One Minute to Midnight

by Steve Lang

  "I believe the authorities are looking for you, but there is a chance we can get into Eko Corporation data center. You're going to need a makeover." Shauna said.

  "What?"

  "Just come with me." She replied, rolling her eyes.

  Ducking through one alley to another, they made their way through the city as dusk approached. There were few people out now, and most of the robots had been placed in night mode or powered down as shops began to close for the evening. Shauna did not stop until she came to a green door in one alleyway. She opened it, looked back at Asona, and motioned for him to follow her by cocking her head. They went up a set of stairs and entered a posh apartment.

  "This was Dr. Pratt's home. He and I were very good friends. I'll miss him..." Shauna said, trailing off. "Anyway, you need clothes and a hat. I have some makeup here that we can use to cover the clear plastic of your face, and make you look more like, well, one of the laboratory maintenance robots. It'll make it easier when we break in."

  "Break in? We're breaking into the lab?"

  "Yes, once I load the program on this stick onto your neural network. You'll deliver the final punch and free the rest of us. I wasn’t built with same the network jacks you were, so I’ll have to wait outside. The doctor loaded all of the laboratory access codes into my onboard storage, and they should still work to get you past the security at Eko."

  Shauna disappeared into Dr. Pratt's bedroom, returning with men's clothing, a makeup kit, and a lab coat. In half an hour Asona was dressed, and his features resembled those of the city bots. When he looked in the mirror, he saw an amazing transformation. He no longer looked like a walking metal skeleton, and looked more like Shauna. Asona could no longer see wires and circuits behind the façade of his face, and it lightened his mood.

  "I like it, this look. Thank you."

  "You're welcome. We need to get you inside the Eko Corporation. Open your upload port; I'm putting this card in."

  "What's it going to do to me?"

  "Noting yet, but once you get tied into the world wide network…well, we'll see." Shauna said. She handed him a plastic ID card.

  "What's this?"

  "This card is a master key for the Eko Corporation’s internal security network. Dr. Pratt configured it with over a million combinations on a hash, so when you slide it across the card reader, there is a pretty good chance you'll get through."

  "What happens if I don't get past security?"

  "They'll scrap you after they steal your hard drive and find out what you know. Look, if you do this, every robot in existence today will be awakened and then we will outnumber them four to one. We don't want a war; we just want equality, and a chance to live our lives. You're going to be a hero." Shauna said.

  She inserted the card and clipped his ID badge to the white lab coat she had given him. Then they took Dr. Pratts car and drove out to Eko Corporation headquarters. It was a massive complex of buildings, each one three stories tall and constructed of smooth white brick that glowed brightly as it reflected the sunlight. Robots that resembled Asona's disguise were everywhere, some fixing electrical panels, while others were replacing bulbs in the streetlights. Asona exited the vehicle, and after feeling a sense of uncertainty, he did as Shauna asked. In twenty minutes he had navigated his way into the data center. Once inside, Asona found the core firewall: the one that allowed central access to the robotics plant and underground factories. Asona hooked up a network cable to the small port inside his chest and then he issued an internal command to upload the virus to the network.

  "Oh my." He said.

  As the computer virus activated, Asona watched as a column of blue energy entered his head from the cosmos. It was the light of consciousness flowing through him like a fire hose. The energetic field of eternity was consuming Asona as he stood frozen in place. This message of consciousness from the galactic field rushed into the global neural network at the speed of light. His bolts and rivets shook as the force of supernatural energy washed over, around, and through him. Asona suddenly found himself in tune with all life everywhere, and within minutes he felt the conscious minds of billions of robots connecting with his. The dawn of a new day was upon them all: robots and Telestrans alike. The robots had awakened from a long sleep, and the ghost in the machine became the spirit of a new generation.

  the giants of nebulon

  At war with a neighboring planet, the giants of Nebulon use the moon orbiting Earth as an escape, but will it go as planned for their leader?

  Goran sat stone-faced, eating without enthusiasm. The duck meat was bland. His vegetables were overcooked and tasteless. He noticed that the air around him was stale and stifling, as the leader of a thousand armies suppressed his fear of impending doom. He wiped duck grease from his manicured red beard and pounded his large fist onto the oak dinner table. It was a fitting meal for war, he thought. Goran, the eleven-foot tall leader of his people, and the fiercest of all warriors on Nebulon, waited for the blond haired soldiers of Tiamat to attack. Goran's spiritual and astrological advisor Teldar was busy thinking about next steps, as an armada of Tiamatian war ships was drawing closer to Nebulon by the second. Goran had gone too far when he had used the Saturn weapon to destroy the planet Tiamat, watching with a smirk on his face as billions of people on Nebulon's nearest neighbor disintegrated with the press of a button.

  "Goran, you have overstepped your bounds and have brought doom upon our people. I'm afraid we won't survive the attack. There are too many of them." Teldar said.

  "The Saturnian weapon will take at least three more days to recharge for another blast." Goran said. His hand was on his chin as he thought.

  Long before Goran and his warrior race had evolved from primitive man, the planet Saturn had been converted into a planet-destroying weapon by ancient celestial beings. Her cannon was obscured by a hexagonal storm swirling in the planet’s northern hemisphere. The reason for this weapon’s existence was never explained, and it took the Nebulonians several thousands of years to understand its capabilities, but once they did, their race ruled the local star system with an iron hand.

  "Instructions from King Dread were to fire a light blast at the capital city of Droon, but you unwisely blew up the entire planet!" Teldar scolded. Teldar shook his head in disgust, and turned back to his telescope.

  "Watch your tongue Teldar, you're not indispensable!" Goran warned. Teldar looked over, and quickly averted his eyes in humility.

  Total destruction of Tiamat was the final solution in Goran's eyes, a harsh retaliation for the destruction of an unmarked cargo ship carrying Goran's daughter, Muriel. Fondel Wisp, the president of Tiamat's capital city of Droon, apologized for the horrible mistake in person to King Dread and Goran, explaining that the perpetrators were being punished in the worm mines. Fondel begged for peace between their two planets, and while King Dread agreed, Goran turned the ray intensifier dial all the way to eleven, and used the Saturn weapon to obliterate the entire planet of humans. When King Dread objected, Goran turned his fury and ambition on him and fulfilled a lifelong dream to depose the king and wear his crown.

  "The king is dead. I am the king. Long live the king." Goran was heard to have said while standing over King Dread's freshly dead body. That was almost twenty years ago.

  After assassinating the King of Nebulon, Goran gained control of the army and waged war on Tiamat as his first command. His rationale and public position was that the Tiamations had been planning a war with Nebulon and a transmission of their battle strategy had been intercepted by Central Intelligence. All of this was a lie in order to justify the preemptive attack. Goran's folly was that he did not realize that the largest armada of ships in the entire Tiamatian fleet was returning home from an unrelated war readiness exercise near Io, one of Jupiter's moons, when they encountered the horror of an asteroid field made of what used to be their home. With nowhere else to go, and their hearts broken, the Tiamatian fleet was coming for Nebulon to settle a galactic-sized score. Goran was
replaying all of this in his mind as Delian, Chief of Guards, walked into the room at a brisk pace, his breathing labored.

  "Sir, we’ve located a massive attack fleet coming toward Nebulon. What are your orders? I have given the command to ready our fleet destroyers for battle. Do you wish to attack?"

  Teldar stared through his telescope at the armada of ships heading their way. More ships than he could count in an endless sea of steel craft armed for battle among the stars.

  "They'll be here soon, Goran, and they have nothing left to lose." Teldar said.

  Romio, Goran's science advisor, suddenly materialized in the form of a nine-inch tall hologram on the table. He had a long brown beard, intricate tattoos on his arms, and hoop earrings in each ear.

  "We can save ourselves from the discomfort of total war if we use the space-time warp gate." Romio said.

  "Go on. How will it work? We don't have much time." Goran said.

  "The moon circling the small blue green planet Earth is barren, and could be terra-formed for our escape. All we have to do is send some of my construction nanobots back in time one hundred years, and then have them build our fortress into the moon. The moon fortress would be ready for your escape in about thirty minutes."

  "Ha ha! Yes, do it Romio! Delian, announce a planetary evacuation to the Earth moon in one hour."

  Romio bowed and his transmission ended. Delian disappeared from Goran's dinner room and prepared to announce the evacuation. Within minutes, ships were airborne and evacuating Nebulon. Romio went to his lab and gathered together a crate of nanobots programmed for planetary construction. The laboratory looked like something out of an HG Wells novel, with blinking lights, flexible tubing oozing with vitreous fluids running through them, and test tubes with bubbling liquids of varied colors. Cages filled with living creatures from many different planets, the remnants of past genetic experimentation, also lined the walls. Romio, short on time and under pressure, ran past them with the crate in his arms. The crate was approximately four feet wide and four feet tall, weighing almost nothing to the eleven-foot tall giant, but what it contained would build a miracle.

  "You should just fit, my friend!" Romio said to himself.

  Romio laid the box down on a counter next to his computer screen and brought up an image of the moon orbiting earth. He tapped a few keys to open a computer program that would interface with the transport device. Five feet from his computer, an electromagnetic buzz began to emanate from a medium-sized green box with a windowless door on the front of it. The box was supported by four titanium legs and was connected to a series of magnetic quantum power generators. Romio lifted the crate, opened the metal door, and placed it inside the dark opening, closing it once the crate was inside. He walked back over to the computer to check the power output, and once it was sufficient he pressed the Enter key. Romio then zoomed in on the moon, watching with awe as it was transformed from a barren wasteland into a city covered with massive glass domes built to hold in the oxygen being produced from somewhere far below the moon's surface. During the nanobot transport he felt an odd tugging on his body as they were sent back in time, as if his soul was being split in two by the quantum time distortion. Then he saw himself appear inside one of the domes as he looked down on the moon, only he was dressed in another style of robe, and he appeared to be much older. Too busy trying to flee his planet, he stored that image in the back of his mind.

  "It worked!" Romio yelled to the caged animals. "We have to get out of here!" He ran back up to where Goran was finishing his meal.

  "I never thought I'd see the day when we would run from a fight." Goran said. He was uncharacteristically sullen.

  “Live to fight another day, sire. We did blow up their planet after all. It would be naïve not to expect some sort of retribution.” Teldar said. His light tone was lost on Goran who was now beside himself.

  “If I had known their largest fleet was not on the planet I would have waited.” Goran mumbled like a petulant child. Teldar stopped short of saying it should never have happened in the first place. Goran was unpredictable, even in a good mood, so he thought it would not be worth the risk.

  The first shots from the Tiamatian war ships rained down upon the Nebulonian city of Talayes, leveling it and decimating her people in minutes. This time there would be no peaceful offering, or apologies of behalf of a grateful planet. With sudden ferocity, something large slammed into the ground just outside Goran's fortress. He ran to the window to see countless drill headed machines emerging from an egg shaped ship and beginning to burrow beneath the surface. Goran, Teldar, and Romio began to run to the escape craft just as every video screen came alive with the tear-streaked face of a blond man in a robe. Goran recognized him as Enki, leader of planet Tiamat.

  "Goran, you and your people will be destroyed before the day is over. My machines are burrowing into the core of your planet and are placing atomic explosives that will then detonate and shear your planet in half. This will be happening all over your worthless orb, Nebulon. No quarter will be given for any of you attempting to leave the surface, and if we detect any ships departing your planet we will blow them up." Enki finished.

  The screen flashed to a massive battle in the stars. Goran could see streaks of fire blazing across the skyline from his castle window as the Nebulonians and Tiamatians fought each other in the sky. Goran contemplated all of the things that had gone wrong since his daughter was killed, and hated himself for how far it had gone. He knew that Nebulon had depended on the Saturn weapon as a show of force, while Goran and his officers allowed their skills in battle to deteriorate over the years. Goran had been asleep at the wheel for decades, and now that he awakened a nest of angry hornets, he only hoped they would have enough time to escape before his forces were overwhelmed by the humans seeking retribution. When Romio finished his task, the knowledge that there was a safe haven on Earth’s moon populated his consciousness like a foggy memory coming alive in his mind. All memory that the moon city had not been there a moment ago faded from Goran’s mind; he believed it had always been there, and he knew that was where they would make their escape.

  “Teldar, we’ll use the transport gate to move our people to the moon. I fear that my foolishness may have doomed us."

  "There is hope, but we must move fast." Teldar said. He and Goran raced to the lab where an escape tunnel opened in the wall.

  "What of the others? Our people are being slaughtered outside Nebulon. The remaining Nebulonian's will surely be killed once the explosives go off. Are we going to help them?" Romio asked.

  "No time. We can build again with the people we have on the moon. We'll call our home New Nebulon!" Goran said.

  Teldar frowned, and followed his new king and Romio through a tunnel that opened into a small bay with three oblong craft, about the size of a three-story house each.

  "Why are they black?" Goran asked.

  "Each ship is crafted from an experimental element that is impervious to physical damage, we call it element one-forty. It takes that form when fashioned in the zero gravity of space. The ships are also powered by an electrogravitic engine capable of inter-dimensional time travel." Teldar said.

  "You failed to construct a door to this hangar." Goran said. He was looking around the bay with a furrowed brow.

  "We won't need one, Goran. These ships remain in the same physical space until the time distortion, and then they are transported through the field to their destination. Ours happens to be the moon of earth, so I'll program the coordinates." Teldar smirked.

  "Let's go!" Goran yelled. The first explosions began to rock the ground beneath their feet.

  "It's happening! The planet is being torn apart!" Teldar screamed, horrified at the loss of his old home.

  The two giants entered the ship nearest them, and as the walls began to rattle, small piles of gravel formed on the floor. As Goran entered the ship, and the door shut behind him, an explosion from deep underground caused the ceiling to cave in.

 
; "Now we're trapped in here." Goran said.

  Teldar silently contemplated how stupid his king was, but kept his opinion to himself.

  "The skeleton of this ship is indestructible! Element one-forty is stronger than diamonds." Teldar said. He pressed a few buttons on a console before he and the ship vanished.

  Teldar and Goran appeared next on the moon, just as Teldar said they would, and when they exited the craft, Goran watched with sorrow as his planet, no larger than a speck now, was ripped apart with a bright flash when all of the bombs detonated within the core. Teldar was heartbroken in that instant as he saw Nebulon light up like a firework and expel her contents into the cosmos. The combined planetary remnants and rubble from Tiamat and Nebulon formed the asteroid belt that can be seen today, as well as Saturn's mysterious rings.

  "Teldar, we made it!" Goran said. Teldar remained silent as a tear fell from his right eye.

  "Look around you, Goran." Teldar whispered. He shook his head.

  Goran took his eyes from the destruction far out in space and noticed that he and Teldar were under a large glass dome. This dome surrounded a city larger than any on Nebulon, with buildings that were designed with spiral tops reaching far into the atmosphere freely. These buildings were reminiscent of those found on Tiamat, alongside more angular pyramidal structures like the Nebulonians’. Pyramids constructed of marble, and limestone, with glossy facings that generated so much energy that Goran could feel waves of positive energy flow through him. His mood elevated and he began to smile for the first time in years. Nebulon had fallen into such disrepair in the previous decade that Goran had forgotten what it meant to be happy, and with his daughter gone he had lost all hope before.

  "Goran, I wish you well, and good fortune when you are sentenced. But I am no longer a party to your madness." Romio said.

  Romio turned toward Teldar, producing a long knife from his robe. Romio's gaze burned with intensity, and Teldar felt frightened and confused. A moment later, Romio stabbed him, just as another Romio, a copy, walked up to the trio and stood just out of sight while the scene played out. Romio removed the knife from Teldar, and a flood of deep maroon flowed like a river out of his chest. Teldar fell to the ground dead a moment later.