Chapter 21 Hazel #3
Shaking her head, Hazel looks to Robin, Shiny, and Teaspoon.
They’ve taken care of her for so many weeks, tended her wounds, tidied her mistakes, fetched and carried, welcomed her into their home—even forgiven her initial ignorance and the horrific accident of her arrival.
She and Robin go bottle cap hunting. Shiny is almost getting tea right.
Teaspoon reminds her to put on her headphones every morning since that incident with the screwdriver.
CHARL1E and the Catopic Aperture don’t function properly without elpis devices, and Tree broke down completely, so goodness knows what would happen to a Tiny. The risk is too great.
‘There has to be another way. We could smash your icosahedron and extract your original elpis device.’
‘There is a ninety-eight percent probability that would shatter the device.’
‘A two percent chance at success isn’t nothing.’
‘It also risks further compromising the chronode networ—’ CHARL1E’s head snaps up as the Tinys’ tails flick in unison. He cocks his head, listening in. ‘Hazel Brandt, I feel the same way as you, but it seems it is not up to us.’
Hazel looks between CHARL1E and the Tinys. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The Tiny you call Robin has made a proposal,’ CHARL1E says, ‘and the others have agreed to it.’
‘What kind of proposal?’ Hazel looks to Robin, who looks to CHARL1E.
‘Robin has—Robin—’ CHARL1E opens his mouth uselessly a couple of times.
‘Robin has made a twofold proposal. First, as the custodian of your keystone memory, it will give you the prompt for your anamnesis. Second, it will donate its elpis device to me. Once I have confirmed the mend to the timeline, you will commit anamnesis.’
Hazel drops onto her makeshift bed, and Robin trundles over.
She shakes her head. ‘No.’
The Tiny pats her hand, nodding. Yes.
‘You don’t have to. We can find a different way.’ Hazel’s eyes burn.
Slowly, Robin strings together their existing signs in new arrangements. No. I must deal with what is in front of me. I am OK. I am ready for the—
‘CHARL1E, do you recognise that gesture?’
Robin’s tail sways, and CHARL1E translates quietly, ‘The lonely dark.’
Opening the hatch in its side, Robin pulls something out and presses it into Hazel’s hand: the pink bottle cap with ‘You’re a winner’ and a gold star on the inside.
She stares at it, so the others don’t see her holding back tears, and by the time she looks up, Robin’s gone to fetch her keystone memory prompt.
Outside, there’s a commotion, and Hazel watches through the window as hundreds of Tinys flood from their burrows, assembling around the Experimentation Dome. They part, making a path for Robin, who returns holding—
‘Why on Earth has it got a cup of tea?’ Hazel says.
She understands as soon as Robin’s through the airlock, and she spots the steam, inhales the tannin-and-bergamot scent, sees the brewed-strong-with-milk sandy-brown colour.
A hot cup of Earl Grey tea. Real Earl Grey tea.
Already, her memories are stirring. All this time, the Tinys have been making rubbish tea on purpose.
Scoundrels! The Tiny puts it on the side, next to the coding computer, wipers angled up in a smile.
It waves, and Hazel waves back, clutching the pink bottle top.
Robin approaches CHARL1E, Teaspoon, and Shiny, and unhooks the oil spout in its torso, using it as a lever to pull open its sternum.
Inside, amongst the tangle of wires, an elpis device glints, bending the world in a reflection so flawless Hazel takes a moment to realise it’s spinning.
A little ‘oh’ escapes her. Seeing inside Robin gives her the same uncanny shiver as building CHARL1E’s body, but it’s countered by wonder that Robin’s voluntarily making itself so vulnerable.
Robin lowers its lenses, unable to close its eyes but curling in on itself, all its focus on its hands as they squeeze into its chest and clutch the device.
There’s a short squeal of mirrored glass against metal fingers, then the device slows and stops.
Robin tugs the connectors from the top and base, cradling the device as it comes free, but otherwise falling still, suspended in the separation.
Wheeling forward, Teaspoon takes the elpis device from Robin’s fingers. It holds the device to its own chest for a moment, tail making figure of eights, then turns to CHARL1E, who kneels, exposing his neck.
Clutching the device in one hand, Teaspoon reaches with the other and presses the button behind CHARL1E’s neck.
His chest cavity slicks open, internal lights blinking on, and Teaspoon places the elpis device in the gap between components.
Wires stretch like vines from every circuit, twining into an artery and vein that latch on to the device’s base and top.
The wires pull the device in, out of Teaspoon’s grip, and the Tiny rolls back, tapping its fingers nervously.
The mirrored sphere starts spinning, accelerating until the cavity’s lights flicker.
CHARL1E’s hands and feet twitch. His mouth opens and a wavering note emerges from it, his thousand voices returning and singing to the tune of Tree’s song.
His chest cavity slides closed of its own accord.
As it clunks into place, CHARL1E shivers and falls silent.
His head droops and his eyes open. Still kneeling, he looks up at Hazel and she sucks in a breath.
His eyes—just moments ago impenetrably dark—swim with stars. As he blinks, galaxies spin and nebulae exhale; comets streak long tails across the vacuum of space; somewhere, a blue-and-green marble spins within an atmosphere thin as cling film.
‘Your eyes…’
He doesn’t respond, cocking his head as if tuning into a celestial song he hasn’t heard in a long time.
Hazel grips the bottle top Robin gave her so hard it hurts. ‘Did it work?’
‘Yes.’ CHARL1E smiles. It shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall in resolution be as sweet as honey. ‘They are far off, but I can hear the chronodes. Give me a moment.’
He rises and strides to the window, placing his forehead and palms against it as if reaching beyond the extinct sea.
Hazel’s eyes drop to Robin, who’s still staring at its hands, which so recently held the elpis device. Teaspoon and Shiny stand not far off, tails entwined.
She puts the bottle top in her pocket and kneels beside Robin, frightened to touch it.
‘Robin?’ When it doesn’t move, she strokes one of its lenses with a finger, feeling the hum of continuing power. ‘You in there?’
It moves, slowly, looking at her without a hint of recognition, then returns its attention to its empty hands.
‘Robin?’ The robot doesn’t move. ‘We could hunt bottle caps?’
Nothing.
‘Or we could go and pray in Tree with the other Tinys? They’ll be so proud of you.’
Again, nothing. Her eyes sting and her vision swims.
Returning on silken feet, CHARL1E slips an arm around her shoulders.
‘What’s wrong with it?’ She’s trying to hold her tears back, but still one escapes.
‘It is lost,’ CHARL1E replies.
‘Then we need to find it.’
‘I am sorry, Hazel, but that is not your task. Leave finding Robin to us, there are other things that you must do now.’ CHARL1E’s voice hums, each of the chronodes lending him a speaker from a hundred thousand points in the past. ‘Come away, you cannot fix it.’
‘But—’
CHARL1E’s grip around her shoulder tightens, but his voice stays calm. ‘It is time for a cup of tea.’
Galaxies twist in CHARL1E’s eyes as she understands. ‘The glitch has almost reached my home present, hasn’t it?’
He nods. ‘I apologise. I estimated that we had longer.’
‘Did we complete the Deed?’
‘Yes.’ CHARL1E nods.
‘And?’
‘It made a little change for the better, though there is still much to do.’
She looks around the Experimentation Dome, thinking of the well-thumbed Lucid Dreaming book back in her bedroom, the Aperture hanging empty from the greenhouse ceiling, Tree endlessly singing.
Now it’s time to leave, she’s resistant.
‘But I haven’t contacted the Backward Traveller As Was. The catopthura—’
CHARL1E gives her a little smile. ‘I calculate there is one more piece of information you need before you can do that, but we must act now.’ He guides her towards the steaming mug of tea on the side. ‘You will have one last moment in the dreamscape. Use it wisely.’
She sinks into her wheely chair by the tea, picks up the mug and inhales the steam. Painkillers arranged like a flower on a plate; does it make them easier to take that way; breathe in to four hold for—
Home comes for her as she sips the tea, warm and familiar and perfectly brewed, triggering a tidal wave of memories at her mind’s edge.
Numbly, she returns the cup to the side, and as she pulls her hands away from it, her fingernails start dissolving in the air, as if she’s only dust disturbed by a breeze. Breathe in—Breathe—
She takes a last look around the dome, her scattered tools and Robin’s still, empty shell. She fixes CHARL1E with a look that could drill rocks, the tips of her hair disintegrating and neck itching as time catches up with her. ‘You’d better find Robin again.’
‘I believe I have already made that promise.’
Ignoring her aching neck, she holds out a hand. ‘Goodbye, CHARL1E.’
He frowns, taking her disintegrating hand and shaking it with a chilly palm, close enough for her to smell his rain-on-spring-grass odour. ‘Goodbye, Hazel Brandt.’
Then the past pincers her neck and her vision floods with Not Here’s molten light. The wave of her keystone memory crashes, sweeping her away completely.