When Hilargi arrived at the bottom of the stairs, she headed down the checkered, blue and white alloy hallway. Hilargi had helped design the hallway long ago, and she always liked the elliptical shape she and her long-deceased scientist friends had decided upon.
Hilargi came to a stop at the door at the end of the hallway, twisting the knob on the wooden door at the end. There were only a few trees in the Wasteland, and those were the trees that belonged to oases. Because all of the tribes of the Wasteland knew that there were so few trees, they all had come to an unspoken agreement that they would only take down as many as they needed each year, if that. Hilargi, who had been nothing but loyal and useful to the Nymphs, asked Ellia if she could have a wooden door for her quarters. Ellia agreed, and Hilargi was allowed to have the one and only wooden door in the fortress.
She opened the door which revealed her spartan quarters behind. There was room enough for a dresser containing her few articles of clothing, a bed, a nightstand, and a bookshelf and that was it. Hilargi said to Yair, “Stay out here while I change into my nightgown, okay?”
Yair nodded.
She shut the door and dug around her drawer for her plain, white, ankle high nightgown. She was always amazed by how organized she was when constructing weapons and robots, but how disorganized she was when it came to finding personal items. Despite the fact that her room was so small, various personal items such as books containing fiction, plans she had drawn up for amusing devices to make the lives of the tribeswomen easier, and poorly drawn pictures of historical and fictional figures she loved were all strewn about the floor. Articles of clothing, which hadn’t made it into the hamper, laid scattered about her floor. Her cheeks went red with embarrassment at the sight of her undergarments hanging off her bedpost.
He’s just a robot. It’s not like he’s my boyfriend. She reminded herself as she finally located her nightgown which had somehow ended up in the crack between her bed and the wall.
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She took off her white lab coat and her glasses, and then removed her pants and shit, putting on her nightgown afterward. She crawled under her covers. “Okay! You can come in now!”
Yair clicked the door open and stood in the doorway. “Where do you keep the Bible?”
“It’s on the floor somewhere…” Hilargi told him nestling into bed with a smile.
She was shocked by how easily he found it amidst the unholy mess on the floor. The robot picked it up and sat on the floor by Hilargi’s bedside. He stretched his stiff, metal legs out in front of himself and turned the pages until he arrived at Samson.
Hilargi felt like an innocent girl again as he read. She remembered herself as a six-year-old, tucked comfortably into bed by her mother, and imagining the story of Samson so clearly as her mother recited it that she felt like she was in the story and watching every scene play out.
She was awed by Samson’s unbridled strength when he killed the lion with his bare hands and enthralled by the riddle he told the Philistines. She wept for Samson when Delilah cut his hair and was devastated when the Philistine temple inevitably collapsed upon him, killing him.
She was drowsy when Yair finished the story. She yawned and felt at peace.
“You know what I never understood?” Hilargi asked sleepily.
“No. What is it you didn’t understand?” Yair answered with his clean, synthesized voice.
“I never understood why God chose such an imperfect man to impart his power to. He was such a muscle-head and broke so many Nazirite rules…” Hilargi mused out loud.
“Perhaps he needed to be empty-headed so that he could be proper vessel to fulfill God’s will.” Yair suggested.
Hilargi murmured, “Maybe… At any rate, I think Samson was a good man. He just made a lot of mistakes.”
Hilargi often thought of the Last Man as a Samson figure, and she wondered why God had chosen him, of all men, to be the last man on earth. She pondered if he was empty-headed with a good heart like Samson, or whether he was an evil man who didn’t care whether the human race lived on.
She drifted off into a deep sleep as she thought about it. She hoped with all her heart that she would get to meet the Last Man. She couldn’t help the deep desire within her to want to fall in love and have children, even though she knew it was wishful thinking.
For all she knew, he might be reprehensible, anyway, which would dash her dreams.