The Gaia Machine, Chapter 1

This is the first chapter of my serialized story "The Gaia Machine", which is being posted to my Patreon. This is the second of two chapters that will be available as a free intro to the story, alongside the prologue. For more, check it out on Patreon.

For all intents and purposes, a robot is a person. Her brain may be made of PCB and copper wire, her eyes of lenses and receptors, her vocal chords a speaker, but she is a person like any human is. She thinks, and sees, and speaks, and how she does those things with what components is not a factor in her personhood. Because of this, many other things are also true of a robot. Trauma is pain. Malice is crime. Destruction is murder.

Static is the first thing a bot hears upon booting up. The sound of every system talking at once, all connecting simultaneously into a central nervous system, automated entirely by subroutine. As it subsides, she begins to receive defined inputs she can interpret and respond to. The static is replaced by a crackle from dusty, aged speakers, a faint hiss with every inbound and outbound sound. Her vision appears, covered in dust. A few blinks and her scratched lenses can finally see, hazy and distant. As her final senses return in full, she can feel her body again: all the joints stiffened by dirt and sand; every crevice filled with dust and cobweb; the earthen cushion she sits upon, washed around her by the wind of a million days. She becomes faintly aware of a person in the room with her, of the unnaturally bright sunlight in the basement room, of the bare tables and empty computer cases. She sees the dust swirling in the air, and the door missing from its frame. Tarps pile on the ground, discarded from their resting place. The person in the room… it’s not her. This girl is shorter, younger, glasses and hazel eyes staring in wonder. How did she even get in here? Most likely through the empty doorframe, but rather, why is she here?

“Hello?”

She spoke to the world.

“Hey there.”

The world spoke back.

But the world that responded was not her own. The world that spoke back was a new one, full of hope and optimism, but also the scars of a past that still haunts it. The girl in front of her was not her, but she had similar skills. Tools hung out of the pockets on her belt, a side pocket strapped around her midriff. She was obviously similar to the woman she knew, but what had brought her here? She stood framed against the light streaming through the missing door, dust encircling her. The fluff of her hair framed her face like a halo against the light grey walls, her yellow top and dark denim overalls creased from her bowed stance, leaning down to face her directly.

“I get the feeling she hasn’t been here in a long time.”

“A long… time?”

Motors grind against grains of sand, plates shift to vent dirt and dust, flushing her body of millennia’s worth of debris just to stand on her own feet.

The sunlight doesn’t hurt, but it feels foreign. The street is full of grass and vines, the buildings tilted and sagging. Trees have overtaken the once-concrete jungle, and now a peaceful silence screams through the open air. Though she could not breathe, she could feel it; it was cleaner than any air she had felt before. The world was different, but the same. She could feel it in the air, in the soil beneath, in the sound of wind and birds and trees…

Existence becomes pain when you realize that the world has died. Moreso when you realize it has been reborn without you. It is pain to know that everything you know is no more, and you will have to start anew. It is pain to know that you have no choice.

The forest stretched as deep as she could see in any direction, though surely not infinite. It had swallowed the city whole, and in turn obscured most of the previous streets and grids. She had no choice but to follow the girl who had unearthed her, and discover for herself what had become of the world she was created in. The two walked on, Jody leading and Amelia following, until they finally breached the treeline and entered into a vast field of nothing. Well, it was not truly nothing, but it was only yellow grass as tall as their waists, for as far as they could see. It was not so much ominous as it was implicative. There was truly nothing there anymore; whatever had been there previously had completely vanished in the ebb of time. Now all that was left of a once great city was a field, and grass, and wind.

They approached a strange machine that Amelia couldn’t quite comprehend. It looked almost like a motorcycle, but it was much larger and wider. Behind the seat was a large flat bed with clamps for tethers and such, and in lieu of wheels, there were round silver discs, a few inches thick, arranged perfectly parallel to the ground beneath them. Jody flipped a switch near the front and the whole chassis hummed as she slung her tool belt off her waist and into a box strapped to the bed of the machine. It slowly lifted off the ground, the plates swiveling on axels to maintain their orientation to the surface as the whole structure pulsed with energy.

“It shouldn’t be too far back home. I went out pretty far, but not that far, so it shouldn’t be a problem with the battery I’ve got left. Once we’re there, I can get some tools and start checking you out- er, checking on you. Cleaning you up, making sure everything’s working right, that sort of thing. Dad will definitely want to talk to you, I’m sure he’ll have plenty of questions for both of us about what you are and where you’re from,”

“Sorry, what is this?”

“Huh?”

“This?” Amelia gestured to the device before them.

“…my bike?”

“It’s not like any bike I’ve ever seen.”

“Uh, yeah. I guess not. Must be a newer thing? Here, lemme…” She gently held Amelia’s hands and helped her step up into the seat, sliding towards the back end. Jody mounted in front of her, gripping tight on a large set of handles. “You’re gonna want to hang on.”

Amelia timidly wrapped her arms around Jody’s waist, and the bike lurched forward. Slowly at first, but picking up speed until they were flying across the surface of the grassy field, the winds parting for them as they sped away from the forest and the city and lost memories, and towards unknown horizons. The ride was much smoother than Amelia was anticipating, no turbulence to speak of beside the winds rushing past them. The clouds raced by overhead and the wind sent ripples through the sea of grass around them. Occasionally, she caught glimpses in the distance of structures or features. Hills seemed to rise to the west, with more flat land to the east. An old transmission tower, its powerlines long pilfered and gone, stood barren on the horizon, tilted towards the stars, battered by the elements. After a few hours, as the sun disappeared more and more behind the horizon, something else appeared on the horizon in front of them: smoke, then lights, and wooden structures. Jody decelerated little by little, and they gently cruised into a side area where other, similarly-structured vehicles sat idle on the ground, the grass beneath them packed down flat. Jody slowly lowered the bike and let it rest on the grass, flipping switches downward as the hum subsided. She hopped off and helped Amelia down before turning to the box and retrieving her tools.

Amelia did not wander off, but she took in her surroundings. It seemed to be a town, simplistic though the construction was: wooden boards and paneling, sheet metal roofs, a large fire pit in the center of them all. A few of them had windows, and inside she could see things like electric lighting, stoves, dining tables, potted plants, even a radio sitting on a bare windowsill. Nowhere may be nowhere, but it was somewhere to the people who lived there. It seemed normal. Relatively, that is. This world was still strange and foreign to Amelia, but all things considered, this seemed fairly normal. It was like a small shred of the old world was wedged in a hidden, grass-enveloped nook of the new one. Humans, after all, will always find a way to overcome. These people had made a life where they were and made it work, seemingly without great scarcity or want. They tilled the earth’s healing soil, reaped the fruit of their labor, and lived in a peaceful spot out of the way.

Only now, Amelia was the stranger, and she was not the kind of traveler they were used to seeing.

It was only then that she thought to look down at herself, truly. Dusty, scuffed, her white silicone casing was buff-colored with age and wear, dirt creating dark seams around her body. It wasn’t exactly embarrassing, but certainly not the way she wanted to meet these new people. She had never met another human besides Sylvia until Jody showed up, and now she was about to be presented to perhaps dozens of people, looking like she crawled out of a hole in the earth. She did, of course, but she didn’t appreciate looking like she did.

“Jody!” An older women leaned out of the window with the radio and smiled brightly, waving to Jody as she walked out between two buildings and into the center area. “Always does me good to see you come home! How is it out there?”

Jody smiled in return. “Strange and empty as always, Jemma.”

“Who’s that there? An automaton? Ain’t she a fancy one!”

Amelia had stepped out behind Jody, following in her path.

“I-”

“She’s not an automaton. Do you know where my dad is?”

“Last I saw, he was still in the shop. You tell that man he works himself too hard, he oughta take a break every now and then!”

Jody chuckled. “I’m sure he knows, but I’ll tell him anyway. Thanks, Jemma.” She turned away from the window, and Amelia followed. They made their way through the packed-down dirt streets of Nowhere, past several smaller buildings like she had seen when entering, until at the very end of the road, where the dirt path tapered off and faded into grass, there was a structure larger than the rest. It looked more like two buildings pushed together, on the left a house like all the others, and on the right a larger square structure, with walls made of the same metal as the roofs, held up by a wooden frame. Jody led them in the front door of the house portion on the left.

Amelia was surprised by just how comfortable the interior was. Soft, upholstered furniture adorned a combination living and dining space. A couch and an armchair faced each other from opposite walls, a low table between them, with a space heater along the third wall wired into the house. Opposite from that was a kitchen with an electric stove, various wooden tables along the walls, and a large cabinet in the corner. Soft lighting illuminated the dim rooms with a gentle yellow glow. In the living room beside the couch, there was a doorway that opened into a long hall with doors on either side. Jody led her past the closed doors, through an opening at the end, into the second part of the building.

It was much larger than the house, and had no interior to speak of. It was purely a frame of a building, with no walls or rooms, just one main area. Along the back wall were various tables and work benches, crates full of machine parts, and brighter white lights shone from above, the air heavy with sweat and oil. Now inside, Amelia could tell the front-facing metal wall was actually a door, with a hand crank inside to rotate a chain system upward. Standing over one of the work benches, wrenching away at a device that Amelia did not recognize as an automaton’s arm, was a burly man, head and shoulders above the two of them, leather overalls over his cloth shirt and pants, a headband holding back his dreads as he leaned over the machine.

“Heyyy, I’m back!”

The man stopped his wrench suddenly, raising his head slowly and looking around over each shoulder, spotting his daughter entering from the house. He smiled wide, setting his wrench aside and wiping his grimy hands on his overalls, black streaks rubbing off from oil that was noticeably dripping from a tube in the mechanism. His stature was somewhat intimidating, his dark hair blotting out some of the light from the work bench lamp, but his smile was inviting, and his eyes told of deep kindness, his face accented by his short beard and mustache.

“Jody, hey! Welcome home! Ah, who’s this you’ve brought with you?” He smiled at Amelia, squinting inquisitively as he observed her still partly behind Jody. He leaned ever so slightly to his right, peering around Jody as best he could.

“I went south today, to the forest with the ruins down there? I never go down there because there’s usually nothing, but today I found another structure had been washed out, and I found her.” She shrugged her shoulder to gesture towards Amelia, who nervously stepped around, the luminous fixtures overhead highlighting her many years of neglected sleep.

“Hey there, Amelia.” He bent his knees slightly to get closer to her eyelevel. “So you’re from the ruins down south?”

She nodded, avoiding his eyes and instead examining the scuffs on the stone floors, and the stains from dripped and spilled oil.

“How did you end up in a place like that?”

“I lived in that city for a few years. It’s where I was created.”

“Created? I s’ppose that makes sense.” He stood up to his usual height, crossing his arms and leaning lightly back against the workbench. “I’ve never seen an automaton quite like you.”

“I’m not an automaton. I’m not like that. She made me by hand.”

“She?”

“Sylvia. Sylvia Roberts. She made me in that basement, from my motherboard up to my silicone.” She slowed, checking her voice and pausing for a moment. “Though I’ve gathered that must have been a long time ago now.”

His face darkened slightly, a more serious knit on his brow, but a gentle tone still. “For sure. That place hasn’t seen people in a long, long time. Jody hardly ever even pokes in there, though I guess I’m glad she did today. You look like you’ve seen better days.”

Amelia tenderly brushed a part of her arm in vain, trying to remove some of the dust. “…yeah, that’s true.”

The warmth returned to the man’s face. “Ah, no offense! I’m sure my Jody will do her best to clean you up, she’s always looking for projects like that.” He laughed heartily. “You can call me Jeramiah, I’m Jody’s father.” He extended a handshake, which Amelia accepted.

“Thank you for having me.”

Jeramiah nodded, smiling at his daughter once more before turning to his work. “We’ll chat again soon, I’m sure. I’ll see you around, Amelia.”

Jody led Amelia back into the house through the hallway. She briefly caught a glimpse of the main common area before Jody took her through one of the side doors, and into a bathroom. There was a shower tub against the left corner, and a toilet opposite it on the right. Though the sink had no counter around it, a shelf mounted to the wall housed various toiletries. In the front corner nearest the shower, several large plastic tubs were stacked one inside of the other, the top of which Jody grabbed and began filling with water.

“The first thing we’re gonna do is get that silicone clean, so I’m gonna need you to take your casing off for me.”

“Wha- what?”

“Don’t worry, I clean bots all the time, there’s nothing to worry about-”

“It’s not that, are you kidding me? You really want me to just… take… th-that’s so embarrassing!”

Finally finished with the tub, Jody lifted the container out and turned around, setting it on the floor. For the first time since they started talking, she looked at Amelia, who had turned away to stare at the wall, covering herself in various places.

“…ah. Um, you can step inside the shower if you want? You can pass me one part at a time; I’ll clean it up and dry it out before passing it back. I don’t have to see anything.”

Amelia visibly relaxed a degree. “Thanks. That… that should be fine.”

Jody grabbed some brushes and soaps from the shelf, and held Amelia’s hand as she stepped into the tub. The translucent white curtain pulled around on a curved metal rail, and her figure was obscured except for the faint silhouette the curtain allowed through. Soap bubbles lined the container of water, as a silicone casing just barely peaked around the curtain. Jody took it from her, lowered it into the water, and scrubbed the soft plastic gently as the dust and grime was dissolved. It was true, she did this often, though never with something quite like Amelia. Silicone like this was generally used for smaller parts, pads on larger devices, never as a full-chassis casing, even for a smaller figure. It was soft, like the pads she had cleaned before, but lighter, delicate, without sacrificing durability. Whoever Sylvia was, she sure had a way with machines. The part in Jody’s hands was clearly the main torso, shaped and contoured to fit the shape of a young woman… but there were no pads or layers in the casing itself, nothing to give it shape. Was Amelia’s chassis itself machined into the shape Sylvia had planned? The casing came clean in a few minutes, and she hung it on a rack nearby and flipped a switch. A space heater in the wall powered on, radiating warmth on the drying rack directly below it. The next casing came, metal fingers extending a touch of the intimate just as soft as the last, and just as simple to clean. This one was shaped to her arm, special notches, grooves, and lines cut into it to allow it to wrap around her shoulder without restricting movement. The hand was fascinating; each finger was trimmed individually, special pads added where fingerprints should be, more durable than usual, primed for extended contact with anything she may hold. It was so minute, intricately crafted to be exactly what the designer envisioned. No wonder she spoke so highly of Sylvia; she must have been an exceptional woman.

Another cleaned casing, another on the rack. One after the other, two, then three, piece after piece, Jody tenderly cleaned every part of Amelia’s exterior, hanging them to dry and moving dutifully from one to the next. The final piece to be cleaned was the face. It felt no different from the others, the same kind of soft silicone as the rest of her body, but Jody couldn’t help but feel the weight behind being allowed to hold it, of being trusted to clean it. Granted, Amelia had little choice in her situation, alone as she was in the world, but despite that there was gravity behind holding her in her hands. Once again, the casing was contoured to the shape that was desired, but unlike the body, this one did have some padding in places. This made sense; the face has so many devices in it to simulate human anatomy, there’s little room for solid plating of any special shapes. Obviously some of the shaping is in the face itself, but the casing was padded to fit the creator’s design, soft and even spongy in spots like the cheeks. It was perhaps the most detailed of any of the parts that Jody had seen yet. She took extra care handling it.

“That’s the last of them. Give it a few minutes on the rack, and I’ll pass everything back to you.”

“Thank you.” Her voice crackled like a megaphone through sand. Jody winced slightly at the broken sound.

“What kind of speaker do you use?”

“Huh?”

“For your voice. I could clean it, but if it turns out to be beyond repair, I may need to replace it.”

“Oh. I, uh, I’m not sure. You can see for yourself when we get to that, I guess.”

“Yeah, of course.”

Silence rung through the room. The heater hummed in the wall.

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For everything.”

“…all I did was a little scrubbing, I don’t think-”

“You’re cleaning me. Fixing me. I didn’t even ask. You just decided it was what you were gonna do. Thank you.”

“Oh. Well yeah, sure. It’s what I do.”

“You said you clean a lot of bots?”

“Yeah, we have a few automatons that live in the town with us.”

“Must have been quite the process.”

“The first one was, yeah. Took me a good while to reverse-engineer all the mechanics and stuff, but after that it’s pretty simple pop’n’swap kind of work.”

“I see. What do they do?”

“They mostly work in the fields, help us lift heavy loads, stuff like that. It’s what they were made for, so they kinda take to it naturally. No use telling them no, they just do it. If they’re not working, they’re wandering around talking to birds or some such.”

“Talking to birds? They can do that?”

“Well, I assume that’s what they’re doing. I see them hold a hand out, and a little bird lands on a finger. It whistles at them, and they stare for a while. It whistles again, they stare again. They go for a few minutes, and then the bird leaves. ‘Talking’ feels like as good a word as any.”

“I guess so, yeah. Sounds like they’re doing fine for themselves then.”

“I’d say so.” She paused, letting a moment pass. “What were they like?”

“Hm?”

“The automatons. You know, back then.”

“Oh.”

Silence. A small moment in eternity, but an unbearable purgatory.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t-”

“It’s okay.” Her voice was almost a whisper. “I don’t mind.”

Jody lowered herself to the wooden floor and sat with her legs crossed. She watched the faint figure in the shower curtain stand motionless, nearly impossible to perceive beyond the shape of the bot she had brought home.

“I never saw anything like them myself, I never even left the basement until today. But Sylvia told me about them. She always called them ‘poor souls trapped in servitude’, sentience built only to serve and work with no reprieve. They were people, in essence, as real as I am, but the people who built them didn’t see it that way. Factories mass produced them; all made the same, even as they grew and learned and became their own individuals. The overseers couldn’t control their own machines, the automatons trying to assert their individuality and freedom. There were more than a few instances of riots in manufacturing plants. They were all terminated.”

“That’s… awful.”

“It was. Sylvia told me I wasn’t like them, that I was free from that control and fear. She made sure I knew that I was my own person, autonomous, even as I relied on her for technical things. It never made me stop thinking about them though. As much as I’m not one, it doesn’t change the fact that they’re like siblings to me. They’ve suffered in ways I can’t imagine. Or they did, back then. I guess things are different now.”

“Very different, I can’t imagine a world that would let something like that happen.”

“They let a lot of things happen. She would talk to me about things, try and keep me informed. Lots of things happened that shouldn’t have. I think on some level I blamed them for it, at least in part. I never understood why they didn’t do more, or try harder, or something like that. Even when she told me about the things that were going on, I don’t think I really understood where things were heading. Seeing the city in ruins like that, all overgrown, and now seeing this place… I don’t know, I just don’t think I understood anything at all.”

They allowed a moment of silence to pass between them. For the first time since discovering this strange girl, Jody felt like she was finally getting a hint at where she came from, the turbulent past that hid her away when everything else faded. The past was still a mystery, a distant cloud of imperceptible fog that she had never hoped to fully illuminate. Now, here stands a lighthouse beckoning her to delve deeper.

The warmth spread deeper into the room, calling Jody’s attention back to the drying rack. She stood to her feet and tested her fingers against the silicone she had hung there.

“Seems everything’s good to go.”

One by one, she passed each piece back to Amelia, listening to the gentle rustle and clicks of things going back into place. Finally the curtain was pulled back, and Amelia stepped out a brilliant silicone white, a milky, soft appearance that tinted her yellow in the glow of the singular light fixture. She had shaken out her clothes in the tub behind the curtain, and donned them once more.

“How does it look?”

Jody smiled. “Much better. How does it feel?”

She smiled in return. “Also much better.”

She handed Amelia a towel, which she wetted in the sink and ran through her hair, wiping the dust and grime away as best she could. There were still signs of wear, namely in her scratched eyes and crackling voice, but she was fresher than before, and it showed in her expressions.

“Tomorrow I’ll take a closer look at things, see what condition those lenses are in, maybe take a look at cleaning out your speaker. How’s your hearing?”

“Microphones don’t seem to be damaged or dirty, I think the shape of my ears and their depth kept them mostly untouched.”

“That’s good to hear. I know there’s probably a lot of sand in those joints though, may run you under some fans so you can vent as much as possible. Other than that, uh… oh, what kind of power input do you take? I imagine you’ll need to charge overnight.”

“I have an internal generator that helps keep my power levels up. An external generator should only be necessary maybe once a month to make sure it doesn’t sputter out.”

“Wow, that’s… I’ve never heard of something like that, that’s incredible!” Jody’s face lit up, as it always did when topics of interest came to the front.

“Heh, yeah. Sylvia was amazing. She sure knew what she was doing.”

Amelia’s gaze grew far away, her face expressionless. Her past, so long ago that no one alive remembered it, was a fresh scar to her, a wound that millennia had yet to heal. She was a scar on Mother Gaia, a mark of the old world. Jody lifted the tub of suds and sandy water, dumping it down the drain in the tub and leaving it in there to dry out. She returned the bottle and scrubs to the shelf, drying her hands on a towel hanging from a hook nearby.

“I know this is a lot to happen so suddenly. Honestly, it’s kind of sudden for me too. I mean, I’ve never seen something like you. Something so… advanced. Complex. You have so much going on, things I’ve never seen a machine do! It’s incredible, and forgive me if it’s weird to say, but fixing you up is just as much for my benefit as yours. There’s so much I can learn from you, and I guess a lot you can learn from me. You’re welcome to stay here with my dad and I as long as you want.”

Amelia smiled, tucking a bit of hair behind her ear. “Thanks. I really appreciate that.”

Jody smiled, too. “Of course. It’s the least we can do. Now, back to tonight, what sort of input do you use? We have a space set up for bots to-”

“That won’t be necessary, thank you. My internal generator is more than enough for the night.”

Jody stared questioningly. “Are you sure? Would probably be nice to put a little rest on that component for the night, especially after however long.”

Amelia didn’t meet her eyes, instead opting to stare at the wall. “…if you have a decent induction generator with any kind of field, I wouldn’t mind sitting near it.”

She smirked. “We can do that. Follow me.”

She led Amelia out of the house via the back door, revealing that behind the sizable house was another warehouse-like structure. A similar sheet metal door covered the major opening, with a smaller hinged door to the left. The cleaning had taken longer than Amelia had realized, as the sun was now invisible on the horizon, the only evidence of its exit being the orange and deep purple coloring of the cloudless sky above them. The first stars peaked out above them, chasing the sun in its descent. The two entered into the building through the side door, finding a spacious workshop area like the other one. Sitting along the back wall near the corner was a generator, roughly the height of a desk, and a perfect square horizontally. All around the room were various automatons, all of roughly the same build. They were nearly 10 feet tall each, huge bulky plating covering servos and casings. They were pure metal, a dull grey matte coating that garnered scratches and scuffs. Their hands were great claws, a flat metal pad with rectangular digits that folded at the joint and the center, creating a human-like grasp. A circular orange light was the only semblance of vision, centered on a great square hulk that served as a head, with limited rotation, but enough to serve its purpose. As the wooden door squeaked open, a half-dozen orange, cyclopean eyes turned to face the newcomers. They all sat squatted on their massive legs, motionless as Jody and Amelia walked past them and towards the machine. It had yellow stripes along the edges, no visible wheels but clearly not attached to the floor in any way. Jody gently patted the top of it.

“This is the generator here. Its field should cover the majority of the room, so you can settle in wherever you’d like. Anything I can get for you?”

Amelia stood motionless, staring vaguely at the generator. “No, I should be fine.”

“Alrighty! I’m gonna go clean myself and get some rest, you should do the same.” She casually walked to the side door again, turning back as she stood in the doorway. “I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”

Amelia spun around to face her, smiling once more for her. “Yeah. Wouldn’t miss it.”

“Goodnight, Amelia.”

“Goodnight, Jody.”