Return to Mech City

by Brian Bakos

  Municipal Marina, 1 kilometer

  “Ah, that’s what we want,” Star said.“How are you at handling boats, Winston?”

  “Well ... can’t say as I’ve ever used one.”

  “Me, neither,” Star said, “but it’s got to beat swimming, don’t you think?”

  Why was she so cheerful about the prospect of riding in a dangerous boat? The prospect frightened Winston clear down to his substructure.

  They rolled past a service plaza with the usual inexpensive restaurants and vehicle service stations. Then the road widened into a main drag leading into the town proper. A large banner, festooned with vibrant red letters, thrust across the width of the street:

  ALL HAIL KING VICENTE!

  “That guy was really stuck on himself,” Star said.

  “Yeah.”

  As they drew closer, it became apparent that the banner had been defaced. Somebody had tried to cross out the words ALL HAIL with black paint and had written Down With in their place. The work had a sketchy look, as if artist had been in an extreme hurry. They paused. Star drew closer to Winston.

  “That is really creepy,” she said.

  “Yeah, it looks like King Vicente wasn’t universally esteemed.”

  In a roundabout manner, Star’s unease served to calm Winston’s own jitters.

  “These are just relics from a vanished era,” he said. “There’s no call to be worried.”

  “Let’s get to the marina,” Star said. “The sooner we leave this place, the better I’ll like it.”

  They advanced under the banner and moved through a typical small town commercial district – little stores and office buildings, restaurants, rows of dead trees poking up through the sidewalks. Some vehicles were neatly parked along the curbs, as if their owners had just left them for a quick lunch at one of the cafes.

  Are we being watched?

  Winston jerked his head about, looking for green men in every direction.

  “What’s the matter?” Star said.

  “Oh ... nothing,” Winston said. “This place gives me the creeps is all.”

  Around a corner and down a block stood a large, elegant building. Corinthian columns upheld the edifice of what had once been the town hall and courthouse. A broad stairway led up to this seat of justice. Winston had seen many such buildings before, and this one looked fairly typical, except for the public square sprawling in front of it. It seemed to have –

  “What’s over there?” Star asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, let’s not bother finding out.”

  Star continued moving. Winston wanted nothing more than to go with her and leave this place as quickly as possible. But something wasn’t right. He had to make sure that they weren’t leaving a danger at their back which could block a retreat. He stopped and shouldered off his pack.

  “Let’s keep going,” Star said.

  “I’d better go take a closer look,” Winston said. “Wait for me here.”

  He began to assemble his weapon.

  “No way!” Star moved back to Winston’s side. “We’re in this together, remember?”

  She retrieved the club from her backpack.

  “Let’s go, Winston.”

  Winston in the lead, they crept along the sidewalk, keeping very close to the buildings. All was utterly silent except for the crunch of broken glass under their feet as nearly every window on the ground floors had been smashed. With every step, the horrific reality in the public square became more obvious ...

  Winston sagged against a wall.

  “Oh, no.”

  “There’s been a war!” Star gasped.

  Fifty or more dead robots littered the square. They all showed the evidence of violent demise – smashed heads, broken limbs, faces contorted with hatred. Many were locked together in death embraces. Makeshift weapons littered the ground.

  Winston approached the debacle, moving in some horrendous automatic mode like an insect heading into a flame. Star loyally brought up the rear. Soon they were among the fallen robots.

  An historic movie clip fluttered up from Winston’s memory banks: the Allied generals walking among the corpses in a liberated Nazi death camp. As these hardened men viewed the carnage, their expressions ran the gamut from outrage, to grim stoicism, to nausea.

  “That must be King Vicente,” Star said in a tiny voice.

  She pointed to a large Humanite machine. It lay pierced through with a lance, and a golden crown lay in the grass by its crushed head. Several other robots lay clustered around him – his attackers and overwhelmed defenders.

  Winston felt himself losing control of his logical functions.

  “Yeah,” he cackled, “this was quite a retirement party for him, wasn’t it!”

  Following some perverse impulse, he moved in for a closer look.

  “Don’t get near that thing,” Star said.

  “Why? It’s not going to bite me.”

  He dropped to his haunches beside the fallen robot. There, on its dorsal placard, below its serial number and date of manufacture, was an etched-in notation:

  Designer, Vicente Calderon

  “What do you know?” Winston said. “The damn guy named itself after a mech head!”

  He chuckled, then he started laughing uproariously, maniacally – out of control. Then he was running. They were both running.

  38: River Crossing

  Winston charged down the bank to the marina, almost hurtling into the water before he could stop himself. His scooter tumbled after him. Star followed close by, dodging the spear in Winston’s flailing hands.

  “Hurry, get a boat!” Winston cried.

  He stood at the water’s edge and glanced fearfully up the slope, expecting something dreadful to come barreling down at them any moment. Star gripped his arm.

  “We’d better calm down – now!” she said.

  “But ...”

  “The enemy’s just a ghost,” Star said, “it can’t hurt us if we don’t let it.”

  Her intense optical sensors bored into him. Winston struggled to collect his shattered wits.

  “Y-yeah ... you’re right, Star,” he said.

  He forced himself to look away from the incline.

  “Let that hill shield us from the horrors back there,” Star said. “like the tarp we threw over that corpse in Cycho World.”

  Winston sat on the ground and cradled his head in his hands. A few minutes crept by. Normality began to creep back into his circuits along with the whispers of the river current.

  Then Star voiced a frightening concept:

  “I hope we haven’t glimpsed the future, if we begin a war in Mech City, I mean.”

  Winston looked up. “F.U. has started the war already.”

  “I know,” Star said, “but maybe we should just leave things the way they are. Humanity has already destroyed itself, shouldn’t we robots survive ... somehow?”

  Winston got to his feet wearily and looked out over the stream. Star had articulated a question that had haunted his mind since his first glimpse of the battle carnage. Was there any answer to it?

  Gray, lifeless water slithered past the muddy banks – like some river of the dead from human mythology. Haze obscured the far shore.

  Is this what our fate is, he wondered, just a drab progression to nothingness?

  He felt drab himself, and totally humiliated by his flight from the battle scene. Star’s apparent calm only made things worse.

  Okay, so maybe he was not the world’s greatest hero after all. Maybe he wasn’t up there on the rarified heights with Ulysses and Gorzo. But did this mean that Fascista Ultimo was destined to triumph? Were slavery or destruction the only possible routes into the future?

  The answer came to him, loud and unequivocal: No! Not if I can prevent it.

  He turned back toward Star.

  “Who can tell what the future will bring?” he said. “I only know that F.U. is evil and must be stopped. C
an we, or any other life form, exist forever? And if so, as what – slaves?”

  Star shook her head. “Of course not.”

  “And who else is left to oppose him besides us?”

  “No one.” Star’s voice had become faint and very sad.

  “So, I think we’d better stick with our original plan,” Winston said, “come what may.”

  “I figured you’d say that.” Star sighed heavily. “All right, then. Let’s grab a boat and get back on the road.”

  “That’s an interesting mixed metaphor,” Winston said.

  “I agree,” Star said, “whatever that means.”

  They perused the available transport. A party barge with room for a dozen passengers floated alongside the dock. Rowboats and canoes lay overturned on the shore, and the bow of a sailboat protruded from a shed.

  “Let’s ride the big one,” Star said, delighted at her clever metaphor.

  She clambered aboard the party barge with her gear. Winston remained behind on the shore.

  “Well come on,” she said.

  “I don’t think I can operate that thing,” Winston said. “I’m hard-wired against running power machinery.”

  “What about the elevator at the REX,” Star asked, “you operated that, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, but all I had to do was push a button, the rest was automatic.”

  Even so, Winston recalled, he’d always experienced a moment of oblivion when he’d pushed the elevator buttons, as if his mind had skipped a beat.

  Star looked over the controls at the pilot’s station. “There’s a button here, it says Start,”

  “I don’t think so.” Winston gestured toward the rowboats. “Let’s take one of those.”

  “How déclassé,” Star said.

  Winston paused, impressed with Star’s use of vocabulary.

  “We’re evolving, aren’t we?” she said. “Maybe we can handle this thing now.”

  “Well ... all right,” Winston said.

  He reluctantly hefted his gear and stepped onto the party barge. The deck rocked, throwing his balance mechanisms off kilter. He dropped his equipment and grabbed the railing an instant before he could tumble over. Star rushed to his side.

  “Careful, Winston!”

  Star took his arm and led him to the pilot’s station. He plopped down into the seat like a bag of old spare parts.

  “Are you okay?” Star asked.

  “Yeah ... I just wasn’t designed to be waterborne.”

  The boat still rocked, but Star handled it without difficulty. Her knees and hips shifted as required, absorbing the motion.

  “How do you do that, Star?”

  “I was made for love, remember?” she said. “That can get fairly acrobatic. A girl needs to know which way is up.”

  “Of course,” Winston replied sourly.

  He felt a burst of frustration at his physical primitiveness. Compared to Star, he was about as nimble as those concrete chunks lying in the river upstream. And her references to her sexual vitality always unsettled him.

  But, as so often happened, Star seemed to read his mood accurately. She placed a hand on his shoulder, and her kind, accepting smile dispelled his gloomy thoughts.

  “Guess we’d better get started,” he said.

  The controls looked easy enough – a wheel to steer the craft and a lever to regulate speed. Another lever reversed direction, but that would not be required. He placed his hands firmly on the wheel.

  “Let’s run it in neutral for a while,” he said. “Don’t untie from the dock yet.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  The way Star had pronounced “Captain” gave Winston a thrill, the same way his old title of Boss used to do when his admirers had spoken it.

  She pressed the Start button and the motor hummed.

  ***

  Fifty meters upstream, a school of mech fish jerked into full awareness. They had suspended their patrol so as to lie inactive on the bottom and let the current recharge their power units, but the motor noise stirred them up.

  The carp and other “trash fish” they were programmed to hunt had long since vanished from the water, leaving only the smallest, most primitive biological life forms behind. But the mech fish still maintained their constant vigilance along the river, swimming constantly in their pack until their power gave out.

  They swam off to investigate the racket.

  ***

  “Winston! Winston!”

  He heard somebody calling, as if from a great distance. He wanted to reply but could not speak or move.

  Star switched off the motor, and things returned to normal.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I-I blanked out ... the moment you pressed the power button.”

  “Let me try,” Star said.

  They changed positions, but the results were no better. Winston was barely able to push the Stop button to end the ordeal.

  “So it’s a rowboat after all,” Star said when she had recovered from her motor-induced paralysis. “Looks like we haven’t evolved as much as I’d hoped.”

  They left the party barge, moving carefully so as not to rock it too much. Star assisted Winston onto firm ground with such cheerful respect that he felt minimum humiliation.

  They flipped over a large rowboat and loaded it up, tying their scooters and other gear securely under the seats. Winston brought life jackets from the shed.

  “Do you think we’ll need those?” Star asked.

  “Just in case,” Winston said, “I’m not sure how watertight I am.”

  “I’m fully watertight,” Star said.

  She knew this because an activity called “Jacuzzi Sex” was programmed into her repertoire. It didn’t seem wise to mention this to Winston’s fragile ego just then, however. They dragged the rowboat to the water.

  “You first,” Star said.

  Winston got in gingerly and took a seat by the oar locks.

  “Ready?” Star asked.

  Winston nodded.

  In a single effortless motion, she pushed the boat fully into the water and jumped inside without even getting her feet wet. Throughout, Winston clutched the gunwales for dear life.

  Star moved to the bench beside him. “What next, Captain?”

  “We must both operate one of these oars,” Winston said. “If we pull with equal force, the boat goes straight, if one of us exerts greater power, the boat turns.”

  “Seems easy enough,” Star said. “Let’s practice.”

  They sat close together on the bench, thighs touching, and rowed a few loops around the marina area. The sinuous movement of Star’s body beside him shot the most baffling impulses through Winston’s circuits.

  She handled her oar with easy grace, as if a dedicated rowing routine had been programmed into her. Winston had to concentrate fully on the task in order to keep himself coordinated. At any moment he feared the boat might overturn, but it continued on smooth and steady.

  “Shall we head out?” Star asked.

  Winston grasped at an excuse for delay.

  “I think we should tie down our packs – just in case something happens.”

  “Good thinking, Winston.”

  While Winston sat observing, lest he tumble out of the boat by trying to move, Star secured the straps of their backpacks around another seat.

  “There, all finished!”

  She gave Winston a questioning look. He gathered up all his fortitude.

  “Well, let’s get moving,” he said.

  They began to row across the river, angling their craft into the current so as to avoid being pushed downstream.

  One stroke at a time, don’t think about falling in!

  Soon they passed the halfway point, and Winston’s anxieties began to moderate. The mist-shrouded opposite bank became more distinct while the marina began to fade from view.

  “Piece of cake,” Star said.

  “What type of cake are you referring to?”
>
  “Oh Winston, you’re such a sweetheart.”

  Suddenly, a heavy thump hit the upstream side of the boat, rocking it hard.

  “Ahhhh!” Winston howled.

  He began tumbling out, but Star held his arm.

  “What was that?” he gasped.

  Another thump tipped the boat again.

  “I don’t like this very much!” Star cried.

  A meter long robotic fish leaped out the water, flipping its tail savagely. It arced over the boat and splashed with a resounding smack on the opposite side.

  “Get down!” Winston yelled.

  He dropped to the floor himself, but Star remained seated on the bench.

  “I can see better up here,” she said.

  Another mech fish leaped clear of the water and landed in the boat.

  “Good grief!”

  The horrid creature flopped around the bottom of the boat, its razor teeth snapping. Star swiveled her legs out of the way an instant before getting chomped.

  “Give me an oar!” Winston cried.

  Star pulled an oar out of its lock and shoved it toward him.

  Winston pounded at the intruder. The mech fish gripped the oar in its steel-tap jaws and tore a hunk out of the blade. Winston jammed the splintered end against the creature’s flank. Something crunched, and the mech fish went limp. Winston flipped it over the side.

  “Look out Winston!”

  Another attacker hurtled through the air. Winston smacked it down. Yet another mech fish leaped out, others battered the hull. Star joined the battle with the second oar. The boat rotated out of control and swept downstream.

  The fight raged for several minutes, the action was so heavy that Winston had no time to assemble his spear.

  I’d probably just run myself through with the damn thing!

  At last, the mech fish ran out of energy and sank away into the murky water to recharge themselves. Winston and Star clutched their splintered oars, glancing around for new assailants – but none came.

  “Thank heaven we’re safe!” Winston exclaimed.

  The current was faster now. They drifted past a large metal sign. A shotgun blast had disfigured it, but the message was still readable:

  DANGER!

  Dam Spillway Zone

  “Oh no!” Winston tossed aside his worthless oar.

  “There’s a paddle under the seat,” Star said.

  Winston wrenched the emergency paddle free and thrust it into the water. The boat began to spin around. Winston nearly fell in again.

  “Let me try it,” Star said.