Chapter 18 Hazel #3
Robin nods assertively, less traumatised—and more intact—than Hazel had feared. It’s a big win.
She has a further surprise when the Tiny follows her into the Experimentation Dome.
As the airlock opens, Robin takes her hand, squeezing so tight as they approach CHARL1E’s body that she’s worried its sharp fingers will puncture her skin.
Robin extends its legs, scrutinising the body like an arachnophobe examining a spider.
Who would’ve thought robots could fear other robots.
It pokes the forehead’s acrylic skin, snatching its hand away as if it might bite.
When the body remains inert, Robin pokes it again, tapping the forehead repeatedly.
‘See? There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a body, like mine. Sort of. Let’s see inside, that way you’ll know it isn’t hiding anything.’
She clicks the button on the back of the automaton’s neck, and the torso slides open.
Robin grips Hazel’s arm with both hands, lenses fixed on the expanding cavity.
Once the torso is fully open, revealing the knots of circuitry she’s been building and coding, Robin relaxes.
It extends a hand, placing its palm over a gap in the torso where you’d find the heart in a human. It looks questioningly at her.
‘Yeah, that gap bothers me too, but there’s no connectors for a missing component, so I’m guessing it’s an intentional space. It doesn’t do any harm to have air circulating through a machine after all, and maybe something next to it gets really hot?’
Robin’s lens wipers draw into a frown, its tail gliding like a dorsal fin.
After all this time, Hazel still doesn’t know what whispers pass through the Tinys’ code.
Robin might be reading or hearing anything through its hand.
Is CHARL1E already there in some fashion, or is it the potential of him Robin is listening for, like a fetus kicking against a pregnant belly?
Robin draws back, hand steady, and without further communication passes her a spanner, adjusted to the precise measurement she needs for a task she hasn’t told it about yet. Clearly, Robin knows things about CHARL1E’s body intrinsically that Hazel has to work at. ‘You’re going help me?’
Another nod, the spanner held out expectantly.
She takes it, still uncertain. ‘CHARL1E?’
‘Good morning, Hazel,’ he replies.
‘You’ve been keeping up with this morning’s events?’
‘Affirmative, however I calculated it would be optimal to give you and the Tinys personal space.’ If he weren’t unembodied, Hazel would swear CHARL1E was smiling. ‘I observe that you have acquired a new assistant.’
‘Are you alright with that?’
‘The Tiny you call Robin has been brave and trusting this morning. I can be brave and trusting in return. The Tinys and I have, as you would say, overcome our beef.’
Hazel smiles, thinking of the “Heretical Book.” ‘Only proper, given it was prophesied.’
‘Unclear, I have encountered no such prophecy.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Hazel replies, settling to work. Now is not the time to explain.
‘I have further positive news.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘The latest update from my chronodes indicates the timeline is mending.’
Hazel grins. ‘You mean all those midnight dreamscape chats with the Backward Traveller have finally done something?’
‘Please contain your excitement. The timeline is not yet mended, but our chances of completing the Deed assigned to Excursion 1133 are rising by the hour.’
As she finishes with the spanner, Robin swaps it out for the soldering iron. ‘So, once the mend is complete will I get to see it, and find out if the Deed made big enough changes to the timeline?’
‘Negative,’ CHARL1E replies. ‘I am afraid this is a moment where I have been forced to withhold information. Anamnesis, the mechanism for your homeward journey, can only take you back to the moment in the timeline that you originally came from. You and the Backward Traveller must both commit anamnesis before the mend reaches your time, otherwise you will not have a “home” to return to, and will be lost in the dreamscape forever.’
Hazel’s heart drops. ‘But CHARL1E, we set off a glitch a month and a half ago. Surely that means I have to get back home before the glitch reaches my time.’
CHARL1E has the decency to sound ashamed. ‘Affirmative.’
She shudders. ‘How long do we have?’
‘I cannot calculate exactly, but two weeks at most.’
‘That’s no time at all.’
‘It is the time that we have.’
Hazel blows out her cheeks, suppressing fears of eternal entrapment in the dreamscape.
She could be angry with CHARL1E, but this information is itself an obvious trigger for anamnesis, so the timeline had to mend before she could be told.
She doesn’t like that this is the way things have to be, but she gets why.
She takes a calming sip of tea. Alas, burying the hatchet hasn’t done anything to improve the Tinys’ brewing skills.
She switches tools again, making a final adjustment to the automaton, and draws back, looking at the ceiling where she imagines CHARL1E’s speakers to be.
‘Your body is ready. Shall we take it for a test drive?’
‘Unclear. I will only be able to download into this body once, this is not a test.’
‘It’s a metaphor, CHARL1E.’
‘It is a risky metaphor.’
‘Risky, what do you—’ But the Not Here makes CHARL1E’s meaning plain.
Raindrops on the windscreen; scent of burning rubber and petrol; stabs of broken glass; hot, viscous liquid flooding down her chest and arms; are these your parents; weakened parents; weak weak—
The past pulls her out of sync with Station C, as she realises in panic that she forgot to put her headphones back on after last night’s adventure.
She needs to get home before the glitch—but not before she’s finished CHARL1E’s body, given the catopthura instructions to the Backward Traveller As Was, and confirmed the mend is real.
Vision blurring dreamscape red, and with no other defence, she grabs the closest thing to her and slams it on her hand.
The acute pain in the future-present returns Hazel to the Experimentation Dome. A screwdriver sticks between two of her tendons, blood seeping around it, the ache doused by adrenaline. That was too close.
‘I see your meaning, CHARL1E,’ she says, voice shaking. ‘Let’s just ask whether you’re ready to download, then.’
‘You hurt yourself.’
‘It’s nothing,’ she replies, batting off Robin’s fretting hands and wrenching the screwdriver out. She bites back a squeal and hugs the hand to her chest, trying to apply pressure while Robin grabs the first-aid kit.
‘You are bleeding.’
‘I’ll sort it out.’
‘But—’
‘CHARL1E, it’s fine. Drop it.’ Talking about the near miss might make another near miss. ‘Robin, can you ask one of the others to grab my headphones from the greenhouse?’
Its tail wriggles, and as it finishes bandaging her hand, Shiny zooms through the airlock and deposits her headphones in her lap. She turns the music on full blast, beating back the memories. Salt an atlas, pull up if I pull up, are we not drawn onward …
‘You ready then, CHARL1E?’ she asks, returning to the body and closing the torso.
‘My readiness is not crucial to the task at hand,’ he replies. ‘I calculate this is the optimum time for the transfer, therefore we shall commence.’
‘Good luck.’
‘Thank you, Hazel.’
Leaning over the body, she presses on both closed eyes until they each emit a soft ‘click,’ then pulls out one of CHARL1E’s fingernails.
A long wire comes with it, drawing from his hand like an artery, and she drags it to her computer.
She plugs it into an adapter, and the automaton’s code blinks onto the screen line by line.
In another window, she opens CHARL1E’s code, and the API that will mediate between them, stitching them together for the first time.
The automaton’s eyes remain closed, but its mouth opens, and Lilith’s voice emerges: ‘Core systems download requested, clearance required.’
Hazel shuffles through paperwork until she finds the right page. ‘Clearance code: SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS.’ The computers bleep for a moment, then fall silent.
Nothing happens. Hazel exchanges a frown with Robin. It must work, she’s tested each element individually, the body has to wake up now. Go and take the body of artifice that is worked by the hand of the Traveller …
The automaton’s eyes clack open. It sits up, blinking, systems whirring with a sound like breath. And I took the body from the Traveller’s hand, and filled it to the brim …
‘CHARL1E?’ Hazel whispers.
He examines his hands as if they were moon rocks, turning them slowly and wiggling the fingers.
‘The air is textured.’ He looks at Hazel, eyes a smooth darkness, blank as event horizons.
His thousand voices are gone, replaced by a single low tone.
‘Why has nobody ever explained to me that air has texture?’
Hazel laughs, a lump forming in her throat watching Lilith’s child coming to life. ‘It is you.’
CHARL1E nods slowly. He paws his chest, wraps the sheet around himself, and paces to the window. He stares out, one palm on the glass. ‘I cannot hear them.’
… as soon as I had become it, my belly was bitter …
She sidles up to him, Robin beside her. Its tail starts twitching and it glances quickly between CHARL1E and the sky. ‘What can’t you hear?’
‘The chronodes.’ He stares at her with those wide, void-like eyes. ‘I can feel Station C, and I can feel my body. I can even still hear Tree singing in the quantum realm.’ He pauses, frowning. ‘But I cannot hear the chronodes. Hazel, the download has not worked correctly: The timeline is gone.’