“Found you? Who –zk– found you?”
Paige didn’t reply. She grabbed her sister and dragged her behind a mound of empty cases. Scrap turned towards the angry screech of the thrusters and looked up. Two flight-cycles descended through the air, purple exhaust fumes billowing behind them.
“Hunters…” Scrap whispered as the cycles drew closer. It wasn’t the first time they, or predators like them, had circled the Pile. Every now and then vehicles like these would appear in the teal-blue sky and soar overhead on the trail of this creature or that. Scrap couldn’t say what motivated these once well-programmed robots to scour the deserts of this sad Somewhere for prey, or why, for the first time since Scrap made his home on this mountain of metal debris, they were suddenly making a beeline straight for him.
“Junk case!” cried one of the hunters as their flight-cycles clanged roughly on to the shifting surface of parts. Scrap watched two robots dismount and realized he’d never seen a hunter up close before. These two were three times his size at least. Grubby cloaks covered lean metal cases with long, segmented arms and legs. Atop their shoulders sat featureless, polished metal heads – one, a sphere, the other, a cube. The sphere-headed robot wore the horned skull of some poor, long-dead alien on his shoulder, while the cube-headed one’s belt clanked with what looked like grenades.
What happened to their cases? Scrap wondered as they strode towards him. Even without their strange adornments, he didn’t recognize their design. They looked almost nothing like any of the robots that set down on Somewhere 513 all those years ago.
But then neither did he.
“I’ve seen some sorry-looking junk cases in my time, June,” said the sphere-headed robot. “But this one takes the biscuit.”
“This one takes the whole tin, Terry,” said the cube-headed robot, casting a long shadow over Scrap. “Ever seen a case like it?”
“Never seen a case like it,” Terry replied as the pair circled him. “Can we take a picture?”
“What?” asked Scrap. In an instant, the two robots were either side of his shoulders, all but pressing their faces to his. Terry held out his arm and a small camera embedded in his thumb flashed. Scrap shrugged them away and backed off towards his shack.
“What’s your name, junk case?” Terry asked.
“Mind your own motors,” Scrap replied. “Get -zk- lost.”
“…I’m Terry,” the sphere-headed robot said, after a moment. “And this here is my sister June.”
“See how easy that was, junk case?” noted June.
“Politeness costs nothing,” agreed Terry. “If a couple of robots can’t pass the time of day, then I don’t know what civilization is coming to, I really don’t.”
“Maybe he doesn’t remember his name,” suggested June. She tapped the side of her head and added, “Could be a glitchy brain-frame…”
“There’s nothin’ wrong with my -zk- brain-frame,” grunted Scrap. He wasn’t about to tell them his real name but, keen to prove he had all his faculties, he cast around for something else to call himself. Unfortunately all he could think of was the name that tiny, tatty human had given him. So, despite himself, he said:
“…Scrap. My name’s, uh, Scrap.”
“Suits you!” declared June. “You want to hear a joke, Scrap?”
“What do you call a junk case with no head?” asked Terry.
“An improvement!” June boomed.
The robots’ laughter echoed across the Pile.
“What do you gubs want?” Scrap growled.
“Oh, I’m sorry, are we keeping you from all your important junk case stuff?” said June. She plucked one of the grenades from her belt and tossed it from hand to hand like a ball. “See, me and my brother here, we’re hunters. We’ve travelled from the frozen mountains to the ocean jungles to the edge of the Elsewhere, and stalked nearly every living thing on this planet.”
“Why?” asked Scrap, staring uneasily at the grenade.
“Good question,” replied June. “Why do we do it, Terry?”
“Love?” suggested Terry.
“Love!” June agreed. “We’re passionate about our work, I can’t deny it. Me and my brother have something of a bucket list – we just won’t be satisfied until we’ve hunted every last critter on Five One Three.”
“If it walks, swims, flies or crawls, we’re going to hunt its head off,” added Terry.
Scrap bristled. He’d never met robots like them. Years of hunting had clearly taken its toll. Each pursuit had left them wanting more, perverting their programming, corrupting their cores, leaving them desperate for the next chase. A decade ago, he would have stood up to them without thinking. Even today, he felt himself clench his tiny fists.
“There’s nothin’ here but dead-cored junk cases,” he said. “Leave me -zk- alone.”
With the sudden click of a button, June armed her grenade. A red light blinked impatiently in the centre of the explosive as it counted down to detonation.
“Want to play ‘catch’, junk case? Loser loses an arm!”
Scrap stood his ground.
“Not in the -zk- mood,” he grunted.
“You’re no fun,” sighed June. A deft click-click deactivated the grenade and she replaced it on her belt.
“I don’t blame you, junk case – all those boom-bang-a-bangs make me nervous too,” Terry noted, his right hand instantly splitting apart to reveal a cannon barrel. “I prefer the sophisticated charm of a hand-gun-hand…”
“You’d be wastin’ your -zk- charge,” said Scrap, staring down the barrel of Terry’s cannon. “Nothin’ here worth blastin’.”
“Can’t argue with that!” June laughed. “Well, I guess we’d better be on our merry— Wait! We almost forgot to ask!”
“So we did,” said Terry, tapping the top of Scrap’s head with his hand-gun-hand. “Tell me, junk case, d’you know what a human looks like?”
Scrap’s eyes darted towards the mound of cases.
“Good question, Terry,” added June. “You ever seen a human, junk case?”
Scrap’s reply was half whispered. “Why d’you -zk- ask…?”
“Truth is, June and me were on long-range patrol by the time the humans arrived on Five One Three.” Terry’s right hand reformed in an instant, and he splayed his fingers wide. “Then, before we knew it, they’d vanished! Rocketed off-world to who knows Somewhere…”
“Yeah…” said Scrap. “That’s what I -zk- heard too.”
“Apparently they’re this big,” said June, and held her arm high in the air. “Green scales, and the rare ones are purple. Tentacles coming out of everywhere. Three or four eyes, five or six mouths … and slime. Like, so much slime you can’t even get hold of ’em.”
“Slime coming out of everywhere,” added Terry. “Can you imagine those things roaming around here? I mean, you ever seen anything like that, junk case?”
“No,” said Scrap, happy at least not to be telling a lie. “Anyway, like you said, the humans have -zk- gone.”
“Exactly,” exclaimed June. “By my count, that makes Somewhere Five One Three the first free robot world in the galaxy.”
“The first Somewhere free of the slime of humankind,” added Terry proudly. “But then…”
“But then what?” Scrap asked.
“Then this,” replied June, and held up her hand in front of Scrap’s face. Clenched between her finger and thumb was something small, hard and off white. Scrap peered closer.
“Is that…?” he muttered.
“That, junk case, is a tooth,” said Terry giddily. “A five-year-old central incisor, to be exact.”
“But not from no snackrabbit or gigantoad or sandsucker,” added June. “No, Scrap – that tooth is human.”