Margo Flint and the Last Soldier

by Nick Mazmanian

  A confused look spread across Margo’s face as her eyebrows began to raise slightly. “Huh?”

  The cylindrical head of the robot wound between its two captives and waved the revolver in a directing motion. “Hoerth, tsbs tu aspon.”

  “I think it wants something.”

  “I think it does too, but what I don’t know.”

  “Hoerth, tsbs tu aspon.”

  “What do you want?”

  The robot’s voice was louder as it answered, “Hoerth, tsbs tu aspon!”

  “I can yell things too! Verton Bollack!”

  “Hoerth, tsbs tu aspon!”

  “Frivolous things matter!”

  “Hoerth, tsbs tu aspon!”

  “Daisies are delicious and make my mouth itchy!”

  “When did you eat a daisy?”

  “Not now.”

  “Hoerth, tsbs tu aspon!”

  “Apples are the best with cheese!”

  “Hoerth, tsbs tu aspon!”

  “Sunshine, rainbows, and…”

  “What good is it to annoy a soldier?” Demanded Catcher.

  “It’s a soldier?”

  “Hoerth, tsbs tu aspon!”

  “Pickety Polly once pressed along a pill and pilfered off a rather pretty drill.”

  “Look at the make. Its sturdy. The joints are reinforced and its vital components are layered with ridged plate armor. It even has a belt with various, things on it. Soldier looking things.”

  “Soldier looking things? Aren’t you supposed to be a vast labyrinth of knowledge?”

  “Hoerth, tsbs tu aspon!”

  Margo held up a finger and shushed the demanding robot, turning her attention to Catcher. “Yes, I am, but the robot here was obviously built way before my incept date. The metal shell alone must be a few...”

  A gunshot interrupted the conversation. The bullet whizzed past Margo’s left boot and impacted on the ground. Panic reached Margo’s throat as she shook her head and said, “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

  The robot thumbed back the hammer, turning the chamber. “Hoerth, tsbs tu aspon!”

  The frustration in her voice cut above the robot’s demanding tone as it punched over her gritting teeth, “I. Don’t. Know. What. You. Are. Saying! We are new here and just crashed landed because someone, probably you, put a hole in my core block!” Her voice echoed in the canyon as she finished her statement.

  A short auditory crackle exited the robot. Expecting to hear gibberish again, she readied her already built up annoyance as her captor stood with its gun drawn, but remained eerily silent. A sigh escaped her lungs as she shook her head. The robot held up its free hand in a stopping motion. “Ma’am, I am going to ask you to calm down.” Now that it could be understood, the voice was almost pleasant and carried a slight accent that couldn’t be placed. Margo’s expression was one of shock as the robot continued to speak. “Now that it appears we are able to communicate: Are you a spy?”

  “How are you able to understand me now?”

  “Universal conversater. Now you a spy? Yes? No?”

  Catcher chimed in. “A conversater?”

  “Yes, now, are you a sp...?”

  “What is a conversater?”

  “You mean a translation matrix?”

  The robot raised the revolver up, fired another shot into the sky that echoed across the valley, and retrained the hulking magnum on his two captives. “I have a gun!” Its free hand pointed to his chest. “It’s called a conversater.” It then pointed the chunky gun at Margo. “Spy. Yes or no?”

  A small chuckle began to develop in Margo’s chest as she answered, “No.. I am not a spy.”

  “That’s exactly what a spy would say!” A blurb of laughter escaped her lips and developed into an uncontrollable torrent of hilarity; much to the bewilderment of her mechanical company. “That is not how a spy reacts when they are outed.”

  “And you know how a spy would react?”

  “Yes, usually an outed spy would say something… smart or funny or glib. Giggling is not the proper response. No giggling! That’s an order!”

  Margo began to catch her breath and recover. “I’m, I’m sorry, it’s just this whole thing is ridiculous.”

  Catcher bypassed her comment and continued with his conversation. “And that is due to, what? Your training?”

  “Training? Life is training. Also, I read about it in these training books.” He fished a small paperback book out of his front pouch. The cover had a scantily clad woman on it holding a gun. Surrounding her was a green border that once carried a title name but it had been lost to the fingertips of time. The only text remaining was on the top right corner of the book: A Harry Marsh tale of espionage. “Good old Harry taught me what to expect.” The robot flicked the book to emphasis his point, which proved to be too much for it, as its robot fingers split the ancient paper in half. “No!” A small breeze picked up and carried away some of the escaped pages from its metal grasp, causing a slight panic to escape the robot’s frame as it tried to collect the runaway paper. After realizing that it was a futile effort, the robot returned its attention to his prisoners, noting that the female one’s face was beet red from trying to suppress her giggles.

  Margo’s voice wiggled and waved as she spoke, “P, per.. Permission to, laugh?”

  “Not granted!”

  “Doing it anyway.” She let loose a barrage of laughter and once all of the funny had left her system, she leaned against Pipsqueak to regain her focus. “Okay, I’m done now.”

  “Alright, no more games…” The robot raised the gun. “Names, now missy.”

  Margo shot a look over to Catcher as his built-in camera shuffled between his ward and their captor. “Alright, no more games. Shoot us.”

  It was a comment that caught Margo off-guard. “Uhhh, what?”

  “You’re a robot are you not?”

  “By the caster who sparked me into being, yes I am.”

  “And a soldier?”

  “Boots on the ground since the day I was assembled and voided the factory warranty.”

  She caught on to the play Catcher was running as her body language loosened up and she casually placed her back against the fuselage. “Then shoot us.” The robot’s red eye looked coldly at Margo as its thumb pulled back the hammer on its revolver. “But I bet you can’t. I bet you can’t because even though you are a soldier, your robot programming won’t let you shoot a non-threat. That’s why you keep asking about whether or not I’m a spy.”

  The robot’s head shifted between its two targets as a light breeze began to pick up. The rustling of leaves filled the air as the barrel of the revolver was lowered to the ground, the hammer disengaged, and the hefty piece holstered. “It is clear you are not from Rys nor are you a spy for them. My Lie-to-Truth algorithm, which can analyze any voice and determine said title of algorithm, shows you as being truthful.”

  A sigh of relief exited Margo’s lungs as she stood from the gyrocopter. “Thanks for the info?”

  “No problem.”

  She strode the six meters between her and the robot and extended her hand. “My name is Margo Flint. The proper speaking A.I. that is currently plugged into my power core is Catcher.” Her heart sped up a few steps as the next sentence escaped the prison of her mind and leapt out of her mouth, “We’re explorers!”

  “Oh-kay, you seem pretty excited about that.” The robot tapped its hand against its chipped and rusty chest and shook the one outstretched toward him. “I’m P.D.113, infantry and recon for the Federation military, but the guys in my platoon call me ZiP.”

  “Charmed.” A note of condescension sat in Catcher’s voice. “Now that we are all introduced, and are not in danger of being shot, may I have a moment with Margo?”

  She turned and walked back to the gyro. “Yes, Catcher?”

  The A.I. answered in a hushed voice, “We cannot trust this machine.”

  Margo matched whisper volume in a mocking tone, “Why not? He seems fine
.”

  “He held us at gunpoint!”

  “Because he’s a soldier, and by your own observation, probably has been out here for a very long time. We’re lucky he didn’t shoot…” Her green eyes glanced up at the puncture in the gyro’s power core, she then pivoted toward the robot, and yelled, “I forgot to ask, did you shoot us down?”

  “Yeah, I, I did! Sorry about that! Thought you were, you know, spying for the enemy. Intel said we had a bird in the sky and to investigate, and since I can’t fly…” ZiP motioned from the sky to the ground, “…I had to ground ya.”

  “That brings me to my next question: What enemy? All I see are trees. Are you fighting the world?”

  “The battle is over, but the war rages on. My orders were to defend this valley from the dirty Rys army. May their bones splinter and crack!” ZiP raised and pointed off toward the setting sun. “My final opponent has been living on top of the highest cliff at the end of the valley; where a natural choke point stands. Luckily when you landed…”

  “Because you shot us down.”

  “...you did so just beyond the reach of his sniper rifle.”

  Margo looked over at where the robot was pointing, retrieved the worn-out rangefinders from the storage area, and zoomed into the split in the cliffs. The top of the rocks glowed in brilliant orange light by the setting sun and as she looked around the ridge she found a rectangular building.

  And in front of the building was a glinting object. “Something’s shiny up there.”

  “That’ll be the damned dirty Rys rifle. It’s an X2-Uri, known as a god gun because it can reach out and touch you at any moment.”

  “And you know he’s there?”

  ZiP lifted the strap of his backpack to show the massive dent underneath it. “Butcher tried to put me out to pasture, but his cheap Rys bullets can’t puncture my mylartyphon shell.” He rapped his chest. “Built to last!”

  “If he’s the only thing keeping you here, why haven’t you stopped him yet?”

  ZiP’s long brim pointed toward Catcher. “You don’t think I’ve tried? He has the entire area around him booby trapped! All sorts of unpleasantries. Believe me, just short of flying… Say, can that whirlybird of yours carry a passenger?”

  Margo raised an eyebrow and looked at Pipsqueak. “Not really.”

  “Sadly, this craft is built for one.”

  “That is unless we modify it, but it would require some additional parts.”

  “I know where we can get all of the parts!”

  “Margo, again, if I may have a word?”

  She rolled her eyes and began to move toward her gyro as ZiP said, “You know I can hear everything you say right? Whispers and all?” The comment made her stop in her tracks and turn toward the robot who tapped the side of his head. “Infantry and recon and I don’t get tinnitus, so my hearing, really good. You might as well just speak.”

  Margo shrugged toward the gyro as she continued her walk. “Catcher, you’ve been plugged in for a while now, what’s the status?”

  “The core will heal itself in time…”

  “Heal itself?”

  Catcher continued, ignoring the question, “...which I am not worried about, but the concerning part is the second blade.” Margo glanced up in the failing light of the gray covered sky to look at the dual blades of the gyrocopter. “Structural report reads of a crack along the body of the blade. It will have to be replaced before we can fly. Other than that, there are a few connection issues as you’ve witnessed, but those are relatively easy to fix.”

  “Why won’t that just heal itself? Since metal can now do that apparently.”

  Margo looked toward ZiP and back to the craft. “Because the nanomachines that make up the core are so dense the additional weight in the blades would make flying impossible.”

  “Oh, yes…” ZiP adjusted the strap of his backpack, “...of course.”

  “World’s changed a good amount since you last saw it.” Margo opened the storage box, brought out a backpack, and filled it with some food stuffs. She took out the leather tube that contained the map as well as the comm gun, which caught the eye of ZiP who had walked closer to the craft.

  His hand immediately went for the revolver. “What’s that round and odd looking gun?”

  “It’s known as a portable communication signaler, but we call it a comm gun because…” She motioned around the object in her hand. “The screen shows what I am writing with the integrated keyboard. When I’m ready to send, I pull the trigger underneath, and it’ll send the message to the according light frequency that I select with the dial underneath the keyboard.”

  “So, it’s a bigger and fatter porcom?”

  “A whatnow?”

  ZiP waved away the question. “Forget it. What’s the tube in your hand?”

  She put the comm gun into her bag, popped open map container, and took out the worn but tough map. “Let me show you.”

  “Ah, all pictures, no words.” He pointed at the far corner where Margo had already filled in the boundaries of Artsiv and the surrounding villages along with any changes in the geography of the area. “You’ve been busy fixing that though, huh…” ZiP’s index finger pointed toward a scattering of islands in the northwest ocean off the coast of Artsiv. The dots of land each carried a different name but all pointed toward a black circle that was hand inked onto the page, showing the land that was inside of it to be gone. “Looks like a piece went missing.”

  A faint hint of pride entered her voice as she answered, “Thanks, just wanted to show you that not everything is not as it once was, which is why we’re here.” She rolled up the map, put it in its carrying case, and placed it inside her bag as she stood up and asked, “You said you know where we can find parts for Pipsqueak?”

  “Yep, the parts you’ll need for the repair and additional assembly are located a few klicks from my base camp, which itself is 4 kilometers from here.”

  Unplugging Catcher from the data port on top of the block, Margo slid the A.I.’s crystalline body into his blue carrying case on her hip. She then pulled out the corded ear piece from the side of the case and plugged it into her ear. “Check, check, you hear me Catcher?”

  The A.I.’s voice entered her ear. “Yes, I do.”

  “Hey now, I didn’t hear him respond.”

  “Good, that means we can have some privacy.”

  “I don’t like secrets.”

  “And I don’t like being shot down, but here we are.” Margo then reached into the storage area and took out a folded flag. Unfurling it displayed a color scheme of orange and blue surrounded by a red border. On left hand side of the flag, touching the red outline and crossing the main blue field, was a orange half circle with jagged looking bolts sprouting out from it. She clipped it to one of the blades and let it fly in the wind. “Now we can leave.”

  “What does the flag mean?”

  “It’s the flag of my family and house, Flint. The red is the red rocks that surround my home, the blue is a cold fire, and the half circle with the lines from it are sparks from a flint.”

  “You’re not trying to claim this valley, are you?”

  Catcher turned on his external speaker to say, “What?”

  “People with flags typically use them to take what isn’t theirs…”

  “It is a personal flag, so no, it doesn’t mean that she’s ‘taking’ the valley by flying it.”

  “It’s simply there to show the gyro belongs to me. Also, I like the flag.” She began to close the distance between herself and ZiP. “Lead on, we’ll keep up.”

  ZiP’s body turned toward the forest with his head still fixed toward Margo. “Remember, I have my eye on you.”

  “You’ll be facing forward, so I am interested in seeing you try to do that.” The robot’s head looked around and then swiveled forward, its voice mumbling in a low octave. “Should we make camp?”

  “No need, we’ll be at my camp by nightfall.”

  “Okay.”


  With his external speaker shut off, Catcher spoke through her plugged in earpiece saying, “Margo, I know our current working relationship is one built upon mutual needs, but we shouldn’t trust ZiP.”

  “And the reason for that is?”

  “He shot us down.”

  “True, but he seems pretty sorry about it.”

  “Besides that point of fact, if we are able to fly him to his destination, I fear what will happen once he fulfills that order. An artificial mind is still a mind and time plus isolation usually equals trouble.”

  In a hushed voice she responded, “I don’t think he’s that nuts.”

  “Oh, one more thing…” His head rotated around like an owls to face his guests. “...do keep an eye out for the ghost.”

  Margo stopped in her tracks and looked at her guide with a curious look on her face. “Ghost?”

  “Yep, damn thing skulks around here sometimes. Been meaning to catch him too, so keep an eye out for him. Always seems to pop up just in the fuzzy part of my excellent high definition vision.”

  An audible click from Catcher’s box signaled he had turned on his external speaker. “An actual ghost?”

  ZiP stopped and placed his hands in a frustrated manner on his hips as his backwards head said, “Yes, am I stuttering or something?” He motioned around them. “There is a ghost.” And then raised his arm toward the cliff face he pointed out earlier. “There is an enemy on the hilltop.” His arm rotated forward and held up two fingers. “They both need to go before we leave this valley. Do I have to repeat that again?”

  Margo shook her no which prompted ZiP’s head to turn around and begin walking. She whispered into the microphone, “He’s nuts.”

  “Like a wiki nut.”

  As the dying light grew darker and the canopy of the forest began to overtake the sky, Margo turned on her orange lamp, hung it on her belt, and pushed past the shadows.