Fifteen, 3 February

My dearest boy

Feb 03, 2025

The size of a large rat

He heard the woman take a sharp intake of breath. As he looked up she put her fingers to her lips and pointed. A dronikus was working its way along the groups of people huddled on the pavement. It moved from person to person, from face to face, hovering a moment, before moving to the next person.

Terror gripped Zola. He reached into his tunic pocket; thankfully the dronikus showed no sign of life. Roberto was sitting upright, his head slumped onto Zola’s chest.

Unsure of what to do, Zola watched the dronikus’s progress and how each person would look at it: generally with a defiant stare but making no moves to cover their face or turn away. This, he thought, was probably to avoid unduly attracting the dronikus’s attention.

As it came closer still, Zola nudged Roberto and whispered, ‘lie back and turn your face downwards, Toto.’ But the old man was too far gone in his misery and discomfort to comprehend. Zola tried to ease him onto his back, but this only caused him to moan and resist. The dronikus came closer; it was a few metres away by now; the size of a large rat and a dowdy grey colour, an ugly creature. Zola put his fingers to his face and massaged the skin into movement.

He wrapped his poncho over Roberto’s head. The old woman waved her hand, indicating for him to remove it. Zola whispered in Roberto’s ear, telling him what was happening. To his surprise the old man registered and sat up, looking about for the dronikus. On seeing it, he watched as it came towards them. Zola sat frozen, not knowing what to do.

‘Toto, I… I… don’t know…’

Roberto put his arms around Zola’s body and said in a very low voice: ‘I’ll take care of this, Zola.

‘No.’

‘Yes.’

He spoke quietly, holding the machine in his view. ‘You make your way now, my boy, my dearest, dearest boy…’

Zola held his arm so tight that it might break. ‘No, Toto…’ the words falling soundlessly from his lips.

The dronikus hovered briefly in front of the old woman and then turned to Zola. He sat unmoving. He felt fear rise from his stomach up his spine and spread through his body. He looked deep into the Glastic eye fixed on him. But then it moved away and focussed on Roberto’s face. Immediately it responded by pulling back sharply and hovering a few feet away from Roberto, locked onto him. Clearly it had found what it was looking for.

Nothing happened for a moment. Then Roberto struggled to his feet and began walking into the rain and the water gushing down the centre of the laneway. The dronikus followed, staying out of the rain under the overhang.

Zola stood up, his movements slow and deliberate. He touched the old woman on her shoulder and edged away in the opposite direction. He kept his eyes ahead of him, resisting the desperate need he felt to look back. Roberto reached the centre of the intersection. He stopped and raised his eyes to the sky, a man at peace with his destiny.

As Zola reached the corner of the alley he turned and saw a dozen attack dronikus come flying into the laneway ahead of a squad of rators, moving rapidly towards Roberto. The dronikus fired a volley of darts and the old man dropped. Before he had even hit the ground, Zola had rounded the corner and was moving away.

He walked as fast as he dared, for fear of attracting attention, not sure where he was heading, stepping over and around the people huddled on the pavements. At the end of the alleyway, down an adjacent street, he saw activity. Squads of rators were moving through the squatters sheltering there, agitating and harassing them. Zola kept going, pulling the hood of his raincoat down tightly, walking even slower now, his head bowed, his hands in his tunic pockets. ‘His’ dronikus still lay snug and inert, enclosed in his fingers.

He had put a few streets between himself and the fatal intersection. The water, swirling and squalling as it fell from the sky, refracted and rippled through the streetlights, casting intricate patterns of fans and sprays and spirals in the air.

As he walked, his mind went to the brief glimpse he had of his beloved Toto being shot down by the dronikus. He stopped, crouching down against a wall, feeling the pain of the death and loss surge up through him. He wanted to close his eyes and give himself over to the suffering, but noises nearby made him look up. A group of rators was approaching in the distance, randomly attacking people on the pavements. Zola leapt to his feet and began walking again, rapidly up the street. Many others were also on the move, getting out of the way of the aggressive machines.

The crowd, of which Zola had become a part, swelled – now perhaps in the hundreds – and began running onto the wider road alongside the river. They were soon overtaken and fell to the vicious batons and hard boots of the rators and the jaws of the ratordogs.

Zola broke away and slipped onto a small iron stairway leading down to the riverbank. He looked back and saw that a rator had seen him and was giving chase. Zola dropped as fast as he could, zigzagging down the flights. But as fast as he was, he heard the rator just above him clattering down the steel steps, gaining on him. On the next landing, he pulled back and straightened, the rator now entering the flight he had just left. As it arrived on the landing, Zola gave it a massive thrusting kick, pushing it off balance. It was quick, just missing Zola’s foot but managing to grab the iron railing to save itself. However, the rusted old metal gave way under the robot’s weight and the impact of Zola’s kick. It came apart and the rator went flying out into the void and dropped down the 10 or 15 metres into the torrent below, where it was swept away in the rapid waters of the flooding river.

Zola made his way upstream on the narrow path along the riverbank, seeking shelter from both surveillance and the rain under trees, rocky overhangs, and bridges above him. He had no direction, with no idea of where to go, but he kept on moving.

Then, as exhaustion and a deep melancholy began to set in and his steps had become a slow shuffle, in the half-light his eyes caught a part of the roof and door of a self-drive van just visible above the black surging waters. Elated and re-energised, he ran up a stairway onto the road and then onto the familiar bridge.

He was forced to push aside people sleeping on the pavement to get to the door of Nazim’s. He banged loudly until it was reluctantly opened a few inches by a man, both scared and angry. Zola persuaded him to call the boy and then persuaded the boy to go find Chesa.

Hey, what's that sound?

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Hey, what's that sound?

Fifteen, 3 February

My dearest boy

Dronikus, a novel set on a burning planet called Earth.

Discussion about this post