Micro-fiction 075 – Infinity Trap (Post-Apocalypse series)

“Quick, come help.” Sandro is dragged in on the shoulders of Artem and Grace, bringing with them a brief flutter of the smoking skies outside.

“What the Hell?” I hurried them inside and closed the camo-flap.

“They caught up with us, Joel didn’t make it.”

“Damnit.” I checked at Sandro’s broken face, he was the bravest of us all, and the oldest, he’d been battling the Infinity Corp for years. I looked at him, not quite daring to ask the question. I didn’t need to.

“Yeah,” he coughed out the word and plunged his hand into the small bag strapped to his side, “here.” Artem and Grace brought him to the wrecked chair by the one-way overhead window, the view from which we watched Infinity Corp’s drones.

“Oh my god.” I could have hugged him, but he was too slumped, too fragile. He pulled out a small cylinder, the size of his dirty fist, and wearily offered it to me. “Here, we’ve been after one of these for years, I hope you know what to do with it.”

“Hah, do I!?” While Sandro had led endless missions to the fortress of the Infinity Corp, and raiding the outposts that proliferated on every street corner, every tower block, we had never been able to outwit the guardians of the Cryos, the robot enforcers, the StepBots, with their trademark step-by-step, relentless motion forwards, in huge numbers, always forcing their opponent backwards, swarming across our underground hideaways, destroying all in their path.

The Cryos, and the Infinity Corp where now indistinguishable from each other, they owned every institution, anything of value, from the natural resources, to the land, the buildings, and every useful device. But one thing they didn’t have was our 3D printers, which our ancestors, the crew ,had used to maintain and repair the starships. We, and the thousands of other resistance cells around the colony, lacked the raw materials to make them work so Sandro’s original raids had focused on securing access to the polymers and hydrocarbons we needed. Unable to make them ourselves we set up a network of underground tunnels to the mines of the Infinity Corp, so every time one was discovered we could still function. And make the laser blades; guns had their uses but the need for bullets put too much strain on the printers, and they were easily detected by the drones, but the lasers could be printed in any shape, and tucked away.

“I’ll show you something I’ve been working on,” I smiled crookedly at Sandro who’s dark irises peered through the exhaustion of his flesh. “Grace, can you get the others, I’d better show everyone together.”

Grace returned with a motley crew, who pressed in from the hidden dwellings below and around. In this cell, We were less than twenty five now Joel had gone, and none of us in good shape, half-starved.

“Ok, this is going to be a surprise, I’ve been working on something, using every chunk of plastic we could find, melting down anything that we could use for this baby.” I walked back and patted on the wall that hid the 3D printer behind, “so don’t freak out.” I leaned over to a section by the wall, and pulled away a drab, grey drape. A large StepBot stood, inert in the room.

“What the—”

“—you’ve got to be kidding.” Everyone started shouting, terrified, some ran back into the tunnels.

I shouted back, “Grow up! Look.” I stood on my toes and flicked my fingers in the face of the automaton. The smooth placid head, with its big, ultra humanoid eyes, and permanent sneer of a smile did not move.

“I made it.”

“Here!?”

“Took months, Sandro’s been taking pictures, and he found the broken torsos of discarded parts on some of his raids, which I’ve copied and remade, piece by piece in our printer.”

“Is it safe?” The others had started to drift back, realising there was no immediate danger.

“It is for now, but it needs to be identical to the real StepBots otherwise it won’t help us.”

“Tell them.” Sandro nodded.

“Now we have this.” I lifted the cylinder Sandro had just given me. “It’s the core, the controlling unit of a StepBot. It’s like a hive brain, connected to the Infinity Corp, and all other StepBots. And I have a piece of code, like a trojan horse, which will stop them in their tracks.” I gestured to the old computing device the screen on which line after line of code was running. “Once that’s finished compiling I’ll upload into the cylinder.”

“But when we insert the core, it will behave just like the others, and attack us.” Sandro sighed. “we need to take our fake Bot outside, and attack the nearest base, so we have the best chance.”

“I’ll go.” Artem looked up.

“I’ll go.” Another, Gem, spoke quietly

“So will I.” And now Grace, followed by her younger sister Celeste.

“It’s my turn too.”

“Ok, that’s enough, four will do, plus me.” I watched them. I’ve never been on a raid. I’m just the nerd, I’d get in the way. “This time you need me. We’ll have to carry the Bot then I’ll insert the cylinder and run like Hell.”

An uneasy silence crept around the room.

“We’ll all run like Hell. When do we go?” Celeste muttered.

“No time like the present.”

“How do we do it?” Artem seemed excited.

“We pretend to surrender. Make sure everyone knows, be ready, because if this works even half as well as I think it will we need to separate as many legs from the StepBots as possible. Let me just prepare the core.” The code had copied, it didn’t take more than a few seconds to transfer into the cylinder, “so, what are we waiting for?”

We gathered ourselves, pulled our StepBot over to the camo-flap, while Grace slipped outside to check for drones. I lookEd back at Sandro, and saw his head drop slightly. I couldn’t tell if he’s sleeping, or finally surrendered to his injuries. But I had told him what would happen, and I think he believed me. We’d always believed in each other.

“All clear.” We dragged the StepBot into the street, and pulled it towards the end, where we knew we’d be visible to the enforcement outposts. I looked at the others, their frightened faces, dirty and old before their time, but Artem, Grace, Celeste and Gem, each one returned a determined nod. We’d known each other for years, they knew I’d never come out unless it was absolutely necessary. And if I failed, and died, well, they were ready for that too.

“Halt!” A clarion shouted towards us from the outpost, two blocks away. The sound of two drones overhead emerged over the dilapidated buildings, and we stopped, my four friends stepped in front of me as first just two, then two more, then a further four StepBots strode out, the Infinity Corp logo emblazoned on their Chest, “One Step at a Time.” They were a hundred feet away, moving heading towards us steadily. I dropped to my knees, pulling out the cylinder from a pocket, fumbling in my nervousness as I reached out to the spine of the Fake StepBot, at the top between the armoured shoulders where a slot opened to my touch and I pressed in the core.

The Stepbots approached rapidly. I cowered. I could feel our Fake StepBot shake into life, unfolding itself from the ground, lifting itself, powering up, computing its surrounding. These were precious moments, as soon as the real StepBots connected there was a chance they would immediately destroy ours, but the initial connection was all we needed.

The StepBots continued their approach. I watched them, aware of the one behind me who seemed confused, and started to move back into the street we’d emerged from.

“Stop.” I said, alarmed that the bot would reveal our location.

“Stop,” said the approaching bots.

“Stop.” The Fake Bot said, almost to itself, and took a half step.

“Stop.” The approaching bots also took a shorter step.

“Stop.” I shouted again, joyful.

“Stop.” The relentless march of the StepBots reduced again, as my four colleagues looked confused, back at me, and our StepBot, and those approaching, but as we watched, they took even shorter steps and then they seemed to—

“Stop.” Every one of the Bots had stopped moving forward, to the human eye at least. Suddenly cries emerged from all around as our friends leapt from the side roads, and the burnt out cars, landed low and slid in to cut at the legs and the arms of the Bots, with their laser swords. And across the city the shouts grew, as the bots were attacked, their weapons removed, their feet removed. For the first time, we had found a way to make them stop.

“How did you do it?” Grace sped passed me and slashed at the legs of our own Fake Bot, watching the heavy body slide to the ground.

“Ah, just a simple piece of code, an instruction to replace their full step forward with a step that’s half the distance of the previous step, and to keep doing that, forever.”

Grace laughed, “So, The Infinity Corporation, felled by an Infinity trap.”

“Yes, they haven’t really stopped, they can’t. But we can make them.” We regarded each other, then began to run at the outpost and the line of halted robots.