Cryo-Man (Cryo-Man series, #1) (6 page)

             
I don’t know what’s so obvious about that but I don’t interrupt.

             
“…but it clearly wasn’t her. She was timid, shy, scared; there was an emptiness in her eyes like so many others of my kind. She said that she was mine to do as I pleased. Though the sadness of losing K still filled my heart – as it does to this day – my depression and desire to die ended at that moment. I sent the female away and decided I would not spend one more night in the only life I ever knew.”

             
E returned to work that day and subtly destroyed vital parts of K’s research that his team still possessed. He knew his actions could get other members of his design team in trouble but if K taught him anything, it was how sacrifice was needed to make sure humans had every chance to survive the war. E made up a story about needing supplies from one of the other labs and easily swiped the robot-disabling prototype, exactly as he planned to do with K by his side.

             
“In fact, every part of my plan went perfectly. I think a part of me almost
wanted
to get caught, if only to prove that K made the right decision since she and I couldn’t have escaped anyway. But that wasn’t the case and by the time morning rolled around and the sun rose in the sky, I stole several days worth of food from the fields and ran so far west that Robotropolis wasn’t even a dot on the horizon behind me.”

             
The paths traveled out of Robotropolis by robotic soldiers were plain to see so E stayed far away from them. After running all night, he found a large pile of rubble far off the beaten path and squeezed himself inside, out of view of anyone that might be out looking for him. He slept for the rest of the day and didn’t wake up until the sun started to go down.

             
“I continued west, pacing myself as I went along, sticking to the shadows as much as I could. I witnessed the devastation K spoke about, saw more dead human bodies than I could’ve imagined in my worst nightmares. The sophisticated civilization I’d read about on the computer was non-existent. Sure, I occasionally came across vestiges of former human existence: burned-out houses, skeletons of building structures mostly collapsed, roads overgrown with wild vegetation. I even found some places that weren’t in such bad shape, places I imagined I could’ve lived in had K been by my side.”

             
But the idea of settling down didn’t even cross E’s mind. He continued his journey west, never once stopping for more than a night to get a few fitful hours of rest. Initially, E figured to follow the plans he made with K, to locate the largest group of humans he could find and share with them the knowledge he possessed about Robotropolis. But the human population he encountered was scarce, none seemingly capable of putting up much fight against one robot let alone an entire army of metallic warriors. That was proven on several occasions when he saw what happened when the paths of stray humans and Robotropolis’s finest intersected.

             
“It was slaughter but at least it didn’t last long for the humans,” E explains. “They would always try to run away but – just as
I
helped design – the robots were bigger and faster and efficient in killing. It was probably a miracle I avoided them but it helped that I chose to travel in the most difficult areas of terrain.”

             
Days passed. Weeks passed. Months passed. E didn’t know how long he walked, didn’t know how long he went without food or water, which was very difficult to come by. Most of his time was spent in overgrown woods he named the Endless Forest. Most in his situation would’ve given up and died but he kept pushing forward, kept avoiding humans and robots, kept heading toward an unknown destination.

             
“I passed through all different parts of the country: empty badlands, cities overgrown by nature, heavy forests teeming with danger. But somewhere along the line, I decided I had to go to the west coast, had to go where K spent her final days, even though I knew the consequences of being in this area.”

             
“What consequences?” I ask.

             
E coughs. I hear the gurgle trying to escape the back of his throat. I don’t know if he does this on purpose or it’s just coincidence.

             
“The explosive K designed wasn’t just meant to destroy humans at the point of detonation; don’t get me wrong, anyone within several hundred square miles would’ve been incinerated within seconds,” E says, the thought once again sending a shiver down my non-existent spine. “But the long-term effects were meant to be just as devastating.”

             
“Like a nuke?” I wonder. E’s eyebrows turn downward in question. “A nuclear bomb, I mean.”

             
“Nuclear? Like radiation?” E asks, chuckling as he shakes his head. “That’s nothing compared to the neurotoxin that our explosive contained. For anybody exposed to it, the pain and deformities would be far greater than a quick death. Nobody for miles would be able to escape it, nobody would be able to go back to the lands around the production center for years unless they were ready to die a slow and painful death.”

             
Yet that’s exactly where E chose to go. He tells me he knew when he was entering the dead zone, knew from the rubble and utter lack of life, knew from the orange haze that hung over the land like a fog of doom. The Concrete Wasteland, he calls it. He didn’t even hesitate to step into the contaminated area, though seeing the destruction made him lose that tiny sliver of hope that K somehow survived.

             
“
Nobody
could’ve survived,” he says. “I wandered the land aimlessly for several days before finally remembering about the Cryonics Institute I’d read about. I knew it was somewhere in this general area, not that anything was distinguishable among all the rubble. I had no business finding this place – I knew it would be a miracle if it survived in the first place – but I felt an invisible hand guiding me and I never once doubted I would end up here. I like to think K was out there, somewhere, leading me to the place that she and I talked about so often.”

E discovered the entrance within the rubble, carefully traversed the damaged staircase and found the bunker empty, yet mostly intact. Solar power still kept much of the place running, though E doubts it can last forever. E didn’t know what he planned to do with his life, how he planned to make a difference and honor K’s memory.

“And then I walked into this room,” he says, gesturing to the cryo-room. I hadn’t realized we stopped in front of it. He pushes open the doors and walks inside the icy room. I’m not thrilled to be back at the frozen mausoleum but I follow him in.

CHAPTER SIX

My new feet are flatter, larger, much easier to maneuver across the ice. I have a moment where I feel shaky but quickly steady myself. With every step I take, I feel more comfortable controlling this monstrosity of a body.

“I was enthralled by these humans frozen in a state of suspended animation; in my wildest dreams, I never imagined something like this was possible until K and I read about it,” E continues. “Even more amazing was that this cryo-room was still so cold – still doing its job – after being abandoned for so long. But then I noticed some sections of the room weren’t receiving enough power to keep the bodies frozen. I tried to fix the facility’s power systems, thinking my fate was to keep these humans frozen and alive; unfortunately I was too late for many, whose bodies had already thawed and died by the time I arrived. The power systems were far beyond my scope of expertise so I could only hope the remaining solar power would be enough to keep the rest of the bodies frozen.

“When I noticed temperatures dropping in other cryo-chambers, I realized I couldn’t sit back and do nothing while these humans died. I began to read the reports of those humans most in danger. Many of them had been inflicted with illnesses so severe that reviving them couldn’t have let them live much longer anyway. That’s when I decided I had to try, I had to use the skills I possessed to try and save them by any means necessary.”

I stop next to a metallic table set up in the middle of the cryo-room. I look down at my blurred reflection; there’s just enough detail to see my bluish skin as well as the tangle of wires running from a metallic socket in the back of my neck into the glass dome. I can’t see the back of my head but I remember the prodding sensation when E was fixing my senses. I have a feeling part of my skull is open, part of my brain exposed and connected to these wires. Something E said moments ago registers in my mind and I have to interrupt the story of his past.

“Did you say something about a report?” I ask.

“Oh,” E says, turning away. “Yes, as you can see, cryo patients have a full medical report outside their chambers.”

“Did you read mine?” I ask excitedly. “Did it have my name? Or where I was from?”

E still doesn’t look in my direction. I see the top of his shroud shuffling and I assume he’s shaking his head.

“Your papers were completely soaked through, destroyed, pulp, nothing at all legible. A leak from one of the cryo-chambers above yours must’ve done the damage,” he says. I’m about to ask more but he quickly goes back to his own story. “I spent months trying to revive people, trying to figure out a way to use my knowledge to save them. Then my enemies made that job easier.”

E tells me that he knew the Robotropolis leader would never just let him escape. During his long trek across the country, he often saw assassin-bots scanning the lands for him. E was barely able to stay out of their range. When he finally made it to safety underground, E never expected to see them again. But the robots didn’t give up so easily and one day he heard the sound of them stomping down the facility’s stairwell. He helped design the assassin-bots, knew how deadly they could be. But he also knew their weakness.

“I still had the remote prototype I used to escape Robotropolis, the remote that could disrupt their power core. When the first robot emerged into the hallway, I zapped it long enough to disengage its mainframes and destroy the main circuitry in its core. I thought that would be the last one I’d deal with but others showed up soon after.

“Modifications to my design must’ve been made that allowed a team of assassin-bots to track each others’ movements, to let them know when one of their own had been destroyed. I eventually figured out how to keep one active long enough to send out a message to the Robotropolis leader saying the robot located and destroyed me. I imagine that once the assassin-bot doesn’t return to Robotropolis, more will be sent here. If they were smart, they’d send another model after me but since K blew up their factory here, I guess they don’t have too many others to spare. Either way, I’m confident I can defeat anything they send at me. Might even be good to get some more spare parts; we can find you an intact power core so yours won’t be defective.”

With the cryo-room part of the story over, E turns and heads back into the hallway. Any thoughts about seeing my destroyed chart fade from my mind at the mention of one word.

“Defective?” I ask.

I stomp after him, nearly slipping as I lose focus. It’s bad enough being turned into a robot but the idea of being broken enrages me.

“I used one of the assassin-bots for your body,” E says. “Of course I removed its main circuitry that makes it function on its own and connected those systems to you. But zapping the robot to shut it down caused damage to the power supply. Yours will never be at full power, which will require you to shut down at certain times so the system can regenerate.”

I don’t like his nonchalance when talking about it.

“Won’t shutting down be the same as dying?”

“No, no, no, think of it more like sleeping… I think,” E adds.

“You
think
?”

“The amount of power needed for your mechanical body is large. Once that power runs too low, the system goes in standby mode. But don’t worry, there should be enough spark to keep the electrical systems functioning in your brain,” he says.

Phrases like ‘should be enough’ do nothing to inspire confidence in me. E must sense my trepidation because he suddenly stops and pats my metallic arm. It seems like such a foolish gesture but somehow makes me feel a little better.

“The first time you have to shut down, I’ll monitor you closely,” he says. “I’ll protect you like you were my own child – not like children those poor women at the baby barns were forced to push out as test subjects.”

He shakes his head in disgust and continues down the hall. The mention of children again awakens the lone memory lodged firmly in my mind. Once again, I clearly picture an image of the little boy. I feel the phantom sensation of my heart swelling within my chest. That thought plus E’s quick comment about human test subjects makes another question stand out in my mind. It only takes me a few steps to catch up with E down the hall.

“You connected wires from the robot into my brain, right? That’s how I can control my new body?” I ask.

“Yes,” E says, though he doesn’t look at me when he answers. I’m starting to get the feeling that regardless of how much he might talk about himself, he’s not big on answering questions.

             
“How did you know where to connect them? How did you know where to insert wires into parts of my brain? Weren’t you just a robot designer? A builder?” I ask suspiciously.

             
E’s eyes glance quickly toward mine before darting away, looking anywhere but my direction. He turns the other way and I see him swipe a shrouded hand over his eyes.

             
“I’m not proud of anything I did for the robots but one experiment we attempted was particularly… unsavory,” he says, choosing his words carefully. “Nothing in my life shames me as much. The leader of Robotropolis wanted to know the viability of using human brains to create robots with the ability for free thinking and creative thought. Since he refused to allow humans into our city, test subjects were limited to my kind. I wish I could say that only the mentally-rejected were chosen but we needed to test those with a wide range of intelligence, which included several unlucky members of my design team.”

             
E shakes his head again. He tells me how he wished he’d refused to partake in the experiments but knew that if he turned down the leader’s request, it could’ve been
his
brain that ended up as one of the test subjects. Though he couldn’t reject the ghastly experiments, he
did
have control over the results. Regardless of what he learned, he continuously downplayed their findings – often at great risk to his own health – before the Robotropolis leader ultimately scrapped the entire project. E kept what he’d learned in the back of his mind and put it to use once he came here and started trying to save humans.

             
He’s short on details about his experiments; I have a feeling he doesn’t like talking about it. On cue, he stops in front of another unmarked door and opens it.

             
“This room is another reason the facility has been ideal for me,” he says, quickly changing subjects.

             
Inside are several rows of shelves stocked with cans of food and containers of water. It looks like enough to feed a small army for a long time. I don’t know the last time I ate but seeing this food does nothing to wake my appetite. A large glass case shares a wall with one of the food shelves. A red cross stenciled across the glass makes it obvious that the supply of medicines equals the food count. E suddenly erupts in another fit of coughing, this one lasting longer than the others. He coughs so hard for so long that I see the skin around his eyes turning a shade of crimson. I don’t know what’s wrong with him but it doesn’t sound good.

             
“At least we don’t have to share the food,” E says once he finally gets his breathing under control. “Not that I eat much these days.”

             
“
I
don’t eat?” I ask.

             
Once I say it aloud and consider my new body, the question even sounds ridiculous to me. If I don’t need to breathe because I have no lungs, then where do I think food would go if I tried eating? E shakes his head before heading back into the hallway.

             
“Your body and brain no longer require air and food and the circulation of blood,” E explains. “The main power core in the center of your robotic body provides all the electrical impulses your brain requires for stimulus.”

“Then why the dome over my head if I don’t need to breathe?”

“First and foremost, protection. You have many wires connected to different parts of your brain. I made sure to secure them very tight but without the dome covering them, you might be more susceptible to having them yanked out,” E says. “Secondly, I don’t want you exposed to any residual effects of the neurotoxin that might’ve leaked down here. Though the toxin attacks and spreads through the bloodstream – which you don’t have to worry about – I’m not sure what contact with your skin might cause. Even though we’re deep underground, that’s not a risk I’m willing to take.” E stops for a moment and I see the frown forming in his eyes again. When he talks once more, his tone is quieter, morose. “Believe me, I know what it’s liked to be exposed and the results aren’t pretty.”

“I remember… hearing about such weaponry,” I say, trying to spark the flame of memory in my mind. “But I don’t recall any of those weapons ever being used in my time.”

“Then you’re lucky; all the humans from your time were lucky,” E says. “Especially if you’ve never had to deal with the combination of neurotoxins and biological modifiers.”

I don’t know what biological modifiers are but I don’t like the sound of them, especially when told to me by E’s gurgling voice.

“Is that what happened to you?” I ask.

He nods. “I hope the explosive killed every human in this area, for their sake. I didn’t get here until years after detonation and the neurotoxin still ravaged my body. I don’t want to imagine the suffering of anyone that was exposed but didn’t die.”

“So it affects your… kind… as much as humans?” I say, the closest I’ve come to asking not just
who
E is but
what
E is. I’ve been so focused on my own transformation that I’ve barely considered E’s multiple mentions about humans and ‘his kind’, about how he speaks of there being a clear difference between the two. Now that I’ve asked, I’m not so sure I want to know the answer.

“It destroys our bodies just the same, the biological modifiers destroys our flesh just the same,” E says. “My kind and yours aren’t so different after all.”

He offers no further explanation so I don’t ask.

“Is it less painful for you to keep your face and head and body covered like that?” I ask.

The corners of E’s eyes crease again; I’m certain there’s a frown beneath that shroud.

“It’s only less painful for your eyes. In fact, the cloth constantly rubbing against me irritates my skin,” E says. “But you don’t want to see this, trust me. I’m sure everything you’ve gone through has been tough enough without seeing what I look like.”

“Please, I don’t want you to be in pain for my benefit,” I say. When he hesitates, I add, “And it’s not exactly like I look normal myself.”

E nods, sighs deeply. He reaches his hand behind his head and slowly pulls off the shroud.