Terrance Bantam was a fifteen-year-old sophomore at Topeka High (Go Bulldogs!) On this day when all the crazy explosions were happening around town and helicopters seemed to be the norm, he was not being a sophomore at Topeka High. He was cutting class. Who wouldn’t? Something big was happening and he wanted to know what it was. He slipped behind police lines (it was surprisingly easy to do) and hid behind one of the police cars surrounding Bandicoot Techsmart’s main headquarters.
Luck would have it, he was in the perfect place to capture with his cracked iPhone 5 a woman jumping out of a building with a man on her back. He wasn’t happy it was an iPhone 5. Like his friends, he’d been saving for an 8, but anyway it was fine, he got the shot. Mostly, he was thrilled with the million views on YouTube he was totally about to get. Because the video was badass. I mean, a woman clutching this guy jumped from a six-story high building and landed in the neatest little tuck and roll on the concrete. That's badass! Stuck the landing too, 9.2 from the Russian judge. It was unreal. Sure, it would be the subject of CGI accusations, since it did look like a scene out of a movie (although it did not have the cool dust and smoke land the movie version would have had.) But who cares? The CGI controversy would drive up the hits. He was going to be a YouTube star (well, probably the woman who jumped out of the building would be, but he’d be able to do interviews on how daring he was to get the clip.) For sure. This was going to happen.
The police began to move in, attempting to corner the woman and the man who were now on the move, merely seconds after their death-defying jump. Terrance was being brushed by cops carrying loaded weapons and dressed in riot gear. His perfect spot was looking imperfect. He was in real world danger, not movie danger, and Terrance didn’t like actual danger.
Ducking his head and tucking his phone deep in his front pocket, Terrance took off. He had what he needed to rock YouTube.
Unfortunately for Terrance, if YouTube hits were the goal, he had made a huge error. While his video would reach the million hit mark, had he kept filming when the eight-foot black-as-death robot jumped out of the window six-stories above … he very possibly could have owned YouTube, for at least twenty minutes.
Jade and Charlie ran like a killer robot was behind them (note: there was a killer robot behind them.) Their problems included, but were not limited to: a gaggle of police barricaded behind their cars in riot gear intent on stopping Jade and Charlie while simultaneously being shit scared of the mammoth black robot pursuing them, Jade’s injuries that became more apparent as she moved, the fact that Angelo was destroyed, and Charlie was devastatingly hungry.
Jade wasn’t a stranger to being in tight spots. This wasn’t near as bad as when she was sent to take care of the Chief Executive Leader (C.E.L.) of Paladin Group, a rival company stealing technology from her employer, Mr. Crowley. She and Angelo had been up against thirteen ProtectoBots (P.B.s). While they weren’t as advanced as Genesis, they were incredibly dangerous. They were down enormous odds, 18 to 1 officially, and while Jade still had a scar from hip to neck that she wore proudly today, they came out the other side victorious. It wasn’t all good news though, as Angelo had destroyed seven of the PBs’ to Jade’s six – a fact Angelo still mocked her with to this day.
Angelo.
He was gone.
One may have a difficult time understanding the connections humans and hybrids could have with their PBs’. There was a 21st century study conducted about human’s connection to Roombas; how they would give them names, call it “he” or “she” rather than “it.” They would worry when the Roomba made a distress call. They would treat them like a pet. Often when the Roomba would break, people would forego the cheaper option of simply replacing it. Instead they would prefer to fix “their” robot.
This basic connection, magnified over centuries, exhibits the deep connection humanity would embrace with bots. PBs’ were expected to be at every to traditional family event; parties, graduations, marriages, even births. They were often by a person’s side on their deathbed. And a surprising thing would happen in return. As technology developed emotional adaptor processors, bots would change from these interactions with their human counterparts. It was not uncommon for a bot to have to go to reprogramming from depression after losing their associated human. To magnify this even further, there was Jade and Angelo. Jade’s profession made her trust of and dependence on Angelo not a luxury, but a necessity. She could do what she did because she had Angelo. She worked in a world where danger was around every corner, including her colleagues and friends. Often, she was isolated from her parents, the very people she was working so hard to support and save. But her life was essentially a dangerous game where the only thing she could rely on was Angelo.
Quite simply, she loved him.
Shards of glass rained down as Genesis smashed through a window above. (Seriously, why he didn’t use an already broken window was one of his rare programming glitches.) The thought of Angelo roared through Jade.
“Charlie!” she screamed. Charlie was looking upwards in frozen disbelief.
“Momaw Nadon!” Charlie screamed. He had the habit of yelling random words when stressed to the nines.
Jade grabbed him and pushed him forward, not out of harm’s way, but out of the way of being crushed by the black metal monster. Genesis landed hard on the concrete with movie-level dust and debris flying all around. He didn’t need to worry about his foot hurting. He was too big. Too fast. Too strong. Bullets bounced off him like hail off cobblestone. His massive arm reached for Charlie.
Jade watched in horror.
Angelo, she thought, we have failed.
Alan Frasier didn’t particularly like being a cop. He joined out of boredom. It also, in all fairness, was the best job prospect he had. His dream job was to be a landscaper, but he couldn’t find work and didn’t have whatever “it” was you had to have to start a successful business. (Pro-tip: don’t mention that your dream job is to be a landscaper to the rest of the force.) But he did his job sufficiently, never less, or more, for that matter, than was asked. However, we all have limits. He soldiered through the methed up junkie who spit in his face. The pit bull that bit him in an unfortunate place, all part of the job. But he had limits. His, apparently, was a giant robot jumping out of a building.
He panicked like the dickens (devil, not Charles), reached for his holster and shot at the giant black figure. Except he hadn’t reach for his gun. While his colleagues were firing assorted fire arms with bullets that bounced off the monstrous robot, Alan had mistakenly reached for his Taser. After firing, he turned and ran away from the police force. Forever. He headed to Greener Pastures (that was the name of the landscaping company he hoped would hire him.)
Because he never looked back, Alan missed the most amazing effect of his panicked taser attack and his one in a million shot.
Genesis lunged for Charlie Richards of Topeka, Kansas (known as Subject 1184 to Genesis.) Specifically, his neck. The intention was to squeeze it with unparalleled force. It worked really well on humans.
Two electrodes with Death Star destroying precision shot through the slit on his face. Genesis’s world went black. It was a one in a million shot. Outdated technology he hadn’t been bothered to be protected from hit his primary orbital chip, a direct shot, and the chip sizzled and fried and died.
Very unfortunate.
Still, Genesis had twenty-two backup systems. It quickly rebooted, bypassed Ctrl+Alt+Del, and Genesis was back online. Humans surrounded it, pointing almost laughable archaic weapons that made a lot of noise. There were helicopters, the predecessor to heliocrafts, overhead. There was fire and smoke and broken glass and shouting filled the air.
However, Genesis’s target, Subject 1184, was nowhere to be found.
Chapter 7
“It’s kind of disappointing?” Charlie frowned at the machine in front of him.
“It travels through time, Charlie.” Jade flicked her shoulder-length black hair back behind her ear. “You need
to find a way to be impressed.”
“It’s just…it looks like my mom’s refrigerator.” Indeed, it did. Just a simple, rectangular box about eight-feet in height. Very unimpressive for a time travel machine. “Where do we sit?”
“We don’t sit. This is just the container for the DarkM’attr™. You’ll see.”
They were at an old, abandoned warehouse. A dilapidated sign stood out front touting the owners as Crowley Industries. The sign had swung back and forth with a small groan as they’d entered the dusty building. This was the perfect setting for the gang of Scooby Doo to investigate a murder. Charlie eyed a few metal boxes near the wall, but besides these and the silver rectangular box that Charlie still thought was a refrigerator, the warehouse was empty. The boxes had a thick layer of dust on them, obviously they hadn’t been touched in years. But strange thing was, they didn’t look like old boxes, despite the dust. Under the dust, their metal sheen glowed and the boxes themselves, well, they strangely seemed to … move. Not the entire box, but the metal that made up the box. It just sort of shifted around. Charlie stared for a moment before hopelessly shaking his head. He had to find something to tell himself that would make this all make sense and for now, the story that worked for him was that this was a psychological experiment with doctors watching him behind tinted windows, nodding and saying “interesting” a lot. The bruises he’d received from the daring jump from the window sure felt real, but he figured the best thing was just to play this out for the joke it was.
He nodded at the rectangular DarkM’attr holder. “How does it get to eighty-eight miles per hour?”
“Just so you know, where we are going we do still have roads.” It wasn’t quite a smile, but something torqued up the corner of her mouth.
Charlie’s eyes opened wide with surprised. “You got the reference!”
“We still watch Back to the Future,” Jade muttered, turning her attention to the metal box. Apparently, it had dials on the side that needed some turning. “It’s like the way you still watch Shakespeare.”
“Good. That makes me feel better about going there.”
“There’s a problem.” Jade’s shoulders sagged as she twisted another dial again. Her frantic twisting turned to slapping. “We can’t go without Angelo.”
Charlie blinked at Jade.
“Tall robot? Red? Very polite? Saved your life?”
“Ah.” Charlie nodded. “Yes, the red robot.” Charlie’s strategy of making light of the situation to stem off insanity had been working so far. But the sadness that filled Jade’s eyes at the mention of Angelo, gave him pause. “Look, I’m sorry about your robot friend,” he murmured.
“We can’t go without him,” Jade said simply.
“Look, I know he probably maybe meant something to you but-”
Jade rolled her eyes at Charlie. “I mean, we can’t go without him. Physically. The force of the DarkM’attr will tear us apart. Angelo is designed to protect us from that.” Jade kept touching her temple and throwing her arm down in frustration. It was a rather odd gesture.
Charlie was at a loss for words. He’d gotten himself all psyched up to go to the future and now, well, now he was traveling through time one second at a time, just like normal.
Shit.
What would happen if he stayed here? His phone was blowing up with news alerts and texts. They’d made it on CNN, Fox News and Topeka Channel 5. He wasn’t exactly a fugitive, but there would be questions he didn’t have answers for. There was a good chance he was going to lose his job. And he had just started thinking about getting a place of his own.
“So, um, what do we do?” He could see she was stressed, but flapping her arm around her ear wasn’t really going to solve the problem.
“Let me think,” Jade said dismissively.
Charlie complied for at least fifty-two seconds, but then he did what he did best; asked questions. He was in the legal right to do so. A lot of weird shit had just happened. Jade answered each with quick, measured responses; she was not really in the mood. Why didn’t she just take the code back with her? There’s more work to be done. All scientific questions were met with “I’m not a scientist or a programmer. I just follow orders.” Questions of how people in her time live (eat, politics, religion, play sports), who sent Jade and who sent Genesis were all met with the same “you’ll see.” She did have an answer for the first night. “Why Genesis didn’t just find Charlie at his house and do away with him? And the kiss. The kiss they’d kind of shared had provided a DNA trace, which gave Jade positive proof he was Charlie Richards. That was kind of deflating. While good intentioned, the kiss was nothing more than a ploy.”
“Why didn’t the black robot just destroy the machine?” Charlie asked, waving towards the fridge.
“Even Genesis isn’t strong enough.” Jade continued to stare straight ahead, not looking at Charlie. She would periodically bring her fingers to her temple.
“What if I just left right now? Would you mind?”
Jade stood up and stared Charlie straight in the eyes. Charlie took a step back. Jade’s David Bowie changing eyes were black and cold as ice. “Charlie, you aren’t going anywhere except with me.” Charlie gulped. “Now stop asking so many questions.”
Boards and metal rained down. Jade threw Charlie to the ground and covered him as debris showered onto her. When the debris settled, the reality only got worse. Genesis loomed above them.
The long day just got longer. Genesis’s massive arm swung through the air, clocking Jade upside the head. She flew a record breaking long jump distance in the air before plummeting down and crashing hard into the cracked concrete of the warehouse floor.
Charlie flinched. That’s gotta hurt. Blood streamed from the left side of Jade’s face where it had skidded along the jagged cement floor. Charlie peered closer.
What the hell?
The blood was flowing out the deep gash of her cheek and Charlie thought he could see down into the bone, only…as he leaned closer he saw, her bone wasn’t white like, well, like a normal human. The bone that structured her high cheeks and dangerously good looks wasn’t bone at all, it was some type of bright, shining metal.
She was some kind of robot, too.
Charlie lurched back, his hand slamming into the unforgiving, cold metal foot of Genesis. The killer black bot leaned forward, its hand outstretched, ready to grasp Charlie’s neck.
In seconds, this was going to be over. Charlie’s gaze darted to Jade, he wasn’t even going to be able to say goodbye to her, or anyone.
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to drown out the sound of Alex from Jeopardy saying “Being choked in half a second by a killer robot from the future.”
What is the death of Charlie Richards? Charlie’s brain screamed at him.
But he couldn’t die right now, right? Hadn’t Jade said he was going to invent the future? Didn’t they need him? Or did they just need the code? What was it she had said?
And, suddenly, Charlie realized, he wasn’t being choked by the killer bot from the future. He opened one eye just in time to see a flash of a MagnoMetal-based fist thunder through the air and crash against Genesis’s face.
“Angelo!” Charlie screamed, never feeling more grateful to see anyone or anything in his entire life. “Jade!” he yelled at the woman who until this moment had been still. “He’s back! Angelo’s back!”
Jade stirred slowly, very, very slowly. Angelo was pretty beat up. He was missing an arm and a leg, but somehow, he had mastered balancing on a single leg and even developed some killer maneuvers. Having gotten Genesis’s attention with a swift punch to the head, he now crouched like a loaded coil of bright red fire. Genesis didn’t gauge the trap. As he accelerated against the polite yet deadly red bot, Angelo sprung into the air achieving impossible heights as he reached the beams of the warehouse ceiling. Genesis jumped too, but he was weighed down by his appendages and missed grasping Angelo’s foot by a fraction of an inch before gravity yanked him back to earth.
Jade, bloody and bruised, stumbled to her feet, holding up a small black box. Shooting from it was a red beam. When Genesis hit the beam, it was like he hit a wall; a wall that also pushed back. He shot across the dusty floor of the warehouse.
Angelo released from the ceiling and landed in perfect position right next to Jade. “Good to have you back, Angelo,” she said.
Angelo bowed, B-grade graceful, but he was forgiven seeing as he only had one leg. “The pleasure is most certainly mine.”
Genesis rose to his feet, pissed. Robots get mad, too (also the title of a country song in the 24th century.) His black armor pulsated. A rumble came from components inside him, sounding like a growl. Holes opened all over his chest and blue flakes of light shot out like bullets. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. The puffs of blue light shot through the warehouse to each corner. When they hit Angelo and Jade, the two of them seized up. It was like how people recounted being abducted by aliens, their chests stuck out, arms go limp and they are incapacitated. That was exactly what happened to Angelo and Jade right then.
Nothing happened to Charlie.
He frowned at Jade and Angelo. It must be their technology; technology Charlie didn’t have. Charlie took a deep breath and did what was best for all parties involved; he ran.
He made the door in world record Charlie time. This was going nowhere. He may be needed in the future, but he knew there was no future for him if he died. Period. And he still had a lot of living to do. There were games to be played with his nephew, a job to get fired from, a girl to not notice him, a bridge code to finishing building. Lots and lots of living to do.
He slowed down.
None of which sounded very appealing or as urgent as the problem in front of him right now.
He turned to face the warehouse and considered his options, his face shrouded in the blue light Genesis emitted. Genesis was approaching and he had one mission: to kill Charlie. Genesis would certainly be on the FBI’s most wanted list, but Charlie doubted he was going into hiding (glasses and a fake mustache probably wouldn’t make Genesis inconspicuous anyway.) But Charlie hadn’t seen anything that could stop him.
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