Scorch

"Attention inmates. This is an advisory notice. Today’s HEAT, previously scheduled for 16:33:07, is now expected to initiate at 16:06:34. Anticipated duration: Fourteen minutes. Revised intensity level: 20. All prisoners will cease operations imminently. All Scorpiens will return their charges to their Habitats. Protective protocols must be complete by 16:04. Notice ends."

The garbled message, issued from the speakers in her helmet, ended with a crackle and Eva lowered her welding gun from a grid of metal girders, turning to look at her guard.

“20?” she said, staring at the chrome-plated Scorpien with her one seeing eye while licking her mutilated lips. “That’s a…mistake, right?”

“Negative,” the android with the flexible arms made of interlocking mirrored metal strips and the head that looked like a camera lens replied, stepping off a rock and coming closer. “Control doesn’t report mistakes. Just updates. Please secure your instruments in advance of departure.”

“In advance? Fuck that, Flint, let’s go! Jesus, level 20? Do you know what that would do to me? 14 turned me into the beautiful specimen you get to drool over every night, I’d flare up like a firework at 20. The instruments will be fine!”  

Fighting talk, urgent words, but worthless. 

“Calm yourself, Ms Thorn. You have sufficient time to stow your tools. It’s not good practice to leave Orion Org equipment exposed to the elements. Losses and damages add additional days to your sentence.”

“Like that matters. Add as much as you want just…ahh…release the lock on these goddamn boots and take me back!”

She didn’t like losing her composure. Not since those long miserable years and that one fatal summer when her world stopped and she mourned for eternity. Eternity that followed a lifetime of suffering, a lifetime that wasn’t hers but that she’d lived every second of nonetheless. A three year span of burning skin and gasping breath, agonising torment that she’d felt second-hand but her Angel had endured to the max. And would have endured more if she hadn’t… But she didn’t need to dwell on that anymore. Not now she knew exactly what kind of suffering her baby had…

“Negative,” the Scorpien classified as Flintlock-645 advised, flexing its synthetic arms. “And if you won’t comply, I’ll do it for you.”

Eva squeezed her eyes shut and counted to ten, the pockmarked tissue on her cheeks stiffening in resistance while her legs began to move against her will. Thud hiss thud hiss thud, the steps her hydraulic-powered boots made on the cracked, dry ground kicked up plumes of wispy, red dust. Three years into a fifty year sentence for ‘murder’, she was more than accustomed to giving up control while a Scorpien moved her. Making her go where it wanted, stopping her in her tracks, navigating her through rust-coloured sandstorms, to work on construction sites with her fellow inmates, building an outpost for humanity. 

The real humanity. Those who hadn’t been sentenced to decades of labour terraforming Scorpia Minor for when the survivors of a dying Earth would have to live there.

“It’s 15:57,” she said, watching through her filthy visor as she was moved to the workbench where her tools awaited. Wrench, rivet gun, angle grinder. Thud hiss thud hiss thud. Allowing her legs to be dragged along by the self-propelling boots she was strapped into morning til night. And then, when she reached the bench and Flint drew the boots to a halt, the gloves took over, actioning her hands. “They said…be secure by 16:04. That means 16:02 for me. Not that I’m questioning your judgement but…do we have enough time?”

“Affirmative,” Flint, now standing beside her, said, swivelling his head on a ball-bearing neck and winking his aperture eye. “I am aware of your requirements. Have I failed to secure you in advance of HEAT before?”

“Uh, have you seen my face? And my eye? And forty-seven percent of my body?”

She could have secured the tools herself but the Scorpien wasn’t giving her the option, remote-operating her hands via the clunky, multi-jointed gloves and making them do what was needed. In this case, the simple task of retrieving her equipment and attaching it to magnetic panels on her suit. He hadn’t had to stop her attacking her fellow prisoners or turning a drill on herself in some time. Ending her life had been high on her list of things to do when she’d first arrived on Scorpia Minor, Scorch as it was affectionately known, but after three attempts when her gloves had stopped her, she’d learned it was all a waste of time.

“That occurred before we were aware of your condition. Also, you brought it on yourself by attempting to saw through inmate #35967’s arm. You knew the rules. You knew the punishment. If I hadn’t stopped you, it would have been worse. They’d have sent you to the Quarry. I wouldn’t have been able to help and we’d both be dead.”

“Inmate #35967 is an asshole,” Eva said, as her gloves picked up a knife and spirit level and ‘clanked’ them into place on her suit. “She has no idea what I had to deal with. What I went through. ‘Your girl was just allergic to heat.’ Fuck off, bitch.”

“Certainly her attitude needed adjustment. But that was for Control to facilitate. You earned your punishment of being locked out during HEAT. It’s standard disciplinary action and an effective deterrent. To the average inmate it’s a painful, uncomfortable ordeal, accompanied perhaps by mild singing. We weren’t aware how the composition of Scorpia Minor’s atmosphere would affect your condition in a much more severe way than...”

“Cholinergic Urticaria,” Eva interrupted, pronouncing every syllable of the two dreaded words with clinical precision. “Say it.”

“Indeed. We weren’t aware how Scorpia Minor’s atmospheric conditions would trigger your cholinergic urticaria and cause your body to burn. Once I became aware of what was happening, I granted you access to Habitat, disobeyed orders to save you and consequently saving myself. Punishment for a Scorpien who loses their charge is disassembly. You know I don’t want to die.” 

As if in response to the pounding of her heart, Flint increased the speed of her boots as he took her out of the skeletal structure and over to a storage box at the base of a hill. Around them, several dozen of her fellow prisoners–clad in the same orange suits as she and secured in the same gloves and boots–continued working, no doubt eyeing the ‘child killer’ and seething at her perceived special treatment.

Her visor displayed 15:58.

“I know,” Eva said, droplets of sweat running into the corners of her eyes, only the left of which winked in discomfort. Her unseeing right eye, a lifeless orb with a cloudy lens, retina seared by the effects of being exposed to Scorch’s Harmful Environmental Atmospheric Transmissions for a full fifteen seconds, didn’t react. “I’m just nervous. There was a time I wanted to die but…not like that. Not anymore. Can we just take the tools to Habitat?”

“Negative,” said Flint, as she arrived at the box. “You are permitted to return to your cell two minutes prior to everyone else before emission of HEAT. I have never not fulfilled that instruction in the year since it was given. You can trust me.”

“I appreciate that,” Eva said, allowing her hands to be manipulated into transferring tools from her suit to the box. “But things can go wrong. Like that time we got bogged down in the marsh in sector 37. And the red smog rolled in. We hadn’t reached Habitat by the time the first salvo of waves hit. If not for the crew guiding it closer…”

She cut herself off to swallow the lump that had caught in her throat while scanning the wilderness around her. She wasn’t sure if it was a bead of sweat or a tear that ran from her eye down her burn-scarred cheek, but if she wasn’t crying now she knew she should be. The memory of her fifteen seconds in Hell, with hair alight and insides melting, flesh blistering and burning, was bad enough, but the knowledge that her daughter had experienced something similar every day of her life was so much worse. 

Her precious Angel. 

Inheriting cholinergic urticaria through no fault of her own. An aggressive strain to which she was highly sensitive, in the super-heated temperatures of an Earth experiencing an ever worsening global warming crisis. At average daily temperatures that had already surpassed 41 degrees, her baby had needed to be kept in an air conditioned incubator for the first months of her life, then kept wrapped in gauze, then kept covered in balm, then kept immersed in cold water, all the while with her skin covered in painful hives and an itchy rash, with her throat swollen from anaphylaxis, unable to sleep, constantly in pain, unable to play or go outside. None of it had been fair. And Eva had blamed herself. Right up until she took responsibility and did what had to be done to end the suffering.

“That was a miscalculation,” said Flint, as she placed the last of her equipment in the box and found herself stepping away. “I now keep three routes back to Habitat prepped at all times. Stop fretting. It is 15:59:04. The Habitat is less than two minutes walk at a pace of 10 kilometres per hour, which your boots will maintain. But don’t mistake my confidence for nonchalance. I understand your concern. And your fear. If I was capable of emotions and had a body that could spontaneously combust, I would experience terror also.”   

Concern. Fear. Terror. All those things, Eva thought, keeping her eyes on the ground as her boots propelled her on, up the red-tinged hills at the outskirts of the settlement-in-progress towards the Habitat that waited beyond. And don’t forget pain. The pain of being cooked from the inside out due to the particular wavelength and mixture of photons in Scorch’s infrared radiation, its so-called HEAT, released into the atmosphere through geothermal vents in the planet’s surface.

And wasn’t it an ironic form of justice. Mercy killing by another name was the crime she’d been convicted of, but her real sin had been giving birth. Passing on an hereditary condition. One that was known to worsen through successive generations. The release she’d eventually given was too little too late and she deserved every bit of punishment she could derive here.

These were her thoughts as she was guided to the crest of the hill and down, her powerboots doing the work, her lungs at rest, clammy hands sweaty in their gloves. The display on the inside of her visor showed 16:01 as the fourteen-wheeled Habitat loomed into view. Home to twenty cells. Eighteen currently occupied. Each housing a prisoner and guard. And this prisoner and guard were the first to arrive. 

“See?” said Flint, as he hacked the Habitat’s systems to open the door, extending a ramp to the ground. “You will be secure soon, two minutes before everyone else, four minutes before the first thermal energy waves emit, six minutes before HEAT. Nothing to worry about.”

“Nothing to worry about,” Eva repeated, as her boots took her up the ramp, into the belly of the behemoth-like Habitat, down the narrow aisle to her cell. Cell 10. One of those closest to the entrance, the door of which slid open as she approached, connected to and activated by Flint. “Except another forty seven years hiding when it gets too hot.”

The time changed to 16:02.

“You are not unique in that,” Flint said, following her into the window-less quarters, which contained nothing more than a bed, chair and table, metal toilet and magno-pad charger for her boots and gloves. “Nobody likes HEAT. Nobody needs to endure it. Nobody other than you would die in it, but this is moot, as everyone is always secured.”

“Okay, well…shit,” Eva sighed, stepping onto the magno-pad and sliding her hands into wall-mounted receptacles as the door hissed shut. With four simultaneous ‘clunks’, the boots and gloves cracked open, allowing her to remove hands and feet. “I didn’t mean to question you. I just…the thought of what would happen in a 20, I… No. Not going to think about it.”

Having taken a moment to wiggle her fingers and toes, she undid the metal clasps that secured her helmet to her suit and twisted it off with a clank.

Before it came off, the visor read 16:03.

“Thank you. For getting me safe. I think I’ll lie down for a bit.”

“Be my guest,” said Flint, taking up position by the door, arms curled into his shoulders. “We’ll head back at 16:25. Enjoy your respite.”

Eva nodded, massaging the back of her neck, unperturbed by the landscape of scar tissue she felt there, a result of those awful fifteen seconds. Worse than anything Angel had endured. But not much.

Suit still on, she sat on her bed and dropped back, moving as the scars on her body allowed, tight skin objecting. Then she lay. On an uncomfortable mattress. Staring at a rust-dotted ceiling. Taking deep breaths to calm her pounding heart. Outside, she heard heavy, stomping feet as the others arrived. She let her eyes flicker shut. Maybe she could sleep. She knew Flint liked to watch her…

Her eyes popped open and she sat bolt upright, ignoring the pain in her muscles.

“What time is it?” she gasped, the waxy, puckered fingers of one hand grasping her throat as her eyes darted round the cell wildly.

“16:06,” Flint replied. “Thermal waves have begun to issue. HEAT will imminently occur. Relax, Ms Thorn. You are safe…”

“Something’s wrong. I don’t feel the cold and…”

“Ms Thorn?”

“I can’t…I can’t breathe, Flint! And I’m getting warm. The air conditioning’s not working! Something’s wrong with the generator…”

“Negative. According to my readings, everything’s normal.”

“It’s not!”

Panicked now, she pushed herself off the bed, hurrying to the atmospheric control module that was embedded in the wall by the door. Its front panel displayed real-time data on the room’s atmospheric conditions—oxygen levels, temperature, humidity. According to the readout, all was fine.

“I don’t…understand,” Eva gasped, both hands pawing at her neck. “Something’s wrong, I can’t breathe…”

The time on the module changed to 16:07, and she doubled over howling in pain. 

“Ms Thorn?”

The unexpected cry from his charge drew Flintlock from the door and he unrolled his arms.

“I believe you are experiencing a panic attack. My readings tell me oxygen is flowing. The temperature is 21 degrees. The module and my data concur…”

“The module and your data are wrong!” Eva cried, dropping to her knees and throwing her head back, grasping the neck of her suit. “It’s starting! I can feel it…! Flint, I’m going to burn…!” 

“This does not compute,” said Flint, rotating his head on its bearing. “The module and my data concur. Everything is working as…”

Eva screamed. 

A scream that would have sent shivers down the android’s spine and stricken panic through its heart if it had them. 

She fell on her side, drew her knees into her chest, banged her head off the tarnished floor while her eyes bulged out and she hacked for breath.

“Help,” she hissed, staring into the lens of her guard. “Lungs…burn…”

It was 16:07. HEAT had begun. Her fate depended on Flint. The Scorpien who didn’t want to die.

“This does not compute,” he repeated, but extended his arms to coil around her. “My fellow Scorpiens report no issues. Their charges appear fine. However, Cell 11 is free and its readings are normal. Put on your boots, Ms Thorn.”

With snake-like arms gently hugging, Flint pulled Eva to her feet, drawing her towards the magno-pad.

Her hands flew to her cheeks and she clawed them, screaming as her nails gouged bloody trails. 

“Help…meee…” she gasped, lurching and toppling towards the floor. “Insides…on…fire…”

Flint drew his arms taut to prevent her slamming face-first to the ground. His head tracked left and right. He stepped forward, then back, unsure.

“Ms Thorn,” he said, struggling to be heard above her torment. “I am sorry. I don’t want you to die. I don’t want …I don’t want me to die…”

Decision made, Flint checked to ensure the Habitat’s side hatch was firmly sealed before overriding the condition that inmates must be in boots, gloves and helmet before leaving their cells, then opened her door. Next, he connected to the neighbouring cell and caused its door to slide aside too. Tightening his hold on his charge he started to move her, as quickly as he could along the floor, out of her cell into the hall. 

“Wait,” he advised, as he turned towards the adjacent opening. “I told you I’d get you secure. I told you you could trust me. I saved you before and I’ll save you…”

He didn’t finish. He was jerked to a halt before Cell 11. His arms went slack and as he tried to turn his head to see why, two leathery hands took hold of it, mottled fingers covering his eye.

“S..sorry,” he heard Eva say, before she slammed his lens-head into the wall, shattering glass and rending chrome. “I…lied…”

Wires slipped through the crack in his dome, sparking and sizzling. His vision faltered. A foot on his back forced him down. 

It was 16:09:21.

He landed with his lens facing towards her. 

He watched as she staggered toward the hatch. 

He tried to get up but his chip was busted.

She grasped the door’s emergency release. 

Looked back at him. 

Smiled through bleeding lips.

“Thank…you…”

Then she pulled the lever and as her hair, eyes and flesh burst into flame, she accepted the blessed release of Scorch’s HEAT and finally punished herself for being a Mother.