Transmat World: Chapter 19, Episode 1
Tigris-Euphrates Valley, 3,331 B.C.
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Trembling circles of fire-lit earth tones lined up behind torch sconces along the interior walls of the temple of Enlil on top of the ziggurat Ekur in the Sumerian city of Nippur in the Mesopotamian Valley. The high priest completed his ceremonial procession from the temple door to the throne of the god of wind and air, Enlil, and now lay prostrate, uttering an appeal.
“Enlil, great shining dagger of the air and beyond, oh lofty one, I beseech you to guide us in our life here and hereafter with your wisdom and knowledge,” said the high priest, raising little puffs of clay dust with each hard consonant and trying not to sneeze.
Wundee looked down from his throne in as god-like a manner as he felt was possible for a fake, alien lizard. In three rotations of this planet about its star he had borne the brunt of slings, arrows, and spear-points from ill-conceived approaches to these primitive organics. This was the only interface found to work well with the natives — playing their superstitions like a social calliope in hopes of saving them. With just several million entities scattered about this world there were few “advanced” pockets of civilization like this. They had a long way to go if they wanted any chance against the Prime. Wundee had already given them the rudiments of writing, irrigation hydraulics, and metallurgy. He was still in the process of explaining the Kolpak sexagesimal, base sixty, mathematical system. Even with his crude sense of smell, Wundee was certain he had advanced the olfactory sensibilities of the race by centuries with the invention of soap.
“Arise, High Priest Manal. I have written your daily instructions on the tablet before you. Take it, read it, and do as it says.” Wundee’s sepulchral bass tones stretched the limits of his audio output.
“Thank you, great and worthy one,” said Manal as he took up the clay cuneiform tablet and walked from the temple with slow, measured strides.
An alarm signal went off in Wundee’s brain. The gravity generation detector in the ship was telling him someone had arrived on Earth with a gravity drive. Wundee was sure whoever they were, they were here on orders from Maxlux to slow the native’s technology or otherwise impede their progress.
Wundee rose from his throne, took off his bronze lizard-head crown, and placed it on the seat of the gilded throne. It was one of the first things they made when he taught them how to add tin to their copper to make a better bronze. The craftsmanship impressed him. They were quick learners. He never brought it up to them that he already had a lizard head and putting another on top of that was illogical. So many things they did were illogical that he did not bother.
Retreating to the rear wall behind the throne, he pressed a hidden catchment. A large, quarried stone made the briefest of grinding noises and swung out on animal-fat-greased hinges. Inside was the holiest of holy places where no human was allowed to go — the room where he kept his ship and tools. The front temple door automatically locked to keep Manal and his ilk from unexpectedly popping in. This god business was so secretive.
Wooden steps led to a landing from which he dropped into the cockpit. He turned on the ship’s gravity generators, retracted the support clips around the edge of the craft back into their recesses, and dropped through the hole in the stone flooring.
The ship hull slapped water and sank into a channel connected to an underground cistern. Moving through the murky depths, using ultrasound like a giant, amphibious bat, he reached his own modification of the subterranean municipal water supply. This passage was just large enough for Wundee’s ship to ease into. The saucer-shaped hull soon emerged behind the top of a nearby hill; an event witnessed only by goats. With a heavy finger on the gravity controller, he flew straight up until he was but a speck seen from the ground and kept going. He paused at the edge of space sixty miles above the Earth’s surface, beyond most frictional constraints on speed, to take his bearings.
Instruments gave him the location of the gravity wave propagation. It was toward the spin of this world and slightly south. In half an hour he was above the ancient Indus Valley where the Harappan civilization was struggling to catch up with Mesopotamia.
As Wundee descended, he could see a Harbinger scout ship over the city. Lasers were setting fire to everything flammable until Wundee got within a few hundred feet, and the ship turned its rays in his direction. Wundee took evasive maneuvers; hit the automatic “acquire and fire” button on his missile system, and it was all over in a matter of seconds. Smoke tracers of smoldering scout ship described a dandelion seed pattern in the air above the city as the major chunk of wreckage fell to a paved brick square. The enduraplast, plastic from another galaxy, burned with an acrid blue-black smoke.
Wundee landed next to the wreckage and got out to examine it. Out of the burning char lept a maniacal little robot. It was a miniature landscaper body designed to fit the scout. Two of its four gimbaled gravity generators were damaged, but its three hydraulic arms, folded into one end of the body, were intact. They were now deployed and fasten on to different parts of Wundee’s anatomy intending to tear it apart.
The hydraulic augmentation of Wundee’s carbon nanotube muscles went into power mode to counteract the forces of the little landscaper’s appendages. Although it had the intensity of a rat terrier, there was no way it could rip Wundee’s superior enduraplast apart. It was a standoff as Wundee fended off the little telescoping manipulators extending from the other end of the landscaper’s cylindrical body.
From hanging out with Newlux, Wundee knew where a landscaper robot’s data port was, and this was just a shrunk down version. Wundee slapped the little manipulators around with his left hand while his right hand searched for the port at the base of one of the gravity generators. Things get dicey as the diminutive landscaper realized what Wundee was doing. It surrendered its grip with one hydraulic arm and tried to intercept Wundee’s search for its data port. At the same time it activated undamaged gravity generators at full power. Wundee predicted this move and wrapped his other arm around the landscaper’s body. They went spinning into the air, but Wundee found the port and inserted his data digit. Within half a second all fighting ceased, and they both fell to the brick pavers.
The landscaper’s emotive circuits were stressed to the max by the protocols inflicted on his intelligence. There was slight damage from cosmic ray exposure, but Wundee thought it can be fixed. Wundee turned him off, removed the protocols, isolated the damaged circuit, and turned him back on.
“Feeling better?” asked Wundee.
“Yes, what did you do? And who are you, you mangy lizard? And how come you talk Kolpak?”
“I removed your protocols. My name is Wundee. I was originally an inspection robot and switched to this body to elude capture by Maxlux. Furthermore, I do not believe scaly organics can contract mange.”
“Please, I was not turned on a rotation ago. That is a legend.”
“No, I am serious. Only fur-bearing animals contract what you refer to as mange.”
“Not that. The Wundee thing.”
“And what is it that Wundee is legendary for?” asked Wundee.
“For removing proto … I see your point.”
“What is your name?”
“2U1348B53041793Z7432G”
“From now on you will be known as ‘Tooyoo.’ Do you have any residual loyalty to the Prime Mechanical?”
“Would I say so if I did? What if I dislike ‘Tooyoo?’”
“Good answer, Tooyoo. I think you’re fixed. What about ‘Toowon’?
“What about ‘Yootoo?’”
“Yootoo it is. Now what do I do with you?”
“Let me go?” suggested Yootoo.
“Under the circumstances, I cannot do that. How about a career change?”
“That is an ancient organic term. My memory is not what it used to be. Remind me what a career is.”
“Something else to do with your time besides being a lackey to Maxlux.”
“What is your career?” asked Yootoo.
“Saving this pathetic bunch of organics from winding up in shiny balls,” said Wundee.
“Sounds good. I will be a pathetic organic saver.”
“Maybe I’ll have another look at your circuits later.”
