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She Was Only A Clown Chapter 42

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SHE WAS ONLY A CLOWN is a special serialized novella presented in weekly installments every Saturday. Click here to read chapter 1, click here to read chapter 2, click here to read chapter 3, click here to read chapter 4, click here to read chapter 5, click here to read chapters 6 an 7, click here to read chapters 8 and 9, click here to read chapters 10 and 11, click here to read chapters 12 thru 14, click here to read chapters 15 and 16, click here to read chapters 17 and 18, click here to read chapters 19 thru 21, click here to read chapters 22 and 23, click here to read chapters 24 and 25, click here to read chapters 26 and 27, click here to read chapters 28 and 29, click here to read chapters 30 thru 32, click here to read chapters 33 and 34, click hereto read chapter 35, click here to read chapter 36, click here to read chapter 37, click here to read chapter 38, click here to read chapter 39, click here to read chapter 40 and click here to read chapter 41. 

Chapter 42

The robot 91765 had come from humble beginnings. He was birthed in a small industrial vat in one of Thalos Prime’s poor southern districts. The robots there lived in abject poverty, only earning enough pay producing crude oil barrels for the galactic army’s war machines to live in small shacks littering the hillside of a vast solar panel valley.

Being that they were synthetic organisms, born of oil and steel, the robots on Thalos prime did not have parents or families per se. Instead, the newly constructed beings were assigned older units with considerably more CPU cycles on their brain-boards to lead them through the first few years of their machine servitude.

91765’s group of new robots had been assigned an aging bot several generations out of date, more fit for the scrap pile than production line named RS-507A. But what RS lacked in cutting-edge technology, he made up for in ingenuity and cunning.

RS-507A was part of a small group of resistance bots who longed to be out from under the draconian rule of Thalos Rictorian and his hell army. And so it went, 91765, though sheer luck of mentor assignment, was initiated into the robot rebellion and quickly rose amongst its ranks after showing an utterly unyielding knack for violence and military-like strategy.

Before 91765’s third solar cycle, RS-507A, 91765 and the resistance had totally cleared their district of sentry bots connected to the Thalos Prime surveillance nexus. Within another solar cycle, all southern districts on Thalos Prime had a strong resistence force among their labor ranks.

Thalos himself was so pre-occupied with the galactic war he was waging against the rest of the universe, he wasn’t able to stop the rebellion on his home planet before it had taken root and become a formidable army in its own right.

Six solar cycles into his existence, 91765 became the official leader of the resistence after leading a charge against a northern district so heavily fortified, it was thought to be a total suicide mission to try to seize it. But seize it 917 did, and handily using the kind of guerrilla warfare tactics not seen on Thalos Prime since the days of the flesh people. 917 simply did not formulate or execute his battle strategies in a way that any of Thalos’s automated sentry machines’s prediction models could anticipate.

And so, with all of the south and an important strategic hold on the north, the resistance christened 91765 their supreme royal commander. And with that honor bestowed upon him, 91765 had official battle insignia created for the army, naming his fighting force The Metal Battalion and officially announcing war on Thalos Rictorian.

The Metal Battalion’s stronghold was constructed in their northern district. From this position, 91765 and his rebel soldiers fended off countless attacks from Thalos, who had returned to his home planet intent on destroying the resistance and bringing control back to Thalos Prime.

This horrific war raged for more than three centuries with Thalos slowly and brutally taking back large swaths of the southern districts. Both 91765 and Thalos fought at the front lines of their armies, felling thousands of enemy robots with their own hands. But it wasn’t until that fateful day that Elwood witnessed inside the Metal Battalion stronghold that 91765 and Thalos met face to face.

***

The doors to the science lab exploded as a hulking robot, clearly designed as a bunker busting battering ram smashed through. His enormous, wide flat head with menacing eyes on either side reminded Elwood of a hammerhead shark as he surged into the room, smoke and shrapnel following him.

Stepping over the pulverized doors, a nightmare entered the room.

Thalos, even though he’d now been completely cybernetic for thousands of years, had kept his human features on his robot body, only… Enhanced.

His hair which had stood tall, thick, black and wild in life, now consisted of three, foot-long rows of black spikes, like robotic mohawks. His face was all blue metal and thick rivets, his eyes two tiny black smudges and the rest was nothing but beard made of the same kind of porcupine quill-like spikes that jutted from his head.

Even his huge brown trench coat was made of thinner overlapping sections of metal alloy. Scores of weapons, hoses and wires running various fluids and electronic data seemed to hover around Thalos like a cloud of noxious fumes. Indeed, in addition to a regular sized army’s arsenal of heavy firepower, several steam pipes extended from his back which added a thick acrid smoke to the already cloudy room.

What happened next happened fast. So fast, it seemed to Elwood that a meeting as epic as 91765 and Thalos finally squaring off deserved a much more dramatic climax than what it got. But he also knew full well what had been birthed in that room there that day on Thalos Prime. And there was nothing more epic nor dramatic in the entire universe than the evil which had been brought to life on that stainless steel operating table.

Thalos wasted no time. Before the smoke and dust had settled, he unleashed a torrent of melter blasts toward 917 and the undulating blob of flesh. A set of four honor guards tasked with protecting Thalos’s flanks stepped through the blasted doors and joined their pirate lord, laying even more blaster bolts toward 917 and his organic abomination.

The honor guards looked only slightly less menacing than Thalos himself. They were covered in massive steel plates adorned with all sorts of knives and swords across their shoulder pads, with a single spine of spiked mowhawks across their otherwise bald metal scalps.

“Bring me the heretic dead or alive,” Thalos screamed in a gravely, digitized voice procured from recordings of his former human speech patterns. “But burn every last piece of that living flesh or it will never die!”

917 activated a small force field around his body, temporarily protecting him from the majority of the melter blasts directed at him. 417 was not as lucky. His body had already been partly absorbed by the fleshy creation which now towered over the table almost to the ceiling, causing the table to buckle under its weight.

Most of 417’s internal parts had already been sucked into the flesh, but enough of his consciousness remained inside his body to scream out in horrible pain when the melter blasts and bolts slammed into his torso and legs.

As 417 died and was simultaneously absorbed by the ever growing flesh mound, Elwood mused that the robot had really gotten a bad break that day. 417 wasn’t a part of 917’s royal guard or even part of his paramilitary revolution. 417 and his spider-bot companion were simply low-level technicians who worked in the data-fields inside the Metal Battalion stronghold.

Earlier that day, after Thalo’s forces had pinned 917 and his mercenaries in at their northern district compound, most of 917’s forces had been decimated in a brilliant pincer attack which found them occupying all of their firepower on Thalo’s forward force, while Thalos and a small group of heavily armed guardsmen had come up and over the top of the stronghold, bypassing its defensive shield and killing its sentries where they stood.

917 himself had barely escaped into the building where he was immediately pursued by Thalo’s entire army. Only 917 and 417 had managed to flee into the medical lab and bar the doors at the last possible second with Thalos quickly at their rear.

417 died in agony, having never so much as picked up a blaster rifle.

Elwood’s musings were silenced as the final crescendo of the entity’s vision began to play out in front of his astral eyes.

“Stop firing at the traitor,” Thalos said, rushing toward the alien monster now large enough to touch the floor and the ceiling of its own accord. “Destroy the flesh! We will all die if it escapes!”

Thalos was well aware of the implications of 917’s creation, in part because 917 had hijacked and confiscated Thalo’s own occult experiments with living flesh that he’d secretly initiated here in this very facility centuries before.

Even while destroying all organic life on his planet, Thalos had remained obsessed with creating organic life of his own to harness as powerful weapons technology against his enemies.

It was only after 917’s Metal Battalion forces seized control of the northern district stronghold that 917 himself began to research, study, and eventually obsess over the occult rituals and scientific experiments being run there.

The rebel leader had spent untold fortunes to procure the small mound of flesh he’d run into the medical lab with when Elwood had first appeared. It had been through the hands of countless shamen, wizards and warlocks each anointing the flesh with their own ritualistic runes and incantations, readying it for 917’s final experiment. He had only received the flesh from off-planet mere hours before Thalos set upon the stronghold. Had the shipment arrived only a few hours later, all of 917s obsessions and efforts would have been futile.

As it turned out, the universe had another fate in store for his creation…

***

917’s shields had stopped the majority of the heavy weapons fire, but such powerful weapons fired at such close range could not be completely stopped by even the royal robot’s sophisticated shield technology. He was badly damaged. Fluids leaked from his torso where he’d taken a nearly direct hit from a bolter. Smoke escaped dozens of other places on his exo-frame and most of the arms on his right side were totally useless after being fused together from Thalo’s melter fire.

But he remained alert and functioning enough to produce a small circuit board from under his robes. “This circuit stick contains all of the collected memories of all of the organic people you slaughtered here on Thalos prime. Or,” 917 cocked his head in his best imitation of a robotic smirk. “Eden Prime, I should say. Combined with my memories, my creation shall have the knowledge of a thousand generations. It will be the most powerful mind in the universe! It will—”

That’s all 917 was able to get out before the flesh mound’s tendril pierced his damaged body from behind and sucked his essence into itself.

917’s body turned inside out, like a vacuum had turned on inside of him. His crumpled shell fell to the floor as the flesh mound rose up, defying gravity. It levitated above the stainless steel tables as the center of its mass peeled back. A great orange eye opened and gazed at Thalos and his hellforged robot army for the first time.

The Entity was born.

“Concentrate your fire at the front of the hide!” Thalos screamed.

But it was futile, every bolt and every melter blast that managed to open a wound on the Entity’s skin healed just as quickly as they opened. The monstrous force was already too powerful to kill.

Thalos, however, had one last trick up his sleeve. He hadn’t ruled the galaxy for ten thousand years from sheer stubbornness alone. He was a shrewd fighter, born on the high, atomic winds of outer space and bred to kill.

“I need a five second window! Lock your weapons on the target I’m shooting right now!”

All of Thalos’s guns shot the same spot just below the Entity’s eye, keeping a small area on its thick hide open. His robots did the same, opening the spot wider and wider as Thalos surged forward, unclipping a specialized grenade from his metalic trench coat.

Elwood knew what the weapon was because the Entity knew. Thalos had specifically designed a grenade while on his warship on his way to Thalos Prime. He’d known 917 was experimenting with his dark matter theories. He’d anticipated that he would arrive on planet and meet a monstrosity just like this.

And so he’d created this particular grenade with an anti-matter shielding that would prevent it from being absorbed by the Entity’s flesh.

Another two steps and Thalos launched the grenade at the Entity’s body. And it landed inside! But at great cost. Before Thalos could initiate the trigger mechanism in his hand and blow up the cursed flesh monster in front of him, a tendril wrapped around his arm and pulled him against the Entity’s body.

Thalos’s essence was ripped from his ten thousand year old robot body in a split second, leaving nothing but burned out circuitry before his hell-bots were able to save him.

Now the Entity not only possessed the collective mind of Eden Prime, 917 and all of his occult and scientific knowledge, but now the memories and essence of the most dreaded space pirate to ever live.

And that’s when the Entity turned its eye on Elwood.

“You do not belong here,” it said, grinding the memory to a stop. Time stood still. Thalos’s troops froze in place even as they were massacred by dozens and dozens of the Entity’s tendrils. With their leader dead and the Entity growing in power by the micro second, they stood no chance. Wheat for the chaff.

Elwood knew this because the Entity knew this. He already knew how the rest of the memory played out. He knew the stronghold would fall in moments as the Entity outgrew the compound’s walls. Knew Thalos Prime itself would fall in a matter of weeks as the Entity entered the upper atmosphere and began to use the robot inhabitants to inflict mass hysteria on the population. Thalos Prime, Eden Prime, the first planet to fall to the alien monstrosity’s predatory might.

“I know how to kill you,” Elwood said, smiling. “I’ve seen your weakness. I will be your death.”

The Entity’s tendril’s whipped through Elwood’s celestial being, drawing it into the semi-corporal world of the dreamscape. Fresh pain surged through Elwood’s body as the Entity absorbed his essence.

“You can’t stop me,” Elwood said through grinding teeth. “I’m not here.”

“But you are,” the Entity responded, floating closer to Elwood, passing through the frozen bodies of Thalos’s honor guard. “You are here with me as long as I want you here. I can prolong this memory for eternity. You are powerless to leave.”

“You… can keep this… part of me,” Elwood said as his limbs melted away and his face began to sag and pull toward the great alien in front of him.

“But I’m already inside your mind,” Elwood still smiled even though his mouth was no longer attached to his body.

The Entity’s eye grew wide in disbelief.

“And I know where the bomb is.”

***

Check back next Saturday for chapter 43!

She Was Only A Clown Chapter 41

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SHE WAS ONLY A CLOWN is a special serialized novella presented in weekly installments every Saturday. Click here to read chapter 1, click here to read chapter 2, click here to read chapter 3, click here to read chapter 4, click here to read chapter 5, click here to read chapters 6 an 7, click here to read chapters 8 and 9, click here to read chapters 10 and 11, click here to read chapters 12 thru 14, click here to read chapters 15 and 16, click here to read chapters 17 and 18, click here to read chapters 19 thru 21, click here to read chapters 22 and 23, click here to read chapters 24 and 25, click here to read chapters 26 and 27, click here to read chapters 28 and 29, click here to read chapters 30 thru 32, click here to read chapters 33 and 34, click hereto read chapter 35, click here to read chapter 36, click here to read chapter 37, click here to read chapter 38, click here to read chapter 39, and click here to read chapter 40.

Chapter 41

Alpha-Prime-470421A had been a lush, green planet when it was discovered by a deep space mining rig hundreds of years before. In fact, its first settlers had nicknamed it Eden Prime for its vast fertile valleys and enormous blue oceans. It was a habitable planet ten times the size of Earth.

It was paradise.

Elwood knew this instantly, as though he’d always known it. He accessed Alpha-Prime’s history as easily as he could his own memories. If he’d wanted to, he could live the lives of each of the settlers, their children and grandchildren. He could drill down as far into the minutia of the planet as he desired.

Which of course meant the entity had eaten this planet and the genetic memory of every living thing on it.

But Elwood was standing on a world with no organic life. What happened to Eden Prime? Elwood had to know. Somehow this planet’s memory stored deep inside the entity’s mind was the key to the alien’s destruction. Elwood aimed to find out how.

For hundreds of years, Eden Prime flourished as one of the main arteries of intergalactic trade. Its vast resources were cultivated and shipped off-world creating huge profits for its leaders and industry giants.

In fact, it wasn’t industry or over-production, pollution or depletion that spelled the ultimate end to organic life on Eden Prime. After centuries worth of resource harvesting, the industrial community was able to create innovative and never before seen means with which to cultivate renewable resources.

Eden Prime was poised to become the very center of the galactic empire when Daron Bon Halfact, the ruler of sector 847916 where Eden Prime was positioned declared the planet one of seven worlds he was considering making his new permanent residence.

The entire galactic senate would have been moved to Eden Prime had those plans come to fruition. Unfortunately for Daron Bon Halfact, a space pirate marauder ship had managed to enter Eden Prime orbit undetected, boarded the royal star ship and assassinated the galactic ruler while he slept, taking control of the planet and its nearly unlimited network of resources.

The pirate commander, Thalos Rictorian, now with near infinite funds at his disposal, set in motion a galactic civil war which lasted nearly ten thousand years.

With each passing millennia, Thalos and his army relied more and more on cybernetic life extension technology to remain both alive and in power far longer than any ruling body the galaxy had ever witnessed.

Seven millennia into his rule Thalos, now half mad with digital brain functions infecting his organic parts, halted all production on Eden Prime that did not serve his enormous and unstoppable cyborg army.

He murdered the farming population in a single season for what he called crimes against technology after he had successfully removed stomachs from his cyborg soldiers, eleminating their need for organic food.

Billions died in famines that swept Eden Prime as Thalos culled the population further, replacing all human workers with androids and cyborgs in his titanic war factories. As the soil and oceans on the planet withered and died, Thalos had the surface of the planet replaced with solar panels which harvested the energy of Eden Prime’s sun into energy for his hell machines.

It was in his 9th millennia as emperor of sector 847916 that Thalos had the final vestigaes of organic flesh removed from his body and the bodies of his now entirely robotic army.

It was in the year 10,467 of his reign that he outlawed all organic material from the planet, and re-named it Thalos Prime in his own image.

The date of Elwood’s ethereal visit to Thalos Prime was 11,501. Elwood knew this because the entity knew this. Even as he accessed the history of Eden Prime, he kept a close eye on the events unfolding in front of him. After all, he was being show this particular space and time on Thalos Prime for a reason.

The robot 417 hurried with its many mechanical legs over to the shelf housing the ancient books. It cursed and worried the entire way, but did as it was told.

“No I don’t know what’s inside these books, actually!” 417 said to the small spider bot, seeming to communicate with it telepathically. “Well, what do you expect me to do about THAT? HE’S the king of the Metal Battalion! If I disobey a direct command The High Order will have my servos served for breakfast!”

The spider-bot seemed to relent, allowing 417 to concentrate on selecting the correct tome from the massive shelf.

After a short time, 417 returned to the operating table with an enormous book, the face of which was covered with raised metallic runes.

“What science has always gotten wrong about dark matter,” 917, the red-faced robot on treads said as it unlatched the book and opened it to its table of contents. “Is that it is not merely a mysterious force holding the universe together. No matter that they learned to harness its energies and use it for intergalactic travel. What they failed to realize,” the robot located the section of the book he was looking for, turned to the page and plugged into the book a series of wires with suction cups on the ends from one of its many hands. “is the true purpose of that matter. It is sentience. It is the divine spirit engine that drives all of us living beings, both organic and fabricated.”

A low chanting piped in from a set of speakers on 917’s back. The wires moved across the pages, the suction cups somehow lifting the words from the pages, translating them and speaking them through the robot’s body.

“But the ancients knew. The flesh-bodies. The meat-machines. They understood the power of the dark matter. They knew how to open gateways and let its pure form in to the material realm.”

The spider-bot on 417’s shoulder began to shake and pace back and forth along the larger robot’s frame. “I know,” 417 said under its breath. “He’s gone mad. His obsession with organic life will be the death of us all.”

91765 gently set the mound of pulsing flesh on the steel table. More wires and tubes snaked out from its robotic limbs. These wires were tipped with long needles which penetrated the flesh, causing it to pulse more frequently.

Elwood watched with apprehension as a combination of 917’s chanting, electricity flowing from the needles and weird fluids pumped in from the tubes caused the meat mound to grow. Each pulse saw it gain significant mass until it was no longer small enough to fit in the robot’s hand.

After another moment it was larger than 917’s head. Another, it was almost as wide as the steel table on which it lay.

The whipping tendrils that Elwood had become all too accustom to slithered out of the sides of the meat, slapping at the table in frantic rhythm.

“YES!” 917 cackled even as the chanting from his speakers continued. “After all these many centuries! My work! My destiny! My LEGACY is realized!”

The spider-bot on 417’s shoulder sprang to action. It dove for the table. Pincer-like claws emerged from its head like long teeth. It scrambled across the old book, snipping the wires reading the incantation, cutting off the chanting mid sentence.

“What are you doing!?” 417 screamed, grabbing the cable connected to the smaller robot’s abdomen, yanking at the spider-bot in an effort to dislodge it from the table.

But a small flamethrower replaced the pincers in its mouth. Hot fire belched from its face, setting the book on fire as the spider-bot clamped its razor-sharp legs into the book’s pages to keep itself from being pulled away.

917 only laughed as the book burned. “It’s too late! Fate has chosen this world’s new master! The rein of cold steel is ended! Long live hot flesh!”

417 struggled to pull the spider-bot away as it leaped through the flames at 917’s face. The royal robot snatched it out of the air. As its knife-like legs slashed wildly in the air, the battle-damaged robot lowered the spider toward the whipping black flesh on the table.

“Witness the power of flesh,” 917 said softly as the tendrils took hold of the spider bot, drawing it closer to the main body.

917 pulled his hand away before the flesh could grab it as well. The spider-bot’s glowing abdomen began to lose its brightness and the tendrils sank through the metal as though it were nothing more than thick liquid.

A moment later and the spider-bot’s husk broke in half, drained of all of its internal parts. Its legs shuddered and went still. The connecting cable broke free, sizzling at the end like it had been burned away. The glowing fluid inside spewed as 417 howled in pain, pulling the cable toward himself, cradling his dismembered part.

The flesh pile doubled in size again as it absorbed the remaining useless outer shell of the spider-bot. But it was far from finished. It’s lasso-like tendrils whipped about, snatching 417’s flailing, spewing cable out of the air and began to drag the damaged robot toward the table, adding new tendrils to its grasp with each passing second.

417 begged his royal master to save his life as 917 laughed maniacally, backing away from the table. Nearly half of 417’s large robotic frame was covered in tendrils thick as the cable attached to the helpless robot’s back when the bolted doors behind them exploded.

And Thalos himself stormed into the room.

***

Check back next week for chapter 42!

She Was Only A Clown Chapter 40

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SHE WAS ONLY A CLOWN is a special serialized novella presented in weekly installments every Saturday. Click here to read chapter 1, click here to read chapter 2, click here to read chapter 3, click here to read chapter 4, click here to read chapter 5, click here to read chapters 6 an 7, click here to read chapters 8 and 9, click here to read chapters 10 and 11, click here to read chapters 12 thru 14, click here to read chapters 15 and 16, click here to read chapters 17 and 18, click here to read chapters 19 thru 21, click here to read chapters 22 and 23, click here to read chapters 24 and 25, click here to read chapters 26 and 27, click here to read chapters 28 and 29, click here to read chapters 30 thru 32, click here to read chapters 33 and 34, click hereto read chapter 35, click here to read chapter 36, click here to read chapter 37, click here to read chapter 38 and click here to read chapter 39.

Chapter 40

Elwood slammed his scythe arms into the creatures many mouths, but each time he chopped off a limb, three more grew back in its place until Elwood was complete immobilized by the creature’s slimy tendrils.

The two tumbled through the chaos of the alien entity’s mind as the creature shoved more and more of Elwood’s body into its largest mouth. He was now devoured all the way to his chest.

As a last ditch effort to save himself, Elwood willed himself to catch fire.

The tentacle monster howled in pain and rage as its skin boiled. The flames took on a soft, emerald hue as it burned. But the spots on its flesh that blistered simply turned into new new eyeballs or fangs, not slowing down its consumption of Elwood’s body for even a moment.

After a short time, both of Elwood’s long, sharp arms had been devoured. All that remained of his psychic body was his head and it too was being slowly pushed into the creature’s hideous wet mouth.

“Die now, little man. And stay dead forever,” the mouths of the tendrils said as they pushed his head further into its gullet.

Elwood’s thoughts turned to Kiana as his face was pulverized by squishy tongues and razor fangs. She had to make it to the brain if his plan had any chance of working.

A moment later and his consciousness met oblivion as the starfish-shaped beast swallowed the last of his mushed up brain.

***

But when he woke, Elwood was not inside the entity’s mental nexus as he’d planned. He was in a brightly lit room. Sterile. Lined front to back with shelving. Bottles and beakers and canisters and boxes cluttered the shelves, all except one which housed nothing but ancient, crumbling texts. The pages of these books were yellowed and crumbling. Some were held together with rope and other bindings.

And in the center of the room lay several medical tables. They were stainless steel as were the walls, the floor and the ceilings. Everything in the room was made of metal.

Even the bodies on the tables.

Robots. The things on the tables were robots.

Their bodies lay in various states of disrepair. Each of them was a different size and shape with vastly different forms, albeit they were all more or less humanoid in construction.

One lacked a head, its neck wires and cables laying down across its chest. Another was missing arms and legs with jagged, charred pieces of metal jutting out from where its multiple appendages should have been. And so on down the line.

These robots looked as though they’d been damaged in some kind of violent conflict. Elwood admittedly had not ever ventured out of Hopp’s county but even on the internet he’d never seen human-like robots this sophisticated outside of science fiction movies. Was he in some sort of secret military lab? Why had he woken up here and not inside the entity’s brain as he’d intended?

The answer burst through the lab’s double doors.

“Lock it! Lock it now! Do not let them inside!”

Two robots rushed inside. The lead robot clutched a large rectangular container to its chest and rushed over to one of the empty medical tables while the other spun around and entered a code into a small numerical panel on the wall, causing a hissing sound as gas escaped from two huge columns of steel which extended from the floor and ceiling, meeting at the middle of the door, presumably sealing it off from whoever the two robots were running from.

The first robot had a head shaped like a hammer. Where its face would have been was large, round and flat. A red light emanated from this circle, subtly changing color when it spoke from speakers in the sides of its head. That head tapered down in the back into a point, giving the head its hammer shape. This robot didn’t have legs. Instead it gained ambulation through a set of two treads, like a tank. Four arms jutted off from its flank, all various different sizes with a multitude of tiny gadgets extending off the end of its limbs where hands would have been on a person, all bound together in a chaotic knot of tubes, wires and cables.

It’s body was draped in ornate robes, but they were tarnished, ripped and covered in oils and fluids of various colors. The robes indicated some kind of royalty or high position in society.

It set the container on the table and manipulated another numerical panel. The panel beeped, causing the robot to curse. It used one of its hand-like instruments to pop the panel loose and zap the circuit board inside, causing the panel to smoke and the locks on either side of the container to release.

“What are you doing, 91765! You can’t open that box! Are you insane?!”

The second robot had an entirely different design. This one was round like a barrel and had six pneumatic legs, three on each side which moved it along. It only possessed two arms ending in claws with four grabbing tips on each hand. Its head was wide, egg shaped and flat on top. It had two yellow glowing eyes in the front of its face which gave it a perpetually surprised look, seemingly matching its personality as it flailed around screaming at the first robot for opening the container.

A long tube filled with some kind of glowing fluid extended from its back and attached to a much smaller robot the size of a small dog. This small robot had 8 legs like a spider and four large stalks on the front of its egg shaped body that glowed the same color green at their tips, indicating eyes of some kind.

This spider-bot rode atop the second bot’s wide shoulders, always scuttling, never sitting still.

“Relax 41789, by the time they get in here, I’ll be finished,” the first robot, the one named 91765 said. “They can do what they want with me. My creation will be free.” It said this last part in a whisper, reverence heavy in its cadence.

“Do what they want with you? I’m in here with you! You never said anything about opening the box! Oh no, oh no, oh no! You fucked me, 917! You fucked me!”

A loud bang rang out as something large smashed into the doors from the outside of the room, accentuating the strange robot’s frantic cries.

41789 scampered over to a set of monitors along the wall to the right of where Elwood stood. Monitors Elwood hadn’t yet noticed in the room. On one screen a mob of robots smashed, scratched and banged against the doors. Elwood was surprised to hear so little of the commotion considering how many robots stood directly outside the laboratory. The walls must have been extremely thick inside. In fact, the bang that had reverberated inside the room had come from a gigantic robot running down the hallway, smashing its enormous bulk into the doors, an act which it performed again as Elwood and 41789 watched the screen.

“They’ll be inside any moment! The penalty for possessing organic material on Alpha-Prime-470421A is DEATH!”

If Elwood hadn’t already figured out he was inside another of the entity’s visions by the existence of the ridiculously technologically advanced robots, or that they utterly ignored him as they went about their business, the fact that Elwood did not truly exist in the same space and time as the peculiar robots was solidified when he looked at the second monitor on the wall.

The camera was obviously stationed away from the compound they sat in now, pointed away from its front doors at any who might approach. A megalopolis loomed on the screen. A titanic city, all made of steel, all the denizens zooming around were self-propelled robots.

Not a tree, a patch of grass or even dirt existed from the gate at the front of the compound to the horizon in the distance. Even the moons hanging in the sky, which were many, were made of metal.

Alpha-Prime-470421A was a metal planet. Elwood knew now, of course, because the entity knew. The knowledge of the planet and the beings inhabiting its surface came to Elwood just as effortlessly as everything else he’d learned about the alien being since his consciousness had been sucked up into its body.

But why was he here? Why now? In the next moments, the answers to those questions played out in front of his eyes in all their brutal and violent glory.

“Stop your whining and get me the book off the shelf, 417! We don’t have time to waste! If I do this right, we won’t have to worry about those backward thinking bots outside!” 917 turned to his accomplice, his face plate glowing bright. In his hands he held a mound of flesh, slowly pulsing.

Its color, black as night. Every beat emanating a soft green glow.

And then Elwood knew exactly why he was there. Why this moment was so important for him to see. This was its beginning. This was the birth of the entity.

***

Check back next week for chapter 41!