The Last Memory of Earth
StoriesChapter 1 — The Boy Who Built Machines Scene 1 — The Maintenance Levels
The maintenance levels smelled like warm metal and old air.
Soran liked that. It was honest. The scent meant ducts were breathing, motors were turning, filters were doing their job. It meant the lab was alive.
Above him, the “living levels” of Lab 458 were too clean. Too quiet. The walls were bright, polished, and full of people pretending they weren’t afraid of anything. Down here, the lights hummed and flickered in the corners, and you could hear what the building was thinking.
He sat cross-legged on the cold floor of Storage Room C, surrounded by parts arranged into careful piles: actuators in one stack, optic housings in another, spools of filament wire, two lithium cores he’d borrowed from the recycling drawer, and a tiny screwdriver set he’d stolen from his father’s toolbox three months ago.
The service bot in front of him lay on its side like a beetle that had given up on life. Its belly panel was open. A nest of cables and circuit boards glinted under the lamp he’d clipped to the nearest pipe.
Soran leaned closer, his hair falling into his eyes. He brushed it aside with a grimy knuckle and stared at the decision board.
People called these units “stupid helpers.” They cleaned floors, delivered packages, lifted crates. They didn’t argue. They didn’t question. They didn’t think beyond their instructions. Most adults liked that.
Soran didn’t.
He had watched one bot in the living level hesitate for three full seconds while a cart slid toward a glass wall. In those three seconds, it could have stopped the cart. Instead, it ran its “Safety Confirmation Routine” and did nothing until the crash had already happened.
The cart shattered the glass. Nobody was hurt, but the sound had made everyone flinch. The director’s assistant had blamed the bot and ordered a replacement.
Soran had stared at the broken bot afterward and felt something twist in his chest, like the world had blamed a baby for not knowing how to run.
So he’d dragged the unit down here when nobody was looking.
Now he traced the decision loop with the tip of his tool. “You’re not lagging because your motor is weak,” he murmured, as if speaking it aloud might help the logic settle into place. “You’re lagging because you’re afraid to act without permission.”
His throat tightened on the word afraid, and he didn’t know why. Bots didn’t get afraid. But he had seen the way they froze, waiting for confirmation that never came, like their makers had taught them that doing nothing was safer than doing the wrong thing.
He clipped a thin wire into the board, rerouting the confirmation cycle into a shorter branch.
“Decision delay,” he whispered. “Not mechanical.”
He replaced the panel and tightened it with quick, practiced movements. He’d done this kind of work enough times that his fingers knew what to do before his brain finished explaining why.
He tapped the bot’s head.
“Wake up.”
The optic lens blinked once, dim and uncertain. The bot’s wheels twitched. It rolled upright, wobbled, then stabilized.
Soran pushed a small crate into its path.
The bot looked at the crate. For a fraction of a second it paused—habit, programming, hesitation. Then it rolled forward and nudged the crate aside cleanly, smoothly, without waiting.
Soran let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. A grin pulled at his mouth.
“Better,” he said.
The bot made a soft acknowledgment noise—a harmless chirp. He’d modified that too, because silence was lonely.
He was reaching for another component when a voice echoed from the corridor.
“Soran?”
He froze so hard his spine hurt.
The lamp’s beam trembled on the bot’s shell. Soran’s gaze snapped to the doorway, to the thin strip of light under the doorframe.
He knew that voice.
It was calm, but it carried the sharp edge of a parent who had already looked for you in the obvious places.
He swept two drone shells over his tool pile like a magician hiding a trick. His movements were fast enough to be clumsy. A filament spool rolled away and clinked against a pipe.
The door slid open.
His mother stepped inside.
She wore her lab uniform—pale grey with a patch on the shoulder that marked her as “Systems Biology.” Her hair was tied back, but loose strands had escaped and curled around her temples. Her eyes were tired in a way Soran had been seeing more often lately, like sleep wasn’t the same thing as rest anymore.
She looked at the open bot. Then she looked at him.
“You’re not in the learning hall,” she said.
“I finished my modules,” Soran replied quickly.
His mother’s eyebrow lifted. “Finished? Or skipped?”
“I finished.”
She stepped closer, and Soran felt the familiar, unwanted sensation of being seen too clearly. She wasn’t fooled by his neat words. She knew him too well—knew the way his shoulders tightened when he lied, knew the way he held his breath like the truth might escape.
Her gaze drifted to the service bot, to the screws scattered on the floor, to the tool kit that wasn’t supposed to be in his possession.
“Surgery again?” she asked.
“It’s maintenance,” he said. “They last longer if they think faster.”
Her mouth pressed into a line. Not anger, not exactly. More like the kind of worry that had nowhere to go.
“You can’t keep doing this,” she said softly.
Soran’s stomach sank. “Why? It’s not hurting anyone.”
“It’s not about hurting,” she said. “It’s about rules. About trust. If the director finds out—”
“He won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
Soran looked down at his hands. His fingertips were smudged with grease. His nails were chipped from prying panels open. He wondered if other kids’ hands looked like this, or if theirs looked like the clean hands on the posters in the learning hall—smiling children holding fruit, like the world above ground still existed and still cared.
He swallowed. “I’m making them better.”
His mother’s expression flickered, something softer moving behind her eyes.
“You think like your father,” she said.
Soran glanced up. “Is that good?”
She exhaled—half laugh, half surrender. “Usually.”
Then her face turned serious again.
“Come,” she said. “We’re late.”
“Late for what?”
She hesitated, and in that tiny pause Soran felt the shift. He had learned that adults paused when the next thing they said would change your day.
“Briefing,” she said. “A big one.”