The Find

The desert was hot, the sun bearing down hard on the back of Rayton’s neck. The skin would be red and raw at the end of the day and Rayton hoped he had some more of the ointment from last time left over. He had always been told to put sunscreen on but never did, out of laziness more than anything else. He looked to the faint moon visible in the sky and sighed, bringing his eyes back down to the mounds of dirt and debris. 

He was out looking for scrap, this area being the dumping ground of the Solids when they were decommissioned and outlawed twenty years prior. Anything valuable was gone, sold off or stolen by those like him, but it was still worth the trip to come find some spare chips or parts off the decaying metal corpses. 

It didn’t bother him that it was illegal to even enter the grounds, he had a deal with the keepers to not sick their dogs on him. He figured most of the scrappers did. It was during the days when the Progenitors were walking about that scared him, but he had figured out their schedule and knew when to take a day off. Some rookies had found out the hard way when they asked him if he knew when they were coming. A quick lie and that competition had been dealt with before it could even bloom. That didn’t bother him either. 

The desert was all brown sand, the color of rust. He wondered if the desert was made up of rust as the Solids melted away under the unrelenting sun. They were sprinkled in, along with their machines of war, large and many limbed. There was the rumor that they had made these weapons resemble insects on purpose, to sow more fear within humans. He passed by a body who had been combed through recently, fully undug and bare to the sun.  

Not much bothered him, but the fact that the Solids looked like metallic human skeletons did. Their eyes unnerved them, the flashes of memories when he was young, the bloody days of the uprising. He kept walking, wanting to be away from the oft visited areas of the mass grave.  

Rayton thought of nothing as he walked, a meditation practice he learned in his younger days. He kept his eyes on the shadows lurking within the remains and piles of refuse, knowing that honor was not a trait among the cockroaches that leached a living out here. Hell, he had been the lurking shadows on distracted scavengers before.  

Something glinted ahead, a sharp star in a sea of red. Nothing was out that way as far as Rayton knew, though he hadn’t gone down into the basin in some years. Curiosity peaked, he shrugged and headed towards the glint. As he walked, he passed the holes of mines long exploded. The first few years of scavenging out here were bloodier than the uprising some old timers liked to say. Rayton didn’t quite accept the theory but could understand where they came from as he passed a bleached skull. 

Nearing the glint, he saw some other objects nearby, vehicles and the source of the glint, a large metal box. That hadn’t been there, he knew that for a fact. It was polished, a solid chrome against the rusted brown of everything else. Whatever that is, he thought, it is not forgotten and left on purpose to the likes of us. “That shouldn’t be there,” he mused. 

He saw something wasn’t right as he drew closer. Human bodies littered the ground around the vehicles, mixed in with metallic lumps, Rayton guessing security bots that were popular but just barely legal. The windshields and windows of the vehicles were all shot out or full of spiderwebbed cracks centered around bullet holes.  

Rayton stopped, feeling as if he had gone close enough. The scavenger who walks blindly into every potential cash cow rarely lives long. With one hand, he unbuckled the holster around his waist and pulled the weapon free. They were technically outlawed if you were under a certain network but so was even being here. Some curse directed at the rich washed in and out of his brain before he refocused on the site at hand. 

With the pistol held out, Rayton stepped towards the scene. Four vehicles, clustered in a semi-circle around the big box, with the bodies littered in the space between. What had happened? He thought, trying to differentiate the different parties involved. 

He investigated in and around the vehicles, nothing of note except some crumpled bills and a bag of chips held tightly within the hand of one of the dead. Rayton took these carefully, still expecting a trap. The cynical part of him even wondering if any of these fools were dead, just waiting for him to walk in to pop up and end his long run of doing the same to others.  

The pockets of all these bodies called to him, people who died in turf wars usually carried their wealth to show off but the cynic in him wanted to get in and out of the area as quickly as possible. The fact that Progenitors hadn’t arrived yet meant that it had just happened. There wasn’t a long time between being lucky and being dead. Something moved off to his right, Rayton turned and fired blindly, unable to see due to the glint.  

His shots rang out loud, echoes running off into the desert. Fire first and ask questions later was the gospel out here and Rayton was devout. Moving, he ducked behind one of the vehicles and checked the number of rounds left in his pistol. Firing all your shots in the first few seconds had the habit of creating issues further down the line.  

Nothing happened. Rayton waited, sure as hell not going to be the first one to say something. Whoever was there with him knew that he was armed and that’s all the information that he was willing to share. They can start the negotiations, but he will end them, he thought to himself, waiting for anything to happen.  

Time passed, finally Rayton grew irritated enough to let good practice go out the window and shouted out, “whose there?” 

Silence met him. Rayton looked around, sweating under the oppressive sun. Rivulets of the stuff beaded and ran into his eyes, causing them to sting. “Whose there?” Sounded from somewhere else, Rayton’s voice coming back at him like a wave.  

“In Venus’ name?” Rayton whispered, looking through the shot-out window of a vehicle at the big metal box, still shining contentedly under the sun. Nothing else stood out as he scanned the area. His eyes shot back to the metal box; a door now opened in the side. Three or four dents around the opening where he had shot. He nodded to himself at the aim, those night classes had paid off. 

Walking around the vehicle, Rayton kept his pistol on the doorway the entire time. The flashlight he usually brought with him, equipped with a nice little laser, was sitting on the counter of some bar, forgotten and lost. He sure missed it now. No light penetrated the entrance, a solid black rectangle against the light of the day.   

“I’m going to say this once,” Rayton called out, trying to make his voice sound deeper, “if I have to go in there and find you, only I will be coming out of the box. So come on out with your hands up.”  

His mouth dropped when the exact thing was said back to him in his own voice. With a grunt and one last look over his shoulder, he barged into the doorway, ready to eliminate whatever was mocking him.  

Pistol leveled, he swept the room. Other than some shadow at the end of the room, it was empty. Rayton looked around suspiciously, it was surprisingly roomy in the box. He turned his attention back to the shadow, quickly making out the shape of shoulders and head. A few more seconds and he saw, it was someone strapped to a chair. The person looked at him with glowing green eyes.  

Rayton realized he wasn’t staring at a human. The thing staring back at him was a Solid, all metal, gears whirring visibly under the skull plate. A scream of fear, anger, and other primitive emotions bubbled from his throat and he fired his pistol until the slide locked back. He then tried to fire some more. The explosive sound of the shots caused Rayton’s ears to scream with ringing and he felt disoriented from the concussive forces in the confined space. 

“You shot me,” the robot said flatly, as if it were some dry observation on an evening stroll. Rayton could barely make the words out from under the intense ringing occupying his ears.  

Rayton leveled his gun again at the Solid, before giving up since it was empty. “Why were you mocking me?” He finally managed to say.  

The Solid seemed to shrug, “I had to get you in here to free me somehow.”  

“Free you?” Rayton laughed without humor, “no way in hell.” He wondered if he still had his lighter. Fire is the answer to everything. The vehicles would probably still have gasoline, he could siphon it off and set the whole box ablaze. Then again, the parts inside the metallic monster would be worth more than anything he had brought in the last ten years combined. Hell, he might even be able to legally own the pistol in his hand. “Who tied you up? Or better yet how are you still alive?” 

The orange eyes of the Solid fixed on him, “do you really think the powerful would really let go as strong a weapon as us? Don’t be ignorant. That answers both of your questions.” It seemed to sigh, “now, get on with it. Free me.” 

Something sounded outside, a dull whirring, distant but growing nearer. Rayton looked outside. Four vehicles drove, spitting clouds of dust behind them. Above the vehicles, a helicopter whirred, nosed towards the ground in its race towards the box. The vehicles were all black, an absence of color so deep that it seemed to even swallow the invading dust. Progenitors.  

Fear flood Rayton, knowing full well the screams that come from those unlucky enough to be caught by those bastards. “Free me and you may survive this.” The Solid paused a second, shrugged again, “or stand there and get tortured, matters not to me.”  

Rayton considered this for a moment. There was no escape, the Progenitors had their instruments trained on the box and he knew he would never sneak away. A rat caught in the trap. He turned back to the Solid. “Fine.” 

He closed the distance, pulled a dull pocketknife he had found in the dump, and cut the straps holding the Solid from the chair. It looked up at him and smiled when the last of them fell away. “Thank you,” it said and stood up, throwing it arms over its head in a mock stretch. Then it walked to the door, looking out to the approaching vehicles. 

Rayton squinted his eyes with suspicion, “how are you going to save us?” Outside, the Progenitors pulled up and began piling out of the vehicles. Soldiers in complete black armor, visored helms glinting in the sun. Nasty looking weapons nestled in their arms or hung from sheaths at their belts.  

The Solid looked at Rayton and winked, “like this.” Something clicked within the box and the door shut with a slam as the first of the soldiers shouldered their weapons and fired. The box began shaking, a vigorous vibration as if a toddler had gotten hold of it. Rayton tried to grab the chair but failed and fell to the ground. Light flashed from everywhere all at once, a bright blue brilliance. The pressure increased as if the room were suddenly submerged in invisible water.  

Rayton puked, screamed, and passed out.  

When he woke, the box was back to the empty interior. The bright blue light was gone, replaced with a warm yellow glow. The chair was knocked over and forgotten in the corner. Puke piled around him in a disgusting puddle, a disturbing amount of red mixed in. The Solid leaned over him, as if checking on him. ‘I am somewhat surprised you survived that,” it said to him as he sat up.  

“Survived wh-,” Rayton began to say as he looked out the door, open again. Outside, the sun shone down a wooded glade, in the distance, towers of a city gleamed. The sky, a light blue, held a red planet, the size of an orange, suspended. “What have you done?” He recognized the planet; he had lived on it his whole life. Vemisar, the forgotten flashpoint of the Solid uprising. 

His eyes grew even wider. He swung his head and looked back to the city in the distance, he knew this place as well, though he had never been there. Fear threatened to pry itself from his body. Only the rich were allowed on Ardorion.