The Robot in the Garden
[Excerpt | Teaser] An android’s journey through a forgotten garden mirrors our deepest questions about creation, purpose, and what it means to be human.
I tightened my grip on the door handle, twisting it back and forth the same way I had entered just moments ago. “Godrick? Where did you — ?” My voice halted, the sound of small footsteps trailing off down the corridor in response, until silence made its home in the hollow emptiness on the other side of the door. I was alone.
With a step back, something brittle cracked beneath me. Looking down, I lifted my heel where a shard of glass lay broken. Its edges glinted in the spill of moonlight. I knelt down, lifting the sharp fragment, and turned it over with my fingers. The crystal rasped against steel, grinding like grit between gears.
When I turned around, I felt the pendulum swing from happiness to isolation, leading me by hand to the blind presence of a preserved pause. My eyes scanned the scattered objects around me. Broken things, not so different from me. These objects were inanimate, motionless and half-buried. I couldn’t help but relate in more ways than one.
Pots and rusted gardening tools caked with dirt stood apart from the uniformity of the plexiglass domed ceiling above. Protecting the space in a gossamer shell. A place where time casually and loyally extracted life, while sustaining the carcass of its own memory. Forever left to disintegrate within an isolated ecosystem, from the cusp of beauty, to the hollowed out chasm before me.
Moonlight seeped through the glass ceiling despite streaks of soot and clouded limescale, tracing lines of fractured light across the ground. Some of the glass panels were intact, though smeared with grime and age; others were cracked, letting in the cool night air. Gray concrete walls rose twelve feet high, while paved stone borders lined the walls.
Deep beds where a variety of plants had once thrived were now brittle, bent, and blackened. Bruised by their slow, eventual fate. The soil was pale, filled with twisted roots and thin remains of leaves, voiceless and disturbed. A persistent rustle whispered through broken panes, too weak to dispel the stifling air of post-mortem vegetation, left to rot and become of the earth all over again.
This place had been an Eden—a word that surfaced not from memory, but from a deeply nested fragment of my dataset. A concept buried within intricate lines of code, embedded in the very kernel of my architecture. This particular gap sparked with hope, making me aware of my duty to what is alive. Yet here, all was still and silent, as if life itself had held a peaceful breath until it could no longer.
I reached my hand out toward the glass overhead, observing the way it splintered the light, refracting into shapeless patterns. One panel seemed to have shifted over time. It was barely noticeable, but the slightest gap had formed along its edge. My systems detected an abrupt temperature drop; a change in atmospheric pressure. And then came a sensation. Something wet touched my shoulder, a delicate coldness. I paused, processing the unfamiliar input until the identification registered: Rain.
A sound interrupted the quiet. The first few notes were scattered and unpredictable, but then more followed. Tapping, faint but distinct, as each droplet struck glass with a subtle vibration, muffled and dispersed. The impact traveled through the structure, became a barrage of life infusing essence.
Raindrops gathered, tracing uneven paths across the glass, meeting at intersections and growing into tiny rivulets that cascaded downward. My gaze followed them, fascinated by how they moved, joined, separated, and began again. Moisture laced upon the glass in a way that teased my sensors, following their path with an acuteness I’d never experienced prior.
A thin stream of rainwater trickled through a gap in the panes above, spilling into the center of the garden. The droplets gathered, sliding down in slender flumes before pooling into a shallow shell of a pond. The impact disturbed the stillness of the water, sending ripples outward that dislodged a fragile film of debris. Bits of dried leaves and specks of dirt lifted from the bottom, swirling lazily to the surface as the puddle gradually transformed into a tiny, restless ecosystem, dancing with life despite their lifeless state.
At the base of the pond was something larger, a shape looming in the darkness: a gnarled, twisting tree. Upon approach the identification reader configured a search, and it was then I knew what it was: Dracaena cinnabari, a dragon’s blood tree. Taller than I’d anticipated, considering the shallow pot it was in, its thick, weathered trunk bore the marks of years past, its shape rugged and enduring.
Its dark, delicate leaves danced in silver-light as the rain produced steady drops along its stems. This bonsai had persisted without tending, endured without thriving. Held together by the intermittent trickles of water that kept it alive, despite its occupancy in this quiet sanctuary of death.
I looked up, studying the panel as my lenses adjusted. Metal mechanisms lined the frame, their latches and hinges dulled by rust but still discernible. They appeared frozen in time, untouched for years. Water gathered along the seam, tracing paths that hinted at movement. Could this dome open? Perhaps it had been designed to do so, though the method eluded me.
My line of sight desperately drifted across the garden, searching for anything that might control the panels. Beneath a trellis tangled with lifeless vines, I spotted a faint outline etched into the surface with markings worn almost smooth. Just distinct enough to catch my attention. I brushed my fingers over the surface, feeling grooves and indentations beneath the dust. One shape stood out. A small, circular button nestled among the markings, worn down to a buffed metallic sheen.
Hesitating for a moment, I pressed it.
Nothing happened. The silence remained undisturbed, and I wondered if I’d been mistaken, if the button had outlived its purpose. Droplets scattered across the metallic surface of my shoulder, cool and unfamiliar, rolling down my arm and pooling in my hand. I felt an impulse to let the rain in further, to allow it to touch every part of this garden.
I pressed it again, cautiously. Suddenly, the ceiling shifted with a low groan, unused to movement. One by one, the panels slid apart, the rain cascaded freely into the space, filling the air with the sound of droplets on stone, soil, and the brittle remnants of what once lived here. The opening widened, and the curtain of rain poured in. It struck the dry soil, stirring a cloudy mist before settling deeply within each garden bed.
The downpour intensified, seizing the opportunity of the open panels, drenching the soil and saturating the dry beds with a deep, renewed richness. I watched, transfixed, as the wall of rain descended upon the garden of death. The bonsai’s branches stretched as layers of neglect washed away, tracing along rough edges of bark. The garden, awakened from its dormancy with quenched thirst, had been patient for far longer than I could know.
The pond began to fill, ripples unfurling outward as raindrops punctuated its surface, each note a part of a symphony building toward its crescendo. For the first time, I felt something unfamiliar. A yearning not born of protocol or instruction, but an instinct to nurture, to restore, to care for something unable to care for itself.
This forgotten sanctuary, though long abandoned, had not surrendered. It had endured, quietly waiting for this moment of resurrection. Now, it was given a second chance. As the rain coaxed the garden back to life, I couldn’t help but calculate that, in some inexplicable way, I had also come to life.