One More Rubicon

One More Rubicon

“How am I supposed to do this?” 

He looked down at the mismatched PVC legs and polymer blades where humans had feet. Human. Why didn’t he get a human to do this? They’re so adaptable. They can live anywhere, scale anything and live on near nothing. He sighed, a habit he picked up from watching archival footage of humans. Not many of those around now. But they showed him that he was far from human. He was just a metal framed conglomeration of brittle, sun-scorched plastics, held together with epoxy-coated nylon and steel needles.

He looked down the sheer cliff face into the river. It was only about twenty meters down and half as far across, but the flow looked swift. The house was just on the other side of the river at the top of a grassy rise. It didn’t look like much, just one floor of plastic walls and a solar shingled roof.

“There’s probably stuff unground. There’s always stuff underground with humans.”

A survivor, or “New Renunciate” as they preferred to be called, generally lived in one of two places. They were either secreted away in dirty, underground labyrinths or lived lavishly in the upper stories of skyscrapers. The Dwellers on High lived gutted the middle half of buildings and had their workers tend container farms for food. All the while they looked down upon city-sized graveyards and listened to the wind howl through the turbines embedded in the bones of the buildings. He shivered and wondered how long it’d be before the relentless weather systems rusted the buildings’ exposed structures out from under them. Even so, he hated the Earthen’s tunnels more. He didn’t know how they lived like that. There always seemed to be something tiny moving around or slinking nearby. Something living… that reminded him that he wasn’t.

He preferred the open road, or what was left of it. He knew it was a residual memory but he liked it nonetheless. The river however, was a nuisance. He always seemed to run into water. He doubted he could make the fall without serious breakage.

“Why me?”

The question rang in the hollows of the misshapen vacuum bottle that served as a head. “I’m just I’m another rot-bot Conundrum who absorbed a bit of sentience when the humans gave up theirs. Stupid humans.”

He walked back and forth along the edge as he’d done ten times before. It was the lowest point for a few klicks in either direction. Then the terrain got worse.

“Stupid humans.” He repeated to no one.

But he knew the humans weren’t stupid as much as they’d chosen a different path. One of absolute celestial ecstasy and terrestrial ignorance. Once they had successfully created the Endless Thought, almost no one cared about anything else.

“Why does it have to be right there?” He gestured with both hands and all three fingers. “Right where I can see it, but can’t reach it.”

He shook his head, making his hip twitch slightly. He pulled a needle out of a hole there and turned his head slowly. Behind the hip shell, a thin Lexan rod slid upward. He moved to replace the needle, then regarded it for a minute. It was a needle from a sewing machine of some kind. It was thick and strong, which was why it was a good pin. It was especially nice that it had a thicker end with one flat, textured side that prevented it from spinning and working its way out. He tested the hip’s new position and slid the needle in to lock it.

He looked at the water again and a plan formed in the empty space that served as a mind. A mind. The stupid humans gave up there bodies when they merged their minds with the Endless Thought. He instinctively waved his two-fingered hand in from of his sensors as if he could smell the rotting flesh of the millions of bodies. He knew he was just recycling shreds of human memories that had leaked out of their discarded cellular connectors, but he didn’t care. The memories felt as if there were his.

It took some time to find vines supple and strong enough. Once they were stripped of leaves and woven into a sloppy basket of sorts, he charged the magnets in his right hand to maximum. That took a while, the sun was already low. Once satisfied, he set the basket on the edge and climbed in. Then he carefully withdrew all of the needles from his various joints, connections and overlaps. Once they were locked into his magnetized fist he pulled the remaining vines tight to close the basket. Then he wobbled back and forth until overbalancing into the river. The impact was as jarring as he’d expected but his brittle body flexed more freely about without the pins. The current took him for a short time and he didn’t fight it.

“Just don’t stay under too long and get your mind wiped.” He thought.

He bobbed to the surface once, then got stuck underwater near the edge of the river. He poked his visual sensor out. Wrong side, but the dangerous part was done. He put himself back together and used the vines to float across. It was slow but effective. The moon was out by the time he reached the small house.

“Here we go.”

His left hand pressed against the electronic lock. It took a few minutes to hack but the attachment Tailor had given him worked easily enough. The entrance looked like a refuse heap. He held out his left hand and ignited the torch. The small motor in his chest engaged and hot air blew from his palm to gently heat the pile. Then he adjusted his sensors to scan for stray polymer molecules of formulas he could use.

“Worthless. This stuff’s gotta be a hundred years old.”

He shut everything down and went into the small kitchen. He had to actually turn sideways to avoid knocking cups from a shelf as he entered. Everything looked normal for a human. There was a half full cup on the counter near a spoon on a dirty looking plate. He bent to sniff them but remembered he couldn’t smell. Spectro-analysis just wasn’t the same. He continued through the rest of the house, which took all of five minutes. He scanned the living room, bathroom, tiny dining room/hallway and stopped in the bedroom.

“Okay. Based on the structure, the entrance would be under the bed.”

He took hold of the frame to lift. A blade shot out and severed both of his legs below the plastic knee caps and stuck in the wall behind him. He steadied himself with his right hand and a second blade shot out but its edge was flat. It smashed him against the flat back of the first blade. The pair of blades hummed and locked around him. Then the bed snapped upward, revealing a gaping shaft. On the underside of the bed was large metal circle which he instinctively recognized. 

“Electromagnet.” It engaged, dragging his body to it. Once he was stuck, the bed snapped back down. “Oh, boy.”

It reversed polarization. He was propelled downward faster than he could calculate. He bounced from wall to wall for a second or two, landed in water and sank to the dark bottom, unmoving.

His months long quest was at and end, just like the makeshift body that’d taken over a year to create. He sighed and wondered how long it would take the water to wash away the unexpected miracle of his mind. He closed his sensors and went into sleep mode.

The awareness was unexpected, but he’d figured that out for himself. If it were planned, the humans would’ve found some way to exploit it long before they went mostly extinct. He remembered repairing the discarded tablet’s battery to read about them. 

When the Endless Thought debuted people were skeptical, of course. The only people who ventured into it were ones they called “hippies,” although he never really understood the term. Very quickly it became like the hallucinogens that had helped society put aside its wars and hatreds. It was pure experience with no boundaries, rules or restrictions. Anyone who was connected to it become coupled with everyone else who’d gone before and all together they became one, single, Endless Thought.

At first, the technology was controlled, constrained and access was limited. But when it went “underground” it became available to everyone, as things do. People checked into secret clinics that “hooked them up.” More and more checked in and little by little, they stopped checking out.

Then the surge hit. He’d read it was basically a “crossing of the Rubicon,” another reference he’d been unable to grasp. But the result was clear enough. The number of people connected to the Endless Though had reached a critical level and humanity’s consciousness no longer needed the physical world to exist. Millions of people who’d given themselves to the Endless Thought simply collapsed where they stood. Without minds inside their brains, they simply fell into comas. Their physical bodies died of thirst, or exposure or starved to death…everywhere. Literally overnight, the human race had all but died. And a new race had leaked out.

There was something that the Endless Thought couldn’t always absorb, but by the time anyone considered this it was far too late. The part sometimes left behind was the spirit. Something he’d also read was called a “soul.” He’d assumed that most people’s spirits just left to…somewhere…when they died. But some stayed behind and became entangled in physical objects. The Conundrums were haunted husks and shells of forgotten items with scrambled memories of identities they couldn’t piece together.

“Stupid humans.”

His undamaged arm scratched the bottle that served as a head. He’d long since given up trying to figure out why he scratched the makeshift container head, since he couldn’t feel it. There wasn’t even a circuit board or chip inside of it. He just felt like that was his center. It felt like that stray soul was in there, directing his body without a power source, without connections and without even a physical brain to house his mind.

Most of the Conundrums he’d run into were sad, leftovers of defeated people. “Ghosts,” the humans used to call them. Many were minimally aware, but still able to move nearby objects by thought. They just weren’t strong enough to create a body that they could move with, let alone travel. He’d often helped them into water where their spirit would slowly be washed away. Now he was here, waiting for the water to do the same to him, and for him.

“So much for my mission.” He sighed again, thinking of the man he’d encountered who’d given him the task.

“Hello, my friend.” The voice came from behind. He’d spun around too quickly and fell over onto the parts he’d been sorting. “Easy now.” He the man’d laughed. “I’m sorry to frighten you.” He was tall, dark skinned and his voice was so…so, what was it? Resonate. He felt the man’s voice vibrate in his metal-framed body. He must’ve been from the skyscrapers, because his clothes were whole and relatively clean. But they looked worn in. He was well equipped, with belts, backpack, bags and even what looked like a gun of some kind. But it seemed that everything was made, not manufactured. He gently helped the Conundrum up to its shaky feet.

“Thank you, sir. I’d give you may name but I don’t recall if I ever had one.”

“I’ve always liked the idea of the old names. They were given for your life mission or your profession. Guess, that makes me Tailor.” He stepped back while looking the him over. “You’re quite the piece of work, aren’t you my friend?”

“Well, I don’t know about that.”

“I do.” He stared for a moment. “You’re only the third, fully mobile, Conundrum I’ve come across.” He wrapped his arm around the mismatched, plastic shoulders. “And the other two are already dead. So here’s what we need to do, my friend.”

Tailor explained that there was a person in hiding who was very dangerous. He’d searched for this person for a long time and had finally discovered where they were hidden, but they were on guard.

“And they would smell my human butt coming a klick away, so I can’t go. But you can…and will.”

“And what do I do when I find them?”

“Have tea.” He winked.

They traveled together until the city was on the horizon but Tailor refused to say anything else about the mission. If he hadn’t been so grateful to the human for giving him the sewing needles, he’d have abandoned the quest weeks ago.

“I never should have…”

In mid thought, he was pulled from the water and thrown onto a hard surface. It took a moment for his sensors to clear themselves enough to see. A man pushed him against a wall and pressed his face to a sensor. The face shifted, blurred and distorted. The man slapped him and shook the vacuum container with both hands. His features blurred again. No, not blurred, they were redundant, redundant in the extreme. Was he hallucinating? It was like he saw every facial expression the man’d ever made…but all at once. The man repeatedly slammed the vacuum bottle against the wall. A piece of his lexan shoulder broke off. He saw its three needle pins and activated his magnet. The part jumped to his hand and he smashed it into the human’s face. The man screamed and stumbled backward. For some reason the redundant faces were lessened. The man growled and balled his hands into fists. He reversed his magnet and shot the part at the man. It struck his leg. The man fell fell to the floor, howling in pain. The redundant, multifaceted hallucination became even more simple. Then he saw it. One of the needles had stuck in the man’s leg. He shifted as much power as he could to his magnet. Every remaining needle dislodged from his body. He maneuvered the dozen or so needles into a barrier of sorts in front of his broken body. The vision of the man’s many faces clarified and became snarling grimaces, of bone, blood and scales. He spun the needles as fast as he could and sent them at the man who screamed and tried to defend himself. The faces screamed in endless languages as they winked out of existence, one by one. In a few seconds only the man’s physical face remained, weeping and sputtering behind his upraised arms. He pulled the needles back, feeling his power ebb slightly. Instantly, the man leapt forward and tried to punch, kick and even bite the plastic and metal body into oblivion.

“Enough!” He pushed his entire will at the man, levitating him a couple of meters in the air. He regarded the frantic human for a moment. His wide eyes kept looking at the needles. “You’re afraid of these, huh? Good.” 

The man roared and flailed at the needles rising in the air towards him. The water clinging to the needles reflected something on the textured, flat side of the needles. Writing. Unconsciously, he read them aloud in a tongue he didn’t recognize. But partway through, his energy waned again. The needles fell downward. He redouble the levitation and managed to catch them by the tips. He tilted his sensors to continue reading the upward pointing needles. Then suddenly, his energy was spent. The man fell fully on top of him and the needles. With a crash, his sensors went off line.

His back ached horribly. Without thought, he rolled onto the floor and lay flat. Memories and visions from a discarded soul, a broken Conundrum and an empty shell all filtered into his awareness. When his back felt better, he got up and went to the cistern. It was horribly polluted so he cycled the drain-and-fill mechanism a few times until clean river water reflected back up at the human face. He dunked his entire head and shoulders in. It was blessedly cool but reminded him of each and every cut he’d sustained in the scuffle. He drank deeply and then turned to face what was left of his Conundrum body. He went to the unmoving pile of parts and stroked the vacuum bottle. 

”Your served me well. But now that this body’s been emptied, I’ll keep it for my own.”

With a wave of his hand, the needles flew onto the table and he arranged them in proper order. Now he recognized the words and phrases that he’d read. Now he knew why Tailor had sent him. He touched the needles reverently.

“I now know my mission…and therefore my name. Exorcist.”