SCRAP, page 11
“He’s talking about us,” Gnat informed Paige helpfully.
“An’ you know what? She lied to you too,” added Scrap. “King of the Robots, am I? You -zk- saw what happened back in the arena. Nobody believed I was K1NG – they took one look at me and laughed. This is my punishment for helpin’ the humans – a lifetime as the lowest of the -zk- low, stuck in this good-for-nothin’ junk case for the rest of my good-for-nothin’ days. That’s what I got for pickin’ the wrong side. No -zk- offence.”
Gnat sniffed.
“You’re still going to help us though, right? You’re going to help us find the ship and rescue Mum?”
Paige let out a strange, stifled groan as she pushed a hundred terrible feelings back down into the pit of her gut.
“Let him be, Gnat,” she said. “You heard him. He can’t help us.”
The three of them sat for a few moments, watching the rain start to ease.
“Yesterday, on the train,” said Scrap, breaking the silence, “you asked me if I could turn my dreams off.”
“Yeah?” Paige said as a question.
“I leave ’em on ’cause, if I’m lucky, I dream of bein’ him … of being K1-NG again,” he explained. “I leave ’em on ’cause then I stand a chance of bein’ someone other than -zk- me for a while.”
“If you hate that case so much, why didn’t you let them upgrade you?” Paige asked. “Why didn’t you let Gunner shift your core into a new body?”
“I couldn’t upgrade without givin’ them my core-code, could I?” Scrap replied. “If they’d found out I was K1-NG … well, you heard what Gunner said – Second Suggestion or no Second Suggestion, she would’ve -zk- killed me. And if not her, then someone else. Back in the war, I junked dozens of cases, fightin’ for the humans. We’re in enough trouble with that hunter, without the whole -zk- city turnin’ on us. So I’m stuck like this. I can’t upgrade, not ever. Which means I’m no -zk- good to anyone. Not you, not your sister, and not your mum.”
Paige looked away. “I could do it.”
“Do what?” Scrap asked.
“Shift your core. Mum showed me how.”
Scrap’s laugh escaped like a cough. Paige glowered at him.
“Wait, you mean it?” Scrap gasped. “You’re -zk- serious?”
“Mum taught me about robots every day. It was all there was to do. I’ve learned design … programming … repairs … and upgrading,” Paige said. “If we had a case to put you in, yeah, I reckon I could upgrade you.”
Scrap rubbed his temples for a long moment. “An’ you didn’t -zk- think to mention this earlier?” he howled.
“You didn’t think to tell me you were King of the Robots,” Paige snapped back.
“That’s not the … that’s a totally different … I could have … argh!” Scrap’s scream echoed through the alleyway. “There were a -zk- thousand empty cases on the Pile! Any one of them would’ve been -zk- better than this! Now we’re stuck in the middle of the city with no charge! Where on Somewhere are we going to get hold of—”
Suddenly Scrap saw stars. A galaxy flashed before his eyes in the sweep of a cape. An instant later he, Paige and Gnat were engulfed in darkness.
Scrap wasn’t sure how long he and the humans had spent bundled and buffeted in blackness as they were transported who-knows-where.
It was long enough for him to wonder what terrible fate awaited them, but not quite long enough to work out how to escape. The one thing Scrap did establish was exactly where they were. The faint glow from his left eye illuminated the inside of their cloth prison just enough for him to make out the myriad shapes decorating it.
A star field. They were inside Morten Prometheus’s cape.
“Morten is going to let you out now,” a voice whispered at last. “Please do not shoot your hand into Morten’s face…”
Scrap was about to give Morten Prometheus a piece of his mind, when he saw a blinking red light appear in the darkness.
Paige had found her grenade.
“For cog’s— Would you stop tryin’ to blow us up?” Scrap snapped. An instant later, all three of them tumbled on to a well-polished floor. Morten Prometheus towered in front of them, drenched in rain.
“Morten agrees – please do not blow us up,” declared Morten Prometheus. He dropped his cape on the floor and raised his huge arms in the air, as if in surrender, adding, “Morten is not good with violence.”
“Ha!” scoffed Scrap, resting his hand on his flattened chest panel. “That’s rich, comin’ from a prize fighter.”
“That is theatre,” replied Morten Prometheus. He watched Paige disarm her grenade before returning it to her satchel, and breathed a loud sigh of relief. “Morten batters ’bots in the Strongbox, but it is all for show – it is pretend.”
“You’d know all about -zk- pretendin’, wouldn’t you?” sneered Scrap. He jabbed at his flattened torso. “What’s the big idea, kidnappin’ us? Haven’t you done enough damage?”
“Morten is very sorry about slightly abducting you,” explained the enormous robot. “Morten did not know how else to get you here … and did not want to leave you like that.”
Scrap clenched his fists as Morten reached out towards Scrap with both hands. He yelped as the great robot grasped his torso. With the now familiar sound of buckling metal, Morten effortlessly bent Scrap’s body back into shape.
“There,” added Morten, with an apologetic smile. “That is better.”
“Better than -zk- junked maybe,” Scrap huffed. “Not exactly what I’d call an upgrade though…”
“Sorry also about somewhat treading on you – Morten panicked because you knew about this case,” Morten said, holding his hand to his chest. “Who are you?”
“I’m Gnat-Bot Ninety-Nine and that’s Paige and that’s Scrap,” Gnat loudly interjected.
“Morten is happy to meet you and happier that you did not blow us up,” said Morten with a smile. “Please, make yourselves at home…”
Scrap might well have been struck by how different Morten Prometheus sounded to the self-assured bombast he faced in the arena, had he not been so distracted by his surroundings. Morten had delivered them to a disarmingly bright and spacious apartment. Dawn light poured in through long windows on the far wall, offering a bird’s-eye view of the city below. In a large sunken area in the centre of the apartment was an assortment of colourful furniture – sofas, tables, chairs and, in one corner, a grand piano. Paintings covered the walls, and on every surface and piled in big, strange mounds were countless objects – cabinets, cupboards, crockery … clocks, kettles and clothing… fridges and washing machines … well-tended house plants … tablets and tele-screens … remnants of lives that the long-gone colonists never got to live.
“Where -zk- are we?” Scrap asked suspiciously. “Where did you bring us?”
“This is Morten’s home,” Morten explained. “And these are all the things.”
“I love things,” Gnat squealed. She leaped to her feet and began racing around the room, pinballing from one remarkable object to another. In no time, she spotted a bright red bicycle propped up against a sofa. “Paige, he’s got a bike. Morten, pleeeease can I have a go on your bike?”
“Please have all the goes. Morten is too big for it anyway,” said Morten. He looked around proudly at his collection of objects. “Morten has won every ’Bot Bout this season so Morten has a lot of charge to spend. Morten spends it on the things.”
As Gnat leaped on to the bike and began pedalling it unsteadily around the room, Scrap squared up to Morten.
“Where’d you get all this?” asked Scrap. “This is human stuff, from before the -zk- war.”
“We do not say war, we say Difference of Opinion,” Morten replied. “And Morten has never once met a human, so instead Morten collects human things. Morten likes the things. To collect the things is to learn about human ways. Morten wonders if humans are not just monsters made of violence and bad ideas and possibly slime. The things remind Morten of simpler times, when life – when Morten was … simpler.”
“Before you stole that -zk- case, you mean,” growled Scrap. “You’ve got some brass neck wearin’ a case that’s not—”
“Scrap, look!” Gnat screamed, thrusting a teddy bear that was easily as big as he was in his face. “Toys. I love, love, love toys.”
“Oh yes, Morten collects those things too,” said Morten, keen to change the subject. He reached under a nearby sofa and dug out half a dozen board games. “Do you like puzzles? There are so many puzzles…”
“I. LOVE. Puzzles,” squealed Gnat, giddily crashing the bicycle into a mound of brightly coloured beanbags. She leaped to her feet as Morten laid the board games in front of her. “Paige, actual puzzles,” she said, “like the ones Mum made but not rubbish.”
“Gnat, don’t touch anything,” Paige told her. “We need to get out of here, as soon as— Wait, are those books?”
Paige’s jaw fell open as she gazed upon a table piled high and fit to topple with stack after tower of books.
“Oh yes, books on everything,” Morten said delightedly, making his way to the table as Paige picked up one entitled A Colonist’s Guide to Identifying Aliens. “Morten has read that one and that one but not that one. That one is very good. It is about germs.”
“I love germs!” Gnat screamed. “You’ve got the best things ever.”
“Who -zk- cares,” Scrap shouted, pursuing Morten across the room. “See, I know your secret, ‘Morten -zk- Prometheus’. Oh, you did a pretty good job of disguisin’ the case – new paint job … new plating … but there’s one thing you missed. Lift your foot.”
“Foot…?” repeated Morten.
“Lift it!” Scrap barked. “There are two letters scratched into the heel of your right foot – ‘DB’, for ‘Dandelion -zk- Brightside’. A human scratched those letters. And I should know, ’cause I was -zk- there when she scratched ’em!”
A distracted Paige was suddenly dragged back to reality. She dropped the book she was holding as Morten lifted up his right foot and used his finger to trace the tiny letters carved on its sole.
“‘Dandelion Brightside’… So that is what it stands for,” he said quietly. He looked back at his foot, then peered at Scrap with wide-eyed fascination. “Then it is true – you are him,” he continued. “The Robot Renegade… The Mechanical Mutineer … the enemy of robotkind … K1-NG … King of the Robots.”
“Obviously,” Gnat whispered to her sister.
Scrap didn’t move, but his arm fell loose in its socket again.
“An’ if you tell a single soul who I really am, I’m goin’ to dedicate the rest of my long life to makin’ sure everyone knows whose -zk- case you’re in,” he said slowly, deliberately. “How do you think they’ll feel when they find out you’re basically their sworn -zk- enemy?”
“Morten is not sure they will believe you, if the Strongbox is anything to go by,” Morten said, his tone sympathetic. “How did you end up in – like this?”
“Well, it wasn’t just so you could tread on me,” Scrap replied, clenching fist and claw.
Morten smiled. As he shook his head, his smile turned into a chuckle.
“Actually, you trod on me first,” he said.
“What are you -zk- talking about?” Scrap grunted.
“Before Morten was ‘Morten Prometheus’, Morten just had a core-code – M0-TN. Morten was a shovel-bot,” he explained. “If Morten was not shovelling this, Morten was shovelling that, all day, every day, and the day after that. Morten shovelled before the humans landed, and when they arrived, and after they were vanished. Just shovelled and shovelled and shovelled. How Morten loved to shovel. You know where you are with shovelling. It is honest and straightforward. Being a shovel-bot makes sense.”
“Paige, I want to be a shovel-bot,” Gnat whispered to her sister.
“The Difference of Opinion made a mess of the city – rubble and wreckage and ruins – and that meant we shovel-bots were needed,” Morten continued. “Morten was suddenly in the middle of a fight – a real fight – and then suddenly, there he – there you were. K1-NG, the most powerful robot on Somewhere Five One Three…”
“King of the Robots!” interrupted Gnat happily.
“Shovel-bots are not known for their speed,” explained Morten. “If anything, we are known for—”
“Shovelling?” suggested Paige.
“Shovelling,” confirmed Morten. “By the time Morten saw that ‘DB’ coming towards me, it was too late,” he continued, turning back to Scrap. “You stepped on Morten and did not even notice. Morten spent the next five years with a dented shovel. When you are a shovel-bot, there is no greater humiliation.”
“I prob’ly had a lot on my mind, what with almost single -zk- handedly fightin’ a war,” muttered a chided Scrap.
“Morten does not hold it against you,” said Morten. “But Morten is also grateful to have had the opportunity to squash you back.”
“Fine, we’re -zk- even,” Scrap huffed. “Still doesn’t change the fact that you’re walkin’ around in another ’bot’s case. How’d you end up with it? You’re not tellin’ me a shovel-bot could’ve disguised—”
“Is that the time?” Morten said with faux surprise. “Morten must power up!”
He stamped over to what looked like a large refrigerator, with the words
emblazoned on its front.
“What? Don’t you dare shut -zk- down! I deserve an explanation!” Scrap roared as with a sudden TSSSSS and a low whirr, the robot’s huge barrel chest folded slowly open to reveal his core, nestled among wires, pistons, hydraulics and cogs. From the side of the battery he dragged out a wire with a plug on one end. Then he plugged it into his core, sat on the floor and crossed his legs.
“Feel free to have a go on all the things, and please do not leave and reveal my secret to the Somewhere. Also, you are locked in, so you cannot.”
“Wait, what? What are you -zk- talkin’ about?” Scrap blurted, but Morten Prometheus had already fallen into a deep, immobile sleep.
Scrap, Paige and Gnat were trapped.
Scrap limped over to the door and banged on it with fist and claw.
“That case-takin’ gub! He’s locked us in!”
Before he’d realized that his angry hammering was doing more harm to his hands than the door, Paige had hurried to the window. She searched in vain for a way to open it, before peering down into the darkness. New Hull – the city of a million cubes stretched out far below them. Without warning, memories of last night’s dream flooded her mind – of giants and hummingbirds. Paige rubbed her eyes. “It’s a long way down,” she noted. “Anyone know how to fly?”
“Wake up, you!” Scrap barked, giving the currently comatose Morten Prometheus a feeble kick. “Wake up, so I can knock your -zk- block off!”
Paige checked the display on his vast power battery –
“Maybe half an hour or more till full charge,” she said. “Why would he lock us in here?”
“I don’t know,” replied Scrap, giving the door one last feeble thump. “But he’s just turned this place into a prison.”
Gnat had already pulled her helmet off. “I’ve never been to prison,” she said, excitedly pouring a jigsaw-puzzle-filled box all over the floor. “But I think we can spend one or ten hours here at least.”
Paige rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t help smiling at seeing her sister so happy. Her mind raced with ideas of how to escape (most of them involving the grenade stashed in her satchel), but then she began to peer around the room. Despite the abduction, Morten Prometheus seemed to be less threatening than the other robots she’d encountered – and his home was filled to bursting with an excess of objects she had often imagined but never seen. She decided she could definitely think of worse places to be cooped up.
“We dreamed about stuff like this in the Foxhole…” Paige said, more or less to herself. She took off her helmet and satchel and placed them on the table next to the books. She’d just started leafing through a book entitled So You’re Moving to Somewhere?, when she spotted a familiar object propped up against the far wall. It looked like a microwave oven, with a clear door on one side, and what appeared to be a typewriter mounted atop it, with brightly coloured symbols on each key.
Paige gasped.
“Is that … a Food-O-Copier™?”
“What?” Gnat screamed. She raced across the room so quickly that she kicked up a bright cascade of puzzle pieces. By the time Scrap reached them, the humans were both huddled around the mysterious box, and their squeals had become almost inaudibly high-pitched.
“Does it work? Let me try…”
“Don’t jab at it…”
“I’m not jabbing, you’re jabbing!”
“It’s warming up…”
“Paige, it’s working!”
“I don’t mean to interrupt,” Scrap huffed as the hum of fully functional technology filled the air. “But don’t you think we’d be better tryin’ to find a way out of this—”
“Scrap, look!”
Gnat spun round to face him. Her hands were cupped, as if she was cradling a newborn kitten. “Look,” she whispered again, happy tears welling in her eyes. “It’s a cupcake.”
Scrap had no time to inspect the cake before Gnat crammed it into her mouth. “Tayssteeee!” Gnat squealed with glee, spitting cupcake crumbs all over Scrap’s face.
Paige quickly pressed another key on the top of the machine – in a flash of colour and a promising hum, a glossy red apple materialized inside. Paige sunk her teeth into it without pause.
For the next ten minutes, Paige and Gnat were engrossed with the Food-O-Copier™, pressing every button and gleefully eating everything it produced – tasty approximations of food neither of them had ever eaten – fruit, biscuits, bread, sweets, even – messy as it was – soup. Then, at Gnat’s insistence, they produced enough food to fill Paige’s satchel five times over. Before long, the Food-O-Copier™ was all but buried among cupcakes.
