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“Where‘s Dr Amherst?” PC asked, rolling up to the group. He’d lost sight of the doctor so quickly in the fight.
“PC…” Michelle winced, fidgeting with the ends of her sleeves, “Dr Amherst… he gave his life so Chris and I could get away.”
“Gave his life?” PC projected a frown onto his screen. “You mean they took him too?”
Shaking her head, Michelle’s chin wobbled. “No, um, we were surrounded by drones and.. he distracted them. He-he didn’t make it. He’s dead. I’m so sorry, PC.”
PC blinked at her. Dead? Dr Amherst? Clark?
“That can’t be right,” he muttered to himself. Clark had contingencies for every situation, a plan for every emergency not excluding a zombie apocalypse, there was no way he would just die .
“We need to go,” the other human grunted, spinning on his heels, wrapping an arm comfortingly around Michelle’s shoulders, leading her away.
Herm — as the angry human had called the four foot heavy construction bot — watched the retreating figures with low eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said. He didn’t even glance at PC.
Usually it’s appropriate to make eye contact when apologizing.
Herm watched the angry one in particular, never moving his gaze, even when the other bots trudged along behind him.
He looked sad. Maybe remorseful, like when Clark would talk about his past.
Why would he look like that unless…
“You… almost lost your human?” PC asked tentatively. He never knew which topics were best to be avoided or whether someone wanted him to continue the conversation by asking questions.
He seemed to have chosen right. Gold star, as Clark would say with a bright smile and a cheeky wink. He’s the same way, after all.
Something cold ran through his monitor.
Was the same way. Used to be. Past tense.
That’ll take some getting used to.
“I almost lost him once— well, all the time because he’s an idiot, but,” his LEDS lights dipped into a frown, “I hate to think that if I had found him only moments later, he would’ve been dead.”
PC clacked his claws as they began their walk towards the peanut shaped van in the distance, away from Clark and away from where the scavengers would surely tear his body apart for their own gain, only to realize they can’t use him. They would leave his pieces scattered, strung apart the carnival grounds like grotesque Christmas lights.
PC faltered. “I don’t think I can go with you.” He frowned, stitching his voice — Clark’s voice — clips together: “I need to find him.”
Herm looked at him, eyes wide and round and sincere , if PC was reading him correctly. “I’m sorry, the doc is… I’m sorry, PC.”
“I need to find him,” he insisted.
Glancing between the gate and PC, Herm sighed. “Alright. I’ll go with you. But we have to be quick, who knows when the scavs will come back.”
“This way.” PC sped away, leaving Herm scrambling behind him.
“Do you know where, um, he is?”
PC’s face flickered. “Well, no, but he has contingencies. He knows the best hiding spots, he’d surely be near one of those.”
They checked spots A through F before coming across the destroyed carousel on their way to contingency spot G. Unlike the similarly chipped paint around it, the carousel horses were charred nearly pitch black, some weren’t much more than splinters left behind.
He stared hard at the broken wood, bent back like something had been forcefully thrown through it.
Hopping onto the platform, he rolled closer to where the object had landed.
His screen glitched.
“Find anything?” Herm called from the other side of the carousel.
He didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer . His circuits froze, which was physically impossible considering the dry desert heat. He remained unable to answer anyways.
He couldn’t tear his eyes away. His best friend, the only person to give him knowledge rather than taking it, was dead.
Herm popped his head around the side and glanced down. “Oh.”
Clark stared at the roof of the carousel with wide misty eyes. His jaw had dropped slightly, the rest of his body just as relaxed, even around the jagged plank of bloodied wood impaling him. PC’s sensors indicated he couldn’t have been dead for more than ten minutes. He still ran orange on the heat vision.
“What now?” Herm asked quietly.
“I…” He didn’t know. For once in his life, in his existence, he didn’t know .
“Do you,” Herm laid a hand on the corner of his desk, “want to bring him with us? We could give him a proper burial.”
PC was shaking his head no before he realized he was doing so. “No, this is his home. Our home. Or, was. He’ll stay here.”
Herm stared at him and slowly nodded, “okay. Tell me how to help.”
He racked through the files in his memory bank, picking several before finding the one that felt right. “We have a garden out back, safe from the scavenger bots but within view of the stars. I want to bury him there.” Quieter, he mumbled, “he likes the stars.”
“Do you mind if I,” he gestured, “pick him up?” PC gave the go ahead, watching as Herm slid his hands underneath Clark, cradling PC’s best friend gently to his chest. “Where to?”
“Uh, this way,” PC said, leading him to a building nearby Doctor Frankenstein’s Laboratory. “It used to be the Poison Emporium, but its greenhouse effect had its uses in growing proper food.”
The reinforced dome was lined with plant pots, each growing some type of fruit, vines tangling up their individual spokes. In the centre, Clark had dug right into the ground in preparation for foods such as potatoes, pumpkins, and other large plants. It had been dug with the intention of planting life. And now it will be used to honour the deceased.
“Here,” he said, rolling himself back and forth. “I, I can’t dig.”
Herm shot him a sad smile and laid Clark on a nearby lawn lounge chair. PC rolled over as Herm bent down, next to the mound of dirt. He dug his hands in, shovelling the soil to the side.
PC turned away, claws playing with Clark’s dark hair, twirling it around his digits. Clark was originally going to cut it with some shears he’d found in the maintenance shed, but had kept it long when he realized PC liked it. Something about the organic twisting and bending but never snapping unless force was applied was comforting.
Scentre applied force, Clark snapped.
“All done, that should be deep enough,” Herm pulled himself out of the hole and dusted off his hands. “Ready?”
“Not really,” PC said, tucking a lock of Clark’s hair behind his ear and readjusted his glasses. “Okay.”
Herm carefully maneuvered Clark out of the chair and into the hole. He crossed Clark’s arms over his chest in a move similar to ancient Egypt’s pharaohs. PC figured it suited him: a king in his own right. He’s made bad decisions in the name of the greater good but understood where his metaphorical line in the sand was drawn.
Pushing himself up, Herm grabbed a handful of dirt and held it out. “Do you want to say some words?”
He knew Herm meant in eulogy, but everything he’s wanted to say to Clark has already been said. Clark knows — knew. He always did.
Instead, he drew himself up handled the dirt.
When they first met, PC didn’t have a humanoid voice. He spoke in a series of beeps registered as binary. And he would again.
G-O-O-D-B-Y-E-F-R-I-E-N-D.
—
The ride back was mainly uneventful, with the exception of Herm and Keats (as PC learned was the name of the angry human) bickering under their breaths nearly the whole way. The others hadn’t liked that he’d held them up but they understood, thankfully. Michelle and Penny had shot him sympathetic glances, Popfly shaking his head solemnly.
The quiet had given PC time to think, really think, about the future. Clark was dead, his human soul drained out of him by the same people that took Michelle’s brother. Clark had given him purpose, he’d given him a voice, and he’d given him a friend. And now Clark was dead and PC was alone, by himself for the first time in eleven months.
So what next?
He and the others picked through the debris of the mall, careful not to step on or roll over the empty husks of fallen bots.
They’ve all lost friends, whether to death or to Scentre’s clutches.
PC rolled off by himself, ducking into a bathroom. It was relatively clean, though incredibly dusty, which was expected seeing as robots didn’t excrete. He stopped in front of a musty mirror, wiping away the grime with a paper towel.
His reflection stared back at him.
When Clark had found him, PC’s screen had been out of order alongside his voice output. Clark had fixed him right up and reconfigured his voice box, recording words upon words for him — over 100,000 words, and roughly 10,000 phrases.
His screen, on the other hand, had been an easy fix. He, embarrassingly, just had to turn himself off and on again. Waking up from his hard reboot, gave him an idea. He’d never had a face before then, always a blank screensaver or an open website. However, Clark had startled when PC spoke to him, unaware he was conscious.
So PC created a face for himself. One he did, in fact, design after Clark’s own.
Staring into the mirror, he couldn’t help but notice the inconsistencies that made PC PC . That separated him from Clark.
Squeezing his face’s eyes shut and disconnecting his visual, his claws clenched around the porcelain sink.
“I love you,” he said aloud, echoing against the bathroom tiles. If he pretended hard enough, he might’ve been able to convince himself that it was Clark speaking to him. He’d never been shy with his affections. “I love you,” he said again.
I love you was included in the low amount of complete sentences that Clark recorded for him, meaning there were no clicks, no glitches, just the smooth recording of someone who wasn’t there and would never be there.
He sighed and opened his eyes.
“PC?”
He glanced to the sound to see Michelle standing in the doorway. She frowned at him.
“Are you okay?”
“No,” he said. “Not really.”
“Do you…” she stepped into the room, shutting the door behind her. “Do you want to talk about it?”
He looked back to his reflection. “I have his voice.”
Michelle squeezed his arm. She swallowed, staring into the mirror. “Did you know, one of the first things humans forget about a person is their voice?” She sighed and ran a hand through her hair, fingers working to untangle knots. “I can’t remember my brother’s voice. And I know , he’s alive, he’s alive , but until a couple days ago, I thought he was dead. He’s a Cosmo bot now, and I’m grateful he’s alive, but I’d give nearly anything to hear his real voice one last time.”
“Michelle…” PC stared at her with wide eyes.
She laughed wetly and wiped her eyes. “It’s silly, but I can’t help it. Sometimes I make this silly Cosmo voice to myself, like I used to do for him, like I’m pretending he’s still here with me but—” Pausing, she made eye contact with PC in the mirror. “He told me a long time ago that people are made of electricity, and the same is for you, you know. Robots, humans, we’re all electricity, and he told me that people’s electric particles can stay with each other for years after they’re gone.”
She fanned her puffy face, “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make this about me—”
“You aren’t,” PC interrupted, shaking his head. One of his claws swivelled to pat her back. “I think.. I understand what you’re trying to say. Mourning will be hard. He was my best friend, but… he lives on. Maybe not literally, but with me. With my memory.” He chuckled, "his memory."
“Right,” she smiled, sniffling.
He looked at her. The real her, outside their reflections.
“My best friend may be dead, but your brother isn’t. Let’s get him back.”