Thunder surrounded him with its mighty roar, making the ground under him tremble like a beaten dog. The darkness suffocated him, pressing in on him like invisible, choking hands. Voices echoed through the thunder, and no matter how much he pressed his hands into his ears, they still got through. A flash of lightening illuminated an impending foot, much larger than him, coming down to crush him.
Derek woke with a start, his heart hammering and the sheets stuck to him with sweat. It took him a few moments to process that he had been dreaming. He sighed and buried his face in his hands.
When Adette walked in several hours later, as daylight had just begun to spill in through a crack in the curtains, that was how she found him. “Rough sleep?” she guessed out loud.
“You don’t know the half of it,” he muttered. Adette was quiet for a moment before she sang cheerily, “Well, ready to start work?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Nope! There are robots to tend to!” she chirped, then skipped out of the room.
“Here we go,” he grumbled under his breath, getting to his feet.
He found Adette standing in front of the door at the end of the hallway, watching him expectantly. He glanced at the door, and then at her, trying to hide the burning curiosity that had sprung to life once again.
“So uh, are we just going to stand here?”
“Yep.”
“Bullshit. Open the door.”
She grinned at him and then pulled a key from her pocket and turned it in the lock. She gave the door a light tap and it swung open without a sound. The sight before Derek rendered him speechless.
Before him stood a room filled with so many different contraptions, blueprints, flickering lights, mechanical arms and screens that he couldn’t figure out what to stare at first. There was a small, wooden table in the centre of the room that was littered with pencils, erasers, paper and discarded blueprints. Towards the back of the room was a steel table that had a various selection of screws, nuts, bolts, pieces of metal, tools, and a lot more that he didn’t even recognize.
“Jesus, girl, you really do have a lot of spare time,” he said once he managed to locate his tongue. Adette wasn’t sure whether to laugh or be offended.
“Haven’t you ever had a hobby? It consumes you at times.” She decided to leave out mentioning the countless nights she had gone without sleeping, slaving over various contraptions and delighting when she could get them to work.
“No,” he replied expressionlessly, “I’m not good enough at anything.”
Adette gave him a disapproving look over her glasses. “You mean you’re too lazy to find what you’re good at.”
“No, I’m literally not good at anything. I don’t say that because I’m looking for compliments, I say it as a fact. My name is Derek and I am not good at anything.”
She slapped him sharply across the face.
“What the fuck, woman?!” he complained loudly, rubbing the side of his face.
“I don’t ever want to hear anything like that out of you again, understood?”
She got no response, just a reproachful look, but it seemed to be good enough for her.
“Now, robots might not be your thing, but we won’t find out until we try, understood?”
“Yeah, whatever.”
