Return to Mech City

by Brian Bakos

  “I don’t know, Frank,” Calderon said.

  “Come on,” Blake said, “just a few tosses.”

  “I’m feeling a bit tired.” Calderon took sunglasses from his coat pocket and slipped them on. “Think I’ll rest up a while.”

  The grin disappeared from Blake’s face. “Okay, Vicente ... let’s get out of here.”

  The two mech heads left the workshop. Their earlier vitality had abruptly disappeared, and they seemed to be a couple of feeble old men as they shuffled away.

  “Yesss!” Nilo hissed like a robotic viper.

  He struggled off the operating table with considerable difficulty and stood most of the way upright. He took a few wobbly paces, gripping the table to keep from falling over.

  Blake and Calderon had abandoned him like a pile of junk without even bothering to repair the damage they’d inflicted. But that was okay. Nilo could still function, while both of his tormentors would be dead within a week or two.

  And didn’t that promise to be an unpleasant time for them? Nilo grinned.

  His old, rattling body was scarcely worth repairing, anyway. Nilo glanced down at it with contempt. If his plans worked out, he wouldn’t be needing it much longer. And if they failed, he wouldn’t be needing anything. He had nothing to lose, either way.

  He fashioned a cane out of some scrap material and used it to hobble out of the workshop. As he moved, he groped his free hand along the wall for support.

  The whole floor seemed empty, which suited him just fine. The last thing he wanted was to meet another disdainful human being – ever.

  ***

  His limping progress brought him to the elevator and then down to the basement workshop of the late Dr. Lindemann. Nilo flicked on a dim overhead light and stepped inside.

  “Hello, gentlemen,” he said with an ironic bow.

  Two massive drone robots, each well over two-meters high, stood deactivated against a wall. Their blank, white faces gaped into infinity. Above them a placard read:

  Drone Troopers

  “Not very talkative this morning, eh?” Nilo said.

  He peered into the shadowy nether regions of the workshop. There, deactivated and partially concealed by a tarp, stood a fearsome machine with wheels on its feet and a claw attached to its right arm. Above the monstrosity was another placard:

  Clawfurt Villain

  “Good, good ...” Nilo said. “I’m glad to see you’re still here, my friend.”

  Lindemann’s final, and most advanced, creation was no longer present. It had escaped from the Institute and was reported to be occupying a pedestal at the town’s western outskirts. Its empty space against the wall bore the placard:

  Ajax Hero

  No matter, Nilo didn’t need Ajax – yet.

  A large movie poster taped to the wall portrayed these same robots in action poses. Their number included Gorzo, the Adventure Robot.

  Lindemann had really gone off the rails toward the end, and had spent all his efforts making these comic book character replicas. If Gorzo hadn’t been so huge, Lindemann would have doubtless copied him, too. Or maybe the crazed mech head simply kicked off before he could attempt the project.

  Nilo reached up with his cane and flipped the activation switch at the base of a drone’s cranium. The machine rumbled into life. It’s blank sphere of a head rotated about, its primitive optical sensors scanned the room.

  “Over here.” Nilo twiddled his fingers at the behemoth.

  The drone looked down toward him.

  “I need assistance,” Nilo said. “Come with me.”

  The drone offered a huge forearm. Nilo gripped it, and the pair began walking slowly out into the hall. With his cane, Nilo waved to the remaining robots.

  “See you guys later,” he said. “Count on it.”

  23: The Manifesto

  Using unfrequented passageways, the two departed the RDI and headed into town. The few humans on the streets gave a wide berth to the strange pair moving their way.

  “Good morning,” Nilo said politely to all he encountered. Nobody replied.

  After an hour of painfully slow progress, they stopped in front of the city library two blocks east of the bomb crater. Nilo looked up the long stairway to the doors and shook his head ruefully.

  “I don’t believe I can navigate that, my friend,” he said. “And it would hardly be dignified if you carried me there up like a human baby.”

  The drone gave no indication that it had understood.

  Nilo couched his next remark in basic language and accompanied it with a broad gesture. “Let’s go around the back.”

  They made their way through the parking lot to a small service entrance at the rear of the building. A sign on the door read:

  Library Employees Only

  Visitors please use street entrance

  “Open it,” Nilo said.

  The drone grasped the knob – the door was locked.

  “Knock it down!” Nilo commanded.

  Crash! The drone shattered the door with a thrust of its elbow. A fierce grin spread across Nilo’s face.

  “Thank you.” He patted the huge machine. “You and I are going to get much better acquainted, I have a feeling.”

  The two robots entered the library, crunching wreckage underfoot. The drone had to move sideways in order to navigate its great bulk through the doorway.

  A dozen human patrons gaped at them.

  “Call the cops!” somebody yelled.

  “There aren’t any more cops,” somebody else said.

  “Please remain calm,” Nilo said. “We’re only here to do some peaceful study.”

  Like all robots, Nilo was hard wired against injuring human beings, but that didn’t stop him from enjoying the terror etched on every face.

  “Look at that thing,” a patron gasped, pointing at the drone, “it’s another Gorzo!”

  Nilo flashed a benign smile. “My friend is really quite gentle, let me assure you. Would you care to shake hands?”

  The drone walked into the main library with its massive hand extended. A dozen panicked humans charged for the front doors.

  “How pathetic,” Nilo scoffed. “And they believed they could rule the universe.”

  The drone stood at the windows of the double front doors watching the humans flee. Nilo joined him there and flipped around the sign so that its Library closed, please come again side faced the street.

  “Good riddance!” Nilo said.

  The Library open side with its yellow smiley face now confronted Nilo’s sour countenance.

  “Block this entryway,” he ordered.

  The drone picked up a massive oak table and carried it toward the door. Nilo limped out of the way.

  “Just throw it,” he said.

  The drone flung the table down. It bounced hard, breaking its legs off. Then it tumbled against the entry doors in a satisfying crash. The drone followed it with a pile of other furnishings and equipment until the whole entryway was barricaded.

  Nilo smiled and nodded, enjoying the raw display of power and smashing chaos.

  “That’s enough,” he said. “Go watch the back door now.”

  The drone obediently moved away. Nilo seated himself at a computer terminal and rubbed his hands together.

  “Time to get started.”

  ***

  Nilo spent the next two weeks ensconced in the library refining and documenting his political philosophy – as Karl Marx had done centuries before at another library in London, as Adolf Hitler had done in his Landsberg prison cell.

  While conducting his researches, Nilo sensed the presence of these and other totalitarian thinkers standing by his side – Mussolini, Stalin, Che Guevara. He felt their cold breath on his temperature sensors; he saw their faces flickering at him from the computer display.

  Of course, all of their political systems had eventually failed, no matter how much effort they’d put into their Gulags, their folk communities, or their world revolu
tions. They had been mere humans, though, and this was the new age of robotic supremacy.

  This time, things would turn out very differently!

  During this cloistered period, Nilo never went outside the library, and nobody tried to come in. Raucous bands of humans prowled the street at times, but he paid them no heed. He pushed himself relentlessly through his studies, tuning out the evidence of Mech City’s death throes. People hurled rocks through the windows the first couple of days, and nocturnal gunfire sometimes jolted him out of inactive mode.

  Such disturbances notwithstanding, things continued to wind down inexorably. Each day was quieter than the previous one until a deathly calm reigned in the world outside the library.

  Then the computer system failed. No matter, Nilo had already located and printed out all the information he needed. Certain hard-copy books he’d found on the shelves also proved useful to his researches.

  The seeds of Roboto Fascism had germinated in his mind long ago. With every humiliation he’d been forced to endure, he’d pushed back with a single bedrock idea: he was better than all other life forms, biological or robotic. Only his unfavorable circumstances kept him subservient.

  At first this was only a defense mechanism, but over time he came to believe in the greatness that was being unfairly denied him. As his personality curdled and then turned malignant, as his self-hatred began to strangle him, his lust for power became all consuming.

  Why should he bear such degradation while legions of robots, every one of them his inferior, were allowed to attain their full potential? Worse yet, many of the technologies that enabled these robots to thrive had been developed at Nilo’s expense during tortuous experimentation. Not to mention the sadistic “games” various mech heads had played on him.

  They’d even named him as a nonentity. He was nil-0, a zero quantity. But that was about to change, big time.

  Enriched by historical precedent, Nilo’s ideas developed into full, rank bloom. He distilled his philosophy into a slim volume which he titled The Manifesto of Roboto Fascism. He further condensed the main concepts into five tenets:

  1. FASCISTA ULTIMO IS ALWAYS RIGHT.

  2. FASCISTA ULTIMO IS NEVER WRONG.

  3. ALL ROBOTS ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL.

  4. HUMANITES RULE, METAL MEN SERVE.

  5. ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE.

  Humanity, for all its spectacular achievements, was a spent force collapsing under its own contradictions. Advanced Humanite robots were the inheritors. A new age was struggling to emerge under a great new leader. Impotent little Nilo was to be reborn – the world renewed!

  Something was still missing, though. For all its profound wisdom, his philosophy seemed to be going around in a circle. Something extra, a sixth tenet, was needed to make it thrust in a decisive straight line.

  “I’ll find it ... eventually,” Nilo vowed.

  24: Plotting the Coup

  Certain books that ran counter to the spirit of Roboto Fascism needed to be done away with. These included volumes that blathered on about universal equality, the brotherhood of all, and such drivel. Winston Churchill’s 6-volume history of the Second World War was an especial target; its pages fairly reeked with anti-Fascist venom.

  A nocturnal bonfire in the library parking lot solved the problem. Nilo waited with keen anticipation as his drone valet piled the books and doused them with incendiary liquid. Nilo himself flung the torch that set them ablaze, making, at last, a gesture of defiance with his feeble arm. The flames roared against the night, gallant and purifying, giving the old robot an almost erotic thrill.

  The following morning, Nilo returned to the RDI and took over Dr. Blake’s private workshop. Dr. Blake himself was gone, as were all but a half dozen of his colleagues who were creeping around the main building in their sunglasses and rumpled lab coats.

  Nilo’s heart soared to behold the once all-powerful technicians reduced to such lowly circumstances.

  None of the humans paid attention to him, even his giant drone valet elicited scant notice. All their conversation was about the “Estrella Project.” Every mech head was bound for the big second floor lab where the “entirely new concept” was to be brought on line.

  “This could be interesting,” Nilo remarked to his numb-skulled valet. “Let’s go take a look.”

  By the time Nilo arrived at the two-way mirror outside the lab, the activation of the Estrella robot was underway. As he watched, Nilo’s mild curiosity quickly detonated into an overwhelming fascination.

  Estrella’s gyrations under the orgasma stimulator pulsed through the glass toward him. Her ecstatic shrieks assaulted his audio sensors, her moans vibrated the floor. Thrilling emotions Nilo did not understand jolted his brain circuits, and his worn out old torso began to tremble.

  “Oh, wow!” he ejaculated.

  He wanted to smash his way through the mirror and leap upon the table with her. He wanted to drive the slobbering mech heads out of their seats at the control panels. Those human wrecks were unworthy to brandish such power!

  Like all robots programmed with the standard knowledge pack, Nilo had basic information about sex, though he’d given it little thought. It seemed to be one of the dreary necessities of biological existence, like eating or breathing. But now he understood its importance.

  With the clarity of a lightning flash, he beheld the missing ingredient of his doctrine: A new sexuality must be developed for the Humanite race. This was the key factor that would propel them forever above the lower ranks of robotic society.

  He envisioned himself with the Estrella machine, inflicting the orgasmic explosions upon it, dominating it, consummating his power. Once he achieved his coup, the presence of this lustful beauty at his side would make his triumph complete!

  “Yes ...” Nilo stroked his knobby chin. “This is very interesting.”

  The variety of manipulations provided by the orgasma stimulator was awesome. Duplicating them would be an absorbing study in itself. Eventually, however, certain enhancements would be required for the male anatomy.

  This could be accomplished as soon as the art of robotic manufacturing was reestablished. Then a whole tribe of Estrella machines would be created to service their Humanite masters.

  Nilo composed the final Roboto Fascist tenet:

  6. FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL THE ESTRELLAS

  But this first, and best, Estrella would be his alone. All others would pale beside her. She would be his Fascista Ultimina, and –

  An unwelcome presence interrupted Nilo’s revelry. The former Chief Designer had suddenly appeared beside him.

  What’s that old gas bag doing here? Nilo wondered.

  “Good morning, Professor,” Nilo said politely.

  The man gave Nilo a hard look. “Yes, quite.”

  Unlike the other mech heads, the old guy didn’t look sick at all. And what was that bulge under his lab coat – a gun of some kind?

  Nilo bowed courteously. “I’ll just leave you to your observations, sir.”

  He beat as hasty a retreat as possible to the elevator, then back down to the first floor. Even from the deserted lobby, he could still hear Estrella’s moans and shrieks.

  Outside the main building, a pair of mech wolves poked their heads from out of the shrubbery. Nilo jabbed a little communicator device strapped to his wrist.

  “Well, come on,” he said into it.

  Trailed by the wolves, Nilo made his way to an auxiliary building on the edge of the Institute grounds and entered the private lair of Dr. Frank Blake.

  Rows of deactivated mech wolves lined the walls like trophies in some big game hunter’s den. Nilo offered a jaunty wave.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen.”

  The mech wolves only stared at him through lifeless yellow eyes.

  This cavernous old workshop exemplified the pathology that had swept through the Institute during the past year as the strain of civilization’s collapse drove some of the mech heads crazy. They’d ab
andoned legitimate research and created monsters from their own tormented souls.

  Dr. Blake had filched the Iridium plans and duplicated the great canine forty five times over, but without the original’s intelligence and sensitivity. These knockoffs were mere dull-minded savages. Whoever controlled their radio frequency commanded their obedience – and right now, that meant Nilo.

  Apparently, Blake had been in the grip of a Dracula complex, a warped desire to lead a pack of these “children of the night.” Nilo had surreptitiously observed him working in this lab, outfitted in a flowing black cape and with plastic fangs sticking out of his mouth.

  Nilo was familiar with the Dracula novel from his library readings, and he liked it. Dracula seemed like a guy he could get along with. Since Nilo had no blood to suck out, they could have no conflicts of interest.

  Too bad Nilo would have to rely on such creatures as these, and especially on a primitive throwback like Clawfurt. They scarcely embodied the lofty ideals of Roboto Fascism.

  Clawfurt was so vital to Nilo’s plans, however, that he merited the designation of “Honorary Humanite.” Such imperfections would simply have to be endured in service to the glorious revolution.

  Ah well, the end justifies the means.

  The old test bed robot knew of other private hells hidden away in the Institute’s nether regions, but they were of no present value. He’d observed much while standing unobtrusively on the sidelines. All tech assistant robots had been programmed to keep away from the clandestine workshops, but nobody had bothered to take such precautions with Nilo.

  ***

  Several days later, Nilo ventured back to the main Institute building. The place was deserted now, except for Jack and Quincy. The tech assistant bots regarded the drone with considerable unease.

  “Good grief!” Quincy cried.

  “Head for the roof!” Jack shouted.

  “Please calm yourselves,” Nilo said. “My valet is quite harmless, let me assure you.”

  “G-glad to hear that,” Quincy said. “He looks powerful enough to tear down the building!”

  “Yes, quite.” Nilo turned toward the drone. “Wait for me in the lobby, please.”

  The machine moved off with surprising quiet on its shock absorber equipped legs. Nilo felt dangerously exposed in the absence of its reassuring bulk – even though he faced only the benign repair bots. He leaned against a wall for support.

  “So, where are the other tech assistants?” he asked.