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A.M.A misses Lightning.
She didn’t know she was capable of missing someone, but she can’t remember any other word for the longing in her chest, the hollow, clawing feeling. Yearning, craving, aching, her database provides, sparking and shivering. It was sliced into pieces when the world ended, and barraged by grains of sand and storms. When the storm swept through the basement, she had been with Lightning, conducting research. It had picked them up and tossed them into the sand.
They’d found each other, though. Eventually. He had analysed the ‘bubble’, as it had been nicknamed, muttering to himself and occasionally asking for her input. There wasn’t much she could do. Her sensors were damaged, pieces of her database missing. It was frustrating, the feeling of having something so integral to her ripped away.
He had given her a task, then. Lightning had crouched down and told her to stay. To guard the basement, whatever it was now. She incorporated the command with a wordless nod, and watched him disappear into the mountains.
Patience was easier for her than organic beings. A.M.A could shut off her power supply, program herself to awaken if a specific criteria was met. After the first day passed, she had set it to wake her every hour, on the dot. Conserving energy, her algorithms deduced, was the best way to follow her father’s order.
When she wakes, her sensors register few sounds— the shifting of sand here, a particularly strong wind there. It’s quiet. A.M.A is not used to the quiet. The breaker room was always humming, computers and power sources working away. Lightning’s attic–his “humble abode”, according to her files–had machines, clanking and rusting. Even aboard the Ophiotaurus, she still registered the waves, the sound of shoes hitting wood.
A.M.A attempts to access her visual feed, and then promptly realises she is facedown in sand. With a vague sense of what her dictionary calls embarrassment, she rights herself, the world spinning as her sensors adjust. In the three point four seven seconds it takes for her visual feed to work again, she sits in darkness. It’s strange. She reaches out to her system, the network of wires and bodies she’s relied on for as long as her HDD can remember, and finds nothing.
She doesn’t like darkness, she decides.
When the visual feed swims into view, she takes a moment to examine the terrain in front of her. Sand, her files tell her. Unknown source. Average particle 2.79 millimetres across. Impure, composed of 98.12% SiO2, 0.91% Al2O3, 0.16% Fe2O3, etc. Estimated amount of grains in view: 1600000000–
She let the numbers run, scanning the desert. It’s all sand, as far as her cameras can see, a few tufts of coarse shrubbery scattered across the area. Yellow and orange and brown. Identical to the previous hour. And the hour before that.
The sand is slightly different. A storm must have blown through while she was asleep, she concludes. Knocked her over.
> LIGHTNING?
She reaches out, searching, clawing, hoping. Please, she thinks. Please. The thinking is not new. The emotions that come with it are.
Silence.
A.M.A pauses, and then tries again, a few moments later.
> FATHER?
Nothing. He has not returned yet, then. That’s fine— patience is easy. Patience is good.
Gears whir as she turns her head to stare at the basement, loose wires falling over her shoulders. A.M.A places a single hand on the magenta surface. Her algorithms told her there was an 85% chance it felt like smooth glass. Magic, certainly. But what? And more importantly, why? Through the ‘bubble’, she eyed Telos, frozen midair with an expression of panic. It was like time had stopped, or slowed significantly.
But that wasn’t her theory to make. Lightning would be able to figure it out, she was certain– if nothing else, she had faith. Faith in him. He’d always come back. She just had to wait.
[The video opens with Lightning, coat on, looking directly into the camera. He stands in a version of his base, identical to the ones scattered across the desert. It’s newer.]
LIGHTNING: Okay. I have lost my friends, my family, my tech, and my dignity. Thankfully, I never had the last one in the first place.
[He stands and begins to pace around the room.]
LIGHTNING: In short: I have nothing. But from nothing, I will make my new home.
They’re leaving.
Of course they are. She’s been bound here for decades, although exactly how many decades… eludes her. As the weeks went on, she only woke up every two hours, then three, then five. From once a day to once a week to once a month. A.M.A did not miss much. The desert was unchanging.
It changed her, though. Time and sand and storms. Once the bubble burst (and they were frozen in time, it seems), she had found her backup body, and transferred her code into it. It could move, and that was enough. In her new chest compartment, she found a pair of Lightning’s goggles. He’ll want these back, she thought. So she kept them.
A.M.A hadn’t left for decades, but now that they were free and awake and moving and talking, the basement dwellers were leaving. Sergei, Cookie’s son, and Telos. The prisoner. She wasn’t familiar with him, exactly, but the frown on his face and the crease of his eyebrows matched up with dislike.
“There’s nothing keeping me here,” Telos says. He stands in the makeshift bedroom, tarps and blankets hung up where the concrete walls have crumbled. “Not anymore. These certainly aren’t.” He raises one hand and shakes off the cuff attached to it, the metal clattering uselessly on the dust below.
Sergei’s expression tightens. He’s a bit of a puzzle, contradictory. A person, she supposes. He wants to leave, but he doesn’t want to leave his mother. In that sense, A.M.A relates to him. If her father was here, she would not leave.
But he isn’t, and that’s precisely why she has to.
> IF THERE IS NOTHING—
She starts, and then stops. There is nothing to hear her that way, not anymore. R.U.S.T is gone. Lightning is gone. “If there is nothing,” A.M.A says aloud, “then let me say this: I am going too.” It sounds different from her old body’s speech, but that is to be expected. She’s adjusted it to better match their speech patterns, to sound more human. “Staying here will not help me find my father.”
“No,” Telos snarls. If his wings could move, she is certain they would be flaring behind him, the way Scelius’s often do.
“I don’t wanna go,” Sergei mumbles. He’s staring at the floor, face hidden from view. Her sensors no longer whir when she moves them from him to Telos. The difference time makes. “Mom would be so upset.”
“Then don’t,” Telos shoots back. “Stay here with your mom. See how many animals you can kill before the desert turns bare.”
Food is scarcer than anyone would like. Cypress, she knows, has taken to swooping down and grabbing coyotes. There are a lot of parkato here, most gathered around the oasis, most in need of sustenance. Not for the first time, she’s grateful her father built her without the need to eat.
Cypress is here, too. Silent, he hands Telos some of the rabbit skins, leftover from his hunts. She doesn’t know what he’s going to do. Leave? Run? Stay?
A.M.A watches as the god grabs a sharp rock, beginning to craft what she suspects is a warped attempt at a waterskin. “Coming with us to find out how that stranger got those abilities is our best bet on getting your speech back,” she tells Sergei. It’s true. Magic has gone missing, and their only clue is a stranger who hates them. “Getting Telos’s powers back, and finding my dad.”
He looks up at her. His eyes resemble a doe she saw once, in the woods, before the world ended.
“So, what do you say?” She asks, holding out a hand. “Wanna come?”
[The video opens to Lightning holding the camera, visibly excited and older than the last video. It shakes a bit as he adjusts it.]
LIGHTNING: I FOUND THE ZORDS! I was sailing on Ship 1.0 and I came across an island, and GUESS WHAT I FIND? THE ZORDS! Post that shitshow about… ten years ago? Yeah, ten. I thought the zords were destroyed. NOPE! They got flung to a remote island called ‘Insula Monstrorum–’
[He does air quotes.]
LIGHTNING: –by the local fishermen, and they were there! Sadly, their batteries are too damaged to last them long enough to get back to any mainland, but they are there! Just, living!
[He reaches forwards and the camera shakes again.]
LIGHTNING: Lightning, out!
Telos has begun to bang on the door.
Their captors threw them in here and locked them inside. It’s a textbook jail cell, matching her database exactly. Dark, dank and damp. “TAKE ME AWAY!” Telos was screaming. “I’M READY! DON’T LOCK ME IN HERE WITH THEM!”
Sergei presses against the wall. Apex predators, he had said. That’s why the desert’s ecosystem was okay. The dragons, bested by the ultimate predators: people.
“Yes, you do,” she says, continuing a prior conversation. “In some primal capacity. Oh, wait, your species technically never evolved in the first place.”
Telos stops banging on the door and turns to scowl at her. “Thank you, A.M.A. That’s so helpful, I had no idea.”
“You’re welcome,” A.M.A says pleasantly, turning to scan the cell for any potential way out. It was built out of stone, likely containing silicate minerals and quartz. Tattered blankets were piled in the corner, a single stool beside them. Sergei had moved to stand in front of a small barred window, the size of one of the bricks.
“...it’s too small in here,” he says, so quiet her sensors barely pick up on it. “...I’m gonna choke.”
“On what?” Telos scoffs. “Air?”
“Trauma?” She offers. It wasn’t a joke. Traumatic experiences often influenced the body’s reaction to situations, especially difficult ones like this.
Sergei mumbles something else, moving to tug uselessly on the bars. His shoulders are tense, heartbeat picking up speed. It was irrational. Unusual.
“Damn,” A.M.A says. “Sergei’s gone crazy.”
Crazy: not sensible. Wild. Out of the ordinary. She watches as Telos sighs and marches over, shoving him lightly so he can peer out of the window too. Sergei turns to glare at her, pressing his back against the wall again.
“I’m not crazy,” he mutters. He wipes his face with his sleeve, turning to stare out of the window again.
“I wonder what they even want with us,” she says, setting his behaviour aside. If anything was irrational and unusual, it was their captor’s actions. They had been travelling. They certainly weren’t a threat to their hunting practice. “You guys are not good food, and their tech is not advanced enough to make use of any of me.”
“They wanted one of us for something.” Sergei’s voice wavers, hiking a few decibels. “...thinks we’re interesting. Like pets.”
“Eh,” Telos says, brushing it off. “I doubt it.”
“We would be shitty pets,” she agrees.
“Yeah, you’d bite them all.”
“My mouth can’t bite,” A.M.A responds, perplexed.
“Not you.”
“Oh, yeah. Sergei would definitely bite them.”
“Good.” Telos folds his arms. “They deserve it.”
Sergei hums lowly in agreement. She turns her sensors to the door for a moment, then pauses.
“Wait, are there any guards at the door?”
Telos hops down from the window, turning and knocking on the door.
“What.” Comes the muffled response.
“Yyyyeeeesssss,” he answers, turning to look back at her. If she could sigh, she would. Instead, she just simulates it, a long drawn out motion.
Sergei began to pace. “I don’t GET IT. Why do they WANT US.”
“When are they going to do anything?” A.M.A questions. “At this rate, you guys are going to go crazy.”
“Don’t ask me,” Telos grumbles. “I got dragged out from the desert into slightly-wetter desert, same as you. I’ve never even heard of these guys before. Before the…” He made a vague motion with his hand, which she interpreted as the storm. “You know. Also, bird people.”
“I thought bird people would be COOL!” Sergei yelled, kicking the wall. “Luchine was cool! Cypress was cool!”
Silently, A.M.A turns to watch the small window.
“I wonder where they are now.”
[The video opens to Lightning sitting down on a chair, spinning gently. He looks thoughtful.]
LIGHTNING: So it turns out my people, the Brits, survived, but also thrived in some new city they are calling ‘Hydron.’ It’s actually just London but new, it’s half flooded, so they’ve entered a symbiotic relationship with the mer who can’t live in the new deep-as-fuck oceans! It’s great!
[He nods solemnly.]
LIGHTNING: It’s wonderful my people could finally stop being racist, even if it took a whole-ass apocalypse.
Hollah leads them to the ivy-curtained tunnel.
Den’lux is impressive. Structures spiral up tree trunks, Scrofa hopping between them with ease, all nestled in the heart of the jungle.
The chief guides them. This tunnel is important, somehow, to the reason they’re here. A.M.A imagines it’s supposed to be dark and ominous, but her torch spoiled the effect. Bright white light swept over ancient rock, curling deeper into the earth.
“All in favour of going in the suspiciously dark tunnel with a complete stranger in the middle of nowhere?” Telos asks. It’s a rather silly question.
“Have faith,” Hollah says. He is the chief of the Scrofas, and his age shows in flecks of grey fur. His voice is calming, eyes dark.
“In what?” He scoffs. “You?”
“It isn’t dark anymore,” she corrects him, doing another full sweep with her torch.
Hollah shakes his head, still talking to Telos. “In the Gods.”
Telos’s eyebrows shoot up. “In the gods. Pfft. Wow. Ha. I have some news that is going to blow your mind.”
A.M.A catches Sergei shooting Telos a look as Hollah ushers them into the tunnel. The chief leads the group, the other two in the middle, herself at the back. “Quiet for a moment,” he instructs. “Listen first, then speak.”
Telos shot Sergei an identical look back.
They walked deeper, metal and leather and paws on rock. Every movement echoed, repeating into eternity. A.M.A swept the torch back and forth every few moments, revealing more rock. Her sensors register a drop in air temperature, and she watches as Sergei shivered.
Hollah pauses and doubles back, leaving her companions at the front of the group as he moves to cover her torch. A.M.A buffers for a moment as he plunges them into the darkness, sensors whirring as her cameras adjust.
“Why would you do that.” Telos says, only a voice in the shadow.
“Trust,” the chief says simply. One beat, two, and then the cavern lights up.
She adjusts quicker than the others, cameras providing low light as opposed to complete darkness. Tiny blue lights dot the walls like a facsimile of the night sky, arching over their heads. Sergei gasps.
A.M.A silently turns the glow of her face screen down, the blue strengthening. Part of her wants to raise a hand and touch the ceiling, but it wouldn’t be logical to do so. Besides, her hands were still cuffed.
Glowworms, her database filled in. Arachnocampa luminosa, or a nearly-identical species. Pūrātoke, to glow. Titiwai, lights reflected in water. Their glow was the result of several chemicals, notably luciferase, an oxidative enzyme, and luciferin, a compound. The Arachnocampa’s ability to produce light is crucial to its survival.
Why can she recall that, but nothing actually useful? These are the consequences of downloading the entirety of Wikipedia, she supposes. The gaping hole in her database cut out everything she might require in the future, and left articles on glowworms.
Hollah returns to the front, turning the final corner into a much larger cave. “You doubt the gods,” he says, “but they are yours. Now you shall meet ours.” He leans forwards and blows softly on a portion of the lights. As they brighten, they form into shapes.
They sit in the carvings, she thinks suddenly, algorithms presenting her with a conclusion. Just like the carvings they had found in the jungle. It was a story.
In the centre sits a human-like figure, palms spread, a yellow light around her like a halo. To her right, something moth-like, glimmering blue. At the very bottom, glowing green, a deer-like figure sits. Logic would dictate something on the first figure’s left, but there was nothing. To A.M.A, it looked like whatever was there had been scratched off.
Different colours. The Arachnocampa luminosa was not capable of that sort of variety.
“That one reminds me of Life,” she says quietly, raising her hands to gesture at the deer. “Only due to the deer thing though.”
“I wouldn’t say douubbtttt,” Telos says.
Sergei elbows him. “Shuddup.”
He turns to him with wide eyes. “Dude, I’m being serious. I don’t doubt.”
“Oh, we believe in the gods,” A.M.A says, stepping in front of them. It was hard to deny their existence, after all. There were many things that the world simply waved away as magic, things without a likely explanation. She had seen them. She was seeing them, right now.
She points at Sergei and Telos. “This one’s mother is a god, and this one is a god.”
“Shuddup!” Sergei hisses again, and now he’s definitely upset. He puts one hand over her speakers for a moment, before pausing and removing it, letting it hang limply by his side. She simply stares at him. She was stating facts. They were gods, and Hollah was talking about gods, so it was a good conversation topic.
“ANYWAYS,” Telos barks, the pair united in their goal of stopping her. For… some reason. Her father would have agreed with her, she was certain. “What’s the big deal with carvings? The ones on the rock, the ones here.”
A.M.A reaches up and adjusts the goggles perched on her head. The yellow-tinted glass is cracked, likely shattered in the storm. She could repair them, with the right materials. But, despite all logic saying she should, a part of her didn’t want to.
They were Lightning’s. A spare pair, certainly. But they were his, and he had used them once. The idea of changing them, even if something else had already done so… no. It was wrong, in the way Cythila’s smile and the United States were.
Not for the first time, she wonders what he would think, if he were here. Of the Scrofa. Of Den’lux. Of Telos and Sergei.
Of her.
Would he be proud?
She had disobeyed his order, in a way. A.M.A was to guard the basement, but now she was deep in a foreign jungle, several weeks of walking away. Cookie was more than capable of surviving on their own— most of the parkato were. But the basement was not. If it was left in the desert, to rot and decay and die, it would.
A.M.A hadn’t been ordered to leave. She hadn’t been ordered to follow. She chose that herself.
Hollah was speaking. Telling a story. She tunes back in quietly, documenting the information, repairing her database one day at a time.
Lightning wasn’t going to come back, she concluded. Something terrible must have happened to him. She refused to believe he would leave her there, in the sand, alone.
So she would find him. A new command, a new mission statement. She would find her father. Piece by piece, day by day, hidden base by hidden base.
She folds her arms and listens to Hollah talk.
[The video opens to Lightning with a sad but determined expression. He looks visibly older than the last video, and visibly more stressed out.]
LIGHTNING: There’s a problem. The apparently magic barrier that protected me when I absorbed electricity is gone. I can still absorb energy, but now it hurts, and more specifically, it affects my mind.
[He runs a hand through his hair.]
LIGHTNING: I’ve been forgetting myself recently. And I’ve been waking up in areas I didn’t go to sleep in. I can feel my memories of my family, my friends, slipping from my mind. I’ve been resorting to violence more and more, in situations where it isn’t even needed at all. And I can tell, I’m losing myself.
[He clasps his hands together.]
LIGHTNING: To whoever is watching this. If you see me again, and I attack you without warning, just know I’m too far gone. And I give you full permission to fight back, even kill me if it comes to life or death. At that point, I’m just a shell of myself.
[The video ends.]