Re-evolution
Set 20,000 years after the event “The Battle of RoBot City on Earth”.
CHAPTER ONE
Rhinohorn was walking through the dark parts of the former RoCon State City of Khan, his bulky quadruped form making heavy work of the uneven camber of the ruined city streets. Once, this was a place where God-fearing RoBots feared to tread; intimidating, foreboding and broken, like its once mighty rulers.
The sad fact was, now it was virtually indistinguishable from the rest of Planet Cyber, the whole giant planet ravaged and torn by millennia of pointless conflict that had taken its citizens nowhere, an ideological battle against an oppressive caste system, replaced with petty recriminations and rhetoric that only proved to self-serve the same old cycle of more war for less reason.
Rhinohorn sighed to himself, and struggled to free his cumbersome leg from another crack in the road. Why was he here? He asked himself, as he had countless times before. He didn’t just mean Khan, he partly meant Planet Cyber, but if he could access his subconscious subroutines, he may have been shocked to realise he meant alive.
He had seen too many of his colleagues die during the course of the war, he was even sick of seeing his “enemies” die. He scoffed at the concept, he hadn’t really had any enemies his entire life - except his own lack of self-esteem – and before the war he had counted many RoCons as friends, who were then suddenly alien to him, arbitrarily divided by a badge.
The new powers that be had embraced the potential of peace by remembering the key aspect of his race’s biology: change. Out were the old names, currently in the process of being replaced by new names and faction logos, no doubt devised by over-paid marketers and branding experts. In was a new treaty, making it illegal to reference the war and forcing all former combatants to swear an end to the eon’s old conflict. Out went the old alt. modes dedicated only to warfare, maximum firepower and horsepower replaced with new, smaller, sleeker and more efficient models. In was a new distraction: science.
Everything old was new again, seemingly by going back to what was old. The whole thing made Rhinohorn scoff; he and his type had been running in smaller, more efficient forms for millennia, and were considered ancient and out-dated when the war was new. Now, they were becoming the standard. They called it updating, though its detractors called it down-sizing, and there were many who were unhappy with the apparent drop in quality of the component parts, and many considered the almost living metal alloy inferior to die-cast engineering, even though the new parts made repairs easier, and were cheaper to manufacture en masse.
Rhinohorn reached his destination and waited, he lifted his head towards the artificial horned moon, a strange satellite with demonic intent, and a grim reminder to all citizens of how close they had come to the brink.
“If you keep looking at the sky, you’ll get your foot stuck again,” came a voice from behind him.
Rhinohorn turned, startled by the voice, but his gruff exterior covered his shock, unfortunately his voice patterns would betray him.
“Wh…wh…who? Sh…sh…show yourself!” he demanded, his frustration at letting his stutter slip out, projected outwards as anger.
**
Ironpaw was also out that night, in the Planet Cyber capital, the once golden Domed City; although geographically only a few thousand miles removed, spiritually, you couldn’t get further apart.
He’d been working for the Homeland RoBot Police Force for decades, and he was out on a stakeout. Making use of his (increasingly rare) ability to mass shift, he had hidden amongst some black market CR chamber materials. Since the war was all but over, new technologies had become the focus for many a former warrior, and with the science advancements came a dangerous new underground. Only the wealthy elite could afford reformattings, CR repairs, or down-sizing, leaving many bots who’d given everything for the war effort broken, destitute and trapped in obsolete configurations which were heavy on power usage, but with no way out. Their former warriors were now relics, largely ignored by the growing bourgeoisie, forced into scavenging - or worse - to survive.
Planet Cyber was reverting to form, and Ironpaw though it would only be a few years before it returned to the sad state it had been in before the war started, millennia ago. But what could one ‘bot do?
He heard a group approaching, and soon felt the cargo crate he was hiding in moving, before the sound of turbo engines drowned out any thoughts he was having, and he felt the unmistakable sensation of flight.
**
Resound stepped forward from the shadows.
“Relax, it’s just me.”
“Hu… how long have you been following me?” Rhinohorn was wrestling to keep his stutter under control.
“Only for about half a breem. You’re easy to track, you’re one of the few ‘Bot’s I can keep up with,” Resound joked, self-deprecatingly. “Besides, no-one comes out here.”
“No-one goes out generally”, replied Rhinohorn.
“Well, this is true,” Resound stepped toward his former colleague. “It’s good to see you, my friend.”
“Good to see you as well.”
The two continued walking, the unsure Rhinohorn following his friend, who seemingly knew how to navigate the terrain and where they were going.
“So, still stuck in that antiquated mode, then?” asked Resound rhetorically.
“Yeah, I can’t afford a full upgrade. Not many of us can. It feels like people only care about the original crew; the rest of us are denied a hero’s welcome. Some days I feel like…”
Rhinohorn stopped himself from finishing the sentence, which stopped Resound in his tracks.
“Feel like what?” asked Resound.
“Nothing,” grumbled Rhinohorn. Resound ran to catch up, his awkward gait making this a comedic sight. The two continued for a while without speaking. Eventually, Rhinohorn broke the silence.
“It’s just that, I thought we’d do better than this. You know? We did everything right, everything we were ever asked to do, and then one day we get the call that the war is over, that it’s time for us to come home..”
“…but it’s the same old story,” finished Resound.
“Yeah, the same as before the war, everything is resetting to the st…st…status quo.”
“Makes you angry, doesn’t it?” asked Resound.
Fighting his tick, Rhinohorn nodded.
“You’re not alone in feeling this way,” a third voice added to the dialogue. His graceful Pteranadon form carved through the skies and came to a rest on a pile of broken rubble near his former colleagues. His RoBot symbol was conspicuous by its absence.
“Reverb!” exclaimed Rhinohorn, “I haven’t seen you in an age.”
Before Reverb could reply, Resound directed a question at him: “We’re here?”
“We are here,” replied Reverb. He gestured towards Rhinohorn with his wing. “No-one followed us, not even with his lumbering footsteps.”
“Where is here?” asked Rhinohorn.
Reverb and Resound turned as one (unconsciously, after years of partnership) to look at a huge doorway in a building next to them.
“In there?” asked Rhinohorn, “how do we get in?”
The doorway was huge, Rhinohorn had no doubt that the ancient building had been created eons ago, maybe in the time of the thirteen.
Resound motioned with his tiny vestigial dinosaur arms, “Those of us with limited configurations need to make the best of what we have, or evolve with the times.”
“Oh, I get it,” said Rhinohorn. He paced away from the door, slowly, ponderously moving until he stood a good couple of hundred feet away, whereupon he turned, dug the toes of his feet into the terrain to find purchase, and started snorting and grunting to himself.
He started running full bore at the doorway. Head down, his horn made a vicious spar in front of him, and he approached speeds that no one would ever expect his unwieldy animal form to be capable of.
He hit full speed moments before he hit the door. It quickly became obvious that in the battle of him versus the door, the door – though dented - had won. The dust cleared quicker than the confusion in Rhinohorn’s head.
“Like I said, ‘or we evolve with the times.’”
There was an awkward squawking as Reverb suddenly flew at and hit Resound, and then a strange cacophony ensued. Suddenly it became apparent what had happened; the two had merged to become one bipedal robot.
“That’s new!” understated Rhinohorn.
“Call us, ‘Onomatopoeia’,” said the combined form, as he walked towards the door.
He pushed the still confused Rhinohorn away from the door, and then arched back his shoulders and arms, into a defiant pose. A murmur came into the air, like the sound of someone whispering behind you, and then it grew gradually, layers upon layers of recorded voices and conversations building to a crescendo, until a lifetime of noise blasted from Onomatopoeia, destroying the door which once barred their path.
Impressed, Rhinohorn walked towards the now open door, and his friends de-combined and landed next to him.
“Not bad for a pair of old cassettes, huh?” asked Reverb.
“What’s down there?” countered Rhinohorn.
The duelling answers came simultaneously.
“Your past.”
“Your future.”
End
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