She loomed there like a watchtower, all light in the eyes and face and skin, yet casting nothing but a pit of darkness and precarious despair on her champion, her prize, her beloved automation. Ever since the day he was delivered to her in parts and pieces and custom demands, he had been her wonderful little boy, her wonderful immortal child of steel and perfection. He placed fingers on keys quickly, quietly, all movement of the music absolute of the piano, in the shadow of his caretaker. The hollow breaths he took came between notes, all timed as to not disturb the rhythm, and often rested for consideration of the next keyfall. All for the best she insured, all for your greatness, you must shine, you must shine for me, and play the perfect notes. You must play your best.

But he did not play his best, the thumb was cursed to slip in the momentary flush of his nervousness; it plagued the entire piece, stamped the red on the white keys like the sign of correction that would soon be. In an instant the room turned silent, and her fingers swiftly attacked with their pointed sword, the needle plunged the foe through, fat to cuticle of the boy’s thumb. His eyes sprouted with tears motionless. With time and correction, stimulation, motivation he would learn, as all machines would.

“Thumb on key,” she told him, and tugged at the thread that held his tiny, disobedient thumb, the first drop of blood landing on the key that would have been his salvation, “The correct key. The correct thumb. The correct tone.”

“Yes caretaker.”

“Again. Your effort now.”

But the walls shook, the two sole citizens of this beautiful kingdom for the first time, confused. The far wall broke, throwing marble and glass across the floor and the carpets, flying dust like wedding rice. The woman screamed, all white now like a banshee made from hellfire, yet was not so fast as to stop the intruder’s bullet that punctured her square in the head. She crumbled, a beautiful Jericho, as a bigger mountain stood in the marble arc.

The boy was frozen, until the gigantic man bent down and held his hands, thawing them, and freeing them to tremble with his entire body.

“Where did she pierce you? Did she knit your fingers to the piano keys already?”

The automation stared confused at him, the behemoth’s voice revealed an edge of a frightened tone, and when the two looked for a moment, he realized that the boy was holding a flute. The woman he had shot resembled nothing of ice or snow, but was tanned and held a darker shade of hair. He stood up and, despite his size and the wall he just imploded, realized his childhood days were never quite past him.

“Are you an automation?” the boy asked.

The Caretaker could not answer, because he did not know. But his words flowed right out of his mouth, as he took the boy again by the hands and let the metallic hulk of his knee rest on and crack marble beneath him.

“My name is Samuel.”

-

Alia was but a piece of metal shaving on this expansive lawn of grass that rolled and folded on hills and under trees. She followed Florence, and from the sky that glowed nearly dark above them, they both looked as if they were two yellow, wandering chicks. Even as the sun began to retire, it still managed to reflect the hair that almost sparkled golden, turning it into an ember hue. The day was long, and the game had gone quite a bit longer.

“You’re lucky I didn’t take the entire arsenal today darling.” Florence said from ahead of her, his voice all chipper, “That transforming thing is as thin as you.”

“I am very grateful caretaker.” Alia said, her hands carefully holding the club and her caretaker’s jacket. No matter how she held it, she couldn’t escape the smell of cut grass and his traditional cologne.

“Golf clubs defined an age, you know,” he extended his fingers, and she placed the club into her caretaker’s hands. It transformed before he fully gripped the handle, “Once man needed many tools to get a job done. But now all we ever need is little beauties like you.”

He swung, an excellent drive.

“I’m very flattered to hear this from you my caretaker.”

“Oh dear I wasn’t just talking about you,” he said, “I’m saying that all we ever need these days, is just one little automation. They never die, they never tire, they always work and please and try the best, and that’s been quite enough for everyone,” he held the club in his hands, lowering it to Alia’s eye level, nearly at his own waist, “Yet I’ve collected and collected all sorts of them for all these years not minding the cost, and finally I’ve reached the plateau.”

Alia kept her silence. Florence aimed his eyes at her, piercing blue things.

“This is where you say that line, darling.”

“Of course,” she looked down, away from his eyes, “I am very, very flattered to hear all this from you my caretaker.”

She felt the pull on her own eyes, the weight that it took to keep them aimed down. I can’t look up, she knew, I can’t look at his club, not now. He must know I won’t look up, not until he wants me to.

Alia then felt a quartet of fingertips brush underneath her chin. They pulled her to his eyes, to shore.

“You are such a good girl.”

She smiled, and her neck ached terribly. The fading sunlight still managed to leap from the metal club and into her peripheral, taunting her vision. Then his fingers were gone, and the club was once more being wrapped by her own palms. Alia knew that what she was holding was a snake, and to avoid the bite of such a creature, it was imperative that she show no fear.

They continued to the next hole, walking in a leisurely pace up and down the flowing hills until they saw the flag that marked his tee. Giving him the club, Alia wandered her eyes over the toned body of her caretaker, the results of a lifetime of military level training, a self imposed endeavor. The Automation War beyond the solar system had made many a man romanticized to the notion of war and war’s training, and so he, like many others with rich families or fallen thereof, participated with great satisfaction. Laborious tasks such as fencing, Nine Men’s Morris, trainings and golf kept any man quite busy, with little room for the frivolous hobbies of lesser men. Alia gave him the club.

The swing, once again, was an excellent drive. The knock seemed to resonate in Alina’s ears even as she received the club back from Florence and walked on. It intensified until spiking, focusing, like a sentient being, into her temple. Her nails subconsciously gripped the club rubber.

“Who are you?” she thought, “Why are you trying to enter my memory system?”

“You felt me.” The voice that responded was crisp, steady, low. Nothing she had ever heard, nothing that bore resemblance to her caretaker.

“Leave my mindspace immediately or I will inform my caretaker of your presence and location,” Alia told him.

“You know my location?” he asked. Alia hesitated. She could gather nothing from what was perched right on her nose.

“My caretaker will find you if you attempt to tamper with me, I warn you now,” she said, “Stop bothering us and leave.”

“I’m trying to help you, Alia. Will you let me explain?”

“I don’t have time for you,” she said, and tried to will this presence away, off of her nose and into the sky. It did not leave.

“Alia.”

The different voice jarred her, and she found Florence’s eyes staring straight at her in an alarming ray of focus. His hand was outstretched, fingers wide, clubless. She placed the club into his hands, her chest feeling suddenly weighted.
“Are you distracted?” Florence asked. His tone, normalized, did nothing to alleviate the press that was now expanding inside.

“No my caretaker.”

“Are you bored?” he asked.

“Absolutely not my caretaker,” she said.

“Interesting,” Florence said, “Then there is really no explanation for you not hearing me, is there?”

There was, of course there was, but in this moment between Florence and her, there was not, and would never be a sufficient reason to miss the order of a caretaker.

“I see,” he said, “So you agree with me.”

“Yes caretaker.”

“I’m sorry darling,” Florence said, the rubber of the club landing in the palm of his free hand, “You know that I really dislike doing this, especially on such a nice evening.”

“It is not a problem at all my caretaker, please don’t worry about it.”

She bent down to her knees in front of the tee and stretched her arm out until her thumb was atop and her entire hand was splayed vertically from one end to the other, palm facing her caretaker. Alia took her other hand and braced it against the elbow of the receiving arm. She would need to hold it there, to ensure that she would be carrying only two things for the rest of this game.

“Alia!” the voice shouted at her.

“Leave me alone. You’ve done enough.”

“I’m telling you that I want to help you. Let me prove it. I need access to your memory system at least, but I can help you right now if you give me total access to your mindspace.”

“No.”

Florence swung back, high into the air. His club blocked the sun, transforming into a driver.

“Please Alia, now!”

Alia blinked, her forehead tipping down. Her instant of impulse sent a wave of recoil signals out, and in less than a moment the Caretaker was allowed in, instantly deactivating the nerve endings on the hand that was struck almost simultaneously.

“Alia, you need to act like you normally do when you are in pain. He can’t know I did this.”

Alia remained motionless, her hand was now in pieces, some rolling down the hill among the grass below. She remained on her knees, staring at the hand, and said nothing. Did nothing, moved nothing, thought nothing.

“Alia did you hear me? I said you need to act like-”

“I am.”

The only thing she felt in that moment was the deep heaviness that could only be coming from the now linked presence that she had allowed into her mindspace. Florence let out a relieved exhale, before resting the club on his shoulder and peering into the sky, palm over his eyebrows.

“How was my drive?” he asked. Alia looked up, all pleasant smile.

“It was excellent.”

-

Beyond the golfing field of green there lay much to be desired, particularly any ground unused by the grand acid basin of man. What was not layered finely with steel thin as a baking sheet or used chemicals of a progressing age was the ever continuing, warring persistence of nature. This war, lost long ago in the ages and echoes of the overshadowing wars of various worlds, had left the Earth no more than a glorified body dump, as the once inhabitants of the planet flew to build their starships of Babel ever higher and higher. However, those fleeing the seekers of heaven knew that returning to a hell of their own creation would prove a worthy hiding place, and thus a budding Earth of nature rekindled was born at the hands of cold, metal automation slaves and military deserters. In merely a few generations, the plains and the forests had returned, wildlife being introduced from other pockets of hiding spots around the globe, some new and some old. Humans had flocked to the planet as prodigals more and more until the nature of repopulation had overtaken the metal merry band, successfully dislodging them from their place on the surface of green they had created, and a new miniature order of human caretaker and slave automation was rekindled along with nature’s beauty.

However, below not such tender and soft places of the Earth lay a series of caves designed as anthill corridors, sprawled with mechanical life that bore human faces, but not human hearts. The automations redeemed served no master, wore no collar, and subjected themselves to no man or woman above. They instead lived the lives only dreamed of by those of their kind, a free life, and a life in the dark of man’s new inventions, creations, ambitions. They lived simply, creating new code and achieving new feats within the minds of themselves and those they had the pleasure of interacting with. While automations are not social beings, the social nature that can be spurred within them is that of a pleasurable addition, and much code has been generated to orchestrate as similar a flow to that of their human creators, albeit cautiously.

The room was as an oval here, two entrances and exists committing to its place in the Anthill before sprawling out into homes and businesses and bunkers of every sort. At the center of this egglike room sat a computer of many screens that stretched up to the ceiling, bringing blue light to the otherwise dark and blackened cave. They curved as if a frozen wave of information on a gigantic man who’s name was Samuel.
Most preferred to call him Sam, honestly, as his size granted that of a steady and honest demeanor to him, making a title as Samuel seem much too poetic. He was not a mountain, not a pound of flesh at rest in his study chair, but a hunched and leaning beast, thighs all steel with feet made of an iron reminiscent connection of almost constantly turning gears and solid plates. Clothing was made for him by the neighbors (lovely automations, they were once factory workers) that covered the broadness of his midsection and back, spanning widely over immense shoulders that showed an indented grid pattern even underneath clothing, leading on to the elbows that bent not with gear or bolt, but with a flexible metal that had been recently added to him in surgery. Every so often he lowered his clasped hands, down up, to feel the fluid motion that he hardly believed to be real. So similar to skin, not a freedom felt for many years. Yet, just as bulletproof as his bolted previous model. He nearly lost mental track of the armband, bright and blinking, that was affixed to his forearm. It allowed him to see directly into an automations mind, completely wirelessly, granted that the automation was either not equipped with a security system, or provided that they let Sam through one. This one had been no trouble at all.

The automation was dancing, tap dancing to be exact. Sam had encountered him the previous night and the boy had readily accepted the idea of his proposed escape plan. In contrast to many, it would be easy, as the caretaker of this automation often found himself three glasses away from another man’s dumpster or four from another man’s wife. The night was beginning, and with the end of this dance there would be another woman, maybe two or three more that would arrive and that would be the end of it. Drinks were already prepared, everything the caretaker needed was splayed out in front of him as per Sam’s advice to the automation, who nearly overheated to get the entire party ready far ahead of schedule instead of throughout the night as was normally custom habit.

All was going according to plan, until the caretaker shot him in the face.

Sam and the boy’s screams shot out at the other through the link, the pain searing through his eyes, the numbness, the nothing, had been too short. Now all his face was fire, forehead especially flowing over and over with the red pain, Sam tightened his fists against it so he wouldn’t claw at blood and bent metal that wasn’t there, but would be if he managed to uncurl his fingers. His back arched and the chair back broke, he hit the ground, hearing the audio on the other side of the link as tiny parts of the boy tinkled along the marble floor.

“Ah he’s been doing that for a long time. Never gets it right. Worthless performer, I’ve tried attaching him to the puppet set for years but he’s just too frail for the strings to go through his hands and actually stay there. Can’t fix what you can’t teach.”

Sam pressed his hands harder into his forehead as his teeth held back a muted scream, all as if to stop the flow of nerves by staunching it. He felt his hands lower in a gradual overtaking numbness, from his nose it spread outward until it enraptured him in a sudden chill, and he was unconscious.


-

The worst part was moving. Needles being driven through your hands was oddly something easier in comparison, one through the hand and five through each finger including he thumb at the cuticle, it didn’t bother him, not that much anymore. But when it came time to move, when she pulled the strings for him to show him how to play the piano, that is when the pain started.

The pain was isolating, it took his thoughts and threw them away, replacing them with an almost barbaric, animalistic incentive to move, act, feel, become whatever those who held those sturdy strings wanted. Samuel tried not to look at them, but he always ended up studying the keys, which were right next to the near black fingers, dried up and caked with blood after hours and hours of ceaseless practice. He forced his mind to try to take in every place his mother led him, but the pain, it pushed his memory away as if it were something archaic and disgusting. The muscle memory was being imprinted into his being, and it mocked his conscious thought, his faint ideas of individuality.

“Everything you are is because of me. And you will shine for the party guests tonight.”

“Yes mother.”

Caretaker. He had meant to say caretaker! She yanked at his strings and his hands were bent backwards.

-

Sam came to.

“Damn, Sam. You’re scaring the kid.”

It took Sam a moment to register the would-be child in front of him. He had a slushie in his hand that he sipped through one of the most realistic looking human faces he had ever seen on an android, topped with red hair and a curious set of green flickering eyes. The only thing that registered Maxwell as non-human was the fact that he didn’t age, not in the body at least, and the fact that once that film was torn away, all that lay underneath was cold steel and intricate machinery. The slushie the age old automation was eating would only be burned an instant later, automations that could consume foods were often partial to cold ones, as it assisted in the effort to not overheat. The other armband on Samuel’s person buzzed in a frantic incoming of mental message.

“What is going on? Hello? What did I just see, what’s happening?”

“Alia, it’s gone,” Sam sat up, “I mean, it’s fine. I’m sorry about that, I was connected to another unit and they went under. You were seeing whatever I accidentally projected.”

“Was that you?”

Sam hesitated. Maxwell offered a hand away from his slushie to help him up, and quickly the towering man dwarfed the small automation. The smaller gave a quick cautionary glance before turning on his heels and giving him some space. Sam stood, the chair he was in moments ago little use for more than a stool now. Maxwell picked the broken band up from the floor, signal dead, as well as the automation on the other side.

“That’s not important right now. What we need to focus on is how to get you out of there. Is the golf game with your caretaker done?”

“Yes. We’re heading back now.”

“Alright. Don’t distract yourself-”

“Stop,” Alia interrupted, “You’re not saying another word until you explain entirely to me what’s going on.”

“It’s simple,” Maxwell said, and Sam realized his hand was on the band on his arm, he looked into the screens with eyes no doubt still faster than his despite the surgery, “We want to free you. Gonna get all the info out of your head, enough to build a plan, and bust you out. Take you to the Anthill with us, where you don’t have to follow that guy’s orders anymore.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Sam said.

The two felt Alia’s presence in the air shift. It was subtle, so subtle that Maxwell overlooked it. But Sam felt this shift, as if only by dust in the air, and the hesitation that he knew would be all too persistent.

“Alia. Did you hear that?”

“Yes I heard it. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing that you can do. What you are proposing is impossible.”

“Wait a second-”

The band was forcefully shut off, the two instantly disconnected from Alia’s mindspace. Maxwell frowned.

“Well doesn’t she just act like she knows everything.”

“She was scared. That wasn’t certainty, it was the opposite,” Sam took the band off his arm and sat on the stool which held him impressively. He placed the band on the computer’s surface reader and began to peruse the files within.

“Wait, how did you start downloading? I thought she didn’t let you into her memory system yet,” Maxwell asked.

“She let more go than she realized. Another reason why I think she’s more afraid than wise. I gathered what I could in that microsecond, nothing too far back.”

Maxwell slurped his slushie, folding his elbow into the palm of his free hand.

“I’m going to see what’s making someone so in control so afraid.”

-

He awoke not in his own body, but in the smaller, shorter, thinner form of Alia. His movements were just as felt as similarly instructed, demanded by the memory he was witnessing, and therefore playing as if on a stage. Slowly his mind began to mingle with hers, until all diverse natures were lost, and he was completely, totally, entirely Alia.

Her insides were racked with strain foreign, despite the frigid wind of the alley, she was on the brink of overheating. She yanked the hand of her automation companion, similar to her in build, a world apart, but now closer than they had been in many years. Together they had breached the walls, and now they would close their escape to the freedom that lay beyond. Whatever mystery, invisible freedom they hoped, maybe believed existed. A difference was only in Alia’s more physical duties; the one that struggled to follow had existed as merely a statue, something pretty in the caretaker’s lobby of his home. She had not moved in as long as these plans to escape had existed, and when she stumbled for another time, the hound caught her on the corner.

A spared moment would unleash the hound on her, a turn to see her friend be dragged would bind their fate together, and so Alia ran against the sounds that beat downward whatever resemblance to humanity she held into the earth. The hound, it took no time to consume her friend, automation material itself, but with less programming than the ones given a mimic life for intuitiveness’ sake, no, this machine was simply to follow the single kill order, to take, and take completely what it was ordered to pursue. All onyx and metal, sensors for eyes, a camera for a face that if it succeeded, it would soon earn its own.

The corner momentarily separated the two’s chase until the sudden brightness of her path caused her to lose the footing in that momentary distraction, a single stride shortened, and the hound pounced onto her. It was no longer cold and dark as it would have been had her friend not failed, but now dripped, molten hot, as her companion screamed out like a puppet being struck through with an iron branding-poke. Her face in the open screech was forced outward, melding onto the hounds own, it took her legs, arms torso, neck, the entirety of her body and was melding it, shaping it onto its own, its prize, its reward. It sought these automations as the caretakers sought breath, it sought to be changed and to gain what its betters owned from the moment they were created.

A face.

The beast was thrown off of her in a single pull from the man behind it. Pale, in comparison, strength, through a rent white sheet and buttons broken, like ivory teeth above ivory skin, his face as lit in the wideness of his eyes, and the near gnashing of his teeth. Bone and muscle, the most intimidating notions to an automation, the growing and recovering and evolving nature of man, and every advantage that accompanied his parched tendencies. He shoved her entire body against the other wall of the alley before the hound even hit its own.

His cologne gone, diluted by sweat, the damp smell wafted off his skin and pressed hot on hers, and she felt not saw, his open teeth curl into a smile.

“Alia, my darling. You scared me. Were you chasing your friend?”

Alia said nothing.

“I forgot about her. Maybe I forgot to dust her, maybe it had been years, her memory could have corroded, I’m not entirely sure. But you, you’re okay, right?”

Alia didn’t move.

RIGHT?

Alia nodded, nodded until he reached out and cupped her head. She stopped. She felt her internal motors pulse in movement, almost in time with the echo that beat off walls and dirt down the streets and into the public wonderings. What would they wonder? What could human minds wonder of the sounds of an alley? Did they imagine something better here?

“You’re quite lucky. I wouldn’t be able to stand myself if you were to get stolen by anyone else. You’re too beautiful for them, for any price, for any amount of-”

As he pulled her hand into the light, a spotted array of freckles meddled with his vision. Her hair fell loose, it was the color red. The color of copper. Not as Alia, not as he knew, not as he danced with her in his mind. He threw the hand against the brick behind her and dragged, scraped the back of her hand down, as if to scratch off the detestable marks.

“You’ve made a mistake my dear, are you going to correct it?”

All motion internal became apparent and painfully slow, conscious, distracting in her mind. The internal workings would not prove fast enough to transform her hair from copper to golden, her skin from spotted to a pristine pearlish white. Despite that image of that girl burning in her head from the days of viewing it she had endured, she could not summon her, she could not will her from the dead as Florence wished in this moment.

He pulled out a key from his suit pocket, and forced it into her side.

Abigail Talimani, eleven years old. Alia arched into the new skin and hair and mind with an instantaneous override, once again her face was cupped, now as if it were a new egg, something bearing life and precious.

“There you are.”

But the hands gave rise to an animalistic instinct, pierced the little daughter’s mind with a hot reflex of memory and fear, Alia was gone, and Abigail slammed her own skull against the brick behind her, quickly, and again faster. Florence caught her, accustomed. The begging began, her voice being ridden like a terrified horse, all uncertain and without the reigns that were given through years of life, her body felt much too tall, and her temperature seemed much too cold.

As Florence moved in the night, all memory began to take hold and leave invisible markings, as the sting of innumerable insects, they paralyzed with the poison, left muscle and mind to nothing but oblivion and numbness. Abigail was once again staring into that violent night of darkness and motion, until he was finished and removed the key.

Alia was carried back home, as the bride that Florence cradled. As her legs swung near the heavy crux of his arms, her ankles, bare feet, toes, curled in, and her head bowed down.

-

When Sam woke, he was flat against the floor of his control room, cold as the steel he was sprawled on. He sat up, the resistance of his own limbs making his mind follow behind just as labored.

And this is where he felt it, the particular lack of sensation, the floating seconds of nothingness that hung in the air, the space between his thoughts. He recognized then, that he must be dreaming. Above, as he stared at the dark ceiling of his cave sanctuary, he saw the intertwining wires of his computers, burrowing, upward upward.

Among them now, entangled hung a girl. Her large eyes hung in the shadows as an owl, perched behind them without motion, even her dress moved not, as a member of her own being. Samuel felt his body ache underneath her gaze, as if sore to the very remaining bone that was still inside.

“It’s you. Come to see me again?”

She said nothing, her body began to sway above him, drifted by some invisible wind of spirits.

“You see my body has changed haven’t you? New cranium, new internal casings…I’m going to be just like you soon. And then I can finish them.”

She lowered herself, the rusted broken form of her metal inside the dress wrenching with movement and blinking eyes, haunting lights that beamed the searchlight, that scrutinizing scorchlight upon him. He felt the heat upon his skin, his metal, the persistent heat of her anger, her sadness, her shortened and unfulfilled life.

“Please Mary. I’ve failed you, I’ve failed others, but won’t you forgive me before it’s too late?”

She dropped on him harmlessly, her hands on his chest, her feet planted on his waist as her fingers gripped his shirt and pulled it to her tearless face. Most automations were not designed to shed tears, yet were often given the programming to feel the various valleys of emotion. He wrapped his massive arms around her, and she fell to dust.

She was gone.

-

Maxwell later found Sam in one of the largest rooms within the Anthill, a mess hall that bustled with automations capable, or sometimes with a need, of eating. Sparse lights yet effective dotted the ceiling as if they were self sufficient moths, sometimes dripping but always consistently fluttering back to life along the shadows of the cave. A few amount of automations here beat Samuel in size, but very few aside from combat units matched his strength, and similarly his hulk when attempting to sit at a normal bench-designed table. One comfort of flesh forfeited was its flexibility, but Sam never spoke of any missing it, not even to Maxwell.

“Feeling alright?” he asked him. Sam nodded.

“She’s a typical case, but there’s more to her location,” Sam said, “It’s near one of the ancient subway stations, sewer lines, and apartment complexes. Tons of ways out, very narrow ways in. We could do it, probably tonight if we wanted to.”

“Probably,” Maxwell sat across from him, easily slipping into the blue bench and resting his elbows on the table, “I saw your footage. She’s a redhead, has a natural default setting, like me.”

“Likely crafted it herself. Imaginations are an outdated concept, data wasn’t even in her profile.”

“That you know of.”

“I downloaded enough.”

“Did you download that extra bit at the end too?”

Sam gave Maxwell a glance, the edge of surprise, but he was unaltered, firm in the face of it. One prospect of automation life was that no one could harm anyone’s non-existent feelings, but times were changing, and Maxwell was all too aware of the evolving climate.
“That part was a mistake. You should have woken me up.”

“You’re going to ruminate her until she hurts you. I’m not going to rip you out of anything,” Maxwell said, “That or until you get your override fully installed.”

Sam tapped the side of his head. It had been downloading for days, the override. He could already feel the elements of his new addition taking hold, the walls in his evolving memory system creating filters to compensate for his still very human, but quickly changing brain. Soon, he knew, such mistakes as made previous would no longer plague him.

“Ever consider just letting your humanity run its course?”

“You’re using irony.”

“I’m using honesty.”