Story by Hhalix
Afterlight
“Helen, I think it would be best to return at a better time.”
Argus stands imposing, sleek metal-grey, in the opposite corner of the room. His skeletal, wired-laced fingers turn a glass prism, which shatter the rays of light that enter the dim, cluttered workshop from a small rectangular window. The slim glass port opens out onto a view of the streets of Kepler, where the last dying embers of dusk reflect off of the gold visors of passerby and dance along the edges of rooftops and nearby storefronts. His eyes, blue-within-blue, turn to examine her carefully. He speaks, words echoed in the small confines of the room, tone rising and falling, half in and out of shadow.
“Cort isn’t here. Residual heat analysis shows he left half an hour ago.” It’s impossible to tell where his voice originates from. Only twin blue eyes shine out at Helen from that unreadable face. She sighs, disappointed, and starts around the register. If Cort isn’t here, she'll just grab the damn thing herself. He’s sure to have stored it away somewhere, but she can’t help but think how hard this will be without him. Cort knew the place like the back of his hand, hell, had been living here for the last forty odd years, but gazing at the piles of scrap metal and half-repaired burners, a veritable maze of circuitry and spare parts and old memories, a creeping feeling of quiet resignation envelops her. Argus, still unreadable, sets the pyramid back down on the dusty windowsill, and strides across the room to join her, the near-silent whir of servo-mechanized joints the only sound heard in the still air. His footsteps unsettle dust from a faded red carpet; an electric fan switches on somewhere deep within his chest, filtering it out of the air.
She sighs, running her hands along the edges of shelves in the clustered back of the shop, holding fingers up to the filtered light, dirt coating the quivering tips, dust motes swirling between them. For a minute, she is a girl again, propped up on the top of the store-counter, Cort handing her toys and new projects; her own hands, small and unlined, tracing smooth edges, captivated by the way the winking overhead lights and pale-blue holo-signs play with shape and color, glowing and brilliant, her uncle’s smiles melding with her own girlish laughter.
The rapid tick of an outdated register: an old, clunky, disarrayed thing Cort refused to give away. The shuffle of age-worn, musty books on the second to last shelf along the west wall, propped up by a broken suspensor (covers cracked, spine bent; one, her favorite, has a sleek futuristic-ship set against a sea of stars). A half-collapsed Plasik-box full of vinyl records, a second sturdier box of thin magazines and clipped news articles balanced delicately on top. Music whispering beneath the shop doors, heard distant from the central plaza; dozing off to the soft sound, dreams of singing metal birds and beautifully exotic moons. For a minute, she is no longer in her Uncle’s shop. She is breathing, no, living the past. The illusion fades with the gentle grasp of a familiar wired hand. She thinks she is still daydreaming, looking up at dual stars, burning blue-white in the ink-blackness of night, but the present grounds her. The disappearing sun is a reminder of when she is. Argus looks expressionless at her. She thinks she sees curiosity in his eyes, a warm afterglow that puts her further at ease. She is glad for his companionship.
Argus lifts his arm, dropping it to his side, and glides to a drawer hidden amid chaotic jumbles of loose paper and torn receipts. Opening it, his eyes flicker around the contents, and with a swift, exact motion he brushes aside hollow cartridges and frayed, grease stained cloth to reveal a thin radiant-white sliver. He picks it up between thumb and forefinger, and turns back to her. “Your uncle could use some assistance with…,” he gestures broadly at the entirety of the room. Her laughter fills the air, bright, brimming with joy. Argus makes as close as an approximation to a chuckle as possible; it comes out as an awkward series of jumbled mechanical notes. This makes her laugh harder. She smiles at him, and any moment of embarrassment is erased by its child-like joyfulness. He keeps this assessment to himself; he wonders if she knows that seeing her smile makes him immeasurably happy. He’s sure she does.
“Still a girl in many ways, I see.” His eyes shine brighter for a brief moment, playful.
“And you’re still as tall and as clumsy, you big clanker.” She says this affectionately, and gives him a mock punch to his upper arm. He’s known her for twenty years, and has yet to decipher the purpose of this gesture. Humans are difficult to understand at times.
He grasps her left hand, pulls it up to his, and places the sliver in her palm. Surprisingly, it is warm to the touch, unaffected by the cool drafts that eddy in corners and pool along the low, hidden currents of the part-strewn floor. Not metallic either: a chalky, bendable material that leaves a silver shadow wherever she moves it. The soft hiss of a calcine-pen ceases behind her, and she sees that Argus has already written a small note to Cort on a yellowed pad of paper.
“Not a holo-notice?” She asks, eyebrows raised.
“You know Cort, Helen. He’ll see the note before he gets the notice.” Argus answers, unfazed. She shrugs, reaches back out to Argus with the sliver.
“Could you hold this for me, Argus? We have one more place to be.”
Argus takes it accordingly; a slot, no bigger than a large pill, slides open on his middle digit, where he inserts the sliver and seals it.
They retreat back outside again, pushing open the rusting metal doors that have stood at the shop-entrance for over two decades now, her feet scuffing the chaotic blend of rough pavement and riveted walk-metal, Argus standing firm against the rushing wind. It passes effortlessly over his frame, but catches on her clothes. She brushes her hair aside, tightens her jacket around her, and starts off down the alley, Argus tagging closely behind. Whir. Whir. Whir. Nearby, halogen lights blink on, reflecting off of the gleaming structure of the rising street-alley walls.
Farther in the city, gunfire. Argus’s head points in the direction of the sound, but she is listening to something more distant. The sound of music, heard echoed from the empty plaza, stirs something inside of her, hums faintly with an unfound thought, and soon she is half-lost in memory, drifting in the dark beyond the stars.