by Rob Vlock
“What?” she answered. “Why would you think he hurt me?”
“You screamed, Alicia! And he’s holding a gun! And there was a gunshot! What am I supposed to think?”
The man laughed and waved the shotgun. “This? No, no. This is part of my latest series of paintings. Watch.”
He aimed the gun at a handful of spray-paint cans positioned in front of a large canvas.
The shotgun erupted, belching flame. The cans of spray paint exploded into a multicolored mist that spattered the canvas.
Junkman Sam laughed as rivulets of paint ran across the floor and pooled near his feet. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Very nice,” I replied. In fairness, it was a heck of a lot nicer than the clowns.
He swept an arm across the expanse of canvases. “Do you like them? Since I left the field of robotics, I’ve dedicated myself to art. It’s my passion.”
I stared at a painting of a sad clown crying as he smashed a cream pie into another sad clown’s face. “Uh, I’m really . . . impressed.”
Reloading the gun, Sam smiled at us with a mouthful of teeth that looked like they hadn’t seen a toothbrush in years.
“So, listen, Mr. Kozakov,” Alicia began. “We need to—”
Before she could finish, the door of the building creaked open.
I heard Alicia’s blade slide out of its sheath. Her muscles tensed. Her eyes focused intently on the potential target coming through the door.
But it was only Will.
He pushed the door back on its rusty hinges. “Hey, guys? You in here?” he called.
His eyes bulged as he noticed the menacing black firearm in Junkman Sam’s hands.
“No!” Will screamed. “Don’t hurt them!”
He picked up a small painting of a robot clown chasing a human clown and hurled it at its creator. It shot through the air and, as if it were a pants-guided missile, hit Sam right in the you-know-whats.
The shotgun fell through the air and landed butt down on the concrete floor.
Both barrels thundered as the weapon discharged toward the ceiling.
Jagged shards of glass rained down on us from the huge banks of overhead lights. A terrible, metallic groaning sound echoed around the space. Then the noise of an entire row of heavy industrial light fixtures crashing to the ground nearly shredded my eardrums.
Sparks crackled and flew from the wires that had been connected to the lights, but were now simply lying on the floor. The current flowing through them made them slither around like long black snakes. One of the wires flopped into a large puddle of spilled paint that had collected in the center of the room.
WHOOMP!
My skin stung as heat and light blazed around us.
“Run!” Alicia shouted.
The three of us burst out of the burning building and fell in a heap on the ground.
A second later, Junkman Sam waddled out after us and slumped down against a rusted pickup truck. “My paintings,” he moaned feebly. “My beautiful art.”
Black smoke poured from the building. Flames licked out of the doorway. Everything inside must have been burned to ashes. Score one for the art world.
“Yeah, uh, sorry about that,” Will said.
Big arrays of outdoor lights mounted on poles blazed down at us, bathing everything in a bluish, unnatural glow. Shadows lay sharp and black on the ground.
Alicia took Junkman Sam by the arm. “Listen, we can talk about your art later. Right now we need your help. We only have until midnight to save the human race.”
That got his attention.
CHAPTER 39.0:
< value= [I’m as Good as Dead] >
WE CAUGHT JUNKMAN SAM UP on the whole story. Right down to the clown snakes and killer roast chickens. When we were done, he had forgotten all about his ugly paintings.
He buried his face in his hands. “This is why I retired. The further I advanced my artificial intelligence algorithms, the more I came to realize that we were sowing the seeds of our own destruction. I knew it was only a matter of time before the machines became self-aware and self-replicating—a threat to humanity. So I came out here. I stopped being Sambor Ivanovitch Kozakov, robotics expert, and became Junkman Sam, artist. I guess didn’t stop soon enough.”
“Well, maybe you can stop them now,” I said. “That’s why we came. If anyone can help us, it’s you.”
Junkman Sam’s gaze drifted to my face, and he inspected me with an uncomfortable intensity. His scrutiny went from awkward to downright rude when he reached out and poked at my face with a plump, pink finger.
“Hey!” I objected.
He blinked in astonishment. “Remarkable! It’s so lifelike.”
“Hello!” I snapped. “I’m a ‘he,’ not an ‘it,’ if you haven’t noticed.”
He looked at me like he’d only just realized I was standing there in front of him. “Oh, hello. Right. Indeed. It is a he, isn’t it?”
I rolled my eyes. “So, look. Can you help us, or what?”
He scratched his nose for a moment. “No,” he said flatly.
My throat was suddenly bone-dry. All the hopes I’d pinned on this guy disintegrated in a supernova of dejection. This man had just announced my death sentence.
“What?” I spluttered. “Why not?”
“The advancements the Synthetics would have made in isolation over the last thirty years . . . There’s probably no way I could get through your security protocols. Your CPU would just be too powerful. And even if I could, the coding, your data architecture, there’s no guarantee that they bear any resemblance to what I developed three decades ago.”
He patted me on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, my boy. There’s nothing I can do. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a fire to put out.”
He said it all in such an offhand way. Like it didn’t matter if Alicia had to “deactivate” me. As he turned to walk away, my despair morphed into rage.
“Stop!” I bellowed.
The man visibly shrank in the face of my anger.
“You’re supposed to be some kind of scientist, some kind of expert on robotics, and all you can say is ‘sorry’?”
“I’m retired,” he said meekly.
“Look,” I continued. “We’ve nearly killed ourselves to try to save the world! The least you can do is get up off your butt and do something!”
Junkman Sam turned away from me and tried to walk past Alicia.
She stepped into his path with a scowl. “You heard him.”
The man pivoted and tried to squeeze past Will.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Will said, in a voice so confident it even startled him.
Junkman Sam frowned at him. Then he swung his gaze to me and Alicia, taking us in one by one. His face reddened. “You children have trespassed on my property, destroyed years’ worth of my art, and nearly roasted me in the process. I’ve told you there’s nothing I can do to help. Now, if you don’t leave immediately, I am going to call the police!”
My stomach dropped. So this was it. We were done. I was done. It was all I could do to keep from slumping to the dirt in despair.
But Will had other ideas. In a sudden lunge, he grabbed the short ex-scientist by the shirt collar and pulled him forward until their faces were only an inch apart.
“Alicia,” Will said in a low growl. “Tell me, how do you say ‘I’m going to kick your butt’ in Russian?”
Alicia was so shocked by Will’s behavior, it took her a moment to reply. “Ya sobirayus’ nadrat’ tebe zadnitsu,” she told him.
“Ya soberanus natrub tevee sadnitsoo,” Will snarled.
Alicia shrugged. “Close enough.”
Junkman Sam’s mouth hung slack. He nodded vigorously, his jowls jiggling like flesh-colored pudding.
Will released him, but shot a couple of additional scowls his way to let the man know he meant business.
Sitting down abruptly on the bumper of a nearby car, Junkman Sam ran his fingers through the tangled
rat’s nest that passed for his hair. He let out a long breath. “Okay, okay. There might be a way to stop this. But I’m telling you, I can’t do it for you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked.
He studied his paint-stained fingers, then reluctantly met my eyes. “No one can do this but you. You’re the only one who can bypass your security protocols. And even then, I don’t like your chances. But you’re right. May as well give it a whirl. At least it’s not my brain that’s going to get fried.”
CHAPTER 40.0:
< value= [Oh, Right. That Guy.] >
JUNKMAN SAM LED US ACROSS the compound, weaving between piles of scrap metal, columns of worn tires, and various accumulated debris, until we reached the crane. Its towering arm dwarfed everything else in the junkyard. With some effort, Sam hoisted himself into the cab, plopped down in front of the controls, and beckoned us aboard.
Fumbling in his pocket, he withdrew a small wrench, a tube of oil paint, and a wadded-up tangle of dental floss. Finally, he pulled out a key. He inserted it into the crane’s ignition and twisted it to the on position.
I expected to hear a big diesel engine roar to life, but the huge machine just made a small click followed by an electrical hum.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Why didn’t it start?”
He grinned. “It did. I converted it to electric when the original engine died. Easier on the environment. And the ears.”
Manipulating a pair of yellow levers, he swung the crane around until we were facing a stack of three old cars. He pushed a green lever, and the cable lowered from the top of the crane. On the end of it hung a huge disk-shaped object with heavy cables sticking out in several places.
“My electromagnet. Made it myself,” he beamed. “Has a twelve-tesla field and can pull twenty-one-thousand newtons. Not bad, huh?”
Yes, bad—given that the last time I was near an electromagnet, I almost got my face ripped off.
“Maybe I should stand over there,” I suggested, pointing to the far corner of the compound.
“Nonsense. The safest place to be when a crane is operating is right here,” he told me. “After all, I’d hate to drop something heavy on you.”
Before I could object any further, he pulled a red lever and the topmost car leapt off the pile like a cork from a champagne bottle, slammed into the magnet, and stuck there.
The pull from the magnet tugged at my body, like an invisible hand had reached into my chest, grabbed my spine, and was yanking me forward by it. If I got any closer to the thing, I’d probably pop like a water balloon.
Junkman Sam flashed us a snaggletoothed grin. “Watch this. I love this part.”
He pushed and pulled the yellow levers until the car swung in a big arc on the end of the cable. At just the right time, he pushed the red lever and the magnet shut off, flinging the car about twenty yards to the side.
“Woo-hoo!” He laughed over the crunch of crumpling sheet metal.
Alicia, Will, and I all stared at him cluelessly. None of us knew what was going on. It was only when he finished removing the last two cars that we understood.
There, in the dirt underneath where the cars had been, a heavy steel door marked the entrance to some kind of underground bunker.
Sam laboriously lowered himself from the crane and waddled over to the door. Seizing a handle recessed into the thick steel plate, he pulled and groaned until the door creaked open. A set of metal stairs curved down into the darkness beneath.
“My robotics studio,” Sam announced. “Shall we?”
“I think not,” a voice called from behind a stack of flattened cars.
A figure emerged from the shadows beside a rusting heap of metal.
It was him.
Dr. Shallix.
CHAPTER 41.0:
< value= [The Obligatory Boss Battle] >
DR. SHALLIX WAS SMILING AT US. But his face somehow conveyed a deep sadness.
Without any combat-ready battle Ticks to back him up, he just looked like a frail old man. Suddenly, he wasn’t really scary at all. I probably would have felt sorry for him, except for the fact that he was an evil cyborg whose sole purpose was to kill as many people as possible. That kind of spoiled the pity factor.
“If one wants something done correctly,” he sighed, “one must do it oneself, yes?”
I glared at him. This was the guy who had sent clown snakes and murderous roast chickens to capture me and kill my friends. This was the guy who had driven me from my family and hijacked my life. He probably thought I’d melt into a cowardly pile of slush when he looked at me with that creepy smile.
He was wrong.
“I won’t let you win!” I bellowed, pent-up anger flooding out of me. “I know what your plan is, and I won’t be a part of it! I’ll die first!”
Dr. Shallix’s smile didn’t waver.
“I think that can be arranged, Seven, yes? But not before you carry out your mission,” he said calmly. “I do, however, have some matters to attend to first.”
He turned his gaze on Junkman Sam.
“Sambor Ivanovitch Kozakov . . . father,” he said softly. “I and my race owe you so much. Without you, there would be no me. No us. We are your children. And sometimes children can be too lenient with their parents, yes? I should have sent one of my brethren here to kill you long ago. It is not a mistake I intend to repeat.”
Without warning, Dr. Shallix streaked toward us, moving faster than anyone I had ever seen. He was only a blur in motion. Before any of us could react, he reached Junkman Sam, lifted him off the ground, and tossed him as easily as I would have thrown a teddy bear.
So much for his being a frail old man.
Junkman Sam tumbled through the air and crashed with a hollow metallic thump onto the roof of his burning painting studio, a good thirty yards away. The steel roof gave way under the impact, and the portly painter plummeted into the fire below.
By the time we turned to face Dr. Shallix, he was already in motion again. In a heartbeat, he made it back to where he’d started, standing next to the stack of cars. The whole thing took less than two seconds.
“As I mentioned,” he said, just as calmly as before, “I am happy to help you die, yes? But do not be impatient for death, Seven. We still have to wait for your sneeze routine to deploy. Then the Omicron Protocol—srok rasplaty—will be brought to fruition.”
While he was talking, I noticed Alicia had slid her hand into her backpack and pulled out her three remaining grenades. She slipped one into my pocket.
“Create a diversion,” she whispered.
Okay. Sure. How do you do that? I mean, people did it all the time in the movies. But in real life, how exactly do you create a diversion?
For some reason, the idea of doing a little dance popped into my head. Which was completely dumb, so I tried coming up with something else.
I pointed behind Dr. Shallix. “Hey, look over there!”
He didn’t look.
Aw, crud.
So, fine. I did a little dance. More of a jig, really. I guess. I wasn’t really sure what a jig was, though, so it might have been something else. But it seemed to have the desired effect. Dr. Shallix cocked his head and looked at me curiously. Maybe I was frying his logic circuits.
I danced off to the right. His gaze followed me.
Alicia slipped behind a pile of scrap metal to the left and started circling behind Dr. Shallix.
“That is a fascinating jig, Seven. I am very impressed with your skills as a dancer,” he said halfheartedly.
So it was a jig! That’s what I thought.
I kept dancing and Alicia kept creeping and soon she was behind him. She armed a grenade and tossed it perfectly, right toward Dr. Shallix. It landed directly between his feet. At the sound of the grenade landing, he looked down.
“Oh, noooooo!” he cried.
A powerful boom shook the ground. A blaze of heat washed over us. And when the thick, gray smoke cleared, Dr. Shallix
was gone. There was nothing left.
Alicia, Will, and I looked at one another. I started to laugh. They joined in. We did it! We beat him!
Then we noticed someone else was laughing along with us. I stopped laughing. So did Will and Alicia. But the other laugh continued.
It was Dr. Shallix.
He emerged from behind the crane. “Ah, that was very fun. I made a joke when I screamed ‘no,’ yes? Your little bombs don’t scare me, children.”
He must have used his freakishly fast speed to evade the blast just before the grenade went off. He was toying with us.
Alicia scowled furiously, her face reddening with anger. She hurled her last grenade right at Dr. Shallix’s head. He batted it away like it was an annoying mosquito. It clanked against a mountain of rusted cars and dropped to the ground.
WABOOOMMMM!
The explosion rocked the tall stack of cars. They teetered with a metallic groan, then toppled over, crashing to the ground.
Right where Will was standing.
He tried to run. But before he made it two steps, he was swallowed up in an avalanche of twisted metal and shattered glass. He screamed for a moment, and then his voice faded into silence.
My knees turned to mush, and I fell to the ground. “NOOOOO!!! WILL!!! ARE YOU OKAY? WILL!!!”
Silence.
Alicia gaped at the scene, then trained her gaze on Dr. Shallix, eyes burning with hate. She drew her knife and charged at him from behind. He turned almost leisurely and easily smacked her aside. She flew through the air and slammed against the crane, dropping to the ground in an unconscious heap.
Dr. Shallix chuckled to himself and strolled casually forward to finish her off.
“Stop!” I screamed, getting to my feet. “I won’t let you hurt her!”
He turned slowly and faced me, that stupid smile still stretching his pale, old-man lips. Then he laughed. “You think you can stop me, Seven? Surely you understand that you could never defeat me. You simply are not good enough.”
Jeez! He was starting to sound just like my dad.