The cold air smelled of burning metal, an acrid alkaline scent. The air felt busy: shouts rang out across the compound. Dull thuds from the heavy machinery were pierced by the shrill sounds of mechanical cutters and whirring components.
“Watch where you walk,” Oliver motioned toward some flagged stakes planted into the ground at intervals. “Those are the automaton lanes, step over that and you’re looking to get stomped on if you’re not careful.”
“Well? Where’s the other lackey then?” Kyle asked, falling in behind Oliver.
“You mean Noah?” Oliver gave him an amused glance, “He’s up ahead.” He did not elaborate any further.
As they walked through the compound, Kyle felt increasingly skittish. There were large mechanical parts moving seemingly from all sides. The four-legged automatons towered above as they strolled past, the loud thumps of their footsteps causing him to flinch as they went. To the far left and far right he could see separate entrances with massive steel gates from which people directed heavier traffic. Most of the automatons walked, however there were also quite a few that were pulled in on transports. Kyle also saw smaller yellow construction mechs rolling in on their characteristic all-terrain treads.
“So wots the deal with you two anyways?” Kyle asked, “Gov’ness send you to keep an eye on me or something?”
“You’re an important man. As such, the powers that be want to make sure you live long enough that they can use you.” Oliver turned his head, giving him a look with uplifted eyebrows.
They were interrupted by a loud shout.
“Shut that thing down! SHUT IT DOWN.”
Kyle turned, bewildered just as Oliver tackled him out of the way.
There was a loud thrumming groan superimposed upon a loud rhythmic grinding noise as an automaton jerked out of its lane and onto the pedestrian path. Its dark metallic leg thrusted into the snow right where they had been standing just a moment earlier.
Kyle looked up from the ground along the machine’s appendage up at its dark underside, and found himself unable to breathe: a cloud closed in on him, smothering him.
His vision tunneled as his breath caught in his throat. He could do nothing but watch, awaiting his impending doom.
Framed against the white sky, the dark figure was that of a monster. It shivered in anticipation, spindly legs shining with pistons flexing like the muscles of a starving predator: weak, yet more dangerous than ever.
Then, it suddenly sagged. Its systems droned in a decrescendo, powering down.
Oliver got off of him, patting himself down and looking off to the side to make sure the coast was clear.
Then, he extended a hand which Kyle begrudgingly took.
“I’m sure you could’ve handled that all by yourself,” Oliver said sardonically. “But we wouldn’t want you knocked out for another week now would we?”
“JAMESON!”
Kyle recognized the voice from the shout earlier.
“JAMESON I TOLD YOU TO TOW IT IN!” A red faced squat man with blazing eyebrows was advancing toward them. His grey eyes gleamed with anger from behind his tiny spectacles. “You damn near shaved priority number one off the face of the planet!”
Peering around the now motionless machine was a dark-skinned woman with a grim-set expression: stubborn with furrowed brows. Albeit there was a tinge of a fluster at the danger caused.
“There weren’t any tows left!” she said defensively. “Plus we needed this ASAP for the job this afternoon… I mean it could still walk so I thought…”
“Oh you thought!” the man rolled his eyes. “The equilibrium systems are shot to hell! Why do you think I told you to tow it?! We’ve already had SEVEN accidents this week, we’re running out of goddamn engineers!”
“Not to worry,” Oliver said, trying to mediate the situation. “We’re all fine. Just be careful next time.”
“If it were up to me, there wouldn’t be a next time,” the man grumbled. “But we’re short staffed as it is. Jameson, you’re off operator duty.”
“Oh what! It was one mistake–” she faltered upon seeing the look on Kyle’s face.
“One mistake is all you need,” he said with a quiet voice.
A heavy pause lingered over the conversation.
“Well, you’re on receive duty until further notice,” the apparent manager said.
“Gahh!” Jameson exclaimed.
“Well go on then, Bay 4.” the man said with a wave of his hand. “And tell O’Donnell to start doing his damn job, I ain’t seen that line budge for the past hour or so.” Sure enough there was a three automaton line leading out of a massive frost etched entrance upon which was a faded painted “4”.
The man turned to address Kyle and Oliver as Jameson stomped off cursing under her breath. “And what have we got here?” He glared at them from under his bushy eyebrows. “More trouble sent from the governess?”
“Aye,” Oliver said with a cheery grin. “We’ve been sent to become robotics engineers.”
“Pah!” the man responded. “You’ll be specialists, but you’re a long ways from engineers.”
The man turned and pointed to a small door on the side of the robotics bay. “Well, let’s head on in then, no use standing out here.” He led the way into the structure, stopping only to direct someone operating a construction mech to tow the downed automaton away.
Inside, Kyle became overwhelmed by the amount of mechanical noise, moving parts and flashes of light as people worked to cobble nonfunctional automatons into barely working order to be sent out again. It felt even more dangerous here than outside.
Throughout all of this busyness was the ever present chill. The fog billowed from mouths as people shouted over the din, and people rubbed their gloved hands together in between tasks. The various space heaters scattered around the compound fought with futility against the cold wind that cut through the compound with each opening of the gates.
They ascended a metal staircase that rumbled and shook every now and again. At the top, Kyle looked out over the work area. From this vantage point, he had full view of the chaos.
Pulleys held up the large machines as their legs dangled down beneath. Workers climbed onto the mechanical beasts held up by pulleys of their own. An alarm sounded to his right. Red lights swirled as another bay door slid open and a group of construction mechs towed yet another automaton in. He recognized this as the one that had almost crushed him, its limbs had barely moved from the position it had collapsed in. The machine reached a crudely marked flat area with the number “5” at the center and dangling cords reached down to meet it.
“The name’s Conor, by the way.” the man said as they reached a metal door beside a long window looking out over the work area. He readjusted his glasses and snorted, fiddling with a keyring. “Conor Leighs. I’m the manager of this here workplace.”
The door jerked open and they stepped into a rather cramped office.
“Don’t really use this place much,” Conor said, flicking on a light before squeezing around a desk piled with papers. “Mostly spend my time down on the floor.” He sat down in a metal chair and gestured across the table at the only other chair in the room. The other two men silently debated over this before Oliver gave in.
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“So, tell me about yourselves,” the man said.
“Well, the name’s Oliver Scholtz. And this is–”
“Oh I know who he is,” Conor interrupted. He spread his hands wide in the air. “Kyle Wilson, the ‘Hand of God’.”
Kyle gave a start. “Is that what they’re calling me?”
Oliver answered, “Well… yes, but–”
“So you can move things with your mind?” Conor interrupted again, eyes gleaming. “That’s gotta be super useful.”
“Err… not quite.” Kyle said, “It was only a moment and if you remember, I was knocked out for a week or so.”
“Hmph…” the man replied, “well, we’ll work on it. Maybe. Otherwise you’re gonna be pretty useless around here.”
“It’s not like I actually want to be here,” Kyle said.
“Doesn’t matter though, does it? You’re here now.” Conor rubbed his chin, “So I gotta figure out what to do with you.”
“Wasn’t there another man that was supposed to be here?” Oliver asked. “Noah?”
“Oh that guy?” the red faced man let out a laugh. “He’s already been with us for a few months already.”
“Wait so he wasn’t a… laborer?” Oliver asked incredulously after a pause.
“Nah, quite the odd fellow he is,” the manager rubbed his chin, “but a pretty good worker. Then the governess had him go off on some mission of some sort.”
“Mission?” Kyle asked, narrowing his eyes.
Oliver replied to this, “I guess that’s when he was sent along with me to babysit you. Pretty odd way to do that though.”
Kyle peered over at Oliver, “And what about you, then?”
“Oh I’m nothing special!” Oliver raised his hands defensively, “Honest to God, one day, Grace comes by and asks me if I wanted a better house. I say ‘why not?’ Tells me to keep an eye on you and report to the governess. That’s more or less the gist of it.”
“Well, either way!” the manager cut in abruptly. “You folks are here now, and I gotta figure out what to do with you.”
He pulled a phone from his pocket and dialed quickly on its touchscreen. “I’m going to have you…” he pointed at Kyle “...start out with operating.
“It’s too difficult to teach you all the ins and outs of the automatons to make you actually useful here, so start with learning to issue commands to a machine.”
He spoke swiftly into the phone before clicking it off. “Once you get a feel for how a machine moves, you can learn bit by bit how to fix it as you run into various issues. That’s the best way to learn, unfortunately. Don’t worry I’ve pulled one of our best to supervise you, try not to slow her down too much.”
Then, he pointed at Oliver. “I’ll have you work with Noah. Looking at your file, you’ve got some programming experience? We’ll have you working to hopefully update some coding with some of the–”
There was a swift knock on the door before it opened.
“Yeh called?” A tired looking thin-faced woman poked her head in, scanning the room with pale brown eyes.
“That’s you, Mr. Wilson.” Conor stood up and gestured at Kyle to stand as well. “This is Lydia; you’ll be under her care.”
Kyle reluctantly got to his feet, looking at the woman hesitantly.
“Well come on then!” she said, slouching back out the door. “Gov’ness wants this last ice crawler torn down and converted by the end of the week.”
“Well best of luck, Mr. Wilson,” the manager said. “And, uh… see if you can’t get that ‘Hand of God’ thing figured out. God knows we could use something like that right now.”
Kyle simply nodded.
***
Lydia walked ahead, a slouched slim figure in a worn out designer winter coat: a testament to a life she would never return to. As they weaved through the busy workplace, dodging heavy machinery, she was mostly quiet: speaking only to herd him from danger zones. Unlike his other guides, she didn’t talk much, which left Kyle to his own thoughts.
Here he was once again, following someone to who knows where. It felt like since the world went to shit, it was all he could do. No… even before that, his whole life he had just gone with the current. He was only here because George, his childhood friend, pulled some strings to get him a spot.
And yet here he was, with powers beyond what anyone could imagine. If he were a religious man, he might’ve believed that some higher power had planned his whole life to lead up to this very moment…
“We’re here.” Lydia said in a deadpan voice, barely audible over the whirring of electric tools from the bay adjacent to theirs.
Before a large “6” printed on the gate was an unhooked automaton sprawled on the floor. A man and a woman looked up from their tasks and shouted something to Lydia. Lydia simply gave them a thumbs up and motioned them to the side. They scrambled away out of the striped area marked on the ground.
Lydia grabbed a rather banged up black tablet from a nearby worktable and shoved it into Kyle’s hands. Its casing was scuffed and there were multiple cracks on the screen.
“Start it up.” She simply said.
“How?” Kyle asked.
She blinked at him, “Are you serious? There’s a power button right there.” She pointed to the side of the tablet.
“Oh… I mean… is that going to start the robot?” He sputtered, suddenly flustered at being put on the spot.
“We’ll get there eventually, but at least start the tablet up.”
He pushed the power button. The screen lit up and after a moment he was presented with a picture of two kittens riding a pig with a text bar running through the middle that said “Enter Password”.
“The password is ‘GG NO RE’ no spaces, all caps.”
“Oh… ok.”
Another screen appeared.
“Ok press that to link with an automaton in range.” She pointed to a button that was labeled “Link”.
A list of automatons in the area appeared. Most were grayed out.
“Make sure you select the right one. Automatons currently controlled by others can’t be selected, as well as those that have been manually switched off for maintenance.” she said, “But of course, sometimes people forget so always double check the serial code on each of them.”
Then she looked at him expectantly.
“Err… what's the serial code for this one then?”
“Well it ain’t written on my face, go over there and check.” She pointed at the limp metallic figure slouched over the charging station.
He did as instructed, approaching the hulking machine. Printed on each of the robot’s limbs and along its sides was a five number code: 00339.
Even so, he double and triple checked the numbers to be sure.
“The number ain’t gonna change, just link it up.” Lydia said. “But I do like that you're being careful.”
The screen on his tablet blinked: “Link complete: Unit 00339.”
An intricate display of various machine anatomy with blinking green and red lights appeared. Then a text box appeared on screen with the words “Set Link Range.”
He scrambled back to where Lydia stood, unsure what this meant.
“You can set a range of 5-100 meters”, She explained. “If the robot transceiver leaves that range, it will freeze up and stop moving… Or it should, sometimes it just topples over.” She waved her hand lazily. “Which is bad. So keep the range in mind.”
For now, they set the range to 10 meters.
Another screen appeared, this time listing what looked like a blueprint of the construct. Various tabs pointing to each part blinked red or shined a solid green.
There were a lot of blinking red parts.
“Wots the deal with all these red parts?”
“Hmm?” Lydia glanced down. “Don’t worry about those. They aren’t too critical… at least for the most part. A lot of them are things we can’t fix, the others… hopefully just faulty sensors.” She shrugged.
Kyle’s face flushed at her nonchalant demeanor. Attitudes like this were what caused George to die.
“Now hang on a minute! Isn’t this dangerous?”
A yell caught their attention. One of the others gestured to her over the noise of the compound.
“Oh wow, is that the time already?” Lydia exclaimed, pointedly ignoring his comment. “We have to make it to the deconstruction site fast, we’re behind schedule already”
She reached over his shoulder and pressed a button reading “Bypass Systems Check” then input a series of numbers to override the following pop-up. A large power icon appeared in the top left corner.
“Alright hold that down to start the machine up.”
Kyle bristled. “I ain’t starting shit ‘til you tell me what those red lights were.”
The dark haired woman sighed. “Listen here, guy. Those lights were all basically faulty parts on the machine. In an ideal world, we would order parts, do a system update and woop-dee-doo all fixed up and ready to go. Pass all the stat inspections and what-not.”
“Unfortunately for us,” She wearily crossed her arms in front of her. “we can’t really do that. We aren’t exactly in a position to have that luxury.”
“But what if something—”
“If something breaks?” Lydia asked with a short laugh. “Then we roll with it. We’ve already scrapped most of the ‘auto’ functions of the automatons, everything is manual now. Things may break, things may not break. What I do know is if we don’t get that ice crawler turned into a functional generator and greenhouse, then we’re fucked, man. We’re already behind schedule as it is.”
He glared at her unyielding pale eyes. She was right, of course. They always were. But he hated that they would be risking more lives for the “greater good”.
“Fuck… alright then.” He sighed, letting loose a cloud of breath. After a moment, he jabbed his finger at the power button.
Nothing happened.
“I said hold it down. Seriously, you aren’t one for following directions are you?”
“Fucks sake, get off my back for just a moment jesus!” he cried. His finger hovered over the button again.
He stopped.
Here lay a monster, dark and unfeeling. In one move, it could reach up and, with a swipe, dash their bodies across the cold metal floor of the facility. This was what had killed George and will most likely kill many more to come. An unpredictable monster.
“Well…?”
He pressed the button and held it down as the creature churned to life.