Re: The Fatal Conflict! (GBS2G7) (Round 2: Robo City!)
06-14-2011, 10:00 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Pinary.
Scott's jump had taken him just over half an hour back, by his watch, something he'd never experienced before and wasn't keen to repeat. His whole body stung like a naked beekeeper's, and for a moment, he just stood there, eyes squeezed shut against the pain. Slowly, though, it began to fade, and after half a minute or so, he was relaxed enough to open his eyes.
When he found himself in a dusty room filled with computer monitors instead of, say, a crowded robo-sport stadium or a busy robo-shopping mall, he breathed a sigh of relief. By the looks of things, this place hadn't seen any use in years. He sagged down into the room's only chair and just luxuriated in the quiet and isolation. No one had been there for ages, and they weren't likely to show up now.
At a leisurely pace, he switched the jumper pins on his new buffer to "engaged." He was much more interested in staying where he was than taking the risk of jumping away and landing somewhere less perfect, and with the buffer active, all the energy that would've been used to take him to the middle of a firing squad or something was instead being siphoned off into a battery.
As it stood, he was reasonably certain he was safe for the next half hour. The process of installing the buffer had taken about an hour, and since he hadn't disappeared midway through the procedure (which, now that he thought about it, would've probably made the next round all of fifteen seconds long while he bled to death), he could assume that no one had died in that time. If he just sat around in a room for half an hour, then, he wasn't likely to change anything, so the outcome would be the same- no deaths. Since that included not-his-death, he was quite happy with it. With a smile making its way across his face, he leaned back in the chair and reflected on his newfound (if rather limited) freedom.
The first item on the agenda he assembled was to look at the case he'd taken from the closet in his pseudo-cell. He grabbed the handle, swung it up onto his lap, and opened it up once more. As before, he found a few devices and a set of clothes.
The giddiness of finding himself in an island of peace amid the utter insanity that had been his day so far had put him in a bit of a silly mood, and when he saw the dramatic, religious-figure outfit, he nearly dissolved into a fit of giggles. Standing, he slipped it on over his other clothes, even going so far as to buckle on the cape. It was all designed to look swoopy and dramatic- the cape had a raised collar that came halfway up the back of his head, and the shirt's sleeves were ruffly and poofy. The whole thing was done in maroons and blacks, and there were gold threads woven in here and there that, to Scott's inexpert eye, looked like they might be real. All in all, it was incredibly overdone and looked positively ridiculous.
Still snickering at how he looked, Scott turned back to the case and pulled out the three devices. Each had a cord attached, about two meters long, that ended in a plug that looked like it would fit right into the sockets on the buffer. The first was pretty plainly some sort of gun, and a quick test proved it- unbuttoning the two shirts he was now wearing, Scott simply plugged it in and fired. The monitor he'd pointed at shattered. The display on the buffer ticked down from 01 to 00.
The second device, he couldn't figure out. Having used up what little power he'd generated since the big jump with that one shot, he had no way to power this one. It was a rectangular little thing, with a screen taking up most of its front surface. There were no buttons or controls of any kind.
The third was even less obvious- just a handle with a translucent sphere on the end. He wished he'd thought ahead a bit, maybe tried the second or third before going and wasting the power on the first.
While putting on the cape, he'd noticed a set of loops on the inside, and they turned out to be intended to hold the devices. They wouldn't exactly be hugely easy to pull out at a moment's notice, but at least he wouldn't have to carry that big case around with him.
He checked his watch. That silliness hadn't even taken five minutes. He still had a while to go, and the giddiness had mostly worn off. Now, he was just stuck in a room with nothing to do.
His bored gaze passed around the room and settled on a stack of papers sitting below one of the screens. Idly, he brushed the dust from the top sheet.
Project Prometheus Log, someone had scrawled, Sunday, January 11, 3615. The first machine-made machine just came online. It's... about what we expected, really. Primitive. Immature. With any luck, those idiots in Parliament won't ever have to eat their words. 'Course, we all know how likely that is.
He paged a little ways down the stack, reading further.
Thursday, April 16, 3615. Looks like I owe Jerry twenty. The robots hit the edge of the border and just stopped. It's amazing- by the looks of things, the filter's worked perfectly. They don't register a thing outside the registered zone. We tried placing things just outside their reach, no response. We disabled one remotely and moved it outside, and when we started it up, it just sat there. They don't even perceive outside their area as a place- as far as they're concerned, this place is the sum total of existence.
As Scott moved further down, nearer to the bottom, the tone changed a bit.
Tuesday, June 9, 3615. We're three weeks from severing contact. I still think continued observance would be better, but Parliament sees two little accidents and thinks it's never going to be reliable. Never mind that we've fixed the faults in the cloaking fields; never mind that we stopped transmitting on bandwidths the robots could perceive. Nope, it's "excessively unsafe." Paul probably won't even live to see the culmination of his life's work with this ruling. Insensitive, bureaucratic b-----ds. (The last word was scribbled out and replaced by "idiots.")
Scott turned to the last page.
Tuesday, June 30, 3615. Last day watching the robots. We've all got high hopes- "In ten years," Jerry says, "we'll be able to look at what we've accomplished and be proud of ourselves." That's wonderful, really, but I can't help but wish for something more immediate. Fame and fortune in ten years' time aren't going to pay the bills today.
Everything's packed up. I'm going to leave these reports behind as a sort of time capsule. See you in ten years.
Oddly enough, Scott couldn't get hugely excited about what he'd read. Okay, he knew something about the history of the place he found himself. Normally, this would be cool- people making robots for some sort of experiment and keeping them contained. For the moment, though, he wasn't terribly concerned about the backstory. He was constantly at risk of dying around here, and everything else just seemed secondary.
He reached out and flipped a few switches below one of the monitors. No response. On an impulse, he switched a whole row of toggles. Still nothing. Sighing, he turned to look for something else to be bored by while he waited in safety.
The door burst down and a trio of robots burst in.
Scott practically leaped backwards, stumbling into the chair and landing flat on his back next to it. The three robots- the same specialized human-hunter model he'd encountered earlier- quickly surrounded him, lifted him, and just started carrying him out of the room. They offered no explanation, but Scott, after struggling in vain for a few panicked seconds, supposed that if they hadn't killed him yet, they weren't likely to do so any time soon.
-
"Hello?"
"Jerry, I've got something over here you should see."
The voice at the other end of the line sighed. "Wallace, I can't just get up and leave. I've got a report that needs to be done by the end of-"
"It's a signal from the robots, Jerry."
-
"So you see," PI-3-TI was explaining, "while you had us confused for a few moments, we quickly discarded our concerns and simply dispatched agents to recover you."
Scott cursed his watch, which had apparently been giving off the signature the robots had been able to follow straight to him.
"Now, the cell set aside for the Arbiter is plainly unavailable for use at this time, so you will have to make do with more typical accomodations."
The "Arbiter" sighed and slumped back against the wall of the cell. This one was closer to his expectations- bare concrete walls, a small cot, and old-fashioned metal bars.
-
"Jerry, I was in the middle of a meeting, what is it?"
"I just got off the phone with Wallace. He's received a signal from the robots. It's just static, but it's on a frequency out of their range- one of our old comm frequencies, specifically."
"...You realize what this means, don't you?"
"Jerry's drafting up a message to Parliament as we speak, don't worry."
"Do you think they'll give us the go-ahead to make contact?"
"I don't know, Paul. I certainly hope so."
-
Scott's sulking was interrupted a few minutes in by the arrival of Kargrek and Bellona, both of whom had extremely messed-up hair from what had turned out to be a pneumatic tube ride to bring them there. Rho-7-7 and ArDat-2 lead them into room, and PI-3-TI turned from his incessant quoting of scripture to look at them.
Kargrek's eyes widened when he saw Scott slouching on the cell's small cot. "You!" he exclaimed, "You're this 'savior' of theirs?!"
"That's what they keep saying," Scott replied.
"'The Arbiter may not know of his duties until they are thrust upon him,'" PI-3-TI recited, not for the first time.
Scott rolled his eyes. "Can you please talk some sense into them?"
Spoiler
Scott's jump had taken him just over half an hour back, by his watch, something he'd never experienced before and wasn't keen to repeat. His whole body stung like a naked beekeeper's, and for a moment, he just stood there, eyes squeezed shut against the pain. Slowly, though, it began to fade, and after half a minute or so, he was relaxed enough to open his eyes.
When he found himself in a dusty room filled with computer monitors instead of, say, a crowded robo-sport stadium or a busy robo-shopping mall, he breathed a sigh of relief. By the looks of things, this place hadn't seen any use in years. He sagged down into the room's only chair and just luxuriated in the quiet and isolation. No one had been there for ages, and they weren't likely to show up now.
At a leisurely pace, he switched the jumper pins on his new buffer to "engaged." He was much more interested in staying where he was than taking the risk of jumping away and landing somewhere less perfect, and with the buffer active, all the energy that would've been used to take him to the middle of a firing squad or something was instead being siphoned off into a battery.
As it stood, he was reasonably certain he was safe for the next half hour. The process of installing the buffer had taken about an hour, and since he hadn't disappeared midway through the procedure (which, now that he thought about it, would've probably made the next round all of fifteen seconds long while he bled to death), he could assume that no one had died in that time. If he just sat around in a room for half an hour, then, he wasn't likely to change anything, so the outcome would be the same- no deaths. Since that included not-his-death, he was quite happy with it. With a smile making its way across his face, he leaned back in the chair and reflected on his newfound (if rather limited) freedom.
The first item on the agenda he assembled was to look at the case he'd taken from the closet in his pseudo-cell. He grabbed the handle, swung it up onto his lap, and opened it up once more. As before, he found a few devices and a set of clothes.
The giddiness of finding himself in an island of peace amid the utter insanity that had been his day so far had put him in a bit of a silly mood, and when he saw the dramatic, religious-figure outfit, he nearly dissolved into a fit of giggles. Standing, he slipped it on over his other clothes, even going so far as to buckle on the cape. It was all designed to look swoopy and dramatic- the cape had a raised collar that came halfway up the back of his head, and the shirt's sleeves were ruffly and poofy. The whole thing was done in maroons and blacks, and there were gold threads woven in here and there that, to Scott's inexpert eye, looked like they might be real. All in all, it was incredibly overdone and looked positively ridiculous.
Still snickering at how he looked, Scott turned back to the case and pulled out the three devices. Each had a cord attached, about two meters long, that ended in a plug that looked like it would fit right into the sockets on the buffer. The first was pretty plainly some sort of gun, and a quick test proved it- unbuttoning the two shirts he was now wearing, Scott simply plugged it in and fired. The monitor he'd pointed at shattered. The display on the buffer ticked down from 01 to 00.
The second device, he couldn't figure out. Having used up what little power he'd generated since the big jump with that one shot, he had no way to power this one. It was a rectangular little thing, with a screen taking up most of its front surface. There were no buttons or controls of any kind.
The third was even less obvious- just a handle with a translucent sphere on the end. He wished he'd thought ahead a bit, maybe tried the second or third before going and wasting the power on the first.
While putting on the cape, he'd noticed a set of loops on the inside, and they turned out to be intended to hold the devices. They wouldn't exactly be hugely easy to pull out at a moment's notice, but at least he wouldn't have to carry that big case around with him.
He checked his watch. That silliness hadn't even taken five minutes. He still had a while to go, and the giddiness had mostly worn off. Now, he was just stuck in a room with nothing to do.
His bored gaze passed around the room and settled on a stack of papers sitting below one of the screens. Idly, he brushed the dust from the top sheet.
Project Prometheus Log, someone had scrawled, Sunday, January 11, 3615. The first machine-made machine just came online. It's... about what we expected, really. Primitive. Immature. With any luck, those idiots in Parliament won't ever have to eat their words. 'Course, we all know how likely that is.
He paged a little ways down the stack, reading further.
Thursday, April 16, 3615. Looks like I owe Jerry twenty. The robots hit the edge of the border and just stopped. It's amazing- by the looks of things, the filter's worked perfectly. They don't register a thing outside the registered zone. We tried placing things just outside their reach, no response. We disabled one remotely and moved it outside, and when we started it up, it just sat there. They don't even perceive outside their area as a place- as far as they're concerned, this place is the sum total of existence.
As Scott moved further down, nearer to the bottom, the tone changed a bit.
Tuesday, June 9, 3615. We're three weeks from severing contact. I still think continued observance would be better, but Parliament sees two little accidents and thinks it's never going to be reliable. Never mind that we've fixed the faults in the cloaking fields; never mind that we stopped transmitting on bandwidths the robots could perceive. Nope, it's "excessively unsafe." Paul probably won't even live to see the culmination of his life's work with this ruling. Insensitive, bureaucratic b-----ds. (The last word was scribbled out and replaced by "idiots.")
Scott turned to the last page.
Tuesday, June 30, 3615. Last day watching the robots. We've all got high hopes- "In ten years," Jerry says, "we'll be able to look at what we've accomplished and be proud of ourselves." That's wonderful, really, but I can't help but wish for something more immediate. Fame and fortune in ten years' time aren't going to pay the bills today.
Everything's packed up. I'm going to leave these reports behind as a sort of time capsule. See you in ten years.
Oddly enough, Scott couldn't get hugely excited about what he'd read. Okay, he knew something about the history of the place he found himself. Normally, this would be cool- people making robots for some sort of experiment and keeping them contained. For the moment, though, he wasn't terribly concerned about the backstory. He was constantly at risk of dying around here, and everything else just seemed secondary.
He reached out and flipped a few switches below one of the monitors. No response. On an impulse, he switched a whole row of toggles. Still nothing. Sighing, he turned to look for something else to be bored by while he waited in safety.
The door burst down and a trio of robots burst in.
Scott practically leaped backwards, stumbling into the chair and landing flat on his back next to it. The three robots- the same specialized human-hunter model he'd encountered earlier- quickly surrounded him, lifted him, and just started carrying him out of the room. They offered no explanation, but Scott, after struggling in vain for a few panicked seconds, supposed that if they hadn't killed him yet, they weren't likely to do so any time soon.
-
"Hello?"
"Jerry, I've got something over here you should see."
The voice at the other end of the line sighed. "Wallace, I can't just get up and leave. I've got a report that needs to be done by the end of-"
"It's a signal from the robots, Jerry."
-
"So you see," PI-3-TI was explaining, "while you had us confused for a few moments, we quickly discarded our concerns and simply dispatched agents to recover you."
Scott cursed his watch, which had apparently been giving off the signature the robots had been able to follow straight to him.
"Now, the cell set aside for the Arbiter is plainly unavailable for use at this time, so you will have to make do with more typical accomodations."
The "Arbiter" sighed and slumped back against the wall of the cell. This one was closer to his expectations- bare concrete walls, a small cot, and old-fashioned metal bars.
-
"Jerry, I was in the middle of a meeting, what is it?"
"I just got off the phone with Wallace. He's received a signal from the robots. It's just static, but it's on a frequency out of their range- one of our old comm frequencies, specifically."
"...You realize what this means, don't you?"
"Jerry's drafting up a message to Parliament as we speak, don't worry."
"Do you think they'll give us the go-ahead to make contact?"
"I don't know, Paul. I certainly hope so."
-
Scott's sulking was interrupted a few minutes in by the arrival of Kargrek and Bellona, both of whom had extremely messed-up hair from what had turned out to be a pneumatic tube ride to bring them there. Rho-7-7 and ArDat-2 lead them into room, and PI-3-TI turned from his incessant quoting of scripture to look at them.
Kargrek's eyes widened when he saw Scott slouching on the cell's small cot. "You!" he exclaimed, "You're this 'savior' of theirs?!"
"That's what they keep saying," Scott replied.
"'The Arbiter may not know of his duties until they are thrust upon him,'" PI-3-TI recited, not for the first time.
Scott rolled his eyes. "Can you please talk some sense into them?"