Nikodemus fell asleep, dreaming fitfully, as always. There was a boy with verdant eyes and pale skin haunting his dreams, whispering things in his ears.

There was a woman, tall and elegant, with friendly, wide, blue eyes and flawless, porcelain skin--blond curls bouncing on her shoulders as she chased after the boy in his dream.

The boy and the woman ran across green pastures that Nikodemus thought only existed in passages of the Bible and bedtime fairy tales. They were as happy as a mother and son could possibly be as they bounded cheerfully under a pristine blue, cloudless sky.

The dream quickly became ominous, however, as the mother and her son reached the edge of a precipice overlooking an ocean and a sandy shore.

Dark clouds began rising in the sky; the mother cried out.

Nikodemus lurched awake with a gasp.

He realized he was being carried by the robot--C-150--across the desert in the dead of night. He gulped at the metal creature’s clawed fingers gripping the back of his knees and torso. He remembered what had happened with some embarrassment. The robot had yanked him along until his wrist was rubbed raw and his short legs gave out beneath him. The robot had brought a flask of water with it that hung around its waist which quenched his thirst, but that did nothing for Nikodemus’s aching legs and feet.

Nikodemus began moving too slowly for the robot’s tastes, and so the artificial creature swept him up in its arms and began carrying him to the Fortress of the Harpies.

Nikodemus was horribly embarrassed by this, but he was so exhausted from being awake for so long that he fell asleep in a matter of minutes in the robot’s arms. Troubles of being an old man, I guess.

Nikodemus rubbed his eyes, tilting his face upwards to gaze at the starry night sky. One of his dreams was to visit the stars, but he doubted that dream would ever come to fruition. There was no way he could ever get the women of the Wasteland to put aside their differences long enough to consider building a spacecraft that would benefit all of mankind, but he supposed dreams were a good thing to have even if they never came true. Especially for someone like him, who had very few.

Nikodemus, who had been sitting up, returned to lying on his back in the robot’s claws. With his chin pointing up at the sky, he watched the upside-down stars go by with his mouth parted, hypnotized by the familiar sensation he was feeling.

His mother used to push him on a swing set, and the euphoric stimulation of leaning his head back when the swing was at its zenith was akin to how he felt now as he leaned his head back and looked at the sparkling sky.

It felt like he was flying.

The fresh wind was hugging him tightly, the sky seemed to be reaching out for him, and he reached back, but however much he wished to, he could not take flight and touch it.

I suppose I’ll have to let that dream go, too. Nikodemus sat up, and, desiring to have some independence in his life, he said to the robot, “Hey. Put me down. I have two legs.”

The robot kept walking without a word.

Nikodemus’s rolled his eyes in annoyance. “Did they even program you to talk?”

No response.

Nikodemus pouted, cupping his chin between his palms and tapping his cheeks with his fingers. “I can walk.” He repeated.

“You were falling behind. I was commanded to get you to Mary by sunrise.” The robot informed him.

Mary was well known for being a remarkable leader and having one of the finest tribes in the Wasteland. Nikodemus had heard from Cynthia and many other members of the Tribe of Sirens about Mary’s plan to attack the Sirens well in advance. What they were not expecting was that Mary decided to utilize a single robot to accomplish the task—especially since a single robot taking a tribe fortress was unheard of.

Mutant scientists just keep getting smarter and smarter...

“Just let me stretch my legs for a minute, and then I’ll let you carry me again.” Nikodemus gasped in exasperation.

The robot paused. “Are your legs cramping?”

Nikodemus’s eyes flitted from side-to-side shiftily. “Yes, they are.”

“Mary’s orders were to make sure you arrived in comfort. If your legs are cramped, you must stretch them.” C-150 put Nikodemus down gently.

Nikodemus made a face. “If your orders were to make sure I arrived in comfort, you shouldn’t have rubbed my wrist into oblivion earlier.”

Nikodemus shook his head, rubbing his red, aching wrist and wondering why he should expect a hunk of metal to understand his feelings. He began walking, casting a look over his shoulder at C-150. “I’ll walk ahead so you can see me and capture me if I try to run.”

The robot thought that was fair and trailed the five-foot-tall pygmy human in silence. As they walked, Nikodemus finally had a moment to mourn the loss of the Tribe of Sirens. He had shoved it to the back of his mind like he always did when he was being kidnapped from one tribe by another tribe, but the feelings would always catch up to him and weigh him down no matter how hard he tried to be free of them.

He had thought he had done a good job distancing himself from the Sirens. He talked to them as little as possible and generally kept to himself while he stayed with them. He had lived with them for five years, however, and it was hard not to become close with people who he had known for five years.

He shed tears and felt like a monster for not shedding more than. He wished he didn’t live in a world where losing his friends and children was commonplace and only caused him to shed a few tears. Instead, he wished for a world where he still sobbed for days at the death of just one person.

His mind kept turning to Cynthia and the daughter he had with her. Nikodemus had a complicated relationship with Cynthia, but then, he had a complicated relationship with every woman in the Wasteland. He genuinely liked some of them—and Cynthia was one of them—but at the same time, his affection for them would always be tainted by the fact that he was their prisoner, and it was hard to be friends with someone who kept him in a cage for the sole purpose of having children with him. Nonetheless, Cynthia had a good sense of humor and a nice laugh, and he would miss it.

Cynthia and the Tribe of Sirens would soon become a distant memory to him like so many of the tribes he was captured by, even if he wished he could mourn them for the rest of his life.

Nikodemus’s chain of thoughts was disrupted by an object speeding towards them that was almost too fast for his eyes to detect.

He squinted. Is that another robot?