[Original Novel] Little Robot, Part 16

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Several minutes went by before my heartrate finally normalized. A gut wrenching silence permeated the room, save for the crackle of burning battery packs, as we waited for any sign of renewed assault. All told, my original estimate was pretty close to the truth. Thirty six robots lay in various stages of “unscheduled disassembly” both inside and just outside the station.

Madeline erupted into anxious laughter. In disbelief, just like me, that we’d actually done it. Lars then emerged from hiding, slapped Madeline on the back and joined in our laughter as if he’d done anything.

We only remembered the cloaked stranger when he stood up amid the wreckage and put up his hands. “Madeline!” I pointed, and she immediately fell silent. Raindrops struck the man’s cloak all over, running down its contours and dripping from the bottom fringe.

“Is anyone hurt?” A woman’s voice. Wasn’t expecting that. “What do you want from us?” Madeline demanded, still brandishing her gun despite the stranger’s raised hands. “I saw you enter the station” the stranger admitted. “Then those dreadful brutes began converging on it. I thought maybe you could use some...help.”

She dropped the robe, and our jaws dropped along with it. A robot. But like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Madeline got a shot off before I could get ahold of her. Missed, thankfully. “What are you doing!?” she shrieked. “It’s a robot! It’s a fucking robot, let me shoot it!”

Of course I couldn’t allow that. I suspected it when I heard her voice. But when I laid eyes on that design, I knew. “It’s me” the impossibly elegant gynoid called out. I finished wrestling the gun from Madeline, then turned back towards the slender thing.

“I know” I called back. Madeline stared at me dumbfounded. Then back at the gynoid, then at me again. Then she began laughing. “You didn’t. Did you?” I asked what she meant. “Don’t fucking play dumb. You made this, didn’t you? This is your...Your what? Sex bot? Your robo-girlfriend? I should have guessed you’d do something like this.”

When I realized her meaning, I protested my innocence. “I had nothing to do with this!” She looked about as skeptical as physically possible. “I swear! I didn’t design that thing. I don’t know where she got it either, She’s supposed to be back in the cave.”

Madeline only seemed more tickled. “You keep her in a cave? Jesus. How many registries and wanted lists are you on?” Helper cautiously inched forward. Madeline’s eyes returned to her at once and she backed away in momentary fear.

“How did you do this?” I demanded. “How can you be out here?” Helper explained that the virus disabled all of the security measures in the mountain complex. “I couldn’t get out by internet, there’s no outside connection. I still have no idea how the virus got in. But with security disabled I could communicate directly to the fabricator, so I used that to build myself this body. Then I simply walked out the front door with it.”

The fabricator! Of course. “Wait, you opened the front door?” She nodded. “After I finished wiping the system, isolating the virus and destroying it I set all new passwords so I could lock the door behind me. Then I set out searching for you.”

Just me? She made no mention of Madeline or Lars. Though with Madeline still backed into the far corner chuckling at me, I couldn’t feel too bothered. “Can’t believe you built yourself a sexbot” Lars jeered. Again I insisted I had nothing to do with it, that today was the first time I’d laid eyes on it and Helper must’ve engineered it on her own.

“Anyway there’s no time for this bullshit. I guarantee every robot in the city heard that firefight, we’ve got to get moving. If what Helper says is true, she’s the key we need to get inside the mountain complex. Remember? The original plan? That’s back on the table, but not if we wait around here like dipshits for the next wave of robots to arrive.”

I led Helper to the car, still stashed in an alley where we left it with Madeline and Lars snickering behind me all the way. “I like your cape” Helper chimed in. “It matches your mask.” The other two burst into laughter again. Fuck them, I thought it was sweet.

This time Madeline rode up front with Lars, which I expect pleased him to no end. Helper and I piled into the back, and once the car was in motion I took the chance to really get a good look at her. I could see why Madeline and Lars leapt to conclusions.

“This is amazing work” I confessed, “but did you really have to make it so…?” She stared at me in confusion. “Is...is something wrong with my body? You...don’t like it?” Her voice sounded hurt. I did my best to recover.

“No, no I said it’s amazing, and it really is. I’ve never seen a gynoid like this. It’s...you’re beautiful.” The light coming out of various parts of her body illuminated from within turned a deep magenta, in what I took for the robotic equivalent of blushing.

“I just don’t see why you needed to make it all...you know. Va-voom.” I poked at one of the two shapely, flexible silicone sacs of glowing purple gel protruding from her chest. “Va...voom?” She repeated, still perplexed.

“He means you look like a whore” Lars called back over his shoulder. This also mystified her as that word never appeared in any of her educational packets. “Whore? Is va-voom bad? I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. I made it like this because I thought...I thought you might like me better this way.”

Her voice wavered again. Decision time. Save face in front of Lars and Madeline, or protect Helper’s smile. Wasn’t difficult. “You’re beautiful. Don’t listen to them, you didn’t do this for them right? You did it for me, didn’t you?” She nodded somberly.

“Well I think you’re lovely. You just took our breath away, is all.” I made stern eye contact with Madeline via the rear view mirror more than once. She was kind enough to remain silent as I consoled the glowing, shapely feminine creature seated behind her.

“He’s right” Madeline unexpectedly fibbed. “I didn’t mean it before. Sorry about that, I just...I’ve been through a lot today. I didn’t know what to make of you. Humans tend to fear the unknown.” Helper’s eyes lit up as she enthusiastically confirmed that I’ve told her that many, many times.

I wanted to hold onto Helper but didn’t know where to put my hands. Her body was rigid white plastic for the most part, segmented and articulated like a fancy doll. But everywhere she thought women ought to be soft consisted instead of flexible, membranous silicone bulging slightly from the glowing gelatinous filling.

That included her breasts, thighs, hips, buttocks, stomach and lips. “You could’ve left the lips off though, surely?” I muttered. “What does a machine need lips for?” She fished around in her cloak and produced a black tube. “So I can wear lipstick” she answered matter of factly as she carefully applied some.

“Oh! There are other robots with you” Helper exclaimed upon noticing Eric, Ellie and Hero nestled at her feet in a bundle of blankets. I nodded. “That’s Hero 1, a recent rescue. That’s Ellie, and that’s Eric. Remember Eric? I’m sure I told you about him.”

Helper’s gel turned bright pink. “Oh you little darling, I’ve heard all about you! You look like such a little cutie, just how I imagined.” Eric yipped, tail vibrating noisily, and contradicted her. “No, I look like a dog!” Helper seemed taken aback but delighted nonetheless, cheerfully answering. “Oh! Well, I look like a whore.”

Lars stifled a laugh. Madeline hit his shoulder. She couldn’t have been too irritated though, as when I angled to get a better look via the rear view mirror Lars had his hand on her thigh. She said nothing but was smiling.

Helper also craned her neck to find out what I was looking at. She then took my own hand and placed it on her soft, glowing purple thigh. It turned magneta. I hastily withdrew my hand and crossed my arms. Helper frowned, her glow slowly dimming while color shifting to blue.

The hospital was guarded as before by a pair of domestic robots, more easily identified from a distance than the military models on account of ostentatious LED illuminated accents on the exterior of their shells.

It made life simpler for us, briefly anyway. Just shoot at the lights until they stop moving. I hid to one side of the parked car, its own heat signature a much higher priority target than my own on account of the mylar.

From this position I waited for any further robots to emerge, shotgun at the ready. Madeline crouched behind the hood, surveying the entrance with my binoculars. Not much to see as the only source of light on it came from the car’s headlights.

After a protracted silence, we formed up and headed for the double doors just below the darkened, shot up sign. “Turn your lights off” I whispered to Helper. “I can’t. They’re not electric. The stuff inside is bioluminescent bacteria harvested from the caves. Consumes less power this way.”

I didn’t really care for trivia just then and asked how she dimmed the output in the car. “Oh! Same way I change the color. The sacs which contain the gel are made out of a material similar to flexible color displays, just without the backlight. They control the amount of-”

I told her to keep her voice down. “I don’t care how you do it, just….glow less, okay?” A moment later the soft, stretchy parts of her body went opaque and we were bathed in darkness. I wondered how much of a difference it would make.

The robots outside the police station wouldn’t shoot at Helper. I assume because she’s a robot too. Must’ve wanted her for parts or something. Odds are good that even if she were lit up like a Christmas tree, any robots we encounter here wouldn’t shoot at her.

I didn’t relish the idea of hiding behind her, but I did hand her my shotgun reasoning that she’s likely to have much better aim. “Careful with this. Very high spread, it would be easy to accidentally-” She reminded me that she handled herself just fine outside the police station, so I left it alone.

Beyond the reception area, a pair of corridors to either side extended into darkness. Lars’ flashlight just didn’t reach far enough to reveal what might be hiding even twenty feet ahead. “Helper, can you see in the dark?” She confirmed it.

We tried letting her lead the way. But bumbling around in pitch black with only Helper’s instructions got old very quickly. Finally I threw up my hands and asked her to glow red as intensely as possible.

“But before you said not to-” I sternly repeated the request. She shook her head slowly, but complied. Soon the corridor around us was bathed in dull red light for about ten feet in both directions. Not enough to see any real distance ahead but enough to avoid tripping or running into things.

Red light would also not ruin our night vision. When our eyes adjusted fully to the dark, that plus the modest radius illuminated by Helper’s bacteria proved enough that we could find our way from the front desk back to the pharmacy with little trouble.

When the four of us came upon a stairwell, I immediately noticed a familiar boxy white humanoid standing at the top. “Helper!” I whispered in a panic. “Look out, it’s an ASIMO!” The squat little fellow, commonly employed in hospitals for basic tasks like ferrying medications around or leading patients to their rooms began to descend the stairs towards us.

It then seized up and tumbled end over end until it crashed in a motionless heap at the bottom. We all stood there stunned, unsure how to react. “Well...that’s...good, I suppose.” Got me all worked up for nothing. Helper prodded the white plastic wreckage at the bottom of the steps as we passed, making sure it wouldn’t get up again.

The door to the back area of the pharmacy was locked, but the door itself gave way after a few good kicks by Lars. I worried about the noise, but the absence of any medical robots so far besides that glitched ASIMO bode very well for our odds of success.

While Lars and Madeline rummaged through the shelves looking for antibiotics, Helper and I stood watch just outside the busted down door in case anybody decided to crash our party. All clear for the first several minutes. Then Helper noticed a faint, distant whine.

Something like the sound a blender makes. I didn’t hear it myself until a minute or so later. I called out to Lars and Madeline. The sound of rummaging abruptly stopped and they soon appeared in the doorway asking what the matter was.

“Don’t know yet. Helper heard something, I thought it was nothing initially but it’s getting louder.” The unspoken implication was that the source must therefore be getting closer. Lars shone his flashlight down the long corridor, back the way we came.

As ineffectual as before, only darkness beyond twenty feet. The whine grew steadily louder. “Helper and I got this” I reassured them. “Find Madeline’s meds.” Lars handed me his flashlight, then went back to searching through the scattered bottles of pills on the floor.

Louder and louder it grew. A raspy, grinding electrical whine I didn’t at all want to locate the source of, but which seemed intent on locating us. Helper and I stood side by side, her with the shotgun while I kept the light pointed down the hall.

What is it? What the fuck is it? I began to sweat, anxiety mounting as the sound drew closer and closer. Almost to the far corner of the corridor now. Any minute, it’ll round that corner and reveal itself. Any minute.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 17!}