Page 44 of Secrets of the Void
Eighteen
Ellie
"There," Ellie said, stepping back to look at her work. She didn't have the delicate hands of an engineer. That much was painfully obvious. But the patchwork she'd done on the piece of wall would hold. "I think that's done."
Pilot scuttled over to her, the clicks of his feet on the now mostly clean tile echoing in the massive chamber. "It'll hold. It just looks horrid."
She wasn't going to argue with him about that. The welder they had found was very old, and it spat flames in fits and spurts rather than a consistent white flame like it was supposed to. That led to her having to go over the same places far too many times, and globs of metal decorated the outline of the door frame, rather than a smooth line like a professional might have done.
But it would hold. And that was good enough.
Leaning down, she scooped him up in her hand so they could head back to the new chamber they had revealed. The sand had hidden more than just this chamber. Apparently, there were other corridors where other people had lived.
"Do you think there's clothing in there?" Ellie asked, heading over to the door that kept them away from the rest of the secrets.
"Who knows? I worked on the settings to make sure we could bypass the coding that keeps it locked," Pilot said as he climbed up to her shoulder and then perched there like a metal parrot on a pirate's shoulder. "I just... I'm not sure if we should go in there."
"Why?"
"We don't know what we're going to find." Pilot paused for dramatic effect before then adding, "It was their living quarters. I don't think it would be out of the ordinary to expect there to be some dead bodies in there. I think many people remained here until the very end."
She’d never seen a dead body. That was concerning, certainly. But also, she wanted to get out of this wetsuit and into something that would be more comfortable. Something like she'd seen the other scientists wear.
A clean, pressed shirt that would hug her waist. Pants that would comfortably fit around her thighs and maybe make her legs look a little longer than they were. She wanted to feel pretty in clothing that was meant for real, living people. Not just dolls like herself.
So she stood in front of the door and asked, "Pilot, how do I open the door?"
He sighed, a strange mechanical sound, before answering, "The password I set is butterscotch cookies. That's all you'll have to say. It recognizes your voice activation."
"That's an odd password for a droid to pick."
"My creator was a fan of them."
And he had paid his respects to his creator in the only way he knew how. By keeping Fairweather alive.
She knew how important it was to droids for the living to still be living. They did that by never forgetting who had made them, long after their mortal bodies had decayed on this planet.
She patted the top of his head before saying quite loudly, "Butterscotch cookies."
The door slid open with a long hiss, revealing a room beyond that was somehow perfectly preserved. It was a living area, just like Pilot had said, although very ancient in its style.
Rather than mostly metal accents and clean lines, this place had once been filled with color. A rotting quilt was even hanging on the wall, clearly once filled with brilliant blues and yellows. A wooden table had three broken legs and leaned on its side next to it, and the chairs were just as bad. But those looked like they had been broken intentionally. Someone had been here before. They’d likely taken everything of value.
She stepped into what must be a kitchen. All the doors were ripped off the cabinets, some of them hanging on by a single hinge, but most of them had been strewn about the checkerboard black and white tile. The fridge stood open, the electricity long turned off in this room, but it didn't matter because the food inside was so ancient it was nothing more than dust on the shelves.
As she moved through the living quarters, she found a door that was still open. The bedroom beyond was in better condition than the rest of the ransacked place. That was where she found the body.
The skeleton had wasted away in the dry air. There wasn't even a hint of skin left on it, but the hands were still placed on the person's chest in an almost reverent manner that made Ellie think even the grave robbers who had come in here hadn't touched the body. There was a tablet still resting on the bed beside them.
"You said you were looking for clothing," Pilot reminded her as she reached for the tablet.
"And answers."
"But mostly clothing."
Apparently, the droid didn't like looking at dead humans. Neither did Ellie, but this wasn't much of a human anymore. The skeleton gave the room an almost holy air. Like she had stepped into a tomb rather than a bedroom.
Tapping on the tablet, she blew out a breath at the dead battery. Of course it was dead.
