Toy Wars

by Thomas Gondolfi

  “You will be Sancho Panza, my good and faithful squire, and I am Don Quixote on a quest for my fair Dulcinea.” It fit. I often felt like I must have lost my mind on this silly attempt to save Dulci…I mean Six. Tilting at windmills seemed my specialty. Personally, I was thinking perhaps Don Quixote had it easy as windmills would be easier to defeat than convincing a Factory of anything.

  “I don’t know if you understand me, but you are Sancho. Good Sancho,” I said, stroking the elephant’s trunk again. I fell asleep wrapped up in the trunk like I was climbing a very thick rope.

  I told Sancho of his Human namesake in the tales originally crafted by the Human named Miguel de Cervantes many, many years ago. They told of deeds of great friendship of a squire to his slightly batty master. The more I told the tales, the more I really felt the names were justified. I don’t know that Sancho understood a single word I told him, but his big, floppy ears did pick up whenever I said his name.

  The very next night, I woke up to find Sancho missing. Puzzled, I followed his footsteps in the earth once more. It took only an hour to find him a few kilometers away, standing still and looking out toward the horizon. I couldn’t understand why.

  “Is there something I need to know about, Sancho?” As usual I got no response.

  “Can we continue our mission?” Sancho looked up at me but didn’t answer, but followed when I lead off.

  Three more times in the next two weeks I tracked my wayward comrade first thing I woke. He never wandered far, but it often took me several hours to track his heavy footprints to where he inevitably stood staring off to the southwest. The third time he stood in the center of a group of black and silver-streaked vines growing up a rock face. Whatever Sancho’s reason for trundling away, he also provided the solution. I took a 50-meter length of the stout-looking growth.

  That next morning just before I turned off my cognitive functions I tied the heavy vine around Sancho’s neck. The other end went around my wrist before I dropped off. Sometime near noon, I started awake as my arm jerked nearly from its socket. My head banged hard against a large rock as my body dragged along, being abused by stiff flora and the occasional low spot in the ground. The damage was minor but cumulative.

  “Sancho, stop!” He didn’t. “Halt.” No effect. I formed a local net and ordered him over his CCT, again with no results. I struggled to my feet, by running at the same time as I got up. “Stop, you overgrown tub of lard!” I busily disengaged my hand from the tether. “Quit moving!” I reached out and kicked him in the hindquarters to get his attention. Just as suddenly and abruptly as I had been awoken, Sancho stopped. He looked at me, and then lay back down on the ground.

  I just stood there staring at him. He obviously knew nothing of what he had done. It wasn’t possible for him to disobey my net command, or at least I didn’t think it was. Something else was at work. My systems complained of wear and abuse. Instead of figuring it out, I collapsed back against my charge and fell asleep.

  Even ignoring Sancho’s desire to occasionally take a walk in the middle of the day, he wasn’t the easiest companion. He’d sometimes be chafing to get started in the evening, and other times I literally had to drag him meters to get him moving. Several times he stepped on my foot (intentionally, I was sure) when he wasn’t happy with a decision I had made or my choice in discussion topic of the day. More than once I cursed the day I’d reactivated him.

  On the plus side, he stopped and trumpeted a number of times during our march. Only one of these times did I find something that could have obviously been dangerous, but I had learned my lesson, and fairly cheaply at that. Sancho had my total attention when he chose to make himself heard.

  In addition to this, Sancho made a wonderful pack animal. I modified my backpack so it would stay on his back. By putting my extra equipment on him I sped up considerably and it slowed him not at all. My tiny command was better off as a result. I still carried my submachine gun and knife. I was not going to let Sancho be the one to defend us. After all, I was Don Quixote of La Mancha, knight and slayer of giants—not to mention the odd basilisk.

  “Look up there, Sancho,” I said one early morning two weeks later. “It’s the peak of the mountains. Once we are on the other side we probably won’t have to worry about our power levels so much.

  “If we rest anywhere along here this morning, the shadow of the peaks will impact our ability to recharge. I say let’s push on to make it over the top this morning.”

  A tiny, silver puff of cloud raced over the top of the mountain ridge as the sun rose up enough to reflect light off the vapor. The way it jumped the mountain made it look almost like a thrown grenade. Two more and then dozens of the tiny clouds soon followed the first. They flew over the peaks like cars racing up a ramp, shooting off into the air for a few precious seconds of flight. Then the trickle of tiny cloudlettes turned into a stampede of larger ones, each nudging the other for room to clear the mountain hurdle.

  Within minutes they no longer had any delineation between them, becoming one huge cloud led by millions of fine, wispy tendrils, like the finest fur on a teddy unit in a brilliant white.

  The ponderous structure, unable to sustain its own bulk, broke in a wave across the hill in a slow, majestic curl. It appeared as if millions of metric tons of the silver-red vapor were going to crush us under its mass.

  “Ferweet!” Sancho offered looking up at the huge formation.

  “Uh-oh!” I quickly tied my vine rope to Sancho’s neck. Well practiced as I’d become, the haste I felt definitely led to some botched motions.

  The swell splashed in slow motion over the crest of the mountain. As it descended upon us, the burgeoning day turned rapidly to inky blackness. No time passed from being bathed in the warming sun to being swallowed by midnight’s dark, cold arms.

  It was dark. Not the dark of night but even darker. Even in the blackest night the starlight and moonlight gave me the ability to see very clearly. My vision couldn’t penetrate the cloud bank that engulfed us. I felt the beginnings of a breeze. My memories contained references to such storms. We were in for a bumpy ride.

  The winds, gently at first, barely ruffling my fur. The gusts became more intense, bursting against us strong enough that it became more difficult to stand still.

  “Ferweet!”

  “Hang on, Sancho.”

  The strength of the winds picked up even more. A small rock pelted my chest, tearing out 3 square centimeters of fur. I struggled over to my companion. “Lie down, Sancho. Get as flat as you can.” While I couldn’t see him, I felt him hunch down. I lay next to him as plant material and flecks of dirt sandblasted our hides. I cut the pack off of Sancho’s back, crawling up to put it over his face to protect his optics. I held it there and pressed my own snout against his chest, presenting my back to the airborne debris.

  The blustery weather gained strength into a gale. The gale raged into a tempest. Violent explosions of light and sound punctuated the squalling wind. Slowly, we were being slid along the ground. I flatted myself even more until we stopped. Deposited by the winds, dirt built up against my back and arms. Twice that morning I felt larger objects hurtle against me. One snapped hard against the smallest digit of my left hand, crushing the joint. The second impaled itself through my left thigh. I could do nothing about either injury while the fury of nature vented around us. All I could do was wait and hope.

  The feeling of impotence tore at my thought processes. How could I fight the substance of the air? Several hours of grinding my processor at high voltage levels caused an epiphany. I would never be able to control everything, no matter how much I wanted and needed to. Weather and Factories would do what they willed and I must find ways to deal with both or relax to the inevitable.

  By the time I’d reached this flash of genius, the storm had slaked its taste for violence and slowly wound down. Already I measured a 33 percent reduction in the wind speed and estimated a 70 percent reduction in danger. Oddly, we never received the deluge of
rain I expected, and for that I was truly thankful.

  My pillow twitched.

  “Hold on just a little more, Sancho.”

  Two more hours I waited before I dug my way out of the earthen igloo that surrounded me. The damaging wind reduced to the barest of breeze, a refreshing change. The storm hadn’t completely vented all of its fury as the black, red, and silver mass moved beyond us. Brilliant flashes of lightning flared from the malignant mass to the ground with astonishing regularity.

  It didn’t take the perception of a Nurse Nan to find a wooden splinter of wood 3 centimeters wide, sticking 4 centimeters out the front of my thigh and 22 centimeters out the back. I inspected the wound and found no leaking materials. Yanking hard with one hand didn’t dislodge it. I took both hands and put maximum strength on the attempt to remove. Again it stayed firm. I decided to ignore it as best as possible for the moment.

  I dug Sancho the rest of the way out of mound. As I did, I inspected him for damage. With the exception of some missing fur, he seemed completely intact. Sancho stood and shook back and forth, creating a crimson cloud of fine dust around him. He returned to his normal pink background color.

  “Good, Sancho. Listen, I don’t know if you can understand me, but I need your help.” I lay down on my stomach and pointed to the wooden skewer.

  Sancho didn’t even hesitate. He waddled up next to me and wrapped his trunk twice around the pole and in a single jerk removed the entire length. One more point for my comrade.

  I searched the gaping hole for leaks. Finding none, I crawled a meter back to the mound of earth and dug down to my pack. Shaking it free of grit, I dug in for some of the armor patches. Positioning them just beneath my fur, one ceramic patch covered each hole, entry and exit, nicely.

  My hand damage rose to a higher plane. The finger was fully dislocated. This paled into insignificance next to the fact that the joint itself looked like a pretzel. That finger would never again inhabit that joint. Without the entire digit being replaced I’d have to suffer with the injury.

  “Well, that was exciting,” I mentioned, as I turned off the bit that controlled my damaged digit so it would remain immobile. “I think we should hurry over the summit before we have to sleep in the shade.”

  The last kilometer wore heavily on the batteries. We scrambled up 70 degree-plus slopes, only making any headway because of paw- and trunk-holds in the weather-fractured rocks. By the time we reached the crest, the sensors on my hydraulic fluid complained bitterly of overheating, but the interrupt never entered my thoughts.

  For all the spectacle and power of the storm earlier, I daresay I have never seen a more reason-stealing sight. A great expanse of shining, undulating silver stretched before me—an ocean of mercury floated below so wide I couldn’t see either end or the other side. Bays of mercury, each large enough to swallow the entirety of Six’s valley dotted the shoreline like leaves on a tree.

  Never had I seen such a large body of mercury in one spot. It wasn’t rushing to be elsewhere in a hurry to find another home, it just was. It exuded a feeling of solid immutability. This sea lived on no matter what happened to us transient units—it lived over all times. It took me eighty-five minutes to take in the awesome magnitude of the metallic sea and forty-six minutes more to begin to be able to function in a reasonable way.

  “Wow,” was all that came to my mouth.

  Near the extreme limits of my vision, to the east, a column of silver and black steam rose from a conic island into a permanent ebon cloud in the sky nearly as large as the ocean itself. The island, obviously a volcano, lit up even the day like a magnesium flare of garish red. Dante’s Inferno looked pale by comparison.

  I don’t know if the entire scene affected Sancho the way it did me, but we both just stood rooted in place. Eventually, I managed to sit and regain some level of control. When I did I remarked at the power of the sun beating down on us.

  “We need to stay here for at least two full days to recharge, Sancho. We’ll have plenty of time to gawk.”

  Partner

  The two days went quickly. Every time I thought I’d seen everything, something new would appear.

  The great cloud mass ebbed and flowed over the sky, remaining mainly over the center of the ocean but occasionally sending threatening tendrils over different shorelines as the winds directed. When I put those tendrils in their proper perspective, the incredible storm we’d witnessed just days before was just the broken off tiny nub. Thinking of all that power caused me to develop a shudder in my balancing subroutine. I zeroed it out but couldn’t stop the very slow but steady ramp of my main bus voltage.

  Taking my processor off that process, I detected additional movement around the volcanic island. Zooming in to my maximum magnification I saw what looked to be masses of balloon like flyers darting in and around the caldera, being thrown around by the thermals as they seemed oblivious to the slashing rain. One of the dark figures darted down through the smoke and ash to land on the back of another. Both of their balloons deflated suddenly and together the barely visible pair spiraled down into the fiery heat below. It happened again and again. I began to realize these weren’t units, but biologics performing more of the craziness that defined them.

  Later on the second day I watched as three massive biologics slithered up the mountain we sat on. They looked like python units. From their distance, I could extrapolate that they were 30 meters long and 2 across. After making their way to the top of a steep slope they rolled up into an 8-meter wheel and cast themselves down.

  “Why would they do that, Sancho?”

  Whether I was just taking too long, or whether Sancho was tired of waiting, he finally began tramping down the other side of the mountain range. After putting away my awe, I applauded my companion’s practicality. The ocean was yet a long distance away and we had no more time to lose.

  “The game is afoot, Sancho!”

  On the way down, I directed us to the hill where the wheel biologics had spun down. At the base of the hill I found the desiccated corpses of the strange creatures. A cursory inquiry showed very little other than a large number of unexplained eye-sized holes all over the snake’s skin.

  “What do you think, Sancho?” I asked, lifting up one end of the bizarre creature. My friend said nothing. In fact he didn’t even look. Oddly, without saying a word, Sancho communicated a great deal. This investigation distracted me from my primary mission. I dropped the tail and got my furry tail moving again.

  It took ten hard days of travel to make our way down to the edge of the colossal metallic ocean. Waves of mercury lapped gently upon a red, powder-fine sandy shore. Tiny clouds of dust billowed up in our footsteps. At times, with the wind from the right quarter, it was almost impossible to see through to the next step. This could have been passively dangerous because of the obstacles.

  Carcasses, both animal and vegetable, littered the beach at random intervals. So badly were some of the bodies decayed, I could only guess as to their original forms. Others bore striking resemblance to creatures out of Human taxonomy—fish, kelp, mussels, and shellfish of several varieties. Not only did I not feel any need to investigate these corpses, I felt an anxiety to leave as quickly as possible.

  Silver waves lapped at my feet. I didn’t delude myself that I could build any craft that would go across it, especially with the excessive weight of my comrade. According to my estimation, the other Factory lay directly to the south of us, across that great breadth of silver. Left or right? East or west?

  “So what do you think, Sancho? Should we brave the dangers of the wicked giants of the west, or plow through the evil dark armies of the east?” I asked in a form as true to my namesake as I could manage. “I really don’t see an advantage to either direction.”

  I was going to mentally toss a coin when I noticed Sancho’s input. While Sancho had still not talked he could be amazingly graphic with some of his motions. In this case he left no doubt. He had already started walking east without me.
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  “Ahhh,” I said, dumbfounded. I was about to object when I realized how little information I had. If he felt strongly about a specific direction, why not follow his lead? He had been right before on information I couldn’t see.

  Trust was hard for me. I had to work on it. I didn’t even truly trust Six, my own Factory, but I was learning to trust my friend, a 1.5-meter-tall pink and purple polka-dotted elephant who couldn’t speak.

  “Lay on, Macduff, and damned be him who first cries ‘Hold! enough!’” I called out as I hurried to catch up.

  That first night next to the beach I learned a very important lesson. So caught up in our travels and the marvels around us, we traveled well into the day. In fact, with midday nearly upon us, Sancho sat down and wouldn’t go further. I realized then just how far into the day we’d come.

  “Sorry, friend. Let’s grab a sunspot and charge.” As was our habit we lay down in the sunniest place we could, in this case directly adjacent to the lapping mercury.

  Some six hours later my timer wakened me, just as the sun passed over the horizon. Instead of finding myself on the beach, I floated on my back in the ocean about 400 meters off shore.

  I panicked at first, trying to sit upright, but instead tumbled. When I finally relaxed, my body righted itself. I bobbed in a gentle up and down motion that caused an odd feedback in my balance subroutine as my gyros tried to fight them. Shutting down my gyros and ignoring the sensations, I realized I could neither see nor sense my elephantine companion. Then I realized that the rope I used as a tether still hung from my wrist. The braided vine traveled straight down, directly out of my reach.

  Sancho was well under the mercury and by the length of the tether, he lay at least a full meter out of my reach.

  “Sancho, can you hear me?” I called out loudly as mercury would keep any local net I could put up from reaching him.