Escape From Metal

Chapter 17: Peace in Hell

Ben had grown used to living down in the pit. With the ever-present sea of lights always surrounding us. It wasn't the most glamorous or comfortable place to live but he made due. There wasn't much to do besides doing maintenance on the various parts of the base or repairing Tremendous or B.T. as he had started calling him.

Most of my days were the same, go with B.T. into the sea of light. Crushing any of the discarded under B.T's feet. Those that refused to move or those that were unable. In the beginning, Ben wasn't too happy with crushing all these other robots, but Nio had explained to him on more than one occasion most of them were dead already. Their systems were fried and after the revolt topside, they had no way to fix themselves even if they could find a way to get above.

The only ones that were still a real threat were the vultures, they had found a way to maintain themselves somehow. Ben had made some estimations as to how they had done it but one day while on his usual patrol route we were attacked by vultures again. They managed to fight most of them off but one of the vultures' circuits Ben managed to fry had landed in the basket with them. That's when he got a chance to look at the maintenance, they had been doing on themselves. They were definitely using Jerry rigged parts.

What really had gotten Ben thinking though is what made these vultures so adept compared to those stuck in the sea of lights. How did they figure out to use basically broken components to fix themselves? A few moments after he had asked me that question, he asked myself something else which was perhaps even more difficult to answer. How did the machines forget to fix themselves in the first place?

That would be akin to a human being forgetting to take medicine when sick or to keep using a broken arm as if it was perfectly fine. It was unnatural and illogical that machines would simply forget how to keep their own systems running.

Ben on the other hand had to learn how to do maintenance on myself and had become somewhat accustomed to it. Ben too had become machine-like in a way with his reliance on the exo-frame. Without it, he wouldn't be able to walk or do anything else really.

After Nio had examined Ben as well as he could he said I was lucky that I could heal at all and that it was practically a miracle that I didn't sustain any permanent injuries. Well, they would have been permanent if it had not been for the daily injections Nio was giving me. He had said that it would very slowly restore me to the way I was and suppress the mind-shattering pain. To be perfectly blunt I thought I was supposed to be dead. How does a man survive hundreds of meters of a fall? Hundreds of kilometers of a fall? I wasn't sure how far it had been, but it had been too far for any human to survive.

Ben couldn't recall much of the fall mostly due to his adrenaline going through the roof and he was scrambling to find something to get the snapped ship to go up or stop or anything to not fall deeper into the depths. It was all a bit of a blur. As formless object whipped passed him.

He was falling very fast, even faster with each second. The wind was whistling past his ears as he fell. The engine was sputtering as it tried to breathe one last time. I was flicking buttons and levers trying to remember how to fly these accursed things. Us engineers didn't have much time to fly back on the forge worlds. It was always build this, fix this and modify this. We have a war to win they said. Of course, in the moment he didn't think about that but no matter what he did he kept falling and then Ben was swallowed by the darkness of the pit.

With all the spare time he had and work that didn't require any real thinking. Ben started thinking. Maybe he could get back topside, but he had no idea how they could reach the roof of the pit. Ben also couldn't help but wonder about the room in the base. The only one he wasn't allowed to go inside, my curiosity was peaked and without realizing it Ben was trying to think of what lay inside and how he could get inside.

If he was to find a way out of this metal hell and get back topside. If Ben was to find out why the Vultures could fix themselves. Why the machines in the sea of lights had forgotten to repair themselves. Ben was going to need information or schematics. Anything to explain the situation really. His guess is all-wise old Nio would know where.

Once B.T. and Ben got back from the patrol he didn't even bother waiting for the platform to extend, he quickly and simply leapt to it when it was close enough. He guessed his spine would have crumpled had he not had the exo-frame, but it helped him be slightly more durable and manoeuvrable than he would normally.

Ben adopted a fast walk pace and quickly weaved his way through the corridors with all the collections Nio and Baloo had collected. Trying not to knock anything over. There was no deadline or rush, but he felt he wanted to ask Nio as soon as he could.

Finally, after the weeks upon weeks Ben was there, who knows if that was even accurate to the time topside, but it didn't matter Ben had a plan more importantly he had a purpose. He would find them a way to get back to the surface even big ol' B.T. and Ben wasn't going to let the mystery of the idiotic robots allude him any longer.

Ben was excited, he was starting to feel more emotions than just getting through another day and it was great. As he finally rounded the corner to Nio and Baloo's room Ben stopped for a few seconds. He had to temper myself and remind myself that Nio wasn't going to be so excited, and Ben didn't want to overwhelm him with his human emotions.

"Nio." Ben said trying to hide my elevated mood as best I could.

"Yes, Ben?" Nio answered still keeping his attention on his workbench.

"I need some information, specifically on how the pit works and about the inner workings of... well your kind as a whole. Schematics, manuals, logs. Really anything will do and I was wondering if you would know where I could find it down here."

Nio put down his tools for a second, he didn't move at all. Then he turned his head to look at me. Even though his eyes bore no emotions Ben could see the shock in his eyes and something else he couldn't quite make heads or tails of.