Evil Robot Town

Everybody lived in a small town in the middle of nowhere. It may have been after the apocalypse. The town was inside a very steep, narrow canyon. The sun scorched the town in the middle of the day, but grass and weeds still grew everywhere people didn't walk. The houses were hewn out of the stone canyon walls, or constructed of the resulting stones in those areas that were wide enough to allow both houses and pedestrians.

We had a nice, low-tech life in the forgotten canyon, until the robots arrived. These were angry, bitter robots. They looked like the robot from Short Circuit, all wires and bits sticking out, but they were covered in trail dust and scratches and dirty hardware fixes. They were different heights, from four feet to about nine feet tall. They hated people and would push us aside with excessive force.

The robots started calling meetings of all the people to tell them what to do. The robots had the ability to control people's minds and in short order were in charge of most of the town. The robots didn't control me, but I couldn't find anyone else who was free. I would go into someone's house and start warning them of the robot danger, and they would slowly turn around and stare at me coldly. Robot slaves. Some people still had some measure of control, and would warn me to leave town as soon as possible. Damn robots.

Finally, I found someone who wasn't under robot control. It was a big dumb guy, probably based on one of the dozens of big dumb guys I went to high school with. His name was Chuck. I doubt that it was short for Charles. He had big hair and a pointy leather hat, which along with a general coating of dirt formed a general village idiot look. Oh, well. At least he wasn't a robot zombie. Together, we left the village. We weren't sure if we were looking for a cure or a champion or if we were just going to warn the world about the robots.

As we trekked out of the canyon, we passed the obstruction at the entrance. A big jungle gym, as tall and wide as a building, had been put there by the people who founded the town -- or maybe it had been there before us. The structure was also sort of a maze, not terribly hard to figure out but still hard to navigate. I think it was meant to delay people coming in so the townspeople could get ready.

Outside the enormous jungle gym, a group of gypsies were camped. They had neat old wooden wagons that almost seemed to glow and they were dressed colorfully and intricately. Chuck and I were in simple homespun garments, and began to feel out of our depth. Outside the canyon, the weather was cooler and there were many shade trees. It was refreshing.

The gypsies were friendly people. We told them about the robots, and they were sympathetic. They had heard vague rumors about robots and they promised to warn other towns they went through. They then pointed out a big wagon parked several yards from theirs. It was metal and industrial looking. Obviously a robot cart. I guess the robots couldn't get it through the jungle gym and figured no one would escape their control and look out here.

I opened the door to the cart and went in. There were many flashing lights and whirring tape drives, just like in classic pre-computer science fiction. Video monitors showed each robot's point of view. Unfortunately, the buttons weren't labeled helpfully. There was a battery box in one of the cabinets that was labeled "DESTRUCT." It was empty, but had slots for nine AA batteries. In the dream, I remembered batteries from stories of the past I had been told.

I left the cart and told Chuck what I'd seen. Our quest now had a purpose. We had to find nine AA batteries and destroy the robots.

We left the gypsies. As we trekked away from their camp at the mouth of the canyon, the landscape was more of the same: green, shady and damp. There was one small spot that wasn't, though. A large, elaborate fountain of white marble, several tiers tall with walkways all the way up. It was almost completely frozen at the top. At the bottom, the water was ice cold with chunks of ice in it. At the very top sat a small blonde boy of a peculiar nature.

He looked about six years old, and was wearing nothing but a diaper. The only color he had was his pale blonde dutch boy haircut and icy blue eyes. Other than that, he was the same color as the marble. From the same stories that had taught me about batteries, I knew that he was the Frozen Boy, a mysterious local figure. He probably had a legend attached to him, but I'm not sure what it was.

The Frozen Boy waved at us, and we waved back from the base of the ice fountain. Chuck and I filled our canteens with cold water and drank quite a bit. Coming from the sun-baked canyon, we were still quite thirsty.

Frozen Boy looked like he was interested in where we were going. I guess that not many people came by the deserted road. We explained the robots and the control cart and the batteries, and he beamed at us. He then opened his mouth. He moved stiffly, likely from the freezing, and his mouth took quite a while to open. Bits of ice flaked off his cheeks.

He reached into his mouth and yanked out his tongue. It was bright red and didn't look frozen. A puddle of blood formed at the top of the fountain, freezing instantly. Some drops of blood joined the melting streams and came down to us. Frozen Boy waved his tongue around, splattering blood everywhere on and around the fountain. It had previously been a frozen and sterile white, but now the blood drops gave it an ominous tone.

Chuck and I had blood spattered all over us. Frozen boy put his tongue back in his mouth and sat down on a pedestal on top of the fountain. Chuck and I would have washed the blood off, but we figured it was somehow important. Also, the fountain was really cold.

We walked and walked along an old, nearly overgrown dirt road. There were wild plants we could eat and we killed several large rabbits for food, so we didn't use up much of our preserved food supply. I had a crude notebook of rough paper or papyrus in which I was keeping a log and drawing a map. If anyone had to leave the town again or if someone found us dead, they'd know where to go. Chuck was just getting a kick out of being outside of the town in which he'd spent all his life, like a football player from a tiny town suddenly going to a big city university. I liked the trees and the water and muted sunlight, but I was worried about our quest.

After a week or so, we came into a 20th century town. It looked like the main street of a small town anywhere would look if it were partially abandoned for years and years. People were living in many of the stores, but most of them were still stores as well. Some were selling off things left from before the disaster, some were selling things they'd made or grown.

It looked a lot like downtown Grants Pass, Oregon, if anyone has been there. Tall buildings, wide streets, seedy or decrepit businesses.

Seeing the stores still selling old stock raised my spirits. We might find some batteries. All we had to trade with were some blankets, some pretty colored glass bottles, a dozen knives and some packets of seeds. I remember packing the seeds because I figured that old commercial seed packets were useless now, and some important plants might not have been planted until too late.

Chuck was amazed at all the people living in wide-open spaces and all the stuff. I gave him a blanket and a knife (of course I was carrying the valuable stuff) and let him wander off, to meet me at the end of the street when it started getting dark.

I went from store to store. The locals were mildly surprised to see me. My style of dress was different from theirs, and they seemed to have a thick accent. It could be that I was the one with the accent, but at any rate it was obvious I was from out of town. I chatted with storeowners and told them of my problem and of my journey. They were interested in both -- they, too, were a little bored.

One old man living in a military surplus store had a large box of pre-collapse area maps, and in exchange for one of the knives he gave me several, as well as a long army coat. He advised me that the nights were terribly cold here, and I should find somewhere to stay, especially since I was originally from a hot area.

The maps fit the map I'd drawn very well. We could get back a lot faster than we'd come. There were some paved roads that seemed to take us straight to the canyon, and even if they weren't maintained anymore, they would still be helpfully flat and easy to stay on.

There were several stores that looked like old pawnshops and old electronics stores, and in one I found a lot of AA batteries. I had noticed that the people here, while made more comfortable than my villagers with their ancient loot, didn't know what a lot of it was. I found a battery tester and quietly tested the batteries. They were still quite good. I traded a couple of the colored glass bottles for a box of 24 AA batteries. The storeowner was a greasy hippie type, and didn't seem to care what anything was, as long as he got stuff for his stuff.

I left the store and walked down the street, only briefly noting what was being sold in the other stores. I had what I had come for. Now I wanted to find Chuck, tell him the night was going to be cold, and find somewhere for us to stay. In the morning, we could trade the rest of our trade goods for useful or interesting things and start the trip back to our robot-infested village. I couldn't find him, though, and was beginning to think he'd prefer to stay here.

At the end of the block I saw a store full of people with electric lights on, so I went in. It was a comic book/RPG store. It had a door to a thrift store that was in the same building. In the RPG store there were plastic model kits for Vampire: The Masquerade. Seemed kind of odd. Nothing else amiss, though.

I went through the door to the thrift store, which was also fully lit. Nothing out of the ordinary, just a St. Vincent's or Goodwill store. Walls painted white, clothing on racks. There was a creepy guy behind the counter, and another door at the end of the store. It was opaque, but there was bright light shining through the cracks around it. Reclining on a chair beside the door was my father. He was wearing his bathrobe, long, hooded and brown, and looked very much like a Guardian of the Portal or something else ominous. He saw me coming and opened the door for me. It led right back into the gypsy camp outside my village.

So I went in. I came out of the rock at the edge of the canyon, next to the jungle gym/maze. There was a perfectly normal door in the rock cliff face that I just hadn't noticed before. It was three feet off the ground, but I didn't hurt myself when I fell out of it.

I looked at the door and thought, "Well, that'll certainly simplify things."