In the past six years, he had gathered survival necessities from the Ant Nest and some scrap steel from the garbage chute, and he had moved them here a little at a time.
At first, he’d only wanted to build a small boat and leave the City of Steel in search of a place where he could live. He had heard that on the other side of the ocean, there were still places for humans. There, no Central Computer called Father controlled everything, and there were no robots that could cruelly slaughter humans at any time. It was a nation where humans were truly independent.
A-Ka wanted to reach that place, so he began to use his knowledge to gather the necessary parts to make a vehicle that could carry him. However, the materials he collected were random bits and pieces of all kinds, and in the end, he had cobbled together a strange mechanical apparatus that sort of resembled the mechas the androids used.
He’d left enough space inside the robot for a place to sit so that it could be driven, and he’d given it a name, K. Compared to the intricate, complex workmanship of the City of Steel, which used nuclear reactors to power steel life-forms, this thing called K was more like a hunk of junk.
But A-Ka was very proud of his creation. At least K wouldn’t take commands from Father or the legal system, and it wouldn’t ever point a laser at a person. It would do whatever A-Ka told it to do instead. This power to control a robot, to make it follow human orders, gave A-Ka a massive sense of accomplishment.
He couldn’t help but treat K as his only friend. After all, K was a secret that A-Ka had kept with great difficulty. He didn’t dare tell anyone about it, but he hoped that one day he would be able to drive K away from here. Before then, he needed to install a setup on K that would extract tritium from seawater to supply power to its fusion reactor.
The interior of the cave where K rested was dark and damp, and the thunder and crash of the waves outside seemed earth-shatteringly loud. When A-Ka entered the cave, he turned on the light before pulling off the oilcloth draped over K.
The steel shell stared back at A-Ka. It currently had no intelligence, but A-Ka planned that, one day, he would help it achieve a simple sort.
Prying open the front cover of K’s chest plate, he installed the navigation chip that he had stolen and tested it out by connecting it to the power source and waiting for the navigation system to initialize.
Outside, every peal of thunder was louder than the last, and the waves pounded wildly, as if something was slamming with all its might against the side of the cave. Afraid that water would get into the rocky cave, A-Ka couldn’t wait around for K to start up, so he ran for the outside.
Just as he was leaving, some large object was caught up in a violent wave and swept toward the entrance of the cave.
“Ah—”
A-Ka’s voice was drowned out by a huge bang.
In that instant, he saw something glowing in the seawater, and that something struck several rocks as it floated its way toward the entrance of the cave. Four or five metallic cracks echoed as it hit some rocks that were about thirty feet off the ground and then fell.
A-Ka had been drenched from head to foot by the surge of seawater, but he forgot all that in his shock. Sprawled in front of the entrance, he looked down and saw some shiny object being swept away by the black waves. It seemed to be something big, and maybe it would be of some use. Still, he didn’t dare to head down rashly, or the tidal wave would immediately sweep him away.
First, he turned off K’s power source to prevent any short circuits, then he peeked anxiously out from his position near the entrance. The waves gradually abated, allowing him to see the foreign object more clearly: a metal chest, aimlessly bobbing in the water, pushed now and then toward the shore by the waves before being sucked back into the ocean by the tide.
A-Ka prayed for the heavens to leave that chest behind. What could be inside? Maybe it contained the fusion reactor that he so desperately desired, or its material could be made into a new body for K.
The waves gradually quieted down as the sea recovered its tranquility; the tempest had passed.
With great difficulty, A-Ka navigated down to the beach, where black petroleum covered the entire surface of the ocean. He left a trail of footprints as he walked.
That was when a wave pushed the chest to the shore, and he saw it clearly!
Following the coastline, A-Ka sprinted toward the steel chest. When he had gazed upon it from the reefs above, it hadn’t seemed real. As he drew closer, he realized that it really wasn’t a chest—it was a sleeping chamber.
A-Ka stared at it suspiciously, but just as the waves were about to sweep it away again, he rushed into the sea and exerted a tremendous amount of strength to push it back to shore.
As he examined the sleeping chamber, A-Ka saw a faint symbol on it in the shape of a lion. “The Lion…Republic.”
Though the exterior was mottled with rust and draped with seaweed, the object seemed very durable; it must have floated in the ocean for a very, very long time. But not all of it was intact. There was a hole in the top of the chamber, and through it A-Ka could see that it was half filled with crude oil, within which lay a corpse.
A-Ka sighed. Having drifted on the ocean for so long, it must have rotted by now. Was there anything valuable left?
Pulling out a wrench, he tried to pry open the sleeping chamber, but it didn’t budge an inch. He panted loudly as he scrabbled at it for a long while before his eyes caught on a line of words on the lower section of the sleeping chamber.
“Year 7210, 4th month. Heishi.”
Year 7210?!
A-Ka was shocked. They were in the year 10073, so this chamber was from almost three thousand years ago!
He stared at it for a long time before he realized that he couldn’t keep dragging things out like this. He searched for the switch for the sleeping chamber with some difficulty, as this ancient machine’s layout was completely different from all of the technologies that he knew.
Finding something this old was like acquiring a priceless gem, and he held his breath, imagining that he had discovered a new world. Thoughts of forgotten tech flooded his brain: Perhaps the ancients had left behind some sort of energy source or a weapon. On a much smaller scale, even if it was just a few slabs of circuit boards, it would be useful.