Chapter One

Lisa wandered through the bustling city, her wings hidden from view, navigating through the throng of people. She stared up at the towering buildings, frowning. There was something familiar about the surroundings, but she couldn’t put her finger on the specifics. The thoughts of the surrounding people started to trickle in, and the images she could see within others’ minds made her pause mid-step.

“Robots…” she whispered, looking around. Through the crowds, she saw two-wheeled carts – almost like taxis – being pulled by familiar green robots.

“Great Orion…” Lisa breathed. Memories from millennia ago surfaced: an attack from similar robots that left many dead, some injured, and one…

Her hearts skipped a beat. It had been a very long time since she’d thought about the poor man who had suffered a terrible breakdown after seeing the aftermath of a robot attack. Blood on the robot’s hands, she recalled. Odd that the memories were resurfacing now, but it could be because of this city she was in.

Kaldor was the name that came to her mind from the projected thoughts of the people surrounding her. Kaldor City.

Lisa felt a strange, familiar presence, a tug at her hearts that forced her legs to move again. She didn’t know where she was going; she just knew she had to move. Her heartbeats quickened as her eyes roved through the mass of people.

And then, across the bustling street, she saw him. He was older, certainly, his face gaunter and his eyes haunted. A sense of fear, of dread, of unease filtered through to her. He was looking around wildly, trying to stay well clear of any passing robots.

Poul looked up, and their eyes locked; time seemed to stand still. Lisa’s breath caught in her throat, and without thinking, she began to move towards him, weaving through the crowd. He stood rooted to the spot, heart pounding, unable to believe what he was seeing.

When she was within arm’s reach, his eyes widened in recognition. “Oh, it’s you!” he cried, and he very nearly collapsed with relief into her arms, tears streaming down his face. She felt his hand stroke one of her wings – transparent to him because he knew they existed – and she sensed relief as he realized they were real. “I knew it!” he rambled, reaching into his jerkin pocket with trembling hands and pulling out a golden feather. Her golden feather; the one she’d left him with on the sandminer. “I kept it…” he whispered. “I knew…they said it was all robophobia-induced hallucinations, but…I knew you were real.” He embraced her again, holding her tightly. “I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again…” he sobbed.

“Oh, Poul,” she whispered, sensing his relief and fear intertwine as he clung to her. She pulled him closer, her wings forming a protective – if invisible – cocoon around them. “Shh…I’m here now.”

They stood there for a long moment, oblivious to the people moving around them, lost in their own world. After a while, Lisa gently pulled back, her hand still resting on his arm. “Hey,” she said softly, “is there somewhere we can go where we can talk?”

Poul nodded and led her to his apartment where he’d spent a great deal of his not very hard-earned money turning into a surveillance-free, robot-proof fortress in which he could feel totally secure. Top-of-the-range surveillance scanning locators, the best jamming devices, and every modification and upgrade to them that came on the market. Access point multiple locks, intruder checks, spy sweep. Threads and dust and fragments of paper. Intruder alarms, eavesdropper tags.

“Oh, Poul…” Lisa said sadly as she watched him lock the many locks and then check and recheck that they were, indeed, locked. He was clearly still suffering from robophobia and had severe PTSD from the attack on the sandminer. She reached for his hand and gently led him to the couch, guiding him to sit. “How long has it been?” He looked confused, so she elaborated. “Since…since you last saw me.”

The frown deepened, and he looked down at their entwined hands, running his thumb over her skin. “S-seven years?” It was more of a question, as if he wasn’t sure. “My…my mind is…clouded. I haven’t been able to recall the incident in detail.” He paused, then said quietly, “There are days…where I can’t remember my own name.”

“And after all that, this place still uses robots?” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, and she felt Poul’s hands shaking in hers. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly, squeezing his hands.

He shook his head and took a deep breath, focusing on the pressure of her hands on his. “Kaldor City is a…a robot-dependent civilization. The attack was covered up and only top Company executives and the three survivors know the truth.”

“Three?” she repeated, thinking back to the incident on the sandminer. “Toos and Uvanov survived, too?”

Poul nodded. “But I…I haven’t seen them since the debriefing, and even then I was in no fit state to speak.” He paused again, caressing her hand as if it helped him think. “Yes…it was seven years ago.”

Her wings turned red at the tips. “After all that happened…the deaths…and your…” She couldn’t bring herself to mention his breakdown. Instead, she swore under her breath, hissing, “Typical corporate – “ Poul raised his eyebrows at her choice of colorful language, and she thought she saw the corner of his mouth twitch upward. She sighed and patted his hand. “I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye last time. But, well…the Doctor hated goodbyes back then.”

“Doctor?” Poul echoed, frowning. She sensed confusion.

“You don’t remember the Doctor?” she asked. “Tall, curly hair, long scarf, jelly babies?”

His frowned deepened, and he began to tremble with the effort of trying to remember the incident on the sandminer. Lisa cupped his face in her hand and ran her thumb over his cheekbone. “Okay, shh,” she soothed. “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”

Poul let out a shaking breath and leaned into her touch, closing his eyes. “I’m so…I’m so very glad to see you again,” he whispered, tears slipping down his cheeks.

“Well,” she said, wiping the tears with her hand and pulling him into her arms. “I don’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon. I’ll stay for as long as you’ll have me.”

He let out a long, relieved sigh and rested his head on her shoulder, breathing deeply. She held him, stroking his hair, sensing he felt especially comforted by the gesture just as he had back on the sandminer.

“How have you been otherwise?” she asked as she gently combed her fingers through his hair. “Forget the…incident…for now. What do you do during the day?”

“Very little,” he admitted, finally extracting himself from her arms but keeping a grip on one of her hands. “Once I’d…recovered…” She had the sense he was using the word very loosely. “I was asked if I wanted to go back to my old job in the Company security division. I said yes because I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”

“Where I come from, people are compensated for, uh…situations such as yours.”

He smiled wanly and rubbed his thumb over her fingers. “You can say it – for trauma-induced psychoses. Yes, I could have retired on a sickness pension but I didn’t want to just sit around and wait for death. The truth is, Lisa, is that I never really fully recovered from the breakdown. I can just about bear to be in the same room as a robot, but I still have nightmares. Sight of the c– “ His voice choked off and he winced, trembling.

Lisa squeezed his hand. “It’s okay. I know what you’re talking about.” In his mind, she could see the image of a small disc of iridescent red plastic – a corpse marker.

He took a breath. “I scream if I see one…and if a robot gets too close, I fall apart into a sweaty panic.” Poul looked away, blushing slightly at what she sensed he perceived as weakness. “How do you go back to your old job when you can’t remember what your old job was? A whole chunk of my life and all the details of that last undercover assignment…gone.” He glanced back at her. “But I had been promoted several times without anything obvious in the way of justification. I’m alive and I turn up for duty on a reasonably regular basis, but that’s about it.”

“So you’re basically paid to do nothing?” she asked, canting her head to one side.

He shrugged. “Essentially. I deal with humans. Just humans. ‘Security Section Head (Humans)’ it says on my door.” He smiled sourly. “There is no section as such, which is probably why the divisional budget could stretch to pay me very well for doing nothing. I joke it’s because I’m handsome and charming and universally loved.” She couldn’t help the giggle that escaped her throat, which had him chuckling as well. It was nice to hear him laugh.

“I mean…if it works, I guess?”

“Lisa?” Poul asked quietly.

“Hmm?”

“I was told that I had been comfortable with robots once.”

She made a so-so gesture with the hand he wasn’t holding. “You told us that you’d rather live with people than robots. That you prefer cities.”

“They told me I had a robot sidekick when I went undercover on Storm Mine Four.”

She nodded. “You did, yes.”

“But…” He shook his head; he was starting to tremble again. “That would mean that a robot had gone undercover and what in god’s name would it go undercover as and how would it know what being undercover signified?”

“Easy, Poul, easy…” Lisa soothed, squeezing his hand and putting an arm around his shoulders. “No one told you?”

Poul leaned into her arms, gripping her hand tightly as if to ground himself. “They wouldn’t tell me. They said it was experimental and that it was destroyed but they wouldn’t tell me what it was that destroyed it. And they wouldn’t tell me what it was that destroyed me. It was better, they said, if I remembered for myself.”

Lisa scratched the back of her neck, thinking. “I guess there’s some logic in that. I mean, I could tell you my version of what happened back on the sandminer, but those are my memories, not yours. I could be wrong and I wouldn’t want to replace something true with something false.”

“Will you at least tell me how on earth a robot goes undercover?”

She thought a moment, then shrugged, figuring what was the harm. “He was a Super-Voc undercover as a Dum.”

“You call it a ‘he’?” Poul asked.

She shrugged again. “The voice was male, so yeah he’s a he.”

Poul shook his head, then covered his mouth as he let out a long yawn. “Oh, I’m sorry…do forgive me,” he said, rubbing his face. “I haven’t slept properly in a very long time.”

Smiling, Lisa gently caressed his cheek. “Don’t apologize for being tired, Poul. You went through something extremely traumatic and it’s affected you significantly.” She glanced around trying to see if there was a clock or some other timepiece nearby. “What time is it anyway? For a time traveler, I’m not the best at keeping track of the time, especially when I don’t have control over where and when I end up.”

He frowned, confused. “Time travel?”

She nodded. “You said seven years since you saw me? Well, I was with the Doctor for a very long time. Millennia, probably, give or take an eon or two.”

“But…” Poul screwed up his face and clenched her feather in his hands, trying to recall their first meeting without traumatizing himself more with memories of the killer robots. “You don’t…you don’t look a day older…”

“I’m immortal. I haven’t aged in, again, a very long time.”

He cast his eyes downward, twining the feather in his fingers. “You…must have experienced traumatic events in such a time…”

She knew where he was going with this and took his hands in hers, squeezing gently. “Listen to me, Poul. I had people around me that I loved very much. I had the inhabitants of my own planet after the Doctor died. I had help. From what you’ve told me, and from what I can sense, you…don’t.” Setting her jaw, she pulled him closer, cupping his face in her hands. “At least, you didn’t until now. I said I would stay for as long as you’ll have me, and I mean it. I’ll help you if you want me to.”

For the first time in what was probably a long time, an actual smile appeared on his face. “Oh, yes! I…I would like that very much.” He embraced her, then took her hand. “I have a spare room,” he said, guiding her to stand from the couch and leading her to a short hall with some doors. “This…used to be my office, but, well…”

Poul opened one of the doors to reveal a small room filled with file boxes, a desk and chair, Kaldor City’s equivalent to a computer, and underneath some binders of the thin, plastic sheets that this planet used as paper was what, to Lisa, looked like a futon – a giant black pillow or cushion sat atop a sturdy metal frame and it was currently in the configuration of a couch. Seeing her eying the room, he stammered, “I-if you’d rather stay elsewhere, there is a hotel – “

“Oh,” she said, shaking her head and taking his hands in hers. “No, Poul. I was just thinking how to best help you clean this room. I’m grateful you’re letting me use it.”

“It’s yours,” he said, absently picking at the corners of one of the plastic sheets. “I’ve no use for this room anymore.” He looked at her. “I hope you’ll be comfortable.”

She smiled softly. “All I need is a couple of pillows and a blanket and I’m good to go.” She thought a moment, then shrugged. “Maybe two blankets depending on how cold it gets at night.”

“It’s the dry-time when the winter wind blows razor sharp directly from the center of the Blind Heart. The wind is called the Emptiness…and when it blows it could be chill enough to make the bones ache. But when it doesn’t, the weather is often calm and mild.”

“Very poetic,” quipped Lisa, smiling.

He returned it. “I shall go get you your bedding.”

“Oh, I can start clearing some space. What do you want to do with these boxes and stuff?”

Poul glanced around at the files and sheets, his eyes unfocused. “I suppose just…place them along the far wall for now.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “I’ll return shortly.”

He turned to exit the room, and a slight breeze from the swishing of his tunic caused some of the plastic sheets to flutter to the ground. Lisa bent to pick them up and saw they were sparse text files containing only the most basic details about the human crew of Storm Mine Four – Name: Kiy Uvanov, Gender: Male, Age: 52; Name: Lish Toos, Gender: Female, Age: 33; and so on. The last file was for Dask, who was listed as a male of unspecified age but whose real identity turned out to be Taren Capel, a man raised by robots who considered himself superior to humans and believed that robots should rule over them. It was he who caused the attack on the sandminer; he who reprogrammed the robots to go against their fundamental protocols and commit murder.

Pursing her lips, Lisa put the sheets in a folder and tossed it onto one of the file boxes. She looked around at the mess and tried to judge what she could lift on her own so she could start clearing the futon off. Some of the boxes were partially empty and were thus lighter than the ones packed full. She focused on those in particular, spreading her hands with her palms out to help focus.

The emptier boxes shuddered, then lifted from the spots they occupied. Lisa telekinetically moved the boxes over to the far wall Poul had indicate they should go. Once she set the boxes down, she started on the loose papers and binders. They were much lighter and thus she could lift more of them simultaneously. She purposely kept the Storm Mine Four file near the top but amongst other files just in case Poul ever reached the point he was able to revisit the incident.

The man in question reentered the room just as Lisa was using her telekinesis to try to lift one of the heaver boxes. She’d managed to get it a couple of inches off the futon when Poul’s gasp distracted her enough to lose her concentration and allow the box to drop with a dull thud.

“Oh, dear,” he said, clutching two pillows and two blankets in his arms. “I’m sorry…”

She shrugged and dusted her hands off on her pants legs. “No harm done. I moved what I could.”

“You’re telekinetic.”

Nodding, she asked, “Does that bother you?”

Poul was silent for a moment, his mind churning with fragmented thoughts. He shook his head after a minute. “No. I…” He squinted and canted his head. “I…vaguely recall that you have…abilities…” He gestured to her wings.

She fluttered them and noticed for the first time since arriving at Poul’s apartment that they were still invisible – transparent to the two of them. She gave them a little shake and they went back to their normal level of opaqueness.

“I keep them invisible when I’m around humans,” she explained, taking the pillows and blankets from him and tossing them to the futon. “Thank you. You see them as transparent because you know I have them. Uvanov and Toos would, too, if they were here. They saw them at our last meeting. And small kids and animals can naturally see them; it’s an innocence thing.”

He stared at her for a moment, then shook his head as if to clear it. “I’m sorry,” he said, starting to lift the fuller – and heavier – boxes and move them to the far wall. “I feel as though I should already know this, but…”

She patted his arm. “It’s okay, Poul. Like you said, your memories are currently gone. But I actually didn’t show my wings until after your breakdown. I needed to use one of my other abilities and most of them won’t work if I’m using the invisibility too.”

Once again he stared at her and blurted, “How many abilities do you have?” Then he winced. “That was rude; I’m sorry.”

Lisa actually chuckled as she lifted a box with her arms rather than using her mind. “Oof…no, you’re fine.” She lugged the box over to the far wall and set it down with a soft thud on top of the growing stack. “I never really counted. Most of them are passive – ones I don’t have to think about, like being immortal and my healing factor. Any injuries I get heal twice as fast as a human.” She telekinetically lifted another box. “There’s this, but if I push myself for anything heavier, it takes more concentration, and I risk a nosebleed if I try lifting something I shouldn’t. Good for entertaining kids, though.”

She set the box down and picked up one of the smooth, transparent sheets they had been organizing. Instead of folding it, she grinned and spun it telekinetically, making it twirl and flutter in the air like a dancer, catching the light in playful flashes. After a few loops, she gently set it back down on top of one of the boxes.

“Who needs paper airplanes when you’ve got these?” she quipped with a smile.

Poul’s lips twitched as he set down another box. “Charming,” he remarked, his tone dry but with a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. For just a moment, the heaviness of the past seemed to lift, if only slightly.

She shrugged. “I have better-than-a-human hearing and sight.” She saw him raise an eyebrow and she knew exactly why. “The glasses give me the latter. Without them I can’t see a foot in front of me.”

“You can read minds.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Well, yeah,” she said, moving more boxes. “But only those surface ‘did I leave the oven on?’ types of thoughts. Anything deeper I need consent and concentration.”

“You said you can time travel and that’s how you wound up here?” Poul set down another box and wiped sweat from his brow.

Lisa nodded. “That particular ability is unreliable, so I don’t force it most of the time. I let it randomly take me wherever it deems I have to go.”

“And it brought you to me?”

She smiled. “Seems so, and I’m glad it did.”

He returned the smile and touched her hand. “As am I.”

Once they’d finished moving the boxes, Poul showed Lisa how to convert the futon from its couch configuration to its bed configuration and then she set up the blankets and pillows.

“Oh,” said Poul, “Lisa, will you need something to sleep in?”

She shrugged. “I can sleep in my clothes; it’s not a big deal.”

He paused, thinking, then held up a finger. “Wait a moment…” She sensed he had an idea but he’d left the room before she could ask. She heard him mumbling to himself, grumbling, some rummaging and he returned carrying a bundle of purple cloth. “This sleep set no longer fits me, but it may fit you.”

She took the shirt and pant set from him and used her telekinesis to size it against her body. “Well, the arms and legs are a little long but if you have something that will cut fabric it’s easily fixed. I’d need to put in slits anyway.” Her wings fluttered.

Poul searched through the desk in the corner and handed her a pair of sturdy scissors. She took off her jacket to use as a guide for the wing slits, then carefully trimmed the sleeves and pant legs to a more manageable length. Finally, she reshaped the collar into a v-neck instead of the original crew neck.

“There we go,” she said, giving Poul back the scissors to return to the desk. “Perfect.”

“Come with me,” he said, reaching for her hand. He took her a little further down the hall, pointed his room out to her, and then showed her the bathroom where she could clean up and change.

“Thanks, Poul,” she said with a smile.

“No…thank you,” he said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “I’ve…I’ve been alone since coming back from the sandminer and…barely existing, never mind living. Day after day, the same routine; I go to work, I come home. Depression was my only companion…and now you’re here.” He squeezed her shoulder, his mouth twitching in an almost smile. “I feel…somehow lighter.”

She took his hands and squeezed them reassuringly. “I’m here for you, Poul, and I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon.”

He finally did smile. “Goodnight, Lisa.”

She stood on tiptoe to peck his cheek. “Goodnight, Poul. Do you have to work in the morning?”

Poul shook his head. “It’s the end of the workweek. I have the next few days free.”

Lisa chuckled. “Where I come from, we call that a ‘weekend’, though ours is usually only two days.”

“Oh, how terrible,” he said in mock horror, and with a last squeeze of her hands and bidding her a final goodnight, he went to his room and closed the door behind him.

Lisa stood there for a moment leaning on the doorframe, staring at Poul’s closed bedroom door. She smiled to herself, but internally she was feeling a mix of emotions – she was happy to see Poul again and that he remembered her, even if right now she was only a single feather and a comforting pair of arms; annoyed at Kaldor’s government and the Company that had covered up the sandminer attack; upset that, due to that, Poul could not get the help he so desperately needed. Her wings had even started to take on that strange purple hue when she was simultaneously sad and angry.

He’s been through so much, she thought to herself. But he’s still here. He’s not going to face this alone. Not now; not ever.

She knew firsthand and from experience that the path to healing was neither easy nor straightforward; it was different for everyone and everyone had to work at their own pace. However, she was determined to walk it with him, no matter how long it took or how many obstacles got in the way.

With a final look towards Poul’s room, she turned and entered the bathroom to change, her wings fluttering briefly as she steeled herself for the days to come.

End chapter one.

Back *~*~* Chapter Two