Return to Mech City

by Brian Bakos

  “How about ‘Iridium the Sweet?’” Star said, giving Iri an affectionate pat.

  The birds fluttering around the head seemed to come to a group decision. They abruptly flew en masse toward a window and departed the tower amid a cacophony of chirps and twitters. The breeze of their passing stirred the torch flames and rippled Iridium’s coat.

  “What was that all about?” Winston said.

  Iri slinked into a darkened corner. “Whatever it is, I’ll watch it from back here.”

  The chamber stood quiet and expectant. Even the torches seemed to be holding their collective breath.

  “Oh, Winston.” Star took his hand. “Whatever happens next, I’m so proud of you.”

  “Thanks, Star.”

  “Nobody else could have handled this situation as well. You’re a natural manufactured diplomat.”

  Her praise bolstered his sagging ego the same way that the crutch kept his body upright.

  At least nobody can say I didn’t give it my best shot, he thought, even if it wasn’t good enough.

  After a few minutes, the birds returned bearing something in their midst – a robot of some sort clad in a white coat. The garment flapped around so much in the turbulence that, at first, Winston thought a great white bird had entered.

  The chickadees deposited their burden gently on its feet and returned to their perches. No tumbling dump off for this passenger. The new arrival straightened its coat with precise, fussy motions and brushed a bit of dirt off its sleeve.

  Winston had never seen anything like it. The robot was an extremely realistic Humanite model, but it looked rather old and shabby with a frizzled perimeter of gray hair on its bald head. Stubble covered its face, like a human male who had not shaved for a while. Why would anybody design a robot like this – was it a perverse joke of some kind?

  The newcomer looked coolly at Winston and Star.

  “So, who were you expecting,” it said in a high-pitched, crackly voice, “the goddam Easter Bunny?”

  “No, it’s just that we’ve never seen a robot like you before,” Winston said.

  “Well, imagine that?” the newcomer said. “Maybe it’s because I ain’t no frigging robot!”

  “You mean ...” Star gasped.

  “Yes, yes, I’m a real human being,” the newcomer said. “Let me prove it to you.”

  Braaappp!

  He broke wind explosively. A nearby torch flared up. Winston recoiled.

  Ugh, I wish they hadn’t replaced my olfactory sensor!

  “Show me a robot that can do that!” the man said triumphantly.

  Realization dawned on Winston.

  “Dr. Rackenfauz, I presume?” he said.

  The man bowed with mock formality. “That is quite correct, young fellow. I am Edgar Rackenfauz, Ph.D. – double Ph.D., actually.”

  “M-my name is Winston Horvath, scholar model robot,” Winston managed to say. “I can’t believe I’ve found you! My master, Dr. Horvath, said I should seek you out.”

  “Ah yes, Anna Horvath,” Rackenfauz said, “a fine lady. I assume she’s ...”

  Winston lowered his head and nodded sadly. Rackenfauz joined in a moment of silent tribute, then he reached out a bony hand and grasped the medals around Winston’s neck. He studied them with an amused little smile.

  “Nice workmanship,” he said. “I really like that skull ring, too – real class.”

  Star took a step forward. “My name is Star Power,” she said. “I’m with Winston.”

  Rackenfauz nodded. “Right, the Estrella Project.”

  “You know who I am?” Star said.

  “I know a lot of things,” Rackenfauz said. “I wasn’t always stuck in this place, you know. I used to be lead designer at the RDI!”

  “Then what about – ” Winston said.

  Rackenfauz silenced him with an upraised hand.

  “Maybe I’d better supply some background information,” he said, “before you take up any more of my valuable time with questions.”

  “Okay, great,” Winston said.

  “Let me see.” Rackenfauz stroked his chin stubble. “I’ll begin with the day I left Mech City ...”

  45: Last Day at the RDI

  “Since the day before, I’d been all packed and read to go,” Dr. Rackenfauz began, “but I was unable to tear himself away from my bird obsession. A final batch of components remained, and I simply could not bear the thought of leaving them behind unassembled.

  “Fortunately, Jack and Quincy were available to help. We’d been working all morning, reducing the backlog. But the time for a final breakup had arrived ...”

  “Excuse us, sir,” Quincy said, “may we go now? We were asked to assist at the Estrella Project.”

  Rackenfauz looked up at Quincy, as if seeing the tech assistant robot for the first time. Then he glanced over the assembly tables – only a dozen mech birds awaited final assembly.

  “Yes, yes,” he said, “go on.”

  Quincy bowed. “Thank you, sir.”

  The two robots walked out of the workshop door and headed for the stairs.

  “The old boy’s not very big on gratitude, is he?” Jack said.

  “He’s a queer one, alright,” Quincy said, “but these are queer times.”

  Rackenfauz had overheard these less than flattering comments, but he was not bothered. Why be offended by the truth? He sat back wearily on the high stool and scanned his miserable surroundings.

  His workshop was the shabbiest, most isolated one in the whole RDI campus – a private reservation for the oddball reject that he’d become. The water pipes leaked, the lighting was bad, the floor was cracked and stained. Only a single high window opened to the world outside.

  From the RDI’s Chief Designer laboratory in the main building down into this hole! It had been a painful tumble.

  Even with the entire world crashing in around them, people still had time for their stupid political games. The death of the Institute’s director had left Rackenfauz exposed to the jealous vindictiveness of his junior colleagues, and they had made the most of it.

  Rackenfauz had gotten along well with Director Kinkaid. They’d understood each other, even if there wasn’t much personal affection between them, and Dr. Rackenfauz owed his high position to Kinkaid’s favor. But, tragically, the Director had been among the many victims of the blast that destroyed the university complex. At least the poor man didn’t have to witness the ravages of the final plague.

  Rackenfauz shook his head with self-pity. “Ah, to be old and gay.”

  Actually, he wasn’t that old, but compared to many of the other mech heads, he seemed like a throwback to an earlier age. But what did they know? A bunch of young punks running through abandoned corridors playing Gorzo the Adventure Robot games and screwing around with technologies they did not understand.

  Rackenfauz was decidedly gay, however, and that rattled his enemies even more than his annoying genius did. Behind his back they called him “the Old Faggot” and “Wacky Rackenfauz.”

  He’d always been the withdrawn, self-absorbed type, far more interested in technical matters than in human relations. He simply could not understand the penchant for gratuitous cruelty that so many people had. Their disrespect cut deep.

  “Ach!”

  He kicked an empty stool across the room.

  So, his dear colleagues had booted him down here to work on mech bird designs – of all things. They thought the humiliation would be too much for him, that he would simply disappear from the Institute as other ostracized technicians had done over the years.

  This had been his intent, but soon a weird obsession had taken hold of him – a screwball plan to replace the world’s lost avian population. During the past months, he’d produced mech birds by the thousands. He’d released them in small flocks so that they would range freely, as far as their solar charged power plants would take them, restoring bird song to an increasingly silent Earth.

  Well, at least he knew tha
t he was half mad. Not like those other mech heads with their monster projects and killer wolf designs. Things were getting so dire that Rackenfauz began packing a submachine gun under his lab coat, just in case.

  In a backhanded way, the awareness of his colleagues’ insanity had kept Rackenfauz from totally cracking up himself. No matter, it would all be over soon.

  Within a few hours, he’d completed the assembly work. He carried the last bird across the workshop to the open window. It was the standard all-black design. In the grip of his mania, Rackenfauz had not given much thought to variation. It would only have complicated his great project.

  The little creature tugged mightily at his gloved hands, straining towards freedom. The power to weight ratio of these mech birds was extraordinary, each one could carry a load far in excess of its own bulk. Rackenfauz held it up to the window and opened his hands. The bird shot off into the gray, shrouded sky, cheeping loudly.

  “Good luck!” Rackenfauz called after it.

  Something abruptly snapped inside him – a cord that had connected him to his mania. A wonderful sense of liberation took its place. He understood how the newly released bird must have felt, if it had any feelings.

  “Well done, Edgar!” He removed the gloves and tossed them on a workbench with an air of finality. “Now it’s time to blow the pop stand.”

  He’d planned to take a French leave, but had since changed his mind. Perhaps some notion of professional courtesy compelled him to bid adieu to his surviving colleagues. Rackenfauz couldn’t understand why he felt this way, since the others clearly did not reciprocate.

  Well, the end of the world didn’t come every day, and it wouldn’t hurt to say good-bye.

  He left his workshop for the last time and mounted the dreary staircase to the ground floor. In past years, even this auxiliary building had hummed with activity, now it was silent and dead. Water from the leaky roof puddled on the floor, and scrofulous green paint peeled off the walls.

  He left the annex and made his way across the grounds toward the main building. As always when he came outside, his breath caught at the foul air. He almost missed his gloomy workshop now, at least the air filters kept the pollutants down to a breathable level.

  He coughed harshly. “This isn’t doing my asthma a damn bit of good.”

  Two mech wolves glared at him from the courtyard periphery. Rackenfauz gripped the compact submachine gun holstered under his lab coat.

  “Come here Poochies!” he called. “I’ve got a nice treat for you.”

  As if cognizant of the “treat” he had in store for them, the wolves slunk away and concealed themselves in the dead shrubbery.

  “That goddam lunatic, Blake,” Rackenfauz grumbled.

  The mech wolves were Blake’s handiwork. He’d been instrumental in overthrowing Rackenfauz and had grabbed the lead designer post for himself. And just look at the result! That madman had produced a whole pack of these savage Iridium Project knockoffs.

  Of course, Blake was dead now, along with most of the others. Rumor had it that one of his own creations had finished him off. But who could say? Things seldom worked out with such geometric precision.

  Rackenfauz entered the main building and ascended to the second floor where the Estrella Project laboratory was located. Any surviving technicians would surely be there for the big event – Estrella was being brought online today. Groans and shrieks issuing from the lab indicated that work was in progress.

  The misshapen test bed machine, Nilo, was standing in the hallway outside the workshop, observing events through the two way mirror. A strange, flickering light shown in Nilo’s eyes. It abruptly vanished when the thing turned toward Rackenfauz.

  “Good morning, Professor,” it said in a fawning tone.

  “Yes, quite,” Rackenfauz said.

  Nilo clung to the arm of a giant drone machine, one of Dr. Lindemann’s inventions. The drone stood at rigid attention with its button eyes staring into nothingness. The two robots made an appalling couple.

  Rackenfauz had objected to the abusive “games” that Blake and others had played with Nilo, but that didn’t mean he liked the test bed machine. On the contrary, it gave him the willies. There was something fundamentally wrong with the creature, although Rackenfauz couldn’t put a finger on it.

  Had they been outside, with a clear range of fire, he might have blasted the grotesque pair. Rackenfauz felt a sudden urge to blast all of creation.

  Why should he care, anyway? Now that everything was coming to an end, the great injustice – a.k.a. his life – was starting to choke him with its toxic fumes.

  Was it any wonder that he’d retreated into a personal world of ideas and machines when the broader society had offered him so little? The “real men,” like those bastards on the RDI staff, disliked him because he was gay. They’d cheated him out of his rightful place, regardless of his brilliance.

  Gay men didn’t care for him because he was unattractive. And he was a bit of an oddball, too, which gave everyone a reason to avoid him. He’d had no place to stand except within his work. And now he was the last one left standing. How ironic!

  As if cognizant of Rackenfauz’s turbulent thoughts, the Nilo machine bowed courteously: “I’ll just leave you to your observations, sir.”

  It hobbled off toward the elevator with its drone valet. The goddam creature had been damaged somehow and was walking with a cane. Rackenfauz approached the two way mirror and stared into the workshop. What he witnessed appalled him.

  The noisome spectacle of the Estrella robot being wrenched through a series of orgasma routines was bad enough, but the lecherous expressions of the observing technicians disgusted Rackenfauz deeply. They seemed possessed of truly evil compulsions – especially Dr. Thurston, the lone female among them.

  And they condemned him? Even in his most extreme fantasies, Rackenfauz had never contemplated sex with a machine! He wanted to vomit but had nothing in his stomach to toss up.

  Finally, the awful testing routine stopped, and the Estrella robot went limp. Rackenfauz almost felt sorry for it, which was something new. Until now, he’d felt very little toward the robots created here, beyond simple pride of achievement for his own work.

  Estrella was approaching the technicians now, pleading with them, offering its body in the most lewd fashion. All they could do was look away, shaking their heads sadly.

  God’s gifts to women, eh? Rackenfauz thought vindictively. And now you can’t even get it up at the crucial moment!

  Rackenfauz’s sense of triumph was short lived, though, replaced by feelings of pity. He understood that his colleagues had early stage plague. Within a week or so, all of them would be dead.

  They were leaving the control console now and trooping out the door. Just a brief word of farewell would do – no hard feelings and all that. Rackenfauz approached the group.

  “Hello, everyone,” he said.

  “You’re still here?” Dr. Potocsky said. “I thought you cleared out already.”

  “Well, uh, I’m getting ready to leave now,” Rackenfauz said.

  “Don’t let us keep you,” Dr. Thurston said.

  Their comments had been merely frosty and unkind, but Dr. Leonid gripped Rackenfauz’s arm and glowered at him over the tops of his sunglasses with genuine malevolence.

  “You’re looking very well, Edgar,” he said. “Why is that?”

  “I think you know why,” Rackenfauz said, wrenching his arm back.

  “Right!” Thurston cackled. “Your magic vaccines.”

  They all laughed. Even Leonid managed an ugly snarl of merriment. Then they turned away and shuffled down the corridor.

  “It’s been nice working with you, too,” Rackenfauz said.

  Nobody looked back.

  46: Adios to Mech City

  Rackenfauz descended to the subterranean garage on the outskirts of the Institute grounds. At one time this place had bustled with activity as delivery vehicles drove down the ramp l
aden with cargo. Here, shielded from the outside world, robots had scurried about unloading the many items which meant survival and growth for the vast enterprise above ground.

  Now the place was abandoned, except for one large truck. Rackenfauz smacked its driver side door.

  “Good to see you again, Old Paint.”

  Rackenfauz had been secretly loading this truck for weeks, assisted by drone robots who were too dumb to spread the word about his actions. In these paranoid times, one couldn’t be too careful.

  The commodious trailer now held everything he’d need to reestablish himself in new surroundings. He had food, medical supplies, weapons and ammo. Not too much food, because he could always scavenge more from any abandoned supermarket. Besides, he needed the room for his large stock of technical equipment and robotic components.

  Rackenfauz ascended to the driver’s seat and started the engine. He clicked the remote, and the metals door grated up, admitting light to the underground haven.

  “Let’s get a move on!”

  Rackenfauz drove up the ramp into the ruined world above with the disquieting sensation that he was emerging from one tomb only to enter another.

  Scenes of devastation pressed in from all sides – abandoned vehicles, derelict store fronts, rubbish blowing around in dust devils. His cloistered existence at the RDI had ill prepared him for the realities of the wider world.

  This is one messed up town, amigo.

  He wasn’t certain of his destination, only that he needed to get someplace else. Maybe he’d check out the Robotics Development Center on the west coast and see if anything was still going on out there. It couldn’t be any worse than here, and at least the ocean would be nearby.

  So, with this vague objective in mind, he headed west through Mech City.

  He quickly realized his mistake. He should have driven east and left town by the shortest route. Once in the rural area, he could have picked up the westbound highway. But now he was forced to maneuver the clumsy, unfamiliar vehicle through city streets and around the large bomb crater defacing the center of town.

  “You’re off to a lousy start, Edgar,” he said.

  “Who asked you?” he replied.

  Rackenfauz had been socially isolated for so long that such two-way conversations came natural to him.