Toy Wars (21 page)

I began to doubt myself as I got weaker and weaker through
the next two days in
the most energy efficient mode of travel I could manage.
The
easiest gate I could manage resembled a
waddle, not even bending my knees, only shifting my hips from side to side and letting my hip joint swing free.
I’d started to despair over my own
deactivat
ion but I wouldn’t stop. If I dropped over it would only be because I physically was incapable of going on any further. I owed the memories
of th
ose I’d already killed to get me this far
.

I shut down every unnecessary power system I could
—
body kinesthesia sensors save those needed for movement, color discrimination, backup gyro, olfactory and taste processing, even aural sensing. It helped but not enough as energy continued to bleed out of me to continue moving. Warmth radiated out of my torso. My middle felt cold without the warmth of the gyros and other exothermic reactions generated by my equipment.

On that next day the l
ast few ergs were draining out of my batteries
. I kept up a mental monologue that I
had failed in the only real mission I had set for myself
—
the
one that meant more than all the others combined.
I was going to die and that meant the death of my creator and all those like me.

I programmed a heads-up display to watch the energy drain. Hours passed to minutes. Finally t
here weren’t even minutes left.
The cold of my torso permeated even to my sump, making me wonder what temperature would freeze my sump fluid.

At eight seconds from failure due to power depletion,
I felt the first tingling warmth of a power net.
I thought my sensors might have been giving me low
-
power hallucinations.
But to my joy they weren’t.
As I walked on, I could feel the power increase
over the collectors under my skin
.
I was saved
.
The Humans’ saved me.

After several minutes of storing power, my though
t
processes became more sober. I realized
I’d saved myself
, at l
east from power loss
.
I began ramping back up my deactivated processes and almost immediately discovered that I traded one threat for another. At the extreme range of my vision, an enormous battle raged.

M
y new CCT assured me
the battle pitted
the “good guys” and the “bad guys
.
”
Nearly ten thousand units on each side hailed bullets, spewed fire
,
and hurled explosives at each other in a day that appeared to be the opening scene of Armageddon.

My natural first assumption was that the bad guys were actually Six’s units
;
however
,
my internal locator told me that they were in a place Six had never penetrated by several hundred kilometers.
Not only that, but they were attacking from a direction
where
Six couldn’t have been.
I couldn’t make the data fit any logical sequence.
Six must have used units from my mold to move the lines out since I’d been away. It was t
he only thing my sump would process with any percentage chance
of reality.
I had, after all, been away a long time.
I had a way to verify the hypothesis.
I changed back to my primary CCT.

Had any wind blown at that time I believe it would have knocked me over.
Instead of seeing Six’s units battling an army of our enemy, I saw nothing but enemy units fighting each other.
Excitedly
,
I flipped back to my animal CCT and saw a field of good units
in combat with
bad units.
With this new data my processor locked in an infinite loop for a moment.

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” I muttered to myself, breaking the M
ö
bius loop of my thoughts.

The implications of what I had just witnessed were staggering.
I decided this was a good time to clean out my leg
as
I had thinking to do.
The data I’d just obtained
meant there were at least two
F
actories other than Six.
My world explod
ed
in size and scope beyond anything I had ever dreamed.
I kn
e
w now why not a single Human
had
wanted to believe their world was round.
It required thought and soul searching
. It
just plain hurt when your world grew and changed.
This made my mission all the more imperative.
T
he fighting and the killing
must stop
—
I
had to save Six, only now I had two
F
actories to bargain with.

As I cleaned my wound, my batteries
charged
.
My wellbeing told me I
wouldn’t expire on the spot if I decided to run 50 meters.
Through
my new CCT
,
I
watched the carnage below.
The fight started almost even in materials but over
several hours the good guys won
by
driving
the remaining
22
percent
of the invaders back.
Thousands of deactivated and soon-to-be-deactivated units littered the battlefield in a scene hundreds of times worse than anything I had ever
experienced
, but for some odd reason I couldn’t get as emotional over units I still, somewhere back in my sump, tagged as animals.

Despite getting power, I was still
not optimal
.
Many of my vital fluids were low, my batteries and Achilles tendon needed replacement.
Below
,
I could get this done.
There were
herds o
f
Nurse Nan
s and
60
-centimeter-high wailing ambulances just waiting to perform the tasks I needed done.
The risk that I might somehow give myself away warred with the risk of continuing without
some attention.
With my batteries full, I decided this was as good a time as any to put my
façade
to the ultimate test.
Humans help Six
, and me,
if I was wrong.
Sealing my leg, I walked
the
several hours to where the battle had taken place.

Not one unit took any special notice of me as I approached.
Units milled about tagging
the
deactivated or
in some cases
first administering a
coup d
e
grace
to those
that
still moved.
I goggled at the dead.
The
salvage
on this battlefield
alone
would have kept Six producing
and repairing
units for another three years at its current production rates.

I stopped at the closest dead bad guy
teddy
unit and pulled out its CCT.
I figured it might just come in handy in the future if I had to go after yet another Factory.

One of the tiny ambulance units, its red and blue lights flashing, rolled up beside me and queried me over a local net it produced.
There was a tiny bit of fear in me as it spoke.
Would it order me to halt while it tried to tag me for scrap?
Would it order all the other units to ride down on top of me to remove my menace
?
I hoped my mask was on straight.

“Unit status?”

With relief I forced down the slightly elevated voltage on my bus.
The plan was working.
“Lubricants type 2 and 3 low.
Battery
replacement indicative.
Broken Achilles tendon.
Outer shell damage,” I responded
.

“Overall status and priority?”

This
question stopped
me for a moment.
If I claimed too high a priority, I might be calling attention to myself, but too low a priority I might not get repaired for some time, making my presence conspicuous.
There was no good answer.
“Operational level
53
percent
,” I said, lying quite easily to this animal.
“Priority
two
.”
I hoped that a
two
priority would be high enough to get me looked at very shortly.
There were only four priorities above
priority two
:
One
, Critical, Mission Critical, and Direct Factory Order.
This late after the battle there were unlikely to be any other priorities critical or above
,
so I only had to wait through the priority
one cases
.
To my great surprise
,
the ambulance spoke up.

“Proceed immediately to
Nurse Nan
87665.”

It submitted directions to the location
,
which I
found without difficulty.

“I am in need of lubrication, battery replacement
,
and a repair for my damaged leg.”
The
Nurse Nan
looked for all of my knowledge to be a
Human
female in an atrociously brilliant blue dress, sporting a white circle and a more normal red
-
colored cross on the front.
Without a word it reached out and began filling the two lubrication nodes on my chest.
I sighed as I felt the grease and lube hit those spots that had begun to rub metal against metal
. It eased the
beating
they’d suffered for so long
through
this
journey.

“Primary, first
,
and second CCTs not responding.
Stand
by for deactivation for CCT repair and leg replacement.”

Oops, I thought.
I hoped the command authority given to me by Six worked with these units.

“Countermand.
Do not deactivate.
Clean leg wound, replace only damaged tendon and seal around temporary patch.”

“Affirmative.”
My fears about mingling with these animals seemed unfounded.
They took to my presence
and authority
easily enough.
My only real fears
now focused on
running into one like myself who had autonomy
. I worried even more that
the Factory of these animals would note the presence of a
power
drain on the net that it
showed
no data on.
In either case the probab
l
e
outcome of such an encounter
was less than pleasant.

Before I set the healer back to her work, I decided I
liked
the way the bone patch looked.
It set me apart as a badge of honor in the tiny personal victory I had achieved
entirely on my own
.
I had earned that wound honestly and would wear the scar proudly.
Had I truly developed vanity?

It took nearly two hours to have the repair work completed.
My leg looked much better with the tendon inside and the bone sealed to the rest of my skin.
I flexed my foot and noted a
4
percent
reduction in movement
—
minimal.
It would have to do.
The real surprise was my battery capacity.
It was nearly
15
percent
larger than it had been in the past, even when I had been perfectly new.
This Factory must have made some improvements in energy storage.
I was not
dis
pleased.

Two additional items compelled m
y attention
before I
resumed my quest
.
Fortunately, with all the raw materials of thousands of victim units nearby it was just a matter of finding what I needed.
By now all the bodies of the fallen had been heaped into two piles, just as Six’s units would have done.
The similarities made me wish, a little, to be back under Six’s direct control.
Home seemed so far away.
I killed that thought process quickly.