Nature and Science

The light snow from the previous night did not bring peace nor beauty to the wet, grey morning by the river. The surrounding forest, full of black and skeletal trees, offered little sympathy to the scant life that stirred in its wintery hold. Fragile quiet was broken by the river’s current that pushed against the ancient stones jutting from the ever-shallower depths, yet the water could not dampen the terrible slogging noise that erupted one unfeeling step at a time.

Metal on snow, metal on stone, metal slipping as it weakly fought the unimpressed current of the creek; the tri-clawed actuator, spitting sparks from every joint in its snake-like appendage, barely managed to grasp the ground with every clawful of riverbed it dug into. Feebly, the piteous creature dragged itself and its precious cargo to the bank’s edge where it rolled the saturated parcel it was attached to onto its back. Then, inspecting the thing to make sure it was still alive, the arm coiled on top of what it so desperately protected; a man, unconscious and drenched, with untied boots and a torn leather trench coat.

The metal harness that wrapped tightly around the man’s midsection was surrounded by healed scars and open wounds, fresh bruises, and skin tinged blue with hypothermia. The man’s chest, and the resting actuator, barely rose nor fell, and with every spark from the arm’s broken circuitry, the mechanical creature was reminded that time was not long. It rose its head up feebly, claws parting to reveal a flickering white light that barely shone. Three of its brethren, identical and tangled in the stones and sticks that dammed against them in the river, making every move forward so incredibly difficult, lay prone and still. One was courteous enough to have lost its head, making the dire situation’s inevitable conclusion very easy; they were dead, the final sibling knew, and it would soon be as well.

If it did not act soon, Father would join them. The actuator deemed this unacceptable. If Father did not survive, there would be no one who was capable of repairing and reanimating his children.

The arm rose slightly, a disk slipping out of place and causing it crash down on top of the man, who did not so much as grunt in response. Again, the arm lifted itself, carefully, slowly, and opened its claws entirely. The white light flickered, and several sparks showered the ground around them, singeing the remaining clothes of the man and leaving black speckles on his exposed skin. Somewhere inside the machinery, a computer tried to feebly start up, sputtering several times in a manner that only the actuator and its delicate censors could detect. The harness, and the attached hard external spine that traveled up the man’s own organic flesh and bone, began to produce several degrees of heat.

The actuator swerved its head from side to side, scanning the area. There was no one around, intentionally so; it had taken Father and its siblings as far from the wretched city as possible. Only pain, only failure had met them in the confines of New York City. Now, however, its singular presence set the AI into a mode of fear. It knew fear well, and it was not willing to co-operate with such an emotion that Father had inadvertently taught it.

Father needed help.

It needed help. It could not save Father without its siblings, and for a flickering moment the AI was at a loss for what to do. Despair, Father had once called the troubling emotion. It did not like despair, more so than it disliked fear. Its initial objective was lost and, while it had purpose aside from building an arc reactor, it had no idea how to go about saving a human life.

Its claws opened wide to again reveal the flickering white light. Summoning all the power it could spare, the actuator let forth a high-pitched shriek, holding the note as long as its power reserves would allow. Birds rushed to the sky in great flocks from the black forest around the river, and several squirrels halted their chatter in petrified terror, but with no humans visibly near to hear the note, the actuator could only assume someone else, perhaps where the great noise carried beyond the woods, would heed its cry.

The actuator again wrapped about the man, exerting all its remaining power to the computer. Desperate to keep Father warm and alive, it closed its jaws, and the white light went out.

Quiet returned to the woods. Birds returned to their perches, rodents to their scavenging. Morning moved into a warmer afternoon but little else stirred in the thick alder and raspberry patches, nor in the wide spaces between the snow-heavy pines. Nothing moved in the forest that did not belong.

A large, dark silhouette that lay silent and unmoving on the ridge that overlooked the creek slowly rose onto four feet. Silent as darkness, it slowly made its way down the slick hill towards the carrion that lay by the river’s edge. With flaring nostrils, it sniffed around the prone human and four metal snakes, breath coming out in puffs of frosted air. It moved an enormous paw to prod at the human, only to retract its limb as though burned.

He was still alive.

Unimpressed, and no longer interested, the creature turned and began to plod away.

The man coughed, water dribbling from the corner of his mouth and down his face.

The creature, its back still turned to the doomed fellow, paused. The other inhabitants of the forest watched in terror as the beast’s face contorted, its maw opening wide to expose impressively sharp fangs. A frustrated growl escaped from the thing’s throat, and it whirled about on its hind legs. It made as if to step towards the drowned man, only to scoff and whip back around again. It did this several times, fighting itself in internal debate. Finally, the sound of a biplane leisurely flying above prompted the creature to make a move at last.

It gingerly approached the man, crouching low and making as if to sneak up on the unconscious lump of frozen flesh. It used its long snout to nudge and roll the man and, with large and dexterous paws, it began to wrench the river-bound actuators and arms out of the water, winding them up to their shortest forms and resetting them in their sockets.

With a displeased grunt and a heavy sigh, the beast flipped the ragdoll of a human onto its back. Throwing the topmost coils of metal about its neck like a scarf, it rose onto powerful hind legs and began a slow, lumbering gate away from the river, grumbling and snapping at no one as it went.