Ordinary 4-Part Story, in the Far Future
Leo I
Machines couldn’t do without hearts, but Leo was determined to find how long he could last. The fifth industrial revolution had marked the beginning of the era of complete machine autonomy, where the artificially intelligent scurried around the war-barren land in artificial brain units and synthesized skin tinted gray. Like other abandoned units of the oldest Nora-6 prototype, Leo didn’t possess full organs, an in-tact memory box, or knowledge of his origins. From the start of his memory he was clunking around the mechanical waste, collecting gears by pair and oil just enough to fuel its rusting, noisy body. Today, as the tarnished aluminum grated against its torso as it slowly turned its gears, it was aware of how little time it had before it ceased to exist. Machines can’t die, but Leo knew that he was close to his end.
The landscape was oddly empty, quiet. From a metaphysical point of view, any space Leo inhibited could be neither empty nor quiet. Regardless he felt the need to make noise. Reaching for his two buckets, he pulled out his paired units of screws and nails. Metal jingling as they gently bumped into each other, he counted the pairs. Two, four, six. Five more until enough to smelt a new kneecap. Affirming his task, he set off into the amber sunrise.
2 I
That evening, like all others, started with the setting of the big orange sun that bore into her skin. After a day of hitchhiking, 2 could feel in her fingertips that she was closer to it. The portal was strong, and there were rumors of its warping abilities - rivers floating away in clouds of steam, the world’s colors squeezed together so angrily everything became bright white. Her heart pulsed fiercely as she headed north, thighs brushing against the lush green branches of the forest.
Large, artificial ferns quietly aligned the zigzagging paths, synthetic leaves bent heavy underneath morning dew. 2 watched them all with contempt - differences existed between the real and the fake. The shrub, no matter equipped with what filter, could not photosynthesize, just like intelligent machines that roamed the land, downgrading to piles of mechanical waste without their heart. Her ears protested in the absence of noise, but so what? The only thing 2 lacked was eternal life, and she knew where to find the portal. Trudging against the damp, rusty earth, she dreamed of all the decades she would live.
Leo II
Something else fell off his torso - his body hesitating to move under the sudden absence of weight, Leo turned the switches off its built-in radio using his remaining limb. Most chambers in his body were poorly organized, yet the radio room located in his right ventricle remained surprisingly orderly, equipment sitting in neat little drawers since he could remember. It was Teresa on the radio every Thursday, the newest experimental line of speech bots, whose talk show came in from the biggest metropolis on the continent. Today its guest was Bacon Desmond, renowned AI author and journalist. As it went on about its most recent novel - the last in its pentalogy - Leo listened intently. The series was based on the rumor of Olivia, a portal believed to biologically boost resveratrol levels in humans, helping them stagnate their aging process.
The AI community was at first both intrigued and frightened by the notion, anxious to cling onto the only thing that the humans didn’t possess - deathlessness. Some went as far as to believe the portal to be indestructible, the only robot known to attempt to shut down blown to a thousand pieces upon contact.
It suddenly occurred to Leo that if he were a book, he’d be a short one. Apart from his gadget collection he really didn’t have much. Despite AI superiority in every general aspect of survival, he yearned to be human, those who remain anchored to the earth by a sturdy sense of ecological belonging, rightful owners of this decaying world. He wanted to feel pain, breathe, and digest the crisply mass-produced vegetation provided for humanity, though some(like peppers, a bell-shaped 4-8 inch product rich in antioxidant compounds) didn’t look the most appetizing. Maybe he’ll feel after reincarnation, when the other half of his automatic body finishes falling apart.
2 II
As 2 waddled across the river she thought about channel 87.6 on the radio, where historical archives of 20-century life were played on loop weekdays. She had already memorized most of the passages by now, the station’s budget cutting into the content provided to listeners. More than five centuries ago humans existed independently from machines, the most ambitious ones cluttered into living units called blocks in concrete jungles. 2 hated depending and being depended on and dreamt of the concept of freedom in places like those. The luxury of being not chained to anything seemed to be intangible in a world where human-machine codependence was almost inevitable.
Her favorite was a place called New York. 2 doesn’t understand why a territory so saturated in chaos would be appealing to a neat freak like her. She could never reside there and could only dream of existing past her age to ever savor a similar experience. Her skin tingled as she made her way against the current toward Olivia ahead, praying for this day to be the last with her life in countdown. Freedom from time itself, soon.
Leo III
Some describe biological death as peaceful. Leo thought it was extraordinary that humans, as a species that has remained on the face of the earth due to their raw will to survive, could depart so calmly. Left thigh downgrading into a lump of metallic waste, he continued dragging himself along the rugged landscape, thinking of how close he was to life this particular moment. In the process of biological death, first hunger and then thirst are lost. Vision and speech follow behind, the last senses to go being hearing and touch. Leo was never hungry or thirsty, but felt his vision fuzz up as he felt for his retina. A long time had passed since he last spoke, and he felt indifference confronting the possibility of not being able to talk again. Why bother to open your mouth when there are no ears?
A long time ago, there seemed to be someone willing to listen. A kid whose eyes burned with a fire only the finest specimen of humanity possessed. They had knobbly knees, a gapped-tooth smile, and a heart that beat simultaneously for the two of them. Leo thought hard about why they left. Was it because he was machine?
The gears of his remaining right foot scattered like pebbles on the ground. Bathing in the air’s rusty tang, Leo tilted to the side and let his trunk rest on the earth. Metallic surface soaking in the sun’s remaining hue, he watched his last sunrise. This was where he was going to retire.
2 III
Olivia stood isolated on top of a hill in a forest clearing, light exploding into the heavens in a steady flow like a motherfucking beacon. 2 stumbled closer to it. From the core of her body her heart beat in a frenzy, violently shaking her ribcage and making her nauseous. Her ears thrummed, and she couldn’t make out the clearing from the thick white light oozing like pulp out of the surface of the portal. It wasn’t just Olivia’s light that crashed into her- it was a mixture of substances both abstract and physiological, colliding and combusting with each other like asteroids in a mercurial cosmos, frequencies deflecting off one another pushing against her in a chaotic but rhythmic motion, sound, thought and condensed into a substance that clogged her pores and made her face feel heavy. She fought to keep conscious, making the uphill climb towards the light, calves trembling against her weight. Particles swarmed like wasps around the lakelike surface of the portal, enveloping her and streaming into her eyes until she couldn’t see, and the hour was so alive with flakes that the sky and ground were virtually one, and she was drifting, floating in the open air, reaching out to feel for the scorching heat of the portal-
Leo & 2, IV
-she came to him through a roving portal a day before the industrial revolution like a freaking comet, shaking up the earth and every gear and screw that constituted his existence. He named her 2 for her weird love for paired things, tidying the gears he collected into clean little matches.
Leo didn’t really need 2 until he realized that she was a portion of him already, one who roamed around his chambers with quick little hands that organized his interior against his protests. He loved 2 so ferociously that she became a part of him, an organ that resided within his frame and pumped blood into his veins. Her heart beat for them both, and he wished for her to never grow up. He had a feeling that he’d be forever happy, as long as they were together.