Chapter 3

 “You nervous?” Alistair looked up at One Forty Two as he asked the question. The bot stood at the boys feet in the little used elevator that was taking them to the surface. Somebody had been in it very recently, but before that, it hadn’t been used in years.

One Forty Two was looking down at the ground and twisting the toe of his boot into the metal floor. He his chest felt shaky and hollow, and he breathed deeply even though it felt like his lungs were there. He looked back up and stared straight ahead at the door. “I guess,” he said in response to the question, shrugging it off as if it didn’t mean anything.

“I would be.”

One Forty Two looked down at the robot, his face expressing curiosity to cover up his anxiety. “Have you ever been up there?”

Alistair looked straight ahead and squinted his lens. “Yes.” He said thoughtfully. It was a complete answer to him.

“What was it like?” One Forty Two asked, used to Alistair’s one word replies.

“It was… Dirty.” He said, looking back up at One Forty Two.

One Forty Two let out a little laugh. “Really now?” He asked sarcastically.

“Yes, dust everywhere.”

“Probably cus of all the dirt.”

“No, One Forty Two. Dust. There are no people out there, and no wind. Nothing moves, and it does not rain.” Alistair, paused for a second before continuing on. “It is sad, too.”

One Forty Two swallowed hard and looked back at the wall in front of him.

“What’s the mission?” One Forty Two asked after a moment of silence.

“To do what our Partner says.”

“But what’s the goal.”

“I cannot tell you.”

“Still?” One Forty Two gave Alistair a frustrated look that the robot didn’t notice.

“It will always be classified. Until you are given your final command.”

One Forty Two sighed. This is how it always had been, but it had become more annoying in the last couple of weeks. One Forty Two had spent most of his time unconscious, or conscious in a hospital bed with Alistair by his side, but the last couple of days were busy days filled with meetings and briefings he was only an accessory to. He knew there was a mission, he knew he had to protect his “Partner” and he knew they would be traveling to a “City” but everything else he knew about the mission was a mess of words and sentences that had no meaning to him.

It took a long time to get to the top of the elevator. Alistair spent the entire time going on about the elemental make up of dirt on the planet, the differences between the nutrient rich west side of the planet and the barren east side. It was this blabber that kept One Forty Two preoccupied on things other than his fearful thoughts. It was always this way, with Alistair afraid of letting any conversation go stale and One Forty Two afraid of silence.

The elevator beeped and the sound of steam being released could be heard.

“We are here!” Alistair exclaimed cheerfully as did a little jump. “Are you excited?” He said turning to look at One Forty Two.

One Forty Two’s stomach was churning, but he nodded in agreement even though the nodding made him nauseous.

The door opened painfully, with scratching, screeching sounds coming from the rusty pieces separating from each other. A gust of wind rushed into the elevator, and One Forty Two began coughing like madman.

“You are used to clean air,” Alistair said knowingly. “You will get used to it.”

One Forty Two couldn’t respond to the statement through his coughing fit, but he followed the robot out of the small room and into the dark factory. The doors closed and the began sliding back down into the laboratory below. When it disappeared belowe the, a sewage pipe lid slid over it, and it was as if nothingwas there.

One Forty Two watched the whole ordeal, then stood to stare at the sewage pipe or just a little longer. He then turned around to follow his robot companion, who was already far ahead of him.

He walked out from beneath the fallen wall and squinted in the bright sunlight. The suns rays were harsher than the soft florescent light of the lab, and he got further and further behind as he was stopped by coughing fits and slow by his near blindness in the sun.

He walked back into darkness and walked more quickly over broken pieces of stone and twisted bits of metal, now only guessing where he thought Alistair might have gone. Eventually he found himself outside of the factory, faing a vast, empty desert. He walked around the dusty old building, rubbing his watering eyes that were still irritated by the dust, until he made it around to a short woman standing next to a car.

“Hello,” One Forty Two stammered as he stepped closer to her.

“There you are,” she exclaimed in an irritated and annoyingly posh voice as she turned around to face him.

She was chubby, with large breast and a somewhat smaller stomach, smaller hips and comparatively thin legs. Her face was round and puffy, with small eyes and thin lips, and she had short brown hair in a style that clung to her head, with bangs swept off the the side, and hair that went down just below her ears.

“Where did you run off to? We have things to do.” She walked to the double doors o the car and opened them up for him. “Hurry up.”

The car was tear drop shaped and low to the ground. Only a third of each wheel protruded out of the car, the rest of them were hidden inside. One Forty Two walked to the car and stepped in, crouching because of the low ceiling. The seat faced the back of the car, and was located on top of the hidden front wheels. The back seat faced the drivers, and also hid the wheels. The ceiling sloped because of the tear drop shape, and One Forty Two had to slide into the front seat becase the back seats ceiling was to low.

“There you are!” Alistair exclaimed. He was sitting in the middle of the back seat. “I thought you were behind me. What happened?”

“I thought you were in front of me. What happened to you?” One Forty Two replied with a grin.

“I was walking,” Alistair responded, not understanding the joke. “You were supposed to follow me.”

One Forty Two smiled again. “I got lost,” he said in a somewhat amused voice. “I fell behind and then I didn’t know where you were.”

The woman stepped into the car and sat down in the seat next to One Forty Two’s. In the middle o the seat was a screen that the woman tapped several times. It blinked on, and she began pressed buttons on it and typing in commands. A map of the desert appeared on the screen and she traced a trail to the north east for the car to follow. With the press of the start button on the screen, the car began moving and the map minimized itself.

She turned away from the screen and reorientated herself. She shook her head around to get the hair out of her face and swept it with her hand behind her ear. She then sat her head up with a ‘hmph’ and looked directly at Alistair.

“Where was he?” she demanded.

“Him?” Alistair said, tilting his head in One Forty Two’s direction.

The woman scoffed. “Aren’t computers supposed to be smart?”

“All human-like AI is slowed down to a-”

“Answer the first question,” the woman said frustatedly.

“He got left behind.”

“And how’s that?”

One Forty Two sat awkwardly in the car, watching the two adults talk about him and his whereabouts as if he wasn’t in the car.

“Hmm,” Alistair said as he thought about the answer. “I don’t know.”

The woman waited for further explination, or at least an attempt on his part to figure out the answer. “Why don’t you know?” She finally asked in frustration.

“I didn’t ask him.”

One Forty Two quietly laughed at the whole ordeal. “I was coughing,” he said when he was done laughing, “I had to keep stopping.”

The woman turned to glare at him. He stared back for a couple of seconds before realizing his mistake.

“Was I not supposed to talk?” he finally stuttered.

“Where you ‘talked’ to?” The woman didn’t wait for his answer, and instead turned back to Alistair. “Isn’t it supposed to be disciplined? How do I discipline it?”

One Forty Two’s eye widened at the words. He opened his mouth to speak out, but stopped himself when he realized it would just make things worse. He turned his head away rom her, gave Alistair a quick glance and went back to staring forward.

Alistair looked at One Forty Two too, and then turned back to the woman. “You should have been given a device.” He replied in a quiet, sheepish voice.

“That’s right” the woman said, now remembering the briefing she had been to just before she rode the elevator and the device she had been giving during it. She searched through her pant’s pockets until she finally found a palm sized, flat, black rectangle.

One Forty Two took in a sharp breath as he spotted the familiar device out of the corner of his eye, and winced at the cheery jingle it made when it turned on.

“Is that really necessary, Ikarid?” Alistair said to the woman in response to One Forty Two’s reaction.

Ikarid’s head shot up to look at him at the sound of her name. “Hasn’t it been taught not to speak until spoken too?”

“Well, uh,” Alistair said in a quiet voice as he tried to think of an excuse that would save both One Forty Two and himself from punishment. “He probably does not know the chain of command yet.”

Ikarid breathed out sharply out of irrataion and turned to look at One Forty Two. “You do not speak to me unless spoken to. You also do not call me anything other than ‘Boss,’ even when you are not talking to me. Understood?”

One Forty Two nodded quickly and turned to look at her. “Yes Boss.”

She turnd her head back around and continued speaking with her nose in the air. “You may speak to Alistair, and he may speak to me, but I am too high up this missions command for you to be treating me lke I’m almost on your level.”

One Forty Two nodded again. “Yes Boss.”

Ikarid turned her attention to Alistair once again. “What were we talking about before we were interrupted?”

“One Forty Two took so long getting to us because he was coughing.”

“Why would he be coughing so much that he couldn’t walk.” Ikarid said with skepticism.

“He is not used to the dirty air.”

Ikarid sighed and looked back down at the screen again. “I gues I cant punish him for medical issues,” she said as she tapped the screen. “It is horribly nasty on the Outside, isn’t it?”

“The air is very dusty, yes.” Alistair said in response to her uestion.

“Mhm,” Ikarid said back, not caring at all about his answer. She pressed a button on the screen and her seat began tilting back. She threw her leg up on the back seat across from her, right next to Alistair and spoke. “No body talk to me. We have a long trip to make, and I’m not going to be awake for all of it just because you two are idiots.”

One Forty Two looked at Alistair. “You can rest too, if you want.” Alistair said to him. “You need to stay alert if you are going to be security.”

“Who’s gonna keep watch then?” One Forty Two asked skeptically, knowing his friends kindness might get him in trouble with the real boss.

“I will,” Alistair said as he moved slightly to reveal a wire connected to him and plugged into the wall. “If anything happens, I’ll wake you up.”

One Forty Two and bent down to tilt the seat back like Ikarid, and put his legs up on the back seat, squishing Alistar between a set of human legs and prostethic boots.