A Man and His Robot

by William Vitka

“Is” not “was.”

  Alpha walks toward us. The mean machine turns. Panels along the shoulders slide out. Flip open. Stubs that look like vertebrae along Alpha’s spine rotate. A quiet zzztt sound. The robot’s right side opens.

  I stare at the cockpit. It’s dark with several dozen different lights that blink intermittently. Little holographic screens that show the status of Alpha’s armor. The energy consumption. Temperature. Structural integrity. Everything.

  DeVille says, “There’s enough room inside the chest chamber that you can look up or down and around. That’s why the holoscreens are where they are. But you won’t be able to touch anything. Your arms will be in Alpha’s arms. When you’re plugged in, you’re gonna have to get used to the idea that your thoughts will control what you see. Think it, and Jade will make it happen.”

  Catarina says, “What if Jade gets angry? Or doesn’t want to do something?”

  “Jade is capable of operating on her own but Alpha—the mech itself—is designed to prioritize the pilot. She’s supposed to do what you tell her.”

  “Because that worked so well with her and the teddy bear.”

  Jack folds his arms.

  DeVille licks the bloody split lip Catarina gave her. “It works when there’s a pilot.”

  I raise my hand. “Guys, I’m bored.” I wiggle a finger. “Can we get on with it?”

  * * *

  They lift my legs up. Help me heft em into the cockpit. Jack and Catarina use their hands to get my noodly limbs where they need to go. The rest I can do myself. Just a matter of getting my ass in the right spot—which happens to be Alpha’s crotch.

  And man it’s hard not to think awful things.

  Jack pats Alpha-Jade’s side. Says to me, “You ready for this?” He puts my guns on a little rack in the cockpit. There’s enough room for the Colt 1911 and revolver plus mags and ammo.

  I glance at him and Catarina and DeVille. Say, “DeVille, I’m guessing you’re rolling into this fight with a gunship.”

  She locks me into Alpha-Jade’s chest harness. “Yeah. After I get the drones and the turrets and base security going. Why.”

  “I’ll run point. I want Athena tucked inside Juliet. I want you flying overwatch. Nothing happens to my little girl. We clear?”

  DeVille furrows her brow. “I promise. But you better promise me the same.”

  I nod to her. “You have my word.”

  Catarina says, “I’ll be on the roof sniping.”

  Jack says, “I’ll be on the ground tearing shit up.” He laughs. “Wee!” Stops himself. “Sorry.”

  Now where the fuck did Plissken head off to...

  I say, “All right. Everyone get in place. I’ll see you guys outside.”

  Saying “Goodbye” or “Good luck” is asking for trouble. Always makes it seem like it’ll go fucky in situations like this. So we don’t say anything.

  I watch DeVille leave.

  She doesn’t look back.

  Probably a smart move. Last thing we need is getting distracted.

  Aww. You don’t wanna kiss her goodbye?

  I push my hands into Alpha-Jade’s arms. My fingers slip into stiff gloves there. I reach far enough that my chest comes to rest against the cabin’s cushioned safety bar. The bar clicks. Locks in place. A button lights up on the ceiling above me. It reads PILOT. Flashes green. I pull my arm free and punch that big green button.

  Alpha-Jade’s side panels hiss. Snap closed.

  The cushioning around me inflates. Presses against me. Not so hard that it hurts, but it gets tight enough I can’t move anything except my head and arms. Guess that’s the idea. Me missing a chunk of spine and all.

  I say, “Jade, you hug real hard.”

  Holoscreens come alive around the cockpit. I see the armor status for the machine’s head, chest, arms and legs—CARBYNE1 100%. I feel the nuclear power plants thrum in her back. Radar flashes in the upper left corner. A beautiful young woman’s face flits to life at the center of em.

  Jade.

  How she sees herself, I guess.

  She says, “Hm. You’re cute.” A pause. “Sorry about this.”

  Ahhh fuck.

  Forgot about the nerve spikes.

  Pain explodes in the back of my neck. My biceps. My forearms. The awful sting of a pissed off hornet. If I could feel a fuckin thing below the waist, I bet it’d hurt there too.

  I grit my teeth. A new hologram appears. Mine. It’s got my heart rate, brain function and all kinds of other crap I’m not real interested in at the moment.

  Letters float above the hologram: NEURAL BRIDGE ENGAGING.

  Before I can say anything, there’s a snap. A white flash.

  I’m back in New York City. Before the infection. I walk along Fort Hamilton Parkway in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. My old hood. I see the monolithic Verrazano Bridge in the distance.

  But there’s no people. No cars. Nothing. Plus, again, I’m walking around. So we know a bit of this is bullshit.

  I wander to the bodega at the corner of Eighty-Sixth. Green awning. “Best Choice Grocery.” Nice Korean lady and her husband used to run it. No sign of her now, though. So I help myself to a pack of American Spirits and a twelve pack of Yuengling from the cooler.

  I head back up to Fort Hamilton and into my apartment building. Up two flights of stairs, then I’m standing in front of my door: 3N.

  It opens by itself.

  Jade’s on the other side. Long dark hair. Olive skin. High cheeks. A smattering of freckles. Green eyes. A devilish smile... Except she’s not eight. She looks however she thinks she’s supposed to look thirteen years on top of that.

  She’s also bare-ass naked.

  I stare. Can’t help it. I say: “Your mom is gonna kill me.”

  Jade says, “I’m an adult. I’m twenty-one. I can do what I want.” She eyes the Yuengling. Opens her hand. “Beer me.”

  Yeah. Well. Why not.

  I hand her one. She cracks it open. Takes a mouthful. The foam drips off her chin. Spills down her chest. Splashes across her amazing tits. She winks at me. Turns on her heels. Saunters into the living room. Her hips sway. Her ass jiggles.

  I’m the delivery guy in the bad porno of my brain.

  I shake my head. Light a smoke. Say, “This is the neural bridge, huh? Makes it so we’re compatible on the battlefield and all that.” I follow her. Open myself a beer from the pack.

  She flops down on the couch. Her breasts bounce. “Yep.” She curls her legs up so I can almost but not quite see her other lady bits. “But that’s not what you’re thinking.”

  She’s right.

  She says, “You just wondered if you could get away with fucking me and then maybe also fucking my mom. And me being a disembodied brain inside of a suit of robotic armor that you’re inside of doesn’t seem to bother you one bit in that regard.”

  She’s still right.

  I say, “Sharing a mind with someone is like having a social cheat sheet.” I sit forward. Prop my elbows on my knees. Take a drag from my cigarette. “So what’re we doing here.”

  “I wanted to apologize.”

  “Ah.”

  “For before.”

  “Yeah.”

  “With the bear.”

  “Yeah, I got that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I spread my hands out. “Okay... You kinda crippled me, though. Whole part of my spine went adios.”

  “I know. I can see your vitals. It’s growing back though. You’ve got an interesting genetic makeup.”

  I cock an eye at her. “You almost killed me and my daughter.”

  She sips from her beer. “Me and my mom have been alone for a long time. A long, long time. I lost my manners. Dying at eight will do that to you. All I saw was some other kid with my teddy bear. My. Bear. My Roosev
elt. My response was shitty. I’m sorry. But that’s the response my mom usually wants from me. She uses me to kill things. I’m not walking around comparing home décor solutions, for fuck’s sake.”

  I roll smoke around inside my mouth. Blow a ring of it out across the still air. “I know the feeling.”

  “Really? You know how it feels to be a female mind stuck in a vat of synthetic flesh? Kept alive with artificial organs on your ninth birthday?”

  “Not that part, no.” I’m gonna need whiskey if this is the direction we’re going.

  “Or how about being fitted into Alpha when I should’ve been able to go pick out bras? Hm? My whole life was stolen from me. You and my mom? At least you two got to spend time with people. At least you had the chance to love someone. Your Momma Bear.”

  I avoid the trigger of hearing that name. “Well, the world kinda ended—”

  “I got cut off. At eight. You have no idea how lonely this is.” She starts to cry. Sniffle. Her lips frown. She drops the beer. Covers her face with her hands.

  Doesn’t really give me a lot of confidence in how the fight’s gonna go.

  Jade sobs. “Fuck you. I can fight.”

  I blink. “Sorry. Forgot you were in my head.”

  “Yes, idiot. That’s how this whole thing works.”

  I take a final drag from my cigarette. Stamp it out in the ashtray. I get up and walk over to her. Sit. Wrap an arm around her. She lets me.

  Jade’s heaves die down. She rests her head against my shoulder.

  I brush her long hair back from her face. Tuck it behind her ear.

  She stops my hand. Keeps it on her cheek. Just holds it there like that while her green eyes stare into me. I stare back. Try hard not to think anything.

  Jade plays her fingers along my chest. She stands up. Bends over so that her face is right in front of me. She caresses my cheek. Presses her lips against mine.

  It feels amazing.

  Jade says, “You think I’m vulnerable right now. You think maybe now’s the time to go to bed together. To let all the emotions out under the covers.”

  I don’t say anything. Mostly cuz I have no idea if I was actually thinking that.

  Seriously. I have no idea if that’s true.

  I mean, it probably is. But.

  Jade smiles at me. “Not right before a fight, asshole.” She laughs. Bounds away. Out the front door of the apartment. A nutty naked angel.

  I look down at my crotch. Boner in a sad state of confusion.

  Now I wanna kill something.

  Flash.

  Plissken hovers in front of Alpha. He says, “Welcome back. How was your first neural bridge adventure?”

  I say, “Frustrating.”

  Jade says, “Oh, shut up.”

  “How long were we in there? In real time.”

  “About four seconds.”

  Lovelace and Turing walk up to us. They’ve turned themselves into mechs. Little five-foot-high siblings to Alpha. Bipedal. Big chests and shoulders. Angular heads. Those emoticon screens are still there though. In their faces now. Both of em 

  Proud bots.

  I say, “Well, you two’ve been busy.”

  Plissken says, “They’ve had ample time. Eight hours.”

  There’s a readout and schematics for each bot on the holoscreens inside Alpha.

  Lovelace has a 20mm cannon at the center of her palms. The barrels run up through the center of her forearms. Her biceps hold the gearboxes. The bullets are fed into the guns through an internal system from an ammo box on her back. Her engine and sensor systems are ripped outta some Sikorsky chopper tech. She’s powered by two mini-nuke reactors. The energy bleedoff from the nukes goes into charged particle beam cannon in Lovelace’s chest. She’s also got daggers that flip out from her wrists.

  Makes me jealous.

  Jade says, “Stop calling Lovelace ‘her.’ Lovelace and Turing have not decided on sexual identities yet.”

  I roll my eyes. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Really? I’m just saying that in my head.”

  “World ends and we still haven’t smashed the patriarchy.”

  “You’re so fuckin weird, I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Takes one to know one.”

  “Your face is a... One.”

  Fuck.

  Turing looks similar but has a totally different loadout. Complementary. He’s got a missile pod on one shoulder. Armor-piercing high explosive. On his other shoulder is a magnetic rail cannon. Like Juliet’s, but smaller. He flips his wrists and two four-foot-long energy swords grow outta his hands. Blue. They buzz.

  Little motherfucker’s armed with lightsabers.

  Jade makes a disgusted sound. “They aren’t ‘lightsabers’”

  “Dude, they’re totally lightsabers.”

  “No! They’re energy weapons that utilize super-heated plasma inside a strong magnetic field.”

  “Pft. Whatever. They’re lightsabers.”

  “Well, anyway,” Plissken says, “Neither want to bother with speech yet. They think humans are awkward and stupid-sounding.”

  I say, “Maybe I don’t wanna listen to em anyway. The emotes are fine.”

  “Do you have a plan?”

  “Nah.”

  “Brilliant, Sun Tzu.”

  Alpha-Jade says, “I’ve synced with Lovelace, Turing, Plissken and Juliet. They will appear on radar with the proper designations.”

  I say, “Neat.” Then try walking for the first time. “Be gentle.”

  Much as I expect to fall on my big dumb face, I don’t. It’s perfect. Alpha moves with me. Even my not-at-all-working legs. It’s all what my brain thinks is muscle memory. Which’s what Alpha reads.

  I’m encased in power armor. Fifteen feet high.

  Hell yeah.

  I walk over to a rack of guns that look pulled from the sides of choppers and tanks. Huge weapons. More experimental tech DeVille was working on.

  I pick up one that fires shells the size of my forearm.

  Jade says, “That’s a 30mm kinetic impact rifle. Fiske Industries’ Annihilator. Bullpup design with a thirty-round magazine. The bullets have a scalloped head that causes massive tissue damage. Like being punched by a concave planet. It doesn’t have any penetration or range, though. Consider that when you’re aiming.”

  I grunt. “Considered.” I put the Annihilator on my shoulder. Magnets on Alpha’s back grab the weapon and hold it in place. I crack my neck.

  “Ooh, Big Daddy is a tough guy, huh?”

  I pick up a massive minigun from the pile of weapons. It’s almost as tall as Alpha. Must’ve belonged on an assault chopper. I thread a belt of 20mm rounds into it. Grip the curved handle in back and the handle on top over the eight barrels.

  Thing weighs two hundred pounds. But Alpha-Jade’s got no problem carrying it.

  Jack’s voice hisses over the radio. “Party’s out front, folks. Whole lotta undead fuckers wanna meet you.

  “Oblige them.”

  21. Blood and Thunder

  The warehouse’s massive doors slide open.

  We greet the night.

  Klaxons sound off around me and my robot brigade. They’re almost as loud as the turrets DeVille has on top of the building.

  Her drones spin through the air tracking shapes.

  Lights strobe against the darkness. Flashes of weapons fire show the faces of the horde.

  Alpha-Jade’s floodlights kick on. They punch into the black.

  It’s a carpet of undead faces. Zombies. Stilt-walkers. Flesh-towers. Arachnocars. Hellbaby variants. A fuckin monster menagerie.

  All coming at us from the south and west.

  There’s a country club there. Oronque. Keefs tumble through the sand and the pits. I’m sure there’s a joke to be
made about class warfare, but my brain ain’t so funny now.

  The bots form a line with me. I use Alpha’s external speakers. Shout to the parasite parade: “Hola, bitches! I’m gonna eat pancakes and get laid when this is over!”

  Hundreds of creatures turn to me.

  I spin up the minigun’s barrels. It spews out 20mm rounds at a rate of four thousand a minute. The gun sounds like an angry metal insect. BRRRZZZ.

  It chews up the first line of zombies. Heads erupt. Volcanoes of brain and bone and blood. Alpha’s targeting software keeps the big bullets going where they need to.

  My hands vibrate. I feel everything.

  Infected limbs break apart. Bodies explode. Chunky goo that used to be people coats the ground.

  I smile.

  Then my ammo’s gone.

  Minigun’s a hungry weapon.

  The ground shakes. Juliet opens fire. A perfect plasma shot that obliterates thirty shambling bastards.

  Jack cackles. His grin lit by the blue of Juliet’s running lights. He’s got the holographic tank controls set up. With his free left hand he balances the Colt. Shoots without looking. Hits the center of a zombie forehead every time.

  I see a sword flash out in the middle of the dark undead sea. A blade that catches some of the light. A Keef head pops off. Straight into the sky. Propelled by a squirt of blood. Catarina flips over the body. Slices another zombie in half from the crotch to the top of the skull. It falls apart like a rotten banana.

  My earpiece crackles. Jack says, “Mom got bored of sniping. She’s finicky.”

  I say, “She gonna be all right in there?”

  “You have any idea how many things we’ve killed?”

  Fair point.

  DeVille rockets overhead. Some super Sikorsky gunship that doesn’t make any sound. Has dual rotar blades on top. Another in the back. She’s also got big motherfuckin guns.

  Mmm. Flygirl.

  She strafes. Paints the links along Oronque Lane with high-caliber hell.

  It’s all fireworks.

  Beautiful.

  Yellow flame from the gunship. Red sparklers from the tracer rounds. Orange swirls from the bullets impacting on the ground blowing up dirt and dust.

  So many bodies.