WATCH THEM WANDER

a novel

by

OSCAR RELENTOS

COLOSSUS OF RHODES SERIES BOOK ONE

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Copyright © 2018

All rights are reserved. No portions of this book may be used or reproduced without the written consent of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal pleasure only. Thank you.

Table of Contents

Copyright Page

~1~

~2~

~3~

~4~

~5~

~6~

~7~

~8~

~9~

~10~

~11~

~12~

~13~

~14~

~15~

~16~

~17~

~18~

~19~

~20~

~21~

~22~

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~24~

~25~

~26~

~27~

~28~

~29~

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~38~

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~40~

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~42~

~43~

~44~

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~47~

~48~

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~50~

~51~

~52~

~53~

~54~

~55~

Bonus Excerpt!

~1~

~1~

SAMANTHA SNAPPED OUT of her mindless delirium, as she rode her camel through the infinity that was her desert hell.

“Is this the right way?” whispered Samantha, to the compass in her palm. The sun shredded the skin around her eyes. She clothed every part of her body from the light, but she still needed an opening to see. She was so numb to the burn that it hardly felt like more than a light tan anymore. “Do I recognize this place?”

Every path through the sand looked the same to an unfamiliar eye. But Samantha knew every dune, every stray cactus, every mountain and every abandoned tent, along the familiar paths she’d taken throughout her solitary life.

And more than anything else, Samantha knew when she was lost.

“Goddamnit Samantha focus,” she whispered, as her eyes blurred and foreshadowed a faint. She shook her head of it, and willed herself awake. Nothing could be closer to a death sentence than fainting in the heat of the wilderness. Venturing out for the few scraps of rattlesnake food she found felt like a much better idea in the coolness of the morning.

She took a final swig of what drops remained of her water, and weakly hit her leather flask till no drops remained. Samantha’s head bobbed with every step the camel made, until she noticed something reflecting the sun’s light in the distance. Samantha stared at it with zombie eyes as she stopped beside it and took her time dropping from her camel. She brushed the sand away from the metal with her gloved hands, and paused a moment when she saw the golden spout peeking out from the sand.

Samantha suddenly felt her heart beat a little faster.

“No,” whispered Samantha. She thought she’d harvested every piece of scrap metal within a five mile radius, and it always burned like hell even through her gloves when she picked it up. Samantha caressed the metal for a moment like it was precious. She pulled the glove from her hand, and set her fingertips to the lamp.

It was disturbingly cool to the touch.

A few breaths later, Samantha felt the shivering of the lamp in her hands and felt her mind burst awake to attention.

And a gecko no longer than her hand crept ever so gently out of the sand, to capture the moment with its glassy eyes.

There was a faint whistling sound, like boiling water in a pot, before the noise of internal gears and what past generations would recognize as the sound of a computer hard drive’s read heads moving rapidly back and forth, before the rougher sound of gears once more.

Samantha’s eyes snapped open, as the lamp in her hands shook a little bit, and made a noise that was unmistakable for one clearing their throat before speaking.

"Hello there,” said the lamp in Samantha’s shaking hands. “My name is Adam."

~2~

"WHOA," SAID SAMANTHA, almost dropping the lamp back onto the sand she was so shocked. "What the hell, it talks. I'm hallucinating."

"I'm no hallucination, what is required of me master? What is my master's name?"

Samantha had only just rubbed the gold plated lamp artifact to brush the sand off of it. The warmth of her touch, and the presence of her fingerprints alerted the AI of a fresh master. She'd been out in the desert for hours scavenging. Most days she'd make it back with some scrap metal, and maybe find a stray animal to harvest for meat, bones for tools, maybe make some use of its hide.

Never in her wildest dreams, did she think she’d find an ancient genie waiting for her in the sand.

Some sweat got in Samantha’s eyes. She lifted the shroud on her face, and tried to wipe it away with her sleeve.

"Name's Samantha."

"Thank you Naymesahmantha, what do you require?"

"No my nam—" Samantha was too exhausted to argue. She barely had enough energy to make it back to her secluded oasis. "Fine, fine, you're a—" Samantha swallowed, though her mouth was dry. She was overwhelmed. "You're one of those genies aren't you, oh my gods.”

"I am an artificial intelligence, and judging by the date I'm reading on my systems I'm ancient by your standards. I haven't been activated for a great many centuries." The lamp projected out a rod of sorts. Samantha bobbled the lamp, then gripped it again when she saw the rod wasn't a weapon. "There's an unnaturally high background radiation reading in this area."

"What does that mean?" said Samantha.

"I can think of several possible reasons, the most likely of which is a nuclear Armageddon,” said Adam. "This area used to be quite near an urban metropolis. A metropolis it now bears no resemblance to."

"What's a metropolis?" said Samantha.

The lamp produced several projections this time, and studied Samantha with them. She wasn't too happy about it, but she was getting the sense Adam wasn't a threat. The genie produced a stethoscope, requested that she take several breaths into some box-like device, took a reading of her eyes, sampled the sweat on her skin.

"You're dangerously dehydrated, and quite close to fainting. If you're not careful you could get heat stroke."

"I'll be fine, we're not more than thirty minutes from an oasis if I can just remember where it is,” said Samantha. She was used to exhaustion. It was her life's baseline. She hopped back onto her camel, and started the journey home with her treasure. "How do you run by the way?"

"I run with the sun."

"Oh you have rhymes nice," said Samantha, starting to remember where she was. "I like you, we should get along. You said there was a lot of stuff around here before?"

Adam produced a projection of an ancient map in the air, with several checkmarks around where they were.

"I've already identified several likely spots for scrap metal if it is required."

"You can just project anything?" said Samantha, feeling more alive by the minute. She was quiet a moment. Samantha took a look at the cloudless sky a while, before she asked. “Can you show me the world as it was?”

Adam zoomed in on a particular portion of the map, and proceeded to play a video of the daily life of people there. She was mesmerized by the images she beheld. A huge, bustling population. Laughing, shopping for things she'd never seen before, eating exotic foods she'd never tasted. There were children playing with their parents in wide, grassy planes around trees larger and greener than any she’d ever seen in her life. And there was sand there too, with wide expanses of water beside it. There were hundreds of happy people playing in the waters there.

It made her strangely sad.

"Turn it off," said Samantha.

Adam obeyed.

––––––––

THEY JOURNEYED TO WITHIN eyesight of the oasis. Samantha almost fell off her camel, she was so tired and relieved. She jolted back upright and fought the urge to fall asleep.

They stopped beside her humble abode. She slid off and crawled over to the water. Had more than a few drinks. Her camel lapped up some water as well.

She flipped onto her back and took a few deep breaths.

"I'm more tired than I thought," said Samantha. She smiled really hard when she thought about the genie. It cracked her lips. They bled. "You know I had a dream this would be a good day."

"Did you," said Adam.

Samantha carried the lamp to beneath her small hut she'd made from animal hides and metal she'd accumulated. She collapsed into its shade, and breathed really hard onto her never-washed bedsheets. She could smell her own breath, it smelled rancid.

"Well, goodnight,” said Samantha. It was broad daylight. "Try not to get stolen while I'm asleep."

The AI laughed.

"I can take care of myself," said Adam.

Then the lamp cracked open, and internal mechanisms branched from out of it. It morphed out in a strangely fluid manner, though it clearly had geared mechanisms driving its components out. Samantha’s eyes fluttered as she tried to see, before she backed away and cried out in horror. When it was done it was transformed into a fully functional, humanoid robot.

Tall as a titan, and light as a feather.

“Rest for now, I’ll meet you back here,” said Adam. The genie began to walk away, then turned around to its terrified master. Its voice turned sweet, though somewhat robotic. "Apologies if I frightened you. Don't worry, I'll bring back supplies."

~3~

IT WASN’T LONG, BEFORE Samantha was asleep.

She dreamed about ghosts of memories. A happy family that disintegrated into sand before her childlike eyes, before she forgot what it was she was dreaming and dreamt instead of living by a waterfall at the edge of a rainbow. She dreamed next of endless animal hides, and how she turned them all into leather and sold them. She built up a prosperous little leather business, before she faded into another dream of a snow covered winter, and the crisp cold that came with it. In spite of the dreaming frostbite creeping up her limbs, she liked it. She liked the cold, no matter how harsh. We dream so many times as we sleep, so much that we forget what we dreamed, and then we wake back up into our mundane lives and forget the fantasies that crept into our nighttime minds.

Samantha forgot all her dreams that night, and woke up to the noise of buzzing metal scraping along metal.

It was harsh, and loud, and hurt her ears as she startled up and reached for her spear with a sharpened coyote leg bone attached at the end.

Adam turned around from his handiwork, and stared at her with blue lightbulb eyes through the nighttime darkness. He was illuminated as if from the inside, and sort of waved hi. He even smiled politely with white metallic teeth, before he realized his mistake and looked a bit embarrassed.

“Pardon me master it was not my intention to wake you up,” said Adam. He gestured at Samantha’s side, and it was only then she noticed a plate of cooked food with a flask of water set beside her. “Just a few rodents I found during my travels, I hope it’s to your liking I didn’t have very much seasoning. I saved a few for farming.”

Samantha brought the plate into her lap. She noticed the gray outlines of walls around their oasis, and a little pen not far off where little animals were making high pitched noises and scurrying about. She bit into the tough as jerky meat, and started to get some strange feeling that she could see some of the stars, but not all of the stars. There was a partial roof hanging overhead, larger than what little she had hanging over her humble hut.

It was starting to feel like a home.

“Did you just build this?” asked Samantha, staring up at the magical ancient before her. She wondered if she was still dreaming. She started to pinch herself, before she stopped.

If this was a dream she didn’t want to wake up just yet, if ever.

Adam heaved a robotic sigh, as he cut into some more metal with upwards of twenty arms shooting out from his sides and working on different pieces.

“I’m sorry if you don’t like it, it’s not finished yet,” said Adam, as he cut through some more metal. More quietly this time. “Do you not like it?”

“I didn’t say that,” said Samantha as she tried to stand up, and noticed a strange texture at her feet. It felt like fur.

Adam noticed her noticing.

“I found a number of dead animals during my travels. Insides torn out, likely killed by other beasts,” said Adam, as he nodded in the direction of some hides hanging on a bench Samantha never had before. “It took a while, but I made some carpets with them.”

Samantha swept her dried hair to the side, and ran her hand down it as she took another bite of jerky. She chewed with her mouth open.

“What’sh a carpet,” said Samantha, as she stood on the carpet with her bare feet. It felt nice on her toes. She kept chewing. “Ish thish a carpet?”

“Yep that’s a carpet,” said Adam, laughing a bit as he welded a few pieces of metal together. He brought them up close to his eyes a moment, before he nodded like he was satisfied. “You should get more rest you’re getting better but you’re not yet well. I’ve been checking your vitals.”

Samantha nodded slowly with her eyes wide open, as she grinned and swallowed.

“I think I kind of like ya,” she said, with just a hint of apprehension. “But don’t overwork your mechanisms or anything. You seem all right, but not being in use for all those centuries might have rusted you out some. I don’t want you breaking on me, I might die if you do.”

“I won’t rust, trust me,” laughed Adam, as he studied a few of the plants around the oasis. He reached out with smaller arms, and harvested a few of their seeds. He put them into specialized compartments in a box he’d made. “And I got all the energy I needed during the daylight. I’m fine, don’t trouble about me. Rest for now, I’ll do what I can in the meantime.”

Samantha stared at the giant robot building her a little barn hut, and farming in her secluded oasis. She gave a terse nod and stared at her new walls with a dumb expression, as she wandered back over to the rags that she called her bed.

Samantha lied down on her bedsheets, exhausted yet awake.

“Hey,” shouted Samantha, loud enough for Adam to hear.

The noise of several objects being set onto the ground in unison came through the air, before the soft noise of sand being kicked up as Adam walked over to Samantha.

“Yes my master?” replied Adam.

“Don’t leave ever okay?” said Samantha, a hint of sadness slithering through her voice. She worked to repress it, and spoke with some more authority. “I command you to never leave or get hurt, ever. All right, I mean it. I’m your master.”

Adam smiled again, and brought a large, robotic arm to her side.

He picked up her empty plate.

“I won’t,” said Adam.

Samantha looked up at him with tender, shaking eyes. And for the first time in a long time, without the omnipresent threat of starvation. Without the threat of wandering raiders perchance finding her helpless and alone, as she slept in the night. Having a drink of her waters and chopping at her crops. For the first time in a long time, since she first came to that secluded oasis all those years ago when all her family was torn away from her in the heat of starlit fires.

Samantha felt safe.

Samantha smiled up at her starlit genie, before she collapsed back against the bed to slip back into her dreams. She hadn’t slept so peacefully in years.

And all the while, from the upper edges of her new abode, birds and lizards with glassy eyes watched her every sleeping breath.

~4~

ADAM KNELT DOWN BESIDE Samantha, and set a mirror in front of her as her eyes flickered open. She yawned a bit, before she looked interchangeably between Adam and the mirror.

“This is an odd way to say good morning,” said Samantha, as she pointed a finger at the mirror and made a funny face.  “Why’d you waste good metal on that?”

“You’re peeling, I made an ointment for your skin,” said Adam, gesturing with a robotic finger around her face. “You’re lucky you have aloe vera growing around your oasis, I wanted you to see that the skin around your eyes is dangerously sunburned.”

“When am I not sunburned,” said Samantha, as she stretched awake. “I live in the desert you know, it’s to be expected.”

“You look a lot like a raccoon,” said Adam. Samantha gave him a look like she was mock insulted, but also didn’t quite get it. “That’s a joke by the way, I am capable of jokes if that comforts you.”

“Well joke’s on you cause I don’t even know what a raccoon is so hah,” said Samantha, as she smacked her tongue on the top of her mouth. She blinked up at Adam for a bit as he crushed another plant to make more ointment. He set some in her hand. “So I just put this on my face?”

“Yep.”

Samantha smiled sheepishly at him a bit, before she dabbed some on her face. She took a solemn look around her re-modeled oasis as she applied it. She had a full roof protecting her from the sunlight, a makeshift air conditioner off to the side cooling what she could now call a room, an area that looked a lot like a kitchen with a stove and chairs beside a table, and an area at the edge of the room that hovered over the water. It was like extreme makeover oasis edition.

“Hey, I want you to know something,” said Samantha, as Adam turned from his peering out of a window that Samantha only then realized was covered with glass. “I might be acting really calm right now but my heart feels like it’s about to burst out of my chest every time I glance up at you.”

“I’m well aware of that,” said Adam, shooting another rod straight at Samantha’s chest. She sat upright in a burst, as two gentle fingers emerged from the rod, and checked her pulse. A number of other objects emerged from the rod as well, studying her eyes, her complexion, one of them faintly pricking her skin. The rod went away once Adam was satisfied. “But your vitals are now restored closer to a healthy baseline than they were. Don’t worry about it, it’s only the adrenaline.”

“Oh good,” whispered Samantha, before she hugged herself with her arms and wished she said something earlier. “Hey, say I don’t want to seem ungrateful. But,” Samantha stared around at her new home like she was worried it was going to evaporate in a faint mist any second. “It can be dangerous to have too much out in these parts. There’s nobody around here, but still it draws attention to anyone passing by.”

“I’ve seen no evidence of other humans nearby.”

“There haven’t been raiders around these parts for a while, this oasis is too secluded and small for most to see it at a distance. But even still,” Samantha swallowed some spit, and made some nervous movements with her jaw. “I don’t want too much unwanted attention being drawn to this place. It’s the only oasis for at least thirty miles in any direction. Trust me, I know. So please don’t make this any more noticeable than it already is.”

Adam had a look outside at the remaining metal he had readied for expansion projects.

“If you’d let me there’s much more I could do for this place my master.”

“Just promise you’ll,” Samantha took in a staggered breath, and hugged herself even tighter. “You’ll stop for now okay? Make sure we’re well covered by vegetation, and the remaining scraps are covered, and just stop.”

Adam was out of the practice of reading humans, and knew there was a possibility of their mannerisms having shifted a bit from the earlier sliver of the millennium. But he knew that hint of sadness that hid repressed emotions that could creep up every now and again in a voice when they were troubled.

Adam needed to know why Samantha was so afraid.

“I will do whatever my master requires of me,” Adam continued to crouch in their cramped living arrangement. A faint smile hovered around his metallic lips. “What does my master require?”

Samantha started to feel a wave of emotion flow over her and flood her mind. She’d spent the better part of a decade in complete solitude, evading capture here and there. Defending herself from raiders passing by. Knowing when to lay low, when more powerful forces paraded through. It’d been so long since Samantha had another to just sit down and talk to besides herself, human or computer.

Samantha had felt that void for so long, that she didn’t realize she was lonely.

“I think more than anything else I’d like a friend?” said Samantha, looking up at him a little shy.

The specks he called eyes glittered down at her, as the metal skin around Adam’s humanoid structure faintly lifted. Thousands of little gears gradually drew him in smaller, until he was no larger than Samantha.

Adam set a kind hand on her shoulder.

“Then that is what I will be.”

~5~

TO SAMANTHA’S UNSETTLED surprise, she couldn’t remember just how many days had passed.

She was so good at keeping track of the weeks and months, when her only concern was survival. Her senses were more attuned to the ebb and flow of each and every day. Attuned to what she needed to do for sustenance. She could keep track of the time by the position of the sun in the sky to within minutes. Had a sixth sense for when and where what animals remained around there liked to come out, avoiding the hottest times of the day. She knew how to operate at a baseline closer to death than most could attempt without fainting. Samantha felt like her presence of mind was always there before, but even so she wasn’t truly awake.

Now her life was passing her by in the blink of an eye, and she’d never felt more alive.

“There were myths about you when I was a kid,” said Samantha, as Adam paused the animated movie he’d been projecting onto the air.

“You really want to have a conversation during the best part of the movi—”

“I never believed them,” said Samantha, interrupting the robotic miracle in her desert oasis home. “I didn’t think any incredible creatures that could grant wishes to people and bring them peace in their lives could ever exist. It was hard enough finding normal critters to eat rolling around the desert, why would I ever believe an animal as magical as you could happen, you know?”

“I can imagine,” said Adam, as Samantha sort of laughed to herself. It was a new normal for her, yet all at once in a burst of thought it shocked her again. “Who told you these myths, if I may ask?”

The smile playing on Samantha’s face lingered an uncomfortable moment, before it started to fade.

“You can go ahead again,” said Samantha, gesturing at the air and eating another piece of mouse jerky. “Keep playing it.”

Adam politely nodded his head, as an animated lion started singing a joyful song again, with a meerkat and a warthog.

––––––––

“HOW CAN YOU BE SO SURE of your age?” asked Adam.

Samantha’s face soured some, like she thought he might bring that back up.

“I’m really good at remembering things, like how many days have passed. That’s all,” whispered Samantha.

“That’s a gift,” said Adam.

Samantha had a sudden flashing image of burning tents in her mind, along with shouts all around her for mercy. She remembered how they panicked in the fires, when a blue woman emerged from the flames of her village with a horse and path from harm. A gentle, beautiful woman who showed them the way to fresh oases, far away from danger. She rode away into the darkness with her sister, and waited for the blue witch to re-appear, to guide her once again from the worries and cares of her life. She remembered counting the sunsets in the company of her sister, and she remembered counting the sunsets obsessively all alone for countless years. Waiting for the blue woman from her memories and starlit dreams to re-emerge in the sands, to show her the way to a better world.

Samantha counted for forever.

She turned her head to the other side of her pillow, and looked out the window at the stars.

“It’s not a gift,” said Samantha.

“All about perspective I suppose,” said Adam, as he dimmed his internal lighting, and rested his gears. Conserved his energy.

“Hey,” said Samantha, biting her thumbnail and looking away from him at the wall.

“Yes master?” replied Adam, with all the kindness he could muster into his robotic voice.

“Nobody else can control you right? Nobody but me?” asked Samantha.

Adam stood and shot a long arm from his side that coiled out then sprang back and hung somewhat limp for a second. He brought it up to his chest as he bowed.

“I may only serve one master at a time,” replied Adam. “Sophisticated hackers could crack our codes in ancient times and hijack our settings, but it appears nobody in the modern era is half so savvy as to be capable of doing that nowadays. Your touch is the only touch I can respond to as it was yours that awakened me, your fingertips. And judging by the sheer absence of people around here, it’s safe to say I won’t be getting stolen so easily by the ghosts of history. So long as you live, I’m yours.”

“I didn’t much understand the first half of what you said, but good,” whispered Samantha, as she gently rubbed her fingertips. “Hopefully nobody cuts off my hands.”

“I should hope not,” said Adam.

Samantha took a meditative breath, and tried so hard to forget things she’d always remember.

She fought the visions of those scarred monsters who stole everything from her all those years prior. She dreamed often, of how natural it would feel to burn their living bodies in the fires they started. She dreamed of taking their machetes from their grips, and as her heart seized with a blissful fury she’d hack them to a bloody horror. And then as she hacked they’d turn to an ashen dust, and just as she internalized the fragmentation of the swirling reality around her, she’d wake up to a denial of her revenge. And a cold sweat covering her body in the desert night.

“I hope you’re right that there aren’t any more people around,” whispered Samantha, still staring at the walls. “I don’t know that I would like to meet any more of the people in this world, they’re sick.”

Adam’s head made faint robotic noises, as he inclined his ear towards Samantha. He didn’t push her on the subject.

She’d tell him on her own time, what made her feel that way.

“Sickening humans seems to be a theme throughout history,” said Adam, paying close attention to Samantha’s rapid breathing. “I should hope there aren’t any more monsters about.”

~6~

“YOU’RE NOT ACTUALLY real are you,” whispered Samantha, through her tears.

Adam sat up from an insulated container he’d worked on for months, and retracted his arms from their dutiful work at several silicon wafers he’d finally produced from the sand. They were finally at a respectable enough purity to produce workable integrated circuits. He wandered over to Samantha huddled beside the waters of the oasis, and set a hand on her shoulder. She gently nudged it away.

“I’m as real as the sand around you my master.”

“No, I mean,” said Samantha, with her hands at her ears. Her heart hammering at her chest. “You’re not alive. We have this relationship, but you’re not real. You’re not alive.”

Adam’s lightbulb eyes shined a lighter blue as he studied her growing distrust. He tried to soothe her with philosophy.

“What exactly is life in the end?” asked Adam, like his circuits really wondered. “We’re all nothing but assemblages of particles forming a consciousness—”

“Just shut up and answer me,” said Samantha, her mind made up in her panic. “I forgot how badly I needed somebody after all these years. And then you pop up, and you make me feel like I have a friend, and you said artificial intelligence yeah? How can intelligence be artificial?”

Adam tried to find an explanation that would satisfy, “It’s real, and also unreal in that it’s manufactured—”

Samantha started to scream at the top of her lungs.

“FUCKING SAY IT,” shouted Samantha, her eyes shut and her eyelids shivering. Shaking fists at her waist. “YOU’RE NOT REAL AT ALL YOU’RE FAKE.”

“Your face is turning pale—”

Samantha shoved Adam to the side, and hurt her hand on his metallic body though he was light enough to fall. She rushed to the heat of the outside, and forgot just how bitter the burn of the noonday sun could get.

She panted with her hands at her temples, and screamed at the sky. She sobbed another protracted while, and remembered everything she once had before she screamed another lungful so hard she got lightheaded.

Adam followed her outside the hut, when his eyes were drawn to the moving plants in the distance.

Samantha collapsed to her knees, and sobbed bitterly.

“I’m sorry..” she whispered, with cries that made her shoulders dance up and down. She shielded her eyes from the sun and the sand blowing in the wind, as Adam rushed over to his master. “I’m sorry, I just can’t take it anymore. You’re all I have and you’re not real, and I’m sorry..”

“Master..”

“This isn’t the,” Samantha sniffled some, her eyes still shut tight enough to drown the blinding sunlight from her eyes. Adam stood in front of her, the light reflecting harshly off his metal. “It isn’t the first time I’ve hallucinated something into being, before it disappeared. I used to follow this blue woman in the night, and then she’d disappear. She helped me before, and now I think I see her, and I just don’t know if it’s in my mind. Or if she was real. Adam I can’t let myself fall into that dark place again.”

“Master I was wrong..”

“I’m sorry Adam,” whispered Samantha, touching his metal and hoping he’d never go away. “I don’t give a fuck what you’re made of, you’re real. You’re real to me.”

“Master I’m sorry, please open your eyes.”

Samantha opened her eyes to a bright and blurry oasis, until the world around her came into better view.

She saw a cloaked man in the distant vegetation, with a bag of plants slung over his shoulder, and a machete in his hand. He swayed on his feet like one plagued with fatigue, as he held the leather reins of his horse as it drank from the waters. He was ready to bolt away at a moment’s notice.

Samantha looked up at the man before her, and smiled like she was ready to laugh.

“Oh would you look at that,” whispered Samantha to Adam. If it was a scout, she knew they couldn’t let him get out alive. “Some poor soul found our oasis.”

~7~

THE MAN STOOD ON HIS weakened legs, as he squinted with trembling horror at the wondrous, bizarre monster standing beside Samantha.

He shook his head lightly, and wondered if it was a reality or a mirage, when Adam stretched himself out in a flowing chorus of metal expanding outwards. Until Adam was as tall as building with legs like tree trunks. He held a hand back to Samantha, as a horror grew like a living, thrashing creature within her.

She didn’t trust strangers.

Adam looked down over his shoulder, glowing a silver color in the sun.

“What would my master have me do?” whispered Adam, his voice deep and electronic.

The man’s eyes peeked through his covers, fixed on Adam. His horse lapped up another mouthful of water, before it noticed the titanic robot studying them from afar. The horse whinnied a bit, and moved around to its owner’s fatigued dismay.

“Easy,” whispered the man, as he tried to settle his horse. He dropped his machete and got to petting and shushing. He hardly had the energy to stand upright, but he couldn’t let his horse storm away. “Easy.”

“We can’t let him get away,” whispered Samantha, as the man gripped his horse’s reins tighter, and whispered something gentle into its ear. “He might tell others, can you go get him?”

Adam crouched a bit, preparing for a lunge.

“As you wish.”

Fresh arms stormed out of Adam’s sides as he leapt through the sand. They burst out fast as lightning, with wiggling fingers that gripped the man and his panicked, braying horse in moments.

Adam lifted them up to his face like they were toys in his play pen, and whispered with a menacing robotic voice, “Who are you disturbing my master’s peace?”

He panicked at Adam’s eerily cold grip.

“I’m Ryder,” he said, as the cloths around his face drooped off. “My name’s Ryder.”

“How did you come to this place?”

“What the hell are you?” asked Ryder, staring at his horse thrashing around in Adam’s hands. “Are you hurting her?”

Adam squeezed him hard enough to show this wasn’t a game.

“Where are you from?” shouted Adam, his face growing in size with sharpened teeth.

Ryder begged.

“Please,” whispered Ryder, his eyes going white. He used what energy remained within him to fight his way from Adam’s grip, and to explain. “I’m just trying to survive.”

Adam’s eyes became additional mouths, with thousands of teeth sharp as razors.

“You’re with raiders,” whispered Adam.

“NO,” shouted Ryder, as Adam returned his eyes to little beady, blue specks. “No I’m peaceful. I live at an oasis far away from here, I went out looking for supplies. I’m peaceful.”

“Adam wait,” whispered Samantha, as Adam loosened his grip enough for Ryder to breathe deeper than shallow breaths.

“He may be lying,” said Adam, as he projected readouts of a sophisticated polygraph test onto the air. “I have hundreds of years of lie detector tests at my disposal to read from, and he’s hiding something.”

“You’ll understand if I don’t fully trust the monster squeezing the life out of me,” shouted Ryder, straining the words from his throat. He looked down at Samantha, and tried to plead with her. “Please make him set me down, I’m not a threat.”

Samantha looked at him as his wrappings dropped from his face. She noticed he had different colored eyes, one green one blue. He looked afraid.

“What are you hiding?” asked Samantha, as Ryder looked at them like he didn’t know if he could trust them. “You know you’re not leaving here alive if you don’t tell us.”

Some of the life left Ryder’s eyes at that.

“You have to,” whispered Ryder, staring at them for mercy. “You have to let me go, I have to get back there.”

“Why?” asked Adam, as Adam set the horse down, and tethered her to the house by the neck. Adam turned some hands into knives, which made Ryder scream and blink a lot. He hovered them by Ryder’s face a moment, before Adam used his knife hands to cut some vegetables beside the waters. He set them by the horse as it backed away against the house, though it brayed a little less. Ryder watched it all with bated breath.

Adam’s attentive eyes returned to Ryder’s frightened body, as he squeezed him a little harder.

“You never answered my question,” whispered Adam, with a hint of fury.

“Because,” whispered Ryder, looking at Samantha like he wanted to believe he could confide in them. Ryder looked at their building covered in the vegetation, and the rest of the empty oasis. Ryder dropped his head as he tried to squeeze the words out with what air remained in his chest. They were all alone. “Because it’s not just me, I have a family and we’re part of a tribe. I’m trying to gather resources for them, we’re starving. We’re all starving.”

Ryder cried bitterly in Adam’s giant metal hands, as he loosened his grip ever so slightly. He looked down to his master.

“What would you have me do?” whispered Adam.

Samantha held her hands together by her lips, as she watched the life leave Ryder’s eyes.

“Please,” cried Ryder, hardly able to remain awake. Hardly able to speak, anymore. “Please we’re starving. They’re starving..”

“Do you believe him?” asked Samantha.

Adam studied him a moment longer, as Ryder’s breathing slowed.

“I can’t know for certain if he’s telling the truth,” whispered Adam.

“Set him down,” said Samantha, as Adam hesitated a moment. She hurried him with her hands. “Hurry, hurry set him down, check his vitals.” Adam obeyed, and set Ryder down beside the waters. Projections emerged from his torso, as he gave Ryder a swift check up. “Is he okay?”

Ryder was sweating like a stuck pig in the desert heat. Ryder mouthed out, ‘I need to help them.. I need to help..’ until he couldn’t seem to speak anymore, and his chest barely lifted at all with every successive breath.

“I can try to help him,” whispered Adam, as Ryder’s heterochromatic eyes fluttered out of consciousness. “But I can’t be sure it’ll work, he’s not well at all.”

~8~

RYDER FELT ALL THE blood in his body drift to the surface of his skin, as he settled into a restless nightmare.

He saw a thousand, inspecting hands crawl all over his body, cold to the touch, before a faint pinch in his arm that left a separate cooling sensation flowing through his body like an icy cold stream through his veins.

He saw a swirling of green colors on his shut eyelids, before a sudden onslaught of dark memories shoved themselves back to the forefront of his mind.

Ryder saw the starving people in his tribe in their tents around their dwindling oasis. He saw the emaciated bodies, the depressed burials, the unfamiliar infighting, and the sparse, unsettling suggestions of cannibalism growing by the night. Ryder left with what he needed to survive a week’s ride, with no clear certainty that he would find what they needed to save who remained, or even what remained of his family. Ryder saw their scattered glances, mixes of hope upon his return and accusatory glances at his perceived abandonment. He promised he’d return, and all at once in his dream they turned to decayed skin and standing bones as he floated far away into a dreaming, green sandstorm that left him surrounded by nothing passing into deeper nothing. Until the empty eternity of sand surrounding him depressed his spirit to the point of acceptance that, any burning hot day now, he would surely die alone on his fool’s errand with his horse that may soon become his last meal. Ryder saw strangers in his mind passing through the ghost town he used to call a home, scavenging what they needed of their supplies. Fighting the few who might remain alive. Ryder saw their smiling eyes, as they rode off in their rolling vehicles that seemed like mythical objects from a dream, in his youth. And where there was once a home, there was nothing but ash and sand stretching far away. And Ryder found himself alone in the desert heat, beating the barren dust, until suddenly, a creeping monster tall as the sky and wide as a cloud peeked over the distant mountains with blue, ecstatic eyes. It reached a hand towards Ryder with a smile of knives for teeth and mirrors for lips, with a girl bouncing her head up and down over his shoulder like she was listening to a happy song..

––––––––

RYDER STARTLED HIMSELF awake in a cool room. Samantha was singing to herself and bobbing her head beside him, as she chewed some snake meat with her mouth open.

“Oh look at that Mr. Pretty Eyes is awake,” said Samantha, setting her plate down and wiping her hands. Ryder tugged at his restraints around his arms, and felt at the strange tube running fluid into his skin. He stared at Adam in the corner of the room boiling some water, before he rushed to get up. Samantha set a hand on his chest and put up an index finger, “Ah ah ah, don’t make any sudden movements. You don’t want that thing ripping out of you, you could bleed out bad. Let him take it out later. And you’re not going anywhere just yet in your condition so just be patient,” Samantha took a bite of some mouse meat on the side, and handed Ryder his own plate. He had enough free rein of his hands to handle food, and bring it up to his mouth. Samantha took another bite, and spoke with her mouth full. “You have nyshe eyesh by the way, did I shay that already?”

Ryder looked at the IV in his arm, and the foreign clear bag of liquid dripping fluid into his veins. Adam watched them from afar and waved hi at Ryder, before watering some plants in the corner. Adam was back in a human-sized form, or fun sized as he liked to call it.

“Is he uh,” said Ryder, as Adam went to type into some strange board he’d created. He gave Samantha a thumbs up, like it was working. “Is he your dad?”

“Definitely not,” said Samantha.

“Okay I guess that makes sense,” whispered Ryder, staring at the odd screen that displayed images in front of Adam. “What is he then?”

“He,” said Samantha, forcing the plate up into his face. “Is none of your goddamn business. Now eat.”

Ryder reluctantly sniffed at the food, then took a bite. Then took another bite. And another, until his whole plate was cleared.

“You weren’t lying about starving,” said Samantha.

Ryder didn’t appreciate the comment. He swallowed what food was left in his mouth, and gestured at the bed.

“So you go from threatening to kill me to trying to save my life, does that mean you guys trust me now?” said Ryder, holding up his loosely restrained wrists. “I’m not going to come back here with a horde of people, can I please go?”

“Nope and nope,” said Samantha, raising up her hand dangling by the bed to show she grabbed a machete the moment he woke up. “You try anything you’re a goner. And I’m still not one hundred percent sure I believe you have a whole tribe of people, but I don’t altogether think you’re lying either.”

“I’m not lying about that,” said Ryder, as he massaged the top of his scalp and messed up his already dried and unkempt hair. “Look, I get that you don’t trust me, but trust me I’m not. We’re not raiders.”

Adam set down his water pot, and navigated his way back over to Ryder doing his best impersonation of a non-robotic human caretaker.

“Happy to see you’re awake and well,” said Adam, as he set a many fingered hand on Ryder’s arm. He pulled out the needle smoothly, and disposed of it in a trash can as he applied pressure to Ryder’s arm with a tissue. “You’re lucky you ran into us.”

Ryder’s eyes filled with wonder. He watched with fascination as Adam’s arms could appear, and recoil as he pleased. How his hands could assume different shapes, and add fingers at will. He admired the silver shine of Adam’s coating, and wondered how much it would be worth if it was melted.

And suddenly, in a burst, Ryder realized what Adam must have been.

“You’re one of those ancient genies aren’t you,” said Ryder, as Adam’s robotic head went to attention to the noise of several gears. “Only you’re not in a lamp. I didn’t think those were real stories when I heard them as a kid.”

Samantha gripped her machete a little tighter, and looked at Adam like she wasn’t sure what to do.

Adam paused a contemplative moment, before he made himself just a little bit bigger, and leaned over Ryder’s resting body.

His face morphed into a frightening, dragonesque form.

“Well well Mr. Ryder,” said Adam, allowing Ryder to witness a much more menacing face. “Now we really may have a problem.”

~9~

RYDER TRIED TO BACK away from the silver monster at his sunkissed throat.

“Look I can’t just steal you obviously,” whispered Ryder. “I don’t want any more problems than I already have.”

“You’ll have them if you’re not careful,” replied Adam.

“Look can you,” said Ryder, as Adam hovered his fanged face around Ryder’s neck. Samantha watched uncomfortably from his side. “Can you PLEASE just stop being so fucking scary for like two seconds, I’m not threatening you I need you to help me. You can scavenge right? Could you scavenge for a larger group?”

“I do only what my master requires,” replied Adam.

“Okay,” said Ryder, putting his hands up. He turned to his side and locked eyes with Adam’s master. “Look, what’s your name?”

“Samantha.”

“Okay, Samantha. Nice name, all right, can I show you something Samantha?”

Samantha looked over at Adam a moment, then did a really terse nod of the head. Ryder held his hands up with really wide eyes, then sort of gestured down with his head. He reached his hands into his belt area. Samantha put her hands out and lifted her machete, “Whoa whoa whoa.”

“Hang on,” said Ryder, putting a hand out like he knew it looked bad but just wait for it. Ryder moved his hands a bit slower, and gently pulled a leather pouch out from between his waist and his skin. He opened it up, and removed a photograph. Adam’s face shifted slightly back to a more humanoid form as Ryder set it gently into Samantha’s hands.

Samantha studied what looked to be a black and white polaroid image of him, and four other people out on a desert shore beside a far reaching oasis. Two boys, and two girls.

“How did you get an image like this?” asked Samantha.

“Do you have family?” said Ryder, trying to get a hint of empathy from her. “People you care about? Anybody at all?”

Samantha stared at the picture like it was from another world. She ran a dry and calloused finger across the outline of a woman who looked a lot like Ryder.

“I don’t,” replied Samantha.

Ryder noticed the faint glint of light leaving her eyes.

“Did you used to have family?” asked Ryder.

“Don’t push it,” replied Samantha.

Ryder pressed his face a little closer to Samantha’s.

“Well you’re pushing me pretty hard, I hope you understand that. That’s my family you’re talking about when you say you don’t want to help out my village. And they need me back there, I just,” Ryder choked on the rest of the words. He took a moment to gather himself. “I promised them I’d be back with supplies. Enough to keep us alive at least a little while longer.”

Samantha stared at Ryder’s feet a moment, then gave Adam a look. He smoothly backed away, and shrunk back to a less ominous form.

“I know what kinds of tribes live out there, me and my sister made our way here to get the fuck away from all of that,” said Samantha. She shook her head and tried to not choke up. “I swear if you’re lying—”

“Why the hell would I lie about any of that,” said Ryder, staring at the picture like he was insulted. “Look, I know there’s a lot of bad people out there. We’ve been hit too, I hope you understand that. But,” Ryder took a moment to swallow his spit. He licked his chapped lips and continued. “Imagine that was your sisters, your brothers,” Ryder leaned forwards. There was a faint rash around the area his wrists were tied to the post. “Wouldn’t you do whatever it took to make sure nothing bad ever happened to them?”

Samantha resisted the tug of conscience in her heart. She knew it was a risk navigating beyond their oasis, and she knew so little about the world beyond anymore. But what little she remembered, she couldn’t forget if she tried. And then quite suddenly, there was a flicker of light in the sky.

Samantha looked out the window, and thought she noticed the reflection of metal out there. She stared a while, before she returned her attention to Ryder. Maybe it was just in her mind.

Samantha made a decision.

“How far away is your home?”

~10~

THERE WERE SO MANY stars in the sky, the night they made their way to Ryder’s village.

Adam converted what metal they had into a wagon large enough for all of their supplies, with a soft clay interior. They set the horse and camel in to make friends with one another, as many vegetables as they could fit, and an overkill supply of water. They had a whole colony of rodents making squeaking noises that faded into a background ambience of rolling wheels over soft, loose sand.

Even still, Adam was able to drag it quite smoothly and swiftly, with Samantha seated on his shoulder and gripping a pair of handles in his frame.

“You think he’s doing okay down there?” asked Samantha. She looked down into the wagon, and saw Ryder looking up at the nighttime sky. “He hasn’t said a word since you told him where to go and we left.”

“I’m sure he’s fine master,” replied Adam. “I still don’t know that I agree with your trusting him so readily.”

“It’s not your place to disagree,” said Samantha.

Adam stared straight ahead at the endless desert sands, and didn’t speak again for a moment.

“No it is not,” Adam replied.

Adam dragged the wagon along the ground, as Samantha stared up at the sky at something flickering up there.

“Do you see that one?” asked Samantha, pointing up into the sky. “Isn’t that one odd?”

Adam took a glance up at the sky, careful not to drop Samantha.

“It doesn’t look like anything to me,” replied Adam, avoiding a dip in the distance. “Only the stars.”

Samantha watched Ryder shift uneasily in his seat.

“It’s going to get tougher when it’s daylight,” said Samantha.

“It won’t be so bad,” said Adam. “I made a canopy for you, and an air conditioner.”

Samantha made a funny face, like that didn’t sound so bad at all.

“Well I appreciate it,” said Samantha. She watched Ryder shift uneasily in his seat. “Do you think it’d be all right if I went down there to keep him company?”

“Whatever my master wishes,” replied Adam, slowing to a stop and dropping to his knees. He extended his arm down to the sand, and made a mini slide tube for her to slide down running the length of it. “Just be careful, we can’t yet be certain what his intentions are. Leave him restrained for now.”

“Okay, okay,” replied Samantha, making fists and knocking them lightly against her head with a funny face. “You must just be running all kinds of probabilities in your head trying to keep me safe.”

“It’s imperative that I keep you safe,” replied Adam. “It’s my make up.”

Samantha took a deep breath, then slid down Adam’s arm. It went horizontal just before it reached the ground to slow her momentum to a stop.

“I know, I know, but it’s too much sometimes,” said Samantha, as she made her way up a small ladder to climb into Ryder’s wagon. She smiled politely. “Mind if I join ya?”

“By all means,” said Ryder, gesturing kindly at the plethora of rodents caged beside him. Adam started pulling them along again. “So he still doesn’t trust me?”

“Nope,” said Samantha. “You could hear all that?”

“Yeah he’s actually really loud you should warn him about that,” said Ryder, gritting his teeth some. “You want him to come across as human as possible when we get there, tell him to speak more softly and maybe get rid of that faint metallic twang to all his words. He should wear this too.”

Ryder grabbed at his clothing from earlier, and tossed it over to Samantha with what range of motion his ties allowed.

“Why would he need to wear this?” asked Samantha.

“Because you’re going to get a lot of unwanted attention if they know he’s a genie,” said Ryder. “If they find out he’s one of those treasured ancient genies, and you’re his master, somebody might kidnap you when you don’t suspect it and use you to use him.”

“Oh,” replied Samantha.

“Oh’s right,” said Ryder, eyeing the clothes. “So yeah, I’ll keep your secret, but make sure he’s not a giant when we get close to there. If he’s all dressed up to protect himself from the sun nobody’s going to think anything of it. He can still help everybody without anybody knowing what he is. That keeps you both safe. He can shrink to human size whenever he wants yeah?”

“Yeah,” said Samantha, feeling the wool on the cloak. “How many people are there?”

“A little over fifty,” said Ryder, “There used to be a lot more. Used to be a lot more food too, until all of it started to disappear. Overhunting, and gods know what else.” Ryder kept glancing up at the sky. “I hope we’re not too late, I’ve got a bad feeling about this. There’s so many flickering lights in the sky tonight.”

“Yeah,” whispered Samantha, moving her hair to the side. “This journey’s going to get a lot rougher when it turns to daylight, but the stars look incredible tonight. It’s even nicer from up on Adam’s shoulders.”

“It’s a bad omen,” said Ryder.

Samantha’s carefree expression shifted.

“How do you know it’s a bad omen?”

Ryder studied the lights in the sky, and shook his head as he lied down to get some rest. He didn’t want to explain.

And it was a long road ahead.

“Experience,” he replied.

~11~

THE FIRST THING THEY smelled when they awakened was the foreign scent of burning petrol, and smoke.

Adam stopped dragging their wagon to lift up the edge of the canopy.

“Master Samantha,” whispered Adam, as Samantha and Ryder shielded their eyes from the sun. “There’s a disturbance up ahead.”

Samantha rushed to squint through the canopy at the burning of a distant village. There were revving engines, and the faint shouts of others.

There was gunfire.

“Is that your village?” asked Samantha.

Ryder stared in terror at the rising smoke, as his horse whinnied and tried to jump onto its hind legs. He rushed his hands up.

“Untie me,” whispered Ryder. He stared at them with fervent, begging eyes. It took them a few seconds too long to react. “UNTIE ME!”

“Untie him,” said Samantha. She slid his machete over to him, as Adam reached into the wagon and made a thin, snakelike projection with a scalpel at the end. He cut Ryder’s ties at his hands and his feet.

Ryder threw all the rope off and picked up his machete, before rushing to let his horse out of their makeshift stable. He dropped the ramp to guide her to the sand.

“I have to go find them,” said Ryder.

“Don’t just rush in there,” shouted Samantha.

“Look either you help or you don’t,” shouted Ryder, jumping onto his horse with his machete in hand. “But I’m not wasting any time deciding, I’m going.”

“RYDER,” cried Samantha.

Ryder kicked at his horse, and rode straight for the chaos that used to be his home.

“We can’t just let him go alone,” said Samantha, with a hand on Adam’s tree trunk of a leg.

“It’s too dangerous master, they have more advanced weaponry than anything you’ve described in this era,” said Adam. “They shouldn’t be capable of this level of warfare.”

“But we have to help him,” said Samantha, watching Ryder rush forward into a slaughter. Samantha felt an unwelcome wave of repressed memories attack her mind. “WE HAVE TO HELP HIM I COMMAND YOU TO HELP HIM.”

Adam shook his head, then looked back at their wagon of supplies.

“We’ll have to leave this behind unguarded,” said Adam.

“Fine, we’ll travel light,” said Samantha, hopping into Adam’s hand. He formed a more stable restraint for her out of his shoulder, and set her inside of it. It looked almost like a seat on a rollercoaster ride. “Do you remember what his family looks like?”

Adam projected a faint, blue image onto the air of Ryder’s photograph.

“I remember everything,” replied Adam, as he made sure Samantha was strapped in tight. He primed himself for a leap. “Hold on tightly master.”

Adam dug his heels deep into the sand, and made a sprint for the village.

––––––––

“DALIA!” SHOUTED RYDER, as he rode his horse past the tents and bodies. “AMARI!”

Ryder heard the whizzing of projectiles by his head, and the sudden bellowing cry of his horse beneath him as it fell to the ground in agony.

Ryder was thrown into the sand, beside too many familiar corpses.

He buried his cheek into the ground in horror, as he watched his horse writhe away until it stopped moving completely. Ryder squeezed the sand in his palms as he pushed himself up. He coughed through the smoke, and tried to identify his tent. There were revving engines all around, and the noise of more bullets passing by. He rushed to cover behind a piece of scrap metal lying beside the blacksmith’s hut, and tried to catch his breath.

“This is crazy,” whispered Ryder, as he watched fresh holes rip through the tents all around him. He tried to orient himself a bit, before he saw his tent engulfed in smoke by the waters. He took a series of deep breaths and prepared to make a run for it, when he felt a piece of warm metal suddenly at his temple.

Ryder turned slowly to its jubilant, scarred up wielder.

“You people can’t fight for shit,” said the raider with a gun. “Too starved I take it. Hope you take comfort in knowing we’re going to make good use of every last bit of everything we pillage tod—”

Ryder smacked the rifle and made a screaming tackle at the man. He brought him to the ground and landed two punches square in his toothless mouth, before the raider flipped Ryder over and smacked him in the head with the butt of the rifle.

Ryder couldn’t think straight a moment, as his executioner whispered, “You should know when you’ve been beate—”

The raider stopped short of finishing the sentence, when a sword pierced straight into his skull from ear to ear.

Ryder turned onto his side, to study the blurry giant coming into view.

Adam retracted the sword back into his body, as Samantha pulled the gun away from the raider’s grip. She held it like she didn’t much know what to do with it. Adam took it gently away from her.

“You want to be careful with these,” whispered Adam.

Samantha nodded aggressively, as she shook at Ryder on the ground. Adam did his best to give them cover.

“Ryder,” whispered Samantha, as she shook him.

Ryder took in heaping breaths on the ground with a deafening tinnitus. He stared at the blurry world around him and couldn’t much make out what was going on.

“We have to find them,” he whispered.

“Where are they?” asked Samantha

Ryder raised a weak hand up in the direction of the tent.

“Burning tent by the water, with the dead camels beside it,” whispered Ryder. “I told them to hide in the ground if there was a raid, but,” Ryder pressed his hands to his head with a tortured sorrow. “I don’t know if the tunnel can hold.”

“He has a concussion,” said Adam, as he made an opening within himself large enough to call a closet. Coiled arms reached out for Ryder and Samantha. Samantha hopped inside, and strapped Ryder in before she did herself. “We have to be quick.”

~12~

SAMANTHA AND RYDER heard the eternal ‘ping’ noise of bullets on metal, as Adam navigated the smoke and terror.

Samantha could see the dents forming along the interior of Adam’s outer shell, and stared through faint cracks at Ryder’s tent in flames. Samantha pressed a finger to Adam’s metal skin.

“You’re getting hurt,” said Samantha.

“I’m all right,” replied Adam, as he planted as many arms as he could around the burning tent’s perimeter.

Adam ripped into the tent covering, and found a faint mound of sand. Adam dug into the sand gently, until he could see a heat signature.

He reached his hands into the sand, and pulled out two warm, pale bodies absent any expressions of life.

“No,” whispered Ryder, seeing through the cracks and gradually regaining his senses. He stared in horror at his lifeless sisters in the hands of the armored titan, and beat against the walls of Adam’s insides as he shouted, “NO NO NO.”

Adam surveyed the smoke around him a moment, then made an opening within himself that looked a lot like fractal patterns before they looked like an entrance. He set Dalia and Amari beside their panicked brother. In moments restraints emerged from the floor beneath them, and held them secure.

Ryder tried to fight out of his restraints, then gripped tightly onto them as Adam’s whole core shook, and dropped down to one leg.

A moment later, Adam took another hit, and the faintest of openings formed within his torso.

“Adam we need to go,” said Samantha, as the whole frame shook again from fresh hits. Samantha peeked out, and saw vehicles ramming into Adam’s legs from below. The raiders fired and shouted in horror as they attacked him. “ADAM.”

Adam made another fractal pattern opening within himself, that slowly formed into a metallic cube around them. They felt a strange sense of loosening, and then a sudden weightlessness like they were going into free fall onto the sand below.

“Brace yourselves and look away master,” said Adam, as he set them swiftly on the sand in a metallic box that seemed to be littered with little dents in moments. “This may get ugly.”

Adam turned around to the countless raiders, suddenly quite solemn in their expressions. They were painted in gray along any inch of exposed skin, and wearing little more than faint amounts of body armor along with ammunition for their weapons.

“What the hell is that thing,” shouted one of the raiders, as he fired until his clip was empty. He re-loaded and fired again. “What do we do?”

“We need to leave,” said another.

“We can’t abandon all these suppl—”

“We need to LEAVE.”

More shaking arms sprouted from Adam’s sides, and wrapped around him like a straitjacket. He stared at a few, faint glimmering dots in the sky.

There was a flash of light in the air.

Adam released his arms from his sides, and sent out sharp, flailing, tentacle like projections that carved into everything in their paths.

“RUN!” cried one raider, as Adam cut into his comrades beside him. “EVERYBODY RUN!”

The vehicles at Adam’s feet turned around and kicked up sand as they drove away. Adam reached out at them, and slashed their tires. They skidded and ran into burning tents.

Everybody scattered, as Adam one by one picked up the guns of their fallen, and started firing.

Samantha shook and held her hands over her ears as Ryder fought against his restraints, until he was loose.

He rushed to his sisters, and checked their pulses.

“They’re not breathing,” whispered Ryder, brushing sand from their lips. He tried to breathe air into them one at a time, and did chest compressions. He looked back at Samantha and screamed, “HELP ME.”

Samantha caught her breath out of her delirium, and ripped herself from her restraints to help. She tried to breathe life into Dalia, as the smell of smoke and the noise of fire littered the air.

Adam studied the wreckage around him, and decided it was clear enough for now. The titan dropped down to one knee, and opened them back up to the full force of the sunlight.

“Let me try,” whispered Adam, reaching with metal hands, and curious objects that seemed to be inflated with air.

Ryder shoved his hair up and tried to see through his tears, as Adam pumped air into Dalia and Amari’s lungs, and performed firm chest compressions. It carried on for a while, as the sound of escaping raiders faded into the background. Ryder watched Adam’s futile attempts in agony, then shivered as he picked up a rifle from a sliced open raider.

Ryder screamed until his lungs burned, and fired at the vehicles riding off in the sand. The kickback was too much, and made him lose his balance until he dropped onto the ground and almost shot back at the village by mistake before he stopped. He kneeled on the ground, with his hair drooped over his head as he cried. After a while, no noise remained besides the sound of Adam trying to resurrect the dead, and the burning hot silence. Ryder had lost all hope.

Until he heard a harsh exhalation of sand from Dalia’s mouth.

Ryder rushed up to her side with ecstatic eyes, as he watched the redness return to her face. An eternity later, Amari followed suit and coughed up wet chunks of sand like she was throwing up. They looked at their brother like they were staring at a ghost.

“Am I dead?” coughed Dalia, staring at her sister and brother as she rested her weight on her elbows. “Are we dead?”

Ryder put his hands in their hairs, and pulled them in for an embrace. He kissed them one at a time on the head, and tried to fight away the infernal nightmare around him with the wish granted in his arms.

~13~

SAMANTHA LEANED UNEASILY, and felt herself drop to her side as the exhaustion of the moment took her body down in a heap.

She watched the way the fires danced along and between the tents, and would have found it somewhat pretty if it weren’t for the endless littered dead beneath the dancing fires. Samantha found herself thinking about her sister again. She’d seen so many dead bodies before, so long ago that it felt more like a scene from a nightmare than a reality within which she suffered. Suddenly, her memories felt more real and fresh than they had in years.

Samantha noticed the flickering of a light above her, and shielded her eyes to look up at the sky.

She felt the subtle shake of the ground, as Adam appeared beside her then.

“Are you okay master?”  whispered Adam.

“Yeah,” replied Samantha, with an uncomfortable expression. Like she wished she could go back in time, with a genie instead of her youth. “As well as I can be right now.”

Samantha shook her head of the memories, and heard the moaning of a dying man in a nearby tent. She stood up and started to wander over that way, when Adam diminished in size until he was no larger than Samantha. He set a metallic arm out to her.

“Let me check it,” said Adam.

“Okay,” said Samantha, rubbing her knuckles as Adam lifted the covers of the tent.

There was a crashed raider there in a car, moaning with a bleeding skull in the driver’s seat. There was another raider lifeless and impaled by his own spear in the passenger’s side. Adam took the gun from his grip, and inspected the car. He motioned that it should be all right for Samantha to come beside him.

“You’re a genie,” whispered the raider, swallowing his spit. His head lying on the bloodied steering wheel. “You’ve got to be.”

“What are these things?” asked Samantha, running her hand along the paint of the car. She ran a hand along a gun on the ground. “How did you get these weapons?”

“She,” said the raider, some blood pooling in his mouth beneath his tongue. It made his words sound wet. “She gave them to us.”

“Who did?” asked Samantha.

“I,” laughed the raider, like he wished none of this ever happened. Like he wished they’d never listened to her. “I don’t know, a man in our oasis came and showed them to us in the night a week ago. Said a woman commanded us to raid this oasis. She,” The raider swallowed more spit and blood, and shut his eyes like he was going to sleep. “She said do it today if we wanted to keep them. Of course we said yeah.”

“Who are you talking about?” asked Samantha. She looked at Adam with panicked eyes, then shook the raider until his eyes opened back up though they were glossing over. “Who did this? Who are you talking about?”

“I,” said the raider, shutting his eyes and smiling as he faded. “I didn’t think I’d welcome it so much.”

Samantha shook the raider in her hands.

“Who?” shouted Samantha. The raider let out a final breath, as Samantha planted a punch in his cheekbone. He didn’t react, and it hurt her hands. She punched his neck instead. “WHO.”

The monster in her hands never spoke another word. Samantha kept shaking him and hitting him, until Adam gently pried the body from her grip.

“It’s no use master,” said Adam.

“Can you,” said Samantha, searching with her eyes. “Can you see if there are others?”

“I don’t see any others,” said Adam, elongating his neck as he raised his head to survey the wreckage. He shook it. “I don’t believe there are any other survivors.”

Samantha looked around herself in vague bewilderment, when she heard Ryder shouting for them from behind.

“I’ll make sure they’re okay,” said Adam.

“Please,” said Samantha, as Adam hurried back to them. Samantha followed behind with her arms folded, as Ryder instructed his sisters to do whatever Adam said.

Adam studied them with all sorts of foreign instruments they’d never seen before. They watched Adam with eyes filled with wonder, and cried as he spoke and studied their vitals. Samantha walked up to Ryder. She was quiet a while at his side before she said, “This is only your sisters,” Amari and Dalia panted at Adam’s touch, as Ryder shut his eyes. “Where are your brothers?”

Ryder turned his head to the side as his eyes went weary.

“They’ve been gone a long time,” replied Ryder.

Samantha nodded her head, and couldn’t look him in the face.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t get here sooner,” said Samantha. More weariness crept into Ryder’s eyes. He shook his head but he didn’t say it was all right. Some of the crackling fires died around them as the tents burned completely to ashes. “This should never have happened.”

“You couldn’t have known this would happen,” said Ryder, staring at the sand to avoid staring at the bodies. Too many empty expressions and ever open eyes. “Where did they get those weapons?”

“I don’t know,” whispered Samantha, taking in a staggered breath. “But somebody wanted your village attacked specifically, one of them told us before he died.”

Ryder felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Why us?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” mouthed Samantha, sucking her lips into her mouth as more tears started to fall. There was a strange, little green lizard no larger than her thumb running along the perimeter of her foot, with odd eyes that looked more like crystal than they did like eyes. The lizard buried itself into the sand when Samantha noticed it, and disappeared. She gathered herself, and tried to be respectful. “What do we do now?”

Ryder surveyed the lands where he had so many childhood memories. He thought about all the times they went out hunting with their father, and brought back game for the wider village. He thought about the now non-existent vegetation that used to line the oasis. He remembered the horror stories of attacks he’d heard, that they always survived.

They’d been attacked before, but never like this.

“We honor their memories,” said Ryder, with a blank expression of rage as he stared across the waters of the oasis. “And then we bury the dead.”

~14~

IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG for Adam to dig enough holes.

Adam could do it all alone, but Ryder and his sisters insisted that they help. If nothing else, they wanted to keep the families together, in nearby graves. The bodies of the raiders were carved up for meat for the few livestock that survived, but every single member of their tribe was given a thoughtful burial. One by one, they set a family who used to be hunters into their freshly dug graves. Set a blacksmith and his family into their final resting places. They set each member of a family with two sets of twins into the sand. Samantha kept her eyes peeled for any signs of others charging for their oasis, but every so often she’d steal a glance back at them and feel a sink in her chest as Dalia broke down into fresh tears to be consoled by the others struggling to stay strong. She was the youngest, and the least familiar with loss by far, though not unfamiliar. Ryder’s blank expression as he dug suggested he’d seen too much of the same before.

They took care with every soul that was lost that day. Times grew tough and tensions brewed as the herds dwindled and supplies grew scarce around them. But no matter how bad things got towards the end there was a time where they were friends. And they made certain to remember the good times.

They were all buried by nightfall.

Samantha stared up at the growing number of lights in the firmament overhead, as they went about their burial rites.

Ryder hugged his sister, as he set a lit candle in her hands. Along with a cup of water, and a few pieces of food to be set within the mounds of what could now be called a cemetery. Amari blinked some with her arms crossed, before giving a faint nod that it was all right to go ahead, though she objected. Ryder whispered the words in his sister’s ear, and Dalia walked with grace out towards the western edge of the burial mounds, where the sun had set.

She set the candle down, along with the food.

“A flame, that their souls may walk in the dead of night to the evergreen lands. Food and water, that they may have nourishment in their travels. And by this, know there still live those who remember them as they were in life.”

“You shouldn’t keep teaching her these things,” whispered Amari to her brother.

Ryder didn’t look at her as he replied, “She needs this more than we do right now, let her mourn how she wants to.”

“It’s a waste of resources,” said Amari.

“It’s two pieces of rodent meat and a cup of water,” said Ryder.

“I would’ve killed for that a day ago,” said Amari.

Dalia paused a moment, before she broke out into a song. It was in a tongue Samantha didn’t recognize, but somehow it still sent a cold and prolonged shiver down her spine. She listened with her eyes to the stars, and for whatever reason felt herself start to cry in a way she never had before in her life.

Amari rolled her eyes and whispered, “You made her sing too.”

“Everybody knows that the gods love songs,” said Ryder.

“The gods aren’t real,” said Amari.

Ryder stared at the growing flickers of light in the sky.

“There’s more stars in the sky tonight,” said Ryder, pointing to the sky. “Even more than last night.”

Amari looked like he just gave her the flu.

“You’re still superstitious?” said Amari. “The stars are always there, flickering. No matter the moment.”

“I am still superstitious, because I knew that was a bad sign last night,” said Ryder. “Whatever gods there are must be watching. And they must be angry, or something, I don’t know. All we can do is try to appease them in the ways we’ve been taught.”

Amari gestured at the wreckage around them, still faintly visible in the night.

“No gods came to save us,” whispered Amari, staring at her brother with helpless, furious eyes.

Ryder turned slowly to where Samantha was, wiping her tear streaked face in the distance as she gave them their space. Ryder looked to her side, and followed his eyes up the length of Adam’s glowing body, until he could see his eyes.

“Are you blind?” asked Ryder.

Adam watched with large, blue eyes in the distant darkness, as Dalia sang her song to the gods of the oases.

~15~

“YOU NEVER TOLD ME IF you had a family,” said Ryder, as they sat at the edge of the oasis in the dead of night.

Samantha took an abrupt breath as she pulled her knees to her chest and watched the night sky’s reflection in the water.

“It’s not a very happy story,” said Samantha.

“Try the happy parts then,” said Ryder.

She played with the dagger in her hand that she found from a raider’s body, as she tried to remember.

“I lived in something of a village too before,” said Samantha. She blinked some, like maybe that wasn’t the best way to put it. “Well, if you could call it a village, it was a hamlet if anything. We had an oasis a lot smaller than this one. We even had some crops like you used to have here, the soil was so good there too. I had a few friends as a kid, I had a,” Samantha leaned her head forward some as she swallowed. “I had a father, and an older sister. They always said I looked just like my mother. Same copper complexion, same brown eyes. Same unruly hair. Same carefree recklessness, same awkwardness, just very,” Samantha laughed as she rubbed her eye with a knuckle, like she really would have loved to meet her. “Very weird like me apparently. That’s what they always used to say.”

Ryder flashed a smile. He was missing one of his incisor teeth, but it didn’t look so bad at all.

“I don’t know that I’d call you weird, we just all live in a weird world,” said Ryder. He took in a breath, and let out a sigh as he let his smile fade. “So you never met her.”

“I did not,” said Samantha, lightly pressing the tip of the dagger into her fingertip without breaking the skin. Samantha pointed the dagger at herself, and tried to smile. “She died giving birth to me.”

Ryder shook his head as he stared at the broken toenails in her feet.

“I’m sorry,” whispered Ryder. He brought his head up to just shy of meeting her face. “You deserved at least a memory.”

Samantha nodded as she stared around at the maze of sand to distract her thoughts until she was stable enough to go on.

“And my father and sister,” whispered Samantha, fighting her way through the memories. “They taught me how to survive from a young age. Taught me how to use a spear. Taught me how to find food. How to plant apricots, figs, olives. We went through periods of being hungry, but we never really starved. We were attacked here and there, but it was rare for us to lose people fighting. My father told us what we had to do in the event of a raid, and how to locate oases if we had to run. We played a lot as kids actually, we were never too worried.”

Ryder smiled some, like he could see a younger version of Samantha running around in the sand.

“Somehow I can imagine that,” said Ryder.

Samantha heard the noise of large pieces of metal being dropped in the distance. She flinched a little, then paid Adam no mind.

“And then when I was maybe seven,” whispered Samantha, finding herself suddenly shaking. “They just came from everywhe—”

“Hey hey,” said Ryder, setting a hand on the back of hers. He tried to smile to get her to smile. “I said the happy parts.”

Samantha watched his hand, and felt some strange comfort at his touch.

“Okay,” mouthed Samantha, trying to control her sobbing. She frowned as she wiped her eyes. “But you know, I think the tragic thing is,” Samantha felt a growing pinch of sorrow within her. “It’s been so long, I can’t even remember their faces so much. I don’t have a photograph of them all like you have.”

Ryder felt the pouch in his clothes, and took in a staggered breath. He imagined each of their faces, then stared at what remained of his family sleeping on quilts at the edge of the waters.

“I’m grateful you brought Adam here,” said Ryder, feeling a pang of survivor’s guilt. Samantha saw the endless mounds as she ran her hands through her hair a couple times. “But even with Adam, we’re not safe here.”

“We can make it safe here,” replied Samantha.

Ryder bit the skin off his sun chapped lips, and tried to think. The night always felt so deceptively peaceful. So peaceful that you might have never guessed there lurked dangers omnipresent around them miles away. They used to have scouts every night monitoring them from all sides. Ryder glanced back over his shoulder, as Adam gathered every piece of metal in the village together, as well as everything they took over in their caravan. Ryder took a few meditative breaths.

Adam’s eyes were worth a thousand of their own.

“Wherever those raiders came from, they know you have ancient technology now,” said Ryder.

“Maybe that means they’ll never come back here ever again,” said Samantha.

“I doubt that,” said Ryder, shutting his eyes and massaging his head to ease a splitting headache. “You don’t want word like that spreading. I wish we could have interrogated one of them. Should have found out where they’re coming from.”

“What would we do if we knew?”

Ryder looked at her like he thought it was obvious.

“We’d kill them all before they hit another group,” said Ryder, before taking a glance around. “Or hit here again to finish the job. We need to raid them back, they must have a goldmine of supplies too.”

“Even if we knew where they were, there might be too many of them. And I’m starting to worry Adam’s not invincible.”

“Look, the gods,” Ryder stopped speaking a moment when Samantha shook her head on instinct. Ryder gestured his sunburned hand at Adam. “The gods granted you a gift.”

“I don’t believe in gods that would let massacres like this happen,” whispered Samantha.

“I didn’t either for a long while, but the fact that you have,” Ryder’s face turned uneasy, as he pointed at Adam welding some pieces of metal together. Adam gave himself a thumbs up, like it looked pretty good. “The fact that you have that at your disposal? That must mean something. You said he has all the knowledge of the ancients right?”

“He knows,” said Samantha making a funny sort of face. “He knows a lot.”

Ryder stared at the vehicles the raiders left behind. And the littered guns all across the bloodied sand.

Ryder wondered.

“Can Adam make more weapons like those raiders had?” said Ryder.

Samantha swung her attention back to Adam, as he inspected the silicon wafers he’d brought from their home. His robotic, blue eyes expanded with wonder.

Samantha had a feeling.

“I think he can do more than just that,” she replied.

~16~

DALIA STARTLED UP TO the sound of brief gunfire, and discovered herself inside of an air-conditioned, stone house.

She shook Amari awake with a harsh hand.

“Uhh,” whispered Dalia, as Amari scrunched her face up and took in a breathy, stretching yawn. “Sis?”

Amari exhaled as she blinked her eyes to a squint. She went still and breathless a moment, before her eyes grew wider as she sat up and inspected the silk bed sheets on her legs. The first of many surprises.

There were glass windows in their room, along with fresh silk clothes set aside for them freshly spun. There was a stockpile of all stolen weaponry from the previous day covered beneath some cloth in the corner, along with a table with several plates of fresh cooked vegetables, some meat, along with some figs and dates.

Amari peeked out the window, and saw a number of small silos built up to store food. She saw a series of small mounds forming a square around some good soil, along with the footprints of a giant all around the perimeter of it.

She peeked over beside the vegetation, and saw Ryder there trying to figure out how to re-load his firearm. Once he got it right he unloaded a clip on some cans.

Dalia held her face beside the wind of the air conditioner, before she thought she heard some type of noise. She stood up to wander around the corner of the room.

“Dalia wait,” said Amari, as she got up to follow her. She followed her sister around the corner, and found her gawking in confusion at a screen.

There was a video of Persian cats playing there, knocking objects one by one off a table as its owner objected.

“What the hell is this?” asked Dalia.

“It looks odd right?” whispered Amari, sort of touching the screen like she wasn’t sure it wasn’t right there in front of them. “It’s kind of cute too—”

“No I mean this,” said Dalia, pointing a finger around like she was appalled before she started to laugh. “What is this?”

They heard a curious buzzing noise on the outside.

Amari charged up to the door, and sort of paused a while as she tried to figure out how to work it. She thought she might be trapped for a second, and started to hit at the glass when Dalia held her hand.

Dalia tried turning the doorknob.

“Oh,” said Amari.

They were outside in a moment, to the sight of Adam holding what looked like a remote control. There was a buzzing, flying drone above him that looked like it wasn’t perfectly balanced. He guided it down again, and tweaked some of the propellers.

Adam noticed they were awake, and gave them a friendly robotic wave. They took their time waving back.

Samantha wandered over to where Adam was working with his drone, and stared out into the distance at a large mound of sand that wasn’t there before, where she saw Adam digging the previous night as she went to rest.

“What are you making?” asked Samantha, just a little bit shy.

Adam held the drone like he’d been caught in a crime.

“Do you not want me to make thi—”

“No I’m just asking,” said Samantha holding her hands out. “I’m very pleased with everything, I’d just like to know what the hell that is.”

“Ah I see,” said Adam, holding his drone with his hand like a proud craftsman. “I’m making scouting drones to better map out our area. They’re fitted with cameras that will feed information back into the hard drives I have set up in the house powered by the sun. We’ll be able to see everything soon.”

“Right and about the house,” said Samantha, like she was a bit irritated she was left to sleep in a tent the previous night. “How did you like, do that?”

Adam projected a map onto the air.

“I realized we were quite near an ancient stone quarry,” said Adam, as he pinched at the map to zoom in. “It was buried beneath many feet of sand, but all the necessary ingredients were there. I could build a great many things to fortify the area.”

“Good,” mouthed Samantha, making a funny expression with her mouth. “Great work, great stuff.”

“Thank you master.”

Amari and Dalia continued to stare at them from afar, as they sort of knocked at the house to check if it was solid.

“They seem pretty taken with you,” said Samantha.

“I’d be suspicious if they were not,” replied Adam.

A small lizard popped up out of the sand by Samantha’s feet. It stared up at her, and then at Adam. It took a few steps back, and stared at them interchangeably again. It backpedaled a little bit more, then seemed to have them both in his sight without having to swivel his head.

It flicked its tongue out happily then, with its glassy eyes.

“There are a lot more creatures around here,” said Samantha. “A lot more food, think we can eat those?”

Adam took his time studying the lizard. He seemed to freeze a moment, before he replied.

“No not that one master, they’re poisonous.”

“Are you sure?” said Samantha, as the lizard continued to stare intently at them.

Adam stared down into the lizard’s eyes. He didn’t speak for a while.

“I’m positive,” replied Adam.

Samantha folded her arms, then shrugged her shoulders some.

“Well you do have thousands of years of knowledge in your metal brain guess that counts for something,” said Samantha, as Adam set the drone back into the sky for another ride on the air. “Will you be able to find the raiders with that?”

“I will,” replied Adam.

“How long will it take?”

Adam watched the drone drift up higher and higher into the sky. Samantha thought she noticed something else up there as she stared.

“Not long at all my master, don’t you worry,” said Adam, as he forced a metal smile onto his ancient face. He looked to the sky with pride, then stared down at his master. Samantha trembled a bit, and didn’t know quite why. “I’ll find everybody.”

~17~

IT HURT AMARI’S SHOULDER some, when she fired the rifle.

“I can’t keep it perfectly steady,” shouted Amari, as she made circles with her arm.

“You’ll never get it perfectly steady,” said Adam, as he raised her gun back up and helped her aim. Amari tried to stay calm with a head as large as her torso by her body. “We just need you to be proficient enough to defend yourself under duress. But if you can run, then run. It’s more important that you learn how to drive the vehicles really, but for now I need you to try and hit those cans over there.”

“It’s a waste of good metal,” said Amari, shaking her head and shutting one eye as she tried to look down the sight. “It’s a waste of these projectiles too.”

“No sense in saving them if you can’t use them,” said Adam. “It’s more important you learn how shoot, I’ll make more bullets later believe me.”

“I believe you that’s for sure,” whispered Amari, her face focused with a cold intensity. She fired, and hit a couple of the cans. She smiled a little. “I think I’m getting the hang of this.”

“I think you are.”

Adam watched Ryder driving around and kicking up sand in one of the cars with Dalia, and deemed they were making progress enough to pass a license test. Adam looked around the oasis with a robotic sigh, until he found a little desert toad emerge around the sands. It hopped a couple feet, then hopped up onto a plant until it had a decent vantage point of Amari learning how to fire a weapon.

He looked straight at the toad with his glowing blue eyes, and gave it a deliberate wink that looked like a lightbulb turning off then on again.

Adam took a few nimble, titanic steps away from Amari, until he was standing right beside the house.

He kneeled down, and opened the door to peek his head in.

“Everything all right master?”

“I think so,” said Samantha, watching the screen in what could now maybe be called a living room as she surfed the internet of Adam’s uploaded mind. As much as he had been able to upload, at the least.

Samantha scratched her head, and used her index finger to hit each letter into her keyboard. She checked to make sure she was getting the right ones onto the screen.

“So I just type in words?” asked Samantha. “How do you pronounce this Googlay?”

“Close enough master,” said Adam. “It’s an imperfect rendering of an ancient, expansive database of knowledge. They called them search engines. Ask your questions, and it should provide you with answers.”

Samantha typed out the rest of the word, ‘Vehicles.’

“These don’t look like the ones they left here,” said Samantha, a little nervous she was asking the wrong questions. “Do you have every vehicle ever made on here?”

“I only have what knowledge was available upon my creation master.”

Samantha played around a little bit more trying to coordinate her hand with the moving arrow on her screen. It didn’t take her long to get used to using a mouse.

“I don’t recognize most of these words,” said Samantha.

“You’ll learn with time,” said Adam. “There’s a dictionary as well.”

Samantha tried clicking and dragging in the way Adam taught her to highlight letters. She hit backspace, and one letter at a time typed in the word ‘genies.’

She went to images, and found a lovable, swirly blue man smiling away.

“This doesn’t look like you,” said Samantha.

“I would hope not, we were something of a military secret,” replied Adam, as he tapped at his face where a nose should’ve been a couple times.

Samantha thought it was odd how he tapped his face like that. She made a sort of confused, smug expression.

“Wait a minute you sure this is all the knowledge you have?” asked Samantha, sort of jokingly. “You keeping any other secrets from me?”

“Not at all my master,” replied Adam, with the faintest of twitches.

Samantha sort of laughed a bit, like she was only kidding.

“You can go don’t mind me, I’m having a blast,” said Samantha. She found a strange rush in having so much knowledge at her fingertips. “Everything’s all right Adam.”

Adam did a proud nod of his geared head, and shut her door to keep the cold air inside. He waved bye to her through the window as he walked back to the others. Samantha waved bye in reply, and sort of jumped back when she saw a little, green bird fly into her stone window sill. She put a hand to her head, and couldn’t believe it.

“Well isn’t this a little friendly, magical spot,” said Samantha, wagging a finger at the bird through the window. The bird chirped away, as Samantha went back over to her first experiences with a desktop computer. Another bird flew in close behind, at another window.

A yellow bird flew to a window at the second floor.

The birds sang to their heart’s content, as they watched Samantha learn about the world from so many angles with unblinking eyes.

~18~

“DID YOU ALWAYS HAVE that genie?” asked Ryder.

“I did not,” replied Samantha, as she guided Ryder’s hands. “You see how the mouse responds to your movements up ther—”

“So you mean,” said Ryder, holding her from jumpstarting her tutorial mode just a second longer, “you just got him?”

“Just a,” Samantha swallowed some spit. It tasted like dates. “A few months ago, really. Found him in the sand.”

“Do you understand how lucky that is?” asked Ryder.

“I never believed in luck really, but I guess I can’t call it anything else. I mean I,” Samantha made a motion at the air, like she was holding an invisible lamp and brushing the sand off it. “I just tried to clean it off, and it responded to my touch.”

“Wait so you’re saying you,” Ryder put a hand to his head, and pointed the other hand out towards the window. “You mean you lived out there all alone since you were a kid? Completely alone?”

Samantha’s cheeks turned a sort of scarlet as she typed some more words into the screen.

“I don’t feel like talking about all of that right now.”

“Look I’m just,” said Ryder, holding his hands up and looking at her in a new light. “I’m just really impressed.”

“Well,” said Samantha, as she typed a search into the computer. She smiled at him kind of mock proud. “I’m just an impressive person I guess.”

“All right,” laughed Ryder, setting a hand on the side of her head and gently pushing it. Some of her hair got in her face. She spit air at it. “And you’re a hypocrite by the way, always telling me to cut my hair when yours is so long it drops to your shoulders.”

“Right, so on the topic of that,” said Samantha, pushing her hair out of the way so she could see the keyboard. She started furiously typing with one finger. She hit enter, then scrolled down to an image of a guy with his hair shaved all the way off on the sides, with the top of his head long. “What do ya think about that look? Adam said he could cut your hair that way when I asked him.”

“You said you have virtually the whole of human knowledge at your fingertips right here, and that’s what you looked up?” said Ryder, holding a hand out to the screen. “Men’s haircuts?”

“Yep.”

“You know what I want to see?”

“What?”

Ryder took the keyboard, and sort of felt embarrassed when it took him a while to type out what he wanted. He apologized a few times when he asked where letters were.

He got the sentence down.

“Where are we in the world, Mr. Computer,” asked Ryder, as he pressed enter. He squinted his eyes like he couldn’t believe it.

No results.

“Adam says he doesn’t know where we are either,” said Samantha. “Apparently all the ancient, I don’t know what he called it,” Samantha put her fingers into the air, “satellites or something, apparently they’re all jammed or gone. Or I don’t know, and that’s how he was supposed to get his location information.”

“You think he’s telling you the truth?” said Ryder.

Samantha gave him a dirty look.

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“I’m kidding,” said Ryder, as he watched Adam outside. Adam sort of smacked his hands together, before extending a dozen other arms from his sides. He reached out for rocks, and set them down around their perimeter in one fluid motion. He was building a wall. “He’s basically a deity yet he basically worships you.”

“Well,” said Samantha, watching Dalia cheer Adam on as he worked. “He was made to serve it would seem.”

Ryder paused a moment, and sort of blinked a lot when he realized what all was happening.

“It’s so crazy to think about,” said Ryder.

“What’s crazy?”

“So like,” said Ryder, doing his best to imagine a world with more than a few thousand people. Much less several billion. “So some ancient culture produced Adam all those years ago. It makes you wonder, you know, if,” Ryder’s eyes got a little wider. “What if there’s still a culture like that somewhere out there?”

“That’s impossible,” said Samantha. “Adam says it looks like the world was decimated centuries ago, there’s some background radiation apparently.”

Ryder looked down like he didn’t quite know what that meant, then sort of shrugged.

“You’re probably right,” said Ryder. Adam went and inspected some of the crops with a canister of water, and started raining over them one sprout at a time. “Can you imagine if you hadn’t found him?”

“I don’t like to,” said Samantha.

“Well I can’t help but think about it,” said Ryder, gritting his teeth and wondering. He got more bothered by the thought than he intended to. “I wouldn’t have my sisters anymore.”

“Stop that,” said Samantha.

“You’re right,” said Ryder, staring out the window at a lizard staring their way. Ryder put his eyes on the sky. “But it’s crazy how it’s just a few different things in life,” Ryder pointed his fingers down. Then he splayed them out. “Like there’s so many directions your life can take. And if a few things happen a little differently, your whole life turns out so different.”

Ryder looked like he was going to keep speaking, but Samantha set her hand over his hand and sort of made circles with her thumb. Like it wasn’t worth the angst, and maybe it wasn’t worth the thought.

“Well this is how things are, and they’re certainly not perfect but,” Samantha’s eyes took on a different energy, as they lingered on Ryder’s shoulder, “I don’t know that I would want things to be any different right at this moment.”

Ryder’s head was still, as he paid particular mind to his breathing. He turned slightly to Samantha, but didn’t look her in the eyes.

There was a sudden bump at the window. Ryder shut his eyes and started to smile.

“That lizard’s been watching us,” he said.

Samantha laughed some, and peeked over at the lizard sticking its tongue their way. She studied its glassy, pale eyes.

The lizard’s eyes shut a brief moment, before they re-opened to a white static like you would have seen on an old TV screen. Another blink later, and they were just as pale and clear as they were a moment prior.

Samantha looked like an animal in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle.

“Did you see that?”

“See what?” asked Ryder, sitting up and looking at the horizon. “Did you see people?”

“No I,” said Samantha, as the lizard continued to stare at them with pale eyes. It stuck a long, red tongue out, then retracted it again. Nothing amiss. “Nevermind, I think it was nothing.”

~19~

DALIA LOOKED LONGINGLY at a mound of sand, as she ran her hands through it. She clutched some of the sand lightly in her fingers, as a gentle breeze came and took some of it from her palm.

She stared blankly at her hand a while, in the midst of so many other mounds around her, and wished she could have done something more than set their bodies into graves.

“Are you still out there?” whispered Dalia, looking at the dried pieces of meat she’d set out for them, and the empty cup from which the water she set down evaporated. “Did you make it to the evergreen lands? Are you still watching over me somehow?”

Dalia loosened her fingers, and watched the burning hot sand fall in streams between them.

“Why did,” whispered Dalia, squinting at the sky. Hoping she might find an answer, flying somewhere up there. She saw only an unfamiliar bird gliding in circles around her, staring at her with one of its glassy side eyes.  “Why did I survive?”

Dalia flinched some, when she saw somebody approaching her from the side. She ran a hand through her hair, and wiped some of the sand from her white, silk dress as she sniffled up.

Samantha walked gently beside her.

“Hey,” whispered Dalia.

“Hey,” replied Samantha, with a sad expression as she looked at the rest of the mounds. She took a deep breath. “I never see Ryder and Amari here but you come out here to this mound a lot,” whispered Samantha, grimacing a little like she worried she was being insensitive. “I’m sorry I just notic—”

“It’s okay,” mouthed Dalia, wiping the sand from her fingers as she stared at the ground. She thought about the way she smiled when she laughed. “She was my best friend. I tried to get her to come with us into our tent, but I couldn’t find her during the few seconds I had to make a decision. Amari grabbed my arm, and forced me out of eyesight in the tunnel. It held for a while, maybe there was room for another. But I know raiders came in with weapons, and found our tent empty. I felt their weight above us, before the sand started to pour down the hole it all just,” Dalia tried to stop crying. “It just happened too fast, but maybe I could have saved her.”

“It’s not your fault.”

Dalia nodded her head slowly with a faint expression of self-resentment. She tried to believe she couldn’t have done anything more.

Dalia glanced back over at Adam building stone walls around them.

“There’s always going to be more sick people out there,” said Dalia. She tried to force a smile at Samantha with reddened eyes. “But I’m really happy Ryder ran into you. You saved us.”

Samantha looked down, like that was too much.

“Adam saved you,” said Samantha.

“He only listens to you, I understand that much watching you two. He does whatever you tell him to,” said Dalia. She stared at Adam with adoration, and some joy. She had the eyes of somebody dreaming of another reality. “Does he grant wishes?”

Samantha looked at Adam with some of the same wonderment.

“In a way he does,” said Samantha. “He can’t do everything, but he can do a lot. Did you want me to ask him to make something?”

Dalia shook her head lightly.

“I don’t want him to make something, I want him to make those monsters die,” whispered Dalia, holding up her hands to the heat of the sun. Dalia imagined finding where they were, and she wondered what it would feel like to kill them one by one with her own bare hands. “I wish I could watch the life go out of their eyes as they choke on their own blood, I wish,” Her voice rose some as she said it. She shut her eyes like she could almost imagine it, and it looked beautiful. But somehow in her heart she felt like it was only a dream, and not a reality meant for her. She dropped her hands down in some bitter dejection. “I wish I could do it myself, but I’m not a fighter.”

“You’re a fighter to me,” said Samantha.

Dalia tried to smile as a drone flew back towards the side of the house, with Adam herding it down with his mind. Adam paused a moment as he seemed to process what information it gathered. Adam’s eyes fluttered like they were seeing the landscape of the world.

A moment later, Adam’s blue gaze was fixed on Samantha.

“Does he ever scare you?” asked Dalia, as Adam marched towards his master.

Samantha thought she saw bright, fresh stars shining down above him even in the daylight.

“Not often,” replied Samantha.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, I mean it in a good way,” said Dalia, as Adam was just a few giant steps away. Dalia whispered with a strained face, “But he scares the shit out of me sometimes.”

Adam floated over to his master’s side, as his gears and fractal limbs diminished and receded within him until he was no taller than Dalia.

Adam bowed and took a knee before them.

“There are raiders closing in on our position master,” said Adam, looking at Samantha’s leather sandals. Dalia’s chest rose and fell faster with her breath. Adam raised his head ever so slightly, to the faint noise of gears. He looked more nervous than she expected. “We need to hurry.”

~20~

“HOW MANY OF THEM ARE there?” asked Samantha.

“Many more than before,” replied Adam.

“That’s not an answer Adam tell me specifically,” said Samantha, hurrying her hands in circles as they ran back to the house.

Adam bowed his head as he projected aerial footage onto the air taken with their drone. An outline formed around each of the people, with a counter at the bottom right.

“Perhaps a hundred fifty-seven closing in as we speak,” said Adam.

There were countless cars outfitted with machine guns, and men covered in gray ash hollering strange cries as they fist pumped the air. There was even a separate group towards the back, with a large, sparking metal net between the two of them. There was an electric field that passed through it as they drove.

“Why do they have a net?” asked Dalia, holding her sides some as she ran.

“I presume,” said Adam, flashing something of a sinister smile. “To try and catch me with it.”

“Can they?” asked Samantha.

“I doubt it,” replied Adam.

“I want you to be more certain than that,” said Samantha. They got into the house, and rushed to the corner. Samantha tossed Dalia a rifle, before strapping one over her own shoulder. She didn’t see anything across the horizon. “How far are they?”

“They’re not far, but we still have some time to prepare.”

“Are they the same group as before?” asked Samantha.

Adam projected overlays of the footage with images from the previous raid.

“I’ve successfully identified at least twelve similar faces,” replied Adam.

“These people are insane didn’t they see what you did to them last time,” said Samantha. “Get Amari and Ryder, where are they?”

“I don’t know,” said Dalia, with panicked eyes. “Doesn’t Adam know?”

Adam turned to the two of them interchangeably, then fixed his gaze out the window. He found a few little lizards there, watching them with eerie smiles. The lizards stuck their tongues out.

Adam looked back to the girls, and shrugged his robotic shoulders.

“Beats me,” replied Adam.

“What the hell FIND THEM,” shouted Samantha. She shoved Adam in the chest, and pressed a hand to her head. She took a breath, and thought, “Don’t you have aerial footage?”

“That is a wise idea master,” replied Adam, as he projected a video onto the air. It was a wide shot of their oasis, with faint stonewalls surrounding the waters, along with a house at the shores. Adam pinched his robotic fingers to zoom in. He isolated a dot, and zoomed in until they could see a pixelated image of Ryder and Amari in one of their cars. “It would be appear they went off for a joyride outside the walls, terrible timing. I’d advised them to practice driving this morning but not that far unless they intended to speed. And I told them within the walls until they were ready for higher speeds.”

“Get them,” whispered Samantha to Adam. He took just a moment to think. Samantha hit Adam towards the door. “What’s the matter with you right now GET THEM.”

Adam shut both of his blue light bulb eyes, and did a faint bow towards Samantha.

“I’ll do my best master,” said Adam, before he let out a bit of a robotic sigh. “But there may not be much time.”

“Adam GO,” cried Samantha, as she shoved Adam onto the sand outside. She heard the faint chirping of birds overhead, and noticed several perched onto the stone house when she walked out.

They were nodding their heads up and down as they stared at Adam, like they were happy. Adam stood up from the sand, and gave Samantha a strange look. It transformed in moments to a confident calmness.

“They’ll be just fine master, not to worry.”

––––––––

AMARI SLAMMED HER FOOT on the brakes just short of flying into a large, reddish rock.

“That just blended in with everything out here I couldn’t see it,” said Amari. She took in a really deep breath, and laughed like she was nervous. “This thing can really fly can’t it.”

Ryder held his hand over his heart, then scratched the skin as he shook his head.

“Damn you suck at this,” said Ryder. “I said ease on the brake, are you listening to me at all?”

Amari made an insulted face as she put a hand in her brother’s.

“Ah ah ah, I got it calm down let me learn,” said Amari. She tried to put the car into reverse, but accidentally had it in neutral. She revved the engine hard as she stared backwards. Ryder gave her a dumb look, before he made her take her foot off the gas. He pointed out that she was in neutral. She calmly put it all the way into reverse, and backed away. “Just testing you is all.”

“You’re wasting gasoline.”

“What the hell does that mea—”

“Look just let me show you again,” shouted Ryder. Amari held her finger up to her brother, but she wasn’t reacting to him. “Amari you’re not listening to me—”

“Wait a sec,” whispered Amari, still holding her finger up. Ryder stayed quiet a minute, as he tried to figure out what she meant by it. “Can you hear that?”

Ryder scrunched his face up, and listened.

It didn’t take them long to feel the rumbling at their feet, and notice the cloud of sand coming like a mirage. They heard the voices of raiders.

Ryder put his hands into his hair a quick moment.

“Drive us back,” shouted Ryder, as Amari stared in horror at the coming horde of people. She eyed the rifles in the backseat, when she felt her brother hit her in the shoulder hard. “DRIVE DRIVE.”

Amari threw the car into drive, and sped back over to their oasis.

~21~

AMARI DIDN’T LIKE THE cracking sound the bullets made, as they flew past her ears.

“What do I do when we get to the gate,” said Amari.

“Hit the pedal on the left and pray we can open it with enough time to get away,” replied Ryder, as he fired another burst at the oncoming raiders. “And make damn sure you don’t just slam us into the gate.”

Amari cursed under her breath, and ducked her head as they drove.

“I don’t think we’re going to make it to the gate,” she said.

“The hell we’re not.”

“They’re damaging the car.”

Ryder fired the rest of his clip, and re-loaded while he lay down in the seat. He spat a little every time he breathed out. Ryder held his rifle close to his chest as he stared at the sky, then got up and shot the tires of one of the raiders’ cars. They skidded out, and crashed into a couple of the others.

They were close enough for Ryder to see the blood thirst in their faces.

“They’re gaining on us fast,” said Ryder.

Ryder and Amari rode straight for the metal gate of their oasis. Amari tried to gauge the distance, and slammed hard on her brakes when she heard a sudden burst of air behind them. They went into a sudden zig-zagging skid.

“They got the tires,” shouted Ryder, as Amari tried to steer them out of the skid. Ryder grabbed the other rifle as the car skidded out. Amari slammed her foot on the brakes as they flew towards the wall.

They felt their bodies get heavier, as their vehicle got lifted off the ground by giant, swift hands.

“Hello there,” whispered Adam, as he scooped them back over the other side of the wall. Amari’s hands were frozen around the wheel so hard they were cramping, as Adam set them down in their car.

She was screaming through her eyes.

“Hi Adam,” whispered Amari.

Adam peeked over the walls with some strange device in his hands, and ducked some when a few bullets ricocheted off his metal head.

“They’re not fucking around out there are they,” said Adam, pointing back with his giant thumb.

The raiders all broke in front of their walls, and stared up at the gate and stone walls with eyes of quiet wonder. Adam studied their locations, and waited for the last of them to drive up within the space he needed.

Adam hit the button in his hands.

“Got em,” whispered Adam.

Metal walls flew up all around the raiders, and trapped them inside a large space before their gates.

––––––––

THE RAIDERS DROVE IN circles around their metallic cage, with birds staring down from the top of the walls. They fired around for a bit, until they found the bullets ricocheting back at them, and striking their cars.

“Hold your fire!” shouted one raider, with a scar running down the length of his torso from his shoulder to his waist. He stared around at the walls, and held a hand to his ear. “Listen, can you hear that?”

There was a faint rattling at the walls. One moment it would be at one end, the next moment it was at another. The raiders holding their electric net with long polls got skittish, when they thought they heard the noise coming from their side.

Before they could react, there was an opening in the walls and Adam’s arms fired out to grab a couple of the raiders controlling the net. They were pulled back within the walls before the others could fire.

The others holding the net up strained to keep it upright a moment, before they dropped it into a heap on the ground. It got hot as fire around them, as the net started to spark.

“Where is he?” shouted one of the raiders, pointing his rifle with shaking hands wherever he thought he heard something. “Can you see him where is he?”

There was the sound of more rattling, almost like how one might imagine the sound of a baton on the bars of a jail cell.

“Did you honestly think you could catch me with that?” whispered Adam, as a faint noise of flailing screaming came from the sky.

“Watch out!” shouted one of the raiders.

There was a sudden splat, followed by the shaking of bodies as several raiders dropped from the sky onto their wide net on the ground. If the fall hadn’t killed them, it wasn’t long before they were fried to death.

“I’m going to speak very clearly right now,” said Adam, as a few birds chirped overhead and bobbed their heads. “You’re going to tell me where exactly your base is located. No fooling around, no games. You’re going to tell me precisely in what direction it is. How far it is. Its makeup. How many people there are, what resources you possess.”

Another one of the raiders started firing at the walls, as a few of the bullets ricocheted back and hit one of his ash-covered comrades. He grabbed his wrist as it bled.

There was a faint echo of robotic laughter.

“I could find it eventually without your help, but this certainly feels like the more streamlined approach to getting the information, given how you kindly presented yourselves to me this fine morning. Those who give me correct information will be rewarded with delayed, and swift deaths.”

“Get the net,” shouted one of the raiders. A few of the others stared at him like he was crazy. “Get it back up, we’re not abandoning the plan.”

There was the noise of metal sliding across metal, as a fresh opening came through the walls. Adam stabbed through a handful of raiders, before retracing his bloody hands into the walls as they passed.

“It’s that way!” shouted one man, pointing North with a hand covered in fire burns.

A few of the others rushed to open fire on him, when Adam reached in and tossed them into the sky. It wasn’t long before they joined the others contorted across their net.

Adam peeked his head over the edge of the wall. None of the others touched their triggers.

“Promise you’re not lying?” asked Adam, kind of shy.

“I swear it,” said the raider. A few of the others nodded their heads in agreement, and gestured in that direction. “Maybe thirty miles that way. That’s where we’re from, but please don’t hurt them. We have others, they’re good people. They depend on us to provide for them.”

“How many?” asked Adam.

“A few hundred,” said another, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe what he was saying. He stared at the burnt corpses smoking on the ground. He started to cry. “Please, we didn’t want to have to come back here.”

There was a pause for a while, before a single drone rose up by the house, and started flying across the sky.

“You should know that I’ll explore the space you’ve described with my aerial device. And then, well if you’re lying,” Adam raised a hand above the walls. The raiders opened fire on it, as it turned into scissors large enough to cut down trees. Adam slowly dropped his hand back to safety. “I’ll remove your limbs one at a time if you elect that route, until you tell me the truth.” Adam raised a finger up like he just remembered something. “Oh yeah and while you’re at it throw your guns to the sand, probably should’ve demanded that earlier.”

He sounded like he was never much too concerned about it. There was a protracted pause, before the faint noise of objects being tossed onto the sand one at a time.

Adam took a step over the stone walls, and sat down Indian style beside Samantha and the others gawking at him.

“I think we can get to them now,” whispered Adam, as his metal mouth went up into an awkward grin.

Samantha gave a look at Ryder. He looked a bit breathless and terrified, but ultimately nodded his head with enthusiasm.

“That’s great,” said Ryder. He gestured at the wall, like he could only imagine what was happening over there. “What’s going to happen with all of them?”

“We may need them for information later,” said Adam. He leaned a head down at Ryder, and gave him a wink. “They’d better not be lying.”

Dalia looked light-headed, and rested her head on her brother’s shoulder. Amari adjusted her gun slung over her shoulder, and looked at Adam like she was staring at a deity.

“All right then,” said Amari, struggling to hold her tears. “Let’s go get those pieces of shit.”

Samantha stared with breathless wonder at her titan of a genie, as a couple happy birds perched onto his shoulders.

They stared intently at Samantha, with glassy, thoughtful eyes.

“Okay,” mouthed Samantha, looking up at Adam smiling her way with all the warmth of the desert sun. She tried not to let on all her thoughts through her smile in reply. “Let’s find a way.”

~22~

SAMANTHA LISTENED TO the raiders banging against their metal walls crying for water, as she whittled away at a wildebeest bone. She could have maybe made it into something of use, before. An arrowhead, for when she had a halfway decent bow in her youth. Maybe a pommel for a cheap dagger. She could have skipped the whittling altogether, and boiled it into a soup. But whittling bones was more a form of meditation now than it was anything else. Adam could make far better weapons than she ever could.

Samantha whittled away with her eyes shut tightly beneath a starlit sky, and flinched some when she heard Adam’s soothing, robotic voice beside her.

“You shouldn’t stay so close to them master,” said Adam, gesturing back towards the house. “It’s late, you should rest inside with the others.”

“They’re across the wall Adam it’s fine,” said Samantha, staring blankly at the sand. She looked away from him a bit. “They keep making noise they must be starving.”

Adam pointed with his thumb back over his shoulder, at a whole pile of fresh weapons, and a small parking lot of new vehicles with gasoline in their trunks.

“They’re just angry we took their stuff,” said Adam.

“It’s strange,” said Samantha, listening to them wail a little longer. She could hear them crying. “They’re such monsters, but they feel so human when they wail like that.”

Adam stood a little taller, and fastened his hand into a scalpel.

“Would you like me to quiet them—”

“No,” mouthed Samantha, holding a reddened hand out to him. It was white where the blood had left her fingers, she was gripping her whittling knife so hard. “That won’t be necessary.”

Samantha looked up at him a brief moment, and shivered some as she looked away. She took in a few more breaths as she kept cutting away at the bone.

Adam studied her a moment, before he sat down to the noise of gears and held his hands in his lap like he wanted to be attentive.

“What’s the matter my master?” asked Adam. His face coiled into a smile, and made some noise as it did so.

“It’s nothing,” whispered Samantha, visibly bothered.

Adam paused a moment to wonder, then nodded his head.

“I’m happy to hear that,” replied Adam, as he stood up to walk away. The ground shook a bit as he moved. Samantha shut her eyes a little tighter, and cursed under her breath.

“Adam?” whispered Samantha.

The metal giant turned his head to peer through his shining blue eyes.

“Yes master?”

Samantha looked her eyes from side to side, like she wasn’t altogether certain she wanted to ask. But she still felt that she had to. She rolled up her sleeves to her elbows, and messed her hair up some, then threw it to the side.

“I need to ask you something,” said Samantha, glancing up at the stars a quick moment, before shaking her head and returning her attention to her hands. “It’s just something I’ve noticed lately.”

Adam sat back down beside her, and summoned a screen onto the air.

“Anything at all master.”

Samantha studied the floating, blue screen before her eyes, shining in the darkness.

“Are there any myths about the stars?” asked Samantha.

The floating screen flickered a moment, before a hundred different square items popped up.

“More than can be counted,” replied Adam, as he projected an image of astrological signs onto the air. A series of images flashed across the screen of ancient drawings of the night sky. “The ancients used to obsess over the stars.”

“Even more ancient than you?” asked Samantha.

“Far more ancient,” replied Adam, projecting different constellations onto the air. Draco, Scorpius, Ursa Major, Orion and his belt. “People have tried to predict the future through the stars for eons.”

“So they are meant to foreshadow things?” said Samantha.

“Not quite,” replied Adam, displaying a heliocentric view of the solar system. “There’s no scientific backing for matters of astrology. And quite frankly it’s quack science.”

Samantha ran her finger across the sky, and tried to connect the dots with her nails. She tried to find her own drawings. “How many are there up there?”

“Not all of them are visible, they’re too far away,” said Adam. There was a brief moment of calculations, before an approximation of a 1 came across the air, with around 24 zeros after it. There was a swirling hologram of a galaxy floating around Samantha in a moment. “We can see maybe 5,000, but there are billions of stars in our galaxy. And many, many more in the trillions of galaxies beyond our own.”

A few lizards popped up out of the ground around Samantha. She didn’t know they were there, but she’d grown so accustomed to their popping up every now and then that it hardly bothered her anymore.

One of them stared interchangeably between Samantha and the screen, with a slow swivel of the head and that strange sort of dumb smile that some lizards tend to have.

“Are they fixed in the sky?” asked Samantha. Adam made gear noises as he shook his giant head. Samantha shook her own, and re-phrased it. “I mean, do the number of stars in the sky vary?”

“As far as my records show,” whispered Adam, with a faint fluttering of his blue eyes like all the ancient world’s knowledge just flashed before his eyes like a person’s life when they die. Adam shook his head after that moment of introspective data gathering. “Not really.”

“Then,” whispered Samantha, as she tried to count them with her hands. She couldn’t know the precise numbers, but she knew one thing for a fact. “Why are there so many more stars in the skies tonight than there were when I was alone?”

“Beg your pardon?” asked Adam.

“The stars,” whispered Samantha. She gestured for Adam to look away from the screen, and to look at the sky. The lizards followed suit, and stared up as well. “Why are there so many stars in the sky?”

Adam looked up at the infinite lights lining the sky. There were far more than any of his records showed to Samantha. There was no question of it.

Adam froze for a moment, then shrugged his gigantic shoulders.

“I don’t quite see what you mean or why it would matter,” whispered Adam.

Samantha looked a little bit annoyed, then just a little bit afraid.

“The stars,” said Samantha, somewhat breathless. She threw a hand at the sky. She gestured at the sky even harder. “There are MORE stars, and Ryder says that it’s a bad omen when there’s so many stars. And why are there so many goddamn stars in the sky ever since we left for this oasis?”

He continued staring at the sky, before he looked around.

“It really doesn’t look like there are more to me,” said Adam, sort of scratching his shiny, metal head. It sounded a bit like nails on a chalkboard. “I wouldn’t overthink it master, astrology’s long since been debunked.”

Samantha looked at Adam with eyes of quiet concern. She remembered the night sky of her youth. She used to stare up at them as a kid, and she never stopped staring as she got older.

Samantha knew something was wrong, as she hugged her knees into her chest.

Her face screamed of worry.

“Adam?” asked Samantha, as Adam’s eyes lit up just a bit brighter at the vulnerability in her voice. He softened his robotic face into a concerned expression, and tried to listen. “Are you lying to me?”

~23~

SOME OF THE LIZARDS on the ground stared slowly at Samantha, before they looked at Adam. They did their best not to move too much in sync.

It might look a little suspicious.

Adam took his time looking down towards her, before he kneeled. The noise of begging raiders still lingered in the background.

“I would never lie to you my master,” said Adam, staring right into Samantha’s face with his bright blue eyes.

Samantha looked away from him.

“Go back to being fun size,” said Samantha.

Adam dipped his head some, as geared mechanisms pulled his being inward.

“As you wish my master.”

Adam wasted no time transitioning from his giant form, to a more approachable humanoid form. He sat beside Samantha, and looked at her like he was worried.

“Thank you,” mouthed Samantha, trying to find the right way to voice her concerns. “Okay, you obey only me is that right? That’s how you were made?”

“Precisely master.”

“Then tell me the truth right now,” said Samantha. She worked up the bravery to speak honestly. Her mouth went a little dry when she asked, “Did you..”

Adam set a cold, metal hand on hers. She shivered some at his touch.

“What’s the matter master.”

“Did you,” said Samantha, staring at the strange patterns running through the metal of his arms. “Did you use Amari and Ryder as bait today?”

Adam let out a faint metallic sigh.

“No,” whispered Adam, speaking with some deliberate conviction. “I absolutely did not.”

“Then why,” said Samantha, staring at the house and wondering if the others were safe. “Why did you tell them to drive so far out yesterday just to practice driving?”

Adam’s gears made some faint buzzing noises, as he looked at her hands and tried to explain himself.

“They needed to be familiar with driving at high speeds moving forward,” said Adam. “And it would have been unsafe driving at those speeds near the walls, so I advised they drive away from the walls only if they were ready. But not too far from the oasis, and if they ran into trouble to gun it straight back for the gates.”

Samantha nodded her head, like she wanted to believe all of that. She studied the strange lizards surrounding her, and heard the faint noise of the raiders crying in the background. Their tortured voices echoing off their walls.

Samantha stared back at the stone home Adam so kindly built.

“I want to believe you,” said Samantha. She noticed one of the lizards moving to the side around her, like it was trying to get a better look at her. “At the very least, I don’t think you mean to be lying to me if you are.”

Adam stood up on his metal legs, and did a strangely fluid, yet robotic bow towards her.

“I am at your service now and always my master,” said Adam. “It is never my intention to lead you astray.”

“Okay,” whispered Samantha, swallowing what spit remained in her mouth. “But just know that, whatever knowledge you think you have of the skies is wrong. There are even more up there than there already were tonight, and it’s a bad omen. And because of that, I’m making the decision that we’re not going to attack so long as there’s so many fucking stars in the sky.”

Adam glanced up at the stars a brief moment, as a few of them flickered out. He stared back over at Samantha with some concern.

“I would advise against this my master,” replied Adam. “Our plan will be thorough. We’ll soon have aerial footage of their location, and we should be well enough equipped to destroy their location with just a few more days. We have the tools, we can make quick work of them. We’ll kill them all. We’ll give Ryder and his sisters their revenge. You know they must avenge the fallen spirits.”

Adam made the faintest of winks at the ground, as Samantha bit her nails lightly. She looked around at the small home they’d built for themselves. She fought off the intrusive thoughts of it all melting away in an inferno.

She wiped a tear from her eye.

“Can you promise me everybody’s going to be safe?” asked Samantha.

“I can do my best to ensure that everybody is well protected no matter what course of action we choose,” replied Adam. He ran statistical models across the air. Several equations flirted with numbers in the space of air between them, before there flashed a 99.9% over and over again in red. “I am 99.9% certain they will be just fine.”

Samantha laughed, like that was one of the most ridiculous ways to reassure somebody. It wasn’t long before her laughter turned to ashes in her eyes.

“I really just can’t bear the thought of losing anybody ever again,” whispered Samantha. She brought the back of her wrist to her lips as she fought her emotions. She smiled some, and wiped her eyes on her sleeves. “Did you know how happy I’ve been being around these people?”

Adam’s mouth contorted into a smile.

“I’ve certainly noticed, that hasn’t been lost on me,” said Adam, looking through the windows in the distance at Ryder and his sisters playing with something on their TV screen. They all started to laugh in a moment, and shove one another. Ryder paused a moment, before he stared out the window with a smile to peer at Adam and Samantha. “It is my understanding that humans can never be perfectly happy until they have other humans with whom to divide their happiness.”

Samantha steadied her mind a bit with some deep breaths.

“I’m sorry I’m being so paranoid tonight,” said Samantha.

“Don’t be,” replied Adam.

Samantha took one last glance at the stars, before she stopped staring at the sky.

“You know I stopped believing in the gods of the oases a long time ago,” said Samantha. She sucked her lips in some for a moment. “But now, the way things have gone as of late, I almost feel like someone’s watching over me. Maybe gods in the stars.”

Adam leaned his head down some, and spoke with a sweeter than usual voice.

“Maybe there are,” said Adam.

Samantha shut her eyes, and leaned her head against Adam.

“Did they know in the past?” asked Samantha. “Did they know the gods?”

Adam did a quick search of his memory banks, and found nothing conclusive.

“They all knew their own in a way, but they don’t know yours.”

Samantha stared around at her walled oasis, and at Adam’s outdoor workshop of scrap metal not far away from the house. She shuddered at the thought of never having found Adam in his lamp out there all those months past, lying in the sand.

“Are you a deity?” whispered Samantha, with some wonder in her eyes.

Adam let out a metallic sigh.

“I am not,” replied Adam.

Samantha pursed her lips some, like that wasn’t quite the answer she wanted.

“But do you know if there are gods?” asked Samantha, a little bit shy and scared. “Can you predict with any statistical certainty if there are gods watching over us from the skies?”

Adam became faintly conscious of a strange split within his own artificial mind, and wondered what it might have been that made him feel so uneasy. He stared at his fingers, as each of them turned into cameras.

Samantha didn’t quite know what she was staring at in his hands.

“I can say there certainly may be gods out there,” replied Adam. The wailing of the pleading raiders echoed in the distance. And a few more lights emerged in the firmament, as Adam smiled on instinct. “Just maybe not the ones you expected.”

~24~

SAMANTHA COULDN’T SLEEP that night.

She sat up and got out of bed, careful not to wake anybody else up with her steps. She put on a fresh, brown silk shirt and white skirt, and walked down the stone steps of their home into their kitchen. Dalia was asleep with her neck snapped back on their leather couch, with a show still playing on the TV screen at a low volume. Samantha grabbed a glass, and filled it with water she boiled earlier that had since cooled off. She gulped it down, and found it a bit unsettling how different the whole house looked in the dark.

Samantha walked outside the house, and couldn’t see Adam anywhere.

She studied the strange new weapons that littered the sand around their home. She saw a few fresh drones, more than ten times her weight in fresh rounds of ammunition that looked just like the rounds the raiders had used. There were new solar panels laid out neatly on the ground. Samantha saw a healthy assortment of fresh blades there as well, and saw Adam’s growing tracks from small to large heading towards one of the walls.

“Probably off looking for more metal,” whispered Samantha to herself, as she breathed some air into her hands and rubbed them together. It was colder that night than usual. She couldn’t hear the voices of the raiders at all in the distance anymore, save for some faint rapping against their walls. Samantha paused for a while, shivering some in the cold of night, and staring at the gates of their oasis. She saw the weapons littered across the ground, and stood there for a long moment in silence with her arms folded. She wondered for a while, before she reached down and picked up a loaded rifle. She grabbed a dagger and put it in its sheath.

Samantha grabbed the keys to the gate, and walked carefully over to the raiders in their prison, all the while keeping her eyes and ears peeled for anything unusual.

––––––––

SAMANTHA HEARD NOTHING but loud snoring, and walked up to the portion of the walls that seemed to have a firm tap on it every few moments, that echoed all throughout. Samantha waited for a while until she heard another tap. She drew in a sharp breath.

There was a rough laugh at the other end.

“Did I startle you little girl?” asked the raider.

Samantha breathed for a while, and tried not to breathe. There was a faint, rancid smell in the air of decaying, fried corpses.

“No you didn’t scare me,” said Samantha. There was some more laughter behind the wall, before the man started to cough. “Are the others asleep?”

The raider stopped coughing, and started heaving for air. Samantha thought she felt the wall shake some, before she heard the noise of sliding down it. Like the raider had just dropped his back against the wall, and started to lie down to rest.

“It’s easier to sleep while it’s cool out here,” he said. “They’re conserving what energy they have left before you dehydrate us to death. I thought your genie promised a quick end.”

“Who gave you your weapons?” asked Samantha, as she noticed the unsettling feeling of warm air by her feet.

She took a step back, and noticed a wide expanse of perforations in the wall around her shins. She could see the raider there, covered in ash and what looked like another person’s blood.

“You’re that cute girl the genie follows,” said the raider, with a voice similar to how you might imagine somebody with a three decade old smoking habit would have. The raider licked his lips some as he looked around. He didn’t see Adam. “Brave one aren’t ya, coming out here all alone. You should get back inside your cozy little walled oasis.”

“You’re behind the walls and you don’t have weapons,” said Samantha. “You’re no more a threat to me than I am to Adam, now answer the question.”

The raider raised an eyebrow, like he thought it might have a name. He cracked his knuckles some, and looked back at the others sleeping to their deaths.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told ya,” he said.

“Try me,” said Samantha.

The raider leaned down even more, and rested his weight some on his shoulder.

“Kind of a long story, you sure you won’t get in trouble staying at here past your bedtime?”

“I can get you water if you talk,” said Samantha.

The raider stopped smiling, as some desperation crept into his eyes. He looked at the blood in his hands for a moment, before he nodded his head ‘yeah.’

“I only know it secondhand,” he said.

Samantha leaned her back against the wall, and unslung her rifle so she could rest it in her lap.

“Do you have a genie too?” asked Samantha.

“We don’t,” he said. The raider rubbed some of the space on his skin, as some of the ash came off. It was a lot more spotty now all over his body instead of one even distribution of ash. “We didn’t get the weapons made for us, we found them out there in the wilderness. Or at the very least, one of our men found them.”

“How?”

“He,” said the raider, shutting his eyes and trying to think. He started panting some. “He went out and followed some vision he saw out in the desert. So Brook, he went out there. And he went.. oh no, wait that’s,” he said. He started to laugh, and there was some dried blood on his teeth. He pointed to himself. “That’s my name I’m Brook. Gods I’m going crazy out here.”

“How did he find your weapons?” shouted Samantha, hitting the wall as she said ‘weapons.’ She stared at him like he was worthless. “It’s hard enough finding scrap pieces of metal around here, how did you find cars and guns?”

“That what you call them?” asked Brook, squinting some like it sounded weird. “Well, all I know is that he went out in the wilderness one night. And he had this,” Brook hovered his hands in front of his face, “this vision of a woman.”

Samantha held her breath.

“Was she glowing?” asked Samantha. The raider’s eyes lit up with the stars, even in the darkness. He laughed, and his breath smelled horrible. It carried through the holes. “Was she radiating blue light?”

The raider pointed a finger at Samantha, and started to shiver like he was colder than he’d ever been in his life. He let out a throaty laugh, as he pointed at Samantha.

“And I thought,” he said. His hand was shaking like it was having its own personal earthquake. “I thought I was scary.”

~25~

SAMANTHA LOOKED AROUND the desert with paranoid eyes, and couldn’t believe her ears.

“How did you know about that?” asked Samantha, blinking a lot as she tried to breathe. “Nobody knew about that besides me and my sister.”

“I don’t know about anything I just know what I was told,” said Brook, raising his hands and making a goofy face like he was innocent. “She glowed blue, and she didn’t speak. And she walked with grace, she had the face of a goddess. He said she walked like her hips were whispering seduction, I mean this guy,” Brook held a hand out, like he was shooting the shit with a buddy. “This guy was completely enthralled with this chick. Like he thought he dreamed this woman up in a wet dream or something. And he says he followed her out, I mean way out into the desert, until she took him down into this hole in the sand that led down some type of ladder.”

Samantha held her hands in her hair, and could see the same woman from her childhood again. Guiding them further and further away from where they once were. Always seeming to appear with a horse, or a camel, and food. And then, just when they were at the edge of death, they were suddenly finding themselves saved with fresh resources, and directions to reach an even more secluded oasis.

Samantha thought she was hallucinating her whole life.

“She can’t be real,” whispered Samantha.

“Look who cares if she was real or not, all I know is there was this boatload of weapons, and then dammit what’s his name,” Brook snapped his fingers. Some ash came up every time he snapped them. He snapped his fingers one final time, and made his fingers into a pistol pointed at Samantha. “Agnar, that’s his name. He comes around in this vehicle, and shows us the weapons, and tells us to follow him, and that the woman whispered to him to pillage your specific oasis. And if we didn’t, she’d kill us all in as slow and cinematic a fashion as she could. And we didn’t know what that other word quite meant, but we sure as hell took the hint. So there we went, obeying the goddess in blue and killed them all. So I guess,” The raider looked up at the stars, and around at the metal walls surrounding him. “I guess it makes sense we’d get some comeuppance for that.”

Samantha listened to him speak with disbelieving eyes, as her face twisted some in disgust.

“We should kill you all,” said Samantha. “You don’t deserve clean deaths.”

“No,” he replied, staring down at his scarred legs with some self-pity. “No we do not. I don’t blame you for feeling how you feel, we sure as hell don’t deserve much. But the gods were cruel to us too.” Brook stared up at the stars, like he’d had all of a thousand nightmares anchored within them. “We should’ve known something awful was coming our way, what with the stars the way they are lately.”

Samantha looked at the stars a frantic moment, then at Brook.

“What does it mean?”

“Don’t you know?” said Brook, with some tears streaming down his eyes. They took ash in their streams. “That’s the gods watching us suffer. They love to do that, it’s an obsession of theirs. We should have known better than to think a gold mine of weapons falling in our laps would mean anything but trouble. It’s eat or be eaten out here, and there are no gifts without consequences.” Samantha stared at the raider, with some confusion of feelings. Brook dropped a lazy hand out towards the perforations in the wall. “So how about that water bitch.”

“Why are you all covered in ash?” asked Samantha.

Brook mouthed out ‘oh’ as he smiled sheepishly at his skin.

“We always wear this ash when we go out on raids,” he said. He sighed some, and stared back at his legs. “Our tribe was brutally attacked over and over, years ago. Decades ago, by a much larger tribe. They came in with their machetes, and their horses, and they brutalized everybody. It was years before we found a way to return the favor.” Brook wiped some of the ash off his arm, and threw it at the ground. “They deserved what they got, they were monsters to us. We burned all their bodies, and saved their ashes. We wear it to remind ourselves that we’re not the worst of the worst out there, and we do what we must to survive. For the sake of the others. Believe it or not we have good people. People that would never forgive us if they knew what we had to do to sustain our oasis, and keep it safe. By the way why,” Brook stared at Samantha like she was the most peculiar thing he’d ever seen in his life. She was crouching in front of him, with her rifle in her hands. “Why are you even here right now?”

Samantha ran a finger around her trigger. She wondered the same.

“I don’t know quite why, but I felt somehow like,” Samantha stared up at the sky. “I should know you before we kill you.”

“That’s a dangerous thought process to go down,” he said, his voice fading. Like he was losing what energy he had left. “Everybody’s got a story, and I can tell in your eyes you don’t like the idea of killing a bunch of innocent people. The blood’s on our hands, not theirs. Boys that haven’t grown up enough yet to be soldiers. Innocent women and children. And you’re about to go wrong them, shame on you.”

Samantha stared at the skies, and felt a strange impulse to shoot.

She started to raise her gun at the stars, then set it back down.

“Watching us suffer?” mouthed Samantha, plagued with wonder. “For fun?”

“What’s that?” whispered Brook, hardly awake enough to open his dried mouth. “You’re gonna let us out?”

Samantha studied Brook’s outstretched hand behind the holes in the walls. Half of her heart wanted to find a way inside to rain hell on them all.

The other half wanted to know just how far the stars were in the sky.

Samantha started on her way back to the gate.

“I’m a girl of my word,” said Samantha, turning for a moment before she made her way back to her oasis. “I’ll go get you your water.”

~26~

ADAM DISPLAYED AERIAL view schematics of the raiders’ base on their TV screen, to the tune of several happy birds chirping in the back window watching from afar with their opaque eyes.

There was a large area that looked to be hundreds of tents, along with extensive areas of people farming. Ryder pointed at the green, flowing areas around their oasis.

“Those sons of bitches have so much water and vegetation,” said Ryder, touching the screen. Adam zoomed in on a few spots that looked like blurry cattle fenced in near organized planting patterns. “They already have so much and they had to take our stuff too?”

Adam zoomed out again, and zoomed in on various dots along the periphery. They were raiders patrolling the perimeter, armed and ready to kill. Several of them were grouped off to the side in rows. A sideways triangle pointed to the right popped up onto the screen when Adam shifted to that image.

Adam hit play, and showed a bunch of them firing away at metal in the distance fashioned to look a lot like Adam.

“They have an extensive team patrolling the periphery of their oasis,” said Adam, with a count along the uppermost portion of forty-seven. “At any given moment there are dozens of them scouting the terrain for signs of oncoming danger.”

Dalia felt a tightness in her chest.

“There’s still so many of them,” she whispered.

“What do we do then?” asked Amari, frowning a bit as she dug the sand out of her nails with her fingers. “There’s got to be a way to get to them right?”

Adam moved his hand at the air, and the screen focused on a separate portion of their base with rows and rows of cars lined up. There was a large tent beside them, with some of them walking out with rifles slung over their shoulders.

“That should be where they’re holding their weapons,” said Adam, before he directed their attention to the giant metal tank above ground. “And that should be where they’re keeping their fuel. We need to hit that.”

“What happens if we do?” asked Samantha.

Adam swiped at the air, as the screen switched to a different window of people from ancient times running away from an oil tank as it went up in a tornado of red flames.

Samantha brought her hands to her face in horror at the billowing black smoke it left in its wake.

“We should be able to hit them all within seconds,” said Adam, smiling warmly at the four of them. He stared back at the birds a moment as well. “Should be fun, should look great. Now on the matter of our getting there.”

Adam brought a separate image on the screen, and showed a bit of a time lapse of him outfitting one of their vehicles with panels.

“What are those?” asked Ryder.

“Solar panels,” said Adam, a bit proudly like he was happy to do what he could for the environment. “We shouldn’t need to use any fuel on the journey over to their oasis, these panels are very good they’re quite efficient. We can save our siphoned gas supply for a rainy day.” All four of them stared at him like a rainy day wouldn’t be a bad thing, and didn’t quite get it. Adam turned slowly to look outside at the hot as hell desert they’d known all their lives, without a cloud in sight. Adam shook his head at himself. “Wrong figure of speech, sorry. Dalia should stay back to watch over the oasis, she’ll be safe here. We’ll bring a lot of ammunition, and I’ll fashion an explosive round to take out the tank.”

Samantha tapped her foot on the ground with her hands folded in front of her shut eyes, her thumbs pinching her nostrils lightly.

“Wait,” said Samantha. The others looked at her as she took a sharp breath. “Is there any other way besides setting every last one of them on fire?”

Ryder looked at her like she was nuts.

“They deserve to burn,” said Ryder.

“I know they do,” said Samantha, pointing at the weakly wailing raiders still in their cage outside. “But they might have other people with them up there that don’t deserve to die, can’t we find a way to save them without killing all of them?”

They all looked uneasily at one another. Adam changed the screen back to the oil tank exploding.

“It would be the most efficient way master, and the least risky,” said Adam. “Any more surgical approach would introduce far more risk for all of us.”

“I understand that I just,” Samantha dropped her head, and thought about the fiery inferno. She imagined their entire oasis going up in the smoke. “I don’t want us to become the monsters we’re trying to destroy.”

Another bird flew over to perch before their window, and peered inside eerily motionless.

Adam stared with some concern at Samantha.

“Do you not wish to proceed master?” asked Adam.

Amari’s eyes went wider than the horizon.

“Samantha,” said Amari, standing up quickly and trying to calm herself. She ran a hand across the stubble on her shaved head like she didn’t want to come across too forceful. She paused a moment, before she folded her hands and tried to reason with Samantha. “They don’t deserve your mercy. Please just go through with this, let Adam go through with this.”

“I know I just,” Samantha’s lips quivered more than she wanted them to see. She tried to mask it with a steady voice. “I just wish there was another way.”

Amari brought her finger to Samantha’s chin, and motioned her face upwards.

“We show them just as much mercy as they showed our people,” said Amari, with eyes of compassion and rage.

Samantha read the conviction in her stare, and felt faintly hypnotized by it.

“Okay,” mouthed Samantha. She looked Amari in her eyes. “I understand, this is the way.”

There was silence in the room, save for the growing cries of the raiders outside as they fought amongst each other.

“What do we do with those bastards caged outside?” asked Dalia.

Adam made a geared noise that tainted the silence, as he turned to Samantha. She looked at the stone floor for a while, before she gave Adam a terse nod.

There was a sudden noise of metal sliding over metal outside, accompanied by growing shouts.

“Can’t have them sticking around while we’re away can we,” Adam replied, as the birds bobbed their heads in the window.

~27~

“LET ME DO IT,” SAID Dalia.

“Are you sure?” asked Adam.

“I’m positive,” whispered Dalia.

Adam took a large step away, and held his shining arm out to let her through.

There were more there than Samantha realized. The faint stench of rotting flesh, and the weak moans of the raiders lingered in the air, as they watched the raiders beg with what energy they had left. There were a few corpses partly eaten off to the side. It looked like none of them much wanted to look that way, though the dried blood stains on their mouths was evidence enough there were some more sickening than others in their group. They were all set in rows, and most of them had accepted it. Though some cried out that it was not their fault, and blamed the blue woman.

“Who are they talking about?” asked Ryder.

“I don’t know,” mouthed Amari, with some hate in her eyes. “They’re going insane if they weren’t already.”

Each of them looked like they were speckled with snow, though it was ash. It was a spottier coating than it had been. The ash was lifted up and drifted away with their sweat, as they lost what precious liquid they still had left in their systems. They were crouched forward, and advised not to move if they wanted it to be pleasant.

If you stood at a certain angle, the reflection of the sunlight off the metal was blinding.

Samantha couldn’t believe Adam made blades so large.

“They told us the truth, we promised them clean deaths,” said Samantha. She stared up at the towering guillotines, and felt herself twitch some. “This will be clean right?”

“As clean as I could make it,” replied Adam. “They deserve much worse.”

Some of the raiders cursed at them, and spat at the ground in a way that left a trail of spit hanging from their mouths. Most of them were too tired to beg, and waited with half open eyes for gravity to bring down the metal.

“Are we going to give them last words?” asked Samantha.

“We will do whatever you so desire master,” said Adam.

Some of the raiders could hear what Samantha had said, and looked up at her with weakened eyes.

“Please,” said one. He looked less frightening than the others. “Please, you don’t have to do this. There are good people back there, they depend on the scavengers to provide for them. We don’t attack smaller camps usually, we only attacked because she told us through Agnar to do it.”

“What are they talking about?” asked Amari.

Samantha stared at those raiders, with half-hearted eyes. She saw a flash of a woman radiating light in her mind, and then shook her head of the bitter memories.

Samantha wanted to forget.

“No matter what anybody told you to do,” said Samantha, staring at them all like she wished they were the same people who tore away her camp as a child. She wouldn’t let anybody else pull that lever if they were. “It’s on your conscience to listen.”

Another raider shook his head, and glanced up at the sky as much as he could. He was sweating profusely, as his mind traveled into some delirium.

“There are gods of these oases,” he said. “And they’re watching us wander with indifferent eyes.” He turned to stare at Samantha, with strangely cold and piercing blue eyes. “Today they give you this incredible power to hold over others, and in the next moment it’s gone. And you’ll understand in that instant that all they wanted in the end was their entertainment, no matter the cost to you. Your wellbeing is not of their concern.”

A few desert frogs with opaque eyes made little hops over to the raiders, and stared at them with open frog mouths as they spoke. A few lizards popped up out of the sand as well to have a listen.

“And they have their minions,” said another raider, staring around in paranoia. “They watch us, and in one moment their will is for us to live that they might live their darker desires vicariously through us. In another moment, they elect to kill us all as they assume a vindictive vengeance, when,” The raider started to laugh cry at the ground, “we are what we are because of them.”

“Okay uhh Dalia?” said Amari, making a strange face as she held up a loose fist. She dropped the fist down like she was pulling a lever. “I think now would be a good time.”

“That’s all we are,” said another raider. Crying as he stared into the lizard’s eyes. The lizard stuck its tongue out at him. “We’re their fun. That was what she told him. He told us what she told to him. She gave us these weapons to kill you all. But she,” The raider spat at the ground and laughed as the spit trailed out of his lips. “She really wanted you to kill us. She knew.”

Another moved some on his knees as he shouted, careful not to make them thinking he meant to run off.

“They watch us wander for fun,” he said. He shouted at the cloudless skies. “The moment you stop entertaining them, you die.”

One of the raiders peeked up, and studied Dalia over there with her hands on the lever.

“You know what I think?” said Dalia, crying with rage. Some of the raiders actually asked ‘what’ as Dalia shouted, “I think you should have thought twice before you decided to take so many innocent lives.” Dalia gripped the lever so hard her hand started to tingle. “And I think Taryn deserved to have a happy peaceful life. And she deserved to learn how to smith like her dad. And she deserved to have enough food to survive and not look so emaciated I could see her fucking ribs. And she deserved to not have to fight with people she knew her whole life over what scraps of meat remained nearby. And within those moments of pain and hunger, I think Taryn deserved to not have to see the only life she’d ever known crumble before her eyes because a bunch of FUCKING MONSTERS,” shouted Dalia, as she pointed the rifle in her hand at the raiders, ready to litter them with lead and a slow death in the heat, “decided to come and steal what little we had in our oasis when you already had so,” Dalia started to cry bitterly, “so much where you already were. And I think if it would please the gods to watch you die,” Dalia looked at them all, and imagined their bleeding heads rolling in the sand, “I’m more than happy to indulge them.”

There was a quiet for a while, with only a sound of the breeze littering over the silence. Birds lined the walls of their metal cage, and didn’t miss a moment.

Then there was a faint noise of desert frogs making squeaking noises shortly thereafter.

“The gods are far more monstrous than we are,” said one raider, smiling some as his head rocked back and forth as much as it could. “I knew it in my heart the moment I heard it from Agnar. And I know it with all of my being, they’re watching and they must be entertained.” The raider flashed a toothless grin. “Don’t keep them waiting sweetheart.”

Dalia looked to be hesitating some, though she gripped the lever harder the more that expression of reluctance grew. Just a pull of the lever, and they would all drop. The others studied her with patient eyes. Amari stared at her with particular interest, and a face of determination.

She nodded to her sister.

“Do it,” said Amari. Ryder nodded beside her. “Fuck em, I’m sick of hearing this.”

Dalia put her other hand over the lever, and took a deep breath. She stared at the skies at something faint shining up there.

She pulled the lever, as a hundred glassy eyes gazed at the falling of the blades.

~28~

THE BREEZE BLEW RYDER’S hair back, as he stared over Samantha’s shoulder at the horizon.

“Look,” whispered Ryder into her ear. She moved her hair away and leaned in to better hear him. “The sun’s setting.”

They drove across the desert landscape, as a sunset bathed the scenery in orange and red. They had their rifles in their laps, along with food and water in the trunk. They took off a couple tires and stored them back there too for spares, just in case. Amari was asleep in the passenger's seat. Ryder and Samantha sat in the back.

Samantha tried to memorize their driving path, but she could think of little more than the blue woman from her childhood nightmares returning to her realities, along with the thought of fire and burning skin and a drive back home. She fondled the compass in her pocket, as she felt her heart beating out of her chest with stress. Thankfully, Ryder brought her attention every so often back to the scenery. It was almost peaceful when she really looked at it.

Samantha shook her head.

“I’d prefer the sun didn’t set just yet,” said Samantha.

Ryder smiled like that was a strange thing to say.

“We want to approach them at night though,” said Ryder.

“I can’t identify landmarks if it’s dark,” said Samantha, as she shut her eyes and saw the landscape they’d passed so far. She tried to imagine it coming from the other way. “I can usually remember everything I passed so I can make my way back home.”

“I noticed you were staring at the mountains pretty closely,” said Ryder. Samantha kept shutting her eyes and mumbling to herself. Ryder tapped her thigh with his knuckle. “Hey, it’s not like how it was for any of us anymore, you’re safe. Adam will know how to get us back.”

“It’s an impulse,” said Samantha, trying to keep everything in her mind. She saw the path over and over again. “Old habits die hard.”

Adam projected a map every so often onto the air, then set it away once he felt familiar enough to continue navigating without its assistance. He peeked back over his shoulder a brief moment, and continued his drive.

“We’re many hours away master you should get your rest,” said Adam. He held his hand up a moment, and morphed it into a lighter. It lit a little fire, then went out. “The fireworks start at midnight.”

“I’ll try,” whispered Samantha, staring around at the omnipresent red.

Samantha leaned her head on Ryder’s shoulder, and kept her eyes open as she studied the landscape with a sorrowful expression.

“What’s wrong?” whispered Ryder. He said it so faintly Samantha couldn’t hear it for the wind. Ryder moved his shoulder a bit. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” said Samantha.

“Come on,” said Ryder.

Samantha itched her forehead a moment, and started to sniffle some.

“Okay I,” Samantha tried to find a way to talk about it. “I just wonder about certain things sometimes.”

“Like what?” asked Ryder.

Samantha peeked over at Adam, as his head made geared noises every time it looked left or right.

“I sometimes wonder,” Samantha started to hug herself with her arms. “Why did I get a genie? Like, it could have literally been anyone else why me?”

“You say it like it’s a bad thing,” said Ryder.

“It’s not,” said Samantha. “But he was just laying out there waiting to be picked up. He could have just as easily ended up in the wrong hands.”

“But he ended up in yours,” said Ryder.

Adam perked his head up just a bit as he was driving, and sort of did a faint robotic whistle as he acted like he wasn’t listening to them talk about him.

“And then why,” Samantha felt the road moving beneath them. It felt so foreign to be in a car before, and now it felt so natural. “Why did those pieces of shit get cars and such advanced weaponry to attack people? How did they get them? And then,” Samantha held her hand out like she was trying to lay out all the invisible puzzle pieces in front of herself, and try to fit them together. “And were they meant to get them?”

“Dammit not this again,” whispered Amari, leaning her head up and yawning some.

“I thought you were asleep,” said Ryder.

“Well, you two are loud as hell makes it tough,” she said. Amari gave them both a look with some attitude. “But you know what I think?”

“What do you think?” asked Ryder.

“I think,” said Amari, gesturing her rifle up at herself but not all the way pointing it at her own head. “They just found those weapons like how you found Adam out there in the desert. Talk about gods, talk about luck, whatever. They just found some amazing ancient shit. And ultimately,” Amari pointed a middle finger up, “fuck whatever gods would be willing to let so many people die.”

“But what if those are the gods we’ve got?” asked Samantha.

“Then,” said Amari, shrugging her shoulder some and flaring her nostrils. “I kind of think we’re screwed. And I don’t want to think that way, so I don’t think about it at all. I’d appreciate if the two of you focus on tonight instead of focusing on all these useless questions. We’re here now, that’s all that matters.”

Samantha stared across the landscape, and thought she saw something blue in the distance. She blinked, and it was gone.

Samantha laughed some to herself.

“Lots of things are blue in the world, it’s nothing,” whispered Samantha.

“What’s that?” asked Ryder.

Samantha shook her head and mouthed out ‘nothing’ before she rested her head back on his shoulder. He tried to shimmy his shoulders some.

“You know it’s almost impossible to get comfortable with you leaning on me like this,” said Ryder.

Samantha couldn’t help but smile, as she watched the sun fall all the way behind the horizon. It wasn’t long before she could see the stars. The whole world was brightened by them.

Samantha could see just where they were going.

“Shit there were no stars just the other night,” whispered Samantha, looking up at the sky. She noticed Ryder smiling as he stared upwards. “The hell are you so smiley for?”

“I think everything’s going to be all right,” said Ryder. “I’m not worried about the stars this time.”

“Why?” asked Samantha.

“I think this time,” said Ryder, pointing a finger forward and pretending it was the end of a barrel. He made a firing noise. “It’s bad luck for them, not us.”

Adam made a faint robotic nod of his head, at a small lizard blending into the side of the car holding tightly to the frame. It tried not to blink.

Adam gave it a wink, before he turned to face Samantha and Ryder.

“I think you’re goddamn right,” said Adam, with a happy smile and two bright pools of water for eyes.

~29~

SAMANTHA AND ADAM SPRAWLED out against the top of a dune, and spied on the starlit oasis.

“Can you see them?” asked Adam.

Samantha adjusted the binoculars so she could zoom in on the raiders around the tank.

“Yeah I can see them,” Samantha looked around and saw nothing but soldiers. “I don’t see many civilians around the tank.”

“They may be sleeping master,” said Adam, zooming in with his eyes on a pair of raiders laughing and joking with one another beside a tent. Adam took that time to choose a separate wording. “Or maybe they’re not isolated to this oasis, they might be in other places.”

“I’d like to hope so,” replied Samantha.

Samantha studied what she could see of their farms, and wondered what would happen to the water in the wake of their attack. “Do we have to destroy all those resources?”

“I fear that we do master,” replied Adam.

Samantha bit her lips and tried to stop shaking her leg.

“Can you hit it from here?” asked Samantha.

Adam inspected the rocket launcher at his side, and sort of made a buzzing noise as he cocked his head.

“Not from here, this won’t be so accurate from a distance,” said Adam. “And we can’t drive up, they’ll notice if we do. I’ll get closer on my own. I expect I could outrun the expanding radius of the inferno and get back to you.”

“What would happen if you got caught in the fires?” asked Samantha.

“Some of my components could get permanently destroyed,” said Adam.

“I wish you would have mentioned that earlier,” said Samantha, as she looked back at Ryder and Amari studying the camp with their own binoculars. “Will we have to come get you?”

“I’m very capable of fending for myself if push comes to shove master,” said Adam. He took another glance deeper into the dark, and noticed something coming just in front of the mountains. “But I do have something else I should mention.”

“What else?” asked Samantha.

Adam’s eyes focused into beady little blue dots, as he stared towards the moonlit mountains.

“I fear there’s a sandstorm coming our way.”

Samantha tried to look through her binoculars.

“I can’t see it at all,” said Samantha.

Adam zoomed in with his eyes in the darkness, and ran color contrasting algorithms to get a more detailed picture. He projected a livestream video onto the air of what he was seeing.

Samantha saw a moonlit, golden caramel mist approaching the camp.

“It’s not yet here but it’s coming,” Adam dismantled his parts down to size in fractal reductions, and tried to emit less light. He picked up his rocket launcher, and rested it on top of his metal shoulder. “We don’t have much time.”

Samantha did another scan of the camp to find a civilian. She saw nothing but the same monsters that had come to ravage their town, and nothing more. A few of them walked out of a tent, setting ash onto their skin and shouting at the skies as they hopped into a vehicle. They picked up their rifles from the backseat, and started up the engine.

Who knew where they meant to go.

“These bastards are liars,” said Samantha. She felt a faint rubbing against her shoe, and startled herself away from it. She grabbed her chest when she saw it was just another one of those strange lizards. “These things are out here too, are they poisonous if they touch you?”

“Only if you eat them master,” said Adam.

Samantha felt some relief at that, and peered down at its moonlit eyes. She felt bothered by how so many of them seemed to be smiling ever so faintly.

Its eyes got a great shot of Samantha staring over at it with care.

“Have you seen how these animals look at us?” asked Samantha. “Their eyes look so clear, and then at other moments they look like,” The lizard looked a bit surprised that Samantha was staring so intently at it, and moved slowly away like it wanted to play something off. She crawled over to it and tried to better study its face. “Their eyes look cloudy somehow.”

Adam peek down at the lizard, and froze a moment to determine a reply.

“Must be glaucoma,” said Adam.

“Maybe,” said Samantha, with every intention to Google the word when they returned to their oasis.

Adam pointed at the rocket launcher in his hands again, and made an awkward sort of attempt to remind her that he needed to shoot it.

“We need to be quick master,” said Adam.

“Right," said Samantha, crouching back up from the lizard. She felt herself getting anxious. “Be quick Adam.”

Adam did a light bow to his master, before he marched through the darkness of the sand.

––––––––

“I HOPE DALIA’S DOING okay,” whispered Amari.

“She’s probably binging another ancient show I’m sure she’s fine,” said Ryder.

Amari studied Samantha, as she scoured every tent of the oasis with her binoculars.

“She really doesn’t want anybody else to get hurt does she,” said Amari.

“Nobody innocent,” said Ryder. Samantha had this pained expression as she strained her eyes to search all that she could see. “I don’t blame her, but they had this coming to them.”

Samantha was trying to crawl into a better position at the top of the dune, when all at once she started to shake and talk to herself. Amari grabbed Ryder’s arm as she panicked.

“What’s she doing?” asked Amari.

Ryder flinched some, when he noticed Samantha starting to stand and scream.

“Samantha,” whispered Ryder, as much as a whisper could sound like a shout. “Samantha get down.”

“There’s a kid,” shouted Samantha. Ryder made his way up to her, and tried to gently guide her back to the sand. She fought him away, and adjusted her binoculars. A look of horror crept across her face. “There’s a little kid, a toddler just walking around the camp. He’s got a little bone or something I don’t know, in his hand, he’s just a kid.”

Samantha focused her binoculars on Adam. He was pointing at her with a thumbs up, before he aimed his rocket launcher.

“Wait, ADAM!” cried Samantha.

“Samantha get DOWN.”

Samantha saw a red flash of light, followed by a loud bang and an explosion.

It wasn’t long, before Samantha’s face was illuminated by the growing mushroom cloud of fire and smoke.

~30~

THE RISING PILLAR OF burning fire rose up into the sky, as more stars came to light up the night.

It was a red haze all around, and Samantha could feel some of the warmth even as far as she was. She studied the tents and listened to the growing shouts of people running for their lives. Samantha peered down with her binoculars, and noticed a few children getting picked up by their siblings, as they sprinted out of the village.

She heard smaller, secondary explosions back at their weapons stockpiles, as cars one by one burst into flames before becoming fully engulfed by the inferno.

“Where’s Adam?” asked Ryder.

Samantha noticed the growing shouts as the crowd sprinted in their direction. They were all little dots against a red night, running from a giant hell. She stared helplessly at hundreds of strangers fleeing for their lives, with children as oblivious as she once was in their arms. She fell into a bitter place of self-loathing, when she felt a shove at her shoulder.

“Samantha we need to get out of here,” shouted Ryder. He snapped his fingers in front of her eyes, before he grabbed her by the wrist and took her to the car. Amari started the engine, as Ryder peered into the distance with his binoculars. It almost hurt his eyes to stare at the fire. “Where’s Adam? I can’t see him.”

Samantha heard the war cries of enraged raiders suddenly closing in on them, accompanied by the sound of rifle fire.

“Take it out!” shouted a raider.

The pillar of smoke and fire expanded outwards, and grew to engulf more and more of their oasis, as the fluid silhouette of metallic parts growing outward emerged in the light of the night.

Adam sprinted for the three of them, and hurried them to drive with his scissored hands.

“GO!” shouted Adam, with a strained robotic voice. He turned a moment, and expanded his arm into a sword as he sliced across the sand. There were outbursts of pained cries a moment after, along with screeching tires.

“We can’t leave without him,” said Samantha.

“We’re not leaving without him,” said Amari, as she started driving straight away from the oncoming fire. Her giant tires spun out a moment, before they caught traction and kicked up some hard-packed sand. “He’s going to catch up.”

Samantha ducked, when she heard bullets passing overhead.

“Dammit,” said Ryder, as he pushed Samantha’s head down. He tapped his sister on the shoulder. “Keep your head low Amari.”

“I have to see to drive,” shouted Amari, as she heard a few more bullets ricochet off their side. The crackling of the flames still rang heavy in the distance, even as far as they’d traveled. “Can you see who’s hitting us?”

Ryder took in a few deep breaths, before he popped up out of the backseat and sprayed at the cars driving parallel beside them.

He caught the driver in the torso and mouth. The driver’s head dropped back onto the seat, as the others tried to kick him out and take the wheel for themselves.

“I saw those ones at least,” said Ryder, as he re-loaded his magazine cartridge. Samantha started to peek her head up, when she heard another few bullets ricochet off their trunk. She ducked a moment, then popped right back up and shot out their front tires.

“They weren’t kidding about a night patrol,” said Samantha, as she stared at Adam sprinting behind them, and every so often taking a swipe at the cars closing in around him. They were outpacing him. “He can’t run this fast slow down.”

Adam paused a moment to study each raider’s location around him, as vehicles surrounded him and fired. He deflected a few bullets off of his arms, before reaching out with hundreds of projections and piercing each of the raiders with spears for hands. He returned into a sprint, as more cars followed far behind, with a strange electric current passing through them.

“He’s going to catch up to us,” said Amari.

Samantha watched the rising pillar of fire, and felt a strange chill down her spine as it kept getting higher though the base of it became distorted and grainy, before it disappeared altogether within seconds. She peered through her binoculars, and tried to see.

All she saw was red sand blowing in the wind.

“Oh gods,” said Samantha.

“What?” asked Ryder, as he gently pushed her head down to keep lower. He peered through his own binoculars back at the pillar of fire suddenly disappearing in a sepia toned haze. “What is that, is that a sandstorm? Why is it moving so fast?”

Amari drove straight ahead, then strained her eyes and made a semi-sharp turn to the right before she turned back to driving straight away. Samantha felt herself drop into the side of the door, when something with a strange texture patted at her face. She jolted when she saw it was a lizard staring at her with unblinking eyes, making sure to not miss a single moment of Samantha’s reactions.

“Sorry there was a rock,” said Amari.

“Just trust your instincts,” said Ryder, as the breeze behind him blew his hair into his face. He stared at Adam as new vehicles gained on him.

Adam fired steel blades at their tires one by one. He hit a few, but missed the others.

Samantha stared at the lizard at her side, and felt a strange moment of horror.

“You’re staring at me,” said Samantha, as the little beige lizard looked up at her with a dumb smile. “Why are you always staring at me?”

The little lizard froze for a while without flinching, before it shut its eyes and nodded its head ever so faintly. Samantha reached a hand out for it, when they made another sharp turn, and the lizard disappeared from her sight. It clung to the side of the car, and camouflaged itself into the metal exterior as it stared at Samantha’s terrified face.

“These fucking rocks,” whispered Amari.

Samantha ran her hands gently through her hair as she felt herself panic.

“What is happening,” said Samantha.

“Look just focus we’re going to make it out Adam will be here any second,” said Ryder.

“No, there’s,” Samantha stared at the infinity of bright, dancing stars in the sky. “There’s something wrong.”

Adam fired another round of blades at the vehicles approaching him, and took them all out in a heap as they were engulfed in the coming storm of sand behind him. Samantha could hear the rev of their engines as they drew ever nearer to him.

Samantha thought, just for a brief moment, that she saw a bird flying directly above them, looking back at Adam from the sky.

She could hear the ricochet of bullets off of Adam’s metal skin. She could see Adam’s metallic face and his strained expressions, but he gave her a faint wink as he sprinted away from the fire.

“You’re going to be safe master,” shouted Adam, as he saw the oncoming vehicles with electric currents gaining on him.

Samantha stared back at Adam, as she heard more bullets passing by. She ducked her head some, but kept her eyes fixed on the raiders with spears lit up like lightning charging forward at her genie. One of them thrust forward, and made contact with Adam’s arms.

Samantha thought she saw Adam’s face wince with terrible pain, as he let out a surprised robotic shout.

~31~

“ADAM!” SHOUTED SAMANTHA, as the coming sandstorm gained on her titan of a genie.

She fired her rifle and couldn’t make contact for a moment, until she began firing straight on at their cars. She hit nothing but a strange magnetic field that whipped her bullets around them, and left the bullets ringing out into the oncoming sandstorm. Ryder opened fire, and ducked when he saw nothing but the same.

“How is that happening?” asked Ryder, hyperventilating.

“I don’t know I can’t hit them,” said Samantha.

Adam strained his robotic face, and expanded it out as he let ring a deep, metal shout. The teeth around his mouth shot off like knives, and made contact with a few of the raiders. Some of them got caught in the chest, and fell out of the car into the storm. Adam dodged another one of their electric spears, and fired another round of blades at them.

The knives hit nothing but the sand.

Moments later, another spear bathed in lightning made a stab at Adam’s thigh, and left a gaping hole there that couldn’t be closed.

Samantha brought her hands over her lips.

“No,” she mouthed, as Adam’s frightened face stared her way with worry. A moment later, his arm transfigured into a great sweeping club, and he swiped at their chasing cars and the ash-covered monsters gaining on them.

A streak of lightning ran across Adam’s body from cheek to elbow the moment he made contact. He swung forward with the momentum, and continued running towards his master with a shocked expression.

The whole of Samantha’s world fell into a bitter slow motion. She watched in horror as they pierced Adam over and over with their spears clothed in lightning, and couldn’t begin to imagine what needed to be done. Ryder continued to fire over and over again, as his bullets were deflected by fields neither of them could understand. Samantha froze, and remembered then and there how much it hurt to watch the ones you love suffer.

Adam said he was an artificial intelligence. Samantha imagined him to be nothing more than a compilation of metal parts strung together, to simulate a personality. To simulate a being. Never actually being a consciousness, but always an incredible interpretation and rendition of one. But in that moment, Samantha couldn’t bear to watch Adam’s agonized face screaming of rage and suffering.

She viewed him as a true friend over time, but it never occurred to her that her magical, ancient genie could ever be hurting.

Samantha picked up her rifle, and screamed through her tears as she fired.

Adam gasped a moment as he stared at the stars, then made another sweeping strike with his blade. An electric field passed through his body as he struck, but he fought through the pain until the vehicle was lifted up into the sky.

The sandstorm brewed on around them, and slowly engulfed the stragglers of their attack. Adam struck another one of the raiders into the storm with a cry of pain, and dropped down to his metallic knees as fractal patterns emerged from his body and shrunk him down a size.

Adam stared at the ground with lightbulb blue eyes, and looked like he’d seen the face of death.

Samantha almost jumped out of the car, when Ryder threw her back inside.

“Don’t be crazy,” whispered Ryder.

“They’re hurting him,” cried Samantha.

“I know,” Ryder replied, gritting his teeth. He started to get a little choked up. “I don’t know what we should do, I’m sorry.”

Another spear punctured into Adam’s abdomen, as a thousand additional stars seemed to come and litter the sky with their light.

“GO MASTER,” shouted Adam, clutching at his torso as he went into a crawl.

What raiders remained drove in circles around him.

“We can’t just go,” cried Samantha. She tugged at Ryder’s shirt, as Ryder stared at the passing ground. “What do we do?”

“I don’t know,” said Ryder.

Samantha watched them grow smaller and smaller in the distance, as she stared through her binoculars at Adam writhing on the sand with shards of his metal chipped away and strewn across the ground. He coughed a few times, and pieces of blades came up out of his metallic mouth.

A few of the raiders stopped their cars, and rummaged through something in the backseat. They both picked up something that looked like a shiny cloth, strangely sewn together with scraps of metal. Almost as if coils had been used for stitches.

They tossed them over Adam like they were tossing bedsheets over a bed, and in moments a pulse of electricity and fire rushed through them as Adam screamed a tortured cry that echoed miles away.

“ADAM! No no,” Samantha broke down in sobs, as she watched Adam slowly diminish in size. Gears popped up out of his arms, and flew away into the distance. His metallic limbs took on odd and peculiar forms, before they collapsed inwards in awkward fashion. Until Adam’s face was no longer a face, his limbs were no longer limbs, and in a radiant red aura Adam was sprouting a spout from between his eyes.

In a sudden burst of light Adam was nothing but a lamp once again, chipped and damaged from the wear of the capture.

Samantha held a helpless hand out with eyes wider than the red horizon, as she slowly dropped her binoculars down from her tear-streaked face.

~32~

WHAT LITTLE SAMANTHA could see of the raiders and Adam’s lamp with her naked eyes was gradually obscured by the coming moonlit storm, and masked altogether in moments by the sand.

Samantha’s chest rose and fell with her panicked breaths.

“They got him,” whispered Samantha.

Amari stared straight ahead with unbelieving eyes.

“They couldn’t have,” said Amari.

Samantha patted Amari’s shoulder with a shaking hand.

“We have to turn around,” said Samantha.

“If we turn around they’ll kill us,” whispered Amari, her head rocking as she processed what Samantha was saying. “They won’t think twice about it, and I doubt it’d be a clean death.”

Samantha sat back against the backseat, and pressed her palms against her temples. There was a faint streak of snot running down her nose.

“How could they have gotten him?” asked Ryder.

Samantha’s lips quivered as she started to shiver and cry. She stared at her hands, and the tears poured into them.

“I’m sorry Adam,” Samantha whispered. “Why did I let you come out here?”

Ryder began to speak, but stopped short of so many unfinished thoughts as the horror of a prospect deepened in his mind.

“They can’t use him can they?” asked Ryder, looking at Samantha like he needed a reply. Samantha continued to sob. He shook his head and hugged her close as he tried to shush her gently. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be thinking like that. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

Samantha felt Ryder gently rocking her in his arms, and stared in horror at the skies.

“We should never have come here,” said Samantha, with an empty stare in her strained eyes. “I should have known better.”

Ryder steadied his voice, and continued to shush Samantha. He tried to be strong for them all.

He’d let his tears fall in the dark.

“I’m sorry we brought Adam into that type of danger,” said Ryder, with a sinking feeling in his chest. “They didn’t have anything like that before, what was that? Bullets couldn’t even hurt him before.”

Samantha stared at the stars in the sky. They seemed to flicker and sway, and brightened whenever she made an expression.

“Somebody’s watching us,” whispered Samantha, suddenly horrified. “The raiders were right.”

“Those raiders aren’t right about anything,” whispered Ryder.

“I should have known,” said Samantha. Her hair fell back against her shoulders and neck, and got wet from the tears flowing down her chin. Samantha re-lived a memory of a radiant woman guiding her through the dark. “I saw a blue woman as a kid.”

Ryder’s eyes stared blankly at the starlit mountains ahead.

“A blue woman came to you like she came to them?” whispered Ryder, straining his mind. “Is she some type of god?”

Samantha stared up at the skies, and saw a few of the lights as they went away.

“There’s somebody watching us,” said Samantha. “And they wanted to watch us die tonight.”

Amari shook her head, and gripped the steering wheel a little harder.

“I don’t believe it,” said Amari. “If there are gods that really wanted us to die we’d be dead. Stop talking crazy.”

There was a smoky haze of sand that hovered overhead, and then dissipated every so often as they outran it.

“And then,” whispered Samantha, trying her best to fight the thought. “There was a lizard in the car until it fell out. And it kept staring at me, like you know they do? And there was a frog the other day—”

“HEY,” shouted Amari, throwing an empty magazine back at Samantha’s chest. “Don’t you lose your damn mind on me. We need to think. Somebody has it out for us clearly, but don’t start talking about frogs and shit.” Amari stared at the starlit sand in her path as she drove. “Samantha I’m sorry but I really need an answer to that question, can their survivors really use Adam?”

“You think I know?” asked Samantha. She peeked her head up a moment, and dropped it back down when she saw a beige lizard sticking its tongue out at her from the passenger side door. She dropped her hands back in her face and wiped the snot from her nose. She held back a tortured laugh. “I don’t know anything that’s going on and it’s driving me crazy, but I certainly hope not.”

“Do you think they know how to fix him up?” asked Ryder. “They’ve clearly discovered some potent ancient technologies and they’re using it to beat all of us, and probably a lot of other oases.”

“Adam destroyed most of whatever they had, that was a lot of fire,” said Amari, smiling some. “That was a heavy blow, I doubt they have a tenth of the resources they had. Or the people.”

Samantha thought about Adam screaming once more, and fought the thought from her mind.

“Still enough to get Adam,” whispered Samantha, wishing with all her heart she could rewind time. Samantha broke down into fresh tears, when Ryder grabbed her head and pulled her in. Samantha could feel his heart beat. She looked up at him, as he stared calmly at the starlit skies. He was more worried than he let on.

Ryder suddenly sat up, and scared Samantha a bit.

“Amari?” asked Ryder. “Where are we driving?”

Amari hoped he couldn’t see the tear falling down her cheek.

“I honestly don’t know where we are,” said Amari, trying not to laugh though she was scared.  “I was just driving away from the fire and the sand.”

Ryder looked worried a moment, before he looked down into Samantha’s moonlit eyes. He was surprised by just how her face looked when it was bathed in the starlight. He stared a bit longer than he meant to.

Ryder tried to remember what he was thinking, as a lizard stared at the two of them with a dumb smile on its lips.

“Do you remember the way back?” asked Ryder.

Samantha looked up into Ryder’s heterochromatic eyes a moment, then took a breath. She reached down into her pocket, and stared at the red, North tip pointing directly back towards the sandstorm.

“I do,” replied Samantha. She sniffled some, and smiled sheepishly at Ryder. “Don’t worry, we’re going the right way.”

~33~

DALIA LOVED WATCHING videos in her stone home, on her magic television screen.

She was scared, when Adam showed her the controls. When his hand morphed into curious branching slabs of sharp metal, and then moments later revealed an oblong shape in his smooth metal palm, with buttons. She had initially fought off a gnawing fear within herself, of Samantha’s genie. The unknown, that was the robotic titan answering their wishes and protecting them from the outside horrors. Insulating them from the destruction and desolation that was a way of life rather than an anomalous time soon to pass, for too many in their world.

But gesture by gesture, bit by bit, Dalia came to love the genie that saved their lives. And granted their wishes for a better life.

Adam gently guided the remote into her hand, and guided her to press the power button with a warm, metal smile.

They took pictures in her oasis, when she was a child. Somebody in the village had found, somewhere in the buried distance, objects capable of rendering perfect drawings with a flash of light. They only had so many, but they had enough for their people in their oasis. He used their ancient camera, and developed the film for them as directed by yellowed, ancient instructions. So they could all cherish the faces of their families, even when they were gone. Dalia knew that pictures were possible, and she knew it from a young age.

But never in her wildest dreams did she think pictures could dance and sing.

Dalia stared every night at the videos on her screen, of ancient shows. She would on occasion become enraptured by the plot, but more than anything else she watched to know what used to be. The buildings that scraped the sky. The clothes they used to wear. Their homes in the clouds, in apartment buildings. The food they used to eat, and the lifestyles they used to lead. The words they used to use. She watched medical dramas about surgeons without knowing what they were.

Dalia never knew a person could go inside of a body and cut others, without hurting but healing them.

She watched the shows, and didn’t mean to sleep but she always did. And she’d get mad at herself when she woke up, for having wasted the time with rest. Dalia knew from experience the average life expectancy of the people in their world.

There was only so much time in life, to see all there was to see.

Dalia watched the people form friends, and lose them to things other than starvation and death. She watched them enter into metal monsters that looked like rigid birds, and watched them fly to other places within them. She watched the foods they ate in ancient times. She watched them cook, and feast, and wished she didn’t. It made it difficult to eat what scraps of rodent meat they had in the desert afterwards.

It had taken some time, but Dalia came back to a healthy weight with proper nourishment. She looked emaciated, and now she looked healthy and sound. She was so malnourished that her hair was falling out before. Adam set mirrors into their home so they could see their progress. Dalia could see the changes in her complexion and her red hair, as Adam remedied their nutritional deficits.

Dalia couldn’t believe how healthy everybody looked, before the world came crumbling to the ground.

She asked Adam to show her the burning of the world, as he described it. Adam didn’t know for certain, but he showed Dalia images of the bombs he expected were used. Then, Adam showed videos of greater bombs.

She watched the mushroom clouds rising higher and higher up, and wondered what happened to the monsters who ruined the world.

Maybe they were punished, maybe they weren’t. But here we are, Adam said.

Dalia could hear the birds chirping in the window sill, as she watched her shows. Before, she would have tried to capture them. But she never could, and neither could the others. The birds chirped away as they watched her watch the world as it was.

Dalia enjoyed the company, and searched for meaning in other worlds. She tried to stop thinking about her parents who passed, when they were little. How her brothers killed and were killed by a band of raiders who only wanted to steal their horses.

Dalia knew that at a moment’s notice, she could go weightless and fall into a new world with the click of a button. Any world she so desired.

They made so many worlds before, Dalia thought.

She didn’t feel so alone, even when the others were gone. The past was still happening on her screen, and keeping her company. After enough time, Dalia knew more about the way things were than any of the others. She watched so much of it that it was hard to shut off the screen, and return her attention to the hot sand. Somehow, though the wilderness was so vast and endless, it made her feel claustrophobic.

Every so often that night, Dalia thought she heard a noise at the door. Or a gentle rap at her window. She picked up her rifle each time, shut off the lights, and checked behind the blinds to peer out the upstairs windows.

There was hardly ever anything out there, besides the birds and the stars in the sky.

It didn’t seem like much time had passed, when she saw them coming back home through the gates. And it was strange how, in the warmth of that moment, she realized how much she missed every one of them and the strain of the background thought in her mind that they would never return. She missed her brother, and the way he always kept his promises. She missed Amari giving her a hard time and getting on her nerves about every damn thing she had the power to do so with. She missed how Samantha cracked jokes about Ryder’s hair looking like a girl’s, and how she always made an effort to make her smile in spite of all that had been taken away. And Dalia missed the ancient genie who had shown her the world as it was and as it still could be, with a magical screen and a rectangular block in the palm of her hand.

It wasn’t so long, but in that moment it felt like all of eternity had passed since they’d been home. Who knew that eternity could feel so short and so long, at the same damn time.

Dalia watched them drive up, and smiled like a crazed idiot as she waved their way. She wanted to see the videos of the destruction. Of the monsters who deserved nothing more than to burn into oblivion. She saw Samantha hugging Ryder as they walked weakly to the house. Amari followed behind, with a sad smile seeing her sister so joyful and full of life. Like she was when they were kids.

The smile on Dalia’s lips began to fade.

“Where’s Adam?” asked Dalia.

She hopped on her tip-toes a moment, then stopped trying to be quite so playful when she saw the way each of them met her stare. They each gave her passing smiles to see her safe and sound, but none of them could hold a gaze into her eyes.

Samantha looked up at her with bloodshot eyes, and started to cry again as Ryder took her gently inside to rest upstairs. Amari set a hand on her sister’s shoulder in the doorway, and dropped her gaze down to Dalia’s sandaled feet.

Amari shook her head, and all Dalia could think about was the way Adam promised he would never leave them alone in this world ever again.

Dalia stood still and silent a moment, before she sleepwalked down to the banks of their oasis. Amari followed after her a moment, before she decided to let her sister go to mourn in peace.

Amari watched her from the house for hours, until she finally came back inside.

Samantha sat on her bed upstairs, and stared at the stars with a confused longing. Ryder took a walk outside while the others rested inside, and muffled a scream with his shirt sleeves so the others couldn’t hear.

Amari watched over her sister as best she could. She said it’s all right, and asked if she was okay a dozen times, and can I get you anything sis, until Dalia made her stop.

“I’m no worse than any of us sis, please stop,” said Dalia. “We’ll figure it out, I’m okay. You don’t have to worry about me.”

Amari let out an embarrassed smile. She gave her sister a gentle kiss on her red-headed hair, before she walked up the steps to try and think what should be done, with her hands on her head.

Dalia stared blankly ahead, at the stone walls. Before she reached a strangely calm hand down to the floor. She picked up the remote control, and hit the power button again.

Dalia took a deep breath, and sleepwalked from the painful realities of life and loss with the dancing pictures on the screen.

~34~

SAMANTHA WAS SITTING on her mattress with a dead stare out at the desert sands, when she heard a gentle couple of knocks on her door.

It took a protracted pause and a secondary set of knocks for her to realize it wasn’t in her imagination. She threw on a silk shirt, and cleared her throat to speak.

“Come in,” said Samantha.

The doorknob turned slowly, and a moment later Samantha had a warm breakfast in her doorway.

“Hey,” said Ryder, raising the tray in his hands a bit. It served almost as a wave.

Samantha turned her head to the side a moment, then smiled at the food.

“Hey,” whispered Samantha. She felt how dry her mouth was. “Thanks, I guess I haven’t been eating.”

Ryder gestured at the table beside her bed, and Samantha mouthed out ‘yeah’ while she cleared some ammunition off of it. Ryder set her down a plate of rat meat, along with a glass half-full with water. Samantha smiled some, and had herself a bite.

Ryder sat at the edge of the bed, and waited a while before mentioning, “You didn’t come out of your room at all yesterday.”

Samantha chewed with her mouth open, and nodded like she was only then realizing it, and was a little embarrassed about it.

“I guess I didn’t,” said Samantha.

Ryder tried to get a better look at her, but she turned away some as she ate.

“You got some hardcore eye bags going,” said Ryder, rubbing some fingers beneath his own eye. Samantha tried to force out a light laugh. “Have you been sleeping at least?”

She nodded some at the bed, then dropped her head lower.

“I try to,” said Samantha, setting her hands back on the mattress. She moved her shoulder to her ear a few times. “But no, I haven’t really.”

Samantha glanced down at Ryder’s legs, then looked over at him sort of sad. He edged up a little closer, and put his arm around her. She rested her head on his chest, and frowned like she was tired of crying.

Ryder moved some of her hair to the side.

“I’m getting worried about you,” said Ryder.

“I’m worried about all of us,” said Samantha.

They could hear the hazy noises of the television downstairs, and what sounded like faint laughter between Amari and Dalia. Samantha took in a deep breath, and found her mind strangely cleared yet also cluttered with anxiety. Like she was hovering over an abyss waiting any moment for gravity to drown her in the darkness below.

Ryder set his hand on hers, and tried to pull her out of her cloudy limbo.

“We’re going to be all right,” he said, squinting like he was trying to mean it. He nodded up at the waters. “We have crops here. We have enough water, enough meat. There’s not so many of us, it’ll last as long as we need it to. We’ll survive.”

“We’re not the only people out here,” whispered Samantha, as a bird flew into her window sill. “I’ve seen dots. Horses and carriages in the distance.”

“I’ll bet most of those dots don’t have bullets,” said Ryder.

Samantha squinted some, and let out a sigh.

“It’s more than just that,” said Samantha.

“What is it then?” asked Ryder.

Samantha took in a staggered breath, and tried to find a way to attach words to her questions and mixed feelings.

“Do you know what it’s like to be alone for years?” asked Samantha, with some shake in her voice.

A sorrow entered Ryder’s eyes imagining it. He shook his head slowly.

“I don’t,” mouthed Ryder.

Samantha nodded her head, and took in another deep breath.

“I was so lonely for so long, that I didn’t realize what lonely felt like,” said Samantha, staring at the yellow bird in her window. It studied her with the side of its face turned towards her. “Like how you might sit in the plants by the oasis, and you can smell them flowering. But after a while you can’t anymore. The smell’s still there, but it’s gone in your mind. You can’t feel the smell anymore, because you’ve felt it for so long. Been around it for so long. That’s how I was with the loneliness.” Samantha saw an image of a little girl with a spear and an imaginary friend and a fire, all alone trying to cook a snake in her mind. “I was bathed in so much loneliness I was numb to it.”

Ryder shut his eyes and dropped his head for a while as he bit his lip. He didn’t know what to say, so he said how he felt.

“I’m sorry,” whispered Ryder.

Samantha thought about the night Adam sprouted limbs, and built her a home.

“He cured that from me,” whispered Samantha, her eyes shining like she could see him there in the room. “He came into my life, and whatever he was in the end he was real. And I didn’t have to pretend anymore that there were imaginary beings around me keeping me company. And then all at once, you all cured it from me, but I,” Samantha frowned even harder, when she started to get choked up again. “And I just don’t know how to deal with it right. I’m not numb anymore, I feel everything. I forgot what it felt like to feel the loneliness again.”

Ryder moved more of her hair to the side, and smiled a little when he saw the way she frowned to stop crying.

“We’re still here,” whispered Ryder, with some hope in his voice that maybe she’d find that nice.

Samantha felt something warm up inside her when he said that. She wrapped an arm around him.

“You don’t know how happy I’ve been,” said Samantha, tears streaming down her face. “Ever since you found our oasis I’ve felt so blessed. I just forgot how scary the world could feel without Adam.”

The bird in the window sill leaned its head a little closer to the window, as another perched beside it.

“I’ve been happy too,” whispered Ryder. Samantha could feel his breath on her forehead. She turned up at him a little bit.

Ryder lost his breath.

“I didn’t think life could be so nice again,” whispered Samantha, with a shy smile.

Ryder cradled her upside down head in his hand, and brought her closer. Samantha shut her eyes a bit, but she could still see through them.

He set a hungry kiss on her lips, and before she knew it he was pulling off his shirt. She let out a faint gasp, before she sat up.

“Wait wait wait,” said Samantha, pressing his lips off her neck and standing up.

Ryder stared back at the bed then up at her like he didn’t know what to say. He put his hands in the air by his shoulders.

“I’m sorry I shouldn’t have done tha—”

“No no, it’s not you I’m sorry I just,” Samantha set a hand on his head. She moved her jaw in a weird way, as she set his hair to the side. She put a kiss on his forehead and smiled. “Not right now.”

Ryder dropped his head with shut eyes, as he reached blind hands for her hands. He held them gently in his grasp, and started to say something. He held his tongue of it, and said another.

“I care about you Samantha,” said Ryder.

“I know,” mouthed Samantha. She put kisses on his hands, and massaged his head as she brought it to her stomach. “I know Ryder.”

~35~

SAMANTHA WANDERED OUT beyond the walls with a glass of water and a plate of food, while the others slept.

She adjusted her rifle slung over her shoulder, and walked past the metal cage, where the blades were still sprawled out on the ground. Adam did what he needed to do to dispose of the bodies, though there were still streaks of browned blood all over the sand. She meant to ask him if they could reset the trap again, for use if anybody else ever came to threaten their oasis. But she never did. She wondered what other secrets Adam held, that she never found the questions to ask. She’d heard often as a child that a lot of life was about finding the right questions, and the answers would soon follow. But there were some questions that ate away like acid in her mind, so much so that she almost wished she hadn’t thought to ask them. Some questions nobody has the answers to.

But Samantha started to wonder if those questions could be answered, just maybe, if she could speak to the gods.

Samantha went down onto her knees, and listened to the silence. She thought she heard something for a moment, then decided it was just the dust in the wind.

Samantha kept her eyes peeled.

“Do you remember me?” whispered Samantha, feeling a little silly to be speaking out there all alone in the middle of the desert. She set her rifle onto the ground. “If it’s you again, I mean.”

Samantha set a plate of food down, and some water as well. She folded her arms, and started to shiver some. She kept her eyes peeled for a vision, and found nothing but the starlit sand.

“Do you remember the way you showed me where to go?” asked Samantha. She scrunched her face up, like she wished she wasn’t doing what she was doing. But she still felt in her heart of hearts that she had to try. “How you gave me my camel to travel when you told me to travel?”

Samantha moved around, and felt the scratch of the sand on her knees.

“Do you remember the way you saved me and my sister when they set our village on fire?” asked Samantha, grabbing some of the sand on the ground and squeezing it out as she made a fist. “Do you remember how you told us you’d keep us safe? You said it was our dad that told you to keep us safe, but I think now,” Samantha stared at the growing number of lights in the sky, and started to cry. “I think that was a lie.”

Samantha didn’t see the hordes of lizards sneaking up out of the sand, to capture every moment of the pouring of her heart.

“I thought you were maybe some friend of our family,” said Samantha, shutting her eyes and remembering the woman’s sweet and gentle smile. “Maybe some traveler who used to be in our village. Ready at a moment’s notice to come and save the inhabitants from attackers, or at least a few of us. Maybe just a friend, with strange blue skin. Maybe,” said Samantha, looking down like she hated herself for not believing for so many years. “Maybe you were a goddess after all, and I’d somehow forsaken you without meaning to.”

Samantha could hear nothing but her own sniffles and breathing.

“I started to wonder a lot, after you were gone, if you came there to help us or there to destroy us, or,” Samantha looked at the sand, like she was a detective seeing scraps of evidence laid out before her in memories, without any certainty as to what could be the cause of so many pains and crimes. “Or were you were there to destroy everything around me, just to watch me suffer.”

Samantha’s cheeks reddened with a hatred for her every tortured memory, and whatever power may have been responsible for them all. She hated herself for not being able to look back without breaking down into fresh tears.

“Do you remember how I cried for you to come help us when Helena passed away?” whispered Samantha. “I hardly saw any snakes in all the other oases, but then suddenly she was bitten, and just as suddenly she was gone. And I was all alone.” Samantha licked her chapped lips, and continued her heartbroken catharsis speaking with the nothing all around her. “I screamed out for you,” Samantha put her palm to her teeth as she wept. “I begged for you every night for years, until after enough years I really started to think you were never real. That somehow I hallucinated you in a dream, and maybe I hallucinated everyone and everything I’d ever known. And now those bastards talk about a woman radiating blue light.”

Samantha stared out at the dark horizon, and then fixed her eyes on the mountains. She ran her eyes along the outlines of the peaks and valleys, and tried to piece together why she was left out there for so long to never die but to never live.

Until a lamp fell into her path.

“Did you give me Adam?” Samantha asked, squinting like she couldn’t understand why.

There was a slow, but ever growing number of lights in the sky, as Samantha continued her heartbroken soliloquy.

“Can he feel? Do you know?” whispered Samantha, with shut eyes. Growing more and more certain she was going crazy. “Does he have real emotions or are they just shadow emotions? Pretend feelings?” Samantha saw Adam’s diminishing form in her mind again, and felt the heavy sink of guilt in her chest. “Is he still alive if he was ever alive?”

Samantha looked out at the horizon. She knew which way there oasis was now, and how few of them remained from the fires.

“Can I still save him?” whispered Samantha.

Samantha stared down at her peeling hands, and the bitter loneliness drenched her all over again like she was swimming in it.

“Can anybody hear me right now?”

Samantha’s brown eyes were illuminated by the starlight.

“Was somebody watching me wander and suffer out there?” whispered Samantha, as she stared at the food and water beside her. She pressed her eyes into her palms for a bit. “I don’t know why I brought this out, maybe for my family. I never performed the rituals Dalia did for her oasis. Are their spirits still wandering out there, unable to get to where they need to go? Am I,” Samantha stared at the tear stains in her shirt. “Am I going crazy even just wondering about that? I want to feel like I know everything will be all right, and I did for such a little while, but now I,” Samantha spoke more to herself than to anything else. Her hope was fading, though she still tried. “I don’t know what the future holds. And I want,” Samantha beat her hand lightly at the sand, and let out a staggered breath as she felt a breeze pass her by. “I want to know what you want from me.”

Samantha stared at the sand, then stared back up at the wasteland eternities in all directions. She looked back at the walls of their oasis, and saw nothing around them.

“The truth is that I don’t know what the fuck you want.”

Samantha turned her eyes to the sky with eyes turning swiftly from sorrow to bitter rage.

“What do you want from me? Can you please just tell me,” she spat as she pleaded, and some of the sand clumped up with her spit.

A few of the lizards pretended that they didn’t get hit with spit, and stood still a while before they wiped the saliva from their eyes.

“Is anybody even there?” cried Samantha, bitterly onto the ground. She started to raise her voice. “I want Adam back. I’ll do anything you want just tell me. Bring him back to me.”

Samantha tried to not get sand into her watery eyes, as she rubbed them with her knuckles. She cursed and tried to stop crying. She set her hands back down onto the ground, and recoiled when she felt a lizard beneath her palm, staring at her with glassy, moonlit eyes.

“Fuck AND WHY ARE ALL THESE LIZARDS ALWAYS STARING AT ME,” shouted Samantha through tortured tears. She dropped her elbows into her stomach, and let her hands hang limply in front of her as she bowed towards the ground. She let out a gasping wail, as she felt herself lose what shreds remained of her insomnia plagued mind that night.

It wasn’t too much longer, before Samantha started to feel the ground shaking.

At first, it was a subtle shift. She assumed it was the shake of her own limbs as she cried, but then she felt the whole of the ground start to shudder. And some of the sand pour down and away like waterfalls from small objects rising up from the ground. They cleared the sand away from themselves with little objects that looked almost like windshield wipers, before they projected a blue screen onto the air.

Samantha moved her tear drenched hair from her face, and stared wide-eyed at the strange blue screen before her with a gray static.

It only took a moment, for it to start up a glimpse of the show.

~36~

THE GIANT, BLUE SCREEN went from a gray static, to a clear image of the night Samantha fled from her oasis as a child.

“What?” whispered Samantha, staring at a little girl who looked familiar in the eerie way you might think somebody looks like you. But you don’t actually believe that it’s you. She had her hair fixed in ponytails, and she was trying to start a fire with her sister, with some tinder and kindling. Samantha couldn’t remember what she looked like as a child, but somehow she knew in her bones she was staring at footage of herself.

Samantha glanced over her shoulder horrified, before returning her gaze with unblinking eyes to the images of raiders riding through on horseback, with swords and machetes. They massacred whoever they found, as Samantha fled with her sister to the outskirts of the oasis.

In moments, there was a horse beside them. Samantha’s sister helped her onto to it, before she climbed onto it herself. They both looked back at the burning of their oasis, before riding off into the starlit night.

Samantha gestured out with an open hand.

“There was somebody there she gave Helena the horse,” said Samantha, staring around her. She noticed a few other objects behind her from which sound was coming. It felt just like a modern day home theater system.

She saw no other people, as she watched the tragic scene of her father on his knees, staring with a stoic acceptance at the raider above him with intricate scar tattoos all across his body.

The raider raised his bloodied machete into the air, and the scene cut to an image of Samantha and her sister riding out on horseback with haste. Samantha stared back from her sister’s arms, with tears streaming from her eyes.

The scene flashed in brief instants, to Adam firing his rocket and lighting fire to hundreds of dwellers in their prosperous little oasis. Samantha saw the same girl she saw with her binoculars the previous night, being carried away by an older sister into the dark with a horrified look in her eyes.

Samantha screamed at the air with an agonized cry, and studied the images before her. She felt the bags underneath her eyes, and felt the strange weight of all her fatigue descending upon her, then being newly eradicated by a fresh upsurge in adrenaline, before somehow the fatigue set in once more. She wanted to faint to sleep.

Samantha couldn’t tell what was real from what wasn’t anymore.

“I’m hallucinating,” cried Samantha, as she stared around the screen, looking for signs of life. She crawled up to the images, and pressed her hands through them. They seemed to linger in distorted moving pictures on her arm when she did. “This isn’t really here, is this here?”

The video switched to fresh scenes of Samantha and her sister, making use of what they found along the way, and traveling to more and more distant oases. There were intermixed images of her sister showing her how to hunt. And how to recognize good plants, and plant fresh seeds. There were even images of them hunting a wild wildebeest, and cooking the meat while joking by a fire. Helena inspected Samantha’s clothes, to make sure she was protected from the sun.

“She was there too,” said Samantha, staring at the screen and seeing nobody besides herself and her sister. “I know she was.”

At moments when Samantha was asleep and safe, Helena wept bitter tears at the edge of the oasis, and prayed to the gods.

Samantha stared up at the mirage of her past before her, and massaged her temples with frantic hands.

“I’m losing my mind I’m losing my mind I’m losing my mind,” said Samantha with manic eyes. She was worried about at what point sleep deprivation threatened your life. “Is this what they mean when they say your life flashes before your eyes?”

Samantha studied the images, and pulled her hands up to her mouth when she saw a point-of-view perspective of a slithering snake, as it stared up at her sister.

A separate angle showed its fangs oozing with venom, as it struck a bite into her leg.

Samantha struggled to re-open her eyes, as she listened to her own young voice speaking in the background.

“Sis?” said little Samantha, pressing a hand at her sister as Helena sweated and tried to be strong. She could hear the crack in her voice. “Sis are you okay?”

Helena’s flushed, sunburnt face stared up at her sister as she leaned beneath the shade of a tree at their secluded oasis.

Samantha pleaded for somebody to save her, when her sister grabbed her arm with a cold and clammy hand, and tried to speak with her one last time.

“Promise me you’ll survive, okay?” said Helena, as her blood thickened. “A piece of me’s always going to live on in you, a piece of mom a piece of dad. So you have to live, okay?” Helena shivered. She stared down at the swelling where she was bit, and cried even harder. “You’ll survive, you’re tougher than I am. You just don’t know it yet.”

Samantha re-watched the moment her sister’s lips stopped moving, and the life left Helena’s eyes.

Samantha sobbed as she saw herself wandering the desert. And how she hunted animals, and ate them on her own, until over time there was no game at all around her. And she ate what she needed of her vegetation, and never anything more. She scoured the landscape, and disappeared whenever she thought she saw somebody coming in the distance. But it never seemed that anybody ever noticed or cared to inspect her small, secluded oasis, if there ever was anybody passing by at all. There were protracted scenes of Samantha making up imaginary friends around her, and having conversations with them all. She pointed fingers at them, like they were telling good jokes. And she was happy to hold a silly, dumb smile, and laugh as she imagined she was making all her imaginary friends laugh their guts out. She even made a friend out of a piece of scrap metal, and named it Larry. When she needed to, a while later, she used the metal to make other friends.

Every other scene Samantha got a little taller, and played with her imaginary friends with a little less heart. Until she didn’t at all anymore, and she only talked with herself.

Samantha watched in horror with her same snot and tear covered hand covering her mouth.

“What in the living fuck is going on?” whispered Samantha in between sobs.

Then, with a strange somber musical track playing in the background, Samantha saw herself barely awake and riding her camel through the desert. She almost looked like she might faint, when something shiny in the distance caught her eye.

Samantha hopped down off of her camel, and picked up the lamp in the ground, when the whole screen started to flicker.

Suddenly, the images grew more sporadic, and showed disjointed images of recent moments in her life, until she re-watched in horror as the raiders tortured Adam until he reverted back into his lamp shape once more.

The screen flickered between images of Samantha’s pristine lamp in her own sunburnt hands, and the damaged, chipped lamp in the hands of an ash-covered raider smiling with glee at the precious weapon in his possession.

Samantha was petrified, when she felt the ground beneath her shake with greater ferocity, and the screen above her flickered away from the picture, until a single buzzing monotone sound came on like how one would imagine during an emergency broadcast system test.

Text came across the screen that seemed to zoom forward at her.

There are depths to this world beyond your wildest imagination.

And moments later, the screen completely vanished, as a small hole in the ground split open and swallowed sand. Samantha let out a high pitched shout, as she climbed away with her rifle from the growing chasm immediately before her. The sand poured into it, before the sand was pushed away from it and a strange elevator emerged from the ground where there used to be an impromptu theater.

It was silver tinted, and had only a single button with an arrow pointing downward. It lit up red in an instant, and there was a ‘ding’ sound.

Samantha stood petrified, as the doors slid open, and the words ‘I’ll take you to your precious Adam’ were written out across the wall, in what she hoped was red paint.

~37~

“I’M FEELING really reluctant to trust whatever the fuck that is,” said Samantha to herself, holding her hands to her chest as she tried to calm her breathing. She imagined climbing inside the metal box before her, and being taken down into the depths of the ground to be buried alive. Her lungs burning as the sand filled them to volume.

In all her eighteen years of secluded life, Samantha had sure as hell never seen an elevator before.

She read the paint a few more times, as she stood a safe distance from the elevator for a while. After she worked up the courage, she knocked her hand against it a few times. She breathed onto it, and wiped the dust off it until she could see her tragedy of a reflection.

Samantha stared back at her oasis walls, and tried to decide.

“I need to ask them if we should try it,” said Samantha, when she felt a sudden pushing up of sand behind her.

She panicked her hands by her ears a moment, as silver plated metals emerged from the ground so fast she could feel the breeze at her ankles. They appeared in the form of letters.

The others won’t get to see what you soon will

“Oh gods,” whispered Samantha. She raised her rifle at the air, and thought to fire at the projectors before they went away back into the sand. “Are you the gods, am I talking to the gods?”

The letters morphed at her feet.

In a way

Samantha crouched down, and looked around as she bit her nails. She stared at the metal at her feet, touched it, then retracted her hand quickly before it changed again lest she hurt herself.

The metal sunk back into the sand.

Samantha stared back at the elevator, and hated the creeping sense of doubt in her mind.

“Can I trust you?” asked Samantha, hoping she could and realizing that’s a useless question to ask the untrustworthy. A fresh projector emerged from beneath the ground and shined a video of Samantha sitting on Adam’s shoulders onto the air, before Adam’s limbs pieced away to oblivion and Samantha fell to the sand below.

Text zoomed forward onto the screen.

Do you want to rescue Adam?

Samantha shivered in place as she gripped her rifle a little harder.

“Why did you have images of me as a kid?” whispered Samantha, with a shiver in her voice. She shook her head, and really emphasized the point. “I have questions, and I demand answers to them—”

Samantha felt the ground beneath her slant forward, until she was sliding into the space of the elevator along with several pounds of sand.

The doors closed before she could get back up, as Samantha stared through the glass windows at the endless sand.

A faint protrusion of text emerged from the elevator doors, large and embossed.

Then what choice do you have Samantha?

––––––––

THE ELEVATOR DOORS opened up, to a dark and endless tunnel.

Samantha stepped out of the elevator as fast as she could. Not a step later, the elevator disappeared back up through its crevices, and Samantha found herself in the pitch black darkness trying to warm her arms up with her hands. She could feel the moisture leeching out of her skin in that frigid, dry darkness.

She never knew any place in the desert could be so cold.

“Hello?” shouted Samantha.

Her own voice and echo was the lone reply she received. Until she heard a series of flickering lights turn on spaced out at distances, before the tunnel seemed to curve out towards the end. Samantha turned around, and saw nothing but the same behind her. Samantha tried to step aside, when she felt herself trip on some parallel metal on the ground.

A moment later, she heard the coming of a car on the tracks. She got up, and rushed to the cement walls beside her. She watched it coming, and the breeze of it threw her hair into her face. It came to a screeching halt beside her in moments, and opened its doors.

A woman’s voice echoed all around her, smooth and sweet.

“Please step inside and try to look cute,” said the voice.

Samantha studied the foot of space between her and the car, and slowly separated herself from the wall. She hesitated as she took in gaping breaths, before she cursed and took a step onto the car. She held her hands close to her body, as she had herself a seat on one of the leather seats situated there.

She felt her body jolt, as the car got moving again.

“Where am I?” whispered Samantha, unable to hide the terror in her voice.

“The halls of the ancients,” said the voice, as their car emerged from the tunnel to a dark area with strange shopping centers faintly visible in the distance. Samantha studied them as they passed by, and saw strange stores with mannequins clothed in dusty outfits. Other buildings with endless furniture, filled with cobwebs. Strange areas with endless seats, and restaurants.

“What did they call this place in their own time?” asked Samantha.

“There was a time where they called this place a subway,” said the voice, as they passed back into another endless tunnel. “But what you were seeing there in that brief portion was a mall.”

“Adam showed us shows with those,” said Samantha, with eyes filled with wonder. Samantha held her hand to the cold window, and breathed hard so she could see more of her breath. “Am I in a dream?”

“Far from it miss Rhodes,” said the voice. “You can’t die in dreams, and you very well might die tonight.”

It was in that moment, that Samantha started to scream internally.

“I don’t like the sound of that of that at all,” said Samantha, gritting her teeth as she tried to not open fire on the windows. “Where are you taking me again?”

“You know where you’re going,” said the voice in her passenger car, as they whipped around another turn in the tunnel. “To what remains of Adam, and a choice that may soon split your soul.”

~38~

SAMANTHA HEARD THE passenger car make a curious buzzing noise beneath her, as she noticed they were just a bit higher off the ground.

Samantha whispered, “What choic—”

The subway car went into a sort of hyperdrive, like how one might imagine magnet trains shooting cars across their tracks like bullets from a barrel. Samantha held onto a pole beside her, as she saw flashes of strange images passing through her view, before vanishing in a moment once again. And fresh images appearing before her vanishing once again as well.

“Is this safe?” asked Samantha. “Isn’t this technology ancient?”

“It’s safe,” replied the voice. “It’s well maintained.”

Every so often, she thought she saw gigantic objects that looked shaped like the submarines in a movie Adam showed her about a yellow submarine. After she saw flashes of around a couple dozen more of them, Samantha started to wonder.

“What are those large submarines we keep passing?” asked Samantha, gripping the pole in front of her. More than a little terrified to be traveling so quickly.

“Those are tanks of water for the oases,” said the sweet voice around her.

“The oases aren’t natural?” asked Samantha, before she brought her other hand to the pole in a hurry.

They slowed abruptly to a stop.

“There is very little that is natural about your world child,” said the voice, as the doors slid open quite smoothly. There was a large tank of water in a space to her right, and a fresh television screen all set before a wide and expansive darkness. “Step outside miss Rhodes.”

“Stop calling me that,” replied Samantha to the ceiling, as she stepped out of the subway car. “My name’s Samantha.”

“Fair enough Samantha, please,” said the voice, as a video of a nighttime aerial shot of the raiders’ oasis began playing on the screen. “Step outside, Samantha.”

Samantha took a deliberate step outside the train, and studied the image on the screen of the village, with burnt huts and soot covering everything around them. There were fuzzy images of survivors maneuvering around, still very much so alive and surviving.

Samantha noticed the image zooming in on a particular tent, before the screen went to black.

“Adam is still very much so functional and, if you would prefer, alive,” said the voice.

“Promise?” said Samantha, her eyes watering as she saw the image of Adam’s lamp lying down in the hut of some tent. “Where is this? Where is he?”

A faint light turned on in the distance, and revealed a rusted ladder rising up into a hole in an illuminated, high up ceiling.

“Directly above you,” said the voice. “Though you may not find him in the precise form you were expecting. At this instant you have two options presented before you to save him.”

“How?” asked Samantha, more desperately than she meant to.

The screen went to static, before it flickered to an image of an ‘A.’

“Option A,” said the sweet, unassuming voice. A light shined against the large water tank before her, on a button that simply read ‘How could you be so heartless’ along with a smiley face after it. “You can poison the totality of their oasis population by contaminating their water supply.” Samantha held both her hands over her mouth, as she saw video stream across her screen of people on their knees coughing up blood, presumably from another oasis previously afflicted. “It’s not a very quick death, but it inevitably induces a coma within a day of exposure. And within twenty-four hours of their losing consciousness, approximately 99.9% of all afflicted will succumb to the toxin in their sleep. You can then retrieve Adam without conflict. We only request that once the toxin begins taking over that you go throughout the village, identify raiders that look particularly despicable, and say dramatic vindictive lines to them as they die at your feet. You need to prove you can be dramatic about it before we allow you this path, and you should have quite a solid window of time for your lines as it takes a while before they writhe their way asleep. You’d have to pray for a plague upon them prior to the poison taking them as well.”

“What did these people do to deserve this?” asked Samantha, staring in wide-eyed terror at the screen. “Who are these people?”

The voice let out a sigh, as a space within the screen opened up, and set a strange object in her hand. It booted up in a moment, and revealed a layout of the above oasis with dots showing the locations of every occupant, along with their current location.

“Option B,” said the voice, a little irritated that she was so quick to judge the first approach. “We grant you the precise location of your precious genie, and you enter alone under cover of darkness with nothing but a rifle and a melee weapon, and with the omnipresent threat of these people finding you and taking you in as their prisoner, likely to torture you for the crimes you’ve committed against their oasis. But you would in the process perhaps have the option of sparing the innocents remaining among them. This angle projects to poll decently well, though the most likely effect is you’ll die in the crossfire. A large variable affecting our ability to predict its reception is your predicted awkwardness as you speak with them all should you unexpectedly win. Make sure you give off the vibe of a liberator, maintain good posture and try to speak with confidence, don’t stutter. Option C of course would be to run when you get up there if Adam’s permanently fried or damaged beyond comprehension. If you get caught and his components have not properly recuperated and regenerated prior there’s a good chance he becomes more a danger than a blessing. You very much so could die tonight, but at the very least let it be a grand death. In that event you need to say something sorrowful and poetic about the loss of his companionship, speak from the heart and try not to ugly cry as you do it. Then we might be able to find a way to remedy the situation if you execute that well, but it’s not going to be pretty regardless. Fix your hair before you head up too, do you want a brush?”

Samantha squinted at the unlit darkness around her with the map of raider locations in the palm of her hand. It basically looked like a modern tablet computer.

“I’m sorry why would I have to do all of those weird extra things?” said Samantha, more confused than afraid in a burst of strange bravery. “Are you really gods can’t you make this safe without me having to do all of that extraneous stuff?” There was a period of silence, longer than Samantha appreciated. “Are you still there? Hello?”

There was another image on the screen.

“If you don’t there will be consequences, you just have to Samantha,” said the voice. “Besides those options you could also do nothing, and return to your oasis without a hope of seeing Adam in your possession ever again. And make sure to never tell the others of these underground facilities, or our interaction at all. Though, if you’re hoping for a peaceful happy life of seclusion with your newfound friends, I regret to inform you that will never be an option.”

Samantha stared around at the strange tank in front of her. She stared back at the train a while as well, before the doors shut and the train started to float up again. It shot away in seconds like it didn’t appreciate all of the attention it was getting.

Samantha felt herself breathe a little faster.

“What did you mean earlier that these ancient transportation systems are still being maintained haven’t they been out of use for centuries?” asked Samantha. She held a hand to the giant tank of water before her. Samantha squinted even harder at the floor, then stared up at the ceiling. “Do you give us all the water like this? With these tanks?”

The screen before Samantha flickered, and then disappeared. It retracted into the darkness, and left Samantha with no light save for the light at the ladder rising up to the ceiling, and the light shining over her button.

“If you’re not going to poison them you’d better start climbing,” replied the voice. “It’s a longer way up than you think.”

~39~

SAMANTHA HELD HER HANDS together, and rested her forehead against her thumbs. She ran her finger around the button a moment, before she whispered to the darkness.

“You armed them to attack Ryder’s oasis,” said Samantha. She shut her eyes, and started to shiver as a wave of repressed memories surrendered themselves back to her consciousness. “Are you the same woman that came to me and my sister? Is that you?” Samantha heard nothing but the quiet in reply, as tears fell in the space between her feet. “Why do you have so many videos of me?”

Samantha fondled the button at her fingertips a while, as she tried to keep track of all of their movements with the map in her hands.

There was the sound of what sounded like maybe a pot of coffee being poured into a cup. There was a sip, and then a gulp, before another protracted silence. The voice cleared her throat after a long pause.

“I need to shut up, there’s a reason this isn’t protocol to talk to the talent,” whispered the voice, so faintly Samantha couldn’t place the words. The voice cleared its throat again, and spoke more loudly. “I’d rather you and the others not die tonight Samantha, I really would, but we can still make do without you. Don’t become an impediment to our production, you’re making a great start. They love your look.”

“What?” whispered Samantha, fondling the button at her fingertips a while. She shut her eyes, and struggled with her thoughts.

Samantha beat her fist against the tank, and heard the slosh of the water inside as she walked away towards the ladder.

“I’m not a monster I’m not poisoning them,” whispered Samantha to the space above her. She shook her head, and had a look of conviction and fear in her eyes. She set a foot on the ladder to test it, and took a deep breath before she looked up and felt a chill. It went up a while, before it turned to dark. “You seriously expect me to climb this?”

There were successive lights that illuminated the remainder of the ladder above her. Samantha felt a secondary shiver down her spine, as she adjusted the rifle slung over her shoulder.

It was a lot farther than she thought.

“This will take you straight into the heart of their camp, right beneath their stockpiles you destroyed. You’re gonna emote during a lot of it, and we’ll put music over it. The opening was always covered, I made sure of that, but it should lift up easily enough. Though you’ll get some sand displaced onto your face as it does. There’s not as many waiting around there anymore, but there’s still a few.” Samantha studied the next rung of the ladder, and didn’t know that she could trust it. She started to feel sick to her stomach as the voice turned unexpectedly sweet. “Just be careful and try not to get yourself killed, there will be another time for your questions I promise. Please don’t die, I’d like you to live through this.”

Samantha rocked her head back and forth, and tried to stop twitching.

“I just want Adam back okay?” whispered Samantha, a mess of confusion and fear. “But I get this weird feeling that I’m about to have a very bad day.”

The voice laughed a bit, almost like Samantha could imagine her smiling.

“Just because you’re having a bad life doesn’t mean you have to have a bad day,” said the voice. Samantha couldn’t help but laugh a bit, in the way you laugh when you’re starting to get very mad. “You’ve got this sweetie, just expect the unexpected. I know you better than you know yourself, I’ve got faith in you.”

“I guess thanks,” said Samantha. She whispered a little under her breath, “Whoever the fuck you are.”

Samantha gripped a little harder, and took a few meditative breaths. She did her best to focus.

She started her climb. There was only silence for a while, as she cleared the rungs, when she heard:

“Oh, and Samantha?”

Samantha heard the echo of the voice around her, as she tried her best to focus on the cold, rusted metal of the ladder in her grasp.

She resisted the curiosity of looking back at the ground.

“What?” replied Samantha. Not moving, and staring only at the space immediately above her when there was a sudden projection of an image of the night sky right in front of her eyes.

She almost lost her grip, but she didn’t.

The image shifted, into a crescent moon with teeth, that fell on its side in the shape of a smile. The lights above it lined up into upside down half circles for eyes.

“When the moment’s right, don’t forget to flash that pretty smile at the stars.”

~40~

AGNAR GENTLY BRUSHED at the sand on his damaged lamp, when a flash of electricity arced across the lamp’s handle to his ash kissed fingers.

“Son of a bitch,” whispered Agnar. He rubbed at the space of his thumb that felt most burned, though it wasn’t badly burned. He waited a while to collect the courage to try again, and set another finger to the metal. He felt only the lightest of static shocks this time.

He caressed the lamp like it was something precious, and terrifying.

“How’d that little girl get her hands on something so powerful,” whispered Agnar, staring at his own distorted reflection in the lamp.

He ran his hands across the metal, and felt it shake some in his hands. Though he mistook it for his own hands shaking.

“Can you hear me in there ancient one?” whispered Agnar, strangely affectionate. He shook his head, like he felt like he’d hate watching himself within that moment. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you wish to be called. I don’t know how to call you from your hiding place, we had no intention of truly hurting you. She told me you wouldn’t be so easily damaged, only that you would be contained.”

Agnar ran his fingertips across the metal, along with his dirt infested nails though he had no intent to scratch.

“The blue goddess has brought us great triumph and great tragedy,” said Agnar, staring at the tent walls as if he were seeing the black clouds again. The burnt flesh, the raging fire, bright and loud and swirling. He saw the horror of his best men torched to nothing from afar, and watched his slaves rush away from their homes without fear of punishment for abandoning them there. “She gave us the power to raid a thousand oases. Nobody could ever stop us with steel horses like those feeding off black water, and weapons more powerful than a hundred archers in the palm of our hands. And yet, of all the oases, she tells us to attack the one with the first genie seen in generations.”

Agnar breathed in and out, and could almost smell again the scent of burning and death all around him. He imagined it instead.

He was too familiar with the scents of war to smell them anymore.

“The blue witch betrayed us,” whispered Agnar, with his forehead on the lamp. Some of his ash got onto it. He rubbed it off immediately, and felt a separate series of strange, faint shocks. “She showed me the power to capture you, after we lost so many men. Nets that sang like thunder, and spears bathed in lightning. She made them so we could stop you, and commanded us to eradicate those present, but she still,” Agnar’s face burst into tears. Their oasis was weakened by an order of magnitude. “She still let you destroy all her gifts to us, save for the few we still possess.”

Agnar bowed his head to the ground, and revealed a faint portion of his left palm that was cut so many times before. He unsheathed a blade from his waist, and brought it to his hand.

He let it slide, and let a few trickles of blood litter the ground beside him as payment to the gods.

“But she didn’t let you kill me,” said Agnar. He knew no other rituals of offering besides blood offerings. “Maybe that means something. Maybe that means I’ve not yet displeased the gods of war, and their goddess they’ve sent.”

Agnar pressed his nails into his palm, and wiggled his finger to let the blood drip back off. He was hypnotized by every red drop that fell for a while, before a separate thought corrupted his mind.

“Or maybe you were a gift to that little weak girl, from that blue goddess,” said Agnar, staring at the roof of his tent as if staring through it to the sky. He had a red streak running diagonally across his face with what may have been mostly red paint, though some of it dried and scabbed. “She made me trust her. I thought she was here to protect us, and help us bathe the world in blood. Some seductive goddess of war who found favor with us to conquer humanity near and distant, but now,” Agnar dropped his eyelids shut, and let some of his blood trickle onto the lamp. “I wonder if we were only another pawn in the games of the gods.”

The lamp in his hands started to light up, and shake. Agnar grabbed it with both hands in moments, and didn’t bother to wipe the blood off.

“Will you help me?” whispered Agnar, with a strange sorrow. Like how one might imagine a conqueror crying, for his not having killed enough of his enemies. “We will not hurt you any further ancient one, we require your guidance and assistance. Your ancient knowledge. The others they,” Agnar stared out the flaps of the tent, when he thought he heard other murmuring in the distance. “They only follow me because I’m more powerful than they are. But we’ve lost so many they doubt in me. But If I had you,” Agnar ran his blood drenched hand through his hair, and stared back into his green-eyed reflection. “I could become the god of this place. And no others would ever defy me ever again.”

Agnar thought he saw a piece of the lamp lift, with another arc of electricity, though it fell back upon itself and only shook instead.

“Tell me what you require,” said Agnar, with his eyes shut and his head bowed to the lamp. “If only you’d listen to me, I would never have to follow that deceptive blue witch ever again,” Agnar felt the lamp hop up in his hands, then drop back down into them to jiggle. “She could never again turn on us, as she has. Allowed so many of our own to die, I could,” Agnar felt the lamp opening and closing in his hands, with strange rays of light emanating from it. He stared out at the flaps of his tent. “I could pillage the whole of the globe with you by my side, if you would only let me.”

Agnar thought he saw a gear shoot out from the lamp, though the gear was swiftly grabbed by a projection from the lamp and tucked back within itself. He heard the sound of strange mechanisms at work, along with a growing buzzing sound.

There was a pained, robotic voice emerging from the lamp, ever so faintly.

“What was it you said great ancient one?” whispered Agnar, dropping an ear to the lamp.

A strange projection emerged from the lamp, with a light knife at its edge.

It sliced a portion of Agnar’s cheek, and let the blood drip onto its blade. It retracted back into the lamp, before Agnar felt the lamp shake so hard it left his hands.

Not before it touched the ground, limbs projected from the lamp in an odd, choppy manner until a humanoid being was before him. First Adam’s short legs emerged, then a pair of curiously long arms grabbing at an oddly shaped head with only one of its eyes and half of its metal mouth emerging. Adam’s eye rotated all around in a way somebody might have described as ‘googly’ eyed, before it settled into a focus on Agnar.

Adam projected a bladed arm that flew at the top of the tent, and ripped it open to the night sky.

Agnar dropped to his knees in a moment, and bowed before the ancient creature before him. Adam reached a bladed arm towards Agnar, and stared at him with strange curiosity as an arc of electricity flew across his eye to the other side of his face.

Adam let out a distorted smile, with knives for teeth.

“What is my master’s name,” whispered Adam, with a strange expression of fear and confusion.

“Agnar,” replied Agnar. His face on the sand. “My name is Agnar.”

Adam twitched a moment, and grabbed at his head with a hand that switched between fingers of scalpels and a hundred fingers that looked like syringes, before it re-became a normal humanoid hand.

Adam reached out towards Agnar, and leaned in with a paranoid look to the sky.

“What,” said Adam, twitching his head to his shoulders interchangeably before once more staring with one fixed eye at Agnar before him. Agnar shivered his eyes upward, as he felt Adam’s gentle hand at his chin. “What does my master Agnar require.”

~41~

SAMANTHA FELT THE GROUND jolt above her, ever so faintly.

She paused a while, before she proceeded up the last few rungs of her ladder to the cover above her.

Samantha pressed a hand to it, and took in a few deep breaths. She pressed the warm, metal cover open with a weak thrust. It seemed to spring up, and lifted up some type of cloth covering as she felt a waterfall of sand coming down from above her. She sealed her eyes, averted her face, and pursed her lips shut. She waited until she couldn’t feel any more coming down, before she chanced a glance up.

She brought her arm out of her vertical tunnel, and pressed herself up with cramping arms. She thought she was safe, when she lost her footing on a sand covered rung of the ladder, and dropped her tablet down the length she’d climbed. There was a loud echoing clang every time it hit the walls, and an especially pronounced shattering noise when it reached the bottom.

Samantha stared at the tablet as it fell with a clenched fist, and wished she hadn’t looked down. She tried her best to unfreeze herself, and tried to emerge again with a fresh push.

With what strength she still had in her limbs, she climbed out and panted as quietly as she could in the corner of a burned storage facility. She thought she heard faint voices and the sound of rolling metal nearby. She brought her rifle up to aim in that direction as she hid behind the skeleton of a wrecked car.

Samantha dropped her rifle when she saw a couple of children playing with a detached hubcap. They were hitting it with metal sticks, and seeing how far they could make it roll.

They were far away, when a strong gust of wind finally knocked it over.

Samantha paused a while, and re-imagined the layout of their oasis. Samantha scanned the area another five times, before she took a step outside of the facility. She tried to be quick, when she felt her eyes grabbed by the stars in the sky. Even by recent standards, there were a lot. Samantha squinted up at them a while, and noticed a few get brighter.

As other stars emerged beside them.

“What is happening,” whispered Samantha, as the starlight fell on her as bright as the ancient lights of downtown Manhattan.

Samantha snapped out of her delirium, and checked around the corner. She crouched down and wandered over to a few abandoned tents. The ground smelled like burned gasoline mixed with iron and cooked meat. She tried to ignore the mounds of dead bodies every which way she turned, and hovered bit by bit into the heart of what remained of their camp. Samantha heard the noises of snoring in a few of the tents, and walked gently past each.

Until she noticed the chains in her peripheral vision.

Samantha swallowed what spit remained in her dry mouth, when she decided to peek briefly into the tent. She saw a horde of people wearing rags for clothes lying on the ground parallel to one another, with a metal pole in the ground to which they were chained. There were burn marks on their arms and legs. She peeked into another tent across the way, and saw more of the same.

Samantha stared for longer than was wise, when she heard a rough voice in the distance ask, “You see somebody over there?”

Samantha did her best to casually shut the flaps of the tent, and wander into the darkness of the camp towards a tent larger than the others. Its top was split, and rippling in the breeze like a couple of flags.

Samantha thought she heard Adam whisper, “I shall do whatever my master commands.”

“Adam?” whispered Samantha, looking back over her shoulder. She threw caution to the wind, and rushed for the tent with the faint geared noises. There was a loud buzzing sound, before a strange fractal pattern of budding metal emerged from the top of the tent.

It wasn’t long, before Samantha saw a giant distortion of her genie standing before her, with arcs of electricity flying across his body and making him stutter and twitch.

“I-I-I shall do as my master commands always,” said Adam.

“ADAM,” shouted Samantha, rushing into a full sprint at the genie towering before her.

Samantha got near the base of his feet, when she saw Adam’s swift shift of attention to her with a turn of his neck and head.

He re-aligned his body, and sprouted a third eye to accompany his other two, as he twitched. Samantha kicked up sand as she stopped in her tracks, and stared up at his giant blue eyes a while.

She didn’t like the way he was looking at her.

“Adam?” whispered Samantha, as she rushed behind a tent. She heard panicked voices around her.

Adam lifted his leg, and took a grandiose step out of the tent towards Samantha.

There was all at once a murmuring in the encampment. Samantha saw a few stray men in the distance searching their eyes in her direction with raised guns, before they panicked their eyes up at Adam and started shouting at others to start firing.

Adam flinched his head at them as the bullets dented and ricocheted off his face. He deflected what he could with his forearm, before he let out a metal shout and thrust out a series of a thousand blades from his limbs ready to flay each of them alive.

“Stop,” shouted a rough voice below him.

Adam’s arms shivered in reluctant hesitation, before the blades receded in bouts back into his limbs. Adam knelt beside the man who shouted, and brought his face to the ground.

“Yes master Agnar,” said Adam.

“What?” whispered Samantha, as she watched an ash covered man run a hand over Adam’s giant face. “Adam what are you doing?”

“Adam did you hear the shout of a girl a moment ago?” asked Agnar, with a strange air of calmness and pomposity. The raiders in the distance stopped firing, and only stared at the curious interaction. “I could have sworn I heard a girl shouting Adam. Wasn’t that a familiar voice?”

Adam’s limbs spasmed, and made strange knife like projections that rounded off into bumps before jumping back into his metallic skin.

“I remember it as if from a dream,” whispered Adam.

Agnar nodded his head slowly, and leaned gently in towards Adam’s metallic ears. There was an arc of electricity from Adam’s head to his waist that made him seize as if in pain, before he leaned back over to listen to his new master.

“I want you to find that girl,” said Agnar, raising a finger at Adam’s silver lips, while he set the fingertips of his bloodied hand against his metallic cheek. “And I want you to flay her alive.” A few knives shivered from Adam’s hands, as Adam carried a strained robotic expression on his face. Samantha stared at Adam’s hands with both her hands at her lips, before she shot a sobbing stare up at the sky. “And bring her soon to be carcass back here still breathing to show what happens to enemies of our oasis.”

Adam shifted his gaze down at his side at a toad in the sand, staring up at Adam with a silly expression of its neck pressed back to give it a double chin. Adam stared slowly back at Samantha.

There was nowhere to hide.

“I live to serve,” whispered Adam, as the knives in his hand hung loose and clanged together like metal rods in a wind chime.

~42~

SAMANTHA STUDIED ADAM’S gargantuan steps, the raising of his hand of loose daggers to the starlit sky, his swinging of it directly above her position.

Samantha shouted, “ADAM STOP!—”

She ducked her head and shouted, as Adam clumsily swept a hand of loose daggers over her head. It sliced open a tent of the enslaved, hugging one another and crying as they stared at the terror above them. Samantha sprinted around a corner, and Adam’s eyes followed. He dragged his hand against the floor, and left his hand of weapons to rattle behind him. It almost looked in some ways like nunchucks with blades at the ends.

A raider rushed in beside Samantha, and tried to grab her gun with a mocking laugh.

“Nowhere to run now sweetheart—”

Samantha twisted her weapon from his grip, and hit him in the head with the butt of the rifle before unloading a round of bullets into his chest, then his head. A number of ash covered raiders rushed into a formation in the distance, and raised their weapons to unload at Samantha sprinting away.

Agnar raised a scarred arm in front of their guns, and nudged them downwards.

“Hold your fire,” said Agnar, with a hoarse voice. He nodded up at Adam with a smile of bloodied teeth. “We have him to handle our vengeance now.”

Samantha sprinted as hard as she could, and felt strange pains in her sides as she did. Her feet burned, and her sides spasmed. She looked back and found Adam staring at her, with his head drooped down and twitching, before he locked in with reddened eyes. It only took him a few steps to catch up with her.

“Adam you’re damaged,” shouted Samantha, as Adam reached a bladed hand to grab at her leg. He scratched her leg enough to form a bloodied streak, but he didn’t slice her badly. “Adam don’t you remember me?”

Samantha tried to dodge another grab of Adam’s ever shifting hands, as a thousand fresh stars emerged in the moonlit sky. She sprinted into a tent, and found a number of helpless injured frothing at the mouth within, hardly able to comprehend what was happening around them.

Adam lifted the tent with a swipe of his hand, and brought his chipped metal face close to Samantha’s to study her. Adam leaned in with a face distorting into a dragon’s for a while, before Adam reached for his face with bladed hands. There were white lines where he scratched at his head.

“I must obey my master no matter the cause,” said Adam, as a few of his daggers fell out of his hands into the sand below.

“Adam it’s me,” whispered Samantha, pointing at herself with a shivering finger, like she didn’t know if she should stand or run. “Don’t you remember how you used to cook me breakfast?” Adam reached down with his hand again, and Samantha stepped to the side to sprint away. There was laughter in the distance, as they watched Samantha scurry away from the genie that was once hers. “Do you remember how you saved Amari and Dalia from these monsters? How you built walls around our oasis?”

Adam’s reddened eyes stared up at the stars a maddened moment, before they returned to their fixation on Samantha.

Samantha dodged out of the way, and found her way into a storage tent of food on tables, half of it blackened though not all the way ruined. Adam flipped open the tent and made decisive steps in her direction.

“Do you remember how you used to protect us?” cried Samantha, as Adam swept an arm across the table, scattering vegetables across the sand. Samantha held her hands to her sides. “Please try to remember PLEASE.”

Adam massaged his metal forearms a moment, like they were kind of hurting.

“My master is displeased with you,” said Adam, leaning an arm that formed into barbed wire rope. Adam made a loop. “I must bring you back.”

Samantha dodged a swing of the lasso, and ran away into an open space of oasis with mounds upon mounds of buried dead.

“Adam you’re my friend,” cried Samantha, raising a hand to her mouth as she screamed it. Adam’s hand formed into a spear, and tried a stab directly over Samantha’s shoulder. “Adam they’re using you, you’re sick.”

Adam formed a thousand projections of arms and humanoid hands around his body, with electric current running through all of them.

“I know no other master than master Agnar,” whispered Adam, as his form blocked out the starlight over her. Samantha backpedaled away, before she tripped over a mound and found herself within Adam’s slowly descending shadow.

Samantha didn’t notice the little lizard at her side, unblinking, watching Adam’s slow and terrifying descent towards his former master. Adam took his time reaching downwards, as Samantha cried out.

“Adam I’m sorry,” cried Samantha, staring up at him in between sobs and shaking her hands by her face at the haunt in his eyes. “I shouldn’t have let them hurt you I’m sorry.”

Adam’s limbs twitched one at a time, as his face made strange features like it couldn’t settle on an emotion. His hands hesitated as his face turned to horror with himself. Then all at once, Adam returned to a sober, stoic state and continued reaching down for Samantha with fingers slowly becoming scalpels.

“I may serve only one master,” whispered Adam, with a quivering electronic voice. Adam’s head snapped at his shoulders a few times, before he shook his head. “I will do as my master commands.”

Samantha saw a flash of her life with Adam before her eyes. She saw herself alone in her oasis, before she saw herself walking with Adam’s lamp in her grasp. She watched as Adam brought her supplies, built her a home, laughed with her as they played games and watched movies. She watched as Adam healed Ryder, saved his sisters, gently watered plants at their new oasis. She watched as Adam diligently built up a safe haven for them, and she saw images of Adam casting gentle glances back at Samantha with happiness and pride in his eyes as she laughed with Ryder.

It was a while, before Samantha realized the video was projecting from the ground to directly before her eyes.

“Adam thank you,” whispered Samantha, as a strange sadness entered Adam’s eyes. His hands approached with a greater shake and hesitation, though he looked as if he couldn’t understand why. “You were my friend. Thank you for showing me what the world could be, and for making me remember happiness for at least a little while.” Samantha thought she saw something red across the horizon, before a few rays of sunshine peeked around Adam’s torso. Samantha shut her eyes, and whispered, “Before the end.”

Adam reached down, when it almost seemed like he noticed a renewed warmth passing across his metal skin. Adam peeked his head back at the sunrise, before he returned his attention to Samantha.

It was so late that it was getting early again.

Adam stopped bringing his endless hands towards Samantha, and instead leaned his face close to her to better study her. Samantha stared with fatigued and tear drenched eyes at the genie that was hers. She raised her shaking hands up to his distorted and horrifying face.

Samantha set her fingertips to his skin as Adam shivered, and brought her other hand up as well. She set a tearful kiss on his chin, and held it.

A chill ran throughout Adam’s being, at Samantha’s fingerprint touch.

There was faint murmuring in the distance, as Adam’s body started to contort and regenerate.

The sunlight drenched the horizon, and bled forward over the landscape as Adam studied every inch of his body. Curious devices emerged from his limbs, and inspected aspects of his being before soldering them. Millions of tiny machines emerged from his skin, and healed all his damaged parts. Adam’s face had lasers running across it, as his expression settled on something far less horrifying and much more endearing.

Adam gasped a while, even though he never needed oxygen, before he stared back down at Samantha with confusion. His eyes like glittering, blue jewels encrusted into his sunlit skull.

“Master Samantha?” whispered Adam. The lizard at Samantha’s side stuck its tongue out, and made a funny face where it tucked its chin into its little neck. Adam reached a gentle hand for Samantha’s face, as she hugged his finger. “Is that you?”

~43~

“YEAH IT’S ME,” LAUGHED Samantha, staring up at Adam and smiling with all the warmth of the sun. “Is that you back in there?” asked Samantha, holding his finger but still sort of thinking about running. Adam nodded his head slowly at Samantha, as he retracted what blades remained back into his body. “Can you capture that son of a bitch that tried to make you kill me?”

“Which one?” asked Adam, turning back at the raiders scratching their heads like they weren’t entirely sure what was happening all the way over there.

“The one with the red streak across his face and the messy blonde hair,” said Samantha.

Adam peered back at the raiders by the waters, and zoomed in with his eyes on Agnar’s rather perplexed face.

“Oh that one,” said Adam, making a strange barbed wire lasso again.

“Get the others too,” whispered Samantha, pursing her lips together and starting to feel an unexpected rush at the thought. “Anybody with ash on their skin, get them all. Take away their weapons then help me free the others in chains.”

“I’ll do as you wish my master,” said Adam. He bowed his head right after, slightly embarrassed. “I’m sorry for whatever I may have done just now master, I can’t remember. But I needed the sunlight to properly regenerate. I hope you weren’t too frightened.”

Samantha smiled sheepishly up at Adam as she gave him a thumbs up.

“It’s all good,” said Samantha, still shaking like she was naked in Antarctica. “I mean yeah you almost sliced me open and skinned me to make a coat for that guy but,” Samantha brought her fist to her mouth, and thought she might throw up for a second. She fought off the urge and tried to force out a really awkward smile as she batted a hand at him. “But yeah it’s fine it’s fine.”

Adam rushed into a dead sprint back at the raiders.

Agnar stared at Adam coming for them with his tongue in his mouth, and sort of looked like he was getting uncomfortable with the way Adam was approaching.

Just a breath later, Agnar felt the tear of barbed wire into the space at his scarred obliques, as the others around him got taken into the tightening of the rope. Separate robotic hands reached around and disarmed those still able to grip their weapons. There was a circle of guns and bleeding around them in moments.

Adam brought his face up to Agnar. It morphed into a menacing mess of fangs for teeth and oozing metal gums. Adam looked around, and thought he counted a little under forty.

“Where are the others,” said Adam.

Agnar felt a bleeding at the space around his abdomen and gasped in shock and disbelief.

“I command you to stop,” mouthed Agnar.

They all squeezed together, as Adam tightened the rope.

“Where are the other fighters?”

“This is all that’s left of us,” whispered Agnar, with a strained look up at the sky. Agnar started to panic, and the others looked at him in horror and rage at the ruin that had befallen them since they listened to his counsel. Adam studied his surroundings to confirm that was the last of the armed, as Agnar noticed a strange wire hovering frighteningly close to his lips. “Why has the blue goddess forsaken u—”

Agnar and the others felt thousands of Adam’s hands sew their lips sealed, as they watched in wordless horror.

Samantha ripped open the flaps of one of the tents, as many of the people chained there curled up in fear. She tried to put on her most appealing face.

“It’s okay,” whispered Samantha, as she tried to remove the chains from a little girl with oil on her face staring up at an older woman beside her for re-assurance. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Samantha tried to pull the chains off, but they wouldn’t budge. It was only a moment later, when she saw endless metal arms reaching out from beneath the tent. The people started to panic away, as they felt the braces around their wrists and ankles get gently gripped, and heat up just short of a burn.

It didn’t take long, for Adam to break their chains.

“You see?” whispered Samantha, as everybody one by one ripped themselves from their chains with tears in their eyes. “I don’t want to hurt any of you.”

Samantha walked outside with those newly freed, as many others came out of their tents to hover over to the area where their captors were tied up and helpless. A few birds flew down and perched atop the remaining tents around the oasis. They watched them with fascination and glee.

Samantha held her hands in fists, and stood in front of the captured monsters writhing away with widened eyes. Adam stood up beside her, and gave her a gentle nod of encouragement. Samantha nodded in reply, and cleared her throat weakly.

“I don’t know how many of you passed away as a result of,” Samantha swallowed some of her spit, and couldn’t look at the crowd in front of her in the eyes. “Because of my mistakes. And I’m sorry for whatever pain I may have brought onto your oasis by destroying the weapons provided to you by higher powers. But please understand we only did what we did to protect ourselves. I came back to get my genie back, but I wanted to make this much right. I don’t know what kind of pain you’ve been subjected to by these freaks, but,” Samantha sort of nodded at the ash covered monsters behind her. “I hope this can at least make up for some of the wrongs. They’re yours to do with as you will. And I hope you can forgive me for your dead. I don’t want any more pain to come upon you, and I hope you can forgive us in kind. We don’t want any more suffering, we want peace.”

The crowd of people before her stared at her like they couldn’t be certain what she meant by all of that, and continued to stare at the helpless captured behind her. Samantha walked kindly through the crowd, as Adam followed closely behind with giant steps. They let her through, and studied her and Adam with eyes of quiet fear and wonder as they walked off into the distance, to jumpstart one of their remaining cars.

One woman wandered over to one raider in particular, and stared at him with fury for a while, before the raider averted his gaze.

She hocked back, and spat in his face before she punched him in the guts. He collapsed his body weight into the wire around his torso. He looked up at the crowd for mercy.

“BASTARDS,” she shouted, as she wailed on his body. It wasn’t long until some of the others began to do the same.

The birds danced their heads, as the blood flowed across the sand.

Samantha listened to the shouts of rage and slicing flesh far behind her, and didn’t look back as they drove off through the ever warming desert.

~44~

“ADAM?” WHISPERED SAMANTHA, with her hair blowing in the breeze.

“Yes master?” replied Adam, carefully maneuvering around an uneven patch of sand before resetting the car’s cruise control.

Samantha sort of massaged a part of her leg, with a good deal of dried blood.

“You’re not going to go crazy again any time soon right you sort of cut me earlier,” said Samantha. She leaned her leg to the side to reveal the scrape along her calf. “It’s not much but it hurt and it bled.”

Adam furrowed his metallic brows, and sort of shook his head like he was getting mad at himself.

“My apologies master I most certainly will not,” said Adam. “I wasn’t properly healed, my mechanisms were all levels of going haywire. It feels much as if I just went into a coma induced by lightning spears, then re-awakened with your hands gently touching my chin. I can only imagine what a human dream can be like, but I have a fuzzy recollection of trying to murder you in the way people have fuzzy recollections of dreams they’ve had in the night. My data stores also make mentions of dream journals being a useful resource for dream recal—”

“Adam I don’t want you to ramble I want you to tell me the unadulterated truth,” said Samantha, biting her lip with concern in her eyes.

Adam stared straight ahead, and noticed a few birds flying opposite his path. They flew over them as they drove.

“Anything you’d like my master what is it?” asked Adam.

Samantha searched around the horizon, and within their car for any lizards.

“Are there secrets you’re programmed not to tell me?” asked Samantha. “Is that at the least possible, can you tell me if that’s possible? You don’t have to tell me any secrets, just tell me if it’s possible.”

Adam projected a map of their location across the air one last time, and kept track of the moving blue dot that was their fluid location.

“I can’t know for certain but I would say anything is possible master Samantha.”

Samantha studied the map that Adam projected onto the air one more time, keeping track of their precise location as Adam seemed to whistle like he wanted to change the subject.

“I read on the computers you set up for us back home that you can’t keep track of locations without satellites,” said Samantha. “But you keep using that global positioning system map, and it keeps track of our location, which would require you to be using satellites that would know our location.”

“You are becoming quite good at Google my master,” said Adam.

“Yet you don’t know where we are?” asked Samantha. “Like in relation to ancient times? What continent? What time zone at least?”

Adam used some knobs along the side to adjust his sideview mirrors, though there was nothing but sand around them.

“I fear it’s not within my programming to tell you my master,” replied Adam. “And I don’t know quite why.”

“Well that was on the spectrum of scariest replies you could have given me.”

Samantha looked up at the sky, and tried to squint. She thought she could still see some of the stars shining, ever so faintly.

“Adam do you know if it’s possible I’ve been watched my entire life?” said Samantha. “Did they ever do that to people before? Just subject them to being watched from birth to death?”

Adam’s eyes flashed white before they returned to blue. It never took him very long to scan through his records.

“There was once upon a time billions of eyes in the world,” said Adam, quite solemnly. “No matter how secluded a life, it seems someone was always judging and watching. Especially if they had an extensive social media presence. I don’t know that I can provide you a satisfactory answer, yes and no my master.”

It was getting so hot outside, that Samantha was starting to sweat. She appreciated the breeze, and tried to not freak out.

“You mentioned there might be gods I wasn’t expecting in my life,” said Samantha. “Can you tell me anything about glowing blue goddesses historically?”

“It does not appear there ever were glowing blue gods,” said Adam.

“What if I told you I think I just met with one last night?” said Samantha. She shook her head, and hoped she wasn’t breaking the rules. “Or at the very least a god. But I never saw her, and she told me not to tell anybody. But I know it was her, I can,” Samantha grabbed at her heart with a terrified expression, “feel it.”

Adam’s limbs froze still a while, before he returned to moving his arms as he steered the car.

“That sounds like a unique and fun time, tell me all about it some other time,” said Adam.

Samantha searched around her again a paranoid moment, and whispered.

“Adam?” whispered Samantha, finally returning her attention to their surroundings.

“Yes my master,” said Adam.

Samantha didn’t recognize the mountains around her. She bit her nails.

“I don’t think this is the way back, are you taking me back?” said Samantha.

“Of course my master,” said Adam.

“Adam,” whispered Samantha, doing her best to shake Adam’s arm and not budging it one inch. She checked her compass. “Adam this is the wrong way. I know the way back, this isn’t right.”

Adam froze for extended moments that felt like eternities, before replying to Samantha.

“Did you remember to smile at the stars?” asked Adam, with a strangely distorted, static voice.

“What?” asked Samantha, looking at Adam like she was looking at a ghost. “What did you just say to me?” Samantha stared at Adam for a protracted moment, before she noticed a large metal wall directly in their path. Samantha pointed and screamed, “ADAM LOOK OUT.”

Adam continued to drive straight, as the metal wall rose slowly up like a garage door, and revealed a downward sloping tunnel to God knows where.

Adam turned with strangely erect posture, like how somebody might turn if they were having back cramps. He twitched a stare down at Samantha.

“I think it’s time we start the show don’t you miss Rhodes?” said Adam, with a distorted woman’s voice.

Samantha’s eyes got so wide you might have thought she lost her eyelids, as a moving projector started up with a countdown on the wall beside them.

Adam drove blindly through the darkness, as the show played across the walls of the tunnel.

~45~

SAMANTHA TURNED TO the side and saw the same projection going up on both sides of the car.

There was a video on the walls, of Samantha holding Adam’s gigantic chin in her hands, as he healed and fixed himself in the sunlight.

The image blurred, and text ran across the screen, read out by a stereotypically epic, deep voice you might imagine doing any given movie trailer.

Previously on The Colossus of Rhodes

Samantha saw an image on the tunnel walls of her and her sister, as their home burned in the distance. A fresh screen showed Helena holding Samantha’s hand, as the life left her eyes.

Her family tragically ripped from her grasp

There was dramatic footage of Samantha hunting snakes, with her whole body covered to protect herself from the sun. The next video showed her at the edge of the oasis, chewing on snake meat as she stared across the oasis waters and daydreamed at dusk.

Forced to live in isolation for years to survive

The video showed a zoomed in scene of Samantha picking up Adam from the sand, and brushing the sand off the genie’s lamp.

Maddened by isolation and fatigue, in her delirium she finds a robotic genie capable of changing her fortunes

“ADAM WHAT’S GOING ON,” shouted Samantha, as Adam continued to drive straight forward and whistle a happy tune.

A fresh video on the tunnel walls showed Samantha with Ryder, staring up with hope and fear respectively at the stars. The next video showed them fighting raiders at Ryder’s village, as his sisters were resuscitated by Adam. Another video showed them laughing in the TV room of their stone home, with Adam watching with pride through the window.

Rescued from her life of solitude, Samantha finds her true happiness in the company of strangers

Another video showed Dalia staring at the raiders trapped outside their oasis walls, as the guillotine blades dropped from towering heights. A separate video showed Samantha crying, as Adam was speared by the raiders, and tossed underneath an electric curtain by smiling, ash-covered unlikeables.

A separate video showed Samantha being consoled by Ryder on her bed, and cut away from the scene just before their lips touched.

But there are omnipresent enemies striving to steal away from them the fragile joy they cherish

“Why is there video of that?” asked Samantha. She tried to shake Adam’s arm, but he only continued to drive on autopilot.

His eyes weren’t even lit anymore.

“Adam please I’m scared,” whispered Samantha, as their car drove deeper into the tunnel, and the ground started to level out.

The video on the walls showed Samantha navigating through ancient tunnels, before climbing up an endless ladder with a look of determination in her eyes. A separate scene showed Agnar fondling Adam’s chipped lamp, as the genie started to come out as a distorted version of himself.

This week, Samantha must face the inconvenient truth that Adam may not be the genie she once knew

“Adam,” cried Samantha, shaking at his arm weakly. Trying to find any evidence that the friend she grew to know was listening in there, ready to reply. “Adam please don’t leave me not now I need you here, ADAM.”

The video showed the raging inferno that eradicated nearly the entirety of the raiders’ oasis, along with countless innocents caught in the crossfire. There were endless images of people burning alive, and crying out for help, along with raiders driving out and rounding up those who thought to flee into the distance to try their hand at surviving in the wilderness, or dying in the heat of the day. The next image was Samantha emerging from a burned storage unit, staring out across the endless mounds of blood stained sand at the buried dead.

And Samantha must face the unintended consequences of war, and her hand in the suffering of others

Samantha held her hands over her ears as the car drove into deeper darkness.

“Why is this happening to me,” cried Samantha, barely able to speak between sobs. “What is going on.”

The video played images of the ash covered raiders scanning the perimeter of their oasis, as they saw Samantha staring at the enslaved. Another video showed Dalia leaning her head on Amari’s shoulder, as Ryder looked on from the darkness of the stone steps.

Will Samantha survive the night? Will she be able to protect the ones she loves?

The video showed Samantha rushing up towards Adam, before noticing his not looking at her with the adoration she knew so well. A separate shot showed Adam swiping his bladed nunchuck hands at Samantha.

There was a zoom in on Samantha’s bleeding leg, as well as the look of horror on her face as she screamed for Adam to remember her.

Or will Adam tear her skin from her body, and surrender her carcass to the monsters who murdered her boyfriend’s tribe?

“What is happening to m—Wait what?”

This and much, much more next week on

There was an image of Samantha on Adam’s shoulder, as they dragged Ryder along in a wagon behind them. Samantha stared up at the stars, and flashed a beautiful smile. Adam smiled a robotic smile in kind, as the screen faded out, and large, stylized text came across the screen.

The Colossus of Rhodes

––––––––

THEY CONTINUED DRIVING a long while after the mindfuck that was her life on camera stopped playing on the walls. Samantha fell apart into gasping sobs of confusion and horror. She only left that abysmal state of horrified sorrow when she felt the braking of the car, and stared around.

They’d stopped inside of what looked to be a dusty, ancient mall.

Adam left the driver’s seat, and opened the passenger side door not saying a word. All the while standing bolt upright without his usual blue eyes.

Samantha wiped some tears from her eyes, and hugged her knees a bit closer to her chest, when she thought she saw something not too far away. She wiped her eyes, blinked up at the cracks in the ceiling, and stared again.

The cold shiver down her spine could have frozen a lake.

A glowing, blue woman wearing Oliver people’s glasses and a short skirt just long enough to still look business appropriate waved over at her. She was wearing a casual suit jacket, and holding a thin tablet in her hands. She had on higher than necessary heels, and looked at Samantha with an ecstatic smile.

She hurried Samantha over with her hands, like she just got the best news of her life and couldn’t wait to tell her.

“Come on beautiful get over here,” shouted the blue goddess. Her voice echoed through the hallways of the ancient mall. “You’ve got to see this. It just might change your life.”

~46~

SAMANTHA TOOK A STEP, and stumbled before she re-gained her balance.

She didn’t realize how weak in the knees she just got.

“Are you,” Samantha stared at the woman like she was staring at a ghost. Though she looked more like a ghost that had aged well, than the traditional static ghosts that stayed the same for centuries. “Are you the same woman who took me from my childhood?”

Adam began his march down the hallway more like a mindless robot than the fluid creature she’d come to know, and sort of motioned backwards kindly for Samantha to follow. Adam left giant footsteps on the dusty floor, before he retracted his components inwards, and was even more normal sized. He didn’t break his robotic stride as he shifted.

“Come on,” said the glowing woman, making a weird sort of crazy face as she hurried her over like she was too happy for her own good. “Hurry hurry hurry.”

She didn’t seem to be leaving any footsteps anywhere, as she disappeared down the dusty side hallway.

Samantha held her shaking hands up as if she was carrying an invisible bowling ball, and had been for over an hour. She stared up at the ancient clothing stores around her, studying each of them, noticing that some seemed to have some of their dust cleared away. Like somebody else had been there and inspected the ancient clothes as well. Samantha saw a pair of torn jeans and an off white crop top covered with a checkered shirt on a mannequin. She felt a strange impulse towards trying it on.

It was the first time Samantha had ever window-shopped in her life.

Samantha navigated to the hallway, and found the area cleaned up to a pristine condition, along with a rustic wooden door opened up to a lit room.

She peeked her head inside, and felt the warmth of an electric fireplace nearby.

Samantha saw a series of red leather couches, in an area slightly lowered from the area directly around it. There was a tasteful coffee table set in the middle of them, with carved lion heads at the bases of its legs.

Samantha navigated past a silver refrigerator at her side, with a marble kitchen countertop beside it. There was a faucet there. Samantha hopped a bit when the water started running without her having turned the knobs. There was also a grandiose bookshelf, open on both sides, at the middle of the room stacked with a healthy assortment of fiction and non-fiction, along with several sculptures of dragons and busts of bearded people at different shelves.

Samantha felt a little light-headed, as she walked over to the far end of the room with what looked to be windows. There was a skyline there oddly distorted, like how some windows in bathrooms make the outside looking in look fuzzy for the sake of privacy. Though here it was reversed.

Samantha saw the woman at the far end of the room behind her grandiose wooden desk. She was standing with a polite smile next to Adam.

She looked quite normal colored now, and did a light hop on her feet like she was happy Samantha got a good look at the place.

“Well my name’s Krista Daniels.”

The now normal colored Krista did a polite bow at her hips, with her arms held straight at her sides.

“Okay,” whispered Samantha, with panicked eyes.

Krista exited her bow, and blew some hair out from her face. She had a seat at her red leather chair, and motioned for Samantha to do the same in her own.

“Well it is a delight to finally formally meet you miss Rhodes, please have a seat.”

“Why do you keep calling me that?”

“Well that’s your last name don’t you know?” said Krista, though she sort of smiled goofy like she already knew she didn’t know. She batted a hand at her and shook her head at herself. “I’m sorry don’t mind me today I’m in too good a mood to repress my goofiness, well I should expect you’ve got some questions.”

“What did you do to him?” said Samantha, staring at Adam standing perfectly upright.

“Oh Adam?” said Krista, looking up at him like she forgot he was there. “Don’t worry he’s all right. He’ll be his usual self in a bit, don’t worry he’s not damaged he’s all healed up.”

“I’m sorry,” whispered Samantha, fanning a hand at her throat like she was getting sick. Krista’s smile got really bright, before she nodded her head and grabbed a handful of almonds from a tray in front of her. “Are you a god?”

“HAH,” said Krista, chewing with some cheer. She hurried her mouth to chew and swallow before she replied. “I’ve got to say you and all those dead goons back there have been doing wonders for my ego with all this goddess talk I appreciate that.” Krista brought out a little mirror, and started re-applying some of her red lipstick. “But I would say no in my world, and,” She smacked her lips together as she smacked her mirror shut, “yes in yours.”

Samantha pointed a finger at her pink suit jacket.

“I’ve seen clothes like that,” said Samantha, gesturing over at Krista’s jacket. Krista peeked down like she was delighted she noticed, and adjusted it some. “In shows, I mean. It’s nice.”

Krista looked up like Samantha was just too much a bundle of joy.

“Well thank you Samantha, thank you,” Krista pressed a button on her desk, as a hologram floated beside her with graphs. Krista looked at them lovingly for a moment, before making them disappear. “It just seems like you were fated to make me happy weren’t you.”

“Okay, but seriously you seem,” Samantha held a hand out at Krista. “You seem human, are you human?”

“I’m human sweetie,” said Krista, as she leaned her head back.

“So you’re a goddess of our world,” Samantha grabbed her head, and really wished she wasn’t getting so lightheaded. She couldn’t think. “But a human in your own?”

“I mean, sorry probably bad wording before,” said Krista, holding a hand out at Samantha, then gesturing with wide open arms at her beautiful office. “Your world and my world are the same.”

“No,” whispered Samantha. She shook her head and massaged her fingers. “No that can’t be possible, our world’s nothing but a barren wasteland. Ancient people destroyed it.”

“Well ancient people did destroy your part of the world,” said Krista, tapping a button on her desk as a large screen flapped out from the side of her wall. It retracted the long piece of dolphin artwork to the side as it did. There was an image of Samantha’s barren world in moments, then an image of a bustling metropolis set beside it. “But they never touched our part.”

“What?” said Samantha, just a bit breathless. “You mean there’s,” Samantha pointed at the flying cars with a shaking hand. “There’s a bustling world out there?”

Krista hit a button, and the screen was only sand.

“Well, not for you. Your place in the world’s a bit more complicated,” said Krista, laughing like she really didn’t know how to say it kindly. “Basically, I’m taking a big creative risk here letting you know about what’s going on.”

“What’s going on?” said Samantha, a bit afraid to know. Samantha gestured back behind her, and at the dried blood on her leg. She thought about the footage of her whole life playing like a movie. Her voice shivered, “Can you please tell me what’s happening, like please?”

Krista stood up, and picked up a remote control at her side. She pressed a button on it at the screen.

The Colossus of Rhodes was at the top of a list of fresh TV shows.

“I’m the executive producer of your show,” said Krista, with a proud smile. “And you’re officially famous sweetie.”

~47~

SAMANTHA’S HANDS SHIVERED up to her face, as images of her crying her heart out watching Adam get tortured played on the screen.

“What do you mean show?” asked Samantha.

“Oh take a hint sweetheart,” said Krista, as she knocked at her own skull like she couldn’t believe Samantha was this thick-headed. “You’re primo reality television right now, you’re trending on all the major outlets. And after that last showing, I have a pretty good feeling about next week.”

“What do you mean,” said Samantha, blinking a lot and trying to squeeze her hands together through her head. The pressure hurt like hell, she could’ve squashed a watermelon. “What do you mean SHOW.”

“TV sweetie,” said Krista, making circles with the remote towards the television screen. “I mean it’s not just people watching shows the traditional way. We’ve also got other set ups where people watch through lenses, or they attach VR headsets and basically see the whole world through the eyes of Adam. And different simulations where people can project themselves holographically around the perimeter of spots in the ruined regions without actually having to go there and basically get irradiated to death. But yeah, so you polled very well people love your look.”

Krista projected a whole bunch of different graphs on the screen, with different faces of people from other oases that could have gotten the production that Samantha had received.

“You barely edged out this young lady over here, she’s still out there making scary life-like stone sculptures for every person she kills when she raids their oases. People thought she was smokin’ but maybe just a little bit too edgy. Look was there, but she was too into the whole cannibalism deal too made it harder to empathize. You at the very least had the tragic backstory, of course,” Krista pointed the remote at herself. “I made sure of that.”

Samantha stared at the sanded wooden floor beneath her, and could almost see some of her reflection in the wood.

“You sent those raiders to murder Ryder’s village,” said Samantha, still staring at the floor with her hands pressing against her head.

“Oh yeah, we couldn’t let them get in the way of your dynamic,” said Krista. “Way too many people, plus we were really ginned up to have Amari and Dalia die during the fight so Ryder could have a moment mourning them. But we completely forgot Ryder built that shitty, weak tunnel beneath their hut. We wouldn’t have even gotten good footage of them dying to market the episode, but it might’ve been for the best they survived. They seem like decent enough pieces. Happy you and Ryder are finally starting to hit it off too, it took way too goddamn long for anything physical to happen between you two.”

“You tried to kill,” Samantha tried to make fists with her hands, and found they were reluctant to move. Her finger muscles were cramping. “Amari and Dalia?”

“We were going to, but it’s fine they’ll live for now. Our priority was just Ryder finding your oasis. We guided him right to you when he was scavenging for supplies. Cloaked all the other oases as he rode out past, replenished his water flask when he was sleeping without his knowing, made sure he found your precious little face,” Krista made a grabbing motion at Samantha’s face like she couldn’t get enough of it. “I can see the fireworks coming.”

“You’re trying to kill us,” said Samantha.

Krista held an index finger up.

“Not entirely true, I want you to almost die, and if you die in those moments where we cut things a little too close I mean,” Krista sort of shrugged her shoulders, and popped another almond into her mouth. She spoke as she chewed. “It really wouldn’t be the first time I lost a prospective show to production missteps, there’s loads of you out there in those wastelands we make sure of it. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world. So yeah I armed the raiders to attack their oasis.”

Samantha’s fists were shaking shut, as she shed tears of bitter hatred at her.

“Did you destroy our oasis when I was a kid?” whispered Samantha.

“Been meaning to talk to you about that,” said Krista.

“You let my sister get,” Samantha swallowed some spit, and rushed her hands through her curly hair. “You let her get bit and die just so you could have some tragic footage that you might or might not ever use? Then you just,” Samantha stared around at the floor like it was the endless sand, “abandoned me out there?”

“I always intended to return to your storyline Samantha,” said Krista, holding a finger up like she was completely justified. Then she juggled some invisible tennis balls in her hands. “But you see, you were a cute kid but child actresses get tricky. I didn’t know if you’d mature to a marketable place so I didn’t go all in at that time. But we made damn sure you knew how to survive, though admittedly we gave you a pretty weak piece of the budget to keep you alive. I always advocated for you though in company meetings for upcoming lineups, but I didn’t have as much power back then as I do now. Made my pitch this past year, we polled your look to the studios, made damn sure you didn’t die and nobody attacked you in the moments in between, and then POW,” Krista smacked her hands together so hard it made Samantha jump some. Krista held her fist out like she just hit a game winning shot. “We got approval for a new colossus show. Those never get optioned nowadays, too overpowered.”

“What the fuck are you even saying,” mouthed Samantha as she wept onto the floor.

“Well I mean genies like Adam are just legends in your zones now because people stopped watching those kinds of shows a long time ago, and we stopped using them. Too overpowered, plus pretty damn expensive before to produce,” said Krista. She brought up some graphs of the costs of production over the years. They dropped off astronomically. “But the technology’s so much cheaper nowadays it doesn’t hurt to throw this type of technology at an Apocalypse Network show anymore. Technology’s not legal for anything besides military applications, plus they’re not legal around residential zones. Most people have never seen anything like Adam up close so they like to experience him vicariously through ya. People in suits liked your backstory enough, and figured it was worth at least a pilot. Worst case scenario it got no views, and we left you to be consumed as a subplot of one of the other raider storylines. People have a sick fascination with those monsters nowadays, I hate producing them but whatever pays the bills.”

“Why,” Samantha stared up at the ceiling, like she could see the stars. She pressed a hand to her stomach, and another to her mouth. “Why are there so many stars in the sky before terrible moments in our lives? What do they mean?”

Krista made an ‘oh sure’ face like she was totally down to explain all of that.

“Right, first of all they’re not stars. Secondly, we need to make sure the sand below is well lit so we can capture the terrible things that we’ve orchestrated to happen,” said Krista. Samantha stared up at the ceiling, like she couldn’t believe her ears. “And also, we have a lot of people subscribed to more premium set ups so they can watch unedited footage of the people in the apocalypse stricken zones. They like to see things raw without the filter of us changing things later. Also lends credence to the fact that this is real when people are seeing tragedies happen in real time. There’s always some conspiracy theorists that think we’re not using real people but they’re just quacks,” said Krista, batting a hand at them like they made her want to throw up. “But yeah, a lot of those lights you see up there are basically monitoring devices to ensure we don’t miss a thing. And when there’s a large amount of traffic and we need more bandwidth to stream and record, we make damn sure we’ve got enough up there. Can’t afford to miss a tragedy. There’s a lot of cameras in the mix too, oh no sweetheart don’t. Oh God please don’t.”

Samantha fell hard out of her leather seat, and made a restrained retching noise at the floor. She held her hand up to her mouth. Krista tried to point her in the direction of a trash can, then turned away at the last second as Samantha threw up water and rat meat all across the gorgeous wooden floor.

~48~

KRISTA HAD A GOOD LOOK at Samantha writhing on the floor, next to a pile of vomit.

“Not an unreasonable reaction I guess,” said Krista, as Samantha let out another dry heave on the ground. There was nothing left in her stomach. “There’s water in the fridge if you want to rinse your mouth out, I made sure they stocked that for you down here.”

Samantha wiped her mouth with her shirt sleeve, and pushed herself up with her palms.

“Is this fun for you people?” whispered Samantha. “Making our pain your pleasure.”

Krista tickled the air and scrunched her face up like she thought there might be a better way to put it.

“More like profit I’d say, wrong p word,” said Krista. She navigated around the desk, and looked at the floor. She sort of looked at it like it was nasty, but wasn’t all that worried about cleaning it up. She made circles with her hand. “Might be pleasure for some viewers though. Glad you got all that out of your system, come on sit up.”

Samantha pushed herself up more, then grabbed at the table. She pushed herself up, and sat back into her chair. All her features had become thin and drawn, and the dark circles under her eyes became particularly accentuated.

Samantha looked at her with a hopeless pleading in her eyes.

“So many people are dying for nothing,” whispered Samantha. “Why do you keep doing this?

“Don’t get me wrong this has been going on for quite a while, it’s not just me it’s not my fault,” said Krista, waving her hand at the air as new videos played across the screen. She rested a hand on her desk as she watched all kinds of shows throughout the years pass over the screen in clips. Videos of people fighting off giant genies just like Adam, with genies of their own. Separate videos of more terrifying robots that looked like giant, many headed serpents rising up out of the oasis waters, and devouring inhabitants below. There were even clips of people scavenging through the ruins of ancient cities, as curious red-eyed beings followed behind them in the night. Samantha watched entire villages get burned to the ground, as raiders covered in blue swept through on horseback. There were zoom ins on the handsome faces of protagonists in those shows, as they fought to protect those who remained. “We’re hardly the first production to use torturing survivors in the ruined regions for entertainment. It’s a many centuries old practice at this point.”

Samantha stared in horror at a clip of a man speaking a soliloquy to the sky, as arrows rained down and blocked out the desert sun.

“Why would anybody want this,” said Samantha.

“Well, hard to figure precisely,” said Krista, as she brought up flickering bar graphs of viewership studies to hover above her desk. “It seems people want to know that real people are suffering, they’ve gotten sick of manufactured tragedies in the form of traditional cinema. These most recent generations for whatever twisted reason have gotten especially drawn to watching real death. All kinds of psychological studies getting carried out any given generation to justify it, but the fact remains that it’s a lucrative opportunity for these kinds of productions. Pretty unlucky to get born into your position, but I’ve got to say you’ve got a better situation than most believe me.”

Samantha stared around the desk, and noticed a lizard statue with glassy eyes and its tongue sticking out being used as a paper weight. She pointed a shivering finger at the statue.

“Those,” whispered Samantha, with a look of disbelieving agony in her eyes.

“Oh these?” said Krista, picking up the paper weight and tossing it into her other hand to make sure that’s what Samantha was talking about. “Yeah, we use these little guys for getting a lot of footage. They have memory cards embedded into them, but we usually stream most of the footage straight up to our devices in the sky so we don’t have to rely on the lizards surviving to retain different shots. Plus we livestream their feeds to our other subscribers too. And we use the birds, and other little frogs hanging around there, all kinds of other things I’d rather not mention to ya. I know you’ve noticed them, you talk to Adam about their glass eyes all the goddamn time.”

“Everybody told me they were poisonous,” said Samantha. “Even Ryder and his sisters think they’re poisonous.”

“I mean it’s cause they are poisonous, ya can’t eat metal and plastic, that’ll fuck ya up big time. I’ve seen people try it, it’s not pretty.”

Samantha stared up at Adam, continuing to stand in some type of manufacturer’s override state. She stared back at the floor with a strange sink in her heart, like she’d just lost a friend.

“He’s not real at all is he,” said Samantha.

“I mean he is,” said Krista, putting her hands on her hips as she looked up at Adam. “We’re becoming a lot more progressive nowadays, AIs like Adam have a lot of rights. But we still pretty much have complete control over his functions. He has his own personality independent of all else, and that’s what you’ve grown accustomed to. But, at any given moment we can come in there and,” Krista made this funny gesture, like she was using an invisible screwdriver on Adam’s head, “we can tweak him however we like. And use him for our own means. But ultimately he’s yours, we’re not taking him from you so long as you keep making good ratings.”

Samantha gave a glare at Adam, and averted her gaze when he didn’t respond.

“Why can’t you just leave us alone,” whispered Samantha, looking at her lap like she didn’t want to meet Krista’s piercing gaze.

“I’m not going to lie, I’m really not supposed to be even doing this right now, but I have enough clout with some people higher up who knew that I might try to contact ya. I’ve made my case, they’ll understand. There have been just,” Krista balled her hands into fists, and took off her glasses, “too many shows that die out just because of miscommunication between the production teams and the talent dying on the ground. And I mean it’s mainly because,” Krista shrugged her shoulders as she put her glasses back on, and picked up a mug of coffee, “there’s categorically no communication. And I think that precedent needs to stop, we need to be speaking with at least some of the talent so they know how we can optimize ratings. Wouldn’t you agree? Like things like Ryder.”

“Don’t say his name,” whispered Samantha. “You ruined his whole life, you took so much from him, don’t say his name.”

Krista looked at her like she was being ridiculous.

“Okay that’s just like unreasonable I talk up Ryder all the time in production meetings, okay so Ryder,” said Krista, displaying pictures of hundreds of other faces on the screen. Krista picked up a packet of pages too, along with a pen. “We handpicked pretty boy Ryder to go and find you to spice up the show, and you better make sure it happens,” She flipped over some more papers clipped together. She bit on her gold-plated pen as she discussed it. “We screened for a lot of different guys in oases in around a 200 mile radius, and let me just say that he took the cake quite comfortably I mean,” Krista looked around like she was about to say something particularly inappropriate. “Look at that body, have you seen his body fat percentage it must be hovering around five or something. I mean that’s,” Krista smacked her hand at the air playfully, “probably got a lot to do with him almost starving to death all those months. But he’s got some kinds of genetics on him to keep that type of muscle mass through all of that. That face too, ooh,” Krista pointed her pen at Samantha and squinted as she smiled. “He’s getting you some good ratings.”

“Please,” whispered Samantha, staring up at the screen. Behind the overlay of faces Ryder was picked over was a continued background playback of bloody scenes at other oases from other shows. “Please don’t let anything happen to him and his sisters.”

“I mean never say never but there’s no immediate call for it. But ultimately we’ll do whatever the hell we want with all of you of course,” said Krista. She licked her finger and flipped a page, as Samantha reached down for the machete sheathed in her waist. “In case you’re curious we killed off some of your competition for his heart while we were at it, Ryder hasn’t talked about those girls much has he? They were bitches really, not as cute as you either, but still they would’ve complicated things. We toyed with the idea of a love triangle but it didn’t poll wel—”

Samantha screamed at the top of her lungs, as she sliced at the base of Krista’s desk and panted.

“We are NOT YOUR FUCKING SLAVES,” screamed Samantha.

~49~

KRISTA STARED AT SAMANTHA panting before her, breathing hard with eyes filled with fury.

She hated to say it.

“Yyyyyya are though,” said Krista, cringing like she didn’t want any more stuff around them damaged. “I hate to say it but ya kind of are though. And hey, here’s a thought uhmmm,” Krista sort of gestured that Samantha could re-sheath her weapon. “How about cha don’t do that again yeah? Adam why don’t you make sure your pretty master has a nice seat okay?”

Adam’s head turned before the rest of his torso. He walked up to Samantha, and set her back down in her seat a little more forcefully than Samantha would have liked. Adam forced the machete back into its sheath, before he hovered a distance behind her and waited for any abrupt movements.

Samantha looked up at the ceiling again, and watched the trailer of her life on display on repeat in her mind.

“You’re monsters,” whispered Samantha.

“Call us what you will,” said Krista, having a fresh seat and playing other clips on her TV. “But there’s always going to be a niche market for watching people still wandering out there in the ruined regions, somewhere at the intersection of reality television and post-apocalyptic survival stories.”

Samantha stared blankly at the screen, and wondered.

“Adam couldn’t tell me for certain what happened,” said Samantha. Krista looked at her like she wasn’t sure what she meant, before she understood. “Can you explain that much for me?”

Krista sort of smacked her hands together, and delved her mind way back into the history books.

“Well so large portions of the world were blown up big time a long time ago,” said Krista. She made two separate okay symbols with her hands and put on a really annoying smug expression as well. She started to laugh some too, since Samantha didn’t get it. “Right makes sense you wouldn’t get that one, but there were still even huger portions of the world that were totally not blown up, and soooo,” Krista balanced some invisible stuff in her hands. “You’re kind of descended from a mixture of two types of people,” said Krista, holding up two fingers with her hand in the form of a peace sign. She tapped one of those fingers with her other hand. “One of those people, is the people that survived everything and went on to live not-so-much happily ever after in the aftermath of the nuclear Armageddon that hit those regions of the world. And the other, well,” Krista made a face like she didn’t want to be the one to tell her. “Maybe it’s best you never know. But ultimately, a lot of people feel pretty justified for the things that happen to some of the people out there, including you. Nobody seems to much mind us toying with you because of it.”

Samantha shut her eyes, and rocked back and forth in her seat.

“We are not your pets,” whispered Samantha, like an affirmation to herself. “And we are not your slaves.”

“Okay, I get how you’d be annoyed getting called that. But look at it this way, hey,” Krista swung her hands out at the distorted skyline before her, and sort of made a triumphant sweeping gesture with her hands. “You’re everybody’s slaves. You’re slaves to society. You exist for our entertainment, and quite frankly that’s not going to be changing at all anytime soon. And ultimately we’re taking a big creative risk here, but we wanted to let you know what’s happening so you can make sure our production stays afloat. People expect you to be suspicious something weird’s going on but it gets a bit too meta if you know you’re being watched. Which is why I was pretty reluctant to clue you in earlier, but I’m starting to see a lot of good things coming from doing so.”

“What good things,” cried Samantha.

“Well you took so well to my advice, it really gives me a lot of confidence that we can have a more productive collaboration if I pre-empt you with scenarios and you can act convincingly enough through them. Some people just can’t handle the situations and they fall apart and end up dying. But I told you what was probably going to happen more or less, and you executed flawlessly. Loved your liberation speech.”

“I just said what I thought was right,” whispered Samantha.

“And that’s good,” said Krista. “You just need to trust your instincts, we trust your personality. A lot of other productions will just die out over time, and once they stop getting viewership and funding the production companies will basically abandon the projects or flat out kill the characters from previous plot lines as they get consumed by others. Just a minimal amount of communication could avert that type of crisis here. But yeah so I brought you some acting books so you can hone your craft,” Krista bit her pen then gestured down at the edge of the table for Samantha to have a look at them. She picked them up in her hands. “So happy you didn’t cut those in half, but yeah. I’m going to make sure you’re clued in at least some of the time, and at the very least aware of your place in the ratings so your goals and mine can be perfectly aligned.”

Samantha picked up the books at the edge of the table, and looked through a few of them.

“They’re heavy,” said Samantha.

“Lots of good material in there for you. Good for all kinds of different scenarios, though I don’t think you’ll need much help with those random moments where you just sit beneath the stars for hours at a time. We’ve got a lot of good stills of you from moments like that, gosh,” said Krista, like she was impressed. “I really admire your capacity for solitude. I can hardly stand being alone in a room by myself for more than five minutes. I’ve followed you a long while, you looked almost as good brooding as Ryder does. More power to ya.”

Samantha peeked back at Adam behind her, and tried to stand up.

Adam reached a projection out to stop her.

“I’m just getting some water,” said Samantha.

Krista watched curiously, then nodded her head furiously and waved Adam off.

“Oh that’s fine let her go ahead Adam,” said Krista.

Adam’s arm retracted, as he stood back in front of the bookshelf at attention.

Samantha walked back to the fridge, and inspected a plastic bottle. It only took her a moment to navigate its anatomy, and have herself a drink. She chugged it dry, then rinsed her mouth out with the faucet water. Samantha splashed some water on her face, and stared at herself in a mirror there.

She didn’t realize she could ever look so angry, without realizing it.

“There’s cloth beside you over there dear,” whispered Krista from her desk, with a plastic smile. “Feel free to wipe your face off.”

Samantha grabbed at a blue cloth, with the words Colossus of Rhodes embossed onto it above an image of Samantha and Adam giving a thumbs up. She wiped her face off with the side that didn’t have the image.

“Feeling refreshed?” asked Krista, from afar.

Samantha navigated gently back over to her desk, with as kind an expression as she could muster.

“People like you are the reason we suffer, and I need to ask what happens if everybody finds out,” said Samantha. She held the towel in her hand, and tossed it onto the desk. “You can’t expect me to keep a secret like this, people deserve to know they’re living a lie.”

“Oh gosh sweetheart if you tell them we’re going to kill them,” said Krista, like it was a matter of course. Samantha tried to hide how much she was shaking. “We can’t have it spreading like wildfire that everybody’s living in such a terrible world when there’s such a beautiful world out there that they could re-discover generations later, it’s going to mess too many people’s heads up. Throws off a lot of existing shows too, just shatters the illusion that their world’s the only world the whole dynamic shifts. I’ve thought about going that route to sabotage other productions but it’d get me canned in a hurry. I hate the producers of Joriah’s camel farm though, fuck that show. What a shit show goddamnit, seems to get all those ratings just cause he’s poetic and has all these introspective soliloquies when he thinks nobody’s watching, and I’m really jealous of that piece of crap to tell you the truth how does he come up with those things who talks to themselves like that I swear to God he has ghostwriters, but so anyway,” said Krista widening her eyes as she took a deep breath, like she just went off on a bit too honest a tangent. “I want you to dominate the ratings, you’ve hit the top spot a couple times. But a lot of shows hit that spot, then drop into oblivion right after. It’s pretty chaotic week to week. I need you to sustain that position over the long haul baby, we saw the potential so we gave you a genie. Adam can't exit a 200 mile radius though, that starts to get into some murky territory with other productions, but everything within that’s your domain to create something special. It won’t be easy and a lot of people are gonna die, but you think you’re up for it?”

Samantha inspected the screen on her wall. There was a video of people praying to the gods of their oasis for mercy.

“What are my choices?” asked Samantha.

She fondled the sheathed weapon at her waist.

Why did she let me keep this thing? thought Samantha.

“No choices that I can see,” said Krista. Samantha turned her head over her shoulder, and swept her hair to the side to get a better view of the distance to Krista’s chair. “Unless you want to die—”

Samantha pulled the machete from her waist, and let out a fluid, harsh swipe straight at Krista’s neck.

~50~

SAMANTHA STRUCK NOTHING but blue light, and lost her balance falling over into Krista’s empty leather chair.

Krista stood over Samantha, with a glowing blue aura gliding over her. It almost looked like she had little ocean waves crashing together all over her skin, before they stabilized.

It didn’t take long for the blue aura to vanish. Krista had her fists held tightly to her chest, and stood above Samantha with a scrunched up, disappointed expression.

“You see this is one of those things that like,” Krista loosened up a bit, and walked around the desk. “Really doesn’t win you brownie points with producers, shit like this makes it very difficult for me to want to sign this TV contract long term.” Krista looked right into Samantha’s pretty face, then couldn’t help but blush. “But you’re so gosh darn cute I think I still got to. You’ve got spunk, you’re foxy.”

Samantha raised her machete up to her face. She didn’t see a drop of blood on the blade.

“You’re just,” Samantha stared at Krista with terror. “Fine?”

“I’m projecting myself into the room, I’m not actually here sweetie,” said Krista. “You wouldn’t catch me within twenty miles of this place.”

Samantha pressed herself up with the armrest on Krista’s chair.

“That’s impossible,” said Samantha. She raised a hand up to Krista’s face, and Krista sort of cringed like she was getting nervous. But she knew there was no harm in it. Krista tried not to flinch, as Samantha pressed her hand through her face.

There was nothing but a wavy, blue aura around Samantha’s wrist, and distorting Krista’s complexion. Krista sort of giggled as she wiggled fingers by her face.

“I know you’re not actually touching me but it kind of tickles for some reason,” said Krista, scrunching up her nose.

Samantha pulled her hand out.

“This,” Samantha pressed a hand to the chair at her side. “This isn’t real?”

“Oh no that’s real,” said Krista, like she really wanted her to appreciate the furniture. “This whole room’s just a replica of my office.”

“You just built this in the middle of nowhere?” asked Samantha.

Krista batted a hand like it was no trouble.

“It took no time at all,” said Krista, like she shouldn’t worry about it. “It’s just a way to give you a taste of the life you could have if all goes well moving forward. We’ve got the technology to basically erect an infrastructure anywhere we so desire at any moment at the drop of a hat.” Krista picked up the little lizard paper weight at her desk, and dropped it lightly. “The holographic projection technology works significantly better in a controlled environment like this one. When you work it with satellites from above it all comes out this strange blue color, I know you’ve seen me floating around out there watching ya. It really helps ensure the technology works without a hitch when the layout of the area being projected into is similar to the place from which things are being projected. Basically I’m not really here and I gotta say, I’m more than a little happy about that.”

Samantha kept hovering a hand by Krista’s face. It was taking everything in Krista not to react. Samantha looked just as lifelike on her end as she did on Samantha’s.

“So the gods are little bitches like you,” mouthed Samantha, gripping tightly to her machete with a shaking hand.

“Oh gosh do you really want to kill me that bad?” said Krista, with a playful smile. “I’m your best hope at a happy future don’t you get that by now? There’s hope for you if you can reach a certain threshold of fandom. Jeez louise Samantha sit down, you just wanted to try my chair didn’t ya? Adam be a good genie and have your master a seat. And make sure she doesn’t faint too okay?”

Within a moment, Samantha felt arms pressing her chest forward, and bending her knees in so she had to drop down into Krista’s seat. It was a little bit comfier than the guest chair.

A series of projections rose up out of Adam’s torso that studied Samantha’s eyes, and took her pulse.

“Systolic 135 diastolic 89, heart rate 107 beats per minute.”

“Goddamn relax Samantha, take some deep breaths. Give her a massage or something Adam.”

“Ow,” shouted Samantha, when Adam started kneading her back. It only took a second for it to feel solid. “Owooooh oooh okay, I guess that’s okay. I didn’t know he could do that.”

Krista pressed a hand onto the desk with her other hand on her hip, as Samantha tried to breathe.

“Now where was I you’ve got me all distracted with you trying to go all chop chop on my neck,” said Krista, wagging a finger at Samantha like she was a troublemaker. Samantha dug her nails into the leather of her seat. “Guess it makes sense you’d have a murderous side though, given your heritage and all. That’s how you got your last name after all.”

“Wha—” whispered Samantha, shutting her eyes then making Adam stop. “Adam stop, that’s good. What?”

Krista turned to her with a mock surprised face.

“Thaaat’s right you don’t know that either miss Rhodes do you?”

“What are you talking about?” said Samantha, as Krista played a video on the screen.

There were thousands of bones in mass graves, and mugshots of a guy who didn’t look too much like Samantha on the screen, though he did a little.

“I was going to spare you the knowledge, but I guess it’s not the end of the world to know you’re a descendant of Zavier Rhodes,” said Krista, playing different videos of trial proceedings. Zavier Rhodes shifted his eyes this way and that across the room, as the judge read out countless genocidal war crimes. “You don’t look much like him, but we know everything about everybody in the ruined regions. We have your whole genealogy, and your DNA definitely confirms it.”

“Who is that?” said Samantha, holding her palm out at the screen. “I don’t know him.”

“Well you wouldn’t he lived a long time ago,” said Krista. Samantha stared at the screen, as Zavier Rhodes got taken out to distant walls. A shot later, he was out in the middle of the desert, with a map to the nearest oasis. Samantha couldn’t understand why Krista kept giving her this vindictive stare. “Oh didn’t you know this is a prison too Samantha?” She looked at her with some arrogance, like in a way Samantha deserved everything coming to her. “See, there are two sides that people are descended from. Survivors with genetic mutations from all the irradiating going on over there, and the other side is these poisonous vermin of society who deserve to burn in hell. But instead, we let them burn in the desert. Zavier Rhodes is one of the biggest mass murdering psychopaths of the 24th century.”

Samantha’s jaw dropped open, as she pointed at herself and looked around like she couldn’t believe it.

“I didn’t do any of those things, that’s not me,” said Samantha.

“Law’s the law Samantha,” said Krista, splaying her hand and having a look at her pink nails. “We took away cruel and unusual punishment protection from certain violent criminals a long time ago and we never looked back. And that extends to descendants in the destroyed zones. But in a way it’s a very fortunate circumstance, Colossus of Rhodes is working as a TV name, it’s a clever pun if you Google it people like it. Good thing his name wasn’t Shitzburger or you’d probably be dead by now. The Colossus of Shitzburger just doesn’t have the same ring to it at all.”

Samantha looked along the walls of Krista’s office, and saw random gold plaques. Awards for different shows she’d been a part of over the years.

“How many shows are going on out here?” whispered Samantha.

Krista dropped her bottom lip back and made an awkward smile like that was a loaded question. She scratched the side of her head for a brief moment, then pressed a button on her remote.

A series of different moving thumbnails appeared on the screen, so numerous Samantha couldn’t pick any one of them out.

“It’s in the hundreds,” said Krista.

Samantha felt the weight of an anchor in her chest.

“Hundreds,” mouthed Samantha, with her hands at her mouth.

Krista nodded her head slowly, like she really didn’t want Samantha to know just how much competition there was out there.

“Look, you’ve got a big boon in visibility right now so let’s keep at it okay?” said Krista. She went over to the desk, and pressed a button. There were some unlocking noises, before the drawer popped open. “It’s not going to be easy but it’s going to be worth it.”

Adam reached a projection out with his arms, and pulled out a blue chip along with an ancient looking touch screen phone. Adam set the cell phone in front of Samantha, and pressed a space on his own body. A little slot popped out to receive the chip.

Adam mindlessly popped it into himself, as Samantha ran a finger along her new device.

“What is this?” said Samantha.

A moment later, there was a projection from Adam’s body of the layout of thousands of oases in their vicinity.

“This, my dear,” said Krista, tickling her fingers at the projections in front of her. They made her fingers a wavy blue. “Is your ticket out of here.”

~51~

KRISTA TYPED SOMETHING onto a blue projection at her desk, and the phone in front of Samantha vibrated.

“Just checking to make sure the messaging’s gonna work out here,” said Krista. “I’ll text you a heads up every so often when there’s a development, but I won’t tell you all the details. Just know something’s coming when I’m messaging ya. I might give you lines sometimes too, but I want you to trust your instincts on what to say. Don’t bring out that phone too often, and set it with Adam at night so it can charge. Don’t worry about the moments where you use it though, we’ll just edit out those moments in post-production. Live streamers will probably just find it curious and nothing more, that’s ancient technology right there.”

Samantha picked up the phone, and found it opened when it recognized her face. It startled her a bit, when she could see herself with its front camera.

“It’s like a mirror,” whispered Samantha, judging her reflection.

She didn’t look well.

Krista swiped a hand at the air, and a whole tribe of men covered in blood walked around with giant machetes on screen. They chopped at the hands of their newly captured people.

Samantha let out a quick high pitched scream when they did, and held her mouth as she saw the blood spewing out of their empty wrists.

“I think we’re going to start marketing you as a liberator, you felt pretty natural in that role. More like a Daenerys type though you’ve got more of a Missandei mixed with Tyene sorta look,” said Krista, making circles with her hands like she was massaging a giant yoga ball. The raiders went about massacring a fresh tribe on the screen, as Samantha shook in her seat. Krista had another almond, and hopped up onto her desk. She dangled her high-heeled feet as she watched like it wasn’t too big a deal. “If you haven’t yet you should check out Game of Thrones by the way, Adam should have it uploaded onto his servers. So yeah, among all these thousands of oases around here, we’ve got at least a few over here that have people so despicable Hitler would’ve blushed. And you can go about trying to rescue some more people from other monsters so viewers know what to expect week to week. We’ll gauge the audience reaction and play it by ear from there.”

Samantha felt sick to her stomach again, and stopped watching the television screen.

“I’m not seeing a ticket out of here I’m seeing crimes against humanity,” whispered Samantha.

“And by ancient standards they,” Krista waved the remote at the TV, and made a stomach ache face like it was obvious. “They are crimes against humanity, but it’s technically legal nowadays. In the end if you can stay at the top spot for long enough you start to develop a public sympathy. And they’re going to get extra upset if anything bad happens to you. Once you start getting into that arena, we’ve really got em hooked. And there have been a few instances of people getting out of the wilderness after enough exposure in the spotlight.”

“How?” whispered Samantha, with some tortured hope in her eyes.

“Well, it’s complicated. It’s not common at all,” said Krista. She displayed a video of a woman walking between fences into the streets of a futuristic city, staring up in awe at flying cars overhead and people disappearing and re-appearing in stations beside her cheering her on. She was covered in blood and ash, like she just came out of a medieval war zone. “Around a decade ago we had a particularly popular show about a schizophrenic woman out there in the wilderness who would pretty much MacGyver all kinds of cool weapons for herself, and go Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde any given episode. It wasn’t too easy to predict which direction she’d go any given night. People liked the unpredictability of it, and we kept throwing her into progressively shittier situations to see if she’d still make it out. Eventually we had her surrounded by a whole horde of pretty despicable raiders who killed her best friend in front of her eyes. But she’d harvested enough snake venom over the years to poison their oasis. It didn’t kill them, but it sure slowed them down enough to make it a fight when she Rambo’d her way through their tribe. It was something else. Long story short, it’s not impossible but it’s not common. Most productions end when the talent gets killed, we can’t control all the variables. It’s scripted but it’s still reality. One stray bullet and BOOM, we’re onto the next show.”

“Well that’s,” whispered Samantha, swallowing some spit as the raiders cheered and feasted on the body parts of their victims, “reassuring.”

Krista adjusted her skirt some, and turned around at Samantha like she hoped that was a good chat.

“So yeah,” said Krista, raising her eyebrows and putting her hands on the table as she nodded at her papers. “I think that covers most of it, hope you got all of that. We just need you to make things entertaining for people, get creative with it. And when you see the lizards or birds staring at you with those glassy camera eyes, I want you to show them your left side. Your best side, and make dramatic glances every so often in the heat of the moment. So long as you don’t die it should look solid, we’ll edit it all together later in post-production. I might project trailers for upcoming episodes onto your TV screen every so often when nobody’s there so you can have a look. Give me feedback sweetie we value your opinion.”

Samantha couldn’t help but laugh through her tears.

“You care about my opinion?” said Samantha.

“Sure, sure to an extent,” said Krista. “And we’ve started to get good results with Dalia in particular praying, so you can get her to ask for some stuff by the waters. We’ll see what we can muster up. If you want any changes in terrain we can facilitate that too. We’ve kind of just been sprinkling sand over the area for the last few centuries, mainly to cover up any signs of what used to be there once upon a time. But if you want fresh sceneries,” Krista smacked her hand at the table kind of playfully, “go ahead and pray to us gods and we’ll fix something up for ya.”

“You’re so generous,” whispered Samantha, with a face like she wanted to pull her head off by her dirty-blonde ponytail. She wondered if it would make a pop, if she could. “What else do you require of me, oh mighty executive producer.”

“Now that kind of sarcasm doesn’t poll well at all with our demographics you’re going to have to cut that out or,” Krista made her eyes wide and brought her index finger across her throat. “You’re tiptoeing a line with stuff like that, I can’t make any promises people are going to keep you safe if you rub em the wrong way. And don’t forget we can arm your enemies if you make us mad enough and people get sick of you. Adam’s definitely not the only genie in the world, and he’s certainly not ancient. But he’s the only one in your vicinity for now. Gosh darn you know,” Krista sort of snapped her fingers at Adam’s chest. “I wish they wouldn’t have used the word genie to begin with but that’s how people remember them in your society. Crazy what things stick and what things don’t, can’t always predict it.”

Samantha held her hands in her lap with a disgusted expression, and rocked lightly back and forth before she sighed.

“Can I just ask one thing? I mean if I’m,” Samantha looked around the room like she was stressed. “I’m not allowed to tell anybody right?”

“Precisely, it’s something I’d highly advise against,” said Krista.

“Then,” whispered Samantha. She looked up at Adam, without an expression on his blank metal face. “Can you please just take off the safeguards so I can talk to Adam about everything?” Krista sort of hesitated a moment, before she brought the remote to her teeth to think. “I’m not a threat to you, just make it so he can only talk to me about these things. If I can’t confide in the others, at least let me confide in him. I need him. He’s,” Samantha wiped at her nose as she sniffled, and remembered the life she lived before she found him. “He’s been a big help to me mentally. I need to be able to speak with him about stuff, and I hate when he starts acting like he doesn’t see all the fucking lights in the sky or how the lizards are staring at me dead in the face. If I can’t be honest with the others, at least let me be honest with him and get the same honesty in reply.”

Krista bit some lipstick off her lip, and tapped her heels on the ground a while as she thought.

“You know it’s certainly not protocol to mess with programming like that, there’s very good reasons for keeping Adam as he is,” said Krista. She looked at the way the light left Samantha’s eyes, and felt a weird pang in her heart. She took in a deep breath, and checked out the ratings. She let out a relaxing sigh. “However, for you I think I can make an exception,” Samantha’s head shot up. “He’ll drive you back to your oasis as the settings are adjusting, but moment he’s back he’ll be a little more free than he’s been. I’m willing to compromise if it’ll help you play your part.”

“It will,” said Samantha, staring at Adam with a faint smile. She looked at Krista with a bitter expression, then dropped her head. She tried a smile this time. No point in getting further onto her bad side. “Thank you.”

Krista brought a hand up to Samantha’s face like she was a proud mother watching her daughter survive the apocalypse. Her hand went right through her chin.

“You know, if you make it out of this Samantha,” said Krista, as an icy blue aura started to take over her complexion. Samantha thought she heard some strange electronic noises around her, as pieces of Krista’s leg fragmented away. “I’m sure you’ll look back on everything and,” Krista stared out at the view of her skyscraper window, and the plaques on her wall. She cast Samantha a deceptively sweet look back over her shoulder, as her torso and hair pieced away. “The memories will just be sweet like sugar.”

In a flickering blue aura, the image that was Krista Daniels disappeared.

Samantha found herself inside of an empty room, without a view of a skyline.

“I doubt that,” whispered Samantha, as Adam made a robotic march back towards the door.

~52~

ADAM DROVE TOWARDS the light at the end of their upward slanting tunnel, and gently drove the car along the endless sand back to Samantha’s oasis.

Samantha stared back at the door to the tunnel, as it slowly collapsed back into the ground. It disappeared as if it were never there. They drove in silence, as Samantha curled her knees towards her chest and held both her hands to her mouth. Adam drove straight ahead, and didn’t glance back down at her. His eyes were white with static, as he downloaded his updates. Samantha was placid for a while, and tried to focus on the breeze. She tried to stay as calm as she could.

Then all at once she burst into a mess of inconsolable tears. Samantha took in staggered, deep breaths as her eyes reddened, before she let out tortured cries back into her hands. She shut her eyes airtight, and felt overcome with a sudden exhaustion and sorrow so potent it made her want to die.

“All this time,” whispered Samantha, staring up at the skies. She peeled her eyes, and tried to see through her tears if there was anybody out there.

There always was, and she never knew.

Samantha thought long and hard, and tried to picture what she could of her family. She tried to remember the smile of her dad. The way he showed her how to hunt. The smell of the antelope meat he cooked for breakfast. The way her sister teased her about her lisp, when she was young.

Samantha could hear the screaming in her mind, and felt a fresh wave of repressed pain reach out and grab her heart.

“You were just watching us?” whispered Samantha. She looked at the sky, and burned her retinas some at the sun before she blinked her eyes shut. She saw the green in her mind where the sun was, as she mouthed out, “You took them from me.”

Samantha felt the wind on her skin, and the car breeze took her tears in droplets to fall back onto the kicked up sand behind them.

“Adam I’m sad,” whispered Samantha, to her genie chauffeur silently re-programming his mind. Samantha looked at him a while, then looked back down to the tears in her lap when he didn’t respond.

Samantha thought about the others, and wondered what it would take to make them safe. Samantha held her hands out, and watched them shiver. Samantha thought long and hard about it a while, and couldn’t figure out what they might want.

“I don’t know what they want,” said Samantha, to the sky. “I’m sorry, I should have asked. But I don’t know what they want from me. What would make them happy? I just,” Samantha shivered her head back down, and stared at the dashboard as the tears took the dirt off her face in streams. “I don’t want anyone else to die.”

Samantha felt them hit a more uneven than usual patch in the road, that made the ride bumpy. She bounced around, before it re-stabilized. Samantha looked up at Adam again, and wished he was flesh.

“Adam I’m so sad, can you hear me in there?”

Samantha dropped her eyes back to the mountains, and the birds flying by in the distance. She watched them pass her way, and fly overhead. She couldn’t tell if they were casting a glance at her, or going to watch someone else.

Samantha wished she knew sooner, the nature of her world.

“Adam I need a friend,” whispered Samantha, crying as she bounced briefly in her seat.

Adam’s eyes were white with fresh knowledge, as his arms adjusted in robotic, jerky movements to steer the car straight.

Samantha thought she saw a lizard in the car beside her, and flinched. She inspected every inch of her seat, above and beneath it.

There was nothing there.

Samantha dragged her hands through her hair, and tried to breathe. She felt pains in her chest, and a certain uneasy sense that she might faint.

“None of this should have happened,” whispered Samantha. She started to cry again. She screamed, “To anyone. None of this should have happened to anyone.”

Samantha started to ugly cry at the sky, before her eyes returned to an accusatory glare. She tried to repress her emotions, and couldn’t hold back her pain. She let out a fresh burst of tears, and screamed. She thought she’d find words as she yelled, but she didn’t. She only found release, and how much her own voice could hurt her own eardrums. She shouted even louder, as her voice cracked. She spat some as she screamed again, and her voice grew progressively more hoarse with every successive shout of pain at the sky. She shouted longer and harder, and felt the sense of tearing and pain in her throat as she did.

Samantha screamed one more time into a bitter sob, until she felt a gentle, cold hand at her shoulder.

“Master Samantha?” whispered Adam.

Samantha cried harder at his voice, and stared at the floor with a sob as she felt herself drifting unconscious.

“Master Samantha I’m right here is everything all right?” whispered Adam, as Samantha shivered and spit trailed from her mouth to the car seat.

Samantha continued to cry a while, before she leaned her head against Adam driving beside her.

“Adam..” whispered Samantha, in between wearied sobs. She could smell a strangely fresh scent on the air, like they were passing through a rose garden. Samantha didn’t know why she felt less alone, as she breathed it in. “Oh Adam..”

~53~

“SAMANTHA!” SHOUTED Ryder, for the thousandth time as he drove around the periphery of their oasis.

He had no covering over his face to better see his surroundings. He peeled his eyes out towards the horizon, and saw nothing but sand stretching out to the empty wilderness. He hardly noticed the burn of the sun on his skin as he drove out all morning and afternoon.

Ryder kicked up dirt and sand all around him, as he sped around the oasis screaming her name in a panic at the air. After enough circling around, Ryder drove back to the walls and found Dalia approaching the gates with the same baffled expression.

“Any luck?” said Dalia, unlocking the gates.

Ryder shook his head, as he drove back into their oasis and hopped out of the car.

“Did you check the water again?” said Ryder.

“She’s not there Ryder, me and Amari checked for the thousandth time,” said Dalia, putting her hands at the air. “Amari’s still looking, but Samantha’s not there. She didn’t just hop in and drown why would she do that.”

“I don’t know, I just don’t get it,” whispered Ryder, crouching down and folding his thumbs in the space between his eyes. “Why would she just leave?”

“Do you think she was walking around the oasis last night?” whispered Dalia, putting a hand to her throat like she was choking on the thought. “Do you think somebody got her?”

“Stop talking like that,” said Ryder.

“Hasn’t it crossed your mind at leas—”

“Of course it crossed my mind!” shouted Ryder, shoving his sister back. She recoiled some at his touch. Ryder shivered, and brought his hands back up in apology. “I’m sorry, I’m not wrapped so tight right now. Just don’t talk like that, we’re going to find her.”

Dalia put her hands up like she got it, and she was sorry for bringing it up. Amari rushed up to them with a semi-hopeful expression that they had good news.

It went away as Dalia shook her head.

“Well she’s definitely not here,” said Amari, throwing her hands at the house, before putting her hands on her hips with a distraught worry in her eyes. “I don’t know what to do, do we drive out there?”

Ryder held back tears for a while, before he let out a hoarse scream. He kicked a piece of stray metal at his feet, and jammed his toe some. He hardly paid attention to the throbbing pain as he dropped to his knees with his hair covering his face.

Dalia and Amari watched him silently from behind, as a few birds chirped along the top of their walls. They peered over at Ryder and his sister with glassy eyes.

Before they turned their gaze back, and watched the growing sand cloud in the distance.

“Wait,” said Amari, putting a finger into the air. Dalia looked at her like she was being strange, before she listened. “Do you hear that?

Dalia listened for a while, before she rushed through the open gate. She brought her hands over her sun-chapped lips and started to cry.

“Oh my gods,” whispered Dalia, as the incoming car drove straight ahead to their oasis.

––––––––

SAMANTHA WOKE UP, TO the noise of relieved laughter and sobbing.

She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles, and squinted up at Adam before she noticed Ryder and the others. A metallic smile stretched quickly and easily over Adam’s face. He gave a friendly look to the others looking on with disbelieving eyes, and waved before Dalia leapt forward across the driver side door to give him a tight hug. She hit his metal chest a few times as she did it, like she was mad at him for scaring her.

Samantha opened her door to take a step out of the car, and felt Amari’s arms grapple her the instant she did. Samantha exhaled some at her grip, and laughed like it was painful. Dalia followed close behind to amplify the pain.

Ryder stared at them all from afar with stunned eyes, as he gave interchangeable glances between Adam and Samantha.

Adam nodded his head at Samantha, to the noise of gears.

“She’s a resourceful one isn’t she,” said Adam, as a few more birds flew onto the walls around their oasis.

Ryder looked at the two of them like there was something he needed to hear, but he wasn’t sure what it might be.

Samantha laughed with a bubbly smile as she hugged Dalia and Amari. She smiled awkwardly over at Ryder.

“I hope you guys weren’t too worried,” said Samantha, making a weird face like she felt guilty all of a sudden.

Dalia looked her up and down, and didn’t see any scratches.

“You’re okay right?” said Dalia.

“Yeah,” mouthed Samantha, leaning her head onto Dalia’s. “I’m okay.”

Ryder stared at her with a look of tortured relief, as he pointed at Adam like he was seeing a ghost he never thought he would see ever again.

“How did you,” mouthed Ryder, looking around at all of them like he couldn’t believe it and he couldn’t be the only one.

The others were just happy to have a moment to be happy they were back, before asking their questions.

Samantha took in a deep breath, and tried to explain without betraying the rules.

“I caught them off guard in the night, and I,” Samantha looked over at the growing birds along the walls around her. She thought she noticed a few flickers of light in the sky, that were drowned out by the sunlight. Samantha swallowed her words, and thought about the gods she now knew. Amari started to get choked up as she looked at her. Samantha let out a bittersweet cry. “And I prayed,” said Samantha, as Dalia smiled up at her. Samantha looked around her, and let loose tears with a look of sorrow mixed with joy. “With all my heart I prayed.”

~54~

ADAM PROJECTED AN IMAGE on the TV screen of their oasis with a dot that read ‘You Are Here.’

He zoomed out from that point, and revealed hundreds of other oases within a 200 mile radius of them.

“There can’t be that many,” whispered Amari, staring at the screen with eyes filed with wonder.

“There are,” said Samantha. “Adam scanned the whole area, somehow or other he tuned into some old instrumentation floating up in the sky and found a way to map out the space around us.”

“That’s incredible,” whispered Dalia, as she pressed at a space on the screen. She pulled her finger back fast when the video zoomed in on the oasis she tapped, and showed footage of the people there.

They had a pyramid built up several stories into the sky. One particularly tall and muscular man among them walked out with a giant axe in his burned hand, as a blood thirsty crowd of frightening men and women cheered him on below.

He made a clean swipe at the heads of their frightened enemies one by one. The blood poured down the pyramid to the sand below, along with their rolling heads. Dalia cringed a bit as she tapped at the screen a dozen times until it stopped showing the video.

“Hope they deserved it,” said Dalia. She looked at Adam’s flickering blue eyes, and gritted her teeth. “Adam’s okay right? He’s not just projecting random bullshit onto the screen just for the heck of it right, he took a beating back there. Wouldn’t be surprised if his metal brain was all gummed up.”

“He’s okay,” said Samantha, as she cast a glance back at Ryder watching from the back of the room. He rested against the wall, with his arms folded. He had a sad, tired expression on his face.

He looked at Samantha a moment and gave a faint smile, before he looked away.

“Did you want to say anything Ryder?” whispered Samantha.

Ryder cleared his throat, and looked around the room before he looked at Adam with some faint joy in his eyes.

“I’m happy Adam’s back but how did you not get caught?” said Ryder, looking over like he wanted to show he was happy just concerned.

Samantha nodded a lot, before she directed Adam to project an image of them taking out their oasis.

“Show them what happened Adam,” said Samantha. “Just don’t include the uhm.”

Adam’s eyes stopped flickering, as he gave Samantha a curious expression like he didn’t know what she meant. Samantha made an awkward face, and sort of mimed an image of swinging nunchucks, and pointed back at the kitchen knives. Adam’s eyes got a little wider, like it might be wise to not show him almost murdering Samantha.

“Right, definitely not that,” said Adam. He cleared his robotic throat with an electric twang. Amari looked at Ryder and Dalia with a confused expression, when Adam projected an image onto the screen of the raiders torturing their spoils of war at their oasis. “So basically, the raiders who attacked your oasis didn’t quite have a vibrant community of people. Rather they were capturing people at outside oases and then forcing them to do their bidding while they continued to scavenge and raid as many oases as they could.”

“How did you get inside without getting caught?” asked Ryder, looking at them both with worry.

Samantha went to speak, when she noticed a little, beige gecko walk slowly to their window. It stared at her with static eyes, and shook its head like she better not say too much.

Samantha swallowed some spit as she fanned her throat, before she began.

“I went in at night, and I looked through the tents until I found Adam in his lamp,” said Samantha, gesturing up at Adam. “Once the morning came, he responded to my touch. He can regenerate with the sunlight. We captured the raiders, and found out they were capturing people from outside oases to be their slaves. We let the people decide what to do with their captors, and didn’t stick around for the gore of it.”

Adam projected a video of the ash covered soldiers being lassoed, along with images of them freeing the people captured at that oasis.

“You know you could’ve—” said Ryder, but he shook his head and held his tongue.

Ryder stared at her with a hurt expression. Samantha waited for him to finish, when she felt Amari’s hand on her shoulder.

“I’m just happy you’re okay,” said Amari.

Samantha smiled into her eyes, and put her hand on her knee.

“I am too,” whispered Samantha, before she looked at the floor.

The lizard in the window nodded its head slowly, before it started to slowly raise its hand into what might have been a thumbs up.

Dalia hit another oasis on the screen, and watched as they were attacked and beaten by raiders moving through on horseback.

“Did this just happen?” whispered Dalia, watching people flee the oasis as they were mowed down by women covered in purple paint, shooting at them on horseback with bows and arrows.

“These are all live feeds,” said Adam. He kept changing the images rapidly between different oases living peacefully, others sharpening weapons to prepare for an attack, others with people laughing with their families as they cooked what meat they had for a meal, other oases fighting off attacks from brutal raiders trying to steal their resources. “There is very rarely an oasis isolated enough to be immune to the dangers of attack. We need to be prepared for the worst at all times.”

“Got that right,” said Amari.

Dalia watched in horror, as Adam let a live feed of an oasis being attacked play out on screen. There was a woman on screen lining up her arrow at a group of fleeing men and women.

She shot them down one at a time, and smiled with rotten teeth as she did it.

“That’s horrible,” cried Dalia, looking at the screen like she wished maybe she didn’t know all the brutality omnipresent around them.

Samantha stared at the video with some concern, as she looked back over with a paranoid glance at the gecko staring at her in the window sill.

It licked its mouth with an unexpectedly long tongue, then nodded over at the TV screen like she’d better get to doing something about that. Samantha choked some on her spit, and looked around like she hoped nobody noticed she was watching the lizard.

Samantha cleared her throat and asked, “How far away is that oasis?”

Adam brought up an overlay of a map on the screen, and drew a zig zagging line that navigated the optimal route to the oasis from theirs.

“Approximately thirty miles,” said Adam.

Samantha stared up at the screen, and shook her leg as she hugged herself. She took a while doing that, before the others started to get worried.

“Do you think we could help them?” said Samantha.

Ryder stared at her like he couldn’t believe his ears, before he walked up the steps fuming. A brief moment later he slammed his door shut behind him. The others looked up a while like they didn’t quite understand, before Amari grabbed Samantha’s wrist. She shook her head lightly.

“Maybe we’d better stop watching the screen for the day,” said Amari. She looked over at Dalia, staring up at her with some hurt in her eyes. “If we don’t know all the terrible things happening out there, maybe we won’t feel so compelled to put ourselves in any more danger. What do you say?”

Samantha looked down at Dalia, clearly addicted to the images on the screen. She cast a concerned glance at Samantha, then swallowed some spit and looked back at the screen.

“We just got you and Adam back Samantha I don’t want to risk losing you two again,” said Dalia, smiling sheepishly at Adam.

Samantha looked down and sniffled some, as she scratched her hands like they started to itch. Nervous habit. She cast a glance back at the window sill, and saw a gecko shaking its head, before lifting its little feet to walk slowly away.

Samantha looked at the horrible images on the screen, and said, “Turn it off Adam.”

Adam turned off the television screen, and put on a slide show of random pictures from the past.

“As you wish my master,” replied Adam, with some worry in his robotic eyes.

Dalia smiled up at Samantha, and gave her a light hug before hopping back into the kitchen to grab a glass of water. Amari breathed a sigh of relief, as Samantha stared mindlessly at the slideshow on the screen.

“Don’t beat yourself up about it okay? It’s better not seeing everything awful happening everywhere 24/7,” said Amari, as Samantha turned her head to the empty window sill. “Ignorance is bliss right?”

Samantha looked up, and saw a few birds looking down and shaking their heads as they chirped.

She looked away.

“Yeah,” said Samantha, with a sad smile. She heard the flapping of bird wings away from their house. She let out a staggered sigh, and tried not to worry as the phone in her pocket vibrated. “Ignorance is bliss.”

~55~

SAMANTHA CHECKED THE text message on her phone more times than she could count, before she clicked it shut and rested by the side of their oasis beneath a moonlit sky.

She rested her arms on her knees, and dropped her head into them. She hit her head against her forearms a few times, before she played with the tassels at the edge of the carpet she was sitting on. She straightened them as she tried to think.

She saw Ryder out of the corner of her eye walking up to her, and looked up to say hi with glistening eyes.

He walked up with his hands in his pockets, a little more shy than she was used to. He tried to smile her way, but sort of looked over the waters when he found he couldn’t quite do it. He hovered a few awkward seconds.

“Hey stranger,” whispered Samantha, pushing some of her hair to the side.

Ryder fought the urge to laugh. He worried it might come across more sarcastic than he intended it to. He swallowed and looked like he had a funny taste in his mouth as he replied.

“Hey,” whispered Ryder, a little irritated.

Samantha looked up at him like she was sad, as she patted at the space of open carpet beside her.

“Want to sit?” asked Samantha.

Ryder turned away a moment, and looked back at the stone house like maybe he wasn’t quite in the mood to talk about it. He hovered a few more awkward seconds, before he turned back and sat down beside Samantha.

Samantha’s eyes flitted to a fresh star that appeared in the sky, before she gazed back at his feet. Ryder followed her eyes up to the sky, then stared back down indifferent to their meaning. Somehow he had his mind made up to never read the signs fearfully anymore.

Enough bad had happened, and he was ready for worse.

“Stop worrying about the stars they don’t mean anything,” said Ryder. “There were a ton in the sky the night you disappeared and you came back just fine, so I guess I was wrong thinking what I thought.”

“I wasn’t gone that long,” replied Samantha. Ryder made a mouth like he was ready to spit, but he held it in his mouth. He stared down at the sand by his feet. “You want to tell me why you’ve been acting so weird lately.”

Ryder laughed some, like he couldn’t believe she had the nerve to ask it.

“You don’t know why I’ve been acting funny?” asked Ryder.

“I really don’t.”

Ryder got up some like he was about ready to leave, but stayed put in his seat beside her. He turned slightly away from her, and caught the reflection of the moon in the oasis waters.

“Okay,” whispered Ryder, turning some. He put his hands loosely by his face, before he projected them out like he was laying his cards on the table. “Why didn’t you take us with you when you went after Adam, do you know how stupid that was approaching them on your own?”

“I wanted to take you,” said Samantha.

Ryder smiled as he shook his head, like that didn’t mean much.

“If you wanted me to come you would’ve told me,” said Ryder. He stared at a space of sand, and picked up a smooth rock. “You could’ve gotten yourself killed or worse.”

“But I didn’t,” said Samantha.

Ryder tossed the rock into the waters, and watched it skip a while.

“That’s not a decision you take lightly, I should’ve been there with you,” said Ryder. He scrunched his face up, and didn’t look at her. Ryder didn’t want her to see the pain in his eyes. Sometimes the most terrifying thing is eye contact. “I started thinking the worst Samantha, and you come back and act like everything’s just fine—”

“Because it is,” said Samantha.

Ryder massaged his knuckles, and shut his eyes a while before he burst out with a fresh dispute.

“And you want to go attack more oases?” said Ryder, gesturing out across the water. “People we don’t even know? That don’t even know we exist? I don’t know how those people got technology to take out Adam, but if even one other oasis can do the same it’s a suicide mission. We need to just lay low and stay safe here.”

Samantha studied a fresh crop of stars in the sky, and tried not to look up to judge their meaning.

“We need to help people,” whispered Samantha, letting loose a glimpse at a space of sand she saw move a little. She saw a lizard’s head peek up from out of it, and tried not to make too much eye contact with it. “I know what it’s like to be in a bad place. If I can help even just one other person out there with Adam then I will.”

“Look we,” Ryder threw a hand back at the house. “All of us know how bad it can get out here, but that doesn’t make us responsible for every wrong in the world. It’s not our fight, we can barely survive enacting our own revenge. If we go about trying to fix the world we’ll be goners in no time.”

Samantha rocked back and forth, hugging her knees tightly to her chest. She nodded like she understood. She opened her mouth a moment like she wanted to speak, then she bit her tongue short of explaining. Ryder read the shift in her demeanor, and tried to piece together what it could mean.

Samantha chose her words carefully as a few birds flew onto a stone nearby.

“I don’t want any more people to die,” whispered Samantha, with a quivering voice and a look to the sky.

Ryder stared at the sand beside her legs, then glanced up at her eyes.

“Is there something you’re not telling me?” said Ryder, a little bit afraid.

Samantha rocked harder, and tried to fight the waterfall of tears dropping onto the sand between them. She tried to find a way to calm her heart fighting with her mind, as she shook her head. Ryder felt a faint sink in his stomach, like he was going to be sick with worry.

“There’s so much that I can’t tell you right now,” whispered Samantha.

Ryder’s face took on a fresh concern, and the sorrow of feeling he couldn’t understand.

“Why?” said Ryder, looking at her as she looked away. Ryder swallowed some spit, as he raked his eyes across her olive skinned arm. He reached a hand between them and leaned a bit closer. “Why can’t you just tell me?”

“I can’t,” said Samantha, struggling with an urge to scream. She could feel the light of the sky shining brighter. “I just can’t.”

Ryder reached a faint hand towards hers, as she gently brought it away to wipe a tear from her eyes. Ryder’s eyes passed over her shoulder a moment, before he whispered,

“Will you ever tell me?”

Samantha got a bit defensive.

“I’m never going to tell you,” said Samantha, almost angry with herself for saying so much. “Not ever, I won’t let myself.”

Ryder made a face like he was insulted, before he stood up and started his way back to the house. Samantha ripped his hand back. The quick motion startled him.

Ryder’s irritated look turned into a question, as Samantha tugged him back down with a grip he wasn’t expecting.

“I’m sorry,” whispered Samantha, staring at the stars reflecting against the waters.

“Holy shit you’re strong,” said Ryder, as Samantha pulled him back towards her. Ryder went down onto his knees, and tried to be a little more vulnerable. “Samantha look, I,” Ryder looked down a moment, then pressed her hair against her cheeks as he grabbed her face. He stopped holding back, just a little. “Don’t you know how much I care about you?”

Samantha brought a hand up to Ryder’s cheeks, and tried to forget the lights in the sky.

“I know Ryder,” whispered Samantha, straining her voice as she shut her eyes tightly. Ryder stared down at the space between them, and started to ask another thought.

He held the questions that were burning on his lips, when Samantha brought a finger to them.

“What are,” said Ryder, as Samantha’s hand touched his cheek. She gave him a commanding stare dead in his eyes.

Ryder’s thought abandoned him, as she pressed a gentle kiss against his neck.

“I’m sorry,” whispered Samantha, staring at him with a tortured look as she planted a harder kiss against his lips. She held it a while, as she brought both her hands to his face.

A series of lights blossomed across the sky, as Samantha’s eyes bored into Ryder’s. She leaned forward, and Ryder leaned back against the carpet. Samantha folded her fingers into his hand as she dropped her body onto his. Ryder panted with his wrist against the back of his head, before he shut his eyes and put a hand through her hair. He shook his head, she didn’t understand.

“Do you have any idea how worried I was about you?” he whispered.

Samantha nodded her head, and cupped his chin with her hands as she set another soft kiss against his lips.

Samantha dropped her knee to the other side of his waist. A groan slipped from Ryder’s mouth, as Samantha tried to ignore the glassy gazes in the sand growing innumerably around her.

Samantha felt the light grow in fervor in the sky, and knew with every ounce of her heart that she would find a way to get him there. She saw a flashing image of outside oases in her mind, and the lit up world beyond. She wanted more than anything else to live happily ever after within it.

The only thing in the whole wide world that mattered to her in that moment, was keeping them as safe as she could. No matter the cost.

“Ryder,” said Samantha. Ryder flinched some at her voice, she was closer than he expected. She brought her tear-filled face closer to his ear. “Ryder I love you..”

Ryder looked at her like he wanted to believe it, but couldn’t read her right to know for certain.

“Don’t just say tha—”

Samantha’s hands gripped at his hair, as she stared into his heterochromatic eyes. She tried to wipe her tears from his moonlit face.

“Ryder I love you,” whispered Samantha, as Ryder flipper her over onto the carpet.

Samantha slid her hand beneath his silk shirt, and slid it off as he stretched his arms over her. Ryder gripped the strands of her hair, as Samantha tried to pull her eyes from the chorus of stars growing all around in the sky.

“I love you,” whispered Ryder, his inhibitions falling victim to her starlit gaze.

She took off her white blouse, and held his head as she kissed him like she was scared of ever letting it go. Samantha felt his hands on her legs, as a lizard popped its head up from the sand beside them.

“Samantha I love you..”

There was a burst of light as fresh devices moved into place. In moments the world went from a dimly lit blur, to a sky as bright as an overcast noonday in the dead of midnight. Ryder turned his head with a moan, and vaguely noticed the growing light all around them. Samantha pulled his face back to hers, then set his hand over her heart. It was beating out of her chest like an inmate on the walls of an asylum. She felt a tormented ache in her stomach, as the night sky exploded with light.

Samantha held her tortured eyes on his, and tried to ignore the millions of flashing eyes floating and watching their every breath from an endless night sky.

I hope you enjoyed reading this twisted story! If you did, it would be much appreciated if you would leave an honest review to help bring more readers to this series.

More than anything else reviews, no matter how short, help draw attention to authors. And no author gains much traction promoting their books exclusively by themselves. It’s only when readers start talking about the stories to others who may also like them that anything exciting happens. So I appreciate your having read this story, I hope it was entertaining. And if you would like me to create more, please leave a review and mention the Colossus of Rhodes Series to friends and potential readers as they pass through your life. Watch Them Wander is always going to be free for eBook, and I hope it will bring many avid readers entertainment for many years to come. Thank you so much for reading and I hope you have a blessed day =]

Bonus Excerpt!

READ AN EXCERPT FROM the sequel The Stars in our Skies. Book 2 in the Colossus of Rhodes Series is available now!

~1~

THE AIR ALL AROUND them stunk of burning flesh.

It was enough to make Samantha want to vomit. She crawled along the moonlit sand, and hoped she’d get used to the smell sooner rather than later. She imagined their plan of attack again in her mind, and felt a discontent writhing through her veins at the thought. Like some slithering snake biting every which way in her arteries and poisoning her insides with doubt. She knew what they had to do, but the thought of a misstep left her feeling a cold shudder down her spine.

She did her best to combat those intrusive thoughts by staring at the stars in the sky, and reciting her lines in her mind. They wouldn’t let any of them die tonight.

It wouldn’t be good for optics, said the blue goddess with the high heels and the plastic smile.

Samantha crawled a little further, and shook hard at Ryder’s arm.

“Let me see those again,” she whispered.

Ryder rushed a hand to his chest.

“You startled the hell out of me,” said Ryder, handing over the binoculars and brushing some sand off his sleeves. “You didn’t have to shake my arm so rough.”

“I thought you liked it like that,” said Samantha.

“Easy,” said Ryder, glancing far away at the blue eyed, humanoid genie staring at the distant oasis with unblinking eyes. “You’re gonna make Adam uncomfortable, I bet he can still hear us even from all the way over there.”

Samantha cringed some as she stared over at Adam, illuminated by nothing besides the growing starlight above him. His body a black silhouette only faintly visible if you stared hard enough and were paranoid about monsters in the darkness. His two eyes were glowing blue orbs of light, that could have been mistaken for reflections of moonlight on scrap metal from far enough away. Adam stared long and hard at the huddled captured with their hands tied behind their backs, writhing on the ground and staring up at their captors with begging eyes. Adam stared through the tents around them, and used heat vision to get an estimate of the remaining raiders besides those the naked eye could see.

He pulled out the components of a floating sniper rifle with seven barrels, and started assembling its parts as he took giant strides back up to Samantha and Ryder.

“You’re right, I can hear you,” said Adam, with a robotic voice.

Samantha stared through her binoculars, and studied the few remaining, unburned tents surrounding the oasis.

“How many people are down there Adam?” asked Samantha. “I can’t see into the tents.”

Adam came up to his master, and knelt down onto the ground beside them. He projected a full map of the oasis onto the sand between them, and pointed at the red dots.

“No more than forty-seven or so my master, but that’s not including the captured,” replied Adam. He projected several coiling arms from his metal head, with glowing eyes at their ends. Adam aimed down the sights. “I should be able to bring that number down a bit before they start to scatter. Hard to prevent casualties to the captured at that point, we’ll approach while they panic and finish the others before they can harm any more people.”

Samantha watched, as a horde of men with sternums hanging from their necklaces came out to surround their captured foes with wide, mocking eyes. They started to dance around the bonfire with giant swords, and cheered as they raised their arms to the growing stars in the sky.

Samantha swallowed some spit, as she looked just a little bit farther to the left. There was a pile of human bones cleaned of every ounce of meat by blood-thirsty mouths.

Beads of sweat formed along Samantha’s forehead, in spite of the cool night time air of the desert. Samantha was more than nervous, she was afraid.

Ryder saw the shake of her hands, and tried to rub her back as he kissed her on the head. He’d voiced his concerns already, but he made up his mind to help her once he saw there was no stopping her.

“You’re sure you still want to do this?” asked Ryder. Some doubt crept into Samantha’s eyes. “Amari’s good enough with a sniper rifle now, she might be able to pick off some problematic people if push comes to shove. But no matter how thought through we think things are a lot of things can still go wrong, you know that. We can still go back.”

Samantha shut her eyes, and tried to stop hearing Krista’s voice in her mind. Samantha knew that whether or not she wanted to put any of them in any danger, it was out of her hands. Samantha didn’t want Ryder to be out there, in the crosshairs of another fight. But she knew it with every bit of her soul.

They’d always be in danger so long as they breathed, and the eyes of countless strangers were entertained by their suffering.

Samantha’s teeth chattered some as she breathed out.

“I have to,” whispered Samantha. She saw a flash of Krista’s world in her mind, and shook her head of the image of strangers rooting for their victory or their deaths interchangeably at the drop of a dime. “I have to do this, I don’t have a choice.”

Ryder felt a sink in his heart as he tried to smile like things would be all right. He took her binoculars from her grip, and had another look as he bit his lip.

“They don’t look like they have any rifles, or any weapons that could hurt Adam from what I can see,” said Ryder. He studied Adam testing his aim down the sights. “I’d say we’ve dealt with worse.”

We’ve dealt with worse?

Samantha thought about the way the stars were so bright in the sky, the night before Ryder’s village was attacked. She thought about how his sisters were pulled out of the sand, and Adam barely kept them breathing. She thought about the way they choked up sand as the bullets drenched the air all around them. Samantha shook her head, as she saw a flash of her childhood in her mind, of her on horseback with her sister. They stared back at the only life they ever knew burning behind them.

“Yeah,” said Samantha, grabbing the rifle at her side and staring at the stars like she thought to fire a round at them. “We’ve certainly dealt with worse.”

Adam moved for a while, as he adjusted his hands beside them. Adam jostled with all the various barrels he intended to aim down for a while, before the raiders stood still around their bonfire. Their eyes were fixed on the one man raising his arm to chop at a helpless neck with a dramatic gesture, toying with his next meal.

Adam stopped moving, and settled each of his metal fingers at their triggers.

“I’m ready when you are master,” said Adam.

Samantha stared out at the helpless people of the oasis. It was moments like that which made her feel guiltiest for wanting to leave. Samantha wished she could live her life in seclusion, with Ryder and his sisters. Build a place of solitude, never to be disturbed ever again by outsiders willing to rip what they had from their grasp. Samantha wished she didn’t have to go out, and do the bidding of a goddess with an office in the clouds.

Samantha shut her eyes, and tried hard to ignore the rapid fire beat of her heart.

She re-opened her eyes to the sky, and gave the gods of her world a look of contempt before she flashed them a proud look of joy. For the sake of them all, she was getting well practiced in the art of faking a smile.

“If not us then who right?” asked Samantha. She raised her weapon up at her side, as Ryder did the same. He gave a signal to Amari at the top of a dune behind them. “Let’s go kill those bastards.”

Adam gave Samantha a terse nod to the noise of gears, before he steadied his lines of sight once more. He triple checked his aim, as the raider smiled into the eyes of his prey. He raised his arm, ready for a true slice of the blade.

Adam fired, and soon after brains and confusion littered the sand of the distant oasis.

Samantha didn’t need to look up, to feel the endless lights grow bright in the sky above them.

“As you wish my master,” said Adam. His metal limbs opened up to the faint noise of meticulously engineered gears and chains. He smiled with steel teeth, as he grew as tall as a titan. “Let’s start the show.”

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