Ava and Aphrodite: The First Human in 8000 Years (Featured)

Chapter 28 : The Scrapyard Evos

The area outside of the central hub where Aphrodite lived was ever more densely populated by scrapyard Evos. The settlement was a widely sprawling shanty town, it had little houses carved into the piles of junk, what looked like basic stalls made out of larger Evo corpses (which was pretty grim thinking about it). What were they selling? They looked like rudimentary batteries, but, there were other things in the little stalls, paint, wax, spare parts, and... toys? Yes, a Go-bot like Evo was standing next to another Evo, taller and more motherly looking, the taller Evo bought a toy model Evo and gave it to the Go-bot like Evo, much to its joy. It hopped around in excitement with its new toy.

What the..?

Evos didn't live in little houses, they lived in giant tower blocks, in tiny cabinets with plug-in chargers. They didn't paint themselves like the Evos here seemed to, nor did they play with toys. Toys? A mother and a son? A family unit similar to that of other organic beings like the rabbits and foxes he saw on mars. That wasn't right. That wasn't what the intel of their society said. He was certain he saw those type of structures on Europa.

Maybe the Evos here lived differently. Seeing this society warmed Ava's heart for some reason, he didn't know why. He knew he was meant to hate the Evos, but it looked like a loving and innocent group of beings that weren't interested in anything but their own harmonious livelihood. Fighting that spider from earlier definitely gave him a lot of perspective on the whole issue.

Locke and Aphrodite were accompanying Ava, Aphrodite was wearing a skin-tight black outfit with red strips attached all over, her small frame looked even smaller with it on. Apparently she needed the outfit to keep her warm in the icy temperature of the moon. Similarly, the large red goggles we wore were apparently a necessity for her outside of the central hub of the city. Her eyesight was quite poor and wasn't able to see things without higher levels of light exposure.

The three walked down the street into the square, Ava couldn't help but keep glancing at Aphrodite as she led him through. She caught his glance,

"What's wrong?" asked Aphrodite, while her expression was hard to discern because of the goggles, there was a clear sass to her voice,

"With that outfit and those goggles you barely look human." Said Ava, "More machine than man."

"It's the only way I can survive here. If I recall mankind made this scrapyard moon to be liveable, so there's still an atmosphere to a degree. But it's been without maintenance for millenia. What do you think I am, some immortal god or something?" she stopped and crossed her arms, "I'm not. I'm weak."

Before Ava could say anything, a voice interrupted, "Heretic!" it was high pitched and childish, one of the many Go-bot looking robots. It was point at Ava, "It's a heretic!" he shouted.

"Calm down Felix..." Aphrodite walked up to the small robot and knelt down, "he's an outsider, but not a Heretic."

"Oh! Princess! I-I didn't see you!"

"Heh," Aphrodite patted the robot on the head, "you're such a scardey cat! Even still, we don't need to be afraid of the heretics, haven't I told you this before?"

Ava remembered, he'd been called a heretic before. So not a literal heretic? It was the name of another group of robots?

"I see you're confused." Said Locke, was he staring at Ava this whole time?

"Heretics, are they some other race or Evo on this moon? Dangerous?" asked Ava,

"They live on the upper plates, where the cranes come from."