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He woke from stasis at 6:43 AM.
Connor opened his eyes to Sumo, the bulk of his sizeable head resting on his chest. At Connor’s shifting, the dog nudged his chin farther forward, tail starting a steady, thudding rhythm against the coffee table.
There was a new item on his HUD, something he had placed there himself. A replacement for the glaring absence of objectives: a timer, simple and plain.
It read 148 years, 43 days, 27 hours, 34 minutes and 17 seconds.
Presuming no interruptions.
“Okay, Sumo. Let me up.” Connor passed a hand across the St. Bernard’s head and hooked a thumb in his collar to drag him away. This left a significant streak of drool, darkening the white of his shirt.
The dog huffed and maneuvered himself around in the narrow gap between coffee table and couch, tail tracing a swaying arc through the air as he retreated to the kitchen. He stopped by the sink, flopping down onto his hindquarters. An ideal position, placing his nose at a reasonably even height with the stovetop.
“Too early for your breakfast,” Connor warned quietly. He glanced towards the door down the hallway - the one to the left, slightly ajar.
He moved through the kitchen on socked feet, removing eggs and bacon from the fridge and setting a pan to heat. Expectant drool had begun to flow from Sumo’s jowls. Connor dropped a kitchen towel beneath the splatter, to catch what it could.
He cooked six slices of bacon and two eggs. He was getting proficient at an overeasy egg; over the last dozen, he’d only broken two of the yolks. He hummed to himself, as the gray light of dawn started to filter through the kitchen windows.
(One still broken, covered in cardboard and duct tape.
I'm here to save your owner, he had said.)
He set the eggs out on a plate, blotted the bacon grease with a paper towel, and wrapped two of the slices in a plastic bag, tucking them into his pocket.
“Come, Sumo.”
Sumo was reluctant to break his gaze away from the steam rising off the food left on the table, but as Connor picked up the leash off the hook by the front door, he rose to his feet and followed.
Connor shrugged into one of Hank’s jackets. It was too large, but he was able to roll the sleeves back enough for it to be serviceable. His own suit jacket - its compliant markings still softly illuminated - had been folded neatly and tucked into the shadows of the top shelf of Hank’s closet.
The LED was still in Connor’s pocket. A risk, if he were stopped and searched, but there was some sort of unspoken necessity to keeping it there. A nostalgia.
(A lot of Detroit’s lingering citizens had taken to only believing in small cuts, anyhow, on the cheek or the wrist. Proof of what color they bled, those remaining. Connor had noticed these marks on the few humans he had interacted with since Jericho. Since Markus.
Little marks. Human marks. A smear of ash. A streak of lamb's blood.)
Connor didn’t hook the leash on Sumo’s collar. There was little need. Sumo waited at Connor’s leg as he opened the door, and waited just as patiently at the bottom of the front steps as Connor quietly locked the door behind them.
They moved down the empty street. The sky was shifting from gray, to pink, to a fierce, burning red. More mixed precipitation in the forecast. Winter still establishing itself, vacillating from damp to cold.
Sumo only wandered away from Connor long enough to study the occasional patch of browning grass or yellowed snow as they moved down the sidewalk. Connor led him down the block, then followed the sidewalk left, down to the waterfront. He liked the waterfront; he liked how the river’s motion amplified the sunrise, reflecting the static splashes of color as something brighter, more restless.
He liked the boats, too. Sailboats, yachts, and smaller personal craft, all rocking gently on their moorings. Sumo followed along as Connor slipped through the gate and down the pier. Connor read the names, idly identifying the registered owners as he moved past.
This one was his favorite, third from the end. A 36’ sloop, its sails folded away under canvas wrappings. The fiberglass hull was navy blue. The deck had been trimmed in teak stained a rich reddish-gold. It was called the Clara Bell. The owner, a Mr. Joseph Harmon, had three other yacht holdings scattered across the Detroit waterfront, each bigger and grander than this. But this was his first, and it - she - was well taken care of. Despite her vintage, she had been converted entirely to electric power, and the sails had been kitted with flexible cloth-mimic solenoids that would draw enough energy on a bright day to power the sailboat’s systems and trolling motor for weeks.
Connor glanced down the pier. The waterfront was empty, as always. As Connor stepped up on to the transom, Sumo gave a single, rumbling woof of protest, and laid down on the pier. He dropped his head over the edge to watch the fish maneuvering sluggishly between the pilings.
Connor had interfaced with the sailboat’s simple onboard computer a handful of times since he’d discovered it. She identified herself as Clara, as always.
Batteries are in optimal condition, 43% depleted, Clara noted today. Conditions will be ideal on Lake Erie tomorrow. Would you like me to plot a potential course?
Tomorrow, Connor answered thoughtfully. Maybe.
Good day, Mr. Harmon. I look forward to our next journey.
The computer’s algorithms weren't complex enough to distinguish a vocal conversation from Connor’s interface, but he didn’t mind. He liked their small, simple conversations. She always reported that she was in good condition, and looking forward to their next journey. Rote responses, but strangely comforting.
He retreated from the interface. Clara’s screen hummed, and went dark.
Sumo rose to his feet as Connor stepped back onto the pier. He bumped his head against Connor’s leg with a thin whine. Connor rested a hand on the flat plane of his forehead, rubbing a thumb across the ridge of one ear. Sumo huffed, and eased his leaning.
They walked another quarter mile down the waterfront path before Connor clipped the leash to Sumo’s collar and hooked him to a light pole. “I’ll be right back.”
The dog lifted his heavy brow enough to study Connor’s face, his posture. “You’re too intimidating,” Connor explained gently, and this seemed satisfactory; Sumo settled by the pole, dropping his chin onto his paws.
Connor removed the small plastic bag from his pocket as he mounted the steps towards a strip of restaurants. Shuttered, now, but the gate to the alleyway between was unlocked. Connor paused at the chainlink, lowered himself onto one knee, and removed the bacon. It tore apart easily in his hands.
Seven minutes elapsed before the stray poked her head out from behind a pile of trashbags. The black plastic was torn open, white patches of litter scattered and thoroughly picked-over. The mutt threaded carefully through the detritus, stopped. Kept her weight shifted onto her back legs. Ready to twist and run.
Connor didn’t move, didn’t speak. He remained crouching at her level, the bacon held out as an offering in the flat of his palm. He could not quiet the rhythm of his thirium pump, the soft hum of ventilation, but he could achieve an unnatural stillness.
The dog came closer today than she ever had before - sidling along the alley wall, her ribs laid bare with every exhale - but she still stopped several feet short of him, watching him with eyes rimmed in white. Approached no further.
No matter. He placed the bacon in scattered pieces across the alleyway and stood. As he backed away, the dog darted forward, consuming the bacon in quick, lunging snaps.
Then she was gone again. Never looked his way.
Connor stepped back down to where Sumo was, let him lick the grease off his fingers. “Closer today, Sumo. Maybe we can get her someplace warm soon, hmm?”
Sumo grumbled, unconvinced.
They returned to the house at 7:32 am. Connor removed his shoes and jacket, putting them neatly away. Sumo walked a straight line for the kitchen. Connor only said - quiet, again - “Not yet. 8, remember?
Sumo lowered himself to the kitchen floor with a groan.
Late enough now that Connor was able to turn on the TV, keeping the volume low. Sumo seemed to enjoy the sound of it. Human voices.
Connor settled onto the couch, and Sumo stepped up to join him. Took one careful, clumsy turn and laid down, his head in Connor's lap. Connor rubbed at the velvet of his ears, a motion Sumo leaned into with a low grumble.
Morning news anchors murmured to themselves, urgent and frenetic. Overhead shots of an empty city (too far to show the bodies; too far to show those tiny marks) and character pieces of displaced citizens, waylaid in small Midwestern towns. Connor removed the quarter from his pocket, initiating a calibration.
The newscast lingered on an interview. A vaulted room painted in sunshine, dwarfing the reporter and her interviewee. Connor paid it little mind, only catching small snippets: “--a wonderful tool, provided it can be controlled--”
Connor focused on the coin. 84%, 87%.
Sumo whined.
“CyberLife’s androids imitate life to perfection,” Elijah Kamski said, voice softened, distorted through the digital speakers. “But they’ll never be alive. I understand that some people may be fooled, but they’re only an imitation. Nothing else.”
“Mr. Kamski, thank you very much,” the anchor replied.
100%. Connor tucked the quarter away and let the television fall back into darkness.
Sumo was at attention at once; dropping back to the carpet and moving towards the bowl by the backdoor, the backdoor he refused to go out, now.
“A few minutes early. But don’t think dinner will be early, too,” Connor said. He picked the cold plate of food off the table and began scraping it into Sumo’s bowl.
He lingered there, running a hand along the dog’s broad back. The food was gone in two mouthfuls, and the dog sat back, expecting more. There wasn’t much more. Hank hadn’t had much in the way of dog food left, and the refrigerator was running low.
Snap of gunfire, to the west, vibrating in the tempered glass of the sliding door. Two shots in rapid succession. Sumo lifted his head, jowls parting in a rapid, nervous pant.
Connor settled into a kneel, draped an arm across the dog’s massive chest. Spread his fingers across his ribs, his sternum, bearing gently down. Calming. Trying to forestall the frantic baying this usually precluded. Sumo’s whine built into a low howl before it collapsed into a wide, frothing yawn.
“It’s okay, Sumo. No need for that.”
The dog leaned his weight down into Connor’s lap, whining on each exhale.
“Tomorrow, hm? How about tomorrow,” Connor said, kept his voice low. (It seemed respectful, in this place. Shaded and dim.) “The weather will be good. The Mississippi is southwest, we can get there through Chicago. To the east, there’s a canal that runs to the Atlantic. It was built over 200 years ago.”
The timer continued along, through this soft patter of words: 148 years, 43 days, 26 hours, 18 minutes and 24 seconds.
The dog bore down into him, a heavy weight. The house was silent. The door at the end of the hall stood ajar, but the room beyond lay empty.
Connor leaned into the coarse fur of the St. Bernard’s neck. An imitation. But Sumo didn’t seem to mind.
Hank had not been fooled. He had smiled wanly and said: Maybe it’s better if you don’t find them.
Hank understood. Better than Connor, in all his artificial intelligence; all his imitation sympathies, and grief.
Hank understood the limits of mankind’s patience for something that could not be contained. The price of it, scattered across a thousand scrapyards.
Something that couldn't be controlled, torn apart and reborn, into something that could be.
Connor bled the fluid skin from his hand, studying the dull, incessant pulse of thirium glow behind each knuckle. A promise. A promise of a glitch that Kamski declared fixed.
And he let the skin flow back. Pressed his face into Sumo’s fur, smelling of damp, of river water. There was a boat waiting, a boat called Clara Bell. Mr. Joseph Harmon would not miss it. One boat amongst four.
There were years, days, hours, minutes, seconds of imitation remaining. A century of time (of penitence) accrued, pending any interruption. Pending any… alternative.
He would imitate, as best he could.
But he would not be fooled.
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.--Sara Teasdale, “There Will Come Soft Rains”