<………>
<…System reboot… system startup…>
“Ugghhh… wha? Who’s that?”
“Ugghh… my head… why does it hurt so much? Right… I remember now, there was a terrorist attack at ARM headquarters.. and I carried one of the researchers to… me? No that’s not right. What’s going on… Whose memory is that? And why do I see myself in the memory?”
“Huh.. I don’t understand… artificial immortality? So I’m alive? How come I can’t feel or move anything. Where am I right now? What happened to the headquarters?”
“So let me get this straight. I’m currently you? The new robot developed by ARM? If so, then what happened to me? My body?”
With that, a recording seemed to flash in front of his unopened eyes, as if recalling a memory of a distant dream he never knew he had. It was the seen from the point of view of the robot, executing a program to remove a highly radioactive threat. Then, he saw himself ordering the robot to stop, before the wall crumbled, as if being sucked in by a vacuum cleaner. What followed marred his mind. He saw his own body sheared from right to left, then the robot’s left arm being sucked into where the wall had disappeared. And then the video came to an end.
“Sigh.. yea why not? I’ve got an immortal body now apparently, so why the hell not. Let’s see what I can do with this body.”
As he opened his eyes, a dark brown light greeted his ‘eyes’ his robotic had had a large scanner running right down the middle of where his robotic face should have been, together with 3 more cameras on each side of his face. What he saw indicated that he was facing up towards the sky, with a large brown translucent cover draped over his cameras.
As Harvey sat up, the wind blew the large hemp tarp off his metallic body, only to find himself on the back of an old wooden cart, being pulled by 2 burly horses that were controlled by a raggedly dressed man. The sudden movement in the back of the cart caught the attention of the 2 other middle aged men who were on board the same cart.
“Wa! Ari mietrel du!?” (Whoa it moved?)
“It eli hulrhali? Hajearu dEEanti da?” (Is it alive? Should we throw it off?)
“Deloum miet deloa vientelli hazamit frathomu. It eli ariolhg qazag ne deka!” (This has never happened before in any previous sky gift. It is usually only stones and metal!)
“Friendly interaction huh?” Harvey thought to himself silently as his head turned silently to look at the 3 men. The cart has stopped moving and all 3 men’s attentions were on him, one of them being more wary than the others. He had his hand already poised to draw a weapon from his waist that was hidden under a slightly torn cloak.
As Harvey tried to raise his arm to give them a wave, he realised that his left arm was not responding. Trying with his other hand, he did not feel a response either. Looking down slightly, he noticed that he was indeed waving his right arm, but as per the diagnostics report earlier, his left arm and leg were missing from their shoulder and hip respectively. Half of his creamy white metal chassis was charred black and even a small portion of his torso on the left exposed some frayed wires.
“Adi dongsi ga walein hietu du?” (Is that thing waving at us?)
“Sjieli we wave bumi?” (Should we wave back?)
“But is it alive doujig?” (But is it alive though?)
“It’s hiatuy its kinjiaki but it’s not bifldrit. Jilan it’s sula menila?” (It’s missing its limbs but it’s not bleeding. Maybe it’s some magic?)
As they went on, Harvey began to understand more and more words as the translation program kicked in. as he watched the 3 men argue as to what to do with him, he began pulling on the ropes that had been used to tie part of his body to other scrap metal. Tearing the rope apart was easy, although it did not help that he could not feel anything. The tactile sensors were not working and he could not even sense that his hand was moving, even though it clearly was. The moment the thick rope tore like cotton candy, the men all stared at him silently, with all 3 now on guard against this abomination that had inhuman strength.
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“Hello,” his voice cracked in their language as the speakers in his shoulders crackled and came to life. “I’m Harvey.”
“Harvey?” all three men seemed to understand him, looking at each other and then looking at him. To that response, he nodded his mechanical head.
“Help,” Harvey pleaded, pointing to his missing arm and leg.
“Halp?” (peace?)
Lucky for Harvey, the word help translated into peace in their language, hence it lowered their guard considerably. The men had assumed that he was pointing to his disability and saying that he could do them no harm. Their hands relaxed and finally strayed away from their weapons. Moving in closer, albeit a little cautiously, one of the men finally came up to Harvey, crawling over plenty of other scrap metal that they had collected.
“Yes let’s do that,” Harvey thought back, which KAOO registered.
As KAOO replied, the large scanner on his face lit up, before his right hand transformed into fabrication mode, the 5 fingers retracting back into his palm and 5 small electrical rods resembling tiny tesla towers rose in their place. Soon, a chip began to materialise on his palm in under a minute. Harvey stretched his hand out to the man closest to him, handing him the chip. The man inspected the chip quizzically, flipping it and looking at his accomplice before shrugging with a confused look on his face.
Harvey then proceeded dismantle the magnesium alloy chassis below his neck where his thyroid gland would have been. His move startled the men as they looked on inquisitively. His hand now already back in its original form, he pulled out the faulty chip embedded below his neck, crushing it before extending his hand once more to retrieve the new chip from the man.
The moment the new chip was inserted, a flood of information gushed in Harvey’s mind as he felt the pile of scrap metal he was sitting on, the cold wind blowing against his body and the distinct difference in sensation between his body and his missing limbs. It was a fresh feeling, but a nostalgic one, as if he had just awoken from a deep sleep.
As the fabrication process began once more, the men continued holding conversations amongst themselves, constantly updating the language simulation module. The new language came naturally to Harvey as if he had known and spoken the language since birth. More words, vocabulary and grammar structure kept updating within his memory with every passing moment.
“Sorry,” he said, catching their attention once more. “Please go on with your work. Don’t mind me.”
The men looked at each other, discussing some more before nodding and securing the rest of the scrap metal. Very soon, they were on their way once more, the carriage bouncing up and down on the uneven grassland as the wooden wheels provided absolutely no comfort whatsoever. Harvey finally relaxed, looking around the cart. He recognised some of the debris that the men had collected. They seemed to be parts of the lab that he was in before the implosion. It would seem that the implosion had sent him here along with parts of the lab and the robot KAOO.
After 2 hours of bumpy carriage ride, the sun had begun to set and the men left Harvey to his own, preparing to set up camp after securing the horses and cart to a sturdy tree. As they took out some firewood from a corner of the cart to start a fire to keep warm, one of them made a short trip to the forest that they had been skirting along to collect more wood. Harvey in the meantime continued to fabricate components of his leg. Soon however, the matbank was emptied and he began disintegrating the scrap materials inside the cart to replenish his matbank.
Harvey did not sleep. Even though the men took shifts as night watch, Harvey found out that one of the many perks about being integrated into a non-organic body was the lack of fatigue. However, the moment he finished fabricating his leg and attaching it, KAOO suddenly shut down. Harvey was still conscious, but everything else simply shut down. KAOO only left him a single message before shutting off.
He figured that for as long as the reserve battery lasted, he would still be conscious, but the moment all power is lost, he would truly and fully dead. This led to his next problem. Fabrication took immense energy. Back in the lab, he could just charge the batteries at any power socket he could find. But here, out in the wilderness, electricity was literally non-existent.
With KAOO offline, he could not peruse through the data bank that KAOO possessed, and hence was stuck between a rock and a hard place. He was clinging to the last thread of life, and he had no idea how his new body worked at the moment. With nothing he could do, not even sense his surroundings, Harvey submitted. He could only hope that wherever these men were leading him to would have a place where they could charge him up, at least before the reserve battery ran dry.