by Luke Norris
"Don’t put your machines here, come and talk to me face to face!"
One was cylindrical, the other was a spherical orb. It had a few indentations and patterns on the surface. Oliver realized what had been niggling at him, nothing holding them up. No support below or above. He waved his hand under the orb then over it. As he circled around the red orb, it rotated with him. About half a meter in diameter, the orb had an arm, a little longer than Oliver’s. The cylindrical one remained passive as if observing. It had two arms, and was rigid, unmoving, as he leaned on it. He pushed harder, but wouldn’t budge. This was too much to take in!
He gradually made his way to the next bed where another person lay. As Oliver moved down the rows, the machines followed, mimicking his movements.
His mouth felt so parched. “Look, if you can hear me...” He looked at the machine where he thought the cameras might be. Hey!” He motioned with his hand to his mouth “I need something to drink!”
The spherical device vanished in a glimmer. No noise, no air rush, nothing to indicate speed and movement. Oliver stood there dumbfounded. That thing that was as solid as a rock a moment ago, and it just disappeared in a flash. A few moments later it reappeared with a cup of some sort.
It looked like water. Ah, what the hell. He’d been here all this time. They could have killed him if they really wanted to. The liquid coursed down his throat into his stomach, instantly warming. He guzzled the entire contents and put the cup down on the edge of one of the beds. In a flash, it disappeared, and he realized the cylindrical robot had taken it away.
He pointed weakly at the orb. “I don’t know what you guys are up to, but you’re in a lot of trouble! You know that you can’t do this, lock people up and…keep them as lab rats…all these people in here…you're going down!” He was ranting. Eventually, he went quiet. “Anyway, I want my phone call!” He started laughing hysterically, or was he crying?.
The damn robot was pointing at his tattoo again. He looked at the leaping cat image then back at the robot.
“It’s a cougar.” He tapped his arm, pointing to the face of the mountain lion and the letters. “Do you know Cougar?”
Every time Oliver woke he felt stronger, more alert. People were obviously unaware that he was awake, and not like the others in this room, all of whom seemed to be dead!
He went to the nearest bed and looked at the body of a dark-skinned man. Completely shaven, like himself. He listened for a heartbeat. Nothing. These are all corpses. I’m in some sort of giant refrigerator, left with some sort of high tech machines in a high tech morgue.
He tried to make sense of his last memories. I was in the countryside fleeing advancing armies. Perhaps I’m being held, prisoner. Maybe I’m being stored for incineration or burial. Whatever it is there should be a way out of here.
Oliver made his way down the long aisle between the rows of bodies. He noticed that the floor curved away from him. It was the most bizarre thing. He walked sideways but eventually, he would find that he had gone in a full circle. Somehow the room he was in was rotating like a drum. That made no sense! Why didn’t the bodies start slipping off their gurneys when they get round to the top or the side?
When he finally found a door he banged against it with his fists, but he was so weary from the exertion. His body did seem thinner than what he remembered.
“Hey! Open this door!” He yelled as he looked for an opening or a latch.
Oliver had become accustomed to the floating machines following him, but ignored them.“Open this bloody door!” He demanded. "Look, if you don’t open this door...” He went across and grabbed one of the bodies, and dragged it off the gurney so it fell to the floor. Lights were glowing, one of them started to flash. “Open the door!”
He pulled another body off. It’s little light also started flashing. It required so much energy, he slumped to the ground against the door. “Open the door, just open the door.” He closed his eyes.
When he awoke, he was back on his gurney. This is getting tiresome. I have to do something, I will set a fire, set off the sprinkler alarm to get their attention. What could he do? He put his feet on the ground.
The adventurous orb came up to him, reached out and touched him on the arm. It pointed, but this time it actually verbalized what Oliver had told it earlier.
“Coouugaar.” It said in a slow robotic voice.
“Yea, cougar! Now you’re talking you dumbass. Now open the door and let me outta here!”
“Cooouugaar,” it repeated.
“Listen, when I get outta here, I'm gonna get the cops onto this place. They are going to tear it down!” That should alarm them! “I’m gonna get the military! They’ll be crawling all over this facility.”
But hadn’t a lot of the civil society broken down? Oliver’s memories were disrupted. Running in the countryside. The crazy war, as he called it, had even spread all the way to Otago in the south island of New Zealand.
He pushed his face up close to the orb, “If you don’t let me outta here, I’ll keep pushing these bodies on the deck! Do you hear me?” He felt stronger too.
Where were the bodies he’d put on the ground? Hadn’t he pulled these ones off? All back on their slabs. He looked around, the orb was following him.
“You picked them up and put them back on here did you? Well somebody’s going to get tired of this soon!” He grabbed a body, dragged it, and dropped it on the deck. Methodically he started working his way around, dropping bodies on the deck.
He was reaching for number five when the machine grabbed his arm.
“Coouugar.”
How was this little machine so strong? He couldn’t resist it. He started to pant. “You're gonna stop me? You're gonna stop me from pulling these bodies off? Why don’t you come and open the door?” He reached up to grab another body.
The arm went out again, this time just grabbing him on the wrist. “Cougar.” It pulled him away gently.
“Who are you? Hey, you in there!” He taped the orb. “Come on what’s your name? Look!” He pointed at his own tattoo. “Cougar.”
No response.
What strange machines these were! Its spherical shape and indentations made the orb look like a Lego model from his childhood. The Death Star from Star Wars. Except of course it had an arm, and was red! “You remind me of toys I used to play with!” Oliver said. “So I’m calling you Lego,” he indicated to the cylindrical one behind him, “and you’re Toro!”
What happened next astonished him. The orb pointed at Oliver, “Coouugar,” it said in a robotic voice. It swiveled around, pointed at the other one, “Toro,” then reached out and pointed at itself “Lego.” Then repeated the motion. “Cougar, Lego, Toro.”
What the heck is going on? What is this…this nut house? Maybe there is a language breakdown. The only words they have spoken are the words I taught them.
He tried something. He brought his right arm up and turned it slowly in front of the sphere and then shook it loosely.
“Arm,” he said.
“Aarrm,” Lego repeated the sound.
He reached out and tapped the arm of the machine. “Arm.”
“Arm,” Lego repeated again.
Oliver brought his knee up and swung his foot forwards. “Leg.”
“Leg,” Lego said.
He methodically started building the vocabulary. Was he going to have to teach every word to the dimwits running this place? Astoundingly, Lego never forgot one word.
“Nose,” he said.
“Nose,” Lego repeated.
Oliver was no linguist, but if he could build up the vocabulary enough to ask a basic question...I just need to draw a picture of a sun, then see if they understand and play along. The sun is a recognized enough image, it hangs in the sky.
He tried to draw on the wall indicating with his hand to Toro. In an instant, Toro disappeared. A few moments later it zipped back with some kind of short graphite rod. It left dark score marks on the side of the wall. He drew a la
rge circle and put radiating lines from it.
“Sun.”
“Sun,” Lego repeated.
He drew a stick figure and pointed to himself. “Man.”
“Man.”
Every time Oliver woke, Lego was forever there, beside him. He slipped off the platform, picked up the little pencil at the foot of the bed, and just started writing on the floor, adding words. This is not fast enough. I have to be able to build a conversation.
He ran down the aisle tapping each person. “Men,” he yelled. “Men,” Lego zipped behind. Oliver pointed at himself in his groin. “Man.” Then he tried to draw a picture of a woman. “Woman.”
He wasn’t sure what words were being recognized, but the machine never forgot, and was always able to repeat the words back to him.
These little bots are my only avenue of unraveling the mystery of this madhouse.
He started drawing more pictures. Then Toro would draw pictures. Lego would speak. And so the pattern went. The difficulty of grammar and sentences was horrendous. Oliver would often lose it, start swearing, bang his fists on Lego’s body, or walk down the aisles pushing bodies off. “Just stop this stupid game and just start talking to me.”
Lego and Toro were forever patient, or resistant, but never changed their behavior.
Sometimes more drawings had been added when Oliver woke. Steadily, conversations with Lego were becoming more involved.
Finally, Oliver made a breakthrough. The breakthrough disturbed him so profoundly, it was almost his breakdown.
Oliver finally drew Earth, outlining South America, Australia, and New Zealand. Then he drew the sun so there could be no doubt. He had to find out what country he was in. Who was responsible? Was it the Americans? The Chinese? Someone else?
“Where is Cougar?” Oliver asked Lego tapping the map.
Lego took the pencil, made no indication about Oliver’s picture of Earth, didn’t re-draw it, or reference it. He drew an arrow. Then drew another arrow following the first, then another. The robot hovered along the wall, each arrow was further from Earth. Finally, he sketched a long thin shape. Was that meant to be a kind of satellite or spaceship? Lego turned and tapped Oliver on the chest, and said, “Cougar,” pointing to the ship.
Oliver tried to comprehend. He was dizzy and nauseous. His vision started to blur. He tried concentrating on what he thought Lego was telling him. I'm...not even on my planet? I'm in this…whatever this hell hole is! A crematorium, or tomb? It’s traveling through space, away from Earth. I've been kidnapped, brainwashed, tortured and experimented on.
His breath was fast, and his pulse was racing. He lay down. He looked at the robots, no expression. They were just machines. He turned over and closed his eyes. I just don’t want to talk.
He didn’t sleep this time. How could he sleep tortured with the realization he was a prisoner being taken far away? He would probably never see home again. Were these machines some sort of alien life-form, or experimentation device, he the experiment?
Oliver finally sat up, “Lego!” He called. The machine swiveled closer but made no other move. He pointed at his own chest, “Cougar,” he said. Then walked back to the drawing of the planet. He took the graphite stick from the ground and made the arrow turn around and return. “Cougar,” he tapped Earth.
Why was Lego just hovering there? Do something you stupid robot! Finally, Lego drew a stick figure of Toro, then himself with a spherical body, and then a little stick figure of Oliver. All three beside each other. Lego then drew something that Oliver understood, and was obvious what was being described. He drew a square with vertical lines going down through it, right through all of them. Bars.
Oliver looked at it for a long time, and then he whispered the word. “Prison.”
Lego repeated the word slowly. “Prison.”
Oliver took the graphite then he circled the spaceship. “Prison.”
It was hard for Oliver to deal with the collision of emotions that were slowly crowding his sensibilities. He desperately tried coming to terms with the reality that not only was he a prisoner, but he wasn’t even on the planet of his birth. Not only did space exploration exist, but space piracy existed. He was far from the people that he loved, and the place he left was most likely ravaged. Oliver cried.
It seemed hours that he sat there, teetering on the verge of insanity. Each time he fully grasped his new reality hyperventilation would set in. He tried to quiet his mind, but apart from two inanimate objects, two machines, there was nobody.
All these bodies around me must be in some suspended sleep, he thought, but they were no more alive to him than the benches that they all rested on.
When Oliver eventually got to his feet, his knees were white from the cold floor. His hands were still shaking. He looked at Lego and Toro. They were not an extension of somebody somewhere else, but people trapped standing right beside him, imprisoned in small tombs that would keep them operating until they went mad or deceased, then replaced like a spare part.
These very machines were his only friends. They were there holding him as if somehow, through the cold metallic extension of their arms, extending comfort to somebody who had just lost everything.
Had Lego and Toro had woken him to save them? No, a more base reason. A reason similar to the one that was now forming within his soul. A reason so basic, so rudimentary, and easy to understand. Revenge.
He looked up, the machines hovered patiently just off to each side of him.
“Lego. Toro.” He looked at them each in turn. “Let’s begin!” He stood. “A drink!”
Oliver was now fully aware, fully awake, and finally consuming time at his natural metabolic rate. His metabolism had caught up to the robots rate of activity, they seemed much slower. Lego and Toro had been working in normal speed, whereas Oliver’s body, like the other men, had been slowed down for the purpose of the long sleep that was necessary to traverse the huge distances between stars.
As Oliver wrote he began to realize that there were words that had been embedded into his psyche, that had come not from the English language, but some uniform, universal command language. A language that was both complicated but rudimentary, straightforward and easy to adapt to. So every single person lying on these slabs have been taught this language for the purpose of control, he realized.
Lego explained to Oliver through diagrams and words that he had been brought onto this ship to be nothing more than a soldier, a sergeant, what the masters called drivers. Oliver would be used on the next planet to exploit the inhabitants, subjugate them, and bring them into servitude. What could these ‘masters’ possibly be getting that they could not maintain from one planet? Why traverse the galaxy to destroy planet after planet in such a vicious and selfish manner?
As communication improved, Oliver learned that neither Toro nor Lego came from Earth.
“We come from a previous planet,” Lego said. “Don’t know where, or how to return. Our thoughts have been interfered with.”
“But you know about Earth?” Oliver asked. “Where I come from.”
“Yes.”
“So each time the ship visits a planet, they not only need soldiers, like these men and me,” he indicated to the bodies, “but also…” the question formulated on his lips, even though he already knew the answer in his heart. His reality shook at the horror of this epiphany. “Human brains, central processing units for their little robotic maintenance units that live and die on their spaceship.”
“Yes,” Lego replied. “I was a person Cougar.”
“We are all prisoners,” Oliver whispered, “just a different fate. We may not be able to destroy this race of people that traverse the universe, or piracy, but we can try and destroy a spaceship. At least these people will pay for what they’ve done.”
Having a purpose felt good, felt right. It was a driving force that helped Oliver deal with his emotional disruption and detachment. But this focus felt scarily magnified within him. Was having a strong goal one of the
aspects of my conditioning? Something my captors had instilled in me, and every other person lying on the beds? There was technology here far beyond anything he had ever comprehended. Nanotechnology, chemical conditioning, psycho imbuement. They had been able to condition men to live for one purpose, serve them. We will serve until we die.
Now that Lego and Toro had woken Oliver and started to recondition him, he was still finding that he wanted to live for a cause. No longer was he living for his captors, but now living to defeat his captors. The conditioning was still working, just driving him to a different purpose. So with a single-mindedness and a determination every time he woke, he began planning, scheming and working.
“How many other robots are working for us?” Oliver asked.
“After I deprogrammed myself,” Lego said, in his electronic voice, “freed myself from the ship’s programming, I had the ability to free Toro and three others being used on the ship.” He paused, “I think I maybe even have the ability to sabotage the main computer. But I have to be careful because I will reveal myself in the attempt.”
“If you can do that, let’s just take over the ship and eject the crew into space,” Oliver suggested.
“They are not anywhere in this part of the vessel, and we have no access to them! Wherever they are, it’s not where we can get. We’re isolated Cougar!”
That couldn’t be entirely true, could it? “We can’t be, how do the drivers get out of here when they send us to a planet?”
“There is a landing vessel,” Lego said. “It docks on the side, and all the people are taken onboard, and then flown down to the planet. That’s usually the last we see of them. Very few of the same men return. Drivers like yourself are either very lucky or very skilled to survive more than one planet operation.”
“Operation? You mean invasion!” Oliver said. “So the landing vessel, where’s that?”
