“I’ll manage.”
Lochlan walked lightly around the metal body parts that littered the floor and some of the walls, realizing that Frikshen had been accurate in her description. It looked like some kind of robotic massacre, with all sorts of microchips and wiring strewn out all over the floor, large bits of metal mixed in. Lochlan’s modifications began to go to work, verifying Frikshen’s story, as he was able to perceive the ways in which the metal had been broken. Many of the limbs had been torn clean off, though some of the chests and heads looked like they had been hit with the side of someone’s palm, perhaps in a chopping motion, with other robots hit center mass, the indent clearly caused by an open hand. There were little bits of rock and dirt all over as well, with large cracks in the concrete visible all over.
It didn’t take long for Lochlan to finish searching his area, as it was mostly open space filled with broken robots. He looked over to Khard, who was squatting down to examine one of the units, and thought to do the same. Lochlan picked up a torso, eyeing the logo that Frikshen had mentioned, on the top of one of the shoulders. He lightly ran his fingers over it, sending a search of the parameters wirelessly to the electronic notebook in his pocket. It was set to search until it found as many images as possible with a similar design. Satisfied with how much time he had spent looking around, he decided to move over to examine the large machine in the middle of the room.
Lochlan determined that Frikshen had been right, and that the machine was designed for printing. It had been some time since Lochlan had seen a desktop printer, but it was clear to him that part of the machine took metal in, melted it down or fused it, and released it on the other end in a desired shape. As far as Lochlan could tell, there were about six different sections to the machine itself, with each section designed to either mold the metal, produce the microchips, fuse everything together, or actually place the robot when it was finished. A large claw at the far end seemed designed to move the finished product away from the printer and into a section of the warehouse, the claw’s arm so long it could easily reach nearly any point in the massive space. Lochlan tried to identify a model number or manufacturing code, but was unable to see anything he might have been able to set a search to.
“Khard, have you ever seen one of these before?” Lochlan called out.
“Something similar, to be sure. Why do you ask?”
“You see anything that would actually turn the robots on? I didn’t notice any battery packs or solar cells.”
Khard stopped looking at the robot head he had grabbed and walked to the oversized printer, where he carefully stared at each of its parts. At the far end, away from Lochlan, Khard saw the printer’s ON switch. “Well,” the old Agent said, “let’s see if we can’t find out.”
Khard flipped the switch and the machine came to life with a whirr, a hatch on the floor opening to reveal a ready stream of scrap metal. A pile of the metal came up through the floor, into the first part of the machine, and the hatch closed again, the air around that part of the machine growing much warmer. Before long, that part of the machine opened again, carrying the hot metal to the compartment where it was shaped, three tiny hammers working quickly to form the metal to the proper specifications before the more delicate parts were inserted and the robot could be fused shut. It only took a few minutes for the finished product–a robotic, humanoid amalgamation of scrap metal–to be fully formed and placed by the claw in one corner of the warehouse. Its feet looked shaky as it touched down among the wreckage and metal limbs. Khard shut the machine down after the claw finished returning to its position and just as the panel in the floor had opened again, preventing any more robots from being printed.
The Agents walked over to the fresh specimen, identifying the same branding on its shoulder that was present on the broken copies, and each ran multiple scans with their internal equipment. From what Lochlan could tell, the robot was still completely without a power source. It occurred to him that the best course of action might be to ship the unit back to headquarters so it could be properly examined. But before he could make the suggestion to Khard, though, one of Lochlan’s modifications registered the activity it was designed to detect.
A blend of radio waves and nearby magnetism began to assault the warehouse, driving Lochlan’s modification into a frenzy. The sudden activity startled the Agent, causing his mood module to begin working as well, bringing an unwelcome heat on his neck in the already hot, humid air of the warehouse. This time, Lochlan didn’t hesitate to speak up. “Khard,” he said carefully. “Something is happening.”
“What is it?” Khard asked.
As if in answer to the older Agent’s question, the newly printed robot in front of them sprang to life, its legs bending and shooting it into the air as it somersaulted over the Agents. The flying robot landed almost ten feet behind the both of them. It was ducked down with its hands on the ground.
“Someone is controlling it remotely,” Lochlan said. “I’m picking up the signal. They’re powering it remotely as well. Keep it busy while I work out where the pilot is.”
“Ah, that I can do.”
Khard took a quick few steps forward, the modifications enhancing his legs still in effect. The older Agent’s foot came up in a flash, a forward kick aimed at the crouching robot’s center mass. The move came with such force Lochlan could tell it would have broken the scrap-metal machine in half as easily as Khard had destroyed the piece of plywood before, but the robot rolled backwards just as quickly and deftly avoided Khard’s kick. As the robot tumbled backwards, once its feet were once again underneath it, the machine sprang up once again. This time, the robot’s trajectory was straight out rather than up, its fists above its head. The robot-turned-missile nearly connected with the older Agent, who managed to move out of the way at precisely the right moment, the machine tumbling once again as it landed then rolled back into a standing position.
Lochlan’s internal modification was working to read the signal the robot was receiving. The younger Agent wanted to work out, at the very least, the general area the signal was originating from. As his internal instruments worked their magic, Lochlan remained almost perfectly still, unmoving until the robot, after its tumble had ended, decided to take a few swings at him. Lochlan assessed the speed of the robot’s fist as it flew toward his face, and the fight computer in his mind worked to define the style, technique, and speed of the punch. Whoever had programmed the robot had designed it to be a southpaw, or at least an ambidextrous fighter. Lochlan’s body remained still while his head bobbed left and back to avoid the first punch, then bobbed again to avoid the next. The robot was working him through a routine, he could tell. Before a fourth punch could be thrown, Khard came in fast and kicked the robot’s hip. The machine crumpled somewhat, one of its legs popping out of its joint. But the robot reassembled itself in the blink of an eye, the still-hot metal no longer red but continuing to possess its malleable texture. Lochlan heard Khard snort in response to the unconventional self-healing tactic.
“Have you found them yet?” Khard asked.
“Nearly. I have the general area,” Lochlan replied. “Just a few more moments.”
The robot came on again, its right leg shaky for a millisecond as it charged at Khard. The robot threw a kick straight out at the older Agent, who absorbed the blow before grabbing onto the robot’s leg. Khard pulled the leg as he took a step back, bringing the robot severely off balance. At least, he would have if the robot hadn’t possessed leg joints which were spherical. Rather than be pulled off balance, the scrap metal machine rolled its back foot onto its toes, and then its grounded leg flew up to kick Khard hard in his cheek. The older Agent turned into the blow, pushing back against the robot’s foot, and it shattered as it struck Khard’s face. Khard continued to hold the scrap metal humanoid by its other leg, leaving the robot clawing at the ground and trying to get away.
“Are you finished?” Khard asked Lochlan.
“Yes. Go ahead and destroy the th
ing; I know where the signal is coming from.”
Khard, holding the robot’s foot, turned around a full circle, then flung the robot easily into the air. The older Agent took two steps forward and raised his right leg high, his aim perfect, impaling the robot through the chest as it fell back down. The living metal stopped moving after that, and Khard discarded it.
The Agents took one last look around before checking with each other that they were both satisfied with their findings. After a moment, Khard signaled to Lochlan that they should leave.
As the Agents walked to the exit, broken plywood still clinging to the frame, a slight whirr sounded from within the walls.
“What is that?” Lochlan asked. None of his internal modifications were detecting any outside influence, though there was clearly something happening. He and Khard continued to work their way over to the exit. Khard’s steps were still quicker than normal, though they had slowed somewhat.
“It almost sounds like-” The building itself cut Khard off, then, and a heavy metal door slammed itself into place, flinging pieces of soft plywood in every direction. Khard rushed at the now barred exit, kicking hard twice into the metal. When his foot bounced off for the second time, the sound of metal clanging on metal ringing out, Khard took one step to his right and kicked directly into the wall. His foot shot easily through the warehouse drywall, only to clang against the metal hidden inside.
Lochlan took a moment to examine the metal door, taking note of the small dents that Khard’s kicks had created. “Is this a part of the warehouse’s built-in system?”
“I’ve never seen one designed with metal doors like that, but I suppose it could be.”
“Hmm. I’m not detecting much.” Lochlan looked up, trying to identify a window or skylight. To his luck, he spotted one in the center of the ceiling. “There! We just need to figure out a way up. Any ideas?”
When Khard didn’t answer, Lochlan called out to the older Agent, preparing to ask again. As Lochlan’s gaze shifted, however, he spotted what was keeping Khard so silent. Then he felt the reason, as well.
The scattered pieces of the robots were starting to move.
The Journal Of Gerald Roupell–Entry #151
I often wonder, at this stage in life, if a man and his clothes aren’t just like a chicken and its egg.
When my parents were growing up, an actor nicknamed The Mountain set out to break as many weight lifting records as he could, himself weighing more than four hundred pounds. He lifted thousand-pound logs and casually tossed weights as heavy as fourth graders upwards of fifteen feet. He held the deadlift world record for a while, as well.
Both of my parents were competitive bodybuilders. They met at a competition, the story went, my mother falling in love with my father “even though he only took home a bronze that day.” He actually won first place–my mother just liked to joke about my father’s inability to get a proper spray tan. They were cute like that.
“Men like The Mountain were special,” my father used to tell me. “They were truly titans among the rest of us. Shining examples of the strength of our species. Compared to them, we weren’t weight lifting or bodybuilding, we were just picking up heavy things sometimes.” My father never broke any lifting records, and neither did my mother. They competed in other categories, focusing on aesthetics and form. Looking back, I’m not sure why he idolized The Mountain so much, since they were technically in different disciplines professionally. But that’s really beside the point.
Imagine their surprise when, at the ripe age of six, a time when it can be challenge for many children to simply carry their backpacks home from school, I was able to casually carry the same logs The Mountain had worked his entire life to lift. Picture their disbelief when their prepubescent boy picked their beater car up out of a ditch after my mother had swerved to avoid a raccoon. They were there when The Mountain broke the deadlift record, my father sure as a young man he’d never see anything so impressive again. Then he saw me lift their Hyundai’s front end over my head.
Imagine their shock when, like so many other parents, they realized I wasn’t the only one.
“The world we live in now is strange,” my father would tell me. “When I was your age, I watched Music Television–MTV–and they played music. I didn’t say anything when they took away your cartoons, but I don’t know how I feel about my fifth grader having nothing other than the Global News Network to watch on a Saturday morning. When did this happen?” He told me a lot of things over the years, of course, as so many fathers do. But that was one of his favorites–that GNN was poisoning our minds and cartoons were the only thing that could have saved us. He liked to talk about the golden ages of comedy, too. His nickname as a bodybuilder was The Funny Man.
Inevitably, whenever my father would start complaining, there was my mother to back him up. Although, thinking on it now, I’m not sure that’s what she was doing, now that I understand sarcasm. All of the “Oh yes, dears” seem less sincere now that I reflect. I suppose she was funny in her own way, too. I missed a lot of that, focusing on the clothes the men on television wore as they fought giant robots or other men in powered suits. I always liked them, though I suppose I didn’t know anything else. Maybe I would have liked cartoons, too.
Neither of my parents liked the outfits. Of all the things my father thought were strange, he talked about Cape clothing the most. Maybe that’s why I got so fixated. “I don’t know why they call them Capes,” my father would say as I ate my breakfast. “Should just call ‘em something else. None of them wear anything other than body armor. The only real Cape we ever got was ImperiMan.”
My father had a knack for calling out ImperiMan’s name just before they’d show an old clip of him on the screen. Sometimes they brought up the old hero to comment on the fighting form of the Capes we’d just watched. There used to be an ImperiMan scale, as I recall, where they’d compare a clip of a modern Cape to a clip of ImperiMan doing something similar. You could go on their website and vote where you thought the contemporary fighter ranked in comparison, but I wasn’t allowed online back then, so I never got to vote.
The morning would often end with a final comment from my mother about how fashion had changed, and my father simply shaking his head at what I suppose was a lack of actual capes, while I would put on my shoes to go to school. It was the same routine each day, until the morning a man in a different kind of suit was there to greet us, preparing to knock on our front door before we stepped outside. I remember my father’s tone changing, but I can’t recall the bulk of the conversation. Nobody yelled or argued. More than anything else, I remember the man’s shoes, shiny and so black they seemed to suck in the light around them. The man wore a suit like my father, though the man’s was much nicer, even if he was a bit thin and smaller in stature.
I didn’t go to school that day–I never went to a normal school ever again. The man had bent down to my eye level, glasses just as dark as his shoes on his face, and held out a doll of one of the Capes I had seen on television during breakfast. He asked me if I knew who the Cape was, and of course I did. The man in the suit held out his hand to shake my own, and he told me his name was Richter. He asked if I wanted to meet the Cape he held in front of me. I remember looking up at my father, probably searching for some kind of signal—I was just a child after all—and I don’t know remember at all whether or not I got one. Then Richter told me I could get my own outfit, like the one the Cape was wearing.
I saw my parents much less after that.
CHAPTER 4—IVY NEAR GRADUATION
Hunter’s office is always cold. He has his personal thermostat taped to keep the room no warmer than sixty degrees. The drastic drop in temperature after entering—from the warm sand pit to the comfortable academy, and then the hallways in the academy to Hunter’s cold office—gave me goosebumps, and it made me happy to be wearing a sweat suit. Hunter closed the door after we entered and walked calmly over to his desk, taking a seat across from me. The layout, with
the tall bookshelves on one side littered with all kinds of novels and textbooks, reminded me of one of my caregivers from one of the places I’d lived as a ward of the World Government. Her name was Patty, and she was a sort of live-in psychiatrist. She loved old comic books, and had an entire nine-foot-tall bookshelf filled from top to bottom with hardcover paperback volumes of her favorites–I can’t remember any of the names. I used to read them out loud by myself and pretend that I was narrating them to Rodney. Hunter’s bookcase was laid out similarly, though he seemed to enjoy fantasy novels, a few authors in his collection that I had heard of, with some literary textbooks thrown is as well—more than one of them apparently about World Literature.
“So,” Hunter said. “I imagine you’re here to talk to me about Sink. How did it go?”
“Well, you were right. Sort of. She was able to tell me that I’m a Communicator. But…”
“She has no idea what you’re able to communicate with. I’m guessing neither do you.”
“Not a single clue. How did you know?”
“It’s like I said last night, Ivy, there’s no point in bringing up too many old wounds. We can just say that it’s my job to know these things.”
Ivy Page 12
