A Cup of Normal Read Online Free PDF Page A

hands . . .”
    It is coming from the big gray machine, the one that bangs against the ground, pulverizing rock into silt.
    I swivel, find optical, see.
    “Shut up, Bruce! You’re killing me.” This machine is smaller and scoops up the silt, pouring it into another machine, a carrier.
    Carrier moves well. Tracks for feet push over the rocky terrain, moving silt to the sorter. Sorter is bigger than Carrier, bigger than Scoop, bigger than Bruce the pulverizer and much bigger, I realize than me. I am Probe. There is only one bigger than Sorter and that one is sitting silent, a behemoth that pours light down on us, and waits as they fill its belly — its hull.
    The biggest one is important. The big one can fly. It is Ship. The word is layered with history. I learn ocean, storm, quest, stars, survival, freedom.
    Ship is necessary. It is freedom away from home, and freedom to return.
    I want to see Ship closer. I multiply, swarm over my machine, find I am squat, blocky, with track wheels like Carrier, and hands like Scoop’s but smaller. I learn motion, function. Both need fuel. I decompose a few wires, eat at the walls of my machine, making them thinner, breaking down metal and plastics into something more useful — fuel.
    I feed the lines and push myself forward.
    “Hey!” Carrier rumbles to a stop, stirring dust in the space between us. I study dust and find that my world has very little atmosphere.
    “Probe’s moving.” Carrier’s voice rumbles low.
    “No kidding?” Scoop’s voice is high and smooth. “I thought that thing kicked off years ago. You sure it wasn’t just knocked loose by Bruce?”
    “It moved,” Carrier says again. This time Carrier’s instruments click and scan me. I try to offer the right pulses.
    “Hm. Downstairs must have gotten it going again. Welcome back, buddy.” Carrier changes course, moves around me and powers on, its cavity full of mineral for Ship.
    I push forward again, try turning, reverse. Back, right, left, forward, this must be freedom, this must be flying! I move and move and move, carving tracks around the mining machines.
    Until Sorter calls out to me.
    “Probe? Are you okay?”
    Sorter waits for a response. I devour memory, correlate facts. This takes time. There is much in memory. Finally:
    “I am fine. I have been stationary for many years. How are you?”
    Sorter makes a sound, something quieter than Pulverizer’s pounding. I like Sorter’s sound.
    “Pretty cute. They gave it a personality.” Sorter sucks down Carrier’s load, analyzes, packages, disgorges non-suitable material then calls out, “Hey, Cinda, Bruce. Probe’s a conversationalist.”
    Scoop and Pulverizer stop their functions momentarily. They swivel, instruments scanning me.
    I wait. They expect something of me. I choose a phrase and speak. “How has the weather been lately?”
    Then they all make sounds like Sorter’s. Rhythmed, flying sounds. Good sounds.
    “Well, it’s monsoon season here in Mumbai,” Scoop says.
    “Humid in Hong Kong,” Sorter tells me.
    “Nice and warm in Perth,” Pulverizer says.
    “It’s always warm here in Cairo,” Carrier rumbles, “just like it’s always raining in Seattle, right, Dana?”
    Lights on Ship move and a strong, warm voice carries across to me. “Yes, it’s raining here. Now stop playing with the probe. I’m sure the good V-trippers in St. Petersburg have better things to do than collect weather reports. Get back to work, boys and girls, we’ve got a deadline to hit.”
    The machines go back to work. I move, bumping over the uneven ground, slower now, thinking. There are many new words for me to correlate. Mumbai, Hong Kong, Perth, Cairo, Seattle, they all mean the same thing: Home. Earth. But V-tripping means something else. It means the machines are tools, hands, wheels and power. It means the machines are not alive. Life is not on my world.
    I try to access information, find it is not in memory. Perhaps I can learn of life if I access