Contributing Author: Baba Vader

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Tick, tock.

Trey considered the noise. For a full seven seconds flat it had clicked away in his mind. A thought that this was incredibly familiar and yet very new raced through his mental cogs with an additional series of clicking noises. But the louder, regular clicks simply kept going.

Tick, tock.

This was it. One of those stupid space aphids had a time travel power, didn’t they? That was why he felt like the world was spinning, like everything was shifting and turning. He’d have to go back to that morning and experience the day’s madness a second time. But it also meant he’d get a second first date with Jill. A smile made its way onto his mechanical face as he thought of the wonderful, lovely, kind, strange, cute–

[Awareness] was telling him something. Mechanical… face?

Tick, tock.

Geneva. That… made a lot more sense. He wasn’t traveling back in time–he’d just passed out after Daizy dozed off. How long until they realized he was awake? Last time it was minutes. Surely…

Trey opened his eyes. There was a click, a clack, from his eyelids, as he blinked. Next, he sat up.

Click, clack.

…

Nothing.

Was Geneva waiting for him to get used to the new mechanical body?

Trey blinked again–then recoiled. His head slammed into something solid, and its backplate impacted with a resounding CLANG.

“Please be more careful with this form,” Geneva said, using their androgynous voice.

“Sorry, Geneva. Glad to hear your voice, though,” Trey said. “What’s going on?”

“It’s quite simple. The lovebirds brought you into this building so you could rest. You weren’t out for long. Maybe thirty minutes? Even if it was my turn again, machines need rest just as much as people do. At least the ones with a brain…”

Trey clicked his eyelids.

“How many machines have brains?”

“You’re the only one.”

“What about the… Cratherine?”

“Not a brain. A general machine intelligence. Made by someone who bases their technology on maths exclusively. Impossibly stupid. How could they deny the beauty of nature like so? Do they not know…”

Trey shook his head at Geneva’s antics as he ignored the words coming from his voicebox. He looked around again. The vegetation looked well cared for and he could spot a few glass walls. Looking up, the ceiling was no different. Large glass panes in a steel grid.

“We’re in a greenhouse,” Trey interrupted Geneva’s rambling.

“Ahem. Yes. Well observed. The lovebirds brought you here, as I said, on my recommendation. It is sufficient for a night’s rest, especially in this form. The GMI was pleasant enough to provide some necessary spare parts and a bit of lubricant so I was able to complete a maintenance cycle. I am pleased to tell you we are running at full capacity.”

“That’s… great? Where are the lovebirds now? And GMI?”

“Short for general machine intelligence. I believe they retreated to the other end of the building. Shall we reconvene with them and plan our next steps?”

Trey shrugged.

“Might as well.”

Trey stood up with much less whirring and hissing than the last morning. His mechanical body felt severely improved to what he remembered. Not only that, thanks to [Awareness], he was able to tell much more about how it worked. Like for example the hidden blades in his wrists, elbows, knees, and heels. Or the dart shooters with their poison compartments cleverly tucked away along his arms. There was a lot more mechanical stuff in his chest but that was still too difficult for him to understand.

Maybe with a higher level of synchronization with Geneva, he would be able to figure it out.

He reached the end of the greenhouse and looked around. There was a little grove in between some large bushes with pretty red petals where a mechanical leg peeked out onto the path. Trey took a step before thinking better of it.

“Ahem,” he cleared his throat, “Are you guys up?”

The leg retreated with a shuffling noise followed by some beeps and a whispered conversation before Tater Tot called out.

“Yes. Trey, that you?”

“Yep. Geneva is with me right now. We should talk about our next plans. Are you guys coming out or…?”

“Affirmative,” came the electric melody of Cratherine’s voice. “We will join you.”

“Great.”

Five minutes later, Trey was tapping his foot as a somehow embarrassed killer robot and her half-potato, half-man boyfriend emerged from the grove. He gave them a mechanical stare.

“Apologies, we are ready now.”

Trey sighed and shook his head.

“Did Jill send me–us–any updates after leaving on the motorcycle?”

“Who?” Tater Tot asked.

“Ah, Madam Jill,” Geneva said, “Yes, Trey, she sent you a message. She is well. She decided to spend the night at a friend’s house. I may call her if you wish?”

“No, no. That’s fine. Just want to make sure she’s safe. What do we do now?”

“Who’s Jill?” Tater Tot turned to his robotic girlfriend.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“Information not available. I believe…”

A crashing noise interrupted her along with a shower of glass. Cratherine moved to protect her boyfriend from the falling shards while Trey felt Geneva take control and shift his body with precise movements. He watched in astonishment as not a single piece of glass made it through the tiny openings all over his body.

“WHAT WAS THAT!” Tater Tot screeched.

“EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!” a choir of electronic noise shouted from the now-broken glass wall they were facing.

“YOU ARE SURROUNDED. PREPARE TO BE ELIMINATED!”

Trey stared. He was ashamed that his first thought was to consider how one might go about preparing to be eliminated. Then, his human instincts–and Geneva’s robotic ones–kicked in, and he took in the situation.

A horde of robots stood there, no less than two-thousand at a quick estimate. But they were tiny. A veritable carpet of mechanical spiders, cockroaches, millipedes, horned beetles, and the occasional rat commanded by a hornet spread out all over the botanical garden. Every last one of them was the exact same size as the real thing, and they were made from plastic. The most bizarre part of the collection were the miniature trebuchets, ballistae, and the renaissance-style cannons–the kind you might see on a pirate ship. Most of them had released their payload–which explained why the side of the greenhouse was in shambles–and were in the process of being rearmed.

Trey couldn’t help it. He started to laugh. This is ridiculous, they can’t be–

“Toy soldiers?” Tater Tot asked, “No. Oh, no. Those are…”

“FOR DOCTOR HUGO HUGO!” the mass of electric beeps and blips managed to yell, just above the normal speaking volume of an adult human.

“AAAhhh!” Tater Tot screeched as he climbed on top of his girlfriend’s chassis.

“Be not afraid,” Cratherine said stoically, levelling a flamethrower, “I will protect you.”

“FO-FO-FO-FORCEFIEEEELD!” the hornets riding the little rats screeched, just as loud as the crowd before them. Trey managed to spot little berets sitting on their heads. Where they commanding officers? [Awareness] certainly seemed to think so. If that was the case, he needed to figure out a way to take them down.

With a fwooosh, blue flames washed over the mass in front of Cratherine–only to bounce harmlessly off an invisible screen. The shield turned a sludgy brown as the fire licked and howled against it, but it held. The robotic insects jubilated with hugs, shouting, “It works, it works!”

“How are we supposed to break through their defenses?” Tater Tot panicked.

“Do not worry, I have a solution,” Geneva said coolly.

With a whirring noise, Trey felt his stomach grow queasy. Some of the things he’d failed to identify started moving around, and it felt as if his very organs were rearranging. He wanted to vomit, but he had no stomach to do it with. Thankfully, a gentle thrumming noise in his head kicked in, calming him down and shifting his mindset. With Geneva in control, he wasn’t fully human. He was something else. Something more.

“Deploying!” Geneva announced and Trey’s body opened up. Armored plates folded away and disappeared in the depths of what had to be Geneva’s storage dimension. Cogs and gears shifted and turned as, bit by bit, his body started to clatter to the ground.

Suddenly, more eyes opened up. More of Trey’s eyes. Or were they Geneva’s? They were quickly followed by legs, wings, wheels, arms, and everything else he could imagine. One by one he started looking over his new bodies.

There were butterflies, snakes, cars, two mice, a clearly female human standing on the back of a chariot pulled by mechanical horses with a bow in her hands, and what had to be a bloody dragon. Not one of them was larger than his previous hands had been, and all of them were clad in brass and steel, equipped with claws, swords, and teeth made to cut through soft, fragile things.

Trey smiled with almost fifty faces at once.

“DOWN WITH THEM!” his robotic legion screamed.

“MO-MO-MO-MOW THEIR TINY FORMS DOWN!” the hornets answered his battle cry.

“B-be careful?” Tater Tot encouraged from the safety of his girlfriend’s chassis.

Then, the armies were on top of each other. Trey was quickly overwhelmed having to control so many bodies at once, but Geneva happily jumped in. They helped him dismantle the plastic robots, tearing into their cheap plastic circuit boards that pretended to give them a semblance of life. Pathetic. Brass and steel, gears and cogs. That’s what life was. Or, well, the proper imitation of it, at least.

Trey used his dragon fangs to rip through a fake-cockroach and roared a tiny roar. A flame followed and burned three more plastic robots. Meanwhile, the chariot archer picked off a few of the spiders and millipedes further back, creating a wall from their carcasses to funnel their adversaries into a choke-point.

The snakes were crunching plastic armor with the weight and momentum of their sidewinding bodies, then piercing through electronic parts with their fangs. All the while, Trey’s butterfly managed to keep an eye on the battlefield from above. He was surprised at just how perfectly the odd assortment of units in his newfound mechanical army worked together.

“DUCK!” Cratherine shouted, and two butterflies looked up just in time to be ripped apart by a cannonball and a ballista bolt respectively.

I spoke too soon, didn’t I?

“Oh, no. I can’t look!” Tater Tot shouted, covering his eyes, just barely peeking out from between his fingers.

“Damnit!” Geneva shouted, “Cratherine, get us some cover. Try to decapitate their artillery if you can.

“Understood,” the crate-bot said, shifting. One of her legs slammed down to the right of the Geneva-Trey army, the other on the left. The crate body was positioned just above them. Armor plates whirred and changed their orientation, giving their allied forces a far more defensible position to make their stand.

Trey took control of the butterflies, trusting Geneva to keep the battle lines strong. So far, they’d only taken minor injuries and, with the help of the mice medics, they’d managed to pull what damaged units they could behind the frontlines for repairs.

Still, the widespread chaos of the battlefield was something Trey had never seen the like of before.

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On the other side of the battlefield, the hornet general was laughing in his command tent.

“It is only a matter of time until we take down the Host, Doctor Hugo Hugo, do not worry,” he spoke into a full-sized walkie talkie. A plastic rat was holding down the transmission button.

“We will not disappoint you, sir! General Stab out.”

The rattling of what could only be a Gatling gun trying to mow down his army made him only laugh harder and harder. The bullets, of course, harmlessly bounced off their forcefield. He peeked out of his tent and through the foliage, grinning evilly at his army’s progress. Even the large machine couldn’t do a thing to them.

They were unstoppable! Invincible! They were perfect. The Doctor had created them, after all. There was nothing that could defeat–

Thump.

General Stab stared dumbly at the arrow shaft sticking out of his forehead. It was a good thing his main circuit board wasn’t there. He looked around for some betrayer, for some malfunctioning Judas of a robot, only to spot two mechanical butterflies and a dragon had somehow made their way around the lines of battle. And on the dragons back was a mechanical woman with a bow. She was drawing a second arrow. This one had been dunked in oil and ignited by the dragon’s fire.

“Oh,” General Stab muttered as the arrow was let loose. The last thought of his short life was how annoying it was that the forcefield only worked one-way. Though, how would they have shot from behind it, otherwise?

As the body of the hornet general melted in dragonfire (that was actually just a normal flame), Trey grinned with the dragon’s face as he looked at the archer on his back.

“Good shot, Geneva.”

“Thank you. Even if ballistic calculations are rather trivial.”

They smiled with satisfaction as the rest of the army dropped instantly.

“Just as I surmised. The general was the only connection to their main server. Without that, they’re just a pile of plastic. Now… Oh. MotherPlanter!”

Trey blinked. Geneva didn’t usually swear.

“What?”

“We need to get back and reunite. Otherwise you might just end up as mini…”

The dragon and butterflies plummeted out of the skies and down onto the sandy path of the botanical garden. As Trey felt his mechanical parts shift out of reality and his flesh return, [Awareness] so helpfully informed him, to his horror, that his consciousness was still scattered across the battlefield in fifty different pieces.