The Multiple One

Pitch black fear filled his being like water in a drowning man’s lungs. His brows were moist with sweat, his heart pounded so fast and hard that it hurt his chest. His mouth was dry.

Sophia finally arose.

She held a gun in her hand now, a makeshift death-barrel that seemed oddly patchwork, like a three-dimensional collage made from disparate things.

She pointed the pistol toward one of the oncoming Winstons, closed her left eye, squinted with her right and fired.
The whole corridor lit up. The sound of an electrical explosion bounced between the dusty concrete walls. A stinging wave of heat broke against the side of Carl’s face.

Sparks of energy enveloped one of the Winstons. It broke down immediately and fell limp to the grimy floor, black smoke rising from its mouth, nostrils, and eyes.

Sophia turned a knob on the side of the gun, ejecting a small black cube. Before the cube had hit the ground, she’d already fished out an identical hexahedron from her pocket and inserted it into her weapon.

It felt so real, the anger that permeated every inch of the other robot’s being. It just had to be the actual thing, meaning that this remaining, wrathful Winston wouldn’t hesitate ripping both of them apart with its bare hands.

“Damn it!” Sophia yelled, yanking and pulling at the barrel of her gun that simply refused to budge. “It’s stuck!”

Wires ran vertically along the wall. They reached all the way up to the ceiling where they went through tiny openings next to pipes and fluorescent lights.

Winston was a mere three and a half feet away now.

Carl swung his axe. The robot ducked, as quick and agile as an acrobat, and the blade simply swooshed past its head and hitting the wall instead.

There it stayed, but not before cutting the thick electrical wires. Sparks flew out their ends.

There was pain in Sophia's muffled sigh, Winston’s probably having hit her right in her solar plexus.

In the corner of his eye Carl saw Sophia fall to her knees and drop her pistol, as Winston hit her in the face with his other fist.

“Stop!” Carl screamed. “Leave her alone!”

No response. Only more punches to her chin, brow, cheek and mouth, every single jab more painful than the last.

Carl pulled at the axe, with all the strength he could muster. When he finally managed to jerk the axe free, he almost fell flat on his ass.

He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, put one foot in front of the other and struck.

This buried the blade in the robot's back, and the machine-man stopped punching, let go of Sophia’ and shoved her aside.

Showing no signs of pain or discomfort, Winston spoke in a flat voice.

“You shouldn’t have done that, guv,” he said, taking his time turning around to face Carl.

This slow, ominous movement, this attempt at unnerving his opponent, backfired spectacularly, because when they finally faced each other again, Carl was ready.

With a stabbing motion he pushed the sparkling end of the cut wire directly into the android’s chest. Within seconds, the robot had been reduced to nothing more than smoldering scrap metal.

It fell like timber.

Carl closed his eyes and sighed.

It washed over him like a wave of warm ocean-water, only to immediately roll back again as Sophia’s sudden scream rekindled his fighting spirit.

“The gun!” she screamed. “Give it to me! Quick!”

The other android, the one she’d shot, arose slowly and unblinking, the expression on its face unnervingly indifferent.

Carl bent down, grabbed the gun and handed it to her.

Sophia extended her arm. She closed her left eye, squinted with her right, and the robot stopped in its tracks.

“Stop!” the robot screamed, in a voice that was no longer Winston’s. “Easy! It’s me!”

It raised both hands, had a frightened, almost pleading, look in its eyes and on its face.

“Dave?” Sophia said, sounding surprised more than anything. “Dave, is that you?”

“You got it,” the robot replied, smiling. “Coming to you live, from an undisclosed section of this very complex.”

Sophia lowered her gun. She pressed her thumb against a small green square that Carl assumed was a biometric safety, and holstered the piece on her hip.

“Come on,” she said to Carl, and walked over to the robot.

Hesitant at first, Carl soon joined up with the other two and together the trio proceeded further down the corridor.

He felt tense. This whole thing felt weird, suddenly joining forces with something that looked exactly like an individual that had tried to kill him only seconds ago.

“Didn’t you…“ he said, “I mean, didn’t this … thing… break down? I thought we killed it.”

“For starters, machines don’t die,” Dave said through Winston’s mouth. “And this one only went temporarily offline. I saw it on a map, realized that it happened in the exact same spot where you two should have been by then, and so I figured you must have run into trouble along the way.”

“VR gear?” Sophia said.

“Yup. I connected to the live feed from the other’s eyes and saw it beat the crap out of you. So I strapped on my gear and hacked the one already downed.”

“See any other unpleasant surprises along the way?” Sophia said.

“Nope,” Dave said. “Map says the coast is pretty much clear from here. But I do see some suspicious movement on level minus eighteen, in sector eight.”

Carl zoned out of the discussion that followed, as it was mostly technical jargon and numbers that he was anything but familiar with.

I actually stood my ground, he thought, proudly, the memory of the last five minutes replaying in his mind, feeling more like a movie than an actual, extremely recent experience.

I didn’t run. I fought back. And I won.

At the end of the corridor was a thick metal door with an “Authorized Personnel Only” sign.

Carl tried opening the door but the handle didn’t budge.

“Let me try,” Dave said through his steel and silicon sockpuppet, and punched a hole straight through the door.

He withdrew the android’s arm, grabbed the uneven edges of the new opening and then widened the hole, as if ripping a piece of fabric in two.

“There,” Dave said. “Door’s open. After you, Mr. President.”