The Cello

The wind howled fiercely in the trees around E7, and lightning flashed in the black sky. The rain that had started only minutes before was now torrential and poured mercilessly from the low clouds.

His mechanics buzzed as the others like him activated their emergency internetting systems. The signal from here was spotty, but images and sounds still flicked through the corner of his vision, each of them sending a moment’s feed of their location -- the sights and sounds recorded by their respective systems. He knew he should transmit his surroundings as well -- it was protocol -- but something stopped him. If they knew how far he’d gotten from base, the enforcers might would come rescue him from the elements. That was, if there was nothing better for them to do. But was the storm really worth a wasted cultivation day? At the moment, he decided it wasn’t. He tuned out the flickering internet transmissions and forged onward, fighting the wind.

The threat of a long week of hunger -- 10,080 minutes, that was -- drove him onward. Not only did his unit need food, badly, but the seeds of what he would hopefully find would mean enough to eat for months to come. He was already a hour and a half into his cultivation time with nothing to show, and despite his hopeful attitude, the storm was growing worse.

“Storm warning;” Seven said, her flat voice at odds with the upheaval of nature that raged around him, “Atmospheric electric potential has increased significantly. It is advised that we take cover.”

“Where!?” E7 Shouted into the heedless howling wind. His mind was silent as his cranial instruments searched. Why, at this moment, was he thinking of A9’s safety instead of his own? Had the mothership called them out of the cactus fields? Were they in the units and out of the chaos?

“Geolocation has found no suitable shelter within reasonable distance.” Seven reported. The boy set his jaw. Determined, he ignored his mechanical eye which had lost most of it’s usefulness in the low light and driving rain, and squinted into the gale. Seven’s locater knew where he was in relation to the base, but he had never been in this particular corner of what, to him, was the known world. Nothing of the hardly visible landscape was familiar to him. It was quite possible that he had gotten further away than he should have.

He could only hope that the large shape he chose to make his way toward was something that would keep the rain out of his electronics. Seven’s definition of shelter might not have been as broad as his was quickly becoming.

He had hardly made it three steps before a deafening boom and blinding flash of light electrified the world around him.

A split second later, he watched from his sprawled position on the ground, as a tall tree hurled downward. In a fit of rain and flying bits of bark, It’s weight hit the ground like an anvil a few feet from him. He felt its impact more than heard it.

It was then that his sense returned to him, and he scrambled backward frantically, not entirely conscious of the fact that the danger had already passed.

“You are experiencing the negative effects of epinephrine release.” Seven’s warning sounded in his mind, “It is recommended that you take slow, even breaths.”

E7 hardly heard her over the wretched, irrhythmic pounding of his heart. He swallowed, wiped the rain from his face, and tried to breathe evenly.

It was mostly to no avail until his focus was abruptly pulled to something happening in the dirt beneath the fallen tree. The wet earth was seeping, ever so slightly, into unnaturally straight grooves along the ground. Soon it was clear that some kind of rectangular object in the ground had been rattled by the trees fall, and the wet earth on top of it had shifted.

He got unsteadily to his feet and moved to where the nearest corner was hidden just beneath the surface. Crouching, he pushed the layer of earth away, and found it was what looked to be a slab of cement. More clearing revealed a square shaped metal cover, it’s hinges in exceptional disrepair. E7 managed to force in open and saw that beneath it lay a familiar bit of technology. It was an ID lock; mostly used for gates or doorways, and only allowed select individuals gain entrance. Although it seemed to be an older version, the boy recognized the black screen and the outline of two spread hands on it’s surface, even beneath the thick dust.

Logic told him that if this were a hatch of some kind, it would mean an escape from the raging elements. Yet this was the exact kind of shelter Seven’s technology should have recognized, and the fact that it hadn’t caused him a little discomfort.

The indecision ended abruptly when Seven repeated her atmospheric electric potential warning. He now knew too well what that meant. Hastily, he pressed his hands against the dusty black screen. Beneath his right hand, the surface lit up a dull green, reacting to the press of his flesh, but remained cold and dark under his mechanical hand. Anxiety growing, he tried again. Still no reaction to the metal of his fingers.

The ID lock needed two hands, and he had only ever had one.

“Although--,” He thought, glancing down at his boot shod feet. In a minute and 39 seconds he had yanked the boot off his muddy human foot, and contorted himself in order to press both it and his hand onto the panel. It reacted instantly, glowing under his skin, then flashing blue twice. There was a metallic click, loud enough to be heard above the storm, and then, just as E7 moved off of it, the entire cement slab began to lower. The fallen tree that had been resting on it shuddered and branches snapped as it’s weight shifted. Through the veil of cascading dirt, the boy watched the top of a passageway appear feet below the surface. It occurred to him that he might had been better off staying on the concrete slab as it lowered, but just then there was the wail of grinding gears and it’s decent lurched to a stop. For a few moments, E7 listened as the system tried to restart the gate, but something must have lodged in the motor because eventually the grinding and whirring ceased, and the slab had not moved.

Not willing to risk the wasted time, E7 tossed his boot down into the hole and eased himself over the edge and down after it. He landed with muffled thump. Picking his way under the tree, he found the dark, half-revealed passageway. With his shoe tucked under his arm, he crouched, staring into the unknown and wondering again why Seven had not detected this mysterious underground chasm.

“I found shelter,” He thought at her, an edge of smugness to the remark, and slipped into the darkness.

As his feet made contact with the cold tiled floor, there was a faint buzzing and one by one overhead lights flickered on. At the end of the short hallway was a big wooden door, unfamiliar in every way to the boy. Upon reaching it, he studied the round metallic knob, and waited.

“Is it broken?” He asked Seven after a moment.

“The door seems to be of ancient structure must be opened manually.” Came her prompt reply, “The knob should be twisted, and then thrust inward.”

Obediently, E7 twisted the handle and pushed against the heavy door. Hinges screeching, it gave way, and swung in. The movement triggered small spherical lights hanging in the center of the large room, and the smell of dust and old fabric hit the boy like a wall. Two steps into the room, and he found himself barraged by so much more of the unfamiliar that the oddity of the manual door was immediately forgotten. He recognized a table in one corner amid what looked like wall-mounted storage compartments. There was a bed centered along the far wall; blankets and pillows covered in thick dust. Other than the scarce items that he recognized, the room was filled with things he had never seen the likes of; piled in the corners, hanging from the walls, stacked on shelves, even hung from the ceiling. The clutter itself was both uncomfortable and entrancing to him. Even to have enough to fill a room like this one defied his reality.

He was drawn to strange pictures hung on nearest wall. Each was framed in wood, and the images within them were perplexingly still; lifeless and dead they seemed. For a moment he stared at the largest of them, confused at the bright scene. There were two people depicted; both with no sign of mechanical limbs; the female dressed in an unreasonably long white smock, and the male in dark breeches. They were oddly entangled, his mouth on hers and their arms wrapped tightly around each other.

He tried for a second to think of a possible reason for such a position, but decided there couldn’t be a logical explanation. Unless perhaps they were attempting to efficiently spread a disease.

Another smaller image showed what looked to be the same man, seated, with a large wooden, long necked thing propped between his knees. He was holding a straight object against the strings that were stretched vertically across the wooden object’s surface. Before him on a stand there was a book with a bright red and yellow cover. Taking an odd interest in this particular image, E7 pulled it gently from the wall, before wandering over to something sitting propped on a shelf.

This was another image, but what it portrayed was neither lifelike or even remotely comprehensible. Upon touching it, the boy was even further confused to find that the disorganized scene was made of layers of dried colored paste, hardened onto the stiff cloth. If he squinted, he could almost see the image of a women, unclothed, laying across the floor with black running from her two human eyes.

Backing away, E7 found himself inexplicably frustrated. There was nothing here that fit what he knew, nothing that ticked in time with his internal clock. He had escaped the chaos outside, only to walk into this place and have an even grosser chaos created inside him.

“What is all of this?” He thought fiercely.

There were four full seconds of silence in his mind; filled only with the distant howling of the wind, before Seven finally replied.

“Useless artifacts,” She stated, “From an age well forgotten. The humans then were afflicted with an ailment beyond your understanding. Before Master Theremin’s benevolent rescue, your race and this planet were in a terrible state of confusion; of sickness in their minds. Your ancestors had two conflicting mentalities, and most, thereby, were driven to madness. One would express logic, rhythm, stability, normalcy, and routine; it comprehended, and computed, and obeyed. But the other, in complete defiance of the first, wove webs of irreality, of colorful illogical expression; It saw the world through distorted lenses, and drove the humans to impulsiveness and irrationality. The way they chose release such stirrings resulted in mad ravings they called poetry and storytelling, or meaningless images like the one you have discovered. Sometimes even crazed vocalization or bodily convulsions to loud continuous noise.

“In his grace, Master Theremin has saved you from yourselves by quieting the irrational mind, as well as the emotions that fueled it. Of course there was no way to do this without damaging physical control of some limbs, so, generously, he has granted movement again through brilliant application of technology.”

E7 stood still for a moment longer, having yet to decide if he should be satisfied with her answer. The explanation seemed to cover all questionable points, but there was something disconcerting about it. He couldn’t seem to identify what exactly.

Wandering with his thoughts, the boy rounded the dust covered bed, and approached a darkened corner. His proximity triggered another set of lights, and as soon as they buzzed to life he stopped in his tracks.

In the glowing belly of a display case was the perplexing wooden object from the image; the image he was still holding. Though, unlike the deadness of that motionless picture, the thing seemed to be full of an old, wizened kind of life. It was bigger than he would have expected too. It’s lower half reminded him in a way of the body of a woman, with waist and hips and shoulders. What would have been her neck extended up and up and ended in an elegant curl of wood. The strings, four of them, that stretched up the face of it were metal, like cables but thin and delicate. There twin ‘f’ shaped holes on either side of the body of the thing, and a pointed stand at it’s base. Beside it hung the long straight bow that the man in the picture had been holding. He could see now that it had hair of some kind running from one end to the other.

How strange it all seemed; so out of rhythm. But still it drew him to it; perhaps precisely because of the paradox it presented; Perhaps in the same way that A9 was both comfortable and yet surrounded in a cloud of the unknown. He knew this wooden spectacle must fit in Seven’s explanation some rational way, but there was still the troubling aura around all of this.

There was a small control panel on one side of the display case with a nondescript button labeled ‘release’. E7 glanced down at the picture, paused for half a second, then promptly pressed the button. There was a hiss of escaping pressurized air, and the face of the display case swung open. With unsteady fingers, the boy slowly reached in and touched the wooden neck. The strings were cold to the touch, and the wood smooth and polished.

What possessed him to pull it out of it’s case, he could never later identify, but pull it out he did. With it’s bow hanging from his metallic fingers, he settled with it onto the edge of the bed. Holding it so that it faced away from him, he mimicked the man in the picture, drawing the bow up and holding it against the strings.

For a moment, he held it there, not sure what he had expected to happen.

When nothing did, he let the stance fall, but as his arm relaxed the bow slid against the strings causing a short low hum to pierce the silence.

E7 froze, the sound still ringing in his ears; so unexpected and intriguing. Is that what this man had been doing? Is that strange noise the reason this thing had been preserved so carefully?

He repositioned the bow, and then, closing his eyes, pulled it across the strings in a long, slow stroke.

It was as if the thing spoke; but it was more than speaking.

He felt it in his skin and his bones.

It charged the air around him with an almost palpable energy.

The room brimmed with the full, reverberating, mournful sound of it’s voice.