The fountain of droplets, caused by the reflective fluid crashing headlong into the immovable stone, lent itself to a spray of tiny mercury droplets everywhere. The air was so thick with the heavy metal that when I arrived at even a hundred meters distant, my fur had coated enough to make me almost white in the silver sheen. Tiny rivulets of combining mercury coalesced seemingly out of thin air on the earth and drained back into the main flow. It was fascinating and somewhat hypnotic, but I had a mission to complete.
The chasm spanned 12 meters between shore and the tiny island. The other channel was 10 meters wide. With a little luck, I thought I could jump that far. Fully functional, I wouldn’t have worried—at overload capacity, my design could make a minimum leap of 15 meters. The performance of my damaged leg worried me. I couldn’t expect any thrust from the ankle, but if I leaned over and just pushed with my legs, I thought I might be able to make it. Then climb to the top of the rock and do it again across to the other side. It was worth a try. It was either that or walk along the bottom of that swiftly flowing liquid. I didn’t cherish that alternative.
I inched my way until I stood teetering over the edge where the stone had broken away. I had to thrust at exactly the right angle to get the most from my damaged leg. I intentionally leaned over forward, allowing my body processor to kick in. I launched with all the power my lower legs could produce. What I hadn’t counted on was that my left ankle, the undamaged one, pushed as well as my legs. This adversely affected the direction of my short-lived flight. I leapt in a cockeyed angle, 0.15 radians off my planned trajectory. Instead of landing flat on the large stone I fell heavily against one sheer side. I dug my fingers in, trying to get them into any anomaly in the rock. Unfortunately the rock’s surface had been worn smooth by the mercury’s constant flow. The rock had the coefficient of friction of hydraulic fluid on a metal ramp. Into the river I went. I had the foresight to turn off all the power to my damaged right leg as I remembered the basilisk trap just in time. With mercury being an excellent conductor of electricity, I would’ve shorted that line, draining my battery power.
The river tumbled me over and over, but to my great surprise I did not sink. I floated and bobbed up and down in the turbulent flow. This was something I hadn’t expected. My memory banks showed that when equipment went into a river it sank. None of Six’s units, as far as I had access to, ever attempted entering a river. We’d gone over it, under it, and around it, but never into it. Another blank in Six’s database, but that wasn’t my specific worry at the moment. The heavy fluid forced me along at a pace I could never have made, even running, but in completely the wrong direction. I had to figure out how to get out of this unsettling position.
The surface of the river seemed so calm, barely undulating, but in fact it was moving rapidly in many different directions. I set my internal gyros to emergency maximum. My tumbling reduced enough to keep me more or less right side up. My inertial locator told me which shore I needed to land on.
I carried in my memories something the Humans call swimming. It involved moving all my limbs in a way that moved liquid under and around me, opposite to the direction I wanted to travel. Without shame I can say that I didn’t swim well. After a time I did find if I lay flat on top of the mercury that I could rotate my arms. On the down stroke, I got some movement in the direction I wished to go.
For the first hour and twenty minutes it visually didn’t seem like I made any progress, then became more distinct over the following hour.
My shoulder gave a level three lubricant alarm. My wounded leg began to drag down beneath the surface rather than float, I surmised because it had filled with mercury. My gyros, struggling to keep me righted, steamed through their normal thermal vent in my ears.
Fortunately for me, my right leg hit river bottom only sixteen minutes later. I hobbled forward until I collapsed on the bank. I lay there quietly for several minutes, letting the heat radiate from my ears and my belly, where my gyros were located. Mercury leaked out around my splint rushing down the steep embankment to rejoin the rushing river.
“Level three lubricant alarm,” came the redundant message over my body interrupt line. I overrode the friction sensor on my shoulder joints. It would have to wait. I had nothing to soothe it.
It was time to be back on my way. Now nearly several hundred kilometers away from where I started my daring leap, the going would be long and the ground had to be retraced. More time lost.
I traveled back along my path, with only the river to guide me. No net concentrators marked my way. Because of this I ran on only internal battery power, which I hoped would get me back to the net. If not, the entire trip was for nothing because I would die—drained of electricity. My batteries would no longer keep my sump or processor functioning. Not a happy thought, but a reoccurring theme of daydreams as I walked.
On the second day the sky darkened ominously. Rain was not common in Six’s domain, but when it did come it blackened the sky like the coming of night, and drops of liquid mercury would fall. The drops varied in size from that of the tiniest fly, barely noticed as it gently landed, to those fully 8 liters large and impacting with the force of a runaway elephant. Neither the rainstorms nor the darkened clouds ever lasted long, but they made up for it in intensity.
I would have to either find shelter or risk the impacts. Unfortunately for me, I saw nothing that would afford me with shelter of any kind. As the first tiny silver splashes hit the ground, I lay down on my belly and rolled up as tightly as possible. My back had the strongest armor and by rolling tight I could present the smallest target. I watched as mercury fell in earnest around me in spherical platinum-white balls.
The rain got heavier and I’d been mercifully only hit with smaller drops, but I saw several drops that probably exceeded Six’s logs of an 8-liter maximum. They hit the ground, packing the earth into a very shallow bowl, and then the drops flattened out to the thickness of hair before shattering into a million or more tiny drops exploding outward from the center. The sound reminded me of a battlefield but with dull thuds and thumps instead of the sharp supersonic cracks of guns and rifles. Even the thorn grass took a thrashing. The rain tore it up from its shallow root systems in patches from the size of bullets all the way to larger pieces the size of my own body. The tall-grassed plain now bore huge mottled circles in the former unbroken waves of chaff like some horrific skin lesions.
In less than an hour, the merciless sky finally purged itself enough to allow the sun to shine through the thin air. I shook out most of the droplets still clinging to my fur before standing. My power requirements concerned me. My internal sensors insisted that I had another two or three days before I’d get back to where I left the powering signals of the net concentrators.
I began to doubt myself as I got weaker and weaker through the next two days in the most energy efficient mode of travel I could manage. The easiest gate I could manage resembled a waddle, not even bending my knees, only shifting my hips from side to side and letting my hip joint swing free. I’d started to despair over my own deactivation but I wouldn’t stop. If I dropped over it would only be because I physically was incapable of going on any further. I owed the memories of those I’d already killed to get me this far.
I shut down every unnecessary power system I could—body kinesthesia sensors save those needed for movement, color discrimination, backup gyro, olfactory and taste processing, even aural sensing. It helped but not enough as energy continued to bleed out of me to continue moving. Warmth radiated out of my torso. My middle felt cold without the warmth of the gyros and other exothermic reactions generated by my equipment.
On that next day the last few ergs were draining out of my batteries. I kept up a mental monologue that I had failed in the only real mission I had set for myself—the one that meant more than all the others combined. I was going to die and that meant the death of my creator and all those like me.
I programmed a heads-up display to watch the energy drain. Hours passed to minu
tes. Finally there weren’t even minutes left. The cold of my torso permeated even to my sump, making me wonder what temperature would freeze my sump fluid.
At eight seconds from failure due to power depletion, I felt the first tingling warmth of a power net. I thought my sensors might have been giving me low-power hallucinations. But to my joy they weren’t. As I walked on, I could feel the power increase over the collectors under my skin. I was saved. The Humans’ saved me.
After several minutes of storing power, my thought processes became more sober. I realized I’d saved myself, at least from power loss. I began ramping back up my deactivated processes and almost immediately discovered that I traded one threat for another. At the extreme range of my vision, an enormous battle raged.
My new CCT assured me the battle pitted the “good guys” and the “bad guys.” Nearly ten thousand units on each side hailed bullets, spewed fire, and hurled explosives at each other in a day that appeared to be the opening scene of Armageddon.
My natural first assumption was that the bad guys were actually Six’s units; however, my internal locator told me that they were in a place Six had never penetrated by several hundred kilometers. Not only that, but they were attacking from a direction where Six couldn’t have been. I couldn’t make the data fit any logical sequence. Six must have used units from my mold to move the lines out since I’d been away. It was the only thing my sump would process with any percentage chance of reality. I had, after all, been away a long time. I had a way to verify the hypothesis. I changed back to my primary CCT.
Had any wind blown at that time I believe it would have knocked me over. Instead of seeing Six’s units battling an army of our enemy, I saw nothing but enemy units fighting each other. Excitedly, I flipped back to my animal CCT and saw a field of good units in combat with bad units. With this new data my processor locked in an infinite loop for a moment.
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” I muttered to myself, breaking the Möbius loop of my thoughts.
The implications of what I had just witnessed were staggering. I decided this was a good time to clean out my leg as I had thinking to do. The data I’d just obtained meant there were at least two Factories other than Six. My world exploded in size and scope beyond anything I had ever dreamed. I knew now why not a single Human had wanted to believe their world was round. It required thought and soul searching. It just plain hurt when your world grew and changed. This made my mission all the more imperative. The fighting and the killing must stop—I had to save Six, only now I had two Factories to bargain with.
As I cleaned my wound, my batteries charged. My wellbeing told me I wouldn’t expire on the spot if I decided to run 50 meters. Through my new CCT, I watched the carnage below. The fight started almost even in materials but over several hours the good guys won by driving the remaining 22 percent of the invaders back. Thousands of deactivated and soon-to-be-deactivated units littered the battlefield in a scene hundreds of times worse than anything I had ever experienced, but for some odd reason I couldn’t get as emotional over units I still, somewhere back in my sump, tagged as animals.
Despite getting power, I was still not optimal. Many of my vital fluids were low, my batteries and Achilles tendon needed replacement. Below, I could get this done. There were herds of Nurse Nans and 60-centimeter-high wailing ambulances just waiting to perform the tasks I needed done. The risk that I might somehow give myself away warred with the risk of continuing without some attention. With my batteries full, I decided this was as good a time as any to put my façade to the ultimate test. Humans help Six, and me, if I was wrong. Sealing my leg, I walked the several hours to where the battle had taken place.
Not one unit took any special notice of me as I approached. Units milled about tagging the deactivated or in some cases first administering a coup de grace to those that still moved. I goggled at the dead. The salvage on this battlefield alone would have kept Six producing and repairing units for another three years at its current production rates.
I stopped at the closest dead bad guy teddy unit and pulled out its CCT. I figured it might just come in handy in the future if I had to go after yet another Factory.
One of the tiny ambulance units, its red and blue lights flashing, rolled up beside me and queried me over a local net it produced. There was a tiny bit of fear in me as it spoke. Would it order me to halt while it tried to tag me for scrap? Would it order all the other units to ride down on top of me to remove my menace? I hoped my mask was on straight.
“Unit status?”
With relief I forced down the slightly elevated voltage on my bus. The plan was working. “Lubricants type 2 and 3 low. Battery replacement indicative. Broken Achilles tendon. Outer shell damage,” I responded.
“Overall status and priority?”
This question stopped me for a moment. If I claimed too high a priority, I might be calling attention to myself, but too low a priority I might not get repaired for some time, making my presence conspicuous. There was no good answer. “Operational level 53 percent,” I said, lying quite easily to this animal. “Priority two.” I hoped that a two priority would be high enough to get me looked at very shortly. There were only four priorities above priority two: One, Critical, Mission Critical, and Direct Factory Order. This late after the battle there were unlikely to be any other priorities critical or above, so I only had to wait through the priority one cases. To my great surprise, the ambulance spoke up.
“Proceed immediately to Nurse Nan 87665.”
It submitted directions to the location, which I found without difficulty.
“I am in need of lubrication, battery replacement, and a repair for my damaged leg.” The Nurse Nan looked for all of my knowledge to be a Human female in an atrociously brilliant blue dress, sporting a white circle and a more normal red-colored cross on the front. Without a word it reached out and began filling the two lubrication nodes on my chest. I sighed as I felt the grease and lube hit those spots that had begun to rub metal against metal. It eased the beating they’d suffered for so long through this journey.
“Primary, first, and second CCTs not responding. Stand by for deactivation for CCT repair and leg replacement.”
Oops, I thought. I hoped the command authority given to me by Six worked with these units.
“Countermand. Do not deactivate. Clean leg wound, replace only damaged tendon and seal around temporary patch.”
“Affirmative.” My fears about mingling with these animals seemed unfounded. They took to my presence and authority easily enough. My only real fears now focused on running into one like myself who had autonomy. I worried even more that the Factory of these animals would note the presence of a power drain on the net that it showed no data on. In either case the probable outcome of such an encounter was less than pleasant.
Before I set the healer back to her work, I decided I liked the way the bone patch looked. It set me apart as a badge of honor in the tiny personal victory I had achieved entirely on my own. I had earned that wound honestly and would wear the scar proudly. Had I truly developed vanity?
It took nearly two hours to have the repair work completed. My leg looked much better with the tendon inside and the bone sealed to the rest of my skin. I flexed my foot and noted a 4 percent reduction in movement—minimal. It would have to do. The real surprise was my battery capacity. It was nearly 15 percent larger than it had been in the past, even when I had been perfectly new. This Factory must have made some improvements in energy storage. I was not displeased.
Two additional items compelled my attention before I resumed my quest. Fortunately, with all the raw materials of thousands of victim units nearby it was just a matter of finding what I needed. By now all the bodies of the fallen had been heaped into two piles, just as Six’s units would have done. The similarities made me wish, a little, to be back under Six’s direct control. Home seemed so far away. I killed that thought process quickly.
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I went over to the nearest stack of deactivated units and searched the pile for a Nurse Nan. There might not be any. Nurse Nan units were not very numerous on the battlefield and avoided conflict if it came toward them. In fact it was rare that they did become wounded as their extreme leg length gave them the advantage in running speed. I guess that great quickness didn’t keep at least one from a bullet as I found a donor for my requirements.
The arm of each Nan contained its working equipment. I used the stock end of a nonfunctional M-16 rifle to pound the lifeless arms until their shells cracked. A tiny hydraulic imbalance sent a shiver up the actuators in my back.
I could envision my own deactivated arm being crushed as I had so callously done to this dead unit. The lack of compassion showed just how far I had to go in my own internal struggles with these things called emotions. I put the thought out of my head and turned back to my duty.
I removed the Nurse Nan medical tools from their now exposed cavities. I looked at the panoply of cutting and cleaning implements intermixed with individual disposable pouches of sealing compounds, caps, and patches joined to a central hub like a ring of keys. I had promised myself I wouldn’t be alone again without the ability to repair at least some of my own damage. But then I had another need for the tools for I was once again going to violate the deactivated.
When the medic had worked on me, she also had “repaired” my basilisk trap. Intellectually, I knew I couldn’t leave my internals strapped to the outside of me, but I needed something that would suffice in its stead or I’d be a target again for any similar biologic.
I knew the anatomy of the teddy units better than any, so I pulled one of the several hundred unfortunates down off the pile.
“Interrupt,” a 50-centimeter, front-end-loader tractor, sporting a Toyco label, growled verbally. “Scrap must remain centralized for final loading. Please move back for reinternment.”
Toy Wars Page 13