The Last Goodbye

“He has what you’re looking for.”

My breath caught, a mixture of fear and excitement coursing through me, each emotion warring for dominance as I surveyed the man in front of me. His thin face and deep eyes were hidden behind a film of dirt, his dark hair falling in mattered clumps. He was tall and lanky, his skinny limbs settled comfortably under the weight of his battered vest, despite his fragile appearance. A large hunting knife was strapped to his waist. He looked no older than 16, but his eyes held a haunted look beyond his years, and I knew not to mistake him for the child he looked like. This was a child of war, and as such, no child at all.

Those haunted eyes leveled with mine, and narrowed. I felt my heart clench. Did he know? Had the mechanic told him? He couldn’t have. If he knew, then surely he could only be here to kill me. I felt my blood run cold at the thought. The man tipped his head towards the path behind him, indicating I should follow him. It’s fine. I shook my head to myself, dismissing my paranoid thought. If he was here to kill you, you’d be dead already. The man, impatient, turned away from the jagged hole in the metal that served as my door and made his way up the path behind him. Taking a deep, steadying breath, I followed.

The path to the mechanic took a winding route through the scattered settlement, weaving through cloth tents and makeshift huts. Everything was covered in the same film of dirt, a permanent feature. Dust storms were common and with barely enough water to sustain the 50 or so souls living out here, cleaning had long ago fallen off the list of priorities.

I felt suspicious eyes track our every movement. I tried my best not to react, my fingers seeking out the cool comfort of the metal locket around my neck on instinct. I traced the outline through my shirt, careful not to pull it out. The familiar shape soothed me, and I repeated the motion, memorizing every minute bump and scratch in the surface of the metal. A heart. I’d asked him why once. Why had my scientist husband, who valued facts and quantifiable data above all else, bought me a locket in the shape of a heart? I expected a joke from him, maybe a sheepish shrug. Instead, he’d turned suddenly serious, his hands capturing my jaw with gentle but firm pressure, his blue eyes boring into mine. “It’s not my heart I love you with, my darling. It is my entire self. Every fiber of my being. My very soul.” I felt my step falter, stuck in the memory. “My love for you defies all knowledge. One day, science may show us what a person is, what a soul looks like. Until that day, this” he’d tapped the locket lightly where it had hung from my neck. “will have to do. This is my whole soul, darling. And it is yours.” I felt a single tear roll down my cheek, and my whole body ached with the loss of him. It had been years, since before the uprising, but the wound still felt fresh. I still carried a piece of him, stuck somewhere between hope and grief. Unable to see him, unable to let him go.

The man stopped suddenly, seeming to notice my distracted state, or maybe the stares of the other residents, and turned to check if I was still following. I dropped my hand away from my chest, unwilling to reveal the lockets existence to him. He narrowed his eyes in a brief expression of annoyance and suspicion, his eyes flicking to the hand that was now at my side and back again. Maybe that’s what he’s waiting for. Maybe he’ll kill you once he finds out why you’re doing this. I froze, ensuring both my empty hands were visible, and held my breath. His hand twitched towards the knife strapped to his belt. Then he shook his head, seemingly dismissing whatever thought had stopped him. He turned back to the path and continued ahead, picking up the pace. I followed.

The mechanic lived a few clicks out of the settlement, bordering the site of the last big battle against The Cured. The human corpses had long since been devoured by the local wildlife, leaving behind only skeletons and broken bits of machinery The Cured considered bodies. Those ‘bodies’ were now picked through for parts in humanities desperate attempt to keep what little technology we had left running, and the war grave was more commonly referred to as ‘the Scrap Yard’.

In the middle of it all, we came to a military landing vessel. It had crash landed long ago, the impact with the earth tearing the thing almost in half. Jagged metal and exposed wires hung from the gaping hole in front of me, revealing a hallway sloping downwards before the view fell into shadow. The black and silver seal of The Cured was still visible on the gray hull. I diverted my eyes, afraid of what my face would show. The man with me was too young to associate it with anything other than the metal monsters that filled these ships, a nightmare to be treated with aggression and fear. He didn’t know the hope it had once stood for, couldn’t understand how humanity had ever considered it a good thing.

The world I grew up in was a starving one; overpopulated, under resourced, and riddled with disease. The gap between the first and third world was immense and ever growing, and violent uprisings against corrupt leadership were commonplace. We just didn’t have the space or the resources to grow enough food for everyone. So when The Cure was discovered, a way for humanity to continue existing without the need for food, without disease, and without aging, the world had welcomed it with open arms. ‘Evolution’, they’d called it. It would be years before we realized the true cost of the transition, before anyone started noticing that The Cured had lost a part of themselves in the change. Once loving people were now cold and calculating, unable to love, unable to hope. While we could now successfully make a perfect copy of a human mind, upload a whole personality into a body of steel and wires, it was more than our mind that made us human. David used to say The Cure ensured your mind could live forever, but your soul was left behind.

The man stopped suddenly and I stumbled, catching myself before I walked into him. Glancing up, I saw his eyes were locked on the shadowy entrance in front of him. He stood staring into its depths for a few tense moments. When I didn’t move, he nodded towards it, not looking at me. “He’s in there.”

I took a step forward. The man remained where he was. Not going to follow me in, then. A blessing or a curse? My matter with the mechanic was a private one. The fewer people who knew what I was after, the better. Still, his unwillingness to step into the vessel made me uneasy. It could well be a trap. I couldn’t give up on him, not when I was so close. Despite the dread that was slowly creeping into my heart, I stepped forward.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dark. The broken hallway of the ship sloped downwards, the end likely buried underground. At the end a heavy, circular door was propped open. DANGER was painted in bold red letters in the center. I suppressed a laugh. How fitting.

“Get on with it, man.” A gruff voice startled me from the other side. Bracing myself, I pushed through the door.

The mechanic was a short, stout man with a perpetual frown. His hands were calloused and streaked with grease, and a rag hung from the back pocket of his work pants. His boots were worn, and his heavy flannel shirt was so faded I couldn’t make out its original color.

A large table stood between us. It was likely once a control center for the vessel, but its screens and control panel had long since been removed. A hulking form lay on it, covered haphazardly with a dusty cloth. A humanoid form. My heart skipped a beat. He really did have it.

In two short steps I was at the table and dragging the cover away, revealing the mechanical body beneath it. It was mismatched, the arms different colors and parts of the chest plate not quite the right size for the model. A few bits of the cover were chipped or broken, revealing the wiring underneath. People had spent the last decade destroying every remnant of these things they came across, terrified The Cured would come back. There were very few people who could locate enough parts to rebuild one, fewer still who knew how. And in the last decade of searching, I had only found one desperate enough to try.

I ran my hands over the metal, inspecting the body. It was cold and unyielding under my touch, but I didn’t care. Anything was worth it to hear his voice again. Making it to the processing center, located at the base of the ‘skull’, I turned it over. The port was intact. This was it.

“You have payment?”

Nodding, I pulled the pouch from my pocket and threw it at him, not looking away from the port. He grunted as he caught the small bag. “That’s it?”

“There’s five courses of stems in there. Some penicillin, morphine. It’s more than enough to treat her.”

He grunted again, picking the bag up and heading for the door. I didn’t wait.

Opening my locket, I stared at the chip inside. It was only the size of a thumbnail, still large for technology of its time. It looked like an ordinary memory drive, a chip identical to the one found in every mundane piece of technology with one exception. Its surface was a glittering pattern of blue, almost black, and not the uniform green of commercial memory drives. Something about the color seemed ethereal.

This was it. The last decade of my life had led to this moment. My love. My David. With a last silent prayer, I slipped the chip into the port. And heard the door click shut behind me.

The room fell into darkness, the one working light flickering out before red light flooded the room with a dull menacing glow from every edge, accompanied by a dull whirring noise as the emergency system struggled to switch on. An alarm blared, a cold robotic voice telling me what I already knew. “Self destruct has been activated. All crew, please evacuate.”

My heart sank as my head dropped. So close. And then, a different voice. “Mark?” I glanced up. Sitting on the table before me, metal or not, was David. I choked on a sob. Cold, strong arms embraced me, holding me close. “I’ve got you. I’m here. I love you.” Another sob. I latched on with all my strength. “I’m sor-sorry, David. It was trap. We’ll die here.” Metal fingers found my chin, and suddenly I was looking into a pair of blue lights meant as eyes. “Do you love me?” He asked. I could only nod. “With everything.” My cracking voice felt warm and steady on those words. The mouth moved, and I knew he was smiling. “I love you too. With my whole soul. In this life and the next, love. Forever. OK?” He always knew what to say. Warmth filled my chest, and I knew I could leave this life a happy man. We clutched each other as the red lights blinked faster. And then the world caught fire.