You can read The Keeper Pt 1 here.
II. Mother
Sonny walked back to his vehicle, a floating bike-like device that hummed deeply as it sat there. He placed his collections from the various places he had traveled in a compartment beneath the seat, climbed on, floated about fifteen feet off the ground and took off at immense speeds. By forests, and overflowed rivers; through overgrown towns, old highways, and ruined cities. Off the coast of the continent and over the dark ocean he sped toward his destination. A place Mother has deemed Atlantis.
A large spherical building rose out of the ocean that spun a large opening toward Sonny. He entered it and stopped in a large dome shaped room with the walls, from where they met the floor and to the center top of the building were rows of small boxes, lights flickered on them. Directly in the center of the domed roof a long mechanical arm extended and at its end is a wide oval shaped face with a light that bounced back and forth, like Sonny’s. Below its face were six arms, each with its own purpose, meant to interact with the environment. This is Mother.
Sonny got off of his vehicle and walked up to Mother while he rummaged through his bag for the spherical object he found in the rubble. He held it out to Mother and said in a low mechanical voice, attempting to hide his curiosity with stoicism, “I found this after receiving a memory. What is it?”
Mother took it from him with her long clawed arm and scanned it for a moment. She turned it over and then turned it back up, with precision, allowing the scene to take place again. The claw lowered back to Sonny’s hand and gave the device back to him. After a moment of silence Mother replied, “Another relic for your collection. It is called a ‘Snow Globe.’ Humans would make this to own as an item of fascination for the cold season. What was the memory?”
Sonny placed the Snow Globe back in his bag and plugged into a database module connected below Mother. She projected the scene of the boy that Sonny had experienced just hours before. . Mother commented on the event taking place, “A celebration of the season, a religious holiday, famous in its day.” Sonny watched on as the scene of the lovely couple appeared to them. “Humans do enjoy their sights don’t they?”
“Yes, Mother. They were very happy.” Sonny walked over to an end of the building where a few other objects had been piled up and laid his bag down in front of it. He returned to Mother and watched as she lifted herself up to a database module high on the ceiling and inserted the information he had just transmitted.
Sonny stood there computing his options for a moment, he then raised his hand with only the index finger pointing upward, a human ritual to indicate inquisitive behavior that he once observed in the Chronosphere. “Mother have you ever observed the setting of the sun?”
“I have observed Sol’s movement pattern 11,402,038 times, never with my own scanning apparatus but through your own and through the recordings of old data modules and that of which the chronosphere has shown you. They are all the same. Ultraviolet lights piercing through the atmospheric layer and scattering the light molecules. Your internal data banks should be able to determine that yourself, S-Zero-One-One-E.” Mother continued to work as if the conversation were an inconvenience.
“That is not what I mean Mother,” Sonny responded, making a fist, attempting to convey that human emotion of annoyance. “I mean, have you ever felt the…” he paused for a moment to consider the options of words he had heard or felt humans describe the setting sun as, and with a grand gesture he finally said, “the majesty of creation?”
“I do not feel. I scan and become informed of the things presented to me.”
“But that’s not good enough! You must open the door and look upon the…”
“S-Zero-One-One-E, I do not have the care for your circuit malfunctions. The Creator may have made you faulty for his purposes but your simulated dreams are nothing but that which gets in the way of the order of things. We are collectors of knowledge and information. We have two functions; Primary: Learn all there is to learn of the Creator’s people to preserve their memory and Secondary: Learn the truth about what caused their extinction. Now allow me to record the data provided, without your speculations. Return to your charging port and be on your way into the wilderness again.”
Sonny was silent. Mother didn’t understand human emotions, the chronosphere never worked here on the platform, even when he attempted to start it up, and Mother was never interested in using it herself. She theorized that the human emotions that Sonny feels are just the way he was wired by the creator to simulate the expected emotions, but to Sonny they felt more real, more human.
He moved over to the charging port and plugged himself in and powered down. It is in this state that Sonny experienced yet another phenomena, Dreams. Mother always explained them away as memory system malfunctions or latent information that had needed processing from the chronosphere data collection events. But Sonny ran the diagnostics, all his systems that would run these codes were properly shut down and not firing, it was something else.
His dreams either were of himself walking the wasteland and seeing the things lost to mankind or of him as one of the people he once experienced in the chronosphere events. The particular one he had this evening was different.
He was in that place with the giant statue and the obelisk and the setting sun. People were there too. Humans, the same ones as before. Most ignored him and continued on with their day but some saw him and looked at him weirdly. Sonny looked up and saw the happy young couple, the young man, who he once was, and the young girl, who he once loved. The emotions flared up in him for a moment. He turned to see the setting sun with his own “eyes” and his own “feelings.”
It was a marvelous sight. Its beauty and its splendor as it fell beyond the horizon. But he was still there and now something was different. The sky turned a dark crimson red and a noise, like the scraping of metal and a blast of trumpets played all at once across the whole city, louder than all the other sounds. Everyone stopped and looked at Sonny, and began to scream.
Thousands of orbs of purplish light appeared to be flying towards people. One orb swept down and connected with the first person, turning them into dust. The people started to scream and run away from this chaos, but one by one the orbs got them, turning them all to dust. Terror flared up in Sonny, a feeling he’s never felt before. He turned back to see the young couple, just as he lays his eyes on them they too become dust. Then an orb floated directly in front of Sonny, almost as if it were inspecting him and then flew into him.
