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The faded orange letters, barely visible beneath the rust and dirt and scratches on the side of his metal body, read Habitat Aggregation of Rubbish Robot – Y.
HARR-Y.
Harry doesn't know what the Y stands for. It could be because there were 24 versions of rubbish robots created before him, and Y is the 25th letter of the human alphabet. But he likes to think the letter stands for something more glamorous, like yams or yellow or yodeling. Yellow is his favourite colour, after all. And he's learned a good bit about yodeling after 491 years of scouring books and recordings and movies, storing as much as he can compress on his puny hard drive. He's gotten pretty good, considering he doesn't even have a real audio output port aside from the mechanical speaker he'd assembled himself from scrounged-up parts.
But now is not the time for yodeling, or music, or books or any of the other inscrutable gadgets he's found over his time here.
It's time to clean.
Harry trawls over the pallid landscape outside of his garage, over the outskirts of the remnants of some sprawling metropolis. Just as he has done all day, every day of every year he can remember, he sifts through a pile of rubbish. He carefully selects and examines each item between pinched fingers: if something catches his interest, such as this silver chain holding a charm shaped like a banana – his favourite yellow object – then he saves it in the small compartment he’s built into his side. Everything else, like the scraps of styrofoam and metal shards and bits of plastic, he stuffs into his cavernous, cube-shaped tummy.
When he can’t fit in any more rubbish, Harry closes the latch and presses down his neck as he sets himself to compaction mode for a few moments. Then, the latch opens, and a perfect, compacted cube of rubbish rolls out. He grips it with his metal arms, climbs up to the organized pile that he began yesterday, and places the cube near the top. Another patch of land free.
His clock still works, and after seven hours, he has assembled 501 cubes of rubbish into a neat stack, the rest of the land clean and empty. He trawls to a new section of rubbish-covered land.
Suddenly, something catches his sensors: something colourful, sticking out of the ground behind a metal slab. He adjusts his binocular eyes for a closer look. The thing is little and green and almost furry-looking, like a light-green stick with a couple of flat, green bits of felt coming out from it. It has a little curl at the top, and he likes that, because he has curls on the top of him, too: little wires curling out of the top of his head where he couldn't fit them in quite properly last time he had to replace his optical unit.
This is something new. Harry gives it a pat. It's soft, and it jostles but resumes its place. He lets out a chittering noise as he tries to process it, but he’s never seen anything like it; he has no idea how to classify such a thing.
He likes finding things he hasn't classified before.
He tries to carefully pluck it out from the ground, but it seems stuck; instead, he gently scoops up the brown earth holding it up, carefully cupping it in palm of his metal hand. He sets his treads to full speed and zooms back toward his garage.
Harry clicks open the door and gazes inside over his collection of treasures. He has boxes of little shiny things; a hoard of useful-looking scrap metal and parts that he might use to repair himself; shelves upon shelves for pretty, colourful things or fuzzy things or other interesting-looking things. None seems like a suitable place to keep the new find.
Then he sees it. He has something he found a few weeks ago: a shoe, a boot, it's called, big and shiny gold and sparkly, with a high heel. He sets the boot on a lower shelf and deposits the new green object, along with its crumbling soil, into the boot. There, he beams.
He goes through the rest of the day’s treasures that he has collected in his compartment. There's a new hat, faded brown and wide-brimmed; he briefly places it on his own head and looks at his own silly reflection in a shard of polished metal, bopping his head with amusement, before gently placing it with the rest of his collection of eclectic clothing. He removes the banana necklace he found earlier in the day; unsure if it should belong with his fruit-themed collection or his jewelry collection, he places it between the two on an upper shelf. He hums as he organizes everything else: a small fuzzy box, some odd bits of metal, a colourful piece of glass, and best of all, a round disc.
He loves discs, in part because they often have pretty rainbows on the bottom when he holds them up to the light at an angle. But mostly, he loves them because sometimes, they play sounds or films, and those are Harry’s favourite things. He slides the disc into the disc player that he'd found and refurbished for this purpose so many years ago.
An image appears on the tiny screen he has connected, and a film starts up, some humans milling around as the opening credits roll. He hopes it’ll be a romance; those are his favourite.
It's not that Harry’s life is boring or aimless. He’s a rubbish robot; he knows his purpose is to collect trash and clean the planet, and he is satisfied knowing he's accomplishing his tasks each day. But sometimes, when it's late or too dark to work, he wonders what it would be like to have something else. Someone else, like he sees in films; someone who would hold his hand and never want to let go.
This film is a romance. He doesn't quite understand the whole thing, because the words are garbled in his puny, makeshift speakers, and sometimes the image cracks. But it’s about two people, boys, who seem to like each other, even though other people sometimes act mean to them; and sometimes, for some reason they pretend not to like each other. Humans are strange that way, he’s found. But the music is nice, and in the end the two boys kiss, look at each other like they never want to do anything else. Then they sway beside each other, bodies pressed together as they slow dance to a pretty song, deep and smooth.
Birds singing in the sycamore tree
Dream a little dream of me…
He watches with eager attention until the picture fades, and then he rewinds back to the beginning of the slow music. He slots his fingers together. He carefully turns his left and right treads so that he moves in a slow circle, imagining someone else beside him.
---
Something doesn't look right. Harry is fully-charged, and he checked his sensors before he came out, so it’s not his fault. But somehow the world outside looks off. It doesn't look that different than it did yesterday, but there are new crests of dirt, ebbing in strange lines around the premises.
He tentatively treads forward, traversing the area outside his garage in a slow circle. Nothing looks new, and yet -
A flash of white movement appears on the edge of his vision field. It's so fast, and he turns so quickly to follow it that he trips over a rock in the process, tumbling down on his face beside a mound of dirt.
He flails his arms to right himself, shakes the dust off of his optical sensors, and then he sees it.
It's another robot, hovering just over the ground. It's smaller than him, sleek and oval and curvy in just the right places, with a pristine white carapace and a pair of sharp blue light sensors that look like eyes.
Harry was never programmed with any notion of beauty, but he recognizes it immediately. This robot is beautiful. He suddenly feels self-conscious about his own dented and dirtied torso. He tries to keep it in top shape, replacing parts as they wear out or as he finds improvements, but he can only do so much.
And maybe the new robot knows that, because suddenly it hones in on him. It emits a hostile whirr, and a metal cylinder extends out from its arm. It almost looks like -
Boom!
The cliff behind Harry crumbles into a pile of black ashes. He backs up and hides behind a pile of dirt, but then that is obliterated, too. He digs himself into a hole in the rubble and goes into survival mode, tucking his extremities into his cubic shell.
But the blasts stop. He counts out sixty seconds before he carefully extends his sensors to peek upwards. The robot is towering over him, but not in a sinister way. It appears more curious, and reaches out a sleek arm to scan him in blue light.
Harry pops himself back open. “Harry!” he says cheerfully, enunciating as best as he can and extending out an arm like people on the telly.
The robot backs up, eyeing him suspiciously and scanning his body once more in blue light. Harry glances down and notices a label on its arm: Land Organism Universal Identification Scanner.
“Louis,” The robot says sharply, voice high and smooth.
Even the name is perfect. Lou-eeee, he tries to repeat, arching his neck forward; but Louis is already whirring past him at high speed, leaving puffs of smoke in his wake. Louis, Harry repeats, following him around as best as he can with his clumsy rollers but nearly falling on his face every few seconds. Louis doesn’t notice; he is focused on scanning object after object, turning away with an impassive huff after each one. He's steadfast and determined, scanning over the surface in a careful spiral pattern, destroying anything large enough to come in his way.
Harry stares after him, and suddenly Louis whirls around toward him, narrowing his digital eyes. “Protocol?” it inquires, enunciating each syllable sharply.
For a split-second, Harry contemplates pretending not to understand, just so he can hear Louis' voice again. But then he does as he was asked. He grabs the rubble of the last rock that Louis destroyed, along with some other rubbish, scooping it into his carapace. He compresses it and pops out the compacted cube, holding it out in his hands proudly. Ta-da!
Louis doesn't react. Harry drops the cube and points up at his castle of rubbish cubes in the distance, but Louis only looks out for a moment before turning back around. He steadfastly ignores Harry as he continues his scanning. He’s clearly looking for something - but what?
Then, Harry gets an idea. He's never shown anyone his collection before. Louis will love it for sure. “Louis!” he screeches in his own wobbly voice. Louis startles and turns to stare, hovering motionless as Harry trails back to his pod. Harry opens the door, and then waves Louis forward. Finally, after a long moment, Louis zooms toward them.
Look at this! He picks up the hat and thrusts it Louis' face. Louis doesn’t react, not even when he puts it on his own head and dances around a bit. Fine; he throws it back on the shelf and goes to start up the film in the disc player. Again, Louis does nothing. Harry even plays his own recording of the song in the ending; but again, Louis seems thoroughly unimpressed. Harry's eyes droop.
He grabs a string of coloured fairy lights that he keeps wrapped around some boxes. Louis stares blankly for a moment before taking it in his hand and examining it, finding the plug at the end and then squeezing. Suddenly it illuminates in bright colours, lighting the whole garage in splotches of pink and blue. Louis titters for a moment, and Harry thinks he catches a flicker of awe in his expression; but then he releases his grip. Harry takes the end and tries to light it up himself, but nothing happens; he hands it back and Louis repeats, proudly lighting the string of bulbs. Harry suddenly has the strange idea that if he were a lightbulb, Louis could do the same thing to him, too.
But the moment ends; Louis shakes his head and releases it from his grasp and onto the floor, looking around the room again. Newly invigorated, Harry finds more things to give to him. But Louis barely reacts to anything else that Harry tries to show him: he scoffs at the fruit collection after merely a brief glance, and he doesn't even glance at the collection of colourful fabric strips, or hats or colored glass; by the time Harry gets to his scraps of shiny metal, Louis is flat-out ignoring him, continuing to scan the room with resignation.
It's as if Harry is not even here.
Harry's eyes droop as he grabs the one of the last items on the last shelf: the shiny boot.
But then, suddenly, Louis perks up. He begins beeping in rapid succession, and his chest starts flashing green, almost the same colour as the thing - the thing sticking out from inside the boot.
Louis likes it; Louis likes him! He proudly holds out the boot, and Louis gracefully plucks out the green stem inside of it, dirt and all. A tiny compartment opens in his chest, and he gently places the object inside of it.
And then he stops.
He just stops moving. His head descends down halfway into his oval body, his eyes go black, and he settles down on the floor in a graceful lump, no indication of life aside from the pulsing green light on his chest.
Wake up. He gently knocks against Louis’ body, but nothing happens.
Harry thinks that maybe he needed the green thing for power, but nothing changes over the next hours. Maybe his battery is low because he charges the same way as Harry, then: in the sunlight. Harry carefully pushes Louis outside, but all he does is grow roots, large metal legs more firmly planting him into the ground.
Harry watches and waits. Their time can't be over so soon; it can’t. Not when Louis was just starting to likehim.
He checks in every few hours, between his rubbish duties. But Louis never moves. He hasn’t moved by the end of the day. He hasn’t moved the next morning, even when water starts falling from the sky – more than Harry has ever seen before – and Harry sets up a makeshift umbrella out of some metal scraps.
After two days pass, Harry no longer has an excuse to stay in this place. He's compacted all the rubbish in a two-kilometer radius, the earth clear and pristine despite his attempts to find new bits of garbage that he missed in the area. It's time to move on.
Louis hasn't moved. Louis isn't going to move. Louis is – just a dream, a fleeting break in the monotony of his real mission that has occupied him for years past and will occupy him for years to come. Harry sets the coordinates on the locator of his garage, and it starts slowly rolling toward its next destination. Harry chitters out a sad sigh, and, with one last look at the motionless Louis, slowly trundles after the pod.
He thinks he's imagining when he feels a low rumble from the distance. He turns his neck around, and slowly, a big vehicle emerges flying out from the distance. It has the same colouration as Louis, white and blue and black; and it hovers over the ground just like him, too. It has to be here for him. Maybe it's the charging station, or his own pod.
But Louis doesn't awaken. Instead, the ship hovers beside him over the dirt. A giant claw descends down and scoops Louis up, his round body disappearing up into the ship's belly. Then, the engines fire up again, smoke billowing up around the ship.
The ship is taking Louis. It’s taking his Louis away, for good. Harry will never see him again. Unless -
Harry has been compacting rubbish diligently for 491 years, and it's time for a change. He sets his treads at top speed toward the ship, and gets there just in time to wrap his metal arms around the leg just before it ascends upward, trapping him inside. Three. Two. One.
And it blasts forward, leaving his home shrinking away in the distance.
***
Louis awakens refreshed and overwhelmingly satisfied. He's back in his room outside of the dock, back home, away from that strange, desolate land. And, most importantly: he accomplished his mission! He surveyed the land and avoided that strange creature that kept trying to distract him, and he got the plant.
What was that thing, anyway? It was clearly some kind of robot, but didn't look like any robot he's ever seen. It looked so old, and it had those strange, curly wires sticking out of its head. And it was acting weird, like it didn't have a proper mission or didn't want to follow its protocol. Maybe it was malfunctioning. It wouldn't be surprising, after having lived so long in that boring, dirty, empty place.
Well, in any case, that's all done. Louis had a mission, and Louis finished his mission, just like any proper robot should do.
Well, technically, he has two missions: to find living things and to annoy Liam. But the latter is more of an ongoing avocation, really. Speaking of which, Liam should be coming to see him right -
“Louis! You're back!” Liam throws open the door and strolls in holding his water pack, a huge smile on his face. “My favourite little robot!” he gushes.
And that is just not on. Louis narrows his eyes, zips across the room and snatches the water pack right off of Liam's side.
“Hey!” Louis chases Liam around the room, flicking water at him while Liam tries in vain to cover himself. “Hey, that's not fair! That's expensive!” It is, but Louis gives him one more squirt before relenting.
Liam waggles a wet finger at him with a sigh. “But really, did you do it?” he persists. Louis shrugs nonchalantly, and Liam frowns. “Oh, c'mon. Don't be coy with me. It's a big deal. Out with it! What did you find?” Louis turns away and hops up to the counter, turning his nose up.
“I told them they made you too sassy,” Liam grumbles, but fondness seeps out, the corner of his mouth twitching and a little crinkle spearing at the corner of his eye. Louis throws him an unimpressed look. “I'm sorry I called you a sassy little robot, okay?”
Louis shrugs and, finally, casually slides open the compartment in his side to display his prize. Liam's eyes widen. “You did it,” he breathes reverently, reaching out to scooping the plant up in his cupped hands. “You found” - his eyebrows furrow. “I'm not sure what, exactly, but you got it. A plant. Do you have any idea how long we've been waiting?” He gently deposits the plant into a little cup on the countertop and turns to the door. “Zayn! Perrie!” he yells. “C'mere!”
Zayn actually hugs Louis when he sees it, whirling around so quickly that Louis has to use his engines to keep steady in the air. “We did it!” Perrie squeals, squeezing tightly around both of them. Zayn stiffens at that, and then they both step back, looking at the ground a little bashfully. Humans are weird.
They all crowd around to view his plant. Louis struts around them, the green light still pulsing on his tummy, bumping into their legs if no one pays him attention for too long. He found it, after all.
“Why'd you have to go and make him sassy?” Liam giggles, and Perrie grins.
“We didn't. I was just programming him to find lifeforms.” She nudges Zayn in the side. “Zayn here had to go and insist we give him one of those fancy new AI units.”
Louis beeps indignantly, and Zayn laughs. “What, he has personality!”
“Okay - I've got to go tell Captain Cowell,” Liam nods, rubbing his hands together. “This is huge. I don't know what's gonna happen, but it's gonna be big.” Louis preens. An accolade from the captain would be the highest honor, and he deserves it.
“We should get down to the docking bay, check on the ship,” Zayn says primly, and Perrie nods.
“Lou? I’ll be back in a minute, okay?” Liam says, and they all trail off out the door.
Louis hears it too late. He hears it in only a few nanoseconds, of course, but the tiny flying robot has already whirred into place, zooming right by him and swiping his plant. His plant!
***
Harry feels like he’s still spinning. He’s never moved that fast in his life. His body still feels plastered in place, and his gyro sensors feel all wonky. From what he can tell, they’ve stopped somewhere indoors, but it’s huge, like some kind of giant bubble suspended in space. It actually doesn’t feel that different from home; his preliminary analysis determines that the temperature, matter composition, and air quality are all quite similar to those in his home, at least for the last few hundred years.
From what he can tell, the craft has finally stopped moving for good. Harry carefully detaches his arms from the ship's carapace, slides down and clunks to the floor. He can’t see much from behind the ship, but he hears commotion going on around him, nondescript beeping and buzzing and other, less consistent noises. He trawls around the corner, slow and tentative as the noises grow clearer, sounding almost like voices -
“Whoa!” The human jumps back, startled. Harry freezes. The boy raises his eyebrows, tilting his head so that his blond hair nearly flops down over his eyes. “What are you?”
Harry shrinks back. He hasn't met one of these for nearly 490 years, and back then, they weren't particularly nice to him. The ones in films usually seem nice; but then, sometimes they're mean, too. This one seems okay, though, judging from his curious grin. “Hey, c'mere,” he says softer, reaching out a pale hand. Harry lifts up his right arm and rolls forward, holding out his hand. The boy laughs and grips it in a gentle shake. “Pleasure to meet you! I'm Niall.”
Harry gestures at the writing on his body. “Harry,” he tries to enunciate, and Niall grins.
“Harry.” He knits his brow. “Where'd you come from, then? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before.” Harry shrugs, taps his fingertips together as he slowly rolls back. “Oh, don't worry, I won't hurt you. You're kinda cute, you know.”
Yep, Niall's nice.
“How did you end up here, though? You don't look like you're from around here.”
This is Harry's moment. Maybe this boy knows -
“Hey, Ni!”
Niall turns around, and Harry follows his gaze to the new person. Two new people. “Zayn, Perrie!” he waves. “Just who I wanted to see.”
“What's this?” Perrie’s eyes lock down on to Harry.
“'s what I wanted to ask you,” Niall says, gesturing down toward him. “D'you know what this is? Just found him wandering around the dock.”
Perrie comes closer, then stops. Her eyes widen. “No way,” she breathes. “I haven't seen one of these since – forever, really. Only ever in books.”
“What is it?” asks the second person – Zayn. He comes closer, and Harry wonders if he's ever seen this face before in films. It certainly looks like it belongs in a film, with its sharp jaw and angled cheekbones and neat quiffed hair.
“It's a HARR-Y series,” Perrie explains. “These are like, relics. Haven't been made for a few hundred years, at least. Rubbish Robot, see?” She reaches out to swipe at his body, and he shrieks, scurrying to hide behind Niall.
“Hey, don't scare 'im,” Niall chastises, then turns around to kneel beside Harry. “Don't worry, little guy. They're not gonna hurt you.” Harry hesitantly crawls around toward her, remaining close to Niall's leg.
Perrie circles around him, examining him closely. “Still in good shape,” she hums. “Parts look cobbled together – he must've been finding parts and repairing himself for hundreds of years. Very resilient, this one.”
Harry preens at the compliment, and Niall grins. “See, I think he likes you now.”
“But where'd he come from?” Zayn frowns.
“And why is he here?”
This is his chance. Harry taps on his chest, and they all turn to look at him. “Louis.”
“What?”
“What's he saying?”
“Louis.”
Zayn's eyes widen. “How do you - wait, you came here with Louis?”
They understand! Harry nods eagerly.
“But how – that means you're from – where, exactly?”
Harry taps on the wall, where he knows his home is slowly spinning thousands of kilometers away.
“I think he might've hitched a ride on the ship,” Niall says, realization flashing across his face. “It's docked right around the corner.”
“So he’s from Earth?” Zayn asks, voice a hushed whisper.
Harry gives a shrugged nod. That sounds right, at least.
“It's amazing you’ve survived,” Zayn says with awe. “We had to go through years of design, and months of testing with Louis, just to make sure he could survive the extremes of that environment. We’ve worked on the project for ages. Well,” he adds hastily, “Pezza here did all the work, really. She's the brilliant one.”
Perrie looks at Zayn and smiles, her cheeks flushed pink, as he looks back with a crooked grin, eyes squinted into happy slits. Harry looks back and forth between them, and - oh. This, Harry recognizes. It's just like in the movies. He begins to sway, bobbing his head as he turns on the recording of the last song he listened to. It sounds more squeaky and mechanical than the disc player, but he thinks it's audible enough, the slow strumming giving way to the garbled-smooth voice:
Stars shining bright above you
Night breezes seem to whisper "I love you",..
Niall immediately starts cracking up, and Perrie and Zayn share a startled look before hastily turning to look down on the floor, nearly simultaneously. “Turn that off!” Zayn protests.
“I like you,” Niall stage-whispers, nudging Harry in the side. Harry beams but does as Zayn told him, waiting until the verse ends before fading down the music. Humans are strange sometimes.
But now, back to the matter at hand.
“Zayn!” a new voice says, breathless and fearful. “Perrie! Niall!” A new man comes running in, short-cropped brown hair and big eyes, but worry across his face.
“Liam, what's wrong?”
He stops, panting. “Have you seen Louis?”
“Wha – no. We left him in the office with the plant.”
“Well he’s gone, and so is the plant! I only left for a minute to go get Cowell, and when we came back they were just gone! And the desk was overturned, like there was some kind of fight – ”
Louis? “Louis!”
Liam glances at him. “What's – ” he shakes his head. “And Cowell didn't believe me. Said if Louis came back without the plant, and then just disappeared - that he must be defective. That he’s probably been taken to the repair bay. I tried to stop him, but he just made the call.” Liam hangs his head, despaired.
Harry doesn’t understand what everything means, but he knows he has to find Louis. Harry trundles into action.
“Wait –”
Repair bay, Harry scans the walls down the corridor. He follows the arrows to the end of a corridor, and then, just outside the doorway, he sees him. He’s as smooth and sleek as Harry remembers, white arms held in the air. Louis. Louis is hopping up and down, propelling himself upwards in a vain attempt to catch the tiny hovering robot who's holding the green thing – the plant, they had called it - above him, deftly zig-zagging through the air. The little robot must be the one who stole Louis’ plant.
Harry can help. He extends his telescoping arm, slowly reaching up toward it.
Louis beeps and his line of sight follows from Harry’s hand back down the arm to him. Harry glances back at him, optical sensors caught in their focus on him for a moment.
But then the tiny robot takes the opportunity to fly right between them, the plant dangling triumphantly in its grasp.
Louis turns to Harry, eyes in a scowl. “Harry.”
Harry shrinks back.
Louis shakes his head and zooms forward after the robot.
Suddenly a man emerges out from the corner. He’s holding some kind of gun, silver and nefarious-looking like nothing Harry has ever seen before. His black hair is slicked back against his pale head, and Harry knows he shouldn’t judge by appearances, but this man looks every bit a villain, down to the malicious grin on his face.
Louis, however, seems unconcerned. It’s as if he doesn’t even notice the man. He’s too busy hopping upward at the tiny robot, who’s flapping above them now against the high ceiling.
Louis doesn’t even notice as the man raises the gun and takes aim, pointing directly at Louis.
***
How did he even get here?
That's Louis' main question when he sees Harry, the weird robot from the Earth. He must have latched onto the ship or something. That is definitely not in his protocols.
Louis doesn't understand what's going on. Harry acts so weird, like he doesn't want to follow his protocols. He keeps chasing him around and distracting him, and now he’s looking at Ben as if he doesn’t trust him. Why doesn't he want to follow the most basic of directives?
At least Ben is here now. As one of Captain Cowell’s right-hand men, surely he’s here to congratulate Louis and help him retrieve the plant back - if only Harry would get out of the way.
He’d noticed Ben is finagling with something earlier; it’s one of those taser guns that they to incapacitate particularly misbehaving robots. He’s probably going to shoot down the little one that took his plant. Or maybe he’s here for Harry. For some reason, Louis finds that prospect a little disconcerting; but Harry clearly has some malfunctions, and if Ben and the other higher powers thinks he needs to be taken in for repairs, then clearly it’s for the best.
Still, it’s strange that the gun is still pointed toward Louis -
And then Louis is clattering against the ground tackled down, Harry practically tripping over him and flopping on top of him. Ugh, those ancient robots can be so clumsy.
Zap. Louis finally processes the sound he heard just before Harry tackled him to the ground. He clamors to pull himself out from beneath Harry, looks up, and – oh. The line of the taser projectile was in a straight shot toward Louis. But it’s Harry that it hit: Harry, who’d jumped in front of him to save him, and who is still fallen forward, the electrodes attached to his body.
Harry saved him?
Nothing makes sense. Ben looks angry, scowling as he attempts to quickly reel in the gun again. And Harry, of course, is still lying on the ground motionless. Robots these days are carefully engineered exactly so that weapons like this can efficiently eliminate them if the need comes. Harry is dead.
But just as soon as he processes that unsettling idea, he comes to a realization: Harry isn’t a robot from “these days.” And sure enough, Harry suddenly props himself, hopping upwards quickly with a little huffing noise. He has merely a small dent appearing in the back of his carapace. He’s fine, and Louis doesn’t know why that matters to him, but it does. He wants to cheer, even as he tries to ignore the happy, almost proud look that Harry sends him. Louis doesn’t completely succeed.
Ben makes a grumbling noise as he eyes them, fumbles to reset the gun.
And then they run.
Louis has no idea why Harry saved him, why he would do such a thing when his protocol is entirely and specifically for rubbish collection back on Earth. But he’s still grateful for it. Harry moves slowly, so Louis hangs off of the back of him and uses his engines to propel them both forward quickly down the hallway. They slide to a stop just before they hit a fork in the pathway. He glances backwards: a slew of little robots have appeared to chase them - to chase Louis, mostly, and Louis could go faster alone. Harry seems to get the idea, giving him a long look before zooming as fast as he can in one direction, and pushing Louis in the other.
Louis flies down the corridor. Every single one of the tiny robots flies after him. There’s an emergency room somewhere near the end of this hallway, he knows. Finally he reaches it, slamming shut the hatches just in time to stop the first robot on his tail.
Only then does he notice Zayn and Liam are also in the room, looking up from where they’ve clearly been poring over a small computer. It doesn’t even belong in this room; Liam must have swiped from some other place. Nothing is as it should be.
“Louis!” Zayn breathes a sigh of relief. “Where’ve you been?”
“Getting into mischief, no doubt,” Liam says, eyeing the locks on the door even as his face floods with relief as well. “We were a little worried about you,” he concedes. “Did you find the plant?”
Louis shakes his head.
“Argh!” Liam grits his teeth. “We’ll get it back, okay? Niall and Pezza are still out there looking.”
Zayn presses some buttons on the side panel, and a closeup view of Perrie’s face, with Niall in the background, comes up on the screen.
“Hey, we have Louis in here. So you can call off that search; just look for the plant, okay?”
Louis taps his arm on the side of the metal wall loudly as Perrie grins at him through the screen.
Harry is still out there, is the thing. What if he's lost? What if he got captured again, and this time -
“Louis, be quiet! I can’t hear!”
Louis taps louder.
“Hold on.” Zayn looks at him. “What has gotten into you? What are you doing?”
“Harry.” The word sounds strange on Louis’ speakers, but it must be clear enough.
“Oh,” Liam squints. “Where - was he with you? You’re worried he’s still out there getting in trouble?”
Louis is fairly certain that his expression resembles what they call a pout.
“Aww,” Liam coos, shoulders falling.
“Hey, look for Harry, too, if you can,” Zayn pipes up. “I think someone might have a crush,” he teases. Louis looks between them. They're making fun of him.
“You're one to talk!” Niall barks through the intercom.
Zayn rolls his eyes. “Seriously, though. We can talk about this later – why don't you guys go try to find him?”
“I’d hate for something to happen to him,” Perrie ponders. Then she narrows her eyes at something in the distance. “We’ve gotta go. Talk to you later?”
“Yeah.”
Zayn clicks off the video feed and turns back to them. Liam has turned back to stare at the other computer screen, biting at his lower lip. He swallows, exchanging a strange, harried glance with Zayn.
“I just don’t understand.” He knits his brow and turns to Louis.
“Louis. I need to know. What else did you gather while you were on ground?”
Everything, obviously. Louis squeaks disdainfully, rolling his eyes before turning on the projector in his head and setting it to display a written list of some of the data. He projects it forward, directly onto Liam’s white shirt.
“Liam's tummy is not a projector screen,” Zayn chastises with a shake of his head, his body curving in a betraying chuckle nonetheless.
Liam has already jumped aside, narrowing his eyes at the data now projected at the wall.
“Zayn, look at this.”
Zayn’s eyes scan over the information. “The air's alright,” he hums. “There’s water. The radiation level's low, lower than we thought. The soil is okay, nothing a little fertilizer can't fix.” He furrows his eyebrows, looking up. “It looks fine.”
“But we've been sending out discovery missions for years. And it’s always the same thing: either they're destroyed by the conditions, or they come back with nothing except for more evidence that it’s not habitable.”
“According to Cowell,” Zayn corrects. Louis doesn’t understand what he has to do with anything, and neither does Liam, apparently, raising a quizzical eyebrow at him.
Something raps at the door. It sounds like a robot, beeping severely. Louis hops under the desk.
“Louis,” Liam starts slowly. “What did you do this time?”
He looks up at them sweetly.
“How many times do we have to cover for you?” Liam rolls his eyes. “At least hide in here,” he says, opening a latch in the console and placing Louis inside. “Perks of an emergency pod, plenty of hidden compartments.”
The knocking stops for a moment, and Louis pops his head back out to listen.
“Li,” Zayn hisses, voice hushed and urgent. “You said that Simon didn't believe you, about Louis and the plant. But he’s also told us the planet was uninhabitable. You don't think” –
Loius peers out, watching as a look of horror passes between them. “No...”
The door slams open, and Louis ducks down before the telltale clunk of another robot enters the room. It sounds large and bulky, bigger than the search robots they usually send after him.
“Hello,” he hears Liam greet innocently, but the robot clunks straight towards him and grabs the hatch.
“Oh, there’s nothing in here,” Zayn says with a smile, and Louis expects it to leave at that. But the robot doesn't stop prying. “What's – I said nothing’s here!” Zayn sounds upset. “Hey, why aren't you listening to me?”
“Because it doesn't work for you people,” a new voice booms in answer to Zayn’s question. The robot's chest suddenly illuminates with a screen, Captain Cowell’s face looking out at them with a smug grin. “It works for me.”
Something isn’t right.
“Um.” Liam stutters. Louis looks between them. For some reason, in the quick processing of his hard drive, the idea of Harry keeps coming up. Harry outside on Earth; Harry dancing to that bizarre music; Harry jumping in front of the taser to save him.
“But look,” Liam reasons. “Louis brought back a plant. And from what he gathered, the planet looks habitable. That means we can go back. That means it's safe, we can finally return home.”
“Home! Ha!” Simon cackles. “Are you so daft?”
And - no. Simon cannot call Liam stupid. No one except for Louis is allowed to think anything ill of Liam, thank you very much. Captain or not, Simon is no longer on his nice list.
Then, the door to the room closes again, latching tightly from the outside. “What are you doing?” Liam asks nervously.
“I don't think you quite understand. That place is not home. This is home. Well,” he amends, sounding amused with himself, “maybe not for you anymore.”
Liam looks confused. “But our protocols said -”
“It was nice talking to you,” Simon interrupts, flashes a grin. “But you've made this too easy, hiding in an escape pod of all places. I do believe your time is up.” Simon’s face disappears. A countdown begins on the screen. Four minutes. That's all the time they have, and then they're going to be ejected to burn through the atmosphere and plummet to the ground.
As if that weren’t enough to seal their fates, the lights cut out, the power cut off from the pod. Simon is cutting them off completely. That’s it. If he’s lucky, Louis can survive for a few days - a week, at most - and then he’ll be gone, too.
Louis zips around the room, pushing at various buttons with all of his might, but it's useless. Zayn rests a hand on his shell. Louis could try to blast apart the whole pod, of course, but that wouldn’t help; they would still be sucked out into space. They’re trapped.
Harry will miss him. The thought seems strange and incidental, but there it is. Harry will never get back home, either, though at least he might get to live here. Louis really can’t help thinking of Harry, of the way he records sounds to play later.
The realization strikes Louis suddenly. If nothing else, they should tell everyone. People - and Harry - should know.
He flashes the words out onto Liam’s stomach, the white letters striking in the darkness. Why. A flash of recognition crosses Liam’s face.
Liam clears his throat, rests a hand on Louis’ head. “Are you still there?” He sounds timid, dejected. “I just have one question,” he says. “Why would you kill us?”
3:30, flashes the only remaining monitor.
And Simon is still there listening - of course he is - because he chortles again, deep and cruel. “Who do you think is making money off of this place, hmm? A neverending supply of rent money from all of you people. Stuffing your faces with Syco food while you watch Syco television and breath Syco air and drink Syco water.” He chuckles. “And I don’t see why anyone would want it any different. Do you?” He pauses. “Ah, perhaps you do. And in that case, not only is your robot defective. You are.”
3:00.
The com abruptly disconnects. All power is officially lost to the pod, and they’re immersed in pitch black. He can feel Liam and Zayn huddled against him.
“What are we gonna do?” Liam asks.
2:45.
In a two minutes and forty seconds, the pod is going to break off from the rest of the ship, sending them hurling through space without any power or control. Louis has a limited power supply himself, but it isn’t nearly enough to power the whole thing, and he can’t speak loud enough to alert anyone else.
2:30.
Unless -
Louis plugs himself into the side of the little computer and makes a few calculations. The communications device doesn’t require that much power, and Louis still has nearly a full charge that he can transfer to power the device.
Zayn gets the idea first. “I think Lou is trying to do something. I think maybe we can communicate with the rest of the ship. Is that right? If we can get Niall, and Perrie - ”
2:00
Liam takes a breath as Louis looks up, determined. “We only get one shot, and then Simon'll turn off the transmitter. Let's go.”
***
“C’mon,” Perrie hisses as they run down the hallway.
Harry had never been so happy to be kicked as when Niall accidentally stumbled upon him holed up in a corner of the storage room, disguised as one of the other old metal boxes.
They’d gone up a few elevators and finally found the plant - Perrie had checked all the locators on the little search robots until she found one with strange behaviour and tracked it down to one of the executive-level rooms upstairs. Perrie and Niall don’t seem to know what to make of that location: suddenly they’re acting more covert, sharing confused glances.
Harry doesn’t know what’s going on; he just wants to see Louis again. He has to return the plant. Louis will be so happy. Harry has it tucked safely in his side compartment, still in the tiny cup that they’d put it in.
Suddenly a man in a crisp suit is walking toward them.
He stops. “What is this?” He glares at Harry, then the two humans; he looks cross, suspicious. “What are you doing up here?”
“Uh...” Niall stutters. Then Niall looks forward at Harry and commands sharply: “get back here!”
Harry didn’t know he did anything wrong. He dutifully treads back to Niall’s side, head low.
“We're so sorry, Mr. Cowell,” Perrie steps forward. Her voice sounds strangely sweet, off from its normal commanding tone. “This is a HARR-Y. We just found him in the storage room down there. He's an absolute antique,” she gushes, “maybe the only one left of his kind. Worth practically a fortune.” Simon's lips twitch, and Perrie gives another sweet smile. “He's just malfunctioning a bit, is all.”
What? Harry's not malfunctioning, he’s – ooh.
Harry starts to spin around in a circle, bopping his head up and down erratically before honing in on Niall’s left foot. He grabs the shoe right off of his foot, stuffs it into his stomach, and shoots it back out again in front of him. Ta-da!
“See?” Perrie bites her lip and moves closer to Mr. Cowell, whispering softly. “We were going to donate it to your estate, once we fix it up,” she says. “It would be an excellent worker, if you’d like it.”
Simon grins then, smoothing down his shirt and stepping back with a curt nod. “That would be splendid.”
“C'mon, lets get him back down to the lab.” She raises an eyebrow, and Niall and Harry follow her around the corner.
She rolls her eyes, grinning at the two of them when Simon finally disappears around the corner. “Good job, Harry.” He beams.
Suddenly the crackle of static booms through the intercom. Well, it sounds like static, but it only takes a few nanoseconds for Harry to deconstruct it as a series of numbers.
“What is it?” Perrie asks, kneeling down.
Louis is trapped. That’s the first thing Harry realizes. Then the voice starts up, and everyone can hear a crisp recording.
“Why would you kill us?” It’s Zayn’s voice. He sounds small. Perrie’s eyes widen, and she grips the side of Niall’s arm.
Niall looks equally scared.
“They’re sending us a code,” Perrie says. “I can hear it, but there’s not enough time…”
Harry beeps, and Perrie’s expression changes. “You have it?”
Three minutes, says the voice behind the transmitter, and then it abruptly cuts out. But the sound was recorded at least a minute ago, by his calculations.
Perrie leaps into action. “We have to open the door. Harry, if I hack into the main terminal, do you think you can do it?”
Harry doesn’t know, but all he hears is Louis, Louis. He nods.
Niall keeps watch behind them as they race downstairs, Harry moving faster than he even knew he could. When they reach the corridor where Harry and Louis forked off earlier. Perrie opens a panel in the wall to a tiny room with a control terminal.
She presses some buttons. “Harry, c’mon!” she hisses. “It’s up to you. Where are they - what’s the code?” Harry takes the cord and plugs it into his side. He thinks he knows what to do. He sends the data.
And then, at the end of the hallway, a door opens.
Zayn and Liam come leaping out through the compression doors just before the pod behind them breaks off away from the ship. Zayn leaps into Perrie’s arms and then pecks her right on the lips. Then he backs away, startled.
“Oh, no you don’t.” She pulls him back for a full-on kiss. It’s as romantic as anything Harry has ever seen, and Harry would watch if it weren’t for Louis, hovering in the doorway behind the airtight transparent window even as the pod pulls off to float out into space.
Harry can’t wait. He trundles forward through the first door toward Louis, cupping the plant in his hands. Only, there’s a step between the first and the second doorway. Just as the first doors close and the second open, Harry trips over it, falling forward and sending the plant flying in one direction into space. Harry’s body hurtles in the other direction, spinning into space as he grabs blindly for any friction. He finally grabs a stray rope still hanging off from the doorway. He grips onto it with two fingers, but they immediately begin slipping. He can’t hold on for long.
He can see the frantic faces watching through the window. And then there’s Louis, turned around from where he’s hovering by the door. He watches Harry for a moment before turning away to face the plant hurtling away in the other direction. Harry understands; that’s his job, after all.
Harry’s sensors go dark for a moment as he focuses all his energy on holding onto the wire. But when he gets his optics working again, he doesn’t see Louis at all. And suddenly he feels weightless, like the grip isn’t as impossible, and he realizes that that’s Louis floating beside him, holding him up.
“Louis.”
“Harry.” The way Louis says it, and the way he looks at him, feels strange. Louis is holding him so tight – tighter than he would need to, just to keep him up. And closer.
And then, Louis starts to lean forward and touches his head, ever so gently, to Harry’s.
Harry feels a spark pulse through him. Suddenly he understands the way that the people act in all the films he's seen. Like they act so silly and full and overflowing and crazy, like a kiss is an electric shock. And, he realizes: maybe it is. He and Louis hold onto each other as they hang from the side of the ship, drifting as if weightless in space, and Harry thinks he might not ever want anything else in his life.
Louis must feel it too. He’s holding Harry even tighter, eyeing him with an intense look that Harry thinks they might even describe as love.
Then another rope flies down to hang beside them. It looks thicker and sturdy. Harry looks up to where Liam is waving from above and holding the other end of the rope over a pulley. Harry reaches out and, with Louis’ help, wraps it around their bodies. Slowly, it carries them back up to the doorway. Finally the door opens to four happy and relieved faces.
They huddle together in a quick group hug, but the relief is short-lived. “We’re going to the dock,” Niall declares. “This way.” He leads them down a passageway toward the dock, near the room where Harry arrived in the first place. “C’mon,” Niall waves them into a small control room. “All the signals in here should be able to hide us for now.” They huddle inside, breathing hard as they look around the room. Perrie and Zayn grip hands beside the rest of them, Liam edging closer to Louis.
Niall clasps his hands together. “From what I was hearing on the transmitters, everyone else is assembling. Your message got out there, and they started looking. Turns out, the data has shown for years that the planet is fine and that we can go back. We were just too ignorant to notice.”
Liam sighs. “But we can’t go now. What if Simon still has control over the escape pods? And he already has a locator out on Louis. If we go anywhere, he’ll cut us off for sure.”
“We have to do something.”
They sit for a moment in tense silence. Finally Perrie speaks up.
“There’s an emergency ship, right?”
“Yeah,” Niall shrugs. “There are a few down there, in case the pods ever malfunction or we need a quicker getaway.”
“And you know how fly, right?”
“Well, I guess so. I mean, not really - ”
“You design the ships!”
He bites his lip nervously, bouncing on his heels. “Yeah, I help design the ships. I've never even done it on my own, and I’ve only piloted a few times.”
“And Louis and Harry know how to get there. And Zayn and I can help with the mechanics, and Liam could navigate.”
Liam’s eyes widen. “Are you suggesting that we go back now?”
They exchange nervous glances.
It’s Zayn who takes a breath and speaks. “When my great grandad came here, it was for survival. I remember he used to talk about the past, about his home. About the place he came from, green and blue and beautiful, and how he ached to go back. And now – we've forgotten. We're here, being force-fed whatever they give us. And we can go back. We can, and we need to.” Perrie grips his hand tighter.
“Plus, we can't exactly stay here now.” Niall points out.
After a tense moment, the silence is broken, Liam turning toward Louis and Harry. “Do you think we can do it?”
Louis nods, and Harry follows.
“Let's do it.”
They creep out of the room, Niall leading them toward the back corner of the dock.
And then an alarm sounds, and the doors start falling closed all around them.
They’re only one single doorway between them and the ship. Harry zooms forward to stop in the doorway just before the door slams shut on his head; it rises and slams back down again.
“Harry!”
The ship lies right there, just beyond the door. They can make it. Harry tucks his head in as best as he can, as the door continues its attempt to pummel him down.
Perrie slides through the gap beneath the door. Someone else follows.
Harry’s carapace is strong – he only ever uses the strongest materials he can find - but the door’s continual shutting is taking its toll on his body, crushing him down a little more each time it falls. He can’t see anymore, but he thinks the rest of them are able to squeeze through the gap, even as the door relentlessly crushes down on him. He tries to move himself out toward the ship, but he can’t seem to control his treads anymore. He thinks he feels someone else try to pull his body.
And then the door comes down one more time, and then everything just stops.
***
They make a surprisingly smooth landing, setting on the Earth with a gentle plop. They land in the exact coordinates where Louis first saw the plant; the dilapidated remains of skyscrapers loom on the horizon, and piles of rubbish cubes line the distance in massive towers where Harry must have put them. He really had a way with turning boring things into art.
The humans whoop; they’re probably excited, and they probably say things of interest when they finally take their first tentative steps outside, but Louis can’t think about much right now.
Harry hasn’t moved. Louis trails anxiously behind as the four of them carry Harry between them, two on each side, off of the ship. They take him to an open space and set him down on a flat rock. Perrie kneels down beside him, presses a few buttons.
Harry’s optical sensors have fallen halfway out of his head, the wires crushed and frayed. The top of his body looks like crumpled paper, and one of his arms is dangling off his side. But worst of all, he's absolutely lifeless, not even a single light on his body to indicate sleep or hibernation or even power loss.
Louis doesn't want to leave Harry, but when it becomes apparent that they can’t do anything now, he's the fastest one who can try to find something to help. He trusts the others to keep watch while he goes out to search.
He doesn't know what he's searching for, exactly, but he looks for anything robot-like: scraps of metal, microchips, mechanical-looking parts. He has to go far out from their location to find anything at all, probably because Harry already cleared the immediate area. But each time he returns with something that he thinks might be useful, Perrie shakes her head sadly. Sometimes she's fiddling with his body, and sometimes she’s done some simple repairs, fixing the scuffs or dents. But nothing happens. He's still not awake, not asleep or charging; he's just. Dead.
Then Louis remembers: the garage! It's not here anymore, he realizes with dismay, but he sets his eyes to zoom, scanning the surroundings and – bingo. A few kilometers away.
“Hey, where are you going?” Louis waves a hand and zips through the air, opens the garage with the switch he remembers Harry using. By the time everyone else catches up – the four of them holding Harry on a rolling cart now, panting nonetheless – Louis is sifting through the shelves with a pile of parts already beside him.
Perrie moves forward to inspect the items on the floor and the shelves. “Oh – hmm, maybe this'll work.” She goes through, selecting some kind of chip and a few other parts, before she sits down and carefully opens Harry's back.
Louis hovers nearby for what feels like days, although in truth it only takes fifty-eight minutes before Perrie flips one last switch and stands up. “Okay,” she hums, patting Harry gently on the side. Sure enough, a red light starts blinking on his chest. “Maybe that’ll work. Let’s put him out in the sun for a bit.” She still looks unsure.
They wait. Louis sits nervously beside him outside waiting for the power bars to rise. They invite him to come kick around the deflated football they found in the garage, but he declines, sticking beside Harry and watching as they run around chasing the ball like children. One day he’ll show them how to really play, not just run around like headless nanobots. There go Zayn and Perrie again, tripping over each other and falling so hard that a sinkhole opens beneath them, their bodies half-disappearing into a splash of water.
“Whoa,” Liam says, jogging up to reach and help them out. “Can't go losing you guys now.”
“Yeah, then who'd repopulate the planet?” Niall barks.
“Think those two would do it, if they could,” Liam points out, looking back at Louis and Harry.
And it's true. Louis doesn't want to leave his side as Harry sleeps beside him, the yellow meter on his chest slowly rising. Wake up. Wake up -
Harry beeps awake. His head pops out of his body, and Louis has never been so excited in his entire existence. Harry slowly turns his head to look at him, eyes clanking focused.
And then Harry rolls backwards, turns, scoops up a few piles of dirt and rubble. He compacts it and spits it out again, a cube tumbling onto the ground.
“Harry?”
Harry doesn’t even look at Louis. He turns again, scoops another pile, and repeats, beginning a circle around Louis' body.
“Harry? Harry?” Louis frantically flies back inside, picks up a shiny necklace and brings it back to Harry. Harrry blinks focused before grabbing it between his fingers, and then he stuffs it in his tummy with the rest of the rubbish. Louis frantically brings back everything he can find – shiny things, yellow things, funny-looking things. He even steals Liam's shiny new keyring out of his pocket, and Harry just stuffs it in with the rest of things.
“Hey, he’s awake!” Liam calls, and soon they're all gathering around.
“Harry!” Niall cheeres, reaching for a high-five. Harry looks at him as if he isn’t even there. “Oh,” Niall frowns. “He's not acting the same.”
Perrie shakes her head. “He.” Her face falls, and her voice lowers to a sad whisper. “He must've been set to do a clean reboot.” She gulps, turning to Louis, downcast. “I'm so sorry, Lou. But I think – he got so damaged. His drive might've not recovered. And in that case, his body might've been programmed to do a total reset. He still has all his parts working, but his memory – you know, his personality – would have been reset to his original conditions.”
Louis doesn't want him to be a clean reboot. He wants his Harry; he wants the same Harry that brought him toys and didn't want him to leave and never followed any protocols. He wants the Harry who danced to silly songs and swooned at love stories. He wants his Harry.
Louis follows Harry around for another few minutes as he blithely continues to make more cubes of dirt and trash and builds up a haphazard pile. Not even a castle.
Louis stays beside him that night, tucked inside the living pod with the rest of them beside Harry's garage. Harry seems put off by the closeness at first, but eventually he seems to settle, beeping sleepily and lowering his head.
Louis overrides his urge to go into sleep mode. He knows he should power down to preserve his energy until the sun comes out again, but he just can't bring himself to turn off. By the time the sun finally comes out, he's at low power, and has to creep out to charge again.
He sits outside in the sun for only a few minutes before Harry comes out, too, treading over toward him.
“Harry?” Harry looks lazily down at him for a moment, stretches all his parts into working order and turns away impassively to face the sun.
The humans haven’t awakened, aside from Liam, who eventually comes out and passes by with a sympathetic glance, tells them he’s going for a run. Normally Louis would fly in circles around him, mock him for his comparative slowness, but he just doesn’t have the energy right now.
Harry looks so sleepy and peaceful in the morning light, head tilted down and back arched upwards. Touching things isn't part of Louis’ protocol; he knows this, but he really wants to touch Harry one more time. Louis slowly hovers toward him, and Harry doesn’t react at the intrusion. Louis reaches to touch Harry’s hand, and when Harry doesn’t move that, he slots their fingers together. Louis leans toward him, slowly, until his head rests just against Harry’s.
Bzzt. A spark flies between them. Louis jolts back with the shock of it, face still mere centimeters from Harry’s. Harry hasn't even reacted, his head still tilted down impassively.
For a moment, Louis thinks he hears a sound, the faintest crackling of music that starts and then abruptly cuts out. Probably one of the humans’ morning alarms.
Louis hovers back away, gently releasing Harry’s hand from his grasp. But suddenly he can't. His fingers are stuck, held by a grip. By Harry.
“Harry?”
The grip tightens. “Louis?” Harry straightens his stance. He rolls back and blinks, adjusting his sensors. “Louis!”
“Harry!” Louis practically tackles him down, pushing against him in a hug as Harry wraps his long arms around Louis’ middle.
“Harry’s back!” Perrie calls from the doorway. Zayn and Niall appear sleepily behind her, eyes widening when they see the scene. They come together in a big hug, Harry bopping his head with joy at being between all of them.
“Where’s Liam?”
Louis is a moment away from screeching out to get Liam’s attention, but then he comes running toward them. “Hey, guys!” he calls, breathless and vibrating with excitement. “Come look at this!”
Plastered against Harry's side with their hands latched together, Louis doesn't even care how slow he has to move in order to follow Liam out behind the garage. He also doesn’t care when Harry bumps over a rock, and that song crackles to life from inside his carapace once again, the slow music starting up again louder and causing the rest of them to gaze over at them with the sappiest looks Louis has ever seen.
Finally, after nearly a kilometer, they arrive at the edge of a cliff, Liam beckoning them to lean over and look out. Just below them, behind some crumbling buildings, lies a plush, green valley absolutely filled with plants, just like the one that Louis found except that there are more, and they’re bigger.
Liam gapes, eyes huge. “This is it. This is – life. This is where we all can live.” He looks around at them. “All of us. This is where we'll make our new life.”
“We have to tell everyone else.” Niall is busy telecomming their coordinates to the other ships. The rest of them simply gape out at the landscape.
Harry gazes outward, sensors finally adjusting to the vastness of it all. “Ooh,” he beeps. It might be the cutest noise Louis has ever heard.
Louis still hasn't let go of his hand.
Louis chitters out a happy sigh against Harry's side as the others come to stand closer around them. Zayn places a hand around Louis’ back as he looks out. “It's beautiful.”
And, pressed against Harry's side, their hands perfectly slotted together as they sway with the breeze to the fading music, Louis has to agree.