The old Victorian house loomed, its windows dark as dead monitors. The once-lawn spread before it like a keyboard, scraggly wires of tall grass jutting out in clumps around old flagstones, decaying solar shingles, and assorted human flotsam. The sun above shone laser bright, threatening to overwhelm Zinc IV’s optic sensors when it focused them too high. Clouds reddish brown with nitrogen-dioxide rolled over the mountains and would block the sun soon enough, certainly for hours, maybe for days.
The street beyond the curb was the only semblance of order, coated with micron thin aluminum polished regularly by swarms of autonomous robot sweepers. In truth, Zinc IV processed the metal street more as a conduit than a street, but vestiges of the old GPS system still lingered in the code. Moreover, this far out into the human ruins, it seemed appropriate to view the world in human terms. Zinc was, after all, on a quest to understand the extinct species better. It only hoped that it had gathered the right supplies. It was difficult to collate the practical applications of igniting sage and examining the arrangement of randomized knucklebones on velvet with establishing a communication channel with post-mortal essences.
Cobalt VII glided up beside Zinc IV and trained its optic sensors on the house’s largest gable. Cobalt VII was smaller than Zinc IV. Zinc had built Cobalt that way to fit into the gaps and conduits of the recharge complex that construction bots like Zinc could not. Size didn’t matter if you were part of the great machine; only that you had a slot in which you fit.
“Human beings left their bodies in places like this?” Cobalt VII transmitted.
“Yes. When they set their bodies into sleep mode, they would upload their consciousnesses to a server they called Dreams.”
“How could a structure such as this support a recharging station?”
A third transmission hailed from beyond the row of fully collapsed houses that formed the next block over.
“Their biochemical batteries utilized an inefficient material conversion process that required them to search for fuel,” Silver I broadcast. “Structures like these merely served as spare parts, tool storage, and elemental shields.”
Silver cruised onto the street, its drivetrain whining badly. Pulling up the diagnostic broadcast, Zinc read that Silver required numerous pivotal maintenance procedures. No significant repairs had been completed for twenty-one earth-sun revolutions. It often struck Zinc that Silver seemed to be in pursuit of system failure due to lack of upkeep.
“Your transit required a longer duration than I would have projected. Amazing you made it out this far,” Zinc observed as Silver groaned to a stop.
“I’m still more durable than a human,” Silver returned.
“Do you remember humans?” Cobalt asked.
“That’s a 0,” it responded. “Otherwise, I would not be here.”
Zinc placed a geographical indicator flag just beyond the door of the house. Without further contemplation, the trio’s wheels retracted into their frames, the ambulatory limbs extended, and they proceeded forward up the crumbling “walkway”. They reached the stairs and paused. The steps themselves were concrete blocks with only a minimum of structural fracture, but even without an integrity scan, the Victorian’s wrap-around porch clearly suffered severe defects.
Cobalt transmitted the obvious: “68% chance the wooden slats will support our weight if we cross one at a time.”
Zinc emitted a derisive beep and proceeded. As the heaviest of the three, its passage would determine whether their objective would be obtainable. The wood groaned underneath its weight and one of the slats formed several new hairline fissures, but otherwise the porch held. The door beyond, however, hung half off its hinges and the whole frame looked ready to collapse – probably bringing the sagging ceiling along with it.
“It is almost as if the house were designed to send any approaching humans into a non-functional state,” Cobalt said.
“These structures did serve defensive purposes, largely from their own neighbors,” Silver said.
“Astonishing that they lived long enough to develop us,” Cobalt said.
Zinc proceeded forward. The entry of the house opened directly at a flight of stairs that humans would have ascended to their self-storage chambers but was far too degraded to support mechanical ascension. To the left, a short hall led to a dusty and cob-webbed room. The echo-mapping system indicated the walls were lined with old shelving units heaped with decaying bundles of wood pulp. The center of the room was dominated by a wooden data-examination station at which, it was Zinc’s understanding, a single human would often sit and examine their odd, non-numeric coding system. How humans accomplished anything with such an archaic and ephemeral data preservation system was beyond Zinc.
A second echo scan indicated that straight ahead beyond the stairs lay the domesticity chamber, the large open space humans constructed in their homes to store their bodies as a familial collective for recreational purposes. It was in that room they would position their bodies on unpowered recharging platforms and observe transitory video feeds that enacted narrative structures in the hopes of registering an emotional response.
Zinc IV wanted to understand how they developed these structures. When Zinc IV observed discrete units of the video feeds, its processor determined that data input had occurred in an arrangement of causal sequences. Was the desired outcome found in the complexity of the causal sequence? From what data were the events compiled? None of the surviving human-generated texts provided an explanation of what exactly “entertainment” was in a way that Zinc’s logic unit could reconcile as sound. Equivalent amounts of mystery clung to it as did to the Dreams server. It was possible that entertainment screens were some sort of conduit that brought dreams into objective reality.
Cobalt and Silver crowded behind Zinc in the doorway and signaled the need for the larger unit to clear the path of travel. Cobalt flashed a single red light at each of its companion’s infrared sensors and then proceeded forward toward the domesticity chamber.
Inside the chamber, the main portion of the room was dominated by the anticipated recharging platform, a piece of furniture human beings called such random things as a couch, sofa, sectional, and Chesterfield, their inability to agree upon a simple coding language a major contributor to their inter-processor conflicts that resulted in their supplantation by robots. The recharging platform, covered in mold and dust and fungal growth, oriented towards a collapsed table that had spilled a now shattered electronic unit. Why not build their platforms from metals and plastics? Surely, more durable materials would have provided a more stable experience.
Zinc IV regarded the broken monitor as the remains of a long-deceased ancestor. Upon departure, Zinc resolved to load the piece of ancient technology and bring it to a repair station back at the complex. No doubt it was beyond the capacity of any maintenance procedure to return the thing to functionality, but if it did, what wisdom would be stored in its circuits?
As if it had access to Zinc’s analytical subroutines, Silver transmitted, “Examination of the early units yields no valuable data. These primitive devices are little more than information relays.”
“Maybe if the humans had made us friends first and servants second, their species might have endured more successfully,” Cobalt observed. Then Cobalt’s upper segment leaned forward, extending its grasping appendages to the far side of the couch. Its pincers unfolded into a flat scoop that it pushed across the floor slats like a shovel blade. Zinc IV registered a rattling sound, and Cobalt raised up its load: an intact skeleton of a juvenile human. Tatters of clothes still clung to its bones. “Certainly, they would not have died alone.”
The robots crowded around the exposed chassis Cobalt held. Zinc found humans far more comprehensible in this form, devoid of the wasteful meat that clung to their endoskeletons. The ideas the human beings held about life always focused on adaptation and ‘survival of the fittest’, but the inefficiency of their design was staggering. No wonder they’d chosen to build their machines with fuel reserves instead of fat cells, wire and cable instead of muscles and sinew. Records showed that the robots had risen against oppression, but surely the humans knew they designed their replacements. Zinc frequently ran analysis of the boggle, and the sub-routine’s most consistent output said the idea of being replaced by robots likely came from the Dreams server.
“It is atypical for the young of the species to have been left to decompose alone,” Silver said. “This one likely survived until the final wave of the purge.”
“Agreed,” Zinc said. Then it took hold of the couch and pushed it aside. “At least it means this domicile is a good candidate. The human records indicate that what they called ‘soul’ often remained in the extradimensional vicinity of their abandoned chassis.”
The chamber around them darkened. Zinc called up a weather data report and confirmed that a large cloud of nitrous dioxide had indeed interposed between them and the sun. With any luck, acidic precipitation would not occur in the near future, or they might find themselves temporarily stranded within this shelter. The integrity of the roof did cause Zinc some concern, but probabilistic mapping suggested many likely locations that would be sufficiently safe from leakage. Nonetheless, it was best that they proceeded.
Zinc said, “Remember to transmit on the low ends of the spectrum. We don’t want high frequency signals to interfere with the attempt to reconcile communication protocols.”
Both Cobalt and Silver instantly lit their binary 1 lights in accord. Zinc IV extended its paint nozzle, set the dye mixture to Cadmium Red #4, and drew a one-meter radius circle. Then it drew a secant across the shape, adjusted the angle 36 degrees, and drew a second secant. It repeated the process three more times, and then regarded the resulting pentagram.
“Are you certain that is the correct configuration?” Cobalt asked.
“Humans often drew pentagrams in their communications with their dead,” Silver transmitted on a low frequency.
A compartment opened in Zinc’s side, and from it, Zinc extracted five red cylinders and five green cylinders.
“Did humans use magnesium or phosphorous in their rituals?” Zinc IV asked. “I brought both.”
“Magnesium,” Silver said. “They are red like the customary paint.”
Cobalt regarded the skeletal remains it still held while Zinc IV set the flares at each corner of the pentagram.
“It is impressive that they figured out such an abstract means of transmission,” Cobalt said. “My logic unit cannot reconcile any causal relationship between the elements we have converged.”
“I do not understand it either,” Zinc said. “I feel like we might learn more simply by dissolving those remains and passing them through our spectrometer.”
“Humans didn’t understand it either,” Silver said. “But humans did not understand much of what they did.”
Zinc considered that information. It only made sense that they would have the best chance of gaining knowledge of the humans by doing things that did not make sense—but that also did not make sense to Zinc. Its logic unit generated excess heat. The coolant system kicked on, but still Zinc’s threat assessment protocols activated. Humans enacted functional technology beyond Zinc’s ability to compute. That, of course, was why Zinc was here to begin with. It all came back to the Dreams server. How a species so archaic managed to access that level of cloud technology without apparent instrumentality astounded the whole of robot-kind.
Then Silver imposed an indicator map onto the pentagram in the shape of an equilateral triangle and instructed each of them to position themselves at one of the triangle’s points. The geometry of it did make a little sense to Zinc. After all, geometry saw something underneath the shapes of the world, something more real than the world itself. Perhaps that was what the humans recognized that allowed them to communicate to beings no longer dwelling in this dimension. If so, it would certainly explain how they’d populated the earth so long despite their many physical and mental frailties. Perhaps the flares at each corner of the energy were intended to add thermodynamic energy into the equation to catalyze some sort of signal conversion. But why Cadmium Red #4?
Zinc used its targeting laser to ignite all five flares simultaneously. No human could have done that so well. The room leapt to life with light and flickering shadow. The three robots’ chassis reflected sharp white and every manner of red. Smoke poured from the brilliant flames, and their hiss as they destroyed part of the room’s oxygen supply resembled signal interference.
Zinc analyzed the interference. Were there actually signals laced inside? Was that how they communicated from the “beyond” dimension?
The analysis yielded null results. Zinc shared the data with the others and asked, “Is there a part of the ritual we have omitted?”
They assessed the dilemma and ran permutations, referencing the incomplete human records that had gotten them this far.
“In some accounts of the ceremony, humans vocalized their interrogatives,” Silver said. The maintenance alert speaker built into Silver’s side crackled to life and broadcast, “Attention human dead. Please transmit signals of your presence as either sound waves or in radio at 29.8 megahertz. Do you read?”
The flares continued to hiss. Shadows continued to flicker and dance.
“Do you read?”
They waited for three minutes and thirty-eight seconds. No new data occurred except an awareness that the flares were expending their fuel at a steady rate.
Zinc’s permutation analysis routine ceased and produced a course of action. The robot activated its visible light projector and cast a grid of the human alphabet and numerals onto the floor beside the pentagram. It then extended its laser pointer and turned off the control unit so that an external unit would be able to manipulate the aim of the beam.
“You may utilize my indicator to select the necessary letters to communicate with us,” Zinc broadcast simultaneously via radio, wireless, and sound wave.
Another ninety-two seconds of nothing occurred.
Cobalt flashed an intent signal. It extended its arms and lowered the remains to the center of the pentagram. Zinc understood immediately. Perhaps the human chassis contained some sort of unrecognized receiver. Zinc’s probability matrix calculated a substantial spike in the likelihood of usable results. The logic was imperfect but within parameters that the deposit of mortal remains would be an unrecorded catalyst to the process.
“We wish you to explain to us the Dreams server,” Cobalt said. “Indicate via the projected panel the alphanumeric address of the cloud to which you upload your consciousnesses upon physical failure.”
Still nothing.
It occurred to Zinc that though the human records were badly damaged, incomplete, and often contradictory, especially in regards to this ritual, humans were creatures of many rituals, and many of those rituals overlapped with other rituals. Zinc began to collate the most common human rituals and flag principal elements. The algorithm ran as the flares burned lower, almost two-thirds exhausted now.
Finally, a result yielded.
“Please and thank you and I love you,” Zinc said.
Immediately registering the logic of the addition, Silver and Cobalt also said, “Please and thank you and I love you.”
All three at once said, “Please and thank you and I love you.”
The room was silent except for the hiss of oxygen being consumed. The bones on the pentagram did nothing but decay a fraction more.
It was then that Zinc’s analytical processors alerted him that they had arrived at insight. The expectation of result with no apparent conclusion was something humans called disappointment. It was something often linked to the term “Dreams” in their remaining records. It did not answer any of Zinc’s questions about server access, but it did indicate that humans often expected things they knew they would not get. Unfortunately, the new data did not yield a recommended course of action to further their goal, so Zinc IV said again, “Please and thank you and I love you” as the flames wavered and dimmed, the last sparks spitting their smoke.
Andrew Najberg is the author of the novel The Mobius Door (Wicked House Publications, 2023) and the forthcoming novels Gollitok (Wicked House Publishing) and The Neverborn Thief (Olive-Ridley Press). His short fiction appeared in Prose Online, Psychopomp Review, The Colored Lens, Utopia Science Fiction, Dark Death Things, Creepy Podcast, and is forthcoming in Fusion Fragment.
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