“You’re a robot?”
June moved closer to Gnat to examine her. With Terry’s hand-gun-hand still aimed between Scrap’s eyes, Gnat adjusted the robot’s head concealing her own.
“Obviously,” she replied, her tone flat and voice tinny. “My name is Gnat-Bot Ninety-Nine. Beep bop, I’m a robot.” She flung her arms in the air and waved them stiffly.
“Well, her story checks out,” said June. With a shrug, she replaced her grenade on her belt and peered curiously at Gnat. “Hey, Terry, have you seen this? This ’bot is … sort of mushy.”
Scrap glanced back at Gnat, her exposed arms jutting out from her poncho.
Brownish skin.
Human flesh.
“Leave her -zk- alone!” he cried.
“What is that?” June asked, poking Gnat’s arm with a metal finger. “Some sort of upgrade?”
Upgrade? The word echoed around Scrap’s head. Is that what had happened to Terry and June? Had their cases been upgraded? By whom? There were no humans left, and robots didn’t go around upgrading each other.
Did they?
“I knew it!” howled Terry. To Scrap’s relief, his hand-gun-hand shrank back up his arm. “What did I tell you, June?” the hunter added. “We’ve been out here too long – we’re not up on the latest cases. I bet these mushy styles are all the rage in the city…”
“You sure?” June scoffed. “Looks like just another junk case on just another Pile to me…”
“No, it’s true! Gnat-Bot Ninety-Nine is all the rage,” Gnat happily declared, deep in character. She paced stiffly up and down, her arms outstretched in front of her. “Boop bop, I’m a mush-bot…”
“‘Mush-bot’…?” June repeated. In a moment, she gestured back to their flight-cycles. “Saddle up, Terry! We’re heading into the city, see if we can’t pick up the human stink … and maybe get us a couple of these new cases while we’re there.”
“Unless…” said Terry, eyeballing Gnat as she marched across the Pile, making loud beeps and whirrs. He tapped the side of his head and his face-map reappeared, the pulsing amber light now glowing a vivid green. “It’s … it’s her,” Terry blurted suddenly. “June, she’s the stink!”
“Stink? Who is? What? Where?” exclaimed June.
“The mushy’s no upgrade!” Terry called out, his hand-gun-hand reforming at the end of his arm. “That little junk case is human!”
“Uh, boop bop, no I’m not…” Gnat insisted, glancing nervously around for her sister.
Scrap saw Terry take aim. Without thinking, he threw his full force against the hunter’s leg.
“Uff!”
Scrap might as well have charged at a steel door. He bounced off Terry’s leg and tumbled to the ground without Terry budging an inch.
“Trying to take me on again, junk case?” Terry laughed, his weapon still trained on Gnat. “You’ve got a lot of core for a rust-bucket…”
“Aaargh!” Scrap roared. He leaped to his feet and raced at Terry again, this time clambering up his leg and on to his back.
“Knock it off!” Terry cried as Scrap wrapped both arms around the hunter’s head. “June, I’ve got a junk case on me! Get it off!”
“Eww, he’s getting rust on you,” said June, turning her attention to her brother as Gnat looked on in petrified confusion.
“Run, you -zk- gub!” Scrap shouted, kicking out wildly, his feeble blows to Terry’s case leaving no more than a scratch. “Go, run!”
“Will you get him off me?” Terry cried, wheeling around while June tried to pluck Scrap off her brother’s back. “I don’t want to have to track that human’s stink all over ag—”
The hunter froze as he spotted another figure suddenly racing towards the human.
“What in the Somewhere…?” he muttered as this new, equally mushy someone-or-other grabbed ‘Gnat-Bot Ninety-Nine’ by the arm and began pulling her towards the hunter’s flight-cycles. “June, that human comes with her own human!”
“Two for the price of one? A red-letter day for June and Terry,” June declared, at last wrenching Scrap off her brother’s back and flinging him roughly to the ground. “Gimme a sec to separate the junk case’s head from his body, and we can add them both to the trophy case…”
“Wai -zk- ait…” Scrap groaned, dragging himself painfully to his knees. “You -zk- want to play -zk- catch?”
“What…?” June uttered as a small black object flew from Scrap’s hand. Terry’s hand-gun-hand retracted instinctively as he reached out to catch it. The hunter glanced down at his palm, and realized he had caught one of his sister’s grenades.
And it was blinking with a red light.
“What…?” June said, checking her belt to find one of her grenades missing. “Sneaky, thieving junk case grabbed one of my boom-bang-a—”
“Disarm it!” Terry yelped. In a panic, he tossed the grenade. As it flew over June’s head, she reached up and grabbed it, stumbling back towards Scrap’s house and colliding with his front door.
“Wait!” uttered Scrap. “Don’t go in there, that’s my hou—”
In an instant of bright white light and searing heat, the grenade exploded, immediately detonating June’s entire arsenal. Scrap found himself being thrown through the air. He only knew he’d hit the ground when he saw his left arm fly off in an entirely different direction. As he skittered to a halt, he peered through a haze of heat and smoke to see the hunter, Terry, cradling his sister’s disembodied head in his arms. As he howled June’s name in anguish, Scrap looked past him to his house – or rather its smouldering remains.
His new home had been obliterated in the blast.
“N-no…” Scrap stuttered, his battered brain-frame struggling to process what had happened. Then suddenly there were the humans, standing either side of him, hoisting him to his feet.
“Let’s go, junk case,” Paige snapped. “Now.”
“My -zk- house!” wailed a dazed Scrap as he found himself being half dragged, half pushed across the Pile. Before he knew it, he was being hauled on to the back of one of the hunter’s flight-cycles.
“We should have left him,” he heard Paige hiss as they hefted him aboard.
“No!” Gnat firmly replied. “He saved me – I got actually saved by the King of the Robots!”
“He’s just some junk case! He is not King of the—”
“Is too.”
“He can’t be!”
“Can too.”
“Ugh, you’re impossible,” Paige groaned.
“That’s the most best thing about me,” insisted Gnat. Paige clambered into the flight-cycle’s pilot seat and pulled Gnat up behind her.
“Whereyoutakin’me? -zk- letme -zk- off!” Scrap wailed, coming to his senses. He struggled to dismount, but barely had control of his remaining limbs as Paige powered up the flight-cycle. “I’m not … goin’ -zk- anywhere…” He trailed off as his systems began to fail, one after the other. He was about to pass out, or worse. “I’m -zk- stayin’…” he wheezed. “I’m stayin’ on the Pile -zk- forever…”
Scrap never set foot on the Pile again.
As everything went dark, Scrap’s brain-frame began to flood with data. Though he could not say his whole life flashed before his eyes, his mind filled with memories he had tried to forget … memories of the life he’d lost … memories of her.
“Stand back, Dandelion,” said K1-NG. “I’ll handle this.”
The robot rolled his shoulders. A satisfying whirr of servos echoed through the air. He towered over his maker, a steel colossus almost three metres from metal head to toe, with armoured panels covering an impractically brawny torso and hefty, strapping legs.
“King, wait,” said Dandelion Brightside, putting her hand on the robot’s arm. She looked up at her creation. “Don’t you see it? Don’t you see what’s happening?”
King stared up at the city. This city, New Hull, that the robots had spent so long and worked so hard building for the humans. Amidst a wilderness of pale rocks and orange-gold sand, it stood as a bright and shining example of robotic endeavour. Every building was made up of dozens of grey-white cubes. They were stacked upon each other in numerous different configurations, sending dozens of blocky, irregular buildings up into the sky, to be met with high, angular walkways, criss-crossing above the city – branching, converging, like a canopy of trees. It looked exactly as it should, built to house the humans destined to occupy it, and the robots destined to serve them. Just like all the other Somewheres scattered across the galaxy.
But this time something was different.
Hundreds of robots had gathered just inside the city gates. There were too many to count – King guessed two thirds of the ’bots that had travelled to Somewhere 513 all those years ago now blocked their way, a metal wall of defiance.
At the front of the gathered robots stood a dozen or so K11s – hulking, powerful sentries, each almost as broad and muscular as King himself. Behind them, smaller robots held up placards that told him everything he needed to know.
“All I see is a mess of malfunctionin’ machines, boss,” King said. “They need some sense knocked into ’em, and I’m here for it.”
“They didn’t malfunction … they grew,” said Dandelion, equal parts admiration and horror. “These robots are changed at their core. They evolved.”
“Revolution isn’t evolution,” scoffed King. “These ’bots need their brain-frames examinin’.”
“Is this a joke? Tell me it’s a joke,” said a voice behind them. King turned to see Tripp Gander join his wife. “What am I looking at here? Revolting robots?”
“They’re revoltin’ all right,” said King. “This is no way for self-respectin’ ’bots to behave. I’m goin’ to have to teach ’em some respect.”
“But this isn’t possible, is it?” added Tripp. “Dandy, your robots – I mean, no ’bot can suddenly decide to please themselves … can they?”
“Just because something hasn’t happened yet, doesn’t mean it can’t – or won’t,” Dandelion replied. “This? This is what FreeWill™ looks like.”
“That tech is supposed to make our lives easier, not land us in some mechanical mutiny,” huffed Tripp. He gestured behind them. In the distance, nestled between two tall outcroppings of rock, was a rocket ship, a silver teardrop on the horizon. “Now I don’t know if you’ve forgotten, but I’ve got one hundred and two colonists waiting back there, tired and grumpy from months of space-sleep, and very much looking forward to starting their new lives in New Hull. As captain of the Black-Necked Stork, I am responsible for each and every human being on that ship. They need Somewhere to call home. FreeWill™ or no FreeWill™, we need to get these ’bots back in line.”
“It’s too late for that,” said Dandelion. “These robots have staked a claim on this world, and they’re not going to give it up.”
“What do they expect us to do, pack our bags and leave?” Tripp laughed, throwing his hands in the air. Dandelion glanced back at him, and shrugged. “Wait, they expect us to pack our bags and leave?” Tripp gasped. “I didn’t cross half the galaxy just to be sent packing!”
“They’ll back down, Captain – for me,” King assured him. “It was my job to get you here, and it’s my job to get you what you deserve. This world belongs to you, and to the colonists … and to Dandelion.”
“They’re going to fight for it,” said Dandelion gravely.
“Against me? They can try,” scoffed King. “By teatime you can all get back to doin’ what you’re meant to be doin’ – makin’ Somewhere Five One Three somewhere to live.”
Dandelion put her hand over her stomach. “You’ll lose … we’ll all lose,” she said.
“Lose?” King repeated, a little hurt at the suggestion. “It feels vulgar to say it out loud, but I’m the most powerful robot you ever built, Dandelion. I’m goin’ to live forever. With this case, I’m unbeatable.”
Dandelion reached up and placed her hand on King’s chest.
“But it’s not your case that makes you unbeatable, King, it’s your core,” she said. “The core I gave you will last forever, which means you’ve got forever to live with the decisions you make.”
“I’ll take time to naval-gaze just as soon as I’ve got you your planet back,” noted King, clenching his fists. “Go back to the ship – I’ll call you when it’s over.”
“You need to wake up,” said Dandelion.
“What?” King uttered. “What’s that supposed to—”
“Wake up,” Dandelion said again.
Or was it someone else?
“That’s it … focus on my voice.”
Whose voice? thought King. It felt like it was coming from everywhere and nowhere. “Who is that…?” he muttered. “What’s -zk- happening?”
“You died,” the voice said. “Now it’s time to wake up.”