A violent bump to the frontal lobe jolted Sister Lucia awake.

  “Restor! Do you not know how to man a vehicle properly?” Sister Teresa shouted from just within earshot.

  “Manning a vehicle is not that common these days, Supreme head nun Sister Teresa. The ambulance refused to cooperate and I had to take over. This is my first time maneuvering this thing.”

  Sister Lucia grunted, letting the head nun notice she was awake. Her head still throbbed, and her muscles ached as if she had run five miles, though running was never something she engaged in. Her elbows propped her up instinctively, but it was in vain; Sister Teresa gently guided her back onto the stiff ambulance bed.

  “We are approaching the gates, Supreme head nun Sister Teres—”

  “Stop calling me by my entire title, you idiot. Have you never addressed a person with their name like a human being before?”

  Sister Lucia could easily sense the frustration from the head nun’s voice. It wasn’t that she was particularly mad at Restor, just frustrated by the whole situation, partly taking it out on the convent’s elusive gatekeeper, the human counterpart they rarely saw

  “I don’t ever get to work with human beings, Supreme head—” Restor stopped, then corrected himself, “—Sister Teresa.”

  “Well, you certainly sound like the ensemble of robots you command. Soon you’d show up just like one.”

  Restor giggled in a monotonous tone. Sister Teresa only made a face of disgust at the sub-human-like behavior before turning to Sister Lucia, still managing not to get thrown around by the violent bumps Restor seemed to actively seek out.

  “Dear, here’s some water.”

  The old nun handed her a packet with a slit at the corner. It read Mineralized Water, Zone Delta 9 in bright yellow, a pleasantly familiar sight. Sister Lucia gulped it down, letting it cool her, the thirst in her body gradually quenched.

  “We are almost there,” Sister Teresa said, caressing her head.

  “You pressed the button, the emergency alert?” Sister Lucia managed to grunt the words out.

  “Of course, I pressed it. You fainted in the bus that moves like a caterpillar. No offense to the caterpillars, dainty creatures in their own right.”

  “Caterpillar, right. But you shouldn’t have. It was meant to—”

  “Stop it. Lay back.”

  “…but everyone at the convent is going to be alerted.”

  “As they should.”

  “We are here, Sister! I need you to be prepared to show your authorization card,” Restor called out from the front. Sister Teresa moved at once despite being bounced around.

  Sister Lucia took the chance to crane herself up and peek over the partition, enough to stay hidden but not too hidden for Restor’s instruments to miss her movement.

  It had been awhile since she’d been outside after sunset. It was shockingly dark. No lights. No paths. Just desolate desert and thick sandstorms whipped around by gusty winds. The ambulance’s headlights only made things worse, illuminating clouds of sand and making it feel more claustrophobic than ever.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  As the vehicle drew closer, the towering twenty-foot wall became visible, breaking the gusty winds. It created a calm perimeter, allowing the ambulance to stop shaking and glide closer to the entrance. For a moment, Restor thought he’d missed it. But as soon as he spotted a violently blinking yellow light, he adjusted course.

  “What’s that?” Sister Lucia made the mistake of sounding out her thoughts, unintentionally.

  Sister Teresa, to her credit, answered.

  They had spotted a wanderer by the grimy outlet pipes, bent over with a transparent cup at the pipe’s mouth, groaning.

  “Water…he’s here for water. Restor, stop by the poor man and give these.”

  She shoved a few water packets at him.

  “We cannot hand off the water packets, Supreme—Sister Teresa.”

  “Then at least give them the ion packets.”

  Wanderers were common in these parts. Water was a scarce, rationed resource, and civilians who failed to meet their quotas often lost access to their government-supplied allocation. Many of the displaced ended up here, drawn to the mega cluster zones, where the highest water consumption now took place. Machines used more water than humans ever could.

  Restor placed the packets in a small tube and pressed a button. The packets got sucked away and tossed out into the air, falling near the man’s feet. He barely flinched before resuming his wait at the pipe.

  “He’ll eventually get to them,” Restor said before Sister Teresa could complain.

  “Is it getting worse? I thought the city had helped the wanderers recently,” Sister Lucia asked.

  “Only a few. More are coming from the wetlands. It’s not easy managing them these days. They trip the security perimeter all the time. I have to release my humanoids on them at least twice a week.”

  “It must be difficult work guarding the mega cluster all by yourself then?” Lucia asked, curious to know for she had only seen Restor a few times before, never spoken to him.

  “Aren’t you a talkative one today,” Sister Teresa only muttered, gently signaling Sister Lucia to lay back on the ambulance bed.

  “It is sometimes difficult, indeed, Sister. A thousand acres of quantaminiums to guard isn’t a small thing. I sometimes dream of the day I’d never hear that humming in my ear. But I mostly patrol the protective walls. My humanoid counterpart takes the brunt of the work within the clusters. But thank you for your concern, Sister.”

  “How—how many individual units are there really? I hear this is the oldest mega cluster. It started with a mere server farm sixty years back from what I gathered—“

  “Sister Lucia, that’s enough now,” the head nun snapped. Questions about digital life weren’t encouraged by the Faith. Sister Lucia had briefly forgotten. The Supreme nun’s caring guise had made her let her guard down.

  “Oh yes, well…I suppose Sister Teresa would know more about that given the convent was here even before the expansion of the mega cluster, isn’t that right, Sister?...”

  Sister Teresa only shrugged, hoping the conversation would end. Yet Restor continued.

  “...I heard the faith refused to relocate the convent back in the day. The government had no choice but to build the mega cluster around the convent.”

  “Enough now. We are almost there. Sister Lucia, please lie back and at least pretend to be sick. I don’t want complaints that we used the ambulance in vain.”

  Sister Lucia sulked, then obeyed. Questions outside the Faith of the Bound Word rarely received answers at all. Ever since Sister Lucia first arrived, the convent seemed oddly placed, enclosed inside a mega data processing cluster. The story told was simple: the Faith resisted the temptation of digital life, fought for its analog traditions, and refused all government attempts to buy them out. That was over fifty years ago. Still, every few years, human agents came to negotiate. And every year, the nuns diffused the deal, refused the money, even laughed in the agents’ faces.

  The convent had become a symbol. A stronghold of religion against the tide of expansion.

  Lucia watched Sister Theresa and Restor struggle to get the scanner to recognize her authorization card. They waved the flimsy square until the yellow light turned green.

  The gate opened, steel layer after steel layer peeling back. They hadn’t used this entrance in years. The usual bus terminal fed into an underground tunnel. This entrance was for highly-security-cleared humans or humanoids. Tonight was different.

  The ambulance crept forward through the yawning tunnel. A beam of green lasers swept the vehicle.

  The head nun raised her hand—don’t move.

  Once scanned, the vehicle jerked into motion again.

  And before Lucia could process it, the ambulance door slammed open.

  Light poured in, then vanished, blocked by something.

  A sudden gush of tentacle-like arms clawed their way inside.