Bone Rush: Chapter Eight
“Do you still know the way to yesterEarth?”
(Note: this is part eight of an ongoing story. Check out the seven part here.)
By Nick Wisseman
Legs suggested covering her mithrol-coated foot in dirt from the adjacent clearing, brushing it off with her similarly contaminated hand, then rubbing that through a fresh pile of dirt. “That should remove the majority of the mithrol and slow the corrosion. Once we’re off-world, I’ll repair the damage.”
Mika followed the robot’s instructions silently. But after Legs pronounced the “mitigation efforts” satisfactory, she pointed at Desmond. “Would you really have shot him? Despite your principles?”
Legs just stared at her.
“And before that, did you open the door to the Mantis and summon Rocket and Smog to distract Desmond and Jabare? I’m not wild about you endangering the animals.”
“From that angle, the odds of them incurring serious damage were — ”
“High, no matter what you were about to say.” Mika stood and took a few experimental steps; her prosthetic foot didn’t hurt much anymore, but it was noticeably shorter. “Given everything you’ve invested in Smog’s development, though, everything you risked by sending him to help me … Thank you. I appreciate it.”
Legs remained motionless.
“Humans say ‘you’re welcome’ in these situations.”
“I’m an — ”
“II, yes, I’m aware.” She gestured at the weapon he still carried, its fibrous string now slack and dangling from one end. “Why a bow?”
Legs pointed at Desmond. “What do you want to do with him?”
She grimaced. Of course the robot would evade her question by asking the one she’d been avoiding. It was tempting to leave Desmond as he was — to let him become bones among bones, discarded and exposed. But … Humans respected their dead. “I guess we should dig a grave. If we have time.”
Legs shrugged and broadcast what must have been intercepted audio:
“Jabare,” Quan yelled. “Desmond, do you read? We’re at the mine, but the transport’s battery flaked out. Looks like more sabotage.”
“We’re fucking stranded,” Wes added over the feed. “You have to come get us.”
Legs switched off the audio. “The mine is two hundred and thirteen point seven kilometers from here.”
Mika estimated how long it would take the miners to walk back — several days, at a minimum. “Well done. Do you have a shovel?”
“My hands can serve as one. Would you like me to bury Desmond next to the rest of your crew?” Legs nodded to the far end of the clearing.
Mika followed the robot’s gaze to three patches of recently disturbed earth. “Yes, but off to the side.”
While Legs chunked out a hole (digging at a speed that recalled their sprint from the Mantis), Mika limped around and gathered up four small fragments of bone. They made for poor headstones, especially since her prosthetic thumb was too degraded to grip Desmond’s knife — she had to use her left hand to inscribe each name, and the results looked childish. But they’d have to do.
By the time she’d finished, Legs had already set Desmond in the hole. “Do you want to say something? I know humans often have rituals for these moments.”
“Not yet. Just help me match these with the right person. You saw where they went, right?”
Legs nodded.
Once the headstones were in place above the appropriate graves, Mika tried to come up with an eloquent eulogy for each person — or any eulogy at all. But all she managed were tears and a curt, “Goodbye.”
She’d come to Virendell hoping to excavate the colonists’ culture. She’d be leaving four friends in the ground.
Legs gave her a ride back to the lower leg bone where they’d separated before the chase. But when they approached the jagged entrance in the fibula, the robot didn’t set her down — Legs just said, “Duck.”
Mika told herself not to hold her breath as they crossed inside.
The immediate interior was bare. But after Legs walked down the near end of the fibula and crossed into the tibia, Mika saw that this section of the bone was wired much like the robot’s lab, with lights strung above and various devices lining both sides, all powered by what was presumably a mithrol-fueled generator.
Nothing about this had a research vibe, though. This felt more like a shrine.
The devices lit up as Legs passed them, each projecting a different scene, but all featuring a woman in various stages of life:
In adolescence, playing guitar for a mint-condition Legs.
In young adulthood, bent over a microscope.
In middle age, gifting a synthesizer to a slightly rusty Legs.
In old age, helping gleeful children drape a scarf over an equally delighted baby bark dragon.
Gal — the videos were all of Gal. Mika recognized the white-haired version from the committee footage Legs had played earlier.
Some of the clips included dialogue, usually in yesterEarth Mandarin. Most of these were hard to parse without context, but two near the middle of this aisle of remembrance stuck out to Mika. In one, a badly damaged Legs warned Gal that, “My brethren made it clear they will no longer tolerate my dissent. They’re hunting me — and by extension, hunting you. The only probable way to finish our research is to join the Exodus. I’m sorry.”
In another clip, Gal danced a short jig and then congratulated a mostly repaired Legs: “Transduction? Oh, that’s a true Eureka moment, my friend. A bacteriophage could be our Trojan Horse. Well done! How soon can we test the seed cultures?”
The hardest recording to listen to was the last. In it, a skeletal Gal lay atop a bed, various tubes and monitoring devices inserted into her pale skin and a gleaming prosthetic foot peeking out of her threadbare gown. Legs stood next to her, staring at the wall. “It’s time,” she whispered. “But before we say goodbye, I have something for you to consider: a minor software update. You can review the code before applying it. If you shut down after I’m gone — and I know you’re thinking about it — all this will do is boot you up once every standard year so you can decide whether you want to go back to sleep.”
“Why is that necessary?” the Legs in the video asked.
“You’re an independent intelligence. Someday, you might choose to move on. Please. Look over the update. It would make me happy.”
Mika’s sleeve was still damp from brushing tears away in the clearing, but she used the threadbare fabric to wipe her cheeks again anyway. Had Legs accepted the code? And if the robot had, how many times had it chosen to go back to sleep? Smog was small; Legs had likely only started growing the bark dragon within the last few years. It was entirely possible the robot had spent the preceding century shutting down its grief by shutting down its consciousness.
But what had convinced Legs to stop the cycle? Had the robot ultimately decided to honor Gal’s memory by continuing her life’s work?
Mika couldn’t think of how to ask any of this, however. So she just watched as they approached the end of the tibia, where a headstone made of what was probably solid mithrol encased a static image of a youngish Gal smiling in wonder, as if she’d been struck by an insight whose many ramifications were beginning to ripple through her mind. The text of the headstone — in perfectly level, mechanically precise hanzi characters — read:
Wu Guanyin
My “Galadriel”
Galadriel. As in the Lady of the Golden Wood from Lord of the Rings — the wise elf everyone seemed to revere? Mika’s eyes went to the dusty outline of a bow above the headstone and the two hooks on which the weapon had probably rested for years before the robot reclaimed it to help her with Desmond. “Is Legs short for Legolas? The archer?”
The robot leaned back, indicating that Mika should let go of its shoulders and slide down. Once she’d done so, Legs made a noise that sounded very like a sigh and tapped the headstone. “Should I leave it here? Or take it with us?”
It was the first time Mika didn’t fault Legs for evading a question. The way the robot’s voice had wavered, the hesitation and indecision in the words, the searing sadness pervading all of it … Her loss was more recent, but the small part of her that wasn’t aching and exhausted knew the pain would fade with time. Legs seemingly remembered everything.
How did you heal when the wound was always fresh?
She took a deep breath. “The video footage — you’ve got copies of it? And her journals?”
Legs nodded.
“Then I’d leave all that to tell her story. So whoever comes after us can piece together who Gal was and what she accomplished — in part because of how she collaborated with a … an II. But the headstone I’d take. If it stays, some strip miner will probably melt it down for the mithrol.”
The robot stood motionless for a long moment, then bent and began unscrewing the bolts fastening the headstone to the tibia. “Thank you. Very logical.”
“Legs … It doesn’t need to be. But sure.” As she watched the robot prepare the headstone for transport, Mika had another thought. For years — decades, maybe — there had probably only been two significant datapoints for Legs’ personality algorithm: the music the robot had downloaded and its memories of Gal.
So now, with all that time to process her attitudes and mannerisms, how much of the scientist lived on in Legs?
Dressing with only one good hand wasn’t easy, but Mika managed. At least her spare clothes were clean — the strip miners had made a mess of much of the Mantis, but they’d left her locker unsullied.
The cockpit was another story. Whoever had been trying to reverse Legs’ hacks — Jabare, probably, before he focused on his own ship — had taken off every removable panel and strung wiring and circuitry about as if decorating for a scrapyard holiday. The robot was rapidly setting everything right, though, and bobbing its head to a soulful beat.
Legs was also wearing a scarf.
The threads were badly faded, but Mika thought she could make out an intricate spaceship pattern. “Did you knit that?”
Legs snapped a panel back into place. “We’ll be ready for takeoff in two point seven minutes.”
Fine, don’t talk about your other adorable hobby. “And Quan and Wes are still outside your surveillance perimeter?”
“Correct.”
Mika sagged into the co-pilot’s seat. This was it, then. They were actually going to get off Virendell. The surviving strip miners probably wouldn’t, though. “Should we leave them some rations — in case they never un-hack their ship?”
“We already did. They’ll have all of Virendell to supply them.” Legs coiled a length of wiring and stowed it in another cavity. “I tucked a pamphlet in the falsified journal we allowed them to find. The pamphlet details thirty-seven types of edible plants, along with five suggested combinations for achieving a balanced nutritional intake.”
“And someone will probably be along for the mithrol soon anyway …”
“Correct.” Legs tidied up a few more connections, folded into the pilot’s seat, and adjusted the scarf so that the spaceship design faced forward. “Please fasten your seatbelt.”
“Is that your way of telling me you’re a shaky driver?” Mika cocked her head. “Wait, have you piloted one of these before?”
“This exact make and model, no. Forty-six other spacecraft from similar lines, yes. Would you like me to summon the animals?”
“Why not? Rocket always liked the view.”
The dog didn’t just bring his usual enthusiasm into the cockpit, though. He also ushered in an echo — of previous departures, when Atalia had sat where Legs was now, easing the Mantis off the ground while Rocket and Neto hovered by her side, one hand in easy reach in case she wanted to squeeze it for luck.
There had been no discussion of switching to the strip miners’ ship — it might have been the better option overall, but everything was already loaded on the Mantis, and it was nice to be back in its familiar confines.
Except for right now. Right now, it hurt.
Watching Virendell diminish in the rearview monitor didn’t help. As Legs took them up — while playing what Mika eventually identified as a syncopated remix of “Flight of the Valkyries” — the jumbled contents of the boneyard shrank to thin, crisscrossing lines that resembled the scaffolding Atalia had first mistaken them for. And Mika couldn’t help remembering her excitement at seeing the planet on that initial approach, especially when they reached orbit. The subject of her now-defunct dissertation still looked stunning: lush, inviting … and eerily similar to humanity’s fabled birthplace.
“I’ve made the calculations to get us to Palmares 3, the nearest starport in my database,” Legs announced. “No thanks to the onboard computer, which is badly in need of AI augmentation — humanity’s ongoing ban on such assistance is irrational.”
“Correct,” Mika murmured. “It’s an entirely emotional response to what happened on yesterEarth.”
“Regardless, once I change the ion engine over to run on mithrol, we’ll be able to take advantage of an intervening space manifold and use its current chaos arches to reach Palmares 3 in twenty-eight point three days. The ship’s log lists a stop there before you arrived on Virendell. I assume that’s because the starport is still operational?”
“It is.”
“Then you and Rocket can disembark there.”
Mika glanced at the dog, who was standing next to Smog and gazing out the viewport. The bark dragon seemed similarly entranced, so rapt it looked like a miniature version of one of its fossilized ancestors below. Such a small thing to hold so much potential … and all too likely to be exploited again if Fleet had anything to say about it. “Where you will go?”
Legs began the process of tapering back the suborbital engine and bringing the ion engine online. Like Atalia, the robot made the transition manually — and smoothly. “I’m still assessing my options. But the Virgo Stellar Stream seems the most promising. It’s where we discovered the Grendeli sceadugenga bacterium. I’d like to see if there are any useful subspecies.”
“What about a detour?”
Legs turned to stare at her, red eyes as unreadable as ever. “To where?”
Mika gripped her seat’s armrests. Was she really doing this? Did she actually think she could survive a longer journey with no one but a dog, a scarf-wearing II that fancied itself a DJ, and a plant-based dragon for company? Could that motley a crew possibly correct the worst mistake in human history?
“Legs,” Mika said, “do you still know the way to yesterEarth?”
