Darkness - Book One of the Dark Series of Novels

Chapter Five

Troy spent most of the day waiting for Jonny. There were slight moments with each footfall – imperceptible to Jonny, interminable to Troy – where he paused, waited, positively stopped to ensure Jonny could keep pace comfortably. When Jonny lamented that he had neglected to bring any supplies, Troy pounced on an opportunity to work at optimal speed. His programming could hardly abide sub-optimal performance, though it did have a sub-function that allowed for limited performance when accompanying a human.

"Keep walking due north," Troy said. "I will collect supplies."

He set off. In a dozen bounding steps, he was out of view, gone to nearby springs to collect water, nearby trees to collect fruit. He trespassed onto a farm briefly to take a chicken, slaughter, clean and de-bone it. He set up a camp roughly in Jonny's trajectory and made him a meal.

Jonny approached as the chicken was done cooking. Troy beamed with pride at what he had accomplished and particularly his perfect timing. "Thank you," Jonny said, taking a seat and a lapful of food served on a plate Troy had fashioned out of woven tree bark. "Well done. You knew where I was coming, where I was going, and when I would arrive. Impressive."

"Not," Troy responded, "when you consider my construction. I am a purpose-built android being tasked to return to the past and save the future. This necessitates a great deal of programming. Particularly important in all this is prediction algorithms."

"It's not enough that you have seventy-five percent of all human knowledge accumulated in your brain?" Jonny asked.

"Over seventy-eight percent," Troy responded dryly, squatting and tending the fire as he spoke. "But having knowledge and using knowledge are two different processes. A computer in your computer lab has significant knowledge but cannot do anything with it, as it is not conscious. I, on the other hand, am.

"Holding knowledge is easy. I could have been given the entirety of human knowledge – technology during the time of my construction was efficient enough to store it in my frame, given that much of me is empty space filled with memory storage devices. But a significant part of my capacity is programming around complex mathematical equations in the Chaos Theory field of study. I must be able to, when acting in the past, determine what impact my actions may have, according to a probability matrix, on the future. Without such programming, I would not be an ideal specimen for returning to the past. Though basic, my prediction of you arriving here at generally the time you did is the most significant type of calculation I can perform."

"Do you eat?" Jonny asked.

"No. I am solar powered. My skin is a type of photovoltaic cell, and my batteries can store enough charge to last three weeks when full. I can ingest food safely, but it essentially sits in a sac in my midsection waiting to be excreted through an anus. I do this to better integrate with society at large – there were no androids in the past, and it is important that I have great latitude when I arrive in the past. Had you not discovered me in the manner you did, I would hope you would not be able to tell what I am."

"Oh," Jonny replied. "That's nice. Are we far from the server farm?"

"Do you see the mountain a few kilometres north?"

"It's on the other side of the mountain?"

"No," Troy replied. "It is the mountain."

***

Jonny grew deeply nervous – anxious, excited – at the prospect of being within a mountain that was home to a server farm. He brought to the forefront of his mind all of the legends he had heard – rows upon rows of thousands of computers, humming, hiding in code within them the complete record of all human knowledge. A treasure beyond treasure, beyond all the farms of the world, something that would make him wealthier than his brother or father or any other farmer knee-deep in dirt.