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The towering tops of buildings have shimmered above the desert for a long time now, slowly rising over the rippling horizon. We must be getting close. I turn to face my sister, but judging from the smile on her face, Devola already knows. How long will that smile last after we arrive? I can’t help but wonder. I’ll do anything to preserve it. To protect her.
I can hear something, just at the edge of my senses, and for a moment I wonder if crossing the desert has done something to me. If I’m losing my mind.
“There’s music,” Devola says, and at least if I’m losing my mind I’m not alone.
I smile at her. “I hear it too, sis,” I say, and we both look away from each other after a moment, trying to find the source. We can’t see far—the wind whips over the sand, and although the storm isn’t as harsh and painful as others we’ve endured, I can’t see past the next hill. The faint sunlight glimmers on spheres of metal breaking the surface of the sand, and I can hear the soft hollow sound as the sand slides over their surface.
No—that’s not what I hear at all, it’s the low hum of an approaching engine. I frown in concentration, and wrap one arm more tightly around Devola’s shoulders. She holds my waist tighter in response, and soon I’m not holding her up anymore. She’s holding me, and the world fades away to white.
The engine is simple, hardly shielded at all, and it takes me only the merest moment to manipulate it, to engage the brake on the front wheel. I come back to myself in time to see the scooter ramp over that nearby hill and hit the sand, hard. It skids, then tumbles end over end, and the rider shouts in fear, but hangs on tight. Eventually they right themselves, and the scooter’s engine turns off. We’re left with only the sound of the wind and the tinny sound of an old radio playing a song with a young boy’s voice. I shift and position myself between the stranger and Devola, my hand closing to a fist. I have no weapon and no real combat training, but I have to protect her. It’s the most important thing in the world to me, overriding even the guilt I feel. The thought What if I hurt them? wars with the thought What if they hurt my sister? inside my head, stretching on through the stillness of the desert.
Then they speak. “Popola?” they say. “Devola?” There is a note of fear in that voice—the voice of a young boy. The same voice that sings out of the back of the scooter. For a moment I am afraid—he knows us. Nobody that has known the us-that-isn’t-us has ever liked us. But he comes no nearer, makes no move for a weapon or even something to throw at us.
“Yes,” Devola says behind me.
“And no,” I’m quick to add.
“No, I guess not,” he agrees. “I remember enough to know that. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Why do I find that hard to believe,” Devola grumbles. She hobbles forward in the sand to stand beside me.
“You’re hurt,” says the boy’s voice. But for as long as I’ve stared at the scooter I can’t really tell where it ends and its rider begins. There’s something that could be a head, but no normal face—only a ball graven with a rictus grin. He turns toward us, and sunlight glints off of it. Metal. A machine? I tense. “Whoever did that was really stupid,” he says.
“Why,” I ask, and I can feel my knuckles lock, clinging to my sister. I’m scared of this machine boy, but I don’t want to let it show.
“I know how you get when she gets hurt,” he says, and I get the sense that he’s speaking to me. That he can feel, somehow, the fury that has turned cold and hard inside my gut since my sister told me there was nothing we could do but leave. “I know how painful it is for you.”
“How?” is Devola’s question.
“I used to have a twin, too,” he says. “And I remember …”
“Who are you?” I ask at last. “You’re acting like we should know you.”
“I’m Emil,” he says. “And you don’t know me, not really. And I guess I don’t really know you.”
“You met another Devola and Popola,” my sister says.
“A long time ago,” Emil agrees.
“I had lost my twin already by then, so … when I had a chance to think about it, it wasn’t really surprising,” he says. “That the other twins acted the way they did.”
“We—they hurt you?” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago,” he says again.
Devola looks regretful, too. It’s nothing to do with us, I know—it never is—but I can’t help but feel bad just the same. Hurting Emil seems like just another sin we have to atone for. Like maybe if we’re kind enough and good enough, people will realize we’re not so bad. And although my Devola is the only one in the world that matters for me, I can’t help but think sometimes of the other Popolas and how much they must love their sisters too. So if we can make up for it, maybe the world will be kinder to them.
After a while, she speaks: “I’m sorry about your twin. Sometimes the only reason I can get through the day is that I have my sister there, living through the same thing. It seems way too difficult to go through alone.”
The engine of the scooter shudders, and Emil turns away atop it to look back the way he’s come. The sand has settled a little. “Yeah,” he says. “Maybe that’s why I … he …” He doesn’t finish the thought, but in the stronger sunlight I can watch the sand pour over the curved surfaces of the broken forms of old machines—or not machines, I realize after a moment. Some of those giant spheres have the same strange eyes as Emil’s helmet; the same rictus smile, one less of joy than pain.
Whatever happened here, I can’t help but feel—it was something terrible.
“The other twins,” he says, “they were overseeing something. A project the humans came up with, where they would split apart their souls from their bodies. The two were meant to to support each other, but … they couldn’t. Eventually they weren’t two halves of the same whole, they were each their own ‘person,’ in a way, and … they were at war with each other. That was never what was supposed to happen.”
Devola and I look at one another. We’ve always been two halves of the same whole, and I try to imagine, for a moment, what it would be like to hate her. What if would be like if she hated me. Before I know it, I am crying—silently, tears streaming over my cheeks like settling sand pouring over the giant likenesses of Emil. Devola holds me closer, lifting her hand to brush at my cheeks, the same way I’ve done for her before. She doesn’t scold me, doesn’t say anything at all, just holds onto me the way I hold onto her.
“What are you doing here?” Emil asks after a while.
“Just passing through,” Devola says.
“We heard there was an android camp in the city. I need to fix my sister’s leg,” I say. “If they’ll let me do that, we’ll stick around as long as we can and try to help.”
Emil is still staring at the spheres in the sand. “Why?” he says.
“We want to save and protect humanity,” Devola says. “It’s one of the most important things in the world to us.”
“That’s what I want, too,” Emil says. “To protect this world. That’s what all my friends wanted. Even the other twins … they wanted that too. We were all friends once.” It’s impossible to ignore the note of sadness in his voice. I don’t know if he’s trying to be merciful by being vague, or if he just can’t stand to speak of what happened with the other Devola and Popola he knew. “It’s been a long time since I had friends,” he said.
“We could be friends,” I offer. “If you can forgive us.”
“Forgive you for what?” he asks. “They weren’t you. And these guys … they’re not me.”
Devola takes a deep breath. She looks thoughtful. I wonder if my face looks the same as hers—sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t. We’re identical twins, but we have such different smiles. “Are they at least your friends?” she asks.
Emil’s cape flaps in the wind. “I don’t think they know how to be,” he says. “But I do have friends. New friends. Or I think they’re my friends; I don’t know if they feel the same way about me. 9S is hard to understand sometimes … and 2B reminds me of someone, too, but … I consider them my friends. They’re still fighting to save this world.” He wheels about again, spraying sand in an arc with his speed.
“Please,” Emil says, ardent and longing. “You have to help them. Things are scary in the city right now. For the Resistance and for them. I’m worried they’ll end up alone.”
Perhaps it’s that word, alone, that stabs me in the chest. My limbs feel heavy, and my head leaden as I bow it. Devola nods too, and I know she feels the same way. “If they want the same things we want, we’ll help them,” Devola promises.
“However we can,” I add.
“Then I want to give you something,” he says. “In the back of the scooter there’s a long black box. Can you get it?”
We approach, and Emil doesn’t move. The scooter’s bed is loaded up with all kinds of things—programming chips and hunks of metal and scrap, even some clothing that looks to be of a very old style. Devola finds the box he described, and lays it across the top of the scooter.
“I didn’t think I would ever part with these,” he admits. “They belonged to my friend Kainé.”
We open the box and find a pair of twin blades, each longer than an arm, slightly curved. Serrations of bright silver interrupt the black steel at their edge, and for a moment we just stare in perplexity. “We’re not combat models,” I say.
Emil sighs. “I know,” he says. “But I want you to have a fighting chance.” He laughs, then: “And it’s not like I can use them either!”
Devola nods, and we close the box solemnly. I look upward into that skull-like mask, accepting at last the realization that it is no helmet or protective armor—it is the only face Emil has, ever smiling, always in pain. A pang of sympathy resounds through my heart and all the hollows of my being.
“Please protect my friends,” Emil says, “and please protect each other. Nobody should be alone.”
The heat of the desert and the sting of the sand seems less terrible as I heft the box, carrying it like a rifle against my shoulder. We go, all three, across the desert, to the shimmering city and the troubles that wait for us.