"And so the body and mind of Ixial-faz
Shall protect you,
Shall feed you,
And shall guide you,
For it is its destiny to guard us,
Until the storm is over."
-Fragment of an old book found in the archives
There was no storm, there had never been any storm for what we know, none at least since I had use of reason, none written down either, though I couldn't say people stopped to write much these days, not people like us anyway, but who knows what the ones in the upper floors could be aware of. The archives were a lonely place, dark and cold, very poorly taken care of by one hell of a glitchy bot, nevertheless he, or it, I don't really know if those things have a gender, was the only soul you could see there apart from me, well, I was the only soul, he surely doesn't have one. This fact had always disturbed me, the upper ones let us full access to this potential source of knowledge, and no one even cared to take a look, it seemed like if it had been a place long forgotten, though I had already started to lose hope for this to be such a "potential source of knowledge", I couldn't make sense of anything this old, ancient I would dare to say, books had to say.
And so I closed the book with a fell swoop, and the dust it must have been carrying for decades, or maybe centuries, shot out into my nose making me sneeze. I heard it among the immense silence, the noise of that soulless machine's neck turning to look at me, always so harsh and bold, demanding to remain in complete silence, like if there was anyone in there but us, always the two of us, him always complaining, me always apologizing, but I was tired, and well... mostly I was bored.
-I demand you to remain in s - I interrupted his deep mechanical voice before he finished his sentence with a rather poor imitation of itself, in my defense that damn thing had a quite inappropriate voice for its purpose, too intimidating for a librarian in my opinion.
-I will not ask you twice boy. Remain silent .Or leave immediately.
I surely didn't expect him to play along, but that response seemed more threatening than any other I had listened from him before.
-C'mon droid, its just the two of us, its always been for the last few weeks, cool down on that programming of yours, I'm sure you are bored, at least I am- I couldn't believe it, this was the first time he had let me say more than three words without "demanding my silence".
-You are right. I AM bored, and tired, of YOU. I will call security to restrict your presence to this facility.
-Yeah well, good luck with that, but I doubt anyone cares about this place, you have but to look around to realize that.
I got up from the desk I was sitting in and approached the droid despite its useless threats, after all he was but and old droid, which did seem to need a deep reprogramming and some repairs. This model I had seen nowhere else but in him, obsolete, out of the market, at least that was my theory, He seemed much more of a civilian kind of droid than an army one. It seemed mostly broken on its down side, it moved thanks to a pair of little wheels which seemed to have been put at the bottom of its body as a last resource, its arms were really flexible made of something similar to rubber, and I had seen it before reducing and expanding their length provably to be able to reach the upper books on the shelves, but what had attracted my attention the most was its head, with the form of a long single-eyed oval, though more than an eye it was a lighty hole where its voice also seemed to come from, overall quite a disturbing model.
