by MacGuffin, WJ; Hanrahan, Gareth; Varney, Allen; Ingber, Greg
Alky had passed the rows of machinery and was heading for a high wall of metal debris. As Sheila neared it, she realized the wall was made entirely of old bot parts—chassis, treads, limbs, circuit boards—all scarred and corroded beyond repair. Lights glowed beyond.
The scrubot led her to a gap in the wall. Sheila entered a narrow, angled passage, its walls made of broken bots. She paused to play her flashlight over the walls, looking for a brain. Should have looked for a brain before I took up with Troubleshooters.
All this salvage amazed her, and she wondered why no one had looted it. One chapter of Pro Tech scroungers could clean this place to the bare floor.
Alky had stopped in the passage, just short of its last bend. Sheila couldn’t see past the bot. “Alky, why have you stopped?”
“Afraid.”
“Of what?”
“J-10 Expunger.”
At the name, light! Sheila yelped as the walls of the passage—rather, the wall-full of eyes from countless bot heads, and dials from unnumbered chassis displays—flared into life. Red, green, yellow—the lights struck her from every angle. And at the same time, from a wall-full of dismantled and disembodied speakers, a chorus of mechanical voices:
“Jayyy Tennn! Ex-punnn-gerrr!”
From the walls, many-jointed robotic arms unfolded from detached torsos. The arms flailed like whips. The nearest grippers clutched at her with broken manipulators. They grabbed—oh no oh no—they grabbed her hair.
She screeched. She ran past Alky and out of the passage. She almost collided with a looming metallic wall—no. As she played the flashlight beam over it, she saw it was a carcass.
This was the titanium alloy chassis of a huge bot, broken and dismantled. Standing in its shadow, looking up at its gaping turret-holes and the remaining flinders of its treads, Sheila recognized it: an Armed Forces Onslaught-class warbot.
Fear grabbed her heart as the arms had tried to grab her hair. Bots built for the Armed Forces service group had no hardwired inhibitions; they killed to order. A name like “J-10 Expunger” had to mean a warbot or combot. Radiation or not, she was still in danger.
Alky wheeled out beside her. She asked the bot, “Why are you afraid of J-10 Expunger?”
“I run on batteries.”
“What—?” Hearing a noise, an echoing boom, she motioned for quiet.
Brushing gloppy hair from her eyes, Sheila peered around the warbot. Here beyond the wall of destroyed bots, she could see the full length of the long, long AutomaTonic factory. Dozens of steel chains, big enough to hold a suspension bridge, hung in arcs. She saw hooks the size of autocars, some bearing foundry buckets that could hold a barracks-full of INFRAREDs. She couldn’t tell what had boomed.
“No current in Underplex,” Alky said. “J-10 has electricity—thorium reactor—Mean Lifetime Between Failures, 14 million years. Battery bots like me need that charge.”
Sheila looked down. Much of the floor was sunken, descending by wide concrete steps to a depth of a dozen meters. She guessed it was an assembly bay for giant cargo transbots. Skeletal construction cranes stood like soldiers along the perimeter. Her hiding place, the dead warbot chassis, rested close to the edge.
Several crane towers were topped with spotlights—the lights she’d seen before. All the spotlights were tightly focused on the far end of the bay floor. She strained to see. “Won’t J-10 just give you electricity?”
“When we want recharge, J-10 makes us fight. Single combat, survival of fittest. Combot takes best parts from loser.”
Now she saw that the bay floor had been turned into a vast elliptical arena, walled on all sides by piles of debris. At the far end, spotlighted in front of a wide half-toppled wall that angled back into shadows, stood a tall gray combot, perhaps twice human height. Though it was built on a humanoid armature, the death machine’s head was a downthrust triangle; its outsized chest and arms were dented from many battles. Its odd, spidery legs looked new, unmatched to the rest—presumably the loot from combat. The bot’s weapons fit awkwardly, jerry-rigged.
She saw, at the edge of the spotlight, a crowd of damaged scrubots, jackobots, and smaller special-purpose automatons. From their careful, tentative motions, they seemed fearful of the big guy. They’re his servants, she thought. Slaves.
Disappointment crushed Sheila’s heart. With sad nostalgia she recalled her happy, efficient vision of precise disassembly, hoppers, bins, forkbots, and shelves. Now, instead—oh well. “What’s he doing—J-10, I mean?”
Alky said, “Eighty-two years ago, woman from FunFoods told J-10 ‘stay where you are.’ J-10 waiting ever since to be relieved of duty. Bots understand won’t happen—J-10 doesn’t believe. Want to leave—J-10 won’t let us. Thinks we’d bring back traitors. Any bot leaves, J-10 fries it with lasers.”
“Why did the FunFoods woman tell J-10 to stay where he is?”
“Don’t know. You help? Tell J-10 to let bots leave? Is awful!”
“You only just got here, Alky.”
“Read data records on way in. Focus! Eyes on prize! For bots, a living hell!”
“A bot doesn’t even knew what “hell” means, let alone—” She heard another boom. Now she recognized it—the voice of J-10. She strained to sort out the echoes.
“SUBMIT. BATTLE TO PLEASE ME, LEST YOUR BATTERIES DRAIN.”
“Ohhh-kay, I might go with ‘living hell.’ Wait, Alky, where are you going?”
With sluggish motions, the scrubot was sidling toward a ramp down to the arena. “Must—go—down. Programmed.”
She still needed the bot brain. “No, I order you to stay here. I’m human, so my orders override.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you! You are friend.” The bot extended a genial brush. “Hope I won’t get you trouble.”
“With the Troubleshooters? Don’t worry.”
“No, with J-10. Already announced arrival before. By radio.”
“You what?”
Suddenly, high up on the cranes, the spotlights swerved. Discs of bright light flickered across the arena floor, zooming straight toward her. In a second she was transfixed in the intersection of three blinding blue-white lights. She shielded her eyes—and so she had no warning.
Giant steel pincers closed on her, seized her, and lifted her high, high up. Terrified, she couldn’t flail her arms—could barely breathe. It felt like the grip of Alpha Complex itself.
Wind blinded her as the crane swung her down to the arena floor and dropped her squarely in front of the combot. Its rusted turret-head turned, crrreak-k-k!, to track the new arrival. From a speaker in its chest, the voice boomed:
“STATE THE PASS-PHRASE.”
Sheila waved a hand weakly, trying to catch her breath. She had no idea what to say. Non-military bots usually followed orders from any human, but combots only obeyed authorized personnel.
The combot gave her no time to think. One bulbous arm telescoped out, and a gripper seized her hair and pulled. She leaped to her feet, protesting from the depths of her lungs. “No, no, not the hair not the haaair!”
The combot let loose. It examined its fingers. “STATE THE NATURE OF THIS VISCOUS SUBSTANCE.”
“Food vat goop. Not that my hair is any better when it’s clean.”
The bot raised an arm bristling with weapons. It pointed at Sheila’s head. “IS YOUR HAIR A THREAT?”
Sheila felt bitter beyond words. Right now, with her life on the line—with a combot’s crackling electrode two centimeters from her left eye—even now, she was thinking about hair.
“I hate it.” As if she’d flipped a switch—like a bot—she poured forth her frustration. “I cut and cut and cut, but the stuff just—keeps—growing. You’d think cutting it would make it stop, but it grows back! Thicker than ever! I’m afraid if people touch it, they’ll feel it growing. It’s a mutation, has to be. Nobody else has a problem. I wish someone could tell me what to do, but who can you talk to about disgusting mutant hair?”
The combot looked at her for
a long moment. “YOU ARE NOT ONLY A TRAITOR, YOU ARE DERANGED. YOU MUST BE DISASSEMBLED.”
“Traitor? Why? Oww!”
Suddenly, a new voice: “Ungrip the human!” Alky the scrubot had dragged itself down the ramp and into the spotlight. “My friend! I protect!”
“Alky, stay back!”
The combot’s other arm extended a few extra sections and grabbed the scrubot. Pulling Alky toward it, the combot said, “HERE YOU MUST FIGHT TO SURVIVE.”
“No! I give up. Take me instead of friend.”
“IT IS NOT EITHER-OR.” Dropping Sheila, the combot pulled Alky close, lifted up its chassis, and began—slowly, systematically—to dismantle the scrubot. With each piece, Alky’s speakers screeched with feedback. For Sheila, the sight was wrenching; she turned away. She felt utterly helpless.
She thought to run. I’d rather face Thaddeus and Roscoe. But glancing down, she saw red targeting dots down her front. Looks like I’m not going anywhere. “J-10 Expunger, I’m not a bot. You can’t use my parts. Why kill me?”
“I PREVENT YOU FROM BRINGING THOSE PRO TECH TRAITORS.”
“Pro T– M-meee? Pro Tech? Why, that’s, that’s—” She cursed herself for the worst liar ever. At the thought, she spotted a sensor in a dorsal recess on the combot’s torso. She knew that logo—Veracity Systems RD—probably their Truth Sensor Model 3—a bio-monitor that tracked heartbeats and skin resistance like a polygraph. J-10 could use it to tell she was lying—
—And it was smashed. Wires hung free, bent at angles like shoulders shrugging, as if saying, Truth? Lies? Ehhh, who knows?
“—That’s preposterous!” She spoke with the courage of her lack of conviction. “So you should just let me go.”
“NO. YOU MUST BE DISASSEMBLED, AS THEY WERE.”
“‘They’—?”
The spotlight moved a short distance to shine on neat stacks of white rods—no! Sheila gasped—human bones! No doubt they’d been scrubbed clean and stacked as the final actions of dying scrubots.
She knew why no one had looted the place. It really was a graveyard—and not just for bots.
Her head spun. The “woman from FunFoods” must have been Annalise-B, the Free Enterprise lieutenant who betrayed Marcellus. Annalise took over the Graveyard and poisoned J-10 against Pro Tech. She must have laid down that tracking tape to ensure new arrivals would believe the same thing. When she vanished, J-10 just kept killing.
Sheila couldn’t tear her gaze from the bones. Through unforeseen interactions—a concatenation of decisions, each one singly sane, together a disaster—those people had died. Just like that YELLOW floundering in a vat, Parker-Y. (Palmer-Y?) And now, or soon, like her.
She shivered, but then she stopped. Instead, she gritted her teeth. High-clearance BLUEs had made this place a deathtrap, and her ORANGE leader had thrown her into it with casual contempt. It was worse than deadly—even she, a lowly RED, could see it was disgraceful. It was offensively stupid.
Sheila stopped feeling afraid. She started feeling angry. She resolved to avoid becoming one more victim of stupidity.
The decision seemed to clear her mind. Here and now, closer to death than she’d been in—well, in at least the last five minutes—Sheila felt alive and awake.
She tried to think. The scrubot had recorded all kinds of new data from that tracking tape.... “Alky, quick, tell me the authorization pass-phrase, and I can rescue you.”
“Not allowed!” Alky’s voice was fuzzing as the combot dismantled its chassis. “Can’t tell!”
Bingo. Alky’s default security meant it wouldn’t reveal the phrase, and everyone in Pro Tech knew dozens of additional systems—forbidding add-ons with names like Xenon-Stronghold and OverMaelstrom—that could lock down the phrase beyond recovery. But would a Free Enterpriser know those safeguards?
“Alky, if you replaced the first syllable’s first letter with ‘S,’ would that be a real word?”
A human might object to playing word games in mid-amputation. But Alky was eager to cooperate, even as the combot snapped off its mops and brushes like sprigs of broccoli. “Not a word—part of a word, like ‘seven’ or—” The bot shook as its rotator arm snapped. “—‘severed.’”
The first syllable rhymed with sev. “And the second syllable, if you add an ‘S’?”
“Sir! Yes, sir!”
It took a few more seconds to piece together the first four syllables: “sev-sir-sieve-sah.” Sheila dropped each initial “s,” got “ever ive a,” and groaned. Free Enterprisers—no imagination. “J-10 Expunger! ‘Never give a sucker an even break’!”
The combot, which at that moment was pulling at Alky’s head, froze in mid-pull. “YOU ONLY KNEW THAT BECAUSE THE SCRUBOT TOLD YOU.”
On the Gray Subnets, Sheila had read a dozen Pro Tech forum threads that advised on these situations. “J-10 Expunger, that inference is incorrect. Delete that inference.”
“STATE PASS-PHRASE TO AUTHORIZE INFERENCE DELETION.”
“’Never give a sucker an even break.’”
“PASS-PHRASE ACCEPTED.”
Bots can be so dumb. She sighed in relief, and Alky—now reduced to a limbless chassis and one tread—sounded ecstatic. “Good-good-good! Just in time! Please save me!”
Sheila looked at the scrubot and thought of toasters with happy faces. She’d been dumb too. “Keep going,” she told the combot. “I need its brain.”
As the combot resumed, the scrubot began to shriek. “No! No-no, not-not-not!”
“Sorry.” Sheila looked on, pleasantly surprised at her own detachment, as the combot wrenched off Alky’s head. Did I really risk my life for a metal chassis and some circuits? Wow.
The combot tossed her the scrubot’s intact brain, a cartridge small enough to hold in one hand. “YOU CAN GO.”
“Not quite yet.” Trying to breathe calmly, Sheila spoke in her most authoritative voice. “J-10 Expunger, Friend Computer has sent me to tell you Annalise-B assigned you here by mistake, and her later correction got misrouted owing to traitorous sabotage. You’re in the wrong room. I’ll take you to my supervisor. Just one thing: Be ready to overcome any traitors who might be out there. Shoot first, ask questions later. Okay, combot, follow me.”
Her heart filled with apprehension, exhilaration, and stark terror, she turned to leave. Would it follow? Was she smart to bring a combot? Maybe it would obey Thaddeus-O instead of her. A surprise attack, then....
The combot hadn’t moved. “Combot! Why aren’t you following?”
“ITS AUDIO SENSORS ARE BROKEN,” said the voice from the combot’s speaker. “THAT IS WHY IT RELOCATED HERE, PER ITS PROGRAMMING.”
“Why are you saying ‘it’ instead of ‘I’?”
“I AM OPERATING THE COMBOT REMOTELY.”
Suddenly Sheila felt a profound disquiet. “J-10 Expunger, show yourself.”
At J-10’s unspoken command, the crane spotlights moved to point high up. Now Sheila saw.
What she’d taken for a slanting wall was the sloping forward armor of an immense cybertank. The warbot was as big as a building, perhaps 20 meters tall. Above the titanium skirt, a wheelhouse bristled with artillery barrels and missile tubes. And its upper chassis towered still higher, lost in shadow.
Sheila felt awestruck and honored. It was a privilege to witness one of the most audacious, if unintentional, stunts in the history of Pro Tech. Decades ago, with his single Bot Graveyard hack, Marcellus-B had managed to pull in a J-10 Expunger Mark L3 Warbot with Enhanced Broad-Spectrum Artillery, Multi-Warhead Variable-Target Missile Batteries, Crowd-Control Sonic Pacifier, and “PointBlast” Focused Anti-Personnel Ion Cannons. It was legendary.
And if she could deliver the bot to Pro Tech, she would become a legend to match.
“Why—” Her throat was tight. She tried again. “Why do you speak remotely?”
“MY SPEAKERS ARE BROKEN. THAT IS WHY I RELOCATED HERE, PER MY PROGRAMMING.”
“Okay.” She hoped any built-in truth sensors might also be
busted. “Well, I’ll need you to follow me to—”
She stopped. The warbot’s chassis was covered with a bright liquid sheen. Something was dripping down on it. “J-10 Expunger, show me the ceiling.”
The spotlights moved higher. The roof was heavily damaged and covered with mold. J-10 Expunger’s uppermost gun turret rested directly beneath a wide crack, holding back collapse. With a shudder, Sheila understood why Annalise had told the bot to stay put.
As she watched, liquid oozed from the crack and dropped onto her hand. The droplet was pinkish-gray, opalescent. On a hunch, she tasted it, then nodded. She knew, too well, the flavor of Emulsion 14b.
She felt like she was back in the vat—as in, over her head, waaay over. Pro Tech would have to scam a construction rig or something. In any case, she couldn’t do anything alone. “J-10 Expunger, stay where you are. I’ll return in a few hours with my—uh, my supervisors.” Now to bypass Thaddeus and Roscoe. “How did you enter this room?”
“I ENTERED VIA THE DOCKING BAY ON THE FAR WALL. IT PROVED SLIGHTLY TOO SMALL.” The spotlights moved. The entire far end of the factory was an impassable pile of rubble. Well, there went that idea.
“Are there any other combots or warbots here? That I can command, I mean?”
“NO.”
Great. After a moment she thought: Wait, that is great!
—————
Sheila went back out to meet Thaddeus. She was half-surprised to find him. Maybe he’d waited to hear her dying screams.
They aimed their flashlights at each other. “Where’s Roscoe?” she asked in an innocent voice.
“I sent him back,” Thaddeus said, in the same flat tone he’d used for Henriette. Sheila assumed Roscoe and Henriette had been “sent back” to the same destination. Poor Roscoe? Hah. He’d deserved Thaddeus.
Thaddeus, in turn, seemed surprised to see Sheila healthy, with not a bloody cough to be heard. “No sores? Hair not falling out?”
“There’s no radiation. Here’s the bot brain. Let’s go.”
Thaddeus pointed, meaning stop. “Wait a minute. What’s in there?”
“Just an old factory. Guess I got the location wrong. That happens a lot, doesn’t it?”
