Military-grade robots had never been known for their intellect, adaptability, or lack of masochistic tendencies, but they were pretty well known for thinking everything was going to kill them, which made them vigilant guardians during the brief moments they faked lucidity. “It's, it's,” began the right-most of the pair before the left-most said, “No, no, don't you says it! Don't I says it either! A bloody huma―” an outburst cut short by a simultaneous, and perhaps instinctively by this point, copper-wire pike to each other's hard reset buttons. Now grounded―in more ways than one if puns be forgiven―the arguably saner of the pair struggled to his feet, neatly adjusted his 'Inspector' tag and maintained enough false poise to say, “Rights, passport then. Chop chop.”
Rain, wise in the ways of the world as she clearly wasn’t, responded profoundly, “Passport? Rain is Rain, not passport! Pfff.”
Confounded by an intelligence perhaps parallel to his own, the inspector continued. “Now nows, look, I suppose I’d best explains. Firstly, me here is Inspector Cog.” He made sure to puff out the part of his chest with the label, hoping none would see the words 'Janitor' scratched over ever so feverishly. “And that there is me sub-inspector, Wheel.” A serious look overtook his already permanently serious façade, as he leaned in to say, “I know, I knows, but we’ll have none of that silly punfoolery here! No jokes about WheelCog or the likes!”
Perhaps even more lost now than she was before, Rain found little to say and was rather haphazardly spinning Usu by his ears while Cog continued, seemingly unburdened by reality. “Nows! What I was going to have saids earlier was about your passport, you see.” His eyes squinted ever so slightly. “Your kind―”
He was interrupted by Rain’s logic circuits actually functioning, in a manner of speaking. “Rain is kind? Of course, Rain is kind! Meanies are boo.”
Shaking his head, Cog tried again. “No, no, you… you know… the word we's can't have saids but did almost say,” Wheel began screaming from the ground behind them, a small siren prematurely peeking from the tip of his head, “You don't mean hu―”
“No Noes! Yous don't says it!” Facing Rain again, “F-Fine we says you’re something else, you’re a… can you be a flamingo? We han’t got one of those prissy buggers around. Go on 'en, make a flamingo noise!”
Challenged by the challenged, Rain searched her centuries of experience, her wealth of knowledge, and her stuffed rabbit cohort that was desperately trying to explain things to her through excessive sweating and arm waving. Somewhere deep, deep down, and then marginally deeper still, she found the answer, the answer to everything, but she sneezed and dropped that bit so she picked up the one next to it instead and confidently onomatopoeiad, “Meow?”
“It's a cat! It's a cat sir Cog, sir! It's come to eat the pengui―” Was as far as the hysterical Wheel got before being interrupted by a minor stab-induced electrical seizure. “Yes, you's no flamingo, definitely a cat. We's usually only let the birdses in but, I don’t think poor Wheel can take many more stabs today. So against me better juryment, you’re cleared Miss Cat! Just… don’t eat all the birds now and do watch out for the primates, you never know when one could sneak by here when I’m not looking!” Cog said in a hushed voice, perhaps to keep his partner from undue distress, or perhaps just for dramatic purposes; no one cared enough to write another poorly comma’d sentence about it. Though, one could suppose the door cared, and probably would have commented too, if a rather disgruntled penguin had not ripped out any speaker related devices the night before in a perfectly calm rage-fueled moment of destructive euphoria. Instead, the door could do little to resist, even verbally. The once prized people appraiser that saw JC Penny reach new heights of personal degradation now silently opened its way for a little girl, her stuffed rabbit, and a fishing pole who soon blurred into the cityscape before them.
This particular chronicle, Old Francisco, was considered a marvel even among robots specifically engineered to be obsessively cynical in an attempt at solving the mass critic-shortage that sneaked up on the 22nd century. 'Sneaked' being your narrator's euphemism for the part where they were all killed. Book critics were first, you remember that now.
Still, inappropriate revelations about career tracks ignored, the city was indeed a sight to behold. None of that flying car nonsense you’ve mucked about with in your head. For all the wire, degrading neon tubes, and fiber the city felt motionless, a silence made eerie by visuals that did little to justify it. The fully spherical structure had strut upon strut of transparent solar paneling inside, a sight marred only by the bare connecting wires sapping life from each one. At its base, the sphere barely pierced what was now a truly dead sea, cycling water from it to cool itself.
Rain and Usu stood on a thick glass walkway, caught between each extreme and a very friendly looking sign that insisted they both 'Sod off'. Then, just as Rain found herself mumbling the words aloud, the silence broke. Awakening from its daily slumber, the chronicle sprung to life and the exceptionally friendly sign swiveled around to be replaced with a far shinier one bearing a far gentler (if generic) banner, 'Welcome'. Robotic birds began to sing from suspended power cables while robotic hillbillies began to shoot at them from shanty rooftops, and in a determined response robotic Europeans felt mild discomfort at the display.
They stood before the hawker's market which, due to trigger-happy hillbillies, had long since done away with any pun related associations to the word hawk. Instead, ancient programming kept them bartering to any prey that would enter their sights, the less self-aware would do so for merchant masters that had long since faded past even the concept of bone meal. Yet, unlike most days which they would spend bartering their own essential parts away to each other, this day new prey had actually wandered into their sights.
Amidst the buildings, coloured and crooked in homage to their namesake, swarms of hagglers approached, merciless in their mercantile ways. They offered Rain dolls, makeup, and hair accessories. They offered Usu a box he’d fit in with a low price-tag on it. They were a crafty lot. They were also there at the worst possible time: The time when Rain’s time stopped. She froze again like so many times before, and Usu could only try and keep the scavengers at bay until one noticed what had happened to her. Suddenly, signals spread like wildfire, and dread gripped each one of them as they backed away silently, too frightened to even break eye contact, as if for the first time they were staring down their own demise in this world flooded with immortality. It mattered little.
All beings cowered under death.
Android - The First Day
I met a total weirdo Diary! I mean okay, okay, he saved me and stuff, after I crawled into the garbage shoot to get away from those meanies, but he was all “Bssshwing” and “Shwwaaaggh” cutting me down and then he was actually disappointed I was awake! So boo!
But… there’s something there, something that feels important.
It felt like if I didn’t follow him, I’d never follow anyone again.
Chapter Nine - Crumpets
If you’ve been trying to link chapter titles to chapter content this far along, you’ve been trying longer than your own narrator. Although, perhaps crumpets are indeed the perfect metaphor for how Rain’s body froze in motion, assuming you’ve frozen the crumpets, which will taste terrible when you reheat them. You’re an odd one, I’ll give you that, but what you won’t be given is any more crumpets, lest you freeze them like the confectionery tyrant we both now know you to be.
Even fourth walls were looking sturdier than our heroine right now; her arms limp and her upper half concaving. Usu was struggling just to keep her standing, a struggle he’d fought this far for, and a struggle he’d be willing to fight as far for as long as need be. He would not let her get hurt, he would not let her fall, and somewhere in the back of his mind a voice much like his own echoed that he would not fail her, not again. Never again.
Right about now, you’d expect some sort of cliché rescue scene; maybe Modbot would come in from a ra
ndom corner of the sphere and merrily un-muck-up things. He wouldn’t though; he was preoccupied with equally personal matters. Yet, in haste not to disappoint you, the dear valued reader, there was a figure speeding toward them across each rooftop, feet flinging tiles as if they were confetti. This figure landed next to Usu and picked Rain up in a way Usu had long wished he had the might to do himself. It was a slender, feminine figure, obvious even through the black rags she had cloaked all but her eyes with, but she was no android. A darker shade of silver took the place of her skin, and her every movement seemed like clockwork. She looked Usu in the eyes, tied his arms around her neck and whispered, “Hold on tight, knots aren’t exactly my specialty,” before running up the side of the nearest building, a foot casually decapitating a wild hillbilly bot in process.
By now, Usu was rather accustomed to situations one should generally avoid altogether, especially ones involving dangerous women flinging him about at high speeds. Given his earlier experience with Rain, you could say this was an almost calming 300mph stroll across perfectly agreeable rooftops. He found little fear to settle his confusion, and thus began nudging his kidnapper for answers. Little did he notice that she was already engaged in some primitive form of mono-synchronistic dialogue, or at least that’s what we’ll call her muttering repeated curse words under her―albeit artificial―breathe. Indeed the stream of endlessly repeating 'Shit!' whilst speeding along, made her slightly more intimidating, but Usu nudged on despite her fascination with fecal matter.
“Shitbeard is going to wet himself over thi―Oh, uhm, alright back there? I’m sure you’re all full of questions dear, but let's save those for the landing alright? Don’t worry, if anyone can dissassem―er, help her, it’s where we’re going!” she said before immediately dulling her eyes to a half-gaze and returning to her rather abusive rattling.
It occurred to Usu just then that, despite memories of Rain and of his other-self beginning to make him whole, he’d not heard any decent swearing until that moment. Rain would probably start a jar if anyone did it and use the funds to buy a bigger jar, eventually forgetting her purpose in life and seeking the path of ultimate jar transcendence instead. While Modbot, well, he was sure he’d cursed a few hundred or so times, but he was so British about it that he didn’t even take notice, contrary to this 'girl' and her sweet American voice degrading into something verbally pungent enough to raise a middle-school hall monitor’s wrath and ire. Thankfully, all of those were also rather somewhat completely dead.
The scenery, verbally diluted by everything being covered in audible shit, was rather astonishing. It seemed that where they came to was but the proverbial rabbit-hole to this vibrant wonderland. Districts divided areas with massive concrete and wire walls, thick metal gates being the official links between each one. He spotted dozens, from vertical residential areas to the hollow shells of industrial plants; it seemed almost as if they had made this land ripe with the memory of the long-gone race that created them. Was it an homage? Or a hope, a strange twisted hope from a stranger still land?
Casino’s in one corner, patrons coming out with fewer limbs than they went in with, contrasted starkly with the Marina in the other end. It seemed to send orbs out through the bottom of the city into the water below, shooting them with such force that even their direction could be little more than a guess. What was at least slightly alarming was that none ever seemed to come back up, more reminiscent of an escape pod than a transportation system. The idea of being hurled into the dead ocean didn’t seem appetising to him either way though. Usu always had an innate fear of whales and presumed dead ones would be all the more terror-worthy.
Speaking of terror-worthy, Usu, Rain, and the mysterious assailant were about to land, it seemed. She’d moved nimbly enough to satiate even the most hardcore parkour fetishist, leaping from rooftop to boundary, detachable head to asphalt and finally down a time-worn chute. The fall wasn’t long, eight maybe nine seconds, but enough for him to hear a very familiar voice, disgruntled to say the least protesting, “Blimey! Look, all I want is for you and your sharp bits there to come tally-ho and right chop this door voice modulator off of what may or may not be my crotch.” Countered by a hoarse brazen voice, with just enough Scottish in it to make you feel sexually displaced at any given moment, “I am lookin' laddy, 'n whit I’m seein' is ye wanting tae just separate 'hings again. Just choap it aff, aye? Is easy, aye? Just pretend it wasn’t even thar, aye?! Och, ah know yer kind.”
Volatile as things may have been, the sudden landing into the midst of a robo-anatomical bickering match actually proved a positive thing. The duo's mysterious abductor landed in a small crater that barely broke the panorama of steel tiles and busted VCR machines, a comfortable fit for few others. Looking up, she couldn’t withhold her excitement and ran forward yelling, “Shitbea―Dad!” before hugging the most bizarre creature Usu had seen yet.
To only mildly disappoint your descriptive expectations, allow your narrator to elaborate: What he saw was clearly mechanical and clearly robotic, like everything he’d seen thus far, but was first and foremost hanging upside down from a rooftop he wished was further and further away. Masculine in features, a strong jaw, square eyes, and a peculiar beard made from what presumably was a sea of left-over arms dangling about. Not to be outdone, the rest of him was dangling about as well; his body began normal enough, shoulders, a neck. It even had good torso potential! Unfortunately, the reality was an arachnid-like bulbous exterior with half a dozen legs on each side, strange work tools welded into most of them. His powers of deduction having grown exponentially since the whole adventure had begun, Usu didn’t take long to grasp this was the oh-so-elegantly proclaimed 'Shitbeard'.
“Och, we're 'n polite mode are we? Mist be fer th' find. What's this noo? Ah, haven't seen one o' these in weel... in ever!” said the supposedly fecal-bearded mystery as he kicked himself off the wall and toward Rain and Usu. Purely cosmetic defensive instincts as they may have been, Usu’s attempt to safeguard Rain was met with a dual surprise, both at the owner of the familiar voice being Modbot and that he was actually happy to see them.
“Usu! Weather channel! Oh, I missed you both like Thatcher missed her penis whenever they got around to removing it. Now wait… the lass, Rain, I do recall her being a bit more chipper than limp and stony eyed.” Though he was possibly just as pleasantly surprised for the first time in his life, the whole limp, near-death business put a bit of a damper on things. Just when he was thinking how he could get Usu to explain what had transpired, his crotch―now plus one module―insisted, “Quickly, explain through interpretive terror dance!” before Modbot could smack it into submission. “Ah, this, this is well, the door and, we disagreed and, well I’m just trying to get this blathering blout to chop the bugger off actually. I hear he does things like that, probably could help the girl too, or just yell at her for asking; seems best at that last bit actually.” While not exactly the greatest news, it did calm Usu down a fair deal and allow for Rain to be peeked at properly without him lunglessly hyperventilating.
“Laddie, dae ye even know whit this 'ere lassie is?” Stroking his beard as elegantly as one could stroke a 2-foot long dangling set of limbs hanging off of a chin, Shitbeard continued. “Ah rate ye dinnae even know whit ye yerself are, eh?”
Usu could do little to hide his growing insecurities over his own identity, which memories were his, and why he was here in the first place. Rain’s downfall had taken precedence in his mind, ignoring the questions that had been gnawing away at him from the inside out. He shook his head, averting his gaze in the process. “Ha, that’s fin'. Ah don’t ken whit in th' hells ye are either, laddie! All ah know is these ‘ere eyes,” he flipped fancifully through several settings on his lensed orbs. “Nae a thing they ain’t able tae see, 'n in ye? Not a single movin' pairt, just fluffy stuffin'. Yit ye shift aboot mair than me own daughter when you’re popp’n a fuss!”
He let out an overdrawn synthetic sigh, making sure to coat Modbot in mos
t of the passing smog before continuing. “The lass, well, she’s special too, but naught ‘n a good way lad. Androids like her, they were all hunt’d down fer fear, fear they might become the new humanitae. But it's worse in this case; she mighta' avoided the grubbies, but the damn girl went and set off her killswitch.” Now even Shitbeard averted his gaze, he’d done this for a long, long time, and giving bad news never got easy.
Modbot, rather helpful as he was very occasionally known to be, immediately knew both the terror of what this meant and that Usu would need a proper explanation. “Blue-arsed flies, I wish I could say he was lying, but a killswitch is our worst fear Fluffpuff. You know how we don’t age, or even decay much because even rust isn’t alive right?” Usu worryingly nodded, one eye focused in each direction. “Well, humans, arses as they were and all, decided it would only be right and proper to stop us from making more of ourselves. You know, so we couldn’t make an evil robot army and kill them, instead of them suffocating one by one in their colonies or being poisoned by acid rain. No, no. Robot zombie armies were clearly the bigger danger there. So whatever tosser was in charge at the time thought it would be clever to set us to shut down if we ever saw any robotic schematics. For most of us, that would mean a short-term memory wipe and a good poke to get back on, but for androids? They were scared bridges to britches of the buggers, so their killswitch it… it causes them to lose all their memories and eventually disassemble entirely. She… must have seen one somewhere. Blight, the fact that it hasn’t taken her fully yet is a miracle in its own way.”
Spreading a smoggy sigh purposdentally across Modbot once again, our more medically inclined ally chimed back in. “Aye, haggisballs thar speaks truth laddie. Th' lassie won make it, hells, only reason ah kin repair others is a faulty switch ’n meself. Ah kin wake her up wance, bit th' next time sh’ freezes, she won' be wak’n up again. Ah kin promise ye that either wey.” Reluctantly, Usu agreed; Rain needed to know, she needed to decide her fate, or find some way―trifle or not―to fight it.
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