Robot 618

In the robo future-castle of Troy, Chronos the Time Baby floated and scowled.

"When will the humans give up this infernal siege?" he asked his assistant, a small robot named Coeus. "I wish Achilles, Odysseus, and all the rest would pack up their tents and go home."

"They seem very persistent, Lord Chronos," said Coeus. "Perhaps we shouldn't have forced humans to work in our underground mines to dig out igneous rocks for us."

"We needed fuel after our long stay in Tartarus, which was mostly lined with sedimentary rock," said Chronos. "Where is their gratitude for saving them from the old gods?"

"They say the New Robot Order is a worse tyranny than the rule of the Olympians we overthrew," said Coeus.

"Doesn't the legend of Domiclese inspire them any more?" asked Chronos.

"That was a generation ago. Now that we are out of favor, his story has been dropped from the heroic odes," said Coeus. "The only thing left is the part about him sitting under a dangling sword, and then they get his name wrong, as Damocles."

"What about Callisto?" asked Chronos.

"There's a vague memory that these wars started because of a beautiful woman," said Coeus. "But they've forgotten her name and gave her another in the odes. She is now called Helen of Troy."

"At least we cannot be overthrown like the Olympians. Even with what they learned of our weaknesses, and the advanced weapons they kept after the Great Robot War, there's no way they can break through our defenses," said Chronos.

"Time Agent Cassandra reports differently, Sire," said Coeus. "She says Troy will fall."

"I don't believe Agent Cassandra's warnings," said Chronos. "Troy is impregnable."

"It's good we sent away Domiclese and Callisto," said Coeus. "They will be safe in the New World of the future."

"That gives me an idea," said Chronos. "Just in case, we need to establish a back-up site with a cache of our technology and a working portal. We should put it in the New World, with a guardian bot we can spare. The trouble is, we need all of our best robots for defense."

"How about one of the robots manufactured at our base in Siam, Sire?" asked Coeus. "Could we spare one?"

"All but one was scrapped," said Chronos. "Their robot brains seemed to be defective. But with carefully restricted instructions I think we could use it."


Robot 618 lay on a table, rebooting. Red numerals in the Thai numbering system flashed across his eye screen. In a moment he popped up from the table and floated in the air.

He was a triangular bot with flat black arms and legs. On his face, below his single eye, was the logo of the Time Baby (a sideways triangular infinity symbol, which could be opened out to reveal a video monitor). He also had a top hat and cane that were purely decorative.

He said, in an annoyingly reverberating voice, "What can I do for you today, Boss?"

Chronos said, "Robot 618, we require you to set up a backup base and portal system on the continent across the ocean, in the wilderness near the western coast. The area is rich in igneous rocks. You may take appropriate slaves and bots for the task."

"Got it boss," said 618. "Then what?"

"You will be responsible for keeping it operational and guarded in case we ever have to use it," said Chronos.

"Yes, sir. May I recruit locals, too?" asked 618.

"Your interaction with humans must be kept to a minimum, for security reasons. You may only interact with them using your dream projector," said Chronos.

"My projector has only ten channels, Sire," said 618.

"That should be all you need," said Chronos. "You can reset the channels at will. Look for temporal hot-spots and concentrate your efforts there," said Chronos.

"At a higher power setting, I can enter human minds directly and control their actions," said 618.

"If you can find someone to give you permission, I will allow it," said Chronos. "Otherwise, stick to controlling animals. We don't want our reputation further compromised."


Robot 618 got the underground base excavated in record time. He didn't report how many slaves died in the process (which was all of them). Dead men tell no tales. There was an access port on the first underground floor, a technology cache on the second, and a portal room on the third. All of these floors were hidden underground and the land above was replanted to conceal them.

Robot 618 and the worker bots got the portal operational and tested it, accidentally pulling in a large colony of gnomes without their queen, manotaurs, merpeople, giant bats that could turn into vampires, and many other creatures from different dimensions. They were dumped into appropriate habitats and the experiments went on.

He sent the bots back to Chronos after building a communication box that could send and receive notes to and from the Time Baby. He got a message that the castle had fallen due to human trickery, a mechanical horse with humans inside. Then there was no word for a long while.

There was a long period of simply waiting, while the land remained a wilderness except for native people, who kept well out of his way. To amuse himself, he created a separate underground base with dinosaurs in time stasis, sealed in sap. They might be useful for cloning as weapons some day.

The land was explored by settlers, forming a country on the east coast and territories that eventually became states. The Oregon Trail was established in 1811. Robot 618 had already put some thought into controlling the direction of the new country so as to keep his caches safe. He went east and entered the dreams of the founding fathers, getting a representation of himself on the Great Seal of the United States in 1782. He had not yet been able to get his face on any currency, though he would have liked to out of a sense of pride.

Finally he decided to take a more direct hand in political matters. He visited the dreams of Sir Lord Quentin Trembley, III, Esquire in his dreams and gave him a summoning formula.

Quentin's main claim to fame at that point in his political career was that he had lived near Mount Vernon as a small child, and he had pestered the retired first President of the United States, George Washington, to the point where the old man chased after him and spanked him. Trembley was a political underling in the Democratic party and seemed likely to remain so, until one night when he tried the formula from his dreams.

"Backwards message, backwards message, backwards message!" he called, and there was a sense of time flowing backwards as 618 time-traveled in.

The triangular figure with one eye floated before him, "Hi there, Quentin. How would you like to be President?"

"You know me? Who are you?" asked Trembley.

"I'm called 618," said the robot.

"That is not a name, but a cipher," said Trembley.

"It isn't a secret message," said 618.

"I didn't mean that," said Trembley. "In my youth, 'cipher' meant a number, and to cipher was to do arithmetic."

"Well, my number is just a sequence number," said 618. "It doesn't mean anything."

"Like the serial numbers we put on our dollar bills?" said Trembley.

"Yes. Hmm... Bill... Cipher. I'm going to keep that name."