4)
Zeta was promptly fetched, and he merrily began leading the way south of the abandoned barn, through an old paddock. He loved to lead. Ro loved to linger. She had tried to teach him the fine art of purposeless meandering, but the robot never fully grasped such a simple nineteenth-century Victorian concept. And Ro wasn't entirely sure she understood it completely, either.
The field was high with goldenrod, sprouting purple and white clover, blue bachelor's buttons and a canopy of Queen Anne's Lace. Zeta picked at one of the flowers, popping off its flat white-blooming head from a long and nearly leafless stem. While keeping up their equal steps, Zeta fastened the wild flower behind Ro's ear, where it made a fashionable ornament. Ro despairingly said she felt like a hippy, but reluctantly left the flower where it was. It reminded her of being a little girl, playing in an overgrown field much like that one, out in the impossible to forget town of Hillsburg. And she would assemble daisy tiaras and dandelion chains, and wear them like a fairy queen, until she was called inside for supper by Mrs. Morgan.
"Queen Anne's Lace," Zeta said, and Ro felt a lecture coming on, and she wasn't disappointed, "is a great ancestor of the carrot. Did you know that, Jas?"
Jas shook his head. Ro looped an arm around the boy's shoulder, leaning in to whisper. "He goes off on these weird tangents. They wouldn't let him be a teacher in the Caribbean, and he's become really bitter about it. Just let it go through one ear and out the other. You'll be all right." Jas looked at her, grateful for the advice. It was high time the kid was taught how to properly tune out the voice of an elder, anyway. Ro felt she was doing a great service unto impressionable Jas.
Zeta continued, oblivious to the lack of concern his companions harbored. "Of course the root of the wild carrot is strong, and has the appearance of a garden carrot, but it's inedible. I'm sure it must taste very bitter." He talked idly of taste, of bitterness, but he had no sense of taste. He could only imagine what was bitter, what was sweet, what was salty. "Most of what humans think is taste is actually smell." He had only a limited sense of what could barely be called "smell," only a module built-in atop his head that could decipher certain smells and compute to what object they were related. But heightened were two other senses, arguably the weakest of the human senses: hearing and sight.
"How much farther to go, Zee?"
"The woods are just ahead, and the river is but few feet within."
Ro was already sick of walking and the day had not even really begun. Couldn't they at least try to invest in some affordable mode of transportation? Even a horse and buggy would suit her fine. But get Zeta near anything that moves and he'd inadvertently have it blown to smithereens within the next few days, sometimes hours.
For whatever odd reason, thinking of cars and transportation, she began to recall the hazy memories of the Morgans, how she was driven to school by her foster father, just so he'd be sure she went. It was horrifying, those tense ten minutes in the car with him, with any of them! And why was it the Morgans always assumed their foster daughter would not go to school, and spend all day learning useless things like geometry and English lit? Was she that rebellious as a child? Although she couldn't really remember, she figured she must have given off a fractious vibe, something that would make everyone frustrated and angry at her. When had she become so unworthy of trust? She had never been dishonest; she had only been lied to so often that she came to believe dishonesty was how everyone worked. All people would treat you dishonestly, without respect, whether or not you deserved it. The Morgans had been no different. And neither was Rosalie Rowen, really, and Ro sighed to herself. She casted a peer and Zeta, feet away from her, looking for himself at the mountain range that dotted the distance, all blue and hazy in the dust of the temperate climate. While touching a batch of wild carrot, a butterfly alighted on his finger, like a present from nature. Zeta was mesmerized by the insect, observing it closely with his scientific mind, an excited entomologist. Ro smiled to herself, caught off guard at the tenderness of the flawlessly inhuman robot. He might be the only being in the world who wasn't repelled by her, who respected her unconditionally, just as she was. Zee lifted his arm as a light breeze drifted lazily over the meadow, and the butterfly departed his outstretched hand, to be lifted on the wind, and by it carried away.
"Some moments are so beautiful," Ro thought to herself. "There are times when everything in the world works, and fits together so nicely. A picture like a poem. The finishing of a sublime puzzle."
She was getting sentimental and couldn't stand it. The sadness of missing something in herself caused this ample hole inside of her to be filled with gross sentimentality. To change her selfish thoughts to some other subject, she looked at Jas, and called out to him as he was a few paces ahead of her.
"So where are you from, Jas?" she asked, hoping it wasn't so snoopy a question to rise his defensive teenage angst.
"Glenview," he answered promptly.
Ro tried to think of where Glenview was exactly, but came up empty-headed. She assumed it was close. "When do you think you'll go back?"
"Don't know that I will," Jas said. He didn't want to say why. Besides, a girl like that, who was not much older than he, out on her own with a peculiar male companion, surely would understand private afflictions.
Zee returned to them, feeling as light as the wispy clouds above. He had no cares, no worries, not at the moment. Dr. Selig, Agent Bennett, the NSA, his old life . . . all were pushed away a billion miles or more. For a moment he felt the proverbial taste of freedom, and relished in the sparse allowance. He threw an arm over Ro's shoulder, happily content. Ro did not tuck away, but was glad for the affection, but wondered what illusive goodness had ensnared Zee.
Zeta watched their freckled charge with wide eyes, scanning this and that. "What's in the sack, Jasper?"
Ro flashed a grin to herself. The name Jasper didn't suit their new friend. Jas did, perhaps, but not Jasper. "Is that really your name--Jasper?"
The kid nodded, a bit shame-faced. "It is."
"It's so old-fashioned. Like ancient backwoods American icons, sitting on low log cabin porches, with a shot gun on their lap and a spittoon at their ugly, curled feet. And--and no teeth, dirty, wide-brimmed hats, and tobacco stains along the front of their shirts."
Zeta attempted to laugh, and it came out sounding forced and unnatural. Ro glared up at him. He needed more practice laughing. It was true, however, that together they did not find much to laugh about.
"Well, I didn't give myself that name," Jas replied to Ro's thorough tale. He liked her; she was bigger than life. That's what he wanted to be, bigger than life itself. Back at his home, he knew he'd never get the chance to prove he was anything but Jasper, the useless trouble-maker. Instead of wallowing in thoughts of home, he thought instead of the peculiar man beside Ro, whose name was Zee. He walked with an awkward gait, as though with stiff, inhuman legs. In his dark overcoat, with the sun beating hotly upon him, this Zee did not even break a sweat. "Aren't you warm, mister?" Jas ventured to ask. He was amply intimidated by this looming father-figure, but refused to let his shyness show. He had to be super tough now that he was on his own, master of himself.
"No," Zeta replied. Ro elbowed him in the side, undetected by Jas, as a gentle reminder that he was not being who he ought to be. "Well, maybe a little. It is twenty degrees Celsius out here." Zeta quickly tried to cover knowing the temperature so easily. "At least that's what I would--think." The word 'think' did not often escape his lips, because he did not just think, as in he did not just believe or guess when it came to the scientific, the non-fiction, he only knew things. All he knew were facts, figures; in his thinking module there was no vague gray space.
Jas kept a steady but surreptitious gaze on Zee all the rest of the way to the creek. He was convinced, by the time they made it to the stream, that Zee was no man at all. Zee was either an android or--maybe!--a synthoid, but not human. No way.
Zeta trekked on ahead downstream a ways, leaving Jasper and Ro to bait string and branch hooks with grubs for catching lunch, for it was officially lunch time by then. The trout were few, but their bright backs glimmered in the knee-deep water occasionally, and Ro stared blankly into the murkiness. Jas leaned in to Ro, who sat on a boulder high above his, in the middle of the slow and rippled river.
"Your friend is a little odd," he said. He tried to determine if awareness flooded Ro's blue eyes as he said it, but he deciphered no change.
"Zee?" Ro momentarily caught Zeta's image behind a leafy green hedge, his blue-violet coat standing out brightly among the verdant wasteland. He never did blend in very well. "Zee's odd, you think? Ha. You've no idea, Jas."
Jas was not dispelled by this avoidant behavior of Ro's. If anything, it made him more keen to know if his suspicions of Zee were correct. "How long have you known him?"
Ro had to think about that, as she had never bothered to count the days or months or years since she'd met Zeta and her life was changed forever. Now she blinked as she thought it through. "Two years."
"How'd you meet?"
He was nosy, Ro thought to herself. Too nosy. She knew it: all children are nosy little brats. For once she'd like to meet and know the exception to that rule. So far all she met with was disappointment. "Oh, you could say we stumbled across each other."
"How old are you?"
"Seventeen." Ro suspired. "I don't like to say that out loud. Makes me feel----" She cut herself off. Did she feel old, really terribly old? No. She felt betrayed by time, and that was all. "How old are you?" She asked the latter question quickly, so Jas would not have a chance to come back with one of his own that she would not feel like answering. People's questions bored and bothered her.
"Thirteen, just last month."
Ro decided that enough was enough. "That's about the right time. Most kids run away from home when they're thirteen."
Jas was startled by this sudden bluntness. If he knew that Ro could be so rudely cunning, he would've played the same game with her long ago, though rough was not who he was. He was too sheepish, too shy; he was a farmer's son who tried to cover exactly how much he was a farmer's son. "How'd you--?"
"I put two and two together. It's not often someone comes to me with a burlap sack full of belongings, and is as young as you are."
They didn't have a chance to continue with the elected form of conversation. Ro's reel was sudden heavy, laden with a hooked fish. At once she wrestled with the line, hoping to catch lunch. She was so hungry that even fried fish sounded good to her. She tugged and pulled, Jas hooted and howled with feverish excitement. Zeta dashed over, moving stealthily along the rocky shore of the creek. But by the time Ro pulled the line from the water, the fish had stolen away, escaped--and with her bait!
Zeta would've laughed for the second time that day, had Ro not seemed so disappointed that he was sure she would burst out into tears. Instead of girlish sobbing, however, she facilitated her tough and walled emotions, slammed the branch fishing rod down upon the boulder, and told Jas to keep trying, while she went off to dig for another grub or worm to bait the line. Zeta met her on the shore, and she watched him for a moment, wondering why he was looking at her so funny. He reached out and laid his hand atop her flaxen mane, giving a little smile. Ro could feel the pressure of his hand upon her, yet it emanated no warmth. She swooped around, to step behind, and reminded him she needed to find more bait.
"The ground is more damp downstream," he said to her. "You would have better luck finding bait there. But be careful, Ro. Around the bend just ahead the stream meets with another, and the force of the water would be more than a human could withstand. Don't go near that. Maybe I should go with you?"
"No thanks, I think I can handle digging around in the dirt. You stay and keep Jas company. No doubt his questions will interest you." She saluted and began to trace Zeta's foot indentations in the damp sand. His holographic boots left a wavy impression, and she followed in them, stepping her own petite feet into the prints, all the way downstream, to where he had been before. As she neared she could indeed hear the wild rushing of water, and knew Zeta had been right about the dangerous rapids ahead. She ignored it, and found a stick to start digging for grubs, deep into the soft earth.
Before she was too far along, and had only started on her second empty hole, she began to hear a whistling sound, then the whistling turned to whispering, barely audible, incoherent and creepy. She looked upstream, but Zeta and Jas were obscured by a protruding rock, a clump of aspen trees and thick undergrowth. It was not their conversation she was hearing. Their words would never reach over the sound of the stream. The voice continued constantly, until it became a cascade of consonants and aspirants. She began to detect not only one distinguishable voice, but at least two others. Ro's skin crawled, her insides tumbled. And she could not remember the last time she had been so fearful of something she did not understand.
"Hello?" she called out, turning about this way and that, in a full three-sixty. Once she faced the hazy mountain range as it formed on the horizon, the river flowing toward it, the voices cleared away, and all was quiet again. Ro sighed with relief, but her relief was premature.
"Rosalie."
Ro wouldn't listen. Instead she began to head toward Zeta, no longer able to face standing there alone. The voice called again. An androgynous voice, neither woman nor man, hissing and faraway sounding, as though it came from the tops of the trees, spoken by the leaves. Ro stopped. She refused to grow angry at herself. This was obviously all in her mind. Why couldn't she get a grip?
"Reality, Ro," she said aloud to herself. "It's called reality. Hello. You need some of that."
"Rosalie! Follow me! Rosalie!"
Ro plugged up her ears with her fingers, but still the voice trickled through. It was as if it was already inside her head. More proof, she believed, that her mind was on the brink of total dissipation. She flung open her eyes, only to see a figure, a woman, dressed in a flowing white robe, hovering over the water, suspended there, staring directly at Ro. Ro blinked, but still the woman was there.
"Come to me, Ro," whispered the image.
Ro refused, her feet firmly planted on lovely terra firma, even if it was sandy and grimy, but it was still something she could run on. "Who are you?" she asked. But she knew, some how, she knew! And there was not a cell in her body that wouldn't obey her logical mind and disbelieve what her heart was telling her. That apparition was her very own mother. The fair, long blonde hair of the ghost, the heart-shaped face, the large and round blue eyes, all were Ro's own features, with little insignificant differences here and there. But Ro knew what this ghost wanted her to believe, and Ro fought with all her might to disbelieve, and could not. . . .
"Mother?" she cooed, with shaky voice and tired breath. "Is that you?"
"Hello, my Rosalie dear." The drifting figure, translucent and not an inch of her opaque, remained in a hover over the water, and seemed to gain energy from the element. "I've found you, after all this searching."
"Mother, what are you? What are you?" Ro, lost in the image of the ghost, no longer able to think with her clean-cut logic, steered herself to the large boulder that jutted out over the river, some paces downstream from where she had first dug holes. She had not noticed, but the matronly image had taunted her, bringing Ro closer to the dangerous portion of the river.
"I'm here for you now. Do you forgive me for leaving you?"
"Forgive you?" Ro blurted out. A childish emotion swept through her, and suddenly she was a preschooler, craving all the parental attention she'd never experienced. Ro's heart caved in, her brick levies burst, and with that came a flood of hot tears. "Mother, don't leave me now! I need you! I've been so lost."
"I know. Come closer to me, dear. I'll comfort you now."
Ro inched up the boulder, not noticing the aches in her knees as they rested against the hard surface, nor did she notice how closely she was to the edge. "Mother, I saw my brother today, too. He ran in front of me. I couldn't catch him. I wanted to." Ro rubbed the sweet salt water from her eyes with the back of her wrist. "I wanted to play with him, to chase him down, like we were kids again and I'd never been taken away. Mother, help me. What is his name, my brother's name? Is he still alive? Are you? Is my father? Where is everybody? I want my family, Mom. I want us together again. I can't remember how it used to be, but I know that it used to be wonderful. Mom, what happened?"
Her mother said nothing, but held out a hand, nearly within Ro's reach. Ro struggled to grasp it, to feel her mother's touch for the first time since before she could remember. But suddenly Ro drew back her hand, remembering something, something more familiar, with a bigger tie to her than even her mother.
"Zeta!" she thought. "I remember Zeta!"
Why was she feeling as though she were falling? Where had Mother gone? What exactly was Zeta? Ro felt a coolness wash her over, like a fresh spring rain in early April, then all the world was a black sphere.
--
Notes
Glenview, Oregon.
Otherwise known as Bend, Oregon.
Two years
While I know TZP started when Ro was fifteen, presumeably in 2041, I kinda stretched things out a bit. They did meet in Oct 2041 (according to my timeline), but since Ro always seemed a little more "grown up" in the second season, I decided it would be about two years later. They are rounding up, however, since it was almost two years. More like a year and eleven months.