Chapter 19 Covenant

Burton sat under a tree. Force grown in a hydroponics rig under uv lamps. Only three feet tall. Yet it bore ample seeds. If he sat on the floor it almost felt like being outside. Not that he could really remember what the world that remained actually felt like. He’d spent a single day outside in the last twenty years.

In the last few months however, the outside had become tantalisingly close. All he needed was a sign.

As he sat Burton worked on dismantling a broken eyebot. He’d always loved these things. He used them to serve drinks at parties, complete with bowties. The scientific dead end that gave them flight served as a platform for almost any purpose. He’d unleashed dozens from the Vault, deeply amusing himself by laughing like a cartoon villain each time.

Above the ground the floating steel balls zipped across the wastes. Advanced sensors picked out prime locations for growth. The simple arm made a hole. The reconfigured weapon housing used compressed air to fire a seed. The arm covered it with dirt and the bot zipped off to the next spot.

After years of this, fledgling forests had taken root. Misshapen and lumpen, but every inch they grew took more radiation from the soil and gave life a chance. His vicarious walks had shown signs of life. Horseflies the size of a man’s arm. Bucktoothed burrowing rats as big as dogs. Foot long roaches. Still, the mutated creatures weren’t enough for him. He had to be certain before leaving.

A sharp blow with a rubber mallet knocked free the magnetic bearing from the split open eyebot. With that, he had everything he needed. Except one thing.

Burton busied himself with his final project, waiting for an eyebot to return above ground. A cable ran up through the lake above. He’d had to sacrifice most of the lighting to salvage enough wire. Now he could override bots directly in range, then connect the hardline to download recordings.

“So what exactly are you waiting for?” He heard Mr. House behind him. Burton kept his attention on soldering.

“A sign.” He’d gotten better at tolerating what he thought of as visitors.

“A sign of what?” Mr. House shot back, his tone sharp.

“A sign from…” Burton checked the monitor, still no bots in range. “You know what, you wouldn’t understand.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“No, I don’t believe I would.” Mr. House talked down to him, as he often did. “And by I, I do of course mean you.” Burton slammed down his tools, turning to yell at nothing.

“Insufferable prick!” He lashed out, kicking the eyebot shell into the dark. An urge to find it and pound it flat with his bare hands surged. The adrenaline kickstarted the combat systems. Without movement around him, it receded. The rage passed almost as quickly as it came, leaving him frightened and shivering.

Cigarettes and a half pint of whisky smoothed his wrought nerves. For years he’d gotten stuck into the work, no thought of anything after. Now the possibility of leaving drew closer, he could think of little else. He pictured building a one room log cabin, by the lake he’d already made. A simple retirement, and far better than he deserved. No one would look twice at a very old man, fishing in a lake with no fish.

Beeping from the monitors drew him from testing circuitry. An eyebot returned as programmed, ready to resupply and continue seeding. Burton took direct control. He manoeuvred the bot to the lakeside, then used the pincer arm to find the buried cable. With the bot connected, Burton downloaded everything the multitude of sensors had recorded.

“Show me heat signatures.” Burton rasped at the computer before the data fully downloaded. Four windows bloomed into view in his eyes. The first three showed the mutated life he’d seen before. Feral hounds attacking rats of a similar size. A twitching mass of roaches clustered around the back of a truck. Something black skittering into its den.

The final recording showed a spot of intense heat. He couldn’t make out the other shapes around it. He switched to light amplification mode, grey and green changing night to day. The image before him showed people. Not like him, not wearing suits, sat round a fire.

Burton closed the feed with a blink, bringing him back to his island of light in a sea of darkness. Still waiting for a sign he could leave. The monitor issued two beeps, indicating the bot had been successfully resupplied. Almost without thinking, Burton checked the live feed, just to get one last glimpse of the outside.

There, pecking at the dirt, stood a bird. Tiny, pointed beak, black stripes on the eyes and dark plumage. Burton quickly stopped the eyebot from moving, desperate not to scare the bird away. It hopped and pecked a moment longer then flitted away. Burton panned the eyebot up in hopes of getting another glimpse. He got something better.

Above a patch of fledgling forest in the distance, a cloud of shapes ebbed and flowed in the dusk air. The murmuration swooped and dove, flocks joining and swelling the organised chaos. After what felt like hours, the flock seemed to vanish as the birds roosted for the night.

Burton shut his eyes, overwhelmed. He told himself that if small, frail creatures could survive, so could bigger things. He told himself that the birds would help seed the forests far and wide. He told himself a dozen different things, rooted in science and logic. All to help him accept what he felt in his bones to be true. That this bird served as a sign of an understanding, an agreement, a covenant. No longer would the land be ravaged. What he’d built would last. And now, he could leave.

All he had to do was cut off his left arm.