Rise: A Cautionary Tale
My last day on Earth, I remember sweating like a fat kid on field day. Running too, but mostly sweating. People love weather. No matter how miserable it feels, some asshole will chime right in telling you how much he loves it. Idiots.
The only good news to come out of this whole trip was the revelation that by the time we landed, we’d be somewhere with a proper environmental regulator. At that point, Cal and I had been on the run for four days straight, trying to make it back to my ship, and it rained the whole fucking time.
We drove to Louisville and stayed in a grungy motel for the first night. I wanted to keep going, but Cal insisted we stop and rest. How’s that for irony?
On the second day we pushed on under a sobbing sky, saw the dripping architecture of the Ozarks, and finally landed in a little hotel in Atlanta. We let our clothes hang dry in the shower. We didn’t bother to decontaminate, and none of that really mattered anymore.
By day three, we were in what used to be Texas. That night I stretched out as best I could, skin sticking to the back seat with Cal curled up behind me. He only needs to go offline for a few minutes to repair, lucky robot. In our old apartment, I used to wonder what he did all night while I slept. That night, I wasn’t even sure myself that I had slept, until the light through my eyelids turned my dreams fiery red. When I opened my eyes, we were at my ship.
—-
“We’re here,” Cal announced.
Reality hit fast, and it twisted up my face like a shot of grapefruit juice to the eye. “We don’t have to leave if you’ve changed your mind,” he told me. “I’ll turn myself in. It doesn’t matter anymore, I just want you to have a life again.”
“Please Cal, don’t make me fight with you about this anymore.”
“This course of action is reckless,” he tells me.
“Don’t get all sentimental on me, Ro-bit. If we blow up, we blow up together. If we get sucked into the vacuum of space, that’s fine too. I like space.”
We had travelled for four days, moving at almost 150 kilometers an hour, barely stopping, rarely sleeping, and too nervous to enjoy the last meal I would ever eat on Earth. This was the first night in 3 weeks that I hadn’t run a fever and had the shakes all night, Laura Ingles style. I went to the medical center and they gave me a decongestant and a judgmental look. I WOULD GET BETTER MEDICAL CARE WERE I TRAVERSING THE COUNTRY ON THE OREGON TRAIL WITH MY PILGRIM RELATIVES. All I wanted was high grade opiates and an antibiotic so I stop feeling like a goddamn sick toddler. At the time, I had no idea we’d be on the lam days later, or I would have bought some on the black market like the rest of civilized society.
I think Cal understood that I was physically uncomfortable in as much as he can understand discomfort, but mostly I think he understood that I might very well kill us both within the hour.
I could have easily saved him, and I could have easily saved myself, but saving us both is where it got tricky. And by that, I mean it would be about as easy as skinning and eating a pack of tigers with my bare hands. We’d come this far, though, and that was massively impressive to me, and statistically very unlikely, to my robo-boyfriend.
We were well beyond Cal’s merciful intentions of saving me. He was sentenced to die either way, and by that point, I probably was too. God himself could tell me to stop running, but I’d give him a solid kick to his almighty kneecaps before I’d let go of the one man in the world I loved.
—-
My ship isn’t really a ship; it’s more like a suit that flies. The hard white polymer exterior houses the environmental containment unit, hundreds small retractable metal arms, a square storage unit, and a set of solar sails. The real gem on this ship is the helmet: cameras allow you to see 360 degrees around you. If that sounds confusing, it’s because it is. Display feeds information directly to your brain, providing navigation, translation, analysis, you name it. If I sound like I love this ship, it’s because I do. I guess I’ve got a type.
When you’re in flight, it’s feels as if you’re just a floating head rocketing through the atmosphere. In the early days, the designers figured out that space travel was less physically traumatic when people stopped trying to impose their dimensional limitations on the navigation. Without a body, there really is no up or down.
It would be another hour before we completely dug the ship out of it’s hiding spot. It was filthy, but still passed its functionality tests without a hiccup. Seeing it again made me realize how much I missed barreling through the cosmos like Mother Brain.
Without a beat, Cal is bent over the diagnostic panel, assimilating any information he can as quickly as possible. He’s fascinated and I love him for it. I grew up with this ship, and to me it’s a tool. I know that it’s a marvel of design and engineering and I can fly it like a champ. But Cal understands every function and process in a way I never could. He stands. I tell him to stand back, but he says he only wants to help make this work. I’m not stupid enough to let him mentally dissect my ship for long. I know he’s planning to force me to make the trip alone, leaving him on Earth to rot, or rust, or do whatever synthetic elasto-polymer based people do when they die.
I open the storage compartment and pull out the cargo straps I use to haul objects that won’t fit inside. The straps are heat resistant, but I’ve never hauled anything through this atmosphere before, and especially nothing as delicate or as large as Cal. I wonder if the air passing between his body and mine will cause enough friction to rip us in half. I’d probably burn to death, or suffocate, but he’d might make it into orbit. One of the many advantages of not being a thin skinned water blob like me.
He faces my little ship and I strap him in face to face with the helmet. He’s the only thing I’ll be able to see as we leave. Not my body, not my pack, not my ship. Just Cal, the disappearing planet, and also, maybe the fiery conflagration of a human and a robot exploding in the upper atmosphere. I’m not trying to be dark, here, I’m just telling you the gravity of the situation.
Ha ha. Gravity. Get it?
Cal tries once again to convince me to leave him, and even he knows I’m not listening. He understands full well that we’re going to shoot through the air like lunatics and that this whole planet will watch the footage over and over and over again for years.
They’ll stare dumbly into the sky with their fists in the air like the screaming, terrified, weather loving idiots that they are, the whole time wondering if I’m going to come back and destroy them or save them.
At this point, I’m leaning towards destroy, but I haven’t really decided yet. I’m too sick to think about it right now.
I climb into my ship and the helmet locks around my head. I don’t know if was the stress, the drugs, or the ship, but my fever breaks like a glass rod, and my body is immediately drenched in sweat. I concentrate on powering the ship on and after a minute my body fades out of my site, my eyes locked with Cal’s, his frame dangling against the side of the ship.
“Is that sound normal?” He shouts. “It sounds like a bell choir in a fist fight out here.” I shake my head. “I don’t know! I’ve always been inside for this part. I’m pretty sure it’s going to get louder as we leave the atmosphere.” I won’t be able to hear it like he will. “You need to stay as close to me as possible.”
I’m not sure what happens next.
Cal wraps his arms a little tighter around my ship; I set the launch controls and start the count down.
As our feet leave Earth for the last time, I feel the rush of wind, sadness, sound, and panic. We thrust upward and I adjust our trajectory. At least on tape it will look like I was in control if we blow up. Cal’s eyes are locked on my face and I try to remind myself that I love flying. We’re engulfed in a cloud of blue smoke as we rise onward and upward, trading thrust for heat, for velocity, for escape.
—
The acceleration makes my brain turn mushy and useless. I think about Cal, sitting wide eyed on my couch, watching E.T. for the first time. When we first met, he was obsessed with watching movies from my childhood. Ultimately, that’s what led to me finding out that he was a robot. He knew nothing of pop culture, at first I figured he was raised a Quaker or something. I was wrong.
I walked in behind him and announced:
“Spoiler Alert. ET kills everyone. Elliott, Drew Barrymore, C. Thomas Howell… everyone. Then he burns down the Reece’s Pieces factory with a flame thrower.”
“What? Really? Why?”
“Because he develops a taste for human blood. It’s a cautionary tale.”
I don’t think he ever finished the movie, and I feel kind of bad about that now.
My sensors tell me that the space between our bodies is heating up. Cal feels it too. His forehead is pressed against my helmet. We have another 2 minutes before we clear atmosphere and I don’t know if he can take it. I sure don’t think I can. Below us is a planet that wants to destroy my robot boyfriend, above us is our freedom, and as we rise I doubt we’ll make it to either.
If we do, I don’t know whether I’ll return to Earth and kill them all. Either way, I am going home.
