This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, Standard-Issue Partner.
Early the next morning Flint got up and dressed. He checked Simon’s charger and made sure it still had twenty percent to go. He put on his jacket and got his things together. He pulled on his backpack, which he had supplied with food, flashlights, and a change of clothes, as well as a few other sundries, and made his way out to the hovercar deck, and unlatched it. The sun was not yet up, and the morning rain was sticking to the buildings in a way that was frankly unpleasant.
He opened the car, tossed in his supplies, and cranked it up. The navigation computer revved up and told him his location, and before long there was a signal coming in from the base.
The screen buzzed to life, and the Chief stood there, with eyes that looked a little worse for wear. “What are you doing on patrol at this hour Flint? Where’s your robot?”
“No robots today Chief. I’m taking a sick day from the force.”
“Nonsense, you haven’t taken a sick day in thirty years.”
“Precisely.”
“Precisely?”
“Yes. I think I’m due a day off, don’t you?”
“Yes, but Flint, the next bust, you’re on tap, and we need you.”
“You can do this one without me today.”
“But Flint…”
“I need a day Chief. Deal with it, I need to get out of the city.”
“There’s going to be hell-to-pay.”
“Then pay it. I’ve got things to do today.”
“Flint!”
Flint snapped the monitor off. He’d pay for that one later he supposed, but he wasn’t going to allow for this. He had to get out of the city, and this was the time. He flew until the rain diminished, and things started to get a little clearer. He could see the edges of the city beyond. He nose-dived down, and hugged the surface streets, a place rarely used these days and increased his speed. The buildings flew by, shooting past him like they were nothing more than streaks in a grand tunnel of some kind.
The buildings began to seem smaller, only a hundred stories each, and soon he was down to the small stuff, fifty stories or less. He had only managed to make a bust out this far a couple of times. He couldn’t believe how much of the sky he could see from here, and actual stars. The city lights behind were blinding. He had always heard that the lights of the city would drown out the lights of the stars, but he never believed just how many there actually were.
Then he saw it, ahead of him in the distance.
It was the first one he had ever seen, a tree.
It was magnificent. It stood fifty feet tall, a great magnolia tree, not that Flint knew what it was called, nor did he think of any resources he could look one up in. He stopped the hovercar, and maneuvered it around the tree, moving slowly, and taking in everything that he could. He’d never really had a chance to mourn Roberts. He had just gone on and started in with Simon, not really taking the time to go and recognize anything, to experience anything, or to give himself a chance at regrouping and reorganizing his thoughts. He thought he would go further west and see what was out there. Outside the cities, there were several of them across the country these days, it was supposed to be desert and wastelands, but this didn’t much look like a wasteland to him.
He revved up the hovercar and zoomed out to the west, four hundred miles an hour at the outside, but occasionally slowing down to take in a landmark or some bit of scenery. The hills were beautiful. The old cracked roads and highways, no longer used by anybody extended into nowhere, covered by a layer of vegetation that was unheard of in the cities.
Not that this was a real mystery, all this nature, but it just seemed like folks had forgotten, sitting in their towers and playing their games. He hung low in the sky. The sun was just coming up behind him. He’d never seen the whole sun before, usually just seeing a glimpse of it through a cloud or some other piece of building or the spire of a skyscraper, which seemed like the only kind of building to have these days. There was a bright light above the sun as it rose. Bright pin-point of light shined in the distance. It stayed with the sun, right ahead of it as it ascended into the sky. Was it a star?
“Computer?”
“Yes?” said a clipped computer voice.
“What’s that light behind us, over the sun?”
“That is the planet Saturn.”
“Saturn.”
“Is there anything else you would like? You’ve got three messages from the Chief.”
“What do they say?”
“‘Return or you’re fired, Return or we’ll arrest you,’ and ‘Come on man!'”
“Figures. Patch me through to him.”
The Chief’s face fizzled up on the screen. “Well?”
“It’s just a day.”
“I know.”
“Are you going to arrest me?”
“No.”
“Are you going to send Simon after me?”
“Yes, as soon as his charge comes up.”
“Don’t.”
“No real choice pal. We’ve got to make sure you return.”
“I’m not going to run. Haven’t you ever taken a day off?”
“No, and I don’t see the point.”
“You should. I think it would do some good.”
“Where are you?”
“And spoil all of Simon’s fun finding me? I don’t think so.”
“We’ve got your beacon on the radar. We know where you are anyway.”
“I suppose I’ll have to do something about that.”
“Flint…”
“Did you know the star that comes up ahead of the sun is really the planet Saturn?”
“Is it?”
“It is.”
“Flint, why do you care?”
“Because I’m ninety-five, and I’ve never seen anything. All I know is busts, and raids, and carnage.”
“Simon, what else is there? Do you want a career as a journalist?”
“No. I just need to see some things for myself, that’s all. I saw my first tree today.”
“Did you?”
“And I’m going to see the Grand Canyon also.”
“The what?”
“It’s a big hole in the ground.”
“Great. My best special ops cop needs to go and see a hole in the ground.”
“Send the robot if you must, but I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“You know I can’t make you come back.”
“Call it earned vacation.”
“Like we ever really have any of that anymore.”
“Yep. So, you’ll send the Robot?”
“Yep. It’s just for backup. you never know what you can find out there in the wastes.”
“Understood.”
“I’ll check in with you later?”
“Not today.”
The Chief nodded and signed off, twisting a knob at the bottom of his display. Flint flicked off his as well, and then flicked another toggle that started to brew a cup of coffee for him as he flew west. On the horizon, a mesa was coming up on his right. The beginning of the painted desert began to open itself to him in the morning light. Flint simply couldn’t put the colors together in his mind. It may have been the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life. He circled it taking in the ancient cities built into the side of one of the great mesas.
“Ancient man, there you have it, early high-rises.”
He took off towards the west, and he thought that the mesa or one of its cousins might have been the most beautiful natural formation he had ever seen, until he got to the Grand Canyon, where he had to land the hovercar near an old abandoned tourist trap, and flop to the ground, and take it all in.
Back in the apartment, a soft beep came from Simon’s charger, and a small light went from green to blue. The panel slid away and Simon stepped out.
He looked around. “Flint?”
He walked into each of the rooms of the apartment, searching. Lights were dimmed, and there was nothing going on, and nobody about. “Flint?”
He flipped on the bathroom lights, half expecting to see him in there or a note on the mirror, something else he had been trained to look for in cops who were adjusting to having a robot for a partner. He wondered for a moment if expecting a suicide note so early was really such a healthy thing to be looking for. Was having a robotic partner that upsetting? Could the shock really be too much for someone? Certainly, robots were around every day. Certainly, they were around so much that people didn’t much care what kind of a partner they had.
The living room monitor came on, a call from the Chief. Simon flicked it on. “Simon?” said the Chief.
“Yes, sir. Is Flint all right?”
“Yes, He’s fine. He’s just switched off his homing beacon, but he’s somewhere in the midwest. I’ll need you to track him down and bring him in, but let him have his say first. Be prepared, he is expecting you to try.”
“What’s wrong?”
“He’s just taking a day off. I just want you to keep an eye on him and make sure he returns to us. Understand?”
“Absolutely. How do I get out there?”
“Flint’s got a pair of hoverbikes. It’s a lot like strapping yourself to a rocket and hitting the go switch. You are already programmed for it, so don’t worry about it. You’ll know how to drive it as soon as you see it.”
“Where was he going?”
“Last time we had him he was in an area of old Nevada near the Grand Canyon, whatever that is.”
Databanks in Simon’s head began to access the main database in the city center and looked up hundred-year-old maps of Nevada. It soon located the Grand Canyon. “That’s pretty far off. What condition is his hovercar in?”
“Should be fine, those things have a half-life of at least fifty years.”
“Okay, I’ll be off in just a moment.”
“Go armed.”
“For Flint?”
“No, but you never know. There are stories of folks hanging out in the wastes outside the cities.”
“I never go without it.”
Simon smiled, and the Chief and he seemed to understand one another.
“Simon, just bring him back to us.”
“Will do.”
He went upstairs, to the garage, and found the hoverbikes. They did indeed look like large rocket engines. He strapped himself in and blew out into the day on a streak of rocket fuel.
He pulled the bike toward the west and poured on the speed. An hour later the city was behind him, and he began to move out into the suburbs. Ahead of him, he saw the great magnolia tree as the first sign of botanical life. He stopped the hoverbike to look at it and picked a leaf to take with him and study on the way. It felt heavy for its size, plump and full of chlorophyll and other nutrients. He tucked it away in an extra evidence compartment in his chest.
Flint watched the sunset boil into the horizon, the first one he had ever seen in his life. The stars were starting to really come out, and emblazon the sky with their story. Constellations he had never seen in his life revealed themselves to him one after the other as the stars began their trek across the sky. He had shut off the lights from the hovercar, to make sure there was no light to disturb his vision of the stars. He, therefore, saw Simon coming about a hundred miles off, at the edge of the Grand Canyon. Flint didn’t know whether or not to look up or down. He’d spent the day looking between the empty blue sky to the vastness of the Grand Canyon.
He set off a signal flare. It spooked off his night vision, but it was worth it. Simon had been circling for some time now. May as well let him know where he was. Simon checked his course and turned toward the spot where Flint was sitting. He touched down, the engine beneath him rattling with exhaustion. He killed the rattling engine and slumped off of the bike. Flint helped him up.
“You didn’t answer your video phone.”
“I was taking in the scenery, sorry. Come on. Have a seat.”
Flint had set up a small campfire, which wasn’t yet lit so that he could get the most out of his night of seeing real stars. The moon was beginning to come up in the distance. He pointed it out to Simon.
“I saw it when I was up higher.”
“I’ve never seen it before. What do you make of that?”
“I don’t know what to make of it.”
“None of them in the cities can see this.”
“None?”
“Nobody who isn’t looking out of a high powered telescope anyway, and since the smog over the city hangs there all the time now I don’t see how it could work unless you were somewhere like this.”
Simon looked out at the Grand Canyon. He wished, like a little Pinocchio that he could appreciate it all, but he couldn’t. He could catalog it, and sense it, and identify it, but he couldn’t understand it or appreciate it. “I don’t get it.”
“You will. If you’re going to be my partner, you’re going to have to.”
“Can you teach that to a robot?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to try. I love the force too much to leave, and if being your partner is the only way to stay, then I’ve got to make the most of it.”
Flint looked out over the horizon counting the stars. From his bag in the hovercar, he pulled a sleeping bag, and he settled himself down, hands behind his head to look up at the stars. Simon craned his own neck to watch them from the boulder he was sitting on. Flint noticed that Simon could crane his neck just a bit too far to look normal.
He watched the night sky, staying awake until the early hours of the morning. He watched as satellites crossed the sky, counting them as they went around the Earth. With some help from his car’s computer, he found the constellation of Pegasus and tried to count the number of stars within Pegasus’s main square. He had heard that one of the Native American tribes used to do that as a test of manhood, but he wasn’t sure. He lost count in the hundreds and fell asleep, losing the battle to the long journey and the sheer number of sights and sounds.
During the night, Simon kept watching. He hooked himself up to the hoverbike and charged slowly off its battery as he did so. The night stayed quiet for the most part. Most of the animals that used to live in this region of the old United States were long since extinct.
Just before dawn, Simon was overlooking the edge of the Grand Canyon, with the dying fire crackling behind him, and just about to unhook his power cable from the hoverbike when he looked up to see an old man with leathery skin, wearing a series of animal skins around his body. The ground seemed to thunder beneath his feet, but he could not move them. The old man spoke in a thick accent, unused to speaking English. He seemed to return to an old native tongue once every few words or so for a moment.
“You there,” said the man.
“Me?” Simon was astonished to realize he could talk. His internal diagnostics were recording the thunder through the ground but the data was not being stored properly. His eyes also seemed to be malfunctioning, because the man kept sweeping in and out of his vision.
“You,” he said. “Are you the keeper of this man on the ground?”
“I’m his partner. We’re detectives.”
“Then he is a detective, and you are a robot then?”
“Yes.”
“His robot.”
“I suppose, although I’m really mine.”
“I suppose.”
The old man seemed to shift and squeeze from here to there. He appeared on Simon’s left side, then his right.
“I have a message for the sleeping man. He will not wake up until I am gone. Your audio recorder will not work, and neither will your video recorder, so don’t even try. You may, however, write this into a text file in memory.”
Simon confirmed the failure of all those devices while trying to use them simultaneously.
“The message is this,” he said. “You are denying your own heritage. The robot is right once in a while. And oh yes, Say hello to your mother. That’s all. Yep. I think so.”
The man disappeared without a trace and left Simon feeling cold and alone. The wind seemed to cackle, and the thundering sound intensified until he saw it. There was a herd of buffalo, extinct for seventy years, and heading for him right at this minute. There must have been five hundred head of Buffalo. They stampeded towards them. The ground shook. The trees rattled. The hovercar slid a few inches on its hover field.
Simon’s legs couldn’t move. He found that he could not move any other parts of his body, or speak. He was desperate. They were about to be killed. The ground shook. The fire toppled over, and Flint did not stir from sleep.
With a few feet to go, the buffalo disappeared into the mist and the thunderous sound of their hooves dissipated into the wind. In a moment the sun peaked over the horizon, and after that all was quiet.
Flint opened his eyes and looked around.
Simon stared him down, unable to contemplate what had just happened to him.
“Rough night?”
Simon unhooked himself from the hoverbike, which he had totally drained during the experience, and pushed the bike over the edge.
Flint saw him do it but did not mention anything.
“We’ll get another one,” said Simon.
Flint shook his head. It wasn’t his bike at any rate. The force owned everything anyway. He stirred a cup of coffee that had been brewed inside his little Hover car. He mixed the small amount of powdered milk in that he’d brought along, not that he knew what real milk tasted like anyway, not since he was a very little boy in any case.
There was a crispness to the air. It seemed to crackle and splinter behind his ears, raising the hairs on his neck. “Simon?”
Simon made a quick scan of the area and looked Flint in the eyes. “They’re coming.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. They’re coming from the southeast. I think… Duck!”
Flint dived for cover, not really knowing which way to turn, and behind him, his hovercar exploded in a shower of light and sparks. He spilled the coffee all over himself but did not notice. Rising above the edge of the Grand Canyon, a huge metal object, that looked as if it were made more of rust than anything else hovered over the cliff face.
“What the hell!”
Another missile from the craft impacted with the hovercar and sent what remained of the craft into the sky. The wreckage sailed over the cliff and down into the Canyon.
“Holy crap!”
Flint dived behind a rock, soon accompanied by Simon.
“Who the hell are they?” Flint flipped the safety on his laser pistol and checked it, powering it up.
“Cannibals.”
“What?” Flint shook his head. “Nonsense! There’s no such thing!”
“Apparently there are.”
“What do they want?”
“What I’ve read is that they’re scavengers.”
“Not very good at it. I’d have chased us off before blowing up the hovercar.”
“It might have been the bike that got their attention.”
“Point.”
“What do we do about it?”
The rusty wreckage began to sweep around. Large lights on its undersurface blazed and searched around for them in the morning light. Wind-generated from turbines underneath the craft held it aloft and managed to drive dust and grass into every human and robotic orifice and crevice that either of them had.
“Under here!”
Simon and Flint slid under a series of bushes and held on, hooking their elbows and knees around the roots.
The turbines above them drove the leaves of the bushes into their ears and eyes. Flint held his eyes as tightly shut as he possibly could. Simon lowered a series of power glasses from his eyelids and continued to watch the craft.
Satisfied there was nothing else to find, the craft moved off, and back down into the canyon. The wind subsided and the two released their branches and roots and fell to the ground.
Flint pushed himself up to see the rusted ship floating over the edge of the canyon and then down into it.
Simon joined him, brushing off leaves and dust. “There they go.”
“We’ve got to get in there.”
“In there? Flint, we’ve got to get back.”
“Yeah, and how are we going to do it? We’ve got to get one of those things. Otherwise, we’re walking back, and I think we’re going to have to do it soon.”
“Otherwise?”
“Otherwise I’ll be recharging you with a bicycle and a set of rubber bands.”
Simon thought about this. In his mind, he set himself up for the longest possible charge, shutting down all non-critical functions, down to the lights in his eyes. “All right, let’s go, but we need a plan.”
“We’ll just have to improvise.”
“I hoped you weren’t going to say that.”
“Come on.”
“That one’s starting to get irritating too.”
“Can robots get irritated.”
“Yes.”
Together they trudged down into the Canyon. Ancient trails that snaked down into the canyon made the going easy, but long. The brush was thick, and the view was amazing.
“The Chief’s going to have an interesting time with this one.”
“Why?”
“No way to contact us. We’re supposed to be back by now.”
“Truth is they probably think we’re dead.”
“The ship.”
“As soon as the blip disappeared, I’m sure they got a report that one of their hovercars had been destroyed. Funny though, they haven’t tried to get in touch with me.”
“Can they contact you directly?”
“Yes, at least I’m on the network most of the time, so my signal should be showing up if they’re looking, of course, it may be that we’re too far out.”
“Can you get a signal?”
“Let me try.”
Simon closed his eyes and sent a burst out to bounce off a satellite, and back to the main system. “I can’t get in.”
“Is something blocking you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s get on down there.”
They continued on down the path towards the bottom of the Grand Canyon, to the old Colorado River.
“Why is it called the Colorado River?” asked Simon.
“I’m not even sure I remember what Colorado is.”
Around them, they could see birds crisscrossing the sky, swooping and circling on thermals. “I haven’t seen a bird since I was a kid. We used to have them on my grandmother’s farm.”
“I wish I had some of those.”
“What?”
“Memories.”
“You will. All you have now is knowledge, soon you’ll have memories, and that’ll be the really confusing part.”
“Why?”
“Memories are funny. They’re not always what you think they are. Even people with the same memories never really agree on what happened.”
“Hmm.”
They passed the remains of the hoverbike.
“I wonder why they didn’t pick it up.”
“Good question. We can use it though.”
“I’m afraid I’ve sucked it dry. We couldn’t ride it anywhere.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. Roberts always kept a bit of equipment on the bike, if ever he needed it. We ought to be able to salvage something.”
They took a large plate off of the back of the hoverbike, with a tool hidden under one of the front fenders. Inside the compartment, they found a small backpack with a bit of food, several small laser pistols, and a map, of this area.
“Now isn’t that strange,” said Flint, holding up the map.
“Very interesting,” said Simon.
They folded out the map and set it on a small outcropping of rock.
It showed where they were, this side of the ridge of the Canyon, and a satellite photo of this area, including a large settlement at the bottom of the Canyon. It looked like a large factory, rectangular in nature, right over the Colorado River, and then off to the sides a series of rounded buildings connected by spires or spokes that went out all around it.
“What is this thing?”
“I’m not sure,” said Simon. “But I think we ought to find out.”
Traveling down wasn’t so much of a problem. There were one or two places where the path had washed out, and they had to jump, but it wasn’t really a problem. On the ground, the trek became tougher. The sun, which Flint was still really enjoying wasn’t helping. The heat was making the afternoon almost unbearable.
Above them, the vultures still circled, except they seemed to be getting closer, almost as if they were following the two of them. Snakes crawled around at their feet. A rattlesnake, which completely fascinated Simon slithered out and nearly bit Flint on the ankle as they were passing a series of rocks that were baking in the sun.
Soon, a building became visible ahead of them. It was marvelous, built of glass and steel, and seemed to radiate a very used and lived-in appearance. It was definitely old, and there were definitely patches of rust, but much of it was actually built of copper and aluminum.
They ducked down behind a series of rocks near the river, they could see it was teaming with fish and watched as ships of all sizes from simple one-man scouts to larger fishing ships floated out from a hub toward the south end of the structure.
They had to wait for night. There wasn’t another way about it. They would be seen, and fast if they made a movement in the daylight from here.
They watched as patrols went out in search of them, looking near the ridgeline and up and down the sides of the nearby canyon. They watched as fishing barges floated out above the river and sunk huge nets into the water, and drew up fish by the thousands.
Some of the craft were light one-man vessels that appeared to have long pointed tapered ends, with large fins toward the front. It looked as if they used them to slice sheets of water up when flying low over the river. There was another craft that looked like family vehicles, capable of four or five passengers. It was through the windows of one of these that Flint got his first blurry look at the people. They did look like humans, but he couldn’t get a good look at them. They all seemed to be wearing lighter colors though, lots of yellow, white and taupe. Flint wondered if this was a standard uniform or if they simply didn’t have method or material for darker colors.
The night was coming on again. They had observed for several hours. “How are we going to get in there?” asked Simon.
“I’m thinking somehow up underneath.” That seems to be the way most of the craft are coming and going, and it seems to me that if we find a craft and are able to pilot it out it’ll be close to the doors we’ve been watching open and close underneath for most of the day.
“I can see that,” said Simon.
“Duck!”
They ducked under a portion of the rock they were using for cover just as one of the search vessels crossed over them from above, its lights blazing on the ground, lighting everything up. They scrambled around, staying around or behind the rock as the vehicle crossed over them, and then it was off, shooting towards the building. They watched as an arm lowered from the building, and took hold of it, bringing it in.
With it out of the way, Flint shouldered Roberts’s backpack, and they started to make their way to the building.
As the darkness gathered, they made their way across the desert, staying close to the river the entire time. By the time they were within a hundred feet of the towering structure, night had completely fallen.
“Let’s get up there,” said Flint.