Chapter 3
Finding A.R.
“Amy, turn off your night lights and open your faceguard.” Jimmy demanded, “We need to conserve energy and oxygen as much as possible.”
After a short pause, Jimmy muttered, “We might need it later on…”
“Where do we go now?” Amy wondered while she did as instructed.
“We need to find A.R.” Jimmy realized, “We won’t survive for long without it.” Then, he remembered that their suits had a special feature installed that linked their machines and gadgets to it. So, if they were ever lost, they could pinpoint its location. “We’ll have to track it down.”
Both children had a touch-screen instilled on the left wrist of their suits. They accessed the list of traceable objects under this feature. The objects were listed by code.
“How do we know which one is A.R.?” Amy asked.
“Well, A.R. is an artificial intelligence machine.” Jimmy clarified. “So, I guess we look under A… I… M…”
Under the code letters AIM, there were only seven items. One by one, the children selected each code until Amy found A.R. “Here it is!”
“Which one is it?” Jimmy asked.
“It’s AIM-9261.” Amy answered and both children clicked on the search button.
Almost instantly, a green dot appeared on the black screen, with direction and distance information about the object.
“Got it! It’s 441 meters north of here!”
“How far is that?” Amy wondered.
“More or less, it’s four football fields.” Jimmy replied. “It’s not too far… Come on, let’s go.”
And on they went, following the direction indicated by the dot on the screen. Noodles ran wildly under the scattered leaves and scrubs of the dense forest as the children walked. Occasionally, he stopped running around to stare at them with curiosity and make chirping sounds every so often.
After a few minutes of walking, the children came onto a pond of liquid water. It was generating small waves as if there was an earthquake—or rather, something big was approaching.
“Water!” Amy moved in for a closer look.
“Amy, wait!” Jimmy cried and ran after her. He grabbed Amy and pulled her to hide behind a big tree nearby.
The Meanosaur, they ran away from earlier, showed up at the pond. It was thirsty for a drink and craving a bath. When Noodles saw the beast again, he dashed back into the forest and disappeared.
“Oh, look is the Meanosaur, Jimmy!” Amy carefully looked over from behind the tree to see.
“Yeah, we have to be extra careful in this place, Amy. We really don’t know what’s out there…” Jimmy glanced over to see as well.
The Meanosaur took a few gulps of the pond water. Playfully, he began rolling around in the mud surrounding the pond. He was making purring sounds as if enjoying his mud bath.
“Well… He doesn’t seem so bad when he’s not trying to eat us.” Jimmy acknowledged.
Jimmy looked at his touch-screen and whispered, “A.R. is not much farther from here. Come on, let’s go around… Quietly.”
While the Meanosaur wallowed in the mud, the children snuck around the pond and went searching for A.R.
It was not long until they reached the spot indicated by their tracking system. The children looked around but A.R was nowhere in sight.
“I don’t get it.” Jimmy pondered, “It says A.R. is right here somewhere.”
There are shrubs of the purplish plants everywhere around them and what seemed to be logs of fallen trees.
Suddenly, A.R. emerged from behind one of these logs and Amy noticed him, “Look! There it is!” She pointed towards A.R.
“Where?” Jimmy wondered.
“There! On that log!” Amy exclaimed.
A.R. was crawling aimlessly and unaware, when the apparent log began to move.
“Uh, I don’t think that’s a log.” Jimmy worried and grabbed Amy’s arm, ready to run.
The animal was dark brown in color and it was about the size of an elephant. It had a long tail with sharp thorns at its end. It began making the similar chirping sounds, only much deeper and less frequent than Noodles. Then, it gave a long distressful bellow.
The log-creature was awakened by the discomfort of A.R.’s pointy legs sticking into his back. The animal began to swerve back and forth hoping the robot would fall off.
“A.R! Get off the animal!” Jimmy cried out.
“A.R! Get off!” Amy also cried out but A.R. would not register their command.
Frustrated, the log-creature let out a high-pitched sound and stampeded towards the children in an attempt to get away. Jimmy immediately tackled Amy to move her out of the way. The animal dashed by them, leaving the children unharmed. A.R. fell off somewhere in the bushes and the animal ran off.
The children rushed over to look for it. When they saw A.R., it was cuddled in a ball. A.R. was also designed to protect itself from harsh environments. It was programmed to wrap its long legs around its body whenever it was thrown into disarray.
“A.R., are you ok?” Amy worried.
A.R. rolled over and crawled back on its feet. “Command not registered!”
“We are aware of that, A.R. Thank you!” Jimmy mocked, when suddenly he had an idea. “Wait, I just realized something. If we could trace A.R. using our suits, maybe the reverse is possible.”
“We could find dad!” Amy eagerly responded.
“Exactly.” Jimmy turned to the rover, “A.R… Do you have tracking software that can find the locations of our suits?”
“Searching…” A.R. acknowledged and scanned its data files. “Software enabled. Suit locations acquired.”
“Ok. Where are the suits, A.R.?” Amy excitedly asked.
“Transmitting suit locations from nearest to farthest… Suits number 2 and 5 are at distance of 0.31 meters north…”
Jimmy squinted expectedly because they were standing in front of A.R. “That’s us.”
“Suits number 3, 4, and 6 through 11 are 1323 meters west…”
“Those are back at the ship.” Amy stated.
“… And suit number 1 is 64827 meters or approximately 65 kilometers due southeast.”
“That’s dad!” Jimmy cried with excitement. “Come on, we have to find him.”
Jimmy and Amy, accompanied by A.R., continued their journey southeast, every once in a while looking at their compass to make sure they were going in the right direction.