Hope's Ruin

6 | Reanimates

The bleeding wouldn't stop. It surged down her brother's face and pooled in his eye socket. Pepper grabbed another towel and held it against the wound. Her hands shook. Nerves and rage blended into one.

"Why?" she said, mostly to herself.

Fisk thumbed towards Flake 99 who sat quietly outside the Millennium Kestrel, his 8-bit eye ever-watchful. "Reanimates," he bleated.

"You cannot be serious?"

"I don't trust them."

"Why ever not?"

"I think this is more about why you do, rather than why I don't."

Fisk moaned as his sister twisted the towel against his head.

"The world of robots and AI and manufactured life was still in its infancy when The Savage Storm came," Fisk went on. "Movies and novels were the only places where these creatures sat up and decided to take measures into their own hands, to be treated as equals, to rise and overthrow us. But now, with the storms gone and the Big Gulp ridding us of water and food, these—things—are suddenly among us."

Pepper glanced through the doorway at Flake 99.

"Have you stopped for a minute to think about how insane this all is?"

"It's not insane," Pepper replied quickly. "It's wonderful. A miracle, even."

"Wonders and miracles," her brother said spitefully. "From a mind as brilliant and technical as yours, I find it almost insulting that you'd say that to me."

"Flake 99 is different," she said. "Different from the others. He's a computer. A device made of circuits and wires, data streams and complex code."

Fisk snorted. Blood splattered his shirt. "No," he said. "He's the same as the others. Brought to life by something beyond our understanding. Wonders and miracles are just placeholders for something we cannot conceive of, something we know to be unnatural, broken, and cursed."

"The reanimates are not cursed," Pepper said, almost laughing at the absurdity of her brother's words.

Fisk grabbed her wrist and pulled the towel away. "They need to go."

"Go?"

Fisk nodded.

"But...where?"

Fisk yanked himself off the banquette and disappeared into the tiny washroom at the end of the Airstream. He clattered around for several minutes before returning with a small cloth bag filled with soap powder, scissors, comb, and toothbrush. He walked past his sister and into the bedroom.

"What are you doing?" she said. "You're not...leaving."

But he paid her no notice. Fisk stripped t-shirts from the cupboard, under clothes from the drawer, and stuffed them into a shredded backpack that he hoisted onto his back.

Fisk turned for the door.

"You're kidding. Right?"

"Move."

A million questions rattled through Pepper's mind. A million objections. A million reasons for him to stay. A million memories of their life together in Asheford City, in Silver Hollow, out in the Great Wastes, and here in Hope's Ruin. What did her future look like without her brother? She'd never dare think it. Why would she? He was her brother, her blood. The one person that would be with her through everything, unto the very end. No matter what stood in their way, they would overcome it, endure, survive.

Together.

"The world is different, Fisk. We're different. Sure, there are strange new creatures in this world. But they do not need to go. They need to stay. We need to adapt, encourage, make them welcome. They're probably just as confused as we are. We need to understand them. Help them understand who and what they are. They should join us, help us, make us better, stronger."