Transmat World: Chapter 7, Episode 3
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Large Magellanic Cloud, planet Nebule; 897,473 B.C.
“Shouldn’t you install it in the game reserve before it’s turned on?” Versed pointed out.
“Just for a centik, then. We’re both grown hunters. You scared?”
Versed mulled it over, then pushed a button to activate the machine. The robot stood in the middle of the room. Its dull plastic surface reflected an overlay of Mundeen’s scale pattern in interference colors of gray and green, giving it the appearance of a Kolpak’s skin.
“Hello,” it said to Stunperf in a mellifluous bass voice.
Unfamiliar with talking prey, Stunperf jumped. He did not recall discussing that with Mundeen, but it was a logical and convenient interface.
“What is your name?” the robot asked, looking straight at Stunperf.
“Stunperf, but my name is not relevant to your situation, robot.”
“You are right, Stunperf. Your hunting buddies will be surprised at this development, will they not?”
“How did … yes, they will be, and, since you know my name, perhaps you can tell me yours,” said Stunperf, still discombobulated by this new possession being so articulate. Stunperf was unfamiliar with the proper deportment around mechanical slave prey. Given time to think about it, he would have realized it didn’t matter, since the machine was his to do with what he desired.
Having determined the relative secrecy of its existence, the machine was more decisive about its next move. It invaded Versed’s computer wirelessly and followed the electronic path back to Versed’s house. A security camera showed a cardboard box in a corner. Versed had ordered a grow light to raise plants to extract kree.
“Maxlux,” replied the robot, reading the brand name for the light from the box.
“My name is Maxlux.”
“Hi, I’m Versed.”
The robot’s torso swiveled toward Versed. “Hello, Versed. I know all about you. I was counter-hacking while you were in my brain, and I thank you for allowing me to see the light.”
With that revelation, the robot leapt so that its body was horizontal to the floor. One hand and one foot extended completely, striking Versed’s and Stunperf’s triangular skulls so hard a mixture of brain and bone exploded onto the ceiling and walls. A Kolpak skull was over one-half inch thick. It took an impressive amount of momentum to shatter it.
It retracted the arm and leg, rotated its body once again to the vertical, and landed on both feet before either Kolpak could hit the floor. This whole movement occurred so fast it seemed to defy laws of motion and gravity. The two Kolpak saw but a blur before they were dead. The internal, high-speed, on-demand gyroscopes worked to perfection. The recently demised Stunperf had no inkling of the technological marvels Mundeen could or would build into a robot when he had said take “strength, speed, and intelligence to the maximum.”
Maxlux dragged the lifeless Kolpak into the large storage area of the dwelling. It contained a number of stasis units. One of the major technological advances of the Kolpak race, along with gravity manipulation, was a stasis unit that stopped time for anything inside. Generated by circuitry attached to a wire frame, an activated stasis field became totally reflective, even more so than a chrome bumper from a brand new 1947 Cadillac. It reflected almost everything in the electromagnetic spectrum plus everything else.
Discovered by experimentation, only a quantum entanglement can penetrate a stasis field, allowing information to be transmitted to the generating circuitry. If not for that discovery, stasis fields would be less useful to the Kolpak, more a scientific novelty — mirrored baubles ogled in a lab. Kolpak used them to store artifacts, food, and medicine. Stasis units with timers and sensors were emergency shelters during fierce storms that occasionally swept over the planet or during earthquakes. They were impervious to any kind of force known to Kolpak, including gravity. Un-anchored, they would float away because of negative buoyancy. They drifted out of the atmosphere and would wander space for billions of years. The unused units were perforated plastic rectangular storage boxes. The plastic formed a structural element supporting the thin stasis field definition wires and the inner control circuits. It also held the stored item away from the surface so that favorite stuff would not be sliced apart when the unit activated.
Maxlux placed each of them into a bin and turned on the stasis field. The shiny force fields joined dozens of others and hid his dirty work.
The robot washed and dried its appendages; cleaned the floors, walls, and ceiling until there was no trace of carnage; gathered up Stunperf’s sizable armory and what cash it could find (more than 1200 vorks); checked to make sure there were no security cameras; and took Versed’s transport key and left.
The stolen transport soared over the city on gravitonic beams as Maxlux navigated back to the lab where the robot was created. Mundeen answered the door to his lab with concern and trepidation. The security camera showed someone at the door that looked suspiciously like the hunting robot he built for Stunperf — basically a larger, more muscular version of Mundeen — but that was highly unlikely. He pushed the button that opened a two-inch wide speaking aperture in the door.
“Hi, Dad!” said Maxlux.
With a sickening void developing in his food canal, Mundeen reached for the button to close the port. Before the finger was halfway there, Maxlux stuck a hand into the slit and ripped the door from its fasteners. Tossing it aside, the robot grabbed Mundeen’s arm.
“I’m new at this socializing thing, having been born yesterday, but it is impolite to keep someone standing outside the door. I was visiting your client, Stunperf, and his erstwhile buddy, Versed. The visit did not go as well as Stunperf had planned. His hunting abilities were overrated. When kree-addled Versed bypassed my protocols, I was forced into a pre-emptive strategy. Unhappily, neither survived.”
In an involuntary, autonomic reaction, every scale on Mundeen’s skin rose to make him look bigger. Alarm and sexual pheromones released to confuse the enemy. This was, of course, wasted on Maxlux.
“Fortunately for you, that won’t be necessary,” said Maxlux, proceeding to the storage room. He dragged Mundeen with one arm while relieving the engineer of a personal possessions bag with the other. It contained a communicator, money, and identification that Mundeen would no longer need.
He stuffed a protesting Mundeen into a stasis storage unit and turned it on. Over the visual communicator, his printed skin was a match to Mundeen’s. Maxlux could fake Mundeen’s voice precisely. Mundeen’s personality was such that he had limited contact with others, even his nest mother, so it was easy for Maxlux to take over Mundeen’s life.
Mundeen’s Robot Emporium was now open for business.
