EXTINCTION WARRIOR

Chapter 5

"Mama calls for dinner. Call me tomorrow. Da?" He smiles gently.

"Da."I nod.

"Do svidaniya." He says, Russian, 'bye.'

The lightscreen goes black. I check the time on my miniQ. Almost nine thirty. Aana and Taata are talking in the kitchen. I reach for a fat black marker from the holder on my desk. Rolling the sleeve of my left arm to my elbow, I uncap the marker, and slowly draw a circle above the inside of my wrist with a dot inside. It's not a perfect circle, but I like how it looks. I have a tattoo that means something. Something important.

"Yuka, what is generative principle?" I ask the personal assistant on my miniQ.

"Generative Principle is the driving force of caring. It is how we generate our life experience. To generate is to create.To create is to care.When you care about your thoughts, your words, your feelings and your actions, these be come the will that supports what you create. It is not enough to talk about the change we want in the world. We must care enough to change it. We do this by taking action to do our part, no matter how big or small." She says.

I turn and pull my chair toward the bed where Mig is grooming himself.

Leaning over, I reach out to pet him. "I care about you, Mig...Mom,Dad...Aana, Taata, Woka, the villagers, VR, the endangereds....and I want Mom and Dad to be alive and come home, and I want the Red Dragons to stop killing endangereds. I want the Sixth Extinction to end....but I have no idea what I can do to take to make all that happen. Do you?" I sigh.

Mig's giving himself a good bath, licking his shoulders all the way down his back.Not listening at all.

I stand and head to the door.

"Overhead light off," I say. The room goes black, and I slip into the dim hall. The door into the kitchen and living room is open halfway. I glimpse Aana on the couch puffing her pipe. She doesn't see me.  in the chair next to her asleep, snoring softly. His head's tilted, falling on his shoulder. They're in a cloud of smoke. I turn to the right, and walk a few steps to the door. Mom and Dad's office.

Open it quickly, close it softly, and whisper the command, "Overhead light on," as the wind outside begins to howl.

The light slowly brightens. Mig brushes against my leg creeping toward the android.

Against the wall on the left, the wall facing the strait are two small desks with a window in the middle. Tuttuk, lifeless sits in the chair between the two, under the window. It's my chair. The one I've sat in a hundred thousand times. Mig sniffs the droid's legs.

To look completely human, the droid wears tight black, ultra-performance jeans, and a white t-shirt, untucked with running shoes and no socks.The unofficial uniform for every kid in virtual school.

I take a deep breath, walk over and lift his shirt, dipping my finger down through folds of membrane protecting his activation key. It's like an extreme "inny" bellybutton. I push down, and count to ten.

Soon as I get to "ten," he sits upright, and places his hands on his thighs.His mouth opens for a full second, and three harmonizing tones float,like a musical cloud into my face. He's powered, but inanimate. To make him fully animated and completely "alive," I need to recite the numerical pass code Dad programmed him with – it's the day they got married. September fifteen, twenty thirty nine. 9/15/2039.

A little nervous, I take another breath and lean over to whisper in his ear,"Nine, one, five, two, zero, three, nine." Instantly he blinks his slanted, Eurasian eyelids and smiles.

"What a wonderful feeling to be animated!" His voice is deep and gentle. Sort of creamy.

His eyelids flutter under a mound of thick, black hair that falls on his forehead, with patches of hair that curl into sideburns below his ears. He rotates his head and looks around the room.

To be like one of us, with our values, I'd helped Dad load the android's mind-file database. He's filled with pictures, holograms and biographical information about our family, about Aana, Taata and the village. Except we'd never completely animated him. Before, he was just a piece of equipment. Fully animated, he's so human it's freaky. I can't help but gasp softly.

"Hi Tuk." I whisper, and drop into Dad's desk chair.

"With your tendency to shorten names, will I be Tuk for you, and Tuttuk for your parents and the villagers?" He asks with a nod.

A wave of sorrow rushes through me, and a lump comes to my throat. "Um,Mom, Dad are gone...missing...probably dead." I say, stunned by the words and the clear, sea green of his eyes.

My chin starts to quiver, and my eyes fill with tears. I turn away fast. Don't want him to see me crying, drag my arm across my nose, smash the tears with my palms. His cool hand touches my shoulder softly. His affective computing.

Turning back quickly, his hand falls away.

"I need your help." I blurt. It comes out more desperate than I want, or feel.

"I am here, whatever you need," he nods, smiling wide, his teeth perfectly straight, gleaming white. His eyes actually seem to twinkle. I can't get over how human he looks...how human he feels.I peer down at Mig who stretches and yawns.

"Good boy," I say and lean to pet him.

"I cannot tell you how amazing it feels to breathe," Tuk exclaims, inhaling deeply, expanding his chest, cooling his blockchain processor.

"And hello Migalik! You handsome little arctic fox, white fox, polar fox, snow fox...phylum: cordata, clade: synapside, class: mammalia,order:carnivore, suborder: carniformia, family: canidae, species lagopus. I was not ignoring you." He reaches out to pet Mig, but he leaps away, toward me.

Tuk makes scientific classification sound like a song.

Tuk shifts back to me, "What happened to Frank and Virginia?"

He looks straight at me, and listens without interrupting while I tell him everything the commander said. He doesn't blink the whole time.

When I finish,he shakes his head, and says, "Nothing in my data base has ever been subjected to a swarm of ten thousand Blue Trance Micro Bolts."

My heart skips a beat. A lump instantly forms in my throat.

"Is there anything else I should know?" He asks.

I can't help it, and begin to cry softly. "Mom and Dad told us about the endangereds the Red Dragons are really after."

"Tell me."He pulls his chair over, and leans forward, close to me, our knees practically touching.

I pause to rub the tears and my nose on my sleeve, "I didn't understand the first one, but pretty sure Mom said, cinereous vultures...um, radiated tortoises, some kind of toad from Puerto Rico, an African wild dog, and Partula Island snails."

"Quite a diverse assortment." He says, and cocks his head.

My chest heaves and I stutter, "What do we do,Tuk?"

"There is only one thing to do." He declares with a certainty that surprises me. He pauses, looks at the ceiling, his pupils dilating, and blinks furiously as if his eyelashes are about to take off and fly away.