Toy Wars (25 page)

The final stage of my
Mengelesque
construction
required
the dead of night
, still a few hours away
, when the temperature
dropped as far as possible
.
I planned t
o
swap a tiny amount of my sump fluid for that of the polka-dotted unit lying at my feet.
The
teddy
brain case
maintained a certain
elasticity to deal with the heating of the fluid within.
What I proposed would
test only a fraction of that limit
;
however
,
I
wanted the fluid to be as cold and shrunken as possible.
No sense in begging trouble.

With the
Tedium
from my brain
,
I
should have a bright, sentient companion
for breakfast
.
If all didn’t go well I might end up a vegetable
and my companion with a head full of black tar
, but in that case I would be no worse off than I felt now
—
traveling on a possibly pointless mission with not a soul to abate my loneliness.

Performing a surgical procedure on one’s own brain is not for the weak of mind
—
or
then again maybe it depend
ed
on the point of view considering the wisdom of my action
s of the last few days
.
Perhaps if
the word conviction replaced mind
it might be a more appropriate
concept
.

Exactly at
midnight
, per my internal chronometer,
I guided
t
he
syringe into
the elephant’s sump
. I
withdrew exactly
5
milliliters of its phosphorescent green brain fluid.
Once again I used the reflecting mercury puddle
as a mirror. I exposed my own sump’s nipple and looked at the needle in the moonlight. My voltage picked up a tiny oscillation I couldn’t seem to dampen out.

“I hope you are worth all this trouble,” I said
,
letting my arms act on what I’d pre-programmed. The needle
press
ed deeply through permeable membrane. My paw squeezed the hypodermic
.
T
he world
seemed to teeter at an angle
.
I closed my eyes
and
felt
marginally
better. My arm
continued my preprogrammed motions
, withdrawing an identical volume
.
The dizziness abated almost instantly
as
my own sump
returned to its specified
volume.

Grasping the elephant’s massive head in my arms, I
infused
my brain
fluid
into the elephant’s sump.

“That does it. We’re brothers now,” I said as I
activated my
creation
.
The CCT in the elephant’s chest sent out a reassuring friendly signal.

My arms and hands
twitched
with the extreme precision and extensive overwork
of the last day
.
While everything had gone perfectly
,
it was still
physically and emotionally
draining.
Even with several hours of darkness remaining, I dozed off.

Companion

I
a
woke rapidly.
Something was wrong. My creation
was
missing.

“You furball!” I yelled. “See if I ever do anything for you again. Next time I’ll just shoot out your sump.” For nearly an hour
I sat in the vermillion dust with my processes caught in an infinite loop
,
wondering what I’d done wrong. A failsafe interrupt for just such an occurrence fired off.

“
No sense crying over spilt milk
. It is time to get back to my mission.”

Just as I
admitted my
failure
I noted
round imprints deep enough only to have carried an elephant. They lead off southwest, the direction needed
to travel for my primary mission anyway.

“I guess I could kill two birds
with
one stone
.” My mental image of
a bird was a little shaky so I wasn’t certain if I wanted
them
killed or not.
With dispatch, I packed up and started off after my wayward creation
or my mission, whichever came first
.

Throughout my travel that night I chastised myself for wasting efforts on this activity in any way.
Had those huge footprints traveled in any other
direction
I didn’t know if I could have brought myself to follow.

“Where are you!” I yelled as dawn broke.

I hadn’t found him the second night, nor the third.
Nearly sunup on the
fourth morning
, I saw the awkward
four
-
legged gait of an elephant silhouetted against the sky.

“You! Elephant. Stop!”

I created a
l
ocal
n
et and delivered a
command over my CCT.
The elephant
finally stopped.

“Hello?”
I asked as I reached verbal range.
I got no reply.
The elephant just stood there looking
off southeast.
The Tedium should have thoroughly entrenched itself in his sump by now.

“Can you hear me?”
Still no response.
“Of all the Human things.”
I all but gave up at that point.
I decided this
experiment
had
truly failed.
“
Oh well,
processes
do go on.
”

I
turned my back on a waste of time and
continued on.
I got no more than
70
meters when I discovered the bulky
pink and
purple unit following me.
When I stopped, it ambled to my side and sat
.

“Are you following me?”

It
turned its pink face in my direction, but made no
sound
.
Perhaps I should have turned off the elephant, but I saw no reason to do so.
If I ignored it, the unit
would either be killed or grind to a halt somewhere.

I resumed my mission. The elephant dogged me, a meter behind and to my left.

“You are a nuisance.”

Once again the pink face turned to me as if it would speak but said nothing.
I wondered if the extra internal programming I possessed really made a significant difference in
my
ability to speak.
“I don’t care, you dumb beast!
Ga
h
!
Why am I even talking to you?”

My righteous indignation made not the slightest difference
.
“I guess you can stay, you dumb
,
overstuffed pile of fluff.
I don’t have any use for you, but you can stay anyway.
”
The pink
beast followed like it was being pulled on a wagon
.

“Well, if you are going to travel with me, you should at least know where I’m headed and why.

“I’m a unit of
F
actory
55466 and I know you are not. My
F
actory is in danger of being overwhelmed
.
I need to convince these other
F
actories to join forces as one rather than continue this fratricidal conflict.”

The elephant still shuffled alongside but said nothing. I took silence for consent. For
1.6
hours
, well into the full sun of the day,
I poured out the details of
my operation.

“It’s time to stop and recharge. Why don’t you l
ie
there and I’ll l
ie
here so we don’t cast shadows on one another.”

The elephant flopped to the ground like his legs had been taken from underneath him.

“
If 55477 was at all typical
,
I figure it
will take
about
fifty or sixty days travel to get to this other Factory.”
The elephant said nothing and as far as I could tell had gone to sleep.
With full day upon us
I decided to do the same.

My internal timers woke me as the final rays of sun fled from the sky.
Elephant sat patiently at my side.
I
had shut myself down dreading
the thought of having to chase him down again, but decided that if it came to that, I wouldn’t play his game.
His m
ute company
didn’t fulfill the empty spot in my chest. I
f
this unit
forced
me
to deviate from my mission, he was a liability.
Fortunately, that evening my companion was up and ready to travel.

I
had dallied long enough. I
needed to reach the second Factory
,
and then I somehow had to convince it to aid me.
I shook my head at the thought
.

As we traveled that night I gathered valuable data about my lumbering friend.
I
c
ould
slowly outdistanc
e
it over the very rugged
terrain
, but it would make super-unit efforts to catch up when the going was more
level
.
Eventually
,
I found myself subconsciously
slowing
for the elephant while it
struggled
over rough
ground
.
I
actually
pick
ed
easier routes even if it meant taking longer.

As usual, or what would become usual, Elephant took a position about a meter behind and to my right.
We walked
.
As we walked, I talked.
The subject didn’t matter.
Elephant never spoke, never uttered a sound.
At first I talked
a
bout my travels and my mission. Later
,
I spent a considerable portion of the travel time doing William Shakespeare’s play,
Hamlet
.

“…Good night, sweet Prince.
And may flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest.”
I admit that it lacked something, but it is hard to play a deactivated unit as you continue to walk along.

“What did you think, Elephant?”
As usual, he said nothing.
“Well, I guess some units are drama critics.
”

I rattled on.
“So what do you think of our mission?
Do you think I’m as malfunctioning as I sometimes feel?”
No response.
“Probably just as well.
You would probably think I was insane.
I have to joust yet again with a Factory.
I don’t understand how I can defeat them.”

Just at that moment elephant trumpeted.
I had never heard
E
lephant make as much as a peep; in fact
,
to
my
best knowledge I’d never heard any elephant unit make a
ny
sound.
It startled me to a stop.

“Hello?” No response.
It just stood there looking at me expectantly.
I didn’t understand and couldn’t envision what it could possibly want.
We stood on a large, flat plateau where
there was
nothing but the occasional boulder f
or kilometers
. M
y battery level
s
approached
full.
With nothing to worry about
,
I
walked on.

“Ferweet!”
he trumpeted again before I took two steps.

“Now look,” I said
,
turning
back toward my traveling companion.
“If you have something to say, say it, otherwise let’s make tracks.”
Elephant didn’t budge.

“Fine, you stay here
;
I’m going.
I have a mission to accomplish.”
Turning
,
I took one step. T
he elephant wrapped its trunk about my
right
leg in a quick motion that tripped me and sent me to the ground in a heap.
I jumped up
, tearing the pink limb off of me
.

“You overstuffed, sumpless trash hauler.
Knock it off.
I will go where I decide to go.”
I turned and resumed walking.
Once again the elephant
grabbed me with its
one prehensile
digit
, but around
my thighs
this time
.
I fell again, but not because of
my friend
. Instead
,
I found myself breaking through
a light
mat of
the
ubiquitous
ground
vegetation
and plunging headlong into an abyss below.
For just a few brief clock cycles, I envisioned my own crushed body at the bottom of this narrow but very deep gorge.
That moment passed as
I
slammed against the nearby cliff face at the end of Elephant’s trunk. I
watched as a battery fell out of my pack and went careening down
. Over eight seconds later the report of its demise reached me.

I scrabbled up the cliff face with the aid of my sharp-witted companion’s sturdy
assistance
.
Acceleration due to gravity on Rigel-3 is 12.74 meters/second squared.
Initial distance
—
zero
;
initial velocity
—
zero.
So plug into the simplified equation
one half the
acceleration
multiplied by
time squared and you have
407
meters deep.
Now in safety, I leaned over and looked down
into
the ravine.

With my feet on firm ground, I looked at my furry companion in a different way.
Perhaps he
hadn’t been
a waste of effort after all.
This merited more thought.
“Thank you, Elephant.”
With my physical control servos oscillating,
I decided that this place was as good as any for a rest.
“I don’t think I like the idea of being scrap just yet,” I said, petting the snout
that
E
lephant thoughtfully press
ed
against me.

“And what am I going to do with you?
You obviously have some use to me…
” My sump raced with many
non sequitur
thoughts.
My processor grabbed one of them and ran with it.

“I just realized I have no idea what to call you.
I think we both need names.
I need one for
you to
address
me, if you ever develop the faculties of speech or offer me a voice, and me to call you in the meantime.”
I once considered myself a contemporary with Marco Polo, but I knew that wasn’t quite right, as there were two of us.
Lewis and Clark?
No that wasn’t right because helpful as Elephant had prove
n
himself he was not my equal until he proved more able than just spotting holes in the ground.
A perfect thought came to mind.