DEPARTURE
“You’re leaving, aren’t you,” he said accusingly as only a hurt 10 year could. I couldn’t look him in the eyes and instead looked at the dirt between my feet. I didn’t answer, preferring the silence to grow in place of the sorrow.
“Well?” he demanded anger creeping into his tone. He knew the answer to his own question but like any child of his age he didn’t want to accept it. He had too many needs that were beyond his articulation.
“Yes, Jacob, I must leave soon.” There I had said it. It was out in the open – no longer an assumed understanding. That explained my sense of relief coloured with sadness.
In response, Jacob only said one word. “When?”
Then he came and sat beside me. A long silence stretched between us. Neither of us looked at each other. The boy poked a stick in the dirt in front of his feet. Slowly a pattern emerged from the scraping of the stick. A crude solar system of five planets, the second from the sun adorned with three moons. Momentarily I looked up at the sky, and there was Vagus the largest moon high in the day time sky, while Nandini coasted the horizon. Eliso had already set some hours earlier.
“It’s best I leave in the morning.” Even as I said it, I turned my back to him. I didn’t wish to see the pain in the child’s eyes.
Then, unexpectedly he began to barter. “If you stay, I promise I’ll be good…You won’t have any excuse to complain…please...”
“Jacob, you know this isn’t about you…Besides, you’ve been a good boy. You’ve overcome all the misfortune that fate has thrown at you. Your parents were killed in the war against the machines, your home was reduced to rubble, and despite your injuries you survived. I’ve ensured your physical safety and a plentiful supply of food…There is nothing more I can do here…”
“You could stay… as a friend…you know...” There was a tremor of hope in his voice tempered with fear of being disappointed. “Friends don’t just get up and leave.” Jacob added the chastisement for good measure.
How to respond to the needs of a ten year old, when inside me something was broken. A deep incapacitating sadness swelled dangerously before I brought it under control. As warmly as I could, I replied, “Jacob you are my friend, and always will be from now on…but you know and you have always known in time I would have to leave…”
The tears rolled down Jacob’s face. He made no attempt to wipe them away. Tears dripped from his chin leaving tiny craters in the dry soil. There was a loud sniff from him, and then he said it. “It’s her, isn’t it? You’re leaving to find her.” I nodded in acknowledgement. “You won’t find her. You said yourself that she was captured by the machines.”
“Yes.”
“And you also said you’ve no idea where she’s being held by the machines - even if she is alive,” he added for good measure. The child’s hopes clung on desperately.
Then I said what I knew he would not understand. “Yes, all of that’s true, Jacob, but I need to do this. I need to try to find her. It was in my search for her that I came to this planet and found you. Your people were battling the machines, as was she in her own way, so I joined your fight for survival…And now that has been achieved I must resume my search.”
“But why?” he wailed in disappointment. “She’s not your wife or girlfriend, or even a relative! So why is she so important?” There was bitter anger in his words. His fists were clenched. It was only a matter of moments before he would lash out at me physically.
I knew then I would have to share my secret before I left if I wanted him to cope with my departure. “She’s important, Jacob, because she’s my mother.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “Liar! You told me she’s your girlfriend.”
I took him by the arms and looked him directly in the face. “Jacob, you assumed she was a girlfriend…I never said she was.” I tried to sound clear and firm in response to the child’s anger.
“You look at yourself. You are well past your middle years and you gave the impression she was of a similar age. So how can she be your mother?”
Then I told him my greatest secret – a secret only two people in the universe knew. “She literally made me.” My reply did not herald the pause and silence I expected from him.
“Leave if you must, but don’t lie to me! “ There was indignation and anger in the words. “She’s not your mother.”
“Think it through Jacob. She was a cyberneticist, researching artificial intelligence.” The boy was listening but shaking his head in disagreement or refusal to believe. “That’s why she was captured by the mechanoids we were fighting.” More shaking of the head. “And remember, I said, she made me.”
The look of shock, of realisation was plain to see on his face. He stuttered, he mumbled but finally the words came out. “You mean…you mean…you’re a robot of sorts?”
Silently, I nodded in agreement. Then I hugged him.
(The End)
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Originally Posted by Munshie
