The Search for Ball Zero (14 page)

They all exchanged glances of disbelief and
got closer. They could see skin, at parts interwoven with tubes or
machinery. They dug at the metal, uncovering as much as they could.
There was a human in there, or at least part of one. It was a human
chest, all the way up to the neck, then above that it was all
robot. The chest went down to around the belly button level, it
didn’t have a belly button. but below that is was all machine
also.

“
Fuckin thing’s a
cyborg!”

“
A robot with a human
chest inside it? What the hell?!”

L noticed, “Look how long it is.” She
pointed at the side of the chest and her

pointed finger rose as she began counting
each rib. She got up to 20 ribs before being too grossed out to
continue. “It’s not human. Not a real human.”

About 100 yards away the forest floor lit up
in spots, search lights shining through the forest cover. Two
drones were heading their way.

No one had to say anything, they all took
off in the general direction of running up the hill, they all knew
to meet at Camp Rawk 2, hoping to see Fozzie waiting for them.

Eventually they made it back to camp, Fozzie
was sitting there, almost with a

smile, but panting heavily. The drones
didn’t follow them past the dead bodies.

“
Holy shit! Where are we?
In some fantasy world? Cyborgs, cannibals,

seriously?!” Perry let out.

“
Should we turn around?” L
asked.

Tony just shook his head, he didn’t
know.

Perry was opening his Fear and Loathing
suitcase, got out a mirror, lined up a

bunch of white stuff and did a giant line.
He stood up and danced in a circle after, motioning to L and Tony
it was their turn.

“
Woooo whooo.” His nose
grimaced, “It’s what Eric would’ve wanted.”

They obliged. Perry grabbed the mirror and
held it out for Fozzie, she licked it

clean. Her nose wrinkled after, and she made
a questioning face.

Perry’s eyes were wide open, his face you
could say looked wide open, “Shit

just got reeeeeal.”

They stayed up for most of the night,
talking about the best course of action. It

seemed they all wanted to stay and go on.
They were on a quest now. A quest to at least see this mysterious
tower. They were Gunslingers, like Roland, they had not forgotten
the face of their father. They were in a fantasy land after all,
some strange forest that had been here all along. They all agreed,
some Lobstrosity meat would be great right now.

The group went to sleep right before
sunrise.

Inside an Elossa warstore cockpit, there was
a quiet “woosh”-ing sound. A door opened and the Captain walked
confidently in, clicking his new shoes on the new cockpit floor.
Two armed guards close behind.

“
Are they here yet?” He
asked impatiently.

The supervisor who seems to be in charge is
caught off guard,“Um,” He looked

around,”No sir. Not yet.”

The Captain is not happy. “Why did you say
“Um?” He asks evilly.

This time the supervisor is not caught off
guard,”I was awaiting a new report, Sir!” He said confidently.

Lazily the Captain replies in a high
voice,”I don’t like “Um””. He pointed at the supervisor and his
guards grab him and drag him away.

“
Are they here yet?” He
asked again, to everyone in the cockpit.

An eager employee, not in a supervisor
uniform jumped up and said loudly,

“
Yes, sir. They are on
radar. What do you want to do Sir!?”

Like the Emperor from Star Wars the Captain
replied,”Promote him. You are now in charge when I’m not here.” He
continued like a snake,”Test out the new AI.”

The eager employee’s chest badge changed to
an new color, now he is the top

supervisor.

The new 2nd in command yelled out,”Initiate
combat AI 1.0”

The group weren’t asleep more than an hour
before being woken up by the

extremely loud sound of a fighter jet flying
by them. They all jumped to attention. Perry was packing his stuff
before being fully awake.

“
Ohh shit, look!” Tony
noticed something, pointing down where the warstore

was.

It was moving.

They scanned around everywhere, trying to
figure out what was happening. There were two jets circling the
area. The jets had US symbols on them. It was the stand off before
a fight, warstore VS the US Air Force.

“
It’s going down!” Perry
grabbed some binoculars out of his pack, jumped up

on a tall rock and looked through. “We got
front row seats to this shit.”

The one jet that didn’t just buzz them was
far away on the other side of the

warstore, lowing. A quick burst of smoke and
it released a missile, heading directly at the warstore.

“
Ohh shit!”

Three lines of swirling smoke quietly
launched from the warstore’s chest. They

intercepted the missile and blew it up,
roughly half way between the fighter and the warstore. They saw the
fiery mid-air explosion, then a few seconds later heard it. The jet
adjusted its vector for a strafing run, and the line of fire went
right into the warstore. The fighter laid into the warstore with
everything it had, guns blazing. From the vantage point of the
group they saw some puffs of smoke come from the warstore.

The second jet was coming in for an attack
run now, from behind the warstore.

“
Ohh shit, they’re fucking
it up!”

Same thing, jet fires missile, warstore’s
anti-missile system shoots it down. But

after that this time, something that looked
like a flock of birds emerged from the warstore. No one knew what
they were looking at, metal birds, flying robots, they wouldn’t be
surprised if it was dragons after the last few days. The flock of
birds turned towards the vector of the jet. The jet unleashed its
guns and took out a bunch of the metal birds. As the flock got
closer they finally made the connection, it was a flock of drones.
As many of the drones that the jet destroyed, new ones filled its
place. On the second pass of the jet, all the drones in the drone
wall launched tiny missiles. In a flurry of smoke and pit pat tiny
explosions, like flak popping all around the jet, the jet took
hits. The jet flew straight through the popping smoke and came out
the other side on fire and going down. It smashed into the side of
the mountain at full speed and made a big, movie like explosion.
They could almost feel the heat from across the valley.

The first jet was back for another run, it
fired one more missile which hit the

drone wall this time and exploded. The
explosion took out most of the drones, but they did their job
protecting the warstore. More drones filled their spot without
hesitation and in perfect formation, a new drone wall was carrying
on the fight within a few seconds. Soon the second jet suffered the
same fate as the first and went down in a hail of drone mini
missiles and flak. The pilot ejected, Perry watched the ejected
pilot through binoculars. If he had a sniper rifle he could
probably get that really hard Titanfall achievement “Pull”.

“
Woops” Tony
said.

“
That thing just owned the
US’ best planes in just a few minutes?” Perry
questioned.

“
And it will just roll
over any tanks.” L added.

“
What the hell can stop
that thing?”

“
It seems unstoppable. And
they’re gonna roll out a new one every week.”

“
Nothing’s unstoppable. We
all know that. But they are going to roll out a new one of those
every week. That’s a gnarly thought.”

“
We’re in a fucking sci-fi
movie.”

L looked at Perry and Tony,”Your dreams have
finally came true.”

Perry interjected,”This ain't my dreams
woman. You don’t wanna see my dreams.”

Back in the Elohssa warstore cockpit the
Captain raised a lip after watching his AI in action.

“
Excellent.” He said in
his best Mr Burns impression. He then stood up and walked out of
the cockpit, slowly clicking away. He stepped over the body of the
previous supervisor and waved at it like “Take this dirty thing
away.”

After the warstore was long gone they went
down to bury Eric’s body. The tall

robot body was gone, tracks leading into the
forest. Eric’s body wasn’t. They buried him right there, dipped
into Perry’s suitcase and told stories about Eric all night. It was
like he was there with them, laughing the night away.

They camped for a few days, not hiking. They
were uneventful days, which was

good, they needed to recharge their souls a
bit. Friends were dying left and right, their reality had been
shattered and they were thrust into a real life, kill or be killed
R rated science fiction movie, or maybe it would be rated
NC-17.

They decided to start hiking again. Sadly,
they had to scavenge Eric’s pack

before leaving.

“
He has 2 glocks in there
and a lot of ammo.” Perry noted. “L, you should probably be armed
from now on. No one’s fucking around out here”

L went into the pack and grabbed the pistols
and a bunch of ammo. “Here.” She said and looked at Tony holding
out a handful of boxes. “There’s too much for me to carry. Are
these the same type of bullets your guns use?”

“
Yeah,” Tony said,
grabbing the boxes. He started making room in his pack. “They’re
all the same guns. 9 millimeter Glock 19s. They all have 15 shots
per magazine, just so you know. Have a few magazine’s loaded so you
can quickly switch them out. You don’t want to have to load 15
individual bullets when someone is shooting at you.”

L pulled out a magazine, not for the gun, it
was an old porn mag, she laughed. “Anyone want this?”

“
Haha Eric was old
school.” Perry grabbed it and started flipping through
the

pages, “Maybe I’ll keep this for those cold
dark nights when my cell is dead.” He saw something he liked,
“Nice.” And he shoved it in his pack.

“
Want this?” L asked,
pulling the old Mr Bungle shirt out Eric had borrowed

from her. “It smells now.”

“
Fuck yea!” Tony yelled.
“Toss it here!”

The only thing left was Eric’s underwear
and socks, and he was known to be a dirty guy who never showered.
After a week in the wilderness, no one wanted to touch those
things.

“
The Bear Grylls in my
mind is saying we should take everything. In a survival

situation everything counts.” Tony thought
out loud.

“
Ok then you take it.”
Perry laughed.

They restarted their trek North, leaving the
sad little pile of smelly socks and underwear in their wake.

They hiked for days. Nice, but sometimes
eerily uneventful days.

“
How big is this place
again?” L asked.
“
I heard like 3000 square miles.”
Tony pulled out his phone and looked it up.

“
Yea on wikipedia is says
about 3000 square miles.”

Perry did the math out loud,”If that’s a big
square, how big would that be?” He made math sounds, “50 miles
width by 50 miles length would be 2500 square miles.”

“
Yea somewhere around
that, a little bigger.” Tony agreed.

They had noticed their cell phones GPS
stopped working as soon as they entered

the fence. They all silently did the math of
how far they thought they had hiked, all coming up with various
wrong answers. Fozzie was closest.

On the 3rd night, they saw a fire a few
miles ahead of them. It was small,

probably a camp fire. They laid low that
night, putting out their fire once they noticed. On watch, each
person stared at the fire intently. Waiting for any sign, ready to
wake up the others. But the entire night was uneventful.

In the morning, they discussed what to do.
The only other fire they ever saw

was the first time they saw the cannibals
get burned by the drones.

“
We should go check it
out.” Perry stated.

“
Maybe it’s a cannibal
camp.” L said.

“
Either way, we should
check it out. But not walk up to ‘em and announce our presence.”
Tony continued, “I say we check em out, stay undetected, see what
they’re up to. They might be cannibals, but they might be like
us.”

L and Perry looked at each other in
confirmation. They got up, got ready and

took off.

“
I’m so sick of fish.”
Perry complained as they left Camp Rawk.

“
Maybe those cannibals
can hook you up with some Rocky Mountain Oysters.” Tony laughed.
“
I’d eat a ball right now. As long as it wasn’t a fish
ball.” Perry laughed back.

“
Do fish have
balls?”

After a few hours of hiking they reached a
good vantage point over the camp. There were makeshift lean-tos,
what looked like a long term fire, it was near a river. The camp
was almost fully encircled by the reaching hills of the valley.
Open to the river on one side and the mountain to their back on the
other, it was a nice camping spot. Besides the fact that their
campfire was visible for miles at night.

They were humans down there. About 30 or 40
of them. Most were clothed in

a grey yellow, hospital-like robe. Many were
bald.

“
Looks like a bunch of
cancer patients.” Perry wondered.