Epilogue
Caught in a whirlwind of hysteria, she only did what she was told. A six-year-old girl only had so much power in the midst of a life or death situation. At least that’s what her father said. She remembered his commands the evening he told her to stay put at the last camp. It was much smaller than this one. The huts were crowded, shabbier and falling apart. Luckily as a family they had their own, but other single travelers had made sure and chose friendly roommates. When they got to this new village, they were stunned and excited. There were enough huts to accommodate everyone however they liked, including a single person living alone. This could be a permanent home. To her it seemed like a mansion.
Her knowledge of the group’s history was limited, but she understood more about the world than most children her age. She didn’t know exactly the implications of the wars that caused the wandering band to be displaced, but she did know how to survive with them. She was optimistic and empathetic. What little she knew of machines consisted less of fear than weary curiosity. She knew that she was supposed to be skeptical of them, but she found it hard to believe that they could all be so bad. There were so many differences in kinds, colors, and sizes. She wondered what they all did before they supposedly turned bad. Her parents wouldn’t tell her a lot about them, presumably because of her age. She felt reduced by that treatment, thinking she deserved to know more about the world. Of course, she didn’t know that eventually it would all come in time.
She didn’t know it, but the primary reason they kept quiet was attributed to that night she was told to stay put. The three of them were sitting inside their hut when they heard frantic voices coming from outside. Her father thought they were shouting his name. His face immediately sank. He and her mother scrambled to go outside and she tried to follow. She wanted to know what was going on, to help, to do anything. Before crossing the threshold, her father looked down at her and hissed with a gaze of fear and anger to stay put.
When the two of them came back in they were sweating and crying. They hugged, attempting to console each other or themselves to no avail. Her mother went to lie down in bed while her father sat down in the chair next to where she had been waiting. During that short time, she tried looking out the window to see the action, but it was dark, and the muddled cluster of people was too far for her to see clearly. She was confused and afraid, but mostly confused. He looked down at her with his sagging, green eyes. He told her that it was her brother. He was nineteen and recently deemed old enough to go on supply runs. He’d gone out that afternoon with two other men from the community to find food. When it got dark, they started to head back with what they had. On the trail a machine suddenly ambushed them. They couldn’t have any idea where it’d come from.
At least for the entirety of her life, those six years were relatively peaceful. They moved through three different settlements, but they didn’t particularly need to, being out in desolate country. They’d move if a scout had found someplace better in their exploration, or if they started seeing too many machines. This was the most extreme incident to occur yet. He suffered a blow to the head that put him into an immediate coma. The other two responded quickly enough to destabilize the machine, but they couldn’t have defended against that initial strike. Seeing that he appeared to still be breathing, they rushed him back to the village.
Her father told her the story in less detail, but enough to convey that he was seriously hurt. He said he was going back out to the doctor’s hut to check on him. She asked if she could help; that’s when he told her that a six-year-old girl only had so much power in a life or death situation. He didn’t quite seem to register how much that statement struck her with fear and confusion.
Now she was in this room. They had this thing. This was the first of this kind of machine she’d seen. She couldn’t help but relate to his small size. She looked at him curiously as he began to open his eyes. She wondered why he had been nagging at the village but not hurting any of the humans. She wondered what he was thinking and what her father would do with him. He looked over at her, and she could see in his eyes that he recognized her.
As Edward stood next to his friend, he wore a calm demeanor. He didn’t know exactly what was going to happen to his friend, but he hoped he’d be safe. Edward knew his buddy was a reasonable machine in every aspect of the word. He’d been fired from enough restaurant gigs in his past to think that Felix’s aggression came from a desire for quality. He knew Ezra was a unit of the highest quality. While he didn’t want to compromise Ezra’s trust as a friend, his desire to create a splash in the bigger picture of the human versus machine dichotomy was enough to overpower his loyalty. At first Felix’s threats seemed unwarranted until he really began to see the bigger issues of the situation. Still, Edward was afraid that his friend wouldn’t crack the way he’d hoped. Ezra had more sympathy for the humans than he did.
Before Ezra had arrived, Edward milled through the crowd patting backs and greeting old acquaintances. He was interested to see what was in store for Felix’s newest speech. The unit seemed to have a plan in the works though nobody quite knew the exact blueprint. Most of his past speeches had revolved around machine unity. He emphasized community and connection, the desire to keep each other safe. After all, they were knit together in a common existence, and Edward had always been an extroverted, community-oriented unit. He had a lot of friends here and, as he felt toward Ezra, he didn’t want to see any of them go down. He felt generally neutral toward humans. Working in kitchens allowed him to generally avoid them except for times that they’d unsatisfactorily send food back; that annoyed him.
He greeted his fellow machines enthusiastically and they greeted back. Many of them did not use the enthusiasm that he greeted them with, appearing deadly serious about The Cause. He tried to converse with them but they’d only nod and agree and revert their gazes consistently back to the empty podium that was waiting for Felix at the front of the room. It would only be a few minutes before he stepped up there and began serenading the crowd. Edward didn’t feel the kind of comradery that he expected to after the last few speeches he’d seen. He expected that they’d all be as excited as him to ban together, one machine to another. Suddenly they were, as they erupted in response to Felix’s heavy foot stepping up to the stage. The moment they’d been waiting for had approached. He walked up to the podium gradually, seemingly for dramatic effect, and Edward was surrounded by hoots and hollers, while Ezra gazed silently forward.
Felix began speaking. At first his expectations were fulfilled. He heard the usual messages of banning together. Felix continued to strengthen the dichotomy of human versus machine. He wondered what Ezra, who stood transfixed on the podium, was thinking while witnessing a stranger whom he was probably skeptical of. The message was ramping up as Felix was degrading humans and preaching on victory. Edward wasn’t sure about these bits. Perhaps due to his neutrality toward humans he didn’t understand the degradation. He didn’t particularly care for them, but he knew they had lives and dignity of their own to protect. Perhaps they were just trying to protect themselves from some kind of war, just as Edward and Ezra had been doing for some time.
Felix’s statements escalated closer and closer toward senseless violence, and it appeared to Edward that these ideas were less organized than what had come before. He began to worry. He wanted safety for his kind in the city, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to take part in some sort of senseless, mass slaughter. He didn’t see the point in starting an all-out war and risking innumerable lives on both sides, not to mention the destruction that would be caused throughout Ottumn’s cityscapes.
He remembered that Felix’s cronies would be coming for Ezra after this speech and realized he probably didn’t want to be there when they did. He didn’t want to have to accompany them. He drifted away slowly through the crowd, continually watching Felix growing more and more animated, more and more volatile. He was maybe twenty feet from Ezra when he stopped and turned around. At that distance he could still see his friend in the crowd. The speech ended and again the crowd methodically erupted. Everyone seemed to accept what was said without qualm. They appeared to have no trouble digesting the language of war. He peered over at Ezra again, still stoic as ever, and saw a couple machines approaching his friend. Edward knew exactly what was happening; it was time for Ezra to go meet the leader. He was distracted shortly as another machine bumped into him from behind. He turned to see them celebrating, not aware they’d knocked into him, and when he looked back toward where Ezra had been standing he only saw absence.
“Are you ready, man?!” another strange machine bellowed at him with glee.
“Sure as shit,” said Edward, attempting to match that glee.
“We’re gonna tear ‘em apart. The anticipation is killing me!”
“Ya, that guy sure is electric, isn’t he?”
Edward had never seen this guy before, but he tried to be friendly as he always was.
“You know, man, I don’t know if he’s electric enough, but I like him anyway. He understands, you know?”
“Understands what?”
“That these humans are a poison, man! We’ve gotta get ‘em all out of here no matter what. Ottumn is ours now!”
“Well what’ll we do with them?”
“Who cares?! They can all die as far as I’m concerned.”
The Unit walked away to fraternize with others as Edward pondered that small conversation. This was Felix’s message. He began to think back on Ezra’s heroic defense of the old chargebar. Maybe it wasn’t so heroic after all, but simply necessary defense. He teetered, speculating which it was, but also still questioned why humans attacked the chargebar in the first place. He thought about Felix’s coercing him to reach Ezra. Maybe Felix wasn’t just trying to wear a strong man image, but really would have taken steps to eliminate him if he didn’t give up his friend’s anonymity. Felix had Edward rethinking that splash he wanted to make in the human versus machine dichotomy, or at least what the right way to do it might be. He walked slowly through the crowd watching more of the same, realizing how few of these machines he actually knew. Most of his old friends had seemed to disappear, or abstained from coming along to the new digs. He peered toward the back of the room toward the door. He knew exactly what it was and exactly where Ezra was.
He wondered what was happening behind that door, a door that was being guarded by the toughest-looking guys in the room. He remembered his own time in that room. Felix was a friendly guy at first. He seemed genuinely interested in Edward, like he wanted to be friends. When he started asking about Ezra he reverted to being increasingly stern. He didn’t know what Felix knew about Ezra, but he could tell it was more than he was letting on. And then the threats began. Felix was pressing on about the importance of his Cause, seemingly desperate for Edward’s participation. Edward still felt on board in that moment, willing to sympathize, but he wouldn’t yet give up Ezra. Felix began making a plea that was both desperate and pressing, threatening to hold Edward as a prisoner if he didn’t give up his knowledge of Ezra. Edward broke, responding to Felix’s authority. He didn’t think Felix was threatening out of sheer aggression, but out of necessity. At least that’s the way it seemed in the narrative he was spilling forth about The Cause.
Still gazing in that direction, Edward saw the door pop open. Ezra lunged through out of nowhere and slid through the crowd briskly. Edward watched him cross the room wondering what could have happened. When Ezra crossed his path, about ten feet in front of him, Edward made the snap decision to join. He realized his loyalty wasn’t as clear as he had thought, that perhaps Ezra was whom he should be siding with. He followed. As Ezra lapsed through the front door of the building, Edward turned to see the guards from the back door making their way through the crowd. They were still a fair distance back. He made it to the front door, seeing Ezra ahead. He still didn’t know what had happened, but hoped he was on the right side.
Rin fluttered slightly above Arnold’s motionless hand. He recalled the feeling of that cold, smooth metal squeezing his frame with authority. It blocked out the pain and confusion that would inevitably sprout back into his thoughts. Now he only felt that immortal fear that encapsulated his young mind in the moments in which he thought he was done for. He looked over at Iris, who lay next to Arnold, also motionless, but fully awake, giving herself a moment to recuperate. He panned back to Arnold’s face and the dormant eyes that would haunt his future. Even just this simple glance filled him with hatred. He couldn’t believe they’d trusted him. He was affirmed in his belief that this outsider was evil, filled with bad intentions that inevitably all outsiders must hold a degree of.
Looking back at Iris again, his hatred translated to anger. He felt anger toward not just Arnold, but her as well. He couldn’t believe that she did this. It was her fault that this had happened. He could have died, but perhaps it would have been even worse for him to be stolen. He thought he would rather have ceased existing than be taken away from Iris in a fashion such as what Arnold had attempted. He was angry that Iris put him in this position and questioned whether or not he could even trust her anymore. She still wasn’t getting up. What was she doing, and what was she thinking?
She looked up at him for a short moment before speaking and reaching into her bag for a wrench, “Let’s dispose of him, Rin. Let’s end this. I’ll rip the arm off.”
“No.” He didn’t want to deal with this right now. He wanted to be safe at home, a place that he knew. He didn’t want anything to do with that arm.
“Rin, we can’t just leave him here.”
“Yes, we can. Let him rot with the rest of these scraps.”
“But Rin, what if he’s not gone?”
“I think he’s gone, Iris. Look at his eyes.”
“Regardless, Rin, we have to at least bury the body under some other scraps.”
“Don’t touch the arm, Iris.”
“I’m going to, like I should have done in the first place.”
“I won’t go anywhere.”
“Yes you will, Rin, you’ll see that it will be better for both of us.”
“I don’t trust any of it, Iris—”
“Rin, think of the possibilities. Other machines, others like you. There could even be machines and humans living amongst each other-”
“Humans—Iris, you know better than that. Don’t you remember what you told me about Zsera?”
“Rin, you know Zsera was different. They were prototype models.”
“What about the wars?”
“Rin, I’m telling you these societies can exist, don’t think we will always be at war because a selfish few thought they were superior.”
“It was clearly more than a selfish few. What makes you think they’ve changed?”
“I lived in those peaceful societies before….”
Before she could finish, Rin turned defiantly, flying briskly toward home. He saw no reason to continue the conversation with a made up mind. He saw no reason to keep that machine in his sight. He saw no reason to have to treat it with respect or give it some sort of burial. He was fine with it, dead, lying just where it fell. Iris shouted at him but the words didn’t reach him. He was closed inside his mind. He didn’t look back at her; she’d find him later. She could dispose of Arnold if she wanted to, but she was going to do it by herself. He didn’t want to stay there continually looking down at the hand that had grasped him. He was going home. He wasn’t going anywhere out in the world, and he wasn’t going to deal with any more of these strangers. He continued flying, looking around at the scraps as he went, thinking about all of the other lifeless machines that could be buried under the vast metal blanket.
Were there others that came for him? Could there still be more waiting to come for him? Would they sneak in at night, kill Iris, and take him by surprise? They certainly wouldn’t befriend anyone again; he was too smart to allow that, no matter what Iris might have to say. He reached the door to their home, still not having looked back, no sense of time or how long he’d been flying. He went into his room and perched on a table, motionless to rest. He allowed himself to feel okay, to just be happy that it was over, hoping their lives would go back to the way they were. He didn’t think he was behaving irrationally, as always; his life was fine the way it was. Why did Iris feel the need to impose this departure on him? Hadn’t she ever thought of his safety and happiness? He sometimes thought she only cared about herself. He heard the door, Iris walking in. She didn’t come to his room, knowing he was in there, knowing his anger. He had no intention of going out to meet her, sending a clear message that he was angry with her. She knew, too; she wouldn’t try right now. He wouldn’t be open to all of the grand plans she had for him, at least not now. She walked into her own room and laid Arnold’s disembodied arm on the workbench.