The Great Disassembly:
T–Minus Four Days
After walking in the dark for several hours, Code and Gary set up camp beneath a grove of eerily quiet trees. Ever the helper, Gary laser-ignited an emergency flare to create an instant campfire. During the long evening, the two sat leaning against logs with their hands behind their heads. Peep settled down on Code’s knee to clean herself. A few moments of comfortable silence passed.
Then, with the firelight dancing in his visor, Gary cleared his throat and began to tell a story. He said that it was his favorite story of all time and that it was about the biggest robot hero—and criminal—who had ever lived in the land of Mekhos:
“Once upon a time, in the dirtiest, darkest factory of the Drudge-Bottom Slums, lived Charlie, a robot worker of the lowest order. Charlie toiled nonstop for shifts that lasted a thousand years. After each shift, the workers were allowed to emerge from the depths of the factory for a one-hour break and a rapid solar recharge. Charlie’s job was to paint yellow happy faces onto pieces of cardboard, clothes, or anything else that happened to pass by on the assembly line.
“Because Charlie had such a simple job, he was designed to be a simple robot. All Charlie ever thought about—all that he could think about—was painting bright yellow happy faces. You see, Charlie loved making happy faces just like I love slaught—”
Code groaned. “I know! I know! Slaughtering!”
Gary harrumphed and then continued. “But the other robots laughed behind Charlie’s back. They would turn his happy faces upside down and, thinking that they had become sad faces, Charlie would spend all day redoing them—only to have them turned upside down again. Charlie was too simpleminded to understand that jokes were being played on him. So when the other robots played mean pranks, he laughed, too. He thought they were his friends. And that only made the mean-spirited robots laugh even harder. Sometimes they would even congratulate each other on being so very smart.”
“I hate jerks like that,” blurted Code, thinking of Tyler. It seemed that no matter where you went, there was always someone who was trying to make fun of someone else.
Gary shook his head ruefully. “But one day, the jokes went too far. The factorybots took Charlie out to a trash rocket. It was about to be launched on a one-way trip into the Trash Quadrant. They told Charlie that the rocket needed a smiley face on the very top. So Charlie climbed atop the rocket and began painting a happy face on the nose cone. Just then, the rocket ignited. Charlie frantically tried to climb off, but it was too late. The rocket launched with Charlie on board and disappeared into space on a thousand-year journey to nowhere.”
Peep chirped sadly and flickered to blue.
“Poor Charlie,” said Code.
Gary continued. “After the next thousand-year work shift, the factorybots weren’t laughing. News reports had begun to trickle in about strange happenings in deep space. Mysterious radio transmissions had begun to arrive from the Trash Quadrant. It was puzzling since the factorybots had no idea who—if anyone—actually lived in the Trash Quadrant. No one had ever bothered to check.
“The factorybots went back to work, but by their next break, the news had become downright terrifying. An unidentified energy pulse had been detected roaring toward Mekhos at an incredible speed. Stars were winking out of the sky in the Trash Quadrant. New planets were disappearing from solar systems closer and closer to Mekhos. Something terrible was coming. King John Lightfall organized the Light Reconnaissance Space Cavalry and reinstated the long-defunct Exo-Spheric Battle Savants; he armed them for combat with the most powerful weapons captured during the Xeno Wars.”
“Wow,” murmured Code.
“The cruel factorybots knew something disastrous was about to happen,” said Gary. “They peered into the sky and shook with dread. They held on to each other and cried out in fright. Then they tried to run away, but there was nowhere to go.”
At this point, even little Peep was engrossed in the story. She had stopped cleaning herself midstroke and now stared intently up at Gary. One of her wings was still cocked at a wild angle behind her leg.
After a dramatic pause, Gary said, “In the sky above, looking down with a horrible smile, was a happy face made entirely of displaced stars. Each eye contained a thousand burning orbs, the mouth a hundred thousand more, and surrounding the entire monstrous apparition was the yellowish vapor of a billion shattered solar systems.”
Gary smiled and leaned over the campfire. Code took a deep breath. This was clearly Gary’s favorite part of the story.
“See, Charlie had been hard at work in deep space. As the workers looked on in horror, a familiar-looking rocket crash-landed next to the launchpad. The rocket was bright yellow, with happy faces painted across every visible surface. Each bolt that held the rocket together had a happy face painted on it. The nose had a happy face. Even the happy faces were made up of happy faces.
“The door opened and little Charlie rolled out, looking the same as ever. He waved to his dear ‘friends’ and began to paint a happy face on the ground. In the sky, streaks of flame appeared in the atmosphere. Then thousands of atmospheric entry pods roared into view, rapid-launching parachutes carrying hundreds of thousands of identical Charlies—each with a paintbrush and a passion for drawing happy faces. Mekhos was overwhelmed in minutes.”
Gary stretched his long arms, joints creaking like an old swing set.
“Charlie’s invasion started the Great Garbage Wars, which lasted over a century. Eventually, King John Lightfall and his Exo-Spheric Battle Savants tracked down the original Charlie.”
“Wait,” interrupted Code. “My grandpa has only been gone for a year. How did he spend a hundred years fighting a crazy robot?”
“Mekhos is an experimental world,” replied Gary. “Time goes faster here. The ancient ones set up the experiment so that a hundred years of our time was only a hundred days in their time.”
Gary continued. “In the final hours of the final battle, King Lightfall captured Charlie and trapped him inside a stasis box. Mekhos was saved—”
“I knew my grandpa was a good guy,” said Code.
Gary shook his head. “But not before Charlie was able to strike one last time. Before King Lightfall could close the box, Charlie used an alien weapon to resculpt the continent of Mekhos into the shape of an enormous, eternally grinning … happy face.”
Gary chuckled in the firelight. Peep tittered, amused. Code sat silently, soaking up the story.
“So let me get this straight,” said Code. “Charlie nearly destroyed Mekhos. He blasted your continent into the shape of a happy face. He blew up thousands of robots.”
“Yeah,” said Gary. “He’s my hero!”
“How, exactly, does that make him a hero?” asked Code.
“Charlie did what he was programmed to do, completely and without hesitation,” replied Gary. “He showed that you don’t have to be big to do big things. Charlie made a lot out of a little!”
Peep agreed, violently nodding her tiny head up and down. Gary laughed and threw another flare on the fire. For his part, Code watched his two new friends closely, shaking his head in puzzled amazement.