"I have searched countless years, scouring the globe for an object that probably doesn’t even exist."
Jen-Li stared at the wrinkled page of her sister’s last journal entry. It trembled in the whipping wind that invaded the abandoned living quarters, howling as it broke through the cracked windows. The room was so cold. Bitter and lonely, as though resentful for being left in such a state. A thin layer of dust covered the overturned furniture and broken dishes like downy, providing just enough protection against the raging elements outside. Removing her gloves, Jen-Li traced the sentence with her finger, leaving a muddled smear of letters in its wake. She wiped it again for the last time so that it would belong to her alone. So that this idea that her sister pondered became nothing but a blur, just like the stain of runny ink on her fingertips that would eventually wash away.
“What does it say?” Terra asked from the doorway. Her small frame was swallowed by her heavy coat, transforming her into a bulky, short stump of a ten-year-old. Her blue eyes shone fiercely from the depths of her fur-lined hood. She could read her mother’s body language too well.
Whisking the withered journal in her arms, Jen-Li closed it with a loud clap. A cloud of dust sauntered up to her face, burning her freckled nose as she hacked on the taste. The sound seemed to startle the frozen room as another wave of dust trickled from the ceiling and into her damp auburn hair.
“I wanted you to stay in the mech,” she said, peering out the frosted window glass as she replaced her gloves. Her mech was still there, motionless and protected beneath the ancient fir tree on the edge of the abandoned drive. She looked up at the splitting beams of her sister’s last known dwelling place. “This place is falling apart.”
“Did Aunt Nina find it?” Terra pressed. Her voice sounded on the precipice of panic.
“I don’t know,” Jen-Li replied sharply before she caught herself, realizing that her own voice sounded strained. That was not her job, not her duty as Terra’s mother, to sound afraid. That was not who she was. That was not the tone of this journey that had taken them from the warmth of home to this wasteland. Jen-Li recovered and joined her daughter in the entryway. “But we will find out.”
Nina Dashwynn had been gone a long, long time. So long, in fact, that Jen-Li was surprised Terra had any memory of her Aunt Nina with her own set of fiery eyes that refused to be extinguished. Their town called her the last machinist. She had become a strange sort of legend to the townsfolk, sad and unresolved, watching day by day for her return in the early morning mists. But it had been eight years since Nina left and she had yet to reappear. No one waited for her more than Jen-Li. They were from a long line of machinists, women trained in the care and construction of mech. It was a strange mix of art and technology, a concoction of knowledge and having a special touch. A blend of human and machine, brought together to work as one. But it was a profession near extinction if Nina couldn’t find the answer they needed. And as the years passed, Jen-Li grew more and more uneasy that soon she would inherit the title of the last machinist.
“How will I know when it’s been too long?” Jen-Li had asked her sister the night before she left. When the restlessness finally became too much for Nina, strangling her slowly from within. The fire from their workshop had illuminated Nina’s face in a way that made her almost unrecognizable, casting a burnt orange hue on her glowing skin. She stared at her mech across the shop, a shell without a soul and doomed to remain that way if something didn’t change.
“You’ll know when it’s time,” Nina said. “You’ll feel what I feel. When you know we need this for us. For Terra. For the future of mech.” She looked at her younger sister curled beside the fire, an unusual tenderness displayed on her hot face. “Don’t be afraid. I know it’s out there. And if I can’t find it, you have to.”
And Nina had been right. The time did come when Jen-Li heard her own calling in the night, beckoning her to search beyond the safety of her workshop’s firelight. When it was no longer time to wait for her sister. She had become her sister, in a way, wrought with the responsibility of the younger generation. She watched Terra climb onto their mech to run through the open fields and knew this could not be a dying passion. It was not a way of life to disappear without a fight. When they left town, Jen-Li looked over her shoulder and wondered what the residents would call her. And if they would watch for her too, a strange silhouette of man and machine, returning in the early morning mists.
Outside Nina’s decrepit dwelling, Jen-Li and Terra raced through the snow to their silent mech. Towering ten feet above them, its titanium exterior appeared dull even in that forgiving light, no matter how much care and polish went into it. The years could not simply be wiped away and this mech had seen much to age it. The snow tried to filter through the ancient fir tree’s branches, curious to investigate this creature of old and new.
Unlocking the ladder that Terra had wisely latched before leaving, Jen-Li motioned for her daughter to climb the rungs and back into the craft. Removing her gloves once more, she investigated the mech’s sturdy legs, feeling with her fingertips for anything that seemed out of line. She had done this a thousand times if not more and if something was wrong, she would catch it. She would feel it. Beneath the machine’s belly, Jen-Li ran her hands over the protective metal in search of any oil leaks. Finished with her inspection, she replaced her gloves and patted the mech’s chest cavity three times, as was tradition. Right where she imagined the heart would be, if it existed.
Pulling the ladder up behind her, Jen-Li settled into her leather seat and continued her inspection. This had to be done, every time. Whether in repair or use, whether used in the fields or for transportation, the mech had to be checked every time. Terra waited in her seat behind her mother, her waterproof tarp already pulled over her head. The mechanics within the open deck of the mech were protected by thick plastic, sealed and sealed again to protect the electronics boards and controls from any moisture. But the passengers of the mech had to suffer another fate, exposed to the elements just as the mech was. It was a strange sort of bond to trek through sun or snow or rain together, both affected but each in a different way. Jen-Li allowed Terra the luxury of her tarp but not for herself. She pulled her hood a little further over her face and brushed their way out from beneath the old fir tree with the mech’s two arms, dexterous enough to move the branches without breaking a limb.
They lumbered down the overgrown drive that led back towards town. Jen-Li had initially avoided the settlement, anxious to finally find her sister – or so she had thought. She had painstakingly traced her sister’s travels over the last few months, a task that sometimes required intuition more than anything else. Sometimes her sister stayed in one place for years and sometimes only for a day. But something about this strange land of snow and flat plains struck a nerve with Jen-Li. Something about this place seemed right and maybe it had to Nina, too. Reaching beneath her jacket, Jen-Li felt for her sister’s journal, the pages heavy with the knowledge that she craved. Maybe if she scoured the book long enough she’d find a clue to Nina’s next venture.
Mech was not yet extinct but it drew more attention than Jen-Li was comfortable with. Some remembered the machines as field laborers or modes of transportation. But some remembered them as warriors, unstoppable in the wrong hands. As they entered town, long stares met them from beneath overhangs heavy with snow and through foggy window glass. Aware yet unaware, Jen-Li’s mech trudged through the snow without regard, planting its heavy feet firmly on the wooden sidewalk outside the town hostel. After securely locking the mech, Jen-Li synced the security alarm on her wristband with the machine. A dull red glow began to simmer in the depths of the mech’s typically flat gray eyes, pockets that were merely sensors consisting of a mix of wires and bulbs and reflective plates. Now used only for esthetic, the eyes were an old remnant of an age long gone when the mechs were used in war. No one that remembered those times would touch her mech when its eyes glowed like those fires from the past.
The hostel smelled as it looked, musty and covered with a fine layer of ash from the smoking fireplace. “Two beds. Just for tonight,” Jen-Li told the owner, shaking her coat and covering the front counter with a sprinkling of snow. “And we’ll need food.”
“Sure, sure,” the short man replied, wiping his gleaming head as he flipped through a notebook of receipts. He paused and looked towards the front door. “That your mech out there?”
“Why?” Jen-Li asked flatly.
The man shrugged three times. “Nothing, just wondering. Lot of mechs around here these days, just not something you see often, you know? Old time stuff, haven’t seen one since I was a kid. Can I go look-”
“Don’t touch it. What other mechs?” Jen-Li pressed. Terra had joined her mother’s side, studying the hostel owner with almost as much severity.
The owner began to flip through his receipt book again. “Well, let’s see,” he began slowly, reading down the list of recent entries silently to himself. He looked up at Jen-Li quickly. “I keep track of who has what, you know. Nothing shady about it, just for my own protection, you know.”
Jen-Li began to remove her gloves. “What other mechs?” she asked once more.
“Okay, okay,” the owner stammered, raising his hands. “Here, there was a woman who stopped in a few months ago. Had a big old mech, only stayed a few nights. Name was Jen-Li Dashwynn.”
Terra looked over at her mother sharply and Jen-Li raised a finger.
“And then,” the man continued, squinting at the notebook. “My associate made this note, sorry. Looks like it was a man named Tirus...sorry, can’t make out the last name. I’ll get onto him about that. Anyway, he had a mech, too. It was a weird looking one, too. Not that I’ve seen many of them, but…”
“And when was Tirus here?” Jen-Li asked. She tried to control her voice but her heart was raging in her chest, reverberating up into her vocal cords.
“A week ago, thereabouts,” the owner advised with another shrug of his shoulders. “Anyway, that’s all I got. You still want the two beds or what?”
Jen-Li grabbed her gloves off the counter. Every fiber in her body wanted to run out and scour those flat, dark plains with her mech’s red eyes shining. Another mech was not a common occurrence, even in this land far from home. A weird mech meant to Jen-Li that it was a hybrid, born of twisted components and lack of knowledge, making the mech dangerously unpredictable because of it. Now she knew her sister was in trouble. Now she knew they were close to what they searched for. But without looking, Jen-Li also knew her daughter’s exhaustion was beyond breaking point.
“Food and the two beds,” Jen-Li ordered quietly, reaching into her coat for payment. She eyed the owner and added, “And I want a room with a window over my mech.”
That night, Jen-Li scoured her sister’s journal, finding entry upon entry that would have helped her weeks ago but was now old news. The further she read, the more Jen-Li felt her sister’s hope begin to wane. She slept without rest, waking more times than she knew, lulled back to sleep by the steady pulse of her mech’s red light on the dark snow below. Still there, still waiting. When the sun rose like a blinding white orb, Jen-Li was awake to watch it stir life in the small town. And on the horizon, a great tower of storm clouds was already gathering, heavy with a day’s worth of snow. Jen-Li watched it descend upon them like a frozen wave. Somewhere out there was her sister. Somewhere out there was the answer.
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