Badger lay in the near dark, his face dimly lit by the soft blue light from his smartpad. He smiled as he flipped through pictures of he and Clancy from their high-school days, rock climbing in the Palatial Desert . They’d skipped school and gone in the morning when no one else was around. A soft blue sky like a fading pair of jeans and a golden sun. There was a picture of him standing behind her, the two of them smiling.
Setting his smartpad aside, he put the mysterious box they’d found on the ship on his lap and started to play around with different combinations. Then, he noticed a small glass panel. It was so covered in grime he hadn’t seen it before.
Clancy tossed and turned. She’d tried sleeping on one of the torn up couches, but no. Then, she’d found an old silver utility blanket and tried sleeping on the floor. No. She kept thinking of Badger just over there in his bed, probably looking so cute she couldn’t stand it.
Unable to sleep, made her way to the hyperdrive location. She’d noticed the corrosion on the contacts. Damning Badger and his infectious optimism, she decided to clean them. Using a brass brush, she buffed the contacts, cleaning off the grime. “Hyperdrive…” she mumbled, “...as if.” No one would accuse Clancy of being a positive thinker, but she had her own form of hope. “The universe can’t keep dealing me shitty hand,” she tolf herself. One of these days I gotta catch a break.
XTZ stood outside the yard. The spaceship waited beyond a tall fence of wire mesh. Her sensors indicated the yard possessed a security system, but it was not turned on.
A flame emerged from XTZ’s hand, and she cut a hole in the fence. She approached the ship, reviewing the floor plans she’d been given. Her mission parameters directed her to either find and retrieve the Box or confirm it wasn’t there.
Scanning the ship, she frowned. It possessed shielding that blocked her scanners. Not standard for a Corsair. Mildly intrigued, she interfaced with the control panel and the ramp began to lower.
Clancy heard the ramp lowering. Her first thought was– Badger. Then, she sensed danger. Something didn’t feel right. Something didn’t feel Badger. She’d always had good instincts. She pulled back into the shadows and flipped a switch. When she brought the contacts close together, hot blue energy sparked between them. Some instinct told her to shut the power off again– for now. She flipped the power off.
XTZ’s head popped up. She’d heard the buzzing of the arcing Hyperlight She moved ahead, feeling a little excited at the prospect of an interesting encounter that might actually challenge her systems.
In his room, Badger wiped the filth off the plastic screen. It had a deep ruby color, and as the grime was cleaned away, it flickered to life. A gentle night breeze tossed the curtains to the front and back windows. He wondered what he should do.
XTZ entered the hold. Clancy assessed. It looked like some girl, but she didn’t recognize her from school or around. Probably some social media nut. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” She said. “Get out of here.”
XTZ’s eyes lit red and a ray scanned over Clancy. “Common human female.Do not interfere with me. Do not move. I will not harm you unless you make it necessary.”
There are three things likely to cause the human mind to activate the fear center in the brain: the novel, the uncanny, the fantastic. That fear center will then motivate one of three behaviors: fight, flight, or freeze. For Clancy, the club girl with the glowing eyes checked all three boxes. Clancy had had seen such a thing in more than a movies, had encountered them in video games, but to see one in real life, to have it scan her? She froze. Most of her froze. Her mouth decided it wanted to have a conversation.
“What are you?” She asked in a whisper.
The Machine’s emotions triggered. She smiled. “I am XTZ-Alpha, and you should be impressed. I am a commando class asset, especially designed to penetrate enemy lines and acquire assets.” XTZ had a full read out on Clancy’s bio-metrics now. “Did you find a metal box?” Clancy’s heart rate increased at the mention of the box.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She took deep breaths, grounded herself counting five things she could see, four she could hear. Years of mindfulness meditation.
XTZ tossed her hair, a wicked smile spreading across her face. “You lie.” She walked toward Clancy, her movement slow and sleek, like a cat closing in on its prey.
“I’m not lying,” Clancy repeated. “When we–” Damn. She realized her mistake.
“We? Where is the other?” She approached, nearer and closer until she was in Clancy’s personal space, so close their bodies almost touched.
Clancy stared into the robot’s eyes. “I meant me.”
“I’m designed to extract information,” XTZ said. “I told you that.” She cupped Clancy’s chin and squeezed. “I will learn what I want to know. The only question is how much you will suffer.”
Clancy’s senses intensified. She saw and heard and heard it all from the gentle beeping of the control panels to the dust mites drifting down from the ceiling, the flesh-like hand of XTZ on her chin, the beating of her heart.
She’s not a girl, Clancy reminded herself. She’s not alive. She pressed the hyper cables against XTZ’s ribs.
XTZ grinned and chuckled. “Biounit. “There isn’t any power in those cables.” She let her hand drop from Clancy’s chin.
“I know,” Clancy said, using her elbow to flip the switch back to the on position. XTZ lit up, her body surrounded by the white blue hyper charges. Her eyes went wide. Her limbs shook and then a thunder clap and she found herself launched across the cabin, slamming into the wall, then thudding to the floor, smoking. The room filled with the smell of smoldering tech– melting plastic and alloy.
“I should run… I should run…” Clancy whispered to herself, but instead she crept toward the robot. Its clothes and skin had burnt and melted. Clancy could see gears and wires inside. She paused and then just nudged the robot with the toe of her boot. It shifted, but then rocked back to its previous position.
“I killed a robot,” Clancy said. ‘I can’t wait to tell Badger I…”
XTZ’s hand clasped around her ankle. She felt her foot being yanked out from under her and crashed hard against the floor, her skull bouncing off the hard metal, a swarm of stars swirling in her eyes. XTZ stood, still smoking, but her skin and clothes were in the process of repairing themselves. “I would kill you now,” she said, forcibly yanking her jaw back into position with an audible pop. “But I need information.”
A needle slipped out of her wrist, its wicked point gleaming. She grinned and leaned down, bringing the needle toward Clancy’s eye. Clancy tried to turn her head away, to squeeze her eyes shut. XTZ grabbed her head and forced her to look at her, pinched a nerve in her neck that forced her eyes wide. “I could jab this anywhere,” she said, “but I’m going to stab it right into your soft, jelly eyes, human, and then that eye will rupture and be blinded.”
“Go ahead,” Clancy said.
Back in his room, Badger had finished cleaning off the box. He once more found himself laying on his bad, the box in his lap, looking at the panel he’d discovered. In his usual “why not” way, he put his thumb on the panel. Nothing. He hit the box on the side. The panel lit up with a strained, electronic whine. Badger put his thumb on the panel for a second time. The box popped open with an electronic whine. “Hunh?” Badger sat up.
XTZ froze as she picked up the signal from The Box. It took less than a millisecond for her system to identity her target. She bolted for the door.
Clancy climbed to her feet and stumbled after her. Once she reached the hatch, headed down the plank. “Badger!” She shouted. “Watch out!”
Across the way, XTZ smashed the front door to Clem’s house to splinters and then entered, arrays of red, green and blue scanner tendrils circling around her.
Badger half fell, half jumped out of his bed. He heard a loud crash, felt the house shake. “What the–?”
Clancy’s voice reached him. “Badger! Watch out!”
Footsteps raced up the stairs– thump thump thump thump– The front door to his room burst into splinters. He shielded his eyes, then looked to see some kind of girl but she was surrounded by energy, her eyes blazed with crimson light. His brain froze, not sure how to respond. He shook his head. “Dude.”
The Machine stalked forward, scanning Badger, confirming he was another squishy biounit. A newly formed subroutine activated. “Step away from the box. Do not seek to make contact with me.”
He heard more footsteps on the stairs. “Badger!” Clancy called. “Badger.”
“Run,” Badger said. “Don’t come up here.”
Too late. He saw Clancy emerge on the landing. XTZ could see in every direction at once, so she didn’t need to turn her head to now track Clancy. Why did these bios have to be so stupid? A whirring began as she prepared to deploy her weapons, intending to kill them the same way she’d killed the Mothren.
Clancy dove into XTZ’s legs. Badger grabbed threw the box out the back window, sending it tumbling through the air to bounce on the dirt yard, bounce again and then come to rest.
XTZ hissed. “Count yourself lucky,” she said, bolting down the stairs.
Badger ran to Clancy. “We have to get out of there.”
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.”
As the two of them headed toward the door. Clem emerged from his room, boozy eyes glassy and dazed. “Keep it down, you two,” he murmured.
“Got it!” Badger yelled.
“Nice slippers,” Clancy said as the two of them ran out the door.
Clem looked down at his fuzzy duck slippers. He nodded, then looked around, seeing the door all busted into pieces. “How high was I last night?”.
Badger and Clancy ran to the ship and into the cockpit, firing up the impulse engines, the ship rising into the sky. “I’m going to stay low and head out over the ocean. Hopefully we can stay under the radar.”.
“Roger that,” Clancy said putting on the old fashioned head set.
As they rose into the air, they saw XTZ collect The Box.
Back on the ground, XTZ scanned The Box and confirmed this, indeed, was the target. “She sent a message to Dim. I have the box.”
Dim, sitting in the dark watching robot porn and eating takeout, did not smile. He knew better than to expect anything from Boom other than more abuse. “Bring it in,” he said. Then, tapping his finger tips together, he wondered if there were some way he could use The Stack for his own benefit.
Badger kept the ship low over the water, frothy white waves trailing in their wake. “Can you find some way to scan behind us? Make sure that thing isn’t following us?”
“Already on it. Using her HCOMM, she scanned the Corsair’s manual. Se flipped a few switches. A screen rose up, showing the area around the ship. “Clear,” she said.
Ahead of them, open water. A calm morning. The sun had begun to rise beyond the horizon, golden light illuminating the scattered clouds. “I don’t…” Badger said.
“Me, neither.” Clancy replayed the encounter over in her mind. The feeling of that thing’s hand on her ankle gave her chills.
“You okay?” Badger asked, finally shaking off the shock. “You hurt?”
“No. You?”
“Nah.”
“There’s a place to land this thing and then we can figure out our next move.” He banked to the right. “Co-pilot. Pull up the coordinates for Hazzard Island.”
“What if there are people there?”
“This time of the morning? During the week? Not likely.”
“True.” Clancy pulled up the coordinates. They flew to the island staying low and at least as far as they could tell evading any detection from the authorities. By the time they settled onto a clear, flat white sand beach nestled among the palm trees, the sun had risen fully and the day had turned bright, breezy and balmy.