[Original Novel] Little Robot, Part 12

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There was nothing like a handle. Neither was there a trigger, only a set of wires trailing from the motorized firing mechanism to a busted up circuit board freely dangling from the twisted mess as she handed it to me. “There’s also this.” She withdrew an ammunition container within which was a bunched up belt of what looked to be fairly large caliber bullets.

Madeline looked at me expectantly, as though I could MacGyver the jumble of parts into a working firearm on the spot. I sighed. “This could take a while. Do you still have your pistol? I’m going to need the handle and trigger from it.” She shook her head. “I think it’s in the car.”

Just then, I heard the boards I’d just barricaded the window with creaking. The cause was revealed to be a set of plastic fingers wedged between the boards as if to pry them apart. I deliberated whether or not to smash the fingers with my hammer. It would reveal that someone’s inside, only making our new visitor more determined.

But as I sat there trying to decide what to do, a second pair of dextrous plastic hands began to pick at the hastily nailed boards, then a third. A humanoid silhouette appeared behind the blinds, backlit by the streetlight. It paused there as if listening closely. Madeline and I both remained perfectly still, holding our breath.

No good. Their numbers steadily increased until so many plastic and metal hands clawed at the door, barricaded window and outer wall that it became deafening. Some of them began to speak. Muffled such that I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but I had a pretty good idea. Discount offers, coffee recommendations, that sort of thing.

“I told you we can’t stay here” I whispered. “If enough of them mass together they’ll be able to push the door in.” Madeline now agreed, but pointed out that it didn’t mean much if we couldn’t get past the growing throng of cold, rigid bodies accumulating outside.

For the time being, the two of us were trapped. Huddled, trembling, against the merely wooden barrier which separated us from death at the cold, hard hands of so many robots. I watched the minutes tick by on my phone. Eventually Madeline spoke up.

“You…didn’t have something to do with this, did you?” I parsed the question for a bit. “That’s a really shitty thing to ask. I can see why you’d think so...” I gestured at the massive collection of robots in all shapes and sizes lining my shelves and every available flat surface.

“...But no, it wasn’t me. I’d bet good money it was those hackers. ‘Autonomous’, or whatever. The ones that keep defacing the websites of robotics companies.” She recalled seeing them at the protest where we first met, and I affirmed that I’d recently spotted them there as well. “They have the means and the motive. What better way to turn the public against robots? Nobody will want one in their home, not after this.”

I pictured truckloads of shot up domestic robots headed for the recycling plant...or a landfill. Then I remembered Richard. Maria ignored him before, but if they both lived through this there was no doubt in my mind that she’d cave into his demands and force me to put Modulus and the rest into storage. That’s if any storage facilities will accept a bunch of robots after what’s happened.

Madeline now had her own phone out, texting various people in her contacts. “Hey, let me see that for a moment”. She clutched it suspiciously. “How new is your car? Is there a companion app?” She nodded and brought it up. Only basic options. It lets you pre-heat the interior while it’s still plugged in so it’s warm in the mornings, notifies you when it’s done charging, that sort of thing.

The next page had what I was looking for. Lock or unlock the doors, air conditioning, and… “...Have you tried this?” She gave me a quizzical look. “It says I can set off the car alarm from here.” She shrugged and replied candidly that she’s never had occasion to test it. No time like the present.

I tapped the icon and sure enough, her car began emitting a shrill klaxon consisting of a steady wail accompanied by pulsing chirps. She grabbed her phone back and scolded me. “That will just attract more of them!” Maybe, I admitted. But it would also lure them away from the front door.

So it did. Tough to hear over the alarm, but putting my ear up against the door confirmed it. The scratching grew quieter as the robots, one at a time, shifted their attention to the new target. When I couldn’t hear anything through the door save for the siren, I chanced a peek through the blinds.

“They’re gone.” She wouldn’t believe me until she checked for herself. The mob of robots, mostly humanoids with a few simpler wheeled models still featuring arms and a head, now clustered around the noisy little runabout. Poking, prodding, clawing at the windows and rocking it back and forth in an attempt to get at the source of the siren.

“That’s not much good to us. I mean sure, they’re on the ground floor now instead of up here, and we can probably get out the door without being swarmed. But I parked right smack dab next to the foot of the stairs. How are we gonna get down? We could risk running to the other end of the building and jumping the railing, but supposing one of us breaks our legs?”

I mulled it over. She was right. Humanoids these days are fairly quick. Their top speed is something like a relaxed jog, but it would be enough to catch us if we were injured. Even if it were only one of us I couldn’t conscion leaving Madeline behind, and assumed she wouldn’t do that to me either.

That’s when I hatched a plan. “You’re on lookout.” She asked what I was up to. “I’m gonna put something together, you’ll see.” I regretted taking apart the workbench to barricade the window, but it didn’t meaningfully slow me down. Instead I spread the parts out on the kitchen floor, my laptop connected to Odie’s mainboard via long, thin ribbon cable.

The first thing was to update his list of acceptable targets to include other robots. Something I disabled the day I brought him home. Being that my priorities had changed recently, I now removed humans from the list of targets he’s permitted to defend me against, and ratcheted up his aggression level.

The interface I originally used to connect the projectile taser pistol to him also came from a police bot, so only minimal work was required to fit the machinegun in its place. I fed the first round from the belt of ammo into it, then draped it down into the canister which I mounted securely inside Odie’s chassis. I had to dremel out an opening for the belt to pass through on its way to the gun, but all things considered it looked pretty handsome for an emergency kluge.

Madeline’s eyes bugged out when Odie crawled into the livingroom bearing his new attachment, understandably questioning the wisdom of weaponizing one of the robots we’re trapped with. “I don’t have the parts needed to turn it into a conventional firearm. I’m sure you could make good use of it if I did. I’ve personally never so much as handled a gun. But I guarantee you Odie’s a better shot than either of us.”

She studied Odie incredulously. Then looked back at me. Then at Odie again, who beeped a few times as if to reassure her. “Alright. But let me pack some stuff first.” I was in no hurry, so I too gathered whatever I thought would be useful into a backpack. First aid kit, tools, portable charger for my phone, laptop, binoculars, some bottled water and so on.

When preparations were complete, the two of us positioned ourselves to either side of the front door. Madeline brandished one of the workbench legs while I clutched my hammer. “Are you ready?” She nodded. “READY”, Odie blurted out. “Odie? When I open this door, I want you to go down the stairs. You can go outside the usual security perimeter tonight.”

He seemed unsure, but I insisted there were extenuating circumstances which justified it. “When you reach the bottom, there will be bad guys waiting for you, like the one that came in the window earlier.” I heard a click. Some of the lights in his tinted, transparent sphere of a head blinked as he loaded up the new target definitions.

Madeline watched with a mixture of concern and wonder as the enormous but agile machine locomoted on its six gleaming legs through the open doorway and out into the cold night air. Madeline then shut the door behind Odie and we rushed to the remaining window to spectate.

With the same insect-like grace that originally convinced me I just had to salvage him, Odie carefully made his way down the steps, adjusting to a more stable gait once he reached ground level. Some of the robots mobbing Madeline’s car stopped what they were doing and turned to study the strange looking contraption now approaching them.

Odie reared up to his full height. “YOU ARE ALL IN VIOLATION!!” Then the bullets began to fly. I plugged my ears, but it was still painfully loud. Pride swelled up in my chest as I watched him work, body swiveling to and fro, spraying the crowd of rapidly perishing machines with a hail of hot lead.

Down they went. One at a time initially. Then in twos and threes, some catching fire as bullets punctured their battery packs. One remained upright, confusedly stumbling along as the fire consumed it, until finally it tumbled to the ground. There it continued trying to walk until the fire melted its mainboard.

“ALL THREATS NEUTRALIZED.” Cautiously, I opened the front door and surveyed the scene below. Flaming wreckage of demolished robots strewn around Madeline’s car...which had also been riddled with bullets. “God damnit! That’s on a lease, too!” Odd priorities given the situation, but I knew better than to say so.

“What do we do now? What the fuck are we gonna do? That was our escape plan! Wasn’t it?” I asked whether getting us eighty miles from this spot really would’ve done any good. “Well we can’t fucking take an autocab!” I tried to calm her down, but I’ve never been any good at that. I usually just make it worse, and this time was no exception.

“Don’t touch me!” she shouted. “Don’t talk to me! This was your plan? Make your fucking robot shoot up my car? Now what the fuck do we do?” I didn’t figure her for such a potty mouth during dinner. As I turned to search the rest of the apartment parking lot, my eyes came to rest on Richard’s truck.

For all I knew he was holed up in his own apartment making preparations to drive that thing out of town. I just couldn’t make myself feel too bad about stealing it. I pitched the idea to Madeline, who affirmed that she could hotwire it. “I learned how while doing research for a story on car theft rings.”

“Look at that journalism shit pay off” I quipped. “This truck is ideal too, I can load Odie in the back-” as I pointed to Odie, a split second too late, I spotted the police robot behind him. I shouted a warning, but he’s never been terribly quick at speech recognition. Doesn’t have cameras all the way around either...that might’ve helped.

The police robot began shooting as soon as it entered what it considered an appropriate range. Some algorithm which graphs ballistic accuracy against distance and chooses the most optimal intersection of the two. Nothing like a personality. Nothing like my Odie.

I watched helplessly as the bullets tore through him. He pivoted around to face the new threat, returning its fire tenfold. The other big difference besides firepower, and in the end the most important one, was that the police robot had a shell designed to deflect bullets. Odie didn’t.

The police robot went down alright. The caliber of the rounds Odie aerated it with saw to that. But so did Odie, stumbling backwards on increasingly unresponsive legs. A burst of sparks issued forth from his shattered spherical head, within which one of his camera eyes hung from its wire, torn up by gunfire.

I tried to catch him. To soften the fall. But Odie’s awfully heavy. I strained, trying to prop him upright in denial of what I knew was happening. “No Odie. No, you’re alright. You’ll be alright, I just need...I need my tools.” His legs spasmed, and his lights began to go out. “Stop that! I just need to fix you…”

I opened the maintenance door in his chassis, peppered with bullet holes. He was a mess inside. Only still functioning for the most part because it was the aftermarket peripheral boards rather than his mainboard that got the worst of it. Still, I couldn’t save him.

I grappled with the realization, searching desperately for other possibilities. His body twitched in my arms as I knelt over him, now resigned to what I knew was coming. Tears began to flow freely. Falling from my eyes, then running down the inside surface of the mask before pooling in its chin.

“You saved me Odie. You stopped the bad guys and saved my life. You even saved me from being lonely all these years. You know what that means, right? You’re the best robot. The very best there ever was.”

Odie’s remaining camera slowly turned to look at me, juddering violently. His now feeble, grainy voice sounded for the last time. “I...I AM….THE BEST….ROBOT…” With that, the last few lights went out. His legs stiffened, and his body became still.

I draped myself over the mangled metal creature, weeping unreservedly. The mask did nothing to hide it. I didn’t care if she knew. Right then I didn’t care about anybody but Odie. I screamed and thrashed when Madeline tried to pull me away.

“Look, I’m sorry about your robot but we’ve got to get the fuck outta here. I guarantee every other robot for miles heard all those gunshots and are on their way to us right now.” I told her to help me load Odie into the back of the truck.

“There’s no way, that thing weighs a ton. We have to leave it.” I tearfully refused to leave Odie behind. She watched me for a while, arms crossed. Then her voice softened. “Look, I...I guess I can’t really understand how important that thing was to you. But if it wanted anything, it was for you to survive. What will Odie’s death count for if you don’t?”

She was patronizing me. I could hear it in her voice. But I also knew she was right. If we didn’t either hole back up in the apartment or start driving real soon, we’d be overrun. The compromise we reached was that I could bring three small robots of my choosing. I picked Eric, Ellie and Hero 1.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 13!}