Bezel’s metal fingers hovered over the keypad. Should he even begin the recovery process? What was left?
The external sensors weren’t functioning. Bezel had no idea if the radiation had fallen to acceptable levels. Or if the air was breathable. There would certainly be little for a human to consume, even after all this time. It was supposed to be his and Tock’s task: replanting the hardier stock in places that were still irradiated, helping the world rid itself of the poison. Without those trees, it could take several more decades.
His memory chip seemed stuck on a replay of the seed repository, its ash forever sliding in the drawers, a gray slush of despair. Nothing was left. He glanced at the other pod readouts. Their red blinks were a constant, warm invitation to oblivion.
She could live for decades in the vault. There was enough food, enough power, even now, to support her. But then what? He’d be gone in a matter of months. She’d be alone.
Maybe there were others. There were certainly other seed vaults. Maybe there were other human survivors too. He ignored the thought that she’d never live to reach them. His job was to protect the humans. His job was to ensure the resurgence of the natural species of Earth. She was all that was left. Without her, he’d have no purpose. He’d be better off shutting down if she didn’t recover. He had to wake her. He had to try.
His fingers punched the recovery code on the keypad. As he swiveled in the office chair, Tock’s leg glinted at him from across the room. He knew it would take months of physical therapy before Karen fully recovered. If she ever could. He wasn’t going to last that long unless he found another power source.
The low-power warning pulsed like a growl in his head. Tock’s leg twinkled, and her storage drive clacked where it hung against his chestplate. She wouldn’t need it anymore. Whatever had happened here, she had tried to defend the people sleeping in the pods. She would want him to take it. He tried to persuade himself, but his mind still revolted.
He got up from the chair and walked past Tock to the living quarters. The linens were crisp and ghosted with fold lines as he pulled them from their wrappers. The absence of dust made him uneasy, as if the date were very wrong. After Karen woke up, he was going to have to look at Tock’s data and see if he could pull anything off the life support records. It might not matter much now that everything was gone, but it would help him to reconcile the data. Anchor him. Make him “feel better,” as the humans would say. But for now, he had work to do.
He smoothed the sheet over the cot’s mattress and tucked the blanket in at the foot. He surveyed the room and grabbed some extra blankets. She would be cold for a while. And then hungry. He draped the blankets over a nearby chair and went back to the control console. The cafeteria records said she’d requested grilled cheese most often. He passed Tock again on his way to the kitchen and tried not to make an association.
In the kitchen, a corpse sat at the table. Its ribcage had been stretched open from the back, its uniform still draped over the limbs, its parka flung on the chair beside it. The name tag read Gunderson. One of the crew that had been awake for first watch. He hadn’t even defended himself. Bezel looked at him for a long moment. Karen wouldn’t like seeing all these bodies. He had time. He’d better dispose of them and clean up the mess as best he could.
Bezel thought it best to place them all in the seed repository. Karen wouldn’t be capable of walking far on her own for some time, and by then, Bezel hoped, he would have sufficiently prepared her. It took a long while, almost three hours to place them all side by side and clean the hibernation pods.
He carried Tock down last, placing her at the end of the long lines of bodies. He could almost feel the power draining from him with every whir of a servo. He didn’t look at Tock’s silver face. He knelt down in the ash and felt for the seam of the compartment in her right calf. It was dented, and the release mechanism stuck. Bezel tried to pry the compartment open but his fingers were too large. After several attempts he resorted to a thin-bladed utility knife he found in the maintenance room. He tried to drive the parallel images out of his processor and regretted the history discs he’d downloaded for his leisure time. If only the humans had stopped before his generation. If only they’d been stuck at the sophisticated mimicry of the Obsoletes instead of achieving true AI. He thought he might have given up his entire existence to skip this one solitary day. Maybe even to skip the past fifteen minutes.
At last the compartment popped open. He pulled out her energy pack and stood up quickly. He looked at the utility knife and threw it across the room. He sent out a ping to Tock’s old address, knowing he would never get an echo-reply. Then he carefully bent the door back in place as well as he could and returned to the kitchen.
Karen
Bezel wasn’t certain Karen would even be able to chew or swallow after fifty years of hibernation. He wasn’t programmed to know the rate of muscle atrophy in humans. He prepared an IV just in case and laid the needle next to the steaming tray of food. He carried the unconscious woman to the cot and covered her with several blankets.
Then, he waited.
He turned Tock’s energy pack over and over, its plastic casing slipping between his printless fingers, all the while knowing he should be conserving his power, not activating unnecessary circuits by fidgeting. Why was he stalling? There was no doubt he would need the battery, and it wasn’t hurting anyone. Before he could waver again, he popped open the spare compartment in his left leg and clicked the pack into place. The compartment slid smoothly shut. It was done. The warning message abruptly stopped. He knew that it would be back.
Bezel watched Karen’s nostrils flare slightly with each breath, watched the heart monitor’s line jiggle and wave. He thought about reviewing Tock’s storage drive, but couldn’t bring himself to leave Karen’s side. She might be the only other living thing on the planet. He had to make sure she survived.
The cheese congealed in a waxy puddle on the plate. Bezel thought about making another sandwich for her, but he didn’t even know if she’d be able to eat it. So he continued to wait. At last her mouth drooped open and she yawned. He noticed that she wasn’t stretching. He wondered if she was trying and failing to move her shriveled muscle tissue, and he wished he’d spent more resources on medical training. She opened her eyes and saw him staring down at her.
“Is it as bad as they said?” she asked, her voice crackling with thirst. He held a straw to her mouth and she sipped some water. Good. She could swallow at least. She noticed he hadn’t answered. “Bezel, just tell me how bad it was. My parents were on tour in western Europe—surely they had a chance?”
“I’m sorry, Karen, I’m afraid at last report the destruction was total,” he answered slowly, sitting down. She turned her head slightly to see him. Good, she could move her head.
“I understand. I’d hoped that the radiation wouldn’t spread that far. We learned in class that a nuclear blast would only travel so far…” She trailed off.
“If it had been bombs, there might have been some hope. Even if it had been all the bombs we knew about. Reactors are different.”
“I didn’t think that there were enough of them to do so much damage.”
Bezel shook his head. “If it had been one or two—but this was a coordinated hit. They hit the waste storage facilities too. All over the world. All at once.”