being detached.

“You yabnuk, do you know what forty milligrams look like?” A big man with a long red beard yelled at a tall skinny boy while they tackled Alex down.

“Stop yelling at me. It’s not my fault he’s awake because you took too long to fix his back,” the young man spoke with a strong accent.

As his pupils adjusted to the light, Alexander recognized the bony individual. They had met in the space station after he knocked over Sadie. 

“Stop moving.” The fat man wiped the blood off a pair of tweezers on his shirt full of holes.

A million needles pinched through Alex’s flesh. The butcher began hauling out three long black strands. Alexander had never heard such horrifying sounds escape his throat. He didn’t know a human being could be capable of feeling that amount of pain.

“God of Earth, help me.” He clenched his teeth until his jaw hurt.

“Done.” The butcher threw the tweezers on a plate.

The strangers let go of his body, and the pain subsidized, but the Earthian didn't have strength to run. He jolted his head at his right arm, expecting it to look bloody and swollen. Instead, he found a discolored dot on his unstained wrist.

“What did you do to me? Who are you?” He patted himself.

“You are safe, Alexander,” said the skinny man. “We’ve met before in the Sagittarius drift, remember me? Mischa of Russia.”

“That’s right.” Alexander sat up on what he now recognized as a wooden table. Then he recalled the last memory before he went unconscious. “A girl. There was a girl with me. I need to find her.”

“Alex.” Sadie ran into view and threw herself into his arms.

Alex grunted and his arm reached behind him.

“Sorry.” She glanced at his back, making sure she hadn’t damaged the wound. It’s impossible to see through his torso wrapped in gauze.

Before Alex inquired again about their location, the bearded man passed the medical instruments and turned to him.

“Your back is healing well. I put extra fish skins to heal the cells around the area, but with the technology we have, you’ll most likely end up with an ugly scar. Kimiora and the other girl brought you here half dead.”

“How long was I out for?” asked Alex.

“Twenty-seven hours.”

Alex exhaled and wiped a puddle of sweat off his neck. The man gave him a large towel.

“It took me some time to get used to the constant heat, but it stopped bothering me after a while,” said Sadie.

“Where the hell are we?” Alex kept rubbing the towel against his body.

Mischa walked toward a corner and began to pull on the wall. As the wooden panel slid open, thousands of crops danced in the air until his eyes met the horizon. Towering over the light blue sky, an active volcano sat inside a black cloud. Within the fields, men and women collected the grains in large baskets.

“Welcome to planet Isaac.”

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Alexander pulled down the seam of his cotton t-shirt as he followed the welcoming party. Only in e-books had he seen small towns of wooden cabins and crop fields. By the side of the street, four women provided thread to a robot with needles for fingers. In minutes, the robot rolled colorful fabrics out of his stomach.

On the opposite side, four children tapped on a small toy and holograms of furry monsters appeared beside them. The kids laughed and screamed, running around the toy in specific patterns.

In the porch of another home, a shirtless Cam poked the forehead of a lifeless Ai-way. They had recycled his body into a raised garden. Every few seconds, its eyes sprayed water over long red roses.

“Alexander of Singapore.” Cam hopped down from the porch and sprinted over the toy box. “You are not asleep anymore.”

“I wasn’t sleeping,” said Alexander.

The Ai-consort shoved his fingers into the front side of his pants and pulled out the red packet. “I saved this for you.”

“Did you have to keep it there?” The Earthian stared at the relic.

The robot snickered and closed his front zipper. “I can’t sweat. The area between my p***s and testicles makes a nice hideout. 

“Okay.” Alexander winced and retrieved the paper with narrowed eyes.

“Anyway,” said Mischa, “when Kimiora talked to the chief about you, I recognized you and voted to spare your life.”

“And what? Should I be thankful for that? You, your chief or whoever paid her to kill me.”

“Yagoda had no choice. He thought it was the only way to make a statement.”

“Yagoda? Is that your chief?”

“He stays in the library. We’ll take you to him,” said Red Beard.

“You have a library? Like the one where you store paper?” Sadie lengthened her neck.

“Yes, we also keep artifacts from the old colonies there.”

“That’s amazing. I can’t wait to see them.”

“We welcome anyone to see them.” Red Beard turned around a corner into a busier street.

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Alexander stopped in the middle of the crammed dirt road, watching dozens of merchants touting the passersby. They all claimed to have the best fruits and meats. In the Human Federation planets, possession of one of those fruits was subject to cloning. His neck could not stop turning at the bright greens, reds, purples, and yellows of all shapes.

Then his shoulders jumped at the sound of a blade cutting through a large piece of bloody meat. He breathed faster and his pupils dilated at the head of a dead animal hooked from a pole.

Alex hugged his stomach and scurried back on his heels.

“You all right?” asked Mischa.

“I know.” Sadie touched Alex’s forearms. “I’m still getting used to it. I’m glad we don’t have to eat that if we don’t want to.”

“We?” Alexander frowned.

“Yeah, without the Met pills, you must have food.”

“What? No. I put four bottles in my suitcase—”

“Alex, I’m so sorry, after you passed out, the police ship started shooting at us. My aircraft was in such bad shape that we had to make a forced landing in a lake. Everything’s deep under water.”

The Earthian took short breaths, calming himself. There was no way he would consume the poison in that place. He calculated in his head the time he had left before beginning to feel hungry. Perhaps he could last long enough to find an alternative. After all, he was a scientist.

He raised his arm to set a timer, then cursed himself. He remembered that Red Beard removed his arm comm earlier.

“How in the universe has the Human Federation not raided this place?” he said.

Red Beard jerked his head and continued walking. Muddled, Alexander followed the group, eyeing the farmers as they sold death.

 -----------------------------

The library was the largest building in town and the farthest from the farms. Two trees sat by the entrance in a grass field, an atypical sight in the skyscraper jungle of Earth. As they approached the door, there was no scan pad requiring an ID or a fingerprint board. Red Beard pulled on the aluminum handle in the center of it, and swung the wood panel open.

“Good day.” Red Beard nodded at Kimiora, who read a paper book behind a counter.

“Always,” she said and smiled at Alexander. “You look well.”

“You, too,” replied Alex. “Thank you.”

They all stopped in a center hall where there was a large-scale model of a star system. Red Beard pointed at the center star, and the planets around it began to trace their orbits.

“This is our star, Koi and the fifth and largest planet.” He pointed somewhere else. “This is Avery Five.”

He turned the star system ninety degrees, showing other perpendicular planetary bodies. The closest one to Koi revolved around it but stood locked in its axis.

“And we are here. Isaac,” added Mischa, “where the sun never sets.”

“Generations of humans have lived here since the Federation took control of Avery Five,” said Red Beard. 

“That doesn’t answer my question,” said Alexander.

“Like the Human Federation, the first colonizers thought Isaac was lava on one side and ice on the other. They had no choice. They needed a new home, so they landed here to find that it was full of vegetation and arctic creatures. Throughout the years, we built towers to deter signals and fool the Federation.”

“Is your chief part of the first colony?” Alex heard a cackling behind him.

“God, no.” An old man limped toward the group.

“Alexander, this is Yagoda,” said Red Beard. 

“The pioneers of Isaac died a few hundred years ago. We are their children,” said Yagoda. “When your grandfather died, he was what? Three hundred? That was big news, huh. You Earthians are so proud of your accomplishments and your Met pills. Us, farmers are more proud of our harvest.”

“You don’t take Met pills at all?” asked Sadie.

“No. The oldest person to have ever lived in Isaac was ninety-five-year-old Nancy Sterling. I will be the second one, eighty-eight, lung cancer.”

“You will die at eighty-eight and you’re still feeding off the land?” frowned Alexander. “You insist on destroying the leadership that is making humanity prosper?”

Red Beard grunted and took air before attempting to defend the farmers. His superior waved down his hand, keeping him quiet.

“Have you ever searched for truth?” asked Yagoda.

“None of us want to be lied to,” replied Alexander.

“Truth brought you here. You can go your whole life believing one thing, but you will always sense that something is not right. You will wonder why you are unable to find happiness. There’s no point in exchanging freedom for security and immortality.”

“I am thankful to you and your people for saving my life. Once I get in contact with my father, we’ll be on our way,” the Earthian ignored the farmer’s message.

“Okay. Kimiora can help you with that. Before you leave, please, look around the library. We always encourage newcomers to do so.” Yagoda crossed his wrists behind his back, and began limping away. “It presents history to them with a different vision of the past.”

Mischa and Red Beard nodded and followed their leader.

“I hope they have books about the white sand. I want to learn more about it,” said Sadie.

“I’ve seen pictures of it in food books, but they’re all in ancient languages.” Kimiora pointed down a hallway to her left. “They’re all down there.”

Sadie grinned and pulled Cam’s hand toward the indicated direction.

“How do you function here without arm comms?” Alexander watched Cam’s fingers interlace with Sadie’s as he addressed Kimiora.

“Arm comm signals are easy to trace. Come, we’ll contact your father if that’s what you want.” She waved at him and he walked behind the counter.

They stood in front of a full size mirror and she pressed a button behind it. A keyboard appeared in front of her and she began typing.

“What’s that?” Alexander noticed a long list of names pinned to a board.

“That’s the farmers’ census. Like a headcount.” She continued typing while words and numbers popped in the mirror.

“There are 250,030 people in Isaac?” he asked. 

“Yeah, well, no. That’s just the farmer’s side. The hunters took over the other half of the planet—the frozen side.”

“The farmers are okay with it? And why do they want to live in permanent darkness?”

“The hunters didn’t choose to live on the frozen side. We used to be part of the same colony until they began to disagree with our methods.”

“What methods?”

“Like I said, the hunters want to murder innocent Earthians. They think it’s the best way to have their voices heard.”

The Earthian leaned his head closer to the list, which was divided into different categories.

“There are 123,000 women in the farmer’s side?” Alexander’s eyes were wide open.

“This is something we’ve observed for a long time, but I’ll let you figure it out on your own. I don’t want you to think I’m manipulating you,” she said. 

“Women here are almost half the population. Usually, male to female ratio in humans is high. It’s never this balanced.”

“Got it.” Kimiora stepped away from the mirror. “You may now talk your dad.”

Alexander marked a long number, and he immediately heard his father’s voice.

“Hello?”

“Dad, it’s me, Alex.”

“Alex,” it was now the voice of a woman.

“Mom, did you get my message?”

“We did,” she replied. “We’ll send a drift to Avery. How many bitcoins do you need?”

“Son, you need to be careful,” said Hammond. “News is a clone murdered Ms. Stone and kidnapped you.”

“No, it’s not like that. I wasn’t kidnapped.”

“We know. Take care of her and take care of yourself.”

“I will. Listen, I—,” Alexander stopped speaking to process his father’s words. “Wait, how do you know they didn’t kidnap me? How do you know about Sadie?”

“I don’t know, son. You must have said so in your message.”

“I’m praying for you, Alex,” added his mother.

“I’ll call you when I get back to Avery,” replied her son.

There was no time to think about his parents as a sharp pain made Alexander bend over his stomach. This was a kind of different pain; one he’d never felt before.

Is this what it feels like to be truly human? A life of different kinds of pain.

With new pain came new emotions and feelings of hunger. Kimiora rubbed his shoulders while he laid his forehead on the smooth wooden counter.

“You should eat,” she said. “I’m telling you, it’s not as bad as you think.”

“I’m fine.” He stood straight and dusted his stomach area as if that would drive his hunger away.

The girl sighed. She caught herself thinking about the way his long eyelids made his eyes more mysterious. The Met pill made everyone more average looking. But gravity gave Earthians thicker bone structures. Something she dreamed about when she found herself alone.

They didn’t say much more to each other when his tongue rubbed the back of his teeth, coveting her cleavage. Her thumb swiped a drop of sweat off his forehead and her lips glided into his. The man’s body responded, pulling her waist closer. He remembered the beauty of the creases under her bouncing breasts as he ripped the front of her blouse. Then the library door opened, and they scuttled away from each other.

“Good day.” Kimiora grinned at four girls that held books under their armpits.

“Always.”  The girls giggled to each other and went into a different section of the building.

Kimiora waited until she didn’t see them anymore. She pulled Alex’s hand into a storage room and shoved him against the wall. There was a pinching on his back wound but he quickly leeched onto her neck and gathered her shirt up to feel her bosom. She pulled the string that held his pants around his waist and shoved her fingers down to his lower abdomen.

As he felt her skin up to her earlobe, there was something different about her scent. For the first time in his life, he experienced the smell of sweetness. Her palm teased his length, stroking its tip. Moaning, he gripped her buttocks and his arousal made him picture the most sensual image in his head.

Sadie. Her hair cascaded over her breasts. Her head leaned back over him as she dug her nails into his chest and asked for more.

Alex held Kimiora’s wrists. The girl frowned, watching his erection disappear.

“I can’t do this.”

“I’m sorry,” she lowered her eyes. “I shouldn’t have kissed someone who is about to father a child.”

Alex turned toward the door.

“Are you in love with her?” she asked.

He placed his hand on the door and stared at the floor for a moment while he thought about her question. “I don’t know.”

Her shoulders fell, seeing him leave. She pulled her blouse, and fixed her hair behind her ears.