Heart of Steel

by Jonathan Tolstedt

I’m awake.

I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who I am, for that matter.

I’m sitting on a bed of some kind, or maybe it’s more of a table. It’s dark in here, but a ray of sunlight slashes across the room through a broken blind on the exterior window. As my eyes adjust, I see someone else lying on an identical table a few feet away from me. 

They are dead, and have been dead for a very long time, from the looks of it.

I bring my hand to my mouth, trying not to gag, and hear a strange tink when my fingers touch my lips. I pull my hand back and look at it.

It’s metal. I don’t think it’s supposed to be.

A quick inspection reveals that the rest of me is metal, as well. I seem to be human in shape: two legs, two arms, two nicely shaped breasts, if I do say so myself. My metal fingers slide across my metal face, feeling lips, a nose, and two eyes. I don’t have hair, per se, but do have a metal covering there that approximates a hairdo.

I’m covered in brilliant stainless steel dulled by a thick layer of dust. Whatever I’m doing here, I’ve been here a while. The state of decay of my roommate confirms this. 

Although it’s hard to tell, the body appears to be that of a woman. Long, blonde hair puffs out around some kind of headset, and the tips of her fingernails are painted deep red. Both the hair and the nails have grown out since she passed away, adding to her grotesque appearance. Her lips are pulled back, exposing teeth in an unnatural grimace, whether from suffering or the simple mechanics of decay, I’m not sure.

“Who are you?” I whisper, shocking myself with the sound of my voice. It is feminine and rather pleasant. My metal lips move when I speak. My voice is slightly distorted, just a hint of a vibrational hum underlying the tones.

I look down at my deceased friend, and something about her seems familiar. I stand up slowly, testing the legs I’ve been given, and start toward the other table when something tugs at me, at the base of my neck. I reach up and find a cable connected there. I pull straight back and it pops out easily. I pull it around and examine it, realizing it’s a fiber optic cable.

I drop the cable and take another cautious step toward the corpse. I kneel, bringing my face close to hers. Reluctantly, I put a finger to her temple and push her brittle hair away from her face. 

“Natalie.”

I don’t know how I know her name. I must have known her, I suppose.

But, no, that’s not quite right, or at least not the whole truth.

I look back at the cable I just removed from my neck and trace its length up toward the head of my table and over the side. I duck and follow the cable into a bank of electronics against the wall. A second cable is connected to the machines there, and this one leads back to the headset worn by the dead woman. 

“Oh,” I say as something clicks into place in my head. “You were Natalie, but maybe not anymore. I think that job belongs to me now.” 

As I say it aloud, I sense the truth of it. This woman’s consciousness – or at least a part of it – was somehow transferred into me. But why? And why can’t I remember anything?

I wonder briefly if the answer can be found inside the machines in the room, but then dismiss the idea. There’s no power. I suspect the machines have been dead at least as long as Natalie. I make my way across the small room to the door and find it unlocked. I open it, then turn back to the woman, saying my goodbyes. 

I walk out into what appears to be an abandoned office building. There are a few overturned chairs, a broken lamp, but the building seems relatively intact. I try to inhale, to take in the scent of the place, but then remember I have no lungs. As I consider this, though, something inside my head makes a small click. I feel air being pulled through my nostrils and passed through some inner workings within my head. A sensor suite?  

I detect dust, plant spores – and death. When I sense the stench of decay, my nostrils shut down quickly. Something hums inside me, purging the air I had sampled, slowly clearing the lingering smells. 

It doesn’t take me long to discover the bodies. There aren’t many – a man lying across a hallway, a woman underneath her desk – but those I do find are in even worse shape than Natalie. Something has been gnawing on them. I detect scratching sounds near the floor, in the walls, and imagine beady eyes sizing me up, trying to decide if I’m their next meal.

“Good luck biting through this, fellas,” I say, tapping my arm so it emits a ringing sound. 

I turn to continue my search when I’m startled by a face staring down at me.

It’s Natalie.

Not really her, not a person at all. A portrait, hung on the wall above me. She was beautiful in life, blond hair and piercing blue eyes. Beneath the portrait, a label reads, “Dr. Natalie McCann, President and CTO of Vitae Life Sciences.” Her full name is suddenly very familiar.

  I push forward and reach out to trace the smile in the painting, to follow the curve of her eyebrows. As I do this, I bring my other hand up and trace the same features on my own face. The proportions and contours are the same. 

Despite my metallic exterior, I was made in her image.

But why? What’s my purpose? Am I supposed to replace her somehow?

Something tells me I should go left.

At least going left will take me away from the bodies. I step over a fallen chair and head down a short hallway. The end of the hallway is hidden in complete darkness, and I fear what I will find there, but I keep moving forward. When I sense I’m near the end of the hall, light flares suddenly. There is a whirr in my head as my pupils narrow, preventing the sudden light from overwhelming me. I try to identify the source of the light, when I realize it’s me. A narrow beam is being projected from my forehead.

Well, that’s convenient. I have a headlight.

There’s an oak door at the end of the hallway, slightly ajar. A name is stenciled across the door in fading, one-inch, black letters, and I’m not surprised it says, “Natalie McCann.” 

This is her office. 

My office.

I know the answers I seek are inside, behind this door. I place my fingertips against the wood and push gently. The door swings wide and the beam of my headlight splashes across the room. A part of me doesn’t want to go in, for fear of the memories that will break free and overwhelm me.

‍ ‍On my desk.

I hear these words as if spoken aloud, from the stuttering memory she gave me. I push into the office. Natalie’s desk is immediately familiar. The stained and chipped coffee mug – a gift from her husband. The mason jar of mechanical pencils. A bracelet of wooden beads from the monks from her trip to Thailand. 

A file folder lies across her keyboard. Despite my growing dread, I walk around the desk and look down at it.

The folder is labeled “Kali.” 

The name, and its meaning, hit me hard. 

Kali is the Hindu goddess of destruction.

I pull out the chair and sit, taking the folder and pushing the keyboard back. I open the folder and take the first page in trembling fingers. 

I don’t read the whole page. I don’t need to.

Kali was a virus.

Feelings of overwhelming loss sweep over me. Without thinking about it, my hand reaches out and caresses the coffee cup on Natalie’s desk. I look up and read the words “Science Wiz” written in fading letters across its ceramic surface. 

Daniel. Her husband’s name had been Daniel.

I keep reading, each new page opening a corresponding section of memories within me. Kali had been a pandemic engineered in a bio-weapons laboratory. I feel Natalie’s fury – her helplessness – rising in me.

Humans did this.

‍ ‍We did this.

I’m suddenly thankful I‘m incapable of vomiting.

Vitae Life Sciences had been trying to develop a vaccine for the virus, but Kali worked fast. I place a hand over my metallic chest plate, feeling a phantom ache where a human heart should be. Memories of Daniel in quarantine, his voice breaking as the blood in his veins begins to thicken. It took only four days from his first symptoms until he gasped Natalie’s name and died reaching for her.

It had moved so fast, and slipped through all the barriers. Masking and quarantine had been ineffective. There were no documented survivors.

Not one, no matter how hard Natalie had searched.

Natalie had realized that there was no way to stop Kali in time, especially now that she’d been exposed. She had to make a significant shift in her thinking. 

I close the folder and sit back.

Natalie had run out of time. I remember the moment Natalie realized she was going to die. I remember her feelings of utter failure.

We had lost.

And yet, she’d built me anyway. She lives on through me, but for what purpose? My headlight switches off, and I sit there in darkness for several moments, reliving the feelings of failure and depression and loss all over again.

Then my headlight pops back on as a new memory cuts through the despair like a sword.

‍ ‍The Vaults.

There were vaults. Somewhere below, in a basement or substructure. Something important is hidden behind their thick doors.

I stand quickly, shoving the desk violently to the side. I run toward the still open door of the office (my office) and back down the hallway. I wasn’t thinking anymore; I was acting on instinct, letting Natalie drive. As I return to the main office area, I turn left (no, the elevators won’t work), then spin back to the right. I leap over a half-eaten corpse and find the stairs to the lower level. I take them two at a time until I come to a door at the bottom. The door is labeled “Sublevel 1.” It’s locked, but I yank hard and tear it open.

Though this level is in near perfect darkness, I douse my headlight. As I do, my eyes adjust and lock onto two small points of red in the distance, like the eyes of a demon. Status lights. I knew the vaults would be there. I run toward them, feeling my heart race (you don’t have a heart). I remember this place. 

I built this place.

The vaults had existed before Kali had swept across the world. They had been part of the lab’s original purpose. 

I stop abruptly, only feet from the twin vaults, a sudden realization hitting me. 

‍ ‍I had been part of the lab’s original purpose. Not Natalie, but this robotic form that contains her memories – as well as what may be the last hope of humankind. I had existed years before the virus. I was Natalie’s child, in more ways than one. She had built me, and everything that remained of her was inside of me.

I only hope it was enough.

I turn my headlight back on and approach the twin vault doors. There’s a scan plate built into each door, sized for a human hand. I raise the only hand I have – a stainless steel one – and press it against the plate on the closest vault.

After an excruciatingly long pause, there’s a hiss and the vault door cracks open. I feel frigid air seeping through the crack and the lenses of my eyes fog over. I take a step back as the door swings past me, wiping the fog away.

I’m not sure what I’m looking at.

There’s a deep hum beneath the floor – possibly a power source or generator that keeps this place going. Fluorescent lights flicker to life, illuminating a back wall filled with metal cylinders. Frost creeps up the cylinders as the outside air swirls around them. Corrugated hoses criss-cross the room, circulating what I suspect is liquid nitrogen. 

I enter and walk toward the back wall, switching off my headlight. I touch one of the cylinders with a finger, then yank it back. I try to stick the finger in my mouth to warm it, then remember I’m not the Natalie who had built this place. My skin will not freeze.

What are they, Natalie?

‍ ‍You know what they are. It’s why you were made.

I start to disagree with the voice in my head, then I realize I did know what they were. 

They were fertilized embryos. 

Natalie’s real children.

But what good are these now? There are no humans left. No hope. 

‍ ‍There is hope. There is you. 

The final memories fall into place, slamming into me like an asteroid. I stumble backward, catching myself on the wall as everything comes back. Something inside me, deep in my torso, begins to vibrate. I place my hands over my stomach and feel my midsection turning, spinning around. 

Opening, revealing an empty space perfectly sized to hold one of the metal canisters.

My God. 

‍ ‍This is what Natalie had been working on, long before the end of the world had commenced. Vitae Life Sciences had started as a fertility clinic. She’d been creating an artificial womb. 

No, I thought, shaking my head. I can’t do this alone.

‍ ‍You can, Natalie. You are me. And you are more than me. Everything I’ve ever known is inside of you now. But you are also an artificial intelligence, capable of so much more than I ever was.

But I’m alone. It’s too much to ask. 

It’s too much.

‍ ‍You’re not as alone as you think, Natalie. Don’t forget what’s in the second vault.

The second vault. 

I remember. 

I remember building them – Natalie building them – the Others. 

Dozens of robotic bodies like mine, empty vessels waiting to bring life into the world. They’d been meant to hold the memories of other women, other mothers, but there had been no time for the transfers required. 

They had no souls.

‍ ‍You will find a way, Natalie. 

***

‍ ‍I stand on a hill with Daniel, overlooking the community we have made.

‍ ‍He’s five now, the oldest of the children, but he is wiser than his years. He has seen too much for one his age. His thin frame is covered in scars. It was difficult to keep an eye on him and rebuild the world at the same time. 

‍ ‍He reaches and takes my hand, and I cherish his warmth in my cold metal fingers. I’ve promised him I’d find a way to cover the metal with something softer, more human, when I had more time. He always shakes his head and says, “No, Mommy. You’re perfect.”

‍ ‍The sun is about to set behind the skyscrapers.

‍ ‍“Okay, Daniel. I think it’s time. Signal the others.”

‍ ‍He looks at me and smiles excitedly. He has his mother’s blond hair and dimples.

‍ ‍He raises his free hand and waves down at the others. One of the Mothers raises her hand in acknowledgement, then squats in front of a switch panel. She reaches out and flips a series of switches. A deep hum rises in the distance.

‍ ‍A series of lights surrounding the community blink to life, one after the other. 

‍ ‍“It works, Mommy! It works!”

‍ ‍I bend down and take him in my arms.

‍ ‍“Yes, my love. We did it.”