Bot Wars, Line Zero

by J. V. Kade

  “Your ‘affinity with precision’?” I say, even though we both know it’s more than that.

  “Ahh. Half the time I don’t even notice I’m doing it. It’s just a thing, like someone who chews their fingernails or cracks their knuckles a lot.”

  “Isn’t there medicine or something for that?”

  “Sure, but do I look like a guy who has good health insurance?” He goes back to the dishes. “Besides, it could be worse. I figure I got off easy.”

  By the time LT’s finished charging, and his charge plate is back in his torso, my cereal bowl is already in the dishwasher.

  Dekker walks us outside. It rained more while I slept, and the everyday grime has been washed away from the hover rails. The driveway is wet and shiny black in the glow.

  “Little dude, you’ve come so far.” Dekker wipes away a fake tear before slapping me on the back. “You got a lot of stuff ahead of you, but I think if anyone can deal, it’s you. Just . . . promise me you won’t go nuclear when you see your dad.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  LT coughs. Since when do robots cough? Cleo never did. Maybe it’s a programmed thing, to make him seem more human. I wonder if he sneezes. Or burps.

  “We are losing time. If you think you can manage to hold on, I would rather travel by foot at my speed. It would be risky to abandon the car near the border.”

  Groaning, I saunter over. Every muscle in my body aches from holding on to LT yesterday, but I figure he knows better than I do about abandoning cars. And my speed is the speed of a snail compared to his.

  When he lowers himself, I climb on his back. The sling pops out and wraps around me. I take the goggles LT offers and slip them over my eyes.

  “All right, little dude,” Dekker says. “Till we meet again.”

  I wave as LT takes off.

  • • •

  Before the sun comes up, I see the force field fence flickering in the distance like a dust-filled hologram. It’s gigantic, rising over the buildings in the tiny border town of Awaso like an ocean wave.

  LT stops at the mouth of an alley in a darkened business section. There isn’t another soul in sight. The town is so quiet I can hear the fence humming blocks away.

  “Follow me,” LT says softly. We go to the end of the alley and LT points to a round metal plate set in the pavement. “This is where we will go underground.”

  I frown. “Underground?”

  “Yes. You did not think we would simply walk into Bot Territory, did you?” LT lifts up the metal plate, exposing a dark hole into nothingness and a ladder that makes its way down into it.

  “You will go first,” he says to me.

  My skin crawls like it’s made of bugs. I shake my head. “No way.”

  One of LT’s operating lights blinks once, twice, then winks out. “It is safe. I would know if there was anything down there.”

  “How?”

  “I would detect the body heat. Or hear a heartbeat.”

  Cleo didn’t have sensors like that. It makes me wonder what else LT can do.

  My hands shake as I put my feet on the second rung and descend. At first it’s not so bad, but once my head is below the opening, the darkness zips up around me. I squeeze my eyes shut and take a deep breath. Po would have no problem doing this. Neither would Lox. So I gotta toughen up. It’s the only way I’m getting into Bot Territory to see Dad.

  When my feet hit solid ground again, LT closes the metal plate above us. It’s like I’m blind. I can’t see anything. I stick to the wall, afraid that if I step too far in one direction, I’ll fall right off the face of the earth.

  I focus on the sound of LT’s steps. Even though he’s as quiet as a beetle, it helps. Finally he reaches bottom and flicks on a light hidden beneath a panel in his forehead. It illuminates the tunnel. I see pipes and wires running along the walls and ceilings. The air smells clean and filtered, not at all like a sewer line.

  “Where are we?”

  “This is a hover rail maintenance line. If you know where you are going, it will lead you straight into Bot Territory.”

  “And you know where we’re going?”

  LT takes a step. “I do.”

  At first I let LT lead the way, because he’s the one with the light, but being the last in line freaks me out. I hurry to catch up, putting us side by side. We round a corner, then another. A control panel at one intersection blinks and beeps.

  “How long do we travel this line?”

  “Approximately twenty-five minutes. We are very close to the border.”

  “And then how long before we reach my dad?”

  “Seventeen and a half minutes.”

  My chest feels light and fluttery. I wonder if Dad will recognize me. I’ve grown a lot since I last saw him. I’m taller, for one, and I don’t care what Po says, I’m not as scrawny as I used to be.

  Will Dad be impressed that I made it?

  LT stops in the middle of the tunnel and turns toward the brick wall.

  “Um . . . what are we doing?” I say, thinking maybe he’s officially lost his bolts.

  “When I said you could enter Bot Territory if you knew the correct way, I meant the way was hidden from most.” He presses a hand to the second brick up from the floor. The brick sinks into the wall. There’s a scraping noise from somewhere behind it and suddenly the wall retracts and slides open like the door at a grocery store.

  “Whoa,” I breathe, when I see the second tunnel on the other side. Cool air sneaks in, like it’s air-conditioned. “Is this a maintenance line too?”

  “It is the old line that used to connect to Texas’s lines. When the wars began and the border was created, the hover rails into Bot Territory were destroyed.”

  LT steps through the hole in the wall and I follow. Once we’re safely on the other side, the door shuts behind us.

  The tunnels here are narrower and chunks of concrete dot the floor like land mines. I accidentally kick one and it skitters into the darkness.

  “Watch where you step,” LT warns too late. “There are chunks taken out of the floor as well. It would be far too easy to twist your ankle.” He points his head flashlight in the direction we need to go. “We’ve maintained this, and other tunnels like it, as best we can, but it is not perfect.”

  A few cobwebs hang from the pipes above, but for the most part it looks all right.

  We head straight down a long hallway, then take three more turns.

  “There.” LT points to a ladder leading up through the tunnel’s ceiling. “That is our entrance to—”

  A quiet whirring noise sounds behind me. Then a tick-tick-tick.

  LT goes quiet. I don’t like it when he does that. Because he’s a robot, it makes me feel alone. Like I’m the last person left in this tunnel.

  Suddenly, he pushes me behind him. “Stay back!”

  Something zooms around the corner from the hallway at our right. Tiny ball-shaped things that hover in the air. Lights blink at the front. There are three, from what I can see in the dark, and they come straight toward us.

  “We need an alternate exit,” LT says, and shoves me the way we came.

  “What are they?” I ask as we run.

  “Line drones used for inspections, but the UD must be using them to locate us.”

  We reach the end of the hallway. LT drags me left. My lungs are burning already. I want to stop running and collapse in a heap and let my brain freeze to a crispy ball. I don’t know if I have it in me to keep running. I’m no one special. I’m not smart and stubborn like Tellie. And I’m definitely not as adventurous as Lox or as brave as Po.

  “We must hurry,” LT says, putting himself between me and the drones.

  “I can’t.” I gasp for air, lose speed.

&nbs
p; “Yes you can.”

  The machines buzz like bees.

  “We are moments away from seeing your father,” LT yells. “You cannot give up now.”

  We barrel around another corner. I grit my teeth. Keep going. Po wouldn’t give up. Dad wouldn’t give up.

  Another ladder comes into view.

  “There is our alternate exit.”

  I reach for the ladder when a new machine rips out of a hiding spot on my left. It lights up like a Christmas tree and straightens its crab-like legs. A high-pitched screech fills the tunnel. I slam my hands over my ears, squeeze my eyes shut. The sound hurts so bad, it feels like there’s a jackhammer in my skull.

  LT says, “That device has an electronic scrambler—” and then collapses to the ground next to me, convulsing. The drones drop a few feet away.

  The front of the crab machine flashes red and a voice plays through a speaker. “Remain where you are. You are classified as a criminal. Do not run.”

  I’m a foot away from the ladder that will take me to my dad. I am this close. And I will not let the UD government, or anyone for that matter, tell me I can’t see my dad.

  I run.

  I go down one tunnel. Then another. I find a small room with pipes and boilers and other old machines. I bat away the cobwebs as I go. Near the back, I find a pile of pipes and grab one. Rust scrapes against my hands. I race back to the ladder, my feet pounding in sync with the blood pumping through my veins.

  The high-pitched shriek seems worse now, like it’s drilling its way deeper into my brain. I hold the pipe like a bat and swing, hitting the machine dead-on. Metal flakes pepper my shirt. I hit again. The shriek cuts out. I hit again and again. The machine loses its boost and plummets to the floor. I whack it a few more times just to be sure and when I’m done it’s just a pile of metal and plastic and wires.

  LT’s fingers twitch. The drones light up. I hop over LT and take out the drones one at a time, like I’m playing Whac-A-Mole at the Brewery Arcade.

  I step back, breathing heavy, covered in sweat and pieces of machinery. I did it. I took out the UD machines!

  LT sits up and swivels his head back and forth, like he’s recalibrating his joints. When he sees the downed machines, he whistles. “You did an impressive job.”

  I toss the pipe and it clangs as it hits the floor. “A couple of stupid machines weren’t going to stop me.”

  LT makes it to his feet. He tears off his T-shirt, slips out of his jeans. He’s one hundred percent robot now with a body made of metal. There are exposed gears at the seams between his torso and his limbs. I think it’s more a decorative feature than anything else. A tiny panel in his chest says he’s running at ninety-four percent and that he has an internal fluid leak in his left leg.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “I am fine. A quick tune-up will be all I require.” He steps over the smashed machinery and gestures to the ladder. “After you.”

  I hesitate. “We’ll be safe in Bot Territory, right?”

  “Of course. The UD government stated explicitly that they would not, under any circumstances, enter our territory. And if they do, the treaty is null and void.”

  LT taps the ladder with his hand and it ching-ching-chings in response. “Shall we?”

  NINETEEN

  AT THE TOP of the ladder, we enter a square brick room. There are no doors or windows. Only a tiny light glows from the ceiling. I move into the corner while LT sets the round metal door back in place in the floor.

  When he straightens, he flips open a hidden compartment in the wall and reveals one lone red button. He presses it, and the wall makes a vareeee-juuuu sound. The bricks in front of me disappear one by one in a flicker of light, like they were never there to begin with.

  “It’s a holo-barrier,” LT explains. “It looks and acts like brick, but there is no brick.”

  “That’s so wrenched,” I say.

  LT leads the way through the new opening and we emerge into a large room with shelves and tables covered in machine parts and tools. A big engine hangs from a crank in the middle of the room. A length of hover rail is propped up in the corner.

  “Where are we?”

  “This is the Mech Shop in Line Zero, the city where I live. It belongs to—”

  “Number 3498393277-X,” someone calls from another room, “but you may call me Scissor.”

  A bot comes through a doorway and its arm snakes out to greet me. I jump back.

  “Scissor,” LT scolds.

  “What? Oh. Sorry.” The arm retracts and snaps into its shoulder socket. “I forget he isn’t used to our extraordinary eccentricities.”

  I think this bot, Scissor, is a girl. Her voice is high-pitched and sweet, and sounds like a flute. She’s shorter than LT and her hips and chest plate are rounder. There’s a dent in her left thigh and a gash in her right foot where a knot of wires hangs out. Blue paint is splattered on her back like someone pelted her with a paintball and she never bothered to clean it up.

  Most of her body is made of some kind of white plastic or composite, except for a diamond-shaped LED panel in her chest. Right now it projects a green plaid pattern, and I wonder if it changes according to Scissor’s mood.

  “Scissor is Line Zero’s mechanic,” LT tells me.

  “And inventor,” she adds. Her arms snake out again and undulate in the air like the tentacles of an octopus. “This is my latest upgrade. What do you think?”

  “Is that . . .” I step closer, but not too close. “Is that meta-pol?”

  “It sure is!”

  Meta-pol is a substance that can regenerate with a UV light. If it’s smashed or cracked, the meta-pol will liquefy and expand to fill in the cracks. Once it cools, it’s soft and rubbery. Lox and I once covered our toilet seat in meta-pol to play a joke on Po, but then I had to use the bathroom before Po got home. That sucked.

  “How does it work?” I ask Scissor. “Don’t you need a UV light?”

  She gestures to her arm sockets. “I have a ring of tiny lights here.”

  I can see a dozen faint dots of light now that I know where to look. “Wow.”

  She reins her arms back in. “Did you two have any trouble crossing over?”

  LT steps forward. “Line drones at the second west exit, but Trout promptly dismantled them.”

  Scissor’s eyes light up raspberry pink. “That is amazing! And so like your father. Robert St. Kroix is one of the bravest men I’ve ever met. Heroic, really.”

  A smile sneaks in. I like being compared to Dad. I like it even more that Scissor thinks of him as a hero.

  “Took out some drones,” Scissor repeats. “That deserves applause!” Cheering fills the room, like there’s a grandstand of people hiding beneath the broken bot parts.

  “What was that?” I ask.

  “Scissor likes to add special effects to everything she does,” LT explains. “That includes adding sound effects to conversations.”

  Scissor raps her knuckles on her chest. “A thousand tracks in here. I have a response for almost anything. Would you like to hear a few more?”

  “Umm . . . okay.”

  Scissor juts out her bottom lip and the crowd goes, “Awwww.” Then she widens her eyes and drops open her mouth. The crowd gasps.

  “I think that is enough for now,” LT says. “I imagine Trout would like to see his father.”

  Scissor starts swaying back and forth and plays a track of music with violins and piano solos, like my reunion with Dad is some sad-sap movie drama.

  “All right, all right,” Scissor says when LT starts for the door. To me, she says, “Your father has been patiently . . . err . . . impatiently waiting for you all day. So I bid you adieu.” She makes her way toward me, hand extended, but trips over a pile of detached robot legs and la
nds in a clang and clatter on the floor.

  The track plays a drawn-out womp-womp.

  LT sighs and helps Scissor to her feet. There’s a new dent in her torso, but overall, she looks all right. We finally shake hands and say good-bye.

  LT leads me through a side door on the Mech Shop and when we step onto the front sidewalk, I freeze.

  A whole bustling city spreads out in front of me. With bots and humans.

  This is nothing like the machine wasteland I pictured. There are hovercars. Hoverboards. A hot dog cart. Women in suits. Men in sandals. Families eating ice cream.

  A robot tosses a stick for a dog. The dog barks and chases after it into the grass. A woman coos at her baby in its stroller and a bot pauses to coo too.

  Around the shopping square, digital advertisements hover on the sidewalks and hang from awnings.

  Glitch’s Kitchen. Glitch’s famous chili on sale today!

  Beans, Bolts & Biscotti is running a dinner special! Buy yourself a sandwich combo and treat your bot friend to a free oil change!

  Rewire, Inc. Get your new Krixus Joint Fittings here.

  The UD government used to play military recruitment commercials showing deserted streets in Bot Territory with crumbling buildings and smashed robots lying in the gutters.

  It makes me wonder what else they lied about.

  “Your father is this way,” LT says, pointing to the street that runs between Rewire, Inc. and Line Zero Bakery. “He has a residence on Fourth Street.”

  I am so close to seeing Dad after so long, I keep thinking something will happen. Like the patrolmen will swoop in and arrest me. Or I’ll wake up and realize it was all a dream.

  We cross the street, cut through the small park, and stick to the sidewalk when we leave the shopping center behind. Brick buildings line the streets. Flowers burst out of window boxes. Curtains flap in open windows. I wish Po were with me right now. He would totally gear out.

  I’m so into the city that when LT stops at Dad’s building, I run smack into him.

  LT swivels his head around. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine. Just . . .”

  “Nervous. And perhaps a bit surprised at your surroundings. Understandable. Shall we continue?” He gestures with his hand toward the double glass doors that lead into a lobby.