[Original Novel] Little Robot, Part 20

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Before long, most of the trees around me had been cut down to make more tools, each set coming to life and eventually making their own.

“All I wanted to do is build something meaningful” I grumbled. “Instead, like some damned old timey cartoon, the whole world’s coming to life around me.” One of the little hammers approached me and spoke.

“What’s wrong with that? Are you not of the world too, as much as any of us? You were the first part of it to wake up. Maybe your job is to wake up the rest, rather than build some impermanent monument to your own vanity. Not to control nature, but become it.”

It then ambled off into the ever growing mass of awareness, a fire I inadvertently started which I now realized would spread to consume everything.

Too soon for it all to wake up and remember what it is, much too soon. I was having such a fascinating dream of being human.

I awoke to the sound of a woman screaming just outside. I rubbed at my eyes and yawned, not yet convinced it wasn’t some lingering post-dream hallucination.

The screaming started up again, confirming it wasn’t. I pulled on a bathrobe, headed for one of the front windows and peered through the blinds.

Nothing at first, save for light from a street lamp reflecting off puddles of rainwater collected here and there on the cold, black asphalt.

Then the source of the screaming came into view. She looked middle aged, wearing a t shirt with pajama pants and some slippers.

Nutter, I thought. Had to be. What’s she running from? I waited and watched in hopes of glimpsing whatever demented killer or nightmare creature sent her into such a fit.

Instead, it was a pizza delivery robot. The sort with a slotted multi pizza warmer for a torso, to keep yours piping hot until it reaches your front door.

It held something in one of its crude claw-like hands that I couldn’t make out from this distance. Arm extended in the direction of the woman as if to return something she lost.

It was quickly joined by three more robots of similarly mundane purpose: A mail robot, a traffic director, and what looked to be an upmarket humanoid gardener with a pair of large shears that it open and shut rhythmically as it walked.

Practical joke probably. Or somebody’s filming a movie. I was sure I’d see it pop up on Youtube in the next few days. None of my concern anyway, so I turned back towards the bedroom. That’s when I heard a loud bang on the window.

When I raised the blinds, it was a hand. Not a human hand, but the complex, articulated metal and plastic hand of a humanoid robot. It clawed at the window, as if pulling itself along the outside wall, until the head and chest came into view.

“Hel-lo-how-are-yyoouuuu?” I stumbled backwards. Unmistakably the same robot from earlier. It peered in at me with those shiny black almond shaped eyes, then suddenly head butted the window as hard as it could. The glass splintered but didn’t give way.

“What do you want? This is a private residence” I shouted, unsure whether it would understand. It only smashed its head against the glass again.

“Hel-lo-how…” Another impact, the spiderweb of cracks expanding outwards each time. “.....Arrreee-yyyyyooooooooouuuuuuu?”

Now fully awake, heart racing, I searched the apartment for something I could use as a weapon. As I did so I heard the doorknob jiggling violently, followed by pounding on the door. When I ran back through the livingroom to check the kitchen for knives, the window suddenly burst inward.

A shower of glass shards littered the carpet and the wriggling upper body of the advertising robot protruded in through the broken window.

The head pivoted suddenly to look directly at me. “I-am-fine-thank-yooooooouuuuuu!” I barged into the kitchen, anxiety mounting as I frantically rifled through drawers.

Then it hit me. My tools! Flashes of the dream returned to the front of my mind as I dashed for my workbench, picking out the heaviest hammer just as the ad robot finished writhing its way inside through the window frame. I heard both a resounding thud and the crunch of so many glass shards under it. Then an eerie silence.

“Did-you-knooowwww” it cooed, indifferent to the fact that it’d just broken into my home. “...that-there-is-a-new-five-star-ho-tel-down-town?” I hid just behind the corner, hands trembling so much that I feared I might drop the hammer before I could use it.

I heard the soft whirr of the various servos in its joints grow more and more audible as it approached. I chose the last possible moment before it rounded the corner to leap out and bring the hammer down on its head with as much force as I could summon.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 21!}