By Luca Nobleman
“Nasir, do you think another tattoo is necessary?” asked the robotic skull from its place hanging on a dusty shelf. His eyes glowed azure.
Nasir lifted his gaze from the pencil-sized steel spike—his rudimentary device for embedding the crushed blue Caerulum crystal into his skin. He wiped the blood from his arm. The older tattoos had faded to gray beneath his skin, like dying veins. Another week and age would return to him all at once, if not for the new tattoos. “How else will we survive another month?”
“We… is the wrong pronoun,” the robot remarked.
“How do you think that power box stays working?” Nasir pointed his tattoo hammer at the box sitting on the shelf—the same metal contraption the robot’s neck wires connected to.
Pan—PNZ-677—was still operating only because he could detect anything within five miles of the cave. Albeit after 120 years together, Nasir had grown used to the machine’s company.
“Touché,” Pan mumbled. “But… there’s enough Caerulum in these caves to fuel an army for generations. Yet you carve it into your own skin so you can survive another month.”
Nasir rolled his eyes. “Your robot god will fall, eventually. Humans will rise again.”
“What then?” Pan said. “You’ll suddenly find it in yourself to leave this mountainside and its Caerulum? Finally live a mortal life? Grow old beside someone?”
He could never leave the Caerulum. It was his.
“You still don’t know what you’ll do, do you?” Skepticism dripped from the robot’s speech emitter. “It goes against my better judgment, but how about this? Take the Caerulum to the resistance. Help them fight the Alpha.”
Nasir laughed bitterly. “And give away my immortality?”
“Immortality?” Pan scoffed. “Nasir, you haven’t lived in decades.”
“What do you know of life? You’re a mechanical product of the Alpha.”
“Well, I know that you—” Pan’s voice abruptly morphed into a high-pitched monotone. “Alert. Alert. Proximity warning. Biological biped detected on premises.”
“How far?” Nasir stood so fast, the instruments clattered to the floor.
“Twenty meters and closing.”
“What?” Nasir growled. “You’re supposed to warn me when anything’s within two miles! What’s wrong with you?”
“Fifteen and closing. Fourteen and closing.” Pan announced, undeterred.
“Crystal cracks,” Nasir swore and jumped into action.
He activated the hologram emitter, muted Pan’s belated and now incessant verbal warning, and ducked behind a table. The cave became a bear’s den instead of a workshop. Beneath the illusion sat a century of scavenged books, rusted tools, and enough Caerulum to start a kingdom.
He waited with bated breath, his heart pounding in his ears.
Footsteps sprinted past the cave, stopped, then rushed back toward the entrance.
Right as Nasir was ready to yank the cords from Pan’s neck, he spotted the intruder. A small girl, disheveled and dirty, burst into the cave, panting. She was no older than seven. Mud-matted black hair hung over eyes wide with fear.
Something ancient woke within him. A memory buried beneath ages of glowing ink and seclusion. He immediately stood, revealing himself to the child.
“Are you okay?” He heard the unplanned words escape his lips.
The small girl gasped, her eyes fixating on his blue, glowing arm tattoos.
“Celesti de Chronos.” She gasped and then rushed toward him, wrapping her arms around his waist, tears soaking his shirt. “Oh, Holy One,” she sobbed, her accented speech cracking. “They found us. Mommy and Daddy got taken by the machines. I think they saw me, and—”
“That’s not my problem,” Nasir interrupted reflexively.
She looked up, confusion filling her small, wet face.
Red lights flashed from Pan’s head, which Nasir still held.
The girl jumped back. “That’s a…”
“Taker,” Nasir finished and unmuted the skull.
“Alert. Alert. Sixteen Alpha-grade sentinels on the premises. Proximity: thirty-seven meters.”
“We gotta hide!” He grabbed the girl’s hand and rushed toward the back of the cave.
“The Takers are coming, aren’t they?” she asked in a tremulous voice.
“Just follow me.”
The cave narrowed in the back, converging into a system of tunnels lined with exposed veins of glowing Caerulum.
As Nasir ran, he became mesmerized by his treasure of glowing crystals. “I can’t leave this. I need it,” he whispered.
“What you need is a distraction, Nasir,” Pan bellowed. “And to get yourself out of here.”
Nasir hesitated. He looked at all the crystals. Then at Pan. Then the little girl. He remembered his daughter reaching for him through the smoke the night the Takers came. He had heard her scream for years afterward.
“Goodbye, old friend.” Nasir lifted the mass of metal and rested his forehead against Pan’s.
“Enough of this gooey, lovey stuff,” Pan interrupted. “Get moving!”
With that, Nasir flipped a switch in the back of Pan’s head. A cacophony of ancient music blared from the speech emitter. Nasir tossed Pan down one hallway and turned down another.
“Where are we going?” the girl asked.
“Pan’s our distraction, and the exit is this way.”
They wound through tunnels, but even with Pan’s music, metal footsteps thundered behind.
They reached the mouth of the exit. Nasir stopped and looked back. Blue light pulsed through the tunnel. Centuries of his life spent in stone.
“Why did we stop?” Her lip quivered.
He hesitated.
Glowing red eyes rounded a corner.
“They’re over here!” a sinister digital voice echoed.
He reached into his pocket and removed a remote. “Goodbye, life everlasting.” Then he pressed a button, and a deafening eruption came from deep within the tunnel. Pan’s head detonated.
Nasir grabbed the girl and dove to the ground outside the tunnel. A burst of dust and pebbles tore across Nasir’s back.
When the cloud of debris settled, boulders filled the mouth of the cave.
“You saved me.” The girl squeezed his hand.
“No, you saved me.” He glanced down as some of the glowing Caerulum sealed within his skin shimmered away. For the first time since their inception, the marks looked mortal.
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Haunting! A great story.