Not Forgotten, Just Misplaced

It was a wet forest, the canopy of which did not succeed in warding off the acid rain. The family shuffled through the undergrowth, three beating hearts and a battery. Hoods drawn low, balaclavas covering everything but their eyes. On their mottled coats were smeared a paste of their own creation: a mixture of car oil, crushed garlic, and fox urine.

Their scent was putrid, yet unidentifiable. If that wasn’t enough to mask them from the creatures, the father of the family carried a machete and the mother an assault rifle. The little girl had a switchblade.

The robot was unarmed.

It did, however, creak something awful as it across through the moss. It had something to do with its left knee, and no matter how often the father tried to oil it, or how often the mother tried to tighten the screws, it still insisted on broadcasting every movement like a wailing cat.

And when one is trying to move unseen through a world where humans are no longer the apex predators, wailing cats are sorry company.

The father held up a hand. The little ensemble stopped. The creaking ceased, and finally all was quiet in the forest aside from the drip-drip-dripping of searing raindrops.

The father and the mother conversed. The girl played a clapping game with the robot.

Left, right, double-clap. Left, right, double-clap.

The mother shushed them.

The father pulled the girl aside. He whispered something in her ear. She drew back, shock on her face.

Another whisper. A yell bit in two. A hush, a whisper, a conversation that hurt to have.

Meanwhile the robot sat in the damp moss. It plucked little white flowers and, with exquisite care, weaved their stalks together.

“What if it’s attacked?” asked the girl.

“It doesn’t smell human,” said the father. “Its knee will attract them, but they won’t attack. It’ll be more safe without us than it is now.”

“But what if it rusts? Or runs out of power? Or if it gets lonely and turns itself off?”

The father tugged at the girl’s hood, pulled it tighter over her head. “Then it’ll wait here till the world becomes a better place, and someone will turn it back on.”

The mother grabbed the shoulders of the girl as the father walked back to the robot.

“We’re going to scout for a little,” the father said, not holding the robot’s eyes as he said so. “We’d like for you to stay here and set up camp. Can you do that?”

The robot nodded.

The father stood, not knowing where to put his hands. Then he put one on the shoulder of the robot, squeezed the metal, and walked back to the others.

The robot waved after them and after ten steps the girl turned, waved back. Then, breaking free of her mother’s grip she ran to the robot.

“Have you forgotten something?” asked the robot.

There were tears in the little girl’s eyes.

“I have,” the robot said. “I have forgotten to give you this.” And it put the flower crown it had just finished on her head.

For the first long time after the family had disappeared between the trees, the robot simply sat on the ground, observing the life of the forest around it. Then it rose, dusted off its legs in a disarmingly human manner, and got to work.

Time did not contain meaning for the robot. It could measure time down to a millionth of a nanosecond, yet it did not have any connotations associated with that measurement. That the family had not returned after three days did not signify anything. It merely meant the robot had more time to improve the camp it was setting up.

The robot was a basic JoAL model, tailored to nothing yet capable of everything. It was a cook, a chauffeur, a babysitter, a gardener, a bricklayer, a secretary. Before the extermination attempts it had been more common in households than neural links.

After the attempts most JoALs roamed the streets of empty cities, walking through radiation no human could withstand, untouched by the creatures that tracked prey via scent, sound, and heat.

JoAL was the last of AwkTech’s line of helpers before the world had gone into survival mode, and it was the latest in a long line of humanoid attempts. Copper muscles, five digits on each hand, eyes that could not only turn but also blink, and a mouth that could light up in three different modes. Frown, neutral, and smile. When one lit up the others turned off, and when it turned them off for the night it looked like an octopus slept on its face.

Sometimes at night it went into low power mode and sat perfectly still, staring up at the stars, unmoving even as the fauna of the forest crawled all around it.

During the day it picked up branches and put them in neat stacks. It dragged dead trees to form the outline of a hut. At first it leant large sticks up against each other to construct a primitive tepee. Then it moved on to weave a wall of branches, interlacing them with growing tree trunks, forming an efficient shelter against the wind.

Shelter from the rain was a priority. The robot was unbothered by the acidic contents in the water but its family was not, and it knew that any home’s purpose was to grant safety. So, though it mattered naught to itself, it always made a sound roof.

The sun set on the forest and rose on it the next morning, rays diffuse through the dust clouds up there. Ancient creatures woken from their slumber by bombs that rattled Earth’s core wandered through the world. They chased and felled those of flesh. Rifle shots frequently woke the birds, sending them fleeing up and up and up.

Cities became ruins, covered in foliage and mud. Empires had fallen, forests had risen, and out by the coast a loud ocean beat onto a silent beach.

Every day the robot woke, foraged for materials for shelter, built and built. Every night it stargazed alone, imagining that its family would return.

Every morning it was proved wrong.

The birds were used to it by now, landing on the roofs it raised. The badgers passed by at night and the trees applauded the creation. The bushes extended their leaves to hug the robot’s walls, and the wild onions it planted did their best to set roots and grow and grow.

Vile creatures came to investigate the creaking noise, found nothing but a cold copper being. The robot waved them away like one would a mouse.

The robot and its ever growing camp became a permanent fixture of the forest, like the creek that clucked happily nearby, or the ancient oak that had withstood tests of time and atom bombs.

It was inevitable that one day a human would stumble upon the hut.

Rain, rain, rain, oh unending rain that burns the skin. Muddy drops of it skidded from the treetops, landed on a camouflage coat. Landed on an open wound, seared the flesh, diluted the blood.

A man. Athletic build, salt and pepper beard on a rough jaw. Sniper rifle on his back, flesh parted in a horrific cut running across his body. A blood tinged memory of a creature raking its claws from shoulder to hip. Knees that would soon collapse, face that would soon stare into the dirt through unseeing eyes.

When he saw the robot he saw no more than a silhouette. When he tried to pull his rifle the pain from the wound staggered him.

Knees folded, hip bent, hands flailed in a vain attempt to break a fall.

When the robot turned the man over it noted weak breathing and a fading pulse.

It stared at him for a moment. It held out its hand, stared at the water pooling in its palm.

Then it shrugged, picked up the man, and carried him to the hut.

Murmuring flames, warm and safe. Tea boiling. A scent of safety wafting through a dry interior.

Death knocked and the robot refused to open. Not yet.

Give me but a minute.

Let him wake, let him drink, let him smile.

Then you may enter.

And so Death bided her time out in the acid rain, her cloak ruffling the wild onions.

“What is your name?” asked the man with that incurable wound.

“I have none,” said the robot.

“You were never given a name?”

The robot shook its head.

“Then I shall call you Hearth, for you have brought me the same warmth and comfort in my final minutes.”

“I couldn’t save you,” the robot said, mechanical in all but sentiment.

“You have allowed my soul to die in the warmth rather than in the dirt.”

Knock. Knock.

Death is at the door.

Hearth began to show signs of the forest. Mud in its joints. Scrapes from where it had carried branches or tripped over rocks. Bits of moss that seemed to grow on its shoulders and palms, and little splotches of red rust the deer liked to lick when it “slept”. Sometimes it would stand in the middle of the day and extend its arms and the birds would land on it. There they would sing to each other and tell each other stories and at some point all would quiet down while Hearth spoke.

It told the story of its family.

It explained the purpose of the camp.

And it thanked the children of the forest for the surrogate family they had given it.

“I will miss you when my own family returns and I have to leave.”

The hut grew and grew. It became a house with a floor, a staircase, a second story. The robot built a bedroom. A living room. A kitchen where it made food it would never eat. But it gave to the forest: to the birds and the badgers and the bunnies, and when a soaked human came stumbling through the trees, Hearth opened the door to its house and beckoned the person inside.

Wounds and war. Creatures with sharp claws.

Bombs dropped from planes above.

Famine spreading through the land.

Pain.

Fear.

A burning nightmare that etched itself into your eyeballs and stayed with you till you died.

Or till you found that hut out in the woods.

It was an oasis. A paradise away from all the worries and horrors. A liminal hotel run by a copper JoAL named Hearth.

You came for whatever reason, and you stayed for however long. You helped make food for the other guests, helped forage through the bushes, helped tend to the ring of onions that veiled the scents of humans.

And you helped expand the hut, for that was Hearth’s purpose.

One day they’ll come back, and they’ll have expected me to set up camp. So that’s what I’m doing.

Setting

up

camp.

There was a woman with a name, a past, and a future. She was something special in her own story. In the tale of Hearth’s hut she was but someone that came, stayed, then went again.

And yet, mechanical though he was, Hearth could not help feel drawn to her, for she was the spitting image of the mother of his family.

So he confided in her one evening when they both stood on the porch, watching the acid rain water the wild onions.

“I fear,” Hearth began, and the words drained him of power, “that they have forgotten me.”

The woman said, “Sweetie, you’re not forgotten. You’ve just been… misplaced. How’s that sound?”

“Not forgotten, just misplaced,” the robot repeated. “Yes. That sounds right.”

“This place feels kind of like that,” said the woman. “As though it should have been in a utopia on a faraway planet but was misplaced and is now in this hell.”

The robot studied her, tilting its copper head. “No, I don’t think so. I think this place is exactly where it needs to be.”

Wet leaves. Wet feathers. Wet cloth and wet copper. A forest stretching across a country. The forest ate cities, planted trees that cracked the pavement and grew leaves that covered broken windows.

Creatures roamed these forests. People sought refuge in these forests.

Shots were fired, throats were slit, people were harmed by nature

or by creatures

by sickness and disease

and regrettably

by others of their own kind

but in the hut no one were harmed

except for those that

hit their own fingers

when using hammers

or gave themselves

splinters

from the planks.

“A couple passing through gave it to me.” Hearth told the little boy as they built a slanted roof on yet another extension to the “camp.”

“Really?”

“Yes. And if you don’t look at what you’re doing you’ll crack a finger with it. Be careful.”

The two worked and the light on the robot’s face was on in the upward smile position.

“You remind me of someone I know,” it said. “A little girl I used to take care of.”

“Where is she now?”

“I don’t know.“

“Will she come to visit?”

The robot rose, put its metal hands on its hips. The rain was soft and the smell of petrichor battled the smell of the onions. Hearth observed what it had made and for the first time the thought of all the time it had spent struck it.

Then it thought of all the people that had gone through, of all the birds that had built nests in the birdhouses it had made, of the thriving ring of wild onions.

“I don’t know,” it said.

And it kept working with that little boy.

The two of them sat on the porch. It had been there for a long time. She had been there for the few weeks it took for her leg to heal.

“I left Barn right before it disappeared,” she said. “They thought it was a hive for those things. Dropped a big ol’ nuke on ‘em. Poof.” She held up her hands, indicating a mushroom cloud.

Hearth blinked. Then, “Did anybody survive?”

“Anybody in Barn?” She laughed. “Naw, ain’t nothing surviving that blast, not for miles! Why? You planning on going there?”

“It is where my family went,” Hearth said, his faux vocal cords grinding.

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“I am also sorry.”

They were both silent, standing on the porch of the hut Hearth had built, staring at the leaves dripping down onto the onions.

“You know, a lot of people left Barn when the first of the creatures showed up,” the woman said. “Perhaps your family did the same.”

Hearth looked at her. “You really think so?”

“Sure.”

The little graphic that was Hearth’s smiling mouth lit up. “Then I think so too. They always were resourceful. They knew exactly when to ditch ship, before even the rats.”

She studied him for a moment, studied the way his leg creaked loudly when he stepped down from the porch and out into the rain.

And she decided to say nothing but to simply pull up her hood and join him out there in the little oasis he’d built, waiting for his family to return.

A sound too soft for human ears to pick up entered the consciousness of the robot. It was “asleep” yet it could not shake the noise. Thus, like a human going for a drink of water in the night, Hearth rose and walked outside. In its house were five humans, some together, some travelling alone.

Each one was under Hearth’s protection, so when it saw the shadow moving out in the trees it did not shy away.

A creature was out there between the bushes, sniffing the ground. It could not smell the humans, smelled naught but the onions. But chance could lead it to cross through that veiling ring.

And what would then happen to the resting humans?

The creature’s head perked up at the creaking of the robot’s knee.

It turned in Hearth’s direction. It was a horrible being, from a time before humanity opened their eyes. Mother Earth had hidden them away to protect her children, but her children had woken them again with their explosions.

It sniffed, tried to determine a scent other than that of the onions. Its underground eyes tried to see the copper shape, tried to understand it.

“Begone,” the robot said. It picked up a stone and threw it at the creature.

The creature snarled, snapped its maw.

“Begone,” the robot said again, threw another rock.

The creature slashed out at the robot, scraped Hearth’s arm.

The robot flung a final rock at the creature, and the creature, confused by the cold being that smelled of onion, lumbered off into the woods.

Hearth watched it leave. It turned around, walked back to the porch.

There stood the little boy that had helped with the roof.

“What’s going on?” the boy asked.

“Just a visitor come to say hello,” said Hearth. “I told them they are not welcome here.” It ruffled the boy’s hair. “Now go back to bed.”

One day the sun rose without the robot. The travellers looked about wearily, wondering what had caused the copper creature to sleep. The children of the forest too stood uneasy. The trees shook their branches, the moss whined, the bushes rustled to wake the birds and rabbits so that they might help in the search for the creation that a dying man had named Hearth.

A tiny blackbird was the first to find the robot and it frantically sang its discovery.

Hearth sat by the little creek, leaning up against a tree, one hand trailing in the water, another resting on its knee.

The lights in its eyes and mouth were off.

Rain poured from the sky as the world wept for the robot.

“Is Hearth… gone?” asked someone.

“No,” said someone else. “This life has just temporarily misplaced it.”