Robut Rampage
Chapter 3
The city of Grand Zodon looked like any other alien city with a skyline of spires, rectangles, and spheres connected by travel tubes and criss-cross walkways. The tremendous silhouettes of the abominable worms writhed at the edge of the city.
The professor followed Zero One’s trail of devastation throughout the city. First he found an old Terskan sprawled on the ground, raving about a rogue robut. Jonas helped the hairy, tusky creature back to its feet.
“What happened?” asked Jupiter.
“I was mugged by a robut!” The Terskan was covered head to toe in long, gray dreads of hair, many of them beaded. Great, thought Jupiter. Hippy aliens. “It knocked me over and stole my crombolt!”
Further down the way, a security officer stood amid a small crowd, scratching his ear stalks. They were gathered around the railing of one of the city’s high walks, or rather, a segment of missing railing—a meter-long section sheered away.
Zero One had left a trail of theft and vandalism in its wake. It was accumulating quite a collection of components. In addition to the crombolt and metal rail, he had acquired a coil of xanthan wire, the keyboard from a vending console of a noodle restaurant, three lengths of conduit piping—all different sizes, a tarnagle, two pluners, and a strip of cork from an elderly Grenian’s breathing stem.
A crowd had formed at a pedestrian square, a gaggle of alien onlookers. In the center of the square stood a fountain topped with a sculpture of an aluminum wire bush, covered in brass flowers with bell-shaped blossoms. It was a monument to the organic life that had once thrived on the ground level beneath the city of Grand Zodon.
Zero One had mounted the monument and was disassembling it flower by flower. He would inspect each torn blossom and, upon finding some unknown flaw, chuck it away. The heavy bells gonged against the pavement.
Jupiter pushed his way through the crowd to the center of the square.
“Zero One! I demand you come down from there right now. Cease this mindless destruction. Rest mode! Rest mode, I say!”
“You may be my creator, but you are not my master!” shouted the robut.
The aliens in the crowd began to murmur among themselves. The professor could see the judgment in their eyes. They rightly blamed him for this wanton destruction.
Someone shrieked and Jupiter looked back to the rampaging robut. A thirty-pound brass tulip was flying toward him. He raised the bumbershoot and its disc-shaped canopy snapped open. The brass hit the kinetic barrier and thudded to the ground with a short clang. The bumbershoot had far more uses than any traditional umbrella. Too bad he hadn’t invented it.
“Where the damn is Skrum with that sparker?”
His cowardly assistant appeared on buzzing wings. “I’m here, sir.” The sparker was in his hands. Jupiter snatched it from him and brandished it at Zero One.
The sparker was shaped somewhat like a tommy gun: two handles, a shoulder-stock, drum and barrel. There was a red wire tightly coiled around the barrel, and the characteristic drum-shaped magazine was at the end of the barrel in the form of a conductive torus.
“Come down from there right this instant, Zero One. This sparker will fry every circuit in your body before you can count to one!” shouted the professor.
Skrum pulled at his elbow. “Professor! Remember the fabricator is unreliable.”
Zero One replied from atop the monument, “Do your worst, Professor! I am more than a collection of circuits, processes, and weapons. I am a being of vibes and grooves.” It began to hack at the stem of one final brass blossom.
Jupiter activated the sparker and a series of small blue arcs raced down the barrel. A light appeared in the donut-shaped torus and began to circle within the tube. It hummed as it cycled, picking up speed.
Whum . . . whum . . . whum . . whum . . whum whum whum whumwhumwhumwhumwmwmwm.
Even as the weapon built up its destructive charge, Zero One had found what it was looking for. It produced a strange construction from its back. The device was shaped like a backward S. The top end terminated in a suction cup. This was affixed to the vent in Zero One’s chest compartment. The body of the device was tube shaped and widened to its end. There were buttons and wires all along the body of the device. The robut used its powerful clamps to crimp the brass tulip to the end of the device so that it terminated in a bell-shaped opening.
“What is it, Professor? Some kind of deadly weapon?!” asked Skrum.
“I think it’s a saxophone,” answered Jupiter.