Gift from the Matriarch

The scout hovers above an isolated house in the middle of the desert one mid-afternoon. Jpop-O knows the house is abandoned. He lands in front of it and goes out of the scout. He looks down at his pink arm. It alters to pale blue, a warning sign that his system would not resist the deadly solar radiation for too much exposure. At the very least he is an inhabitant of Hikiki, a planet similar to Venus in terms of distance from the sun.

Jpop-O steps into the porch. He walks cautiously to the door and pushes it open. It creaks and dust shoots out from the gaps. He sneezes, there’s a damp smell from inside.

The house has been untouched for centuries. The floor and the walls, which are made from acetylated wood, are now coated with thick dust. He ambles, leaving traces of shoe-prints behind. He looks around, from the flat-screen TV suspended in a wall to his right, to a dusty sofa chair facing the TV, to the bookshelves by the wall beside the TV, and to the study table in front of the bookshelves. He continues to walk to his left and finds the staircase twirling up.

This could be the last human abode I can search in this continent, Jpop-O thinks. He’s been to six continents. His sensor has detected places that store intact and functioning droids, but has been unable to find one. This is the 29th house his sensor has detected in the continent of Australia.

Jpop-O ascends the stairs slowly, worried the stairs might collapse. He stops at the top landing and looks about. There are three doors, one door ahead of him and two doors to his sides. He closes his eyes and like the human counting rhyme “eeny, meeny, miny, moe”, he counts from the door to his left. He ends up choosing the door facing the stairs.

Jpop-O holds the dusty and rusty knob. He pushes the door in. Inside is a bed covered in dusty-greyed sheets. Lying over the bed is a human skeleton covered in a darkening and rotting blanket. The skull is intact, and it seems smiling as if thanking him for paying a visit after ages. By the curtained window overlooking the backyard is a woman sitting erect on a stool.

Before Jpop-O examines the woman, he searches in the other two bedrooms. But, they are all empty like Earth has been emptied of humans for centuries ago.

Jpop-O treats the inanimate woman with utmost care. He wipes the thick dust on her face in his pink soft hands, exposing the beauty of a human, a woman, a mother, to be exact. Concerning physical features, humans couldn’t distinguish themselves against his artificial creation. The woman’s face was sculpted from silicon that last millennia at normal temperature. Jpop-O gently pinches the cheek to distinguish it from his. The texture is close to mine; he thinks.

The woman is wearing a duster designed with various flowers. Jpop-O tries to take it off, but when he holds it, it collapses into particles. Thinking that there’s no sense in saving it for her, he strips it down instead. Specks of dust wholly coated her naked skin. Jpop-O diligently brushes them off. In a few moments, the woman’s ivory skin shows off.

When examining the back of the woman, Jpop-O notices a vertical lining from her nape under the thinning blonde hair. The lining trails down from the vertebral region to the sacral area. And there’s a horizontal line from shoulder to shoulder. He thumbs through the hair to locate the starting point of the vertical line. There’s a tiny slider hanging. He realizes the linings are tiny zippers. He drags down the slider to the sacral area. The woman’s back reveals her internal system. Stainless steel and circuitry. At the center of the internal system, there is a small panel with buttons. Jpop-O looks closely. He couldn’t read the ancient text, but he surely feels that the button is the power button. He pushes the button with a tiny circle and horizontal half-line on it.

“I need to recharge,” the woman speaks in what seems to be a voice from a portable radio that is losing its battery.

Jpop-O pulls back. He thinks he just heard archaic.

“Son, I need to recharge.” The woman’s eyes are blinking. She turns to Jpop-O and abruptly pushes him off. The force threw Jpop-O off the threshold of the door.

She shouts, “Intruder!” She stands up, but her system goes off.

Jpop-O gets near the woman. Her eyes are closed. He goes behind her and zips her back closed.

Fumes of dust whirl as Jpop-O sits in the rickety bed. He ponders. Apart from being an astronaut and a Minister of Hikiki’s council, he is also a historian. He knows that his race originated from an advanced human-hybrid millennia ago. Homo sapiens have been extinct for two millennia now. The Jovian War wiped them out. Humanity’s legacy is now in the hands of countless human-hybrids across the Milky Way and out into Andromeda where Jpop-O’s star system lies.

Jpop-O rummages through the attic of his memory. He remembers humans relied on machines to live for quite some time. One of these machines is the artificial woman he has found. He supposes she will only operate if there is a power that comes from energy. He recalls humans used solar energy. So he takes her out of the house and lets the sunlight play on her body.

The woman’s skin seems to disintegrate. With apprehension, Jpop-O shelters her on the porch. He put her on the bench and sits beside her. Suddenly, she turns her head towards him and shoves him off. Jpop-O drops to the floor, but he scrambles up.

“You intruder,” says the woman, her eyes dilated.

Jpop-O knows little about the old universal language. “Me friend,” he says while pointing his slim hand to the chest. “Me friend,” he repeats.

She calms down and studies Jpop-O’s feature. “What are you?”

“Me friend, there Hikiki.” He points up to the sky. “Me human before.”

“What do you mean?” she frowns.

“Me friend, come here, get you.”

She ignores him. She rises and walks inside. “Son?” she says and searches around.

Jpop-O follows her until she learns no one is there except the two of them.

***

Twilight looms in and stars flicker in a cloudless night sky. Jpop-O and the woman sitting on the porch like a couple and staring at the heavens like they’re dreaming.

“I used to take care of my son,” she says.

Jpop-O glances over his shoulder, trying hard to decipher her words.

“But he’s gone,” she continues. “My existence now is futile.”

“I come here. Find you,” says Jpop-O.

***

The scout darts up into the stars, leaving Earth like a brown jackstone ball floating in the darkness. They get out of Sol, out of the Milky Way, to Andromeda, and into Saleb’s System. They land in a hanging port of Manisi, the capital city of Hikiki.

Inside a mosque-like building, Jpop-O gathers his folks. The Hikikians pink skin illuminates the entire place. They have been waiting for this moment. They have been deprived of maternal care since the death of Ofellum, the matriarch, and the only female of the race.

At the back of the stage, Jpop-O discreetly wraps the woman in a silky green cloth. He then takes her to the middle of the stage and puts her in the chair. The murmurs of the Hikikians disappear as their mouths hang open. It seems like a magician has just finished a magic trick that utterly amazes the audience.

“My dear fellow Hikikians,” Jpop-O begins his speech in the Hikikian tongue. “My quest has ended.” Clamor fills the building.

A Hikikian wearing a silky purple gown standing by the rostrum to the left side of the stage waves his hand. The noise comes to complete silence. He gestures to Jpop-O to proceed.

“Ofellum loves us all. She wanted to stay with us forever. She wanted to take care of our children the way she took care of us, the first generation. She had never thought her life would end. She was designed to last nearly forever.

“Before her passing, the council was summoned in secret. Ofellum longed for someone who would take her place. Be our matriarch. We couldn’t pledge that we could find one. We know that races in Andromeda are distinct from each other. A Sumeriasi is the best candidate, but she cannot survive in Hikiki unless she put on a life suit. Ofellum confessed that her replacement can only be found on Earth.”

Whispers and hisses go around the audience.

“Let me continue please,” Jpop-O says. The Hihikian race is one of the Andromedan races with high adherence to a leader’s appeal. It’s a race of good followers. “Ofellum spoke of our ancestor’s helper. A machine they created to make life easier. A machine they created to replace their masters. If a couple was unfortunate of a child, they got a machine that behaved like a child, a machine designed to satisfy the couple’s desire. If a father or a mother died, the relatives had to get a substitute to take care of the orphan. A machine designed to match the behavior of the deceased.

“Ofellum also told us that, before the colony, where she belonged to, had dispersed in Andromeda, she found out that more and more male humans were artificially borne on Earth to get everything set for the interstellar war. As expected, it was necessary to have someone to nurture them. So they manufactured considerable numbers of machines to keep up with the newborns. They manufactured machines that were perfectly fashioned to a mother.”

Jpop-O pauses and walks to the woman. “My absence here is because of my journey to Earth. From there, I circled the planet, alighted to land masses, and searched for a single machine Ofellum had told us. I nearly lost my perseverance, but I thought of you. I have thought of us. I went on and finished my task before I go to Mars. And with the grace of God, I found a place where the machine was. Now,” Jpop-O declares, “May I present to you Ofellum’s gift to us.” He pulls down the silky green cloth.

The Hikikians lauds in merriment and hope. Some whistle in satisfaction, and others toss their hats off like it is a graduation ceremony. They play music about and several Hikikians dance in tune with it. The roof slides open to let in enough air.

Jpop-O now thinks of the next step they would do. That is, to replicate the woman and distribute it to all households. He looks up to the night sky full of stars and casts a smile that reaches to his tiny ears.

At last, Ofellum, your will has realized, says Jpop-O.