I am not hearing any words anywhere, not even wind, just crunching of stones and rustling like clothes and shuffling like feet wearing slippers on road until many bodies tumble away at once and I am seeing blue and white and gold and red, and I must close my eyes because it is too much. And air is feeling cold on my skin because there is no more pile of smelling bodies crushing me. But air is also paining me like many many knife on my skin. It is burning, and I am hearing sizzle like meat is cooking.

Then, hand is pulling me out of where I am lying and I see robot for the first time. It has arms and legs and a big round chest like an upside-down belly. It has no lips, just two lines on the sides of its face for where the plates are coming together. They are like grooves, and I am wanting to reach and touch them, because some memory in my bones is wanting me to do this, but I cannot raise my arm, because I am too weak.

Robot is raising me up and down so that my feet just touch the ground, but when it is letting me go to stand on my own, I am falling like sack of yams. Small small stones on ground are digging into my cheek, and I am trying to push myself up. But I must try many many times before I am able to sit on my knees. And that is when I am seeing them.

Many many robots. Not like army of robots. But family of robots. They are all looking the same, and they are the only thing I am seeing in this place that is moving. Not even beetle or blade of grass is moving here. Only the light in the eyes of the robots. That light is like single bar of white moving back and forth. I am thinking that this is how they are speaking to each other. With light.

My teeth are chat-chatting but I am sweating like it is second skin, and, even though there is quiet everywhere, there is noise like jagga-jagga inside my head. Like train is running back and forth between my ears.

One robot is walking to me with crunch-crunch footstep and is lowering themself to me. And long wire is coming out of its back and I am seeing that it is hose, because it is opening at its end and sliding past my teeth and into my mouth. And water is swimming down my throat.

I am coughing so hard my chest is paining me again, but I am wanting water, so my body is scrambling like mouse to take hose, and I put it to my mouth and it is feeling like entire world—like sun and earth and sky—is smiling on my body, because pain is leaving me.