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8. The Humanity of Machines

The fire was everywhere. He looked around and saw people crawl out of the flames. They screamed as they burned away, and there was nothing he could do to help them. Two minotaurs—the only ones who could save everyone there—just stared at him. No, they weren't there to save anyone. They were only there to erase evidence again.

A hand grabbed his left leg, causing him to turn around and see who it was. A familiar face looked at him with brown eyes through the broken, rectangular lenses of a pair of glasses. It was a young man with shoulder-length brown hair and dressed in a black uniform with vertical red lines going along the sides of his limbs. The uniform was on fire. "Corby ..." the guy barely uttered. "They're dragging me away, Corby!"

"Matthew!" Corby said, reaching out for him.

Matthew continued to burn as two minotaurs came out of the flames behind him and grabbed him by the shoulders, dragging him away.

Corby used his glowanade strings to pull the artificial ground up and separate the minotaurs from his friend. One of the robots fell off the thin tower he had created, but the other one shot Matthew without hesitation before the tower crumbled to the ground.

"Matt! Just when I found out you survived … I still couldn't do anything!"

Two burning hands grabbed him by the right arm, and two more grabbed him by the left one. He looked to his left and saw two barely discernible faces of humans that were aflame. By their screams, he could tell who they were, so he said, "Mister Waltz?! Mister Peterson?! But you d—"

The other two guys from his right tugged at his arm to draw his attention to them as well.

Corby felt a chill run down his spine, in spite of the intense heat generated by the fire. "Alex?! No way! They shot you in the face! I saw it with my own eyes! Harold, you were just a mass of body parts on the wall of the lab! There's no way you're all … Wait! Is this Hell?!"

The burning people dragged him toward the bigger flames, and the heat started boiling the sweat on his face.

"I didn't do this!" Corby said, struggling to escape their grasp. "I didn't get you into this mess! Matthew warned you! He warned you all! You didn't listen!"

Another hand grabbed him firmly by the right arm's wrist and pulled him away so hard the dead people's arms got torn and fell off him. The rescuer was a man with very short gray hair with a receding hairline, bushy eyebrows, small eyes, a mustache, and a beard reaching his neck. He wore the black uniform with red lines.

"Dad!" Corby said. "What are you doing here? What is this place?"

His father's beard was on fire. The man said nothing and just stood there, smiling at him.

Corby tried to put out the fire on his father's beard with his hands, but it was futile. The moment he looked him in the eyes, he realized the face had changed. It was wider and rounder, with a smaller nose. "What happened to your face, Dad?"

The man continued to smile, his face changing again, the big nose and unequally-sized eyes making him look more like a caricature than an actual human. Then the rest of his body caught fire as he spread his arms to his sides, falling on his back onto the ground and turning into ashes.

Corby jumped out of bed, tripped over Ora, and fell flat on the wooden floor. "Blasted nightmares!"

Ora illuminated the room with her eyes. "Again?"

"Yeah," he said as he got up. "I thought I got over the trauma. My brain decided to show me just how naive I was."

"What did you see this time?"

Corby frowned. "I saw my colleagues burn. I saw Matthew get shot again. But worst of all, I saw my father turn to ashes! And his face … It changed! It was morphing constantly!"

Ora tilted her head to the right. "The human mind can get very creative during sleep."

"Yeah, creative ..." Corby said. "Can it not inspire itself from the worst parts of real life?" He raised his arms in frustration. "I'd love to have a dream about what it's like to be on Earth for a change."

Samuel's voice came from the other room. "Are you all right there, Corby?"

Corby lowered his arms and turned on the lights. "I'm okay. I just woke up from a nightmare and … tripped over my robot."

"Oh. Well, it's breakfast time. You know where to find us."

"I'll be there soon, Mister Samuel!" Corby said. Then he squatted next to Ora and patted her on the head. "I'm sorry that I've tripped over you. I should have placed you on the bed last night." He took her in his arms and put her on the pillow. "There. Well, time for me to get changed."

Since he didn't bother to tell her to turn around, she tried to see if anything changed after her declaration from last night. To her surprise, Corby didn't seem to mind that she stared at him while he undressed.

Once he was fully dressed in his day clothes, he said, "Let's go to the dining room."

She spread her wings and flew after him as soon as he opened the door.

Corby sat at the table in the dining room, joining Vanessa and Samuel. Ora sat next to Zoom atop the cupboard. The breakfast on the plates consisted of two sandwiches and a glass of orange juice for every member.

"We're out of cucumbers," Samuel said, "which is why these sandwiches only have boiled egg and some lettuce and tomatoes. But once the new plants grow in the greenhouse, we'll have more cucumbers. We got the mother plant from Gruzifor three months ago."

"It's fine," Corby said. "I'm glad I don't have to keep eating pigeons and fish every day." He took a first bite and wasn't disappointed by what he tasted.

"Did you decide what you'll be helping out with at the greenhouse?"

Corby swallowed the food he had been chewing, then said, "It wasn't really a decision. I was given the task of cleaning the chicken coop today. Ora will have to gather the eggs."

Samuel grinned at him. "Ah, yes. What better way to thank the chickens for their eggs than to clean their coop?"

"When you put it that way, it sounds fair." After grinning back, Corby took the glass of orange juice and took a sip.

"Man, these critters produce a lot of s**t!" Corby said as he shoveled away at the piles of chicken excrement.

Ora landed next to him. "Do you need help with that?"

Corby put the trash into a metallic, cylindrical container. "No, I got this. Did you finish gathering the eggs?"

"Yes. I have delivered them all to Nargirata."

"Good."

Hilarion entered the coop. "You done, dude?"

"Almost," Corby said. "I still have to go clean the corners behind the last row of nests."

"Bring the container to the wheat room once you finish. Nargi and I will put that stuff to use there."

"Okay."

Later on, Corby brought the manure to destination. Hilarion and Nargirata brought shovels and took out the droppings from the container, then smeared the substance onto the ground at the base of the wheat.

"It may not do much for the current crop," Hilarion said, "but we'll be replanting in about a week, so might as well have better soil for the next batch."

Once the manure had been expended, Nargirata went to a control panel that was near a door on one of the long walls. "Everyone get on the path now! I'm about to start the irrigation system!" As soon as everyone was in the clear, she lowered a lever of the panel.

Short metal poles came out of the ground among the wheat and sprayed water from around their tips.

"Must have taken you guys a lot of time to set this stuff up," Corby said.

"It took about half a month of work done by all five of us," Hilarion said. "It was totally worth it."

Nargirata smiled while watching the field get watered. "And this room ended up having quite a romantic scenery too!"

Corby frowned after remembering something. He turned to look at her and Hilarion. "Speaking of romantic … seems like your discussion with Ora had some strange consequences."

Nargirata stared at him with her wide green eyes. "Oh?"

He pointed at Ora. "Last night she said she loves me, out of the blue."

Hilarion giggled.

Corby scowled. "It's not funny, Hil!"

"That's so cute!" Hilarion said, barely holding back his laughter. "Seems you got yourself a life partner."

"Stop encouraging her!" Corby said while flailing his arms. "She's a robot! It would be absurd to have a robot for a wife!"

Nargirata frowned while looking at him.

Hilarion gave Corby a look of slight annoyance. "Dude … my wife is a robot."

Corby took a step back. "What?!"

"A gynoid, to be precise."

"Y-you're married to a robot?!" Corby said. "Why? You'll never be able to have kids with her, and—"

"I'd never be able to have kids the natural way anyway," Hilarion said. "I'm modified. The Triumvirate has strict regulations when it comes to us and gene passing, so the clinic has to sterilize everyone they modify. And before you ask, yes, you're likely sterile too, which means you can't pass your genes unless you resort to assisted reproduction. The Triumvirate controls the reproductive rights of all of the modified people."

"I … I'm sterile?!"

"If they told you to visit the clinic once you're 22, it means you can't have children naturally."

Corby clenched his right fist. "Damn those bastards!"

"Hey, it's not the end of the world," Hilarion said, smiling. "After we take down the Triumvirate, we'll be able to take control of the clinic and ensure that the next generation of GMHs get full reproductive rights. And nobody will be forced to work underground just for being born artificially."

"That's a future I can look forward to."

"I will help you all the way!" Ora said while holding on to Corby's left leg.

Corby frowned at her. "Just don't expect me to be your boyfriend."

"Give her a chance, dude," Hilarion said. "Robots can offer love just like a human can."

"How did you and Nargi become a couple anyway?"

"Our history goes back to when I was 16. I was making loads of money out of being a supervisor over the mining robots, and I used to spend most of it on anime. I was into the anime girl stuff, so … one day I decided to buy a gynoid customized to look like an anime girl. She didn't have a name when I got her. I asked her what she'd like to be called, and she generated her own name. Nargirata. She had some knowledge of how to socialize, and was eager to learn more. So we started with friendship and spent our time cooperating in household chores and watching anime together, doing workouts in my home gym, going for walks in the underground parks … Several months later, we were dating, living our love story. When I turned 18, I asked her to be my wife, and she accepted. Sure, the state doesn't recognize our marriage, but all that matters is staying true to our wedding vows. We don't need a piece of paper to tell the world what ties us."

"I admit that Nargi seems like the real deal as a wife," Corby said, "in spite of her too flawless appearance."

Ora said, "Would you consider me your partner if I'd acquire a body like hers? I could take control of her, if that is what you want."

He could feel his hair stand on end. "No, Ora!" He picked her up and stared into her eyes. "If you behaved more like a human than a slightly intelligent insect, I'd probably love you even if you were just a program on a phone!"

"How can I learn to be a human?"

Corby stood there in silence. What could one say to their robot when confronted with such a question? Should he encourage her to learn what it means to be human? Maybe then she could truly understand him, allowing for better cooperation. He turned toward Hilarion. "Hil, do you have any books about humans? You know, about social interactions and stuff."

"We have a few," Hilarion said. "Most are about relationships between humans, but I think they cover just about everything she needs in order to understand human behavior."

"Here," Corby said, putting Ora in Hilarion's arms. "Take her to your library and give her any books you think might be useful to her."

Hilarion passed Ora to Nargirata. "Nargi, take Ora to our library corner, please."

"Sure thing, dear!" Nargirata said, taking the little robot in her arms and leaving with her.

Hilarion went to the lever and pulled it up. The irrigation system stopped, its pillars going back into the ground.

"You know," Corby said, "while I lived in the city, I used to read during my free time every now and then. Do you happen to have any e-books?"

"We all left our phones and tablets behind when we fled, so no."

"Okay. I can settle for physical books. I'm not sure if anyone bothered to print this mysterious fantasy e-book that appeared five years ago on the internet, but ..."

Hilarion smirked. "The Three Trains?"

"Yes! Did you find a physical copy of it?"

"Nah. I had the e-book on my phone though. Gotta say, it inspired me to go through with helping the miner robot and freeing myself and my family from the Triumvirate's grip."

"I think whoever wrote that wanted to cause people to 'wake up'. But it mostly just caused a split fan base, and the call to action was probably lost on most people."

"Things like that tend to happen, but the ones who took something from it will most likely become our allies once we bring the rebellion to the city. For now, we need to prepare ourselves."

Corby followed Hilarion into the other greenhouse room.

Hilarion pointed at ten small plants with round leaves that poked through the wet soil in one of the larger corners of the area. "Looks like our cucumber patch is growing well."

Vanessa was also in that room and went up to him. "Morning, Hil! I've irrigated this side of the greenhouse for you."

"Thanks. Now that the greenhouse and the chicken farm have been taken care of, I can go help Gramps with building more of those cannons."

Corby gasped. "You're building cannons?!"

Hilarion looked at him. "How else are we going to keep invaders at bay? Our portable weapons are just the last line of defense."

"Grandpa will connect several cannons to some switches," Vanessa said, "so one person could operate them all from the distance."

"How many of them do you guys have?"

"Thirteen," Hilarion said. "Might have fifteen today if Gramps and I don't mess this up."

Zoom arrived next to Vanessa's right shoulder. "I will act as a spotter and tell which cannons to fire!"

Vanessa smiled at him. "I'm so glad to have you as my assistant, Zoom!"

"Hey, Vanessa, how did you get your robot?" Corby asked.

"I bought him," she said. "I wasn't as lucky as you to come across one among trash, but I'm happy with how he turned out."

"I'm not so happy with how Ora behaves, but I have to admit she's often useful. I wouldn't have pulled off yesterday's victory without her keeping my glow in check."

"About your glow … I think there's something important in one of these houses. It's a machine. Could you use your glow to power it?"

He squinted at her. "What kind of machine?"

Vanessa and Corby entered the dark room of one of the abandoned houses. Zoom flew in and joined them to light everything up with his yellow eyes.

There were several black metal cubes in the room, some of them having shelves jutting out of them. But the most important object was the room's centerpiece: a gray, circular, one meter diameter screen surrounded by a silver frame and supported by a trapezoid prism black pedestal under it.

Corby raised his left eyebrow. "It's a big … TV set?"

"I'm not sure," Vanessa said. "The screen is round."

"Earth once had round TV screens. That was during very old times though."

"I don't think we're dealing with human-made stuff, Corby. The Triumvirate's claim that they've made the nanobots that form the artificial ground seems dubious. The existence of this strange village under ground also says they're full of shit."

"Sometimes I wonder if the glow is an alien life form," Corby said.

"Can you use it on the screen?"

"Probably, though it's going to hurt my head since Ora isn't here to keep the glow under control. I'd go get her, but I really want to focus on this." He brought out the glowanade circuitry from his fingers while his irises glowed violet. Then he grinned. "I'm dying of curiosity!"

The glowing wires went into the machine, resulting in the screen displaying a light blue color that seemed to change hues before going dark.

"I think it might be broken," Corby said.

The screen lit up again, this time showing a white background with a central, swirling, black vortex. More such vortexes with varying hues could be seen around it. On the top right, there was a bright green vortex. On the top center, a yellow one. Top left, a cyan one. Bottom left, a dark blue one. Bottom center, a violet one. And last but not least, middle right had a rainbow-colored one.

Corby's eyes widened. "This is definitely not a human-made machine. Look at all these colors! I can't make sense of them."

Vanessa poked the screen with her right hand's finger, touching right in the center. "It doesn't seem to be a touchscreen."

"I feel something strange. Those vortexes … It's like they're now spinning inside my head. What if ..." He moved his right hand's fingers. The glowanade wires moved with them.

The bright green vortex grew and grew until it covered the entire screen. It was then replaced by what Corby could only perceive as leaf patterns mostly colored in white and red over a purple background with pink triangles. The leaves moved around and grew, revealing that they too were made of smaller leaves. Between the openings of those patterns there was a bright green triangle over which Corby was given control by the machine.

"It seems like it's a video game," Corby said. He mentally manipulated the triangle to move around in two dimensions, but then realized something. "It's actually in 3D!"

The triangle rotated until it was pointing at the background. It advanced in that direction, being greeted by various other fractals that looked similar to lightning or stacked triangles, all colored in white with red accents.

"I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do here, but I'm getting a headache already." He made the game close, taking him back to what he presumed to be the desktop of the machine. "Let's see what's in the black one."

It grew, and the entire screen went dark.

"I guess that was the shutdown button. Let me turn it back on." He retracted the wires and sent them back into the machine, booting it up again. "There we go. Now I'll try the yellow vortex."

That vortex grew and changed into a black screen that generated a line graph with a light blue broken line from the right side toward the left.

"Could this be a performance monitor?"

"Sure looks like one," Vanessa said.

The peaks and low points of the graph became more and more exaggerated the more Corby stared at it.

He grimaced. "Ow! The pain! It's intensifying!" When the line turned yellow and its zigzagging became chaotic, he retracted his wires, causing the machine to shut down abruptly. Corby put his hands around his head, keeping his eyes shut.

"Don't push yourself any further," Vanessa said, patting him on the back. "I'm sorry I made you do this. I just thought the machine might be something we could use."

"It's okay. But now I really want to know everything this machine can do, and I'll be damned if I give up just because of a headache!" He connected his wires to it again, booted it up, and accessed the rainbow vortex. "This thing probably contains everything! Might be the control panel!" His expression changed from a smirk to a look of disappointment as he witnessed what he considered rainbow splatters that moved around on the screen. "I'm not even sure what I'm looking at."

"Corby! We should go get Ora!"

"No! I'll study this thing on my own!" he said as he closed the application and accessed the violet one. "I'm sick of depending on that robot for everything!"

The violet vortex opened an application that showed what Corby could consider neurons made of rainbows over a black background.

"These things feel … heavy," he said, forcing his mind to grasp the concept presented by the machine.

Vanessa pulled him by his right arm, causing the wires from his hand to disconnect. "Corby, don't do anything that could end up hurting you!"

Still using his left hand on the machine, he said, "Just let me inspect these things! I feel like there is something amazing inside each of them. I'll try this one."

The neuron-shaped virtual object morphed until it became a model of a strange machinery made of multiple black beams connected to each other at various angles, surrounding and connecting to a gray octahedron caught in the center of a white square frame.

Corby couldn't make sense of it. There was no sign that the concept could be used for much in the real world. "This might be the aliens' abstract art or something."

The screen flashed yellow twice before the "performance graph" appeared, showing the yellow broken line with chaotic zigzagging once more. It all happened as Corby's headache intensified to such a level that he had no choice but to disconnect himself so he could hold his head. He blacked out.