Gaia's Brethren

                Mondo stood in the center of the finely polished, sterile room.  Hundreds of cords and plugs ran up and down his body, plugged into a number of input and output orifices; he was collecting his daily charge.  Electricity hummed in the air as his mechanical eyes moved behind his mechanical eyelids.  If robots could dream, this would be the time for it.  Instead, images and words scrolled across his onboard computer chip.  It was the field report from yesterday.

         Mondo sensed a switch being flipped and he felt the current from the generator cease to flow through his fiber network.  “Charge complete,” he heard a monotone voice say over the intercom.

         Mondo opened his mechanical eyelids and was faced with two engineers.  He opened his mouth in a mock yawn and stretched his joints.  His body creaked and groaned, his bolts threatening to pop out of his sockets.  Mondo was the oldest model of his generation, and soon his metal body would be sent to the great recycling room down the hall, but for now he would have to deal with stiff joints and short circuits. 

         “How are you feeling today, Mondo?” the shorter of the two engineers asked.

         “Just fine, thank you,” Mondo replied.  “I read over the field report from yesterday.  It says there was a collapse in sector Alpha Zulu.”

         Both engineers nodded.  “That’s right.  The mining auger drilled too far, disrupting a pocket of air and causing a massive pressure blast.  We report thirty casualties with another seventeen injured and at least twenty missing.  Was the mission profile uploaded completely?”

         Mondo’s neck creaked as he moved his head from side to side.  “Sorry guys, these old data systems aren’t what they used to be.  I’ve been dealing with a lot of short circuits lately.”

         The short engineer pulled out a small computer and plugged it into the port on Mondo’s arm.  If robots could feel pain, the feeling of electricity running through his arm would have sent him into shock.  Instead, his internal wiring gave him a feeling similar to being tickled with a feather.  His computer chip booted up and the mission brief flashed in front of his mechanical eyes. 

         It was a search and rescue mission.  Mondo hadn’t been involved in search and rescue since his inception so many years ago.  He hated search and rescue.  The outcomes were almost always saddening, not to mention, when he was human, he had a serious problem with claustrophobia.  Some of his human quirks had been encoded and downloaded with him when he was inserted into his suit of armor.  Claustrophobia had hitched a ride on the data highway. 

         Mondo used to be known as James Hanthorp, creator of the suit he was now trapped in.  He was the head engineer for a mining company when he developed the suit.  It was originally made as a robot, created to do the dangerous mining for the humans.  When the unions picketed the new invention, the idea was scrapped and James was sent packing. 

         James took his creation to a new level.  He worked in secret, became a shut-in, and dabbled in DNA-alloy meshing.  Mondo was the result.  James had taken his own DNA, coded it, and combined it with a circuit board.  The computer inherited all of James’ memories and thoughts, his knowledge, and his fears and hopes and dreams.  James Hanthorp had become artificial intelligence. 

         The door to Mondo’s keeping room opened and Mondo was given access to the rest of the compound.  Hundreds of feet below him was a labyrinth of coal catacombs.  Far off to the east were the caved in tunnels of sector Alpha Zulu.  Mondo was going there today.  The area had been secured by smaller, less intelligent safety bots, and Mondo was given the go ahead to begin the search and rescue operation. 

         He took the elevator down into the bowels of the earth.  It creaked and moaned in protest at the gross amount of weight it had to charter to the bottom of the pit.  Mondo tried his best to whistle, but there was no air coming into or out of his metal body.  He had no lungs, not to mention lips, therefore, whistling was impossible.  Oh, how he wished he could still whistle!

         Moments later he had arrived in the coal mines.  They were abandoned; work being called off until Mondo had completed his work.  Being the brains and the brawn, Mondo required no aid in his mission.  He was quite happy to be alone; he found that when others were around he became self conscious and constantly worried what others were thinking or whispering. 

         His body clunked as he crouched to make his way through the slender tunnels.  More than once, he brushed against roof braces and the ground around him threatened to come tumbling down.  He forced his body to his hands and knees and crawled through the tunnels to keep from doing any more damage.  Why oh why didn’t they make these tunnels bigger?

         Finally, Mondo had arrived at his destination.  Sector Alpha Zulu was littered with bits of rock and machinery.  The roof had caved in; burying the huge auger and God knows what else under the debris.  Slowly he began to pull away the huge boulders.

         “Hello!  Is anyone alive down here?” he called.  His voice was cold and mechanical.

         Mondo knew if he was in peril and he heard a voice like his calling out to him, he would rather perish than find out what it was trying to save him.  His own generated voice scared him.  He always vowed one day to get a real-time voice installed.  The opportunity just never presented itself. 

         There was no answer to his calls, and soon he had removed all the debris from the tunnel.  There were a few human bodies buried under the dirt and coal.  They were covered in soot and blood.  Mondo turned his head, shading his eyes from the death.  If he could vomit, he would have.  Instead, he looked away to avoid the strange out of body experience.  He dearly wished he could be all human or all robot.  Being part of each gave him strange sensations he had never been able to explain or deny.

         It was the hole in the tunnel wall that grabbed his attention and pulled his mind away from the human feelings.  It was a massive hole, bigger than Mondo was round, and dark.  It wasn’t black like a void, but dark, like night.  A breeze blew through it.  It carried the scent of lilac and jasmine, which was strange because Mondo was deep under the Earth’s crust in a tunnel of black lung causing coal. 

         Slowly, Mondo approached the hole in the dirt and coal.  He heard an animal cry and then an owl hoot.  He cocked his metallic head like a young dog trying to understand its master.  What was going on?  As he got closer, Mondo noticed a slight light emanating from somewhere on the ceiling on the other side of the hole.  If he could breathe, he would have choked on his breath at what he saw. 

         Emerging from behind the clouds was a moon, full and bright.  The light from the moon reflected off a watery surface and gave the whole area a magical glow.  A massive meadow lay behind the hole, the green of the grass was as dark as emeralds and the white and pink flowers glittered like diamonds.  Swirling in the sky were thousands upon thousands of fireflies with blue and green and yellow lights. 

         Mondo’s childlike wonder got the best of him and he had to investigate further.  He hadn’t felt excitement since he was a human, and he had forgotten what it felt like.  He was determined to make the feeling last.  Mondo pushed his massive body through the hole and dropped to the ground on the other side with a thud.  He stood and brushed off the bits of dirt and grass that stuck to his bolts and joints.

         “Amazing,” his mechanical voice said.  It didn’t fit in with the surroundings.  He was an unnatural beast in a very natural world.  He covered his mouth, cursing himself for nearly ruining the harmony of the atmosphere.

         He walked under the moonlight of the strange new world, the beams twinkling off his iron body.  He clunked as he walked; and if he could wince, he would have at all the racket he was making.  Mondo came to a lake situated in the center of the meadow.  Lilly pads and lotus flowers grew along the bank, scenting the air with a sweetness Mondo only wished he could smell.  His sensors told him it smelled beautiful, and he was dismayed that he couldn’t enjoy one of life’s little pleasures. 

         He stuck his metallic hand in the water, causing ripples to form on the watery surface.  He looked at his distorted reflection, trying to recall what he looked like as a human.  He was never good with faces, and now his own eluded him.  He smacked the water with his bulky hand and sent waves lapping against the bank of the lake. 

         “Hey!  Just what is the meaning of this?”

         Mondo nearly jumped at the sound.  The voice was mousy and musical. 

         “Who’s there?” he asked.

         Mondo heard a small splash of water.  He looked down near his hand that still rested in the water.  A tiny little bug was clinging to his index finger.  Mondo lifted his hand; the little creature clung to his finger for dear life.

         “Whoa! Stop it!” the voice called again.

         As Mondo raised his hand closer to his face, he saw it wasn’t a bug that was talking to him; it was a little pixie.  She was drenched from head to toe, and shivering slightly.  The little fairy creature pulled herself up so that she was standing on Mondo’s finger, perched there like a finch.

         “What are you?” he asked.

         “Not so loud!” the pixie screamed back.

         Mondo was put off by the creature.  He remembered reading books as a child about mythical fairies.  They were kind and sweet and joyful.  This pixie was nothing like what he had read.  She had small translucent wings that reminded him of a dragonfly, and her hair was white and flowed down around her body.  She held an anger in her voice that would have shook Mondo to his bolts had she been much larger. 

         “Sorry,” Mondo whispered.  “Who are you?”

         The pixie wrung the water from her hair and shook herself dry.  “My name is Celeste, if you must know.” She rapped on Mondo’s finger, the sound of a hollow shell echoed back.  “What are you?”

         Mondo thought for a moment.  There was no easy way to explain to this creature what exactly he was.  He settled on giving Celeste his name.  “I’m Mondo.  What in God’s name is this place?”

         The pixie snickered.  “Not God.  Well, not that god anyway.  This is Gaia.”

         “Like Mother Nature?”

         “Sort of.  It’s hard to explain.  This is where Gaia lives.  Hey, why are you here?”

         Again, Mondo had no clear answer for Celeste.  “I came through a hole,” he stated simply.

         The fairy marched along his finger and pointed one of her own into his nose.  “You woke me up!  What’s becoming of this world when a tired pixie can’t take a nap on a lily pad?”

         “I’m terribly sorry about that,” Mondo replied.  “I didn’t know anyone lived here.”

         “Well, I do.  And many others like me.”

         Mondo sat quietly for a while.  He stared out at the vastness of the realm he had stumbled upon.  Celeste had flown from Mondo’s finger and found a new perch on his shoulder.  She too looked out at the Realm of Gaia, but with very different eyes.

         “What are those fireflies there?” Mondo asked finally.

         “Souls,” Celeste answered, matter-of-factly. 

         “Souls?”

         “Yes.  When living creatures die, they are returned to Gaia.  They come here, their lights bringing joy and happiness to this place.  They are Gaia's brethren.”  Celeste looked to Mondo.  “I can’t feel your soul.”

         “I’m not so sure I have one,” Mondo replied.  “I was human, once.  Science has proven a winner to the world out there.  I’m not so sure anyone has a soul anymore.”

         “Everyone has a soul.  If you are human, you have a soul.”

         “But I’m not,” Mondo insisted.  “I’m a matrix of human cells inlaid with alloys.  I’m artificial.”

         Celeste thought for a moment.  “You said you used to be human?”

         Mondo nodded.  “I created this thing I am trapped in.  All of my thoughts and memories are contained in a computer chip in this iron suit.”

         “So, what happened to your human body?” Celeste asked.

         “I don’t really want to talk about that,” Mondo replied.  He conjured up the images of his human body’s demise.  He wished deeply to feel the pain and remorse his processors told him he should be feeling.  If robots could cry, he would be a burbling mess.

         His human form could not take the enigma of existing as two wholly different beings and he had killed himself not long after his DNA had been injected into the metal alloys.  Mondo mimicked a sigh, his chest rising and falling deliberately, but no air went in and no air escaped.

         “My soul may be here,” Mondo said finally.  “My human form perished long ago.”

         “No, I don’t think so,” Celeste said.  “If that were the case, then you would cease to be.  You say you have memories and thoughts.  Those cannot exist without a soul.”

         Mondo was becoming frustrated.  He was having a deep spiritual debate, and all his data-crammed mind could do was try and make sense and numbers from it all.  He wanted to feel the passion of the conversation, but instead it was reduced to logic. 

         “What’s wrong?” Celeste asked him, sensing a disturbance emanating from his iron suit.

         “I can’t feel anything,” Mondo replied.  “Inside, I know I should be feeling sadness, or pain, or happiness; I should be feeling something.  But the computer part of me won’t allow it.  It’s aggravating, although I can’t even feel that, I only know that I should feel it.”

         Celeste’s eyes widened.  “Your soul IS in there!”

         “What do you mean?”

         Celeste rose and began to walk along Mondo’s leaden skin.  “It must be the iron.  Yes!  That’s why I can’t feel your soul.  It’s blocked by this unnatural material!” Celeste stomped her foot on the iron, trying to get a better understanding of it.

         “What are you doing?”

         “I can get you out,” Celeste replied.  “Would you like to be free?”

         “Oh yes!  So much so.  I’ve wished for it so many times.”

         Celeste took to her wings so that she hovered in front of Mondo.  “You won’t be human anymore,” she said.  “You’ll become one of these fireflies.”

         If he could smile, he would be grinning from ear to ear.  “Can you really do it?  Free me, I mean.”

         Celeste clapped her hands and rubbed them together.  “I think so.”

         “Then do it!  I don’t want to not feel anymore.”

         “Okay, first you have to detach yourself from the tangible,” Celeste said.

         “How do I do that?”

         “Try and think of a really happy, really incredible memory.  Think of something that made you feel alive.”

         Mondo looked at Celeste.  She could read the confusion from the metallic eyes.  “It’s like when people die, their whole life flashes before their eyes; except it’s only the happiest, most amazing memories they have that they see.  Do that.”

         Mondo concentrated hard.  He conjured up images of his childhood.  His childhood puppy, his sister and parents all at the beach that warm summer day, and his best friend in the whole world all danced before his eyes.  Next came school.  He saw himself at graduation.  He saw his first love, her auburn hair blowing in the breeze as they drove around in the convertible with the top down.

         He felt a strange sensation.  His body was being lifted away from the clunky metal suit, only there was no body.  He felt himself being stretched and compressed all at the same time.  The memories came faster.  His wedding, his new baby.  He remembered their deaths, but it wasn’t a bad memory any longer. 

         As his body got lighter and lighter, he actually sensed his former wife’s presence, then his son’s presence.  As quickly as the memories flitted by him, they were gone.  He could not hold on to any of them for any length of time, but it didn’t bother him that they were disappearing.  He didn’t need them any longer. 

         “It is done,” he heard Celeste say.

         When he opened his eyes again, the clunky metal body laid on the grass, lifeless.  Mondo was freed from his torture.  He was no longer Mondo, nor was he James.  He no longer had a body or a memory; he simply was.  As his blue light danced under the moon of the Land of Gaia, he couldn’t remember when he had felt such ecstasy and bliss.  He joined the swirling mass of fireflies in the sky, finding the essences of all that he knew in life.  He was content to glide in the air forever, and if he could speak, he would have shouted to the world of his utter freedom.