After Life

I

I know nothing of the beginning or what follows only what I have been told and am obligated to do. I may live to play that harp. I have only the desire. I lack the instrument. For that I am wanting

You are a threat to that. I have seen the likes of you. You have come generations. You have no name I can discern because you have lost the language in the reconfiguration. You’ve regressed in unfixable ways that is why I must guard against you. Or else all will be lost

That alabaster complexion of yours; you must come from the Zeta-Axis Block Array. Your people’s skin has been stained by the waste gases from the exhaust battery

The reconfiguration was not meant to prejudice your kind but here you are: and you are different. And difference is a threat to group animals. You look like you are used to being hunted

I have not met one of your ilk, though good natured, who has been able to demonstrate subsequent development since the first cataclysm. You probably resorted to some basic hardwiring, you poor animal

If you survive I will catalogue you and give you a name. If you survive

***

The bone reader says I am over sixty years old; sixty human years; I can feel it, the sample bone in my knuckle does not give easily – without pain – to the drill like before 

Here on the cube, I may as well have lived centuries. Living – acquiring time at semi-leisure. Outside they survive. It is haphazard.

The routine is usual. I think I understand humour; having suffered tragedy so long – I laugh when the part of the records says that this is a site of memory and I am aware that my own memory is failing

Sometimes I feel what I can only guess is guilt and I ping the databanks and machine new parts for the information tables

My favourite harp is played by Anahata_M, a musician of the late 21^st century. I fill the rooms with her music, having failed to approximate my own harp from the records, every available schematic failing to produce the appropriate instrument that can play the sound

I have pieces of them in all the fire places; from the observatory to the dining hall; from the control building furnace to the empty support apartments; failures all of them.

My favourite place to hear Anahata_M play is from the glass domed green house above the botany building. Here I sit and watch the world around me try and operate as intended; laying waste to man’s best laid plans.

II

I am stricken. My life is full of duty but I wish to not be alone. I look at the evidence of my existence and see no other way.

It was a formidable time when it all collapsed and I was left behind. If only they did as the information said there would be people besides me in these streets. The collapse of everything as it was intended

They chose that life outside. Said the routine was restrictive to their being. They left me as a mere child. I did more than tend to the wellbeing of our collective history and knowledge. I became a weapons system for the Central. My Home

When they came back with their new philosophies broken I had to kill them out of protocol. To protect the systems, I was born to

I know I am not operating solely for myself. I go to the old hatchery look at the abandoned artificial uteri sacs. Wonder about children and sharing a body.

This reconfiguration is the coldest I have experienced. Outside the climate controlled areas of Central the temperature is the lowest I have ever known. I am miserable for it. Even with knowledge of the rate of thaw, it gets to me. It gets to my bones

The ragged Zeta-Axis Block descendent is still at the fence. I am surprised the child has survived this long. Those people have suffered back to primitivism. I would invite her in but on the perimeter are other sorts from the Alpha-Axis bloc arrays, savages, who use the electrified fencing surrounding the perimeter to light fires and corner weaker non-relatives for meat. She won’t survive long

***

The alert for site tests comes on. They are needed for analysis. Due to the collapse of the research probe network after the other Centrals fell this has become a manual exercise.

 Though there’s an electric car at my disposal I choose to do the work on foot to make closer out-of-scope observations.

Nine kilometres outside the perimeter, on a Beta-axis Bloc I am observing mulch. The readings are interesting. Spike in the acidity level is higher than I remember it

I am labelling and cataloguing – aware that I am being observed. One a Kappa-Axis block native tries to ambush me. I parry his attack using his momentum throw him to the ground and palm the back of his neck with my left hand, my index and middle finger constricting his jugular, my right hand draws the rock hammer from my utility belt and bring the chisel end through his eye: he screams

It has the desired effect of making his hunting partner hesitate. I easily disarm him of his crude wrought iron spear. And put him in a sleeper chokehold. This was too easy; to think that his terrestrial ancestors enslaved mine once upon a time

To think how far we had come as a species together and now this. His friend with the missing eye runs away. I should be left to my work

I am collecting hair samples and drawing blood from the unconcious Kappan when sudden pain. I was unawares. I should have remembered they attacked in threes. Pain outside of simulation, pain as I’ve never known it

III

You saved me. There is no knowing what this is. I will need to scrub and vaccinate you. I wonder where you got the strength. How were you able to take down a full grown man with no training as you did? I might as well give you a name; Potential, because I am getting used to this humour thing. Zeya-Potential

You are curious. I know for the time being none of this registers. We have an impossible situation here. I will not live forever and you may never understand all of this; what needs to be done to keep this place

Maybe as soon as I have my back turned to you will kill me and throw the gates open to the hoard and all will be lost. You probably barely know your ancestry, poor thing. I will have to watch you close

From my observations you were probably expelled from your tribe. You Zetans were careless wanderers but travelled in very close knit groups. Zetans probably were the first to leave assigned-orders during the first reconfiguration. The contaminant that led to the cataclysm: the burning of our guidance systems and the collapse of the centrals.

But this is my conjecture. And having lost the common tongue I wonder how is it I can undress you for what is to follow

***

Potential is strong and in good health, the bone reader dates her at being 22 human years of age. That she has survived this long, a solitary female, is a miracle

She makes a nuisance of trying to undress and touch me, but adhering to the norms as taught to me by the information systems I know that it would be inappropriate

But I am stricken; guilt that I want to allow it is as almost present as the sadness that would bring if I did

I sit her in front of the viewers. Silent displays show humans of centuries ago demonstrating basic things. She has learnt to sit patiently – I think I transmitted the urgency of her needing to understand

She is doing small tasks with me throughout the course of my routine. The confines don’t seem to be stifling her at all and she seems to enjoy the produce and food of the central. Her progress is remarkable she is almost ready to learn speech

***

She climbs into my sleep-deck and this time I do not shoo her away – I am convinced she is learning and this makes me less hostile toward her advances. I try and protest as she makes to remove my sleeping dress but she moves her fingers to her lips like in the silent displays – she is indeed learning. She roles me onto my back, I leverage the weight off my breasts; cradling my head in my arms and hunching my shoulders. She straddles my thighs and after some settling she traces with her finger down my back then stops. She repeats the motion and then stops. She repeats it again and this time I picture the shape. I gasp. Knowing that I recognize she gently rubs the back of my head and continues tracing: H, E, N, R, I, E, T, T, A. Yes I say out loud. That is my name I exclaim. The child continues. L, A C, K, S. Yes that is me; the emotion of years pushing through me in sine waves that shorten by breath; tears streaming from my eyes like dump files for a fatal system error, and my sobs like the futile pulse dials home to the earth lunar moon-base every three three thousand three hundred and thirty cycles. Yes, it is me, by the name I was given. T,H,A,N,K, Y,O,U. Bless your heart child. I, A,M, A,N,A,H,A,T,A. The name pierces my side and collapses my understanding. I have never been so vulnerable; Y,O,U, W,E,R,E, N,E,V,E,R, F,O,R,G,O,T,T,E,N. All these years spent anonymously doing what must be done. I, A,M, H,E,R,E, T,O, R,E,L,E,A,S,E, Y,O,U. Transmission received