The Great Disassembly:
T–Minus Four Days
Code found himself in a huge cylindrical room. Shafts of sunlight cascaded through a glass dome three stories overhead. Swirling dust motes danced in the empty air. Bookshelves, stocked with thousands of crumbling tomes, stretched upward, crisscrossed by spindly ladders. A rickety old machine dominated the middle of the room. It looked like a gargantuan microscope aimed at a thick slab of metal resting solidly on the ground.
Peep scurried out of Code’s shirt pocket and leaped into the air. She darted from place to place, examining everything with green beams of light. Safe for the moment, Code shoved his hands into his pockets, leaned against the door, and exhaled deeply.
Just then a wobbly, wheeled robot creaked out from behind a pile of musty books. Startled, Code yanked his hands out of his pockets, dropping a piece of paper. It was the drawing of the atomic slaughterbot he had made in school. Before he could pick it up, the curmudgeonly robot snatched it away.
In a slow, windy voice it said, “Hmm … what have we here? The fabrication tank was last activated four hundred and ninety-two years ago. Haven’t seen a human in quite some time. But we’d be happy to make this for you, sir.”
“Sorry?”
“Hold,” said the robot curtly. It adjusted a pair of cracked spectacles on its face and scowled down at the page.
“Can I have that back, please?” asked Code, reaching for the paper.
The robot held up one dismissive clamp. Code stood there frowning, too polite to just snatch the paper away. Peep zoomed past and shot angry beams of red light that the half-blind robot simply brushed away. “Scanning that design for you just now, sir.”
Another clawed arm popped up over the robot’s shoulder and a beam of blue light shot out. It rapidly traced the contours of the drawing. Wherever the blue light touched the paper, it burst into flame. In a matter of seconds, the page sprinkled to the floor as burning confetti.
“Hey! That was mine!” said Code.
“Very well, sir. We will be delighted to help you. Here in the fabrication tank we like to say that nothing will stand in our way and we will stand in the way of nothing. That includes the creation of your—how do you call it?—atomic slaughterbot.”
“What-bot?”
“It really is a strange choice. Probably extremely dangerous, but honestly who am I to judge?”
“Wait,” said Code.
“I’m just a simple, lowly clerkbot with a cracked frame and half a battery. I’m in no position to criticize your actions based upon what horrors you may or may not unleash upon yourself, the world, and the universe at large through your own blind ignorance, selfishness, and/or insanity.”
“Just stop for a second,” said Code.
“Eh? What I mean to say to you, sir, is this and only this,” said the clerkbot, raising one wavering clamper and placing it over Code’s mouth to prevent him from speaking. “One atomic slaughterbot, coming up!”
The clerkbot slapped a bell on top of its own head. Ding!
Now the huge machine in the middle of the room began to shiver and rumble, and wild light sprayed onto the walls. Code fell to the ground, shaken off his feet. The pitted surface of the metal slab began to glow: deep dull red, bright cherry red, orange yellow, yellow white, brilliant white, and, finally, dazzling white. Before his eyes, the slab liquefied, forming a white-hot swimming pool of molten metal. Code held on to the wall while the entire smoldering room hummed and thrummed, quaked and quivered. It felt as though the whole castle were about to shake apart.
The giants are sure to hear this, thought Code. Code motioned at Peep to come back, but she ignored him and cavorted merrily through the air. She seemed to be enjoying the mayhem.
Discouragingly, the clerkbot scurried through a small door and slammed it shut. Code heard a thunk as the door was locked securely from the other side.
Code flattened himself against the wall as the ponderous microscope machine kept up its crazed activity. Motors whined as the machine whipped back and forth, tracing intricate shapes onto the glowing liquid with pulsing blue lasers. As the lasers etched patterns onto the slab, a shape began to rise up out of the liquid. A menacing form slowly emerged, growing foot by foot into a dark, towering figure.
Finally, it stood motionless and huge in the middle of the room. The machines died down. The lasers stopped. A nozzle sprayed cold swirling clouds of gas onto the slab, cooling down the liquid metal. The room became completely silent and filled with dense mist.
Code heard a low, frightening chuckle boom off the walls. Something was alive on the slab. This situation has gone from bad to worse, thought Code. And now to worst!
After a few seconds, the mist slowly began to clear.
Stray drops of molten metal rolled across the floor, but the slab was no longer empty. Standing there like an armored statue was a real version of the atomic slaughterbot from Code’s drawing. The thing was over twelve feet tall, with short, awkward legs and long, apelike arms that hung nearly to the floor. It had a tiny head perched high up on its body. As Code watched, his creation opened its bloodred eye visor and blinked a couple times. It scanned the room and spotted Code.
“Hello, there. I’m Gary, your atomic slaughterbot.”
Code was speechless. After a moment, he managed to stammer, “M-my slaughterbot?”
“That’s right. Of the atomic variety. Obviously.”
“You … slaughter things?”
“You hit the nail on the head, little buddy!”
“Do you do anything else?”
“Afraid not.”
“Why … slaughter?”
“Well,” said the looming slaughterbot, slightly ruffled. “Is a bird happy when it eats a worm? Is a kitten happy when it pounces on a string? Do you blame a wrecking ball for smashing through a building?”
“I guess not, but—”
“Great. See? I’m designed for slaughtering from the ground up.” Gary sighed. “And I do love it so!”
The monstrous robot flexed his battle gauntlets and flipped open a finger cannon thoughtfully. “Oh, slaughter, how I love thee! Let me count the ways!”
And then Gary began to hop around playfully. His reckless dance shook the room and shattered the domed windows above, sending shards of glass raining down. The glass bounced harmlessly from Gary’s thick armor, but Code had to throw himself out of the way to avoid it.
Then the hulking robot burst into song:
Crashing, smashing, blasting, wrecking,
These are the things I love to do!
Lasering, Tasering, masering, phasering,
Slaughter, mayhem, I love you!
For I am a slaughterbot,
I never have to say “Please.”
Even if I am caught,
I can crush your head with ease.
My principle of attack?
Leap ahead, never look back.
My principle of defense?
I haven’t got one—I’m too immense!
My head is extra tiny,
My arms are extra large,
My lasers extra shiny,
And I keep ’em fully charged.
My motors roar, my huge arms bend,
That crashing sound, it is your end.
Turn around, and run away,
For I’m about to slaughter—yay!
Gary stopped dancing and looked around at the devastated room. Code swallowed, certain he was about to be flattened. Peep chirped, annoyed by the dust and destruction.
“It’s just a little song I wrote about slaughtering,” Gary said modestly.
There was nowhere to run. Code was trapped in this room with a chatty, oversized slaughterbot. And the only way to survive seemed to be to … talk to it.
“That’s really, uh, nice,” Code called up to Gary. “But can’t you do something besides slaughter?”
Gary thought for a microsecond. “No. That doesn’t make any sense. I’m a slaughterbot, plain and simple. In fact, I better get on with the slaughtering! You’ll excuse me if I unscrew your head from your body now?”
Gary reached for Code with a cranelike arm. This is it, thought Code. My head is about to be crushed into jelly. Code squeezed his eyes shut as the metal hand loomed closer and closer. And then he abruptly remembered something that Gary had said.
“Wait. You’re my atomic slaughterbot?”
Gary paused. “That’s right. And who are you?”
“I’m Code, and I need to ask you for a favor.”
“Anything for you, Code.” Gary waited for Code’s command.
Code took a deep breath and then blurted it out: “No slaughter.”
“Come again?”
“No slaughtering. You can’t slaughter.”
“Once more?”
“You aren’t allowed to slaughter anyone. No slaughtering. Can’t slaughter. No. Slaughter.”
“Not quite sure I understand. Are you saying that I should not slaughter? Or is this a metaphor? Or some kind of riddle? I’m not very good at riddles. Only slaughtering.”
Just then a thunderous knock sounded on the other side of the door. Code heard the booming voice of Brutus, bellowing angrily.
“Gary,” urged Code, “we’ve got to escape from here! Can you bash a hole in the wall?”
“Can’t.”
“Why?”
“I’m not allowed to slaughter.”
Code pointed at a wall of old books and ladders and papers. “Gary! Slaughter that wall!”
Gary hopped up and down and clapped his metal-sheathed hands together.
“You got it!” With a gleeful giggle, Gary raised both fists high in the air and smashed through the wall, sending stones, chunks of crystal, and shards of glass erupting into the courtyard. Without looking back, Gary lumbered through the gaping hole, chuckling happily. With much less enthusiasm, Code and Peep climbed through the hole and onward to freedom.