[Original Novel] Little Robot, Part 21

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Many were badly charred. Some even partly still on fire. I couldn’t make out any detail at this distance but could see them well enough to notice missing arms, or even heads in a few cases. Just a slow trickle for now. But if my drunken friend from the cafeteria could be believed, they would soon swarm these fences by the thousands.

Draw in as many as possible before bringing down the hammer. That must be the plan. But even if not for that, we couldn’t stay long. Fallout from other strikes would be carried to us by the wind soon enough.

The two of us found ‘Rhonda’ parked with a mess of other cars in a covered lot, many with scattered bulletholes in them. I peeked inside and was relieved to discover Eric, Ellie and Hero1 still tucked behind the front passenger seat, wrapped in that blanket. All three sported blinking red LEDs, almost out of battery.

I wasn’t about to bring them back to the tent with me in full view of the other refugees. I don’t expect they’d be very popular here, so I made note to charge them from the car’s 12 volt socket once we got on the road. Lars and I stiffened as a soldier approached to ask what we were up to. When I warily told him we meant to leave soon, he shrugged.

“You’re not being held here. Everybody’s trying to get in, we don’t care who gets out. It reduces the resource burden if anything. I don’t recommend it though. The stragglers-” he pointed to the small groups of robots being picked off as they approached the fence. “-are just the beginning. There’s several massive groups incoming from multiple directions, between eight and ten hours out.”

I asked if the roads would be clear, or if they’d be coming in hijacked cars. “What we’ve observed so far is that they move at the pace of the slowest member. So as not to break up into smaller, more easily defeated groups, I reckon. If you mean to go hunker down someplace, you best get while the getting’s good.”

It wasn’t clear to me whether he knew about the better than even odds that this entire base would be flattened by a nuclear blast within the next couple of days. I kept that to myself lest it change his mind for some reason, and returned to the tent.

“Madeline, get your things. We’re going.” It turned out she’d already packed while Lars and I were finding the car. I grabbed my bag and was about to leave the tent when it struck me that Helper wouldn’t make it very far without some sort of disguise.

“Couldn’t you have stolen a burka or something?” I muttered as I searched through the pile of clothing she brought with her last night. None of it covered nearly enough. “I didn’t steal these”, she argued. “The owners were dead.”

I fretted over how to conceal enough of her that we could get from the tent to the car without trouble until it hit me. I’d disguise her as myself! My own outfit covers everything, I’ve always insisted on it. Out of something like a mixture of scopophobia, agoraphobia and hypochondriasis.

A bunch of ten dollar words that amount to a general desire for insulation from the world. From other people. A way not to participate in anything happening outside the walls of my familiar, orderly apartment except to the degree absolutely required to support myself. Something like the social equivalent of a space suit, or scuba gear.

For the first time in my life, it paid off. When dressed up in my outfit, complete with gloves and mask, Helper was indistinguishable from me except for a few conspicuously pronounced curves and bulges. “Can you do anything about…?” I poked her bosom.

She lifted the mask, hunched over the camping toilet we were provided and violently regurgitated about a litre of bacterial gel. After she finished horking up the last of it and wiped the residual goo from her mouth, her figure now more or less passed for a man’s.

She noticed my disturbed expression and giggled. “Don’t you giggle after something like that” I scolded, “I’m traumatized now!” But it only further amused her. I’d brought no spare set of clothes, so I wound up borrowing some from Lars.

The jeans fit alright, but I absolutely swam in the shirt. Like wearing a circus tent! I asked if he had anything in medium. “Not my fault you don’t lift. Anyway it doesn’t have to look nice, you just gotta pass-” He trailed off. When I asked him why, he pointed out it was the first time he’d ever seen my face.

“You look so normal.” I would’ve taken offense if I ever aspired to normality. “I dunno dude. I guess I always figured you were Quasimodo under the mask, and wore out of shame. Or that you were a robot underneath.” He said the last part in jest, but only mostly by the sound of it.

“To me, nobody could be more handsome” Helper declared. “But then I could always see through the mask, so it’s no surprise to me what he looks like. It only blocks the visible parts of the light spectrum. The face he’s revealed just now might be new to you, but it’s the one that watched over me every day since I can remember. I know his every pore. His every crease, every strand of hair and cute little mole.”

Helper’s affectionate gushing made Madeline visibly uncomfortable. I felt the same way but for very different reasons. It was bizarre and frightening to suddenly be so naked. To feel wind on my face, to see the world unfiltered by the mask. Too bright, too loud. Too real.

Stranger still to feel everyone’s gaze on me. Harrowing, even. I’ve never given a second thought to the shape or appeal of my face, it’s just what I pour Soylent into. “Can we get this over with? I don’t like being exposed. I just want to get Helper into the car and get outta here.”

Lars added “...plus Madeline and myself, right?” I hurriedly nodded. “Sure, whatever.” He laughed for some reason, then the four of us set off for the covered lot. I drew some funny looks from our ‘neighbors’ as I walked, probably because I resembled nobody they’d seen go into that tent, but they said nothing.

“This is excruciating” I mumbled. My oversized yellow plaid trucker shirt billowed in the breeze, what little chest hair I have on full display. “I look like a 70s porn star.” Lars, perhaps irritated by my commentary on his fashion choices, advised me not to flatter myself.

We soon passed a crowd gathered around a preacher with a loudspeaker that I recognized as the one from the protest the other day. Instead of his verbose sign listing mortal sins, today his focus was doomsaying.

“Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.” Madeline rolled her eyes, but I paid closer attention than before.

I got the sense people like this, with the ability to sway large numbers of desperate survivors, would become increasingly influential in the coming years and wished I had more time to study his methods. Something about it seemed uncannily familiar...for some reason evoking within me the same instinctual repulsion as the scent of decomposition, or signs of illness.

“Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. “Do you see all these things?” he asked. “Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down. This is it! Bear witness to the abomination of desolation foretold by the book of Revelations! Do any of you doubt that the old world will soon pass away?”

Lars rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Well he’s not wrong.” The grim reminder that everything around us would soon be a flaming, toxic crater quickened my pace. A few more isolated survivors in the process of retrieving clothing and other supplies from their cars also eyeballed me, but only briefly before returning to their own concerns.

“YOU!” I spun towards the source, but didn’t recognize the haggard looking man until he got close enough. “WHERE’S MY GOD DAMN TRUCK!?” Richard Papadakis, shirt speckled with spots of dried blood, strode up and seized Helper by the shirt.

The sudden sight of him stunned me such that I froze up, expecting him to belt me one. Instead, he’d mistaken Helper for me on account of the clothes and mask. I realized as he’s never seen my face before, right now I was essentially a total stranger to him.

Helper grabbed him by the wrist when he motioned as if to strike her. “Calm down sir, I mean you no harm. I’m here to help.” He looked taken aback by her voice, and in one swift motion she neglected to prevent, he flipped her mask up.

Not now. Why now, Richard? For fuck’s sake, we were almost out. He fell backwards in fright, pointing to Helper’s now exposed face and stuttering as he fought to regain composure. “ROBOT!” He shouted. “IT’S A FUCKING ROBOT! SOMEBODY SHOOT IT!!”

Helper pulled the mask back down over her face just in time, as my now thoroughly hammered but still nicely dressed guide from the cafeteria appeared. “Settle-hic-down fella. I know how he looks but hic that’s just...Captain Reflecto! Here to save us all from the nuke.”

Richard recoiled in disgust from the man’s booze saturated breath, then carried on shouting excitedly to anybody who would listen that the masked, suited figure was a disguised robot. He then stopped cold and turned back to the drunken fellow next to him. “...Sorry what? Did you say nuke?”

It was enough of a distraction for the four of us to pile into the car and pull away before Richard noticed. I saw him receding in the rear view mirror gesturing wildly, still shouting this and that. But when the soldier at the gate looked to our happily blitzed friend, nursing a freshly refilled flask, he gestured for him to let us through.

What a relief to finally be on the road again. Helper, now leaning against me with her head on my shoulder, inquired what “nuke” means. Her educational packets omitted anything that might reflect badly on humanity, part of why I took it upon myself to balance out that rosy narrative by relating my own miserable experiences.

“It’s a very big bomb we invented to facilitate strategically valuable mass murder. There’s a war going on, all sorts of desperate measures are being employed to stop the affected robots.” Helper mulled that one over, then hoped aloud that humans come out of it alright.

I muttered that, in spite of everything I’d so far seen, I still think it’d be no tragedy if they don’t. I caught a concerned glare from Madeline in the rear view mirror, plus one from Helper this time to my surprise.

Madeline asked why I kept referring to humanity as “they”, and reminded me that I’m human as well. I winced but otherwise did not bother to react. Helper went further. “I know you want to protect me, and that many humans are afraid of robots. They have good reason to be. But they’re not all bad, they just haven’t met me so they don’t know I’m different.

After all, Madeline is a nice lady. I like Lars too, he’s amusing.” Lars raised a silent thumbs up from the front. “The people in the camp didn’t seem malicious either. They seemed frightened and worried about their loved ones, just like I was until I found you. I’ve been thinking, maybe you simply haven’t met the right-”

I snapped at her, stressed out from going so long without my mask and from the last minute altercation with Richard. “One night and half a day outside the cave, and you think you’ve got humanity figured out. I’ve lived with them for thirty two years. Don’t tell me how humans are, I’ll tell you. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll listen.”

Helper slid away from me. Her lights dimmed and shifted to blue. Then bright red. Then back to dim blue, alternating for a few minutes until returning to normal. She took my mask off and plopped it in my lap, still strangely unresponsive a while later when I asked if she was feeling okay.

An hour or so later, desert gave way to thick woods. A familiar sight from past commutes, it meant we were getting close. I wished GPS were still safely usable so I could know the precise number of miles remaining. I’m a constitutionally anxious person, and the looming prospect of death from the skies wasn’t doing me any favors.

Now and then a humanoid would burst out from between the densely packed trees behind us and chase the car for a ways. With a maximum speed of twelve miles per hour they were easy to lose, but numerous. Ever-present pests which made it unsafe to stop the car for bathroom breaks or to effect repairs to the car.

As a result I initially paid no mind to the latest robot to chase after us, only taking notice when we still didn’t manage to lose it after several minutes. “Guys? There’s a-” Lars cut me off. “I see it. Been keepin’ an eye on it for the last couple miles. Doesn’t look like the ones we’ve dealt with until now. Still got your nocs?”

I did, and was soon peering through them at our mysterious pursuer. More cause for curiosity than alarm as it didn’t seem able to overtake ‘Rhonda’...until the small aerial drone detached from its back and sped towards us. “Something came off it!” I cried.

“I saw”. Lars swerved into the other lane, then back. The drone changed trajectory each time, confirming our fears. I couldn’t see it clearly as it wouldn’t hold still enough, but there was plainly some sort of payload attached. I had my suspicions about what it was, and no desire to be vindicated.

“Give it more gas!” Madeline demanded. Lars objected that we were already approaching 110 and coming up on the red line. “What is it? What fucking robot is there that can run this fast!?” In fact I recalled some article I’d seen months ago about quadrupedal military robots designed for speed, patterned after cheetahs.

The speed of the legged robot wouldn’t be such a problem if not for the drone it carried. The little quadcopter’s battery couldn’t keep up for long at these speeds, but whenever it ran low it simply withdrew, landed on the running quadruped and recharged from it. Then our evasive dance began anew.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 22!}