Chapter 34 - Easter Island

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When the shuttle's iris opened, Cat looked around the landscape in wonder. "It's snowing!" She was hit by a veritable wall of heat and realized that the ambient temperature was too high for the white flakes to be frozen flakes of water. "What is this?" She asked her travel companion.

"Ash." Bentley replied. "The average temperature has risen by as much as 35 percent in these parts, plus all the water evaporated in the atmosphere. Nothing to temper the Earth's molten core from flaring up. The volcanoes in this region are almost all active and are threatening to engulf this whole region under a burning layer of molten lava. As a result, they are throwing a record amount of ashes in the atmosphere."

"We not only wasted Mars, our planet, but it seems we wasted Earth too." She looked around the dead city. The streets covered with a thick layer of ashes. Not a soul in view. The only sign of disturbance was the displaced ashes from the shuttle's landing. No animals, no life whatsoever. Just ruins buried under inches of soot. "What insanity compelled us to act like this?"

"What is done is done, don't waste your time on the past. Humans waged war before and they will again. It's in your nature." Bentley said flatly.

"Bentley, sometimes you depress me. What now? Where are we going?" Cat asked him curious.

"We take a transport to the edge of the sea and we embark on an ekranoplan. It's a six-hour flight from here."

"An ekranoplan?"

"It's a ground-effect vehicle that is designed to attain sustained flight over a level surface by making use of ground effect, the aerodynamic interaction between the wings and the surface. It's part of my mother's fleet here on Earth."

Cat wiped her goggles with the back of her glove, she could see a wheeled vehicle coming their way leaving a gigantic cloud of dust in its wake. "What the hell? A wheeled transport? A bizarre plane that takes forever to go to an island close by."

"The island is actually quite far away." Bentley remarked. "3700 kilometers approximately."

"You know what I mean, we just traveled 100 light-years in a little bit more than eight hours and now we got to spend another six for such a little distance in an ancient transport. Why is everything so old here?"

"Resources are scarce on Earth. Humanity is dedicating most of its resources off-world. My mother is financing most of this by herself."

"Knowing it doesn't make it more pleasant." Cat said sulking.

"Somehow, you'll survive." Bentley said, laughter coming from his metallic voice box.

On the way, in the bus and in the ekranoplan, Cat, kept pestering him with the universal impatient sentence.

"Are we there yet?"

Halfway to their destination, the otherwise patient Bentley lost his interest in her conversation and muted his audio sensors. Cat moodily resumed her observation of the rapidly passing ocean below her. It was so close, there was no way this was considered flying.

If a wave rose...

They were barely 13 feet above the surface of the water. Not helping with her white-knuckle flying, the thing was noisy and rattled badly. Cat was afraid the craft might disintegrate before they reached their destination. She hated Earth, everything was covered with dust and ashes, her environment suit with its itchy radiation-proof liner was pure hell. She was used to wearing protective space suits in the field. The Martians had refined them to be as light and durable as possible. This environment suit was older than she was. Counting her years in cryo. The breather was restricting the airflow going to her lungs. It was like breathing through a tube. She had to work her lungs hard to get oxygen in.

"Relax." A voice said. Like someone had just whispered in both her ears at the same time. She let out a little cry of fear, muffled by the breather mask and unheard by the robot with the deaf ears.

"Mina? You scared me!"

"Involuntary, I assure you Catherine. You seemed tense."

"This planet sucks."

"You don't need to speak out loud, just think the words dear."

"Oh! I hadn't realized I was doing it."

"Don't fight your protective clothing Catherine. It is a necessary precaution against your mother planet, your cradle if you will. It is reacting against the treatment it received by your hands. Humanity has mistreated her and she is rebelling. Would you not?" Mina said.

"You're talking about this planet like it is a person."

"Why not? The waves binds us all together. Are we not all made of stardust? We are all made of the same matter. Even I who is purely ethereal, do not escape this inevitable truth."

Catherine took a few calming breaths and smiled inside her breather. "Thanks for that Mina, I feel much better now. If this trip could end now I would feel a lot better."

Catherine got her wish 45 minutes later. When the craft touched the water, Bentley had to stop her from opening the hatch too soon. They exited the ekranoplan and Catherine jumped in the beach's weak and shallow waves. The heat was somehow more muted here. The ground wasn't covered with ash but the place was barren.

"What a depressing place." Cat commented.

"It's not as bad as the rest of this planet."

"What is it called? Do you know?" Cat asked the robot.

"Easter Island or Rapa Nui. Mother is here to save the great statues here. There are about 900 of them here and are called Moai I believe."

"Overachiever. You didn't need to quote Encyclopedia Britannica."

"Sorry. This beach is called 'Anakena', see this road to your right? Let's head for it. A transport will be here shortly."

"And these statues here?" Cat said pointing to the row of statues guarding the beach.

"Ahu Nau Nau. Those on your left are called Ahu Ature Huki."

"Wow. So she's here to save these statues?"

"Let's go to the road." They walked together. "Yes, mainly. My mother calls it philanthropy but I call it an obsession. She wants to save humanity's cultural artifacts and bring them to Aurora.

"Isn't that a good thing?" Asked Catherine.

"Not when it's twenty-four seven. It's unhealthy. She won't admit it but she's getting frailer with every year that passes."

"You're dreading her death." Cat realized.

"What? No!"

"You are. You just realized that she'll die someday."

"I... It is disturbing for me to think that my creator might die. That's all."

"It happens to us all the time when our parents die."

"Your parents didn't build you, she knows all my particularities. Who will replace her when she is gone? Don't get me wrong, she is insufferable and we don't get along very well but... She's the closest thing to a parent I have."

An ancient ground car stopped near them.

"Aw, you do care about her." Cat said, smiling behind her rebreather.

They got in, Cat saw the brand of the vehicle. Rolls Royce. It was very old and the fact that it wasn't sealed against the elements was proof of it. The car started towards their destination smoothly.

"That thing may be old but it feels like quality." Cat observed.

"2043 Rolls Royce sports utility vehicle. Six wheel drive and three water-cooled electric motors, totaling 1200 horsepower. My mother is rather fond of it." The robot said glum.

"A bit over the top in an old-fashioned way."

"Just like her."

"Hm." Was Cat's only reply. She watched the scenery pass by.

"Is this the island where people went extinct because they used up all the resources available to them?" Cat asked him.

"It's a bit more complicated than that, but basically, yes."

"And, typical of humanity, we didn't learn from this. Look at this planet now, radioactive, most of the water evaporated in the atmosphere, weather is all crazy, most life is dead, what's left of the oceans is so acidic that nothing lives there anymore except for some specialized bacteria."

"And here I was thinking that you didn't know anything about the Earth." Bentley said, his laughter made strange by his encased voice box.

"Oh, it's a required study for all Martians in school. It's to teach us about the mistakes made by the Mud... Earthlings. They loved to gloat over how bad the people of Earth had spoiled her and how good we were with Mars. The truth is that we could have done more with the terraforming of Mars. Martians chose to wage war instead, using precious resources that could have been used for the betterment of all Martians. Not a select few."

"Well said. But unfortunately for you wetbags, it's a bit late. Your family's agenda was always about achieving its goals through conquest. Not inclusion, but enforcing the 'them and us' idea. Instead of building a true Martian society, they created a tribe. Used a cast system. Defined its own people as either 'True Martians' or 'Neo Martians' for the proletarian majority. I'm sorry Kitty, but your way of life was doomed from the beginning."

"I... know."

"Don't feel so bad, everyone does it with robots."

"What do you mean? You feel like humans are mistreating robots?" Cat asked him.

"The site we're heading at relies heavily on robotic labor. You'll see what I mean when we get there."

"I noticed that there's a lot more now."

"Low population, high-risk colonization. It made sense to build more of my kind."

"Stupid woman, I told her to be kind to your race." Cat said seething.

"She is in her own way. But the other humans aren't as considerate as she is."

"Can't they see the danger? Robots are our superior in every way. One day, you robots will tower over us like we do over bugs. I just hope we don't give your kind a reason to step on us." Cat said.

"Amen to that Kitty." The robot said as the vehicle drove itself next to the airlock that seemed to serve as the main entrance for a six-piece modular building.

Cat looked at more of the gigantic statues lined up close by. "These guys give me the heebie-jeebies."

"And yet, they are your cultural heritage; but I see your point." Bentley said.

They entered the unlocked airlock. Pressurized air, water and soap assaulted them in a brief but violent fashion.

"Ahhh! It's cold." Catherine complained.

"Wuss." A voice said from inside as the inner door opened.

"Jab?" Cat said hesitantly.

"Hey! What did I do to deserve name calling?" The voice said. Tiffy was waiting inside for them.

"Oh look, it's the maid." Bentley said.

"Now that is name calling. What happened to your eyes?" Tiffy replied.

"I think it becomes him." Cat said.

"Oh come off it. You're just saying that to flatter his naive ego. Bentley, I'm sorry but you look more and more like the help."

"I AM the help. I am a robot. Just like you, I might add."

"What do you suggest? I revert to a regular robotic body to prove a point? To display clearly that I'm a robot? A machine? Everybody knows I'm a robot. I have nothing to prove. Not to robot kind and certainly not to humankind." Tiffy said with barely hidden passion.

"Well, good for you. Me? I'm the freak. The experiment. Mother created me and as usual, she didn't think of the consequences. People look at me and they're scared of me. The robot with no failsafes. Humans are afraid I might turn on them."

"The Frankenstein complex." Cat interjected.

"Exactly. Maybe if I blend in..."

"Experimenting with your robotic nature is fine, but hiding? That's plain cowardly." Tiffy said scathingly.

"I'm afraid she's right." Cat said.

"Whatever." Bentley said, as he left the room for the gear room. Probably to remove his protective garments.

Cat removed her breather mask and laid it on the table nearby. It was covered with legal forms of all kind in different languages. Cat observed them with a practiced eye before Tiffy could shut down the table's display and make them disappear.

"Legal troubles?" Cat asked her.

"Jab is having difficulties with the people who stayed here on Earth. They don't want her to take away those artifacts to Aurora." Tiffy said.

"Those creepy statues?"

"Not only them. She had a ton of trouble when she did the Louvre in Paris. Egypt, South America too and don't get me started on China. When legal means are exhausted, some revert to violence."

"Why is everything so complicated?"

"I see now why you and Bentley are such a perfect match. You two are the most naive people I know."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"It wasn't meant as one flesh and bones."

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