AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yeah, probably, but I think it’ll be easier for you to wrap your head around sleeping in a bed every night than it was for me to find out that you’re the hundred and third copy of a person.Our ancestors came here to escape from that kind of thing.”
He was quiet for a few seconds.“Do you disapprove of it?”
For some reason she couldn’t determine, Hannah felt like her answer was important to him.She was honest.“I resent that they deliberately took steps to cut us off from the galaxy for their own selfish and shortsighted reasons.We’ve lost out on advances in medicine and technology.I had a hell of a time reassembling the equipment in the old launch tower to send out an SOS.If we’d had a warning system in place, maybe we could have reduced the mortality rate in the quake.”
“I meant about our reproduction methods.”
“Oh!”She felt like an idiot.“No, no concerns from me on that front.I’m glad you’re here and you have your tech.We need to be able to protect ourselves against future quakes.”
That was what rankled her the most, making her curse generations of long-dead Forsyths to whatever hell they currently roasted in.New Eden had a history of minor tremors, occurring once every year or so since the planet was originally colonized.
“It sounds like you need seismograph technology,” RH103 surmised.
“Yeah.”
“Creating such a device is within our capabilities.”
Tears sprang to Hannah’s eyes, and she impatiently brushed them away.She thought about her parents and so many others, dead in the quake after the community center collapsed.“You could really do that?”
“It’s fairly straightforward.We will have to sit down soon and sort out which infrastructure needs to be replaced or created first.I think seismographs are as important as clean water in a place like this.”He stopped walking, dust swirling around their feet.“Why are you crying?”
“You weren’t supposed to see that.”She sniffled and pasted a smile to her face.“It’s nothing.Well, not exactly.”She tried again.“Everything that you take for granted as normal—that’s what is going to save us.It feels too good to be true.”A sob escaped her.“I’m sorry, I didn’t plan on breaking down today.”
“Hannah.”
His voice was uncharacteristically soft, more human than she had heard from him before.She looked up, her gaze meeting his.
Dark eyes searched her face, as if he couldn’t read her expression.Maybe he couldn’t.“You sent out the SOS, didn’t you?”
She nodded.
“You saved your people,” he said.“You also saved mine.You’re doing enough.”
It was the first time Hannah had ever heard or thought such a thing.If they weren’t in public, she would have broken down and cried, letting out her grief and relief physically.
But they were in public, and she couldn’t deal with anyone passing by asking her what was wrong.“Thank you,” she said and gave him a watery smile.“Let’s go home.”
ChapterFour
Once upon a time,Hannah’s house would have looked homey and inviting, even to a cyborg unaccustomed to such sights.Like the other houses in Hannah’s neighborhood, hers was made of wood and yellow-colored stone native to New Eden.It was probably sourced from the old quarry on the east side of the landmass the ship had detected when it broke atmosphere.Wooden shingles of varying colors and ages from years of repair formed the roof.Stumps revealed where trees had once grown and the remaining grass was patchy.The small house now looked forlorn, a couple of its windows replaced with wooden boards—one more casualty in the natural disaster that had rocked the planet.Hannah flushed when she looked at it, then at RH103, and he thought she might be embarrassed about its condition.
But why would she be?She had spent the last two years trying to keep her people alive any way she could.She hadn’t mentioned who she had lost close to her in the quake, but he knew she’d experienced significant loss and hadn’t had a chance to grieve it.
She opened the door and held it for him.“There isn’t much.But I have an extra bedroom for you to use.”
He stepped into a small foyer, its walls papered with a cheerful flower print that had faded over the decades, peeling in some places.The wooden floor creaked comfortably beneath their weight, buffered by a handmade rag rug in a rainbow pattern.To their right was the kitchen, sunlight streaming across the floorboards from its intact window.To their left was a lounge area, darkened due to the wooden board covering the window where the glass used to be.A few framed holographs of people who looked like Hannah were affixed to the walls, happy scenes frozen in time.Other pictures were drawn on rough paper with charcoal, probably created after their holography tech failed or they ran out of supplies to keep it going.
A scrap of an old memory that wasn’t truly his flashed in his mind.He saw through floor-to-ceiling glass windows at a storm raging outside.When he looked down, he saw he was hundreds of meters up, looking down at a gray city, its buildings running the gamut from old and rundown to modern and luxurious.The feel of thick carpet pile beneath his bare feet told him he was in a unit that was in the latter category.
RH103 shook his head.It had been a long time since his subconscious had dredged up a memory of the original Rhys Hammond.
“RH103?”Hannah’s voice brought him back to the present.“The bedrooms are upstairs.”She inclined her head at a flight of stairs, covered with a threadbare carpet runner.
He followed her.A bathroom was directly ahead of them at the landing, and a bedroom was on either side of it.She pushed open the door to the left.“Here you are.It isn’t a recharging coffin, but I hope it’ll be okay for now.”
While clean, the bedroom had clearly been unused for a long time.The window was covered with sheer blue drapes that matched the blue covers on the wide bed, its mattress sagging in the middle.Striped paper covered the walls, peeling a little at the corners, and there were more framed charcoal portraits here, these clearly of Hannah as a small child with two people he assumed were her parents.This had been Hannah’s parents’ bedroom, a place she’d lovingly kept intact.
“Will this be okay?”she asked.
