An hour later the vehicle's small wheels landed on the roof of a tunnel that led into one of the domes. The robots left the vehicle and marched off. Dotty and T1N followed behind them. They snaked through a series of service doors: stairs that descended to secret levels or dim passages that led to other routes. They walked that labyrinth in near darkness, through the shadows of the old paradise.
Just when they thought they would never arrive, they came to a dead end. One of the robots approached the back wall and raised his arm. A thin red beam swept across the passage until it found his primitive hand. A couple of seconds later the wall slid to one side.
"Woah, open sesame!" Dotty whispered to T1N.
Once they were all through to the tunnel beyond the wall roared closed behind them. Dotty couldn't help looking back. There was no way to go but forward.
Tiny diodes lit a cavern carved into the moon's rocky surface. The roof was low and stalactites threatened to scratch their heads. The floor was covered in mountains of discarded electronics: steel plates, cables, and tubes were mixed with half-disassembled control panels; Household items like coffee makers or food processors lay gutted and incomplete. Perhaps they were waiting for the day they would be useful again. Some of those mounds reached all the way to the roof. T1N had to hunch in places, his height preventing him from standing upright.
The robots continued through the junk piles until they came to a door of reinforced steel. Two of the robots took position on opposite sides of the door while a third approached a circular control panel in the centre of the door.
"No!" said a sudden voice over a loudspeaker. "Let him do it."
The middle robot stepped back immediately and stood to one side. Its bolt-eyes watched the android.
T1N looked at Dotty. She shrugged and gestured to the door.
"Looks like they want you to open it."
The android took a step forward and a strange sensation shot through his circuits. Was this a premonition?
On the panel, he saw a message in glowing letters: ENTER PASSWORD.
T1N had a hunch. If she was behind all of this, then he already knew the password. Her password was always the same. Gliding his fingers over the keypad, he typed out the name of his creator.
He heard a chuckle and then the ringing of a bell. The door retreated upwards.
"Welcome, my son," said a sharp, metallic voice from the shadows beyond. "You've finally arrived."