His name is Archie.
He had a surname to go with that once. That’s not important now.
What is important amounts to a careful line of oil slick bottles lining the back wall of his garage. His toolbox is full of meticulously labelled nuts and bolts polished to perfection and standing to attention like regimental soldiers.
His faithful wrench scrapes against the metal carapace of his thigh on his right-hand side. His hammer does the same on the left. The computer sits, a dark husk at the back wall of the garage. The generator is hooked into mercilessly modified ports to keep it functional.
These things are important…
...No, they’re not.
All that matters is the yellow USB stick.
*
Archie’s self-analysis program is telling him that his left foot is over 57% damaged. If he continues to walk on it, it will cease to remain operative within an estimated window of 7 - 10 days. If he intends to run, the program informs him that he will be crippled by day 3.
Archie ponders where he might get a new foot as he waters the plump basil in the kitchen. He can’t just take any old scrap.
It has to be durable.
It has to be light.
It has to meld with his circuitry.
He considers the old hardware store downtown. He used to go there when he had his other name. When he had 5 fingers, not 4, on each hand, and when his heart was an organ that pumped blood around an organic body. He used to go there when...
Rob used to work there. His pale eyes lit up, and his easy, stubbled smile would turn excited when Archie ambled up to the counter to drop off his latest purchases.
“Come and see the Trans Am!”
Rob’s grease-covered hands were heavily callused, a mirror of Archie’s own, as he ran Archie’s items through the checkout as quickly as he could.
Then there was ice-cold beer over the baking tarmac, the bitter bullet of engine grease in the thick air, and the stick of sweat over Archie’s skin. The glass of the bottle was smooth with condensation, and in the distance, the wheat fields ruffled in an errant breeze, bringing the smell of cooking vegetation.
The beer was always good, the sound of Rob’s engine would rumble through Archie’s ribs, and life didn’t get much better than that.
“Hey, how’s the missus?”
A soft beep flutters like a terrified butterfly through the silence of the kitchen. Archie’s external sensor is telling him that he’s overwatered the basil. It has a 68% chance of surviving if he can move it into the sunlight and drain half the excess.
The circuitry that makes up his neural-cognitive processing unit now struggles to compute his reasoning for being worried about the basil. After all, Archie’s fuel source has nothing to do with seasoning. Not anymore.
Archie drains the plant carefully and sets it in the conservatory. Then he clanks off to find the bag he’ll need to carry his new foot.
*
There is a digital clock that sits beside the lamp in the living room.
Archie sits down at 18:24 to watch the glaring red numbers. He lets his internal metronome count the minutes as he waits.
It’s a near-silent tedium that he endures every night, a ritual. Such a thing is irrelevant, illogical, and yet Archie cannot eradicate it.
At 18:58, Archie carefully lifts his hand up to close metal fingers over the yellow USB stick. It dangles like a lure over the scuffed metal of his chest. If he still had a heart, he’s sure it would be pounding now. Instead, he lets his internal metronome count the minutes.
The clock ticks over to 19:00, and Archie stands, making his way down to the garage so he can boot up the generator. He waits for the whir of the machine and the flicker of life, turning the husk of his computer into something more. Then he sits down in the desiccated frame of his old swivel chair and slips the USB stick into the port on the right-hand side like he’s slipping a lady’s foot into a satin stocking.
It takes 52 seconds for the pictures to load.
Then she is there.
Her hair was dark, wood brown, and it smelled of jasmine and coconut. Sometimes when she went to bed after a shower, Archie would wake up in the morning to find her hair strewn about her pillow in loose ringlets. If she'd forgotten to close the blind, those ringlets would glint like the coils of his projects.
He could feel his heart growing like some overambitious flower inside him as he looked at her in those moments. The feeling was always so terrible, so wonderful.
She had a weakness for Belgian buns. The icing always stuck like an incrimination to the corners of her lips. Then she'd turn to ask him a serious question and would scold him for laughing at her.
She wore dark blue dungarees in the garden. Her nose was streaked with dirt, her fingernails were caked, and her trowel was bent from overuse. She was desperate to grow plums, but for some reason, their little plum tree never produced so much as a bud.
She hated basil.
Naturally, the stuff grew everywhere.
He has just 20 pictures of her, and he looks at them every night.
Laura was the only one who ever saw him as something more than his mechanical mind.
He doesn't want to forget her. He's lost so much over the course of the years, holed up in the house that belonged to Archie.
But she was his light and his life and his soulmate.
She was the one who kept him human.
*
He is using screws I through K when he realises that his rhythmic wrenching movements are not punctuated by the light clack of the USB stick against his chest. He starts suddenly, clumsy metal fingers scrambling at empty space over his clavicle. It's not there. Where did he leave it? In the computer?
He lurches upright. The pacemaking device that regulates the hollow flood of biofluid through his systems keeps the usual metronome timing, so his distress has no physical grounding. His neural-cognitive processing unit is telling him that feelings of panic are irrelevant, inefficient.
Archie sucks in a hard breath anyway and flexes metal-clamp fingers.
The yellow USB is all that matters.
*
By 19:00, his house has been ransacked.
The USB is still missing.
He forgets about fixing his foot.
*
Watering the basil is unnecessary. Artie does not need vegetable-based sustenance. Instead, energy should be diverted to acquiring more oil. Artie's satellite GPS reveals a petrol station located 2 miles away.
He leaves without touching the watering can.
*
Artie is sitting in front of the clock. The numbers burn into its visual receptors. There is a stirring of something that feels like hollowness deep within the live circuits of its motherboard.
It does not know what it is doing here.
Vital statistics and analysis programs are begging for its attention. Artie's foot still requires addressing if it wishes to make any further trips into the ruined town for supplies. The garage needs reorganising to implement a security coding system. The dead basil plant in the kitchen needs ejecting into the refuse.
At 19:00, Artie stands up. It blinks once in the stark light of the overhead lamp, a slight processing delay, then it moves towards the metal parts strewn across the kitchen table.
*
Its designation is Artifice.
It has never had another identifier.
Its primary directive was to survive the catastrophe. Through various bio-mechanical modifications and robotic feats of ingenuity, this has been accomplished. That’s not important now.
What is important amounts to a careful line of oil slick bottles lining the back wall of its garage. Its toolbox is full of meticulously labelled nuts and bolts polished to perfection and standing to attention like regimental soldiers.
Its wrench scrapes against the metal carapace of its thigh on its right-hand side. Its hammer does the same on the left. The computer sits, a dark husk at the back wall of the garage. The generator is hooked into mercilessly modified ports to keep it functional.
These things are important.
That is all.