Junkhead

Content Warnings: Grief, loss

Neoma breathed in the cool air—a moment of solace before the rigours of shipwrecked life. Wildgrass swayed around the wreckage of the Resurgence, and dawn sunbeams twinkled on its broken hull. Chirps and trills rose from creeping vines that wound along the rusting metal of the wreck, slowly entangling it since the crash. Neoma descended the escape ramp on the safe side of the ship, as she did each morning, to the makeshift storage room at the base.

The angle of the wreck formed an overhang, narrowing at the earth. In the darkness, the red LED of her robot’s power indicator shone in languid oscillations. The bot was bent awkwardly over a heap of metal scraps and broken equipment, preserving power in idle mode.

“Up and at ‘em,” Neoma said, and banged on the underside of the hull. “That means you, Junkhead.”

Junkhead hoisted the slender rings of his neck, his head rolling and bobbing, and his spine followed, hefting the bulk of his canister torso.

“Power levels low,” Junkhead said, and he folded back to the workbench.

“I don’t think so! Sun’s up, I’m up, so you’re up. And besides, you’re not even plugged in! Up, up, up!”

Junkhead wobbled to attention, limbs askew from mismatched joints and hasty repairs. “Ready to serve,” he said.

Neoma sighed. “Go get some charge if you need it.”

“Proceeding to port,” Junkhead said, and plodded past Neoma with a whir of servos and clicking gears.

“Meet me at the field in twenty minutes,” Neoma said, hands at her hips.

“Confirmed.”

Junkhead ambled towards a charging port, awkwardly swinging ill-proportioned limbs, almost as if the robotics engineer had used a child’s stick-figure drawing as a blueprint. Possibly, Junkhead was more trouble than he was worth, a burden to maintain and a drain on the generator. Nor was he built for the tasks he was now regularly assigned.

Neoma marched to the eastern side of the ship, where she had established her farming experiments. It wasn’t surprising that Terran crops could flourish here—the planet was selected for its Earth-like composition, after all—but Neoma was struck by how readily the local wildlife feasted on her hard work. A flock of birds, in two variations, had found its way to Neoma’s field. Grackles and starlings—or might as well have been. They were close enough to those Earthly counterparts, and there were no ornithologists to object. The morphological similarity was predictable—even in an alien evolutionary tree, the utility of wings needed no explanation.

Neoma shooed away the birds. Back on Earth, farmers would use scarecrows to keep away airborne pests. It was doubtful that tactic would work here. These creatures shared many things with the birds of her world, but a fear of humans was not among them—Neoma serving as their sole, curious example. Loose dirt was unsettled across the length of the plot, though it was impossible to say how many seeds had been eaten. She would just have to see which plants poked up their heads in a few weeks—or didn’t.

A nearby patch of land was still choked with weeds. Winding like curls of barbed wire, with blossoms like orange dandelions. She called them dandy-roses. They were pretty in their own way, but a thorny, painful annoyance. Studying these alien plants was one of Neoma’s first projects once she had gotten the lab online. Not poisonous, but not nutritious. The dandy-roses were stubborn, deep-rooted, and fought for their space in the land.

Neoma put on her gloves, got to her knees, brushed away soil, and tugged gently, but not enough to break the roots, digging further until the whole thing could be extracted. She worked through the dull pain of old injuries, superficially mended, but still aching reminders of the crash. Before long, a mound of dandy-roses lay at her side. As the sun beat down, Neoma wiped sweat from her brow, exhaled deeply, and looked back to the ship. Where was Junkhead?

Neoma marched back to the Resurgence and found Junkhead loitering at the charging port.

“Junkhead,” she said, “I thought I told you to meet me at the field in twenty minutes. What are you doing?”

“Undocking from port is not recommended prior to full charge.”

“Well, what’s your charge at?”

“Twenty-seven percent.”

“Twenty…twenty-seven? How long is it going to take to get to full charge?”

“Full charge will take approximately 127 hours.”

“Blast it, Junkhead, I can’t wait that long! Screw the recommendation and undock already.”

Junkhead pulled his arm from the port and dropped it to his side. “Ready to serve.”

“Look, I just finished pulling weeds from a new plot in the field. Do you think you could help me get some seeds from the ship?”

“Affirmative.”

DAVID F. SHULTZ writes from Toronto, ON, where he organizes the Toronto Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers group and is lead editor at Speculative North. Author webpage: davidfshultz.com