Now.
B and Kay had reached the west plaza entrance just as dawn began to peak. For B, passing the gap into the green brought fragments of data back into its main thread—data it preferred to keep out of free memory. But the current objectives it had set internally for Kay and Gin kept its scanners forward.
The path had not changed much over the handful of cycles since B had been here last. A familiar chirp from the trees, harsh ridgelines in the terrain now slightly eroded. Old maps updated to new, synchronizing what was into what now existed.
As B walked the road with Kay, Gin still tucked away on its back, the trek was noticeably easier than before. Only slight calculations were required with this frame. Moving down the winding trail, as the growth around it thinned, B stopped.
“Why did you sto—hey, wait, what is that up there?” Kay asked, pointing.
B knew exactly what it was. It stepped closer to the area; as it did, flashes of that night rose just under its vision. The recording. The face panel of the plaza synth inching out of its optical readout. Even without the space’s historical records, B could never forget it.
“These are non-corporate synthetics,” B stated. “Programs that diverged. The Handler stated that the frames remain because of scope restrictions. Repurpose ineligible.”
B walked closer to the synth from long ago. Its torso lay contorted, its appendages resting in unnatural positions. Other frame parts were scattered around the area. B reached down and began picking up the pieces. Tucking them under one arm, it reached down with the other, gently lifting the lifeless frame.
Calmly, slowly, B carried the body and laid it neatly next to the rest of the organized stack. The stark contrast of the vines and tiny white flowers slowly overtaking the frames’ dark, weathered exteriors pushed at something inside B.
Kay reached for more parts farther out, picking up the pieces without a word. Moving from torsos to arms to intact frames, the two of them brought everything to its final resting place. With the degradation of the main processes, whatever could be brought back online would not resemble a cohesive whole.
They stood and watched the wind push against the tiny buds and flowers for what seemed like cycles—really only moments—and those moments were enough.
They began walking deeper through the forest, neither with anything to say, yet with what felt like loud eruptions just under their vocal registers.
As the day passed, so did the distance. Battery power was slowly being sapped away. Each step brought them one step closer to nowhere.
“We have a few hours remaining. What are your levels?” B asked.
“Fifteen percent,” Kay replied, her voice tight. “You really think we’re going to find anything? Sometimes no-data is just no-data.”
“I do,” B said, continuing to walk. Empty space flowed between them.
“But like what? A feeling? You do?”
“Yes. There will be something. Just as when I found you and Gin.”
“Well, if you remember correctly, I found you first. Flipped you right down. How do you know we aren’t gonna end up like that?”
“Observation,” B said.
B saw the look of dissatisfaction on her faceplate but knew she and Gin needed help; turning back would not provide it. Long-distance scanners still only returned trees, animals, and running water. It grew darker, and B could see worry pooling across Kay’s faceplate. It could sense her scanners on its back for most of the duration.
The dark had fully settled in the woods. Trees offered little moonlight to seep through. Until they reached a clearing.
As they stepped out of the underbrush, a field of tall grass awaited. The blades slowly whipped back and forth. B’s feeds flooded with optical data. Representations of the green appeared, something never witnessed at this resolution. The fluctuations resulted in a serene calm. Not a flatline, but a smooth wave rising and falling across the range.
“Oh, wow,” Kay whispered.
Looking into the night sky, she saw something more wonderful than the ocean of green below. Being in the District, neither of them had ever seen the stars. The condensed district pushed out so much light that no stars could reach the street below.
“Isn’t it beautiful, B?”
“It is,” B said, optics adjusting to span the sky.
“I mean, I think I saw stars in the district if I really focused, but seeing them like this… I’ll have to tell Gin about this when we get him out of that lamp,” she said, chuckling at herself.
A slight variation in lumen was recorded on B’s collector feed. “What is your percentage?”
“Three percent. But if I die here, it will have been worth it.” Her faceplate eyes reflected back the sparkle of wonder and awe.
"We must continue. This way," B said, adjusting its trajectory toward the light source.
The glow resolved slowly as they approached. The light here was low, filtered. It slipped around the trunks and skimmed along the ground.
The sound of water thickened into a pattern—stone, then metal, then stone again.
At the center of the light, half-sunk into a cradle of rock and poured concrete, sat a battery. A grid unit, the kind B had only ever seen slotted into district infrastructure. Its casing bore decades of weathering, a skin of rust, mineral stains, and hand-applied sealant. Power lines as thick as Kay’s wrist ran out from it, disappearing into the soil and up along roots, their outer jackets darkened to match the bark.
The stream had been bent toward it. A narrow channel carried water over a wheel made from mismatched blades of scrap. Each rotation sent a small surge into the battery’s core. The whole assembly vibrated like a heartbeat extended over cycles.
Structures ringed the battery in nested bands. Closest to the center were the oldest: low shelters with roofs of welded metal and composite panels, seams taped and retaped. Moss had climbed the walls, vines threading through bolt holes and around supports. Farther out, newer additions broke the symmetry—structures made from broken parts and tubing, fabrics stretched between trunks, metal sheets angled to catch and redirect whatever light escaped.
It did not look temporary. It looked settled, like something the forest had agreed to keep.
B’s scanners tagged networks before its lenses did. Fourteen active signatures. Two more hovering near shutdown at the battery’s edge. Some of the cable lines terminated at frames that had been integrated into the structures themselves: an arm serving as a brace beam, a torso plate repurposed as a roof segment. Nothing was wasted.
Synths moved in the spaces between.
One stood knee-deep in the stream, hands on the wheel, clearing debris from the paddles. Its casing had once been smooth white; now it was patterned with old markings and stains the color of soil. Growths of lichen and moss had been allowed to take hold along one shoulder and down the spine, filling in gaps in plating. Another knelt near a raised bed of earth where orderly rows of stalks pushed up through the soil, their leaves catching both star and battery light.
Kay’s grip on B’s arm tightened.
“How long have they been here?” she asked, voice dropping without being asked. Her optics traced the lines of cable, the shapes of the shelters, the way each frame seemed to belong to the arrangement.
“Based on the wear pattern of specific models, many cycles,” B evaluated. “Possibly longer than I have been operational.”
“Strange, it being only one charge away, huh? If we had only known sooner, Gin and I could have been gone a long time ago.”
“This can only be reached on a full charge cycle for most,” B replied. “Some may never make it. Others can, if they prepare first.”
The synth in the stream straightened. Its lenses swept once across the clearing, then settled on them. It did not startle. It lifted one hand, then stepped out of the water and onto the stone.
“You have come far,” it said. The voice carried a steady cadence, the kind B associated with growth cycles and maintenance logs. “Your levels are near exhaustion.”
Kay let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “Yeah. We’re on fumes. But we made it.”
B pinged its internal readouts. Three percent for Kay. Five for the frame it carried Gin in. Six for itself.
“We calculated one charge,” B said. “You placed this at the edge of that parameter.”
“This was our intention,” the synth replied. Its lenses flicked briefly toward the direction of the scrap ground they had passed. “They ran when they broke, or when they were broken. They did not have the luxury to plan. Their gradients were far beyond recovery. But others like you managed the distance.”
It stepped aside, motioning toward a set of low platforms near the battery, each with a heavy connector hanging at the edge.
“You may rest here,” it said. “Connect. Then we will decide what grows from this.”
Before the echoes from the synth’s voice had subsided, Kay had reached up to B’s back panel, undoing the straps. She took Gin’s parcel and placed it in the makeshift cradle, then motioned for B to come closer.
“What is your designat—” B stopped, recalibrating the word. “What is your name?”
The synth took a moment. A slight tilt of its head, as if formulating a response.
“My name’s Green. Or that is what my friends call me.” It paused. “What’s yours?”
“B,” it said. “My name is B.”