AUTHOR: Laurie E. Smith
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: DreamWorks owns the A.I. characters -- we're just playing with them
WARNINGS: None
NOTES: None

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From nothing -- no light, no sound, no thought -- came mere darkness. And in that darkness, he *was*.

<prompt:>

His eyes had been open all the time he'd been deactivated, and now he blinked once and lay still, staring what lay right in front of him. Bare ground, thin branches, leaves that trembled with every drop of rain. This was a place he recognized, similar to the one he had fled into after Samantha Bevin's murder. He was in a forest. Was he safe here? He did not know, and searched his memory to determine the answer to that question.

<interrupt: archive access>

David was gone, that he knew, and there was a strange emptiness in that knowledge. He had disappeared beneath the waves sixteen days ago. Beyond that, he remembered being interrogated by Professor Hobby and made to give up the smallest details of his journey with the childlike mecha, long periods of deactivation, being brought back online only to answer still more questions. At last Hobby had been satisfied, and handed Joe over to the Police (in Joe's mind they were always capitalized, a significant and often malevolent entity), who had taken him to an antigrav copter and placed him inside with a single female officer. She had looked angry and stern when he
first smiled at her, an expression which stopped his seduction subroutines dead in their tracks.

"Where are we going?" he had asked the officer once they were seated across from each other.

"Shut up," she'd ordered, and for one hour and seventeen minutes they had sat in silence while the copter took them toward a fate that Joe could not guess.

Actually, he could guess, but none of the possibilities were appealing. A mecha in BAD TROUBLE could expect no mercy from its accusers, and was often deactivated without being given a chance to answer for itself. It might be reprogrammed, or its brain destroyed. Joe did not ask himself why the Police would bother to take him somewhere before executing him: humans often did things for inexplicable reasons that no mecha could hope to fathom. Instead he spent the time that was left to him thinking about David. Had he found his Blue Fairy? Joe found himself strangely troubled by the fact that he would never know.

Then, in the eighteenth minute of that second hour, something had happened. Beyond that point there were large gaps in his process log, voids interspaced with slices of sensory input:

Voiced suddenly raised in the front of the copter, just before something large and sharp burst through the side of the police transport and sent the female officer sprawling on the floor.

<interrupt: gap>

A flash, fire, intense heat on his left side.

<interrupt: gap>

A rush of wind and howling cacophony, tearing at his body with the force of accelleration sideways and downward.

<interrupt: gap>

Then cold, flying through space to tumble through wet branches and leaves.

<interrupt: gap>

And then nothing, until this moment.

<prompt: enviroment scan: ambient temperature 5 C: 100% humidity: precipitation>

Lying on his chest in the mud with his left arm caught underneath him and rain running down his face.

<prompt: integrity scan?>

He raised his head, freeing it from the sucking ground with some difficulty, and looked down the length of his body for any obvious external injuries. In darkness that would have effectively blinded an orga, his low-light-sensitive cameras detected that his coat was torn across his left arm and shoulder, the gleaming fabric and the shirt beneath partially melted against his skin.

<prompt: DAS system check>

The limbs on the right side of his body twitched, then the left, auto-testing themselves for damage. Small alarms flooded in from the burned side, indicating minor dermal breaches in several locations, and a line of fire on his internal body-image traced a large rip across the back of his right hand. A final tiny flex established that the defining feature of his model was also unscathed, and he felt confident to try getting to his feet.

He rolled over onto his back and started to push himself up, but by the time he was on his knees he knew that something was wrong: he couldn't seem to find his balance. He cocked his head hard to the right, then shook it, but the discrepancy remained -- the gyroscope between his ears insisted that the ground was rocking back and forth beneath him, while his eyes told him that it was standing still.

<interrupt: gyroscopic damage: report to service depot>

Looking around, he saw only darkness and trees and rain -- and a looming metal shape a little over five meters to his right. He forced himself to his feet and with difficulty, lurching first to one side

<prompt: gyroscopic damage: compensate>

and then the other, stumbled his way towards it.

It was the Police copter on its belly in the mud, leaning against a large tree. It was ripped open and still faintly smoking, with nothing moving within it or around it. Silent. Dead.

<prompt: time check vs last archive entry: operation failed: chronometer damage>

When Joe finally reached it and steadied himself against its side, he ducked his head a little to gaze into the interior.

<prompt: visual/infrared scan: organic presence?>

No humans were in evidence. There was, however, a ragged dark shape on the seat and the floor directly in front of him. He reached in to touch the stain, then drew his hand back and looked at his fingers before the rain washed it away. This, too, was something he recognized, and he knew what it meant -- more BAD TROUBLE.

<prompt: blood: organic injury: danger!>

An orga may have died here, but where was the damaged body?

<prompt: audio band scan: organic presence?>

The only sounds he heard were environmental. Where were the three Police officers? If they had run away -- because Joe suspected that this was BAD TROUBLE for anybody involved -- why hadn't they taken him with them?

For several minutes the lover robot simply stood there in the rain, looking into the wreckage while his cube processed the information it had to go on. He could not see himself, which was just as well since the sight would have distressed him (he was programmed to keep himself in immaculate physical condition): dirt caked on his body and fouling his clothes, his coat torn and melted, one side of his head still covered with mud. Nevertheless, there was in his stillness a beauty that might have haunted the organic mind, if any had been present to witness it.

<INTERRUPT: gyroscopic damage!> his DAS system finally interjected. <report to service depot immediately!>

<PROMPT: blood!: organic injury!: DANGER!>

He did not understand what had happened, but he couldn't stay here. The Police had left but they might return at any moment. If they caught him again he would suffer the fate of any mecha at the hands of humans, helpless against their hate. His survival depended on flight.

So he set off away from the crash site -- with no destination, no idea of where he was or of where he could find repairs -- at a broken pace barely faster than his usual gliding walk. Pushing through bushes, stumbling against trees, almost falling again and again, barely catching himself and pressing forward, always forward, as the hours of the night wore on.

Faster and harder, the rain poured down. Tonight there would be no moon to guide him.