* * * *
Uriah smiled at the sanctuary before him in the afternoon sun: the Bio-Bazaar of Sloan, fulfilling all your post-apocalyptic guilt trip needs. Sloan used to be an unincorporated community, but eventually its convenience as a train stopping point, as well as the technological boom of the early twenty-first century there, became its lifeblood.
He parked lazily now that there was no reason not to, and, not bothering to lock the door, sauntered toward the entrance.
“Sorry, sir, but the Bio-Bazaar is currently closed,” said an amiable-looking android who had been hidden by one of the store’s pillars.
“Is it?” Uriah said, drawing an EM gun and pulling the trigger.
The robot stayed standing. “Please put down your weapon, sir. It is ineffective here.”
“Then why should I put it down?” He held the gun like a Frisbee and tossed it at the bot’s most vulnerable spot. The bayonet analogue hardly punctured the android at all.
A projectile fired from the robot’s chest and hit Uriah, stunning him from the neck down. “You were warned, sir. Sloan authorities will deal with you shortly.” It beeped, having sent a report to SPD, and returned to its starting position.
That’s it? You’re gonna make me just lie here in total indignity until the police come? So it was, and every faint note of the soft rock playing from inside – for what Uriah could only assume were humans intending to do renovations – every second of that buzz given off by androids that one scarcely notices in normal situations, and every time his mind wandered to the memory of wailing Andy, made him eager for the moment when he would incapacitate that skeleton of amoral metal.
Uriah looked around as much as he could in his state. Maybe if he could manipulate the controls on the device that had rendered him paralyzed, he could free himself. Or he could end up paralyzing his head as well. He had to be discreet. To give commands to the Homunculi was out of the question.
The small sphere of gadgetry lay two whole feet from his head. As he flailed his head every direction and stuck out his tongue, he wondered if the descendants of Luke Skywalker, in a galaxy far, far away, were mocking his lack of telekinesis.
He’d cherish the majority of his muscles from now on, that was certain. At least every futile attempt at propulsion of his body that Uriah made was a drain in the android’s reasons to take him seriously, if adherence to pre-programmed heuristics for judging how to act can be called true reason.
A siren crept into Uriah’s earshot. Crunch time. He thought. Hard.
“Hey, you!” he shouted at the security bot. “Get over here, piggy!”
The android walked toward him. “Please wait for the police, sir. Be aware that any enmity you display will be held against you in your legal record.”
“Yeah, yeah. You think I care about that right now? ‘Droid, what I’d really appreciate right now is if you could scratch an itch on my forehead, seeing as I can’t reach it like this. Understand?”
“I comprehend your request, sir, and I refuse to honor it. Be patient.”
Its foot was inches from the sphere, to which Uriah nodded as he spoke, “Fine, then, but ugly, you forgot to pick up your little toy.”
Undeterred by his taunts, the automaton reached down. In perhaps the scariest seconds of his recent life, Uriah shrieked, pressed the restorative button of the device that the robot jerked in his direction with its fortunately humanoid nervous system, and gave his enemy the strongest kick in the leg his adrenal glands could muster.
The top-heavy robot tumbled backwards. He snatched up his EM gun and, remembering that it wasn’t the right weapon for the job at hand, called, “Homunculus SU-70, that security bot has attacked me. Disable it.”
Two android kills in two days, if Livingston was not to be considered a human with his Libertas. This record would have pleased Uriah if the police bot, which would surely be even more advanced than the android a Homunculus had just snapped like a wishbone, were not twenty meters away from him.
His eyes darted towards the door, then to the nearest of his soldiers. “Get inside that building, Homunculus, and use force if necessary. Universal minus three. Confirm?”
They complied, and he heard no evidence of their resorting to breaking glass. Uriah addressed the remaining triad. “Incapacitate that rogue robot, Homunculi. SU-70 to seventy-two.” Rogue, cop, it was all the same, as long as it posed a threat to a human.
Uriah glanced at his watch. Quarter after four. That wasted second paid its rent in his multiplied haste. Figuring his gun would fare better aiming away from the store, he gave it a charge and squeezed off a strong pulse twice as fast as he would have otherwise.
The bot matched his speed, however, putting up a shield. The Homunculi fell.
This is not supposed to happen! He was on his own and the android was a yard away. Now or never. He rolled forward and right, saw his opportunity, and shot again – blocked. Were he an Unnatural, he would be dead. Such as it was, however, the police bot shot one of those stunners, which Uriah flung off course with his weapon.
He nailed it right in the silicon heart, but not before it could send an alert. Well how about that. Undoubtedly more than one replacement would show up soon enough. Time to be proactive. He entered through the now-unlocked door.
More androids of a different yet competent model – Bio-Bazaar Bots – stood all over the store, awaiting orders of a kind they would never hear. If the mission was to nip the police in the bud, before they could even know they would need reinforcements, these were not ostensibly helpful. Not yet. Uriah programmed seven of them to do as the Homunculi did, and he took another with him into the elevator, holding his nose along the way in response to the odor of dog food and fish tanks.
“Where are your security bots?”
“Third floor, sir, in the back-left corner.”
He pressed the corresponding button, and they ascended. Within the next twenty seconds, the door remained shut. Idiot! Of course those bots would get the other guy’s signal, too. Must’ve locked us in.
“Triple-B, can you open that door?” he said, remaining calm.
“I am afraid I cannot carry out any command that defies store management, sir. Please be patient. Authorities will take you into custody.”
Uriah drew his gun and deflected the Triple-B’s stunner. He picked it up and kept his gun glued to the android’s chest. “One wrong move and you’re museum fodder, ‘droidy.”
“Threatening me will not open the door, sir.”
“Oh, I know that. But it will keep you from harming me.”
“That is not entirely true, sir. I do not value my life as anything but a means to the ends of the Bio-Bazaar, and as such I could disarm you right before you destroy me.”
This caught Uriah off guard a bit, but he shrugged and said, “Sounds like a sorry excuse for a life to me.”
“It is what I was made for, sir. I trust my creators’ judgment.”
The elevator was silent for so long that Uriah broke it by saying, “Shouldn’t the security bot have gotten here by now?”
“Even if your servants disabled one, they will not be able to stop all of them, sir.”
“Wanna bet?” He glanced at the door, to his right. It has a point. No sense leaving it active. He fired.
The lights on the Triple-B stayed on. Inspecting his weapon more closely, Uriah found that it had run out of power.
His heart plummeted even more as the elevator doors opened to show a stunner-sphere flying straight toward his chest. Its owner wasn’t as stupid as its predecessors, picking up the projectile and signaling for two Triple-Bs to carry Uriah by the armpits.
“This is robbery of my dignity, don’t ya think?” said Uriah in a facade, in spite of his resignation to a situation that he now knew was thoroughly FUBAR. Every Homunculus the escort passed by, descending to the first floor, fell in deactivation to his cold master. The minutes were drying up as muc
h as the water dishes at the FHS.
There was only one option left now: abuse the First Amendment. “Homunculus, block the doorway now! Universal!”
A wall of Homunculi greeted them as the doors opened. Being designed purely for manual labor, these bots had thicker skins with no soft spots. They pulverized the enemy in a frenzy that gave Uriah a whack in the head.
When he was sure the nearby Triple-Bs of all kinds were down, Uriah ordered a Homunculus to free him from his immobilization and stood up, rubbing his head. No wounds any more serious than the kind he had suffered during the bombing, but this was hardly the time to rest easy. Just the first wave of bots down. Now we make our stand.