The trio wore their visors at all times to protect their eyes, and kept their heads firmly wrapped; at night, to sleep, they formed makeshift bivouacs with their backpacks, stacking them like sandbags for protection against the storm. The soil and grit would pile up on the north side, forming a black drift by morning.
Before the storm, Rhea already had trouble falling asleep each night, and the howling winds raging through the darkness only aggravated that. She often had to mute her hearing sensitivity levels down to zero before she could find repose. Since her mind-machine interface intercepted that sound, and handled the muting, it could continue monitoring external noises independently of her brain. That way if there was a sudden spike in noise or a shift in frequencies, such as might transpire with a bioweapon attack, she would wake up.
But even with the sound muted, sleep wasn’t easy. Sometimes she engaged her virtual target practice course, which comforted her. Other times, she spoke with Horatio, who always remained awake, and on guard.
“Does it ever get to you?” Rhea asked the robot one time over the private comm. “All this time you spend alone each night?” She spoke over the mental comm line, as she had all sound muted. They had tried using noise cancellers, but the hardware had difficulty filtering out voices against the storm. Muting and mental communications were the only way to have a decent conversation without shouting.
“No.” Horatio said. He huddled next to her, behind the row of backpacks. “Why would it ‘get to me?’ AIs such as myself are used to solitude. We relish it.”
“Then why do AIs, such as yourself, play that massively multiplayer game you mentioned?” she said. “The one designed specifically for your kind?”
“We don’t play it for the companionship,” Horatio said. “Not all of us do, anyway. A good many of us rock solo, believe it or not.”
She smiled. “Rock solo. AIs certainly have their own vernacular.”
“A vernacular based on your own,” Horatio countered. “In any case, I prefer to be alone. In VR, and the real world.”
“Didn’t you mention at one point that you wanted to retire into VR?” she asked.
“That was one of my options,” Horatio agreed.
“You can be anything you want in VR,” she said. “Have a human body. You could interact with humans, join their VR games, they’d never know the difference.”
“I’ve experienced what it was like to be human many times, in VR,” the robot said. “Though I sometimes wonder if it would not be better to acquire an actual human body.”
“Have your AI core transferred into a full body replacement cyborg?” she pressed.
“Exactly,” Horatio said. “Though one with a more human face than your own. No offense.”
“None taken,” she said.
“A face indistinguishable from that of an ordinary human’s,” Horatio said. “I think I would like that. I would be almost human, then. I could form relationships with women in real life.”
“Why bother?” Rhea said. “When VR will let you do that too. You can even have sex over VR, with the proper attachments.” She waved a hand, which Horatio would see in the darkness courtesy of the outline generated by location sharing. “All of this is an illusion anyway. Created by the mind to satisfy the primitive senses we once needed to interact with our physical environment. When we lost the need for actual human bodies, we lost the need for the real world.”
“I suppose so,” he said. “And yet there are some women, some people, who exist almost exclusively in the real world. If I want to form a relationship with such women, it can’t be virtual.”
Rhea stared uncertainly at the blue outline of the robot on her HUD. “Are you trying to tell me something?”
“No.” Horatio’s answer came a little too quickly, even for the robot, for her to trust it entirely.
“Because if there’s something you want to tell me, there’s no better time than now,” she said. “We might not make it to Rust Town alive. And even if we do, there’s no guarantee we’ll get out of the city in time. You know that. We all know. So then, we should make sure there’s nothing left unsaid between us.”
“All has been said,” Horatio told her. “And even if there were words or feelings I was holding back, would it make a difference? You don’t feel any attraction toward me. If anything, you’re attracted to Will. I’ve noticed the way you look at him.”
“That’s not attraction,” she said. “But more like respect.”
“If he tried to hold you in his arms, or place his lips upon you, you would resist?” Horatio pressed.
She made a disgusted expression. “Of course.” Then again, she wasn’t entirely so sure.
“I see,” Horatio told her. “Perhaps I was mistaken. Good night, Rhea.”
She stared at him a moment longer then lay back and closed her eyes. “Night.”
Thankfully the storm continued for several days, giving the party much-needed time. Whether it would be enough to pull ahead of the Hydras was another story, however. It was possible luck might be on the side of the Hydras, and that more than a few of them might continue on the same course though blinded. That seemed extremely unlikely, unless the designers of the weapons could come up with some alternate way to lead them through the Gritstorm.
The map data guided Rhea and her companions, and they made good progress through the storm. Though they often stumbled on unseen rocks and boulders, and other hazards, they moved almost as fast as before the storm, considering the grit otherwise formed only a thin layer on the surface. After all, there was a limited supply of sediment, unlike in say a blizzard, where fresh snow could fall indefinitely. It was the black drifts that really slowed the trio, but Horatio, who remained in the lead, did a decent job
