Robot Wrecker

by Paul Tomlinson

  The factory we were heading for had been built out in the butt-end of nowhere in an attempt to curry favour with the government of the day. Improving employment prospects outside the cities had once been a priority, if you can believe that. Talos Industries factory had wanted to negotiate over the tax paid on components imported from Mexico and East Africa. The result was a huge robot assembly plant with an airstrip, where parts could be landed, unpacked and assembled into robots. Unsurprisingly, the promised jobs never materialised: after the initial construction jobs were done with, the factory itself was almost completely automated. Two Talos Industries employees lived in one of the local villages, and were on call for breakdowns and repairs, but they had moved to the village from the city. Local workers were called in whenever new plant was installed, and although the rates of pay were greater than for seasonal crop picking, the work didn't happen often and when it did, it didn't last long.

  In the moonlight, the road was a pale ribbon of grey, winding across the barrens and finally fading into the shadow forest on the horizon. This had once been a major route, heading north-west out of the city, but now it was broken asphalt with weeds sprouting from the cracks. Every so often I had to slow and drive around something – a tree branch, a rusting barrel, even a limp rubber dinghy at one point. Whatever – or whoever – we saw, we'd agreed that we wouldn't stop. We were the only things moving, like explorers on an alien planet. I tried to imagine what it had been like in my great-grandfather's day, when everyone owned a ground car, and the roads were in danger of being gridlocked by traffic, but it seemed such a crazy idea. Why did they all need cars – where was there to travel to?

  The Talos plant was controlled from an operations centre in the city, including all of the security systems. I'd rigged it so that the watchmen in the city would get 'situation normal' reports all night. By morning the situation would be back to normal, and no one would ever know that we'd been there. Until my little software implant took effect three weeks later, and all the newly manufactured robots began... well, we'll get to that.

  The locks on the gates read a code from approaching vehicles and opened automatically. Or not. There was a keypad for manual override. I tapped a number on the little metal keys, and the gate swung open. Nathan stayed in the car 'keeping watch.' I could hear him snoring gently in my headphones. I stepped across the threshold. My presence should have set off alarms and brought half-a-dozen security robots to the scene. All was silent, still. Situation normal.

  Inside, the factory was in darkness except for a few widely spaced lights high overhead. My shoes made little squeaky noises on the painted concrete. I stepped out of the way of an automatic forklift, which trundled along, following a green stripe painted on the floor. Moments later another followed, then another. It was kind of spooky. Too quiet. Further in, conveyor belts moved components along to a point where they were combined with other components, to become a leg or a torso or a hand. These in turn were carried along to be connected together and tested. The heads came last, and then the software was downloaded into their bio-electronic 'brains.' This was the process I was interested in: I wanted to add a little software of my own to the mix.

  It would have been possible to hack into the factory computer from c-space, but it was heavily defended: Talos Industries didn't want anybody getting into the system and causing all kinds of havoc. It would have taken someone with more skill and patience than I possessed to do the job. Which is why I had to travel out to the boondocks to cause my kind of havoc. Once you were actually in a Talos building, it was much easier to get into their system: I mean, who in their right mind was going to travel out to such a place and physically break in? The computer welcomed my ID and password, it belonged to one of the maintenance men in the village: he used the same password here that he used for accessing his on-line news services, and security on those services is virtually non-existent. It's a mistake many people make: why remember two or three different passwords for different systems, when you can use the same one for them all? This was the reason.

  Planning the 'how' had been my side of the plan – the 'what' had been Nathan's idea. He had a kind of twisted flair for this kind of thing. I could have replaced all the software going into the new robots and had them do anything, but Nathan had come up with something a little less obvious: at a given point in time, all the robots manufactured in this plant tonight – a total of three to four hundred – were going to be triggered to perform a certain act. The program would lie dormant, unnoticed until that time. I slid the memory card containing the program and its installation and camouflage routine into the waiting drive and clicked on the load icon. It took only a few seconds, and then the drive light went out. I retrieved my card. It was almost too easy.

  The incursion protocol I'd launched back in the city had 'parked' the factory's security robots in out of the way places. The security reports being fed back to Talos' control centre were ones I'd faked. Everything had gone as smoothly as I'd hoped, so I decided I could afford to have a little fun with the security robots. Something I could record and anonymously upload to a video sharing site later. I sent the security robots a little taster of the routine I'd just uploaded to the Talos system: I wanted a sneak preview of its effects.

  I could hear the tip-tapping as I got closer, and couldn't help smiling. Closer still, and my smile became a grin: I could hear the robot singing, or rather humming. It was just outside the packing area. The sound was a buzzy, electronic version of the Merrie Melodies theme from the old Warner Brothers' cartoons. And the robot was leaning forward doing the kind of tap-dance routine Daffy and Bugs sometimes did. It was great! At the stroke of three, one month from today, four hundred new Talos Industries robots would simultaneously stop what they were doing and start singing and dancing like little metal Shirley Temples.

  The packing area itself was in complete darkness. Huge pallets of coffin-like crates were stacked up ready for loading onto trucks at first light. A little way off there was a patch of moonlight, filtering in through a grimy skylight high above. I stopped and squinted into the gloom beyond, thinking I'd seen a shadow move. I wanted to tell the security robot to shut up so I could listen, but knew it couldn't respond. I moved further into the darkness, taking off my headphones and trying to ignore the merrie mecha. A faint humming sound, rising in pitch. Approaching. From the corner of my eye I saw a dim red light coming towards me, then moonlight reflecting on chrome. I sighed. It was just another automaton, a packing robot.

  When the packing robot collided with the security robot, knocking it to the ground and rolling over it, I knew something was wrong: its collision detectors should have steered it around the obstacle and back onto its painted control line. I looked down, there was no painted line for it to follow. Now it was coming straight towards me. I ducked instinctively, arm across my face, and rolled clear. A cutting blade on the end of a chromium-plated arm whistled through the air inches above my back. I rolled further out of reach, then turned to face the machine. It turned, heavy tyres squeaking on the glossy floor. Towering menacingly over me was a normally docile machine programmed to place goods in boxes and seal them up. This particular machine obviously had instructions to pack me off. It was advancing towards me, its red and blue chevroned body bristling with arms and lethal-looking tools.

  "Nathan," I said into my throat-mike. "I might need a little help here."

  The cutting blade snapped back into its holding position, and a second arm rotated to the forward position. Two barrels of some sort of gun were trained on my head. I looked left and right, trying to keep the gun in view, looking for some kind of cover to head for. There was nothing, except for a stack of boxes off to the left, far out of reach.

  "Nathan!"

  There was a sudden sharp click and a hiss of displaced air: I felt a stinging on my right cheek. I investigated with my fingertips, and found blood and a metal staple, the big kind they staple boxes with. The click came again and I ducked to the left, shielding my
eyes with my arm, and rolling over and over, aiming for the cover of the boxes. Staples pinged off the concrete floor close behind me. I leapt for cover.

  "Help!"

  "Wha?... Who's there?" I heard Nathan mumble in my headset.

  "I'm under attack!" I yelled, hoping to stir him into action.

  "Is there someone there?... What do you want?"

  "Rescue me!"

  I heard the whirr of another arm being rotated into place by the packing robot. I peeked over the stack of boxes, and to see what weapon the machine sought to turn against me now. I was in time to see a white line of viscous fluid snake out of a second gun. I brought my arm up fractionally too late. Hot molten glue streaked across my forehead and eyelids, blinding me, burning my skin. I staggered, screaming, and collided with the boxes, tumbling in a blind heap. I heard the squeak of tyres approaching as the machine tried to locate me. I did not move, unsure what sort of sensors the robot had. I was out of sight and I hoped it would think I'd gone away. I tried to prise my right eye open, pulling at the warm, solidifying glue. I managed to peel off a strip of glue, taking off an inch-wide strip of forehead skin and most of my right eyebrow and lashes. My eye was swollen almost shut, and tears streamed down my cheek. I blinked them away, trying to clear blurred vision, looking for a way out. The doorway was about twenty or thirty feet away, to my left, and I knew I had to go for it and do it fast, before the robot managed to register and respond to my movements. I raised myself into a half crouch, ready to sprint for the doorway. 3-2-1, run!

  There was a sharp twang behind me and a sudden pain in my right hand, blood and a strange heaviness. I stopped and looked down. My hand had been pierced by a piece of baling wire fired by the robot: a bloody six inches stuck up through my palm, two metres of it lying on the floor trailing from the back of my hand. I fought the urge to puke. The robot remained motionless. Was its energy spent? Had the wire been a last desperate salvo? I thought not. It was waiting for me to make my move. Conserving its wire. Then it began to coil the wire in: if I didn't free myself, it'd coil me in too, and gut me like a fish. Gritting my teeth, I gripped the wire and pulled the six inches back through my palm. The wire dropped to the concrete. I tried to stem the flow of blood, pressing with the thumb and fingers of my right hand, swaying on my feet, fighting unconsciousness. The robot's baling wire dispenser rose a couple of degrees until it was pointing directly at my eye. I guess it was telling me not to even think about moving.

  "My, my, aren't we a sorry looking sight!" It wasn't Nathan's voice.

  I glanced to the left, at the young woman who stood in the doorway. She was shorter than me, dressed in what looked like ex-military boots and trousers, and a sweat-stained khaki vest. Her hair was short, sort of Peter Pan-style, and her face had been smeared with that black stuff soldiers seem so fond of in old movies, though in her case I think it was more for effect than night camouflage.

  "Do you know who's controlling this thing?" I asked. It was obvious she had no more legitimate reason to be here than I had.

  "The repairman. He's up in the auxiliary control room on the main gantry. I've got someone on the way up there to take care of him: until then, I suggest you don't make any sudden moves."

  "Thanks for the advice," I said.

  "You responsible for the dancing robots?" She asked, just making conversation to pass the time, I guess.

  "Yeah."

  "Nice work," she said. I think she was sincere.

  "Thanks. Who are you?"

  "Janine, Janine McKinley," she said.

  "I'm..."

  "Stevie Houston, I know: we met your friend outside. He's not a very good look-out," she said.

  "We didn't think there'd be anything to look out for. What are you doing here?" I asked.

  "We've come to blow up the factory. We're The Insurgency."

  "Oh, right. I've heard of you," I said. I hadn't, but it seemed the right thing to say.

  She nodded, then looked back through the doorway, presumably back towards the main gantry and the control room. "Come on," she urged, impatient.

  "You aren't going to tell me that you've already planted your explosives and that the timers are set to go off very shortly, are you?" I asked.

  "Not unless you want me to," she said. She smiled at my worried expression. "It's okay, we've got seven minutes yet."

  "Plenty of time," I said.

  She seemed to consider this. "What's taking them so long? It's only one man for God's sake," she muttered. Then: "Crap!"

  Janine raised her gun – it looked like a variation on an Uzi – and sprayed the packing robot with bullets. There was a bright electrical flash somewhere deep behind the robot's collection of arms, and the red light above them went out. She went up to it and kicked it in a sensor panel: the robot remained motionless. "You all right to walk out of here?" She asked, turning to me.

  "I'm all right to run out of here, let's go!"

  There was a squeak, rubber on concrete. Janine half-turned, but too late. One of the packing robot's arms reached out and caught her neck in one of its elbows, began to squeeze. She was pulled back towards the scarred metal body of the robot. This was unfair, we'd won.

  "Get out of here!" Janine gasped, face puce, eyes bulging. "The explosives!"

  I snatched the gun from her fingers and dodged round the robot, pushing the machine pistol deep into its inner workings and pulling the trigger. There was a series of bright flashes and the smell of insulation burning. The robot shuddered and began to thrash violently back and forth.

  Janine screamed, pulled off her feet and shaken like a rag doll. Some rescuer I turned out to be.

  I leaped up onto the machine, fighting the urge to rip out every wire I saw, forcing myself to think about what I was doing. Locating the main transformer, I worked back and found the power cut-outs. I flicked the switches, and the whole thing shuddered to a halt.

  "Come on, thirty seconds," Janine croaked. She ran for the door, not looking back to see if I was following. She didn't need to.

  We caught up with three men who obviously shared the same tailor as Janine. Two of them were supporting a semi-conscious Talos Industries repairman between them.

  "We met a bit of resistance," one of the men said, nodding towards the repairman.

  We managed to get out onto the airfield, where they had a couple of old black Land Rovers waiting with drivers, engines running. We scrambled into them.

  I felt the first explosion shake the ground under us, felt the wave of heated air waft through the open window. I turned to watch, as the Land Rovers hurtled down the runway, away from the warehouse. Orange and yellow light blossomed just ahead of the sound of the next explosion. Two more followed, and the structure began to fold in on itself. As it collapsed, the flames and several minor explosions were forced out sideways, along the ground.

  "Great feeling, isn't it?" Janine asked, her voice hoarse.

  I nodded. My whole month's work was gone with the destruction of the warehouse, but it was almost worth it to see the installation flattened. I looked out the side window and was relieved to see Nathan in the BMW not far away.

  The Insurgents left the unconscious repairman in the stolen BMW close to his village, where he would be easily found, then drove us back in the direction of Nottingham, through ghost towns that Nature was slowly turning back into woodland wilderness.

  "We were impressed with what you did back there," Janine said.

  "Getting cornered and beaten up by a packing robot?"

  "Breaking into their software download system and inserting your own software: there's not many people can get past that kind of security."

  She seemed genuine in her praise. I shrugged, embarrassed.

  "I just did it for a laugh," I mumbled.

  "You're wasting your talents," she said. "How come you're not working in the industry?"

  "I'm not corporate material. Failed the required brainwashing programme: they said I had 'undesirable rebellious tendencies, in
compatible with company employee status.'"

  "We could use someone with your skills." She said it in an exaggerated matter-of-fact way.

  "Is that why you're sitting back here, so you can recruit me? I'm disappointed," I said.

  Janine frowned. "Why?"

  "I hoped you were back here because you thought I was sort of cute."

  She laughed, blushing at the same time and trying to figure out whether I was seriously flirting with her.

  "I've never really been one for joining gangs," I said.

  "We're not just a bunch of terrorists," Janine said. "Direct action is the only way to make the companies pay attention."

  "And when you have their attention, then what?" I asked.

  She frowned as if their demands should be obvious to me. "Then we tell them we want our country back."

  "You're nationalists?"

  "We're freedom fighters." She said this with a straight face.

  Freedom fighters, I liked that. A smile tugged at my lips before I could stop it.

  Janine frowned.

  The Insurgents drove us to an all-night diner that looked like it had once been a drive-thru for an American chain. The lighting was too bright and the place had no atmosphere, but it was far enough out not to be on the main security grid. The food was freshly prepared, and arrived hot and quickly. Real fries, not frozen. Generic sodas – not a corporate logo in site. As we ate, Janine told us again how her group was impressed by what we'd done to the security robots at the factory. Nathan tried to impress her further by detailing our whole back-catalogue of escapades. But her frown said she thought what we had been doing was kids' stuff. She said we should join The Insurgency and put our energies and talents to good use. Before we left I told her I'd think about her invitation.

  Chapter Seven 

  I had downloaded the technical specifications of Talos' new line of robots from the computer at the manufacturing plant. I knew it would be years before anyone brought one of these new robots to be repaired at Raoul's repair shop, but I figured that the data would give us a chance to keep up to date with the latest developments in robot technologies. At least, that's how I tried to rationalise it. To be honest, I felt that our attack on the robot factory had been pretty pointless, even before The Insurgents turned it into a pyromaniacs' convention. True, I'd enjoyed the adrenaline buzz, but it was a kind of junk food excitement: nice at the time but ultimately unsatisfying. Taking the data was meant to give my actions a more serious purpose – my artistic vandalism was really a cover for a little industrial espionage.