Silash braced himself as the giant robot holding an electrified warhammer took two angry steps forward and growled at him in a rough, static-filled voice.

"Interloper! Stand down and prepare to be disassembled!"

Silash tuck and rolled out of the way as the robot swung its nasty hammer, but as the weapon slammed into the cold, steel ground, the current from its charge snaked through the ground and coiled around Silash like a serpent before charging over him and then dissipating into nothingness.

[You are taking damage]

That was an understatement, to be certain. Silash felt the electricity coursing through his circuitry, and it felt like acid got poured in under his skin - well, it wasn't skin any more, was it? - still, under the metal plating that would've been akin to his skin. His vision not only blurred, but it became filled with a disorienting amount of static as well as an aberration of pixellation that completely distorted his perspective. He felt a dreadful nausea, and it seemed that his limbs went a little numb as well. This electricity was exceptionally powerful against his robotic composure, and Silash didn't know what to do about it!

"I will deactivate you!!" shouted the evil robot.

Silash couldn't help but think that it was a little funny how it was talking to him in 'automaton speak' as it were - talking about disassembling him and deactivating him was just as funny to Silash as it was terrifying. After all, he'd been a living, breathing tauman for an awful long time, and barely thought of himself as an automaton at this point. Regardless, he was going to have to use his robot body, and his [skills], or he was essentially doomed. This machine knew what it was doing, and it was out for blood! Well, it was out for the robot equivalent of blood. Which was, what, coolant? Transistors? Electricity itself, possibly, though if that was the analogy Silash went with, then the robot was attacking him with the robotic equivalent of blood... Silash would just have to reconcile with the fact that he wasn't a tauman being any more, and that not everything would track one to one, but now wasn't the time for thought, even though that was his specialty. Now was time for action!

Silash shook himself off and stood up tall to face the towering robot before him. There was no point in shrinking and cowering.

[Healing...]

Silash started to feel better almost immediately. So he was able to heal automatically?

[Clarification: Yes, you have a feature developed in your robotic form known as robo-healing. It's almost like a skill, except it isn't technically a skill as it was custom built into your robotic form by its creator as opposed to granted sublimely by a system.]

Interesting. Well, Silash was thrilled. Maybe he'd be able to survive this fight after all.

"Stand down and prepare to hibernate... Forever!!" shouted the robot as it charged at him, warhammer held high and bursting at the seams with crackling lightning. "I'm going to brick you!"

"Fuck no you aren't!" said Silash. He held up his cannon arm and shot a few blasts at the robot, but they bounced off it! What use was his attack if it barely made a mark anywhere it went?

"Nice try, you foolish robo-fool," said the robot. "I'm going to show you the blue screen of death!"

What the hell is this thing on about? Silash asked himself as he jumped out of the way of the electrified hammer and suction cupped his claw to the wall. Oh, shit, didn't know I could do that!

"Nice evasive maneuvers! I had only calculated a .5 percent probability that you would perform such a thing. Regardless, it won't matter soon enough," said the robot.

Silash sighed. This towering robot had the inflated ego of a tauman celebrity, which wasn't necessarily something he realized could happen to machines. Maybe automatons had more in common with taumans than he'd previously thought. And that gave Silash an idea. If automatons did have more in common with tauman beings than he thought, then maybe this automaton, while formidable, might've been quite gullible. Usually the taumans with big egos were, so it was a good sign. And it could definitely help him win the fight against the robot, if it were gullible.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

"You only calculated a .5 percent probability?!" Silash said with incredulous alarm in his voice as the big robot was but a breath away from swinging its warhammer at him like he was a fly or something similarly small and annoying.

The robot's swing stopped in midair, and its electric charge faded a little. "Yes? Is there something wrong with that? That was what I was able to calculate using my probability module, a probability of .5 percent based upon to formation of your legs and your general reflexes, as far as what I could see in your system, as well as your estimated intelligence, which I can devise using the Quantdrastic Equation to be several magnitudes dwarfed by my own.”

Now Silash was angry. Had this... Had this robot just called him dumb?

Silash had been called a lot of things in his life. When he was young, he'd been called 'man face' because he looked so much older than he was, and then when he was older, he'd been called 'child face' because he looked so much younger than he was. It had been a bit of a strange effect, wherein Silash found that when he was younger he was often mistaken for a short adult, whereas as an adult he was mistaken for a tall child. Awkwardly enough, this had resulted in him being offered beers and whiskey unprompted when he was ten and then denied those same things when he was thirty. He'd also been called boring by risk takers, and risky by homebodies. He'd been called picky by people that ate everything, and he'd been called a tauman of low standards by people that ate only the best. He'd been called a bookbrain by people who hated books and a lazy reader by people who loved books. But he'd never, never ever, been called dumb. And this robot had just went there.

Silash had made up his mind. He didn't give a shit about tricking this stupid robot. No, he didn't care about tricking it, or about fighting it, or really about anything, except one thing. He was going to prove that thing wrong.

"So clearly you know about Grimgluglug's variable then, right? If you were using the Quantdrastic Equation to estimate the probability of whether I might leap away from your warhammer attack or not?"

"Estimate?" The big robot laughed. "I was not estimating. I was not using a squiggly equals sign in my random access memory, you fool. And I can remember that, because I don't auto-clear my memory. Do you even know how much RAM I have? I have buckets full of RAM. That's not a joke, either. I literally have two buckets in my head unit that store copious amount of RAM modules, Silash. That's right, I looked in your system and at your character sheet, I know your name. I also know you used to be a tauman, and that you have absolutely no idea how to use a system. Really, keeping your character sheet unsecured in such manner as you presently do is an act of idiocy of the highest degree."

Now it was calling him an idiot? This robot had to pay, and then it had to die!

"You never answered me!" said Silash. "Do you or do you not know about Grimgluglug's variable, machine?"

"My name is Dennis, you dick," said Dennis the big robot. "And, for your information, Grimgluglug's variable was removed from one of my last patches for being outdated and irrelevant."

"Aha, but that's where we differ in opinion," said Silash. "See, that's a thing. I may be an automaton, but I was once a tauman, as you yourself know, Dennis. And I have opinions on things I know, and along with that, when I was growing up, I had the variable drilled into me over and over again. They really pounded it into my mind."

"Okay."

"And the thing about Grimgluglug's variable is, essentially, is that it's said to store the quantitivity for realities where the unexepcted is more likely than the unexpected. This is, of course, due in part to the quotient of reflexivity, but of course you already know of that as well-"

"Yes, yes, damnit, of course I do!" said Dennis with robotic rage. "Control-X already and cut to the point!"

"Gee, alright, sorry, Dennis," Silash had a bite in his tone. "But see, basically, it's also due to the theory that I'm going to fuck you up."

"What?"

Silash held up Dennis' hammer, which he'd grabbed during his meandering semi-diatribe about equations and variables. "Check this shit out, asshole." Silash swung the warhammer at the back of the robot's head. With a brilliant slam and a crackle, electricity coursed through Dennis' body. Additionally, what looked to be a large bucket fell off the side of his head.

"AAAGH! MY RAM!!" cried the robot as it stumbled to its knees. "Wait, shit, what was I so upset about again? Wait, why am I in pain?"

"HAH!" Silash would've smiled if he still had a tauman face. Did he have a robot face? There would be time to figure that out later.

"Hey, who are you?" asked Dennis. "Oh, wait, your system says you're named Silash. Wait, what's a system? Wait, what's my name?!"

"Wow, and you called me an idiot?" Silash laughed as he swung the warhammer down on Dennis' head, busting it open in a brilliant show of sparks and creaking wheels spilling all over the place.

[Dennis the Big Robot is dead]

"Anybody with even half a brain knows not to keep important information stored in your RAM without also moving it to perpetual storage, no matter how much you have. And he had the gall to call me a dumbass."

Suddenly, the sounds of hands clapping echoed through the dark hallway.

"Very, very well done, Silash."

Silash was once again on edge. It was Tim's voice! Had this all been a part of his plan? Silash had thought he was escaping!

"I must admit, I didn't expect you to get out to this hallway, and especially not so quickly. But you'll find I've planned for every contingency."

A cold, steel door split in half and slid open a few paces away from Silash. Billowing smoke poured out; it was thick like a soup.

"Come on in, Silash. We have much to talk about."