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Cats. Everywhere they looked there were cats.
Furry, pointless little creatures, constantly mewling for attention surround them. Little pompoms of dirty, unkempt fur clutter the platform. Seated on the floor and leaned up against the railing, XBOT 4000, 11-45-G, and K-VRC pet cats, cats of all different shapes and sizes and colours, cats that are staring them down every second they don’t have their unanimous, undivided attention. Cats.
Since the cat first spoke to them, three robots have been sitting on the floor of this abandoned missile bunker adorned with skeletons and dust petting these cats. It’s far more laborious than XBOT had expected. If he had muscles they’d be aching, that’s for sure. Not to mention that, at first, the cats demanded the ‘pets’ (as the leader cat had called them) to be in just the right spot, no more no less. ‘A little more there’, ‘go lower’, ‘now on my head’, it never seemed to end. The only cat that seemed to talk was the leader, though, the others only conveying their wants through piercing gazes. Odd.
But what were they supposed to do? The cats had not yet confirmed or denied the possibility that they would explode if the petting ceased and, with several hundred metric tons of explosives right behind the railing they were sitting against, XBOT and the others didn’t really feel like risking it today!
The existence of the card game Exploding Kittens certainly encouraged the theory. Humans made card or board games about real life things all the time; like Monopoly to represent the decay of their flimsy economy; or Cluedo to simulate how far too many of them enjoyed the concept of murder; or Life… the game. Self explanatory. Look, humans aren’t very creative. Either way, Exploding Kittens could simulate a possible scenario all the same. As to whether or not it’s true… well, who’s to say?
It’s been approximately two hours. Two hours of the most boring, repetitive motion XBOT has ever performed in his entire duty cycle. At least the cats are starting to… power down, it seems? Though, at the same time, so are they in a way.
K-VRC has long since turned on Low Power Mode making him sluggish and 11-45-G had switched to ‘Focus Mode’, whatever that meant when petting cats. XBOT’s battery is looking okay but it isn’t a surprise the smallest bot has to conserve battery; his screen takes up a lot of power. They need to get to the ship.
11-45-G’s thin, articulated appendage stays firm making the same three motions as she suddenly turns off Focus Mode and turns the top part of her pyramid towards XBOT.
“Do you think we will be here forever?” She asks, monotone text to speech echoing a little in the empty space. Well, over the meowing, that is.
XBOT glances around quickly before lowering his voice to a whisper. “Nah. There’s no way, right?”
“What do you suggest we do?”
“Uhhh,” XBOT swerves that question, “What do you think?” He asks K-VRC, nudging him.
The little orange robot jolts awake, his screen’s light dimmed. “Wah-ju-wha? What are we talking about?” He asks, voice sleepy. The little dots that acted as eyes were halved.
“We are talking about what to do about the tiny, possibly explosive creatures surrounding us.” 11-45-G says.
“There are explosives around us?” K-VRC asks, slightly delirious.
“Oh my god,” XBOT sighs, patting the smaller bot on his head, “go back to into Sleep Mode, dude.”
“Sleep Mode?” He asks slowly, shaking his head, “no, I need to keep petting cats.”
11-45-G turns to face the front again. “That’s fair.”
XBOT groans mechanically. “We can’t just stay here forever!”
“That may be a likely outcome,” 11-45-G responds, her thin arm still stroking the keratinous fibres attached to these cats. XBOT had done a fair bit of internal research through his connection to the wide internet. He’s learned a lot about these killer beasts and honestly, knowing your enemy is good but he misses the blissful ignorance a little bit.
According to what’s online, these furry murder machines have sharp, retractable knives, ‘claws’, coming from the ends of their limbs, navigation and balance devices called ‘whiskers’, and a fifth limb to serve no purpose other than balance and conveying their emotions. Not to forget the opposable thumbs, too. Stupid, pointless little demons, although, according to 11-45-G before, they apparently had their own online social network dedicated to pictures of them. Perhaps they once held more social sway than they originally let on. He had found no information on wether or not cats could explode, though. Annoyingly, whenever he searched anything with ‘cat’ and ‘explosion’ the card game would just come up instead of any actual information.
You’d think humans wouldn’t converse with dangerous animals that could kill them but you’d be surprised at their willingness to interact with the cause of their possible death. They often kept dangerous creatures as companions such as venomous snakes, some types of aggressive gecko, and tiny, buzzing insects that would pollinate flowers and commit suicide to only mildly injure a human. Taking all of this into consideration, it would be no surprise if cats really could explode. Humans demonstrated such a carefree lack of self preservation already when interacting with every type of possible death (not even just with pets), it wouldn’t be too far out of their ballpark to say they would all own creatures that could explode if displeased. Their chances of getting out would’ve looked pretty great if there wasn’t the possibility of an explosion (or a few hundred.) Stupid cats.
It’s been so long that XBOT hadn’t really noticed all of the meowing had mostly stopped. The three cats in his lap have long since entered their respective rest cycles and so had the ones surrounding them. The leader cat, the one they had first met, was still awake though, surveying the entire bunker with a watchful gaze.
11-45-G had gone back into her Focus Mode and K-VRC appeared to have given up and gone into Sleep Mode to conserve the last of his battery. Upon seeing him motionless and the cats in his lap becoming agitated, XBOT scrambles closer to pick up his workload. He starts petting the cats who calm down instantly before realising he’s just fucked himself over, because now he’s juggling two different loads of cats at once and leaning in such an awkward position. Curse K-VRC for having the shittiest battery life in all of space time.
After a few more minutes, both lots of cats seemed satisfied enough to enter their rest cycles, freeing XBOT from the burden. Carefully, with surgical precision, XBOT removes his digits as if trying to disarm a bomb.
His hands are free, now there’s the matter of getting up without the leader cat noticing. If they’re going to get out of here, the best option is stealthily. Furry explosives litter XBOT and K-VRC’s legs while 11-45-G is completely surrounded by a moat of felines, their backs looking like ocean waves against the cool grey metal. It’s going to be one hell of a task to get these little bombs off them (he says ‘little’ and yet K-VRC is only a bit bigger than them.)
XBOT can’t think of anything else to do, so acting like he’s surrounded by bubbles he can’t pop, he hopes the cat he’s inching closer to is a deep sleeper and picks it up. As gentle as a robot can be, XBOT sets it down next to him, miraculously still asleep. If he had any breath to hold, he would’ve let it out.
Delicately, he peels the rest of the cats off of his lower appendages. 11-45-G seems to catch on to what he’d doing and uses her arm to sweep the cats surrounding her away. XBOT begins to release K-VRC from his furry bindings but the first cat he touches opens it’s eyes and makes a strange, muted whistling sound with sharp things protruding from the tops and bottoms of it’s intake orifice. Must be the same rocky pegs that GG mentioned humans have—though, the implications are… strange.
XBOT veers back, standing on his kneecaps, danger sensors going haywire as the rest of the cats surrounding K-VRC begin to make the noise.
“I wouldn’t try that if I were you,” the leader cat cautions with a smug disposition, “That’s Knives. He has a bit of a mean streak.”
This time, the skeletal robot tears his hand-indicator away, clutching it to his torso in a frightened hurry. Knives seems to keep up the front, bearing it’s rocky pegs for all to see. Instinctively, XBOT pops his shoulder blaster up, aiming it at the feral beast. At some point 11-45-G swept most of the cats on her side away and ended up behind XBOT, also separating her two sides to bring out her own blasters.
“No need to get aggressive, gentlemen,” the leader cat says smoothly, jumping down from the ledge it was perched on and coming closer. XBOT leans forward and swipes blindly for K-VRC’s arm, not taking his eyes off the leader cat. Once he finds it, he pulls the small, sleeping bot to his chest, the three becoming a huddle of metal and guns.
Most of the cats back up, making the same hydraulic, whistling noise and grouping together. “All we want is a few pets. That’s all. Is that so much to ask?” The leader cat asks, advancing slowly.
“A fucking few?!” XBOT asks incredulously, backs towards the exit. The cats move smoothly around them in a circle, blocking every escape. They slink across the floor like drones flying low, gleaming eyes narrowing dangerously in their direction, daring them to try something.
“You had us busting our cast iron asses to meet your outrageous demands.” 11-45-G retorts, monotone, eye gleaming red. “Even if you do explode, it will be for the better if no living being has to give in to your cowardly leeching ever again. Now get your rocky pegs and misshapen, furry forms out of our faces and go get lost.” And instantly after, GG’s eye phases back to blue, “Please.”
There’s a split second where every single cat pauses to process 11-45-G’s cold tirade, her icy, monotone voice sounding out across the bunker and silencing all willing to try and stop her. XBOT catches that window of opportunity and lets loose.
Guns-a-blazing (literally,) XBOT rapid fires hot, orange blaster bullets which send the cats all scattering like bugs when you lift a rock across the missile bunker. Frantic and chaos, furry blurs zipping away as rapid gunshots ring out across the room, probably able to be heard from miles away. He keeps a tight hold on K-VRC, keeping him close to his chest as he shoots carefully around any missiles.
“Yeah, that’s right! You’d better run! Four-legged bastards.” He yells over the sound of the cats retreating, some howling in pain from the bullets. “C’mon, let’s go before they get any ideas about coming back,” XBOT says, making a beeline for the exit.
11-45-G retracts her guns too, following close behind. “I am seconding that.”
As the two flee the scene, XBOT taps K-VRC’s screen. The battery displays instantly, flashing low. He ignores this and shakes him out of Sleep Mode.
K-VRC’s screen eyes light up and open, him gradually waking back up. “Wha?”
“Guess who’s free of the cats?” XBOT asks, still sprinting full speed. He would grin if he could but settles for upping his vocal enthusiasm meters.
K-VRC gasps, an animated smile spreading on his screen face. “You did it!” He says, looking around. “Where are we going?”
“Back to the ship,” XBOT replies. “We’ll get you all charged up.”
“Yayyy,” VRC whoops lazily, pumping his tiny fist in the air. His arm sways back and forth as XBOT runs, like he’s waving a flag. “I hate low power mode.”
With a nod of agreement, XBOT turns his focus back to running. 11-45-G keeps up easily as he looks back and quick-scans in thermal vision for any cats. All blue. XBOT turns back around, no four legged murder machines to engage in the wild chase of felis catus and mus musculus. Lucky for them. XBOT had thought they would have to keep fighting.
Suddenly, one of the routine glances down at K-VRC is abnormal, an outlier amongst the rest where he looks sleepy but optimistic. Here, his on-screen speaking orifice has disappeared and a cartoonish sweat droplet is present in the top right corner.
“Um. XBOT 4000, you have a little something on your back plate,” GG calls from behind.
“What?” He turns around once again only to see another furry creature clinging onto his back and making the sound , yellowish eyes glaring back at him with thin, violent pupils. XBOT veers backwards, falling over and dropping K-VRC with a crash. In a tangle of furry limbs and otherwise, XBOT wrangles (or attempts to wrangle) the cat off, trying to pry it’s hand-knives out of his circuits, screaming a little too high-pitched and swatting behind him, managing to grab a loose, flappy section of it’s fur to throw it off him. Gross.
XBOT whips his hand around in disgust, trying to rid it of whatever invisible residue he’s convinced is there and scrambling away from the writhing cat on the floor. “What the fuck was that thing?!”
K-VRC picks himself up, wobbling a bit as he dusts off his shoulder joints. “What was what?”
“I’m sorry, did you miss the part where we crashed onto the floor?” XBOT asks as he stands back up, watching the cat dash away to join the oncoming hoard of cats bounding over the horizon. It’s almost impressive. It would’ve been more beautiful if they weren’t heading straight for them.
“That, was a cat, but I will spare you from the sarcastic explanation and instead will, you know, answer your vague question,” 11-45-G says as she breezes past the two bots.
“The thing you grabbed, XBOT 4000, was a loose flap of the cat’s epidermis, commonly called a ‘scruff’ by humans in which the cat’s mother would hold it by, using it’s own rocky pegs.” 11-45-G explains, waiting for them to catch up. “Typically they would only have this done to them as juveniles, however, I suppose you have broken that trend.”
They get up and follow to avoid the tidal wave of cats. “Now isn’t exactly the time for a biology lesson, GG.” XBOT says, getting to his feet, popping up his shoulder blaster again and scooping up K-VRC on the way.
“Less biology, more ethology.” GG adds.
“Yeah, whatever.” XBOT grumbles dismissively. He shoots without looking back, the howling of the affected felines coming from behind them becoming a lovely background noise.
XBOT groans, shooting backwards some more. “What is that dissonant, shrill cacophony?!”
“Busting out the SAT words, are we?” 11-45-G asks, slowing down a fraction to allow the boys to catch up.
“Haha! More like a CATcophony!” K-VRC chimes in with.
XBOT looks down at him, unimpressed. “I will drop you.”
“Pun retracted!” K-VRC holds his hands up in surrender, a goofy smile still persisting on his screen. He’s lucky XBOT will tolerate that much, maximum.
“Where did we park the ship again?” XBOT asks, suddenly realising that they’ve been running in a completely random direction this entire time. “Ey, dude,” XBOT jostles the orange bot in his arms, “Can you bring up the map?”
“Uhh, I would, but—Y’know, low power mode ‘n all,” K-VRC shrugs, smiling sheepishly. “I can’t make holograms on low power mode.”
“Yeah, everyone knows that, dummy.” GG says.
“Oh, I’m sorry I’m not so educated on holograms, considering he’s the only one who can make them!” XBOT snaps back.
K-VRC’s dot eyes shrink and glance around uncomfortably, “You’re sounding very mad for someone who’s carrying me!”
“It is alright. Follow me, boys,” 11-45-G calls, pulling up her internal GPS, no doubt. XBOT rolls the eye that listens to him and obliges, trailing behind 11-45-G and ducking behind an abandoned few pieces of scrap metal formed into a box with one of the sides ripped off and some broken glass in between.
It’s a dark canopy of scrap metal, looks to be some sort of destroyed box once meant for humans to… exist in? To be fair, XBOT doesn’t have much to work with here. It’s a metal box with half the side ripped off and a couple of lines and glass panels. 11-45-G makes her way to the only remaining corner, settling there. XBOT ducks down to avoid hitting his head and sits against the back of the box, still holding onto the smallest.
“Do you think you have enough charge to make a projection, K-VRC?” GG asks, turning her top triangle towards him.
K-VRC smiles nervously, fidgeting uncomfortably in XBOT’s arms. “I see where you’re going… Uhh, I could try, but not for too long or else I might keel over!”
“Great. Think you could get on that, dude?!” XBOT urges, gesturing to the side as the howling cats draw closer in a tidal wave of fur and sharp claws.
“Yeah, yeah, I got it!” K-VRC stumbles off of XBOT, “But I’m just saying, I’m—I’m just as antsy as you guys. I’m the one who’s bright orange here!”
XBOT shrugs and looks back momentarily, choosing to peek over the lip of the empty cavity where only shards of glass remain. Upon turning on thermal vision, doing a more thorough scan than before (more range) and seeing the meowing hoard roaring closer in a red-orange rage, leader cat perched near on a piece of debris, overlooking. There are a lot more cats than they thought… The skeletal robot turns back, frantically darting his eyes between the two. “You might wanna hurry it up, guys!”
K-VRC nods vigorously, joints quietly whirring and zipping as he opens a hatch on his arm, pressing a few buttons before crouching down as a camouflage projection beams from his arm. It envelops them in a cloak of safety under the canopy of ripped and torn metal. Three robots huddle together, still, waiting for chaos to flow around them like water around a rock in a stream. The camouflage pattern bathes them in darkness, the irregular green shapes falling over their iron appendages like dappled light threading through a tree.
And the chaos flows. Balls of enraged, muddily spotted fur tear past their shelter, scratching and yowling and following blindly their leader’s orders to hunt and destroy. Most flow to the sides, some jump off the roof, some don’t even make it past. Raging ahead of them is what feels like a tsunami even though XBOT hadn’t remembered seeing that many cats in the missile bunker. Backup, perhaps?
“What will we do when we get to the ship?” 11-45-G says through the communication devices implanted in their respective CPUs. Easiest to talk in each other’s CPUs rather than out loud when they have to remain camouflaged and quiet. “Just… fly away, I suppose? New destination?”
As the outside roars and howls with bloodthirsty cat vengeance, inside XBOT 4000’s circuits, motors and motherboards it’s silent. He isn’t sure how much power K-VRC has left, how much longer their anonymity can be maintained under shadow and projection.
“Oh, I just realised, you guys,” K-VRC says, “Our cool little earth tour doesn’t have to end here, right? Just because we got a little derailed by some cats back there doesn’t mean we have to leave.” It’s a special kind of languidity that accompanies his voice, small and tired but still just as avid as always. It plays in XBOT’s head, their comm devices built in when they met each other.
“What do you mean?” 11-45-G asks.
“I mean, like, how about we go and see the upper echelons of human society when it was falling apart?” K-VRC asks. XBOT can feel him slumping against his side, voice becoming slower. “I’m sure it’ll be just as cool to see. It doesn’t have to end at the bunker. Not if we don’t want it to.”
“You just realised that?” XBOT asks, making a conscious effort to say it using his inside voice and not to blurt it out loud. He wraps an arm around the small bot’s shoulder joints, under his head, jostling him in an attempt to wake him back up. He fears if he doesn’t they’ll get the scratch treatment from who-knows-how-many-cats, or worse, get roped into the forever-pets again. “Getting a little sentimental about this whole vacation?” He asks, trying to dull his own concern for how dim and sluggish K-VRC is becoming, muted fright building up under his outer plates and weaving it’s way through his circuits.
“Maybe not sentimental. I just don’t want it to end! I’ve read so much on the WI about this place, so many cool things and I just wanna show you guys.” K-VRC smiles, eye-dots halved, the white light of his screen dimmed. His wrist projection flickers a little as if every quiver and twitch of the army-green light is another tick on the invisible clock of safety. “I wanna see it, sure, but I wanna see it even more with my two best pals.”
XBOT pauses. It’s silent inside again, silent in his friends, too. He thinks that’s what the word is. Their little bubble is sealed away from the chaos, threatening to pop, threatening to cut their trip short as soon as they change their minds. But right now it’s silent. He can’t feel things being only something made of cast iron, a processor, a fusion battery. But this… well, whoever gave him sentience, his creator, the person responsible for making him self aware, able to get angry, scared, to get attached. They might’ve made a big mistake.
“Perhaps not for sentimental reasons but have to say I am agreeing,” GG says. And not-so-suddenly XBOT looks out on the desolate wasteland that used to be human’s domain with no rush of feline creatures following the leader cat’s demands. As if their figurative timer had stopped as soon as they were on the same page, able to push continue. No cats are rushing past anymore though they are still lingering around, the last of the few to dash past them in the search for the pets and affection they were probably always provided by humans.
Loopy, K-VRC laughs, “Oup, here I go.” And immediately after saying that, the small bot’s arm hatch closes, ending the projection. And it’s only a little endearing this time, as if all of the pressure disappeared, all the snakes of worry slithering out from between XBOT’s inner workings. His screen goes black and he collapses backwards, reverting into Sleep Mode, but not before both XBOT and 11-45-G are there to catch him.
And yet again it is silent, not even the whir of an internal fan or the moving of mechanical joints or the unpleasant grind of metal against fine dirt stuck between the cracks. All is calm and the metaphorical storm has ended. K-VRC is tugged closer again, close enough to be cradled safely like a teddy bear, limp and dead weight but still comforting.
“Why didn’t they explode?” XBOT asks after a minute of surveying their surroundings.
“Erm,” 11-45-G swivels her top pyramid to look around before turning back to him. “Kindred spirits?”
“That doesn’t even make any sense,” XBOT groans, “and that’s his line!” He adds, gesturing to the small orange bot in his lap. And after a moment of silence the taller of the two sighs. “So they couldn’t explode then?”
“I guess not.”
“So that’s it?” XBOT throws his hands out towards the sides. “All we had to do was call their bluff?!”
“I suppose so.” 11-45-G brings out her arm just to shrug it. “Although, in a way, this has upped my personal enjoyment tenfold.”
“Fucking what?” XBOT stares bewildered, triggering his jaw-dropped function. He shakes his head, groaning. “What were those humans called—the ones who jumped off cliffs only attached to one strong elastic band and, like, jumped out of their kind-of-primitive flying tubes and stuff? Overall dangerous stunts for no purpose other than exciting them and making their peers concerned?”
“Uh. Adventurers? Thrill seekers?”
“Up your street talk meters.”
“I don’t have those. Adrenaline junkies?” GG suggests.
“Yeah, those. That’s you.” XBOT 4000 stands up, inspecting the broken panes of glass in their box shelter. “The fuck was this thing, anyway?”
“This appears to be the remains of a car, a box-like shape that looked sort of like an old model of ship except with far less lights and far weaker windows. They were made mostly of steel, plastic, aluminium, rubber and wheels.”
“Ooh, humans’ favourites.”
“Yeah, they never really let go of those since they made them.”
“Okay, now that’s giving them too much credit,” XBOT says, scoffing. “Humans didn’t make circles. They looked at them and accidentally had a good idea.”
11-45-G parts her two sides to shrug them before moving over to stand next to XBOT 4000. “The idea behind these was to transport humans from A to B automatically instead of just by using their legs, although, they still had to tell it what to do using sticks, twisty knobs and buttons. A primitive version of our automated asses, clearly. Powered by gasoline, a mixture of volatile, flammable liquid hydrocarbons derived from petroleum and used as fuel for internal-combustion engines located in the front of the car, no human would want to walk their tiny legs ten miles through an industrial metropolis, so they would drive these instead.”
“I bet at least some of that was paraphrased from the internet.”
“What do you think I’ve been doing this whole time?”
“Fair enough,” XBOT says. “Seems pretty convoluted. What was wrong with walking?”
“Well, evidently humans did not run on fusion batteries. Instead they relied on muscles which would get tired after any such strain like walking. I suppose it is like us with our ship, in the sense that we will take advantage of it rather than have K-VRC fly us across the galaxy with his rockets. Though, we still do have the upper hand as we cannot get tired.”
“What?” XBOT asks incredulously. He would’ve thrown his arms out in surprise if not for the aforementioned third party occupying them. “So humans’ individual parts ran out of power sometimes? Like, they all had mini fusion batteries in every single appendage?!”
“In a sense, yes. Except that these ones recharged themselves automatically after a couple of minutes to a couple of hours depending on the severity of the strain. Whereas humans would charge their internal CPUs at night in their charging ports they called ‘beds.’”
“Damn. Humans just name everything something stupid, don’t they?”
“Yeah, well, that’s humans for you.”
XBOT 4000 pauses, retracting what he was going to say. The weight in his arms and the stark lack of a third little voice is too distracting, too odd. Like its absence is louder than otherwise. The rag-dolled weight in his arms just keeps bashing him with the reminder that they’re missing a piece, that they shouldn’t continue yet, that there’s still something they need to do first, unfinished business.
“It doesn’t feel right, does it?” 11-45-G says out of the blue.
“Nah, it doesn’t,” XBOT sighs. “We should get this sorted out.”
“I agree. Let’s bring our friend back.”
“Well,” XBOT says shrugging. “What are we waiting for then?”
If 11-45-G could nod she probably would’ve. Instead, her eye travels down the track to look at K-VRC and then back to the top, bouncing up and down to simulate nodding a head she doesn’t have. It looks like the ball the two convinced XBOT to bounce in one of the first places they ever visited here.
“Let’s go,” she says, turning the top of her pyramid towards him. XBOT nods back.
—
After there’s silence, there’s a whirring of confirmation that no, he isn’t going to stay in the dark forever. The dark that’s comfortable but unnerving, the only sound being the low hum of a charger buzzing life into his every joint, circuit and LED pixel. As expected, exactly 2.5 seconds after the first new noise, light starts as a line drawn across the screen and cuts into the dark, blipping on once and opening the curtain for light to stream through.
Certainty returns to him as the world reforms in front of his simulated eyes. For a moment it’s blinding but soon after he remembers where he was and what he was doing before, two faces K-VRC definitely recognises coming into view. The whole process takes a couple of seconds but his smile is instant even if he does feel two times heavier than usual, like the nuts and bolts holding him together have loosened: they haven’t. He’s sure of it.
“Hey, there he is!” XBOT 4000 waves, bending down a little to meet his eye, an action often done mockingly. They don’t often verbally acknowledge the height difference but oh, sometimes. XBOT knows how to remind him. “Feeling recharged?”
“How are you, K-VRC?” 11-45-G asks, coming into view, her eye sliding down to eye level curiously (his eye level, anyway). He sees the lens behind the casing of her eye shift, constrict, like she’s squinting at him.
“Fresh as a daisy!” The little bot simulates stretching and unplugs from his charger, hopping off the surface and spinning. Upon reminding himself of the days previous events (he hasn’t got the best battery time but it doesn’t take a day to recharge!) he laughs. “What ever happened with the, uh, the cats? Did they finally decide to leave us alone?”
“Ehhh,” the skeletal bot shrugs. “‘Decided’ is a little ambitious. We kind of just evaded them until we got to the ship.”
“Call it cowardly but it worked, so, win-win for us I guess.” GG says, reaching out her thin arm to pat him on the head and making a clunking sound. “Glad you’re feeling better.”
K-VRC nods and before he can ask his next question he stops himself, looks back at XBOT and 11-45-G, tries to gauge whatever conversation they had after he powered down. Were they going to leave? Stay? The small bot shuffles, anxiety lodged uncomfortably between his circuits. Was there even a discussion about it?
Because while K-VRC is certain his friends enjoyed their time here, would they even want to stay? Here? In a place that tried to kill them? Nobody would enjoy staying in that kind of place. It was GG’s idea to come here but K-VRC feels as if he’d enjoyed it more than anyone, maybe. But at the same time, maybe since now they’re back on the ship, back to safe familiarity, maybe they could discuss it. Maybe, provided he hadn’t already, he could try to change their minds.
“So…” he begins, his digits fiddling together and looking up at his companions. He tries not to seem as invested as he feels. “Verdict? On the whole leaving thing?”
“Well, why don’t you take a look at our current course?” GG suggests, ushering him over to the control panel of the ship. K-VRC does as he’s asked and hops up on the stool they brought specially for him to scan over the ship’s dashboard, finding the course set.
If K-VRC had a heart it would leap with joy. Earth, just a different part.
The orange bot spins around, beaming from his screen and bowing his head playfully. “You guys!”
“Yeah, well, we thought about what you said,” XBOT notes, walking over to them and waving a directionless hand around as he talks. “…for about three seconds. It wasn’t really a hard decision to make.”
“Extending our vacation definitely sounded like the most appealing option. Additionally, I was thinking the same thing,”11-45-G says. “This is by far the most exciting post-apocalyptic planet I have ever seen. It’s got it all: wreckage, drama, a species we can call stupid and make fun of.”
“Yeah, ‘exciting’ alright,” XBOT rolls his orange eye, the blue one he took from the console earlier staying lazily in place. “More like downright deadly. Hey—you know those cats couldn’t even explode? Such a fucking scam.”
“Whaaaat?” K-VRC crosses his arms. “Lame. Wait so, what do they do then? Just sit around for humans to take pictures of and post onto online social media conglomerates dedicated to them?”
“That and the whole ‘slavery by pets’ thing, yes,” 11-45-G says. “It appears that they have no point other than to serve as the living, breathing subjects of humans’ photographs. Online empires have been built and collapsed. Pictures of specific cats even attracted enough attention to make the feline and the owner famous on previously mentioned social media conglomerates. Sculptures, paintings, simplistic cartoonish doodles. All of these have immortalised these creatures in humanity’s history books for eternity, cementing the idea that, even though they are pointless, they are possibly one of the most influential beings on this planet.”
K-VRC and XBOT 4000 take a look at each other, long and a little uncomfortable. And then they look back at GG.
“Yeah, didn’t warn us this time either,” XBOT mutters.
“You’ve gotta give us a heads up, jeez, you can’t just—it’s too much at one time,” K-VRC groans, screen covered by his hands. These rants need to stop or at least have some kind of warning on them. They make his CPU work too hard.
“Yes, yes. Got it,” GG interrupts, eye blinking blue for every beat that she talks, it sliding down as if narrowing at them. “No need to be salty, boys.”
XBOT 4000 rolls his orange eye and crosses his arms. “If they didn’t make me salty they didn’t make me right.”
“We know,” K-VRC chuckles quietly. “Anyway, where exactly on earth are we headed?”
11-45-G swivels and whirs towards the ship’s dashboard, K-VRC and XBOT trailing behind her. “Well, after you powered down, XBOT 4000 and I had talked about a human transportation device. A ‘car’. It got me thinking about other methods humans used to get around and, while I think of other places we could visit, we could check those out.”
“Oooh!” K-VRC smiles, expanding his screen eyes. “Sounds fun!”
“Not only that, but I thought we could build up to the class elite of human society as you suggested by going up the ‘wage ladder’ one step at a time. We have already observed what some of the middle class would do. Bounce balls, eat nutrient mass, take pictures of cats.” 11-45-G says, bringing up a line diagram on their hologram screen. One end was tinged red, one green, most likely representing the range of wealth. “All riveting things but we could stand to see the other two ends of this line.”
“Here, you can see where we just looked at,” 11-45-G says, pointing her arm around the mid-left portion of the line where a circle pops up to mark it. They are located just around where the line begins to tinge red. “This is the middle class where the average human will fall. There are many differences between the two ends of this line. Most are economical but there were also clear social differences between the two as well. The ends live in vastly different areas too, so it should give us a unique experience every time.”
“Sounds great!” K-VRC says, energetically twirling around to jump off the stool. Before he reaches the ground his forearm plate is grabbed and he looks up at XBOT who’s dangling him a couple inches off the floor. He ignores this.
“So, where are we going? As in, what kind of area,” XBOT asks, placing K-VRC onto the ground.
“I have charted us a course to another part of the country we were already in. A low income area, so it may look different from the city from before,” 11-45-G says, bringing up pictures of the place. It seemed to be on a website where people reviewed different places on earth.
K-VRC gasps, running up to the dashboard and staring up with a grin. “Ooh! I know this! It’s ‘yee-ulp!’”
“The fuck is ‘yee-ulp?’” XBOT asks, following K-VRC’s gaze to the logo in the corner of the screen.
“It’s this website on the earth specific internet where humans leave reviews on different places and accommodations and they’re usually pretty normal, but every once in a while you’ll find a gem!” The orange bot says, glee in his eyes. All of the reviews on-screen are dated for sixty-one years ago or so and there are hardly any functioning picture links but some still appear. One of the reviews features a simple two words: “Shit hole.” There is a picture attached to the review of a strange, faded-blue rectangular box with a door out in what looks to be the middle of nowhere.
“Most humans would review things on here seriously but sometimes you’d find people doing reviews satirically,” K-VRC says, cocking his head to the side and zooming in on the review. “This… looks like one of them. I think.”
“You would probably find you’re correct.” 11-45-G flits through the reviews, all droning on about the same thing. “I was looking earlier and, as I had predicted, nobody seems to give a shit about this place, and yet they all have the time to go on pointless tirades about it online to try and get other humans to agree with them.”
“What, like, actually?”
“Humans were very codependent creatures,” 11-45-G says, shrugging her two sides and rolling back to face them both. “They craved validation and would lie constantly if it would mean people would think they were the littlest bit interesting, when in reality—“
Suddenly, GG stops. “This is your warning.”
XBOT and K-VRC look at each other and nod. “Alright. Go on,” XBOT says, crossing his arms and leaning against the dashboard.
“When in reality, they were all just strangely shaped piles of mush all screaming for a nonexistent divinity to save them from the mess they created by being stupid dummies. They were all in fucking-themselves-over together and so if they could earn one other human’s approval, especially one they held in high regard, then it was worth more than winning an actual, meaningful award.”
“That one wasn’t that long!” K-VRC smiles, planting his hands on his leg joints and walking over. “Thank you for the warning.” He pats her base triangle.
“Yes, well, you asked.” 11-45-G says, moving back over to the control panel as a notification pops up on the screen. “It looks like we’re here.”
K-VRC looks up towards the screen and then all three heads turn towards the opening door of their ship. The familiar rumble of landing purrs underneath them, the door opening a slit of light. And then a rectangle, and then the light fades into a dirt-covered concrete. The sight that greets them as they walk slowly towards the outside isn’t exactly a pretty one.
They appear to be in a residential neighbourhood, the small houses look torn apart and yet they’re still in a messy row, still holding together. Like everywhere else, parts of skeletons litter the place, sprawled across the street. The painted white lines on the tarmac under them are cracked and faded, random tarps, shopping carts, pieces of cracked road and shingles from roofs are scattered everywhere, big pieces of sidewalk cracked and strewn about the place, one even seemingly flung into a house, the building crumpled from the impact.
All new opportunities for exploration and knowledge and fun with his friends. K-VRC smiles up at the two, taking off forward and spinning around to face them. “Well? What are we waiting for, guys? Let’s go take a look!”
11-45-G’s arm extends, picture device in hand and K-VRC blinks at it, staring into the lens. “Say terabyte.”