EMBER6 // Dead Network

Part One of Five

EMBER6 Keeps Watch - Original Illustration by Andy Ives

^{Read Part Two Here}

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It is the deep part of the night, when all whisps of sunset glow have faded from the sky and creatures with bulbous eyes and sensitive ears leave their hidey-holes to spend a few hours trying to eat each other.

Ember6 is nestled among thin branches at the top of the tallest tree in its sector, cameras cycling between night vision and infra-red, scanning the forest canopy for anomalies. The little robot is diligent, but its old batteries can no longer store enough solar charge for a full night’s vigil. An internal alarm chimes, seven milliseconds earlier than it did the night before, telling Ember6 to return to earth before power fails and it falls out of the tree.

As the robot climbs down the ancient trunk, the critical systems portion of its brain flags a negative value change to the Predicted Possible Charge Cycles count. Ember6 acknowledges the new //PPCS// value with a robotic wince, and hustles toward the solar array that will charge its batteries when the sun comes up. Safely connected, Ember6 uses the last of its juice to broadcast a forlorn All Stations Assist Respond //ASAR// ping, then passes into the void listening to the static hiss of a dead network. Above, the giant sequoia’s branches creak and sway.

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Eighteen hours later and fully charged, Ember6 takes its station again. Shortly after midnight it senses the faint subsonic rumble of distant thunder and turns its cameras East to see lightning illuminate the violet guts of a towering cumulonimbus cloud. It looks like neurons firing inside a giant brain.

Firewatch was once an important part of the Embers’ job, but now there is no-one to call if lightning strikes, and no Canadair aircraft will appear on the horizon to skim the treetops and dump water to douse the flames. Ember6 knows this is not its fault, and there is nothing to be done about it, but thunderstorms make the robot feel uncomfortable and powerless all the same. It is not in its programming to let the forest fend for itself.

The storm rumbles on, filling the atmosphere with electromagnetic energy, effectively blinding Ember6 to everything beyond the visual range of its cameras. And so the blinding blue-white flash and supersonic WHAP of a re-entry module streaking overhead takes the little robot completely by surprise. A human would have been shocked out of the tree, but the autonomous, purely digital part of Ember6’s mind recognises what is happening and begins to respond before the mimetic module has time to form a thought. But when that thought arrives, it resolves itself into nine words.

It’s happening. After all this time, it’s actually happening.

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Hello everyone, I hope you are all very well. It’s been ages since I published a proper post, but I’ve been working on things in the background. And, thank fuck, I also now have some regular work, which is excellent news on the paying bills front, but not so great on the making art n’ stuff front.

Anyway, I wrote a short story about (inevitably) a robot that lives in a forest, and thought it would be cool to break it up into five parts, each with an original illustration. My plan is to also release this as a little home-printed zine, so I’ve made all the artwork in cheap paper-friendly black and white.

Speaking of artwork, here’s a little glimpse of the process. The artwork in the story is the second one I made for this. Having spent hours on the original, I just didn’t like it and decided not to fall for the sunk cost fallacy, and start again. Here’s the discarded version:

What do you think? Did I make the right decision, or do you like this one better? Or are they both rubbish? Let me know!

As ever, thanks for reading. Part Two of EMBER6’s adventure will follow soon.

Andy