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Fermius Firefly

A Dream Log, whenever I remember the dreams I've had.

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Location: San Marcos, United States

Fermius is a pen name drawn from a series of short fiction I wrote when I published the small press magazine Stellanova (on paper.) I play RPG games to escape from my daily grind as a technology wage slave for the state of California. I eat out a lot in order to do my part in supporting our increasingly service level economy. I am butler to 2 feline masters. If you ask them they will tell you I'm not very good at it, late with dinner, don't have enough hands with brushes in them, and sometimes I even lock them out of their office.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Robot Rampage

            I dreamed I inherited a boat from an unknown person. My benefactor had also left me the robot staff of the boat, a boatswain’s mate and a very pretty cabin maid/cook/bed buddy. I immediately freed them. The Boatswain’s mate took off (not for good, unfortunately) and the maid decided that she’d heard all sorts of interesting things about me and offered to stay. I explained that I didn’t know if I had enough to pay her even what she was making while in servitude. She said it would be enough.

            Things seemed to go well for awhile, we sailed and I found myself quite attracted to this robot woman. She was intelligent, funny and attentive.

            One night while we were ashore the former boatswain boarded our boat and started wrecking things. He wasn’t the only robot on a rampage. Most every robot in the harbor had gone crazy, attacking people, sinking boats, lighting fires.

We raced back to our boat and headed immediately out to sea, unaware that the boatswain and one of his earlier victims were on board. I was steering us out of the harbor when I heard screams from below decks. Setting the auto pilot I took an extinguisher down the stairs with me.  The robot menace struck me through the ladder and I tumbled down the stairs. I noticed that my companion robot was battered and lying across a beat up blonde woman. I didn’t know who was beating up who at that point. The Boatswain hit me while I was down, smashing my glasses into my temples and then kicking me and slashing at my clothing.

I managed to hit him in the chest with the extinguisher, knocking him back out of the way. I raced back up the ladder, he followed. I managed to unhook a fishing pole from its rack and he laughed at me, until I cast the line around his legs and tripped him. His shouts became very angry and garbled, like digital static. He broke free and knocked me into the water.

I swam for the nearest pole and climbed out of the water. The Boatswain called out and a half man half shark swam over, and then came after me. I climbed the pole out of the water, and waited for the sharkman robot to follow me up the pole. I grabbed on to some wires and swung out over to another pole. The sharkman tried to follow, breaking the wires. I slid down towards the sharkman on the broken wires. The sharkman opened his jaws, waiting for me.

I managed to pull up one end of the power line and dropped it into the sharkman’s mouth. I poked the return line into his eye and electricity shot through the robot.  We fell into the ocean below tangled together. I felt the electricity when we hit the water, but I’d been ready for it, and the damage had already been done to the sharkman robot. The juice stopped flowing and I started swimming for shore.

My boat steered after me, the engine kicking over in an ever increasing whine. I dove under the boat as it headed inland. I kept swimming for shore, there was a small dark strip mall with a grocery store in it, I was hoping a phone was still working. All of the lights went out just as my boat turned around and headed directly for me again.

Once again I dove under the boat; it swerved around almost tipping over. The Boatswain hit me just as I surfaced and I blacked out for a time.

When I woke I was in the grocery store, tied next to another man on top of a shelf full of peanut butter jars. The Boatswain spoke over the speakers of the store.

I looked around while testing my bonds. I’d been tied with some sort of narrow cotton cord, it wasn’t coming loose and my hands and feet were numb from lack of circulation. I finally spotted the Boatswain, he’d hung the blonde, I couldn’t tell if she was still alive, from the straps of her jumper in the center of the store. My companion was visible on the staircase leading up into the manager’s office of the store. I though I could just make out the Boatswain in the control room.

“Dinner time for RoboGaters!” the Boatswain shouted into the microphone. I wondered if there were more robots watching us.

I heard some growling and screeching. Sitting up, I spotted two Robot alligators being set loose in the store by a forklift robot. The robot ‘gaters lashed at the forklift, damaging it and knocking it back. The forklift rolled back into the warehouse and rolled down the big steel doors.

The man next to me screamed obscenities and deprecating remarks at the robots.

“Thanks. That’s got their attention.”

The Robogaters turned from ripping at the rollup doors to focus in on the man’s voice.

“There’s trouble.” I said as the two centaur-like robogaters reared up to their full height to see over the shelves of the store. The man suddenly realized what he’d done.

“Get me out of here! Please!”

“I’m working on it.” I broke a glass jar. The robogaters dropped out of sight, but we could hear them running around the shelves towards us.

“Why’d you do that?”

“I run and jump better without my legs tied together.”

“Run, Jump?” the man stood up, he wasn’t tied at all; he jumped down into the aisle.

“Stay on top of the shelves!”

“What? Arrg!” the man was spotted and he took off down the aisle. I noticed that only one of the robogaters was in the aisle running after him. Instead of heading for the stairs, or the restrooms, or the bank teller cages, he headed for the big glass doors at the front of the store.

“The Bank, head for the bank!” I shouted at him, but he ignored me.

I cut my bonds with the broken glass and moved to the end of the shelving unit away from the robogaters.

I could hear them playing monkey in the middle with the other man. One had cut him off from the front doors. He started back down the aisles a few over from me. I really didn’t want to have him lead the robogaters back to me, so I jumped over the aisle to the next shelves. It collapsed under my weight, but I managed to pull myself up.

The shouts and cursing started up again. The Boatswain shouted “he’s turned east!” I noticed the cameras at the end caps of the frozen foods section. I jumped on top of the cooler, grabbing a rolled up picnic umbrella and stripping the plastic restraining collar off of it as I pushed wheel barrow decorations and summer lawn chairs off the top of the freezers, anything to slow the creatures down. I reached the end cap and reached up with the umbrella to smash the camera. I leapt over to the next aisle and took out that camera, running back along those freezer cases, also dumping everything as I went. I could hear the Boatswain swearing like a sailor, somehow appropriate, I thought.

I smashed that camera and was ready to jump back to the other end cap on the first freezer aisle when one of the robogaters teeth snapped the air in front of me. Almost without thinking, as the robogater, an impossible shade of Kelly green, opened its jaws to strike again, I jumped down into its mouth with the umbrella spreader between my feet.

My weight drove the semi-sharp tip into and through the robogater’s throat. The spines of the umbrella were forced to open and I jumped out, pulling back on the umbrella. I could hear some of the spines snapping but it was jammed in the creature’s mouth solidly.

The robogater began to thrash around, throwing me back up into the air. I managed to land halfway across the top of the freezer case. I kicked at the glass doors, breaking them and showering glass on the spasming beast.  The noise attracted the other robogater, as I figured it would. I didn’t have anything to hold on to on top of the freezer, it was smooth where I was though there was electrical conduit and a plug strip just a few feet closer to the center of the aisle.  

“You’ve killed him!” shouted the boatswain, and the other man, apparently an idiot, turned around from where ever he was and ran into the aisle to see what I had done.

The second robogater was only about 15 feet behind him. The attack spurred me into trying harder to get fully on top of the freezer, and I managed to reach the central plug strip and pulled myself atop the aisle. Trying hang on to the cable shut out the screams and wet crunching from the aisle below me. The electrical cables pulled out of the thing and I wondered if I could try the same trick twice. Somehow I didn’t think it would work but since I’d knocked everything else useful off the top of the freezer, I didn’t have any choice.

I separated the cables under my body, hidden from the boatswain. He’d stepped out of the manager’s office and was beating on my companion robot, who’d been shouting encouragement and the location of the other robogater, while she could see it. I didn’t need her locator help any more. The nose of the second beast was moving towards me along the freezer case. I could hear glass doors breaking and being torn off as it scrabbled for purchase, trying to climb fully up to my level. I stripped the end of one of the cables and wrapped the bare wire around a protruding metal feature of the freezer case. I pulled the insulation back from the second wire and split it from the first as far as I dared, all the while trying not to move.

“He’s almost there, get up, get up!” my companion shouted.

The blonde woke up and started screaming, she was a couple of aisles over.

The robogater stopped and considered its options. Me, close, bleeding and not moving, Blonde a couple of aisles over, up in the air, but wriggling and screaming like Fay Wray. It went for the wriggling bait, figuring that I could wait.

I struggled to my knees, “Over here, boot leather!” I shouted and crawled out over the edge of the freezer.

“Nooo!” from the companion.

“What?” from the Blonde.

“Humans, they always give up in the end. I told you so,” This from the all too happy boatswain.

Growl. The Robogater turned back and lunged back to the top of the freezer. I grabbed the back of its clawed paw and leaned back, trying to pull it up onto the freezer. Confused, it stopped lunging, then, animal brain augmented by robot brain, decided to go with it.

As soon as its chest was sliding though my blood and it was more or less balanced I let go. Its paw swung down and the claws buried themselves in the metal top of the freezer. I sidestepped and rammed the hot end of the wire into the nostril of the robot alligator.

250 volts shot down its snout and through its brain, along its arm and chest into the freezer case. I could feel the tingle in my feet, but I’d wrapped part of my dinner jacket around the wire as insulation, so I got none of the main shock. A half dozen banks of lights went out and I ran to the next freezer case, then across to the next aisle. I broke another glass jar and cut the woman down.

The boatswain had stopped beating my companion and raced down the stairs. I helped the woman down and we raced for the front doors of the grocery store. I grabbed a cart along the way, having no intention of going around to the doors. I rammed the cart through a glass window. (I’m not sure I could really swing a grocery cart, but maybe under these circumstances.) I lifted the woman out of the store and turned back to face the boatswain.

He was far faster than I’d expected. Again, a beating, but the woman didn’t run away this time and joined the fight. Still, we lost. Muttering something about having earned a Viking Funeral, the boatswain hauled both of us back to my boat.

I struggled to wake up before he could finish dousing the boat with gasoline.  Apparently I wasn’t quiet about trying to get up and the boatswain dragged me into the back deck, which was awash with water, and opened up the large cooler. He forced my head under water.

“Ice and fire, and water. And NO AIR FOR YOU!”

“Nooo!” this time two voices. One I assumed was the blonde, the other was the companion robot.

“Didn’t I break both your legs? Damned but you’re a tough model, loyal, too. Enough of that no time to fix you. I’m not keeping you around for later.”

He let me go, then smashed a bait barrel across the opening of the cooler, pinning me under water. I heard him smashing my companion robot and telling the blonde “Ice and Air for him, Fire and Water for her! Romance and tragedy on the high seas! Nothing for you.” And then the companion robot slammed wetly against my legs, pinning me further. I couldn’t hold my breath any longer.  I drowned, icy pain shot through my lungs, trying to cough the water out but only being able to replace it with more and ever colder water.

I was dead but could still hear what was going on somewhat. The companion had used my trick of stripping some wires; the blonde had recovered them then jammed them in both the boatswain’s ears as he turned to crow over the companion, she held them there until smoke was pouring out. I could feel movement on my legs, the companion, still barely able to move, pulled me out of the water. I couldn’t feel anything.

“Zap him, breath for him. It was frozen water, you’ve only got eight minutes.” I felt the companion collapse across my torso. My eyes were open and I could see her, flesh torn from her frame, optical wiring exposed, organ simulators ripped out. I wanted to cry, to shout, but my heart was not beating and I wasn’t breathing. I just wanted to drift away.  The blonde backed the boat back out into the water, smart girl, get some distance from the shore. In a couple of moments she brought the wires to me.

“Two minutes,” came a thin voice from the companion.

“I…” the blonde bent over me. She was pretty but very beat up, and I could see the shine of metal under one cheekbone. Either she was a robot, a really natural looking one, or a cyborg.

“For me, then?” The companion pleaded with her.

“Hmph!”

She ripped what was left of my shirt away and jammed the wires into me.

 

Ad astra per technica,

FF

 

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