“So that’s that, huh? You just go about ‘having fun’?”
“Well, yeah, what else is there to do?”
I stared in silence. He coughed and averted his eyes.
“I can’t refute that.”
He looked up. “What?”
“You heard me. It’s not my place to tell you that’s not what life should be. Truth be told, that’s a more defensible reason than I could come up with.”
“What reason might that be?”
“Does it particularly matter?”
“I suppose not, but I’d still like to know. I showed you mine, now you show me yours.”
I sighed, and I tapped my forearm a couple times. Scout came to life again. She nuzzled my hand, but I gently pulled away. “This is my reason.”
His brow creased. “I don’t understand. The bird thingy…? That’s your reason for still being here?”
I nodded. “That, and death terrifies me.”
He tapped her blue-lit lenses with a fingernail a couple times, but she didn’t react. “What’s that mean?”
“What, my fear of death? That seems pretty justifiable--”
“No, no, no. I mean, like, that thing is a weapon. Why would a weapon make you feel the need to keep going?”
I glared. “Don’t call her a weapon. Please.” His half-smile dropped.
“Sorry, didn’t mean nothing by it.”
I sighed, leaned back on my seat and rubbed my eyes. “She’s capable of terrible things, I know. But she’s more than just that.”
“You keep calling it a ‘her’. Why is that?”
“Well, she’s a girl.”
“It’s a robot, man--”
I stood up quickly. “SHE’S NOT A FUCKING ROBOT.”
“Well, what is she then?”
“None of your business, that’s what she is.” I turned and grabbed the can I was using as a seat, which had been knocked aside. I slowly set it down and eased onto it.
“Who are you, Ben?”
“Y’know, I’m not sure anymore.”
“Well, do you know who you were?”
“You mean, who I was before the world went to shit?”
He nodded. “Me, personally, I was a nobody. I was just a kid in high school about to go off and do fuck-all with my life.”
I laughed a little bit. “Guess we all did fuck-all, huh?”
“Yeah, I suppose so.”
I gave a pause and cleared my throat.
“I was a workaholic, I think.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I think I was. I regret it every day I look back on it. I had a family, you know. Wife, kid. The usual. I worked for some corporate dickheads in a lab that used equipment far more expensive than everything I ever owned.”
“What did you do there? Sell your soul or something?”
“Yeah, something like that. It was a prosthetics lab.” I gestured to my forearm.
“Damn, musta been pretty good at your job, then. Shit looks clean.”
“I was good, but I wasn’t good enough.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Well, I said I had a daughter. She was paralyzed, but she was so sweet. She really liked birds, you know. She always talked about how much she wanted to fly like them. She didn’t know it, but I applied for funding for a side project to build a mechanical bird for the ultimate form of undercover surveillance. It got approved. One of her birthdays came, and I showed her my newest creation.” I lifted the blood-stained bird up. “A little banged up nowadays, but still one of my proudest accomplishments.”
“That’s great and all, but that doesn’t explain what you mean by not being good enough. If anything, that just proved that you were too good at your job.”
“I’m getting there, I’m getting there. It’s not like we are in a rush, right?”
“No, I suppose not.”
“I worked in that lab to free her, you know. It upset me that she was confined to a bed, locked away in her own uncooperative body. I can’t even imagine what that would be like. I dedicated my life to getting her free somehow. I tried putting some chips in her spinal cord, thought that might bridge the gap, so to speak. No such luck. What it did do, however, is learn her brain. How she thinks, anyways.”
Danny was starting to understand, I could see it in his eyes. He kept a cold, dead gaze locked onto Scout.
“I’m sorry, Ben.”
“Nothing to be sorry for. In a way, she is free. In a couple ways, actually.”
“Don’t you think that she might be more confined than ever, though?”
I tilted my head.
“I mean no disrespect, Ben, what you’ve done here is… astounding, to say the least. But look at your forearm. Tell me that she’s free to be herself.”
I stared at him, feeling my chest grow more hollow by the minute.
A corner of his mouth raised in a sad smile. “Smart man can’t outthink my reasoning, huh?”
“No, I guess not. Well, not exactly that. It’s not that I agree you are right--”
“You just can’t say that I’m wrong, I know. You don’t have to agree with me, I’m not asking you to.”
“Well, what are you asking me, then? Why do you care what I do and why I do it?”
“Can’t I just ask questions? I’m a curious guy--”
“I’d rather you respect my privacy. You owe me that much for saving your ass from those bandits.”
“Woah! Bandits or not, they are--were--still my friends, and you killed each and every one of them.”
“Don’t tell me you are upset that I killed them--”
“I’m not, I’m not, I’d just rather you didn’t call them bandits is all--”
“Are they not bandits? Seems like bandits to me--”
“I was one of them, you dumbass!”
“Well, if you were one of them, why did you leave?”
He paused.
“For the record, all I was asking you to do was say that my reason was valid.” He got up and walked towards the punctured hole only to stop halfway there. “You know what? I wasn’t even asking that. I don’t know what I wanted from you. Thanks for the rescue earlier, but I owe you nothing.” He walked out of the vessel.
I called out after him. “Where are you going?”
He didn’t turn around. “I need some time. Maybe I’ll be back, I don’t know.”
The night, per usual, was windy and cold. Relatively speaking, of course. On the horizon, I could see the heavy anvils of a sandstorm rolling through the hazy black sky. I stood on top of the boat surveying the land for my next location, and Scout assisted me in Recon. She still had some nasty perforations, but nothing that would hinder her ability to fly. Just made it a little inefficient is all.
The encroaching storm was bad news for Danny, but he hadn’t come back. As far as I was concerned, he was long gone. Made me a little sad, but that’s life in the Red.