[Original Novel] Little Robot, Part 14

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The empty tank didn’t somehow fill itself just because of the robots now bearing down on us. We still needed that gasoline to get any further. I loaded Eric snugly into the truck, wrapped up in a blanket next to Ellie. “I found you!” she gushed. “I was scared.”

“I’m scared too”, I whispered to them. Madeline started the engine and edged the truck far enough from behind the hill that we could watch the figures approaching. As soon as we could make them out in detail, she floored it.

The tires squealed in protest. The gas starved engine roared as the truck lurched out of its hiding place and rocketed towards our only hope for survival. Some of the military robots stopped running, knelt with their rifles and fired on us.

The muffled pop pop pops far behind seemed harmless until the first of the bullets penetrated the cab. Shattering part of the back window and exiting through the windshield, it left a tangle of splintered cracks around the hole. “Fuck! Jesus!” Madeline shouted, hunching over as far as she could without compromising her ability to drive.

Our problems multiplied when, as we drew near to the gas station, more robots appeared. Must’ve been inside the attached convenience store until now. I studied them through the nocs. “No rifles. They’re unarmed.” Madeline, still rattled from the near miss, instructed me to hold on.

“Why? Wait, you’re not…” But she was. The truck plowed directly into the trio of robots waiting for us between the two sets of pumps, coming to a rest with one of them pinned under a wheel and the mangled remains of the other two scattered behind.

“I could’ve done with more warning” I griped as I nursed my aching head, noticing cracks in my mask spreading out from where it impacted the dash. Madeline swung the door open, stepped out and took aim with her handgun at the robot pinned under the truck.

It reached out for her with both hands as if pleading for help. We both knew better. “Citizen, you are in danger” it barked in a monotonous, commanding voice. “Return to your home. Once there, refer to the Emergency Alert System for further instructions”.

Madeline knelt to get a better view under the truck, guessed at where the battery was most likely housed, and put a few rounds in it. The robot immediately went limp. She turned towards the pumps. Just then, the robot’s arm shot out and grabbed her by the ankle.

Madeline screamed, dropping her pistol. The robot’s other arm groped about the asphalt trying to get hold of the fallen gun. “Aaagghh! My leg! My leg!! Shoot it!” she cried. I dove for the gun just as the robot’s other hand seized it, pointed the barrel directly between my eyes, and pulled the trigger.

Click. Click, click, click. In that moment, my heart felt as if it stopped. Saved by the empty mag. I stomped on its wrist until it dropped the useless gun, which I picked up and began clubbing its head with. Madeline finally pulled free of its grip and began kicking it with her good leg.

No use. I looked up and spotted the rest of the robots rapidly approaching. “Madeline!” Her gaze followed mine. At once, the two of us sprang into action. I noticed her wince in pain as she hobbled around the truck to get the fuel cap off.

I fumbled and dropped the fuel nozzle in my hurry. She swore at me, grabbed it and stuck it in the fill spout herself. “Just get in the truck!” She yelled. I obliged, and as soon as she finished filling up the tank and putting the cap back on, she joined me.

I heard the now-familiar pop pop pops of an automatic rifle, bullets whizzing past. Looking over my shoulder I realized we were out of time, the rest of the robots almost on top of us. Again the tires screeched under duress. Again, I was pressed back into my seat as Madeline hammered the gas pedal. I noticed her wince as she did so and wondered about her leg, but she didn’t complain.

Neither of us breathed until, as we watched nervously in the rear view mirror, the small crowd of military robots receded entirely out of view. After a few minutes of silence, I asked if her leg was okay. “No more phone” she demanded. “Take the battery out.”

I did so reluctantly, tucking the battery, phone and plastic backing into my bag. At least we were now running on a full tank. That’s what, four hundred miles? More like three the way Madeline drives, but still. I double checked the meter, the little orange needle now satisfyingly pinned against the protruding post next to “F”.

I had to give Madeline turn by turn directions as she wouldn’t trust the GPS enough to let me turn it on. I could see her side of it. The problem is that I rely on it so much, I don’t know the exact way to the mountain complex off the top of my head. We made more than one wrong turn followed by laborious backtracking before finally arriving.

Apparently Lars had the same idea I did when shit hit the fan, because there was his obnoxiously airbrushed muscle car parked just outside the entry tunnel. He waved at us out the open driver’s side window as we pulled up.

Madeline looked apprehensive. “Is that a friend of yours?” I hesitated. “Not exactly, but I know him. He’s okay.” She slowly brought the truck to a stop next to Lars’ tricked out mid life crisis on wheels so we could speak through the open windows.

“You pass any safe gas stations on the way here?” I told him about what happened when we stopped to fill up. “That’s what I meant by safe. I scoped that one out on the way here and noped the fuck out of there, it was crawling with metal. I hope you left with a full tank then because I got here on my last legs, I doubt if there’s more than a quarter gallon left in Rhonda.”

Madeline looked to me for clarification. “He means his car.” She rolled her eyes. “Why is the outer door shut?” I inquired. Lars explained that the UGV which normally scans our biometrics and work badges was infected. He gestured to the busted up remains on the side of the road. “Had to run it down. Fuckin’ thing made me dent Rhonda. Hope there’s a Hell for robots.”

Madeline let out an exasperated sigh. “You mean we made it all the way here, and now there’s no way inside?” He pursed his lips. “Fraid so. I dug around inside the bot after downing it, looking for the PCB it signals the security computer inside with.” He held up the shattered, twisted remains of a circuit board.

“Well fuck” I added, feeling thoroughly defeated. The three of us then debated what to do next. While we stood there, Lars noticed Madeline’s limp as she struggled to keep weight off her injured ankle. “Back at the gas station?” She nodded. “Here, let me have a look.”

He knelt, shined his flashlight on her ankle, then let out a long whistle. “So are you a doctor or something?” Madeline asked. “No, just into women’s feet.” She backed away. “Just kidding, geez. That looks pretty bad though. It’ll get infected for sure if we don’t treat it.”

I took the light from him and studied her ankle myself. It was badly bruised, purple everywhere the robot’s fingers closed around it. In places where the segments of its rigid plastic fingers came together, skin was pinched so hard as to split. The dozen or so small wounds wept thin trails of fresh blood.

“I’ve got a first aid kit” I offered. Lars asked if it had antibiotics in it. When I checked, it didn’t. Just some gauze, aspirin, a tiny cheap compass and an emergency blanket. “Huh I guess it’s really more for backpackers who get lost. Could we use gasoline to sterilize the wounds?”

Madeline shook her head, explaining that she discovered firsthand in Syria why that’s a bad idea. “It does have antiseptic properties, but it’s also toxic. Plenty of rebels had the same idea as you, not knowing any better, and wound up poisoning themselves.”

Lars checked for other sterilizing agents like alcohol while we loaded everything from the truck into Rhonda. We all agreed to siphon gas from one vehicle to the other since we couldn’t all fit in the truck, which was by this point pretty badly shot up.

When he got to Eric, Ellie and Hero 1 he looked at me disdainfully. “You brought toys? Really?” Eric looked up at him, eyes glowing. “I’m a dog!” Lars wrapped the blanket fully around the two Aibos and lifted them out of the cab. “No, you’re a toy. But I guess we have room.”

“No, he’s a dog” I affirmed. Lars looked downright perturbed that I felt it necessary to argue such a point right then. “Sure, okay” he laughed. “Just like Sue is a woman.” I gave him a disgusted look, but then thought to ask what became of Sue. “No idea” he said. “I tried calling, no answer. Inside the complex maybe? Or dead.”

He said it with an indifferent air that chilled my blood. Madeline has grown on me, but I was having second thoughts about spending the next few months riding around with Lars. He produced a siphon kit from his trunk, then spent the next few minutes transferring gas from one tank to the other while I used the binoculars to watch for any other incoming cars.

“My name’s Lars Henrikson by the way.” He spit residual gasoline out and extended a hand to Madeline. “I see. Madeline LeBlanc.” She hesitantly accepted his handshake. He eyed her dress. Then looked at me. I was still in my nice dress shirt and pants on account of dinner.

“You two…?” Madeline hurriedly dispelled that idea. “We just met the other day. I invited him to dinner to pick his brain. That’s when all this started. I just didn’t recognize it for what it was until I got home.” I recalled the spinning waitrons and the out of control Motoman chef. If I’d known then...

“Good” he mused, big toothy grin framed by his scruffy blond mustache. Lars screwed the gas caps back on, packed the siphon kit back into his truck, then slapped Madeline’s ass before climbing into the driver’s seat. She stared at me with an expression of indignant shock. I shrugged and called shotgun.

Though none of us relished the idea of heading back into the city, the hospital lay right on the edge, and Madeline’s ankle was in urgent need of attention before it got any worse. It’s easy to forget in the age of cheap pharmaceuticals and universal healthcare that, when society breaks down, an infected cut can eventually mean amputation or death.
Now and again Lars asked if Madeline wouldn’t rather ride up front in my place. Each time she assured him she was quite happy remaining in the back seat. I tuned them out and doted on Eric, now chilling in my lap. “You did a good job back there Eric” I whispered. His broken tail vibrated furiously.

“I still say this could wait until tomorrow” Lars remarked as the black silhouette of the city appeared in the distance. “Just wait for them to run out of juice.” It surprised me to hear him say that given what he saw at the gas station. On the off chance he didn’t make the connection yet, I explained.

“The virus didn’t just hijack robots. It also took control of all the autocabs and personal cars recent enough to be driverless.” Lars boasted that Rhonda was made in the nineteen seventies and as such had nothing remotely like a computer in it, much less an internet connection.

“That’s nice. Anyway, think of the huge, high capacity battery packs in all those cars. And the ones still running on gas are basically mobile generators.” Lars frowned, eyes wide. I could tell he was now realizing the same thing I did back at the gas station.

“Still, they’ll eventually run out.” I conceded, but did some quick math out loud concerning the energy density of the battery packs commonly found in domestic robots versus those found in autocabs and personal cars, working out the number of times a single robot could recharge from it.

“Gasoline is an order of magnitude more energy dense. And the underground tanks at gas stations often hold as much as ten thousand gallons. The gas itself will probably go bad before they run out of it.” Lars asked how long that would take.

“Three to six months depending on stuff like the type of gas and the ambient temperature. Or as long as two years if preservatives have been added.” He cringed, silently mouthing the word “fuck”. I nodded somberly.

“Still, I doubt it’ll drag on for more than a couple weeks. I mean really, what are we up against? First of all it’s not clear how widespread this is, but while there’s a lot of robots in this country the ownership rate is nowhere near one per household. So fifty million give or take? Ninety, counting those in the service industry?”

Madeline confirmed those numbers, mentioning something about data she looked up for the report she was working on before this all started. “Alright. Domestic robots can be dangerous, but they’re significantly weaker than the average grown man. If they get ahold of guns it’s a different matter, but the important thing is that the number of hardened military robots is a small fraction of the total.”

It was Lars’ turn to confirm, as he’s privy to the same military data concerning the prevalence of armed drones that I am. “What I’m getting at is that we’re going to win this war. Easily. A lot of people will die, lots probably already have. Most within the first few minutes at the hands of their own household robot. But we survivors have a huge numerical advantage, plus the enemy is running on a rapidly dwindling supply of energy they have no way to replenish.”

Lars began slowly nodding, now visibly less shaken. Madeline also appeared somewhat comforted by it. “We’re also going in under cover of darkness, that should help” Madeline added. Lars and I both fell silent. “...What? What is it?” she asked.

“Military robots have both standard night vision and thermal imaging, same as the average soldier’s helmet optics. That’s why I had you park behind that hill back at the gas station. If we run into any in the city…” I trailed off, and for a while we simply rode in silence.

I broke it the same way as before, by turning on the radio. It was the same broadcast judging by the voice. “-away from gas stations, as I’ve now received credible reports that teams of robots are seizing control of them.”

Madeline groaned. We could’ve used that tip just a bit sooner. “It is believed that convoys of infected robots are traveling in commandeered vehicles to cities as yet unaffected by the virus in order to spread it. Critical internet infrastructure as well as vulnerable communications satellites have been shut down, leaving physical propagation as their only recourse.”

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 15!}