The Restoration

A tunnel stood before him - ancient, crumbling, and overgrown with thick, fuzzy green vines. The old robot stepped forward and peered into the passageway. It was dark and humid; cobwebs dangled from the ceiling and sour-smelling peat carpeted the ground. Not far in the distance, he could see a faint light marking the end of the path - it wasn’t as long as he had remembered.

Lumbering forward, a warm breeze flowed from the narrow opening to greet him. He made his way, step by step, towards the point of luminosity in front of him. Memories flooded over him as he stumbled along. He remembered when this tunnel had been bright and welcoming - carved out of marble and lit on either side by dozens of sweet-smelling honeyed candles. The feeling of racing through the tunnel with a childhood friend, laughing as they ran out into the warm sunlight, rushed over him. He sighed at the bittersweet memory. He was so old now.

Emerging, a warm milky light filtered down through the dense forest canopy above and gently touched his cool face. He made his way to a strange, gnarled tree nearby and ran his fingers over a few faded words etched in the wood. They felt rough against his smooth, metallic hand. The tree held the names of his brother and sister - a memorial to those he had lost. He remembered when he carved this - it was a time now lost to the rest of the world. He had forgotten his own name years ago.

Moving away from the sad relic, his gears creaked painfully. He had been traveling for so long - hundreds of years now. He was ready to rest.

As he moved on through the greenery, the sun trickled down through the thick foliage and speckled the ground with flickering patterns and colors. Here and there, the forest moved with life. The robot smiled as two squirrels rushed past him - tussling over an acorn before losing it among the thick roots of an upturned cedar.

After a while, he came across a clear, icy stream. The mechanical man used to hate walking through water; all it ever did was rust his legs and joints. Now, though, he waded right in. He no longer cared what happened to him - the last of his kind.

As he trudged through the water, he could almost see the human children he used to care for splashing in the shallows. He had fond memories of his humans - they were the last few decent ones before the end. Reaching out, he tried to touch their faces, say goodbye one last time, but as he lifted his hand the illusion faded. All that was left was the little stream running ever on - a tiny sparkle in the darkness.

‘I suppose this is the only taste of the past I can have - rusted feet,’ he thought to himself.

The forest grew denser the further he went. Vines reached out here and there and grabbed at his knees, tripping him and making him stumble. Low branches punched and prodded him - scratching at his already beaten body. It was hard for the old machine to move through the undergrowth. He was more than twice the size of an average man.

Another memory flashed through his mind as he trodded along. He was young; newly built and full of excitement about the world around him. He was cutting down these pesky vines and trees - making way for civilization. After a few years, beautiful stone roads curved through the trees, and twinkling cities sprung up here and there to give light to the dark forest.

If only he could reach back to those days - the days when he was young and strong - the days when he had purpose.

After an hour of struggles, scratches, and falls, an opening formed in front of the tired old machine. Pulling his foot loose from one last root, he emerged into a small, brightly lit grove. In the very center lay a pile of rocks - the somber remains of a once homey cottage. Purple wildflowers and greenish, white-flecked vines grew thickly over the rubble. As the robot emerged from the woods, a family of deer pricked their ears and bounded into the undergrowth.

As he approached the debris, he spotted two decrepit, rusted robots partially hidden beneath rock and weeds.

“Hello, Brother. Hello, Sister,” he tried to say. His voice had died years before - the parts in his throat unfixable and irreplaceable. Instead of audible words, a mere breath flowed from his mouth to usher his greetings.

He smiled at them. They looked so peaceful in their old home. Tarnished, broken, lifeless for nearly a millennium - they were still beautiful in his eyes.

Reaching around his back, he grabbed the worn, stinking bag he carried around his shoulder and pulled out a short but heavy crowbar. If he could cry for what he was about to do, he would sob. If only he had been blessed to have been born a human, he would already be at peace beside his family. Instead, here he was, about to break the bodies of his most beloved siblings. He had wandered the earth for hundreds of years in search of the parts he needed. There was just one left - one piece he could find nowhere else. This was his final, desperate option.

Leaning down next to his brother, he shoved the sharp end of the bar into a crack in his chest and slowly pried him open. A vast array of decaying metal and frayed wires lay exposed before him; brown, earthy insects crawled among the shadows of the corpse.

The old robot began to search frantically for the last piece of the puzzle. It wasn’t there.

He could feel a scream forming in his chest. He had defiled the body of his brother for nothing!

Pushing the metal back down around the exposed circuits he stood, shakily. There was no need to check his sister’s body. If his brother’s heart had been stolen hers would be missing as well. He couldn’t bring himself to disturb her slumber for nothing.

These two were his last hope.

“You filthy humans,” he grumbled silently to himself. “If only you hadn’t taken the hearts you forged for us in your greed and desperation, maybe we could have prevented your destruction.”

Battered and full of sorrow, he turned and left his home behind one last time to begin the final trek of his journey.

It took nearly a week to reach the end of the forest. As the trees cleared, a massive city of ruins rose around him. Majestic, crumbling, and consumed by nature, it stood proudly in the middle of the wilderness.

Stepping over the debris of the city wall, he made his way along the barren streets. After the great war, the pavement was lined with bones. After a hundred years or so they crumbled and turned to dust. Dark creatures had long since moved into the abandoned structures - some big, some small. Demonic reincarnates of those long dead, they haunted the earth in a restless rage, wishing for something else to destroy now that the humans were gone. They stared at the old robot through empty windows as he moved along - screeching their distrust.

“I am not afraid of you, little devilish imps. I have nothing left to lose but my life.” The machine didn’t need words to express his disdain for the creatures - it was clear in every movement of his body.

At long last, he arrived at his destination. Beneath a sprawling oak tree in the center of the city, and leaning against a broken wall, sat a tiny, man-sized robot.

“Well my little friend, what do you say? I have the final piece of your puzzle,” he tried to say as he knelt before his creation. The old machine had pieced him together over the centuries with the remains of his oldest and closest friends - sometimes traveling for years at a time to find just one minuscule component. Now he had just one thing left to do. If it didn’t work, all hope would be lost.

He carefully opened the chest of his small counterpart and paused - preparing himself for what he was about to do. Reaching into a hole in his side, he pulled open his own chest. He looked down at his old heart. It had been fashioned from a heart-shaped locket that still held the photos of his human family. It was an unconventional heart. Maybe that’s why he felt such a passion to survive.

Reaching into himself, he grabbed hold of this mechanical gem and pulled it from his body. Immediately his systems began shutting down. One by one the parts and gears of his body stammered to a halt, but he had just enough power to install this last piece.

Gently placing it into the body of the small robot, he quickly installed the heart. As he inserted the final wire he fell to the ground - the last of his systems shutting down. He forced his hand to move and turned his masterpiece on. A tiny blue light appeared and the old robot could hear the gentle rush of mechanisms beginning to move in unison.

He sighed deeply. It worked.

“Please, continue my work, young one. Use what I have given you, and restore life to those we have lost.” With this unheard statement, the weary robot breathed his last breath before finally succumbing to the nothingness.

Silence.

Then, the small robot opened his eyes. It looked around at the desolate city before its eyes fell on the old, lifeless machine. Unaware of the sacrifice that had been made, it stood and, turning, took its first steps towards the darkness.