Sci-Fi Story Challenge from DC Creative Writing Read and Critique, Prompts:
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Trope/Technology
Space Colonization
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Scenario
Stranded
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Also posted in the DC Creative Writing Read and Critque’s Wattpad anthology; find it and others here.
Beep.
The one and a half meter tall, slate-green roboid rolled quietly across the floor. It collected the dust that had settled since it last cleaned this area – exactly ten cycles of the fifth moon.
Beep.
Roboid Methyl-Capable-Alcohol-Combination-Sanition roboid, generation 6, unit 9 – known by the four other roboids in the complex as M-09 – hushed to a stop and popped open its collection tray. As every cycle at this stage of M-09’s work, it barely contained enough dust to cover the bottom of the tray yet.
Beep.
M-09 clicked the tray closed and switched to liquid functions. It turned exactly one hundred and eighty degrees, and whisked back across the tiles it had just swept. The tiles of iron-gray, moon-set pink, and slate-blue and -green – this last the match of M-09’s own metal facing – gleamed after its passage.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
The door behind M-09 burst open and unit P-507 came hovering into the corridor.
“The masters have arrived! The masters are here!” sounded from the small speaker at the base of the dark clay-red cylinder’s bulbous head.
M-09 looked up multiple meters to P-507’s display screen. A triangle that imitated their creators’ trio of eyes, it currently blazed all white with no distinction of “eyes” like it usually did. M-09 appreciated how this intense brightness from P-507’s face lit the orange highlights along the long lines of its body. M-09 had always appreciated P-507’s lines and personally created processes. M-09 had even copied one of P-507’s personal code-snippets that provided it with a constantly updating map of the other roboids’ location in the complex.
But M-09 also knew better than to mention that to the taller, smarter roboid.
“Are your audio drivers still functional?” P-507 snapped M-09 out of its reverie and a few soft clicks sounded from under the ground bound roboid as M-09 reset all its brushes and liquid cleaner hoses.
M-09 had not really registered what P-507 had said. P-507 would think M-09 didn’t want to listen to them!
“Yes, yes, my audio drivers received Ki-11’s update twenty lunar cycles ago. I hear you.”
“Good! Then come, we convene!” And with that P-507 whirred down the corridor, a streak of red and orange down the tiles M-09 had already cleaned.
M-09 followed more sedately. It knew it couldn’t keep pace with P-507, so M-09 would just head straight for the power room, where the five roboids who cared for the complex convened each night. Unit I-613 had informed them very early on that this togetherness would be important for their mental fortitude over the extended time they would have to wait for the masters to arrive. It had proven effective, as the six other units who had originally arrived at the complex with them each went offline permanently within the first ten or so cycles of the planet.
M-09 checked the arrival timestamp; the four other units who had followed I-613’s guidance had reached over two hundred planetary cycles since arrival. The emotional wellness roboid had created truly amazing personal codes. M-09 resolved to compliment I-613 when it saw emotional wellness roboid in the power room.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“People have arrived, we must gather the offline units!” Unit P-507’s voice remained excited and high but the tall red cylinder stopped behind M-09, outside the door, as units Ki-11 and P-33 dove into their oldest argument.
“We can’t show them to the masters broken. Ki-11, why haven’t you figured out what’s wrong with them yet?”
“They are broken beyond-”
“You’re a repair roboid! Do your job!”
“I am kept more than busy enough maintaining and updating the five of us and the livelihood systems.”
I-613 paced between the two arguing roboids, saying nothing, the roboid’s three antennas at a calm, forty-five degree angle. The lights at the end of each antenna pulsed gently, a soothing buttery yellow that looked like flower stamens over the pale green pyramid body, like a flower bud.
Ki-11 slithered between I-613’s three legs, circled up one, and wrapped gratefully around the emotional wellness roboid.
“Let us just go to greet our new masters,” I-613 crooned, stepping toward the door next to which M-09 had stopped to watch the argument.
Unit P-507 perked up at this. It leaned over the much shorter M-09 to poke its red and orange head into the room. “I’ve been trying to hail the computers. But I wasn’t getting understandable responses, so I started working through my cracking dictionaries. These aren’t the masters. They’re a different species!”
A couple of M-09’s hoses slipped from its grip, cascading limply on the floor around it.
Ki-11’s usually opaque, fluid body went rigid with shock around the top of I-613’s pyramid form, blocking the movement of I-613’s antenna which had changed to a brilliant vermilion in excitement.
P-33’s triangular face display, identical to the newer generation P-507’s, went solid red and the normally dark silver body started flowing through a rainbow of colors. “A different species? How exciting! They won’t care that our maintenance roboid is malfunctioning. Ki-11 won’t know how to fix their things anyway.” Ki-11 remained stiff, unresponsive to I-613’s attempts to get the ribbon-like roboid to unwind from around I-613’s antenna.
“What else have you learned about them?” P-33 asked of P-507.
“They call themselves humans. They come from a planet they call Earth, in the Sol System. I have uploaded my data package to the repository.” P-507 rattled off the data and M-09 stared up at the face-display that showed a picture of a strange, round head, with a face sporting only two eyes and a mouth filled with flat teeth.
M-09 stared in dismay as another image cycled through, showing a dented, battered, ovaloid ship. Then M-09 received the data package. M-09 skimmed to the new species’ biology report.
Carbon based life forms. They breathe a mix of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and other trace elements. They possess an internal skeletal structure, manipulated through long muscle which is interspersed with fuel and waste processing organs, all bound on the exterior by a soft dermis. This structure heals itself given time, but is susceptible to sharp puncture and slicing of the soft tissues, and highly vulnerable to fire damage.
M-09 froze.
While M-09’s processing power could not compare to P-507 or P-33, it could put things together eventually. M-09 worked with alcohols to clean. The new creatures breathed a high ratio of oxygen. For the occasional cleaning tasks M-09 lit the alcohols on fire to burn away refuse. This higher oxygen level would make those fires harder to control. To a species that was highly vulnerable to fire damage, M-09 would be a danger. It would never be allowed to stay.
They would junk M-09!
“We should go to the east port and guide them inside. We don’t want-” P-33 jumped back when a terrible grinding, growl erupted from the squat, five-sided cleaning roboid.
“We can’t guide them inside!” M-09 cried in disbelief. As M-09 looked around, it seemed no one else had realized what it had. “We… we…” M-09 was gripped with fear that P-507 would see M-09 as useless if it pointed out its observation – if P-507 wanted the new creatures to stay, it may support them over M-09. M-09 leapt on another possibility, “We are here to welcome the masters, no one else!”
“Well, we have been waiting for them for over two hundred cycles. Maybe they decided to go somewhere else? Or got lost? They may never-” M-09 interrupted P-33 this time by spraying some of the dirty mop water it still held up at the face display.
“You little trash heap!” P-33 leapt forward, aiming to crash down on the sturdier M-09. M-09 tightened all of its chutes and apertures for the impact. A grinding metal on metal resounded over M-09’s head and no attack came. Opening the aperture before its vision cam, M-09 found P-507 had injected its own body between its model mate and M-09.
M-09 beamed up at the beloved red cylinder. “We are not here to damage each other!” P-507 chided P-33, bumping the now black unit back further from the doorway and M-09.
“I agree with P-33. I will let them inside.” M-09 starred in horror as I-613 strode from the room through the now cleared doorway.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“I-613, you mustn’t!” M-09 wheeled after the long-legged roboid as quickly as it could. One of M-09’s hoses trailed after it, the effort to roll it back up properly too costly at that moment. Ki-11 still rode on I-613’s peak, though it had lost all rigidity. Now it just hung, saying nothing.
“Ki-11 talk some sense into I-613!” M-09 pleaded. “Surely you don’t want to be decommissioned because you can’t fix their equipment! They’ll scrap us both!”
“Ki-11 will have no trouble learning their equipment.” I-613 dismissed the concern. “Or even if not, Ki-11 is the only one who can maintain the livelihood systems. If the new creatures want to survive here, they will need Ki-11’s help.” The large three-lobed door before the articulated tripod roboid whooshed open, revealing an expansive bay.
M-09 almost stopped in surprise. It had never seen this room. How were there places in the complex it had never seen? How did it look so clean? It should be covered in dust, shouldn’t it?
M-09 didn’t know I-613’s goal, it only knew it needed to stop I-613 from welcoming the new creatures.
The sssshhhh of the air jets which propelled P-507 and P-33 sounded behind M-09 and it shuddered under conflicting fear of P-33 and exaltation that P-507 had come to help M-09. But then P-507 announced, “The humans have hailed the complex. Their computer has opened the system. They are coming to the east bay.”
“Perfect.” I-613’s steps didn’t falter.
Ki-11 lifted the end of its body that bore its best camera, looking back at M-09. “Ki-11, they’ll decommission us both!”
“That is the masters’ choice.” Ki-11’s voice came out slow, as if someone had already started the power down cycle.
“They’re not our masters, we don’t have to let them!” M-09 begged. “Ki-11, please stop I-613!” M-09 pleaded with the hopeless roboid as I-613 reached a control panel M-09 had never noticed.
This expansive space, empty the entire time the roboids had traveled the corridors cleaning and maintaining it for another species to come live in, was the east bay! They had already arrived. M-09 had mere moments before the new species could enter!
M-09 jerked its loose hose. With a swift spin, it threw the metal nozzle at I-613’s legs. The rounded foot-bed landed on the soft nylon. Then the leg strained, as the nozzle continued to spin around it, wrapping the metal in flimsy nylon. I-613 wrenched to a halt, its back-most leg stretched out straight behind it.
“M-09, what are you doing? The humans won’t decommission you, either. Didn’t you read the report, they are carbon based life forms, they need clean living spaces just as-” I-613’s words were lost as M-09 heaved on the hose and sent the tripod roboid sprawling, then sliding across the floor. M-09 sped toward a side wall, dragging the discombobulated I-613 after it.
“M-09 must have corrupted its circuits!” P-33 cried from behind M-09.
M-09 didn’t hear anything from P-507, so it didn’t stop. Accessing the map of the complex P-507 had created, M-09 easily found the bay they all stood in now. There, in the north wall. M-09 raced toward it.
Reeling the hose in faster than it ever had, M-09 hauled a struggling I-613 into the trash compactor. M-09 scooped Ki-11 from on top of the pyramid body before shoving I-613 into the large cavity. It punched the button to close the door.
Then it froze.
A low hum sounded from inside the trash compactor. Closing the door had begun the process. An old, default setting M-09 had updated on all the other units in the complex – at least all the ones it used. Ki-11 revived its fervor with a jolt. “I-613! I-613, no! Open the door! Let I-613 out!” Ki-11 started punching the wall, but it didn’t know which buttons operated the compactor. Trash management was in M-09’s processes.
“I-613 has to promise not to let the humans in!” M-09 cried before its processor could catch up with the implications of its words.
“You have to stop it now!” Ki-11 reared up before M-09, “Stop it now, or I will freeze every update you are accessing and never open another to you. I-613’s death will be your own.”
M-09 shuddered, rolling forward slowly to reach for the button to pause the compactor.
“你好?” A strange voice sounded from across the bay and M-09 went rigid.
The humans had opened the bay door!
But none of the other roboids were facing them. They all starred, transfixed at the trash compactor. M-09 spun back and forth, torn between terror of the humans and a high pitched grinding that had started inside the trash compactor.
Ki-11 threw itself at the control panel before the trash compactor, forcing as many of its tools into the circuitry as possible. A bright blue suffused Ki-11’s ribbon-like body, then an intense jolt of electricity cracked through Ki-11’s touch points on the panel.
The trash compactor stopped moving and Ki-11 collapsed to the floor, seeking a seam to sidle through to I-613 inside.
M-09 turned its attention on the humans. It rolled a couple revolutions of its wheels toward them, watching them. What would be threatening behavior from them? M-09 didn’t know how to read body language, that was in I-613’s processes. Could M-09 get I-613 out of the trash compactor to help?
As M-09 considered, P-507 jetted toward the humans. M-09 had not parsed the entire data package on the humans and had to adjust its thinking to see how very large and swift P-507 looked compared to them.
“Hello, humans. Welcome to the-” One of the humans snapped up a long, hollow stick, and a bright jolt of electricity launched from the end of it into P-507. P-507 crashed to its side on the ground, all its lights dark.
“P-507!” M-09 bolted forward. A jolt of the light singed the floor behind the roboid. M-09 circled P-507, but couldn’t study anything well enough while trying to avoid the strange lights from the humans.
“You are not welcome!” The squat, slate-green roboid barreled toward the humans. It opened the large panel it had oriented to its front and force ejected every ounce of methyl it still held, drenching all four of the humans standing in the bay. Snapping its sparker, M-09 lit the tail end of the jet of methyl. It exploded. Fire enveloped the humans instantly and threw M-09 halfway across the bay so hard the roboid shorted and lost time.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Beep.
The one and a half meter tall, slate-green roboid rolled slowly across the floor. It had collected the largest pieces, now all that remained were the viscous liquids the humans had left behind.
Beep.
M-09 hushed to a stop and popped open its collection tray. It overflowed with a strange, dark red mixture. M-09 rolled over to where it had collected the larger pieces of the humans into a bin and poured the tray over it all.
Beep.
M-09 clicked the tray closed and rolled over to continue collecting the liquids. The little roboid’s front roller hitched against its dented front, halting its progress. It backed up and tried to roll forward, back and forth, back and forth, a few times before it was able to free the wheels and continue on its duties.
Beep.
Once M-09 collected all of the pieces and liquid together, the humans could start healing, like P-507’s data package said. But if Ki-11 wasn’t able to get P-507 functional again, M-09 resolved not to collect all the pieces together and just leave the humans damaged.
Beep.
The tiles of iron-gray, moon-set pink, and slate-blue and -green lay lost under a thick pool of congealing, dark red. Far darker than P-507’s casing – M-09 decided it didn’t like it at all.
Amanda Writes 