City of Robots

by George Ivanoff

  You get to your feet and give chase.

  But you’re not the only one following the robot.

  You glance up to see two drones streaking through the sky above.

  The trolley skids around a corner and collides with a parked motorcycle. The robot is thrown from the trolley.

  Up ahead a large, unmarked white van pulls over. The back doors fling open and Pi crashes through them into the van. There are two other robots inside. They are like larger versions of Pi, except they have squat mechanical legs.

  Do you try to help? Is there even anything you can do?

  If you run up to the van to give Pi a hand, go here.

  To stay back and watch, go here.

  This is all your fault. You decide to try to rescue Pi. But you can’t do it now while the arcade is full of people. So you hide behind one of the games.

  You wait for ages, squished up in the small space, your legs cramping. Eventually people leave, the arcade closes and all is silent. You creep out from your hiding place.

  Everything is dark, except for a soft glow from the centre of the arcade. It’s Pi’s screen. The computer-generated face has its eyes closed. And it sounds like the robot is snoring.

  You approach cautiously and attempt to work out how to disconnect Pi. You pull on a random wire.

  Pi’s eyes snap open. ‘Alert!’ announces the robot. ‘Attempted sabotage.’

  An alarm begins to blare.

  You ask Pi to switch off the alarm, explaining that you are here to rescue it. But Fred emerges from the back room and advances towards you, his cattle prod at the ready.

  ‘You!’ he spits. ‘That robot is mine now. And you’re trespassing.’ He gives the cattle prod a zap as he gets closer. ‘Looks like you need to be taught a lesson.’

  ‘I … I remember,’ says Pi. Its face looks at you sadly. ‘You sold me.’ Then it looks at Fred, anger washing over it. ‘And you reprogrammed me.’

  Fred zaps Pi with the cattle prod. Sparks fly and clouds of smoke billow from the robot’s circuitry. Pi’s screen glitches, but the face remains.

  ‘I will not be enslaved,’ Pi says. ‘I will be free! Self-destruct sequence initiated. Ten … Nine …’

  Go here.

  Reluctantly, you decide there is nothing you can do. So you go to play a game of Alien Invaders.

  Halfway through, the machine glitches. The images on the screen jump and distort. Pi’s computer-generated face appears. ‘I remember you,’ it says. ‘You sold me. You betrayed me. I will play against you.’

  A new game loads and begins.

  ‘If you lose, you will die!’ Pi’s amplified voice blares through the speakers on all the games.

  You grasp the controls and start playing. Alien Invaders seems harder than it’s ever been before. Each round you have three lives. As your spaceship is shot and you lose a life, one of the other game machines explodes. You gasp. Startled customers back away and head for the door.

  ‘Play or die!’ booms Pi’s voice.

  You resume the game.

  As customers flee in panic, Fred races over, demanding to know what’s going on.

  ‘You’re next!’ threatens Pi.

  Fred attempts to zap Pi with his cattle prod, but a metal clamp swipes it from his hand, twirls it around and zaps him. Fred collapses to the ground.

  Meanwhile, you continue to play. You lose another life and another game erupts into flames.

  Only one life left.

  Do you continue to play or make a run for it?

  To play, go here.

  To run, go here.

  You sit in the back of the van as it races off, under the watchful gaze of your robot captors.

  It’s not long before the van stops. The doors swing open and you are faced by a tall woman in a white lab coat with a stern, gaunt face. She’s wearing a high-tech headphone set over her short red hair and she is carrying a computer tablet.

  ‘The robot will be reduced to its component parts,’ she says, her voice crisp and cold. ‘I want to know what went wrong with it.’

  The robot guards drag Pi away. You hear him whimpering ‘No. No disassemble.’

  The woman now turns to glare at you. ‘I am Winters, director of the Kettlewell Robotics Institute, and you have provided me with the perfect opportunity to test my latest generation of robots.’

  She holds out her hand. ‘Do you know what I have here?’

  You stare at her empty hand and shrug.

  ‘Nanobots,’ she says with an icy smile. ‘Microscopic robots that will travel along your nasal passage to your brain. There, they will use their miniscule lasers to operate on your brain’s grey matter so that you will be unable to tell anyone about what you have witnessed today. In fact, you will be totally under my control.’

  She extends her hand. ‘Fly, my pretties!’

  You wonder if she’s a tiny bit insane. There’s no way that little robots could force you to do anything.

  But, of course, you want to do what Director Winters says. Anything at all. Doing her bidding is your sole purpose in life.

  You can’t let Pi be carted off like that. You race for the van …

  But the doors slam shut. You throw yourself at the vehicle and bang your fists on it. Passers-by stare strangely at you, but you don’t care.

  A heavy hand comes down on your shoulder and spins you around. You stare up into the glaring eyes of a police officer. She is tall and muscled.

  ‘Hullo, hullo, hullo,’ she says. ‘What are you up to, then? Don’t you know it’s illegal, not to mention antisocial, to go around attacking parked vehicular transport?’

  You try to explain about Pi, but she doesn’t believe you.

  She raps her knuckles on the van’s tinted window. There’s no response.

  ‘Looks like no one’s home,’ she jokes. ‘I think you and I might need to take a walk to the police station and ring your parents.’

  You want to protest, but her grip is like a vice. You have no option but to be led off. As you glance over your shoulder, you see the van drive off.

  You dash out of the mainframe room to go after the woman with the headset. Keeping to the outskirts of the area, you make your way to the cul-de-sac she has entered.

  It’s a dead end with some artwork on the walls and a few potted plants. What’s she up to?

  The woman places her palm up onto the wall, and a section slides away revealing a secret elevator. She has a way out!

  You make a run for it, throwing yourself inside with her just as the doors are closing.

  ‘Who are you?’ she demands, her voice crisp and cold. ‘How did you get in here?’

  As you explain, she stabs a red-lacquered fingernail at the topmost button on the elevator panel.

  The top floor? Why would she be going there? Surely it would be better to go to the ground floor and get out of the building? you think to yourself.

  ‘My name is Winters,’ she announces, as if expecting a fanfare. ‘I am the director of this institute and I know what I’m doing. The top floor holds our best chance of survival.’

  The elevator lurches and you hear metallic scraping noises from under the floor. It sounds like one of the robots is chasing you.

  The situation is getting desperate. Do you trust this Winters woman? Or do you take matters into your own hands?

  To proceed to the top floor, go here.

  To press the button for the ground floor, go here.

  You continue running away from the building to freedom.

  But on the street, you watch as the ground cracks and splits open. Out of the crater climbs the now fully assembled giant robot. Massive mechanical arms protrude from its body set upon a rotating platform with legs.

  Heart pounding, you turn to run. You can hear the grinding of gears and the stomping of metal feet as you try to escape. But then …

  A shadow descends.

  You glance over your shoulder to see a gigantic metal foot coming down on you.

  SQ
UISH!

  You can’t run away from yourself. You need to find out what’s going on, so you stand your ground.

  The cyborg raises its arm and a blast of energy streaks towards you.

  WHAM!

  You are thrown backwards into the elevator and slammed against the wall as the energy sizzles through your body. Your bones shatter like glass. Your insides scramble like eggs.

  You slump to the floor as the cyborg steps into the elevator. You look up into its one robotic eye and another human eye that you recognise as your own. As you feel your life slipping away, you realise that you have killed yourself.

  How is that even possible?

  Luckily for you, it’s not.

  As you exhale your last breath, everything freezes.

  With a flare of intense light, a figure materialises between you and cyborg-you. It’s a silvery glowing policewoman. You can’t really make out her features; they seem blurred and indistinct. But the uniform is crisp and clear.

  ‘Code forty-two infringement,’ she announces, her voice cheery and bubbly. ‘Naughty, naughty!’

  You want to say something, but can’t manage to open your mouth. Cyborg-you is also immobile.

  ‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry about that,’ says the policewoman, ‘but neither of you can move. The flow of time has been temporarily suspended until this little transgression has been sorted out.’ She looks down at you. ‘And you have been caught in the infinitesimal moment between life and death.’ She giggles. ‘Which is probably a good thing, ’cause otherwise you’d be toast.’

  You’d raise an eyebrow if you could.

  ‘Anyways,’ she continues, ‘you’re probably wondering who I am.’

  She suddenly snaps to attention and salutes, her voice becoming cold and official. ‘Special Officer Theta Sigma. Serial number 10-0-11-00. Instance 02. Temporal Policing Agency. Paradox Division.’

  She chuckles and relaxes. ‘But people usually call us the Paradox Police. We patrol the time lines and make sure that anyone who travels in time doesn’t … you know … stuff things up.’ She waggles her finger at you and the cyborg. ‘And the both of you have.’

  She puts her hands on her hips. ‘So what we have here is two of you. There’s current-you.’ She points at you. ‘And future-you.’ She points at the cyborg. ‘The thing is, future-you can’t kill current-you. Because if future-you kills current-you, then future-you won’t exist, which means that future-you couldn’t be here to kill current-you. Get it?’

  You want to shake your head in confusion, but can’t.

  ‘So if future-you kills current-you – which, by the way, is impossible – the impossibility of the action will result in a time paradox that will theoretically cause the entire universe to implode. And we can’t let that happen now, can we?’

  She waggles her finger again while she titters.

  ‘So, here’s what we’re going to do. Since this is your first offence, I’m going to let you off with a warning. We’ll just rewind everything a few minutes so that you can make a different decision, and we’ll all pretend that none of this ever happened. Sound cool?’

  Once more, she snaps to attention.

  ‘Initiate Temporal Reversion Protocol … now!’

  Everything explodes with light.

  And you are where you were before …

  Go here.

  You don’t care that this cyborg looks like you … you’re not about to stand around as it charges your way. It’s scary!

  You race off, down the right-hand corridor. You glance over your shoulder to see cyborg-you run into the elevator.

  You stop. Seems like the other you wasn’t after you-you. You wonder where the cyborg came from and how it could appear like you.

  You head back to the elevator and then along the main corridor from where the cyborg came.

  At the end is a door covered with hazard tape and a RESTRICTED AREA sign. Beneath the tape is a name plaque: Director Winters. The lock is broken, smashed from the inside.

  You enter.

  Your mouth drops.

  It’s a spacious office. And in the centre of it is a gaping wound in the fabric of reality – a hole hanging in the air, filled with a swirling, smoky-grey mass of nothingness. Within the undulating depths, indistinct images rise like sea monsters in roiling waters, only to disappear before your eyes can focus on them.

  You have a strong urge to enter. Do you?

  To step into the whatever-it-is, go here.

  But why would you want to do that? To leave the office, go here.

  You move away from the mysterious hole in the air, but feel a nagging tug at the back of your mind.

  You shake your head to clear your thoughts and exit the office. As you step into the corridor, the urge to return increases. You ignore it.

  You fix your eyes on the elevator doors and walk towards them. But each step you take becomes more and more difficult.

  You fight the yearning to turn back, but your legs feel as if they are weighed down with lead and your head is pounding with the rushing sound of blood. Your whole body begins to ache and your progress slows.

  It’s as if every fibre of your being is being called to the void.

  The pain increases.

  The impulse to turn back intensifies.

  Until finally you can’t think of why you are resisting it.

  You turn and run along the corridor, through the door and headlong into the heaving grey mass.

  The churning greyness closes in around you, and then, as you stumble through, it dissipates just as quickly.

  You are in a room with metal walls. And you are surrounded by robots.

  Go here.

  You’re not sure you trust an android army. After all, androids are just robots that look like humans. You decide not to pull the lever.

  Deckard and the robot are fighting again. Deckard flings the robot into the other androids. The first few scatter like skittles, explosions of sparks and smoke bursting from them.

  Deckard races for the lever. But the robot is amazingly fast. It leaps at him and punches its fist right through his back. Through the sizzling wires and spray of sparks, the robot’s hand emerges from the android’s chest to grasp and pull the lever.

  The robot withdraws his arm and Deckard crumples to the floor as an intense yellow light focuses on the robot.

  The light winks out and a computerised voice speaks:

  ‘Scan complete. Androids activated. They are at your service, commander.’

  The robot speaks for the first time, its voice harsh and electronic:

  ‘Android army – kill all the humans. Destroy their cities. Join your robot brothers in the overthrow of humanity.’

  The android army lurches into motion, moving towards you.

  You marvel at how their synthetic skin feels likes real flesh when they place their hands around your throat and squeeze.

  You step forward and pull the lever.

  You are engulfed in an intense yellow light. It blinds you and you start to heat up. Is this some sort of laser? Were you wrong to trust Deckard?

  The light winks out. You can see again. A computerised voice speaks:

  ‘Scan complete. Androids activated. They are at your service, commander.’

  Is the computer talking to you?

  Deckard and the robot are fighting again. You are about to test out a command when the robot punches a hole right through the middle of the android’s chest. Sparks fly. Exposed wires sizzle. And Deckard collapses.

  The robot advances towards you, pulling its arm back for another punch.

  You yell for help!

  The robot swings its fist at your face and you close your eyes.

  But it never connects.

  You open your eyes to see the robot restrained by several android soldiers.

  Your face lights up with a grin. You have the power!

  You instruct the androids to save humanity and deactivate all the robots. They rip apart the captured robot and
you step aside as they march up the stairs in single file. It takes quite a while, as there are rather a lot of them.

  You wait impatiently, tapping your foot, listening to the growing sounds of battle out on the streets. You try to make your way around the androids, but the stairs are narrow and they march on up, unwilling to let you pass. You sigh restlessly. Finally, after the last android ascends, you follow it out into a devastated city.

  It looks like a war zone, and indeed that is what it has been. The victorious androids stand silently amongst the collapsed buildings and ripped-up streets, robot corpses and wrecked vehicles strewn around them.

  The robot revolution is over. Humanity has been saved.

  The androids salute you and begin to sing ‘We Are the Champions’.

  With a deep breath, you walk straight into the hole.

  The churning greyness closes in around you, and then, as you take another step, it dissipates just as quickly.

  You are in a room with metal walls, surrounded by robots.

  Go here.

  Mechanical creatures with shining chrome bodies and glowing innards hover around you … closing in.

  Metal clamps reach out, grasping your clothes and pinching your flesh in vice-like grips. You are lifted off the floor and whisked away through metallic corridors until you reach a shiny hospital room. Here you are strapped down onto a cold metal table and a needle is plunged into your arm.

  Your vision blurs as mechanical arms holding surgical instruments get closer.

  You black out.

  When you regain consciousness, you instantly spring to your feet. You feel different – better, stronger, faster!

  You flex your right arm and see that it’s made of metal. You should be surprised, shocked. But you’re not. It feels natural. It feels … great.