Apocalypse Omega

by Marc Landau

  A smile crossed her face. “YES! I got it.” She clapped her hands. “It wants us to leave the planet.”

  “That cannot be correct,” the bot-alien said. “The Ultra is home. It is preparing to be seated.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Farmy, but it sent me a very strong vibe that we have to get out of here.”

  “Vibe? What is vibe?”

  “It’s the same as a feeling.”

  “You cannot go,” the bot said.

  “We can do whatever we want,” I said. “It’s not like we ever gave consent. Remember?”

  The bot made fuming beeps and buzzing noises. It was not happy about the way things were working out. Join the club botty.

  “It was the Ultra who told us to leave,” I said. “Don’t you want to do what the Ultra requires?”

  The bot whirred and buzzed and again it made me check for steam coming out of its ear holes. It was having a hard time processing the wish of the Ultra, versus its desire to have it back on the throne. “Why would the Ultra command you to leave? It is illogical. The Ultra is ready to be seated and to protect the universe.”

  Kat shrugged. “Sorry, Farmy. It didn’t explain anything in detail. Like I said, it was just a feeling. A vibe.”

  “Feeling! Vibe! It’s illogical.”

  Kat and I smiled, because that was one of the truest things the bot-alien had ever said. It had unwittingly stumbled onto an insight about human nature. We are illogical as shat. And like most of us humans, it didn’t like it either.

  Again, it confirmed my theory that strong emotions caused the aliens to react. The Ultra must have had something important to say, if it actually put Kat into a seizure. I crossed my fingers they’d figure out a better way to talk. I couldn’t have her randomly falling to the floor in a seizure every time the Ultra had something important to tell her.

  “Weird that it would tell us to leave. The only place we can even go is the ship.”

  Kat shrugged. “I guess that’s where we go, then.”

  “Beep. No! I mean. Ultra, please, you cannot.”

  That made her eyebrows go up. “I cannot?”

  The bot tried to bend down and get on its knees to plead, but it didn’t have knees, so it tilted forward like the ancient toy where the bird dips its beak into a cup of water.

  “Ultra. If you leave, the universe will be dire. It will collapse.”

  “The universe will collapse?” I interrupted. “Laying the guilt on kind of thick, aren’t you? My mother would be proud.”

  Its head appendage spun around to me in a fit of bot-alien rage. “You know nothing, infidel primitive.”

  “Now I’m an infidel? That’s actually a step up from plankton. I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  Its eye holes went beet red and it lifted a glowing hand appendage to my face.

  “Farmy. What did I tell you about hurting him?”

  It shut off its glowing hand and apologized. That was twice as many apologies as the walrus had ever given me. “Please, Ultra. You must listen. Your people need you. The universe needs you. You cannot let the Krin find you. They will bind you and harness your power. It will turn the tide of the entire universe. They will destroy all balance. Chaos and darkness will reign.”

  Kat patted the bot on the shoulder. “Relax, Farmy. It’s not like I’m going to hand myself over to the Krin. I don’t even know what’s going to happen. All I know is, we’re supposed to leave.”

  “You are supposed to stay and be seated.”

  “How can that be true, if we’re leaving?” she asked.

  The bot-alien tried to process the situation, but didn’t sound like it was having much luck. Its beeps, blips and whirs were sounding like a broken machine running out of steam.

  “You never consented. The probabilities were not locked in. You should have consented.”

  “Or should we be doing exactly what we're doing?” Kat replied. “Maybe the Ultra knows something you don’t. Maybe we need to leave to save the universe.”

  “No! Beep! No! Beep! No!”

  “Easy, Farmy.” Kat said.

  “No. No. No. No! The Ultra must remain.”

  I got in the bot’s face hole. “Hey, hold on there…”

  “No!” The bot-alien swiveled and hit me in the gut with its fist appendage, sending me flying through the air, landing with a thump ten feet away. The oxygen flew out of my lungs. I choked and gasped and rolled on the ground. That was going to give me a major bruise later. Unless I was already bleeding internally.

  If this thing wanted a fight, I was going to give it one. Paralyzing finger appendage be damned. I wasn’t going down without at least putting some dents into that thing’s head appendage.

  “Farmy! What did you do?” Kat yelled. “I told you not to hurt him. You have disobeyed a direct requirement from the Ultra.”

  “I am sorry, Ultra.”

  “You’d better be.” She rushed over to me and helped me up. My legs wobbling beneath me as I got to my feet. “You okay?” she asked.

  I brushed off the dirt and nodded. I was also sure about something darker lurking beneath the veneer of this alien paradise. I don’t remember the Garden of Eden including being punched in the gut by an abusive bot-alien.

  It was at least the third time (maybe the fourth; it's getting hard to keep count) in less than a week the robot had attacked me. I made a mental note to shut that thing down and trash-chute it, if it was the last thing I did.

  “We’ve got to get out of here. That thing’s losing it,” I said.

  She looked around with a confused expression. “Where the hellvian do we go?”

  It was my turn to look confused. “Can you teleport us back to the ship?”

  Kat closed her eyes and focused, but nothing happened. “Nope.”

  “Guess you’re not emotional enough.”

  “This isn’t enough?”

  I mimicked her shrug.

  The bot-alien slid towards us ranting and blipping like a classic horror vid lunatic. Chanting an eerie mantra like it had just been inducted into a cult. “The Ultra must remain. Beep. The Ultra must remain. Beep.”

  I had no idea what it would to do when it got to us, but the Ultra wasn’t helping at the moment, so we’d be at its mercy. If we were lucky, it would kill me and the two Pokas, then lock Kat up in an alien castle like a princess.

  The insane cult bot-alien hovered closer and began glowing purple. I hated it when they started glowing. It was never a good sign.

  “Can you order it to cut the shat, or send it to the cornfield or something?”

  “I can’t do squat at the moment. The Ultra doesn’t seem to be listening.”

  “It’s listening. It’s just decided not to help for some Ultra reason.” Without her super Ultra powers activated, there was only one option.

  We ran into the forest like teenagers being chased by a man with a chainsaw. The good news was that while the bot was able to hover and glide, it was slow. Thank the universe the military hadn’t built these things for speed, only efficiency. And they were efficient. The walrus had become an efficient killing machine… again. Slow but deliberate. Just like in a horror vid. I cursed myself for watching so many of them. The boyfriend never makes it out alive.

  “What about the Pokas?” Kat yelled as we leaped over brush and wood.

  “They’ll be fine. That thing doesn’t care about her—them. Besides, they’d never come if I called anyway.”

  We hadn’t been running long, and I was gasping for breath. I hadn’t run this hard since prelim military training, and even then I’d barely made it through. I remembered sneaking a peek at one of my progress reports. The phrase “not a fighting specimen” stuck in my mind.

  The forest got denser the further we ran into it and I couldn’t help but notice how quiet it was. Except for my panting.

  The aliens hadn’t populated it with birds or insects, or life of any kind. Nothing except the foliage. Maybe they were going to do that la
ter, once we’d consented. Maybe it was up to Kat to decide what animals she wanted. Her very own Noah’s Ark. The silence was creepy, adding to the horror vid scene playing out in real life.

  We had a maniacal alien robot chasing us, chanting an insane mantra.

  “The Ultra must remain. The Ultra must remain.”

  Over and over again.

  “The Ultra must remain. The Ultra must remain.”

  It was downright chilling.

  “The Ultra must —.”

  SLAM. I hit a rock and went down to the ground with a resounding OOOFF. Literally just like in the horror vids when the boyfriend trips, hurts his leg, can’t get up, then looks behind him and the dude with the mask and chainsaw is there. I wasn’t going to turn around and look. I was sure if I did the walrus would be floating behind me with an evil smile on its mouth hole, and a chainsaw in its arm appendage.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Kat doubled back and helped me up. Again. “You okay?”

  It was sore, but I could put weight on it. “Not really. No. I’m not okay. I’m sick and fraking tired of lunatic aliens trying to kill me!”

  “I meant your leg.”

  That’s when we spotted the robo-killer peeking out from behind a tree about fifty yards away. “The Ultra must remain.”

  Kat grabbed my arm and pulled me along. “Come on. We have to get out of here.”

  It was impressive how fast she was. Was the alien giving her a boost, or was it from all the edu-running medals and megathons she’d run when she was younger.

  Kat pointed to a clearing and stopped us in front of a small hill. “Help me out,” she said as she bent down and started pushing brush away.

  I hobbled over and lent a hand. “What are we doing? We need to run away.”

  “Shhhh. It’ll hear you. Just keep moving this shat.”

  We quietly pulled branches and vines away from the hill. We even dug, scratched and clawed dirt away, until finally a hole about the size of an ancient Hobbit doorway was revealed.

  I wiped the sweat from my forehead. “How the hellvian did you know that was even there?”

  Kat shrugged. “Let’s just get in and cover the entrance back up.”

  Hiding in a hole like a bug was the only viable option. We couldn’t outrun the bot forever. Human legs eventually tire out. Even if they’re alien-boosted, as in Kat’s case. She is still part human. An old joke came to mind. You don’t have to outrun the bear to get away. You just have to outrun the guy next to you.

  I was tempted to tell her to leave me behind. Tell her I’d fight the bot and buy her time in a final grand gesture. Just like in the vids.

  “Leave me. I can't go on. Save yourself. I’ll keep the robot occupied.”

  “No. I won’t leave you!” She’d cry.

  “You have to. I’m a goner. You have to live! Go now. Go!”

  I’d watch her slowly disappear into the forest then die a horrible but proud death against the maniac-alien, knowing I’d saved the life of the woman I loved. She’d remember me with a locket or by naming her first child after me.

  Instead of leaving me behind to die, we decided to hide like Drez-rats in a hole and pray the killer bot would pass us by. The odds were slim, but it was the best chance we had. As quickly and as quietly as possible, we snuck into the random Hobbit doorway hidden in the side of the alien hill, covered the hole with brush and hid from the psycho-killer alien-robot.

  It was dark and narrow inside the hole. Our bodies pressed together in a forced hug. I was surprised we both fit. I guess the military rations and boring exercise on the Outpost had done me some good after all. I was going to get murdered by an alien robot but at least I was thin. The warm heat from Kat’s skin actually relaxed me a notch. Until I heard the eerie mantra of the bot-alien growing louder in the distance.

  “The Ultra must remain. The Ultra must remain.”

  It sounded like a creepy version of “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” which made sense since we were playing a deadly game of hide-and-seek.

  “That thing’s going to find us,” I whispered.

  “Shhhh,” Kat replied.

  The chanting grew louder as the bot got closer. “The Ultra must remain. The Ultra must remain.”

  “It’s totally going to find us,” I repeated, like she couldn’t hear me the first time since I was only a millimeter away from her face and could literally feel the warmth from her cheek.

  Kiss her, the little voice in my head said at the totally wrong and inappropriate time.

  “Shhhh,” she whispered. “I’ll kiss you later.”

  “You heard that?”

  She nodded. “You’re transmitting your thoughts everywhere. Can you try to keep it down so Farmy doesn’t hear you, too?”

  “Yeah. Okay, I’ll try to quiet my thoughts. No problem with a rampaging, mind-reading alien-robot out there stalking us.”

  “Just count numbers or something simple.”

  I nodded and tried it. “One. Two.”

  “The Ultra must remain.”

  “Three-four-five.”

  “The Ultra must remain.”

  “Six-seven-eight.”

  “The Ultra must remain.”

  “One-two…”

  It was turning into a bad jazz jam.

  “The Ultra must remain.”

  I knew in my heart, which was beating a million miles a second, that the bot-alien was going to find us. It was only a matter of moments.

  “The Ultra must remain.”

  That’s when Kat started glowing orange.

  “Well, if it wasn’t going to find us before, it definitely will now that you’re beaming a signal.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

  Kat’s orange glow lit up the hole. It shed so much light I was able to see a passageway in the far left corner, only a few feet away. I’d thought we were just digging our own grave.

  It had to be the Ultra giving us a helping hand. Or a helping whatever the hellvian these aliens had. Why it wanted to illuminate a passageway, and not give Kat the power to just snap her fingers and make the robo-killier vanish, I had no clue. But it was the Ultra's world. We were just trying not to die in it. So we squished ourselves together even tighter and made our way over.

  “Do you think this is how babies feel when they’re born?” I asked for no good reason. Totally inappropriate time and place. It just came out.

  “Twins, you mean,” Kat smiled as we crammed ourselves through the passage. Thankfully, once we got through it widened enough for us both to fit without squeezing ourselves together like a Prikan panini.

  “What do you think is down there?” I asked.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Good point.” The only other option was to go back and wait for the bot-alien to rip open the front of the entrance and yell, “Peek-a-boo. I’m going to kill you!”

  We did the only thing we could and headed down the passage. Thankfully, Kat was still glowing, so it was easy to see where we were going.

  The walls were smooth, highly polished. I thought it might be some sort of metal tube we were moving through. This was no Earth cavern full of jagged rocks and dirt. This was a pristine, clean, sheer tunnel. Ironically, there was no goop or gel of any kind. I was half expecting anything alien-made to be sticky, but for some reason they’d decided not to snot up this tunnel.

  We heard the bot pulling away the branches and brush we’d camouflaged the hole with. Once it cleared the entrance, hopefully it wouldn’t be able to fit its stout robo-body into the narrow passage. I was sure it would, but at least the narrow passage would slow it down a little and buy us time to scurry like Drez-rats.

  it didn’t dead-end. Why would it, though? It didn’t make sense they’d put this here just to lead it nowhere. This was definitely a passage to somewhere. But what I really hoped was that it wasn’t going to lead us somewhere worse than what was behind us. On this planet, I was sure there were things even worse than a rampaging p
sycho bot-alien.

  “The Ultra must remain,” echoed loudly in the distance.

  The bot must have gotten through. Even if it was stuck, it wouldn’t take long for it to break out a shovel appendage and dig its way through the passage. Or blast the hole wide open with a pulse beam.

  I heard the muted sounds of a shovel, along with its creepy work song, “The Ultra must remain.” It had decided to dig, not blast, so at least we were safe from pulsar burn waves. It was probably concerned about hurting the Ultra while it was still in human form. It had waited eons. It could wait a few more minutes before ripping Kat from the Ultra.

  We picked up speed, moving as fast as we could down the tube. My leg still ached and slowed me down but it felt good enough that I didn’t need Kat’s help and we could put some distance between us and the walrus.

  The digging stopped, and we sped up because that meant the bot had made its way through and was going to be gliding down the metal tube toward us like a bowling ball down toward a seven-ten split.

  Bowling. A national pastime, and something I was pretty good at. It was an exalted game and believed to be given to the world by an ancient race of God-like aliens. I wished I was back on Prime warming up for a competition. Or even in an alien dream hallucination where I believed that’s what I was doing.

  Were there bowling alleys on the planet? If not, the aliens could build one at the Ultra’s request in no time. And they would be the grandest ever created. More astounding than even the Daytona 12,000 lanes in Kansas proper.

  “We gotta move,” Kat said, snapping me out of it, and we did. We kicked it up a notch, trying to keep the robot’s chanting as distant as possible. We had to stay ahead of that thing, buy Kat time until she had better communication with the Ultra.

  There was no question the Ultra could do pretty much anything, but trying to figure what, when, and how was still a mystery. Except that it responded to intense emotional reactions. And for some reason it wanted us to leave the planet, be chased by a killer robot and scurry down this hole.

  My best guess was it had started glowing in response to Kat’s fear of the walrus closing in on us. But again, why didn’t it just make it disappear? The Ultra had a mind of its own, and right now we were along for the ride.