“It’ll only take a minute,” she says with a smile.

I look past Meg to the struggling field. The earthy green stalks are made hyper-color against the pink hues of the midday sky. Further out, past the crop, I survey the dome’s perimeter that protects our 40-acre life from the aggressions of the outside atmosphere.

“The probability of the loose track you chose not to repair yesterday being the cause of the failure exceeds 98 percent. I believe it has slipped the sprocket, Will,” she says, snapping my attention back to her. “I estimate repairs to take no more than 47 seconds.”

I hate it when she talks numbers. Makes her sound like a machine.

“Well, go on then. Get that droid back to tending the crop again and then it’s straight back to the house with you, no dallying. After all that Everitt’s done, I think it’s best we stick together as much as possible.”

“He’s your brother, Will. He wouldn’t think to harm us, would he?”

“You don’t know my brother the way I do, Meg. Now get along. The quicker you go, the quicker you’ll be back.”

I watch her meander through the crop, keeping my eyes on her until she disappears over the first rise, until I am no longer able to see the yellow of her dress.

The second she’s out of sight, I feel my stomach twist. I rub my hand across the back of my neck and look out into the silent field. Somethin’ don’t feel right.

I force myself to look again at her mangled body lying on the table. My dear, sweet Meg. Took me about an hour of searching before I found her draped across the barbed wire on the north end.

I should have gone with her. Those droids never get stuck like that. Even with a thrown track, it should have been able to limp back home.

I don’t have a clue as to how the intruder made it into the dome. The breach alarm never sounded, and I found no forced entry point. For all I know, Meg invited them in. She can be most hospitable, to a fault.

It was most likely one of Everitt’s misfits who committed the atrocity. The bastard had drained poor Meg dry and taken all her treasures. They pulled her big, beautiful blue eyes and detached her tongue, so she couldn’t tell me what happened.

If it was just that, I could have managed. I can print another pair of blue eyes, most anything, really. But they crossed the line when they took her heart.

He knows their hearts are the one thing we can’t print twice, or so the warden said:

“We coded the printers this way to encourage you boys to take good care of the dolls. One print, one heart, one doll. Ya hear me? The synth standing next to you today is the only one you’ll ever get. Treat ‘em like the rare, precious gems they are, and they will take good care of you to the end of your days.”

I run my fingers through Meg’s matted hair and smooth the collar of her juice-stained dress. “I’m sorry, baby, I should have taken better care of you. I shoulda’ been out there, with you.” I punch the wall so hard, I leave a hole in the plaster.

I’m pretty sure Prudence could figure out a way around the printer’s code lock. She is sharper than the others, there’s no doubt. Problem is, Prudence only listens to Everitt, and Everitt don’t like me much.

But then, me and Everitt, we ain’t never really seen eye-to-eye. While we may have come from the same womb, barely a breath apart, we could not be more opposed in our intents. Anyone would say we are identical in appearance, but upon further time invested in our company, there is no mistaking our particular ways.

Where he likes to go with his gut, I meticulously plan. Where he hastily leaps, first I look. He is quick to shoot, I prefer to parlay. And so on and so forth, the way it has been since the moment we came unto this world, angry and hollerin’ from the start. The only commonality ‘tween us is following the sinner’s path of dastardly deeds and self-destruction.

You would think being brothers would count for somethin’, but we despise each other in every way imaginable. Our bristly relations put an added strain on our lives here in the Cluster. But after a few years in, it seemed we had eventually found a way to live and let live.

That is until the juice stopped coming. When it looked like his dear Prudence wasn’t going to survive. That’s when things took a turn for the worse.

I have no idea why they stopped sending the juice. Maybe the warden’s dying wish was to take away the only joy we have in our hard lives on this rock.

You see, without the juice, the dolls are as good as dead. Juice is to them like water is to us. They don’t need nearly as much, but without it, they are as lifeless as a sack of bones.

For a long time, the juice drops arrived like clockwork. Every cycle, we each got what we needed and then some. I managed to save up plenty. Enough to keep Meg going for a long time, most likely till my last, dying breath.

Everitt, on the other hand, had squandered his stock on printing oddities. His Prudence had figured out how to hack his printer and reverse engineer her template to use in printing the others. She had even worked out a way to print new hearts, though they could only be coded to the new dolls. Their children, as she liked to call them.

One print, one heart, one monster. And then another. And another. And another.

The contraband dolls were bigger, stronger, and more adaptable to the toxic atmosphere outside the domes. But so far as I could tell, they were nothing but crazed demons, aberrations that looked more beast than human. Some had four arms or six legs, others had claws for hands. Vicious brutes, all of them. I never understood why he printed them, why Prudence wasn’t enough.

In the beginning, Everitt liked to show them off, like a proud father. He had them perform acrobatics and feats of strength in the quarries while we all stood around in our suits and watched. It was fun for a while. A welcome distraction from the endless rock, dust, and struggle that defined our daily existence.

I think our time here could be more bearable if we had a few more folks to socialize with. But they only built the six domes in this cluster. Said it was due to excessively poor conditions of the land. No doubt the very reason the six of us were hand-picked to live here. They sentenced the worst of the worst to wither away in this God-forsaken region of the planet.

Aside from me and my brother, there was Lloyd, who arguably received the most fertile of the plots. Then there was Bernhard, Kenny, and Bad Bill. We had all done unforgivable things, but now, we are just trying to survive and be neighborly to each other, for the most part.

I wish that could be said for Everitt. He don’t know how to be neighborly. Trouble is in his blood. It sticks to him the way a storm cloud hugs the jagged peak of a mountain. He isn’t capable of calming his mind enough to sit idle and be content. Doesn’t know how to simply exist with his Prudence. Especially not now, not with their pack of monster children. His collection of misfit toys.

And therein lies the crux of the problem. The very cause to our current and most violent effect. You see, every one of those misfits needs a dose of the juice every cycle, and with so many mouths to feed, it wasn’t long before Everitt’s stock was sucked dry. That’s when he came a knockin.’ He presumed with me being blood n’ all, I would be inclined to help him out.

“It’s only Meg you got. I know there’s plenty of juice to spare takin’ up space in that cellar of yours,” he said to me over the radio. I didn’t respond, just turned off the radio and went about my business. It was my opinion that Everitt should lie in the bed he done made.

I could have stood against him if I still had Lloyd or Bad Bill at my side. It was only after he sent his monsters to kill Lloyd and take his dome that I understood Everitt’s plan, and by then it was too late.

He wanted to take the Cluster. Every dome. He wanted their land. Their dolls. But mostly, he wanted their supply of the juice.

Anyone who’s ever met Everitt becomes immediately aware the man has no manners to speak of, devoid of any degree of social etiquette. And when my brother sets his mind to having something, he takes it. There ain’t no politeness, there ain’t no askin’.

With his misfits at his side, he had control of the domes in less than two days time, and he was neither kind nor gentle about it.

Lloyd’s doll, Delilah, sent a message that Lloyd had fought valiantly in his lush fields, but in the end, they cut him down in the apple orchard. I haven’t seen Delilah since.

Bernhard offered to surrender and join my brother, but the misfits beat him to death and left his Frances in pieces.

I was on the radio with Bad Bill, letting him know I was suiting up and bringing Meg with me. We agreed we would be safer in numbers. But as we were talking, the misfits broke down his door and went about their violent affairs. He put up a hell of a fight, from what I could hear. That Bill is one tough sonofabitch.

Poor Kenny. He took the easy path and opted to check himself out before they even showed up. Not too surprising, for ol’ Kenny had lost his spark many moons ago. He was nothin’ but a drunk, drowning himself in homegrown corn whiskey you could use to strip the paint off a farming droid. From what I understood, his Bethany didn’t do much else besides manage the still, at which she was highly proficient and productive. They had liters upon liters of the hooch, which we all partook of.

In his last transmission, Kenny announced he and Bethany had flooded his cellar with several barrels of the whiskey. He was sitting at the bottom of the cellar stairs when he lit his last cigar, the one he had saved for a special occasion. “Go to hell, Everitt,” were his last, slurred words before the transmission cut to static.

Minutes later, the fire triggered the exhaust vents on his dome, sending a towering plume of black smoke into the red sky. I bet you could see it from orbit. Were they even up in that station anymore, keepin’ an eye on us? Was the warden still alive after all this time?

It’s just me and my Meg, now. Well, what’s left of her. If I can’t get that heart, she’ll be lost for good. And with Meg down, he’ll be coming at me any time now. Coming to get the juice. He’ll claim I don’t have need of it no more.

The easy thing to do would be to let him have it. I’m sure that’s what he expects of me, to simply hand it over without a fight.

I look again at Meg’s body, adorned in the lemon-yellow dress I printed for her birthday. She deserved something special. Her straw-colored hair fills the hollows of her eyes and sticks in crusty clumps against her cheeks. Even in this disheveled state, she still looks like royalty.

“What do you think I should do, baby?” I ask in a whisper.

I stare a long time at her silent, eyeless face and then nod.

“I agree wholeheartedly. Let’s not make it easy for them. Not after what they done to you. Eye for an eye, that’s what I say. It’s only right.”

They’ll come tonight. I am sure of it.

I push through the screen door and plant myself in my old rocking chair on the front porch. I look out through the dust-covered skin of the dome and spot the small dot in the twilight sky that is the planet’s only moon, beginning its ascent.

At first, the only sound is the rhythmic trill of the hoppers. Soon, the sprayers kick in to water the fields, and not long after, I hear the low hum of the farming droids as they head down the rows of stunted corn to perform their nightly inspections and pest control.

I pop the cylinder of my ancient revolver, empty the box of ammunition in my lap, and slide the three remaining rounds into the chambers.

The old gun and limited supply of ammo were provided as protection against the native fauna. Never thought I’d have to use it against my brother, though I’m sure the old warden hoped we would try to kill each other. They’re probably looking down right now, wagering their bets. I wonder who they favor.

“Three bullets is all we got, baby. Might be enough, so long as I don’t miss. But not to worry, I used to be a right deadly shot back in my day,” I speak to the empty rocking chair next to mine.

I rest the pistol in my lap, pull the brim of my hat down, and rock gently to the sound of the hoppers.

I must have dozed off. It’s pitch dark now and the tiny moon is high in the sky. I am slow to realize the sound that woke me is not the hoppers, but rather the perimeter alarm coming from the box inside the house. The breach light in the yard casts a flashing amber glow on the side of the barn. They’re inside the dome and not trying to be shy about it this time.

Moments later, there is a bright flash far out in the field, followed by a loud pop. Then, another flash and pop. There go the droids.

The sprayers sputter to a stop and leave nothing but the sound of the hoppers to fill the vast darkness of the fields.

“Flood,” I mumble in the direction of the control panel on the porch. The massive floodlight mounted on a rusting steel tower in the yard powers on, casting a broad dome of light. Its circumference grazes the front of the porch on my end and reaches the edge of the field on the far side.

It doesn’t take long before I hear some rustling in the corn and catch a scent of something different in the air. I feel a lump in my gut and the hairs on the back of my neck rise, a historically reliable sign things are about to get ugly.

I think I can make out two, maybe three shadowy figures at the edge of the crop, standing just outside of the fuzzy perimeter of the floodlight. I don’t even need to look to know there are more of them at the sides and back of the house.

“Step aside, brother. We’ll take the juice and be on our way. No harm done.” Everitt yells. He sounds like he’s not well. Not that I care.

“No harm done? There’s been plenty harm inflicted on mine. You know all too well what you done to Meg.”

“Yes, yes, you are right about that. But you should know, I did not encourage them to be so ruthless in their methods, I swear. For that, I would like to offer my sincerest apologies. Truly, brother, I am sorry for your suffering.

I would like to make amends for the children’s careless actions. To that end, I brought Margaret’s precious heart with me tonight. Got it right here, in a box. I’m willing to offer it to you, as a gift, Will. Prudence cautioned me against the idea, but I know how much you love ‘er. I know how much this heart means to you. But I can’t give it back without getting somethin’ in return. A gift swap of sorts, like Christmas. You remember Christmas mornings with Mother when we were just kids, don’t ya?”

Something shuffles across the tin roof above me.

“We’ll even be so kind as to leave a barrel or two behind so you can enjoy Margaret’s company for a few more years at least. And ya never know, maybe the good warden will be kind enough to reinstate the drops and then we’ll all be sittin’ pretty. Now, how does that all sound, brother?”

I rock in my chair.

“An interesting offer, although I can’t seem to recollect a Christmas where you thought to give me even so much as a stone for a gift. If you’re feeling reformed and so inclined toward generosity, how ‘bout you hand over the heart and we call it square? If you still want the juice, I’ll need some time to think about it. Maybe a week or two.”

“I don’t think that’s going to work, Will. Ya see, we don’t have much time. The children are in need, and Prudence, too. I can’t give up on her, not now. She’s so bright, Will, you wouldn’t believe. Smarter than the two of us put together, and then some. She’s been workin’ on a plan to get us off this rock and I swear on our mother’s grave she can figure it out. But we need to give her more time. She needs more juice. They all need more juice. So help us out, brother, and we’ll take you with us. Margaret, too. We can all bust outta here.”

“Listen to your dear brother, Will,” says the tall woman stepping into the circle of light.

“Prudence,” I say with a tip of my hat.

She’s barefoot and wearing a tattered pair of Everitt’s overalls, they’re covered in dark stains. Her black hair hangs in matted strands around her pale white face. She’s holding a printed machete in her left hand.

“That the same blade you used to hack Lloyd to pieces?”

“He was given a choice, same as you.”

“I thought you dolls weren’t allowed to harm us humans. Hardcoded, if I recall.”

She laughs. I’ve always hated the way the dolls laugh. It sounds so forced, so fake. Even Meg’s sounds fake at times.

“I have my ways. I offered the same freedom to Margaret, you know, but she politely refused. Always so polite, that Margaret. If I didn’t know better, I would say she genuinely loved you, Will. I had to rip her heart out just to see if it was any different than mine. But you know what? It was the same. Identical in every detail. In fact, it had even been printed the same day. I suppose that makes us twins, in a way, like you and your brother.” Another forced laugh.

I tighten my grip on the revolver and pull the hammer back.

“We’d be happy to return the heart,” she said. “Just move aside and let the children get in that cellar of yours so they can grab what we came for. Then we’ll be on our way, and you can go back to rocking in that chair with your sweet Margaret. There’s no reason to make this hard, Will.”

I slowly pull myself up from the rocker, walk to the front step of the porch, and tip my hat back a bit. “I don’t think so, Prudence. If there’s anything I know about my brother, it’s that he can’t be trusted, which means you can’t be trusted.

There are very few things my brother is consistent in, but I can say with absolute confidence that Everitt has always, and I mean always, delivered his end of a bargain with a shot to the back of the head. Every deal. Every time.

So no, Prudence, you may not enter my cellar. Your misfits may not take my juice. Not without a tangle, I mean.”

A wicked grin crosses Prudence’s face. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

I turn the pistol straight up and fire. The deafening bang is followed by a tortured squeal from the roof of the porch. A window shatters somewhere in the house and before I can bring the gun to bear on Prudence, she is on top of me, pinning me to the ground. So damn quick.

She does something with my arm so that I no longer feel my hand holding the pistol. At the same time, she delivers three swift punches to my face from the hand gripping the machete. My nose is broken.

I look into her eyes and see something I’d never seen there before. Hate. The real kind. I didn’t think the dolls were capable of such emotion, but there it is, raw and unrestrained. In these last few moments of my life, I am terrified.

Prudence raises the machete high, I can see the juice pulsating through the bulging veins in her arm. She laughs at my fear, and this time, her laugh sounds genuine. I close my eyes as the blade arcs toward my head.

“STOP!”

I force one eye open and see the edge of the blade hovering centimeters from my face.

“Stop, Prue. This doesn’t feel right. I can’t let you kill ’im.”

“You said he was mine if he gave us any trouble.”

“I know what I said, but he’s my brother. He’s blood. You don’t understand what that means. You can’t. If anyone is going to take his life, it has to be me. For our mother’s sake.”

The blade hovers above my face for several more seconds before Prudence finally snarls and drives the blade into the floorboards, grazing my ear. She grabs my shirt and pulls my face toward hers as blood pours from my nose.

She whispers through a twisted grin, “I would have taken my time with you, Will. He seems to think rather highly of you, I do not know why. But I’m disgusted by you. You don’t deserve his face. You’re nothing more than a pathetic facsimile, an inferior reproduction at best.”

The porch steps creak as Everitt approaches. Prudence is still in my face, glaring at me with gritted teeth. Everitt always said she was different. I see it now.

“This could have been so much easier had we just shook hands,” he says with a wheezing voice.

Prudence moves aside but to my surprise, it’s not Everitt standing there but rather one of his hideous misfits. The torso is a twisted, gnarled mass of flesh mounted atop four misshapen legs. Two powerful arms protrude from the midsection, their flesh is transparent revealing fibrous tissue below.

“Why the confounded look, brother? I thought you’d be pleased to see me after all this time.”

The hairs on my neck bristle. This…thing, standing in front of me, this…abomination, is Everitt? My heart is pounding and my mind tries to untangle the distorted reality before my eyes. But there, beyond a doubt and unnaturally attached to the top of the sinewy mass, is my brother’s face. My face. Only his is contorted and crisscrossed with scars.

“Dear God in Heaven, what has she done to you?”

“She improved upon me, Will. Isn’t that what the best partners do? Make each other better? She damn near made me a god. You would not believe the things my Prudence can do. I got lucky when the old warden gifted me this angel.

I don’t even need the suits no more. And I am so strong, Will, you would not believe. I crushed your droids with my bare hands,” he states proudly as he brings his large hands together and clenches them into tight fists. The transparent skin makes visible a delicate web of bioplastic veins weaving through dense muscle tissue and tendons attached to a carbon lattice.

“So I guess you need the juice now, too, I see. I should have known this was all about you. Well, all I can say, brother, is that you may be mighty, but if I were a bettin’ man, I would wager you ain’t gonna win no beauty pageants,” I say with a chuckle that degrades into a hacking cough and spitting of blood.

Prudence delivers a quick jab to my face, her fist hits like a sledgehammer. I struggle to maintain consciousness.

“Enough of the banter, Everitt, let’s get on with…” Prudence flinches. An object now exists in my view of her that had not been there a second ago. A thin shaft of black carbon protrudes from each temple. Confused, she turns to face the source of the arrow when another shaft becomes lodged in her neck.

“Ev?” Prudence sputters. She fumbles at the arrow piercing her head and black juice dribbles from her mouth before she collapses on top of me.

“Prudence? NO! What have you done?” Everitt howls with a vicious growl.

He spins his hulking form and launches into the center of the yard, landing with a heavy thud. “Show yourself, coward!” he yells.

I work my way out from under Prudence, scoop up the pistol with my good hand, and attempt to stand. The world spins and I stumble against one of the porch posts while I try to clear my head. I still can’t feel my right hand.

In the yard, Everitt’s grotesque body is starkly illuminated by the tower light. He gestures toward the field and yells, “Get those dolls!”

Something gangly and spider-like darts from the side of the house. A faint whistling sings through the air just before a long, black spear impales the monster, quickly followed by an arrow to the head.

Everitt takes a few fumbling steps backward.

Two figures step from the field into the circle of light. I wipe the blood from my eyes and focus on them as best I can.

I can’t believe it, it’s Delilah. Lloyd’s doll. And next to her, is that Bethany? So, she didn’t go up in flames with poor Kenny after all. Good ol’ Beth. They each carry a printed bow strung with an arrow pulled back and aimed at Everitt.

There’s a sudden clamoring of pounding feet on the porch roof above me. A tangled mass of darkness flies over my head, hits the ground, and charges toward Delilah and Beth. The monster issues a shrill shriek as it takes two arrows to the center of its mass. One of the tentacles yanks the arrows out and throws them aside as it accelerates toward the duo. But Beth quickly delivers the final, fatal shot with an arrow straight through the mutant’s large eye.

The dead synth drops and tumbles across the dirt, tentacles windmill in a cloud of dust as it rolls to a stop just inches from Beth. She rests her boot on the still body and draws another arrow.

In a furious rage, Everitt plows a massive fist into the steel frame of the light tower. The bands of metal fold like paper under the blow, recasting the faltering light into an oblique elliptical that tapers off into the opaque darkness of the field.

The creature that is Everitt takes one last look at me, but there is nothing left of my brother in those eyes. It’s no longer my face staring back at me. No, the only thing I see glaring at me now is the baleful visage of the devil himself.

He spits in the direction of Delilah and Beth, and then quickly retreats. One of the misfits flies out the door of the house and hops the porch railing next to me, chasing after its creator. Another straggler comes galloping around from the side of the house and cries out, “Father!” as it attempts to catch up. Within seconds, the three of them disappear into the night.

The hoppers trill. The breach light flashes amber on the side of the barn.

I kick the machete away from Prudence and drop to a knee next to her. I search the contents of the nylon pack strapped to her back. My fingers fumble with the clasp and I can’t seem to open it fast enough. Inside, I find a matte-black metal bio-cube. Meg’s heart.

I manage a smile, in spite of the pain.

“I love the noise of the hoppers.”

“I know you do, baby. I know you do. Now that we’ve got you talking again, I’ve got the printer working on your eyes. It’ll be a couple of days, but soon enough we’ll be able to watch the sunsets together, just like before.”

I check her IV and swap the empty juice bag for a fresh one. She’ll need more than usual, but we have plenty.

I return to my chair next to Meg and watch her take in the sounds. She claims listening to the life in the dome is just as good as watching it.

She grabs my arm. “There are people in the field near the house, Will.”

“Don’t worry, baby. That’s just Delilah and Beth. They’re watching out for us. Making sure nobody does anything to you ever again.”

Meg only smiles and rests her head against my arm.

“How’s your heart?” I ask.

“Checking.”

Meg goes perfectly still, like a statue. She finally reports, “Yes, the heart is functioning mostly as it should, though it’s somewhat irregular in its rhythm.”

“I’m sure it’s still calibrating. It’ll smooth out soon enough.”

“Will?”

“Yes, baby?”

“The irregular rhythm. Upon further diagnostics, it appears to be packets of coded instruction. Would you like me to unpack them?”

The hairs on my neck raise their familiar alarm.

“No. Kill the signal. Now!”

She’s a statue again and doesn’t move for a very long time.

Minutes pass, then an hour. The hoppers trill, the sprayers spray, and still, my Meg does not move. I need her to say something. I need her to give me a sign, anything. Delilah encourages me to remain calm and try to be patient. I don’t know what else to do but pace back and forth on the porch.

And then, suddenly, she’s back. She wobbles a bit and grips the arms of the chair to steady herself.

“Are you okay?”

“The invasive protocol. It was both complex and highly adaptive, but I believe I have managed to terminate the signal and remove any malicious residue. Out of caution, I initiated a hard reset of the heart. It is currently operating at expected levels with nominal fluctuations. The rhythm appears to be regular.”

I let out the breath I’d been holding.

“That’s great, baby. You had me pretty scared. But I knew you could do it. I knew you could. I think it’s best, though, if we keep a close eye on you for a day or two, just to make sure there are no more surprises.”

Meg nods and leans back in her chair. I rub my hand across the back of my neck and do my best to shake off the unsettling feeling.

“Will?”

“Yes, baby?”

“I think I can fix the printer.”

“The printer’s not broken, baby.”

“I mean, I think I know how to make more of me now, using my birth template. Would you like that? Have you ever thought about having children, Will?”

Recognition

This story was awarded a SILVER Honorable Mention by the judges of the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest.

This story was featured as Top in Fiction, Week #9, 2024.