Of Gears and Humanity

| 01.2

[DAMIEN]

Earth as I knew it was a desolate land. It was a thought that plagued me every time I left the safety of the Sectors I called home. The dry fields, with nothing but dirt and rock, were the complete opposite of the stories I was allowed to read as a child. Pages and pages filled with greenery, with trees, and animals of the chittering kind, the stories were only alive when I went to sleep.

The War of Humans left me with what remained. And I, the last human alive, could only wish to live in my dreams. Loneliness was an emotion the machines could never understand.

The silent clock of the rover's dashboard displayed a temperature too hot for a human. For an Attribution, the heat may have done damage to their exterior, but without the pain receptors warning them, the machines could go on and on without the need to stop.

Arvon, the Attribution Lead, needed to acquire all minerals for Sector Seven, and because of him, I had to stay close by. In the heat. Struggling to stay cool within the vehicle's air conditioning. I had fixed the coolant within the old rover at least ten times before my nineteenth birthday. I was thankful that today of all days, it worked without an issue.

As a human, I wouldn't last more than fifteen minutes under the Earth's furious sun.

"Only a few hours until I can get back and eat," I muttered as sweat glistened over my skin, small drops trickling between my fingers. I brushed my palms over my pants before glancing out the rover's window. Arvon was just outside, loading the materials inside the crate for delivery. If the sun wasn't so high in the sky, I would've helped him; I was good at the organization and learned well of the mechanical ways. I had to, considering I was trained to be their mechanic. And in a way, it was my thanks, as payment, for my safety.

The Attributions could have left me for dead as an infant. Being the last of my kind, I would have rotted away within the deserts just outside Sectors one through twelve. But the machines were programmed with kindness, a trait left within them by my ancestors; a programming that kept me alive. The least I could do was learn to care for them until I was gone from this Earth.

"Damien?" Arvon turned and faced the vehicle. He looked towards the window I sat beside and I nodded, acknowledging that I'd heard him. A small smile lifted his human-like lips. "Are you well?" he asked.

I lifted my brows. Had he heard me? He might have. But his smile reminded me I had nothing to complain about.

With the care he had given me since I was a child, it was easy to forget he wasn't a human like I was. He appeared to be; his artificial skin and black hair made him feel real enough. If his complexion hadn't been so pale, he could have passed as my father. But he wasn't; he was an Attribution, like the cyborgs back home at the Sectors.

Still, he treated me no different.

He smiled again as he shut the crate in front of him. "Is it hot inside the vehicle?" he asked

Again, I nodded. Then shrugged. The air conditioner made the temperature bearable, but boy was I sweating. Glancing down at my hands as another bead of sweat formed between my fingers, it was a reminder that I would be comfortable and cool if I had remained at home.

"You can speak." Arvon approached the vehicle, leaning against the hood. "There are no secrets between us, Damien."

I lifted my brows as I looked at him. There were secrets, ones I kept to myself.

They developed when I was young, forming because I had been allowed literature upon request. I had explained how I was human and I needed more to my education than the words of machines. Arvon, filling in the father-figure shoes very well, complied and supplied me with old, tattered books he'd located in an old human library just south of our Sector. And over the years, I read them but kept my questions to myself. Attributions wouldn't have been able to answer them, anyway.