“Oh, you sad little thing,” she said, bending down to cup open her hands, inviting it to roll into them.
To her surprise, it did so without hesitation. Yet, in her palms, there was a quiver to it. It was anxious to be held and nervous about it at the same time. She examined the black bot and gave a short whistle. “I think you might be broken. I wish I was back…” She almost said on her Disc but realized that she wasn’t confident this little thing wouldn’t share that bit of information with the others. She had no desire to lie, but they had constructed a different idea about her, and she feared any deviation might delay her getting to Blip. Instead she continued, “I was back in… my Garden. I have tools there and a workshop. I’m sure I could get you flying again.”
The eye-bot shook and rocked back and forth in her hand. It rolled to the front of her palms and teetered on the edge, repeating the motion twice. Syn twisted her head and pressed her lips together, furrowing her brow. “I’m not sure I—” The bot repeated the motion and Syn smiled. “You want to go that direction?”
The bot moved back and forth in what Syn was sure was to be a nod. “Okay, point the way. But I don’t have long. I have to get going. My friend needs me.”
The ebony eye-bot rolled around in her palms in various directions, guiding her through the quiet but still lit pathways, around corners, and up two flights of stairs, that led back into the closest settlements. All was silent, and there was a blue-orange glow above the ever-present haze in the air. The world around her missed all the normal cues of early morning, but Syn was certain she had slept through the night and had awoken early.
Before long, the bot directed her to a series of garage doors, one after another. It nudged her toward a regular door between the second and third one. Syn glanced around and noticed the larger pathway beyond them—this was a vehicle repair section of the settlements—quite like where she had discovered her Ogun and had set up her own workshop. Syn stepped to the door and the access panel lit up and the door slid open.
As she stepped inside, she gave a quiet, “Lights on” command. The room came to life with an electric blue light as the recessed LED strips in the ceiling and floor turned on.
Around the edges of the room, several white tables stood, now covered with dirt. In a washbasin against the far corner, dishes piled up, a soft black fuzziness creeping across the surfaces—it had been food a long time ago but had since crumbled and darkened beyond recognition. A glass pane hung to her left with marker scribbles of various robotic shells and the calculations for power conversions—simple math but definitely the handiwork of a specialist. Along the right-hand side, a red hoist and cart stood with the shell of a guard bot hanging from the chain. She had only seen a couple guard bots on her Disc, and they were all inert. They were the closest to a human form she had encountered, and they always unnerved her. The first one she had encountered had been in Captain Pote’s office, standing right in front of the entrance. She had been sure he was alive in the dim-lit room—finally another human. The mistake had hurt.
Along the walls hung several baskets with an assortment of gears and wires and circuit boards. The floor had brown crates and boxes, each overflowing with shells from robots. Syn spied three different fire extinguishers—this person was definitely accident-prone and had learned to take precautions.
Syn smiled and gave a deep breath of relief.
A workshop.
A quick glance at the eager eye-bot reaffirmed her suspicions. “Do you want me to fix you?” It wobbled back and forth. She let the ebony eye-bot roll out of her hands onto one of the few clear spots on the center table and said, “Let’s see if we can get you back to normal again.” Syn searched around for a few tools—she’d need a magclip to release the shell and a gravometer to confirm if his grav-pump was working, just to start. She moved papers and boxes and tossed aside a couple paint-speckled vacuum bot shells. The owner was definitely messier than Alileen, the original owner of her garage back on her Disc, had ever been.
The repairs were smooth and simple. The challenge was keeping the little bot still—its unease and anxiousness made it jittery. After a few pauses to calm it and reassure it that everything would work out, Syn was able to look around inside and determine that the problem was a short in a power tube. She patched it up and then repositioned its outer shell into place. She used the opportunity to clean it up and make sure that it gleamed under the cyan light overhead.
The tiny bot leapt up and zipped around, zooming from one corner to another, causing Syn to duck several times as it careened past her head far too close. “Watch it, little guy!”
After a few minutes, it slowed down and then floated down in front of Syn. For a moment, it paused without movement, staring at her, its large iris shuttering open and closed. Memorizing her. Then, it nuzzled up against her neck in what Syn assumed was a hug. She reached a hand up and said, “It’s okay. I’m glad you’re better.”
The black bot pulled away, gave a nod, and then moved to the door that opened with a swoosh, sliding to let it through. The door closed after, and Syn was left in the quiet workshop.
This was not her workshop. Everything was out of order. Hers was messy, but this was chaos without purpose.
In her workshop, the tables were cleaned (for the most part). This table was full of scattered items, garbage, scraps, pits of wire, equipment, and gunk. Whoever had called this place their garage wasn’t tidy.
Yet, this was the first moment Syn felt at rest since crossing over to this Disc. Even amongst the junk, this was a shop where things were fixed and problems were solved. It felt comfortable. It felt sane. At one time, life had operated normally here. There were days when whoever owned this awoke and came out here to begin work on projects. A normal day in a normal life.
The room preserved this individual’s daily activities but held no keepsakes. After Syn’s first glance around the room, nothing personal turned up. No photos. No letters. No trinkets of any sort. Whomever had toiled in this garage had seemingly done so without much connection to the rest of those around. Or perhaps this was their retreat, and only when surrounded by these walls could they be alone. In that situation, reminders of others might be an intrusion. Syn shook her head at that thought. She couldn’t imagine not wanting to crowd her life with the artifacts of relationships. She had dreamed of sending notes back and forth to a sister. She had looked at photos of a group of friends and imagined herself pressed into the group of smiling, laughing faces.
Syn pulled out a red stool that rolled about on small chrome wheels and sat down. Behind her, the door slid open, and Syn spun around. The ebony eye-bot had returned, but he wasn’t alone. Several other bots crowded the doorway—most she had spied on her first walk to the theater. They were the ones that were broken, slower than the others. A pair of vacuum bots moved inside, their frames off-balance and scraping against the ground as they moved.
Behind them, a square-framed, sand-colored bot the size of a garbage can rolled on a single wheel; it attempted to enter but misjudged and hit the doorframe. It backed up, and the ebony eye-bot descended down, chirped out something in that high-speed gibberish song the bots used, and the larger one aligned itself to the frame and carefully wheeled inside.
The others ranged from an octagonal ball scuttling forward on four trapezoid legs, clicking against the hard floor, to a tall, thin med-bot with a dozen wire-like floating armatures, to a rusted-out iron bot sporting a large head on five horse-like legs—Syn was sure the thing would topple over or fall to dust. Others, all different and each broken, crowded in. Syn counted over twenty and lost track soon after.