Persephone’s Paradox

Day I

The first night the drone appeared at my doorstep, it brought me a small box wrapped in crinkled, terracotta-brown paper.

As I sat on the porch during the dwindling light of the dusk, I noticed what appeared to be a kitten creeping out of the rose and juniper bushes. Though our world was now overrun by the Robot Regime, I’d never caught sight of a drone in all my nine years of life.

I’d always envisioned drones flying - and while I believed that they did fly - this one did not.

It crept over to me with the graceful, curious stride of a feline; its circular wings poking out of its back. I held my breath for a moment and waited - my childlike sense of wonder overruling my crippling fear.

Tick…tick…tick…

It slowly made its way over to me with little, paw-like footprints that exuded a playful yet promiscuous elegance. Somehow, it had adapted to using its under-hanging antennas as legs.

Even though this incredibly apocalyptic and strange world had always been home to me, I’d never understood the evolution of robots and all of their subordinate, mechanical citizens.

I continued to watch it. In the light of the rising moon, I could see a small box with a hemp-woven ribbon dangling from the carriage beneath its small girth. It had no face, but it somehow managed to lock eyes with me.

“Here, kitty!” I whispered; my voice a hoarse little ghost that fled to the shade of the ferns.

Though I didn’t have any idea why this drone was approaching me, I knew one thing for certain: I’d get in terrible trouble if I were to be found having any interaction with it. Communicating with drones was strictly prohibited.

Still, I welcomed it.

It completed its last tiny steps in my direction and then bestowed me with the terracotta-brown box - a bit of pride in its motion as if it were presenting me with a bird or a mouse.

I took the small box in my grasp with two trembling hands.

“What is this?” I asked it, “Who is it from?”

Of course, however, the mute little thing did not answer.

For a moment, I stared into its robotic, featureless face. I then proceeded to untie the string and tear off the paper.

Inside I found a single, fortune-cookie-sized note, which I picked up and caressed between my thumbs and my fingers. The papery texture was one I’d read about in electronic books but had never been able to feel. True paper like this was no longer fabricated; it had to be vintage. I wondered how whoever sent it had gotten ahold of it.

My eyes found their way to the tiny, electronically-transcribed message:

“Where touch sparks a question, follow thy wonder to wade in transgression.”

I wrinkled my nose and looked at the drone, which now rubbed back and forth on my leg with a very feline and pet-like demeanor.

Perplexed in more ways than just one, I reached out my hand and began to stroke its hard, pewter-grey back; question marks gleaming like stars in the dark of the evening.

Day II

The second night that the drone appeared on my doorstep, I woke up in my bed still thinking about the first.

“Where touch sparks a question, follow thy wonder and wade in transgression,” I said to myself.

I’d discarded the box in a place where no one would find it, but I’d saved the little white note and tucked it away under my pillow. I pulled it out and examined it; the warm morning sun seeping in through the curtains and allowing the words to glow against their soft, wafer-thin background.

Downstairs, mom was cooking me breakfast - the same way she did every morning. I knew mostly by the clang and the clatter of her robotic, mechanical hands grasping the pots. Famished, I tucked the note in my pocket and headed downstairs.

Mom’s face was featureless, except for the glow of her two apple-green eyes. She was what they called a “domestic cyborg”; created for the sole purpose of raising the new generation of homo sapien children now that all human adults had been successfully eradicated. I wasn’t exactly certain how many children mom had raised before me. However, I did know I would not be her last.

She handed me a fresh plate of pancakes. “Bring the box back by twelve, Persephone,” she said to me.

My heart jumped from my chest as I crammed my mouth with a fork full of breakfast. However, I quickly realized she was talking about the harvest box. Every day, mom had me fill it up with a fruit of my choice from our garden, which she then baked into a pie and took down to the market. She always used the leftovers to make me a mini tart to eat for dessert. It was our little thing.

I smiled and nodded, then ate the last bite of my pancakes before heading outside.

***

On the other side of our garden, there was a small aluminum tool shed where the neighbor-borgs could often be heard rummaging for shovels and rakes. On this particular day, however, my ears caught a noise that was quite different from the usual jumble of backyard apparatuses.

The sun beat harshly on my face as I walked toward the edge of the yard. With ample curiosity, I peered through the small openings in the lattice wood fence and was surprised to find a boy - about my age - attempting to dismantle a white drone on the ground with a poorly-held wrench.

I felt my heart nearly implode in my chest. I’d never, in all my nine years of life, seen another human child. I immediately wondered where he had come from and why he was picking apart the drone. I wondered if he’d also received a strange box with a note inside it.

It was a felony for me to do so, but I decided to talk to him.

“Hello,” I finally managed to squeak out, “my name is Persephone, who are you?”

The little boy stopped what he was doing and looked at me with two deep, impressively large brown eyes. His face was covered with dustings of freckles, and he wore a dirt-ridden shirt and a pair of ripped jeans.

“We’re not supposed to be talking to each other,” he said to me quietly. He glanced cautiously at the old colonial-style house that sat proudly in the front of his yard, then met my eyes again. “My name is William. But you really shouldn’t be here.”

I ignored the advice. “Why are you doing that?” I asked him, pointing to the drone.

“I can’t talk about it,” he said.

“Did you get one of these?” I asked him, holding out the small note for him to see.

His eyes widened. “Did a drone come to you, too?”

I nodded. “A silver one, though.”

William got up from the ground and walked over to the fence. “Let me see that,” he said. He reached for the note and his hand brushed my own.

There was an electrical surge as the skin of two human beings touched for the very first time. We both pulled back in shock, and that’s when I knew what to do.

“What are you doing?!” William exclaimed as he watched me climb up and over the fence. “You’re breaking the law!”

I ignored him.

He followed me in a bit of a panic as I ran through a maze of roses and juniper that lead up to his house. I thought it was just the shadows of the overhanging evergreen trees that were causing the sunlight to dim all around me, but the closer and closer I got to the house, I realized something was suspiciously off.

I stopped as I approached the porch. “It can’t be,” I said as I ran my fingers along the pristinely kept miniature gnomes and abalone shells. All around me, the sunlight had faded into the silvery glow of the moon. Somehow, it was no longer morning. Somehow, I was back in my very own yard.

I glanced to the right to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. Indeed, my own house sat just on the other side of the fence. Except - my own house was here.

William caught up to me. “You can’t be here!” He whispered - his voice out of breath and nervous.

I opened my mouth to say something regarding the change of day, but just as I did, a kitten-like drone appeared from the roses and crept to the base of the porch.

I stared at it - dumbfounded - just as William ran to attack it with the wrench.

“Wait!” I exclaimed, “this is a nice one.”

Akin to the previous night, the pewter-grey drone proceeded to tip-toe over to me with playful, kitten-like footsteps. Exactly as the day prior, it carried a small, terracotta-brown box in its undercarriage.

Willaim nodded at me as I untied the string and lifted the top off.

Surprised to find nothing, we were hit almost instantaneously with the sound waves. They were tiny, delicate roars that escaped from the box and fled into the air; hollow, ethereal, powerful.

I asked William the obvious question. “Did you hear that?”

He nodded at me. “It sounded like last year.”

I agreed with him, but I stayed silent for a moment as I thought about what he’d just said. Finally, I decided to ask one more question. “Do you remember last year?”

“No,” he said.

“Me either.”

Day III

The third night the drone appeared on my doorstep, I decided to wait for it.

Mom was inside the house cooking dinner, and William was hiding in the rose and juniper bushes just beside where I sat on the porch.

I wasn’t sure what mom would do if she found out I had found another human child. His being there was a felony. My allowing him to be there was even worse. I’d only heard stories of what they did to those who disobeyed the highest of laws set by the Regime.

I’d convinced mom to let me eat out on the porch that evening - making up some excuse about wanting to look at the stars.

It had never really been explained to me why I was a human child growing up in a world among robots - about why my own mother was a cyborg. It was just one of those circumstances where if one didn’t know any better, it all just seemed normal. While I was aware that other human children existed, I never thought I’d find one. Discovering William was a complete revelation for me. It was for him, as well.

“How long does your mom take to cook dinner?” William whispered from the bushes.

“It usually doesn’t take her this long,” I admitted.

“What’s she making, anyway?”

“Pork chops, I think.”

We continued to wait in the darkness. If I’d had any manners, I would have been helping my mother prepare my own dinner. I was usually a much better daughter. Tonight was different, however. Tonight there were questions that needed answers. Tonight, things felt off.

I felt off.

“Have you ever heard about the Dark Sky Paradox?” I asked William.

“I can’t say that I have.”

“It was an old theory that questioned how the night sky can be dark when the universe is so full of stars.”

William looked at me blankly. “You shouldn’t talk about stuff you have no idea about.”

I bit my lip - he was right. Although, I couldn’t help but wonder how it could be nighttime at my house while it was daytime at his. I glanced over the fence which adjoined our two yards - William’s was brightly aglow in the sunlight. I couldn't believe I’d never noticed the difference before.

My thoughts were interrupted, however, as mom appeared from behind me with a plate full of pork chops.

“Don’t stay out too late,” she said to me as she put a metallic hand on my back. She then pointed at the harvest box that sat to my left. “Bring the box back by twelve.”

She was talking about twelve the next day, of course.

I nodded, thanked her for dinner, and watched as she walked back inside. As soon as she was gone, I glanced over at William. “Ok, come get some,” I said teasingly, “be quiet, though.”

I cut a few hearty slices away from the bone and gave William the fork. While I’d never much cared for pork chops, William’s eyes lit up as he took his first bite.

“It tastes like home,” he said blissfully.

I looked at him. “Does your mom cook pork chops a lot?”

He thought for a minute. “No.”

Just then, as expected, there was a rustle from the roses and juniper. I stared at the base of the plants until the silver-toned drone made itself visible.

“Here, kitty!” I whispered.

William looked at me oddly. “Drones aren’t cats, you know; most of them are dangerous.”

“This one’s a cat,” I said back to him, “and there’s something familiar about him.”

We both watched as his little footsteps made it over to us - the same graceful stride.

We untied the string and took off the lid: no sound this time. Instead, another message.

“When fragrance and flavor turn back the time, follow the feline; be wary the crime.”

Day IV

The fourth night the drone appeared on my doorstep, it was during the pure light of day.

That was because William and I followed it back to his house - which was my house - to wait for it to reappear from the bushes all over again.

A kitten-like drone, a flavor that tastes of home, I thought to myself. Still, there was more: the sound of last year, the paper that could not be found anywhere near, the touch of human skin that brought familiarity, yet crippling fear.

“What do you think this all means?” William asked me, interrupting my thoughts.

“I’m not sure,” I said, “but I’m curious what the part about the fragrance means.”

“Well, I’m mostly worried we’re going to get in trouble,” William said.

I sighed. “Me too.”

We waited in silence. We watched as the kitten-like drone stepped out of the bushes.

We opened the box.

I remembered reading in an old book I’d secretly found one time that the sense linked most closely to memory was scent. Of course, I had to discard of that book as quickly as I’d come upon it, as the Regime would have severely prosecuted me for misconduct.

However, there was not a thing that could erase the smell of a book from my mind, and it was the scent that drifted like invisible clouds out of the box. Not only did I recognize it instantaneously; it brought me back in time.

“Books,” I said quietly, “the library.”

The feeling was so strong that as I stared into William’s eyes, I saw an ocean of book-filled shelves right before me. The fragrance of books - old and new - surrounded me, as did the rainbow of their bright, vivid covers. Tidy, neatly organized books. Behind them, human faces began to emerge. I felt myself frown. “Who are they?” I heard myself whisper aloud.

William stared at me, a look of accord in his eyes. I couldn’t tell if he was seeing the same thing I was, but I could feel that he, too, was entrapped by the scent.

Suddenly, the drone started rubbing against my legs, the same way it’d done on Day I.

I looked down and noticed it was holding out a note for me, which I grabbed.

“Bring the box back by twelve,” the message read.

Day V

The fifth night the drone appeared on my doorstep, I remembered a quote from La Nuit des temps that I’d read in a library: “Night is only night for us. It is our eyes that are dark” -

and I realized my eyes had been dark the entire time.

Our town was led to believe we were quarantined from the danger. On the 5th day of the robot invasion, my family and I had been visiting the local library on Ocean Front Avenue. “Bring the box back by twelve,” my mother said to me, smiling. Her strawberry hair gently brushed against my face and she leaned in to kiss my forehead. She knew I wanted to sit at the table and finish reading the box of books we needed to return before we could check out the new ones.

The sound of the waves rolled in through the windows; my father was in the corner helping William look through a book called Fixing Things: For Kids - as Willy had become quite fond of using a wrench to put things together and take them apart again.

I glanced up from my papery book for a moment and noticed a cat crawling in through the window. Drawn to it, I went up to stroke its soft, plushy-grey fur. It jumped down to the floor and rubbed back and forth on my legs.

Suddenly, there was a loud blast from the hallway, and within minutes, the robots had crashed through the door. Then, all was dark.

***

On that 5th day, I never brought the box back by twelve. My family was already held captive by then; my parents were already on their way to be eradicated.

But…

on this fifth day - as I raced through the roses to bring the box back to the drone - I finally knew:

it was my human parents who'd been communicating with us - they were still alive. William and I could be with them again...

I just had to bring the box back by twelve.