ch4 · Morning Commute
- Jun 6
- 5 min read
She looks at Zero. He registers this but doesn’t acknowledge. He’s familiar with the routine. One of eight responses already queued in.
“You’re coming with me today.” She cuts to action items, sooner than usual.
Nothing relevant queued for this declaration. His system searches for the proper response. He scans his surroundings and finally gestures at himself, in the hauler, already coming with her. “Quite the delayed instruction.” Dev’s dry humor, top preference.
“Into the city, I mean.” She amends.
“More of a country boy, myself.” A joke, as filler.
She doesn’t follow up. Action item validated. Conflict.
“I get to meet the other little droids at school?”
“Reduce humor for a minute.” She says, flatly.
“A bit risky, don’t you think?” He says. “Unless they’ve decided to embrace artificial constructs with open arms?”
“Important component’s come in,” she says. Unusually direct. “I’ll connect it ‘soon as I get it. Won’t be taking any chances today.”
Zero looks at her but doesn’t give a response. His program remains in standby, until he can register recognizable context.
“Then it’ll be complete.” She says to herself.
Recognized and registered. “Thirty-seven.” he chimes.
Vae rolls her eyes.
He clarifies. “You have said ‘It will be complete’ thirty-seven t—”
“It will this time.”
“Thirty-eight times.” His gaze, still directed at her, unchanged.
“It’s the last piece…”
“You said ‘last piece’ one hundred and fifteen times.”
“I mean it this time.”
“You’ve said—”
“Don’t give me the tally!”
Zero turns his gaze back at the snow dunes.
“Tally disabled.”
He waits.
“Temporarily.”
Vae gives a heavy sigh. “He would cut it off with sarcastic agreement.”
Zero processes this. Then, “I agree with you sarcastically.”
“No,” she corrects him, “like, he’d say ‘Rii…ight.’ …like that. Sarcasm.”
“Rii…i—ight.” Zero almost sings it, with a glitch in the middle.
“Don’t worry about it.” She assures.
Zero tries again. “R—ii…ight.”
“We’ll take care of today.” She declares. “Take care of all of it.”
“‘All of it’,” Zero repeats.
“Yep.”
He processes.
“‘Complete,’ you said.”
“That’s right.”
“You also said I’m not him.”
“You will b—”
“I’m his archive then?”
Vae drives for a bit to think. Then swats it away.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Do I worry …sarcastically?”
“A droid worrying is not sarcasm.” She looks at Zero. “It’s irony.”
She smirks at the thought. Then—cuh-CLUNK—the hauler hits a sharp divot. The wheel jerks up and smacks her lip. She recoils, winces, and wipes her mouth with the back of her glove.
He observes, “Facial damage …ironically.”
She glares.
“Worry about the road…?” he pans, almost asking.
“Resume previous humor level.” she says, checking her bloody lip. She tastes blood. And at that, her mind is not in the hauler anymore.
< < <
It was dusk. The air, sharp, even within Kolomb’s walls. Snow hadn’t started falling but the sky looked like it would any second.
She remembered the sting in her chest. The taste of iron in her mouth. It wasn’t pain exactly, but heat. Too much heat, and a buzzing behind her ribs. Then the feeling of floating. On something solid. As if in the sky and on the ground at the same time. Then Dev’s voice.
He was yelling. Her name, she thought, but too distant and muffled to know. Something cold was felt on her chest and ribs. A whine, a click. The jolt cramped her torso with a thud.
Her eyes flew open. Breath ripped into her lungs. Her vision swam among dark shapes. It felt like falling, but still. Her ribs burned.
Sound was more clear but piled on top of itself. People yelling. Dev’s voice again, attempting comfort, masking panic. Boots getting louder. Accusations of illegal tech.
And there, the shape comes into focus. The defibrillator. Innocently sat beside her, still humming. A cold slab casing of outlawed circuitry. And Dev, knelt, calm yet earnest, desperate for eye contact, as if her eyes were the only safe place his gaze could land.
Carry on, she heard. Not knowing from whom it came from.
She put it together all at once but her body couldn’t match her desperation. Each physical response, a step behind. She reached but couldn’t hold him. She called out but her words failed to reach an audible volume. She cried but her sorrow stalled. She looked for help but Garren and Siah were already cordoned off. She was left with unanswered desperation, until finally.
“Nno…noO—Oh!!” But he had already been dragged out of sight.
Her body felt scraped raw from the inside. She couldn’t stop crying. Not the kind of tears that come from fear. The kind that came from being thrust back into a world she never wanted.
The last thing she saw was Dev. Calm, even then, telling her it would be okay.
He lied.
> > >
The hauler bumps over another drift. She blinks hard.
Zero is silent now, clasped to the armrest. Hers this time.
The blood on her glove is too noticeable. It would draw unwanted attention. She’ll have to swap it out.
They crest a ridge. Ahead, a sheer cliff protrudes up sharply, cutting off the horizon. The walls of the Kolomb Reach are past it, wrapped in mist and shadow.
The hauler slows to a crawl. Vae waits half a moment too long. Then interrupts her distant gaze.
“Time to walk,” she says.
She parks behind a long-dormant, salvaged digger chassis. It’s a rusted bulk, half-swallowed by the snow. But the cliff face shields it from the wind and, most importantly, out of sight.
Vae pulls off her gloves and throws them on the dash. She moves to the cargo hold, grabs a pair of skis and straps them to her boots. Fresh pair of gloves, hat, and heavy scarf. She unlatches one of the sleds. The most frankenstein’d one she has. The best one to conceal a half-sentient orb droid.
Zero drifts an eye into the bulkhead doorframe to peer in.
“Yes. You’re coming with me today.” she gestures to a Zero-sized slot in the sled.
Lowering the loading ramp Vae taps her foot as Zero slowly stows himself into place.
“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” he says, “I will fear no evil…”
“Don’t be dramatic.”
Zero pauses. Processes. “How will I know when I’m ‘complete’?” He asks.
“I’m not gonna explain it all now.” She says impatiently.
Zero waits. He knows that, doing so, results in her explaining at least part of it. She can’t help herself.
“Basically, your machine will learn the code. When it matches enough of his DNA, y’get a confirmation.”
“What confirmation?”
She relents. “You’ll sneeze.”
“I’ll what?”
“You’ll know it when you do it. C’mon, we’re burning daylight.”
Zero looks out a porthole.
“What daylight? It’s cloudy. Also, we don’t burn it. Daylight burns itself—”
“Get in the cart.”
“I will fear no evil, for you are with me…” he continues as she skis down, the unassuming sled in tow. “Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” He rotates himself to conceal his eyes. His backside a natural camouflage against the rest of the framing and weld marks.
The sled bumps along behind her as she glides silently across the snow toward The Reach, small and distant.
But every stride brings them closer.