Like a Brick
.. as Gumby becomes partly useful …
Crawling slowly after a trail of footprints in the dust, propelled through blazing agony by little more than stubbornness, dragging the dead weight of this dying body with just one good arm and a half-functioning leg … I couldn’t help wondering what I ditto deserve this.
My aim was to chase Beta, to catch the basdit before this body of mine dissolved, to thwart his evil scheme—whatever it might be. And if that proved to much to ask? Well, then, maybe I could inconvenience him a little. By biting him around the ankles, if nothing else.
All right, it wasn’t much of a plan. But my other motivation, curiosity, which had kept me going for two grinding days, didn’t serve anymore. I no longer cared about the secret struggle among three geniuses—Beta, Kaolin, and Maharal—only that they all must think they were rid of this cheap green copy by now, and damn if I wasn’t going to show them otherwise!
Anyway, that’s how it felt as I crawled past the main part of the old vacation house and into the mountain, following Beta’s footprints across the uneven floor of a cave … a natural limestone grotto that must have attracted Maharal to build here in the first place, erecting his cabin over the entrance, then using the cavern to establish a clandestine scientific redoubt.
Glowbulbs cast long shadows across stalactites and other drip features that shimmered along their dewey flanks. Water beads glistened as they fell. If my ears were functioning, I’d surely have heard a rhythmically pleasant plinking as the drops struck cloudy pools. One sound did penetrate, a low vibrations I felt through my belly while creeping across the
stone floor, growing more intense as I pursued Beta’s trail downward at a shallow angle … easier for me than climbing, I suppose.
Soon I passed by a wall that had been chipped and smoothed by human hands. My good eye glimpsed figures, etched in the rocky face by strike-flaking, one chiseled nick at a time. Petroglyphs, incised by some long-ago native people who deemed this cave a sacred place of power, where nature’s forces might be implored and miracles invoked. Humanoid shapes with sticklike arms and legs brandished spears toward rough-drawn beasts—simpler dreams, but no less ambitious or sincere than anything we hope for today.
Let me thrive and prevail, the magic on the wall beseeched.
I agreed, amen.
For about a hundred meters there weren’t any more distractions. Dragging myself along with one arm and a bad leg became so normal, I found it hard to recall any other mode of existence. Then, blinking in confusion, I found myself confronting a decision: a fork in the trail.
Left—a small niche room contained humming machinery. Familiar mechanisms, a freezer, imprinter, and kiln combination. Automated and ready-to-use.
Ahead—a well-lit ramp lunged downward, to the belly of the mountain. The vibrations came from there. It was also the direction taken by Beta’s footprints. The focus of big events. Probably the doctor’s secret lab, in all its glory.
I didn’t bother examining the third path, leading to the right. And upward, yuck. I had enough trouble deciding between just two options. Should I keep following Beta, or try something really daring?
The autokiln beckoned, its ready lights all gleaming the same color that I first wore when Albert made me long ago. It sure was a lot closer than trying to catch Beta by slithering after him. How alluring to contemplate swapping a ruined, expiring body for a fresh one!
Alas, there was no guarantee I could manage to pull myself onto the imprinting platform with just one arm and a bum leg, let alone fumble the controls correctly, setting golem-creation in motion.
Disadvantage number two: everybody knows that it’s non-warranty for a copy to try making copies. True, Albert was—or is—an excellent copier. But trying ditto-to-ditto using me as a template? At best a cheap frankie, now a complete ruin, how could I make anything but a mindless, shambling thing? Anyway, the exertion of reaching the perceptron platform would likely finish this body.
On the other hand, straight ahead lay a smooth downhill path to the center of all secrets …
That isn’t the way.
I winced. It was the damned external voice again. The bedeviling scold.
You may want to go right.
Upward.
It could be important.
Obstinate anger nearly overwhelmed me. I didn’t need a termagant hounding the last moments of my pitiful existence!
Oh, but perhaps you do.
And to my surprise, I realized something about the statement rang true.
I could not—and still cannot—explain what made me decide to accept that advice against all evidence and reason, abandoning two known options to invest all that I had left in a final daunting climb.
Perhaps it amounted to—why not?
Turning away from the tempting autokiln … and Beta’s hated footprints … I started to drag myself up the crude stairs.