window of a shop selling Elvis Presley wigs, glasses and suits, scaled down to local dimensions. A Japanese Elvis looped on a screen in performance on a stage in Las Vegas, baring his fluorescent white teeth. Bartek stopped and stood there, unable to tear himself away. Something looped inside him, as if all the branches of an algorithm were leading to the same node, to an Asian King of Rock and Roll. Until all of a sudden he took a two-hundred-pound hammer to the head and was sent flying through the shop’s plate-glass window.
Would you kindly… kill!
It wasn’t actually a hammer, but the fist of an industrial Schmitt. The red and green mech, with its asymmetrical skeleton, stomped over the scattered screens, wigs, and glasses, and began to trample Bartek like a pile driver. It couldn’t fit through the window, so it tore through the ceiling with its jagged head, showering plaster down over the battlefield. Bartek couldn’t even tell if it was someone from Black Castle or Patagonia. He pinged out an alarm on the RA frequency. The Schmitt smashed his freshly repaired leg. Then it shot out its own Faraday mesh from under a fist at the Star Trooper Miharayasuhiro. The other mech was one and a half times bigger and four times heavier. The Star Trooper would not rise again after the impact. Bartek decided to log out and then hightail it back to the location in an armored Drill Master GE.
He hadn’t noticed when he’d lost his Spit Gun – probably when he smashed through the shop window. He soon figured out where it was though, when he saw the Totoro and two Winnie-the-Poohs leaping from an Elvis mannequin onto the Schmitt’s shoulders, stretching Bartek’s mesh on its earthing Wire over the mech. The Schmitt waved its fists about, trying to knock them off, but a second and third wave of irigotchi poured through the showroom over the shelves and mannequins. Within a few seconds, there were two dozen stuffed toys – Bartek’s entire neuro-family – jumping, stomping, and dancing over the industrial pile driver. One of them must have pulled the trigger of the Spit Gun. They didn’t wait for earthing or for the signal to cut out. They just burnt straight through the robot, exactly as Bartek liked to do it.
The Schmitt crashed to the floor like a toppled monument, imprinting a coffin-shaped hole and crushing an unlucky Pokémon. Bartek extracted the toy with care, checking its little legs and arms, twisting its little head. The other irigotchi settled all over the Star Trooper from his knees to his shoulders, whimpering in their peculiar way, gesticulating like little monkey people.
“Just don’t suffocate me.”
He heaved himself up onto one leg. The little Totoro stretched out a paw towards him, as if offering its help or support to the half-ton robot. Bartek emoted a broad smile. The intelligence of the trawl! He responded with the very same gesture, and so they went out onto the street as a new day dawned, the crippled Miharayasuhiro leaning on the Spit Gun and the plump Totoro clinging to its steel thumb, with the rest of Bartek’s frolicsome brood following close behind.
10K P OST A POC
The First Transformer War broke out over resources, just as SoulEater had predicted. It broke out, raged across the planet, and then subsided. Now everybody knew exactly who owned all the working servers and power plants.
On 4529 PostApoc, the last white dot disappeared from the map of the world. No unaffiliated transformer was able to independently provision himself with constant hardware maintenance and a regular power supply.
“We’re entering the era of feudalism,” joked Bartek. “Instead of a castle on a hill, we’ve got a robot forge.”
On 7899 PostApoc, something went wrong with the last telecommunications satellite still transmitting signals across the Atlantic Ocean. The cables stretched across the ocean floor had succumbed long before. The minor repairs that human beings had constantly been conducting,
Would you kindly… kill!
It wasn’t actually a hammer, but the fist of an industrial Schmitt. The red and green mech, with its asymmetrical skeleton, stomped over the scattered screens, wigs, and glasses, and began to trample Bartek like a pile driver. It couldn’t fit through the window, so it tore through the ceiling with its jagged head, showering plaster down over the battlefield. Bartek couldn’t even tell if it was someone from Black Castle or Patagonia. He pinged out an alarm on the RA frequency. The Schmitt smashed his freshly repaired leg. Then it shot out its own Faraday mesh from under a fist at the Star Trooper Miharayasuhiro. The other mech was one and a half times bigger and four times heavier. The Star Trooper would not rise again after the impact. Bartek decided to log out and then hightail it back to the location in an armored Drill Master GE.
He hadn’t noticed when he’d lost his Spit Gun – probably when he smashed through the shop window. He soon figured out where it was though, when he saw the Totoro and two Winnie-the-Poohs leaping from an Elvis mannequin onto the Schmitt’s shoulders, stretching Bartek’s mesh on its earthing Wire over the mech. The Schmitt waved its fists about, trying to knock them off, but a second and third wave of irigotchi poured through the showroom over the shelves and mannequins. Within a few seconds, there were two dozen stuffed toys – Bartek’s entire neuro-family – jumping, stomping, and dancing over the industrial pile driver. One of them must have pulled the trigger of the Spit Gun. They didn’t wait for earthing or for the signal to cut out. They just burnt straight through the robot, exactly as Bartek liked to do it.
The Schmitt crashed to the floor like a toppled monument, imprinting a coffin-shaped hole and crushing an unlucky Pokémon. Bartek extracted the toy with care, checking its little legs and arms, twisting its little head. The other irigotchi settled all over the Star Trooper from his knees to his shoulders, whimpering in their peculiar way, gesticulating like little monkey people.
“Just don’t suffocate me.”
He heaved himself up onto one leg. The little Totoro stretched out a paw towards him, as if offering its help or support to the half-ton robot. Bartek emoted a broad smile. The intelligence of the trawl! He responded with the very same gesture, and so they went out onto the street as a new day dawned, the crippled Miharayasuhiro leaning on the Spit Gun and the plump Totoro clinging to its steel thumb, with the rest of Bartek’s frolicsome brood following close behind.
10K P OST A POC
The First Transformer War broke out over resources, just as SoulEater had predicted. It broke out, raged across the planet, and then subsided. Now everybody knew exactly who owned all the working servers and power plants.
On 4529 PostApoc, the last white dot disappeared from the map of the world. No unaffiliated transformer was able to independently provision himself with constant hardware maintenance and a regular power supply.
“We’re entering the era of feudalism,” joked Bartek. “Instead of a castle on a hill, we’ve got a robot forge.”
On 7899 PostApoc, something went wrong with the last telecommunications satellite still transmitting signals across the Atlantic Ocean. The cables stretched across the ocean floor had succumbed long before. The minor repairs that human beings had constantly been conducting,
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