Zero Time

by M. P. Swinnerton

  “What more can a man do?” Zon thought to himself with exasperation “I have offered now it's up to them!”

  Zon instructed Zenith to keep an attentive eye on these poor people and if it were ever evident that they desperately needed help, then the Zelites would step in and take over, but until that time they must just stand by and ensure no harm came to these strange folk.

  Zenith kept in touch with the Dropouts and carried on with his reports, but so far nothing worrying seemed to be happening to these people and they obviously did not want any interference from others. They seemed to be quite content in their own odd way of life. “So let them be!” Zenith thought.

  CHAPTER 8

  Zon and his brothers had their main homes in California, but they commuted daily to the Planet's Command Center in Washington.

  Zon's day would begin with his personal GM maid bringing his sustenance tablets for him to swallow before he arose, and whilst he was still in his bed, she would check him with a health monitor to ensure whether he would require any additional vitamins or minerals to maintain his body and brain functions. Zon very rarely required any extra boosts, but on the few odd occasions when he did receive a warning from his health monitor, then it was necessary for the GM maid to give him an extra shot of health-booster.

  Zon had picked this GM maid to be his bedside attendant as she was a good looker and pleased his visual senses adequately. She usually accompanied him whenever he traveled. This GM female had been very adept at satisfying his physical needs prior to the arrival of Uvarna.

  After she had finished his daily health monitoring, she would then leave him to his toiletries. Zon would step through his cleansing shower spray unit to revitalize his skin and wash away any impurities that had occurred during his sleep session. He would then dress in the clothes that had been laid out for him by his male GM valet and meet up with his brothers in the communal refreshment room. The brothers would have some vitamin drink and breakfast together and chat, discussing the plans in hand for the coming day. Both of his brothers admired Zon tremendously. There was no jealousy among them and they had never quarreled or fought between themselves. The other two younger brothers were also extremely handsome and strong and were constantly approached by Zelite women who openly lusted after them.

  The three brothers usually traveled together each morning to Washington, and while Zon paid his visit to the Council, the other two brothers inspected the Robot stocks, the GM facilities and other vital supplies to ensure all was in order.

  Initially Zon had not wanted an apartheid situation to develop between the Zelites, the GM people and the Robots, and allowed all the groups to travel together on the existing transport network. But as the system was gradually becoming grossly congested due to overloading, Zon had to decree that only pure Zelites would be allowed access to the faster laser-powered monorail transport and the rest of the population would still have to use the much slower original system. The slower system still operated underground and relied on a magnetic/levitation field. This system was normally quite effective, but occasionally became disorientated when too many people transporters were using the same magnetic fields.

  Whenever leaving their individual apartments, the Zelites had their own ‘personal movers’ that could travel along a private tunnel from each apartment and then link in to the laser-powered Network. The modern system was, of course, built under each city's protective canopy to avoid the risk of contamination from the air pollution, etc.

  This network of travel had been a bit of a headache for Zon and the Council, as such a massive usage of the system had not been anticipated. Eventually Zon decided to instruct the robots to remain in their places of work and no longer allowed them to travel even on the older subway system that the GM population utilized. He did finally authorize the commencement of the building of a new faster system for the GM people, but decided that even so, the Zelites would still be the only ones allowed to travel via the monorail Rapid sections.

  Zon was a little sad about this decision, as he had made many friends amongst the GMs over the years. Many of them were very intellectual, as their brains had been modified to allow them to calculate as fast as most average computers for everyday tasks. It fascinated Zon when chatting to his GM friends traveling alongside him on the transport Network to see that their brains were so active, but he sympathized with the fact that, if they were modified to have extra brain calculus, they then had their physical powers diminished. This naturally had been instituted so as not to allow the GM people any possible power struggle over the Zelites. The other GM folk were of meager intellect, but had great physical abilities.

  Originally, when the Personal Movers linked into the Power Network and joined the main ‘Transport Vehicle’ the travelers would step outside of their own cars and have a good old chat with their pals before getting back into their own Personal Movers once again when they were nearing their destinations, and quite a lot of genuine friendships were cemented. But when the Power Network was upgraded to the laser Rapid grade, there was not enough time to dismount on the journey and the Zelites remained in their own Personal Movers, which had been coupled to the main rail, until they reached their final destination, and consequently contact with the GM people on a social basis became very rare. Some of the GMs were used for their memory capabilities, and Zon's Aide, Zenith, was one of them. Zenith always accompanied Zon whenever he attended the Council. On the insistence of Zon, Zenith had been receiving injections of the life-prolonging gene and Zon dearly wished and hoped that his friend would be able to survive another 100 years!

  Research was being undertaken to try and solve the problem of short life expectancy for the GM people, but so far, no great inroads had been made in this field.

  There had previously been an attempt to create cyber men to replace the GM population, with the hope that the cybers would be permanent and not die off, as did the GMs, but these creations were found to be completely flawed and could in no way be relied on to fill the shoes of the GM people. They just could not cope with the tasks that the GM people dealt with on a daily basis, and although there were still a few cyber men in existence, usually they were just used for entertainment purposes, as they were quite unique in their appearance. Mostly they were made up of a combination of human and vegetable and other vegetation, and a lot of the Zelites found it weird but fascinating to watch a man with branches for arms and legs trying to sit at a table and eat a meal. They were able to manage, but in a very peculiar manner, and provided the Zelites with a lot of laughter and banter when they were forced to sit in an exhibition window to eat a meal just for sheer entertainment value for the Zelites.

  Eventually Zon had to prohibit the use of these creatures as entertainment, and placed them in a suitable Housing Compound with nurses and staff attending to their needs when they found it impossible to eat or drink due to their immobility difficulties. He did allow some of his scientists and specialists to visit these strange cybers to endeavor to find ways and means of assisting them to gradually be able to cope on their own and perhaps return to mixing in with the Zelite race once more.

  They even fitted some of the cybers with artificial arms and legs, amputating the extraneous twigs and greenery, and this did help some of them to a certain degree, but on the whole there was not a lot that could be done for these poor souls except to try and give them as much comfort as possible.

  This had been a case where scientific research had gone completely haywire. Instead of being able to improve the lot of the Zelites by having a subservient race of cyber men at their beck and call, the experiment had turned out horribly wrong and these poor creatures either had to live forever contending with all their afflictions or they would have to be humanely destroyed. So far Zon had preferred to put this decision on hold, as he was still hoping that gradually his specialist surgeons would be able to operate on these creatures and give them some acceptable kind of limbs and other organs to make their lives more bearable.


  CHAPTER 9

  Whenever a Zelite wished to travel to another distant state or country for any trivial reason, they had the choice to use the power of teleportation to transfer their entire scanned body copies to wherever they wished to be transported and then used a Robot as a host body whilst they were visiting, or alternatively they could use the space vehicle service.

  It was quite simple to step into a Scanner Cubicle, program the destination, give instructions for whichever task was to be carried out by a robot on behalf of the Zelite, and make an automatic request for a robot host to be made available on arrival. After the scanned copy was installed in the robot host, an exact replica of the initiator was consequently obtained and then operated by the robot until the object of the visit was completed.

  The replica lacked only one vital ingredient, and that was a very important part of the originator's brain. This critical part of the brain was not transmitted so as to prevent the receiving robot having absolute full control of the initiator's actions, except for the orders initially programmed into the instigating scanner.

  Any Zelite who wished not to travel personally but to use a robot host would set out his orders quite clearly onto the scanner and no deviations from these instructions were possible after they were programmed in.

  The original Zelite remained in inertia at their place of source until the robot teleported the host body to its correct place as instructed in the program. This usually took only a few seconds to take place, and then the Zelite would continue with his normal everyday activities until he received confirmation that his acting robot had completed its task and was ready to teleport the Zelite facsimile back to the original Zelite, who would then re-enter a Scanning Cubicle and receive his copy back. This was an additional safety procedure to ensure that the facsimiles were kept under tight control. This procedure worked smoothly and efficiently until, however, the inevitable happened.

  One particularly degenerate Zelite professor of physics decided to carry out an illegal experiment by allowing his entire brain capacity, as well as his body, to be scanned and teleported to a Robot host.

  This was, of course, asking for trouble in no uncertain terms!

  He had decided to teleport himself from his living quarters to his laboratory in his home-town of Chicago, as living there, he felt that if something should go wrong with his experiment he would be able to call on one of his contemporaries to help him out of his mess. He left a note and a message on his laptop with a fully detailed description of his actions and his proposed antidote to bring him back in case of any malfunction.

  At first the mad professor, who had now changed into a combination of human being/robot, was rather bemused at his state of transient weirdness. “Oh, crikey,” he thought aloud, “It worked, my experiment worked!”

  The professor moved his unfamiliar body and steered himself around his laboratory, taking a short time to try and gain control of his robotic parts before taking the plunge and going out into the exterior walkway. A passing lab technician, who knew the professor quite well, greeted him and did not seem to notice anything strange about the Robomix professor.

  The Robomix laughed aloud as he found he could lift the concrete bollard that was placed outside his lab entrance. He then tried running and put his controller speed to 100 km per hour. The Robomix was soon whizzing along the walkway at such a crazy pace that other robots jumped aside in amazement at his ludicrous behavior.

  After a couple of hours of experimenting with his newly found power, the crazy Robomix professor decided to find somewhere to rest. He could not decide whether to return to his own living quarters where he had his own room with a comfortable bed, or perhaps he did not now require comfort, but did he instead need a robot station to park up for the night where he could receive the automatic static charge that all robots required to function correctly? The Robomix was finding himself, or itself, in a state of confusion. “Was it a robot or was he a human?”

  Eventually the Robomix decided to park up in the robot park and switched off, like a robot, standing up. The following morning the Robomix was roused back into action with a jolt when the automatic static charger reached it and loaded the Robomix with a sharp injection of electro-biological infusion. Then it found itself being pushed and jostled by other robots gathering to take their places in the line-up for take-over electronic mega transmission jobs.

  These particular sections of robots were strange creatures. They had been given human-shaped bodies with arms and legs and heads and faces. Their look-alike flesh had a strange pinkish hue that reflected light and consequently made them visible at night. Their hair was always the same color and shape, a kind of creamy, shiny nylon-type material, cut into a bob with a straight fringe framing the face. They all had blue eyes encased in long, fringed dark eyelashes.

  They had been implanted with a minuscule amount of brain cells, sufficient to allow them to do simple tasks without being instructed each time. These robotic beings always covered their bodies with the same tunics that were of a stark, exceedingly vivid, red color, which tended to exaggerate their presence even more than their body hues.

  Eventually the Robomix managed to extricate itself from the fracas and moved stealthily away from the Robot Park, shuffling shrewdly so as not to draw attention to its bewilderment. Crossing the walkway, it found a sheltered grassy embankment and managed to organize its robotic parts into sitting down so that it could have some time to gather its senses and decide what to do next.

  After some great concentration, eventually the cunning part of the mad professor's brain came into action, allowing him to win the struggle for the power to control the Robomix. It was a long and difficult task and the robot side fought hard to control the body part of the Robomix, but with clever and great focus the professor's human brain won the internal battle of wits. He managed to program his Robomix's brain, which possessed the same type of side aperture as other robots, and succeeded in keying in instructions for the robotic brain to run in conjunction with, but to be controlled overall by, his more powerful human brain.

  He began to realize the potential of his Robomix situation and decided to take advantage of his now immeasurable capabilities and, getting up off the grass, confidently strode over towards the line of robots. “You, you and you, come with me,” he pointed to three robots standing at the rear of the line and without hesitation the three machines followed him towards the garden park that he had just left.

  “Now for the real test of my newly found powers,” he thought.

  The professor was aware that robots only acted on specially programmed instructions, except for specific mundane everyday tasks that were already pre-installed into their computer brains and, ordering the first of the robots to stand in front of him, he pushed the tiny button at the side of the robot's head and sure enough, it opened a small aperture revealing the operating buttons to the robot's computerized brain.

  “Aha! That's the answer. Now I have got the power to get these machines to do anything I desire. Great!” he thought to himself.

  The mad professor decided to have some fun with the robots and programmed in to each of them an instruction to cooperate with any voice commands that he might give them. He made them march in line up and down the park and then sideways and backwards and even around in circles.

  The sight of these three machines, cavorting and parading through the park, aroused the attention of some of the other robots, and curiosity got the better of them and they agreed to allow the professor to alter their programs to obey him. Soon he found he had a contingency of about thirty or so robots under his command.

  Luckily for the professor, there were no Zelites present in the area at the time he was giving commands to the robots, otherwise he would obviously have provoked a great deal of suspicion in them.

  “Okay, you guys, I want you all to line up in twos, and follow me and do exactly what I tell you.”

  He continued ordering the robots to do whatever he commanded until h
e became bored with this ‘game’ and decided to lead them to a robot barrack, which consisted of a huge warehouse containing all the gear necessary for repairing and retuning these machine people. He instructed them to immobilize themselves until he gave them further orders.

  An idea had crept into the professor's corrupt mind.

  “I think I will become the Planet Leader and replace that softheaded jerk that leads us now. All I have to do is take over all the robots, one by one, and program my orders in to them and I will have planet domination for sure.”

  Before Zon was made aware of the crazy happenings of the deranged Robomix, the mad professor had also managed to capture and keep under his domination scores of Zelite men and women. Physically they were not able to match his superhuman robotic strength.

  The Robomix had in fact captured and commanded most of the interior part of Chicago, and when he thought he had gained a large enough army, the deluded professor sent a message, via one of his detainee robots, to Zon to instruct him to surrender his command to the Robomix who now claimed to be the Planet Leader.

  When Zon received this strange cryptic message, he laughed at first, but then he received another clear and more worrying message from his buddy Zenith that there was some truth in the fact that the crazy professor had really taken over quite a large part of Chicago and had been able to put together a pretty substantial robot army. Zenith advised Zon that, surprisingly, the crazy man had also managed to dominate and detain quite a few Zelite people.