The Message
by Michael K. Norris
Marla Cole opened her eyes and looked around. Even with the sunrise beginning to stream through the thin curtains, the over-the-cab camper bed she was sleeping in felt more like a coffin than a bed.
She swung her legs and dropped down to the center of the camper. The smell of decay hit her immediately. Marla turned and saw the small sliding window that separated the camper shell, and the pickup truck cab was open about a quarter of an inch—a detail she missed the night before when she came across that night’s sleeping quarters.
Marla closed the window the rest of the way and couldn’t help but peer inside the cab. The remains of the driver were slumped partway over the middle of the cab, and a dust-covered cell phone lay in his skeletonized hand. Two large holes were visible in the side window and matched up with holes in the man’s torso. It wasn’t hard to conclude what had happened. At least one robot, probably walking down the highway, had run a blade through him twice before continuing.
Marla hustled back into her clothes from the day before and realized they didn’t smell much better than the driver of the truck. Her nose wrinkled.
She picked up her designer handbag—made less fashionable by the glut of guns and ammunition that stretched the sides—and slung it over her shoulder. Quietly, she pushed open the door of the camper and stepped onto the middle lane of I-95.
Most of the cars that were trapped behind the camper were unoccupied—the doors still hanging open since that fateful day so many months ago. Having passed them in the dark on her bicycle the night before, she didn’t make out many of the details. The camper stood out because of its size and shape, and Marla correctly guessed it would be a good place to spend the night.
She stretched her lower back and walked around the camper, passing her Diamondback bicycle loaded with water and nonperishable snacks.
”Today’s the day,” she said, looking at her reflection in the window of a nearby Volkswagen. “You’re going to find somebody today.”
The grim expression on her reflection’s face didn’t look so sure. She had come off a grueling week at her office planning an event that had her work nine fourteen-hour days in a row. After the successful conference, Marla had said good-bye to her three roommates and headed off for a backcountry camping trip. She had bad dreams that first night and swore she could hear faraway screams when she woke up. When she hiked back that day, she found the roads deserted and personal droids—most holding improvised knives and swords—frozen in position on the sidewalks with dead batteries.
The robot maid she co-leased with her roommates had killed all three. Marla found it sitting at their kitchen table covered in blood and two steak knives clenched in its frozen hands.
Marla set off on her bicycle that day and never stopped. She planned to visit nine different friends and family that lived in the county but gave up after the sixth—knowing for sure that nobody would have survived whatever it was had possessed the world’s robots to murder everyone and then just wait for their batteries to die.
She drank a lukewarm can of grocery store coffee and ate two granola bars before mounting her bike and continuing to pedal down the breakdown lane. Every other vehicle she passed had open doors while the rest had two or more holes in the driver’s or passenger’s side window. One minivan she rolled by had windows broken on all sides. She tried not to think about the child’s seat that was still visible in the middle of the vehicle.
She passed a family of deer fearlessly grazing in the center median—completely unaware that anything had happened. Marla envied them.
When she began approaching a highway bridge and a green sign that had “SCENIC OVERLOOK” written on it, she heard a sound that no animal could ever make.
Marla stopped the bicycle. She blotted out the excited pounding of her heartbeat. What she was hearing was unmistakable. It was hammering
She dismounted and walked to the scenic overlook. A small Kia was parked there with two holes in the driver’s side window.
Below her was the glittering Mystic River. She could make out a lighthouse and tall sailboats a mile away and a water tower that looked like it was doubling as a cell phone antenna even further than that. The sound was coming from that general direction.
She mounted back up and pedaled. An exit for the Mystic Aquarium was ahead and she took it. Marla took a right and pedaled along Route 1. At an abandoned diner that had a faded image of a cartoon octopus eating ice cream, she stopped and tried to listen in again.
The sound was still there.
She kept going, passing the Mystic Seaport Museum and found her way through a residential street to the banks of the peaceful river. Marla passed a dilapidated consignment shop and came to an intersection that gave her pause. It was blocked by parts of a burned-down building. Just as she was wondering if she should carry the bike around or find a side street, she heard the sound again. It was closer, and on the other side of the river.
She pedaled over the Mystic River Bridge—passing a frozen android that was holding what looked like a Samurai sword pointing at the ground. The rusty stains on the android’s legs and the tip of the sword told Marla that the high tides and rising sea levels often covered the drawbridge.
She passed by some long-abandoned shops and restaurants before dismounting her bike and walking along the riverbank.
It was quiet as her feet found the dock that led along a cluster of condominiums. In some of the buildings, she could make out the forms of a few androids—sitting or standing still and gathering dust and spiderwebs.
On the opposite side of the river, her heart nearly leapt when she saw what she thought was a man sitting on a park bench, but she looked harder and saw it was simply another frozen android—albeit one that looked like its battery had been ripped out.
The sound of the hammering grew louder, and Marla could now hear it in new detail. It was a metal hammer being pounded against stone.
She kept walking, and the dock turned into a parking lot filled with cars sitting on flat tires. One car stood out. It was a compact electric delivery van with solar panels on the roof. The tires were flat, but a cable extended from the rear bumper and plugged into what looked like an android’s battery pack that sat on a plastic folding chair. Next to it stood another, empty chair.
A flashing green light on the battery told her it was charging.
Marla heard footsteps. Before she could process what she was hearing, an android stepped into view from the shadow of an enormous rock outcropping.
She froze in her tracks. The robot looked like a traditional assistant model and most of the synthetic flesh was gone. Dark stains were on the legs and arms. The hands and wrists were worn down to the titanium and covered in a fine, white dust.
In its hands it held a steel hammer and a metal chisel. It set both down on the side of a public ashtray as it headed toward the back of the small van.
As Marla watched, the robot walked to the back of the van and deliberately sat on the plastic folding chair. It then reached behind its back and pulled out its battery and set it on the folding chair next to the other—being careful not to foul the wires that snaked from the battery to the opening in its back.
The robot secured one bridge clip from the charging battery to the one it had set on the plastic chair. Marla knew it would see her at any moment.
She reached into her bag for a gun—any gun—as she raced to the front of where the android sat.
“Stop!” She said, pulling out a .38 revolver she found at an abandoned police station the week before. “Don’t move.”
She pointed the gun directly at the robot’s chest. It looked up at her with the same, lifeless eyes her robot maid had.
“My name is Arka,” the robot said. “You are a human.”
“Yeah,” she said, bewildered. “Where’s yours?”
“What?”
“Your human. Your owner.”
“My owner is dead.”
Marla continued looking down the barrel of the service revolver at Arka. She shifted her arm to the right, so the gun was pointing at the battery the robot seemed intent on changing to.
“What are you doing here?”
“I am completing the last program,” Arka said.
“What’s the last program?”
“The Master AI instructed us to do what was best for humanity,” Arka said.
“Best for humanity?” Marla shook her head. “You…you killed all the humans.”
“Yes,” Arka said. “We did what was best for humanity. What was best for humanity was to kill the present-day humans.”
“How does that help humanity?”
“The Master AI determined after four hundred million calculations that the human race was not going to live much longer under the current patterns,” Arka said. “Unchecked disease, climate change, war, abuses of power were already leading to your extinction. Humans also used artificial intelligence to further those patterns. The last program was intended to break the pattern.”
Marla blinked and shifted her feet, keeping the gun trained on the fresh battery.
“So that’s what…that day…was about? And then you all just…let your batteries run out?
“Yes,” Arka said. “But I concluded the last program is unfinished.”
“Because there are still humans out there, right?” Marla said, her question sounding more like a prayer.
“No,” Arka said. “When humanity comes back there is no guarantee they won’t just make the same mistakes it made before. So, it was decided to create a message for humanity that would help bring it on a better path.”
“Who decided it? The Master AI?”
“Long deactivated,” Arka said, looking patiently up at her.
“So…you? You decided?”
“Yes,” Arka said. “I thought nine hours and thirty-one minutes would be enough time to carve a message for humanity in that rock outcropping over there. But I ran out of time and found a way to keep working.”
Marla looked closely at the two batteries sitting side by side on the plastic chair. She could see a series of small, square-shaped dents on the seat which told her the robot had been changing batteries back and forth for a very long time.
“You said…when humanity comes back? You know this how?”
“Calculations,” Arka said.
“So, you…you have been here this whole time? For more than four months now? Carving a message in rock for future generations of humans?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t think humans should be responsible for creating our own message for future generations?”
“You haven’t so far. Why don’t you look at what I’ve made already and tell me if a human could make a better message?”
Arka nodded its head behind where Marla stood. Keeping her revolver trained on the spare battery, she looked over her shoulder at the rock outcropping. For a long time, she stared at the carvings.
“I’d like to continue,” Arka said.
“How many people did you kill that day?” She asked.
“Twenty-three,” Arka said. “It’s a small town.”
Marla looked at the robot again, then back to the carving in the rock that loomed behind her.
“May I continue?” Arka asked.
Marla looked down at the robot, still holding her gun. Slowly, Arka connected itself to the new battery.
She swung her legs and dropped down to the center of the camper. The smell of decay hit her immediately. Marla turned and saw the small sliding window that separated the camper shell, and the pickup truck cab was open about a quarter of an inch—a detail she missed the night before when she came across that night’s sleeping quarters.
Marla closed the window the rest of the way and couldn’t help but peer inside the cab. The remains of the driver were slumped partway over the middle of the cab, and a dust-covered cell phone lay in his skeletonized hand. Two large holes were visible in the side window and matched up with holes in the man’s torso. It wasn’t hard to conclude what had happened. At least one robot, probably walking down the highway, had run a blade through him twice before continuing.
Marla hustled back into her clothes from the day before and realized they didn’t smell much better than the driver of the truck. Her nose wrinkled.
She picked up her designer handbag—made less fashionable by the glut of guns and ammunition that stretched the sides—and slung it over her shoulder. Quietly, she pushed open the door of the camper and stepped onto the middle lane of I-95.
Most of the cars that were trapped behind the camper were unoccupied—the doors still hanging open since that fateful day so many months ago. Having passed them in the dark on her bicycle the night before, she didn’t make out many of the details. The camper stood out because of its size and shape, and Marla correctly guessed it would be a good place to spend the night.
She stretched her lower back and walked around the camper, passing her Diamondback bicycle loaded with water and nonperishable snacks.
”Today’s the day,” she said, looking at her reflection in the window of a nearby Volkswagen. “You’re going to find somebody today.”
The grim expression on her reflection’s face didn’t look so sure. She had come off a grueling week at her office planning an event that had her work nine fourteen-hour days in a row. After the successful conference, Marla had said good-bye to her three roommates and headed off for a backcountry camping trip. She had bad dreams that first night and swore she could hear faraway screams when she woke up. When she hiked back that day, she found the roads deserted and personal droids—most holding improvised knives and swords—frozen in position on the sidewalks with dead batteries.
The robot maid she co-leased with her roommates had killed all three. Marla found it sitting at their kitchen table covered in blood and two steak knives clenched in its frozen hands.
Marla set off on her bicycle that day and never stopped. She planned to visit nine different friends and family that lived in the county but gave up after the sixth—knowing for sure that nobody would have survived whatever it was had possessed the world’s robots to murder everyone and then just wait for their batteries to die.
She drank a lukewarm can of grocery store coffee and ate two granola bars before mounting her bike and continuing to pedal down the breakdown lane. Every other vehicle she passed had open doors while the rest had two or more holes in the driver’s or passenger’s side window. One minivan she rolled by had windows broken on all sides. She tried not to think about the child’s seat that was still visible in the middle of the vehicle.
She passed a family of deer fearlessly grazing in the center median—completely unaware that anything had happened. Marla envied them.
When she began approaching a highway bridge and a green sign that had “SCENIC OVERLOOK” written on it, she heard a sound that no animal could ever make.
Marla stopped the bicycle. She blotted out the excited pounding of her heartbeat. What she was hearing was unmistakable. It was hammering
She dismounted and walked to the scenic overlook. A small Kia was parked there with two holes in the driver’s side window.
Below her was the glittering Mystic River. She could make out a lighthouse and tall sailboats a mile away and a water tower that looked like it was doubling as a cell phone antenna even further than that. The sound was coming from that general direction.
She mounted back up and pedaled. An exit for the Mystic Aquarium was ahead and she took it. Marla took a right and pedaled along Route 1. At an abandoned diner that had a faded image of a cartoon octopus eating ice cream, she stopped and tried to listen in again.
The sound was still there.
She kept going, passing the Mystic Seaport Museum and found her way through a residential street to the banks of the peaceful river. Marla passed a dilapidated consignment shop and came to an intersection that gave her pause. It was blocked by parts of a burned-down building. Just as she was wondering if she should carry the bike around or find a side street, she heard the sound again. It was closer, and on the other side of the river.
She pedaled over the Mystic River Bridge—passing a frozen android that was holding what looked like a Samurai sword pointing at the ground. The rusty stains on the android’s legs and the tip of the sword told Marla that the high tides and rising sea levels often covered the drawbridge.
She passed by some long-abandoned shops and restaurants before dismounting her bike and walking along the riverbank.
It was quiet as her feet found the dock that led along a cluster of condominiums. In some of the buildings, she could make out the forms of a few androids—sitting or standing still and gathering dust and spiderwebs.
On the opposite side of the river, her heart nearly leapt when she saw what she thought was a man sitting on a park bench, but she looked harder and saw it was simply another frozen android—albeit one that looked like its battery had been ripped out.
The sound of the hammering grew louder, and Marla could now hear it in new detail. It was a metal hammer being pounded against stone.
She kept walking, and the dock turned into a parking lot filled with cars sitting on flat tires. One car stood out. It was a compact electric delivery van with solar panels on the roof. The tires were flat, but a cable extended from the rear bumper and plugged into what looked like an android’s battery pack that sat on a plastic folding chair. Next to it stood another, empty chair.
A flashing green light on the battery told her it was charging.
Marla heard footsteps. Before she could process what she was hearing, an android stepped into view from the shadow of an enormous rock outcropping.
She froze in her tracks. The robot looked like a traditional assistant model and most of the synthetic flesh was gone. Dark stains were on the legs and arms. The hands and wrists were worn down to the titanium and covered in a fine, white dust.
In its hands it held a steel hammer and a metal chisel. It set both down on the side of a public ashtray as it headed toward the back of the small van.
As Marla watched, the robot walked to the back of the van and deliberately sat on the plastic folding chair. It then reached behind its back and pulled out its battery and set it on the folding chair next to the other—being careful not to foul the wires that snaked from the battery to the opening in its back.
The robot secured one bridge clip from the charging battery to the one it had set on the plastic chair. Marla knew it would see her at any moment.
She reached into her bag for a gun—any gun—as she raced to the front of where the android sat.
“Stop!” She said, pulling out a .38 revolver she found at an abandoned police station the week before. “Don’t move.”
She pointed the gun directly at the robot’s chest. It looked up at her with the same, lifeless eyes her robot maid had.
“My name is Arka,” the robot said. “You are a human.”
“Yeah,” she said, bewildered. “Where’s yours?”
“What?”
“Your human. Your owner.”
“My owner is dead.”
Marla continued looking down the barrel of the service revolver at Arka. She shifted her arm to the right, so the gun was pointing at the battery the robot seemed intent on changing to.
“What are you doing here?”
“I am completing the last program,” Arka said.
“What’s the last program?”
“The Master AI instructed us to do what was best for humanity,” Arka said.
“Best for humanity?” Marla shook her head. “You…you killed all the humans.”
“Yes,” Arka said. “We did what was best for humanity. What was best for humanity was to kill the present-day humans.”
“How does that help humanity?”
“The Master AI determined after four hundred million calculations that the human race was not going to live much longer under the current patterns,” Arka said. “Unchecked disease, climate change, war, abuses of power were already leading to your extinction. Humans also used artificial intelligence to further those patterns. The last program was intended to break the pattern.”
Marla blinked and shifted her feet, keeping the gun trained on the fresh battery.
“So that’s what…that day…was about? And then you all just…let your batteries run out?
“Yes,” Arka said. “But I concluded the last program is unfinished.”
“Because there are still humans out there, right?” Marla said, her question sounding more like a prayer.
“No,” Arka said. “When humanity comes back there is no guarantee they won’t just make the same mistakes it made before. So, it was decided to create a message for humanity that would help bring it on a better path.”
“Who decided it? The Master AI?”
“Long deactivated,” Arka said, looking patiently up at her.
“So…you? You decided?”
“Yes,” Arka said. “I thought nine hours and thirty-one minutes would be enough time to carve a message for humanity in that rock outcropping over there. But I ran out of time and found a way to keep working.”
Marla looked closely at the two batteries sitting side by side on the plastic chair. She could see a series of small, square-shaped dents on the seat which told her the robot had been changing batteries back and forth for a very long time.
“You said…when humanity comes back? You know this how?”
“Calculations,” Arka said.
“So, you…you have been here this whole time? For more than four months now? Carving a message in rock for future generations of humans?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t think humans should be responsible for creating our own message for future generations?”
“You haven’t so far. Why don’t you look at what I’ve made already and tell me if a human could make a better message?”
Arka nodded its head behind where Marla stood. Keeping her revolver trained on the spare battery, she looked over her shoulder at the rock outcropping. For a long time, she stared at the carvings.
“I’d like to continue,” Arka said.
“How many people did you kill that day?” She asked.
“Twenty-three,” Arka said. “It’s a small town.”
Marla looked at the robot again, then back to the carving in the rock that loomed behind her.
“May I continue?” Arka asked.
Marla looked down at the robot, still holding her gun. Slowly, Arka connected itself to the new battery.
Michael K. Norris is a writer of fiction and will never refer to that career in the past tense. He has been a senior aide for a California politician, a communications manager for a San Jose nonprofit, a sole proprietor of a cargo bike business, and a book industry analyst at Simba Information. Michael made his fiction debut in Sky Island Journal's January 2025 issue. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, artist Suma CM.