STATE OF MINE
…Would never have thought… that it’d be so painful… to die again…
They were moving under the sand now. An odd way of moving, indeed, for he had never experienced this before, the vibrations making the whole vehicle shake, the feeling of slowly getting engulfed in a sand that had all of a sudden turned into a new, unknown substance… Little, muffled noises, the eerie silence in the cell, only broken by the sound of their breathing and the regular signal on the radar’s screen… No means of communication, except this one; though he knew it was too late now, he’d have still wished to be able to try, a last time, without betraying their dual existence.
Dual existence. He lightly chuckled, now desperate enough to be laughing rather than crying. Not for long. I hope you’ll be happy, Jen. I can’t do more for you.
So painful. So painful to be looking through her own eyes, as usual, hearing what she was hearing, listening to the sound of her voice, yet not able to seize her anymore, not even able to talk to her or make her feel his presence. The dreams… a failure. They were directed as much by her as by himself, and his weakness was forcing him to retreat more and more each time. Even in dreams, he couldn’t reach her. Just a pitiful puppet trying to attract her attention, before the last of his strings was to be cut, leaving him fall in oblivion.
Jen…
And there she was, sitting with the two Engineers, helping them as best as she could, though ground vehicles and sandcruisers really weren’t what she was best at. With a faint, notalgic smile, he remembered the first time she had decided it was high time for her to learn to fly. She had been a real catastrophe all by herself, indeed, almost crashing a bridge in Omni-Entertainment, never really listening what the instruction program would say about air routes to be followed. Doing things on a whim, as usual. The very same ways that, oddly, made her appreciated by people – because she would never follow the procedures, would take untreaded ways to obtain the same results, would take people’s feelings indirectly rather than confronting them, putting them off-balance from the beginning… He loved her for that, too. For her oddness. For the weird thoughts crossing her mind. For her smile, for her quirks, for her way of speaking, for her abilities…
He loved her, and now it was too late.
“Hey! Damn, we have–!” he heard Rickert exclaim all of a sudden, and she slightly jerked to look at the boy. At least he was still able to look through her eyes as well.
“According to the radar, we’re heading right on a hive!” the young Engineer said again, a panicked expression now raising in his eyes. “Ain’t what the navigation AI had computed, master!”
“Let me look at this.” Elm’s voice, as calm as ever. She was now looking at him, intently, studying his hands moving on the control panels, and frowning as he was silently cursing between his teeth, mumbling something about more damages than expected, caused by the first ion storm that had hit them. Something about a deviation from their initial route, a deviation so slight, 0,5 degrees at most, that none of them, not even the terminal raw AI, had detected it until now. Only Rickert’s eyes, looking at the rudimentary map of the underground displayed on his datascreen, had finally been able to pinpoint what was wrong.
“Can we go faster on the surface?” she suddenly said, her voice making them turn to her in the same move, as if she had enounced something so odd that no other human being would have thought of it.
“No”, Elm shook his head. “The Mole gives its best underground. If we decide to surface and a Sandworm spots us, we’re dead.”
“Ya could make us go faster!” Rickert said. “Ya have programs for this, if you’re a Fixer!”
“What’s this whole Fixer story?” Elm’s voice, again. Uh-oh. Things are beginning to smell fishy… he thought, but his own despair had made the thought dulled and unimportant as well. Just a reaction, an automatism from a time, not so long ago, when she’d still have listened to him.
“Dunno if I’m a Fixer, dammit, I told ya!” she exploded, waving a hand as if to get rid of him. “Jus’ tryin’ to find a solution! Forget ’bout it. Ya know this… machine better than meh, ‘nyway!”
“Calm down, kids”, Elm frowned, motioning Rickert out of the driver’s seat to overtake manual control of the Mole. “There’s a rocky formation 35° on our left. If we can surface and reach it, we’ll avoid the Worm’s hive. Your idea’s not so bad, Miss. On the surface, we’ll be causing less vibrations.”
Hmm. The usual speech of the Engineer proud of his work, he chuckled for himself, reminded of Cyrus and of the way he used to talk about Maru-1 and his other androids. Always having to explain for hours how it works…
“… an’ they’re attracted by vibrations, right?”, she ended the sentence for him – another bit of knowledge come from her past, without her being however able to really seize it. “So if we can break the rythm, or lessen it, then we–”
“Master! I have an echo on the–” Rickert suddenly screamed, pointing at the radar, where a small light was indicating something approaching, faster and faster.
The both of them turned to him – turned to the holographic display – but it was already too late to change direction.
The violent, unexpected shock sent them all flying through the cell, as something looking like a gigantic claw began to tear through the Mole’s armor platting. The pain exploded in him, in her, all of a sudden – pain was everywhere, nothing else but pain… And the darkness engulfed them both, with the last, desperate thought that this time, everything was over at last.
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