Remnant Population

No. Ofelia pushed past them, using her elbows even as they squawked and grunted. Then she faced them, arms spread. “Get out of here,” she said. “No.” It was like talking to a new puppy, or someone else’s baby: they were staring past her at the colored lights, the gauges, the monitor screens flickering with status reports. They grunted at each other and pushed forward.

“NO!” Ofelia stamped her foot; they stopped as if she’d hit them with something heavy and stared at her.

“This is not for you/’ she said. “You’ll break it. You’ll ruin it.”

The one in front gave a long rolling churr and waved its forelimb at the room. Ofelia shook her head. “No. Not. For. You. Dangerous.” She wondered how to mime danger to them. Did they know about electricity? “Zzzzt!” she said, pretending to touch something and then jerking back, shaking her hand.

“Zzzzt…” It was the first sound of hers any of them had copied. What did zzzzt mean in their language? More importantly, would it stop them from poking around in here and destroying things? Ofelia tried to remember childhood lessons in electricity. Lightning was also electricity; they had to know about lightning. Could she get that across?

The one in front slowly extended its long dark nails toward one of the control boards. “Zzzzt…” it uttered, more softly than Ofelia had, and yanked its limb back as if stung. Ofelia nodded; at least they had that right.

“Yes — zzzzt. Hurts you. Big ouch.” She felt silly, talking to them as if they were babies just reaching for trouble, but it had worked.

The creature extended its limb to her, not quite touching. It tilted its head to one side, presenting her with more of one eye than the other. “Zzzzt…” it uttered again, and then touched her very gently on the chest. Ofelia frowned. It meant something, she was sure of it. It wanted to say something to her… but she could not think what that meant. She rehearsed it in her head. She had tried to convey that the things in here could hurt if you touched them — and the creature had copied her actions, which might mean it understood, although she had known plenty of children who couldn’t learn from a pretense like that, who had to be hurt themselves before they understood that fire would burn. Then it had uttered the sound, while almost touching her, and then had touched her.

Was it saying that she might hurt it, the same way as the machines? That she did hurt? But no — they had touched her already, and as near as she could tell, it hadn’t hurt them. They hadn’t jerked or jumped back or shown any other sign of pain. If they showed pain the way people did. “Zzzzt…” the creature uttered, repeating its earlier sequence. Then it seemed to point to the machines behind her, with an emphatic little stab on the end of the gesture. “Zzzzt.” Then it pointed at her again. Oh. Ofelia laughed aloud before she could stop herself. Of course. It wanted to know if the machines would zzzzt her. Or it wanted to see her get a zzzzt. Or something that connected her with the machines and the action she had claimed they had.

She held up one finger; the creatures stared at it. “The wrong place will go Zzzzt,” she said. She walked over to the outlet where the cables linked to the power system. “Here it will make anyone go Zzzzt.” Again she pretended to touch it, made the noise, and jerked back. “But here — IF you know what you’re doing, I can touch it.” As she spoke, she mimed: finger tapping head… knows… a careful approach, looking all over the control board before deciding which button to push… a careful touch with one finger on one button. No zzzzt. The lights blinked; she had enabled a warning circuit that put all the center lights on slow flash.