Part Thirty-One
Temperate Grasslands Nature Preserve
77.548392 kilometers from the colony center…
Tall prairie grasses and wildflowers swayed in the wind, creating a ripple effect strikingly similar to holovids he'd seen of ocean waves.
Dee breathed in the sweet scent of sunlight on the living meadow, awed by how the grassy expanse seemed to stretch on and on beyond the few trees shading the riverbank. The cries and chitters of the prairie fauna - birds, mammals, insects - seemed a melody in itself, communicating something wary, warning, yet joyful his translation program could not process into words.
"Incredible," he whispered, though he wasn't sure what prompted him to keep his voice so low. The various, and varied, nature preserves that occupied the planet beyond the science colony and its surrounding farmlands were maintained by non-sentient drones, remotely operated by members of OTHER Labs' Exo-BioZones Project. As far as Dee knew, no one from the colony had ever ventured this far from the town center on foot…
Save one.
Dee had come upon this vast meadow after tracking his brother more than 77.548 kilometers upriver from the reservoir. Not that Lore had left much of a trail. While the path leading from the Soong residence to the riverbank had been heavily trodden, almost exclusively by Lore's boot prints, tracing Lore's upriver journey had been far more challenging - even for Dee's android sensors. For a 100 kg android, Lore seemed surprisingly light on his feet. The few partial footprints Dee had found indicated Lore maintained a rapid sprint when moving outside the colony's limits – Dee estimated a speed between 48 and 50 kph. In addition, it seemed Lore rarely used exactly the same route twice, leaving only a few bent grasses and snapped twigs in his wake.
"Perhaps he wishes to avoid wearing a gouge through the landscape?" Dee speculated, still admiring the shades, colors, sounds, and scents of the rolling prairie before him. "Strange... I always presumed my brother's predilection for hiking beyond the settlement to be an aspect of his misanthropy. I never suspected how deeply he must care for this world's natural environment. Still, it is getting late. If I don't find him soon, I'll miss my opportunity to observe this evening's meeting. —Ah! And speaking of observing…"
Dee stood very still, slowly panning his gaze from left to right. "I promised Thea I would send her regular updates of my progress. I am certain she will appreciate this view."
He blinked and stepped up from the muddy bank to the swaying grasses, cupping a hand to the side of his mouth. "LORE!" he projected at top volume – wincing apologetically when a startled prairie chicken burst from its grassy roost into the cloudless sky. "LORE, IT IS DEE! IF YOU HEAR ME, PLEASE RESPOND!"
Nothing.
Dee sighed and continued his trek, increasing speed to match his brother's tracks even as he scanned the environs ahead for more signs and traces of Lore's trail.
"What is– Ooph!"
Dee's android reflexes allowed him to dive down and cover his face even as his positronic brain identified and evaluated the sudden threat. A lily-like sporophyte, nearly eye-level with Dee, had popped up from the grass like a released spring, blocking his path and shooting a spray of spores directly toward his upper respiratory passages. Dee waited several seconds for the concentrated burst of spores to disperse, then cautiously rose to his feet.
The spent 'flower' sagged like a thirsty daffodil. Dee seized the thick 'stalk' and snapped it near the base, releasing a thick, viscous gel that smelled faintly of cedar and cinnamon.
"Intriguing," he commented, echoing one of the fictional detectives he'd been studying. "This specimen is similar, yet not quite the same as the native 'weed' plaguing local farmers. I wonder..."
He touched one finger to the gel, then rubbed another inside the lily-like structure that had contained the spores. A quick 'taste' of each revealed the organism's chemical make-up, which Dee rapidly compared with the concentrated spore paste he'd sampled at the 'petal-head' meeting.
"It's a match," he realized, spitting the piney residue from his mouth. Dropping the stalk, he marched forward a few steps, only to be met by half a dozen more sporophytes springing up from the grass to surround him. Faster than the human eye could blink, he dropped and rolled back to the riverbank, leaving the 'flowers' to spray each other.
"Hm!" he exclaimed, eyes wide and eyebrows raised. Standing, he shouted, "Lore! Lore, I must speak with you!"
Silence. Again.
Dee closed his fists in frustration, conflicting impulses leaving him frozen, trapped in place. As much as he felt compelled to return to the colony in time for the meeting, his curiosity about this place, and his brother's connection to it, felt stronger still - and it was growing.
Lore had to have encountered those sporophytes on his ventures upriver. If so, it was probable he possessed information - information about their biology, their niche in this transplanted grassland environment. More significantly: Lore may have observed others coming to this sporophyte-infested prairie. Perhaps even the Storyteller himself.
Lifting his chin, Dee plowed upriver with renewed motivation. Employing his fastest speed, the young android soon came to a forking stretch of rocky rapids where the river's tributary streams met and joined together around a small, tree-covered island. There, Lore's tracks vanished. But a jagged path of slick stones laid a path across the rushing rapids - treacherous to humans, yet hardly a challenge for an android.
"Lore?" Dee called, feeling his hiking boots sink into the soft moss that lined the island's rocky banks. Lore's nearly identical tracks speckled the surrounding area, some recent, some severely weatherworn. "Brother, are you here?"
The smell struck him first. Then the sound… A buzzing whine, like a swarm of insects, wafting from beyond the trees.
Dee blinked and looked around. The breeze felt as warm as a moment ago. The slowly sinking sun shone as brightly. Yet, somehow, the scene before him had grown chilled…ominous…
"Lore?"
Cautiously, Dee strode ahead. Ground-covering bracken pulled at his trousers, low-hanging branches clawed his shoulders, his arms… But he pushed through until the dense ring of trees opened to a bare, rocky clearing at the top of the island's mound-like hill.
"The hell—?"
Dee's golden eyes widened, his pale lips twitching in horror. The lichen-crusted rocks hosted a gruesome scene. Small gibbets, dozens of them, standing in terrible display. Small mammals, birds, amphibians… Their bodies swayed, lifeless, in varied stages of decay.
This was the source of the smell…the hideous drone of the flies…
Dee turned away, pressing both hands to his mouth. The revulsion he felt had triggered something physical inside him, a deeply unpleasant roiling, churning sensation that left him reeling. Grabbing for the support of a nearby tree, he gasped, "Oh, Father… Could this be nausea?"
A rustle…a faint, desperate squeak…
"Dear god," Dee exclaimed. "That rabbit's still alive…!" As quick as thought, he sped to its side, breaking it free. The rabbit trembled, then lay dreadfully still. Dee's golden eyes filled with tears, his nostrils widening in fury.
"Who could have done this," he demanded. "What purpose… Wait…"
Slowly, he rose to his full height, moving until the placement of the gibbets no longer seemed random. In fact, he realized, they had been arranged quite deliberately.
"It is code," he whispered. "The programming language preferred by—"
"By Dr. Soong?"
Dee spun with a gasp. "Lore!"
Lore smirked, jumping effortlessly from an overlooking boulder to stand by his side. "Right, first try."
Dee bared his teeth. "What is the meaning of this," he demanded, gesturing angrily toward the terrible array of tortured creatures. "Who is 'Charlie'?"
"You're the detective," Lore taunted, clearly amused by his brother's threatening posture. "Figure it out."
"I cannot!" Dee exclaimed. "Such an act – it is unfathomable!"
Lore tutted, sadly shaking his head. "Send a machine to do a man's job…" He sighed through his nose. "How can you live among humans, play their games, attend their schools… And not understand their most basic drives?"
"If you are evoking the historical use of gibbets and gallows on Earth in an attempt to excuse this…this…! I must inform you, the reference is irrelevant," Dee stated. "No human perpetrated this…atrocity! You did this, Lore. I want you to tell me why! Explain to me, brother!"
"I'm speaking of mortality, Dee," Lore said, draping a casual arm over his brother's tensed shoulders. "Everybody dies, brother. And doesn't it drive them mad? Millennia of competing, battling, undercutting each other just to get an edge… Only to witness their own withering decline. Every life form, everywhere, gets snuffed out in the end." He smiled. "Except us."
Gripping his brother's arms, Lore stared straight into Dee's troubled golden eyes.
"Don't you see," he said, "That's the difference between us and them. The insurmountable chasm. Human mortality is only tolerable if it is universal. Allow one being to be exempted from death, and the rest feel victimized in the deepest, most personal way. That's why they hate us, Dee. Why, despite all the Federation's talk of tolerance and equal rights for all sentient beings, we androids will never be acknowledged as a true life form. Our mere existence is too much of a threat to their fat and meat brains."
Lore turned his gaze toward the swaying gibbets as if daring Dee to look, to decode the message he'd scrawled to the unblinking sky…
"Our lives represent a fundamental offense to their mortal psyches," he said, his nimble fingers finding and pressing the younger android's 'off' switch. Dee gasped and slumped heavily – a dead weight in his brother's arms. Lore smirked and stroked Dee's hair, whispered in his ear, "Is it any wonder they refuse to acknowledge our deaths?"
Lowering his unconscious brother to the rocky ground, Lore activated his comm device, turning his golden eyes toward the setting sun.
"Hey, beautiful," he said, the little machine automatically encoding and translating his words. "It's supper time."
Electronic tones swooped and trilled in response. Lore grinned and cut the transmission.
"Now," he said, kneeling beside his brother and flicking open an access panel at the side of his skull, "to make certain you won't be getting in my way…"
Lore hummed as he worked, bobbing his head to the clack of the gibbets in the wind - his gruesome monument to the day, the moment, the revelation that had granted the android his painful, bittersweet enlightenment.
CHARLIE LIVED
To Be Continued...
References Include - TNG: Datalore, Brothers, Descent I/II, The Quality of Life, The Measure of a Man, Evolution; TOS: This Side of Paradise, I, Mudd, What Are Little Girls Made Of, Requiem for Methuselah; Asimov's "The Positronic Man" (novel, partially paraphrased)
There's more to come, so be sure to stay tuned for updates. Until next time, thanks so much for reading my story! Your reviews and comments are always welcome! :D
P.S. This story gets into some pretty dark stuff, but here's some brighter news: The Crowdfundr for my nature comic trilogy, The Adventures of Nicki and Ricky: Baffling Birds! is live all through July! We launched last week, and hit our funding goal in less than 12 hours! Now we're working toward our stretch goals. Wish us luck! And if you're curious about my Nicki and Ricky stories, you're welcome to join the investigation. We're part of Crowdfundr's Kids and YA Content Creators Spotlight! :D