Sally woke to another day in paradise. She yawned and stretched, then looked around. There was a lot more green than when she’d gone to sleep. She rubbed her eyes to bring things into focus. Where there had been a small lake was now all grass.

“Humph,” she paused for a moment. She was getting a lot of use out of that word.

She looked around. Jon was nowhere to be seen.

Wasn’t her problem. He was a full-grown little boy/man/robot... whatever.

She got up. She was a little stiff, by “a little stiff” she meant that she could barely move.

“This never happens to heroes in movies,” Sally griped as she struggled to sit up. “They can get shot, run ten miles, fight the bad guys for hours and then act like nothing happened. All I did was walk and now it hurts to even blink.” Then she tried it, and yep, it hurt.

She creaked around, getting ready for the day. Fortunately, the grass hadn’t grown over the water caught in the crook of the two beams. Nothing bad had happened from drinking it yesterday, so she supposed the alien filter in her gut was working.

She splashed some water on her face, then dug into their packs for some food. Easing herself into a sitting position, she snacked on some of the powder and seeds, which were as nasty as usual.

She thought about expanding her diet. There’d been the spider leg she’d found in the fire that the other her may have been cooking. Maybe she should try munching on some yummy spider-rabbit? Sally looked around, but she couldn’t see any evidence that they were in the area. She wondered if the grass would attract them.

She finished forcing her food down and tidied up. Still alone. Where had Jon gotten to?

She did her best impression of walking to move around the structure they had camped by and attempted to spot him. Having no luck, she scanned the other girder-type buildings scattered around the area, but still no Jon. She could see the wall of the arena rising in the distance and it was hard to tell, but if she stared long enough there appeared to be a lot of dirt, or something, piled up against its base.

Still no sign of Jon. She was moving a little better and decided she could attempt some exercise and see if things loosened up.

After a try at stretching, bending, and groaning she was arching her back when she saw a flash of something high up in the structure. Circling the base to get a better view she realized it was Jon. He’d scaled the structure for some reason, probably to look around, or, really, who knew why?

He was scampering back and forth, moving so fast that he blurred. He would stop for a while, then blur and move to a new place. It was sort of fascinating.

Sally did some more easy stretches while she watched. Eventually, he descended to the campsite.

“Did you have fun playing up there?” she asked.

He ignored her question. “I now have a fairly good analysis of this artifact. I have no idea of its purpose but I do know how it was constructed. This is the reason field trips can be illuminating. I had absolutely no record of constructs even remotely like this.”

Sally decided to return his ignoring with her own, so she asked, “Well then, what are we going to do today? Continue on and head for the wall?”

“Yes, that seems reasonable. We can deviate a little way to look at the other structures along the way and see if they are similar to this one.”

“It looks like there’s a lot of dirt, or something piled up against the wall. Any idea what it is?”

“Oh, you will see.”

Although his demeanor hadn’t changed, Sally still got the impression that he was actually excited about the pile of dirt. Probably more data. Dirt data. Data dirt. Dirty data. Ha!

“By the way, what happened to the scent trail we were following” Sally asked. “Are we still tracking, or back-tracking, the two?”

“No. Once the trail started widening, the traces became indistinct and mixed with other scents, chemicals, and microscopic presences that I could not identify. It appears my existing archives do not have much in the way of information concerning what I will loosely term "scent traces" left by various entities. I’ve opened a new archive to categorize this since I have very little information concerning the process of analyzing scents. It appears that this is a little-studied field. I am rather excited.” Delivered in his typical monotone.

With nothing to keep them in this spot, they prepared for the day’s journey. Jon took some time to design, make, and fill a couple of water bags out of the leftover cloth they had found in the hidden room. They rounded up the chair, packed, and started out. Their speed was a little slower today because Sally’s soreness. One particular issue was that her feet hadn’t toughened up. Jon offered to make shoes for her, but Sally declined, remembering how calloused her feet used to get during summer break when she was in grade school. "A little pain for a little gain," her aunt used to say.

Over the next few hours, they took a meandering path toward the wall. Jon decreed that the other structures they passed were similar to the first, some larger, some smaller, and a few that seemed to be partly melted. Jon didn’t volunteer any further information, and Sally didn’t ask.

The skeletal structures ended and Sally guessed that they had about two miles to travel before they reached the wall. Even at this distance, it loomed high above them. When she looked up she could see signs of a ceiling, but it was still obscured by haziness in the atmosphere. Sally was somewhat intimidated by the scale of the structure. Jon’s sensor flying around looked like a tiny lost bird in the open expanse.

As they neared the wall, the dirt began to take on more distinct shapes. Rather than a uniform consistency, it resolved into a mass of many things jumbled and packed together. There was a glitter of metallic objects, organic-seeming things, cloth, boxes, wires and tubes; just tons and tons of stuff.

They stopped a few hundred feet back from the pile. It was immense, twenty or thirty yards high, and extending out of sight in both directions.

“Oh. My. Goodness.” Sally said as she took on its immensity. “It is huge. If it was more organized you could call it a garbage dump.”

“This is… significant.” Sally swore there was actually some emotion in Jon’s voice. Sally thought that in another moment he’d tear up like a little girl. If he were a girl and if he could cry. And if he had emotions.

Sally decided to be practical. “Let’s set up camp, then we can start on understanding whatever this is. First things first. Water?”

“None we can trust. I will deal with the issue.”

Sally stood in amazement as Jon blurred. He threw the things off the chair, grabbed some sheets of material, made some more bags, and streaked back along the trail they had taken hours to travel. He shrank into the distance, heading toward their last campsite. Sally watched as he disappeared, then waited a couple of minutes. She wondered if she should be doing something when one of the beams on the nearest structure suddenly collapsed. She kept watching for something more, but that was it. A few minutes later, just as she was starting to wonder what was going on, Jon zoomed into view carrying full bags of water.

Sally was humbled to realize what Jon could do without her slowing him down. The practical side of her said she could only do what she could. The impractical side said, “Yeah, well, but... crap.”

Jon ran up to her and stopped. “So. Where should we set up camp?” she asked.

“Here is as good as anywhere.”

She thought Jon had just slammed everything down before he had raced off to get water, but when she went to organize the camp, it was apparent that Jon had already done so. He really wasn’t human. She turned to comment about it, but found he’d moved over to the pile and was now pulling things out and examining them.

Sally watched for a while, musing that this was probably the biggest rummage sale of the century, or probably, ever. She too was starting to get excited. Who knew what was in this immense pile? Maybe some clues? Or maybe even some answers?

Jon’s sensor hand was flying up and down the pile, sometimes so far away that Sally couldn’t see it. She guessed that in his excitement, Jon had given up on security.

He was still pulling out things from the immense jumble, and placing whatever he picked up out in the open, in no discernible order. He would study each thing intently for a few seconds, put it somewhere, and then go get something else. Sally had no idea why he was doing what, but he probably had a plan. Maybe she would ask later, since he seemed busy.

Sally realized that she was contributing pretty much nothing, so she walked up the edge of the pile to see if she could discover anything for herself. She didn’t expect to accomplish much, but that made it easy to succeed.

After walking along the edge and occasionally poking at things for half an hour, she started to realize something. Every so often the mass of stuff had been disturbed. Not to the extent Jon was accomplishing, but things had been moved out from the main mass. Someone else had been here before them.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Sally approached one of the places where things had been displaced. Obviously, the stuff that had been pulled out onto the floor and placed in some kind of order, metal in one pile, dirt, or at least organic looking stuff, in another, some sort of tentacles, or something like that, in a third, boxes and containers in a fourth, and so on. The piles were organized more for similarities in shape than anything else. It was something she could understand, rather than how Jon did things. She was sure Jon had some scheme, but, much of the time, she couldn’t figure it out.

Sally poked at the small pile of containers. Maybe she could figure out how to open a few of them? For once she actually thought about it before she did something. There was some chance that contained some surprise like exploding purple staining stink bugs. Best she be careful.

The pile consisted of cubes, cylinders, weird multi-sided boxes, and even some sort of spiral tube. Two of the boxes were so heavy she could barely move them, even though they were quite small. She pushed and pulled, but they barely moved. They were heavy! She decided to leave them for now, mostly because she really wasn't accomplishing much.

That left ten other boxy things. She picked up one, a silvery cube, and turned it over and over, examining it closely. Each side was about a foot long, and the box itself was moderately heavy, a few pounds. There weren’t any openings, but something was rattling around inside. She pulled, pushed, and tried to twist the sides. She even did a version of the hokey pokey, but nothing worked. She hadn’t held out much hope for the hokey pokey method.

Although she wasn’t getting anywhere, she was nothing if not stubborn. She sat back and looked at the other containers. Was there a chance that some of them worked together? She selected a few that were similar to the cube she had, and tried fitting the edges together. After discarding a couple, she found a rectangular box that looked a lot like the silver cube, but bluer. She looked at each side of the bluer box and didn’t see anything special. She felt it all over, and one side was a little rougher than the others. She put the cube down and picked up the first silvery one and felt all over it, too. It had a rougher side too! She put both cubes on the floor and pushed the rougher sides to face each other. She jumped when they snapped together like magnets!

Success! Ish. Now what? Instead of two little square boxes, she now had a bigger rectangular box thing. She looked at the other containers but nothing else seemed to be similar to the two boxes she had been playing with.

She sniffed. Something was burning. It wasn’t coming from the boxes or little piles, so she looked at the main pile. A few wisps of smoke were rising from somewhere inside.

Oh, oh! Probably not a coincidence.

She tried to pull the cubes apart, but they were really stuck together. Twisting them caused even more smoke to pour out. Frantically, she pulled, pushed, twisted, and eventually got the two boxes apart by throwing them onto the ground and jumping on them. The smoke from the pile died down. She stared at the cubes for a few minutes, but they seemed to be safe. For the moment. She decided to leave everything where it was and walked back to where Jon was working, debating what she should tell Jon. She couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t make her look bad.

When she arrived at the camp, he completely ignored her. Before publicizing her probably embarrassing and unsafe findings, she decided it was time for lunch, so she sat and ate as he sorted.

Sally wasn’t sure why she was avoiding telling Jon about her slight mishap. Actually, that was a lie. She just didn’t want to look even stupider than she already was. He probably wouldn’t care, but she did. Maybe it would be better if she brought everything back here to show him what she’d found. At least, that would postpone things.

After eating, she grabbed a bag of water and extra bags, then headed back to where she had left the cubes. Upon arrival, she kicked the two boxes even further away from each other, just to be safe. She watched everything for a few seconds, and after zero explosions, she started pulling at the main pile, trying to find where the smoke had come from, hoping to find something.

It didn’t go well. The main body of the pile was densely compacted. Her main achievements were a number of cuts and scrapes. She sat back on her heels, contemplating her lack of success. This wasn’t working. She washed her cuts while thinking about her next step.

She decided to give it one more shot, but only managed to wiggle out a few pieces of some sort of cloth, a tiny chunk of some unknown plant-thing, and a bit of dirt. Her hands were even rawer now, and she’d bent a fingernail.

This was stupid. Man was meant to be a tool user so she should be a man, so to speak. A quick look around didn't reveal anything suitable, so she looked around at the organized piles spread out on the floor. One had a bunch of sticks, but they were either too small or too bendy. She kicked the other piles and a bigger stick rolled out of one. It was very strong and even had a pointed end. Perfect. Maybe this was what the others had used before her?

She attacked, poking and prying at the place where the smoke had come from. It was difficult, but the stick worked much better than her hands. Although she still wasn’t at one-hundred percent, by working slowly she could make some headway without becoming too tired.

At one point she took a break and sat back, examining the pile, since there wasn't much else to do. She blinked in surprise, then got up and looked carefully at some spots near where she was digging. Now that she knew what to look for, she could see that someone else had been using the very same stick she had to dig there. That was interesting. She wasn’t the first. Maybe not even the first Sally. She put that thought away, not really ready to chase that demon down, yet.

Sally returned to digging, and after another hour of alternating digging and resting she found an obviously charred area. A bit more digging unearthed (un-garbaged?) another cube. This one was orange, rather than silvery, with its corners cut off. The surrounding burned area made it obvious that this was what the other cubes had caused to heat up. She dug the cube out and poked around the area a bit more, but couldn't find anything else of interest.

She intended to bring everything back to the camp, but had definitely learned her lesson. After packing each of the cubes into different bags, she kept all three bags far apart from each other. She hung two of them from her belt, one on each side, and used a few drawstrings to make a rope so she could drag the third bag behind her.

She carefully walked back to where Jon was working.

“Excuse me, Jon,” she called to him. “Can we talk for a moment?”

While he watched, she pulled out her bags and emptied them, being careful to keep the cubes separate, then told Jon about the area she had found and what she’d done, admitting everything. She didn’t want to, but even the smallest detail might be important. Her only compromise was that “a whole lot of smoke” became “some smoke”.

Jon carefully examined the cubes, then his third eye snapped open and she heard clicks and a faint buzzing as he did something. He turned to her. The opening on his forehead still creeped her out a little, so she didn’t look at it directly.

“This appears to be a type of subspace power tap," he explained. "Two of the cubes form a controller. Fitting them together in different ways will define how much energy leaks into the third item, which is the actual tap. It is a low energy version, a few kilowatts. The tap can power various technologies, generate heat, or infrared light. Variants of this idea are common in many cultures. It never runs out of energy and is relatively safe, unless it is enclosed in a limited space, then it can get hot, and melt everything around it.”

Sally was almost certain that this meant he’d seen what she’d done.

He continued, “We may unearth items from this debris field that we can power with this tap, and we can also use it for heat and cooking.”

Sally felt relieved. In fact, she felt proud of herself. She had found something useful and didn’t die.

“What about you?" she asked. "You’ve uncovered a whole lot more things than I did. What are they?”

“I have found a mixture of parts of things from a number of different cultures and civilizations. In themselves, they are just bits and pieces broken from larger constructs, but the unique thing is that they are together, here. So far, I have not been successful in developing a viable theory that adequately explains this conundrum. For instance, what we have here,” he waved his hand at a puddle of some sort of goo, “is a philosophical discussion about the appropriateness of using purple for educating immature slugs, and this,” he indicated a metal construct, “is the controller for a hybrid being’s thorax stimulator. I found the discussion inside the controller. I have nothing in my archives to explain how this could come about. Most of the remainder of what I have arrayed here are equally eclectic and have the same sort of inexplicable relationships. I need more information.”

He then gestured toward the main pile. “Fortunately, there is an abundance of information. We simply need to keep looking.”

Sally wasn’t sure about that. She had assumed they would keep wandering to see if they could find a reason for why she was here, but apparently, Jon wasn't going to leave this big pile of garbage, any time soon. She thought the matter over. Perhaps they would find something buried here to explain what was going on? Maybe Jon was right.

Whatever. She certainly had no intention of setting out on her own. She was just... well, she needed Jon too much.

Ignoring, or unaware, of her thoughts, Jon went on to explain how to control the energy tap, then he went back to his sorting, Sally fiddled around and set the tap to generate some heat. She dragged over another box to sit on while she warmed herself. It was a sort of a high-tech campfire. After a while, she dug up some supper, which was as bad as usual. Most definitely she wasn’t getting used to it, although the food was keeping her going.

If it was anyone else, they might get annoyed with too many interruptions, but Jon seemed immune. After some thought, she called him to come over. He finished what he was doing and approached the “fire”.

“Sorry if I'm being a pest, but I have a few more questions." She waited for a reaction, but there was none. She continued, "Do you have any idea where this garbage heap came from?”

“I have not yet found any information to explain its existence.”

“Do you have any guesses?”

“I do not guess.”

He’d mentioned stuff like this before, but she’d assumed he didn’t really mean it.

“What do you mean, you don’t guess? You can’t know everything. Everyone guesses about stuff, all the time.”

“I do not. I will take input data and use it to look at my internal archives to find comparable situations and use what I find to deal with the situation. I am continually updating these files with what I observe, and with what I absorb from other data banks. If I find a situation for which I have insufficient information, I keep acquiring data until I can resolve the issue.

“I have the hardware to be able to deal with minor variants so that my internal processes do not have to match the external events perfectly, but this only allows for small deviations. I give percentages when the matching is less adequate, and these percentages must be above a certain level before I can conclude that I understand an issue.”

“How big is your database?”

“Very large.”

Sally thought for a while. This whole process seemed pretty limiting.

“What happens if you don’t have any information, but something really bad is happening?”

“In all but a limited number of cases I am indestructible. I will record the event and carry on obtaining data.”

“Um, what if I'm involved? I am very... destructable.”

“That is a complication.”

Some complication! And, although Jon seemed happy being the way he was, Sally had a suspicion that if he were a bit different, he might be a more significant player wherever he was.

“Do you think you were made this way by whoever set up this... whatever it is. Experiment?”

“Perhaps.”

This bugged Sally even more, although she knew a lost cause when it was shoved in her face. She thought about what he’d said. Maybe she could help Jon expand his abilities? How the heck would she do that?

After waiting to see if she had more questions, Jon returned to sorting things. Sally prepared for bed and went to sleep enjoying the warmth radiating from her discovery. She slept well, occasionally waking when Jon made too much noise.