“I don’t need a lecture.”
“Well, it seems like you might.” Byte settled beside her, watching her with those unblinking eyes as she put her feet into the yellow glow of the water and swished her toes there. “If you keep doing that, your toes will rot off.”
“No, they won’t,” she replied with a chuckle, surprised it could make her smile so easily. “They’ll be fine. I know everything has been a little damp lately, but at least I can dry out in this cave.”
“Where all the other undines know you are. It’s a risk for us to stay here too long. You’ll be wet again soon enough.”
“I don’t really mind it,” she said quietly. “I like the ocean. Swimming is something that I’ve always enjoyed, even though we were only allowed to do so in the moon pool where there were a hundred cameras underneath to make sure nothing would come close to us. Even the engineering wing had a small section of the ocean we could dip our toes into.”
She swished her feet in the water, watching delicate foam rise from her movements, and it captivated her. Just as it had when she was a little girl.
Byte made a little clunking noise that sounded rather like a huff. “Humans have always been so interested in the ocean. Even when I was made, lifetimes ago for you, you all had a fascination with the sea. It’s always the depths that you couldn’t understand and the creatures far beneath it.”
“You remember?” She turned to look at Byte, noticing the rust gathering on its edges. “How much do you remember?”
“Everything.” Byte picked at one of those rusty pieces. “I told you, I was meant to be a record keeper. I remember everything that happened in those old days. The beginning of our journey underneath the sea. The first construction of Alpha and the secondary constructions of others.”
“How?” She pulled her feet out of the water and gently picked Byte up. “How do you remember all that if you were mapping the sea floor?”
“Transmissions. Even underwater, there are ways for droids to keep in touch with each other. I have many memories of those early times.” It tapped the side of its box, and the little projector appeared off the top of it. “Would you like to see?”
A glimpse into a world long gone? She would be honored to see what the droid had archived, but even more than that, she just wanted to see how people used to live.
“Why don’t you show me while I clean off some of this rust? There were a few chemicals in the back that haven’t degraded yet. I think I should be able to get you shining so the rust doesn’t get any worse.”
She placed Byte on top of the computer console and gathered her things to clean it while the droid settled in. She watched as it flicked through memories, speeding through some and then dismissing others. But eventually, it settled on images to project that immediately captivated her.
Memories from above.
Together, they watched a beautiful landscape unfold before them. A young woman with blonde sparkling hair and a smile that showed far too large teeth. She was so full of life, though, bubbling with laughter as she raced after an older gentleman. They were running on bright green grass, endless blades weaving around their knees. Not inside a pod or inside the cities, but above ground.
“What is that?” Mira asked, pointing at the bottom of the memory as the image suddenly left the grassy plain.
“That was a rock formation that was found often above the surface. They called it lava flow, and it was cooled lava from the volcanoes up above. The land there was difficult to live on. That’s why humans turned their attention to beneath the surface. It’s very warm. And sometimes the lava would get into homes and towns, and kill people.” Byte zoomed in on the background of the memory, showing what looked like a tall peak of land. “That’s one of the volcanoes.”
“It looks very tall.”
“They all were. Are. Likely, there are plenty of them out there, but the drones that humans built to fly above us were long ago destroyed. Unfortunately, all the robots they left on land stopped broadcasting one by one.”
A wave of sadness rushed through her as she started polishing Byte’s sides. “Do you miss them?”
“The humans?”
“The robots that were left on land.”
“Ah.” A few gears whirred and clicked before Byte sighed again. “I have not heard from them in one hundred and sixteen years. It has been a long time, and I know they are gone. But some part of me hopes that perhaps they are simply waiting for someone to find them. As I was.”
Oh, if that didn’t break her heart. Mira winced before continuing to clean Byte’s sides, picking off rust with her nails as she worked. “Who were the people in the memory, then?”
“Ah! Miss Alys Fairweather and her father, Professor Norbert Fairweather. They were two of the most intriguing adventurers I ever met in my life.” Byte flicked to another memory, one of the two people getting into what looked like a submarine, though the model was clearly old. It was little more than a round ball that floated in the ocean.
Professor Fairweather got in first. His white hair waved in the sea breeze, and there was a faint sheen of sweat on his face. Perhaps because it was so warm above the water. He lifted a hand and waved, the older style clothing he wore billowing with his movement. He likely should have been wearing a suit jacket, but then again, she didn’t expect to see him wearing that, considering the heat.
His daughter stepped in after him, standing on top of the round submarine with her eyes cast out to sea. She wore a pretty yellow dress with a wide leather belt around her waist. And as the breeze moved her dress, Mira could see that she was also wearing a pair of immaculate knee-high boots beneath.
“He brought his daughter on adventures with him?”
“Oh yes.” Byte zoomed in on Alys’s face, and she could see how tenderly the droid had taken care of the memory.
There was so much detail in the projection. She could see how blue Alys’s eyes were, and how she had the faintest abrasion on her chin, like she’d scraped it on something. Her lips were chapped, and her brows had a few flyaways that gave her a rather roguish expression. How strange to look at a woman like this and see so much, when she had most certainly passed away years ago.
“What were they doing in this memory?” she asked.
“Scouting out the first location for Alpha. Professor Fairweather was the lead architect on the project. He led many people to the location after this, but the first exploration was first and foremost, him and his daughter. They traveled the entire planet together once. Or at least, that’s what they claimed.” The projection blinked in and out of life before showing yet another memory.
This time, it was an image from inside of the submarine. There were so many wires and ports and strange buttons that Mira couldn’t even hazard a guess at what they did. But the professor and his daughter sat in matching chairs, looking out into the ocean with matching expressions of awe.
Alys leaned forward in her chair, pressing closer to the glass as she stared at the magical world they had revealed. It was stunning. Beyond stunning. So many kelp forests and fish and turtles and fluttering creatures she couldn’t even name.
“That doesn’t look like Alpha.” She pointed at the forest and all the other creatures around it. “Alpha is set on a barren rock. Nothing can get near it for miles out to sea without someone seeing it.”
The memory blinked out of existence. “That is because Alpha was built on what was once a thriving biome of sea creatures and plants. It was all destroyed to build Alpha.”
“I...” She didn’t know what to say.
Instead, she thought about it. Silence descended between them as Byte instead played images from above. Even those weren’t enough to distract her from what it had said. There used to be so much more where their cities were built. She’d assumed, of course. But why go through all the trouble of clearing out an area of the ocean when there were plenty of blank spaces?