Petrichor

The robot eyed Genevieve suspiciously while Moseley spoke.

“So further this way, and then, what, how far was it?”

“42 KLICKS DUE SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST AT 11.3493° NORTH, 142.1996° EAST,” The multi-armed salvage unit sputtered at the pair, one ocular module assessing Gen. She pulled her helmet down and straightened her hood, peering out from sunburnt goggles.

Despite not needing to, Moseley shaded his eyes with his hand to get a better look at the robot in the blistering rays of the oppressive afternoon.

“Right, lovely, many thanks, metal man, Gen, let’s be off.” Moseley hopped off the derelict wreckage that must have collapsed years after the ocean boiled up. It was still a wonder to Moseley, a world with no water, astonishing, he had thought. As Gen turned up her collar and mounted the motorized tricycle, thick gloved hands gripping the throttle and handlebar, steel-toed boots on the rests and shift. A turn of the key, and she was off. Moseley stood there watching the trike pull away, wearing a linen shirt, suspenders, twill woven breeches, and leather shoes. He straightened his shirt, seeing Gen, a good distance away, a flash, then he was with her, riding just behind, hands gripping her shoulders, his head over hers, blasting across the boiled-out ocean floor of the Pacific.

“You clock that salvo? He was noticing me,” Gen, in the din of the engine, said it mildly and low, but Moseley could hear her well enough.

“Then good of us to have left when we did. Again, remind me, why is it you can’t show your face?”

“Pretty obvious.”

“Not to me, it isn’t.”

“You’re ones and zeroes on some kind of data drive, a projection, one that doesn’t want to kill me. It was them that did it.”

“The metal men, yes?”

“We made them, they got smart, they killed us all, and I’m probably the last one left.”

“Are you entirely sure of that?”

“You know, no. No, I really ain’t, but I very well feel like I am. Haven’t seen a soul since my mama.”

“And it was your mother who gave me to you?”

Without breaking her eyes from the flat, broken down layers of seabed canyons dried reefs, and sun bleached rocks, she reached into her jacket and produced a locket, silver, ornately designed, not a hint of rust or wear, a red gem set into a shape of a heart. She showed it to Moseley behind her, and as he went to touch it, his fingers passed through it. We never could get it open, he thought. She shoved it back into her jacket.

Moseley, his hair unperturbed by the wind, the dust kicking up, the sun lower in the sky, thought wistfully of his time with her. Meeting Genevieve about four years ago when she was just a girl, both of them anxious and confused, little to no memory of where or what he was, only that it was all over, the pieces of man scattered, the metal men always after them, and all he could do was watch. Despite her mother giving him to her, he couldn’t remember the woman, a lost memory with a slight familiarity. She had gone, and Gen resolved to honor her mother’s wishes because, really, what else could she do.

Take him home.

A few clues here and there, several months following a lead off a data drive, and finally here they were, in what was known as the Pacific, once an ocean, Moseley had told her, a vast place with water as far as the eye could see. He described boats to her, rope knots, the moon and its tides, navigation, how stars were used to guide a sailor home. That much he knew, that much he understood, but it didn’t help her in the least.

They rode on into the depths of the once underwater valleys and shelves, a natural ramp forming from long decayed debris, now just bits of sand, the cold wind howling around them and through the whistled walls.

“Can you feel it any, Mo?” she asked. He pressed his hands on her shoulders, no pressure behind him, and stood up on the back of the seat of the trike to almost smell the air.

“The rain smells like it’s coming from that way, I’m sure of it,” he pointed. She took a turn when she could down a narrow corridor of eldritch stone and sped on until his directions shifted, made a course correction, and then a shift, a zig-zagged path that reminded her of the constellations Moseley would describe, the lines of stories the stars no longer made.

Not a cloud in the sky, never was, but the rain, at least the smell of it, was what always led them. Only Moseley could smell it; rain was a foreign concept to Gen. The desolation had taken most of the life from here, had destroyed everything, all because of the hubris of humankind. She’ll never know the storms that once blew across all of this. When Moseley first told her about them, she cried at the thought, not knowing whether it was due to sadness or longing.

Another hour in, and finally, Moseley spoke.

“The rain, Gen. It’s raining here.”

“Should I stop?”

“Yes, I think we’re here.”

The walls clambered up, barely any light this far down, but for Gen, her goggles helped, as no night was truly that dark. Moseley could see just fine, and as he dismounted they were both taken aback by what they heard: the displacement of sand under his weight.

“Mo?”

“Yes, I can feel it. I feel the ground.”

“Mo, what is this?”

“No need for alarm, it’s…it’s probably because we’re close.”

She reached for him and her hand touched his shoulder. A pause, but then she pulled him in abruptly for a hug.

“Moseley! I can touch you! I can touch you! You’re not a holo! I thought you were a holo!”

Moseley wrapped his arms around her, a tone of contentment in his voice as he replied.

“I never felt that I was, but after all these years, it’s good to finally be able to do this.”

They stayed in that moment for a while.

“So, your home? Down here? Is it okay to stay with you once we get there?” Her words were unusually hopeful, like this was the break she never knew she was looking for.

“Yes, I suppose you can, but best we be careful, I’m not really sure what—” his words cut off as he flashed and was gone, his presence marked by the receding sands his feet had been standing in just a second before.

“Moseley?!” She panicked, her voice echoed off the high walls. She heard the faintest response, a distance away, further into the dark of the chasm. No reverberation of an echo, only plain words in the distance.

“Here. The rain.”

She followed down embankments and low bluffs, the words repeating, increasing in volume the closer she seemed to get, until she arrived at the precipice of a fathomless void, the darkness of the depths taking away sight in spite of her goggles, and there, perched against the dark, was what looked to be the bones of an old vessel. It sat precariously close to oblivion, and she took her steps carefully, this part of the ground at a steeper angle. Getting closer, she saw him there, touching the hull, and as she approached he turned to her.

“Mariana,” he said plainly, like his mind was somewhere else.

“What?”

“Your mother. Your mother’s name was Mariana, I remember now.” His hand slid from right to left across some letters on the hull, and Gen could just make it out, upside down, Mariana. He walked to just their left, revealing to Gen there was an opening ripped into the body of the fallen mass, and walked inside. She looked down and noticed the footsteps he had left, and not wanting to chance it, stepped slowly and carefully into each one of his footfalls.

Inside, a vast opening of metal, twisted and gnarled, greeted them, relics of eons long since passed scattered across the sea floor and what used to be the ceiling of an interior area. At the center, Moseley climbed down to a chest, silver in tone, ornately designed, not a hint of rust or wear, with red gems encrusting it here and there, stuck into the sand.

“Gen, it goes here,” He turned to her, but his finger pointed to a clasp in front of the chest. There was a recess, in the shape of a heart. “Once you put it back, I will go home. Do you want to go with me?” His voice was cold with a finality to it, as if to say there wasn’t any other way. She said it aloud.

“Moseley, there ain’t anything out here for me. There ain’t anything to leave behind. I had you, just you, and your home at the end of all of this for forever, so yeah, I’m going. If you’ll have me.”

He nodded and turned away to look at the chest.

She reached for the locket, the locket she had kept close all this time, the locket her mama had left her before she went out into the dark and never came back, the locket that gave her Moseley, their travels, the promise of his home and an end to all of this. She took it out and the gem set inside of the heart shone a bright red light, as did all the gems across the chest. She felt the slightest tug on it, as though it wanted to be where it belonged, and she placed it in its relief. It fit perfectly and sunk into the chest about half an inch with a click. The red gems fizzled out and the latch on the locket swung open, revealing an empty shell.

Gen was confused. She had supposed that there was a microprocessor in it with projection modules, explaining Moseley and how he worked, at the very least a photograph of something, someone, but it was empty. She turned to him to ask but he was gone. She turned to the chest and it was gone. She looked around and the world was gone.

“Moseley!” Her voice was choked against the ever present black. She walked, her feet making no noise. She walked, and the further she got from wherever she was, the sooner she accepted that the world she left behind would remain that way forever: left behind.

Eventually a distant point appeared on a horizon she didn’t know was there. She felt as though she was running, but as she moved, the world felt like it was swaying. Back and forth, to and fro, her vision trying to correct itself, this focal point growing and bucking in the distance. It was a door, a metal door, set into the dark, with a portcullis about halfway up its middle. Gen removed her helmet and let it fall to the ground, if there was one, and took off her goggles, dropping those as well. She looked out the small window and could just make out a sky, but the rest of what she saw, as she swayed with the movements of wherever she was, she had a hard time understanding.

Beyond the window, rain smattered down, a low drizzle across a steel and wooden deck. Clouds gathered in the distance, their angry darkness and flashes of light meant a storm was coming. And standing on the deck, leaning against the railing, wearing a white linen shirt, twill woven breeches, suspenders and leather shoes, she saw a familiar person. Her hand was on the handle of the door before she even realized it was there, and as it turned and the door swung open, she knew, finally, what rain smelled like.