After the Winter (The Silent Earth, Book 1) (8 page)

Outwardly, he projected a constant and resolute nihilism. I hadn’t reached him yet, but I wasn’t giving up. In a garage out in the suburbs I found a wheelbarrow, eaten by rust but sturdy enough to carry a load. I carted it back, and upon reaching the apartment, Max peered out the window at me sceptically.

“What, are you starting a bricklaying trade now? You’ll have your work cut out for you around here.”

“It’s for you, Max.”

A strange look passed across his face. He seemed both overwhelmed and embarrassed, but quickly regained his composure.

“What do you mean?” he said thickly.

“C’mon.” I waved up at him. “Let’s take a ride.”

“In that thing?” he said, sceptical.

“Yeah. It’s just your size.”

I thought he’d grumble at me and disappear inside, but to my surprise he scraped his way downstairs and climbed up into the tray.

“I’ve seen some pretty shitty rides in my time, but this one takes the cake,” he complained, but he sounded pleased.

“Well, I had the option of a Corvette, but didn’t like the colour.”

“Can’t blame you for that.”

It was hard going. Max’s bulky frame was almost too big for the tray and he had to grip the edges firmly to stay inside. Getting him along the street posed a bigger challenge. With so much debris, the going was slow and unsteady. On the way here, I’d been able to lift and bounce the wheelbarrow over bricks and stones and piles of concrete. That wasn’t an option with Max’s hulking physique bearing down on it. I was forced to go ahead and clear a path, kicking and hurling rubble aside and smoothing it out as best I could. Even still, we hit a stone and Max’s leg stump almost slipped out. I caught it and helped ease it back inside the tray, the wires trailing from the stump scraping on the wheelbarrow like long hairs of a brush.

“It must have hurt. The explosion,” I said, my eyes lingering on the wound.

Max looked down at his legs. “For a while. A few days maybe, until the nerve receptors went numb and my neural core shut them down. I don’t feel it anymore.”

I’d experienced the same phenomenon, most recently with my wrist. The wound from the drone was no longer hurting anymore, even though the hole was still there. A good thing, too. I couldn’t imagine walking around for years with the wounds I’d sustained still causing pain.

We passed the wreck of a car and Max suddenly reached out, taking hold of it by the door frame and thrusting his head inside. I fought to keep control of the wheelbarrow.

“Oh man, I used to love these things,”
he said.  “A Chevron Galaxy!”  He grasped the controls enthusiastically and jerked them back and forth.  He peered out through the ravaged windshield as if imagining taking a leisurely cruise down the roadway.  Suddenly the controls snapped off and crumbled in his hands.  Disgruntled, he flicked the pieces away.  “Needs some upkeep, I guess.”  He ducked his head back out of the door frame and twisted to look at me.  “You ever drive one?”

“I wasn’t a big car enthusiast.”

“You really missed out. These could crank up to 300 clicks out on the open road.”

“It just wasn’t my thing. I drove a pretty standard sedan, back when I was human.”

He sighed heavily.  “We’re back to that, are we?” 

“To what?”

“That bullshit about returning to a human body. Do you expect me to take that seriously?”

“Well, yeah,” I said, insulted. “I do.”

“So, even if you used this ‘Replacer’ to transfer yourself to a clank body, just so you can return to being human, how can you go back?  Unless you invented a time machine along with all your other
miracles
,” he said sarcastically.

“It’s called a ‘Displacer’,” I snapped.

“Whatever.”

“Why would I lie to you, Max?” I demanded hotly. “What point would there be in doing that?”

“Well, explain it to me then,” he said, folding his arms. “I’m all ears.”

It was getting gloomy. I gathered supplies from my satchel and began to assemble a torch as I spoke.

“After the displacement, our human bodies were placed in cryosleep.  Not your typical
cryosleep, though. Not the ones they sold on the black market to rich people looking to extend their lives for a year. One or two years?” I scowled and shook my head. “That wasn’t going to cut it. We projected the Winter would last much longer than that.”

The lighter sprang into life and I turned the head of the torch as the flame started to bite. I rounded on Max, holding the torch aloft.

“To stay in cryosleep for
decades
meant going to a level so deep that brain function ceased altogether.  I’m talking
deep
.  We calculated the damage would cause memory loss at a catastrophic level.  Let’s assume a total wipe, or near enough.  To simply lock ourselves in cryotanks, set the timer and then hope we’d awaken a few decades later was beyond optimistic.  It was another dead end.  We knew that we’d come out of it with no memory or understanding of how to survive. 

“That’s the whole reason for the Displacers. Our memories are safely stored here,” I tapped my head. “When the planet starts supporting organic life again, we’ll be able to end the cryosleep. We’ll transfer back. The human race survives.”

“Not the human race,” Max said deliberately.  “One guy. 
You
. That doesn’t resurrect a species.”

“Yeah, I’m just one guy,” I admitted. “But we have embryos. Frozen embryos, kept in storage. Plants and animals, insects. Hundreds of species.” I paused. “Human, too.”

“What the fuck?” Max said, sitting up intently. “Are you serious?”

I shrugged awkwardly.  “The company we worked for kept a huge bank of embryos for biotech research.  The human ones were strictly
black market. It was a closely-guarded secret.”

“Lucky you guys weren’t shut down.”

“We would have been, had the law found out.” I considered the irony of it. “Funny that, now, it might be the thing that ensures the survival of the human race.”

“I guess so,” he said. I could tell I was starting to get through to him. “How many other species do you have in the freezer?”

“Well, obviously, the company didn’t have
everything
in storage. Most species will be lost forever. But we have a start. We have the tools to bring back some of what was lost.”

“Sounds like a long shot,” he said, dubious.

“Of course it’s a long shot.” I waved the torch for emphasis. “A huge long shot, but the only shot we had.”

He shifted his weight and the wheelbarrow creaked. “Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out then, huh.”

“I’d hardly say that. Taking a stab in the dark more like it.”

“The final ingredient in this little recipe of yours would be an army of clanks to do all the rebuilding work for you.” He smirked sourly. “How many of us do you think are out there, apart from Marauders?”

“Clanks?”

“Yeah.”

“I saw a few early in the Winter. Most were in pretty bad shape. They’re thinning out now. Many are in hiding thanks to the Marauders, I guess.”

“That’s what I figured,” he said dejectedly. “A few broken machines. That's all that's left of us.”

“Well, who knows? Maybe there’s a few out there found each other, like we did, and they’re making good.”

“Making
good
? What the fuck are you talking about?” he snarled. “What’s there to make good of?”

“I don’t know, uh... a community.” I raised my hand in contemplation. “Maybe they’re out there rebuilding right now.”

“To what end? What happens after they rebuild? Their cores run dry eventually. There’s no future for them. They know that as well as you and I.”

“They can still have a place in the world, Max. So can you.”

“Bullshit,” he bristled.  “A
place
?  No, I don’t think I
ever
had a place in this world.  They went to an effort,
such
an effort to make us just like a human in every way.  Down to the last detail.  They made us
look
like people.  They made us
sound
like people.  They made us
fear
, and
hate
and
love
like people.  But they never
treated
us like people.  Hell no, just look at the war.  We were thrown in there like landfill.  They didn’t care if we lived or died.  They didn’t care if we made it back in one piece.  Maybe in a financial sense, but that's it.  In fact, they
expected
us to die.  Were we mourned?  Were we remembered?  Were our names written on plaques and memorials, to remember our sacrifice?”

I averted my eyes and muttered, “No.”

“No.  They weren’t.  We were forgotten.  Just like we are now, cut adrift and forsaken.”  He shook his head.  “I
never
had a place in this world.  I was just a tool for those who did.”

I stood in the middle of the road, unable to respond.

“Listen,” he said in a more measured tone, raising his hands placatingly, “it’s not your fault. None of this is your fault. But don’t try to put stupid ideas in my head, okay? I know the score. I know what’s in front of me, and I know what I left behind.” He looked about. “You better take me back. It’s getting dark out here. I don’t want you stumbling around and dumping me out of this thing on my head.” He reached out to take the torch from me.

I smiled sadly. “I’ll take it slow.”

I pivoted the wheelbarrow and started back where we had come, following the narrow path I’d cleared earlier.

He turned and looked back at me. “Oh, and tomorrow, make sure you bring the Corvette.”

9

I hefted the stone in my hand. It was a good weight. A good shape. I tossed it again, testing the balance of it, ran my thumb over the contours and tiny grooves. I looked up and gauged my target. Then I let fly.

The stone bounced once, twice, three, four times. Then with a final splash it sank beneath the murk.

“Best one yet,” Max remarked. He sat in the barrow further up the bank, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Now are you gonna take me or what?”

“Plenty of time, Max,” I said casually. “Plenty of time.”

“Plenty of time for what? Working on my suntan?”

I pretended to chew over that thought. “You do look a little pasty.”

“Hey, I can tell when someone’s stalling,” he said, pointing a finger at me. “And you’re stalling.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, clambering up the embankment and away from the river. I dusted off my hands and took hold of the barrow. “I’ll take you.”

We started along the broad concrete path again. It wound its way alongside the river, in places cracked and brittle, but, with no buildings nearby, for the most part clear of debris. Lining the other side of the path were the husks of dead trees, willows, Max had said. They were fractured and disintegrating now, just stumps, but they must have been a beautiful sight while alive, adorning the edge of the river parkland with their long tendril-like branches undulating in the breeze.

I pictured an early morning scene here of the old times. Joggers huffing past, a woman pushing a pram, an old couple sitting on a bench, a yoga class stretching under the trees, cars banked up as commuters travelled to work, pigeons pecking at seeds in the grass.

“Did you come here much, back in the day?” I asked.

“Sure, came here a lot.”

“What did you do?”

“Jogging, usually,” Max said in a matter-of-fact way.

“You did
what?
” I snorted.

“
Jogging.
”

“But... you’re a synthetic.”

“Can’t synthetics go jogging?” he said.

“Well, there’s nothing stopping you, I guess. But it doesn’t achieve much. It’s not like you’re going to burn off calories.”

“It was a squad thing,” Max explained. “Camaraderie. My squad consisted of both humans and clanks. So if one of us was going out for a run, we’d all go. It was the done thing around here. It didn’t matter that I could run for hours on end, or that I could do five thousand push-ups without breaking a sweat. It wasn’t how easy or hard it was, it was just that we do it as a unit. We were in it together.”

“Were you close with the men in your squad?”

He looked out across the river wistfully. “Yeah, I was. Formed some great friendships with humans and clanks alike. We all would have gladly died for one another. In that group, I don’t think anyone thought of another as a machine or a person. We weren’t defined in those terms. We were all just soldiers. We were there for each other. It was the politicians, the commanders, the higher-ups. They’re the ones who saw clanks as a commodity more than anything else.”