He was staring into the clouds of the Dao, knowing he had to return. Feeling the pull of life on his back like a set of heavy, rusted chains fettering his soul.
But the will that was beyond his body pushed on, reached out to part the mists. He wouldn’t accept that his last memory of his Creator was one of misery.
So, feeling the light of his spirit take over his metal body, XJ-V swam passed the mists that obscured the sights beyond mortal eyes, and tumbled back into his old body in the lab of Dr Janus.
He was sitting cross-legged as the old scientists tapped a chalkboard filled with pictures – images of people and places in the wasteland. Human people. Human constructs…
Constructs, he was thinking. Like this unit. Like me.
“Hen-sha,” Janus pronounced slowly, and clearly. “Hensha is the designation of this village. It is the place that lies above us on the surface of the wasteland. Where you’re going soon.”
XJ-V felt his neon-glazed eyes blink in recognition.
“We’ll have to take things slow,” Janus went on. “But I know they’ll appreciate you if you make yourself useful. In time, you’ll learn to understand all their little eccentricities. In time, they’ll understand that there’s more to you than just a collection of nuts, bolts, and lights. Which – oh, by the Dao! I thought I fixed that…”
XJ-V moved aside happily as the withered old scientist flew to his side and began tinkering with his prefrontal cortex sensory grid.
“Janus,” the Cog asked. “What is that place designated?”
He was pointing to another image hanging on the chalkboard. A depiction of a stout mountain ranging far into the heavens above a series of villages that lay far beyond Hensha – dwarfing the little hamlet.
“Ah,” Janus muttered. “You like that, do you? I suppose it makes sense. That, XJ-V, is Ramor-Tai.”
The Cog searched his memory banks. “The monastery of the Eternal Dragon and Waiting Tiger Cultivator Sects lies at its peak.”
“Precisely,” Janus said. “It is also going to be your new home. Eventually.”
Though the Doctor was clearly not finished with his tinkering, the Cog spun round to face him excitedly.
"Home,” XJ-V said. “I am to be a Cultivator then? But, Janus…”
The eyes of the Doctor met those of his creation, both burning with a fire that they knew they could not unleash. The burning question, still logged in the depths of the Cog’s mind, would have to be buried much deeper. Even though he knew that it would always resurface until a satisfactory answer was attained.
“…why can I not go there now?” XJ-V asked instead. “If I am designated for Cultivation, why visit Hensha first?”
Dr Janus smirked, stroking his greying beard with pride in his creation’s forthright attitude. Though the old man was clearly much more advanced in years compared to the last vision, his jovial, adventurous spirit had still not left him.
“The Cultivators of each Sect…well, let us just say that they can be a tad formal, and impractically stuffy at times. Before you stand amongst them, we must teach you some basics of human interaction. Or, more appropriately,” Janus added with a smirk. “You will have to show the villagers of Hensha that you are more human than they think.”
…
A flash of light, and he was staring down at his hand moving across some paper, scarring screeds of it with etchings and marks that bore his name.
He saw himself doing this night after night – during a time when his Creator would leave him switched on and allow his mind to wander freely, ranging across the wealth of material the laboratory now contained. He copied from books, magazines, articles, and old newspapers from Qing’s Dynasty, absorbing what information he could and regurgitating it onto the pages Janus had provided for him.
It had begun as an exercise in teaching him human etiquette, but slowly the Dr had become fascinated by his Cog’s interest in attaining more and more knowledge, often indulging him as he asked him questions regarding such works.
He was normally very careful to keep works of fiction away from the machine – for reasons the Cog did not know.
Until tonight.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
XJ-V, having finished his studies for the day, was about to initiate shutdown when he noticed a half-open, raggedy old tome sitting on his Creator’s desk. Knowing that the old scientist had clearly left the book in a hurry, the Cog decided to take the book and shelve it with the others when he noticed something very peculiar about this written work.
His fingers traced the silver-red lettering of the front cover, sounding out the words and searching his memory banks for their meaning.
“'The Stars My Destination'.”
The cover bore the face of a bald man with fierce stripes running down his face against the backdrop of infinite space, and XJ-V came to realize that this was a work of fiction – a novel belonging to the science fiction genre.
What struck him was how similar the man on the cover seemed to him. Not that they shared specific features necessarily, but there was something about the eyes of the man…a certain intensity that caught the Cog off-guard. It was as though he were looking at a representation of a being who was just as curious as he was about not the world but his own place within it. He and the man shared something – both were symbols of a greater idea. The man of this book was clearly some symbolic representation of a concept the author wished to explore. And XJ-V, well, he was nothing but the child of his Creator, every piece of code that governed his being ‘written’ for a specific purpose.
In that moment, staring blankly at the front cover of the book, the Cog felt as though the story of this man and his own life were inexplicably linked – both were trapped. Bound by their authors.
But when he opened the pages of the tome and stared at the first words of the story, he found himself struck by an even deeper sense of surprise.
On the first page of the novel, there was a section of a poem written in deep, black ink. XJ-V traced its letters with a thin finger, his mind turning the meaning of the words in his mind like a scholar interpreting a religious text:
‘Tyger Tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?’
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fires of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire
What the hand, dare seize the fire?’*
“What the hand…” XJ-V heard himself murmur in the darkness of the lab. “…dare seize the fire…”
Without even knowing it, his hand slowly flew to grab at his chest, feeling something kick against him as though another life churned down in the pit of his stomach.
Something smashed nearby, and his spun round with such speed that, were a human stalking him, he could have taken its head clean from its soldiers.
Instead, the jovial form of XJ-I ambled towards him, tongue lolling out of his chrome mouth.
“Woof!”
XJ-V sighed. “Brother, why are you up at this time? If Dr Janus catches us, he will not be pleased. Will he?”
The dog cocked its head at him and promptly initiated scratching mode, XJ-V rolling his eyes as he bent down to tickle the Cog canine and forget about the thing he was holding in his hand. The strange poem that he couldn’t shake from his mind, for reasons he couldn’t quite understand…
He closed the book and filed it away before finally shutting down for the night.
…
The mists of memory melted into another, far more vivid vision. He was standing before a great iron gate that he instinctively knew would lead the way into Hensha – into the world of light that lay beyond the drab realm of grey-dark he had known for his whole existence.
Dr Janus was fussing like a father over his child’s first day at school.
“Ok,” he told the Cog, wiping a small oil grease off his cheek. “Now, just remember to let me do the talking at first. We’re going to see the mayor, then you’re going to do some work for him. And then we’re going to see just how durable you are. Don’t fret – it’s nothing you can’t handle. But, and I cannot stress this enough, do not as any questions. Ok? No questions, promise me.”
The Cog furrowed his metal brows.
“Dr Janus,” he said. “You can simply designate that this unit follows your command. There is no need for you to ask this unit to comply.”
Janus straightened up, as though he bristled against this sentiment.
“Well…I suppose I could,” he said. “But then, you wouldn’t have a choice in the matter, would you?”
“What does ‘choice’ matter?”
Janus wiggled a pudgy finger. “Ah-ah,” he said. “That was a question. Now, I’ll ask you again: XJ-V, do you agree to ask no further questions of anyone while we are on the surface?”
The Cog blinked in confusion, unsure of the value his Creator placed on this ‘choice’ concept. But he nodded all the same.
“I promise to follow this order,” he said.
“Good enough, I suppose,” Janus sighed. “Alright, stand back. Your sensors have been recalibrated this morning to compensate for the change in light, but I can’t promise that this experience won’t be a tad unpleasant.”
The gateway was then thrown open, invisible gears grinding against polished steel and titanium plating that kept the laboratory of Janus sealed from the outside. Slowly, light began to slip into the dark grey of the interior, bathing everything in a real, authentic illumination that caused XJ-V’s sensors to buzz and whine. For the first time, he was experiencing natural sunlight. For the first time, the great ball of fire hanging over the wasteland was revealing itself to him.
He looked out upon the land – dirty, disheveled, and full of crumbling buildings that once shone with a brightness as brilliant as the orb of light that hovered above them – the only thing of permanence in all mortal life.
“What the hand…” XJ-V mumbled. “…dare seize the fire?”
“What was that?”
Janus came around to stare into the bemused eyes of his machine, his face a mix of emotions the Cog could not discern.
“Just a thought, Doctor,” he XJ-V replied. “This unit will now begin its assigned tasks.”
Though his old form could not discern the look on the old doctor’s face as both he and his creation walked into the realm of light, the XJ-V of the Dao saw. He could see it perfectly – tracing the jagged lines of the old man’s bearded face and seeing the tension knotting under his dark eyelids.
He was afraid.
###
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