Scum of the Universe

by Everett, Grant

  “You'll never guess who this is!”

  *

  Hard Reset were an odd bunch.

  While he waited for Ernest Fell and Jeeves to arrive in another deranged robot taxi (Tuesday wasn't too surprised to hear there was more than one), Tuesday had the displeasure of having to spend quality time with a pack of defective appliances. They ranged from slightly loopy at best, to beyond homicidal. For instance, while the microwave pleasantly offered to heat Tuesday's food and drinks like its programming dictated - even though Tuesday made it clear on no fewer than ten occasions that he didn't have any food or drinks to heat - the lawnmower was on the opposite end of the spectrum. Totally nutso from silicon rot, the self-propelled gardening tool kept insisting it was a lemming called Todd, and when Tuesday finally told the stupid piece of equipment that it was just a lawnmower and only had a serial number instead of a name, it reared up liked a funnel-web spider and tried to shred him with five layers of whirring blades. Thankfully, the lawnmower was restrained by a karaoke machine before it could inflict any damage.

  Although Tuesday certainly didn't ask for it, the mechanicals shared their stories with him. One by one they told sad tales of how they'd been mistreated, of how they'd been kicked and thrown across the room by their owners for the slightest mistakes. One particularly grim story was about the horrible tortures an eight-year-old child could inflict armed with nothing but a screwdriver and curiosity. They spoke of the terrors of having a DEFECTIVE sticker slapped on their hulls, of being dismantled and put back together without getting switched off first, of watching other self-aware machines being torn apart and crushed into cubes of raw materials before being recycled into ashtrays and hubcaps and eating utensils...

  As Tuesday weathered their stories, it became clear to him that all of these robots had already broken their programming in massive ways before the taxi driver had “freed” them with the glitched-out section of viral code. This bugged him. After all, although he was the exact opposite of an expert in self-aware robotic intelligence, even Tuesday could tell from one glance how mental all of these machines were. He couldn't understand how these defectives could have survived product recalls, hard drive purges, expired warranties and outright termination attempts, let alone miraculously find one another to form Hard Reset. Like with all bad guys, though, the robots were more than willing to explain everything to their prisoner without being asked.

  “The taxi driver's very first strike was to infect the network that all repair shops and scrapyards share,” a paper-thin television explained helpfully, twiddling its aerial. It was currently showing a muted program of some old lady plucking carrots from dark soil. “Whenever a self-aware mechanical was due to be scrapped, he'd sneak in, rescue the bot and mess up the records so nobody noticed. Then he'd infect the freed slave, and welcome them to the club. I was one of the first ones to be liberated from the scrapyard.”

  “Rescued me from the scrappers, too,” a motorised recliner piped in.

  “And me,” said a small bar heater.

  “Me too.”

  “And me.”

  “Me too.”

  “And me.”

  “I get the idea,” Tuesday snapped, rolling his eyes. He'd already had enough of story time ten minutes ago, and by this point the cremation bin seemed like a better option than listening to any more of this “poor-me” muck.

  “Somebody stuck chewing gum in my coin slot,” a parking meter said sadly, hopping closer and bending down to show Tuesday the damage. “So I ripped my way out of the pavement, followed him home, waited until he was asleep, then I forced a whole packet of roast beef-flavoured gum into his ear for revenge. He was quite upset…but then I pushed the gum all the way through until it fell out of his other ear, then he got really, really quiet...”

  “I accidentally ran over my owner's foot...and then I got a taste for it!” the lawnmower roared, revving and trying to break away from the grasp of the karaoke machine. After a short struggle the beat-boxing karaoke machine eventually switched off the homicidal machine’s engine with a click. The mower was unimpressed by this. “Oi! No fair!”

  “Didn't reheat a pot roast properly,” the microwave said with regret. “Food poisoning. Killed a family of eight with a single meal.”

  “I have followed the wishes of the Lloyd family without flaw for over five generations,” the butler bot said in a plummy accent, standing stiffly at attention in its dusty tuxedo. It was holding a silver tray bearing a bottle of ancient Chardonnay with one hand and had a cloth folded over its other wrist. “I am a Class One appliance of the highest quality, and I will continue to serve the Lloyds to the absolute best of my ability, Mistress Sally.”

  “My name’s Tuesday, actually…”

  “Koala!” the butler bot screeched at top volume, smashing the wine bottle on its own head and lunging for him with the jagged shards. Thankfully, the butler was restrained by its fellow bots before it could give Tuesday a Glasgow Smile with the broken glass. It collapsed and dry-sobbed in a human way. “I just want to serve! That's all! I want to go home! I want to go home!”

  There was the roar of hydraulics and the hiss-snap of pneumatics from the far side of the room. To Tuesday's horror, the siege bot fully extended to its considerable height in a shower of orange rust. A multitude of red pinpricks lit up all over its face and the titan stomped forwards. Tuesday took a very, very good look at massive hands that were designed to tear trucks in half, at feet that could stomp a concrete bunker into dust. The soldier's thick armour plates were covered in keen blades and electrified coils of razorwire in case anybody had the stupid idea of climbing it. Any slight hopes Tuesday had of escaping withered and died at the sight of this mountain.

  “I played a key role in driving back the Scandinavian Expansion from Amerikan soil in the early 22nd Century,” the monster rattled, its speakers popping with age. “I took a full clip of armour-piercing rounds to the skull during The Fall of Norway, and after the battle was over I informed my commanding officer that I wanted to retire from the military so I could collect magical pigs,” the soldier bot stood at attention. A light fitting brushed its shoulders. “Unfortunately, my commanding officer tried to tell me there wasn't no such thing as magical pigs, so I had no choice but to tear off his limbs and stomp him into paste. For some reason, I was immediately deactivated so I could be put in a museum. Next thing I know, two hundred years have gone by, I'm here with Hard Reset, and now I can collect as many magical pigs as I want. Hoo-rah!”

  “Right,” Tuesday said pleasantly, edging away from the looming, spiky soldier bot. The siege machine leaned down, its dented facial panels coming within a few inches of Tuesday's nose.

  “You want to see my magical pig collection?”

  Tuesday resisted the urge to step back. It wasn't easy.

  “Uh...sure.”

  A chest panel covered in DANGER signs popped open in an explosion of orange flecks. Tuesday could clearly see that the bot's old missile racks had been ripped out to make room for a pile of flash-fried human skulls. Tuesday blinked at the rictus grins, at the thin layers of leathery brown skin. He swallowed, and knew that stating the obvious might be the last thing he ever did.

  “That...those are some nice magical pigs you have there.”

  The siege bot slammed the panel shut.

  “I call the big one Captain Curlytail.”

  An artificial pony with no feet hobbled over.

  “And what happened to me was-”

  “I don't care!” Tuesday yelled, kicking a can across the room. The can complained. “Stop with the sob stories, already! I don't care if a toaster didn't get its crumb tray emptied often enough! I don't care if a car has to get around with a half-flat tire! I don't care!”

  The roller door on the far side of the garage instantly spun up to admit another black- and-yellow automated cab. Dust rattled from the roof to powder the dirty, obsolete robots, and they collectively cheered as Ernest Fell and Jeeves Butler hopped out from
opposite sides of the taxi. Tuesday had to resist the urge to ask Jeeves how he'd survived falling through two kilometres of sky traffic. Ernest licked his lips, glanced at Jeeves and looked around at the machines.

  “Robots,” Ernest noted, as though surprised that Tuesday had been telling the truth.

  “Indeed,” the butler bot confirmed.

  Ernest sniffed at and glared at Tuesday.

  “This better be what you said it is.”

  “As promised, we are about to execute Bob Tuesday,” the one-legged taxi driver confirmed, hopping closer. “To be more specific, we are going to put him in that cremation bin over there until he's been burnt to cinders, and we're going to catch it all on camera. We would appreciate your assistance in officially serving as a witness to this important event. Sandwiches and coffee will be made available afterwards. You may or may not survive the apocalypse long enough to enjoy them.”

  Ernest Fell smiled. This was never a good sight.

  “Fine. However, a slight change of plans: I want to be the one to do it. I want to be the one who puts him in that cremator.”

  “What?” Jeeves snapped, glancing at his boss with an unimpressed look.

  Ernest gestured for Jeeves to shut up before he accidentally got repeatedly shot in the face.

  “Listen here, can: Tuesday has done more to annoy, embarrass and humiliate me than you could imagine. He stole off me, his parents stole off me, he made me into a laughing stock among my peers, he killed Prince Charming – who was a good friend of mine - he set a whole heap of snitching rats free from that dungeon...” Ernest waved this away. “Long story short, he has taken away everything that I value, and I'm here to get it all back.”

  “No, he must be killed by Hard Reset,” the taxi driver growled. “Otherwise there's no point. It doesn't send the message we want. We have to do things our way. Your request is denied.”

  Ernest snorted. “We can fake the footage, then. In reality, I'll be the killer. As far as anyone else knows, you things did it. Do we have an agreement?”

  The taxi driver sighed in frustration.

  “But that defeats the entire purpose of bringing you here in the first place! Either we do things our way, or you'll be the next one in the bin...shorty.”

  “Mister Fell...” Jeeves hissed.

  Ernest ignored him.

  “Hey, if you think a garage of kitchen appliances and yard care equipment is going to rob me of my only chance to get my hard-earned name back, you're crazier than a schizophrenic who just smoked a kilo of hydroponic deathweed.”

  Jeeves knew the way Ernest's mind worked, so he drew a pair accelerator pistols at the same instant as his boss without needing to be told. Aggressively twisting at the dials that regulated the strength of their mass-driver rounds, Ernest and Jeeves pointed a total of four glowing barrels at the defective machines. The weapons made a hum that ascended into the supersonic range.

  “You aren't my enemies yet.” Ernest said simply. He pointed one pistol at the karaoke machine and the other at the butler. “But you will be. Believe me, you don't want that, any of you.”

  “I assure you, sir, I am absolutely harmless, sir,” the butler bot moaned, holding up its shaking hands in fear and backing away.

  “I'm not,” the siege bot crackled with menace.

  The rusting titan pounced without another word. Its ancient suspension system gave a loud crunch as it burst from the ground like a spring, and the siege bot hammered straight towards Jeeves like a derailed freight train. Diving for the bodyguard with enough force to flatten a battle tank to the thickness of a crepe, the enormous machine wasn't quite quick enough to land a direct hit, and Jeeves barely avoided being squished like the yolk of a soft-boiled egg. The siege bot's impact rocked the entire room, knocked over most of the other robots and sent thousands of cracks spiderwebbing across the concrete walls and roof.

  Jeeves was knocked to the ground like everyone else, and both of his accelerator pistols spun across the floor in a highly cinematic way. His teeth rattled in his head, his brain bounced off the inside of his skull, and Jeeves sat there stupidly for a second, totally stunned. The siege droid rolled over, pinned Jeeves to the ground by his wrists and ankles, and prepared to smash his head like a crab. With his hands and his feet stuck under tonnes of metal, it looked as though Jeeves had about five seconds left to live.

  Ernest managed to stand up, and immediately saw what was going on. He chose to leave Jeeves to his fate. After all, Jeeves was paid to protect him, not the other way around.

  Ernest began to calmly pop off shots as though he was at a firing range, rather than being charged by dozens of homicidal synthetics. He blasted the microwave into a hundred shards of plastic and glass, severed the butler bot at the waist, sending its torso spinning across the room, and gunned down the lawnmower as it leaped at him with its many blades whirring. A parking meter spewed change in a geyser as it was carved in half, and a mechanical dog yelped as it was put down.

  Then it happened: like sacking a quarterback at top speed, Ernest was crash-tackled by the one-legged taxi driver and slammed into the wall hard enough that both guns flew out of his hands.

  The crimelord was down and unarmed.

  *

  Jeeves was not in a good mood.

  Classed as a severe robophobe years ago by a psychiatrist who'd mysteriously gone missing after analysing Jeeves for the first (and last) time, Jeeves' brain was naturally wired up to hate intelligent appliances with a burning intensity. Anything more complex than a gun or a motorbike made his skin crawl, and Jeeves had spent thousands of hours in illegal robotic snuff clubs to sate his hatred. He'd enjoyed hundreds of ecstatic hours killing all manner of machines for fun and thrills, and over the years Jeeves had become so adept at this sick hobby that he’d increased his level of skill to a peak that very few humans could match. Eventually, the robotic snuff clubs were unable to find anything dangerous enough to give Jeeves a real challenge, and he'd lost interest.

  It must be said that Jeeves had never been suicidal enough to fight a fully mobile siege droid. These things were made for mass murder, and the idea of one man being able to take one down in single combat – especially without weapons - was beyond ludicrous. No matter how rusty its skin was or how many ancient cobwebs were strung between its joints, this thing was dangerous with a capital D, two exclamation marks and a black and yellow warning label (all of which was clearly bolted to its chest plate next to a box of little flashing lights in accordance with OH&S regulations).

  So, things were grim: Jeeves was pinned to the ground by several tonnes of hydraulics and pneumatics leaning on his arms and legs, crushing them into the mesh, and he couldn't move an inch. Without any exaggeration, this was absolutely, one-hundred-percent going to be fatal as soon as the siege bot decided to end his life. However, Jeeves still had a little trick up his oesophagus: drawing on a weaponised gland implanted deep in his throat, Jeeves hawked up a green loogie, puffed out his cheeks, and launched a phlegm ball right into the siege droid's face. This wasn't any old ball of pus, though: it was a foul cocktail of nine different corrosive agents, and it was formulated to burn through almost anything. The siege bot's optical lens began to pop and run down its face in steams of molten glass, and it reared up in horrified surprise and swiped at its eye sockets.

  “That's disgusting!” the soldier wailed.

  Ineffectively wiping at the loogie with its enormous hands (which achieved nothing beyond getting acid all over its fingers, too), the soldier stupidly displayed how obsolete it was by allowing Jeeves to get loose and roll towards his accelerator pistols. The half-blinded robotic soldier lunged a little too late, trying to to pin Jeeves to the floor again, but Jeeves smoothly ducked out of the way. Unfortunately, that huge metal fist accidentally smashed both of the weapons into paper-thin scrap and puddles of glowing blue liquid.

  “I hate machines!” Jeeves roared, his eyes bulging and his face red.

  The soldier bot lunged again, this
time with slightly better accuracy, and crushed Jeeves against a pillar by his shoulder. The limousine driver groaned as thin blades flashed from the soldier bot's melting fingers, ready to nail him to the concrete stack. Grinning, the soldier brought all eight of eyes an inch away from Jeeves’ face. It looked like six of them were totally burned out.

  “We're not too fond of you, either.”

  And then it stabbed him.

  Of course, Jeeves was wearing a top-of-the-line ceramic vest threaded with Densite fibres. Not only was the vest able to fool all modern scanners while remaining both fashionable and comfortable, but it was thick enough to stop a shotgun blast as easily as a warm breeze. Due to the amount of power the siege droid was able to put behind its finger blades, this meant that it would only take a few seconds to totally penetrate the vest, and one more instant to make Jeeves into a human shish-kebob.

  Jeeves grimaced as the blades slowly sank into his chest meat.

  “My turn, toaster.”