Heishi picked up a rock, hefted it high with his hand, then hurled it into the distance as he let out an enraged roar.
A-Ka understood a little of what Heishi was feeling. He was someone without a past, without a future, who didn’t even know his own name. That kind of confusion and frustration, locked in the depths of the mind like a demon, would leave anyone feeling bitter.
A-Ka walked over. “Hey, man, don’t take it to heart.”
The muscles of Heishi’s body were all tense, but at A-Ka’s voice, they slowly relaxed. Despite that, he shot A-Ka a cold glare.
“Where are you planning on going?” Heishi asked.
“I don’t know.” A-Ka smiled. “At least we’ve escaped, haven’t we? The world is so big, there will always be somewhere to go. Plus, I’ve saved your life twice now, so why don’t we travel together?”
“I don’t owe my life to anyone.”
A-Ka persevered. “But I saved you two times.”
What he didn’t expect was for Heishi to snap his hand out and cup A-Ka’s head with his palm. Confused, A-Ka didn’t move.
Heishi said mildly, “One time.” He pulled his hand away, then brought it back again. “Twice. Now I’ve saved you twice.”
With that, he walked away.
“What does that even mean?!” A-Ka called after him.
From a distance, Heishi turned back. “I could have killed you just now!”
A-Ka threw up his hands.
Three hours later, A-Ka had managed to finally disassemble one of the mecha. Heishi was still nearby, drifting aimless as a cloud. He didn’t come to assist, but neither did he wander too far.
“Can’t you come over and help me out?” A-Ka yelled.
“Say ‘please.’”
“Ugh! Please.”
Lifting a hand, Heishi casually tugged off the entire arm of the mecha and threw it on the ground.
A-Ka sized up Heishi. This guy has so much strength. But he’s not a clone, and he isn’t a robot either…
The blood of the clones was not red, and robots didn’t even bleed.
This time, Heishi didn’t keep going. Instead, he stood to one side and watched A-Ka pick through the scraps, not asking anything else or even speaking. However, he did react when A-Ka put together a laser gun and handed it to him.
“Keep this on you for protection,” A-Ka said.
Heishi looked at that laser gun for a while before taking it and mimicking the clones as he clipped it to his waist.
“After we leave this place, we need to pass through the region around the City of Steel as we head west,” A-Ka said to Heishi. “Getting to another mainland is how we’ll survive.”
“When will we leave?” Heishi asked a little impatiently.
“We need to make the proper preparations, or we’ll die on the journey.”
“You’ll die, but I won’t.”
“Fine! In that case, why don’t you just go on your own?”
Heishi sniffed haughtily through his nose before he suddenly asked, “Did they die?”
“Who?”
Then, A-Ka realized the current condition the City of Steel was in. Father’s fate was not one he could easily determine, but from the knowledge he had amassed over the years, that being was all-powerful. The Central Computer that rose from the ground was only one portion of Father, and its even more colossal mechanical body lay buried under the earth. A-Ka really couldn’t say for sure, so he could only explain what he knew in vague terms to Heishi.
A-Ka also remembered the chip that that old professor had given him, and he pulled it out and studied it carefully for a while. Of course, neither of them could see anything special about it, and Heishi had absolutely no interest in this chip, so A-Ka just stowed it away again.
Night fell, and in the shelter of the robotic debris, they turned on the nuclear stove, huddling by it to stay warm. Heishi returned to the riverbank and used the laser gun to shoot a few odd-shaped fish. Due to spending their lives in wastewater, the bodies of the fish contained a large amount of heavy metals. A-Ka only ate a little, and he didn’t let Heishi eat too much either, to prevent either of them from being poisoned. Afterward, they ducked inside of a broken robotic shell to sleep.
In the middle of the night, a heavy snow began to fall on the plains. The north wind gusted over the desolate landscape. A-Ka was so cold that he couldn’t stop shivering. He didn’t know where Heishi had gone. Shrinking into the robotic shell a little more, A-Ka tried his best to hide in a spot sheltered from the wind. He was so cold he couldn’t bear it, feeling like he was almost nothing but a piece of ice.
Just as he had frozen almost to the point of hallucinating, a warm body pressed against his spine.
“Where did you go…?” A-Ka asked, voice garbled by his stiff tongue.
“It has nothing to do with you,” Heishi responded curtly.
A-Ka was so cold that his teeth chattered, and he had no way to deal with it otherwise, so he turned around and pressed into Heishi’s embrace. Heishi’s chest felt as hot as a nuclear furnace, and after a long time, A-Ka grew warm enough to fall asleep.
The next day, A-Ka was woken by the cold, alone. When the sun hung directly overhead in the sky, Heishi came back. Climbing out of the pile of robotic debris, A-Ka shivered as he found Heishi dragging a clone corpse by the leg back to camp.
He tossed it in front of A-Ka. “Eat.”
“Don’t joke around! How can we eat people?”
“He’s not the same kind as you.”
A-Ka knew that, compared to humans, clones were basically just a collection of proteins, and a dead clone even more so. Nonetheless, as he stared at that clone’s face, frozen to a greenish purple, he found there was no way he could eat a living creature whose shape and features resembled a human’s.
“I… I won’t eat that,” he said.
“Then I’ll eat it myself,” Heishi said.
Hysterically, A-Ka cried out, “If you eat this clone, don’t talk to me ever again!”
Heishi rolled his eyes. “Why do you have to be so troublesome?”
A-Ka huffed. “Either way, you aren’t allowed to eat clones.” He simply could not accept the sight of Heishi standing in front of him, sawing off a humanlike leg before roasting and eating it.
Heishi hesitated for a moment, but finally he let go of that clone’s body and went in search of other food.
They were not the only beings that had ended up on the plains, but all the clones inside the scattered mechas had died. At one point, Heishi pulled an arm off a mecha and swung it around experimentally, like it was a sword. Unfortunately, it was a little too bulky to use as a weapon.
“Don’t take too many things with you,” A-Ka said. “But… What, do you like heavy weapons?”
Heishi didn’t speak.
A-Ka was torn between embarrassment and laughter, but he helped Heishi peel off a long strip of metal from a mecha and weld on a handle. Heishi tested it, and when he swung it, the wind whistled around it. Afterward, he slung it on his back like a broadsword.
“Let’s go.”
A-Ka organized his own hastily gathered satchel. Inside it was a compass, a box of healing supplies that the clones used, a few stimulant injections, a portable energy stove, a wrench, an assortment of screwdrivers, other tools for fixing broken electromagnetic equipment, and a set of magnetic field generators.
Heishi glanced at him indifferently. “What did you bring all this for? You can’t even carry them.”
Sure, A-Ka had brought so many things that carrying the pack was a little taxing, but he persisted. “The repair tools of a technician are like a soldier’s gun. They’ll be of use in the future.”
On the flat plains, the large flakes of snow that fell were so white they hurt the eyes. Heishi put on a pair of sunglasses that he had gotten off the clone’s body, then he and A-Ka stepped out into a new, unknown world.