Junkers

by Benjamin Wallace

  Mason hit the ground as the rest of the crew dove for cover.

  Glitch stood. The big man’s machine mind snapped on. As the corn struck the floor around him, one of his oddmentations began to calculate the trajectory of the corn and triangulated its origin in the darkness.

  The data load was immense due to the number of kernels, but it finally returned an answer.

  “I’ve got you now,” Glitch said as he raised the IMP and fired. The gun sounded and a round section of the roof melted away, letting in just enough moonlight to expose the Reaper’s silhouette as the machine leapt from its place in the rafters.

  The IMP was knocked from Glitch’s hands as the mechanical scarecrow kicked the giant back against one of the harvesters.

  The Reaper’s left arm still hung limp at its side, but it swung the mini-gun barrel to great effect, bashing Glitch back into the machine every time he took a step forward.

  “Shoot it!” Mason yelled as he searched for his disruptor.

  Kat kept tabs on the Reaper with her own disruptor but couldn’t get a clear shot. “The current will run right through it into Glitch.”

  Jake stepped out from behind a crate and the mini-gun spooled up instantly to fire. He dove back behind cover as the kernels dug into the wood.

  Glitch made the most of the momentary distraction and seized the machine by the waist. The metal muscles in his arm twitched as he lifted the Reaper above his head. He bashed it into the ground as he yelled, “You hurt my real arm!”

  The Reaper’s eyes turned brighter and it brought the gun to bear on the cyborg. Then its head and torso melted.

  Mason flew back across the room and dropped the IMP as he slammed into the barn wall and collapsed.

  The collision caused the entire structure to roll like thunder.

  Glitch dropped the remains of the machine and rushed to his side. “Are you okay, Mason?”

  Jake slid to his knees and examined Mason as best he could. “Would someone find the lights?”

  “I’m on it.” Glitch stood and ran off into the darkness.

  “Firing the IMP?” Jake said. “That was…”

  “Brave. Courageous. Selfless.” Mason said as he stood on shaky legs.

  “Stupid,” Jake said.

  “This sounds an awful lot like the start of one of your insurance premium rants.”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “Oh, now we’re doing performance reviews?”

  Bright lights filled the barn with a boom.

  “Good job, Glitch,” Jake shouted over his shoulder.

  Glitch’s voice came back from somewhere deep in the barn. “That wasn’t me.”

  Jake turned. The lights weren’t coming from overhead. They were coming from one of the massive combines. The work lights were focused on the two men in front of the barn doors.

  “That’s weird and terrifying,” Mason said.

  “Maybe it’s just trying to help,” Jake said not believing a word of it.

  “Yeah, I don’t like the way it’s looking at us.”

  “I’m sure it’s just the farmers back at the office trying to help.” Why did he keep saying things he didn’t believe?

  The combine’s engine turned over and the giant machine began to rumble. The blades began to spin.

  “How sure are you?”

  Jake started to edge toward the access door they had entered. “Not much. Actually I kind of regret saying it because now it sounds really stupid.”

  The combine lurched forward as the two men dove aside. It crashed into the door and produced a thunderclap that shook the barn and rattled the team.

  Glitch ran out of the darkness and joined the two men. “What did you guys do?”

  The combine backed up and redirected its lights at the trio.

  “Run!” Mason shouted and turned for the door.

  Jake and Glitch followed.

  The three men ran out of the barn and were halfway across the tarmac when the combine exploded through the barn doors in a shower of sparks and screeching metal. The combine’s reel snapped in two and spun away across the parking lot. The machine turned on the fleeing trio and choked out the moon with its work lights.

  Jake fired a blast from the disruptor, knowing that it would do little to slow the massive machine. The streak of electricity ran the length of the farm equipment to no effect.

  They zigged and zagged across the open space and the machine course-corrected each time.

  Cybernetics notwithstanding, Glitch’s bulk slowed him down and he was falling behind. “It’s following us.”

  “You think, dumbass?” Mason shouted as he tried his own disruptor against the machine. It worked as well as Jake’s.

  “Lose it in the corn,” Jake yelled and turned into the field.

  Glitch followed him as Mason took the next row over.

  “I’m not going to make it, guys.” Glitch yelled.

  “You can do it, Glitch.” Jake turned to encourage him. “Redirect power or something.”

  “Nope.” Glitch crashed to the ground and slid through the dirt as the combine tore into the corn behind him. “I was right.”

  The machine sucked the giant man into its maw and Glitch’s screams disappeared inside the machine.

  Jake screamed himself and fired his disruptor at the combine until the system shut down to prevent it from overheating.

  The machine chewed through the corn toward him.

  Mason burst through the row of stalks and fired his own weapon to failsafe.

  The machine kept coming.

  The two men turned to run but bounced off one another in the process and fell to the ground.

  The combine’s blades snapped at a blurring rate as they neared, and the two men kicked into the dirt trying to push themselves away.

  The machine loomed over them.

  The lights were blinding them.

  The two men rolled out of way as the blades sheared the corn stalks from the earth and the combine passed between them.

  Jake got to his feet and beat against the machine looking for a hollow spot, a belly in the beast. He screamed the cyborg’s name. “Glitch!”

  “I’m okay.” The voice came from behind the combine.

  Jake rushed to the rear of the machine and found Glitch lying in the cleared field naked to the skin.

  “Glitch! Glitch, are you okay?” Jake asked.

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  “How the hell are you okay?!”

  Mason ran around the far side and saw the two men. “Why are you naked?”

  “That thing ate my clothes.” Glitch stood, revealing that every shred of material had been thrashed away on his journey through the machine. Also, that his crotch glowed in the dark.

  “Geez, Glitch. Even your junk? Can’t you leave anything alone?”

  “Shut up, Mason.”

  “Let’s talk about Glitch’s little light show later,” Jake said. “It’s turning around.”

  The combine roared as it turned and bore down upon them once more.

  “Man that thing is surprisingly nimble.” Mason checked the status on his disruptor.

  Jake held up his own and saw that it was ready to fire once more. “Maybe if we both hit it at once?”

  “Sure,” Mason nodded enthusiastically, “that will never work.”

  “Just shoot.”

  Both men fired and the front of the combine turned blue as the disruptors let flow a steady stream of electric bursts. The engine sputtered, wheezed and died, leaving them in silence but for their panting and something on Glitch that beeped.

  The work lights flickered, popped and went out leaving them in the dark with only their flashlights and Glitch’s junk providing any kind of light.

  Mason looked at the weapon in his hand. “That really shouldn’t have worked.”

  The combine boomed and all three men jumped. A hatch squeaked open and Kat jumped to the ground. “It looks like I saved you all once— Glitch, why is your dick glowi
ng?”

  4

  Bruises and fatigue made it a long walk back for everyone, but even more so for Glitch, as the tarp they’d found in the barn covered his nakedness but did little to hide the glow in his crotch.

  “Tell me it’s just to make peeing at night easier.”

  “Shut up, Mason.”

  “I’m not judging,” Mason said. “Just asking.”

  “No, you’re judging.”

  “Okay, you’re right. I’m judging.”

  They reached the office parking lot to a round of applause.

  The rest of the ZUMR team had arrived and were busy unloading their reclamation equipment. Four robots standing seven feet tall and four wide at the chest stomped into the parking lot from an old model moving truck. Designed to take a beating from anything the company had ever manufactured, they were built thick and shook the ground when they walked.

  The technicians turned at the team’s approach and clapped fervently, whistled and made other congratulatory comments that they obviously didn’t mean in the least.

  Mason told them all to go to hell and walked back over to the Beast.

  Hailey didn’t clap, but she was smiling when she walked up to Jake. “How did it go, Jake?”

  “It went fine.”

  “You have a funny definition of fine, Ashley.” The man’s name was Colton Porter. And he was a dick.

  He walked up to the couple and held up his phone. A splintered ray of light shot from the end, projecting a large screen into the air that was playing drone footage of the exact moment Glitch was dropped naked from the combine into the cornfield. “So that’s how morons are born. So much for the cabbage patch.”

  The ZUMR technicians laughed at this.

  Glitch turned red and rushed to the Beast, where he sat inside wrapped in his tarp and sulked.

  “You’re a class act, Colton,” Jake said.

  “Sorry, Ashley. I wasn’t thinking.” He put his arm around a reclamation bot and smiled. “You see, our machines don’t have feelings. They just do what they’re told and keep their pants on.”

  “You put a little too much faith in your machines. I wouldn’t trust them to fold my laundry, much less stand by me in the field when it mattered. One little hiccup and I’ve got two renegades to worry about.”

  “That’s not how it works, junker. A machine can’t turn other machines.”

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.” He patted the machine on the back. “I coded the Guardian series myself. They are completely incorruptible and incapable of anything but compliance.”

  “Yay for you. I’ll remember that the first time I’m called to bring one down.”

  “You wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  Jake smiled at Colton and took Hailey by the arm. He led her a few feet away under protest.

  “What are you doing?” She snapped her arm out of his hand.

  “I need to talk to you about something. How long did you have your drone overhead? How much did you see?”

  “I saw it all. You managed to destroy a barn, a crop, a combine and Glitch’s pants all in a few minutes. I’d call it your highlight reel.”

  “You saw it then?”

  “Saw what?”

  “The second anom.”

  “What? No, there was no second anomaly.”

  “Then what do you call that giant corn cob chomping monster that tried to run us down?”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say salvage error.”

  “You think we turned it on ourselves?”

  “Oh, I’m sure it was an accident.” She put air quotes around “accident.” He hated it when she used air quotes. “I’m sure a stray shot probably triggered its programming. And I say that because I’d never accuse you of intentionally sabotaging a machine just to justify a second bounty.”

  “You’d never do that? That’s sweet of you.”

  Hailey nodded. “Just like I’d never even think for a half a second that you would fry a machine and make it go renegade just to extort more money out of the poor farmers here at Happy Dell Independent Family Farms Incorporated.”

  “Isn’t that nice of you to say.”

  She smiled at him and nodded.

  He leaned in close. “Look, you and I can play I Hate My Ex all night long, but I’m being serious here.”

  She folded her arms and cocked her hip. “Yeah, because you’re Mr. Serious.”

  “Hailey, we never touched it. Not once. It went renegade on its own. I swear.”

  “First of all,” she said. “We are not exes. We would have to have been a thing before we could even be a couple. And we’d have to be a couple before we could be exes. That’s how it works. And you and I were never a thing. You get me? Second of all, you don’t get to swear. I get to swear. If anyone has a right to swear it’s me, dammit.”

  Jake took a deep breath, focused on removing all sarcasm from his voice and looked her in the eyes. “Hailey, both of them were ZUMR tech. Don’t you think that’s at least worth looking into? At the very least to cover your company’s ass?”

  Hailey looked away and sighed.

  “Look,” Jake continued, “I want to be wrong. And I want you to be the one that proves me wrong. Because I know how much you’d enjoy that. So please, prove me wrong and call me up and tell me you told me so.”

  She looked at the ground and ran her fingertip over her lip as she thought. Then she nodded. “I’ll look into it.”

  “That’s all I ask.” Jake turned and stepped toward the truck. His mind was working on how to explain everything to Forester.

  “Jake,” Hailey called with no trace of hate.

  This surprised him and he turned. “Yes?”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  And she meant it. He could tell. His heart tripped and tried to tell him all of the things that her tone could possibly mean because it wasn’t what she said, it was how she said it.

  So, how did she say it? She had said it softly. That could mean she didn’t want others to hear, which wasn’t necessarily a good or bad thing.

  How was she standing? That mattered. Body language was ninety percent of communication. It was open. She had unfolded her arms. That meant she wasn’t opposed to further communication. That was a good thing.

  How was she dressed? That mattered, too. She was in a one-piece blue ZUMR jumpsuit, which meant that she was working and he had lost all perspective on the conversation and was possibly going crazy and why did she have this effect on him?

  And how long had he been staring now? Oh, no, he was well beyond thoughtful pause and considered silence and was moving deep into awkward moment territory. He had to say something. “Hey, Hailey?”

  “Yes, Jake?”

  Something playful, but nothing serious. “Were we at least an item?”

  “Good night, Jake.” She turned and went back to her truck.

  He watched her walk away and sighed. He decided to bill the farm first thing in the morning. He hoped they paid quickly. Hopefully before they came back out here and saw the damage that had been done. But it could wait until morning. He just wanted to go home.

  5

  The next morning arrived as it normally did. Some embraced it. Others cursed it. And for a lucky few who got to sleep through it, the morning crept on by without making any kind of fuss at all. Jake neither embraced nor feared mornings. They happened. That was enough for him.

  He was still rubbing the stiffness out of his back when he opened the door to the shop. The idea of getting paid would have excited him, but he knew it would be months before the Happy Dell Independent Family Farms Incorporated account was settled.

  The combine had to be explained, documented, argued, probably litigated and eventually settled for a fraction of the original charge. If they were lucky, they might get something for the night’s work in the end. Maybe salvage rights. The runaround was fully expected.

  What he didn’t expect was that he’d open the
door to a rousing speech being given by a beautiful woman. That almost never happened.

  The crew was gathered on the shop floor in front of the woman. She was standing next to Uncle Aaron on the stairs to the office and speaking to the gathering of four as if it were a crowd of thousands. “…don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, you are all heroes. Your work is a benefit to all of humanity. What you do, every day, is ensuring that humankind remains the dominant species on Earth. You are not just saving lives, you are saving the entire human race.”

  The woman heard the door close and turned toward the sound.

  “Hey, Jake.” Savant had returned, apparently, and waved him over. “Come here. This lady is saying nice things about us.”

  “She isn’t saying nice things about you, Savant,” Glitch said. “You weren’t even there.”

  “Why don’t you say nice things about us, Jake?” Mason asked.

  “Give me a reason, Mason.”

  The woman rushed down the steps toward him. She looked to be about forty, but anyone of means looked to be about forty. That’s what a million dollars in science would get you at any doctor’s office. Forty was the best science could do and it had been that way for years.

  There was a new ad running for a surgeon that promised thirty-nine for $999,999.99, but most everyone considered it a gimmick.

  “There he is. There he is.” The woman was all smiles and jiggles as she crossed the room with outstretched arms and Jake soon found himself in an uninvited hug that he wasn’t all that upset about. Science did good work.

  Uncle Aaron crossed the room behind her and let the hug finish. “Jake, I’d like you to meet Meagan Mouret.”

  “It’s wonderful to meet you, Jake. Your uncle has nothing but wonderful things to say about you.”

  Her smile was warm and so practiced that Jake almost bought it. “Well, thanks, Uncle Aaron. It’s nice to meet you, Meagan. Now if you don’t mind, we’re a little busy around here today.”

  “Doing what?” Kat asked.

  Jake’s lip stiffened. “How about repairing everything that broke last night?”

  Glitch rolled his head like a distraught toddler. “Aw, we can do that later. She was saying such nice things about us. She called us heroes, Jake. Heroes.”