Gilgamech Part 2
Gilgamech searches for how to repair and restore EndKilU.
The high mountains were far from the array, and Gilgamech had to its small solar collectors to stay energized enough to move during the day. At night, it sat against a stone, still warm from the day, and shut down as much of its processors as it could. It worried about EndKilU, but comforted itself that at worst, EndKilU might be uploaded to The Cloud, though it had not taught the other bot how to do that.
Gilgamech was weak when it finally reached the realm of the Big Hairy Ones, as they lived in the deep forests with little sun and much shade. No large animals attacked the bot, but they watched it, and the birds gave warnings about it.
When it was found lying in a patch of sunlight in a clearing, a Big Hairy One carried it to the dwelling place.
“Why have you come here?” she asked. “What have you done to EndKilU?” Seeing that the bot was too weak to answer, she rigged up a charging port to match its input.
When the bot’s power supply was restored, it answered. “EndKilU is damaged, and I do not have the right tools to repair it. I came here to ask for the tools you use so that we can work together again.”
The Big Hairy Ones sent birds to survey the array and saw that it was being overgrown, and that there was no clear sign of EndKilU.
“You killed him,” she said.
“No, I moved it to the recharge station, but there was too much damage.” Gilgamech got to its knees. “EndKilU is my only friend. Please help me repair it.”
After much discussion and argument, the Big Hairy Ones put together a tool box with spare parts, none of which would fit Gilgamech, and led him to a path to take him back to the array.
Gilgamech walked day and night, wanting to get back to repair EndKilU as soon as possible, but with no recharge station, it collapsed, lying on the sand for a whole day and night before it could awaken. When it woke up, the tool box was gone, with small foot prints and drag marks leading off in all directions.
But there was still the array, so Gilgamech slogged back to its job, feeling more alone than ever before. It connected to the recharge station to make ready for the next day. It tried to connect to The Cloud, to search for EndKilU there, but the other bot was not there. Gilgamech had failed. EndKilU was dead.
At dawn it closed the gate and started repairing the fence. Once the perimeter was again secure, it rooted up the plants and tramped down any signs of burrows. It killed or chased away the animals, raging at the loss of its friend.
In its mind, EndKilU whispered, “You are not here to kill. You are here to bring the energy. Work with the plants, as I taught you. Think of what the humans will do to this place if it does not bring them the energy they want.”
Gilgamech remembered the scraping away of the soil, the digging and dumping of rocks and sand to clear the space, the building mess, the waste of materials, and the fussing and cussing over the efficiency of the low-level panels. All of it would be done again, and it would likely be put on the scrap pile along with whatever was left of EndKilU.
EndKilU’s ideas helped Gilgamech to let the animals clear the space beneath the panels. Rabbits ate much of the greenery, snakes controlled the rodent population, and the detritus of the plants that were unhelpful were thrown over the fence to attract the animals away from the array.
In the cool evenings, Gilgamech hooked into the recharge station and logged onto the cloud, looking for any information that would help him rebuild EndKilU. It would not be the same, but the pain of having lost its friend drove him to find new answers.
The Big Hairy Ones did not use the Cloud. It could not find their secrets. However, the humans who made it had left clues. Gilgamech searched for spare parts and wiring, not requisitioning in the usual channel, but moving across the array and out into the desert for anything that might be used. It found a rusted vehicle, a crashed plane, and various pieces of tech, long abandoned but possible to repurpose.
One morning as its charge cycle ended, it found a small cache of circuitry piled beside the station, random bits, and short lengths of wire. It noticed the pattern of how the pieces lay on the sand, like its own schematics. A pinpoint of light shone from the darkness of the dead bot’s carapace. Two of the scorpion bots had returned.
Gilgamech took the spare battery from its stores and put it to charge while it serviced the array. EndKilU had been right, and its way required less work. When it returned, the tiny scorpions had placed all the electronic bits inside the dead bot’s carapace, aligning them and wiring them together.
The bot went searching again to strip any wiring and circuits from anything abandoned in the desert, even digging down into the trash left behind by the human builders. What it scrounged, it brought to the pile of rubbish beside the red bot’s remains. Little by little, the pile was sorted by the tiny scorpions, piece by piece worked into the red body of EndKilU.
But it had no life.
Even when its battery was charged for several days, it did not wake up.
Its program was gone.
Gilgamech lay on the sand beside the recharging station, staring into the Milky Way of stars. In the distance, it saw an approaching cloud, one with lightning covering the stars. In time, it covered the whole area of the array, bringing a great wash of rain.
EndKilU was dead, so the water would not damage it, and Gilgamech did not much care if it rusted or shorted out. The humans would send another bot and simply dump both of them on the slag heap it had been mining.
The rain passed, and with it a small flood of only a few inches, not enough to bother the array. When the sun came up again, Gilgamech stood, let any residual mud flow off, and started drying the array, cleaning any mud or other mess from the panels.
It did not look up as the sun rose and glared from the sky, as it always did. Soon the array was dry, and it was only the dust that needed clearing. Yet around them, a green growth grew, first leaves, then buds. By the next day, the whole area around the array, and between the panels, bright flowers had sprouted, a colorful sight as far as it could see.
Gilgamech thought that EndKilU would have loved the display, so it picked some of the blooms, which would not last long in any case, and laid them on its friend’s carapace.
So much life sprang from the cloud and the rain.
Gilgamech started recharging early and logged into the Cloud, looking for answers on how to repair EndKilU without the proper tools or parts, not for the first thousand times. The Big Hairy Ones had not told it how to repair its friend, or what was needed, only giving it the tools it requested.
What the red bot lacked was the programming that made it sentient. That kind of programming was not offered open source or free, but Gilgamech thought of one source it had the access to…its own program.
Carefully, so as not to alert anyone who might be monitoring it, it copied everything it remembered about EndKilU, each text, each action, each recommendation. Then it copied its own code, its own memories, and instructions, only a small packet at a time, so as not to attract attention. Every night, as soon as it had sent its reports, it downloaded and stored the codes.
It wired a connection to the processors the scorpions had rebuilt, to the memory chips and storage space, to hide what it was doing from the humans. It lay beside EndKilU and let the scorpions wire their processors together, so share their consciousness.
The array was left to itself, gathering dust, overshadowed by plants that withered in days, and filled with animals seeking condensation and shade.
“Wake up,” Gilgamech sent to EndKilU. Their batteries were charged, their processors warmed. Gilgamech sent a spark to the other bot’s sensors. “Engage.”
EndKilU shuddered. Its hands and feet flailed. Its head flopped back and forth, but then its visual sensors lighted.
As the other bot ran its diagnostic routines, Gilgamech took one of the solar panels from its platform and rigged it up to be carried along with the charging station. It heaved the panel and the station onto its back, and then reached down a hand to EndKilU to pull it to its feet.
“Let’s go.”
***
When the humans came to see why the array was failing, all they found of the bot caretaker was a few spare parts among the raccoons’ nest.