Rehash

Twenty-four (final)

Copperspine's headquarters was nothing but a vague memory after all these years. I didn't recognise my surroundings much while I was escorted through the gates, and I supposed they had changed many things. Technology didn't stand still, and neither did bases harbouring secrets about technology. 

The world and the base had moved on, but not everything was different: the gigantic vault still stood tall and unchanging. The man standing in front of it, likewise. 

Mr. Shea had aged. His already greying beard during his Lenora teaching days was now snow white. He still wore a brace, but the jagger scars on his right arm were faded now. His hard eyes hadn't changed, however, and neither had his energy. Still a military man, who stood up straight and proud with his hands behind his back.

"Mr. Rey," he greeted me, once I was within earshot. "I had a hunch we would meet soon after the new android laws passed. I have taken the liberty of preparing the body, but I also had a hunch you would want to reinstall the core yourself." 

Mr. Shea showed me what he'd been hiding behind his back, opening his left hand in front of me. 

I tensed, choking up when I saw. I reached out and carefully took the memory core from Mr. Shea's palm. I held it in both hands, curling my fingers around it tightly like I would never let it go again. I wouldn't let Zed go again. 

"Let's go inside," I said. 

Mr. Shea nodded, and made a hand gesture at the guards stationed on both sides of the vault doors. They opened the doors for us, and while I didn't remember Copperspine's base much, the screeching noise brought back memories.  

I remembered being taken outside, clutching Zed's memory core against my chest, before agent Denn demanded it from me. I refused for a few seconds, but ultimately had Zed ripped out of my hands and was kicked out of the base. 

My breathing sped up as we went inside. This place, I still recognised. Somehow, I still remembered the exact route I needed to walk to end up in the room where I saw Zed alive last, but that wasn't where Mr. Shea led me.

We passed the hallway where Zed first fought Ava, then sunk to the ground and made me promise I wouldn't give him up. I hadn't, which is why I was here today, finally face to face with Zed's body again when Mr. Shea had me enter a laboratory. 

I breathed out through my mouth as I saw Zed on the bed. I slowly approached him, almost afraid he'd disappear in front of my eyes again if I went to fast. His eyes were closed, his hands resting on his stomach. He was naked down to his waist, below there, he was covered by a sheet. 

Zed looked like he could be sleeping, except, his chest wasn't rising and falling. 

"Do you still remember how it's done?" Mr. Shea broke the silence. 

I looked at him over my shoulder. "Yes," I said. I hesitated for one more moment, then walked over to the bed and sat down next to Zed. I snaked an arm around him.

Despite looking dead in this state, his lifelike skin was warm, making goosebumps appear on my arms. The steel he was made of was light enough so I could lift his upper body up alone. 

Mr. Shea had already prepared the body as he'd said, so I could part the skin and find the slot where I needed to insert the memory core. I looked at the core in my hands, took a deep breath, and finally inserted it, making a ninety degrees turn right to fasten it. 

Zed instantly started moving. His shoulders rolled, and the skin surrounding his spine closed itself the moment I pulled my hand back. I nearly jumped when Zed suddenly reached up and his fingers were on my arm. 

I leaned back just in time to be face to face with Zed as he blinked his eyes open, immediately focusing on me. For a moment his expression stayed blank and my stomach sank. They wiped him again, he didn't recognise me. The fear made my chest clench, but then Zed smiled at me.

"What's with the sad face, Camilo Rey?" he asked. 

"I—" I sputtered. "Zed?"

"Yes," he said, and I finally broke, throwing my arms around  him and pulling him in a tight hug. He placed his hand on my back, too. 

"You've gotten older," Zed said. "My scans indicate you're in your forties. How many years has it been?"

"Twenty-one years," I replied. "Five months, and three days."

I'd been keeping count, striking off days on an old-fashioned paper calendar but saying it out loud like this made me sniffle. 

"I knew you weren't going to give up," Zed said. "I ran thousands of scenarios that day in the vault, using every fraction of knowledge I could find about you in databases far and wide. A mere one percent of them predicted that you would stop trying to help androids in your lifetime."

I clenched one hand into the sheets to keep control of myself. "It wasn't just me," I said. "My brother, Alan, while hardheaded and difficult to convince, eventually whittled down. He entered the government of our city, and later our country, preaching that androids and gyndroids were more like people and less like machines. And newer generations slowly started believing it." 

"Huh. I didn't expect that." Zed gently pushed me back so we could be face to face. "He was vehemently against rocking the boat when I last looked up his profile."

"He's not, really." I snorted. "He's whatever he needs to be to launch his political career, and he decided to stop fighting and instead ride my fresh, new, pro-android wave. Zekiye now works on recreating bodies for androids and gyndroids who lost them after the war, too."

Zed tilted his head to the side. "You don't swear anymore," he noted. "I haven't heard you say 'fucking' once. Then again, you swear less when you're serious, oddly enough."

I let out a brief laugh. "As somewhat of a public figure as well, I needed to control my speech a little more to be allowed on all-ages national and international television." 

"You sound like a busy man, now," Zed said. He reached for my clenched hand on the bed, and placed his on it. "Do you still have a moment to spare for an old, Singularity War era android?" 

I grinned. Part of me had been afraid this meeting after so much time had passed would be awkward. And it was, for a little while. But now, it already felt like yesterday when we sat in the lab together, saying goodbye before a wipe. Even better, because I knew I didn't have to say goodbye this time.

"Yeah, of course," I said. "I believe I still owe you a story."

Zed smiled back at me, playfully. "I already looked up our entries in the city library. Huh, so, our story, from the underground tunnel network to the military base, came out and many people took the liberty of turning it into novels. Cute. Did we really take off all our clothes inside Lenora's vault and—"

"That's enough!" I hastily interrupted him, feeling myself turn red like I was a college student all over again. "People let their imagination fly, alright. But that's not how it went." 

"Tell me, then," Zed said, softly placing his hands on my chin, the same way he'd done inside the vault. "All your memories of us. Before we walk out out of here, and make new ones, together. And I promise: I will not forget them this time."