Chapter 16:
A Promise for the Next Life
A-KA AND HEISHI had returned to the garbage chute’s exit. As they were about to leave, Heishi couldn’t resist glancing back. Not too far away, his past self was walking on the beach, following A-Ka’s footprints.
“Go back!” A-Ka’s past self shouted before waving his arms, indicating that Heishi should return to where he had been hiding.
Heishi smiled at that, then he and the present A-Ka ascended the garbage chute.
“There’s still two hours and thirty minutes left,” A-Ka said. “Quick, so they don’t see us.”
A-Ka led him through the opening in the garbage chute that the robots used to replenish their fuel. The opening consisted of a narrow, twisting pipeline, which led to the energy supply center for the entire City of Steel.
Half an hour later, they arrived at a huge, icy boiler connected to the pipes, which was what the human district used for heating.
“Heishi, are you all right?” A-Ka asked.
Heishi, who had been quiet, came back to himself and nodded.
“That sentence your father said about Labere… What did that mean?” A-Ka asked. “Unless it was Labere who released you in the first place?”
“He left behind a control sequence in Labere’s central region,” Heishi said. “The reason he was wandering the universe was to recreate the splendor of his homeland through his various experiments. Humankind, from his observations, is the closest to the Creator.
“He witnessed the destruction of his homeland with his own eyes. Fearing that the same tragedy would play out once again, he made it so that the central control region would cleanse the Astrolabe when necessary, in order to stop the experiment. However, he still felt some sympathy for his experiment, so he left behind a sequence of code in Father’s central region that would awaken me. When the intelligent life-forms on the Astrolabe evolved to a point where they developed emotions, such as loneliness and hope, they’d be just like the giants on my Heavenly Father’s home planet. The existence of these life-forms would then activate this section of hidden code.”
“What does that code do?” A-Ka asked.
“After this section of code is activated, it takes remote control of my sleeping chamber and brings it to land,” Heishi said. “It then allows me to wake and assist Father—Labere—in determining if the experiment on the Astrolabe is worth preserving. But even it, I think, doesn’t know about the code that was hidden in its central processor, which means…waking me was not its original idea.”
The energy pipeline they were traveling through was narrow and cramped, so the two of them could only press their arms against the bottom of the pipe as they shimmied along. A-Ka understood what Heishi had told him, but he still had questions. He turned his head back.
“Has Father always had this section of code? I never knew.”
“It can only be activated under a specific set of circumstances. I imagine that it probably mirrored my Heavenly Father’s emotional state. When he wrote down this code that hinged on the existence of emotions, he was probably feeling lonely because he longed for the companionship of his own kind.”
“If he is still in this world…”
“Keep going,” Heishi said. “There’s not much time left. Hurry up.”
A-Ka clambered along the passage, and at the end he turned. Heishi’s voice echoed from the depths of the passage behind him.
“Perhaps he’s already died,” Heishi said.
A rich voice echoed through the pipe. “Yes. He has already died.”
A-Ka jerked his head up, and Heishi’s expression warped. “A-Ka! Watch out!”
In that instant, the passageway that had been left abandoned for decades filled with blue light. A jarring explosion happened somewhere behind them, and the displaced air rushed forward as the entire City of Steel started to echo with sirens.
“Damn,” Heishi muttered, before shouting angrily, “A-Ka—!”
“I have spent too long searching for signs of you,” that voice said. “If you hadn’t activated the communication signal from your survival cradle, then I would still have no way to pinpoint your whereabouts…”
Heishi had been blown away by the force of the explosion into an empty space underground, and he struggled to stand. Metal doors slid down, blocking the exits in all directions.
Fresh blood was dripping down Heishi’s face as he shakily rose to his feet. “Labere, you’ve betrayed our Heavenly Father,” he said in a low voice.
“Our father has disappeared into the depths of the universe. A thousand years ago, he stopped sending back fixed-interval signals. According to the determination of my main program, the Creator of the Astrolabe perished somewhere in the galaxy. Now, I hold ultimate control over this petri dish.”
“As I thought,” Heishi said, breathing heavily. “You’ve still managed to evolve. Labere, have the humans been unable to influence you?”
Right when that forceful voice was about to speak again, Heishi let out a bellow. As he suddenly began to rise into the air, his body glowed with a piercing light and his arms stretched outward. A strange black-gold aura surrounded his body until he exploded with powerful energy that collided with Father’s energy shock wave.
That impact wave crushed all the pillars in the depths of the energy pipeline. A beam of black-gold brilliance sped back along the pipes, rushing toward Father’s towering, majestic form above. From afar, a muffled boom rang out, and the aftershocks of the detonation caused the surface of the earth to tremble. The entrance to the energy pipeline had been destroyed.
A-Ka woke to those quakes.
“Heishi? Heishi!” A-Ka, blood running profusely from his head wounds, searched everywhere, but it was pitch-dark in that collapsed underground to the point where he couldn’t see his fingers if he reached his hand out.
“I’m here. Can you hear me?” Heishi asked anxiously. “A-Ka! Are you all right? A-Ka!”
A-Ka was still in shock, and it wasn’t until he heard Heishi’s voice that he finally calmed. He followed the voice and the thin light, only to find Heishi with one arm trapped under a steel structure, tugging viciously at it while he grunted from pain.
“Don’t use brute force!” A-Ka screamed, his eyes wide. “Let’s think of a way to lift it!”
A fallen elevator and a pile of rubble separated them. Heishi’s head and body were covered with fresh blood. A-Ka did his best to thread his hand through the debris. Finally, his fingers just managed to make contact with Heishi’s nose and lips.
“C-calm down,” A-Ka said. “How are you? Does it hurt?”
Heishi had recovered his composure. “Labere found us. I’ve managed to break its energy pipeline, but we have to leave. There will be robots coming very soon.”
“Let me think for a moment. Don’t act rashly. We’ll find a way out.”
A-Ka took a deep breath, his fingers trembling, before he pulled out some tools from the bag he carried at his side. Heishi, on the other hand, gritted his teeth and tried to lift the elevator off his hand. Huge rocks and concrete slabs from the living quarters had fallen atop the elevator during the collapse. It was far too heavy, even for Heishi.
A-Ka only had a mini toolbox in his bag. Heishi glanced at A-Ka before saying, “Hand me the saw. I’ll cut my hand off.”
“No way. Let me think a little longer,” A-Ka said.
“I’ll take care of it after we get back,” Heishi said.
“There’s no way to transplant a hand onto you!” A-Ka said. “You’re not like the clones.”
“Install a mechanical one instead. It makes no difference to me,” Heishi said. “You can even personally make one for me. Quickly now.”
“No!” A-Ka said. “It’ll hurt too much! There must be a way.”
“Pain is also another experience I have to learn in order to become a human.”
“But, if possible, I don’t want you to experience it,” A-Ka replied, sighing. He didn’t even lift his head as he spoke, focusing instead on digging through his bag, until he suddenly found his remote control. He held his breath and pressed a button on it.