The Boy at the End of the World Read Online Free

broken it some more until it was something he could use.
    â€œWhy wasn’t I born smarter?” Fisher asked.
    â€œI uploaded a very intelligent personality module into you,” said Click.
    â€œI’m not smart enough to ever build anything like that. I wouldn’t even know how to begin.” Fisher gestured toward the far-off ruins. People who could build what the ruins had once been must have been limitless.
    â€œNo single individual in your Ark was ever intended to possess all human knowledge. Each of you would have had his or her own set of skills. If your community worked together, you would combine your knowledge for the common good.”
    But there was no community now. There was no “together.” There was only Fisher.
    He dipped his hands into the brook for a drink, and a small creature flitted above the pebbles at the bottom.
    A fish.
    Fisher had never seen a fishhook, but he knew what a fishhook was and how to make one and how to use one. He could catch fish with a line and a worm. He could make a line from fibers woven of tall grass. Or he could make a fish trap from twigs. He could catch fish with his bare hands. He could use explosives to blow them to the surface.
    â€œHundreds of ways to catch fish,” Fisher said in wonder. “I know all of them.”
    â€œYes,” said Click. “I gave you the Fisher personality. If your Ark community had survived, your specialty would have been fishing. You have other skills, but not advanced. You know how to build a fire, but all you can do with it is keep yourself warm and cook game. The possessor of the Forge profile would have been a builder. The Healer profile would have known advanced medicine. You have very little of those skills. You have no knowledge of raising and keeping animals. You cannot farm. You are not a leader. I cannot give you these things, for you are only one unit of what should have been many. You are limited, Fisher. Your survival is in question.”
    Click paused and clicked. “I am sorry, am I talking weird?”
    Fisher gritted his stupid teeth. Limited? What did a machine with a broken head know? Fisher wasn’t limited. He would survive. He would.
    He walked along the stream until he found some flat rocks overhanging a deeper part. Lying on his belly, he peered over the ledge. The black shapes of several small fish darted in the waters. Fisher dipped his hand in and the fish darted away.
    He knew what to do.
    He gathered some stones about the size of his head and arranged them in a dam on the streambed. It wasn’t a very effective dam. Water still flowed through. So from the forest floor he gathered leaves and twigs and clumps of shed bark, and these he stuffed in the spaces between his stones. The spaces didn’t need to be watertight, just fish-tight.
    Next, he constructed a funnel with more stones and more forest material. Then he crouched by his dam and watched. If the fish trap worked as planned, fish would swim through the funnel and collect near his dam. There, they’d be sitting targets.
    But the trap didn’t work as he’d hoped. The fish avoided it.
    â€œI thought you said I know how to fish.”
    â€œYou do,” said Click. “You appear to be fishing right now.”
    â€œBut I’m not catching anything.”
    â€œKnowledge isn’t enough to guarantee your survival, Fisher. There are additional factors: experience, circumstance, luck.”
    â€œYou should have given me more of that.”
    Getting up to gather more rocks, he paused. Something stirred in the mud at the foot of his dam. Long antennae twitched. A claw emerged in a small cloud of silt.
    Fisher grabbed a heavy stone and brought it down right on top of the creature. He lifted it out of the water by a claw.
    Some kind of insect, he thought, with a cracked armored shell, six segmented legs, a plated tail, and two claws.
    An insect, or a small … the word lobster came to him,