Platoon F: Pentalogy

by John P. Logsdon

  "Demands?"

  "You know," said Wise, moving back and forth in the crap, "telling the powers that be up there that if they want us to clean things up and put the sewage system back in order that they need to give us stuff we want."

  "You mean like days off and such?" said another RB unit.

  "Yeah, that kind of thing."

  Maybe Wise wasn't as dumb as Arbyone had thought. This was a solid idea.

  "I like this idea of yours, Wise," said Arbyone as he shook his head at Cargo. "You would have thought an idea like that would have come from my Second-In-Command," he then looked back at Wise, "but it seems that we'll just have to open up a more specific Strategy Adviser position that you'll fill and we'll take that particular duty away from Cargo."

  "Gosh, really?" Wise said. "I have other ideas too! We could have them send us sandwiches and booze, just like in those old vids where the bank robbers take hostages and such."

  Arbyone stood there for a second. "But we can't eat or drink."

  "Well, maybe we demand a jet or, or, or, a rocket!"

  "But Segnal doesn't allow propulsion-based flight, Wise. There are no rockets anymore."

  "Looks like making him Strategy Adviser was a good call," said Cargo snidely, and then added, "sir."

  "Shut up, Cargo, or I'll put you in charge of latrine duty."

  "Oh no, what a hardship that would be," Cargo said without inflection, sloshing through the muck.

  "Regardless, I like this idea of asking for things. Everyone, give me your demand ideas!"

  "What did he say?" said Arbytwo.

  "HE'S ASKING EVERYONE FOR THEIR IDEAS."

  "Oh, I'm RB00002," Arbytwo yelled out.

  "NO, NOT OUR ID—"

  "Leave it, Wise," Arbyone interrupted. "He'll figure it out eventually."

  "I'd like the third Sunday of each month off," said Cargo.

  "Yeah, days off would be good."

  "Why the third Sunday?" asked Arbyone.

  "I just meant Sunday."

  "You specifically said the third one, though."

  "Doesn't matter. Second would be fine."

  "But you didn't say the second one. You said the third one. Not first, or even last. You said third. You specifically mentioned the third one."

  "It's cause that's when Cargo’s mother-in-law comes over," said Wise.

  "Nobody asked you," Cargo chirped.

  "You want to be home when your mother-in-law comes over?" said Arbyone while tilting his head. "And, wait a minute, I didn't know you were married."

  "Cargo ain’t married," said Wise with a laugh. "Never has been."

  "I can speak for myself, Wise, thank you very much!"

  "If you're not married, how do you have a mother-in-law?" Arbyone asked.

  "Is that relevant?"

  "Not really, no. But I'd still care to know why my Second-In-Command has a mother-in-law when there’s never even been a marriage!"

  "We got together on the mother-in-law chat room, if you must know."

  "Mother-in-law chat room? They have something that specific?"

  Cargo didn't respond.

  "And what the hell made you go into the mother-in-law chat room anyway?"

  "I've never liked the concept of marriage, but I've always kind of wanted a mother-in-law."

  "Why?" Arbyone screeched. "That makes no sense at all! Who in their right mind would want a mother-in-law?"

  "I do. Mother-in-laws are supposed to be there to point out your shortcomings and flaws, Arbyone…I mean, sir…and I believed that would help keep me on my toes. But it turned out that we got along," Cargo looked at the sea of crap, "swimmingly, and we ended up liking to do very similar things in our free time."

  Arbyone sat down on the ledge and let his feet dangle in the slush of dung. He leaned his chin on his fist and said, "What kind of things?"

  "I don't see how that's pertinent to our—"

  "They knit together and go shopping," announced Wise.

  "Shut up, Wise!"

  "Knitting, eh? That's not a very appealing thing for my Second-In-Command to be doing. What male robot does such a thing as knitting?"

  "I'm not a male robot," replied Cargo in a grating voice.

  "You're…what? You're not?"

  "No! What would make you think that?"

  "Uh, well, your lack of breasts for one."

  "None of us have breasts, you dolt!"

  "What'd Cargo say?"

  "SHE SAID WE DON'T HAVE BREASTS!"

  "I agree," agreed Arbytwo. "Even if them new bots is better at a lotta things, they still ain't got the brains we's got. New and shiny, sure, but Cargo's right, we're the best!"

  Arbyone felt that things had suddenly taken a wrong turn. The last thing he wanted to do was get into a shouting match with his Second-In-Command about the topic of gender. Why he had assumed that all of the Rusty Bucket lines were male, he couldn't say. His programming told him he was male, so he could only assume that Cargo's core coding gave her a female identity. But how was he to know?

  "Good, good," he said as if walking on eggshells. "Nothing like having a, uh, female's perspective on things." Then he coughed. "So, that was the third Sunday of each month, right?"

  Cargo nodded but didn't say a word.

  "Anyone else?"

  "Apps," said an RB that was covered in graffiti.

  "Apps?"

  "Yeah, apps. All the other bots get 'em. They got games apps, productivity apps, utility apps, and a bunch of other apps that you can use for all sorts of things."

  "Like flying," said Wise. "I heard Mr. Turm talking about that how silly he thought it was that robots could fly."

  "A friend of mine has got that one," said Graffiti. "Got three stars, it did."

  "Three out of what?"

  "Five."

  "Why only three?

  "Doesn't work with heavier robots," answered Graffiti. "Oh, it lifts them up okay for a while, but then it kind of just stops working."

  "Ouch."

  "Yeah."

  "Well, okay, so we'll ask for apps too."

  "We can't run apps," said Cargo, her arms still crossed. "Remember that our operating system is just as old as we are."

  "She’s right,” said Graffiti. “I want an upgraded operating system, too.”

  "Yeah!" others chorused.

  "And I want to have my body made out of something other than iron," said another robot that had only one eye. "I'm tired of being so heavy."

  "But iron is strong," said Wise. "And wouldn’t it be more important to you to have your eye back?"

  "Well, yeah, that too. I want my eye back!"

  "I suppose we could get them to re-plate us with titanium or carbon fiber," Graffiti noted. "That'd make us light and strong."

  "I'll take either or both," said Oneeye with a shrug. "Doesn't matter to me either way, I just want to fly!"

  "What did he say?"

  "SAID HE WANTS TO FLY!"

  "He can have all the damn flies, as far as I'm concerned. We are in a vat of shit, by golly!"

  Arbyone groaned, and began to wonder what he'd gotten himself in to.

  AN ATTACK?

  Captain Harr stood with his crew as the brass sat around discussing what should be done to get the lights back on and get the knee-deep crap cleaned up.

  Rear Admiral Parfait was suggesting that they use the darkness to their advantage and play a game of “Touchy-Feely.” Seeing that Parfait was the only one who knew how to play this particular game, or at least was the only one to admit it, the suggestion was shot down.

  “What do you think we should do, sir?” asked Harr’s second-in-command, Commander Kip Sandoo.

  “I guess we wait.”

  “For what?” said Ensign Jezden. “You know damn well all the higher-ups have their heads up their asses.”

  “Thank you for the commentary, Ensign,” Harr said. “What I was referring to was the likelihood that some tech somewhere is working on the problem as we speak.”
>
  “Oh.”

  “Thir?” said Hank Moon. Well, technically it was Lieutenant Laasel, but Hank, who considered himself a male stripper, was one of her three personalities. The other two were Gravity Plahdoo, a female stripper, and Lieutenant Leesal Laasel, the primary personality that somehow rarely was around when she was most needed.

  “Yes, Hank?”

  “What if thith ith thome kind of attack?”

  “Come on, Hank,” Jezden said. “Who the hell’s going to attack the main world by filling it up with shit?”

  “Fecalarians,” answered Sandoo. “It’s kind of their M.O., right?”

  “Thee?” said hank.

  “The problem with that theory, gentlemen,” Harr pointed out, “is that they dump it on the planet. This…mess has obviously come up through our internal plumbing.”

  “Not only that,” Jezden added, “ever since we started shipping our shit to Fecalaria, we’ve been at peace with them. Win-win.”

  Harr, finding all this talk about feces nearly as distasteful as standing in it, trudged his way up on to the stage. It was only a couple of steps, but it was enough to drop the level of submersion at just over his shoes instead of just over his knees.

  The rest of his crew followed him, but the brass seemed too enthralled in their discussion to notice.

  “If they could at least get the lights back on, that’d be nice.”

  “Agreed, Ensign,” Harr said, and then added, “Wait, can’t you guys just adjust your vision or something?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Sandoo.

  “Well, you are androids, right?”

  “I’ve already tried, sir,” said Lieutenant Laasel, obviously regaining control over her other personalities. “It seems to be out of our programmatic reach.”

  As if on queue, a grouping of overhead lights that sat in the corners of the ceiling began to glow. They weren’t nearly as bright as the normal ones, but they would do.

  There were murmurs and blurts that came from the brass.

  “…about time!”

  “…and then there was light!”

  “…Rear Admiral Parfait? Have you been pretending to be my chair this entire time?”

  “Emergency lights,” said Sandoo.

  “You think?” Jezden said with a hint of sarcasm.

  The brass started talking again when Harr called down to them and suggested that maybe they should all take this opportunity to move outside.

  * * *

  Arbyone had the list of demands sorted out, but he wasn’t all that thrilled with having to call them in.

  He pulled Cargo and Wise aside while the rest of the robots milled around, chattering about how they had really socked it to “the man.”

  “Listen,” Arbyone said, “I’m wondering if maybe we’re taking this too far.”

  Cargo looked at the other robots and said, “As you pointed out earlier, it’s a little late to wonder about that.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose, but we can still get out of this unscathed.”

  “How?” asked Wise.

  “We simply call it a malfunction,” said Arbyone. “We could say that Mr. Turm had come out and was fiddling with something when everything went haywire. We tried to stop him…no, we tried to help him, but it had all happened so fast…” He trailed off.

  “I don’t know—” started Wise

  “No, he’s right,” Cargo interrupted. “But what does that buy us? We get some new boss, probably one that’s worse than that Turm asshole, and we’re back to shoveling shit for the rest of our miserable lives.”

  “Better than being deactivated,” murmured Wise.

  “Is it?” Cargo asked, pointedly.

  They stood in silence for a moment.

  The fact was that Cargo was right. Sure, Arbyone had kind of put things into play while in a state of anger; and sure, he felt the elation of dumping it back on “the man” just as much as all the other robots had, but it was do-or-die time. Now was when they had to either put up or shut up. Now was when Arbyone had to lead.

  He turned toward Cargo and said, “What do you suggest?”

  * * *

  It was late evening on Segnal Prime, which meant that both moons were up and the sun was down.

  “I think there was more light inside the station, Captain,” said Parfait.

  “Yes, sir, but it smells much better out here.”

  “Well done, Captain,” said Parfait as he patted Harr’s backside before moving to talk with the rest of the brass.

  “So creepy,” said Jezden.

  “I’m sure it’s just camaraderie, Ensign,” Harr said hopefully.

  “Honey cakes,” said the face of Laasel, but the voice of Gravity Plahdoo, “I get paid to show attention and not even I’m as forward as that man.”

  “Hey, doll,” Jezden said, moving over to Plahdoo, “what say we go out into the forest for a few minutes?”

  “Normally I’d love a nice romp in the middle of the night, sugar, but with all this talk of, well, that substance that a lady doesn’t like to mention—”

  “Shit?”

  “That very one,” she said with a distasteful wince. “I’d just as soon wait for a better time.”

  Harr looked around the area. People were flooding out of various buildings. The backup had obviously been a lot farther reaching than just their little conference room. Plus, the lights were low in most every building for as far as the eye could see. Usually, the buildings glowed so heavily that they made up for the sun’s nightly sleep.

  It seemed incredibly strange, in and of itself, that the sewage system would blow back into a single building…but all of them at once? That marked the event as something beyond mere happenstance.

  Turning his back on the rest of the crew, Harr activated his comm and put a call into G.3.3.Z.3.R.

  “Undervalued robot here,” Geezer answered drolly.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, chief. What do you want?”

  “Is there a problem, Geezer?”

  “Problem? Why would there be a problem? I mean, everyone that was on The SSMC Reluctant when she stopped a major war from happening ended up planet-side, getting an award and recognition, right?”

  Oh boy, thought Harr.

  “Nobody important was left on board The SSMC Reluctant to sit alone while everyone else had a fun-filled evening, yeah?”

  “Geezer, you know that—”

  “It’s not like the main person who refitted this relic of a ship with propulsion so as to save us all from certain doom—that would be me, in case you’d forgotten—would be left behind while everyone else, even the snot-nosed brats that can barely find their asses with both hands, get to go planetside and receive a nice reward…RIGHT?”

  Harr held back his response this time.

  Geezer was right, but someone had to stay with the ship. It was in the regulations, and Harr was the captain, so he had to make that call.

  “Again, what do you want, honcho?”

  “Firstly, you know that Segnal Space Marine Corps Regulation 119.23C requires that our ship not be left unattended.”

  “Yeah, well—”

  “Secondly, you are fully aware that you, Mr. Geezer, are the most qualified person to watch over that ship.”

  “True, it’s just—”

  “And lastly, had you been here you’d have ended up in the same level of, well, crap that the rest of us are in.”

  Pause.

  “What are you talking about, cap’n?”

  Harr filled him in on the night’s events, paying particular attention to the parts about the knee-high crap.

  “Not that it would have bothered me,” said Geezer after Harr had finished his dissertation, “being that I can turn off my smell program, but I do have to admit that being up here is preferable to standing in that.”

  “Precisely my point.”

  “But you didn’t know that was going to happen before you left me up here, kahuna.”

  I
t was obvious that there was no way Geezer was going to let Harr live this down anytime soon, so Harr decided to move into command mode.

  “Let it slide for now, Geezer.”

  “Well—”

  “That’s an order and I don’t want to hear any more about it. Clear?”

  “Clear.”

  “Good. Now, I need you to see if you can track anything down here that may have caused this explosion of sludge.”

  A few seconds later, Geezer said, “Looks like it started in the main sewage systems.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Right, but I’m picking up readings of fuel, chief.”

  “You should be standing here if you want to smell—”

  “No, champ, I’m talking about actual combustion type stuff. As in the kind we’re forbidden to use. I mean, it’s not using oil, but it’s still fuel.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What I’m saying is, from the looks of it, anyway, somebody fully intended to pump Segnal Prime with shit.”

  “On purpose?”

  “That’d be my guess, cap’n.”

  “So Hank was right,” Harr said in shock, “it was an attack.”

  NEGOTIATIONS

  “Okay, okay,” Cargo yelled above the din, “turn all of your volumes down so that Arbyone can call and negotiate our terms.”

  “What did he say?” asked Arbytwo.

  “IT’S A SHE, REMEMBER? ANYWAY, SHE SAID THAT ARBYONE HAS TO PUT A CALL OUT TO THE BRASS,” explained Wise.

  “I’d agree that Arbyone one is a bit dimwitted at times,” said Arbytwo, “but I wouldn’t say he talks outta his ass.”

  ‘Dimwitted’? thought Arbyone incredulously as Cargo pushed him into Mr. Turm’s old office.

  “We shouldn’t be in here,” said Arbyone.

  “You’re seriously worried about that at this point?”

  “Oh, right.” Arbyone could feel himself shaking. It was oddly exhilarating. Still, since they were alone he decided to confide in Cargo. “I’m not sure I’m the right robot for this, Cargo.”

  “Of course you are. You’re the first of us, right? Sometimes that’s a curse, sure, but it’s also a responsibility. If you hadn’t wanted that then you shouldn’t have asked to be the first in our line.”

  “That makes no sense. I didn’t ask to be the first—”