Between the Lanterns (10 page)

“No, sweets. I have a feeling… and I trust my feelings. It’s Tara,” Samantha said, her voice muffled against August’s shoulder. “She’s gone. I just wish I knew why she was there with that damned tin can.”

August stroked her hair, kissed her forehead, and said, “We should know soon. The Fire.Response Team is usually pretty fast with their investigations. Two days from now we should have some answers.”

Samantha looked up, kissed her dear husband, then lay her head back against August’s shoulder, and began to cry again.

“Take me to bed, won’t you, sweets? I need to lie down,” she murmured.

August once again gathered her light frame into his arms and walked her to their room where he lay Samantha down on her side of the bed. He kicked off his shoes and climbed in next to her. They held each other for the rest of the night, going back and forth from crying on each other, to telling stories about the diner and Tara.

The sun came up quicker than expected, and August noticed that Samantha was finally asleep. He quietly climbed out of bed and lowered the shades so she could sleep. There would be no going into work for her today, and he was going to call out, for obvious reasons. She might need him to be there for her, just in case she needed help with anything. And so, he would be there.

Later that afternoon, a call came in on their Home.Phone. It was the Insurance Rep from Montek.Claims, who said, “Mr. Lurie, may I speak with Mrs. Lurie?”

“I’m sorry, sir. She is still asleep. It was a long night, and we didn’t get much rest. She’s very upset by all of this, you understand.”

“Upset?” the smooth voice replied. “Oh, she won’t be when she sees the payout y’all will be receiving. It’s quite large. Due to the loss of the antiques, the damage to the state-of-the-art Montek.Automaton, the need for repair of the Nutricator, the loss of an employee…”

August cut him off and said sternly, “She wasn’t an employee, sir. She was a business partner and a friend.”

“Yes, well, be that as it may,” the man replied, “she is listed on the Insurance Contract Agreement as an employee and as such will be covered that way. I’ve been in contact with our Law Division, and it seems that Ms. White had put your wife as the sole beneficiary of her belongings. So, with that and the insurance payout, you both will be receiving a check in the next couple of days with enough Credit to buy a dozen restaurants that size. You could probably both just retire on this much Credit. I’m positive of it!”

“That’s fine, sir,” August said, not giving a shit about the Credit. “Any word on what started the fire? And would it be possible for me to come down there and find out if there is any of the old equipment I might be able to salvage?”

“We spoke with the Montek.Fire.Response unit and they seem certain that the investigation will show that a Montek.Credit machine malfunctioned, causing the fire. And I see no problem with you going down there from our side of things, but I would check with the Chief of the Fire.Response team just to be sure.”

August’s mind flashed back to the first time he ate in the diner. He had bought John a meal on Credit he had saved up for a new workbench. The machine had malfunctioned and sparked on him, causing August to catch fire a little bit before Sam doused him with coffee. He should have fixed it back then. If he had…

“Alright, thanks for your help, sir,” August said, now feeling worse than before, despite the amount of Credit they would be receiving.

“No problem, Mr. Lurie. My name is Sidney Cobb,” the man replied, “and I’ll attach my number to the documents I’m forwarding you now. If you have any questions, just give me a call. We appreciate your business and congratulations on your big payday.”

“Sidney, please,” August begged, hoping that, for once, someone in the world could show some compassion. “My wife’s best friend just died. This is not a happy time for us, do you understand?”

There was a brief pause on the line before Sidney continued, saying, “Well, I guess I can see how that would be disappointing. Maybe she activated her new BrainSave before she died. Then you could keep Ms. White around, talk to her through an automaton.”

“There was a BrainSave there with the automaton?” August said hopefully. “Was it damaged?”

“No, the BrainSave was installed, so it escaped damage from the fire,” Sidney explained. “You’re welcome to take a look at it when you go to the diner. We’ll be paying out on the Montek.Automaton, though, so I’m afraid you won’t be able to take the BrainSave.”

“But what if she did activate it, sir?” August asked, his heart rate soaring. “Let me take the chip, just in case! What do you care?”

“Well, I guess it can’t hurt,” Sidney said. “If you don’t tell, I won’t… you can keep the BrainSave as my way of apology for your loss.”

“Ok, thank you, sir. Bye-bye,” August said, disconnecting the call before Sidney could change his mind. August hoped Tara had time enough to activate that chip, for Samantha’s sake at least. She may hate those automatons, but he bet she’d be glad enough at the chance to say goodbye.

Chapter 10

EMPTY

Samantha couldn’t go to the diner again so soon. She was too distraught, and the sight of it would more than likely send her into an emotional fit again.

“Please go, sweets,” she said to August. “Don’t let me keep you from going. I just can’t bear the thought of seeing it like that again... empty… and broken. I want you to go, though. Maybe there’s something there you can bring me back that will remind me of the place… and of Cheryl … and …Tara.” Samantha broke off, fighting off the cry, but knowing it was a battle she was soon to lose.

August gently kissed her on the lips, and then hugged her close, smelling the soot still present in her hair. She hadn’t showered since coming back from the fire two nights before.

“Ok, but I won’t be gone long,” he whispered into her ear. “I promise.”

She smiled and nodded, still not trusting her voice other than to say, “One level brighter, please and thank you,” instructing the lanterns to increase their light so she could look at pictures of her and Tara together.

After a brisk ride, August pulled up to the diner on his bicycle, and the scene looked much as it did two nights before. Only now there were no firefighters with hoses coming from their trucks. The flames were long gone, but the desolation remained.
 

He picked his way through the debris, and looked for anything he could take back and fix up; anything at all that might make Samantha the tiniest bit happy. It was no good, though. Everything was ruined. The young firefighter had been right after all. The only two things not completely destroyed were the automaton and the Nutricator, and there was no way either of those would make her happy.

Unless Tara had activated the BrainSave, that is. Once August spotted the big machine, he rushed over to the Montek.Automaton and did a once-over visual inspection. Now that he had been put in charge of their production in the local area, he was very familiar with the construction and design of these “tin cans,” as his lovely wife was so fond of calling them.

He noticed it wasn’t the newest model, but it was a nice version from several types back. Some of the improvements included in this model were of his design. Not that Montek would ever give him any credit for those ideas. But as long as he and Samantha knew about it, that was all that mattered to August. He had no desire to please everyone anymore. He only wanted to help where he could and enjoy his wife’s affection. That was plenty for him.

August popped open the shielded area containing the BrainSave. He couldn’t check the contents here, so he placed it in his pocket and stepped carefully out of the wreckage and back to his bicycle.

Only an hour after leaving, August walked back in the front door to find Samantha asleep on the couch, holding a photo album in her lap. He grabbed a blanket and draped it over his wife, then gently guided her head down onto a pillow.
 

He whispered to the lanterns, “Follow, please and thank you,” as he tiptoed to his workshop out back.

As he took out the BrainSave, August looked over and saw the wooden automaton statue Sam had made for him. Beside it were the blueprints for an idea he had been working on. And that idea might just come in handy now.

He placed the chip that may or may not contain the memories of Samantha’s best friend off to the side, forgetting it for a while, and getting lost in the little wooden automaton project. August had a habit of getting into something deep and tuning everything else out.

He examined the wooden sculpture and his blueprints, then gathered all of the materials he would need to begin. August worked tirelessly for the next two hours while Samantha slept soundly on the couch. It was what they both needed. She desperately needed the rest to recover from the past few emotional days, and August just as badly needed to focus his mind on a task and fix something. It felt good.

The door to his workshop creaked open, and Samantha peeked her head in with a sleepy look on her face, saying, “Sweets, what are you working on? Is that the wooden sculpture I made you?”

He whirled around, surprised by her sudden appearance and made a startled gasp. Bringing a hand up to his heart as if having a heart attack, he and exclaimed, “Good Lord, woman! You scared the bejeezus out of me!”

Samantha smiled genuinely for the first time since the phone rang two nights ago. There was nothing like a jump scare to make you feel better, especially when it’s not you that gets scared.

“Sorry, sweets,” she said, stifling a laugh. “You know that you get lost in here sometimes. Even if I knock, you won’t hear me. Now, what is going on, huh?”

August held up the finished little robot and grinned at his wife and said, “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

Setting it down on the workbench, the same old workbench he had been using for years, August connected the last of the wires in the back of the little wooden automaton. It immediately sprang to life. The wooden robot began to walk up and down the length of the workbench. After a minute or so, it just stopped and stood idle.

“What on Earth did you do to it, sweets? How is it working?” Samantha asked excitedly.

“Well, I installed a similar chip to the ones in the lanterns,” he said gesturing up at them, “letting the automaton work off of the Tesla generator outside of town.”

Samantha gazed up at the two lanterns they were standing between once again.

“Amazing, sweets. How is it moving, though?” she asked, leaning down to examine the newly automated figurine. “It was a solid hunk of wood earlier today!”

August picked up the surprisingly heavy robot and showed her the changes he had made and explained, “Well, I cut it. I made movable joints by adding these bolts and hinges at the shoulders, elbows, wrists, knees, etc. Then I, uhh, used string.”

“String? Did you say string, sweets?” she asked with a touch of doubt in her voice.

“Yeah, well it’s not like yarn or nothin’. It’s the same fiber coating we use to cover certain types of wires. It’s real tough, it can’t be cut without a plasma torch, but it moves like string. I used it to make the little guy walk and move his arms by runnin’ them through this small engine I came up with.”

“So it’s kind of like a puppet?” she asked with a grin.

“Not really,” he answered, too caught up to notice she was just messing around. “It’s still an automaton. It has a few different chips that control its vision and movement.”

“Can it talk, sweets?” she asked, serious this time.

“Oh, yeah. It can,” August said, even more excited. “I installed an entire voice system with speakers. Little ones, of course.”

Samantha took the automaton from his hands and turned it over, examining all the work he had put into modifying her creation. She was impressed. It was beautiful. So much more so than the big tin cans that people paraded through town.

“If they all looked like this, sweets, I wouldn’t mind them half as much. And if they didn’t have people’s memories and voices inside of them, I would like them just as much as I do this one,” she said with a smile, and hugged it close, adding, “Thank you, August. It’s very nice. It’ll be fun to watch it walk around the house, and maybe help take my mind off of… Tara.”

Damn. He had forgotten about the BrainSave. August still didn’t know if it had Tara’s memories in it or not.
 

“Listen, Sam,” he began,. “There is a chance that Tara activated the BrainSave in her automaton before she died in the fire. If so, it will have her memories and stories, and voice, and you could talk to it… talk to her.”

The look on her face went cold immediately, and Samantha said, “Sweets, you know how I feel about those damned robots. It’s unnatural. It ain’t right to do that to people.”

“Sam, love,” August said, his voice pleading, “if she activated the BrainSave, then it was her choice. It would be what she wanted. And then you would have the chance to… say goodbye.”

Samantha had not fully processed the loss of her best friend until that very moment; when August said, “…Say goodbye.” Sam realized that she hadn’t said goodbye to Tara. The last thing she said had ever told her best friend was, “Don’t forget to clean up the stove when you finish. See you tomorrow.”

That wasn’t a goodbye. That was instruction. It was cold and loveless. She had only really ever lost two people in her life.: Cheryl and John. Cheryl had been like a mother to her for years, and when she died from the Countdown, Samantha had been there to say goodbye.
 

John had been Cheryl’s husband, and Samantha hadn’t known him that well but had heard stories about him from Cheryl. Samantha had felt a friendly connection to John at their first meeting that only blossomed into a loving admiration right up to his death. And she had got to say goodbye to him, too.

Tara, who was basically her big sister, was gone. She had died in a fire at their diner. Samantha had not been able to say goodbye to the woman who was the Maid of Honor at her wedding. The only person in this world, other than August, who truly cared about Sam. She had not been able to say goodbye.

Upon realizing this, Samantha crumbled into a ball on the floor and cried into the carpet. The loss she felt at that moment was equal to or greater than any she had ever felt in her entire life. Forget the diner; Samantha had her memories. Forget the antique cooking equipment; she would figure something out and make do. But Tara? Her best friend? Her “sister”?