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Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12
Part 13
Part 14
Part 15
Part 16
I stayed mad at her for all of four minutes. Simply being near her lifted my mood. It was frustrating in a sense as she could get away with anything and I’d not just forgive her but be bashful and doting again before long, even if she were unrepentant.
Her hand felt warm and fragile in mine. I softly felt the contours of each finger, then squeezed. She smiled at me. Of everything which had transpired recently, the biggest shift was in my model of the world. Until recently, there’d been only one person in it. An absolute division between myself and a grey wasteland of senseless brutality.
That model now required reformulation. From singularity, to duality. If it wasn’t just myself and monster world, if there could be one other genuine human being, might there be more? The single ray of sunshine breaking through the cloud cover began to multiply.
I was for the first time entertaining the possibility that I’d fundamentally misunderstood all of this and my place in it. One minute, everything only makes sense if I’m alone. The next, it only makes sense if she’s with me. They can’t both be true. Nor could I pinpoint when the transition occurred.
I felt this was a liminal time, like when an insect molts and is soft for a few minutes until its new shell hardens. It added urgency to the process of figuring out which of the models I would embrace. Whether I truly could abandon the “me against monster world” paradigm for a world with more color and warmth in it, or if I was being coaxed out of hiding just so they’d have a clear shot.
“What’s wrong?” Her expression suggested either concern or sadness. Odds favored concern given the context. “Nothing, just thinking.” She seemed unsatisfied. The next day was the last before Summer. She came home with me to celebrate. As usual we trekked out into the forest, stopping to rest in a sun drenched clearing. There, I finally indulged her curiosity somewhat.
“I was just thinking….Everything I go through at school is possible to endure because I can come here afterwards. I have someplace special, a refuge from the world. I’ve been struggling to put into words how I feel lately. The best I can do is that you’re also a refuge for me. When I’m with you the world doesn’t weigh so heavily on my shoulders. Weariness leaves me, I am rejuvenated and could take on the armies of the world. You’re the air in my lungs when I dive. The warmth of a fireplace in the winter. The only oasis in a human desert. I can survive without you. That’s what I was doing before we met. What I can’t do is live.”
I felt her gaze on me but couldn’t make myself meet it. I could only put my thoughts together the way I wanted them to come out if I didn’t. The air felt painfully empty until she next spoke. “I...I dunno. I mean, I think you’d be okay without me. All good things come to an end, yenno.”
I took a moment to process it, while she continued. “I really like you. But I worry that you have some grandiose image of me when really, I’m not that great.” Not the reaction I’d expected. I didn’t give it further thought right then, instead proceeded further into the woods to check up on the settlement.
“When did you have time to add all this!?” she exclaimed. I was at least as surprised. The settlement was no longer a village, or even town. At some point they’d begun making bricks, metal beams, and multi-story buildings. A number of rudimentary skyscrapers rose from the hustle and bustle below.
Above, fishing line strung between the aerial outposts bore cable cars for those not inclined to travel by bird. The outposts, too, were now larger and more elaborate. Some had what looked to be farming platforms on the levels just above the ‘bird hangar’. It struck me that with not much more work, they could live up there full time with no need of food or other resources from the ground. I resolved to keep an eye on this development as I didn’t want separatism to develop.
The ballistas were gone, replaced by spring loaded lead pellet launchers. I didn’t recognize the springs and worried they were looting nearby houses or something. I made a note to instruct their representative only to take stuff from trash bins. Two clusters of four launchers each were now mounted to the shoulders of the metal Tyrant, with an additional single launcher per arm.
They’d also fashioned it a sword from what, upon closer inspection, looked to have once been an electric turkey carving knife. The handle removed, the electronics miniaturized, and the battery discarded as it now fed via long, thin wire from the same central battery stack as the rest of the robot.
X-acto blades adorned the shoulders, head, waist and various other points to wound attackers that attempted to grapple with it. On top of that, exposed wires ran along the exterior, evenly spaced. I couldn’t be sure without a demonstration what those were for, but I could guess.
One of the two car batteries was now dedicated to supporting the metal Tyrant, the ‘computer’ and other recent power-hungry applications. That included a charging bay for a six wheeled offroad transport they were using to travel between the city and the lake, running on the AAs that used to be the buffer for the metal Tyrant.
On the rear of the vehicle there was a turret consisting of a quad cluster of pellet launchers, insurance against ambush. On the front, an armored cockpit. In the middle, a payload platform. It was segmented so it could take the shape of adverse terrain on the way over it. I began to wonder if, in time, they might exceed the present state of human technology.
At the lakeshore, there was something new being built in the shipyard. A glass pickle jar laying on its side, with the interior of a two story house meticulously built from wood inside of it, and a familiar docking collar inset in the lid. Zip ties affixed some sort of empty container to the underside, the purpose of which was unclear until I spotted another jar out on the lake, in the process of sinking.
A sailboat floated to one side of it, a surfaced submarine to the other. The sailboat had some mechanism I figured for a dredge pump on the deck, sucking up sand from the lakebed and depositing it into the empty container just beneath the jar until it could no longer float. As it slowly disappeared beneath the waves, so did the submarine. Presumably to guide it down, and position it for connection with the rest of the lakebed settlement.
The submarines were now larger, more numerous and fearsomely armed. When I pointed inquisitively to the row of torpedos under construction, one of the shipbuilders drew a picture for me of a crawdad attacking a group of little fellows in diving suits I’d not yet seen. Fair enough. A nuisance and occasional pinched toe for me, but a formidable sea monster if you’re an inch tall.
I found Jennifer still marveling at the intricate details of the skyscrapers. Poor little fellows inside, having to hide for so long. “The tables and chairs are amazing. I don’t own anything close to this quality. Did you buy these or make ‘em?” I told her the little people were expert craftsmen. She sighed.
“That’s wearing a little thin, you know.” I didn’t know what to tell her. “How long have you been doing this anyway?” I told her it all began about a year ago but that I’d only begun building the settlement recently. “Is this like...your thing? Or did you have normal hobbies before this. It’s hard to imagine somebody still playing with toys out in the woods when they’re a grownup.”
Stay Tuned for Part 18!