The Worst Man on Mars
Page 6
And here it was that repair-bot Zilli was about to unwittingly find herself. She had been trudging for what seemed like hours across the Martian sand, searching, searching for the Other Place. It was critical that she found the robotniki and her anxiety at being lost began to gnaw away at her.
As she tried to retrace her steps she became distracted by a light in the evening sky. A bright light, brighter than any star, triggered new sensations of wonder and joy in her evolving AI emotions. For its appearance could mean only one thing.
Excitement fuelled her headlong drive towards the star, heedless of the sharp drop into the canyon ahead, her optics fixed on the heavenly glow. It had to be the Ion Drive of Mayflower III, heralding the humans’ imminent arrival. Electrical palpitations pinged backwards and forwards within her breastplate. This is it, she thought, the moment she and her robot colleagues had worked for five long years.
The robot’s motors squealed as she dug herself out. Fortunately, damage was minimal. A shy spider-bot poked its head from beneath her back panel and, coast clear, scurried out to polish her casing with eight tiny dusters, restoring her natural sheen.
Zilli engaged forward gear and headed down the sand-dune, but what she saw in the darkness at the bottom made her slam on her brakes. Her optics, aided by her full-beam headlamps, scanned the dark canyon, taking in the eerie graveyard of mechanical components strewn ahead. For a full minute she stood stock still, gazing in wonder at the variety of items, all vying for her attention. In human terms, the feelings that flooded her developing AI brain were akin to those of a chocoholic in a sweet shop after an earthquake, with every shelf covered in broken Easter eggs, and no shopkeeper in sight.
Momentarily she dithered, unsure where to start, but then her crisis-response program kicked in and she lurched into rescue-and-repair mode. Not having a high degree of intelligence, Zilli assumed that the assorted mechanical parts all belonged to a single robot that had befallen some mysterious and terrible fate. Deep in her core a voice was calling her to reassemble this fallen comrade and restore it to its former glory.
Lights a-flashing, she launched into action, pulling the dispersed fragments into a huge heap in the middle of the canyon, occasionally weighing down the lighter pieces to prevent them blowing away. Then she set to work, her Swiss Army digits a blur of activity, and began connecting the items together. She plugged RS232 cables into RS232 sockets, attached USB devices to USB ports and inserted cable jacks into cable outlets. She plugged together whatever could be plugged together, straightened out whatever could be unbent, reattached whatever appeared to have dropped off, and bolted together whatever, in her limited AI opinion, needed bolting together.
She laboured throughout the icy Martian night, working precisely and with indefatigable optimism. Gradually, the construction grew both in size and complexity while looking remarkably viable.
Then, as the sun was rising over the Martian horizon, she encountered an item that presented something of a challenge. It was less rigid than all the other components; made of white, floppy material, with several gaping holes. Any human would have recognized it instantly as a pair of gentleman’s well-worn long-johns and would have set to puzzling how such an undergarment might have arrived on Mars. For Zilli, the puzzle was where to stick it; there was no obvious place to attach it, or plug it in or bolt it on. After much pondering and searching of her small-parts database and scooting this way and that in search of a suitable attachment-point, she had it figured. The item was some kind of double pronged windsock, specifically designed for the blustery winds of Mars. A vacant flagpole presented the most obvious solution. After tying the waist drawstring to the pole she stepped back a few paces to admire the underwear fluttering in the stiff breeze.
Zilli worked for six more hours, and by the seventh, when she felt she had completed her task, she surveyed her creation, a sense of pride swelling beneath her breastplate. To her simple mind, it was good. Towering six metres above her, looking magnificent in a monstrous, twisted sort of way, stood the Frankendroid – a composite robotic creature, like nothing a human engineer would ever, could ever, have designed.
But would it work? Would it come alive? She attached her jump leads to the worn terminals on its massive battery pack and crocodile-clipped the other ends to her own Lithium-Air Featherlite cell. A starter motor clicked, but nothing else happened. The ancient logic chips and electrical connections, covered in dust from decades out in the open, refused to respond. Unperturbed, Zilli unhatched her cleaning-brushes and spent a further two hours methodically removing as much of the dirt as she could, unplugging connectors, polishing their ends and reinserting them.
Then, she tried again.
This time a light flickered and, deep inside, a drive engaged. A brief, but annoying, tune played. More lights flickered. One of the cameras, perched on a tall pole at the very top of the Frankendroid, swivelled with a screech, pointed itself at the Sun, opened its shutter and exploded. A solar panel started to vibrate for no obvious reason. And a rover-wheel, which Zilli had seen fit to attach to the roof of what had once been Opportunity, started to spin. Smoke issued from several of the life-detection instruments and one of the digging arms started to dig with a nerve-fraying grinding noise.
Zilli squirted a few drops of 3-IN-ONE oil between two flange plates on the monster’s back and the grinding noise quietened to a repetitive mouse-like squeaking as the machine continued to dig away at the Martian soil.
But that was all it seemed to do. Just dig. Zilli watched, a little disappointed.
Then, she detected an ancient signal-initiation protocol.
Zilli perked up and relayed her name, model, serial number, and comms frequency. She returned the question,
The Frankendroid seemed to think long and hard about its reply, perhaps struggling to work out what indeed it was. Finally, it blasted its response from the pair of powerful transmitters Zilli had wedged into the centre of a large iron hoop.
it roared, with a heavy accent from a Soviet MARS lander component, so badly distorted that the transmitted message came across as ‘I AM THEV IKING OFE ROBOR.’
Fortunately, the repair bot’s language processor had voice recognition capability, although it was only as accurate as the Taiwanese engineer who had programmed it. And Kun-Fang Wu had placed rather too much reliance on his pocket English dictionary’s phonetic pronunciation. So, what reached Zilli’s central processor was, ‘I am the King of Robots.’
The lower section of her faceplate dropped in awe.
Meanwhile, the Frankendroid’s various CPUs had detected the multitude of devices, processors, instruments and storage media connected to it. Lights flashed on and off, bells and buzzers sounded, data was read, data was written, and the digging arm rose from the hole it had created, swivelled through 30 degrees, and started digging again.
reported the Frankendroid. The message reached Zilli as ‘I DTEST FOREGN INSURMENTS’, ending up as ‘I detest foreign insurgents.’
irst one video camera and then another.
For once, the message reached Zilli unscathed, but her error-correcting software soon scathed it, producing: ‘Where are my robot armies?’
The Frankendroid raised itself to its full height.
The oversized robot jerked into motion on its three wheels and one leg.
The robotic monster creaked as it bent down to pick up a large stone, turning it slowly in its gripper. A drill bit emerged from a hatch and drilled into the rock. The dust was tipped into a hopper leading to a mass spectrometer. Lights flashed and some ticker tape chugged out of an orifice at the rear. Finally, Karl Eckrocks brought his laser probe to bear on the rock, blasting an intense beam at it and splitting it in two.
All the while, Zilli watched with a mixture of fascination and pride, a lump forming in the circuits of her throat. A drop of optic-lubricant collected at the corner of an eye.
Karl Eckrocks stretched, slowly raising itself to its full height and then stopped, as though sniffing the air.
Zilli was too absorbed in her sense of achievement to catch the message.
Zilli nearly choked at what she thought she had heard: ‘Mummy, thanks for life.’ Primitive AI emotions flooded her circuits.
The giant robot’s motion detectors swivelled towards her.
The Frankendroid limped towards her, reaching out its gripper arms. Zilli could barely contain herself, opening her appendages wide, welcoming the embrace. Great was her joy as she was lifted high into the air and a warm fuzzy feeling filled her abdominal unit as she stared into a corroded metal face only a mother could love. Thankfully, her final emotions were not tarnished by the cruel truth – those warm fuzzy feelings in her belly were the result of Karl’s laser-knife slashing its way to her central processor unit, frying her electronics and extinguishing her existence. With Zilli’s casing split, Karl Eckrocks ripped it apart and peered inquisitively inside.
After probing, and pulling, and drilling for several minutes, the robot let the jumbled mass of mangled electronics and exposed wiring fall onto the Martian dust.
As Karl turned away, the spider-bot scuttled from the wreckage of its former host carrying a pouch stuffed with dusters. No arachno-bot in its right mind could miss this once in a lifetime opportunity – to polish the King of Robots. And so, with no thought for Zilli, it shot up the monster’s leg and made its new home in an old Viking undercarriage vent.
*
With the sun at its highest point, the Frankendroid lurched out of Windy Point Canyon, digging arm aloft like a warrior charging into battle, the long-johns – his regimental standard – flapping in the wind.
11. Gone with the Wind Spirits
“Hmm,” muttered Willie Warner to himself, his brow furrowed in puzzlement. He realized there was something odd about the readings he was getting from the infra-violet scanners. They were showing about a dozen of the 12-foot aliens, plus a handful of smaller ones – possibly their young – but that was all. All within a very small region. Whenever he directed the scanners anywhere else, he got nothing. No signal at all. The aliens were all clustered together in a single place, about two miles from Botany Base, but nowhere else on the planet.
He could think of two explanations. Either these were the last Martians alive – the last of their kind – or these were visitors from another world, maybe another star system, attracted to the base.
“Gulp,” he said, staring through the cockpit window, down at the Red Planet below, absorbed in thought.
A beep in his pocket jerked him out of his reverie. It was a text message: “Lieutenant Warner. Report immediately to Dr Faerydae for your pre-landing medical.”
Willie huffed in frustration. Before he left the cockpit he switched off the infra-violet scanners, copied all the log files to his own personal directory and cleared the screen. It was too soon for him to reveal his discovery.
As he left the cockpit a female voice announced over the ship’s tannoy, “Important message for Lieutenant William H Warner. Please apply anti-infestation cream to the rash on both your moobs before seeing the doctor.”
“I don’t have moobs!” retorted Willie.
From somewhere nearby he heard the sound of a snigger.
*
“Willie, how are you?” Dr Adorabella Faerydae purred in her low, husky voice, flicking her head to make her thick and wavy auburn hair cascade in weightless ripples behind her.
“Fine,” Willie grunted.
“You’re looking great! Have you been taking those special homeopathic Spider Monkey-nut hormones I prescribed?”
“Yes,” lied Willie, closing the door behind him.
“Thought so! I can tell from your recharged aura.”
Without responding, Willie strapped himself into the examination couch.
“Not so fast, Willie Hilda Warner. I want you stripped down to your underpants.”
With a sigh, Willie removed his utility belt and slid off his space dungarees, allowing his bare legs to float free. He removed his top to reveal an emaciated torso that looked like a mummified corpse with the wrappings removed. He floated wearing just his Y-fronts, the ‘William Warner’ nametag his mother had stitched on visible on the waistband.
“And how’s the rash?” enquired Adorabella, scanning his pale flesh.
“I’ve never had a rash.”
“Oh? Haven’t you?” Adorabella put a finger to the side of her mouth and tilted her head. “Must be the other one. I’m always getting you two confused.” She flashed him a smile.
“Zak Johnston?”
“No. Emily Leach.”
“The whole ship now thinks I have one.”
“Do they? Well, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
Willie scowled and strapped himself back down to the examination couch.
“Hmm,” mused Adorabella as she continued to look him over. “You have the body of an anorexic chicken that has been rather badly plucked.”
“Thanks.”
“We must do something about your muscles, you know. Severe wastage and atrophy. Even with the reduced gravity on Mars they’re not going to hold you up for long.”
Willie looked down at his paper-white skin and weedy limbs and could see her point.
“Now,” Adorabella was saying. “A conventional medic would probably prescribe anabolic steroids.”
Images of Mr Universe flashed through Willie’s mind and he nodded vigorously.
“Ugh, nasty things. Aren’t you glad I’m not that kind of doctor?” She turned a
nd floated to the cupboard frontages of her medical stores and retrieved a tub of something foul-smelling and what looked like a roll of green moss.
“A giraffe manure poultice should coax out the muscle-building energies, while a moss wrap will provide an aura-shield and stop the negative forces feeding on the new flesh.” She began liberally smearing the foul smelling mixture up and down his skinny legs.
“Can I have the anabolic steroids instead, please?” pleaded Willie, fanning his nose at the stench.
“You’ll get used to the smell,” she assured him. “The others might not – but what’s important is to build you up. We don’t want people kicking Martian sand in your face.” She wiped her hands on a towel and started strapping the moss around his calves. “Are you excited about Mars?”
Willie had covered his mouth and nose to stop him gagging from the overpowering stink. All he could manage was a nod.
“Thrilling, isn’t is!” Adorabella enthused as she started on his thighs. “But what excites me most is that there’s life down there.”
Willie froze. His eyes widened. He managed to utter a single word. “What?”
“I can sense it. There’s life on Mars, Willie. I’m picking up the vibes. I can feel their presence. Reaching out to me. Calling to me. Trying to communicate.”
Willie was staring at her, a chill running through him, far greater than that from the giraffe dung. He lifted the hands from his mouth, but still kept his fingers clasped over his nose. “How do you know?” he asked cautiously, trying to make his interest in the matter sound casual.
“I just know. That’s the way it is when you have psychic powers.”
“What kind of beings are you ‘sensing’?”
Adorabella’s eyes sparkled. She closed them as though to bring back the memories of what she had been sensing. When she opened them again she said, “Wind spirits!”