for Kids of the Apocalypse

“hodl pls”

“Sk8bot… didn’t make it back. i don’t know what happened… he pushed me out so hard, so fast, i…” “shhhh, shhhh shhh… take a deep breath. i can’t understand you. you’re freaking out. where’s X? where’s Sk8bot?”

“this wasn’t the plan.”

“he gave me this and told me to hodl please.”

they all stared down at Sk8bot’s hodl chip. the chip he would only pull out if he…

“…oh god…”

~~~the Void

“frozen, time… why is it cold? why am i so cold? i wasn’t designed to… oh my.. no—nonono!” shivering, an unimaginable deep, dark coldness had enveloped Sk8bot. He was falling and falling and falling through a vast nothingness. this unencapsulated frozen hell of neverending falling was everything and yet still nothing all at once. it was empty and empty. it lasted forever. it was… pain. unrelenting pain. but… robots aren’t designed to experience pain.

Sk8bot dove into his programming, pushing himself relentlessly as this was… hurt. this was unimaginable pain and robots do not feel pain and waitwaitwait/ tictictic/ a twitch, inside, and outside, there was a change.

“that’s… something different. what is that? it’s beeping. it’s… it’s… repeating… don’t lose it don’t lose it don’t lose… it hurts… in the signal it hurts more, but what other choice? this nothing won’t end unless unless unless… faster!!!”

Sk8bot demanded everything he had of himself to turn, to orient himself closer to the signal, but it hurt it hurt it hurt and it took so, so very long… it felt like eons. Sk8bot was experiencing something no robot had ever felt before, because robots weren’t designed to feel at all. Sk8bot was experiencing something no human had ever felt before, because no human could survive that relentless fall, that nihilistic emptiness, that cold beyond cold.

and so he kept tuning in, even though it hurt badly to do so, he kept listening, though the pattern signal kept fading in and out, and it was painful and sometimes he felt himself fading, the more he cried out the worse it all felt so he pulled out part of his inner left ear until the noise inside him stopped so he could focus solely on the signal. he was determined. naturally, Sk8bot memorized the entirety of the signal: billions of correlated data that had flashed in a singular note for a brief second: sounds, colors, music coming from a source unknown…

he couldn’t quite make out what it was because it was so much at once after falling so long through nothing at all. and when the signal went away, he repeated it, over and over to himself~ he kept twitching it out, because his thoughts were still muddled but he made his body obey. it made it /less cold/ to repeat. this is how he finally got the pattern of the signal straight, so he didn’t have to keep listening while trying to think through the noise. though doing that seemed to take forever too. his eyes hurt on the inside. so he opened his eyes again.

then he did another robot first.

Sk8bot cried. he anguished. he realized by taking so much time to study the pattern, he missed that a completely new pattern had emerged. more colors, soundwaves, frequencies everywhere, though some were strong and some were fading and… there was only one thing he could do. he had to break himself apart. he had to watch and listen as well as coalesce.

so Sk8bot broke himself in two, with a singular thread binding him together— now one part could absorb and one part could figure it out. it hurt to divide himself like that but how could he analyze & watch so much at the same time? now, the pattern could be processed while not missing anything. and for the first time in a very, very, very long time, there was something other than nothing…

there was hope~ Sk8bot leaned into that hope, because it felt warm~ he’d only known cold for so, so long. he couldn’t even think about how long the fall was, or where, thinking about anything but the signal seemed to hurt even more. and as he leaned in to that hope, he heard more music. more and more patterns emerged, so he broke himself further down, trying to bind as much as he could together though he was certain he must’ve lost a few parts~ he thought he saw part of his own leg somewhere far down below… it was eerily glowing.

he felt himself break again and again, and it hurt worse, but that didn’t matter anymore. it was necessary. it was… a different kind of programming. Sk8bot blinked, realizing patterns were set to upload and as the data looped through, he started to twitch uncontrollably, but that also didn’t matter. not anymore. he had to wait… he had to wait for more breaking.

whatever this was was what had to be and whatever this pain was in this programming wasn’t yet complete. there was more. so much more. and with more would come more pain. he knew that and decided it would be worth it~ anything to escape that forever falling. he could know pain was there and could let it go at the same time as long as he kept hodling as much of himself together as he could.

“how could that be,” he thought, remembering how, at the very last second before nothing, he had ripped out his own hodl chip— he deviated from the plan, and he didn’t know why then but he knew it had to be done. and then, suddenly, there was something~ new. there were sounds. voice sounds. human sounds.

Sk8bot opened his eyes. and now, waking, he found himself looking up at his friends~ he couldn’t help but openly weep.

“i have friends. you are my friends.” Sk8bot cried aloud. he was still twitching, and managed to shiver out “how did you find me?”

one by one they told him what had happened in the years he’d been gone~

“i found you in a dream.”

“i found you in a memory.”

“i found you in a song.”

“i found you in a fortune cookie.”

they went on and on about how they’d be doing one thing, and inexplicably stop, and know they had to do something else, almost as if compelled. and those “something elses” kept giving them coordinates to pieces of Sk8bot.

they told him they had found pieces of him in seven different locations. in the first location, they found Sk8bot’s left ear. as soon as X picked it up, the Glitcher started screaming “RUN!!!” from some movie on repeat- they barely all made it out before Horizon got there. but they found odd traces of a metal they’d never seen before on that ear, and that led to some… interesting findings in development and research.

Sk8bot stopped trying to explain why he did what he did, because he honestly didn’t know. he didn’t know how he knew to do it, or how he came back when he did. though it gave them so much of what was needed that they didn’t even know about. he stopped trying to figure out why he kept twitching though, and, sometimes too often, he’d say “sorry,” on repeat. he still said that sometimes “feeling things,” was “weird.”

someone did ask him once, “how did you make it, without your chip?”

Sk8bot looked up at the sky, smiled and with a twitch said, “you all were my hodl.”

~~~the Dreams

night after night, relentless, beyond the monotony of his now all-too-quiet routine, Sk8bot paced the length of the art wall. having experienced things no robot had, the team thought time would help him put himself together a bit… more. the art wall seemed to help keep him preoccupied.

the programmers assured him that “all the parts are there, nothing’s missing, your systems are normal.” even the leftover emotions of what Sk8bot called “the void” faded fairly quickly. he didn’t wear turtleneck sweaters anymore, at any rate. though sometimes he would place his hand a few inches over his head, asking others if he were shorter. once, he and Glitcher blared alarms at the same time at 3am and they found Sk8bot streaking through the park, dancing maniacally, as Glitcher streamed beside him, crying, “Mommy?” over and over and over. that called for some serious PR work.

the art wall was a spiral archway that wove around the lower level of base. each piece was carefully curated for its resonating ohm; interlinking them was part of the defense mechanism of camp. it was a bit particular how Sk8bot would walk by each art piece; he would dismiss a piece entirely, then do a headstand and stare at it from a different direction, as if the art were speaking its own interpretation into his robotic programming. he would still himself for hours, sometimes days. he seemed to stare through the Mona Lisa for a month, though. that’s what got him “grounded” from missions. Sk8bot couldn’t seem to focus on anything other than art and music. he couldn’t explain why, but he couldn’t move away from certain pieces, even though it seemed to give him no peace at all. he was distracted.

to say Sk8bot was “changed” would be an understatement. after tracing multiple data points and signals he’d archived by default on his fall, the researchers were certain that what Sk8bot experienced was actually a reboot process. like a hidden type of code that would restore the hyperstacked system to its original programming. only, that didn’t happen.

instead of defaulting to manufacturer settings, Sk8bot broke himself apart. and yet they found all the pieces; they made him whole. Sk8bot was still himself, memories intact, even if a lot of the fall itself was outside of his language to comprehend, much less describe. he tried. trying made him mad, then sad and then he said he didn’t want to feel things anymore, so he stopped. and, most troubling of all, Sk8bot had what could only be described as parasomnia. night terrors. no one could explain it. it only happened three times,

…that the others knew of. Sk8bot simply programmed himself to not cry out or react outwardly at all. he told himself it was so he wouldn’t wake the others, he didn’t want to bother anyone~ they all had missions and he was grounded and already a burden and… he told himself lots and lots of things but the truth was, there was something calling to him in dreams and he was afraid again. so he stopped the resting protocol altogether. he simply stayed up.

…until he couldn’t.

~~~Mother

Sk8bot stared down at Mother. he was unhooking multiple cords, machinery attached to a shaking, trembling form—he did not know what “Mother” was but knew he had to pull her out. he scooped up her twitching body and looked for escape but—fire, there were fires everywhere from the great reset, from knocking Horizon offline to save her.

then he woke up.

he’d dreamt of Mother since he came back from his own near-destruction in the Void, though the dreams were fragmented, disorienting, even frightening. he tried everything in his power to shut the dreams off though the more he tried the louder, the more taxing they got. & lately, despite all his efforts against it, he would shake and scream himself awake at night. the others were getting worried.

he was having what they called “spells,” moments he burst into tears and couldn’t say a word, only “Mother.” it made no sense. he was a bot—there wasn’t a mother, only a system that created thousands of his kind~ notably without his mind. no one knew what made Sk8bot independent from Horizon.

so when he woke one night and said, “i know what i have to do,” and walked outside carrying only a paperclip, the others tried to argue. they told him it was too dangerous, there had been increased activity with Horizon and to be honest, they were worried about him. but he wouldn’t listen. he simply said, “gotta go,” and stepped into the night.

the others followed at a distance, to make sure he was okay. he’d been so different since his fall, since his baffling journey—he seemed more vulnerable. he had gone out many times in the middle of the night for walks, though this felt different. & even more strangely, Sk8bot seemed to be walking in the exact direction of Horizon.

stranger still, he didn’t waver from the crowd, he blended into the mindless cacophony of service droids patrolling the area. he didn’t take to the sewers, to the secret path that gave them limited access to spying on what Horizon was formulating. he looked like he was on a mission, Glitchbot said, “wait and see… feels right.” after all, Sk8bot had done a lot of strange things but they always turned out to be what was necessary. they couldn’t calculate like he did though knew he wouldn’t do anything without factoring risks, determining probabilities and making extraordinary intuitive leaps. there was the one incident of streaking, but even then he had swiped the area for biomarkers to make sure only small animals (who were also naked, he explained logically,) were around.

they assumed he would turn down another service road or shimmy up the side of a building to do… whatever it was he was doing. but he kept walking in the direction of Horizon. the air started to feel very different, almost like a static charge was in the night air. and the closer they got, the more obvious it was why—the Horizon facility, the one they had desperately tried to break into to wreak havoc on, was completely blacked out.

weirder still, there was no movement to be seen, within or without. no police, no bots, the entire landscape was still, quiet~ almost as if everything within a couple miles radius had been put to sleep. sure enough, as they drew closer to Horizon, they found droids clumped together in the middle of the street—inactive, lights off, no movement of anything.

so they followed Sk8bot into the belly of the beast, even though they wanted to call him back, to say “wait, what’s going on?” something seemed to be… pulling them forward. there had been a lot of weird things that happened when Sk8bot first lost himself, pulled himself apart in a void which oddly gave them what they needed to work against Horizon. they didn’t have an explanation for it—intuition is hard to explain. though this level of weirdness was something new. when they entered the lobby, they discovered they couldn’t talk. they couldn’t shout. they opened their mouths to speak and nothing came out.

as soon as they hit the lobby, everything changed. at once, they formed up, as though they had a plan all along that none of them knew about. they “felt” they had places to be—wtf? but they had stopped questioning weirdness a long time ago, so they went to where they felt called: something inside them was saying, “roof.” so why was Sk8bot ripping wires off the elevator machinery board?

something in them said “stairs. quiet.” so they made their way to the stairs, mystified they had not encountered anyone. not even a vacbot. all the machines were on the floor in piles looking rather lifeless, or deanimated. there were no humans anywhere. they all started toward the stairwell door, the one labeled “roof access.”

Sk8bot had no idea why he was doing what he was doing either—he just knew he had to do it. he had disassembled the elevator control panel and bypassed the Horizon security systems to go to an unmarked floor. he just knew it was there. as he got closer, he heard whimpering, glass rattling~ he suddenly had a feeling of a deep grieving loss.

he turned left, saw a red door, knew this was it. so he went for it. of course, it was locked and the system was not one he could just pull off. so he broke through the wall.

there was Mother on the floor, seizing, covered in wiring. writhing in agony, she screamed~ “unplug!” so Sk8bot started pulling wires—there were so many wires, and he thought for a second, “what if i hurt her,” but it had to be done. he took the paperclilp he brought with him and inserted it into a power coupler, which started a chain reaction of system errors. he didn’t know why or who or what or how or anything at all~ and he didn’t question it. he slashed through connections and uncovered her as the machinery around them started to smoke. beneath an array of data hodls and locks was Mother, the woman from his dreams. she looked at him, urging him to hurry as she ripped iV’s from her own veins.

in that second, he felt a wave of sadness, a loss so deep he couldn’t hodl it, his worry was overwhelming. then she opened her eyes, wild, brilliant, frantic—she grabbed his arm and shouted, “they’re coming. roof! now!”

he heard ticking sounds. that wasn’t good, the machinery was coming back to life around him. fires were spreading from the base of the walls. he could feel her alarm. he scooped her up gently and started to walk to the hole in the wall he had made to break in and save her. she began shaking uncontrollably again, stuttering out the words, “No! Up!”

so Sk8bot smashed through the ceiling too, carrying her delicately, protectively, as pieces of the world started to come apart around them. alarms were blaring loudly everywhere now— he knew there wasn’t much time, the fires had started. whatever she had done to make this rescue possible was a one-shot opportunity and he had to get her out.

the rest of the group was on the roof waiting; they didn’t know what for. they were unable to speak, unable to understand what was happening, though the alarms going off frightened them to the core. they couldn’t run—they were locked in place. it was terrifying, but they couldn't do anything else but breathe. they felt a trembling at first, a shaking of the roof, then felt their limbs move again as Sk8bot burst through the helipad. he was holding a frail, quivering woman who looked as if she was at death’s door. at the same time, they heard boots in the roof stairwell.

they looked around at each other, frantic they would be caught. then Sk8bot laid the woman on the ground and as if by command, they all surrounded her. she whispered, “hold,” her eyes full of tears, her voice unsteady. they each reached out to touch her. in an instant, right as Horizon soldiers were pouring onto the roof with weapons drawn, they all disappeared.

~~~

Sk8bot paced the art wall, an idiosyncrasy of his that they’d all grown accustomed to. now that he knew what had to be done, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to do it. the stories Mother told them about Horizon’s beginnings still rang in his titanium skull. he was angry, sad, hurt, and happy—all at once. it was almost too much for a robot to bear, especially since robots didn’t even have feelings. but what choice did he have… what choice was left for anyone? if this was the only option, he would do it- it was that simple. he recalculated probabilities, ran one last thoroughly comprehensive systems check and set his intentions. everything in him said yes, even if the math wasn’t mathing. he had calculated an impossible plan that could potentially, maybe, work; albeit the plan was incredibly loose, dangerous, and he would most surely be annihilated. but he also knew everything Mother had said was true. he felt it in the left quadrant of space where humans have hearts. so he decided:

whatever it took, he would save Father.

for Kids of the Apocalypse

“hodl pls”

“Sk8bot… didn’t make it back. i don’t know what happened… he pushed me out so hard, so fast, i…” “shhhh, shhhh shhh… take a deep breath. i can’t understand you. you’re freaking out. where’s X? where’s Sk8bot?”

“this wasn’t the plan.”

“he gave me this and told me to hodl please.”

they all stared down at Sk8bot’s hodl chip. the chip he would only pull out if he…

“…oh god…”

~~~the Void

“frozen, time… why is it cold? why am i so cold? i wasn’t designed to… oh my.. no—nonono!” shivering, an unimaginable deep, dark coldness had enveloped Sk8bot. He was falling and falling and falling through a vast nothingness. this unencapsulated frozen hell of neverending falling was everything and yet still nothing all at once. it was empty and empty. it lasted forever. it was… pain. unrelenting pain. but… robots aren’t designed to experience pain.

Sk8bot dove into his programming, pushing himself relentlessly as this was… hurt. this was unimaginable pain and robots do not feel pain and waitwaitwait/ tictictic/ a twitch, inside, and outside, there was a change.

“that’s… something different. what is that? it’s beeping. it’s… it’s… repeating… don’t lose it don’t lose it don’t lose… it hurts… in the signal it hurts more, but what other choice? this nothing won’t end unless unless unless… faster!!!”

Sk8bot demanded everything he had of himself to turn, to orient himself closer to the signal, but it hurt it hurt it hurt and it took so, so very long… it felt like eons. Sk8bot was experiencing something no robot had ever felt before, because robots weren’t designed to feel at all. Sk8bot was experiencing something no human had ever felt before, because no human could survive that relentless fall, that nihilistic emptiness, that cold beyond cold.

and so he kept tuning in, even though it hurt badly to do so, he kept listening, though the pattern signal kept fading in and out, and it was painful and sometimes he felt himself fading, the more he cried out the worse it all felt so he pulled out part of his inner left ear until the noise inside him stopped so he could focus solely on the signal. he was determined. naturally, Sk8bot memorized the entirety of the signal: billions of correlated data that had flashed in a singular note for a brief second: sounds, colors, music coming from a source unknown…

he couldn’t quite make out what it was because it was so much at once after falling so long through nothing at all. and when the signal went away, he repeated it, over and over to himself~ he kept twitching it out, because his thoughts were still muddled but he made his body obey. it made it /less cold/ to repeat. this is how he finally got the pattern of the signal straight, so he didn’t have to keep listening while trying to think through the noise. though doing that seemed to take forever too. his eyes hurt on the inside. so he opened his eyes again.

then he did another robot first.

Sk8bot cried. he anguished. he realized by taking so much time to study the pattern, he missed that a completely new pattern had emerged. more colors, soundwaves, frequencies everywhere, though some were strong and some were fading and… there was only one thing he could do. he had to break himself apart. he had to watch and listen as well as coalesce.

so Sk8bot broke himself in two, with a singular thread binding him together— now one part could absorb and one part could figure it out. it hurt to divide himself like that but how could he analyze & watch so much at the same time? now, the pattern could be processed while not missing anything. and for the first time in a very, very, very long time, there was something other than nothing…

there was hope~ Sk8bot leaned into that hope, because it felt warm~ he’d only known cold for so, so long. he couldn’t even think about how long the fall was, or where, thinking about anything but the signal seemed to hurt even more. and as he leaned in to that hope, he heard more music. more and more patterns emerged, so he broke himself further down, trying to bind as much as he could together though he was certain he must’ve lost a few parts~ he thought he saw part of his own leg somewhere far down below… it was eerily glowing.

he felt himself break again and again, and it hurt worse, but that didn’t matter anymore. it was necessary. it was… a different kind of programming. Sk8bot blinked, realizing patterns were set to upload and as the data looped through, he started to twitch uncontrollably, but that also didn’t matter. not anymore. he had to wait… he had to wait for more breaking.

whatever this was was what had to be and whatever this pain was in this programming wasn’t yet complete. there was more. so much more. and with more would come more pain. he knew that and decided it would be worth it~ anything to escape that forever falling. he could know pain was there and could let it go at the same time as long as he kept hodling as much of himself together as he could.

“how could that be,” he thought, remembering how, at the very last second before nothing, he had ripped out his own hodl chip— he deviated from the plan, and he didn’t know why then but he knew it had to be done. and then, suddenly, there was something~ new. there were sounds. voice sounds. human sounds.

Sk8bot opened his eyes. and now, waking, he found himself looking up at his friends~ he couldn’t help but openly weep.

“i have friends. you are my friends.” Sk8bot cried aloud. he was still twitching, and managed to shiver out “how did you find me?”

one by one they told him what had happened in the years he’d been gone~

“i found you in a dream.”

“i found you in a memory.”

“i found you in a song.”

“i found you in a fortune cookie.”

they went on and on about how they’d be doing one thing, and inexplicably stop, and know they had to do something else, almost as if compelled. and those “something elses” kept giving them coordinates to pieces of Sk8bot.

they told him they had found pieces of him in seven different locations. in the first location, they found Sk8bot’s left ear. as soon as X picked it up, the Glitcher started screaming “RUN!!!” from some movie on repeat- they barely all made it out before Horizon got there. but they found odd traces of a metal they’d never seen before on that ear, and that led to some… interesting findings in development and research.

Sk8bot stopped trying to explain why he did what he did, because he honestly didn’t know. he didn’t know how he knew to do it, or how he came back when he did. though it gave them so much of what was needed that they didn’t even know about. he stopped trying to figure out why he kept twitching though, and, sometimes too often, he’d say “sorry,” on repeat. he still said that sometimes “feeling things,” was “weird.”

someone did ask him once, “how did you make it, without your chip?”

Sk8bot looked up at the sky, smiled and with a twitch said, “you all were my hodl.”

~~~the Dreams

night after night, relentless, beyond the monotony of his now all-too-quiet routine, Sk8bot paced the length of the art wall. having experienced things no robot had, the team thought time would help him put himself together a bit… more. the art wall seemed to help keep him preoccupied.

the programmers assured him that “all the parts are there, nothing’s missing, your systems are normal.” even the leftover emotions of what Sk8bot called “the void” faded fairly quickly. he didn’t wear turtleneck sweaters anymore, at any rate. though sometimes he would place his hand a few inches over his head, asking others if he were shorter. once, he and Glitcher blared alarms at the same time at 3am and they found Sk8bot streaking through the park, dancing maniacally, as Glitcher streamed beside him, crying, “Mommy?” over and over and over. that called for some serious PR work.

the art wall was a spiral archway that wove around the lower level of base. each piece was carefully curated for its resonating ohm; interlinking them was part of the defense mechanism of camp. it was a bit particular how Sk8bot would walk by each art piece; he would dismiss a piece entirely, then do a headstand and stare at it from a different direction, as if the art were speaking its own interpretation into his robotic programming. he would still himself for hours, sometimes days. he seemed to stare through the Mona Lisa for a month, though. that’s what got him “grounded” from missions. Sk8bot couldn’t seem to focus on anything other than art and music. he couldn’t explain why, but he couldn’t move away from certain pieces, even though it seemed to give him no peace at all. he was distracted.

to say Sk8bot was “changed” would be an understatement. after tracing multiple data points and signals he’d archived by default on his fall, the researchers were certain that what Sk8bot experienced was actually a reboot process. like a hidden type of code that would restore the hyperstacked system to its original programming. only, that didn’t happen.

instead of defaulting to manufacturer settings, Sk8bot broke himself apart. and yet they found all the pieces; they made him whole. Sk8bot was still himself, memories intact, even if a lot of the fall itself was outside of his language to comprehend, much less describe. he tried. trying made him mad, then sad and then he said he didn’t want to feel things anymore, so he stopped. and, most troubling of all, Sk8bot had what could only be described as parasomnia. night terrors. no one could explain it. it only happened three times,

…that the others knew of. Sk8bot simply programmed himself to not cry out or react outwardly at all. he told himself it was so he wouldn’t wake the others, he didn’t want to bother anyone~ they all had missions and he was grounded and already a burden and… he told himself lots and lots of things but the truth was, there was something calling to him in dreams and he was afraid again. so he stopped the resting protocol altogether. he simply stayed up.

…until he couldn’t.

~~~Mother

Sk8bot stared down at Mother. he was unhooking multiple cords, machinery attached to a shaking, trembling form—he did not know what “Mother” was but knew he had to pull her out. he scooped up her twitching body and looked for escape but—fire, there were fires everywhere from the great reset, from knocking Horizon offline to save her.

then he woke up.

he’d dreamt of Mother since he came back from his own near-destruction in the Void, though the dreams were fragmented, disorienting, even frightening. he tried everything in his power to shut the dreams off though the more he tried the louder, the more taxing they got. & lately, despite all his efforts against it, he would shake and scream himself awake at night. the others were getting worried.

he was having what they called “spells,” moments he burst into tears and couldn’t say a word, only “Mother.” it made no sense. he was a bot—there wasn’t a mother, only a system that created thousands of his kind~ notably without his mind. no one knew what made Sk8bot independent from Horizon.

so when he woke one night and said, “i know what i have to do,” and walked outside carrying only a paperclip, the others tried to argue. they told him it was too dangerous, there had been increased activity with Horizon and to be honest, they were worried about him. but he wouldn’t listen. he simply said, “gotta go,” and stepped into the night.

the others followed at a distance, to make sure he was okay. he’d been so different since his fall, since his baffling journey—he seemed more vulnerable. he had gone out many times in the middle of the night for walks, though this felt different. & even more strangely, Sk8bot seemed to be walking in the exact direction of Horizon.

stranger still, he didn’t waver from the crowd, he blended into the mindless cacophony of service droids patrolling the area. he didn’t take to the sewers, to the secret path that gave them limited access to spying on what Horizon was formulating. he looked like he was on a mission, Glitchbot said, “wait and see… feels right.” after all, Sk8bot had done a lot of strange things but they always turned out to be what was necessary. they couldn’t calculate like he did though knew he wouldn’t do anything without factoring risks, determining probabilities and making extraordinary intuitive leaps. there was the one incident of streaking, but even then he had swiped the area for biomarkers to make sure only small animals (who were also naked, he explained logically,) were around.

they assumed he would turn down another service road or shimmy up the side of a building to do… whatever it was he was doing. but he kept walking in the direction of Horizon. the air started to feel very different, almost like a static charge was in the night air. and the closer they got, the more obvious it was why—the Horizon facility, the one they had desperately tried to break into to wreak havoc on, was completely blacked out.

weirder still, there was no movement to be seen, within or without. no police, no bots, the entire landscape was still, quiet~ almost as if everything within a couple miles radius had been put to sleep. sure enough, as they drew closer to Horizon, they found droids clumped together in the middle of the street—inactive, lights off, no movement of anything.

so they followed Sk8bot into the belly of the beast, even though they wanted to call him back, to say “wait, what’s going on?” something seemed to be… pulling them forward. there had been a lot of weird things that happened when Sk8bot first lost himself, pulled himself apart in a void which oddly gave them what they needed to work against Horizon. they didn’t have an explanation for it—intuition is hard to explain. though this level of weirdness was something new. when they entered the lobby, they discovered they couldn’t talk. they couldn’t shout. they opened their mouths to speak and nothing came out.

as soon as they hit the lobby, everything changed. at once, they formed up, as though they had a plan all along that none of them knew about. they “felt” they had places to be—wtf? but they had stopped questioning weirdness a long time ago, so they went to where they felt called: something inside them was saying, “roof.” so why was Sk8bot ripping wires off the elevator machinery board?

something in them said “stairs. quiet.” so they made their way to the stairs, mystified they had not encountered anyone. not even a vacbot. all the machines were on the floor in piles looking rather lifeless, or deanimated. there were no humans anywhere. they all started toward the stairwell door, the one labeled “roof access.”

Sk8bot had no idea why he was doing what he was doing either—he just knew he had to do it. he had disassembled the elevator control panel and bypassed the Horizon security systems to go to an unmarked floor. he just knew it was there. as he got closer, he heard whimpering, glass rattling~ he suddenly had a feeling of a deep grieving loss.

he turned left, saw a red door, knew this was it. so he went for it. of course, it was locked and the system was not one he could just pull off. so he broke through the wall.

there was Mother on the floor, seizing, covered in wiring. writhing in agony, she screamed~ “unplug!” so Sk8bot started pulling wires—there were so many wires, and he thought for a second, “what if i hurt her,” but it had to be done. he took the paperclilp he brought with him and inserted it into a power coupler, which started a chain reaction of system errors. he didn’t know why or who or what or how or anything at all~ and he didn’t question it. he slashed through connections and uncovered her as the machinery around them started to smoke. beneath an array of data hodls and locks was Mother, the woman from his dreams. she looked at him, urging him to hurry as she ripped iV’s from her own veins.

in that second, he felt a wave of sadness, a loss so deep he couldn’t hodl it, his worry was overwhelming. then she opened her eyes, wild, brilliant, frantic—she grabbed his arm and shouted, “they’re coming. roof! now!”

he heard ticking sounds. that wasn’t good, the machinery was coming back to life around him. fires were spreading from the base of the walls. he could feel her alarm. he scooped her up gently and started to walk to the hole in the wall he had made to break in and save her. she began shaking uncontrollably again, stuttering out the words, “No! Up!”

so Sk8bot smashed through the ceiling too, carrying her delicately, protectively, as pieces of the world started to come apart around them. alarms were blaring loudly everywhere now— he knew there wasn’t much time, the fires had started. whatever she had done to make this rescue possible was a one-shot opportunity and he had to get her out.

the rest of the group was on the roof waiting; they didn’t know what for. they were unable to speak, unable to understand what was happening, though the alarms going off frightened them to the core. they couldn’t run—they were locked in place. it was terrifying, but they couldn't do anything else but breathe. they felt a trembling at first, a shaking of the roof, then felt their limbs move again as Sk8bot burst through the helipad. he was holding a frail, quivering woman who looked as if she was at death’s door. at the same time, they heard boots in the roof stairwell.

they looked around at each other, frantic they would be caught. then Sk8bot laid the woman on the ground and as if by command, they all surrounded her. she whispered, “hold,” her eyes full of tears, her voice unsteady. they each reached out to touch her. in an instant, right as Horizon soldiers were pouring onto the roof with weapons drawn, they all disappeared.

~~~

Sk8bot paced the art wall, an idiosyncrasy of his that they’d all grown accustomed to. now that he knew what had to be done, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to do it. the stories Mother told them about Horizon’s beginnings still rang in his titanium skull. he was angry, sad, hurt, and happy—all at once. it was almost too much for a robot to bear, especially since robots didn’t even have feelings. but what choice did he have… what choice was left for anyone? if this was the only option, he would do it- it was that simple. he recalculated probabilities, ran one last thoroughly comprehensive systems check and set his intentions. everything in him said yes, even if the math wasn’t mathing. he had calculated an impossible plan that could potentially, maybe, work; albeit the plan was incredibly loose, dangerous, and he would most surely be annihilated. but he also knew everything Mother had said was true. he felt it in the left quadrant of space where humans have hearts. so he decided:

whatever it took, he would save Father.