"What is the right direction?" she asked and peered at the soil as if it would somehow reveal an answer.
"I'm actually not sure about that," Windchime admitted. "Hammerhand likes to cite the experts and admins from his time—whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean—and say a change in the landscape means we're headed in the right direction, and damned if I don't believe the old bastard."
She scowled at the man. "Well, if you don't know what it means, where would the right direction take us?"
"Well, that depends whether you believe the old myths of Citta del Mar," he said. "Hammerhand talks of it like he's been there and honestly, I have to say I believe the man. Or want to believe him, anyway."
Jessica13 narrowed her eyes. "I've never heard of that. Mini, do you have anything in your records?"
"Negative," he replied quickly. "I have no records of the location or the myth, but my records are about a hundred years out of date. I have endeavored to update them, though."
"What's so important about this Citta del Mar?" she asked her companion.
"It's been the mission of the Knights Mechanica to find it and reveal its location to the people still living in this area," the man explained. His voice took on almost a reverent tone as he brushed the soil from his hands so it caught the wind and spread into the grasslands ahead of them. "We know of it as a place of plenty, a land where the soil is rich and fertile and where people have begun to grow our society toward its former glory. It’s a land that holds to the old world, with strong and healthy plant life, fields, parks, and entire cities of people living out in the open without fear of Skyfall or pirates."
"Have you ever seen it?" Jessica13 asked, unable to keep herself from being swept up by the wonder in the man's voice.
"No," Windchime admitted. "But I will see it one day. That's where Hammerhand is leading us."
"It would appear that Citta del Mar is a modern twist on the old Promised Land myth," Mini said. "A place where all is good in the world and all the evils are a thing of the past. Where there is peace and plenty for all."
"Are you saying it doesn't exist?" she asked, careful to keep this part of the conversation between herself and the AI.
"While the possibility that such a place might exist is impossible to dispute, the more logical explanation is that it is the result of hopeful and wishful thinking," he pointed out. "People who dream of such a place talk of it and the talk spreads to perpetuate the myth. If it does, in fact, exist, the likelihood of it living up to such lofty standards is equally unlikely."
Jessica13 scowled. She wanted to think there were places in the world where people didn’t barely subsist in bunkers and scavenge to stay alive. There were enough reasons to think it, the Knights Mechanica themselves being only one. And if the thought of it was what kept them moving and helping people, she could see no reason why it was a bad thing to believe in it.
"Well, we'll keep searching for it," she told Mini. "Like you said, there'll always be a chance it does exist."
"You know I can tell that you're talking to your AI, right?" Windchime pointed out.
"From my body language. Yes, I know." She laughed. "Tinker likes to tell me every time like he doesn't do it himself."
"Well, yes, he is a crazy character, to begin with, so it would make sense that he sees the oddities in others but never himself." Her companion chuckled. "But all that aside, it’s odd to see a mech making all the gestures that would be expected from a conversation but never actually delivering on the conversation part of it."
"Well, in that case, you simply have to know there is a conversation but not with you," she countered.
She wasn't sure why she challenged the man, although he had to know it wasn’t intended as ill-will. It was more or less her style of speaking to someone. Any of the Knights would have been able to confirm that.
"Well, then, what is the AI saying that it doesn't want to tell me?" Windchime asked.
"Well, it's he, for starters," Jessica13 said with a chuckle. "And he merely wondered how reliable the stories of Citta del Mar might be. I told him that simply because it wasn't in his records didn't mean it didn’t exist. Many things happened in the past hundred years or so while he wasn’t activated."
"Well, you never got around to actually saying that," Mini said and it sounded like he was grumbling.
"I don't know. In a world like ours and growing up like we did, it’s nice to think and dream of a place that found a way to put itself together again," the man said, and she thought she could hear a hint of a smile in his voice. "There are streams and clean drinking water. People don’t live in cramped quarters or out in the open, scavenging and scraping to survive. There’s no longer a need to repurpose and retool goddamn everything. Obviously, you still can if you want to, I guess, but it wouldn't be a requirement for survival."
"A place where parts are new instead of a hundred years old would be interesting," she admitted with a soft laugh.
"The Knights Mechanica have taken a beating lately," Windchime continued. "We're not what we used to be, and in a place like Citta del Mar, we would have something like a base. Somewhere we could come out of our mechs and settle in, rest, and recharge before we head out and help people
