Sunlight flared and the windshield dimmed, and the Director glanced to his left as the transport dropped past his own cruiser, tossing off silvery chaff as it fell out of the sky onto the little town’s courthouse lawn.
He nodded to the driver, who followed the transport’s lead, settling onto the soft green grass a dozen yards away. The door opened, and the Director stepped out of his car. From the door on the other side, the consultant emerged, her dark hair lightly tussled by a soft breeze. Each took a moment to survey the town square.
This little community was unbelievably beautiful, as it had undoubtedly been before the insanity had descended everywhere, on everything. There was an old stone building in its center, relic of another century, an old courthouse lovingly preserved and surrounded by cheery plaques proudly presenting its history. A wooden gazebo, brightly painted, stood not far away. An old-fashioned mailbox, long obsolete, had been preserved on one corner of the square. And a canopy of breezy trees, emanating from an assortment of artfully-located trees, hovered over the promenade that proceeded from the street to the courthouse to the gazebo.
It was unbelievably beautiful.
It was an island of life nestled in the horrific hellscape surrounding it, extending for hundreds of miles in all directions, an ocean of terror and madness – so many towns of similar size, filled with the scorched shells of buildings; jagged glass of shattered storefronts; abandoned vehicles; a few animal corpses missed by the service bots. The human ones had long since been gathered and disposed of.
As it had been here, before.
“Beautiful,” the Director muttered.
A slender gray bot, summoned by the consultant’s pad, approached her and waited for instructions. She gave them, and the bot turned smoothly and began walking across the square to the opposite street.
“This way,” she redundantly instructed.
As they walked, the transport opened up behind them and a phalanx of service bots emerged, systematically deploying through the town. They began silently conversing with those already present, assessing the town’s condition and vulnerabilities. The Director glanced over his shoulder at them, then proceeded to follow the consultant and the bot.
“In here,” the consultant said after a moment. They confronted the façade of an old-fashioned diner, a slate of lunch specials prominent in the front window.
Stepping into the entrance as the bot waited dutifully to the side, they found themselves facing a large dining room lined with booths along the windows, with free-standing tables on the floor leading to a counter lined with barstools. An old-fashioned cash register sat at the end; behind the counter, a table covered with dishes and cups buttressed the wall, below a steel window and shelf that led into the diner’s kitchen.
The two wandered slowly into the anachronistic room as the bot quietly followed.
Then they saw him.
He was a small man, the size of a young teenage boy, sitting in a booth below the front window. Before him sat a sandwich on a plate – an actual sandwich, half-eaten, on a clean plate. A glass of some beverage stood to the side.
He appeared to be talking to someone across from him in the empty booth. The Director and the consultant stared at the odd display, when the two steel doors of the kitchen swung open and another bot appeared, carrying a tray that held two bowls of warm soup. The bot took it over to the booth and set one in front of the little man, the other across from him.
“Thank you, Alice!” the little man said to the bot. He then spied his two new visitors.
His astonished eyes widened behind his glasses as his jaw slowly dropped. He stared for a moment, then slid out of the booth, standing and cautiously approaching them.
“Can it be...?” he muttered to himself.
Slowly his mouth curled into a grin and he extended a hand.
“Hello, hello!” he said with enthusiasm as the Director took his hand, which he proceeded to pump vigorously, “Welcome!” He took the consultant’s hand, “And you! Welcome!” Not neglecting the bot, he reached down and grabbed its right hand, shaking it as well - “...and you, miss! Welcome, all of you!”
They gently introduced themselves.
“...and I’m - call me Ray!” he replied with energy. “I’m Ray! And I’m so glad to make your acquaintance! Welcome to Grover’s Corners!”
The Director stood on the street corner with the little man and the bot, waiting for the consultant, who had stayed behind to interrogate the bot in the diner who had served the little man. As she strode across the diner floor to catch up with them, she took one last look at the room – all the subtle, disturbing signs that life here had been cruelly interrupted had been erased; no one would have guessed that good people had been overwhelmed by the sudden poison that had ridden the wind into this town, like so many others, as in the cities, across the land – an agonizing fire that had fevered their minds and burned away their reason and control, leaving so many of them screaming for death. So many of them. All gone. And so few of us left, now, anywhere... They were lucky to have maintained as much order as they had.
“Grover’s Corners!” Ray declared with pride. “A little slice of heaven on earth!”
He grabbed the consultant’s hand and pulled her into the street. “Come,” he urged them, “let me show you around!”
They proceeded down the street, past the parade of thriving businesses.
“Over there, that’s Floyd’s Barber Shop,” Ray informed them. “You can get a haircut for two bits, and if you don’t need one, you can just show up with a bottle of pop and shoot the breeze!”
The consultant touched her pad, waited a second or two, then handed it to the Director. He read the display, paused, and stared at the little man. He handed it back without comment.
“...and over there, that’s Godsey’s general store,” he continued. “He’s also our postmaster, you know.”
A bot passed them on the sidewalk. “Well, hello there, Emily!” he smiled, bowing slightly. “Such a beautiful morning!”
“Sweet, sweet girl,” he commented to his companions as he looked back at the passing bot.
They passed the large brick shadow of a fire station. Within, a shiny red fire engine loomed.
“Our fire house,” he explained, “and there’s Captain Rosewater. ‘Morning, Eliot!” He waved at no one.
“One of those firemen, I’m not sure what to make of him,” he added in a soft voice, “name of Montag...”
They proceeded in silence as the bot recorded everything. Presently they arrived at what had to be the town park, a pair of cheerful acres populated by picnic tables and benches and swings and slides and monkey bars. The Director tried to conjure children, and found he couldn’t.
Across the lawn Ray pointed to two young men lounging beneath a large tree, one small, one large, both dressed in dirty denim overalls and work shirts, invisible to the Director and consultant. “Over there, that’s George and Lennie,” Ray explained. “You never see one without the other. And over there,” he motioned to a young woman in a hand-me-down dress, sitting on a bench, scribbling away in a notebook, “That’s Jo March. She has pretentions of a literary nature.” He said it with pride. “One day we’ll find her work in yonder building!” He motioned toward the town library.
Two bots approached on a path that flowed through the park. Ray stepped off the path, motioning for the others to follow.
After they had passed, he nodded toward the two bots.
“Did you see that robot?” he asked them.
“You... saw a robot?” the consultant asked, puzzled.
“Yes, there with that older woman!” Ray answered with a smile. “That woman is Doctor Susan Calvin. She studies robots, you know. Not a very pleasant woman,” he noted.
He pointed to an unoccupied picnic table.
“See those two? That’s Jim and Della Young,” he said. “They’re newly wed, and a pair of lovebirds, I can tell you! Jim took me aside not a week ago. He’s fretting over what to get Della for Christmas. They don’t have much money, you know.”
As they crossed the street, the little man motioned to a large and forbidding home on a corner, with gargoyles at its front steps and imposing gables protruding above.
“That’s where the Baron lives,” he said. “He’s a strange one, and even dangerous, they say. His whole family is.” He leaned in close.
“They say he floats in the air!” he whispered conspiratorially. “We tell all the children to steer clear.”
A small cruiser floated down the street in their direction, two bots within.
“Ooo, there’s Mister Darcy in his carriage!” Ray noted, “with some sweet young lady! He’s quite the charmer, you know. Handsomest fellow in town.”
On the other side of the street, a bot went up the concrete steps of what had been an office building, entering.
“Did you see that? Did you see that?”
“Did we see what?” the Director asked.
“That man in the business suit, running up the stairs and charging into that building? That’s Walter,” he said with amusement. “Walter is quite something. He fancies himself a private detective! Or a surgeon. You never know, one day to the next. He has an office in there with ‘Mitty’ on the door, but he’s really just a very ordinary fellow.”
They had come full circle to Floyd’s Barber Shop, and the three sat on the bench outside, Ray in the middle, as the bot took up station next to the consultant.
“So how did you come to be here, Ray?” she asked the little man.
“Oh... I really couldn’t say,” he replied. “I’ve lived here in Grover’s Corner as far back as I can remember, since I was a small boy. I don’t know that I’ve ever really been anywhere else.”
“Do you remember before?” the Director asked.
“Before? Before what?” Ray stared at him, confused.
The Director has no immediate reply.
“Do you remember other people living here,” the consultant jumped in, “before Walter and Jo and Alice and the others?”
The little man stared into the space ahead of them, his eyes slowly unfocusing. He was quiet for a long moment. Behind his eyes, a terrible storm of dread and confusion began to creep toward his thoughts, and his eyes snapped shut and his jaw clamped down.
He let out a slow breath.
“Ma’am, I’ve lived among the people of Grover’s Corners all my days,” he replied, and then he said nothing further.
As he continued to stare straight ahead, the Director and the consultant exchanged a look.
Within a few minutes, the little man had fallen asleep.
They stood in the outer room of a small house that had been recently rebuilt by the first wave of bots, a comfortable little home where Ray had lived for several weeks. Two bots had helped him to bed.
“You see now why I wanted you to see this for yourself,” the consultant said.
The Director nodded. “...and why you told me so little beforehand. I don’t know how much of it I’d have believed.”
“And you see why we need to leave a much larger contingent of service bots here,” she continued, “and why he’s so important to our research. All of this must be preserved, and he must be protected.”
The Director frowned. “From the last survey, almost half a million people in this region died,” he replied. “He is one of only eleven survivors to be found.”
“...and this is how they found him,” the consultant said. “The implications are obvious.”
“Yes,” he answered. “He’s a danger to himself, and it’s clear that we need to get into his mind and understand what’s happened to him. But what we’ve spent restoring this entire town, and now the expense of so many more service bots, when we’re already overextended – I don’t know. I’m not sure I can justify it for a man who’s so clearly gone insane.”
“Oh, no!” the consultant smiled, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, I really did tell you too little. No, it’s the other ten who have lost their minds...”
She looked back through the bedroom door at the sleeping little man.
“Ray, here, is the only one who’s still sane...”
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