Garbage Planet by Bill Bowler

Our host was gracious and hospitable. He welcomed us, made us comfortable, and tended to our needs. Our journey had been long and tiring but, after we had freshened up, we gathered in what served in his modest dwelling as a living room.

His other guest, a dark-eyed girl, looked at me expectantly. I had not met her before, but her resemblance to my old friend, if I could put it that way, was striking. It brought back to mind images from a past long gone, but never to be forgotten.

"Shall I tell you what I remember?" I asked.

"Please," said the girl. "That's why I've come."

I leaned back into my chair and settled in. "It was many years ago, but seems like only yesterday. I remember him so clearly. I see him now as vividly as I see you here in this chamber. We were on Philemon, during the Reign of Trash. One night..."

* * *

...the wail of the intrusion alarm broke the uneventful boredom of existence at Alpha Base. Officer Hardy, bleary-eyed, stumbled into the control room and flipped on the satellite feed. A huge, filthy scow, from the Proxima system by looks of her, appeared on screen.

With a curse, Officer Hardy pulled up the schedule. The next drop wasn't due for three cycles. Hardy swore again and ran a vehicle i.d. search on the trespasser while we watched the video feed.

The barge transfer module separated from the main scow, opened its bay doors and 500,000 tons of junk rained down to the planet's surface, adding two feet to the height of Perfume Peak, the ten-mile high mountain of trash that dominated the central area of the dump site. The scow retrieved the empty barge module, fired its engines, and accelerated out of orbit. The blip moved across the radar screen, reached the edge and dropped off.

The vehicle i.d. search came back positive. The scow was owned by Galactic Solutions, Inc., an environmental maintenance firm operating out of the Proxima II colony.

Officer Hardy sat slumped at the command console, head down, staring at the screen. Dark bags hung under his bloodshot eyes and his skin had a sickly, pale yellowish tinge. He took a gulp of cold coffee, scratched his chin whiskers, and turned his eyes to the control panel gages.

Two LEDs, representing two beacons in the dump sector, were flashing red. The beacons had been knocked off line.

"Sir?"

"I see it, Mom-E, I see it."

Strictly speaking, I wasn't anybody's "mommy." I'm a Motherboard Model-E android, "E" for emoticon. It's common now, but I was the first unit equipped with the prototype of emotional expression. And I guess I am a "mommy," after a fashion: the Model-E family of emoticon androids went into production using my template.

Emoticons mimicked emotional response as closely as memory and computing speed could approach it. Pride was modeled as optimization of system resources; joy as increased rate of computation; anger as a surge in power; grief as system-wide process slowdown; love as a tenfold increase of bandwidth connection.

"We've lost the signal, Mom-E."

"Yes, sir, I see that."

"We're going to have to go out there."

"I know, sir."

The loss of signal from the beacons was alarming. They were part of a network that monitored the geo-stability of the dumpsite, which encompassed some 25,000 thousand square miles. The site, including Perfume Peak, was highly unstable and prone to shifting and settling, which resulted in avalanches or the sudden opening of deep crevices that had buried and swallowed whole villages of Philemoids and could threaten Alpha Base itself.

"That scow knocked out the beacons, Mom-E."

"It would appear so, sir."

"They're going to have to pay for it."

"Yes, sir. But, your report..."

"I know, I know," Officer Hardy waved me off.

I didn't need to remind him. Galactic Solutions could be held liable but regulations required the Base Officer's report to be filed within 48 hours of the infraction.

"All right, Mom-E," said Hardy. "Let's get ready to go."

"Can I come, too?" asked M-E2, Officer Hardy's auxilliary support staff android. He was standing next to me, watching the screen. M-E2 was a Model-E, only one month old at that time. He was still spanking new and his database was empty.

M-E2 was always asking questions and getting in the way. Maybe his emoticon was glitching, but he was constantly pestering everyone, even now while Officer Hardy worked at the console dealing with the emergency. Gaps in information seemed to trigger M-E2's processor, which was fast and new, and he soaked up new data like a sponge.

"Not this time, M-E2," said Officer Hardy. "You stay here. I need you here at the control panel."

"Please, Officer Hardy, you can run the panel by remote. Please take me with you. I can help."

Hardy stood up from the console. He looked a mess. His hair was greasy and matted; his stained and wrinkled work shirt hung out and his overalls were smeared with grime.

"All right, all right," he said. "You might come in handy. We'll leave the systems here on auto."

Hardy walked to a cabinet and took out his gear. With a grunt, he pulled a full armored body suit over his coveralls, strapped on two oxygen tanks, and pulled on his heavy boots.

"I won't get in the way," M-E2 said to me, his green eyes sparkling. "I can help. You'll see. You'll be glad I'm there."

Officer Hardy picked up his helmet and work gloves, "OK M-E2, Mom-E, cut the chatter. Let's go."

Officer Hardy was Chief Sanitation Engineer at Alpha Base on Philemon. Philemon was, at that time, the planet where colonists in the Alpha Centauri system dumped their trash, everything from decommissioned rockets and junk vehicles of every description, to storage tanks, waste solids and chemicals, sludge, debris, batteries, broken computers, refrigerators and scrap robots.

Much of this trash contained poisonous concentrations of cadmium, lead, mercury, lithium, and other heavy metals and radioactive waste. None of the colonized planets in the system would take it. As it piled up on Philemon, the toxins leached throughout the layer of surface trash, and the smoke from smoldering subsurface fires poisoned the atmosphere.

Officer Hardy, M-E2 and I left the control room through the airlock and walked to the base garage.

"Do you want me to drive?" asked M-E2. "I know the way."

"I want you to be quiet," said Hardy.

Only one of our surface vehicles was currently in working condition: an ancient, beat-up hovertruck, which looked like it was overdue for the junk heap itself.

The hovertruck was not the right vehicle for this job. The airstream from its jets tended to dislodge the loose surface trash, making the truck difficult to maneuver. As the grade of the slope grew steeper on the approach to the beacon placement on Perfume Peak, the hovertruck would become inoperable.

The halftrack was safer, more secure in the loose, shifting layer of trash. But the halftrack tread had ripped in two on a job three cycles ago and was in for repairs, which had been postponed while we waited for delivery of the replacement tread and spare parts.

After a couple of tries, Hardy got the hovertruck engine started. We pulled out of the garage and left base heading north towards the downed beacons.

Officer Hardy scowled and muttered to himself as he guided the truck over the rough surface of trash and junk.

"I'll get her in as close as I can."

"The closer, the better, sir."

"We'll have to walk the last leg."

"Yes, sir."

"I wish we could have used the VTOL surveyor," Hardy muttered half to himself.

"Not in this weather, sir," said M-E2 from the back seat. "Visibility is zero above five hundred feet."

He was right. The sky above us was overcast and a thick, toxic fog was descending.

Hardy checked his oxygen. The gauge showed green, 90% -- 18 hours at normal respiration. It was five hours from Alpha Base to the damaged beacons, another five back.

As we skimmed towards the sector, the yellow blotch of Alpha Centauri A shone dully through the gray overcast. Ahead of us, on the horizon, the summit of Perfume Peak was draped in fog. We began to see large numbers of Philemoids working the surface of the dump, scavenging through the trash.

Philemon had once been rich in natural resources, and the temperate continental regions had been covered with a form of photosynthetic vegetation, which oxygenated the atmosphere. But, once discovered and colonized, the planet had been extensively mined for the abundant metals and minerals, which lay near the surface.

Within 500 years, the terrain was leveled, the surface defoliated, and, once the mineral resources had been extracted, the colonists moved on. Philemon, now a flat, barren, desert planet, was converted to a trash receiving facility.

By this time, most of the Philemon's surface had been coated with a twenty-mile thick layer of junk. New mountains were growing, mountains of trash, some reaching a height of ten miles and more above the surface, higher than the natural mountains, which had been leveled.

Conditions on Philemon had changed as a result of the defoliation and the trash accumulation. The atmosphere now contained high levels of toxic gasses emitted from the smoldering crust -- ammonia, chlorine, arsine, and bromine, in highest concentration near the central dump sectors. Some of these gasses were so corrosive, they were toxic to androids, as well as humans, and we had to limit our exposure to short periods or risk permanent damage.

Oxygen persisted in the poisoned atmosphere after the vegetation had been stripped. The source of this post-defoliation oxygen was a mystery and would have made an interesting object for scientific study, but no studies were funded, none conducted, and science abandoned Philemon to fate.

The alien life forms native to Philemon, had thinned and died out when the vegetation had been removed. Only one species adapted. The Philemoids, as they were called, were immune to the toxins and lived on the trash heaps. Large, sightless, slow moving globular creatures with rows of motor and grasping cillia, with a particular internal organ which derived energy from light, and who communicated by transmitting and receiving electromagnetic waves through long, flexible proboscis-antennae, these humble creatures had once labored for the colonists in the abandoned mines, directing miners to the veins of iron ore, copper and bauxite.

With the colonists long departed, and no surviving predators, the Philemoids multiplied and now great numbers of them eked out a meager existence as trash scavengers. They scoured the dumps and hunted through the mountains of refuse to recover and separate out the scrap metal, the computer chips, the nuts and bolts, the glass and circuits, any pieces or parts still usable or recyclable in any way, and established a primitive economy trading and reselling these recovered parts back to the colonists in the neighboring systems.

The Philemoids built their nests on and around the dump sites out of scavenged parts, using vehicle doors and computer screens to build walls, motherboards for roof shingles, robot legs for support posts, even robot eyes for wall decorations.

The Philemoids shared the planet with one other species, an alien collective organism that looked like a flock of birds and behaved like a swarm of flies. This organism was non-native to Philemon and had been introduced inadvertently to one of the trash dumps by some contaminated garbage ship from a remote system.

These swarming organisms, "black clouds." which looked for all the world like some giant, undulating, speckled, flying amoeba, thrived on Philemon, where conditions suited them perfectly. The swarms were capable of ingesting a wide variety of materials, such as fabric, metal and plastic, as were found in abundance in the trash heaps of Philemon.

The swarms were an annoyance to humans and Philemoids, a pest that had to be kept from eating the paint off vehicles, weakening structures, and eating holes in the Alpha Base buildings and Philemoid nests.

But the black clouds were a menace to androids, which the swarms apparently considered something of a delicacy. The black clouds voraciously consumed plasto-derm, circuits, wiring, and minute metal and plastic parts, and were capable of incapacitating and destroying an android in short order.

We had traveled four hours, making good progress up the slope. About two miles from the downed beacons, the airflow from the hovertruck dislodged a loosely packed section of surface trash and a sinkhole opened up, large enough to swallow the truck.

We tipped down sharply on our right side, teetering on the brink, as tons of loose trash -- refrigerators, vehicle chassis, computer monitors, keyboards, machine parts -- gave way from underneath us and careened into the hole.

Officer Hardy spun the wheel and veered sharply left. The old hovertruck rattled and groaned, but inched its way up and away from the edge of the gaping hole. Hardy maneuvered the truck to a more solid area, brought her down next to a round hillock of trash, and turned off the engines,

"We go the rest of the way on foot, folks."

We disembarked and, as a safety precaution, hooked ourselves together with a line of cable. I took "point," with Officer Hardy in the middle and M-E2 bringing up the rear. It was slow going as we trudged ankle deep through the loose, shifting mounds of trash.

The now red sun of Alpha Centauri A was setting behind Perfume Peak and the orange disc of Alpha Centauri B was rising in the east, like a harvest moon viewed from Earth, haloed by the clouds and fog. By my calculations, the damaged beacons were 1.5 miles north of our current position and we continued moving up the slope in that direction.

As we rounded a dune of particle trash, ball bearings, nuts and bolts, I picked up an electromagnetic signal.

"You feel that?" radioed Hardy.

"Yes, sir."

"Me, too," radioed M-E2 from behind.

"It's a distress signal, a Philemoid in trouble." I said. "The source is one half mile east."

"Roger that," said Hardy.

He stood for a moment. There was very little time. We had to reach the beacons on foot, document the damage, walk back to the truck and then return to base and file the report. It would be very unpleasant if Officer Hardy missed the deadline. There would be a lot of finger pointing and scapegoating. He checked his oxygen gage: yellow, 15 hours left in the tanks, maybe just enough for a quick detour.

"My achin' back," he growled, and turned east.

Still hooked together, we made our way slowly through the loose surface trash. The signal was growing weaker even as we moved towards it. The Philemoid's life was ebbing away.

I took a step, and sunk up to my knee in goo. Loose junk and garbage were floating on a brown swamp of brackish sludge seeping through to the surface from an underground lake of oil and tar, bubbling to our left. I pulled my leg from the muck and backed out.

We circled around the bog. It took two hours, but eventually we reached the signal source, a large Philemoid lying helplessly in a pool of its own fluids. The bent and rusted remains of a small container rocket had fallen from a heap of trash onto the creature, pinning it to the ground. One of the rocket tailfins had punctured the Philemoid's leathery skin. It was unable to free itself and leaking protoplasm badly.

"Gimme a hand with this," Officer Hardy unhooked himself and turned towards us. M-E2 and I began to lift the rocket frame off the creature.

"Easy, easy. Not so rough! Pull it straight out and up. Don't tear it."

We pulled the fin carefully out of the injured Philemoid, and placed the rocket frame down to the side. Hardy patched the wound with a bandage from his medkit. Designed for human use, the bandage did not adhere well to the cilliated surface of the Philemoid, but it did at least temporarily close the hole and staunch the flow. The Philemoid had lost a lot of fluid. It had noticeably shrunk in size; its leathery skin hung loose in folds and its electromagnetic signal was barely readable.

Hardy checked his oxygen supply. Red, two-thirds down. He uttered an oath and looked at the dying Philemoid. It was six feet in diameter, difficult to move. M-E2 and I could lift it together but it would be slow going on foot. Hardy shook his head.

"I'll get the truck!" said M-E2.

Hardy kicked the surface and his boot dislodged a spray of cans and small parts.

"I can do it!" M-E2 pleaded.

Hardy pursed his lips and scowled.

"OK. We'll have to chance it. M-E2, get the truck and bring it here. But go slow and watch out for sinkholes. If we don't get this 'moid to a nest fast, he's not going to make it."

M-E2 started off towards the truck, which was parked up the slope on the far side of the sludge bog. We could not see the vehicle, but we could see the jutting pile of scrap that was next to where we had parked it.

M-E2 skirted the swamp carefully, step by step, ankle deep in the loose layer of trash. Small metal and plastic parts and pieces came loose and clattered down the slope past where we stood with the injured Philemoid. When M-E2 was just a dot across the swamp on the upper slope, we received an urgent radio transmission,

"Officer Hardy, there's a problem."

"What is it, M-E2?" he radioed back.

"Black cloud, sir. Swarming."

"How large?"

"Large, sir."

"Has it sensed you?"

"Yes, sir. It's moving in my direction."

"Can you evade?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Take the truck and get out of there!"

"Yes, sir."

I turned on telephoto vision and transmitted the image to Hardy's HUD. M-E2 scrambled to the hovertruck and leapt in.

The swarm was moving quickly across the slope. A translucent cloud, weaving, undulating, climbing and falling, changing shape, stretching and receding -- it bore down on M-E2.

"What's he waiting for!?" screamed Hardy.

"He's trying to start the engine, sir."

As a finger of the swarm reached out and touched the truck, the truck began to move. M-E2 accelerated and pulled away. The cloud pursued, gaining on him. At full throttle, he hit a patch of loose trash, which gave way under him. The truck fishtailed and spun out of control. It slammed sideways into a bank of scrap metal and a steep pile of heavy trash collapsed on the truck, crushing it.

Sparks from the falling metal ignited a pocket of gas. We heard the boom of an explosion, and a huge fireball shot into the sky, incinerating the black cloud. We could feel the heat where we stood.

"Poor devil," Hardy muttered into the radio, more to himself than to me.

There was nothing we could have done. Hardy began to search the junk near the wounded Philemon and found a loose door jutting from a mound of trash. We pulled it out, lifted the creature onto the makeshift stretcher and carried him slowly up the slope, around the bog, to the blackened area where the hovertruck had been.

The blast area was littered with dead "bugs" scorched in the blast. All that remained of the truck was a bent and charred front end. We combed the area for any remains of M-E2. The blast had scattered debris over a wide radius.

I discovered a broken section of his torso in a smoking pile of rubble. I might not have recognized it but the serial number was still legible. The section held M-E2's motherboard. It was burnt and broken. Ruined. I lifted the little housing and removed the emoticon chip from its slot. A little piece of his "heart," I thought, and gave it to Officer Hardy for safe keeping.

Alpha Base lay 90 miles to the south. With no hovertruck, we were stranded. Hardy's oxygen gauge was deep in the red, near empty. He had maybe one hour, maybe two if he breathed shallow. We radioed our status and location to the primary computer at Alpha Base, which rebroadcast our SOS on all frequencies. But we had little hope there was any ship in range that could reach us before Hardy's oxygen ran out.

Alpha Centauri A had set. The fog had lifted; the clouds were dispersing; Alpha Centauri B was at its zenith in the sky, casting an orange glow in the twilight. The temperature was dropping fast.

"Sir, I'm picking up another signal. Approaching from the north."

Coming down the slope, we saw a hulking shape. A Philemoid emerged from the shadows of an overhang and came into view in the twilight. It crawled to its injured fellow, stroking it with cillia and antennae and emitting bursts of electromagnetic waves which we picked up on our sensors and which Hardy felt directly as transmitted emotion -- affection, shock, and pity.

"It wants us to follow, sir."

Hardy hesitated for a moment. His oxygen gauge was near zero.

"We might as well help this poor sonofabitch," he snarled.

We hoisted the Philemoid back onto the makeshift stretcher and followed its companion slowly up the hill. We made our way a hundred yards or so when three more shadows approached in the twilight. The four Philemoids crawled under the stretcher, took it on their backs and relieved Hardy and me of the burden.

Hardy was panting now, gasping for breath. He seemed to have decided simply to go on until the end came.

We followed the Philemoids a short way further up the slope and came to their nest. Several domes, made of loose parts and pieces scavenged from the trash, stood on the steep slope of Perfume Peak.

I heard a wheezing gasp and Hardy collapsed to the ground. The four Philemoids, moving quickly for their bulk, grasped him with their cillia and pulled him through a membranous seal into the nearest dome. I followed them in. The interior walls and ceiling glowed dimly. The walls were a crazy quilt of junk pieces and parts, glued together by some sticky phosphorescent substance excreted by the Philemoids. The pieces of junk were organized structurally to support the dome and, at the same time, formed an intricate mosaic. The main support trusses were I-beams from large rockets. Smaller sections of wall were bordered by rows of robot arms. There were no windows, as the Philemoids were sightless.

Hardy lay semi-conscious on the floor of the dome. I ran a quick scan of the physical and bio-chemical status of the dome interior: 14% oxygen with only trace toxins in the interior atmosphere. How was it possible? The sealed entrance could filter the pollutants, but why the high concentration of oxygen?

I reset the parameters and scanned again. The oxygen concentration rose in proximity to the Philemoids themselves. They were exuding oxygen. I hypothesized it might be a by-product of their metabolizing chemicals like sulfur dioxide ingested from the trash heap. Further testing was required but this would explain the mystery of the oxygen that had lingered in the planet's atmosphere long after the surface had been defoliated.

I removed Hardy's helmet and pushed down on his chest with both hands. He exhaled, and then sucked in air with a groan, and kept breathing.

He revived but, to stay alive, he had to remain inside the dome and in the presence of several Philemoids. Philemoids from the village took turns with him.

"Mom-E," said Hardy, still struggling for breath. "You must return to Alpha Base and come back with the VTOL surveyor."

"It will take several days to reach the base on foot, sir, if I reach it at all."

"What choice do we have, Mom-E?"

"None, sir."

I had gotten as far as the edge of the bog when a radio transmission came in. The SOS relay from the base computer had been picked up by a Dept. of Sanitation inspection cruiser patrolling the shipping lanes between Philemon and Baucis, the third planet from Alpha Centauri A, colonized and densely populated. The cruiser was speeding towards Philemon and requested our coordinates. I radioed our location and returned to the village. Four hours later, a rescue party descended to the surface and transported us back to base.

Officer Hardy had missed the deadline to file his report on the illegal dumping, but the recorded images of the scow from the surveillance satellite feed were enough for the Enforcement Division to prosecute Galactic Solutions. And since Officer Hardy had risked his life in the line of duty, and almost lost it, he received a departmental commendation for exemplary service and was promoted to Inspector First Class. He was transferred to headquarters on Baucis and rode a desk for 15 years until retirement with full pension.

On Baucis, he met and fell in love with the beautiful, dark-eyed daughter of the Alpha Centauri System Sanitation Commissioner. They were married in a grand ceremony attended by all the top brass in full dress. The couple settled down on Baucis and, in four years, Officer Hardy and his bride found themselves with three young daughters.

Officer Hardy never tired of telling his children, with some embellishment for greater effect, the story of his adventures on Philemon, of his close brush with death, of the green-eyed android M-E2, and of the strange Philemoids who exhaled oxygen. In the telling and retelling, the story evolved and M-E2 assumed something of a mythical status among Hardy's children, as having nobly and tragically sacrificed himself.

Hardy lived in comfort on Baucis for many years. His hair turned silver and, when his daughters grew up and had kids of their own, he told the same stories to his grand children. Dark eyed Zayla, his favorite, sitting on her grandpa's knee, listened wide-eyed and rapt to the frightening tale of when grandpa was young, and how the robot M-E2 made the ultimate sacrifice, and how air from the monstrous Philemoids had saved grandpa from certain death.

All these years, Officer Hardy had saved M-E2's emoticon as a treasured keepsake and kept it in a small box in the back of his desk drawer. When Zayla turned sixteen, Hardy had the little emoticon chip set as a pendant, hung from a thin gold chain, and gave it to Zalya as a birthday present.

"This was M-E2's heart," he told her. "Keep it close to yours and think of me."

"It's beautiful, Grandpa!" cried Zayla and threw her arms around him. From that time, she wore it always.

Ten more years passed. Officer Hardy joined his ancestors. Dark-eyed Zayla, grown to womanhood, was a graduate student at the University of Baucis, doing her doctoral work on the conversion of wasteland to fertile terrain.

When the opportunity for fieldwork on Philemon arose, she took it at once. To visit Philemon, the wondrous land of her grandfather's stories, was a wish come true. She resolved, while there, to visit the places her grandfather had described, to see the base, and the spot where the black cloud had attacked, where the robot M-E2 had sacrificed himself, and where the strange and horrible Philemoids had kept her grandfather alive.

Philemon had been closed to dumping for thirty years. The deep layer of trash and junk was slowly being processed, de-toxified, and recycled. Once the thick crust was removed and the surface of the planet uncovered, plans for an immense project were in place -- to bring in soil and rock, to rebuild the landscape, if not with towering mountains, at least with hills and valleys, and to refoliate and reforest the terrain, which would restore the atmosphere and, in the end, make Philemon habitable once again.

Zayla took a flight from Baucis to Philemon and transferred to the surface direct to Alpha Recycling Center, our former base, now the central facility servicing sector III of the primary continent. She was assigned an all-terrain hovercar and robot driver, and left at once, heading north towards Perfume Hill, now a small mound of trash, which was not visible on the horizon from the base.

The trip was much less treacherous than it had been for her grandfather, eighty years earlier. Most of the loose, shifting surface layer of trash had been removed, and paved roads had been laid out between the Alpha facility and the Philemoid nests in the region. In many spots, the trash was entirely gone and the surface of Philemon had been exposed. In some areas, native vegetation was taking hold again. The leaching poisons and toxic smoke from the trash heap were contained and filtered now, and the air was breathable again. In two hours' time, Zayla came to the foot of Perfume Hill and saw a village of Philemoid domes spread across the slope.

Upon reaching the village, Zayla got her first close up look at a Philemoid. Why, they're cute! she thought. They look like big brown beanbags, with fringe. She approached one of the creatures, explained who she was and what she was looking for, and was directed to a small dome near the edge of the village.

When she arrived at the dome, which looked like a neatly arranged pile of junk and spare parts, she saw it was surrounded by a low fence of robot legs. She pushed through the gate, walked up to the entrance and stepped through the membrane into the dome.

The air inside was wondrously fresh and clean. Strange and complex patterns on the walls glowed with beautiful shimmering colors. A large, old Philemoid was lying near the phosphorescent wall of the dome. Its worn, leathery skin was dry and wrinkled, and its cillia were stiff with many hairs missing or broken. Zayla felt, in her mind, Welcome. My home is your home.

Zayla sat amidst the dimly glowing, ornate walls. Her grandfather's image came to mind.

I knew him, she felt from somewhere. It was during the Reign of Trash, after the mines were closed.

She gazed at the Philemoid. She could see it was breathing shallowly.

Your mind is much like his was.

She thought of Grandpa's story of the black cloud.

It was almost the end... for all of us.

She looked again, more closely at the Philemoid, and saw the scar from a deep puncture wound on its side.

Since entering the dome, she had had the odd feeling of being watched, of eyes upon her. There was no one else in the dome but the sightless Philemoid, yet she couldn't shake the feeling. She rubbed the pendant hanging from her neck, and turned her head. Behind her on the wall, from the middle of an intricate mosaic of small pieces of machinery and electronics, two green eyes were looking straight into hers.

She stood up, gripping the pendant. The green eyes followed her.

They're from the M-E series android that was destroyed in the explosion. We found some of the parts.

Zayla's heart was racing. She felt faint. The eyes were functional.

We recovered the hard drive, as well.

With two cillia, the Philemoid pulled open a hidden drawer in the dome wall. Zayla saw it was filled with robot drives, neatly lined up and organized by make and model. The Philemoid ran its cillia across the contents and pulled out one of the hard drives.

This one. The serial number matched the cranial unit.

The Philemoid pointed with one cillium and Zalya saw the arch over the sealed entrance way was decorated with a row of eyeless robot heads. The center head, burnt and dented, was from an M-E series android.

Zayla and the Philemoid searched the premises. One of M-E2's arms was in a row of struts along the bottom of the entrance arch, and they found his legs among the fence posts of the fence outside. Zayla offered to pay for the scrap, but the Philemoid wouldn't hear of it. He helped her gather and carefully pack the pieces and she took them back to Alpha Center and then to Baucis.

M-E2's head, eyes, arm and legs were refurbished at the robot plant on Baucis. The missing pieces were manufactured according to the original specs and he was reassembled, good as new. His original hard drive was installed and the emoticon from Zayla's necklace was popped into the slot.

When they powered him on for a test run, he turned to Zayla: "Thank you. You can't imagine what it was like to stare across the room at my own head for so many years."

* * *

I paused and leaned back in my chair. The images from the memory files had triggered my emoticon. I needed to slow down.

Our host waited quietly and patiently to see if I was done.

I turned to the dark-eyed girl, seated across from me, "There you have it. That's what really happened. I remember it like yesterday, though it all started on Philemon one hundred and twenty years ago, in the third month of 4006, during the dark phase of a light-dark cycle. Officer Hardy was still alive, still young. M-E2 here was spanking new, just manufactured, all shiny and polished. I don't think his labels had been removed. Zayla was not yet even a dream in the back of somebody's mind. I saved all the files. Never deleted a single one. They are too precious. That's why I opened them for you. I wanted you to know."

"So, you knew my grandmother, Zayla?"

"Yes," I said. "Quite well."

"And my great-great grandfather?"

"We were very close."

"And you knew them, too?" she asked M-E2, who was standing beside us.

"Yes." His green eyes sparkled.

"And YOU knew them, too?" she turned to our host.

Yes, said the Philemoid.

Copyright (c) 2007 by Bill Bowler