Code Lightfall and the Robot King

by Daniel H. Wilson

  7

  Robot Heroes and Criminals

  The Great Disassembly:

  T–Minus Four Days

  After walking in the dark for several hours, Code and Gary set up camp beneath a grove of eerily quiet trees. Ever the helper, Gary laser-ignited an emergency flare to create an instant campfire. During the long evening, the two sat leaning against logs with their hands behind their heads. Peep settled down on Code’s knee to clean herself. A few moments of comfortable silence passed.

  Then, with the firelight dancing in his visor, Gary cleared his throat and began to tell a story. He said that it was his favorite story of all time and that it was about the biggest robot hero—and criminal—who had ever lived in the land of Mekhos:

  “Once upon a time, in the dirtiest, darkest factory of the Drudge-Bottom Slums, lived Charlie, a robot worker of the lowest order. Charlie toiled nonstop for shifts that lasted a thousand years. After each shift, the workers were allowed to emerge from the depths of the factory for a one-hour break and a rapid solar recharge. Charlie’s job was to paint yellow happy faces onto pieces of cardboard, clothes, or anything else that happened to pass by on the assembly line.

  “Because Charlie had such a simple job, he was designed to be a simple robot. All Charlie ever thought about—all that he could think about—was painting bright yellow happy faces. You see, Charlie loved making happy faces just like I love slaught—”

  Code groaned. “I know! I know! Slaughtering!”

  Gary harrumphed and then continued. “But the other robots laughed behind Charlie’s back. They would turn his happy faces upside down and, thinking that they had become sad faces, Charlie would spend all day redoing them—only to have them turned upside down again. Charlie was too simpleminded to understand that jokes were being played on him. So when the other robots played mean pranks, he laughed, too. He thought they were his friends. And that only made the mean-spirited robots laugh even harder. Sometimes they would even congratulate each other on being so very smart.”

  “I hate jerks like that,” blurted Code, thinking of Tyler. It seemed that no matter where you went, there was always someone who was trying to make fun of someone else.

  Gary shook his head ruefully. “But one day, the jokes went too far. The factorybots took Charlie out to a trash rocket. It was about to be launched on a one-way trip into the Trash Quadrant. They told Charlie that the rocket needed a smiley face on the very top. So Charlie climbed atop the rocket and began painting a happy face on the nose cone. Just then, the rocket ignited. Charlie frantically tried to climb off, but it was too late. The rocket launched with Charlie on board and disappeared into space on a thousand-year journey to nowhere.”

  Peep chirped sadly and flickered to blue.

  “Poor Charlie,” said Code.

  Gary continued. “After the next thousand-year work shift, the factorybots weren’t laughing. News reports had begun to trickle in about strange happenings in deep space. Mysterious radio transmissions had begun to arrive from the Trash Quadrant. It was puzzling since the factorybots had no idea who—if anyone—actually lived in the Trash Quadrant. No one had ever bothered to check.

  “The factorybots went back to work, but by their next break, the news had become downright terrifying. An unidentified energy pulse had been detected roaring toward Mekhos at an incredible speed. Stars were winking out of the sky in the Trash Quadrant. New planets were disappearing from solar systems closer and closer to Mekhos. Something terrible was coming. King John Lightfall organized the Light Reconnaissance Space Cavalry and reinstated the long-defunct Exo-Spheric Battle Savants; he armed them for combat with the most powerful weapons captured during the Xeno Wars.”

  “Wow,” murmured Code.

  “The cruel factorybots knew something disastrous was about to happen,” said Gary. “They peered into the sky and shook with dread. They held on to each other and cried out in fright. Then they tried to run away, but there was nowhere to go.”

  At this point, even little Peep was engrossed in the story. She had stopped cleaning herself midstroke and now stared intently up at Gary. One of her wings was still cocked at a wild angle behind her leg.

  After a dramatic pause, Gary said, “In the sky above, looking down with a horrible smile, was a happy face made entirely of displaced stars. Each eye contained a thousand burning orbs, the mouth a hundred thousand more, and surrounding the entire monstrous apparition was the yellowish vapor of a billion shattered solar systems.”

  Gary smiled and leaned over the campfire. Code took a deep breath. This was clearly Gary’s favorite part of the story.

  “See, Charlie had been hard at work in deep space. As the workers looked on in horror, a familiar-looking rocket crash-landed next to the launchpad. The rocket was bright yellow, with happy faces painted across every visible surface. Each bolt that held the rocket together had a happy face painted on it. The nose had a happy face. Even the happy faces were made up of happy faces.

  “The door opened and little Charlie rolled out, looking the same as ever. He waved to his dear ‘friends’ and began to paint a happy face on the ground. In the sky, streaks of flame appeared in the atmosphere. Then thousands of atmospheric entry pods roared into view, rapid-launching parachutes carrying hundreds of thousands of identical Charlies—each with a paintbrush and a passion for drawing happy faces. Mekhos was overwhelmed in minutes.”

  Gary stretched his long arms, joints creaking like an old swing set.

  “Charlie’s invasion started the Great Garbage Wars, which lasted over a century. Eventually, King John Lightfall and his Exo-Spheric Battle Savants tracked down the original Charlie.”

  “Wait,” interrupted Code. “My grandpa has only been gone for a year. How did he spend a hundred years fighting a crazy robot?”

  “Mekhos is an experimental world,” replied Gary. “Time goes faster here. The ancient ones set up the experiment so that a hundred years of our time was only a hundred days in their time.”

  Gary continued. “In the final hours of the final battle, King Lightfall captured Charlie and trapped him inside a stasis box. Mekhos was saved—”

  “I knew my grandpa was a good guy,” said Code.

  Gary shook his head. “But not before Charlie was able to strike one last time. Before King Lightfall could close the box, Charlie used an alien weapon to resculpt the continent of Mekhos into the shape of an enormous, eternally grinning … happy face.”

  Gary chuckled in the firelight. Peep tittered, amused. Code sat silently, soaking up the story.

  “So let me get this straight,” said Code. “Charlie nearly destroyed Mekhos. He blasted your continent into the shape of a happy face. He blew up thousands of robots.”

  “Yeah,” said Gary. “He’s my hero!”

  “How, exactly, does that make him a hero?” asked Code.

  “Charlie did what he was programmed to do, completely and without hesitation,” replied Gary. “He showed that you don’t have to be big to do big things. Charlie made a lot out of a little!”

  Peep agreed, violently nodding her tiny head up and down. Gary laughed and threw another flare on the fire. For his part, Code watched his two new friends closely, shaking his head in puzzled amazement.

  8

  Toparian Wyldes

  The Great Disassembly:

  T–Minus Three Days

  The next morning, sunlight filtered through the trees and Code opened his eyes to find every shade of green imaginable. Looking around, he realized that in the dark of night they had set up camp in a beautiful garden that seemed to go on for miles. The plants here seemed almost real. Gently waving bushes formed vivid green walls. Prickly bridges made of tightly packed shrubs crossed overhead in twisting spirals. Moss-covered statues of robots, machines, and animals dotted the gardenscape. Even the grass was tight-growing and spongy, like a trampoline.

  Everything smelled like wet grass and dirt and metal.

  Code smiled to himself. Finally, a nice quiet p
lace without any heart-stopping danger. Then he noticed Gary standing nearby, peeking over a towering bush.

  “Good morning, Gary,” said Code, yawning.

  Gary thunderously dropped to all fours and peered into Code’s face. He rubbed his shiny head with one hand and muttered to himself in a panic. “Oh, Code! Thank goodness you’ve come back to life. I was sure that you were deactivated. I almost buried you!”

  And indeed, Code noticed that he was lying next to a hole about the size of a boy. “I was sleeping, Gary,” said Code, warily eyeing the freshly dug grave. “Humans go to sleep every day and stay asleep for about eight hours.”

  “What? You’re telling me that humans fall on the ground and go completely limp and unconscious and helpless for eight solid hours every single day? But why? That’s just silly!”

  “It’s true, though.”

  Climbing out from Code’s pocket, Peep chirped fearfully.

  Gary continued breathlessly: “You can make up lies about humans later. This is an emergency. Look around. Can’t you see we are in serious trouble? We’re all about to be killed instantly! Any minute!”

  Code sighed and lay back down, looking up at the leafy green foliage. Of course trouble was coming. How long could he expect to actually calm down and enjoy visiting an experimental world designed by a lost civilization?

  “What’s the danger, Gary?”

  Gary craned his head around nervously. “Last night while we were walking in the dark, we accidentally set up camp in the Toparian Wyldes.”

  “So?” Code yawned.

  “So?! The Toparians are a race of robots designed to trim, sculpt, and cultivate greenery. They’ve been spreading farther into the Odd Woods every year. Nobody can stop them!”

  “That’s why this place is so beautiful,” mused Code. He imagined thousands of friendly gardeners, relentlessly pruning every branch, sweeping up every twig, and watering every last delicate flower. It was a job too big for any human being. Funny that robots had created a place that looked more natural and beautiful than anything Code had ever seen on Earth.

  “They’re killers!” shouted Gary, making Code wince. “They don’t just trim the woods. Anything that enters the Wyldes goes into the equation, if you know what I mean. I don’t want to be mowed to death, Code. I’m just a newborn. How are we ever going to escape from the trimmers, hedgers, cutters, snippers, shearers, twiners, shapers, fringers, choppers, loppers, pruners, nippers, thinners, thickerers, cubers, hackers, sawers, gnawers, slicers, and dicers?” (To protect Code’s emotions, Gary considerately chose not to mention the mulchers, gulchers, composters, sod slingers, bark blasters, and ditch rippers.)

  Looking closely, Code noticed bits of glinting metal wrapped into the shrubbery, providing architectural support. To his dismay, he realized that the mangled skeletons of long-deactivated robots were mingled in with nearly every plant, lending them all a strange metallic shimmer. A nearby statue was really the rusted corpse of some kind of robot knight. Even the flagstones underfoot seemed to be made out of the shattered remains of robot body parts.

  The garden was completely still and quiet, except for Gary’s panicked muttering. Peep hopped into the air and hovered low over the ground. She probed the garden with inquisitive green light beams. Then, with a purposeful burst of speed, she took off along a path.

  Code stood up and dusted shards of metallic dirt from his pants. The great shining mass of greenery suddenly made him feel claustrophobic. Green filled his vision, towering above and creeping below. The distant call of a bird took on a sinister note. The creaking of branches sounded ominous. What horrible monsters could be lurking in the depths of this lush paradise?

  “It’s okay, Gary. Peep will lead us out of here,” said Code, pretending to be brave. “Let’s get moving.”

  Following Peep, Code led his lumbering friend steadily through the magnificent gardens. Certain death failed to appear.

  A few minutes later, Code felt a tap on his shoulder.

  “Code?” whispered the hulking slaughterbot.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m scared.”

  To distract Gary, Code pointed to a particularly impressive shrub; it had been pruned into something resembling an elephant with long, thin legs and twin towering topiary tusks. It was at least a hundred feet tall.

  “What’s that supposed to be?” he asked.

  Gary examined the sculpture. “It’s a stilt-walker, the royal war steed of Lightfall’s Shatter-Gun Brigades. You don’t wanna be around when one of them shows up. Unless you’ve got me to protect you, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Code, carefully stepping around one outstretched hoof. Lightfall. Royal. Code wondered again how his grandfather, just an ordinary old man back home, had come to be royalty here in Mekhos. Then again, any human being who could stay alive in this place for a week had to be amazing.

  As they walked, Code allowed himself to imagine what the Robonomicon would look like—probably a massive golden book with words written in shimmering light. Like a book of magic spells. Code couldn’t wait to find it.

  They pursued Peep and soon found themselves in a clearing with tall, waving grass. It was home to a group of odd trees covered with what looked like glowing lightbulbs. Their smooth, thick branches were pruned completely bare except for puffy tufts of leaves. Planted in a row, the trees looked like a line of trimmed poodles at a dog show.

  Gary screeched like a broken can opener and pointed with one trembling finger cannon at the meadow. “Oh, no, Code. The grass.” He quaked. “It isn’t mowed!”

  “Geez,” said Code, peering through the tall weeds. “Just relax—”

  Suddenly, a loud buzzing sound rang through the clearing. Peep flickered past, glowing a scared violet as she darted over the grass and toward the puffy trees. Gary squealed as a flurry of freshly cut grass shot up into the air nearby. The flying grass erupted in a zigzag pattern that raced across the field. Whatever was hidden in the grass was coming toward them—fast.

  “Mowers!” shrieked Gary, stomping his huge feet in hysterical fright. (In fact, his body was doing what it does when the brain shouts at it to do something, but doesn’t tell it what.)

  From the corner of his eye, Code saw a bright streak of light as Peep careened away. Thinking quickly, Code grabbed Gary by the finger and pulled him headlong through the grass. The buzzing noise seemed to be coming from every direction. Code and Gary couldn’t see anything as they stumbled forward, ribbons of grass and acrid smoke flying everywhere. Finally, Code spotted the trunk of a tree. Just as a mower lurched out of the grass, the boy and the robot leaped for one of the lower branches. It bent alarmingly under their added weight, but held steady. Peep was already waiting on a higher branch, preening nonchalantly.

  Below, the monstrous predators were hidden somewhere in the tall grass. The mowers buzzed angrily and circled the tree like sharks, sending plumes of shredded grass into the air. Safe for the moment, Code and Gary perched on the creaking branches and stared morosely at the grass. There was no place left to go—they were trapped in a tree in the Toparian Wyldes.

  After a few moments, however, all the grass lay in a jumble on the ground. And Code saw the mowers for the first time.

  There were two of them. Each was about the size of a dinner table and covered in a thick mat of sod and leaves. They had small heads with tiny, dim eyes that peeked out from under their grassy shells. With all the grass gone, the roar of the mowers’ whirling tummy blades had grown quiet. Without the smoke and confusion and cutting, the mowers actually looked kind of like a couple of oversized puppies. Of course, thought Code, when a puppy jumps on your leg, it doesn’t chop up your pants with whirling metal stomach blades.

  The boy and the slaughterbot sat in the tree for a long time, trying in vain to come up with a plan to escape. An expert tree climber, Code made his way to the upper branches and found one of the lightbulb-shaped fruits. It glowed and pulsed with a rainbow swirl of delicious-looking colors.
But when Code tried to pull it from the branch, the fruit wouldn’t budge. Instead, he heard a beeping and booping noise coming from inside the tree. Very faintly, almost lower than the sighing of the wind, Code heard the word “human” being repeated. Suddenly, all the fruit on the trees snapped to a single color: bright apple red. Code tugged again, and the nearest apple-thing snapped off the tree. It flickered in his hand, and its red light went out. Code took a hesitant nibble. The fruit tasted delicious—like a warm caramel apple with vanilla ice cream in the middle—but it was hard as a rock.

  From the ground came a pitiful whine. Looking down, Code saw a mower staring greedily at the lightbulb fruit. It waggled its broad, grassy backside and yapped at him. With a shrug, Code tossed down the apple. The eager mower jumped onto the fruit and devoured it. Afterward, it barked happily up at Code.

  “What just happened?” asked Code.

  “You set the tree to human. And the mowers must love people food,” said Gary.

  That gave Code an idea.

  Ten minutes later, Code had collected over a hundred apples and Gary had shoved them all into his chest cavity. Code had explained his plan, but Gary was reluctant. “Don’t take your eyes off that mower for two blinks, Code. These woodland Toparians are mighty flighty!”

  Hanging by one arm from a low branch, Code held out a fresh fruit to the enthusiastic mowers. One of them bounced forward and knocked its fellow aside to gobble up the fruit. At that moment, Code dropped lightly down onto the mower’s back. He wrapped his fingers in the cool grass and vines. The bulky mower didn’t even notice. With a small whimper of fright, Gary hopped out of the tree and carefully settled himself on the back of the other mower. The heavily armored machines ignored them, searching for more food.

  “Go!” shouted Code.

  Peep chirped happily and pinched herself tightly to Code’s forearm. Gary took an apple out of his chest and pitched it like a baseball, rocketing it a hundred yards through the sculpted garden. The mowers sprinted forward eagerly with Code and Gary and Peep hanging on for dear life.