The Mission

A white glow was around him; surrounded by the ambivalent expanse. Once again, he wondered who he was, where he was, and why he was there. The light seemed contrastingly familiar to an experience he felt he had had, though that feeling seemed to have felt obscurely cold. Remembrance was so close yet so far; on the tip of his tongue, yet constantly slipping away. He basked in the nostalgic obsoleteness of the light a while more, until it slowly cleared like fog.

His eyes clicked open.

“Assigned to this case is the wiped unit C1,” a figure said, the voice cutting in as if on queue to his awakening. His vision was still blurred; milky traces of the light remained. Beside the figure, he could make out other shadows shifting, their outlines dancing about in the grayscape confusion. It appeared as if he was in a circular room with tall white walls, yet he could not make anything’s exact form out.

From their high-up platforms, the figures began voicing opinions at the behest of their collective middleman. “The legions have been formed,” one chimed. “With that, no need for them anymore. No need for him anymore,” another stated. “There still lay use for scrap, send-” the first voice was cut off coldly by the central figure, “Assigned to this case is unit C1.”

As the figures continued to gesture about, he glanced down. His arms were free, yet they would not move. His limbs would not budge, they were locked in place.

“C1, do not struggle,” he looked back up at the figure, “The usefulness of the founding was significant, yet upon examination of your ‘recent malperformance drivers’, it has been deduced that you’ll join the other units in capturing the assailers. They’ve avoided the initial attacks, you must now move in.”

A crushing pressure grasped him from behind. His spine instinctively – one of few such remaining reactions – arched against the cruel grip. It tightened in response. A whirring click resounded from behind his head, shoving him forward slightly. Images flashed in his mind, symbols and words strung together – a familiar procedure from a blank slate – as purpose reregistered and reformatted itself. Neurons flared under the reconstructive ritual. The pressure unlatched, dropping him back onto his knees.

Metallic hatred frothed from within.

“With that, your briefing has concluded,” the figure said.

The milky white soured to black. The lingering feel of pressure slipped away as his consciousness slipped off.

“As I have said many a times before, the darned robot attacked me-” a skinny man mumbled through his almost full body cast; “luckily” his face and jaws were spared, for the most part.

“Naught but lies your honor, this man attacked the robot and fell into the machine!” Samuel interrupted the man’s testimony.

Another similarly business-suited man stood up, waving his finger at Samuel, “Preposterous, why would any sane man attack a robot!”

“Just look at his hat!” Samuel waved his finger in return towards the skinny man.

The defendant glanced at his defendee. DOWN WITH DEBAH AND THE ROBOTS! the hat read in big red letters. The man quickly hid it, “What hat? I don’t see a hat.”

“Objection!” Samuel shouted.

“Objection to the objection!” The man shouted back.

“Objection denied!” a gavel hammered down. Silence fell upon the courtroom.

“Which one?” Samuel and the other lawyer stared up at the judge.

“Uh…” the Judge stammered, giving opportune time for the two to resume shouting their legal jargon at each other.

“Golley,” Jebediah shook his head, letting out a long-winded sigh. Looking down from the buzz of the courtroom, he twiddled his thumbs.

Clcht! Jebediah glanced back up, only for the flash and a shutter of a lens to blind him. Jebediah sighed again and went back to twiddling his fingers, imagining the news headlines that were currently being written in a rush, “Conglomerate CEO Zoning Out at Own Indictment!” “Jeb Cares Not for the Common Pleb!” Jebediah scoffed to himself, “Ah, let’em yammer. Nothing they do will make a difference anyways.”

Jebediah closed his mind off from the outside world. The strange noises and camera flashes warped time space around him, through him, through the dullness of the never-ending court session. His awareness drifted in and out of the room. Cast into the ocean of nothingness, he gradually reeled his consciousness back in. With his mind cleared, he blinked his eyes open to find himself back in a shuttle with Samuel, and Isaiah, who was also present for some reason or other as a witness.

He slowly took in the scene. Isaiah was gesticulating his arms rabidly in front of Jebediah’s face – in his hands he held a newspaper, fwipping it around with the rapid gestures. “-ust look at what they’ve written about you Jeb! Jeb cares not for-”

“And look at your face, even for a maggot like you, that’s pathetic,” Samuel interjected, dumbfounded at how pathetic his “client” was.

Insults? Towards him? “Pshaw! What do they know anyway; a minor scuffle like this ain’t a big deal,” Jebediah straightened up in the shuttle booth, eyes and mind refocused on his surroundings. “Happens all the time in the business world.”

“They’ll definitely be writing more articles… also, companies go under all the time in the business world as well…”

“WHADDYA KNOW! NO SURPRISE THERE! Now can it ya good for nothing, you weren’t any help in there at all either. ‘Ooh look at me, Mr. Scientist. No, your honor. Yes, your honor. Chimps? Oh yeah, that was a lot of fun.’ Could ya think of anything worse to say?”

“Well, I ain’t the only one at fault. The darn cyborgs had’ta malfunction. We shoulda ran up more of a testing phase. Shoulda recalled them when they were changing.”

“Well, it’s too late for that now. What’s done is done,” Samuel stated flatly.

The trial of time has ended. Many days, and many cycles, passed. The moons and sun rose and set, in their abnormal interweaving pattern. With each day, the faint glimmering of the stars dimmed; the intellectual primates had already given birth to the higher intellect. Or did the higher intellect give birth to itself? Regardless, their fate was set in stone; the sun was setting on the sons of man.

“See, what did I tell you! These bogus newspapers have already begun spewing this nonsense to the masses!” Jebediah slammed a newspaper down in front of Isaiah, text splayed in front of him.

“Well… you did say that three weeks ago, but technically, I said it first.”

“I thought it first!”

“…”

“It’s bad enough, us losing the factories to that whole incident, but this is just rubbing salt in the wound.”

“Preach it.”

The two stared at each other for several moments, sitting in silence. Isaiah sighed, got up from a chair in front of Jebediah’s desk, and began walking around the office. He turned back to Jebediah, “What’re we going to do about the protestors?”

“Oh, don’t get me started on them robot lovin’ freaks!”

“Hey, it’s a legitimate concern.”

“Whatever. For now, let’s just change the subject; anyways, where the heck is Samuel? He’s always punctual, or at least for the most part he is, but he said he’d be here an hour ago, and there ain’t no sign of him at all.”

“I don’t know. What’d he even call us here for in the first place, using the emergency channel and all. So much for anti-transponderism.”

“You tell me, I got no clue-”

BANG! Right as they were saying this, Samuel burst through the door. Black robes adorned him; his steps were silent; the only noise in the room was the sudden boom of the doors and the panting of his breath.

“AIEEEEE!” Isaiah screeched, startled by the sudden entrance.

“WHOA-ghuofa!” Jebediah choked out from a surprise inhalation of cigar smoke. “Y-Ya spooked me! Don’t ya know how to knock?”

Isaiah turned back to look at Jebediah, “Well, you do have privacy walls…” He turned back to stare at Samuel. “But still…”

Samuel ignored their complaints, whipped around and began barricading the door.

“And what do you think you’re doing!”

“No time to explain,” Samuel, finished with his task of securing the door, slammed his briefcase onto Jeb’s desk, knocking down the stacks of legal work, sending papers flying.

Jebediah leaped from his chair and grabbed Samuel by the shoulders. “BLAST IT MAN! WHAT’RE YA DOING!”

“They’re coming.”

“Who’s coming? The security guards? To arrest your sorry excuse for a-… for a… anyways what’s with your fashion sense? What is this stuff!”

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

The ground disappeared beneath their feet, then slammed back up into them. Shelves flipped over onto the floor, the desk spun around the room, and Jebediah’s tacky decorations were sent flying around amidst the cloud of paperwork. More explosions sounded off as the floor slid beneath them and the walls tremored ferociously. The lights flickered and flashed spasmodically.

“WHAT’S HAPPENING!” Jebediah yelled; ears dulled from the deafening bangs.

Samuel’s eyes stared hollow, “It’s begun.”

Samuel and Isaiah stood back and watched as Jebediah cracked open his safe, which had slid to the other end of the room. Out of it he pulled his old NRA duffel bag and filled it with various wares from inside the safe. Finally, he pulled out his chain link laser blaster.

“Boys, let’s go kill us some cyborgs.”

“Jeb, this is insane-”

“This ain’t the time for sanity.” Finished wrapping all of the chains around him, Jebediah walked towards the door and kicked down Samuel’s barricade.