Less Talk, More Robots
an excerpt

[tentative prologue]

“Morning now…”

It was pitch black; probably because my eyes were closed. I must have been knocked out by something, but the thing was, I couldn’t even remember what that ‘something’ was. You know, this and that, and the sort of opening line you would see in the millions of novels, television shows, comics and whatever other form of media a person like me or you or them or even your grandmother (frail and cranky as she may be) might enjoy. This entailed me, as I slowly came to, to utter the most cliché words in any film or novel ever. And by that, I mean the one thing that the main character always says whenever they regain consciousness after a very sudden smash to the head, or inhalation of very strange substances, or other very mysterious and equally cliché events prior to being sent to La La Land.

“Ugh… Where am I?”

It was dark. Pitch black, as I said before. I couldn’t see a thing. I couldn’t even see my own hands. A small light came on a few feet away from me. I thought it was an illusion at first. Maybe it would grow bigger and bigger until it became a tunnel of light for me to go through. It was an amusing thought and it helped me handle the strangeness of it all. Hey, how often did a guy like me get a free ticket to Heaven, right? But then, another small light appeared beside that one, and another one beside that one, and so on and so forth, until an entire array of lights lit up, combining to form a great light that could have resembled a screen of some sort. I was mesmerized. The screen fizzed and sputtered until eventually the lights changed colors to reveal an image of a person… whom I didn’t know, though that would have been wildly obvious to anybody. His eyes were covered, so even if I did know them, I wouldn’t have been able to tell.

“Hello and welcome to the enrichment center.” He said it in the coldest voice possible: that of a computer. It was distorted and I was pretty sure he was using a vocoder. That DJ side of me got thinking on what vocoder he could have been using until he repeated the sentence.

“Hello and welcome to the enrichment center…” it cooed, this time in a sing-song manner. A smile played on the image’s lips.

What the… where am I? Enrichment Center? What is this place? I don’t remember anything before this. It piped up again.

“Oh, your specimen has been processed.”

Specimen? What specimen?

I gasped and flinched when I felt some cold slimy things touch my leg. I stared as these strange black wires began to crawl toward me and creep up my legs. It was uncomfortable. I tried to kick them away, but they coiled around my legs too quickly. I reached over and tried to pry them off, but as slimy as they looked and felt, they were actually made of metal. They were wires after all, but it … was kind of disturbing. It was a bad idea to have reached over, because the wires began to crawl up my arms as well, slinking around and around, till they reached my upper body and coiled dangerously tight – I took in a deep breath just in case I wouldn’t have a chance to breathe ever again - until they had me bound completely. I could not move.

“Oh,” it said again, the screen turning green this time. “Your specimen has been processed.”

Was I the specimen that he was referring to? I didn’t like the sound of that. I tried to kick and move my arms, but it was no use. The wires were all over me, save for my head. I tried to scream, I tried to cry out, or yell something, anything, most likely the predictable “Let me go!” line, but to my utter shock, no sound came from my lips. I tried again. I tried over and over, but still no sound came out. It was as if I had become mute. And it scared me.

“Oh,” it said yet again, screen turning blue. “Your specimen has been processed.”

“What in the world are you talking about?” I wanted to yell, but this time my entire body was paralyzed. Thousands if not millions of thoughts ran through my mind. Am I going to die today? Am I going to be part of an experiment? Was an alien life form, a parasite, about to enter my body and possess me?

“Oh,” it said, almost … casually. I stared in horror as the screen turned a bloody shade of red and the person on the screen smiled. “And we are now ready to begin the test proper.”

The lights died, leaving me in pitch black darkness again. The wires tightened, and tightened, and tightened until I felt that I could no longer breathe, as if my lungs were being crushed by invisible giant hands. I felt tiny wires begin to creep up my neck, up my jaw line, creeping along my face, and I felt them begin to crawl over my eyes – I shut them in fear of them poking them out and causing me to cry tears of blood or something as equally as gory as that. Strangely enough they did not cover my mouth. I appreciated that, but then I still couldn’t cry out or call for help. Not that it would help even if I could – it looked like I was alone.

“The device has been modified.”

I heard a click or two in the background. I looked sharply behind me to catch the glint of metal and the creaking of wheels. I mentally wanted to run away – at the very least, if I saved my mind, maybe I would be able to live as a spirit. Absurd thoughts began to consume me. Desperation did that sort of thing to people like me.

“The device has been modified.”

If I was the specimen or the device, I was unable to tell anymore. As a specimen, it seemed that they were performing a twisted sort of experiment on me. If I was the device, then the former still stood – except this time they were using me directly rather than using things on me. I wanted to run, I wanted to hide. This was a complete nightmare. I had to run away, somehow. I had to.

“I don’t hate you.”

Neither do I, I found myself thinking. Despite this abuse of my body, I could not feel it in me to hate. I could not feel it in me to kill. All that was coursing through me at the very moment in time was fear, horror, terror, and every other synonym that could have described that feeling. At the same time, I could not feel love or sympathy or kindness. Aside from the fear, I was empty, I was blank, completely null and void, as if all the emotion had been squeezed out of me.

That was most likely – and maybe my guts would soon join those intangible things on the floor.

The wires twisted and moved, maneuvering me in whichever way they liked. I wondered if they would make me dance ridiculously, but this was a serious situation. They jerked violently and lifted me off the floor. I felt like I was flying, except I knew if this got any worse, I would be as flat as a pancake. If it would be on the ceiling or the floor I was uncertain. Maybe I would die as a morbid kind of pancake, one with a lot of blood and internal organs as a dressing. That would have been flattering.

I braced myself as the wires flung me hard to the ground. I landed very gracefully, and by ‘gracefully’ I meant ‘face first.’ My limbs were numb. My nose hurt. I groaned and pushed myself off the ground. I found myself on my hands and knees in front of a man, his chin raised high – he seemed to think that he was of higher than me. He most probably was. I didn’t budge. I didn’t want to end up in trouble. I was scared enough as I was. If I got any more terrified, I would have died of a heart attack.

“Well, you found me,” he quipped, throwing cards into my face. I brought my hands up to defend myself – I felt them cut my cheeks. They were sharp. Paper cuts would have been an understatement. I was able to minimize the damage they did to my face, but my hands had to pay the price. The copious amounts of blood that dripped to the floor made my heart stop beating. At least I was able to protect my eyes, but maybe I would have preferred to be blind at that point in time.

“Congratulations.” He picked up the bloodied cards and studied them, before glancing at me again. “Was it worth it?” he asked, flipping the card between his fingers.

I blinked. I was not even looking for this person. That and my face and hands were now horribly cut beyond repair, so I don’t think it was a very worthy find. I looked up and shook my head no. He frowned and decided that kicking me in the face was the correct answer. I cried out a silent cry of pain and covered my face with my hands. I was like a gibbering piece of shit. I peeked from between my fingers to the sight of the man tilting the card so that the little blood that was left on it dripped onto his tongue. I shivered in disgust and stopped looking.

“The only thing you’ve managed to break so far…” he started, reaching into his coat and retrieving a Queen of Hearts that was torn into two. “… is my heart.”

What? I squinted and tried to make a logical conclusion out of what he said. He threw the two pieces of the card onto the floor, right where I could see them. They landed perfectly. The picture of the queen made me revolted; it wasn’t a woman at all. It was a picture of me.

“It’s murder…”

He stopped whispering and held himself.

I gasped when I saw red eyes – millions of them – appear behind him. I assumed that there were monsters lurking behind him, ready to pounce on me at his very command. I did not like the sound of that. I shivered and covered my eyes again – I had to close them, because the blood would have gotten into them. I did not want my vision to turn red and bloody.

He looked at me with those sad eyes.

“What did I ever do to you?”

The question was, what did I ever do to you? Did I do anything at all in the first place? I heard low growling coming from all around me. Apparently I did, but I had no memory of it.

He glared down at me like I was the lowest of scum on the earth. He kicked me in the chest. I gasped for air and keeled over in pain. He hmph’ed, turned around, his cape moving like a wave, and said, icily:

“You don’t even care, do you?”

I raised my head to try and say something in my defense – I barely even knew this person. He raised his arm gracefully, almost like an actor, a dancer, a performer…

“Please proceed into android hell.”

I heard the loud twisted roaring of a gargantuan beast and before I knew it, great big claws reached out for me. Just as their pointed tips where about to rip me apart, I felt familiar objects wrap around me again – the wires had returned. I let out a silent scream as I got pulled down to what I perceived as hell.

There were monsters everywhere, but the scariest, most horrifying thing was that there people that I used to know in there. They all looked at me with their terrifying soulless eyes, mouths agape as if hungry for flesh and blood. What did I ever do to them to deserve this? What did I ever do to him to deserve this? I did not even know him. They reached for me, swiping their grimy paws at me, but thankfully enough I was not within their range of touch. The ceiling seemed so far away now; I wondered how long I had been falling. Had I been falling for hours? I had no idea. I had decided that closing my eyes would help me deal since I would no longer be able to see the horrifying faces. That was all I was able to do, anyway; close my eyes and hope that all of this was really just a terrible nightmare and wake up to the sunshine and be my normal self again. Now all I had to deal with was the terrible stench and the frightening noises. I tried covering my ears, but my body was still frozen. I don’t know why I was able to close my eyes, but, oh well. That was physics for you.

I could hear more robotic voices speaking over and over again like broken records. They acted like they had overloaded and were now out on a rampage. I silently prayed that all of this would be over soon – before I land and became nothing but a mass of skin and fiber, or before I got captured by any of the beasts. Something, someone, anyone, help me.

Android hell…

All around me I could hear the robotic chant of the masses. Rated Storage Mute… Destroy. Rated Storage Mute… Destroy. I was going to die to the tune of that. Rated Storage Mute Destroy. Except for the last word I had no idea what that was supposed to mean.

This entire thing didn’t make any sense, anyway.

Eventually I noticed that the chanting seemed to fade away. It was replaced with silence and the chirping of birds and the sound of the wind passing me by. Where was I now? Hesitantly I opened my eyes to find myself falling down, but in the sky. It felt more like I was suspended in the air, but I was certain I was falling – my hair was getting in the way of my face and my clothes were ruffling, after all. It felt almost comforting. I seemed to have been falling at a much slower rate than when I started.

I landed – rather, fell too hard onto a surface that was made of something that was way too soft soft. It turned out to be mud… and grass. I sputtered and spit out the soil that got into my mouth, and wiped off the dirt that got into my eyes and all over my face. I dusted myself off. So much for these new clothes I had just bought. When I stood up I found myself in a vast field of flowers. The sky looked almost like something in a perfect dream. There were only a few clouds and they lazily floated in the sea above. The breeze was nice and cool. Had I not just been through a terribly traumatizing experience involving technology, I would have gladly taken my vacation here, and immediately so. The fear was that this might have just been another illusion projected by the technology. I checked my body for any traces of wires that might have been on me. That was when I realized that something was missing. I inspected my hands – the cuts were gone. I touched my face, carefully tracing a line down my cheek with one finger – the cuts on my face were gone as well. Was this still a dream, or was I doomed to stay in a never-ending dream world forever?

In the distance I was able to see a woman with red hair, her back turned to me. She wore a white sleeveless blouse and a short blue skirt. She must have been younger than me. I wondered who she was. She looked like she was deep in thought, and she did not seem to have any intention of talking to me either.

She never did turn around so I never knew what she looked like, but I heard the robotic voice speak yet again.

“Thank you for participating in this amateur science computer aided enrichment activity,” it said, a hint of teasing in its tone. “Goodbye.”

I wasn’t sure who said the next, but I assumed it was the woman – it seemed squeakier, girlier, but she did not look like a robot to me.

“Goodbye.”

Whatever I saw disappeared, and I felt myself get pulled away from the green plain. The vastness of it all overwhelmed me.

I woke up in a cold sweat, my breathing fast and heavy and my eyes wide with shock. I immediately began to check myself for any injuries that I might have incurred. My eyes were fine, my face was fine, my hands were looking good, and my lungs seemed to be functioning just right. I tried to calm down, taking deep breaths and rubbing my temples. I brushed my bangs out of my face and swallowed. I hadn’t had a nightmare like that in ages.

I looked around the room. It was still my familiar disorganized mess. The only evidences that I might have been trashing about in pain were my blanket and pillows that found their way to the floor.

I sighed and brought myself to sit at the side of my bed, staring down at the floor. What was that dream? What did it mean?

I comforted myself in the thought that at least it was now over.

But I jumped in surprise when I felt something lightly brush my feet. I brought my feet up on the bed and peeked cautiously over the side. I screamed at what I saw.

The girl had poked her head out from under my bed, looking at me with a stoic expression, her eyes cold and her hair a splayed spatter of red, and she spoke to me:

“… are you still there?”

~~~

[excerpt 1]

“I need you to operate this machine.”

“What…?”

“In here.” The man stopped in front a large chamber, lined with all sorts of electronics that he couldn’t even begin to recognize. “There’s a machine in here that I want you to use.”

“But…”

“But what?”

“Look at that thing,” Glynn stressed, “If that’s just the storage-”

“I’ve had enough ‘looks’ at it, boy,” the man interrupted with a smirk. “Don’t be such a wuss.”

Glynn sighed, taking a look at the chamber, where inside was massive machine that he was expected to operate. “What do you expect me to do?” he asked, though not really sure what answer he was waiting for.

The man didn’t answer. Instead he reached into his vest pocket for a pack of cigarettes.

“Hey!” Glynn shouted. Sure, he was quiet, but when it came to important matters – matters like something that could endanger his life - he hated being ignored, and this guy – this guy who picked him up from out of nowhere - was taking his time picking a cigarette from his pack.

The teen tried again. “Say something!”

The man had already made his choice, cigarette between his lips. After lighting it (again, taking his sweet time,) he finally responded.

“Something.”

~~~

[excerpt 2]

“Get in uniform, Mr. Rebrierro. We have a mission.”

All he got was a groan and a grumble.

Hendrickson frowned.

“Mr. Rebrierro, get up right now or I will personally come over there and fry your little ass so bad you’ll never be able to sit or lay down ever again.”

From the corner of the room where the young man’s bed was he could make out the faint outline of the teen’s arm as he raised it into the air weakly.

“Gimme ten more minutes…” Glynn mumbled before letting his arm fall back onto the soft mattress.

Hendrickson did not approve.

In seconds, Glynn was sent into a screaming fit of torment no thanks to one of their latest technologies – notably an electric zapper the captain always kept in his pocket.

“Aaaaaaaagh---!”

“You have five minutes.” Having said that, Hendrickson returned the way he came, leaving the teen to try and deal with the burning pain he was now cursed with.

~~~

[excerpt 3]

And before their very eyes, they witnessed a gigantic robotic rabbit emerge from the sand, right in the spot from which the little girl had disappeared to. Its red eyes glowed menacingly. The two young men just stared wide-eyed at the spectacle.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Nathan blurted after he found his voice again.

“Dude, you know what you just said…”

“Oh, jesus.”

“She’s serious.”

“Stop rhyming!” the girl yelled, her voice booming from speakers that were set into where the robot’s mouth would conceivably be.

“Hey, we didn’t mean to, and besides, what has that got to do with anything?!”

“Glynn, it’s not use arguing with either that girl or a robotic bunny – run for it!”