Pt 10

Once it was clear that John meant what he said, Dorian conceded and the two men made plans on how Dorian should go about. John emphasized that Dorian should not run since that was probably what he had in mind. Which was true, Dorian wanted to get to the city as quick as he could, even if it meant running hours on end. He wouldn't grow tired the way humans did. But John had a point, Dorian's reserves were running low. Next to that, his vessel system was still fragile and it was possible that he would spring new leaks if he would start running. John assumed, probably correctly, that The City was in the east so Dorian had to walk towards the dawn. That was easier said than done, there was no light just yet. It was still raining which made the air dark and difficult to tell where the sun would appear first. The two men gathered that they were approximately 300 kilometers from The City, although that was a rough estimate. There was no telling where they actually were. Dorian was quite convinced that it didn't matter if he walked to the east or the west. There'd be a city on either side and they were somewhere in the middle. It would be a long walk either way. But John insisted he'd go for home base.

The direction turned out to be a problem. Now that Dorian was walking, he had no idea if he was going the right way. He had difficulty pinpointing his location and he could only guess as to where east and west were. He had an inner compass but it didn't work. The initial crash must have damaged it and after the auto shutdown it was still offline. After all Dorian had fallen a long way too. It dawned on Dorian that he'd been pretty banged up, even if he hadn't noticed it at first. Bit by bit his system showed malfunctions, which worried him. How could he rescue John if the android needed rescuing himself?

John was not alright, it was clear to Dorian that his friend was really seriously injured. It still bothered him that he hadn't noticed that before he went after Escott. When he had seen John scurrying around the wreckage of the helicopter from his vantage point in the tree, he could see clearly how difficult it was for John to move and how restricted his movements were. It was also apparent that he was very, very glad to see Dorian alive. He had said something amazing. He had said Dorian was injured too... Injured. As if he was human. Normally people would say that Dorian was damaged or that there were problems in his hardware or software. Not John. He had seen Dorian's arm hanging uselessly from his shoulder and he had noticed that Dorian couldn't do what he normally did and he had called it an injury. Somewhere along the line John seemed to have forgotten that Dorian was not a human.

Dorian was touched by this. If John only knew how much this meant to him. The two men had grown closer over time, and the process was still going on. Dorian liked it. John might not be the easiest man to work with, but he was sincere and sound. And that was a rare commodity.

Dorian had left John with pain in his heart. Leaving him behind was probably one of the hardest things Dorian had to do since he was revived and had been reinstalled as an active part of the police force. But John didn't take no for an answer so he banned whatever objections he had from his mind and had started the long walk.

With a steady pace Dorian walked towards what he assumed was the east. Use a fixed point of reference in the distance, John had said. That was the way humans did it without a compass, so Dorian adopted that method. He kept in mind what John told him: don't run. He had to keep himself in check, which wasn't easy. He had a very unsettling feeling in his stomach that told him that every delay would be bad for John.

He wondered if John would ask further about Escott and what happened, how he came to die. Dorian was equipped with feelings of guilt and remorse, and – much to his own surprise – he felt none of both. He should be feeling something of the kind, but if anything it was resignation. Escott was a punk and no one would mourn his demise.

Dorian knew that this was very strange: he was not supposed to pass judgement the way he did now. He wondered if it had to do with John's condition or his own damaged system. How could humans make decisions when they were constantly harassed by feelings of guilt and trouble and sorrow and sadness and at the same time exhilaration and happiness? How did humans manage to separate and control all those emotions and not go crazy?

Perhaps, in a way, Escott had been right. He had compared him to Pinocchio which was of course a ridiculous. Pinocchio was a wooden toy and Dorian was an active member of the police force and had nothing to do with playing children. But Pinocchio wanted to be a real boy and if it was up to Dorian if he had the chance to choose, he might say yes if the possibility existed that he could turn into a real human.

He remembered clearly that John once told him that it was difficult to be human, that people messed with your head, that they got inside your soul and that they screwed up things in a way that made you doubt every decision you made. Now that his own mind was messing with him and feeding him false info, he thought he could imagine more or less what that must be like.

Dorian put one foot in front of the other, keeping his eyes on an apparently immobile dark mass far away. From its shape Dorian assumed it was a mountain peak of some kind and while his mind ran overtime on confusing thoughts about humans and flaws in his own system, the distance between him and John grew at a steady pace.

to be continued...