A/N – Just wanted to quickly say thanks to everyone for reading, and thanks for all the reviews! Cluster Prime not quite what you expected, eh? Well, there's more developments yet to come …

Escape From Paradise

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Six – It's Smart, It's Safe, and It's The Law

Their room at the Royal Metropolitan Hotel, like everything else Jenny had seen so far on Cluster Prime, was fantastic beyond anything she could have imagined. It was a full-fledged suite, with immaculately polished stainless-steel walls, comfortable rubberized floor carpeting, and a large bank of windows that gave a spectacular view of the capital's skyline. A thickly padded semi-circular sofa sat in front of a titanic video display, boasting 3-D capability and full-immersion stereo. The furniture was masterfully constructed from the finest brass and pewter, and was decorated with intricate strips of fine-gauge tubing; the recliner looked like a great place to curl up with a data disk for a late-evening read. Jenny sat her shopping bag down on the table, next to a complimentary gift basket of motor oil, bearing lubricant, and rust rejuvenator. "Wow … just a little bit nicer than my bedroom!"

Drew tossed his bag on the floor and dropped into the sofa, sinking deep into the foam cushions. He grinned and held up his finger, morphing it into a ClusterBank card. "Deluxe hotel room, 1250 credits. Shopping for research material at the mall, 225 credits. Two rounds of silicone smoothies for your new friends, 28 credits. Having Smytus pay for the whole thing – priceless."

Jenny folded her arms, and give him a disapproving smirk. "Isn't that sort of like, stealing?"

"The big gap-toothed lummox kidnapped us, sealed you in a titanium straitjacket, and locked me in a lunch pail! This is poetic justice. Besides, I figured we needed to do something for money while we're stuck here." He flopped his head back and went completely limp, his arms and legs draped on the sofa like silver spaghetti. "Would you get a load of this room? It's like something a rock star would stay in. Hey, let's call room service!"

"Wow, a self-molding recliner with a deployable footstool!" Jenny jumped into the chair, eager to take a load off of her aching feet. Suddenly, the chair came to life, sending waves of soothing vibration through her chassis. "Oooooh … s-s-six kinds of s-s-servo massage … ohhhhh, D-d-drew, take my calls for m-m-me while I'm o-o-o-out."

Drew found the video remote, and the screen burst to life with spectacular graphics, filling the room with rich, vibrant sound. "You're watching RSPN, the Robot Sports Programming Network! Four hundred channels of robotic sports excellence, all day, every day! Coming up next … SportsServer caps the day's top stories, and keeps you up to the minute on the playoff races!"

"Four hundred channels of sports …" mouthed Drew, in a weak voice. "Sniff … it's … it's more beautiful than I dared dream."

"We're not going to spend the night watching robot football," Jenny groaned, as she threw a foam-rubber pillow at his head. She bounced out of the recliner, and continued her exploration of the room's features. "Hey check it out, there's a fully stocked refrigerator! Eight types of anti-freeze … twelve grades of oil … oooh, even teeny bottles of Teflon lubricant! This room is absolutely amazing! Allison really came through for us. I wish there was something I could do to thank her." Then she snickered, and turned to Drew with a wicked smile. "I bet you could think of a way to thank her."

"Yeahhhhh …" he sighed, lost in a wonderful dream – " … I sure could." Then he caught himself, as the sound of Jenny's giggling snapped him back to reality. "Hey, what's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, come on," she said, rolling her eyes. "You're crushing on Allison, big time."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," huffed Drew, a little too quickly.

Jenny squealed with delight at his brazen denial. "Drew Nabholtz, you big fat liar! You're lucky I'm equipped with a fire hose, because I think you're about to burst into flames. You were flirting with Allison all afternoon! And you two looked pretty cozy in the back seat of Tank's hovercar."

"Wha … uh … I was just being friendly," he grumbled. Drew nervously skulked away to explore the rest of the room, eager for an escape. "All I'm sayin' is, it was really nice of her to take time to help us out, y'know, and I … er … was just trying to be … uhh … polite!"

She chased after him, having far too much fun to stop now. "Suuuuure you were. And I couldn't help but notice that she was being polite right back."

"Well, I … uhh … ahhh … brflbrbll …" He babbled incoherently, totally flustered and green-cheeked, while Jenny enjoyed an evil laugh at his expense. She was getting a great deal of entertainment out of Drew at the moment. Finally, he gathered his senses, got his mouth untangled, and shot her nasty look. "Oh, knock it off, Jenny. Look … I'll probably never even see her again. Now do you want to finish checking out the room, or do you just want to horse around?"

"Lead on, Romeo," she laughed, following him into a smaller, adjoining room.

The secondary room was, in fact, a bedroom, but the two beds were unlike anything they'd ever seen before. Each was a flat platform, tilted about twenty degrees from the vertical, attached to a large pylon anchored to the floor. The bed was lined with a shiny foam padding, the same self-molding foam that covered the recliner; at the top of the bed was built-in pillow, ringed with electronics and a small display, like a computer screen. Sitting on the bed was a printed sign, bearing the hotel's logo. Jenny picked it up and read it aloud. "For your regeneration pleasure, your room is equipped with state-of-the-art SleepMaster 9000-Z rest platforms, with built-in diagnostic and backup function. Remember, at home or on the road, back yourself up every night! It's smart, it's safe, and it's the law."

"Pass – I don't think I want to leave a copy of my brain floating around in a computer somewhere," snorted Drew. "Hey, look, there's another room over here. It kind of looks like a bathroom. What the heck does a robot need with a bathroom?"

While Drew looked around the bathroom, Jenny stepped onto the sleep platform, experimentally letting her body sink into the firm but gentle foam. Within seconds, the bed had custom-molded to the exact shape of her robotic frame; it was the most relaxing, soothing material that she had ever rested on. She wiggled a bit to get comfortable, and stretched out her arms, feeling tiny snaps and clicks work free from the tiny gears in her joints. "Boy, I'm not going to have any trouble falling asleep on this thing!"

Drew's voice echoed to her from the bathroom. "Hey, Jen, there's a bathtub in here … but the faucets are labeled 'acid' and 'oil' instead of 'hot' and 'cold'! Isn't that nutty?"

"Sure … whatever …" she murmured in a faraway voice, already feeling the stress evaporate away from her servos. She slid her hand along the side of the platform, and her fingers found a large pushbutton. Feeling curious, she pressed it. Maybe this thing gives massages too …

Suddenly the systems of the bed-platform came alive, and the electronic displays blinked to life with a faint series of chirps. Jenny felt a strange pulse of energy travel through her wires, and then she instantly fell into a deep, blissful sleep. With a soft whirr, motors in the pylon pivoted the entire bed, until Jenny had rotated to a horizontal resting position. While a contented smile grew on her peaceful face, a small door in the platform opened up, just above her pillow. From the concealed compartment, a curved metallic headband deployed, mounted on a flexible robotic arm, and slowly positioned itself directly above her forehead. The headband illuminated with a white light, as its electronic components warmed themselves up, and bathed Jenny's motionless form in soft, warm glow. Then it gently curled down to settle against her face, and the room filled with an electronic hummm …

Drew casually strolled out of the bathroom. "Hey, if you want to take a bath, do it now, because I think I'm just gonna sleep in the tub tonight … Holy crap!!!"

The silver-green android launched himself across the bedroom and plowed into Jenny, knocking her out of bed and sending both of them tumbling against the wall. He frantically shook her shoulders, in a mild state of panic; but Jenny's eyes snapped open immediately, and just like that, she was restored to full alertness – and more than a little ticked off. "Cripes, Drew! What do you think you're doing? I just wanted to rest for a minute on that amazing bed … hey, wait a minute. How did it get all horizontal like that?"

They got back to their feet, and Drew showed her the metallic band that had clamped over her forehead. She didn't remember any of it. Then they noticed a flashing message on the small computer screen next to the pillow. It said Backup Interrupted – Please Try Again.

"I … I guess they take backups pretty seriously here," she gasped, still amazed that she remembered nothing of the experience.

Drew carefully let his hands flow around the metallic headband; they shimmered with faint green patterns as his nano-computers tried to create an interface. "Sorry, Jenny – but I saw this thing stuck on your head, and you were totally zonked out. Hmmm … there's all kinds of activity going on in this thing. I don't really understand any of it, but I can tell you that the data is flowing in both directions. It reads and it writes. I guess that makes sense. If you're going to make a backup of a computer brain, then you might need to do a 'restore', too. It's probably harmless. Still …"

"Yeah, I think I'll sleep on the couch tonight," she gulped, suddenly feeling very uneasy. Something told her that she'd just had a very close call. She walked back into the main room, past the comfortable sofa in front of the giant video display, past the fully stocked fridge, past the massaging recliner with its magic fingers, and stood in front of the huge plate-glass windows. She raised a hand to the glass, and gazed out at the amazing view of the capital skyline, with its countless skyscrapers lit up in a nighttime rainbow of brilliant lights. It was one of the most beautiful sights that she'd ever seen in her life.

She saw Drew's reflection in the glass as he walked up behind her, but she didn't turn around. "This place is fantastic, wonderful, and terrifying all at the same time," she said, in a saddened voice with a hint of shame. "It was so great to finally meet other robots like myself … that I almost forgot we're five thousand light-years from home, trapped on the home world of an evil empire. No matter how beautiful it seems, we know what the Cluster is really like. We know what Vexus is really like. We're in danger every second that we stay here … we have to remember that, Drew."

He scratched his head, trying to think of something reassuring to say. "Well, at least Vexus and her goons aren't looking for us yet. All we have to worry about is avoiding Smytus. Just look out there at all those giant buildings, going on for miles and miles, and all those tens of millions of robots. There's no way Horn-Head will ever find us in a city this big!"

Her pigtails drooped with a pained whirr. "And there's no way we'll ever find Brad and the others."

The unpleasant thought blanketed the room with a heavy silence, like a bitter winter frost. Jenny turned and leaned against the window, with an incredibly sad look on her face. Drew's shoulders sunk, and he fidgeted with his hands for a few seconds, staring into the artistic patterns on the rubberized carpet. Cluster Prime had been such an unexpected shock – and a not completely unpleasant one – that he'd forgotten all about his classmates. The last time they'd seen them, they had been marched off in chains to a Cluster military transport. Even now, they might be toiling under the whips of a Cluster slave master, or working as servants in some robotic big-shot's mansion … or something worse. Jenny and Drew were the only chance they had of seeing their homes and families again. They had to save the kids – even if most of them thought they were a pair of metallic freaks.

"Well, we sure won't find them moping around like a pair of robot basset hounds," he said, slapping his hands together. "Let's see if we can't figure out how things work here in paradise. You bought all those books-on-disc back at the Galleria, and I picked up a copy of every newspaper I could find. Which one do you want to start with?"

A tiny smile crept onto her face. "I got one called 'Glorious History of the Cluster Empire'. It might put me to sleep faster than that bed did." She rummaged around in her shopping bag, opened the disk case … and put a thoughtful finger to her chin. "Mayyyybe I should get you to look at it first, just in case there's some kind of freaky Cluster virus on it, or something. Heh-heh … after all, you're immune to Cluster assimilation. Wow, listen to me, I'm turning into a total paranoid."

Drew slid the disc into the side of his head. "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not out to get you," he chuckled. He picked up a copy of Cluster Empire Today, and tossed it to Jenny. "Shouldn't take too long to read. It's all written in barcode."

"I'll concentrate on the best way to find the kids," she said, as she configured her eyes for barcode scan. "You figure out how we're going to get back home. Mom didn't install any hyperspace engines in my body – I was only designed to save the Earth, so I guess she figured I didn't need them."

"Gee, thanks for giving me the easy job," he groaned. "Maybe I'll just walk back to that military base and ask if I can borrow a spaceship for the weekend."

She gave him a sarcastic smile, then sank back into the recliner with the newspaper, scanning for any information she could find about humans or human slavery. "I just hope they can hold out long enough for us to find them," she sighed.

The rust-red cockroach drone entered the proper number sequence into the keypad, and the thick doors rolled apart with a mechanical rumble. Brad pressed his face against the door of his small, cube-shaped cage, trying to figure out where the robots were taking them now. They'd already been put on a hover-truck, and a train, and he was pretty sure they had been taken somewhere underground. He'd heard one of the insect-like robots mention something about arriving at the palace complex. He craned his neck to get a better view of the sign above the door … and snapped backwards, as a roach-drone slapped the side of the cage with his metallic claw. Brad sat back and sulked, as the robots transported him and Sheldon into a large, brightly lit room filled with strange-looking equipment. The roaches dropped each of the cages onto the floor with a loud clang, and clattered back into the hallway, joking about what that crazy scientist was going to do to this pair of mammals.

Brad got to his knees – he couldn't stand up in the cage – and rubbed his sore rear end as he took a look around. They were in some kind of high-tech science lab, filled with fantastic-looking equipment and rows of computer screens. The air smelled of chemicals and ozone, and the background was awash with the hum of power generators and chirping electronics. He leaned over and whispered towards his neighboring cage. "Sheldon! Sheldon, are you still there? Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm okay," answered a weak voice, trembling with anger and fear. "At least I will be, until I get sliced up like a bullfrog in a biology lab. Ohhh, face it, Brad, we're goners! Jenny's not coming to save us this time. Even as we speak, my sweet, sweet angel is being reprogrammed into a mindless puppet by an evil Cluster mad scientist! Grrrr … when I think of that little creep, fiddling around inside Jenny's brain with his disgusting, skinny little claws …"

Suddenly Sheldon's rant was cut off by an annoyed, tinny voice coming from across the room. "Hey, monkey boy! My claws are not skinny! They're slender. There's a difference! Show a little respect for a genius with a pan-dimensional hyper-brain, will you?"

A short red robot rolled up to the front of their cages on a single wheel, an egg-shaped fellow with six arms, six eyes, and a comically large head studded with antennas. Brad leaned up against the steel bars, and gave the robot a nasty stare. "Wait a minute, don't I know you? Yeah … yeah, you're that weaselly little scientist from the Cluster starship! What did Jen call you? Stanley!"

Sheldon pointed an accusing finger through the bars of his cage. "You're the no-good schnook that locked my Jenny up in that horrible torture rack, and stuffed Drew in that little yellow barrel!"

"Quiet down, you two," growled Stanley, as he leaned forward to peer into Sheldon's cage. Then he inspected Brad, and his frown deepened, apparently unhappy with his latest specimens. "I ask for test subjects, and these are the best they could send over? How am I supposed to produce miracle results when I'm working with substandard livestock? That does it! Next time, I custom-order. Sure, it costs a little more, but sometimes you've got to pay for quality."

Brad fumed at the implied insult … then snapped his fingers as a thought occurred to him. "Hold the fort! If you're the scientist super-geek from the starship, and this is your lab, that means that Jenny and Drew must be in here somewhere!"

"Hey, that's right!" shouted Sheldon. "Where's Jenny, you motorized light bulb? Where is she?"

Stanley smacked the cage door with his clipboard. "Arrrgh, not only do they send me the runts of the litter, but now I have to put up with the yakitty-yakitty-yakkity! You think you could possibly be more annoying, maybe? What's the deal with you two … what do you want, food? The stupid roaches probably didn't feed you. All right, all right, hold onto your mouth-flaps, I'll get you some food. Sigh, you gotta do everything yourself around here."

The bulbous little robot zipped over to a set of lockers, and loaded up all six of his arms with feeding apparatus. Then he wheeled back to his new lab animals, and attached water bottles to the doors of their cages. He set a pair of aluminum bowls on the floor, and gripped a large food bag with four of his arms, struggling to rip the top open. Brad made a disgusted face as he read the bag's label ... Human Chow – New and Improved Algae Flavor! Stanley filled the bowls with dry, crusty brown-green pellets, and slid them inside the cages via a slot in the doors.

"Aww, gross!" sneered Brad. "Do you seriously expect us to eat this garbage?"

"What, you're some kind of gourmet, now?" huffed Stanley. "Eat up, monkey boy, it's fortified with eleven vitamins and minerals. It'll give you a wet nose, healthy gums, and a nice, shiny coat! Look, if you don't like algae, I've got two other flavors … 'Crunchy Insect' and 'Soylent Green'."

"Yuck, I'd rather eat mystery meat from the school cafeteria!" Brad sat against the back of his cage, and folded his arms defiantly. "You may have us locked up in cages, but that doesn't mean you can treat us like animals! We're human beings! We're just as intelligent as you are, and we deserve to be treated with a little decency! We're not going to touch your stupid puke-food, are we Sheldon?"

The only reply from Sheldon's cage was a loud, moist crunching sound. Brad and Stanley stared at Sheldon with nauseated amazement, as he happily dug into his bowl of algae-flavored kibble. "Hey, I was hungry!" he mumbled, spraying chunks of food all over the floor. "And this stuff doesn't taste half bad. And when you pour water into the bowl, it makes gravy!"

Stanley rolled all six of his eyes. "Oh, for the love of … look at you, you're getting crumbs all over the place! Disgusting humans – hang on, I'll get some fresh newspaper to line the cages …"

But then the lab was pierced by loud electronic beeping, coming from Stanley's desk. The egg-shaped robot managed to heave all six of his shoulders at once, and sighed in frustration at the latest interruption to his valuable research. He tossed his clipboard onto a workbench, and rolled to his desk to activate a large viewing screen. The picture came to life with a harsh warrior's face – and again, it was a face that Brad recognized from earlier in the day. It was the big robot commander from the starship, the robot who had kidnapped them all and brought them to Cluster Prime.

"Scientist, this is Commander Smytus," he said, in a voice considerably softer than his usual grandiose tone. He was almost whispering into the screen. "Scientist, report! What is your status? Have you spoken to the queen or any of her guards yet?"

Stanley shook three of his six fists with frustration. "Have I spoken to them? Have I spoken to them?!? Queen Vexus has been calling every two hours since I got back here! You'd better have some good news, Chuckles, because I don't know how much longer I can keep covering for your sorry metal butt! So have you found her yet?"

"Cool your circuits! I, Smytus – Destroyer of Worlds! – shall find those blasted teenagers … it is only a matter of time!" His eyes darted left and right, checking to make sure that he wasn't being overheard. "Listen, I have a meeting with the queen in five minutes. She's going to ask me about XJ-9. We need to make sure we keep our stories straight!"

The scientist groaned, and clasped three hands to his huge, transparent dome-head. "All right … I told the queen that XJ-9 is here in the lab, she's powered down, but I found a whole bunch of booby traps inside of her body. I said her self-destruct mechanism is armed, she's a ticking time bomb, the whole lab could go kablooey at any minute, yada yada yada … it's much too dangerous for the queen to come down here! She's buying it for now, but Vexus is no fool, Commander! You'd better find that little robot chickie soon, or else … it's the recycling bin, for both of us!"

"Shhhhh! Keep your voice down!" hissed the giant robot. "Just keep up the act, for now. My own squad of roach-drones are scouring the city for her, and her slimeball friend. They can't run forever!"

Then the screen abruptly faded to black, and Stanley bolted away from his desk, grumbling to himself. "They can't run forever, he says … well, that makes me feel a whole lot better! Stupid gear-head, glory hog, over-decorated paper pusher … arrrrrghhh!"

The super-genius rolled back to get his clipboard from the workbench, mumbling and fuming with anger and anxiety … and noticed that his new lab animals were smiling back at him. "And just what are you two so happy about, hmmm?"

"They escaped, didn't they?" laughed Brad. "Jenny and Drew got away, and ol' Smitey-pants Fat-bottom is out there trying to find them, isn't he?!? Ha, ha, ha! All right, Jen! Sheldon, did you hear that? Jenny and Drew got away!"

Stanley was already in a poisonous frame of mind. He'd suffered through the Earth robots' escape, he'd lied to the queen, and he'd put up with Smytus' insufferable arrogance. He was in no mood to take any guff from a pair of barely-evolved naked apes. "Oh, you think that's funny, do you? Well, go right ahead, laugh it up. You two meatbags better enjoy yourselves while you can, you should!"

"Wh-what's that supposed to mean?" asked Sheldon.

"I guess you humans really aren't that bright after all!" taunted Stanley. He opened a drawer, and took out a pair of blank labels. He stuck one on the top of Sheldon's cage door, and wrote the number '35' on it. "What do you think I ordered a pair of lab animals for? You think I'm going to dress you up, and have a little tea party? This is a research lab. And while Commander Smytus plays hide-and-seek with your little robot friends, I have scientific experiments to perform. After all, now that I finally have a stable sample to work with, I'm hoping to make some real breakthroughs!"

"Stable sample? Stable sample of what?" asked Brad, suspiciously.

Stanley stuck a label on Brad's cage too, and gave it the number '36'. Then he tapped a few buttons on a desktop control panel, and a door slid open on top of the workbench. A platform slowly rose up from below – holding a small cylinder about the size of a thermos. Its sides were transparent, revealing the magnetic bottle that was contained within it – and inside the bottle hung a small, shapeless blob of silvery molasses, twisting and spiraling with slow, fluid patterns, like a lava lamp.

"Nanobots, from your android friend," smirked Stanley. "See, I wasn't sure if Queen Vexus was going to have him destroyed or not, so I took a little sample ahead of time, just to be on the safe side. I've never understood how my nanobots turned a human into a robot, or how they evolved into a stable, independent mind, what with the personality, and the free will, and everything! I've worked on the problem for months, trying to duplicate the result, and always I come up a little bit short. But a-ha, I've been analyzing these nanobots all day, and the lab computers are working nonstop to decode the fancy-schmancy software in all of those itty-bitty nano-computers. In the morning, I'll be ready to start a whole new round of human-injection experiments!"

Brad wasn't sure what that meant, but Sheldon's jaw dropped open in excitement. "Injection? You're going to inject us with nanobots? You're going to turn us … into robots, like Drew?"

"Well, that would be the best-case scenario," chuckled Stanley. His eyes flitted to a storage rack at the side of the lab, and his chuckles grew into a stream of sadistic, evil laughter.

The sign on the rack read Experiment Storage. Its shelves held rows of identical transparent cylinders, designed to store the results of Stanley's lab experiments. Each cylinder contained a shapeless gray lump of moist, chalky, lifeless sludge, with textures varying from pudding to concrete. And all the cylinders had labels attached to them … in numerical order, from one to thirty-four.

Continued in Chapter Seven / Six Days to Cluster Dawn