"So, you got any plans for tonight?"
"Not yet," Robot replied, his feet kicking back and forth as he sat on the servicing table. Ever since he was activated, he had always behaved rather antsy during his yearly maintenance sessions. Darvick almost had to smile, noticing the little things his biggest project did to prove he was very much alive, and very much like a real kid. Fifteen years later, the middle-aged project manager was never any less proud. "I was hoping Socks would have called this morning before I left, but I suppose I'll have to call him when I return home."
The human stood behind Robot, fingers typing away at the yellow keypad revealed by his open back-plate. Robot leaned forward ever-so-slightly, not at all bothered by the incessant tapping against his back. "Same as last year, then?" Darvick asked. "Stay at home with Mom and Dad?"
The automaton shook his head. "Not exactly. We've never celebrated my activation day before. I've attended my friend's birthday parties, but Mom and Dad never put together a party for me… But this year, Socks promised to take me to a rock and roll show."
Darvick paused, taking his fingers off of Robot's back momentarily as his smile faltered. "No kidding? Uh… Is Pink Floyd still touring? Think I could tag along?"
Robot made a sarcastic laugh. "Ha-ha. You know I like metal, Darvick. We're going to see Megadeth in New York tomorrow. It'll be my first real concert."
"Wow, kiddo," the human said while still frowning, though Robot couldn't see it with his back turned. "That's a… pretty important passage for you."
Robot's feet kicked faster. "I know! I'm excited."
Darvick straightened his back and put his hands on his hips, looking down at his almost-son in a fatherly way. He abruptly cleared his throat. "Just remember: No drinking, no drugs, and if a six-foot-five girl with an Adam's apple and a flat chest walks up to you and asks if you want a good time, run away as fast as you can."
Robot snickered. "You know I can't even do any of that stuff." His smile suddenly dropped. "Although… your last part confuses me a little."
Darvick smiled warmly and shook his head, going back to typing on Robot's back. "Not important. Uh, just stay out of trouble, okay?"
"Right," Robot replied, rolling his eyes a little. A few moments passed, when he decided it would be polite to ask Darvick how things were doing himself, even if he wasn't actually interested. "How are things at the factory?"
"Year after year, same stuff," Darvick sighed, as if he was glad to change the subject from the topic he himself had started. "Managers push for more ambitious projects, overseers—the money—argue that it's too risky. How is science ever going to move forward if the investors of major corporations are too afraid to use their profits for new ideas?" Finished with his work, he closed the door on Robot's back with a 'click', paused again, and waited until Robot turned around and looked at him in the eye. "I'm just lucky I got to work on you, buddy."
Robot smiled, but the longer he looked at Darvick, the older the man seemed to appear, with dark bags under his veiny, tired eyes, and small graying hairs at the root of his scalp.
"Are you feeling alright?" Robot asked, smile dropping like a sack of bricks. "You look exhausted."
"Oh, I'm fine." Darvick wiped his brow with the back of his hand, pushing his long bangs aside as he did so. Though he did have to cut his hair a certain length for the job, Jonathan Darvick would sooner chew on a bag of rocks than cut the hippie bangs his own father despised. That said, it was strange to see Darvick sweating so profusely in a well air-conditioned factory during a rainy morning in the middle of April. "Just gettin' old."
The Darvick Robot remembered was bright and excitable, with a kind disposition that was hard to break—even when Robot misbehaved, as children do. But as the years ticked by, Robot had begun to notice age creeping up on his once young, ambitious project manager—the one human in the entire world Robot thought of as close enough to be family, and one of the few people in the world he could converse with freely. And right now, the Darvick Robot was looking at was far less familiar than the one so preciously etched into his memory.
"Are we done?" Robot asked, and feeling bad immediately after. He'd looked forward to seeing Darvick all week—his birthdays always meant a trip to the factory to speak with his now very busy project director. But now, he just felt uncomfortable. Like his visit was just another appointment in a date book, and he had overstayed his welcome. "I probably should be heading back home soon…"
"Just gotta print up the results and take a look at 'em," Darvick explained, hitting a few keys on the machine to the left of Robot's bench. A few beeping noises later, and the printer on the other side of the room began screeching and spilling out a white pile onto the floor.
Darvick crossed the room to pick up the pile while Robot hopped down from the table. "I don't see the point in this, anyway. I am operating exactly as I was last year, and the year before that."
"And we want you to keep operating the same for a long time," the human lectured, ripping the paper off of the printer's serrated cutter and holding a section right out in front of him. "Be grateful, Robot. I'm not going to be around forever to do these checks for you."
Robot was already heading towards the door when he heard this, and his feet came to a slamming halt. "What do you mean?" he asked, turning around.
Darvick looked up from the paper, giving Robot a surprised look, before quickly brushing it off and smiling. "Oh… nothing… Nothing you have to worry about. Just go. Have fun."
Robot obeyed, but the last time he looked at Darvick, he thought there was something off about his face in a way he couldn't describe. Like the man's smile wasn't entirely genuine. In fact, his smile didn't look right at all. Too toothy, with canines that shined under the harsh industrial lights above.
The automaton turned and hit the button on the wall, closing the automatic door to the general robotics servicing room (number 16, according to the label on the side), and turned back around to go meet his parents, who were down in the front lobby. If Robot went down there now, they hurry home in the utility van so he could call Socks and perhaps plan a pre-concert sleepover.
But it seemed like he wasn't going to meet his father anytime soon. Even though, when he'd stepped out of the door, there were people pushing past each other in the halls, and every single light was glaring brightly, it only took one blink before turning from the door for reality to falter. Everything was deathly quiet. Not a mouse peeped in the dark, endless hall he looked down. The only thing keeping the dark-enough halls from being pitch black were the security lights above, spaced in-between each other by several feet.
Robot froze, stared down both ways of the hall for a few moments, and immediately turned back around, facing the room he just came out of, eyes the size of dinner plates. It was like that door was a time machine, and stepping through it fast-forwarded the day into late night. Without a doubt, something was wrong. Very, very wrong.
Not sure what else to do, Robot slammed the button on the wall panel to Service Room 16, watching the door fly back up. "Mr. Darvick?"
But to his horror, nobody was in there. Jonathan Darvick, whose uneasy gaze Robot could picture in perfect clarity in his head from just a minute ago, had vanished. And worse yet, there was no sign Robot himself had ever been there. The pile of printer paper that described in technical detail his system's operation was gone too, and the printer's light was off.
It was then that a childlike panic hit Robot like a train, not unlike how a toddler would feel after losing their mother in a crowded department store. All alone, and with his godfather no longer around to call on for help, the newly-turned fifteen-year-old boy felt the sudden urge to find the next living being he could, and latch onto them. Out of the room, he fled, open door behind him. Down the hallways, aided by his own night vision where the security lights had their blindspots, Robot turned corner after corner—rows and rows of near-identical rooms in the servicing wing of the facility. His eyes scanned for the most remote sign of movement, left and right. But every corner he turned, every place came up alone. Silent.
A giant, active robotics plant, on a Saturday at 11:00 AM. Totally empty. Everybody's outside. They have to be. There's no way…
Using his mental map of the place, Robot set his trajectory for the front doors of the plant, and went for it, like an arrow aimed at a target. Reaching the front lobby, he noticed the windows, which had let in what little natural light there was earlier during the storm, were now pitch black. Robot was still relying on his night vision all the way until his claws pressed against the double doors.
Swinging them open, Robot flung himself outside, like he relied on oxygen and the factory had been vacuum sealed.
To behold… that he was standing right outside of Service Room 16 again.
But he had no time to stew on this horror. The world's silence was broken as it thundered under his feet, and a terrifying roar rippled through the air. Robot teetered back and forth, ready to scream. An earthquake was ripping through reality as he knew it, floor and earth and brilliant, hot, molten lava beneath it, miles and miles down. Machines that had been piled out in the hallway of the maintenance rooms were falling into the abyss around him, followed by tiles and papers, wrenches and drills, broken robot arms and metal plates and everything in sight. JNZ Robotics bent like a dollhouse in a giant's fists, the bottom ripping away as the ceiling caved in on itself. Industrial lights and the long, white tubes inside that hadn't even been on lit up and exploded above Robot's head, sending shards dusting his light bulb like snow. Robot grabbed the only thing he could in sight—the frame of the still-open door to Service Room 16—as the room rose in the air above his head, nearly lined up with where the former ceiling had been. He dangled from the door like a trinket on an infant's mobile, too stunned by fear to plan an escape—as if there was one. The longer he held on, the longer his arm joints expanded.
Just as it seemed like the door was going to be crushed into the already crushed ceiling, the earthquake's rumble quieted a little. Debris continued to fall on Robot's head and back as he was hypnotized by the metal-melting liquid below as it seemed to be so close now, his powerful eyes scorched white. And only when he got himself to look away did he realize that his arm hadn't been the only thing to expand. The lava hadn't gotten closer to Robot—he had gotten closer to it. The figure that dangled below Robot's head hung like the heavy part of a wad of bubblegum, stuck to the bottom of a desk at school, while his torso stretched for what must have been miles and miles below. And it was only getting closer to the lava.
By the time Robot looked back up at the hand that was clutching the doorframe, it, too, was miles away, so far that he could barely see it. He didn't know what was more horrifying: The perilous fate of the bright red and yellow cascades below, or the state of himself as he sat, waiting for something to cause the gap between himself and the lava to abruptly close.
He wasn't sure what it was. Maybe a sudden surge of loneliness in this empty world, maybe the doom of himself and everyone around him, but he decided, on a whim, that there was really no reason to prolong closing that gap.
His life flashed before his eyes, preparing for the tumbling terror of his rubber body in freefall to the earth's core, and then he let go.
He kept his gaze upwards the whole way down. The further he fell, the more time crawled, and the heavier his eyelids felt. The door above him grew smaller and smaller, and when it was just barely recognizable as a square from the distance he was falling, he thought he saw a black figure appear on the other side, waiting for him.
His eyelids felt like they had been welded shut. They were so heavy, Robot almost felt like he'd rather just let himself sleep through the next day instead of making use of his claws to pry them open, like doors on a bus. As any teen would, if it was a regular Saturday morning, Robot would probably do just that—let himself get more sleep instead of forcing himself up and awake. But as all his systems began to activate one by one, including his internal calendar, he remembered what day it was, and why he needed to get up. April 16th. The fifteenth anniversary of the day he was first activated.
But—wait—that was yesterday. Today was April the 17th.
But that couldn't possibly be correct.
Recent memories seeped back to him like floodwater under a basement door, details coming clearer with every second that passed. Robot remembered waking up like normal on Saturday, listening to Mom nag at him to finish his chores, and driving to the factory to get his yearly overall exam by his project manager, Darvick. He hopped up on the maintenance table, and passed the tedious examination time by catching up with his godfather, discussing things like the concert his best friend was going to take him to. Beyond that point, he couldn't remember anything but what had to have been the dream. Meaning he'd been put into sleep-mode—and a very deep one at that. But why? Why would they do that?
Robot finally pried his eyes open, but he could hardly see a thing around him. He could only guess he was still in the servicing room. He was laid on a flat surface—probably the same table he was sitting on just hours and hours ago. The darkness and silence, and loneliness, eerily reminded him of the dream—at least, what brief flashes of the dream he could remember since he'd woken up. He stared at the pitch black ceiling for a few seconds, and the same question began to go on a loop in his head: Why did they put me to sleep? Why? It was starting to irritate him. And now he'd have to wait to ask, because neither his parents nor Darvick were even here right now. No one at all, except for a few late or early workers. They really thought it was just fine to leave him here? Leave him alone, with no one but some strangers he definitely wasn't going to be comfortable approaching?
Too tired and frustrated to remember in that moment he had night vision, he felt around to the edges of the table in preparation for pushing himself upwards. Later on, he'd recall a lot of small details that were off that he didn't notice in his groggy and irritated state at the time. Like how odd it should have been for his arms to reach the corners of the wide table so easily. Or how little his head seemed to weigh compared to the rest of his body.
But the thing that broke the illusion, that rattled him so hard, was the sudden and shocking feeling of his feet hitting the floor before he hopped off of the table. He sat there, feet firmly on the ground, his computer mind whirling, trying to explain this error. When he'd arrived to Service Room 16 the previous day, his feet definitely dangled off of that table—they always did. He distinctly remembered kicking his feet to and fro that same day as he spoke with Darvick, out of both habit and tradition.
Either this was a lower table he was laying on, or…
Robot turned his head to the left, and finally snapped on his night vision. Right away, he could tell he was still in the same servicing room—the cabinets, tools, and machines were all still where they were yesterday when he was here with Darvick.
But his eyes fell on the shining object leaning against the wall, behind where his head had laid, across the room, six feet tall and two feet wide. It didn't take long to identify the object as a full length mirror, to which he flew to with the speed of a phantom.
The first thing he saw was his face, from which the same brilliant yellow orbs looked back at. But it didn't take him long to realize the high placement of his face in the mirror and its significance. Feeling as though he were on stilts, he cautiously backed away from the entire wall.
And nearly collapsed.
All it took was his good distance away from the mirror, when his eyes peered slightly downward, for him to feel suddenly very, very weak. He stumbled backwards, towards the table, catching himself just in time, staring into his own horrified eyes.
His body was different. The short, boxy torso he once stood comfortably in was now three times bigger, with shoulders twice as broad. His shock only worsened as he turned from the mirror to stare down at himself with his own eyes. Familiar head to familiar toe, he looked over himself in an overwhelming combination of fascination and terror at everything in-between—everything that surely did not—could not—belong to him.
He slid down onto the floor, against the table, head spinning, limbs quaking. He tried to gather his thoughts and form a coherent sentence in his mind. Despite his best efforts, however, he just couldn't. Drowning in panic, he shut his eyes and tried to wake up. It was all just a dream, just like earlier.
But it wasn't.
Part 1 of a Multi-Chapter Collab with Wit!
Oh boy this is gonna be fun.
Whatever Happened to Robot Jones? © Greg Miller & Cartoon Network