by Stone, J.
The corpsmen outside had begun to make a barricade comprised of whatever was lying in the streets, and the lead corpsman again spoke up, “If you do not comply with our orders and surrender your firearms, we will be forced to breach the bank!”
“Come on, doc,” Vincent said to Rowland. “We’re running out of time.”
The professor shook his head, so Vincent began to load up his rifle.
Hirim saw this and told him, “No. We’re not starting a firefight in the streets. Stick to the plan.”
“We’re running low on options,” the bounty hunter responded. “If they don’t hurry up and--”
“They’re done!” Rowland shouted.
Hearing this, Vincent pulled out a special shot from his belt and loaded it into the rifle. “You’re sure this is going to work, old man?” he asked Rowland.
“It seems probable,” the professor answered.
“Wonderful...” Vincent said. He lifted up an elbow and knocked out the glass of one of the windowpanes. Turning and pointing the rifle out the window, Vincent fired the shot into the neck of the corpsman outside.
The man swatted at it like a fly and yelled, “What the...” He fell to the ground and disappeared behind the makeshift barricade.
“What about him?” Hirim asked pointing to Ruben’s body.
“Leave him,” Vincent answered coldly. “We can’t carry him.”
Surprised by the bounty hunter’s indifference to the death of the rebel, Hirim simply kept his mouth shut. He watched as Vincent surveyed the scene outside.
“Alright, fellas,” Vincent said to Rowland and Hirim. “Get ready to run.”
A few moments passed as the other corpsmen inspected their leader. Eventually, the man stood back up, drenched in sweat and breathing heavily. “What did you do to me?!” he screamed.
The man began to grow larger, his clothes ripping as he did so. Pieces of his skin began to fall off in chunks, and they were replaced by tentacles that came squirming out. The fingers on his hands elongated, crackling painfully, as the bones broke and shattered. His hair slid off his scalp, quickly replaced with sharp spikes of bone fragments.
The abomination slammed its fist into the barricade and then slashed out at the other corpsmen, knocking many of them back. It let out a savage roar with globs of drool slavering from its mouth, and successfully distracted all the soldiers stationed around the bank.
“Now,” Vincent told the others.
Amidst the chaos, the three men exited the bank and rushed around to the side of the bank where their horses were waiting. One of the corpsman stationed on top of an adjacent building saw them and fired off a few shots, but before he could strike any of them, Rowland aimed his gauntlet at the man. Out came an incendiary blast, hitting a chunk of the building and knocking the man back and off the other side of the roof.
The mechanical contraption on Rowland’s arm sputtered, and sparks flew out erratically. It continued to shower him in flickers of flames, so the professor winced away from the device, as they ran towards the horses.
They climbed onto their horses and quickly made their way out of town. Behind them in the distance, they heard a clamor of gunfire and the roars of the mutant creature that they had created.
Vincent looked back and said to the others, “That oughta hold ‘em for awhile.”
Chapter 18. Ryn the Safecracker
Erynn and Pearl looked out the window of the second story of the safe house. They could see the bank quite clearly from the room and had seen Rowland, Vincent, Hirim, and Ruben go inside the building. They were waiting for a signal indicating that the vault had been sealed.
“This is your last chance to get out before you’re lumped in with the rest of the rebellion,” Erynn said to Pearl.
“Ya can’t get ridda me now, kitten,” Pearl answered. “Things are just startin’ to get interestin’.”
They could see inside the bank window where Rowland was standing. He painted a red line down one of the panes, and in response Pearl placed a green piece of paper in the window while Erynn ran downstairs to start breaking into the safe.
When she got into the basement, she yelled down the long winding tunnel, “Tern! Break open the wall! Now!”
She could hear at the end of the tunnel a banging sound of metal colliding with metal. Pearl soon joined them, and Germ handed each of them a few empty bags as they all made their way through the tunnel.
By the time they reached the end of the tunnel, Tern had made his way through the metal wall encasing the safe deposit box room. He was standing in the middle of the room waiting for instructions.
Climbing out of the hole she told him, “Tern, tear open the doors on boxes one-hundred three, six seventy-two, and eight ninety four.”
“Acknowledged, debugger,” he said and set to work on the task.
Erynn meanwhile had approached the door leading into the vault.
Behind her Pearl said, “That looks pretty complicated. Ya gonna to be able to get through that thing, kitten?”
“I sure hope so,” Erynn answered. “Otherwise we’re going to have risked this whole bank robbery for nothing.”
She pulled out the device and the blood sample that Rowland had given her, and she poured the blood into the machine that analyzed it. Simultaneously she watched the numbers on the device flip to the next series. When they reset, she typed those numbers into the console on the door. She took a deep breath as the security slowly authorized the information that she had presented, and soon the door opened to reveal the bank vault.
Inside was an enormous automaton that came to life, as the heavy vault door swung open. It powered on, making whirring noises, while its eyes flickered, until there were two steady red beams shining out at Erynn. The construct stood upright, nearly scraping the ceiling with its head, and it began moving forward.
“Intruders will be destroyed,” it declared in a booming, echoing voice.
“Rusty cogs,” she said to herself.
The automaton reached out with his enormous arm and grabbed her by the throat. It raised her up to eye level and pulled her close.
Through the pressure on her throat, she barely managed to say, “Tern… help…”
“Acknowledged, debugger,” it replied.
Tern dropped the last safe deposit box’s door on the floor and lunged toward the other automaton and Erynn. He swung his fist at the construct’s arm, knocking Erynn free. She fell to the vault floor and crawled back, coughing. Pearl and Germ helped her get to her feet, as they all backed toward the tunnel.
The security automaton swung at Tern’s head, knocking him back several feet and followed the attack up with a second blow to Tern’s chest. Tern ejected his blade from inside his arm and swung at the mechanical guard. It managed to block the attack, grabbing Tern’s arm with its hand. The automaton squeezed Tern’s wrist, crushing his circuitry, wiring, and framework, causing the blade to become unhinged and fall from Tern’s arm.
With the guard’s other arm, it grabbed Tern by the neck and crushed the metal between its strong metallic fingers. Tern’s yellow eyes flickered, and sparks shot from his framework, as his neck was broken inside the automaton’s hand. Tern’s head fell backward toward Erynn, while the security bot flung Tern’s lifeless body to the floor, and bashed his chest into a chaotic amassment of pieces.
“Get back to the basement,” Erynn warned Pearl and Germ.
They squeezed through the tunnel, while Erynn retrieved Tern’s head from the floor and followed them through the hole. The security automaton finished smashing Tern to his satisfaction and stood. It walked to the tunnel and stretched an arm into the hole, but Erynn had crawled far enough away that his big, bulky body couldn’t fit inside. They arrived back in the basement of the Callahan home, and the guard had halted its attempts to reach them.
“What now, Madam Clover?” Germ inquired.
“It may have taken Tern apart, but that thing has to have a weakness,” she said. “And Tern is goin
g to tell me what it is.”
Erynn sat down at the table with Tern’s head, and she flipped open his eye lenses, revealing a tape wound throughout his headpiece. She pulled the tape out and looked at it carefully, sliding the tape forward between her fingers. It was comprised of a series of pictures, showing her the last moments Tern had recorded with his ocular sensors.
In the images, she was able to discern several pieces of information about the security bot. His frame consisted of thick chrome plating, his processor was a Plexnode 575 with front cooling and a halo recalibrator, and he had three corrosion-resistant plasteel memory units. Everything was very advanced and didn’t offer any easy solutions.
She thought back to the bright red eyes he stared at her with, however, and remembered that behind the red light, she had seen a whirling pulse behind his lenses. Looking through several images of the automaton’s eyes, she was able to verify her theory. She knew that the whirling pulse was a telltale sign that his optics could read in new commands if in the proper syntax.
“Germ!” she exclaimed. “You have your journal handy?”
He nodded and replied, “Yes, Madam--”
“Let me see it… and ink and a quill,” she said.
The rat took the journal from his vest pocket along with a long white feather quill. From his trouser pocket, he retrieved a corked bottle of ink. He placed the items on the table in front of Erynn, and she flipped through the book to an empty page.
She dipped the quill into the ink and began scribbling the following:
def Loop():
while true:
print ‘I’m a dumb robot’
Erynn stood up from the table and said, “You two stay here. I’m going to try something.”
She proceeded down the tunnel with worried glances from both Pearl and Germ. When she had reached the end of the tunnel, she looked around before exiting. She saw no sign of the guard, so she dropped from the hole and walked toward the vault. Creeping around the corner, she could hear the automaton’s machines whirring.
Taking a deep breath, Erynn turned the corner and walked toward the hulking machine, passing the splayed parts of Tern on the floor. She held the journal upright, where it could read the commands, and it moved forward to meet her. Its heavy stomps came closer and closer, as the vault floor slightly shook from its weight. From behind the book, she could see its optic sensors studying the page, and she hoped that it understood the method she had written out for it.
Suddenly, the automaton’s movement stopped, and Erynn could hear the sound of paper being printed out from the guard. She dropped the journal to her side, and went behind the robot to find a string of paper jutting from the machine. It was a thin strip of paper that simply read, ‘I’m a dumb robot’ over and over.
She went back to the tunnel and shouted up, “It’s clear, come on down!”
Pearl and Germ soon joined Erynn back in the bank room to find her already stuffing the contents of the safe deposit boxes into the bags. Both of them stared in confusion at the giant automaton sitting motionlessly in the corner.
“What’d ya do to it?” Pearl asked.
“Stuck it in an infinite loop,” Erynn answered.
“How’d ya manage that?” Pearl again asked.
“There’s a huge security design flaw with its optic sensors,” Erynn began. “It can read in commands, interpret and compile them, and then run them. I just wrote it in a way it understood, and it obeyed.” She turned to Germ and continued, “Your journal is on the table, Germy. You can take it back now.”
They loaded up the bags with the rest of the contents from the safe deposit boxes as well as the coins, jewels, and rare metals from inside the vault. Pearl helped Erynn fill up the last remaining loot, while Germ carried the bags back to the house. They had soon emptied out the entire room and were taking the last remaining bags back out of the vault when Erynn spotted something she had failed to see earlier.
“Rusty damn cogs!” she yelled out.
Pearl jumped and looked around the room. “What is it, kitten?” she asked.
Erynn nodded up toward a camera that was taking periodic pictures.
“Well, yer already a heretic,” Pearl said. “What’s the harm in tackin’ on bank robber to the list?”
“That’s not my concern,” Erynn answered. “Now they will know we’ve joined up with the rebels. We’ll have to be more careful.” Erynn pulled out her pistol and fired a single shot at the camera, causing the contraption to explode and shoot sparks out of its frame.
With the vault loaded up, Erynn set to picking up the various pieces of Tern and loading them into a bag. His arm had been completely crushed, his chest was in complete disarray, leaving the key input and the monitor output useless, and even the punch card input in his back was demolished.
“Alright,” she continued, as she stood up with the bag of Tern. “Let’s hurry and get the rest of these bags out of here.”
They carried out the last few sacks through the tunnel, and on her last trip Erynn placed a small explosive just inside the base of the tunnel nearest the vault. She made her way through the tunnel back to the house and Germ immediately began filling up a bucket with the dirt he had used to dig the tunnel.
“When you’ve got a good amount of the dirt back in there, push this button to explode the tunnel from that end,” Erynn said to Germ, handing him a small device with a large red button. “Don’t want them realizing it was the Callahan’s that helped us do this.”
Germ nodded, taking the device and quickly scurrying down the tunnel to fill it back in with dirt. Erynn meanwhile ran to the second floor, where the green paper was still stuck in the window frame. She pulled it out and replaced it with a black piece of paper instead.
Erynn ran back down to the first floor and went to the back door. Pearl was there with Gerrit Callahan loading up a stolen corps halftrack with the bags. She joined them in doing so, and they quickly finished the job.
Pearl and Gerrit began to tie a tarp over the bags, while Erynn ran back downstairs to check in with Germ. She found him making quick work of the pile of dirt.
“It’s about half way filled in now, ma’am,” he told her. “Should that be sufficient to conceal the tunnel?”
“I think so,” she answered. “Go ahead and blow it.”
Germ took the device from his trouser pocket and placed his whole paw on the button. In the distance, they could hear a muffled explosion as the ground shook and caused the house to creak a bit.
“The halftrack is loaded and ready to move,” Erynn told Germ. “Let’s go ahead and leave. It’s a long road back to Chrome City.”
“Do you think the professor and the others made it out alright, ma’am?” Germ asked.
“Yeah,” she answered walking up the stairs. “He may be crazy, but it tends to be the useful kind of crazy. Moreover, Hirim, Vincent, and that other rebel are with him. I’m sure they’ll get along just fine.”
Erynn and Germ made their way out to the halftrack, where Pearl waited patiently for them. Gerrit saw them off before making his way back inside the house. As they left the town limits of Ash Cloud, they could hear behind them the roar of a monstrous creature followed by a loud thud.
“Guess the professor’s mutagen worked pretty well,” Erynn said. “Hopefully we can all meet back in Chrome City tonight and find out what all we got from the bank.”
Chapter 19. Alice the Detective
Alice arrived in Ash Cloud riding in the back of a bus transport that ran between there and Willow Switch. She and Edwin exited the vehicle, where a Cultwick Corps officer immediately greeted them.
“Operative,” he began. “We received word of your visit concerning the heretic, Erynn Clover.”
“Yes, do you have something for me?” she asked.
“There was an incident at Ash Cloud’s Bank of Cultwick yesterday,” he explained. “It was robbed.”
She looked at him quizzically and then said, “Yes, and what does that
have to do with the heretic I’m hunting, corpsman?”
“We believe she was the perpetrator, ma’am,” he explained.
“Show me,” she simply stated.
The corpsman guided her and Edwin through the streets of the sizeable town. As they walked, she noticed a fair amount of destruction to some of the buildings. There were bullet holes in some of the walls and many the windows had sections of broken glass.
“What happened here, corpsman?” Edwin asked the man leading them.
“When the robbers made their escape,” the man explained, “they mutated one of our men. He rampaged through the town, attacking the other corpsmen, until we were finally able to take him down.”
They walked past a few soldiers who were piling up a monstrously large creature into the back of a halftrack. It had vicious looking claws and long tentacles protruding from all over its misshapen body.
“They turned a man into that… thing,” the corpsman told them.
“Hmm, if it really was the heretic, then Dr. Rowland must have been responsible for that creation,” Alice said. “He does quite impressive work.”
“Is this doctor we’re tracking truly our enemy if he shows such prowess for the transcription sciences?” Edwin asked.
“He has skill,” she confirmed. “But he ignores the church’s teachings, and ignorance of scripture is ignorance of truth.”
They soon arrived at the bank where the corpsman showed them into a backroom. As they walked, they passed several dead bodies, two guards and two other bodies. In the backroom, there was a table of grainy-brown pictures lying on a table. The corpsman picked up one in particular and handed it to Alice.
“There is a camera in the vault that managed to take this during the robbery,” the corpsman said pointing to the picture she held.
“Erynn Clover”, she said, looking at the picture. In the photograph, she was pointing her chromesmith gun at the camera, preparing to fire. “What are you doing robbing a bank? What are you doing in Ash Cloud for that matter?”
