Elaja.
Elaja lost her friend, but she's going to find him. In the distant future, among the ashes of our world, robots inherited the earth. Written for the Iron Age Media Writing prompts.
The evening light pressed on her face. Fans whirred in her neck, expelling heat through long vents, past cables and pipes which stretched from her headgear and disappear into cut-outs on her back. Her golden body shimmered as she turned and rested her head on the shoulder of a tall, green and rusty old robot, with a glass dome on top of its head, a single red eye looking out to the horizon and a mess of wires beneath its neck and attached to a voice box beneath its chin. Its servos whined when it turned its head and its processing discs croaked as it scanned Elaja.
“Do you remember what it’s called?” she whispered. The robot turned towards the light on the horizon. It stared for a few moments, with an increased frequency of croaks as a cooling fan whirred in its back.
“Sun” it said in a wobbly voice. Suddenly she saw herself staring at him from a few feet away. The robot turned its head. “E-la-ja”, a gunshot pierced its back and bursts out of its chest.
Elaja woke up with coolant leaking down her face; dripping onto the matted carpet with steam rising from two vents on the side of her neck, and a fan at the base of her throat whining while her eyes were racking in and out of focus. Eventually, two words flashed in front of her in large red letters, ‘defrag complete’.
She was wedged into the corner of the room between the wall and an old bed, who’s bright flowery sheets were dulled by a layer of grey dust. When she looked over the bed, she saw a large wooden dressing table barricading the door. She peeled herself away from the carpet, and wobbled a few steps forward, swaying side to side, then raising her left leg and placing it softly in front of her. She did the same with her other leg, leaning to one side then righting herself until she could stand without leaning one way or another.
She stopped in front of the dressing table and stared at her reflection. The evening sun glinted from of her golden body which was scarred with rust and blotches of corrosion. The light rippled over dents as she turned her back to the mirror, and stared at a faint word written across her shoulders ‘Elysia’, which by now was barely legible, with scattered flakes of white paint forming the vague shape of the letters.
She picked up a belt from the table with a revolver hanging in a holster and a dried finger dangling from the trigger guard by a piece of old string. She lashed the belt around her waist, picked up her backpack and heaved the dressing table out of the way.
She stopped in the lobby and peered into the street. Her view was blocked by a large overturned goods truck, but she looked up the street as best she could, scanning for movement in every crevice, being careful to watch the dark store fronts. When she finally built up the courage to step outside, she stayed close to the wall and hurried down the sidewalk. The wind was howling through the buildings, trash rolled down the street, rubble clattered onto the pavement as chips of concrete tumbled from buildings that leaned into the road where the skeletons of civilisation, cars, trucks and busses were rusting. She heard three loud beeps in her head, and looked down at four bars on the side of her torso, the bottom one was flashing red.
She looked up and down the street, then her eyes latched onto a large robot sitting on the other side of the road with a trash can clamped inside a giant claw. She wondered between the cars, climbed up onto it its side, and searched for a panel. She ran her fingers across its metal hull and felt a seam which, when pressed, caused the whole panel to gently slide away and reveal a set of four bars beside a round plug. She pressed the bars and they all lit up red.
She jumped down and continued up the street, staring through the storefronts until something at the back of one caught her eye. She saw a slender robot collapsed over the counter. She crept inside being sure to avoid the broken glass and scattered leather bags. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness then approached the counter. When she peered over, she noticed a long thick cable protruding from the side of the robot and hanging down to the floor. She reached over and grabbed the loose end.
Then the machine suddenly leapt over the counter and tackled her to the ground. Her head hit the far wall and the robot grabbed her arms. She struck it in the chest and dented its breastplate. The robot didn’t seem pleased about this and twisted her onto her side, pinning both of her arms to the ground. She kicked and shoved, but it was too heavy. It picked up the long cable and jammed it into her power socket. Her vision blurred for a moment and the last bar on her side flashed red. She couldn’t wriggle herself free, but she could move her arm. She managed to slide it under her side and scratched at the revolver until it pulled free of the holster. She grabbed the handle and pointed it at the robot. The first shot missed, but the robot didn’t have time to dodge before the second shot tore through its head, leaving a fist sized hole through its brain before it collapsed onto the floor beside her. With the cable still connected, she pressed a switch on her side. The red bars began to flash blue. She sat herself against the wall and waited.
By the time she left the store, darkness had set in over the city. She climbed the on ramp up to a highway with a red map in her hand. She crested the top and looked down the road between a maze of rusting, burnt-out, and mangled vehicles. She stared at the map, then pulled it close to her face. Her vision was grainy and dull. She took a torch from her backpack and inspected the red and yellow leaflet with ‘sight-seeing’ written across the top. She followed the yellow squiggles across the city, past Millenium park, past the Willis Tower and out towards the river, following a thick yellow line all the way to the edge and towards a giant grey obelisk which the map simply called ‘droid-co’.
She set off down the highway, weaving between the rows of vehicles that stretch all the way to the horizon. She passed an old bus, and noticed shadows dotted along the windows. She pointed the torch up at them and realised they were the old machines, a dozen of them staring down at her. They each had dark hollow eyes, soft shells with buttons and zippers holding them closed and thin grey frames that didn’t seem to use pulleys or servos. It was a mystery to her how such machines ever moved, or powered themselves. She thought for a moment, back to a book she once read, but she couldn’t remember what they called themselves. Then, she spotted something on the horizon, peaking above the treetops, a dark grey monolith crested by moonlight.
She pushed her way through a mangle of dense brambles which scratched the few patches of gold her arms still had. She burst into a clearing and looked ahead, straight into darkness. She wondered forward into the clearing and pushed through a chain link fence with scattered warning signs barely hanging onto the wire. She stared at her map and strained her eyes to find another exit on the highway, but her sensors were too grainy to see the map clearly. She grabbed the torch and followed the yellow highway until her finger landed on Droid-co, exactly where she should be, but she saw nothing. She pointed the torch into the clearing, and a wall appeared from nowhere, only four feet in front of her. She stepped away until her back pressed against the fence. A huge grey building was towering above her, and no matter which way she pointed the torch, the light never reached its edge, then she saw a featureless door set into the wall.
Elaja crept into the room. Scattered around were hinged tables, some horizontal, some vertical. Most of them were empty except for a handful on the other side of the room beside a set of large sliding doors. She walked over to the tables, and looked at the machines which were strapped into them. She noticed one beside the door, lying on its back covered in untarnished golden plates, chrome vents on its neck, and a soft artificial skin running from its neck, which merged into the golden plate midway down its chest. She leaned over and looked closely at the face, half covered in skin, the other half peeled back. She held the torch close to it and the light danced through a tangle of metal, glass and pulleys. It shimmered through bulbs, glittered across gleaming pistons and metal cables. She looked at the face, and saw herself. She ran her finger along its steel cheek, then did the same to hers. She checked its power level, all green. Then she checked hers, three green. Suddenly, something clattered in the room behind her.
She heaved open the sliding door and stepped onto a gantry, high above an enormous room which stretched into the distance. Down below her, there was a bewildering mess of rails with half-finished torsos hanging beneath them and robotic arms frozen in between. Below the rails she noticed wide conveyors with steel bins, each filled with a loose assortment of parts. Elaja looked out into the room, and noticed a tower in the middle, barely visible in the darkness.
She made her way down and walked along the edge of the production line. She stared up at the steel frames holding the machinery and wondered to herself what it was all for. Why had the old machines left so much behind? Then, she noticed, just ahead of her, a row of steel racks stacked with robots, blue robots, with a single red eye, a glass dome on their heads and a small voice box hung beneath their chins. She rushed over and noted the designator stamped on their arm, ‘X-9000’. She pulled one of them from the rack and proceeded to take a green, rusty metal cartridge from her backpack with ‘X-10’ stamped into the metal. The cartridge was heavy and bigger than her hand. She turned the robot over and located a panel on the back of its head. When she opened it, she found a small rectangular slot no wider than the tip of her finger. She put the cartridge away and left the machine lying on the floor.
Suddenly, a torso shattered onto the ground behind her. She whipped around with the torch and saw one of the frames shifting from its footing. She stood frozen, until a huge machine leapt from within the production line and began galloping towards her. The machine had a huge claw on its front, which snapped at the air as it ran. She slipped beneath the conveyors and ran between the belts. The machine jumped on top of the frames which bent and buckled under its weight. It grabbed at her from above, and managed to gouge a strip of metal from the top of her head.
She ducked beneath a conveyor and crawled along its length. The robot slammed onto the belt above her and began jabbing its claw blindly beneath it, tearing out wires and beams. When the conveyor began to collapse, she bolted out of the side into a clearing and ran.
Her feet pounded the ground, her fans whined, and coolant began leaking down her face, but then, she spotted the tower up ahead and a door set into the wall. She looked over her shoulder in time to see the huge machine crashing through the conveyors and chasing after her. It caught up in moments, grabbed her by the legs and tossed her across the room. She smashed into a frame and bounced between the machinery.
Panels tore from her body, parts scattered into the air and clattered down between the production line as she slammed into the floor. She turned to look, just in time to see the machine hurtling through the air. It landed on top of her and a crushing pain coursed through her nerves, making her head jitter and warnings flash across her vision.
The robot pinned her to the ground with its claw and she struggled to break free. It extended a long arm from its body and jammed a spike into her socket. The bars on her side flashed red and began to fade one by one.
She hit the claw, pushed it, writhed and wriggled, to no avail, her vision began to blur and static fizzed in her ear. The bars ticked down one at a time, until the servos were creaking in her arms and the fan in her neck began to sputter. Then another giant robot, leapt through the frames and smashed into the one on top of her. Both of the machines tumbled into the production line and a whole section collapses on top of them. Huge beams flew into the air and crashed down around her as they tore into each other. She seized her moment of respite and dragged herself towards the doorway.
When she made it into the tower, the commotion outside fell silent. She dragged herself across the dark room and propped herself up against the first obstacle she found. She couldn’t find the torch, it no doubt was lying somewhere outside, but she didn’t have the courage to look for it.
She reached into her backpack and took out out a tiny stick with a light on the end. She yanked a tab and shook it, causing the end to glow and cast dim light over her body. Her chest plate was gone. She stared into wires, pulleys, pistons and rotors whirring and hissing inside of her, some sputtering fluid onto the floor. Her left arm was stiff and jolted every time she tried to move it. She glanced down at the bars on her side, and noticed for the first time that only one was illuminated, and it was flashing red.
She looked around the room, and her eyes landed on a row of batteries standing across the back wall. She took a long cable form her pack and shuffled herself across the floor. She fell onto her front and dragged herself the rest of the way with the torch clenched in her mouth. She checked the first pack which glowed red. She checked the second and third until the fourth one finally gave her a greenlight, prompting her to sit up and jam the cable into its socket. But, when her hands slid across her abdomen, searching for her own, she couldn’t feel it. She held the torch near her side and saw a gaping hole filled with shredded wires. In a moment, she felt an emotion she’d never felt before, lashing through her brain like a whip cracking at her circuits. The feeling rippled into her arms and the hydraulics in her chest began to spasm and twist her body. She held herself still, as still as she could. She read about this, the old machines had a word, this must be death. She screamed as loud as her vocals would let her before they began to crackle. Then, she slumped against the wall, tossing the torch across the room when her screams turned to growls of anger. The torched bounced off a steel canister and clattered onto the floor beside a workbench, as the feeling inside of her began to fade.
She checked the power bars again, as if hoping for change. Then she remembered the robot, strapped to the table near the entrance, and concluded that it was the best chance she had. Her optimism was briefly tempered by a crash from outside, alerting her that the machines hadn’t managed to kill each other yet.
It was now that she began to regret tossing the light away. A pipe in her gut had been spluttering liquid onto the floor and a puddle had formed around her. Her legs were stiff when she tried to crawl, and her left arm wouldn’t move at all. She managed to scrape herself all the way to the light and toppled onto her back. Beside a work bench. A sight immediately struck her, a circular panel poking from beneath a dust sheet. She tugged on the edge of the sheet and yanked it onto the floor.
She mustered what little hydraulic fluid she had and managed to lift herself just high enough to see over the top of the bench. On it, was a green robot, with a polished hull, a single red eye and voice box stuck beneath its chin. Her backpack was across the room. She crawled with her one good arm until she could reach it and dragged it towards her, searching around inside and grabbing a hold of the green metal cartridge at the bottom. She turned the robots head and opened a panel on the back, comparing the cartridges, she realised it would fit. She jammed the cartridge into the slot and reached for the loose cable attached to the battery bank. After dragging it towards her, she plugged it into the robot on the bench, and all four of its power bars began flashing blue.
She felt her arm stiffen until it froze in place, then, her whole body did the same, and all four bars on her side began flashing red.
Wow, what a story and a very good read. Had me captivated from the start, Well done.