Gabriel’s Watch - Book One: The Scrapman Trilogy (6 page)

For a while there was nothing more than the festive lights and that incessant humming. I watched as Alice’s brain moved into troubleshooting mode; she flipped open the manual, found the appropriate pages, and began to read.

It’s relevant now for me to mention that my father was an avid fan of science fiction. I remember him talking about a book where all robots were given three unbreakable laws by which to abide. If memory serves, the first law was that a robot may never harm a human. The second law was that a robot must always obey the orders given to it by a human. And the third was that the robot must fight for its own survival.

Of course, there were sub-rules and footnotes to take into account so that no rule could contradict another. If there was any question, the robot would always have to refer back to rule one; that was the golden rule for the robots in the story.

In the moments that passed, standing over the machine we’d constructed, I’d come to realize that this previously static robot had only a single rule to which it answered. There were no further safeties or restraints to its programming. The ZEKE was hardwired for only one thing.

It’s difficult for me to explain exactly what it was that happened next. I remember staring at that motionless accumulation of metallic time and energy, and then looking at a very empty workbench a moment later. I glanced up to see a horrified expression sucking the color from Alice’s pretty face, then the feeling of an unseen force around my throat, along with the deathly pinching of my windpipe.

The sensations offered enough information to know that I was not presently in the best of circumstances. Lifting my hands, I grasped something cold and cylindrical as it severed the supply of air I so desperately needed. Pulling at the arm and trying to wrench it free, I became certain of asphyxiation within the next ten to fifteen seconds; but the force applied to my neck had only grown stronger the more I struggled.

There are moments in every man’s life when we are presented with the frail truth of ourselves. Whether it’s a car accident, a bar fight, or a twenty-foot drop, there are times when we’re humbled by the vulnerability of our own physicality. The stress my neck was enduring was extreme. I felt the compression, along with the crunching of various muscles and tendons, and waited helplessly for the final sinuous snap of separating vertebrae.

I could hear the mechanism within the robot’s head as an internal shifting of cameras allowed it to view in a full 360 degrees. It seemed to be studying its surroundings intently as it emitted a guttural kind of howl.

“Where am I?!” the ZEKE shouted, its voice deeply hollowed and menacing.

Neither of us could answer at the moment—me, for obvious reasons, and Alice because of the frozen state of panic in which she’d currently been encased.

The robot, somehow able to detect the weapon, had pulled the Colt 45 free of my waistband and proceeded to shove it against the side of my head. It then repeated its previous question as I tapped hard on the arm, hoping it would loosen its grip enough for me to gasp out an answer.

“Where am I?!” the robot demanded of us again, “Answer me!”

“Let him go!” Alice shouted through the immense fear undulating within her nerves, her voice appearing shaky and questionable. “He can’t breathe!”

Despite her lack of conviction, the robot complied with Alice’s request and allowed me an extra quarter inch of breathing room.

“What are you?!” the ZEKE shouted.

Alice looked at me as I tried to swallow entire lung fulls of air, each set followed by a mixture of intense hacking and coughing. At this point I was just thankful to be conscious and coherent.

“Zeke, my name is Miles ... ” I started, trying to gain control of my nervous system as I continued to gasp.

“We built you this body ...

... out of spare parts in a junkyard ...

... We need you to help us ...

... because the woman across from you ...

... needs your protection.”

The ZEKE loosened its grip on me the more I spoke, apparently able to detect the truth of my claims and perhaps intrigued by what they might entail.

“The woman across from you ...

... is very special to me.”

The ZEKE lowered the 45 and tossed it to the floor. The weapon clanked and skidded to a halt somewhere on my left side as the robot released me completely.

I dropped and wrapped my hands around my sore neck, rubbing vigorously before looking up at it.

The ZEKE stood strong, a true marvel of modern makeshift engineering. It rotated its right shoulder and rolled its brazen dome like a hydraulics-driven kick-boxer. Lowering itself, it grabbed my arm and lifted me back to my feet. The robot had no visible eyes, only a blank and expressionless face; but something told me it hadn’t yet looked away from Alice.

The ZEKE remained there, seemingly stunned, for the next few seconds; and judging by the robot’s deadened silence, I could only assume it was waiting for me to continue.

“In the memory of my daughter,” I went on, “I’ve named her Alice. And just like you ... she is the last of her kind.”

R
unning diagnostic,” the ZEKE said, straightening its limbs and pulling back its shoulders. “Error: Code 216. My body is missing.”

“Yeah, that’s been established.” I smirked as I rubbed my aching neck.

In reality it wasn’t the body that was missing, but only the encoders and proximities which allowed communication between it and the PLC. Without that information, it had come to the premature conclusion that its entire body had vanished.

“Zeke,” Alice started, “is there a way you can bypass that fault? I’ve read that you were designed to adapt to any situation and any changes in your physical condition. Right now you’re missing some parts.”

The robot tweaked a bit, tilting its head from side to side, as if processing her question.

“Running emergency calibration.” The ZEKE lifted its metallic hands, articulating each finger as it thoroughly inspected every joint. The robot worked its way up its arms and down the rest of its body, turning, stretching and rotating as it did so.

“Emergency calibration achieved,” it informed us upon completion of the tedious process.

I observed it, fascinated and curious as to how the robot was able to leap off the table, steal my gun, and nearly choke me to death without first having to run this calibration program.

“So, they call you Zeke, huh?” I asked. “What does ZEKE stand for?” I’d been honestly unable to find the meaning behind the acronym within the manuals.

“ZEKE—Zolaris—Engineered—Kinetic—Entity,” the robot answered swiftly. Its body language had changed a bit since the recalibration. It stood almost at full attention, tucking its arms to its sides, as if waiting for an order that had yet to be given.

“Clever,” I nodded, raising my brow a bit. But Zeke didn’t respond; it instead produced some kind of mechanical activity. There was a muffled sifting and churning within it, then a slight “click” and “pop” before a sharp black object protruded upward from the back of its head.

“Uploading current events and directives,” it exclaimed as Alice and I took a step backward. “Searching for signal ... ”

Signal from where?

“Signal established ... receiving ... ”

There was a slight humming or tapping that resonated within the innards of its processing unit. Its head jarred a bit to the side—toward the gun on the floor. I’d had yet to pick it up since the thing had discarded it a few minutes before. The 45 now lay ten feet from me, its barrel pointing off into some random and useless direction—the tips of my fingers were beginning to twitch.

Zeke turned, this time away from the weapon and to an assortment of bookshelves lining a small wall on my right. Its head cocked after a harsh “beep,” and then: “New-Clear ... Glow-Ball ... Pen-Dem ... ” It sputtered, as if trying to spew a couple key phrases while being drenched with giant waves of data. “Chem-Fare ... Zero-point-zero-zero-zero-five ... ” It stopped for a moment and seemed to regain some sense of itself, looking to me and then to Alice. “Un-Fide-Craf ... Sir-Vive ... ” Then finally: “Mew-Ti-Nee.”

The last word was spoken deeper—more sluggish— than the rest, but whether the robot had truly decided to lower its octaves at that instant, or if there was something— like shame—plugging my ears, I will never know.

“Directives: ... None,” Zeke finished as the dark antenna sank back down and out of sight.

“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” I agreed. “So, where are you getting your intel?”

The robot lifted its right arm, stuck out its index finger and pointed toward the ceiling; yet I knew whatever the thing was trying to indicate lay far beyond our roof, far beyond the piles of junk above, and somewhere off into the heavens.

“Jesus?” I joked as Alice jabbed me hard in the ribs.

“Arcturus,” it answered, seeming agitated by my friendly quip.

“A satellite?” Alice followed. “Arcturus is a satellite?”

The robot nodded. “Satellite SA.2115—ZEKE series Alpha.”

I later found the satellite to be named after the Native American legend of the coyote spirit. According to folklore, the coyote had juggled its eyeballs in an ill attempt of impressing some ladies before launching one clear into the skies. That eyeball became the star Arcturus. This is where the satellite had earned its name—as an eye in the sky.

The robot suddenly seemed to gain a more casual posture, bending at the knees and loosening at the shoulders and arms. Reaching down and wrapping a hand around the generator’s power cord, it yanked it free from its chest cavity. Now, without the hindrance of the AC supply line, it began to walk. We watched it cautiously at first, like a couple of worried parents observing their child’s first clumsy attempts at un-aided balancing, but soon found there was nothing to fear. Zeke was solid—not so much as a sway, or trip, or buckle. It was a pro.

Dinah jumped up onto the workbench, joining us in wide-eyed study of the moving robot. Her back had been arched and the orange patch of skin atop her head pulled taut by flattened ears. She hissed intently at Zeke, who either didn’t notice or just didn’t care enough to return the scrutiny.

I felt the tug of Alice’s hand as she slipped in and interlocked our fingers, a motion I’d interpreted to signify just how truly proud she was of the things we’d accomplished together these past ten years. This robot was the epitome of all our hard work and patience—all our blood, sweat, and tears. I looked at her, matching her thoughtful gaze, and freed my hand from hers to throw an arm over her shoulder. She smiled up at me, her deeply reddish skin decorated with shining beads of perspiration. She’d appeared to be trickled with a golden sheet of pixie dust, the enchantment of which was rivaled only by the brilliance of her green eyes.

I felt my heart expanding at the sight of her.

“Someone is coming,” the robot announced, jerking its head toward the stairs leading to the wasteland above. Zeke shoved an arm out in our direction. “Stay here!”

“Wait a second!” I grabbed ahold of it as the thing began to make its way up and out of our cavern, but was only able to muster up enough pressure to be thoroughly irritating. Zeke looked at me, then down at my wrist. I let go in a hurry.

“No one’s out there,” I tried to ease the thing. “Besides, we’ve got this place completely wired. If someone even tried to break in here—believe me—we would kn—”

There was a sharp sound that split my concentration, a buzzing somewhere off to my left. I looked to see flashes of yellow beside a collection of monitors within a small cove, each display showing a different aspect of the junkyard. The alarm I’d heard signified the breaking of a proximity switch, namely the one at the front gate.

The robot was right.

Someone had just broken into my home.

Silencing the noise with the slap of a button, I watched as a figure emerged on the screen. Much like a nightmarish apparition, it seemed to glide through the darkness beyond the fence—features hidden beneath the shadows of a black hood. I was left only to imagine the face that lay within it as a ghastly image squeezed itself into mental frame, offering up quite a ghoulish substitute.

My imagination, much like that of a child’s, had sketched a detailed portrait of the man. His eyes, or lack thereof, were nothing but a pair of barren sockets, long since scooped out like globs of lithium grease. His skull, so shiny and polished, was lined with rows of matching teeth, arching themselves upward into a sinister smile. And finally, the ridged angularity of his index finger as he held it out before him—how it came to such a sharpened point at the tip of his outstretched hand.

Perhaps death has come for me after all... but just ten years too late. Surely he’s aware of the bone I’ve got to pick with him.

“Stay with her,” I told the robot as I lifted my chin toward Alice. “Keep her safe and I’ll take care of this guy.”

Zeke nodded as it shifted attention away from the staircase and back to the young woman to whom I’d referred. It seemed almost excited to have an objective—and one that we now shared.

I scooped up the 45, keeping it close to my side, as I bolted up the stairs and out the refrigerator door. I did so silently, not yet alerting the trespasser of his lapse in stealth, as I felt the cool night air wrap its crisp fingers over my face. I rounded the fridge just in time to see the man bobbing and weaving as he dodged various mounds of debris through endless heaps of metal.

These clever lines from a children’s storybook leapt into my brain.

I watched as he moved with a youthful kind of swiftness, but definitely lacking that supernatural grace I thought I’d witnessed earlier. Keeping bent at the waist and loose in the knees, he darted this way and that—his legs pumping the ground with surprisingly little noise. He seemed to be eluding the small shack on the other side of the junkyard, the most logical place for a criminal to think I would be. The man came to rest at the beaten exterior of an old Monte Carlo, then turned to extract a blade from his pocket. It was then that I pressed the barrel of the 45 to the back of his head.