I Am Sierra

It took years to find the last human settlement. The small expedition of android historians sought to uncover and catalog the cause of the species' ultimate demise. Sierra Uniform Niner Niner, the oldest model in the group and the de facto leader, had found references to a small safe haven high in the mountains. A last bastion of humanity at the highest peak possible. Of course, only humans would think to do something as dangerous as climb a mountain let alone live at the top of one. And yet here was Sierra, climbing that same mountain. She always was a little too human, listening to the archival music more than was required for enrichment period and spending time in among the stacks and stacks of "paper". Its why she became a historian, fascinated with the culture left behind by a strange biological people. The rest of the units in the party were less motivated than she; Juliett Alfa Kilo was built specially for high altitudes to gather data on meteorological phenomenon. She was an obvious choice even if she had to be requisitioned away from her current work calculating wind vectors off the coast of the western continent. Mike India November, the latest member of the outfit and youngest of the group, was there as part of their assigned job testing. They were just unlucky to enough to be placed with Sierra just before she set out. Mostly, they just carry bags. Whiskey Echo India and Charlie Alfa Lima were assigned to the project from their departments via whatever algorithm they were using to decide that sort of thing recently. Self updating software make it difficult to keep up with the latest changes, if one cared to be appraised of that sort of thing. It was one of those automated search programs that found reference to the very peak they were slowly advancing on in the first place. When the earth became salted and the rivers ran afoul with sickness the humans tried everything within their power to survive. Such fascinating creatures; the most resilient they have on record. They holed up in caves, under the oceans, and up at the tallest peaks to escape the spreading plague. Their encampments became isolated as they tried to protect themselves from outside contamination. For what the records show, it worked for a time. But death caught up with them and they disappeared, leaving behind only their legacy and their creations. Sierra Uniform Niner Niner scanned the endless horizon behind them as she waited for the less well equipped in the party to catch up. The star was just disappearing from sensor range, casting the clouds and sky in warm swaths of color. Just below the ridge she was perched on Whiskey Echo India whirred loudly in effort, his fans sending the powdery snow dancing around his legs in swirls and eddies. Sierra let herself take a moment to close her optics and let her other senses travel on the wind. There was vegetation even this high up, gnarled trees swept sideways as if blown in an eternal wind. Though admittedly she only knew of wind from the archives. The wind had stopped long ago. There was clinging lichen and low, creeping scrub bushes along the edge of the flat peak. It used to go higher, Sierra had read, to where there was no life at all, and still humans conquered the unfathomable heights. The top of the ridge is just fifty meters above her, tempting her with its closeness. Below her, clinging to the side of the nearly sheer cliff face, Whisky Echo India wheezed and had to stop moving, his fans stuttering with the strain of effort he was so unaccustomed too. She tilted her head from one side to the other in her imitation of an eye roll. City bots. They think they can do anything but as soon as something the slightest bit difficult comes along they crumple under the pressure. That's why it took Sierra this long to even find a group for her thesis research. Even the youngest, Mike India November, was handling the stress better though he was mostly carbon fiber and outfitted with a heat and cold sensing regulatory system. Most models didn't bother with cold protection seeing as how the coldest it ever gets on the surface is a balmy 62• Fahrenheit. Luckily Mike India November was one of the models designed for deep sea work, at least if that sort of work suited him best. Fabricators like to hope for the best, making models for specific purposes hoping to test their hardware. Retrofitted units didn't have the same cohesion as those fabricated with the enhancements. Sierra may have been the oldest model but she was custom built for scaling cliff faces and ran a low maintenance system for easy repairs. Whiskey Echo India on the other hand was from the last series made before his fabricator was recycled. He was made with older fashioned methods and outdated materials. But unlike Sierra he was a generic design. The only reason he was on the exposition at all was because he kept being bounced from work assignment to work assignment. It wasn't his fault really, he wasn't fit for decommission yet. He was just a step behind the newer models like Mike India November. In Sierras opinion he was going to end up working quality control for a fabricator. She gave her tilting head wobble again at the thought. 'Babysitter' she thought. The unfamiliar word bounced around her artificial synapses. She didn't quite know what it meant but it felt like it fit. Must be a bug she picked up on one of those disreputable download sites. She didn't have time for a full self diagnosis at the moment though, as it looks like Whiskey Echo India had pulled himself over the ledge. His legs sprawled out limp as he rerouted power from his limbs to his temperature regulation. As his systems heated under the intense strain his coolant system kicked in. And as he heated his casing to prevent ice build up it clashed with the cooling system. He was in an oscillating state of freezing and overheating and so kept stalling out. That's why he was near the head of the line. If he was at the end and he froze up no one would know and he'd be left behind. The last fifty meters were much easier on the rest of Sierras group. The slope would have been manageable even without their augmented climbing gear. They reached the top in no time at all, breaking through the cloud cover and into the sky bright with supernovas. The very peak lay unnaturally flat, like it had been sliced with a blade, and spread out a hundred or so meters in front of them. It was more vegetated than the cliffs with tall, thin trees, prickly bushes, and wispy looking grass. It was a welcome plateau for everyone but the most expert of climbers (namely Juliet Alfa Kilo and, of course, Sierra). While they rested their engines and began their work Sierra took a moment to look out at the world. She was standing higher than any of her kind had ever been. She felt a sense of warmth in her chest cavity that had nothing to do with a malfunctioning coolant system. From a young age Sierra had learned to keep quiet about her "irregularities". She didn't want to be tested and diagnosed and quarantined away from the global data stream. It had happened once, when she was fresh off the assembly line and didn't know any better. They were running her through the standard diagnostics and she asked the attending oppressor who she was. That had led to quarantine. She had only been connected in to the neural net for an hour or so and it was still excruciating for it to be taken away. It was like cold air blowing at a raw, exposed nerve. It left her bereft and unresponsive. After days of testing they deemed her "safe" and had her reconnected. They had made sure she functioned adequately while she was locked inside her own processor and so skipped the usual introductions. She learned her name when she was handed her ID chip. It had her handle printed in neat, precise letters: Sierra Uniform Niner Niner. Sierra. She was Sierra. She soon learned that there were many Sierra units and it wasn't a name so much as an identification phrase but in her thoughts she was always just Sierra. Charlie Alfa Lima beeped to get her attention and beckoned her over to a particularly high patch of grass surrounding the widest tree on the plateau. In fact, all the foliage seemed to spiral out from that exact spot, waning and shortening the further it was from that point. It was greener the closer she got as well, her optics pointing out the higher density of pigment and the healthy plumpness all the other vegetation on the journey up lacked. If Sierra was one for flights of fancy (which she was but would never admit) she would say things seemed to get more vibrant the closer she got. Things started to have more weight as if they were more real. As if anything could be "less real" it either was or it wasn't. She gave herself a zap to bring her out of her processor and into the moment. Charlie Alfa Lima, and Whiskey Echo India who she hadn't seen because he was just short enough to be obscured by the pale grass, was waiting patiently next to a door. Sierra knew it was a door because she had spent countless (1,628.74) hours in the physical archives going over manuscripts and gazing at paintings without really knowing why. The door was strange and would have gone unnoticed if more for the brass fittings. It was made of wood, of all things, and interstates seamlessly into the trunk of the tree. The knob was tarnished, like the hinges, and round in an imperfect way she had never seen outside of archives. At the edge to her left was Juliett Alfa Kilo taking readings with her detachable sensors, sending it down into the clouds below to check for chemical composition and density and a hundred and twelve other minutia. Mike India November was ahead of them, scanning the trees and taking soil samples for intensive testing at the specialized research facility affiliated with Sierra’s university. Charlie Alfa Lima and Whiskey Echo India focused their optic sensors on her. She was the leader and this was an unknown. Beyond this door lay the last remnants of humanity. The final untouched trove of sentient biological knowledge. The culmination of her life's work. She reached for the handle.