Also we are not sure what the hooting of owls sounds like, or what the creatures themselves resembled. A lot of the old records were lost.
The moon was up that night. It had been broken long before, and it hung crooked in the sky, a giant lump of misshapen rock with the scars of old battles on its pockmarked face. It bathed the world in silver light. Oli’s footsteps echoed alone as he walked through the town. We should have been more vigilant, of course, but we did not have much experience in the raising of children. Mother and Father were in their room, having put Oli to sleep and kissed him good night. They thought him long asleep, and now stood motionless in their bedroom, caught like statues in the moonlight. The moonlight shone down on the park and its insects, on the storage sheds where we kept the dummy children who played with Oli, on the too-big houses where no one lived, on the dogs who were asleep in their yards, frozen until such a time as they might be needed again.
We didn’t think Oli would really leave.
We waited for him on the edge of the town. He was a very determined boy. He saw us standing there. We looked just like Mrs. Baker, the friendly neighbor who worked in the grocery shop, whom Oli had known since birth.
“Hello, Mrs. Baker,” he said.
“Hello, Oli,” we said.
“I’m leaving,” he said.
“Why?” we said.
“I’m not like everyone else,” he said. “I’m different.”
Gently, we said, “We know.”
We loved him very much at that moment. There was a 56.998 percent chance of Oli dying if he left the town, and we didn’t want that at all.
“I want to be a real boy,” he said.
“You are a real boy,” we said.
“I want to be like Mother, and Father, and Michael, and you, Mrs. Baker.”
At that moment I think we realized that this was the point in the story of childhood where they learn something painful, something true.
“We can’t always get what we want,” we told him. “The world isn’t like that, Oli. It isn’t like the town. It is still rough and unpredictable and dangerous. We can’t be you. We don’t even truly understand what it is to be you. All we have are approximations.”
He nodded, seriously. He was a serious boy. He said, “I’m still going, but I’ll come back. Will you please tell Mother and Father that I love them?”
“We love you, too,” we told him. We think maybe he understood, then. But we can never truly know. All we have are simulations.
“Come on, boy,” Oli said.
Rex whined, looking up at his master; but he couldn’t go beyond the boundary of the town.
“We’re sorry,” we said.
Oli knelt by his dog and stroked his fur. There was water in the boy’s eyes, a combination of oils and mucins and hormones such as prolactin. But he wiped away his tears.
“Good-bye, Rex,” he said. The dog whined. Oli nodded, seriously, and turned away.
This was how Oli left us, alone, on his quest to become a real boy: with the town silent behind him, with the broken moon shining softly overhead, with us watching him leave. There is an old poem left from before, from long before, about the child walking away… about the parent letting them go.
We think we were sad, but we really don’t know.
We waved, but he never turned back and saw us.
“This is a very strange story, Elder Simeon,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “It is very old, from when the world was different.”
“Were there really thinking machines in those days?” Mowgai asked, and Elder Simeon shrugged.
“We are thinking machines,” he said.
“But what happened to the boy?” I said. “What happened to Oli?”
“They tell no stories of his journey in Tyr,” Elder Simeon said. “Nor in Suf or in the floating islands. But old Grandma Toffle tells the tale…” But here he fell silent, and his mechanical duck waddled up to him and tucked its head under Elder Simeon’s arm, and its golden feathers shone in the late afternoon sun. “It’s just a story,” Elder Simeon said reluctantly.
We left him then, and wended our way back across the fields and over the brook to the houses. That night, after the sun had set and the lanterns were lit over our homes, I felt very grateful that I was not like that strange boy, Oli, and that I lived in a real place, that I lived on the Land itself and not in something that only mimicked it. But I felt sad for him, too: and Mowgai and I sought out old Grandma Toffle, who sat by the fire, warming her hands, for all that it was summer, and we asked her to tell us the story of the boy.
“Who told you that nonsense?” she said. “It wasn’t old Simeon, was it?”
We admitted, somewhat sheepishly, that it was, and she snorted. “The old fool. There is nothing wrong with machines in their rightful place, but to fill your heads with such fancy! Listen. There was never such a city, and if there was, it has long since rotted to the ground. Old Simeon may speak of self-repairing mechanisms and whatnot, but the truth is that decay always sets in. Nothing lasts forever, children. The ancients built cities bigger than the sky, and weapons that could kill the Earth and almost did, at that. But do you see their airplanes flying through the sky? Their cities lie in ruins. The old roads are abandoned. Life continues as it always did. The mistake we’d always made was to think ourselves the most important species. But the planet doesn’t care if humans live or die upon it. It is just as important to be human as it is to be an ant, or a stinging nettle.”
“But… but we can think,” said Mowgai.
Old Grandma Toffle snorted again. “Think!” she said. “And where did that ever get you?”
“But we can tell stories,” I said quietly.
“Yes…” she said. “Yes. That we can. Very well. What was your question again?”
“Do you know what happened to the boy, Oli, when he left the town?”
“Know? No, I can’t say as that I know, little Mai.”
“Then…”
Her eyes twinkled in the light of the fire, much as Elder Simeon’s did in the sun. When she smiled, there were dimples on her cheeks, making her appear momentarily younger. She said, “Sit down, children. Sit down, and let me tell you. The boy wandered for a long time….”
The boy wandered for a long time away from the town. He missed his parents, and his dog, and everyone. The world beyond the town was very different from everything he’d ever known. It was a rough place at that time, which was not that long after the great floods and the collapse of the old world, and many of the springs were poisoned, and the animals hostile and deadly, and flocks of wild drones flew against darkening skies, and unexploded ordnance lay all about and some of it was…
Not exactly smart, but…
Cunning.
He went for a long time without food or water, and he’d grown weak when he met the Fox and the Cat. They were not exactly a fox and a cat. One was a sort of mobile infiltration unit, designed for stealth, and the other was a stubby little tank. They were exactly the sort of unsuitable companions the Town had worried about when it let the boy go.
“Hello, young sir!” said the Cat.
“Who… who is it?” said the Fox. “Who dares… walk the paths of the dead?”
“My name’s Oli,” said Oli. He looked at them with curiosity, for he had never seen such machines before.
“I have never met an Oli,” said the Cat.
“I have never tasted an Oli,” said the Fox, somewhat wistfully.