Rebirth: An Automaton's Journey

Chapter 11

Click.

The sharp noise of his charging cables fastening into their ports was the most reassuring sound he'd heard all day. Auto closed his eyes, focusing on the tingling stream of electrons pouring through him, reviving his exhausted body.

His present exhaustion was completely his fault, and he knew it. Madly zapping the wasps left and right had been a massive drain on his internal batteries. Auto repeated to himself that he was no longer wired into a nearly-infinite power source, but was making do with a finite battery capacity. He couldn't let this happen again; he needed to be more conservative with the use of his taser hands.

Ugh. Changing bodies was so complicated. He was having to relearn everything.

"I checked the gauge on the generator," Lily began, interrupting his thoughts. "It indicated that it can operate for another two hours twenty-seven minutes."

"That was before you plugged me in. While I am not as heavy of a power drain as the life support systems are, it will noticeably shorten our time window."

"Oh." Lily knelt down beside the bucket and rubber gloves she'd brought with her. "Is it possible—" she slid one hand into a glove "—to streamline our power usage at all? Are there any non-essential systems that we can turn off?"

"Not unless you want to go without the life support."

"Wait...that's it!" Plunging her gloved hands into the bucket, she suddenly looked up. "Right now, the life support systems for the entire ship are running, right? What if we turn it off for all of the passenger cabins? Nobody's living in them anyway. I can get my stuff and move it into the control room; we'll start sleeping in there."

Remarkably good idea. Auto wondered why he hadn't thought of it himself...

Oh. Right. He'd been programmed to keep the human race alive onboard the ship, and things like turning off the heating and CO2 scrubbers in the cabins hadn't been an option then.

His programming was seriously obsolete, and it was hindering him. He needed to talk to Illinois as soon as possible.

"The manual ought to explain how to do that."

"Good. I'll look at that once we get you fixed up a bit." She lifted a sponge from the bucket, squeezed out some of the liquid, then gently pressed it against the fingers of his right hand.

He watched, intrigued, as she carefully wiped the sponge across his hand, squeezing it against his finger joints so that the parts cleaner would trickle in. Much of the wasp remains were firmly baked onto his skin thanks to his liberal use of his hands as a bug zapper. Lily gently but persistently scrubbed with the sponge, lifting off the debris bit by bit.

When she dunked the sponge back into the bucket, streaks of dirt spiraled out from it before slowly becoming diluted to invisibility. Auto hadn't realized how dirty he really was until he saw the sponge being rinsed out. She brought it back to his hand, wiping away more grime; the insect remains came free much more easily this time, thanks to having soaked.

"Try to move your fingers now," she instructed.

He began to slowly flex the joints in his hand, curling and uncurling his fingers. The remaining debris broke loose from the movement as his range of motion increased.