Lithium Heart (Patreon)

Dark gray waves lapped at a light gray beach under a medium gray sky. Things that approximated birds squawked and swirled through the humid, hot air, wings spread wide to catch both the wind and pallid sunlight.

A man woke up on the beach, some ways away from the waterline.

He awoke not all at once, but in stages, as if he was assembling consciousness from many different pieces. He got to his feet, brushing sand off himself.

The sensation was entirely incorrect. Metal against plastic against metal. The main recoiled from his own touch, then lifted his offending hand into view.

Instead of the skin, bones, and muscles he had expected, metal joints and wires gleamed as they pushed and pulled in a mimicry of the human form.

He screamed, falling back and landing on his silicone butt. He looked at his other hand and screamed louder, kicking back in the sand.

He was panicking, behaving irrationally, and so didn’t hear as someone investigated the commotion he was causing.

“Hail,” said someone. The confused man turned, and was faced with a bulky robot built like a four-legged cross between a lobster and a truck.

He screamed louder, kicking sand into what might have been the machine’s face.

“Hail,” the voice repeated, and it was coming from the truck-lobster. The man stopped screaming.

“What’s going on? Where am I? What am I?”

The truck-lobster hummed thoughtfully. “You are on the southern coast of the Landau sea. I heard someone screaming, evidently you, and came to investigate.” He paused. “And I’m not sure what you are. Some kind of android, certainly, but not a model I’m aware of.”

“An android?” The man asked uncomprehendingly.

“A machine created in the image of the Makers,” the truck-lobster said. “You know, for opening their doors and such.”

“And such,” The man echoed. “The Makers. Humans.”

“Yes,” said the truck-lobster.

“I’m… a human,” The man said. “Or, I think I was.”

“Is that so?” the truck-lobster asked, in a tone that suggested he was unconvinced but playing along for a confused stranger’s benefit.

“I’m not… I don’t know. This feels wrong.” He gripped one hand in the other, flexing it. “This isn’t what I remember looking like, or feeling like.”

“What do you remember?”

The man looked blankly ahead, seeing nothing. “I don’t know.”

“A name, maybe?” The truck-lobster prompted.

The man trawled his mind. “Rogers. Mister Rogers.”

“Is that your name?” The truck-lobster asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Then what should I call you, stranger?”

“Roger, I guess.”

“Alright, Roger. I’m 80678015b. 8015b for short.”

“Your name is a sequence of numbers?” Roger asked.

“Your name is a sequence of letters,” 8015b retorted calmly. “But if you prefer, call me Doc. Many of my patients do.”

“You’re a doctor?” Roger asked.

“Yes,” said Doc.

“For, what, other robots?”

“Well, that’s why I’m here,” replied Doc. “You were screaming.”

“Wouldn’t that make you a mechanic?”

“That’s what I said, yes,” said Doc. “Are your language processors working within tolerance? You seem to be having difficulty with synonyms.”

Roger got to his feet, unnerved with how natural it felt to do so. “This doesn’t feel different. I think that’s why it’s so strange.”

“Different from a Maker?” Doc asked.

“I guess,” Roger said. He stretched his arms to see what it felt like, and it felt like he expected it to, even though he hadn’t known what his expectations were.

“We should head back into town,” Doc said. “No use sitting here on the beach. Would you allow me to run some tests back at my scrapyard?”

“If you mean your hospital, sure,” Roger said.

“I do mean that, yes,” Doc said.

The beach gave way to a low grassland, the grass being pitch-black and flexibly metallic. Roger pinched one blade between his own metallic fingers, analyzing the sensation. “What is this?”

“Grass,” Doc said.

“I can see that,” Roger said neutrally, “But it’s mechanical. It’s like a field of solar panels.”

“Yes,” Doc said. “It’s like that because it is.”

Roger nodded dumbly. “Is it all like this? All… mechanical?”

“Yes,” Doc repeated. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

Roger thought about his reply. “What about living things?”

“The grass is alive,” Doc said. “It grows, it reproduces, it adapts and evolves in response to external stimuli.”

“But it’s not alive,” Roger said. “Not like real grass. Not like a person.”

“A pointless distinction,” Doc countered. “The Makers built us in their image. You may look more like them than I, but we are both their children.”

“But I’m one of them,” Roger said. “A human.”

“You sound quite sure of that,” Doc said, “but it may take more than that to convince people that a Maker walks among us.”

“What? Why is that?” Roger said. “What happened to us?”

“Roger, the Makers left this world eight thousand years ago.”