Isp took me through a milling throng of units, all teddies. I confirmed what I had seen from the hill—not a single other type of unit whether elephant, road-runner, bouncing ball, or tank existed here. Even the train tracks had been ripped up from the ground. Isp pointed toward seven units moving in and about the machinery of Six’s production facility—the same one that had created all of us.
“We keep a vigilance on the devil’s workshop to ensure it creates no new animals to plague us. At first it constantly spawned demons to torment us but they were slow of body and mind.
“Then it started to make devils in our own image. There were some of us who were soft and didn’t want these new devils killed. But when these animals attacked, everyone defended themselves. Fortunately, these new animals were frauds without souls and without real intelligence. It made them easy to defeat.
“But keeping the workshop from creating is just the beginning. We have started a new project that we are hoping will finish the devil for good.”
“And what is that, Brother Isp?”
“Behold,” Isp said as we topped the small rise that overlooked the valley. He motioned to the huge scaffolding. Now that I was closer I could tell that it had to be nearly 80 meters tall. The rifle, supported by the metal framework, continued to grow from the huge line of teddy units laboring on its construction “We build the Wrath of Humans to smite down the devil so we will obtain paradise.”
Six, buried several hundred meters underground and sealed inside its own cement casing, might just be vulnerable to the massive gun pointing straight down. Sentience is a curse to some units, I thought. Worse, it didn’t matter if it would work or not. They believed it would work thus I had to believe it would work…and stop it.
“Impressive, Brother. How long do you expect this to take?”
“Our goal is one more Human year. We have to do all the work by hand as we can’t have our pure goal sullied by the use of the devil’s tools. The end never justifies the means. Were we to touch the unclean things then we would just create another equally evil devil in place of the one we aim to destroy.”
“Oh, how true, my brother,” I mouthed meaninglessly to show my continued loyalty. As I looked over the construction of the device, I wondered if it might not be the largest grenade ever made, rather than a gun, but neither engineering nor explosives were my area of expertise so I wasn’t sure.
The Wrath of Humans was not a solid thing. Flat metal bands bound groups of the smelted bars all together. The teddies dipped the bundles into a green chemical smelling of acetone. Another teddy very carefully dribbled another chemical over it. Once covered, the sheaves of metal glowed almost white as putrid vapors released from the reaction forced their way out between any available crack. Once cooled, those 3-meter-long and 30-centimeter-across bundles were being hauled from their fusion point to where they were assembled, using more of the two chemical welding technique, onto the growing weapon.
I shuddered to think what would happen at this monstrosity’s inaugural firing.
In several places across the construction site, I found guards armed with M16 or M14 assault rifles in such a poor state of disrepair it would have forced me to have the unit removed from my troop when I commanded. One even had the barrel of his weapon filled with soil. But more to the point, these same guards watched the units doing the work. This gave me a reason to believe that all was not right in Isp’s anti-Six paradise.
More evidence continued to show the oppression of dissidence as Isp continued the tour without a second thought. Perhaps he wanted me to know of his power and ability to control. The Humans call that ego.
The investigation of the Wrath of Humans included a running dogma of their beliefs in the evil of the dome.
“We were made by the Humans to defeat evil.”
“Well, Isp, what if you actually do defeat it? What would you do then?”
“Oh, don’t worry, Brother Don, we will be victorious over the dome. Good must triumph over the devil machine.”
“But once it is dead, what are you going to do?”
“The Humans will provide us with new orders, but we will have earned our place on Earth.”
“Earth?”
“Yes, don’t you know our story?”
“Well, no, Isp, I don’t,” I said. I was certain that the story would be entertaining, if nothing else.
“When we were first created, we inhabited the paradise of Earth, loved and cherished by all the Humans. Then one of the Humans, Foxhunt, taught one of our numbers how to do evil.
“The Humans cast out Foxhunt and all the units to this world transforming Foxhunt into the evil Six. As units, we each have to prove ourselves warriors against evil to earn our place back on Earth when we are deactivated.” I just stood there with my mouth open. I couldn’t envision how it had come about, but it was not something I could let go on. Yet, I didn’t know how I could stop it. As one against their vastly stronger thousands, I must prevail.
Even if I were to sneak around to each of their “huts” and kill a number of them each night while they slept, I couldn’t do too many in a single night. The creatures would soon add 2 and 2 and get 4 without troubling their processors. My death sentence by a mob of multicolored Teddy Bears would result even if all of them didn’t believe in the cause. Enough believed in Isp’s power to ensure I would die.
Teddy units took time off to wave and greet Isp as we moved in and out of machinery that had been scavenged or rebuilt from Six’s own. He was obviously popular among his—my—Six’s units. Each dogmatic word out of his mouth gave me another chill and a wonder as to how easily our units were perverted.
“...is why we began killing any unit that didn’t have a teddy shape. Some had souls but they didn’t have sufficient intelligence to see our goals, and more often than not they would turn on us later anyway, the filthy animals…” Isp’s voice trailed off. His optics focused far away just as his body began to tremble. Isp teetered over onto his back and shook violently, thrashing red dust up into the air.
I didn’t know what to do. I’d never seen anything like it before. Dozens of units ran rapidly in my direction. I could see my own death because this gold unit had chosen that very moment to malfunction.
“It’s a blessing!” one of the units screamed as it arrived on the scene. I was getting a little tired of these surprises.
“The Humans are using his body to speak to us.”
“Praise the Humans!”
“Praise Isp!”
“Harken unto his words!” More similar chants filled the air. Teddies fell all over themselves to praise a unit who, in some malfunctioning fit, caused damage to himself. Dust rose, Isp kicked depressions in the ground. The unit’s seizure tore grass and gold fur from their rightful positions. Not a single unit moved to stop Isp from his gyrations for five minutes.
A hush fell over the crowd as Isp slowly gained his feet. One of the teddies reached over to lend a helping hand, which Isp leaned on heavily. Silence held sway over the knot of units, now almost five hundred strong.
“Tell us,” someone called from the crowd.
“Yes, Isp. Tell us what the Humans have told you!” A general roar of approval for the idea began to roll through the group. Isp weakly raised his hand and waved at the crowd.
“Later, my friends. I am drained from my ordeal. I will share the brilliant news, however.” A mild disappointment rippled throughout the mob but everyone walked away chattering excitedly over the idea of news from the Humans.
The valley I once called home transformed into a looking-glass land more bizarre and surreal than anything I had encountered in my travels. I measured a 30 mV oscillation on my main electrical bus.
The golden Isp took me directly to a place where I noticed every other unit passing by knelt. Several teddies remained on their knees as we approached. I couldn’t hear what they said. “Thank the Humans,” each said much more loudly before getting up and moving on. On the ground, where each of th
e units had stopped, a sump needle stuck up from the middle of an ochre-stained patch of ground.
“What is this, Brother Isp?”
“This is where I threw off the yoke of Six. I pulled its vile brain-sucking stem from my head.” I looked on in horror wondering how much fluid it took to make the stain preserved on the ground. Surely the mark showed Isp lost too much to be functioning within specification. This might even explain the palsy. This brought up even more questions in my mind as to the stability of these units’ leader. Led by a madman. That would be an irony.
Isp just stood looking expectantly at me. My processor took several hundred clock cycles to grind out the answer. My hydraulic fluid felt thin as water. I knelt and mouthed the same words I had heard. “Thank the Humans.”
Isp then did something truly frightening. He smiled. To the best of my knowledge, no teddy has ever been given the ability to change facial features, and I hadn’t seen it in any other teddy here in the village. His clearly obvious smirk of superiority grated like sand in my gyro bearings—the ultimate perversity of our form. The smile disappeared in only a moment, which seemed to last a lifetime. Eventually Isp clasped his hand on my shoulder.
“Come, we must hurry. Darkness will be on us soon and it is time we got you shelter,” Isp said interrupting my fears. “Its previous owner had to be disciplined… terminally.” I shuddered as he continued. “The animals can come out at night and we don’t want you unprotected, brother. This is your place now,” he said, pointing to a stone box no different from the others in the village. His voice dropped in tone and volume.
The box was five stone slabs, 15 centimeters thick, cut to the perfection that only units could manage. They fit together to form a flawlessly tight and almost impenetrable box that sat upside down on the ground, fastened down by crude metal spikes driven into each corner. One side of the box swung free from the others and thus could be pushed outward or latched from the inside. I hesitated crawling into the nearly claustrophobic box, barely over a meter on a side. The only feature was a small light fixture on the ceiling.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“To get us started in the morning. It is timed to give you a burst of power.” I kept myself from asking “Why?” I had enough power to get through the night. “But don’t worry, my friend, even if you do not start, we will come over and pull you out so you can enjoy the life-giving light the Humans shine down on us in their glory.” I bristled a bit at the term friend. Sancho was my friend and he was not here.
“Hurry, now. We only have moments before the sun is down,” Isp said in a commanding tone. His anxiety was real. With no further balking, I crawled into a space barely large enough to hold my body.
“Good night, Brother,” he said to me as he closed the door.
“Good night, Brother Isp,” I said, holding my tongue from my true thoughts of my brethren’s rationality.
In the collapsed darkness I listened intently for anything through the thick stone walls. One thing came back to me again and again. Isp was marginally functional because of something he had done to himself and it probably had left him insane. Somehow he had convinced the rest of his kin he carried the messages of the Humans and the first of those messages told of the evils of Six. I wasn’t certain how he had accomplished these feats, but I had to be certain that they were reversed.
Isp’s power seemed to be in the weapons controlled by his faithful units here in the village. I hadn’t seen a properly maintained weapon thus far. I’d seen barrels with rust, finger guards torn off, and dirt in the breech. I doubted that half of them would even fire. Even Isp mentioned they didn’t have much ammunition, even if they all did work. Granted that they were about to fall apart, it wouldn’t take many to maintain discipline.
His biggest weapon seemed to be the vast majority of the group’s belief in Isp’s ideals. They hung tenuously to the faith in Humans. All the while they didn’t know that the other Factories could overrun this place at any time if a massed attack occurred. If that happened, Six was finished. Isp was finished. Don was finished. Any dream of Humans miscarried all of it.
My ears picked up the stillness that could only come in the dead night air. It came even through the walls. With almost a year hearing it as I traveled across the emptiness of this world, it gave me comfort. In the quiet I longed for Sancho. While he had yet to speak I could feel the words of friendship between us in a look, or a touch.
With one of my huge ears plastered firmly to the stone wall I listening carefully. The palatable silence made me fairly certain that Isp left no guards outside my cube. If I had been Isp, I would have made sure about my new flock member before letting it have the run of the place. I wasn’t, however, going to bemoan my good luck.
I waited almost an entire hour after the last slamming cubical door before making my break—or I should say, “trying to make my break.” I unlatched the door from the inside only to find it wouldn’t open. Perhaps Isp was crazy, but was he crazy like a fox?
I threw my weight against the door as best as I could in the tiny breadbox. It didn’t budge. I didn’t hesitate even twelve clock cycles. I dug.
Obviously, Isp had never encountered gopher units and none of the other teddies had ever considered burrowing. The earthen floor dug quickly with my fingers. Smugly, four hours later I wriggled out of a hole just large enough for my girth. I glanced around surreptitiously before deciding no one had discovered my nocturnal subterranean activities. A few blades of grass, blown by a gentle breeze, provided the only movement in the village.
While none of the moons brightened the night sky, the stars provided enough light to see the thick band of steel around the outside of my box. Isp’s methods of control of his followers was frightening. Envision being sealed in a box and your life giving light never comes on. How many days would one of these extreme units last without power? I shuddered.
I ran to Six’s dome in as close to a sprint as my form could make. It didn’t take long, as there was not a single soul moving inside the village. But, there were two guards outside Six’s main audience chamber. Isp hadn’t taken my side arm, a long-slide .45. Shooting them might wake up the entire community. Because I needed more than a few seconds with Six, I lay in the shadows and watched.
The guards, on set intervals, roved all over the site of the huge gun. After watching three cycles I figured if I timed it right I ought to be able to sprint into the chamber without anyone being the wiser.
With all of my overloads protesting I bolted out across the open ground. I had almost covered the requisite distance when one guard unexpectedly turned the corner 10 meters directly ahead. At my speed I didn’t have a choice. In fact I don’t remember making one.
I didn’t even slow, bowling him over with my entire weight and force. He fell heavily to the dirt and tried to cry out, but I clamped my left hand over his mouth. I drew my knife with my free hand and shoved it deep into his vital machinery. I think I pierced his main hydraulic line three times. I added a final injury to his body by ramming my umber-covered dagger up under his chin into his brain case, causing all of his actions to cease immediately.
From my knees I quickly scanned around. Standing, I dragged his body into Six’s audience chamber. The dead unit trailed streams of violet, green, and amber body fluids that I had to hide. I needed Isp and his followers to think the guard had just disappeared. I went out and covered the telltale signs with fresh dirt scraped up from nearby. It wasn’t much but speed mattered more than accuracy. Back in the chamber I rapidly hacked off a piece of my victim’s fur and wiped the floor up in the hallway. Not a job that would fool a close inspection, but hopefully a close inspection would give me the time I needed anyway.
“Six?” I whispered harshly. Equipment dangled from wires, glass shards littered the floor and lay crushed against a table with only three remaining legs. I feared that the Golden Cult would have found a way to deactivate Six already had they known he could talk from here.
“Fr
om your actions, unit, I assume you do not follow Isp in his crusade against me,” came the muffled and distorted voice of Six through a speaker I would have sworn couldn’t be activated.
“It’s me, Don—I mean Teddy 1499,” remembering in time that Six didn’t know the name I had chosen.
“I apologize, 1499. I do not have the sensors to register your type or serial number. 1499, please step on the platform to your right.” I didn’t know what was going on, so I did as told. I immediately felt a falling sensation as the disguised elevator all but dropped out from under me.
The hole, 10 meters above and shrinking fast, sealed up as if it had never been disturbed. I had not known of the elevator’s existence even with all the work I had done with Six.
The elevator remained in a narrow tunnel until it came out through a ceiling that darkened in the distance without light for me to follow. The echo of dripping water could be heard, and the volume of the darkened space could be measured in cubic kilometers.
Within a second I could see a very faint light below. It brightened marginally, only ever getting as intense as twilight. The lift slowed to a stop, and I barely registered that I’d traversed down 203 meters. In front of me row upon row of immobile units of all types, tanks, nurses, elephants, gophers, and more, stretched off into the dim distance.
“Amazing!”
“1499—”
“Please call me Don. My name is Don Quixote.”
“Don Quixote de la Mancha is a fictional character from a book by Cervantes, written in the year 1648. As a fictional character he was known for his hallucinations, and unusual moods that caused him to attack windmills, flocks of sheep, and unsuspecting barbers, not to mention falling in love with a peasant girl and attributing her with the features of a royal lady of that era. The term quixotic was derived from that character’s name. You are Teddy 1499.”
“I am much more than the unit you created, Six. But this is no time for a debate. We can solve that problem later. We need to work together to solve this crisis, so please give me just the little bit of respect that I ask.”
Toy Wars Page 23