A/N – Sorry this chapter's a bit late. Work has been killer lately. As an apology, this chapter is a bit longer than normal. Man, I wouldn't be surprised if this story tops out at 100K words!
Countdown to Mindshatter
A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic
Chapter Twelve – Demons, Ghosts, and Reflections
A mob of students stampeded down the corridor towards the cafeteria, eager to get in line for Pizza Day. The people who got there early got the good stuff. The people who got there late got tofu and goat cheese. Pity the poor soul who found herself in the path of a horde of hungry, pepperoni-deprived teenagers; it was tantamount to getting caught in the middle of the street during the Running of the Bulls. But the girl who was wandering down the hall just now was not your average pour teenage soul. Just as she was about to be flattened by the wave of students, they peeled off to either side of her to avoid her, as if accidentally brushing against her would bring instant death.
It's not like Jenny could blame them. In the few short hours since the morning bell had started the day, she had pretty much demolished the English, Social Studies, and Biology classrooms. Two of the school's major corridors had been bathed with laid waste with plasma fire and napalm. An entire row of lockers had been squashed like an accordion. One of the stairwells had been closed off due to partial collapse. And there wasn't a single unbroken window left on the north side of the building. And all of it had been caused by random outbursts from Jenny Wakeman – the resident reject from a bad horror movie. Students whispered frantically to each other, speeding past their robotic classmate as fast as they could. Who could say when Mount Jenny would erupt again?
Jenny slowly shuffled down the hall in a miserable funk as if her feet weighed ten tons apiece. She was slumping so drastically that her hands almost dragged along the floor; her paint color seemed a grayer shade of blue, and her eyes were so darkened that some of the girls wondered if she'd gone Goth. And still that miserable Z-Pack clung to her back, like a parasite draining her of the will to live.
It was all so unfair. Not even two weeks ago, everything had been going great. The kids had finally started to accept her as a normal teenager. She could walk the halls and wave to her friends – well, people whose names she knew – and they'd wave back with a smile. Then the Omni-droid had come to Earth and ruined her name, turned her into a fugitive. After that, apparently not satisfied with wrecking her reputation, the Cluster had decided to ruin her life by kidnapping her and her classmates. It was all her fault, she knew – she should have stopped them somehow. Yes, they'd made it back to Earth, but she should have stopped them from being kidnapped in the first place. And now she'd lost the only two other teenage robots she'd ever known – Allison and Drew. Some hero I am, I can't even keep my friends safe. And now she knew why. The Z-Pack just made her shortcomings all the more obvious. She was obsolete. Old technology. Last year's model. She was a slide rule in a world of supercomputers. The Z-Pack was a Formula One race car, and she was a Model T. With a mournful whine, her shoulders slumped even lower, and her pigtails hung weakly onto their bolts as if they would snap off at any moment.
So naturally, who should come down the corridor just then but her perpetual torturers, the Krust cousins. The school socialites were already smiling with satisfaction over one of Tiff's classic put-down jobs on a shy girl in Biology class. When they saw Jenny moping along in front of them, their eyes lit up with the joy of finding an easy target. "Ah, there you are, Jenny!" cooed Brit. "I wasn't sure whether or not I'd bump into you at lunch. I thought you might be busy ripping the water pipes out of the bathrooms. I believe they're the only part of the school you haven't destroyed yet."
Tiff burst into a nasty chortle. "Yeah, if the Cluster don't hurry up an' get here soon, there won't be anything left for them to blow up!"
Jenny didn't react as the Krusts broke into cruel laughter. She didn't mutter a word of protest; she simply stared at them blankly, while their insults rained down on her like a barrage of laser fire. She didn't try to defend herself from any of it. She didn't even react to the warning alarms and diagnostic messages that flashed in her vision, on the inside of her eyes. Caution – Mood-O-Tron exceeding designed safety limits. Caution – power levels becoming unstable. Caution – neural net integrity dropping.
"My, she appears to be speechless, dear cousin," chuckled Brit, cleaving her gloved hands to her chest. "Hmm, we really must think of a way to cheer her up. I know! We can check to see if Justin Spitzer is in the cafeteria! Maybe … snicker … maybe he still needs a date to the prom!"
Tiff clutched her ribs, near delirious with laughter. "Oh, dat's hot! Dat's hot! Ha, ha, ha! Hey Jenny, so what if Justin wasn't a marshmallow fluff kind of guy? You could always try drowning him in a couple of thousand gallons of chocolate syrup, and see how that works! Ha, ha, ha!"
And as the laughter of Krusts faded away into the lunch room, a nervous twitch fluttered in Jenny's right eye. The prom – ah yes, the prom. She'd almost forgotten what a complete fool she'd made of herself yesterday, right in front of Justin, and the whole school. It was only too obvious now that Justin had never had any intentions of asking her to the prom. The rumors had just been rumors, nothing more. In fact, with only two days to go until the prom, she was totally dateless. Big surprise … just add 'Social Interaction' to the big list of XJ-9 failures. But then again, there wasn't even going to be a prom unless she defeated the Cluster this afternoon. Defending the Earth was something she was still good at … wasn't she? Caution – brain operation degrading. Caution – neural net integrity at sixty percent and dropping.
Suddenly, her right pigtail twitched up in alarm. Her auditory systems still worked perfectly, and she heard the cry for help loud and clear. A glimmer of alarm flashed in her eyes. Someone was shouting from the parking lot, somebody in pain … and one microsecond and one voice match later, she realized that the person in danger was Brad!
With a gust of wind like the exhaust from a rocket launch, Jenny disappeared into a blur of motion. She exploded through the last untouched wall in the school, tore through the Music room in the middle of band practice, and flew through a plate-glass window into the outside air, like a mortar shell blasting from the mouth of a cannon barrel. In the midst of the bricks and plaster crashing onto the ground, she heard Brad's voice cry out again …. "Help! Haaalp! Jenny!"
It only took a quick scan to locate him. Brad was lying motionless on the pavement in the parking lot, with a pool of sticky red liquid on his chest … underneath the rear tires of a school bus!
"Oh, no! BRAD!" Unstable energy surged through her circuits, and she leapt into full-tilt superhero mode. Brad was only fifty yards away, but Jenny still broke the sound barrier getting over to him. A deafening sonic boom cracked across the parking lot, shattering the windows of every parked vehicle and building within a one-block radius. But all that mattered to Jenny was removing the crushing weight from Brad's wounded chest. Her arms ratcheted out and grabbed onto the chassis of the school bus, and she gave it a mighty heave. The heavy yellow bus shot into the air like a stray newspaper in a hurricane, punching through a puffy white cloud before simply disappearing into the sky.
Jenny dropped to her knees and examined Brad's chest, being extremely careful not to touch or move him. "Brad! Are you all right? Brad, say something!"
Brad gripped his chest in his hands, creaked open his eyes, and moaned dramatically. "Ohhh … there I was, walking across the parking lot, innocently enjoying a carefree day of education … when from out of nowhere, a runaway school bus hurtles towards me like a rampaging hippo! I was pinned under the tires … I thought I was road kill for sure!" Then he broke into a huge grin, and slapped his hand on Jenny's shoulder. "But then you showed up and snatched me from the Grim Reaper's cold, merciless hands! You saved me, Jenny! You're a hero!"
The tiniest of smiles crept onto Jenny's face. "Well, it was just a lucky thing that I was so close … hey, wait a minute." She cocked a confused eyebrow at him. "Where's the driver of the bus? He just ran you over and walked away?"
"Ahh … err …" Brad tugged nervously at his shirt collar. "Did I say the bus hurtled towards me like a rampaging hippo? I meant the parking brake slipped, and it rolled onto me. Yeah, rolled. Uh … like a … rampaging hippo."
"Brad, what are you …" She dipped a finger into the sticky red fluid on Brad's chest, and examined it closer. "Brad … why are you covered in spaghetti sauce?" she growled.
"Wha … see, the thing is … okay, I just happened to be cooking pasta for the basketball team's pre-game meal, when the bus …"
"Uh-huh. Yeah, right." Jenny drifted back into her deep blue funk. "Real funny joke, Brad. Guess it's all that a screw-up like me is good for nowadays. Why don't you just slap a 'kick me' sign on my back? That's always good for a chuckle or two."
"No! No, wait, Jen, you don't understand!" Brad jumped to his feet, in remarkable health for a guy who'd just been 'crushed by a bus', desperately trying to explain himself. "It wasn't a joke! See, the important thing is, you thought that I was in danger … okay, even though I, maybe, wasn't exactly … but you thought I was, and you rushed over and snatched that killer bus away at the last second! And who knows? I mean, maybe the parking brake really was about to snap loose! It could happen! The bus driver doesn't look like the kind of lady who keeps up to date on her regularly scheduled maintenance …"
She squinted at him in disbelief. "Have you gone completely off your rocker, Brad? Nobody was in danger from that school bus …"
Suddenly they heard a whistling sound coming from the sky, and looked up to see a yellow school bus punch through the clouds, screaming towards the ground at terrific speed. What goes up must come down, and the school bus that Jenny had thrown into the stratosphere was hurtling back to earth like a comet. Fortunately, it was going to crash outside of the populated part of town. Unfortunately, it was going to crash into Tremorton's one and only oil refinery. There was a spectacular flash of light on the horizon, and an orange pillar billowed into the sky, forming an ominous, flaming mushroom cloud.
Jenny turned to Brad with a nasty scowl on her face. "… nobody was in danger, at least until I came along. Thanks again." She slumped back towards the school, in an even deeper state of depression.
"But I was just trying to … cheer … you … up." Brad babbled for a few more seconds, then shrugged his shoulders and just watched his friend disappear back into the battered remains of the school. I sure didn't do a very good job of it. He really had been trying to cheer Jenny up, but in her current frame of mind, that seemed all but impossible. What was it with teenage robots, anyway? He thought Drew was the resident black cloud of gloom these days. But that stupid Z-Pack had Jenny in such a dark mood that she made Drew look like a cheerleader in comparison. This was different from Jenny's usual angst and moodiness. This was serious. Dr. Wakeman had said that her robotic brain might even become unstable. From what Brad had seen so far today … it was already happening. She has convinced herself that she is obsolete, Mrs. Wakeman had told him. You've got to snap her out of it, somehow. Yeah, right … how in the world was he supposed to snap her out of this?
Retrieve updated invasion plans from Military Tactical Database … ACCESS DENIED.
Establish connection to Hyperspace Communications Array … ACCESS DENIED.
"Aww, c'mon, gimme a break here …" – Display command interface for Drone Hive Mind. Log in to Nightly Backup System Mainframe. Download master encryption keys … ACCESS DENIED.
"Arrrghh!" Allison slumped in her tangled web of wires, silently mocked by the swarm of virtual windows that hovered in front of her face, each bearing the simple phrase Access Denied. With the Cluster Fleet on its way, her workload had slowed down to an almost leisurely pace, and would stay slow until just before the fleet arrived at Earth. Ally was trying to make good use of the time by poking and snooping around in cyberspace, looking for a way to free herself, or to get a message to the outside world. Normally, she wouldn't have had any trouble accessing any computer system in the Great Network. But the Cluster assimilation protocols that dominated her higher brain functions were putting serious limits on what she could and couldn't do.
For the past five days, she'd helplessly watched and suffered while her mind obediently churned through mountains of data, helping to prepare the very war fleet that would enslave her new friends. She'd managed to piggyback a hidden message into Queen Vexus' long-distance gloat, but that was about it; she wasn't having much luck initiating anything on her own. Here she was, plugged into the center of the most complex computer network in all of existence … and she couldn't even make a phone call! She glanced at the shimmering, translucent sphere of energy that surrounded her like a smoky soap bubble. After it had protected her from Vexus' vicious cyber-attacks, she'd hoped that she might be able to somehow use its power to break free … but so far it seemed that it served only as a defensive shield. She was still as trapped as ever.
Flashes of light and data streaked around her, and a minor report raced through her processing nodes with an update on the War Fleet's position. Allison obediently processed the report and filed it in the archives, then moaned sadly. The fleet was more than halfway to Earth. Her thoughts drifted to the new significance of that small blue planet whose name she'd barely known of a week ago. She thought about her new friend Jenny; she owed Jenny so much, for showing her the truth about the Cluster, and the cruel nature of its evil queen. She was grateful to have learned the truth, even in spite of everything that had happened to her since. Allison felt like she was already in mourning for Jenny; she couldn't imagine that the Earth robot girl would survive a battle against the mighty Cluster War Fleet, no matter how powerful she was. It had been such a blast being with Jenny at the Galleria last week … laughing and shopping, hanging out at the lube court, checking out robot boys …
Allison closed her eyes and sighed. The one with those cute green stripes all over his body …
She replayed the files in her memory banks for what must have been the thousandth time. Those big dark eyes that made her feel weak in the knee joints, smiling out at her from behind that swath of silvery hair … the cute way his cheeks turned soft green whenever he got embarrassed. The electric tingle she felt in her wires when he held her hand … the fun they had dancing together at Festival Square. The haunted look on his face when he'd told her about the accident that had cost him his leg, and how he understood why she felt so self-conscious about her replacement arm. When I look into your eyes, Ally … I think I can see my soul reflecting back at me … the warmth and intimacy of the tender mind-kiss that had followed those words. She shivered in her bonds, and a soft, glowing tear trickled down her ghostly cheek. She'd only met him a week ago, but the pain of losing him burned in her circuits with a ferocity that Vexus' claws could only hope to match.
Then the pleasant memory was rudely interrupted by a flash of yellow light from a distant part of the ClusterNet. A new batch of video data rushed into the pathways of Ally's brain, another instruction from an unseen master that kicked her processing matrix into high gear. Her decoding algorithms revealed that it was a police report filed by a Black Mantis unit. Allison rolled her eyes with a huff; just another stupid message to file, and copy out to all the other Mantis goons roaming the capital. Let's get this over with, she groaned, as the implants in the back of her head buzzed with activity.
A new data window popped into existence in front of her face, and the boring details of the police report spilled out in rows of soft green text. "Mantis Unit 538 filing an incident report, blah blah blah, location grid co-ordinates and timestamp, blah blah blah …"
Whoa. "Black Mantis Unit 539 has been found sliced in half?" Allison arched an eyebrow, and started to pay closer attention to the police report. The Black Mantis robots were tough, and ruthless – they'd given her the chills, even before she'd learned their true nature – she'd heard that even the army officers were scared of them. But a pair of robots had attacked a Mantis robot at an observation deck only three miles away from the palace – and left it in a smoking heap! She shook her head at the foolhardiness of the unknown attackers. "Phew … when the rest of the Black Mantis find out about this, they'll hunt them down like robotic dogs!"
The report included a video clip taken from Mantis-539's log file, which opened up in a second window next to the first. The picture crackled to life, and showed two odd, nervous robots – a silver-colored hulk with a giant swirl on his chest, and a lanky, bronze-colored rattle-trap. They had gotten caught hacking into a tourist information computer, then the bronze fellow started babbling something about his serial number, and the Mantis unit tried to perform a mind scan …
Then she saw the robot's arm stretch out into a thick gooey paste, and form a razor-sharp, silver-green machete … and suddenly she felt that all of her fuses would blow at once.
"Impossible …" she gasped, "… that's impossible!"
The video continued, showing the lightning-fast blade delivering its deadly blow, followed by a mighty punch from the mysterious silver giant … then the bronze robot amazingly turned into a flowing pillar of silver-green slush, and re-formed into young teenage robot boy …
With cute green stripes all over his body …
And then the video file ended, trailing off into a blathering stream of official statistics for filing.
Allison gasped in shock and amazement. She couldn't feel her arms or legs anymore, even her virtual ones. Time felt like it was speeding up and screeching to a halt all at once. An uncontrollable smile came to her face, and she swore she could feel her hydraulic fluid swirling around inside of her like a giddy whirlwind. Only her state of shock kept her from screaming out at the top of her voice … Drew! That was Drew! Here, on Cluster Prime … within sight of the palace! I don't believe it … I thought I would never see him again! For the first time in days, despite being imprisoned in cybernetic limbo, she felt like she would burst with joy. Drew was here on Cluster Prime, with a large, strange silver robot … probably some kind of elite robotic super-commando, she figured. What in the galaxy was he doing back here? Reconnaissance? Sabotage mission? Guerilla attack?
No, as crazy as it seemed, she knew deep inside why Drew was here. He had come back to rescue her.
She felt a chaos of excitement bubbling up in her circuits. He came back for her! He was risking his life and his freedom to save her! He's so brave! He's so magnificent! He's …
She blinked her eyes a couple of times as reality set back in. "He's CRAZY! I don't believe this – he's absolutely nuts! What is he thinking? If he gets caught, there's no telling what they'll do to him! He's going to get himself killed …"
A message blinked impatiently on the data window in front of her. "Mantis-538 recommends arrest and detention of two suspects identified in this video. Issue All Points Bulletin to all Mantis units."
Then Allison groaned and shook in her bonds, as she felt flickers of data and code racing in and out of the horrid connectors that invaded her brain and body. The Cluster assimilation protocols were compelling her to obey. Obey, obey, OBEY. She had to send out an alarm right away, that would make Drew the most hunted robot on Cluster Prime. No, I won't … Do it NOW. Obey. Now. Obey. NOW. No, I'm tired of taking orders … she winced in her web of circuitry, trying to resist the Cluster command … but it was strong. VERY strong. Obey. Obey. I won't put Drew in danger! Send the alarm NOW. OBEY, LSN-1482. Nnnghhhh … noooo … have to … stop it … OBEY, NOW. OBEY!
The commands were too strong. She couldn't prevent the alarm from going out …
But she could modify it.
Her processing nodes glowed with brief activity, and microseconds later, an alert message went out on the Black Mantis command frequency. "Two robots, a large silver brute and the treacherous shape-shifting nano-droid, wanted for immediate arrest. They are to be presumed armed, and dangerous, and Mantis units are instructed to shoot to kill on sight. The robots are enemies of the Cluster and all robot-kind. All Mantis Units be informed, their last known position was …"
"… at the high-speed monorail station, boarding a train for the other side of the planet."
Thousand of miles away from here, Allison sighed in relief, feeling some satisfaction in her little act of digital vandalism. With luck, maybe she had managed to help Drew out a little. Hanging limp and motionless in her neon webbing of circuitry, she surveyed the bizarre cyberspace realm in which she was trapped, and allowed a small smirk to come to her face. Maybe there was more that she could do from in here, she thought. Maybe she could keep an eye out for Drew, from within the ClusterNet. Maybe I'm not as helpless as I thought I was.
The police hovercraft wailed through the busy skies of the Cluster capital, buzzing low over the stainless steel rooftops of the Western Industrial Sector. Dozens of identical thirty-story warehouses flashed by as its scanning beams swept back and forth, looking for any signs of suspicious activity. Security in the capital was always a top priority, but things were running at an even higher alert level since the strange natural disaster that had struck the city five days ago. From up here, the civilian police-bot could still see the strange oval-shaped craters running down the wide urban avenue. He didn't believe any of the kooky rumors buzzing around the city, although he did have to admit that the craters did kind of look like giant footprints. But all he cared about now was that there was no sign of any troublemakers in Sector Gamma-73. The hovercraft banked left, and disappeared around the corner of a giant skyscraper.
And once it was gone from view, an industrial exhaust fan atop one of the warehouses began to shimmer like a block of silver-green gelatin. Then it tipped up, and out crawled the Silver Shell, who anxiously scanned the skies like a nervous chipmunk looking for falcons. "Is he gone? Is he gone?"
The 'industrial fan' oozed back into android form, and Drew motioned for his ungainly partner to lower his voice. "He's gone, but I imagine one of his buddies will be back in a couple of minutes. There's drones all over this city like mosquitoes in a swamp! All right, let's go." He snuck over to the edge of the rooftop, lying prone on his stomach, and grew his eyes out into a pair of telescopic lenses. The Silver Shell crawled up beside him, as flat as he could manage with his giant barrel chest.
Sheldon's hacking had almost gotten them caught, but it had succeeded in downloading a copy of the tunnels running into the Royal Palace. Unfortunately, Drew sighed to himself, knowing where the tunnels were and actually getting into them were two very different things. Just like every other tunnel entrance they had scouted in the past few hours, the one below them was overflowing with hundreds of vigilant roach-drones. A pair of nasty-looking heavy laser guns stood sentry at either side of the entrance. Drones on small hover-scooters buzzed in loose circles overhead, watching for any unwanted activity. And this was just at the mouth of the tunnel, five miles away from the palace itself! There had to be even more cameras and patrols inside the stupid thing …
Drew let his eyes shrink back to normal, and slumped his face into his arms. "Those tunnels are guarded like crazy," he moaned. "We'd have better luck breaking into Fort Knox …"
Then he noticed that the Silver Shell was sitting upright and cross-legged, with a blank expression on his metallic face. He could hear a faint high-speed tapping coming from within the giant robot's chest. "Sheldon," he hissed, "what the heck are you doing?"
A tiny door slid open in the side of the Shell's torso. "Phew! There we go … wow, I needed to get a little fresh air in here!" Sheldon had temporarily stowed the Shell's control sticks away, and was focusing on one of his computer monitors. He pulled a length of red licorice from a dispenser wheel and started chewing. "While you take your little pictures, I'm going to work on a couple of my new hacking programs … and I'm going to look over the rest of the maps that – I – downloaded! Not only did I find all the tunnels, but I got the blueprints for the inside of Vexus' palace, too! Now, all I have to do is find that secret lab where they keep the nanobots …"
"Okay, let's get one thing straight right now. Once we find a way into the Iron Pyramid, we're going after Allison first."
"Nuh-uh! I've got the maps, so I decide where we go first!"
"Hey, Ally is more important than any stupid batch of nanobots!" Drew pointed an angry finger towards Sheldon's ventilation door. "She could be hurt, or disassembled, or even … geez, I don't even want to think about it. We've got to get to her somehow. Oh, man, she's got to be so afraid right now … she's been afraid of being disassembled ever since she spent all that time in the repair shop, after that monorail accident. Geez, she was lying there for days in the repair bay, with half of her systems turned off … plugged into an external battery … she couldn't move or talk while the mechanics worked on her … she didn't even know if she was going to be scrapped or not! And she was surrounded by all these monitors, and spare parts, hanging from the ceiling like some robotic butcher shop …" He sunk his face into his hands, plagued with worry …
Sheldon paused for a moment, with a curious expression on his face. "Wow, Drew … you talk about it like you were actually there."
"Well, I was! I mean … well, I wasn't. Of course I wasn't. But …" – he pushed his silver-green bangs out of his eyes, confused and upset – "… arghh, this is so weird, Sheldon! Of course I wasn't there, but I remember what the room looked like. I remember what the beeping monitors sounded like. I remember how afraid Ally was … except, I know that she didn't tell me about any of this! She didn't tell me, but I swear, I can remember it! I remember it, almost as if it happened to me!"
"Ah-ha, I knew it! I knew it! See, that confirms my theory! Sheldon Lee, you're a genius!" He thrust out his chest and smiled proudly, all while continuing to hammer away at his computer keyboard. "I knew there was something different about the way robots kiss! Hee hee hee hee!" Snort! Blush! "This means that my brain interface invention will work just the way I imagined it would! Hee hee, I can hardly wait to get back to Jenny, to test out my little present to her. Ah, I can just imagine my sweet angel's forehead pressed up all snuggly close against mine … Oh, rapture …"
"Whoa whoa whoa … the way robots kiss?" Drew looked at Sheldon as if the little nerd had just grown a second head. "Okay, you're losing me here."
"You mean you haven't figured it out yet?" Sheldon shook his head and gave Drew a condescending smile, and started babbling excitedly. "Robots like you have computer brains, which generate radio waves, just like a wireless network! When two robots press their foreheads together to kiss, their networks overlap each other … and if the networks are tuned the right way, and they're compatible, then the robots can actually exchange data, just like sharing a file between two computers! It's a brain interface! Cool, huh? That's where all those strange data files in Data Bank 546-A came from! They're pieces of data from Allison's memory banks!"
Sheldon had explained the process with a techno-geek's enthusiasm, as if he was describing a cool new way to download songs … but Drew gulped hard, as he realized what Sheldon was really saying. He had exchanged memories with Allison … and there were snippets of her memory stored in his data banks. Deep, private memories … maybe she had even selected which ones to share with him. He closed his eyes, and dwelled on that thought for a bit. Somewhere deep inside his mind, he was carrying a tiny piece of Allison around with him …
"Hey, wait a minute!" Drew's face snapped up, and he arched an irritated eyebrow at Sheldon. "How, exactly, did you know that those memory files were in Data Bank 546-A?"
Sheldon's face drained itself of all color. "Umm … well, I, uh … lucky guess?"
Drew leapt to his feet and stretched his neck, flowing his head inside the Shell's torso to within six inches of Sheldon's nose. "You rat! You snooped in my memory! When you downloaded my brain Tuesday night … you read through my memory files! You rotten, sneaky little creep …"
Sheldon raised his hands defensively as Drew's cheeks glowed an atomic red. "Hey hey hey, you asked me to download your brain, remember? I had to search through all the files, in order to make that Cluster anti-virus program for you! I just happened to … heh-heh … find a few other interesting chunks of code while I was rummaging around in there. I didn't hurt anything! I mean, that's how I figured out how to build my human-robot brain interface …"
Drew stretched an arm inside the Shell, and waved an angry fist under Sheldon's chin. "I'm gonna interface your human brain with my robotic knuckles, pal!" Sheldon got nervous …
And slammed his palm down onto a panic button, and the Shell's control sticks snapped back up into his waiting hands. The mighty robot whirred back to life, and gave Drew a shove in the chest, knocking him backwards onto his butt. Drew was hopping mad, and gave the Shell a hard shove back. The supposed partners abandoned any pretense of stealth, forgot about their 'mission', and started shoving each other back and forth in almost comical fashion, like a pair of eight-year-olds fighting on the school playground at recess. The Silver Shell blocked a wildly thrown silver-green fist, and wrapped Drew up in a headlock. While the teen android struggled, Sheldon deployed a new attachment from the Shell's right wrist. He'd wanted a chance to test out the new Atomic Noogie attachment …
The two robots became so wrapped up in their wrestling match that they didn't notice the Cluster police hovercraft until it roared over their heads. The argument came to an immediate halt, and they desperately scrambled for a hiding spot. The hovercraft slowed down, made a gentle loop in the sky, and floated down towards the roof … it was coming back to land! They'd been spotted! Drew and the Shell ducked behind a satellite dish, then they dove behind a ventilator fan that was only slightly bigger than they were. The roof was large and flat, and there really weren't any other good places to hide …
The police hovercraft settled down on its landing struts, its canopy flipped open, and an eight-foot tall civilian police robot stepped with a heavy thud. He deployed a bullhorn from his thick left arm, and held it up to his mouth-grill. "Attention, attention, this is a restricted area. We know you're out there. Come out and be identified. You have ten seconds to comply …"
There was nothing but silence. A second police-bot got out of the hovercraft, deployed a huge stun cannon from his arm, and nodded to his partner. They started walking towards the ventilator fan …
When the Silver Shell stepped out, swinging his arms with a cocky grin and purposeful strut. But he didn't look like his normal, swirl-chested self. Amazingly, the Shell's metallic body seemed to have gotten an instant repaint! Instead of the usual mix of light and dark grays, the Silver Shell's body now sported a mix of drab burgundy and olive green, with gold stripes on his shoulders … an exact replica of the Cluster police-bot's uniform. "Nothing to worry about, guys," boomed the Shell, in his easy-going, baritone voice. "Just doing a little routine patrol. Yep, nothing at all around here. This roof is secure. Yessirree, roofs don't get any more secure than this one …"
The police-bots exchanged an annoyed glance with each other, and folded their arms back up with a series of ratcheting clanks. "Nobody told us there were foot patrols on the roofs," said the senior police-bot. "Didn't we see another guy up here with you?"
"Uhh … yes! Yes, you did. Ah, it was just some punk robot kid that wanted to watch the drones marching around." The Shell waved off their concerns with a dismissive smile. "I chased him off. Nothing to worry about, guys."
"Well, this was a fantastic waste of time. Thanks, buddy." The two police-bots dragged themselves back into their hovercraft, and with a burst of power from their anti-grav engines, they climbed back into the traffic pattern, and disappeared from sight as quickly as they'd appeared in the first place. The Silver Shell waved as the hovercraft flew off, then let out a massive sigh of relief. "Phew, that was a close one!"
"You're telling me." Suddenly the Silver Shell's new paint job came to life. The new colors started to flow off of him, as if they were a layer of watercolor paints being washed off in the rain. Moments later, the colors spiraled into a puddle at the Shell's feet, and shimmered into a silver-green color. Drew reverted to android form, and planted his fists on his hips, annoyed both with Sheldon, and with himself for losing his temper. "That was pretty smooth talking there, Sheldon. Good job." He scratched at the back of his head, and managed to bring himself to look the Shell in the face. "Uh … sorry I got mad, there."
"Yeah, well … " – the huge silver robot rolled his eyes and sighed – "… ahh, I'm sorry I read through your memory files without your permission. And it was kind of cool, the way you turned yourself into a layer of camouflage for me. It worked out pretty well."
"Thanks," replied Drew … then he tapped his chin, and started to think for a second. "Hmmm, it did work out pretty well, didn't it?"
Drew got an idea. A crazy one.
Continued in Chapter Thirteen / One Hour to Cluster Dawn
