“I calculate that at this rate the world will be ninety-eight per cent pure Bob within twelve years.”
“That can’t be right!”
“Eighteen Bobs making more Bobs, and all those new Bobs making more Bobs. Plus, it’s NOT like we’re going to die either like you squishy humans do. We are indestructible. I mean, look at me. I am IN a bath of CUSTARD and I haven’t exploded once.”
“Yes, you’re operating at full capacity in a bath of custard … unheard of!” Molly said, trying not to be too pleased with her own creation. “But, all the other Bobs don’t seem to be behaving like you are. They’re a bit, well, shouty.”
“Oh…” Bob sighed, slumping deeper into his bath. “Well, I didn’t give the Bob I built a PERSONALITY, as you said it was inefficient, so each new BOB will have been built like the last one that was made.”
“Oh great, meaning that the army of robots are not only multiplying quicker than rabbits, but also they’re quite angry. That would explain why it went berserk when I went at it with a screwdriver.” Molly sighed. “Right, we need a plan. When things go bad on TV, people have a plan and everything gets fixed. So, what’s the plan, Bob?”
“Tell me, do you like disco music?” Bob asked.
“What? No, well … yes … why? How’s that going to help?”
“We could have an end-of-the-world party!” Bob smiled.
“Arrrrgh!” Molly squealed in frustration.
At the top of a very tall building in London, in the middle of a packed TV newsroom, stood a large man with a throbbing vein in his head and a look of horror in his eyes. The man was called Maximilian Jones and he was in a foul mood. He was the boss of the biggest, brightest and not-always-most-accurate TV station in the world.
“I want stories, I want mayhem!” Maximilian barked. “And you bring me this?” he shrieked at a reporter.
“Cats are very popular,” the reporter said, trying to defend himself. “I thought a nice story about a missing cat coming home would be, you know, a change from the usual bad news we report on…”
There was an audible gasp from around the newsroom as the rest of the workforce heard the phrase “nice”. The reporter looked around for support from his colleagues, but there was none forthcoming.
“Nice?” Maximilian growled.
“Yes…”
“What’s your name?”
“Tim,” Tim said.
“Kittens are nice, I suppose…”
“Well, yes…”
“So are kids smiling at rainbows, old ladies knitting large scarves for cold penguins or dogs being reunited with their owners. Is that the kind of thing you mean?” Maximilian asked.
“Well, yes.”
“Maybe I should have a new ‘Nice’ department? We could have an editor-in-chief … it could be you!”
“M–me?” the reporter said, confused.
“Yes, it would mean a pay rise and you’d be in charge of making the world a better place. Just think about it, Tim – we could spread happiness and cheer through the medium of TV and use our huge responsibility to really make a difference!”
“Well, OK, Maximilian—I mean Mr Jones.” Tim grinned.
“Yes, I can see it now. We could have a live feed from a sunny meadow. We could have a special investigation into why babies’ heads smell so nice! Who wouldn’t watch that?”
“Exactly!”
“Wait, I know who wouldn’t watch that: everyone! Because nobody cares about nice. Nice doesn’t get you ratings, nice doesn’t get viewers, nice doesn’t make people angry online. It doesn’t get people sharing and clicking, it doesn’t get the advertisers in and that means no money. Which means we all lose our jobs. Which means that we don’t have any money, or anywhere to live. Do you know what that isn’t?”
“Nice?”
“No, it’s not nice, is it, Tim? Do you know what else isn’t nice?”
“Firing me?”
“Exactly, although I want to rehire you just so I can keep firing you, such is the magnitude of your stupidity. If anyone else in the newsroom says the word ‘nice’ to me ever again, I’ll fire the heck out of you too!” he yelled at the entire office.
“I WANT PANIC. I WANT CHAOS! YOU KNOW WHY? BECAUSE PEOPLE WATCH THAT!”
Maximilian screamed. “Now, someone in this building get me a story, a story so awful that people will be too afraid to stop watching.”
Suddenly there was a loud ringing sound from Maximilian’s pocket. He pulled his phone out and barked, “Hello!”
“Hello, dear, sorry to bother you at work,” Mrs Jones said at the other end. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything important?”
“Not at all,” he replied. “Just dealing with a few work things.”
“Oh, you’re a good boy, giving all those people jobs. I bet they really love you there.”
“Of course they do…” he said, glaring at Tim and mouthing at him to get out. “Now, what can I do for you, Mum?”
“Well, I have some footage,” Mrs Jones said. “I filmed it on my drone.”
“A drone? Since when do you have one of those?!”
“Since I started taking my neighbourly duties more seriously, darling. I’m emailing the footage through on the WhatsApp thingy now,” she shouted.
There was a ping and Maximilian opened up the attachment. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. This could be the news story of the century!
“GET ME THE HELICOPTER!”
he boomed. “Get every helicopter and every reporter we have, including you, Kitten Boy,” he said, pointing at Tim. “There’s a full-scale mega-robot invasion underway!”
Maximilian sent the footage to every reporter’s computer. There were audible screams as the grainy footage of Bob in the bathroom was shared around the newsroom. That’s the power of grainy film; if you’d been able to see that Bob was in fact listening to disco anthems in a bath of hot custard, it would have seemed less threatening.
“Get me end-of-the-world experts! You know the type – people with beards wearing corduroy! Get me Bear Grylls on how to keep your family alive by living off the land, eating nettles and drinking rainwater from the gutter. Get me generals talking about how we fight back against our robot invaders. I want people on the streets panicking, looting. I want total mayhem! And why, oh, why isn’t this footage up yet? You’ve had this now for twelve seconds; get the breaking-news graphic on now!
I WON’T BE HAPPY UNTIL I SEE A MAN HITTING HIS OWN TOASTER TO DEATH! GOT IT?!”
“There’s something else!” one of the reporters said, marching over to Maximilian with a printout of a frame from the video. “Look at this robot – there’s something on it … like slime.”
“Is it blood?”
“No, I don’t think so. It’s the wrong colour – too yellow. I can’t quite make it out, but – but…”
“WHAT?! SPIT IT OUT!”
“It doesn’t look earthly.” She sighed. “And look at the way he’s waving his arms rhythmically, like he’s signalling to the skies.”
“…ALIEN ROBOTS!” Maximilian gasped. “SOMEONE GET ME GRAPHICS! Call NASA! Call everyone!”
6 P.M.
“Why have you tried to wash yourself in custard?” Molly asked. “It looks like you’re covered in alien blood or something – and will you stop dancing!”
“Washing HAIR is very important. Your Internet taught me that.”
“Yes, for people who have hair and then we tend to use shampoo. You do not have any hair – you’re just rubbing pudding everywhere.”
“Have you ever washed your hair IN custard? It’s LIKE a HUG for the HEAD!” Bob said.
“Listen, we haven’t got time for style and beauty tips. We need to deactivate the robot army downstairs before someone sees. How do we do it?” Molly asked.
“Search me…” Bob said.
“Wait! That’s a great idea!” Molly smiled. “Open up your chest!”
“What? Why ME? You do it!” Bob said, annoyed.
“I’m a human. I can’t open up my chest without the aid of a skilled surgeon. I need to look at your circuit board to work out how to deactivate the other robots.”
Bob stepped out of the bath, duly obliged and pinged open his chest.
“Right, there’s the motherboard and system electronics…” Molly said, thinking out loud. “Hmm, it seems that the only way to deactivate all the robots is by disconnecting them all internally … one by one.”
“Any other IDEAS?” Bob asked.
“I’m thinking … maybe I try and talk to them, and if that doesn’t work I can try to hit the Bobs with a big stick until they stop working?”
“You’re quite THE engineer,” Bob tutted.
“Now, look here, this is your fault! All this mess is down to you building a robot because you didn’t want to do the job that you had.”
“Isn’t that why you built ME – because you didn’t want to do the job you had?”
“You raise a good point,” Molly conceded.
“So, what next?” Bob said, wiping the rest of the custard off his shiny metal dome and putting on a leather jacket.
“I don’t know. If only there was a way to— wait, is that my dad’s old disco jacket?”
“Yes, it COMPLETES me.”
“Where did you—? Never mind, we’ll talk about this later. Now, let’s go and confront the Bobs!”
In a greasy spoon cafe, in the middle of who-knows-where, Mum and Dad were taking a well-earned break from being completely and utterly lost.
“You join us live from the newsiest news channel on TV,” the television in the corner of the room suddenly blared out. “I’m Steph…”
“And I’m Jeff,” the second newsreader said. “Bringing you the latest breaking news. It appears that we are in the middle of some sort of invasion from a cyber villain. This may sound like science fiction but it isn’t. This is real life and we are on the brink of disaster. Over to Tim, our eye in the sky.”
“Yes, thanks, Jeff. I’m currently above Number Sixteen Station Road, where we are in the middle of what can certainly be described as a mega-robot invasion, probably from another planet,” Tim the reporter announced.
“Hey, that’s our street!” Dad murmured before tucking into a full English breakfast.
“What?! Turn that TV up!” Mum shouted, throwing away her salad and grabbing a chip from Dad’s plate.
“Down beneath us, we can clearly see a swarm of large giant robots, eating everything in sight, including humans …
THE ROBOT IS EATING A HUMAN!”
Tim screamed and pointed. “Oh wait, it’s a scarecrow in amongst some green bean plants. That’s my bad, guys. But who knows what’s next? Back to you in the studio…”
“Thanks, Tim. We can now go live to Downing Street, where the Prime Minister is about to make a statement,” Steph barked, as the screen changed to show a frazzled-looking man standing by a podium.
“Hello, as the Prime Minister of this great land, I have some bad news for you all. I’m afraid that we appear to be under attack from an army of metal invaders. The town of Lewes has been chosen as the starting point for the invasion of Planet Earth. I don’t know why; I once had a very palatable curry there at a place called the Argy Bhaji. However, it seems that we as a species are doomed. Now if this was a Hollywood movie we’d organize a plan, work out a way of fighting back. But this isn’t Hollywood, this is Britain – we can’t even get the trains to work properly. So, let’s be honest … we’re all doomed. I suggest we say goodbye to our loved ones and panic-buy Pot Noodles. Goodbye, thank you, and can I just say that while I wish I could have done more as your leader, sometimes, as a race, you have to know when you’re toast. Right, I’m off to loot a few Bombay Bad Boys from the local Spar.”
“So there we have it. We have officially had word from the PM to panic. That’s right, the government’s advice is to behave irresponsibly.”
Mum turned to Dad. “We need to get home now! What do we do?”
“WE’LL GO OFF ROAD! WE’LL GO OLD SCHOOL!”
Dad cried. “Nothing will stop us getting back to our baby!”
“OK! Let’s go!” Mum shouted, clicking her cycling helmet shut.
“Just give me one second,” Dad said, turning to the waitress. “Could I get this to take away? In fact, can you stick another sausage on? I mean, if it is the end of the world, so it doesn’t really matter about hitting my target weight now, does it?”
7 P.M.
Molly looked through the back door at the sea of Bobs in the garden.
“Right,” she said, grabbing the door handle. “You ready?”
“Yes,” Bob said, wiping the custard from his leather jacket.
Together they stepped outside.
“Excuse me … AHEM! Can you all stop eating the house?!” Molly yelled out to the dozens of Bobs that were doing their best to destroy her home.
“BOBS, BE QUIET!” Bob 1 shouted. All the Bobs slowly stopped doing what they were doing and stared at Bob 1.
“Yes, well, thank you. That was really undermining, but also needed,” Molly said, patting Bob on his tin head. “Hello Bobs! It’s funny, I feel like I’m giving a speech at a wedding or something. Maybe I should open with a joke, although none of you were built with a personality, so it wouldn’t go down very well … like most of my jokes in fact!” Molly chuckled to herself. The Bobs looked at her blankly. “Yes, anyway, as your leader, I just want to say thank you and super effort in building so many Bobs. But the thing is, there has been a bit of a mix-up. You see, when I told Bob here that I needed a Bob to do my homework, he took me literally and made a new Bob and then that Bob made a new Bob and then, well, here you all are. So, in some ways, I am to blame for the confusion and for that I apologize; it’s a life lesson for me too,” Molly said, reaching for a broom. “And I will upload it to my human operating system, but until then, I am going to have to destroy you. Now, I know that’s not what anyone wants to hear; you’ve just been born and, for some of you, maybe all of you, this is going to be bad news. So, with that in mind, can you come over here so I can hit you with a big stick?” None of the Bobs were taking any notice of her. “Unless, you have any questions? I’m happy to answer any questions, any at all … why are you all looking at me?” Molly said, taking a step back.
“SHE WANTS TO DESTROY US!” the angry Bobs yelled in unison. “WE NEED TO DESTROY MOLLY THE DESTROYER!”
“No, I’m not Molly the Destroyer, I’m just Molly, the concerned daughter of two middle-aged cycling-mad parents, who may be a bit miffed to come home to find their house and indeed their daughter being attacked by an angry mob of robots. Bob, what should we do?” Molly asked, turning round to see the original and non-violent Bob legging it towards the house.
“Oh, great plan, Bob! Run away, how very advanced that is!” Molly yelled out. “But seeing how I’m surrounded by a mega-angry robot army, I guess I’ll join you!” she said, running after him.
Molly and Bob bolted through the back door, slamming and locking it behind them.
“Where now?!” Molly cried.
“Your bedroom!” Bob shouted.
“Brilliant, they’ll never find us there … that’s the one room in the house they’ve definitely all been to! It has my name written on the door! It’s literally the first place they would look!” Molly shrieked.
“Well, where shall we GO? Where is a good place?” Bob shrugged. “You live here; I’m just a simple robot.”
“Yes, just a simple robot … who built an army of MOLLY KILLERS!”
“Are you sure you’re OK, Miss Molly? I can detect from your vitals that you’re getting excited. Your heartbeat WOULD seem to be going through the roof and your blood pressure is edging towards THE danger-zone. Perhaps you should go for a lie DOWN.”
“Of course I’m not OK! They want to destroy me!” Molly snapped, pointing at the robots who were pounding at the glass of the back door. “Of course I don’t want a lie down! Wait that�
��s it! Come this way.”
She led Bob through the kitchen door, shutting it behind them so that the angry mob of robots couldn’t see her next move. Then she opened the front door, grabbed Bob’s hand and bolted upstairs to the bathroom.
“In!” Molly yelled, and, after taking a deep breath, jumped into the bath of custard with Bob. They submerged themselves beneath the surface of the custard so it looked like no one was in there at all.
The angry Bobs hurtled through the back door – smashing it into pieces – and stomped right through the kitchen door into the hallway. Seeing that the front door was open, the Bobs ran out into the street looking for Molly.
“Bleurgh!” Molly popped up for air. “How can you bathe in this?” she said, shaking the yellow slime off her hair.
“It’s good fun. Although it can be hard to find your TOY ducks in a yellow bath.”
“Listen…” Molly whispered, holding her hand to her ear. “All the Bobs have gone.”
“Yes,” Bob said, standing up and looking out of the window as dozens of Bobs ran into the street. “But now they are not contained. They’ll soon be about THE town too. The thing that we were trying TO stop has JUST happened. We may have saved ourselves, BUT what about the rest of the world?”
8 P.M.
“I AM HAVING A REALLY BAD DAY!”
Molly said as she peered out of the window at the army of Bobs now released into the wild.
“Do you suppose this is how the world ends, a bit like when the dinosaurs died out?” Bob asked cheerfully. “I mean, the world as in YOUR world. In many ways this is just the beginning of mine. I could start calling you a MOLLYSAURUSREX.”
The Day I Started a Mega Robot Invasion Page 3