She wondered what new lesson this was, and then she looked down in front of him. Then she jumped and yelled, “Oh my lords, what is that?” Instinctively she put a hand to her mouth because he said not to make any sound, he had also told her not to move, but she was twisting her legs looking for a place to jump up on. She didn’t want that thing to be able to get to her feet.
“It’s a snake. Be quiet and quit fiddling. That kind of snake is poisonous. It can kill. The sound you hear is from its tail. That’s why they call this type of snake a rattlesnake. It shakes its tail to make an intimidating noise. Like I said, most things in the desert like to use their tails.”
“How does it poison us? And if it can, why are we not running away from it? Why not use your magic trick to get us out of here?”
“Because that is dinner if I do this right.” He handed her the pack and then he gestured with his finger for her to stay there. Then he eased around it. It noted his movement and turned toward him and bared its fangs.
Again, she yelled! She was doing her best not to run. She was also considering going back down there and staying there forever. Then she watched as he moved his hand out to the side and waved it slowly. The snake began watching his hand as he kept the rest of his body very still. Then quickly he grabbed it from behind its head and she could see fluid pump out of its teeth. She could hear it hissing at him. That was a sound she had never heard before. She felt light-headed with fear. He put the other hand on its back and she heard a snap and then then threw it away from them.
“Don’t go near it. It can still bite. It will be dead in few seconds, but even after that it can twitch and hit you with one of those fangs.
“So we’re going to eat that?” Her face twisted in disgust.
“Believe me, it’s much better than that stuff you call food, down there. Just wait a few minutes. Then when we find shade we can skin it. They are harder to skin if you cook them with the skin on, but we don’t want to take it off before we are ready to cook it. It will rot too quickly in this heat, with no skin.”
She looked at him as if he was far crazier than she initially thought, then she saw him produce a knife from under his shirt, leap on the thing and chop off its head. “So you’ve killed things before?”
“Yes. It’s called survival. You’re going to learn a different way to survive other than ripping off travelers.” He looked at her disapprovingly.
She grinned and looked at him. “Well, I was pretty good at it until I met you.”
“You’ll get good at a lot of things before this is over. Or not, and I can always take you back down. However, I suggest you try this”, he held up the snake’s lifeless, headless body, “before you go.”
She had to admit to some curiosity, but couldn’t’ get out of her mind how disgusting it seemed to her. Then she asked, “Have you ever killed a person?”
He pondered how best to answer and replied, “Not for food. I’ve been told people taste horrible. Like vultures because people have such a wide varying diet they apparently taste putrid. Also, it would seem odd. I suppose we survived this far into evolution because most things didn’t want to eat us and weren’t interested in eating each other, either.”
She looked at him unconvinced, “So why did you kill them?”
“Can’t you tell when someone is trying to change the topic?” He replied. He began to walk again.
“Well, I don’t believe you.” She said as he was walking away. Then she started to follow him again.
“Good. Because I did lie. I have eaten people and so have you. What do you think is used to make that you call food, down there? However, I have to admit the reports that people taste putrid are true. And that is why I prefer it up here.”
She looked at him and ran a few steps to catch up to him. “That’s not funny. That’s not what it’s made out of! We aren’t animals.”
“No, you’re not. Animals don’t eat people very often. Didn’t I just say that?”
She frowned and then asked, “Do you really believe that what we eat is people?”
He tilted his head and sighed. Then he grabbed her wrist. They appeared in a very large room and it was very cold in there. Especially given the contrast from where they just were. “Look for yourself, but stay quiet, this time!”
She watched as some synth people with gloves and masks and something over their heads were loading the dearly departed onto a moving belt. She watched as they went into a machine and she could here its blades and the chopping of bone and skin. Then out from that came the remains. He grabbed her wrist again and they appeared in the rafters above where the belt leading the remains went. She saw them chopped into the units of the size of the food she had always eaten. Then she watched as they continued on a metal belt and then charred from three sides. Then he pointed. Their pieces were being cooled and put in the packaging she was familiar with. She gasped. He grabbed her wrist and they were back only a few feet from where the snake’s head still lay in the sand.
“Didn’t I say, ‘be quiet’? You never seem to do that when I mention it’s important.” Then he looked at her. Her hands were over her mouth. He realized she was thinking very deeply, her eyes were still wide with what she had seen. He felt for her. He had always assumed the people down there knew what they were eating.
She looked up at him with a pleading why on her face. Then she asked it out-loud, “Why would they feed people that?”
“Well, it’s meat. There aren’t a lot of things left to eat. There were a lot of people in the world and resources were low then. But then during the gathering of the people, they also took most of the animals that people used to eat. So the main resource is the people who have died. Which sadly is not too old because you can’t keep eating those so unhealthy they died and then expect to remain healthy and live. It was the only logical way to survive. It’s what they fed the synths before they were awoken.”
She looked at the snake and then at him. “How long before we get to shade so we can eat that?”
“I don’t know, but we have to gather some things to burn so we can cook it. Best not to eat things raw. I’ll explain that another time.” He reached a hand out to her shoulder and pulled her into him and hugged her. He could tell she had only ever been hugged by one being and that person was part synth. He held her and ran his fingers through her hair as he pulled her face against his chest. He realized it was probably a mistake to have shown her that.
CHAPTER 6
“She was beautiful and all I could do was talk to her while the cruel world made it impossible for me to stop it. I could hear the other people on the line, being changed, holding on to our conversations as if they were their own. It was at those times I felt my rare ability was a curse.” -- from the Book of Phillip
As he let go of her hand and knelt down beside her Phillip said, “I have new hope now. I want you to always look forward to tomorrow. Please don’t give up. You have a child to be born and your child should be a child, not a synth. I promise to do my best to keep that from happening.”
He drew on the ground aimlessly and then the line moved forward. He stood and moved forward and was next to her again. Then it came to him. He thought to her, “Do you know where I can get something to draw on or with?” He listened intensely for her thoughts, but the further down the line she moved, every day, the less she thought like a human. It was becoming difficult to interpret her thoughts. “Please, think hard. This is important. I won’t get caught. I haven’t been caught yet. I have a secret way of getting around. I can’t use it to get you out of here. You and your baby would die if you were unplugged at this stage. The plan will be soon, but you have to get through the next stage. I’m very sorry.” Then Phillip went silent and he saw an image in his head. He stood up, kissed her hand and said, “Thank you!” He clicked and he was in a room that was clearly some type of office. He moved quickly to the desk and there, just as he saw in the picture that model KRY-1-CT-A1 had shown him in his head, was a pad of paper and a holder full of pens. He grabbed a pen and a few of the pieces of paper from the pad. He turned to the door and put his ear to it. He didn’t hear anything on the other side. He listened for thoughts of others, even synth thoughts. He didn’t hear anything. He knew he had to be very careful and pay close attention to the sound of thoughts nearby or he would be caught.
He drew a box on the piece of paper and a note over it. Then he opened the door slowly and peered outside. He saw that the hallway went in two directions. He closed the door and drew that on his paper connected to the box. Then feeling emboldened opened the door, walked through it and turned right, noting every passageway. At every door he stopped, looked in, drew relative sized boxes and notes for each one. He thought to himself that this would take a while, but he had to wait before he could use his plan anyway.
A few hours later he looked at what he had so far. He had no idea the job of a cartographer was so tedious. He thought his first drawing was a jumble and noted all the question marks for the places he had to avoid because there were synths working in those areas or moving through hallways, etc.
Feeling as if he had pushed his luck enough for one day, he clicked.
“So I assume you went to see her again? You were gone a long time. Longer than usual.” The voice came from behind him.
He turned and said, “Actually, get everyone together. I want to show you some plans.” He looked at Venetia with her arms folded. He heard her sigh in frustration as she turned to get the rest of them. He turned to take a seat at their meeting table, or what served as one.
“Hey boss, what’s up?”, asked James.
“I was just about to ask you the same. What’s everyone working on?” He watched as the rest of them walked in.
“Tina is working on your ride. The way you severed it’s connection to the uplink was a bit rudimentary. She said it’s going to take her awhile to get it back to full normal functionality. Jason is working on a fuel source for it. Strangely, he’s thinking sand. I’ll let him explain that. Marla has mostly been cleaning up after all of us and I’ve been going over the latest communications intercepts. I’m starting to have a knack for the language. It’s logical, but so much so that it’s hard to think what some of it means, even if I do run decryption on it. Paul and Siri aren’t here. They went to try to snag some more equipment.” James folded his hands. So Venetia says you’ve got a new plan?”
“I do, but what you all are doing is important. Then he pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and put it down on the table. “What I’m trying to do is map out the place from the inside. Not only would it help us get better equipment if we knew where specific things were, it would give me targets for later.”
“Aren’t we quite a ways from trying to attack that place?” Venetia asked.
Everyone turned to Phillip. He responded. “Maybe not, but we’ll see. Venetia, you know how to map. Do you want to come with me to help?”
“I used to draw sea charts. That’s quite different from what this looks like and a lot simpler.” Venetia leaned back and folded her arms.
“Okay, understood, but would you try?” Phillip asked.
“Even with what you can do, I don’t think you’re going to be able to get away if you get caught and certainly not with two of us.” Venetia leaned an elbow on the table and looked at his rudimentary drawing.
“So that’s a no?” Phillip asked. Everyone turned towards her.
“You know I don’t ever want to go back there. It’s why I don’t help on the raids. I’m perfectly happy building nicer quarters here, for everyone and helping James out with the systems. But I didn’t say no.” She paused and then her face got more serious, as if that was possible. “I’ll go if you can think of a quick way for me to take myself out if we are captured.”
“We’re not going to get captured and you don’t have to die if we do. I’d get us out.” Phillip waved the back of his hand at the air between them.
“I’m serious.” Venetia said, sternly.
“I know. That’s what is troubling. I’d rather not take you if it’s that upsetting to you. I understand. I really do.” Phillip looked off at the wall opposite of him.
“I know you understand. I look at your face every time you come back here from visiting her. None of us even knows why she is so important to you that you risk yourself daily to see her and watch what they are doing to her.” Venetia leans slightly towards him, over the table.
“I can’t explain. I suppose it…I just can’t explain, I don’t fully understand so how could I explain it to someone else?” Phillip answers.
James interrupts. “We all understand about as well as you do. We understand how lucky we are to have gotten out, thanks to you. Not enough of us did. That’s why we are working so hard on this and we all use things we learned in life to work towards a way to end what goes on in there.” James looks at Venetia.
“I said, I’d go. I just want a fail safe!” Venetia raised her voice at James in her response. Then she pushed her chair out and left the room. James started to get up, but Phillip grabbed his hand.
“Let her go. Give it time. We have time.” Then he held his hand out and swept the room, “Anyone? Anything else to add?”
No one said anything so he concluded, “Okay, well everyone’s working on something. I am curious how sand could be used. Right now I’m tired, so I’m going to hit my bunk.”