As Gunner guided Scrap, Paige and Gnat down the street, Scrap peered through the haze of thick blue-grey mist and stopped in his tracks. There loomed the emporium. Built from an assortment of construction cubes, it formed a wide, skull-shaped building, hot plumes of smoke belching out from inside its mouth-like entrance. And buzzing like an angry wasp above the entrance, a sign flickered with glowing lights:
“It may look like the gates to your worst nightmare, but trust me, this is the place where dreams come too,” Gunner said. “Corpus Coil can build any case you can imagine – and not just head-turning cases like mine – he’s built nearly every combat case since the ’Bot Bouts began.”
“’Bot Bouts?” Scrap repeated.
“I don’t care what Pile you’ve been living on – you’re not seriously telling me you’ve never heard of the ’Bot Bouts,” scoffed Gunner. “They’re on every channel – Five One Three’s finest fighters, going toe to toe to test their metal. Victor da Spoils! Temperance Steel! Morten Prometheus! You must have heard of Morten Prometheus…”
“They’re fightin’? Why?” asked Scrap.
“You know the joke – what do you get if you put three robots in a room? A winner, a loser and a referee,” Gunner said as her dust-drones made a show of battling each other, clanking together as they hovered in the air. “’Bots love nothing more than a tournament where they punch each other until one of them falls down. It’s part of a rich cultural tradition, rusty. Plus the winner of the bouts gets a shiny new upgrade. And speaking of which…”
With a dramatic flourish, Gunner raised her arm towards the emporium’s entrance.
“I want helicopter hands!” Gnat cried, pulling Paige inside. Gunner laughed and led Scrap through the mouth-like entrance. The space was cavernous, dark and hot with vapour. A vast array of tools, machinery and spare parts hung from every wall, and a metallic smell burned the girls’ nostrils even under their disguises.
Scrap stared upwards. The space seemed to go on forever – far higher than the physics of the skull-shaped building should allow. A dense web of wires stretched all around, wall to wall, corner to corner. Suspended from the wires in their hundreds, were cases. Half built and under construction, each case was being tended to by dozens of shimmering insectoid robots, building cases piece by tiny piece.
“Cases,” muttered Scrap, his jaw agape. “So many…”
“Millions and hundreds,” concluded Gnat.
“Upgrading is a basic robot right,” said Gunner. She nodded to Tinpot and Copperpot, who zipped away to attach themselves to a nearby charging station. “Except for the drones, of course – they live to serve the FreeWill™ of their robot mast—”
“Look out!”
No sooner had Paige cried out than Scrap saw her hand reach for her satchel. He followed her gaze upwards to see a robot emerge from the gloomiest part of the web. He looked for all the world like a huge, metallic blue-black spider. His body was made up of a dozen identical spheres, held together by some unseen force. Eight spindly knife-sharp legs protruded from the central sphere-cluster; while four were curled and poised beneath him, the remainder clung to the wires above as he dragged himself along.
“Out,” the spider snarled, his voice as sharp and rasping as a detuned radio.
“I beg your garden? Irascible arachnid, that’s no way to speak to your employer,” Gunner tutted. “’Bots, allow me to introduce Corpus Coil.”
“Junk. Cases. Out,” Coil hissed as he scuttled down a wire stretching diagonally from floor to ceiling. He stopped suddenly, gazing at Scrap through half a dozen black orb eyes. “Junk. Cases. Bad. For. Business.”
“Helicopter hands, please!” declared Gnat.
“Hear that, Coil? Helicopter hands!” Gunner laughed. “Gnat-Bot Ninety-Nine here thinks outside the blocks! And speaking of which, where’s my new case?”
“Not. Ready,” Coil rasped. “Tomorrow.”
“Corpus Coil, when you’re waiting for an upgrade, tomorrow is a lifetime. I’ve been in this case for five whole days – how can I wait till tomorrow when I already feel like yesterday’s newts? I don’t need it fine-tuned, I just need it shiny and new!” She flung her arms towards the vast tangle of wires above them. “Now show me what you have hidden in that wonderful web of yours, or I’ll double your workload overnight. Every ’bot in New Hull is climbing the halls for upgrades, and you know it.”
Coil let out a disgruntled hiss. He waved one of his knife-sharp legs and a shape suddenly appeared above their heads – it descended slowly from the web of wires on four glistening metal strands.
Scrap’s jaw fell open. He had never seen anything gleam so brightly as Gunner’s new case. It looked almost identical to her current body, but was finished in gleaming, lustrous gold, with an even greater and grander mass of tendrils cascading down its back.
“Cool as cooclumbers…” uttered Gnat.
“You astonishing arachnidian artiste, Coil! You have outdone yourself,” declared Gunner with a giddy chuckle. “Let the Song of the Liberated Robot ring out!”
“The -zk- what?” Scrap asked.
“The upgrader’s mantra, rusty! Oh, you’ve really not lived, have you?” Gunner declared, before turning back to Corpus Coil. “Work your magic, splendid spider, I cannot live a moment longer in this case…”
“Fine,” Coil moaned. “Hold. Still.”
Scrap watched Gunner extend her tendrils wide, puff out her chest, and close her eyes. Slowly, dreamily, she recited the Song of the Liberated Robot.
“My code frees my core…” she said. Then: “K11-LU.”
A moment later, panels on her torso began to unfold and open, exposing the core within. Countless wires held the core in place, glowing and glimmering with charge. Corpus Coil leaned back on four of his legs, while the other four moved swiftly around Gunner’s core like a spider snaring its prey, nimbly detaching each wire with remarkable swiftness. Within seconds, Gunner’s core was freed – the life immediately left the old case and Coil turned to the new. Two central panels parted and unfurled to welcome her core – it almost seemed to float as Coil passed it from limb to limb, before connecting dozens of wires and securing even more connections with dazzling dexterity.
No more than twenty seconds had passed between the moment Gunner spoke her name to the time her new case enveloped her core and she sparked back into life. Neither Paige nor Gnat had taken a single breath.
“They say upgrading is akin to surgery,” said Gunner, flexing each servo as she inspected her new case with delight. “But a skilled upgrader is nothing less than a magician.”
“What happens to your old case?” Scrap asked, already imagining himself strutting around in it.
“Next stop, the Piles – not even a junk case would wear another ’bot’s cast-offs,” Gunner scoffed, glancing derisively at her former form, before bowing deeply at Corpus Coil. “And I promise I won’t ask for a new case for a whole week.”
“Hmph,” came Coil’s grunted reply.
“Now who wants to go first?” added Gunner. Gnat put up her hand but Scrap stepped in front of her.
“Me!” he blurted. “I -zk- mean, I will. I’ll -zk- go.” His mind raced with the possibility of not being “Scrap”. The last ten years suddenly unfolded before him. Ever since he had banished himself to the Pile, he had never once considered leaving. If not for the humans, he’d still be there. But now he was here. Maybe it was fate that they came looking for him, if it gave him a chance to start again. He took another step towards Gunner. “What do I have to -zk- do?”
Corpus Coil slid towards him on a wire.
“How. Pay?” he hissed.
“This one’s on me, Mr Coil – a free sample … a taste of upgrades to come,” Gunner insisted. “Let’s make sure the ’bots of New Hull stare at rusty for the right reasons…”
Corpus Coil replied with a disgruntled grunt. “Can. Have. Spare.”
With that, a shape suddenly descended from the spider’s web above them. Suspended from a single wire, lifeless and still, was a brand shining-new case. It was twice Scrap’s size and polished to a glassy silver-blue sheen. Strong shoulders gave way to a lean, unfussy frame. It wasn’t the most impressive case Scrap had ever seen. It wasn’t even the most impressive case he’d seen in the last ten minutes. But it was a hundred times better than the case in which he’d spent the last long ten years.
“Are – are you sure?”
“Welcome to the future, rusty,” Gunner smiled. “Welcome to the new you.”