Big Blue
“So, just to be clear,” Tabby says, concentrating on the sound of their boots on the tiles rather than the furious beating of their heart in their throat. “A Carillon woke up downtown and she’s got Rylan as a hostage. Is that correct?”
Next to them, Adelaide nods. She looks frantic; her eyes keep darting in every direction as if waiting for the shapes of metal bodies to mar the sunset sky. Tabby would try to soothe her, but, in a way, this is what they’ve all been bracing for since picking Big Blue as their new home: the choice’s always been between the violence of the living and the faraway threat of the dead.
“There!” Adelaide yells, out of breath. She’s pointing a little further down the road, towards the harbor, where a handful of people are giving a wide berth to a hulking, motionless mech suit. The old thing’s rusted all over, the visor’s cracked and twigs from an abandoned bird nest poke out of the hole. Standing next to it, as if cradled to its chest, is Rylan.
“Alright…” Tabby exhales through their teeth, then they motion for Adelaide to hang back as they take a step forward. The Carillon turns her head towards them and specks of dirt flutter down her neck as the hinges let out a sharp whine.
For some reason Tabby was expecting a Carillon’s voice to sound like the whistling of missiles, or like the rumble of an engine, but when the creature in front of her speaks she does so in a faraway, monotone murmur. “Please don’t hurt my son,” she says, and her hands creak when the fingers curl around the shape of Rylan’s head.
Tabby meets his terrified stare for a moment, then they look back up. They try to weigh their options: the dagger that rests against their thigh would be pretty much useless in a fight against a mech, even a barely operative one such as this, and there’s no knowing how she’d react if they just told her her son’s been dead for centuries.
They’ve never been the religious type, but there’s a comfort in reciting in their head the few words to the Earth they remember from their childhood before saying, “What’s your son’s name?”
The Carillon is standing so still it would look the same as all the other inactive machines littering Big Blue if it weren’t for the faint hum of something deep within her. The sound of ghost memories desperately trying to congeal into a person again. “I… don’t know,” she murmurs, no louder than the sea lapping at the shore a couple hundred meters away. “How could I not know?”
Her hands shake and Tabby’s heart pounds against their ribs, but then she spreads her arms, slowly, dislodging more grime with the motion. Her visor seems to be pointed at the sea as Rylan scrambles away, ducking in between her legs and running to where Tabby is.
They draw him closer out of instinct, dimly aware of the way he’s shaking like a frightened hare, and say something to him they won’t remember later. No one else dares to move.
“What year is it?” The Carillon asks. With a jolt, Tabby realizes she must be looking at the huge, kneeling mass of metal that sits into the water, their town’s own patron saint.
Their lips feel dry when they run their tongue over them. “I’m afraid we don’t keep track of time the way you’d be familiar with anymore.” A pause. “The battle you... took part in happened about three hundred years ago, though.”
They think they can make out the lines of defeat in the way her shoulders slump as she looks down at the joints of her hands, turning them around as if seeing them for the first time. “I see.”
“Why are they— why are we called Carillon?”
Tabby looks up from where they’ve been cleaning the joint of Birch’s elbow (she’s got a name now, she said she could remember the trees and their white, paper-thin peels) and they wipe some sweat from their forehead, most certainly smearing it with oil and dirt.
“It’s ‘cause the metal remembers, apparently,” they say. “When a Carillon is born, um… Well, it must be a pretty shocking way of waking up. After dying in battle.”
The whirring coming from Birch sounds almost like humorless laughter for a moment. “So we all lash out? Violence is the only tune we can play?”
In the silence of the garage, Tabby mulls it over. It’s true that the first thing Birch did was kidnap a child, but she’d calmed down when confronted with words instead of the screeches of cutting wheels; most Carillons aren’t given the chance to get there, they’re taken apart while their minds drown in fear.
“You’re being plenty peaceful right now,” is all they offer, which gets them a low hum in response as Birch turns to look in the vague direction of the sea once more. She seems drawn to it, or rather, to the Colossus size mech resting among the waves.
“What if that one wakes up?” she asks. “Even moving an inch might wash you guys away.”
This time it’s Tabby who hums. They stretch, grimacing at the snap of their back. “You know we named this place Big Blue in its honor? Still can’t decide if it was more morbid or uninspired of us.”
The broken glass of Birch’s visor glints in the sunlight when she says, “I’m willing to bet on both.”
“Ah, riveting. Anyway, the reason we settled here to begin with is that all this tech lying around makes it much more of a hazard for anyone else to come bother us. We were, uh, fleeing. From a ‘shelter’, as they called it.”
Birch shifts again and Tabby starts working at her left wrist. “I take it wasn’t a nice place.” She moves the tips of her fingers, looking down at them. “Maybe I should’ve fled, too. I hope my son did, after I didn’t come back.”
“I’m sure he managed,” Tabby says. Maybe it’s the atmosphere of the garage, the smell of the grease so similar to the way their mother’s hands used to smell all the time, but they find that they mean it.
The cries of some seagulls pierce the air, loud against the backdrop of the constant, low hum that comes from Birch, and it’s almost odd how at peace the world feels around them right now. Then, as if on cue, Birch says, “We could always hang a big sign that says ‘WELCOME TO BIG BLUE, PLEASE REMAIN SEATED’,” and Tabby laughs the hardest they’ve done in a long while.
Wren Douglas
Wren Douglas is a Literature graduate with a passion for language, writing and everything speculative in nature. When they're not busy typing away, they're usually fawning over their cats.