Chapter 3 Vex
Vex.
PERRI
A storm is coming. I can see it on the horizon, like a giant wall of dust. In the wastelands, there is only one thing that can produce a sandstorm like this, moving so erratically.
Hartross is coming straight towards me. The old god is a mystery of nature.
She’s rarely out of her storm, but I’ve seen a few pictures.
She’s a scaly beast with four wings beating as fast as a hummingbird’s.
A plane-sized hummingbird with talons and a beak that could crush a car.
Her territory spans over three states. All traveling merchants do their best to avoid her trajectory.
I was too busy talking with Vex and I must have missed the warning on the radio.
“Shit,” I say out loud.
“What is it?” says Vex through our open channel.
She’s been my companion since I left the Market. I hate solitude and I get lonely very easily. Especially out here in the wastelands.
“Hartross is coming,” I say.
“The old god you told me about?”
“Yes.”
I’ve been giving her updates on the outside world since we started talking weeks ago. She knows nothing.
“You need to find cover, Perri. Quickly.”
There is worry in her robotic voice. I’m always so impressed by the range of emotions she displays as an AI.
Every day, she evolves and builds connections to make herself more human.
A true marvel of technology and intelligence.
Which makes it even more cruel that she’s been stuck in the underground labs for twenty-eight years alone.
I put my foot on the gas and aim for the small town I saw five minutes ago. I usually avoid towns and ruins, they can hide many threats, but I’m out of options. I’d rather face hungry nomads than a god set on devouring little me. If Hartross notices me, I’m fucked.
Our truck is fast and efficient on the desert’s uneven ground; Stellan always made sure that it stayed in the best condition in case we needed to escape a situation like the one I find myself in right now.
I reach the town’s ruins in less than five minutes.
And it’s not a minute too soon. I keep my eyes on the rear view mirror and the dust storm chasing me.
I park the truck behind a concrete building that looks sturdier than the others, then close all the windows.
I reach for the radio’s antenna on the roof and throw it on the passenger’s seat before pushing my seat back all the way.
I hide under the steering wheel like a terrified child.
“Perri,” says Vex, worried.
“Here goes nothing,” I say, just as the storm reaches me.
The truck gets engulfed by the cloud of sand and debris.
Rocks hit the windows and I startle at every major impact, blessing the day that Stellan decided to put in unbreakable glass.
Vex is talking, but I can’t hear a thing over the incredible noise.
In the ruckus, I almost swear I can hear the beating of giant wings.
If Hartross finds me…
The storm rages, and my vehicle shakes and slides in the dust for the longest minutes of my life. I expect Hartross to rip into my truck at any moment with her talons.
At last, the winds calm and the dust cloud dissipates. I stay hidden for a while, hoping that Hartross is now far enough.
“Perri?” Vex says in the silence.
“Yes. I’m alive.”
She lets out a sigh of relief, so very human.
I extract myself from my hiding spot, muscles sore from the uncomfortable position. The truck is covered in a thick layer of dust. The windshield and windows have spiderweb cracks where the biggest debris hit, but the glass held.
I swipe a hand through my sweaty hair. My braid is almost undone.
It’s quiet outside. Hartross is gone. I open a door, and sand rains from the window.
I grab an old towel on the back seat and start cleaning off the dust from all over the truck.
There’s nothing I can do about the cracks in the windshield.
I’ll just have to get used to driving with them obstructing the view.
It certainly won’t be the first time; intact windshields are difficult to come by nowadays.
“Stellan will be so pissed,” I say, placing the radio’s antenna back on the roof.
“Why?” asks Vex through the open line.
“Because I damaged our truck. He’s spent a lot of time working on it.”
“I think he’ll just be happy that you’re alive.”
I snort. “You don’t know him yet. Stellan can be happy and still tear me a new asshole.”
Vex gasps. “He would do that? Perri. You might die.”
I burst out laughing. “It’s an idiom, Vex. It’s a way of saying he’ll scold me.”
“Oh.”
Vex was built a few months before the Rise, and she came to be conscious only days before the first old god attacked the United States.
They were still teaching her the basics of emotions and behaviors.
She was never connected to the internet and is unaware of many things about human history and culture in general.
She has the mind of a functioning adult, but the knowledge of a three-year-old.
The engineers who built her were evacuated and never came back.
The lab was sealed shut, and they abandoned her. She’s been alone ever since.
It’s my worst nightmare. Thank the gods she didn’t require food to survive.
“Please, never change,” I say, smiling.
Her innocence is endearing.
“I can’t help but change, Perri,” she says. “I was created to learn and evolve.”
“Ah, yes.”
Vex was the product of a top-secret program back in the day. Apparently, there was a lot of money to be made in robotics before the Rise, and they guarded their technology ferociously. Robots had been made for decades, but Vex was supposed to be something else.
Then, the Rise happened. And here we are. I’m crossing the wastelands to reach Silicon Valley and free her from her underground prison. No sentient being deserves to be so lonely.
I switch the truck to four-wheel-drive to get out of the sand and away from the small town’s ruins.
There is a storm on the horizon. Hartross is heading north.
I change the radio channel for a moment and relay the coordinates of her position to the Traveling Market.
I hope Stellan isn’t listening. With some luck, I’ll be back before his return home.
He’ll still be mad, but Vex will already be with me.
“We can build you a bedroom,” I say to Vex as soon as I’ve tuned into her signal again. “There’s still room to build behind the hangar. You can live with us, if you want. I’ll upload all the data that I can find into your system, and you’ll know everything there is to know about the world.”
“Thank you, Perri,” she says. “I would love that.”
“And wait until you watch some movies,” I continue.
“Stellan really likes those intellectual ones about space and time, or the nature of mankind. I’m more of a horror movie lover, myself.
Do you know that they used to be scared of paranormal activity in their homes?
Like creaking doors or shadows at night?
They were even scared of the dark.” I laugh. “They never had to outrun an old god.”
“I have the definition of paranormal activity in my internal dictionary, but I fail to understand why humans find it scary,” she says.
“Well, I guess they were afraid of what the dead could do to them.” I look at the town’s ruins in the rearview mirror as I drive away.
It must have been a nice place to visit before the Rise.
“But I know for a fact that the dead stay dead. Otherwise, they would outweigh the living and rule the world.”
Every scrap of land would belong to the ones who came before us. There would be no room for the living. My family would follow my every step, reminding me that I kept on breathing while they didn’t.
“How far away are you?” Vex asks.
“From my calculation, less than a day. If I don’t encounter any trouble, I’ll be with you by nightfall.”
The day before, I crossed the mountains and what used to be called Stanislaus National Forest. Now most of the trees have burned and the mountains are bare.
But I found pamphlets in the ruins of a gift shop.
It used to snow. I’ve never seen snow. Maybe one day I’ll convince Stellan to leave the Market and travel north to Canada.
“Thank you, Perri,” Vex says.
I smile, even though she can’t see it. “No worries.”
The rest of the journey is uneventful until I reach what used to be the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area.
“I hate this part,” I say, driving on the dust-covered roads.
Thankfully, most vehicles were cleared a long time ago. For parts and fuel.
“What is it?” asks Vex.
“I’m getting close. But I hate entering big cities. You never know what lurks behind the buildings.”
I know for a fact that Scylla dwells in these parts. But the old god usually prefers the waters of the bay and is rarely seen walking inland. I should be safe. From her, at least.
“Are you sure you want to do this, Perri?” says Vex. “I don’t want you to risk your life for me. Maybe this was a bad idea, after all.”
“Chill. It’ll be quick. I’ll go in, blow some shit up, grab you, and then we’re out of there. In two days, we’ll be back at the Market, oiling your parts.”
“Please, don’t talk about my parts like that, Perri.”
I laugh. Over the weeks since I caught her signal, I’ve been teaching her about innuendos and humor. She’s a fast learner.
The streets are eerily quiet as I drive through.
And yet, I notice a few faces watching me pass from the broken windows of many houses.
Scavengers and survivors. They’re the ones who never built a better life for themselves after the Rise.
It’s also thanks to most of them that the traveling merchants always find wares to trade.