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Dot Robot Page 5


  So far Jackson had found the whole experience electrifying, despite the fact that he couldn’t seem to fly his robotic saucer in a straight line. His partner, on the other hand, was having no trouble at all keeping her craft straight and he was determined not to let her down.

  ‘You need to be more gentle with the controls, cowboy,’ continued Brooke.

  Holed up in her workshop at the English family ranch in a remote corner of California, the young American was speaking from the salvaged three-seater of an old 1960s Cadillac on which she was lying with Green Day’s American Idiot plugged into one ear, and the MeX grommet in the other. The ancient car bench was usually reserved for watching movies after one of Brooke’s mammoth workshop sessions. She had been known to work twenty-four hours flat if she couldn’t solve a problem. Tonight, however, it wasn’t a movie that had her hooked, but the virtual adventure in which she was a main protagonist.

  ‘I’ll get the hang of it, thanks very much,’ replied Jackson. The pen was amazing; it was as if it was tethered by wires to the machine he was controlling. Even the slightest flex of his finger muscles would register as a dip or the beginnings of a roll. Jackson found he could improve his control of the flying machine by resting his elbow on the cafe table. And he needed the improvement. Neither Jackson nor Brooke had seen or heard from the Kojimas since Devlin Lear bade battle commence. Already a Dazzler down, Jackson could only hope that the brother and sister duo weren’t camping round the next corner.

  Jackson expanded his ‘cockpit’ window to fill his view and Lear’s smooth tones filled his ear like a TV voice-over.

  ‘The medium that carries your gestures from the pen to the robotic machines you are controlling is the Internet. During their development we referred to them as remobots. But I’ve always preferred the more staccato ‘dot.robot’. Call it a fringe benefit of owning your own network of satellites, but I can drop a MeX unit anywhere on the planet inside twenty minutes.’

  ‘Wait! You drop these things in from space?’ said Jackson.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Jackson recalled the Lear Net advert that had launched their world-famous Satellite Internet Service. Lear’s Surf the Skies campaign was heralded as a great success for bringing the wonders of the Web to some of the poorest and most remote parts of the globe.

  ‘Your dot.robots are electrically powered,’ Lear informed them exuberantly. ‘They get the juice for their ducted fan engines from fuel-cell batteries. Flaps on their underside allow them to hover and move locations by vectoring the flow of air. Oh, and try not to crash. They are a single-use solution, throwaway you might say.’

  ‘A throwaway robot?’ asked Brooke. ‘Not exactly environmentally friendly.’

  ‘In point of fact it’s one hundred per cent disposable. Just a puff of smoke … and a super-heated fireball … and hey presto, it’s like it never existed!’

  Hearing how sophisticated his machine was made Jackson feel all the more stupid for being such a dodgy pilot. He managed his first controlled turn into a narrow corridor made entirely of railway carriages stacked four high on either side. Luckily, the Kojimas were nowhere to be seen as his machine continued to swagger like a drunk.

  ‘Try the MAP option in your menu,’ suggested Lear. Jackson mouthed the required command and a circular grid materialized at the bottom of his display.

  ‘The outer ring covers a distance of fifty kilometres, the inner ring just a hundred metres. It uses a combination of infrared and radar signals to pick out you and your adversaries.’

  ‘Cool,’ exclaimed Brooke. ‘So, Farley, have you tamed that tiger yet or am I gonna have to do this on my own?’

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ said Jackson. ‘It’s that spot in the middle of your map you need to be concerned with.’

  Two icons blinked in the inner circle of Jackson’s glowing grid display, like a couple of flies stuck in a brilliant spider’s web. The one at the very centre was obviously Brooke’s machine and was clearly labelled ‘English’, but the other symbol near it denoted one of the twins’ machines, ‘Kojima’, followed by an unrecognizable squiggle that floated mystifyingly beside it.

  ‘That’s odd,’ said Jackson. ‘I’m only seeing one of the twins.’

  ‘Me too. D’you think the other one is running scared?’

  ‘Knowing the twins’ zeal for virtual combat, I’d say that’s unlikely,’ Lear interrupted. ‘I’ll wager one of them has discovered stealth mode.’

  Stealth mode, thought Jackson. How did I miss that? ‘It’s not too effective if you’re moving … but when your bot is stationary, it’ll render it almost invisible to radar.’

  Jackson found the STEALTH command buried in his menu. While the silent instruction was still skipping across his lips, the centre circle of Jackson’s web display dimmed and a moment later Brooke’s icon vanished. Now they were both in stealth mode, hidden from the Kojimas’ displays. Strange, then, that one of the twins had decided to remain conspicuous.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Jackson. ‘Brooke, d’you see that square on your one o’clock?’

  The precisely drawn glowing square on the grid was actually an area of muddy wasteground boxed in by the carcasses of three articulated lorries. The large containers on the back of each battered truck looked ready to spew their contents into the square, a curious mixture of entangled exhaust pipes hanging out of the side of the first lorry, neat piles of copper wire in the second and what looked like hundreds of sofas jammed inside the third.

  Years spent playing first-person-shooter games online had taught Jackson a few tricks. For example, a simple tactical advantage could be gained by leaving behind a teammate in an enclosed space with only one entrance. The rest of the team would then work to herd their unsuspecting opponents through the entrance where their crack-shot comrade would pick them off. It was also the surest way to get a player booted off a server and labelled a ‘camper’, but this was life and death, sort of, and gaming etiquette would have to take a back seat. Jackson just wasn’t sure how Brooke would respond to being the one left behind.

  ‘I get it. Leave the broad behind so you can go get all the glory? No way, José! You stay behind if you want to. I’m gonna go lasso me a robot.’

  Brooke wasted no time, accelerating away from Jackson in the direction of the twin’s signal, her remobot skimming the bonnets of the rust buckets that lined her route.

  Jackson jabbed the pen in his hand forward, the view in front of his remobot twisting violently as he flicked the craft up and over Brooke’s machine, the two craft ending up nose to nose.

  ‘Whoa, rein in your horse there, skip,’ said a startled Brooke, the lift fan underneath her MeX1 throwing up a cloud of dirt and stones as she braked hard to avoid collision.

  ‘Brooke, I want to win this as much as you do and we can, but only if we work as a team,’ urged Jackson. ‘Trust me, I just need you to hang back.’

  Brooke hesitated for a tense moment, her robot saucer drifting slowly in front of Jackson’s, its grey profile like the shadow of a huge manta ray stalking the cafe table where he’d now been seated for some three hours. Jackson glanced in the waitress’s direction to make sure he wasn’t being stared at. Her boyfriend had gone and she now had a queue of two customers to deal with, but that didn’t stop her talking into her mobile while she poured their drinks and buttered their toast.

  ‘All righty,’ Brooke broke the silence. ‘As my dad says, the best thing about following orders is that you get to blame someone else when everything goes wrong.’

  Not exactly a vote of confidence, but green light enough for Jackson to pitch his MeX1 forward and race towards the blip with the twins’ name and that curious symbol. What was it? A ‘4’? An ‘R’ perhaps … a capital ‘R’? He hoped his hunch was right, but for now Jackson had more immediate things to worry about. Narrowly avoiding random pieces of jagged steel and open doors that blocked the endless car-lined corridors, he sped towards the location of the symbol. Jackson slowed d
own a few metres from it and decided he had been right – it was an upper-case ‘R’. ‘Kojima R’. He was sure of it.

  It was time to let Brooke know. ‘What do you get if you put 1 and 2 together?’

  ‘Er … 3?’ said Brooke.

  ‘No, I mean if you put one over the other?’

  Brooke, who like her teammate had been puzzled by the mystery of the disappearing twin and that strange squiggle, gasped. ‘An “R”! Kojima 1 and Kojima 2 on top of one another looks like Kojima “R”. Jackson, this is a trap!’

  CHAPTER 11

  Jackson had known all along. He observed the shadowy outlines of his opponents hovering in a nearby doorway, the first saucer a metre or so above the ground, the second piggybacking just millimetres above it: one radar symbol, two robots.

  He had the twins just where he wanted them. It might be two against one, and Jackson might only have one Bass Bomb left, but he had the element of surprise.

  ‘Brooke, it’s time we played them at their own game. Switch your stealth mode on and off a few times – you need to make them think your system is malfunctioning,’ he ordered.

  ‘Very devious, Mr Farley,’ said Lear, suddenly back in Jackson’s ear and evidently observing their every move. ‘I wasn’t sure you had it in you.’

  Jackson decided to wait and see what happened before taking any credit.

  ‘How’s that, captain?’ asked Brooke, her icon flashing sporadically on and off Jackson’s map.

  Jackson was watching the twins who, after being practically motionless for the last few minutes, had suddenly moved in the direction of Brooke, holding their stacked formation flawlessly.

  ‘Perfect! They’re heading straight for you, Brooke!’ Jackson shadowed the pair from a distance as they followed a river of wire and cables that carved a route around towers of old TVs and computer monitors.

  ‘Just bring Donner and Blitzen to me. I’ll give them a hillbilly welcome they’ll never forget!’

  Brooke was ready for action. She had managed to slide her craft inside the canvas sheeting that covered the back of one of the trucks. Using her remobot’s nose to shunt a couple of exhausts out of the way, her machine was hidden but still offered a clear view of the entrance to the square. Below that the spider’s web display showed what still appeared as just the one Kojima, steadily approaching.

  ‘Stand by, Brooke … two Kojimas, incoming. Give ’em everything you’ve got!’

  It was all Jackson could do to keep pace with the devious double act, who despite maintaining their tricky flight pattern, were pushing their machines to the limit. Jackson’s bot bucked fiercely as he banked round the final bend, glancing off a windowless double-decker bus while he levelled out for the final straight.

  ‘Better drop anchor, skipper,’ advised Brooke, ‘it’s about to get bomb-diggity in here.’

  Jackson eased back on the small controller in his hand just in time to see the twins break formation, one darting left underneath a jumble of fridges and the other coming to a stop at the entrance.

  ‘Brooke … they’ve split up!’ warned Jackson. But the phrase was lost in an ear-splitting boom that had him leaping out of his chair. His yell caused a group of workmen who had just walked into the cafe to abruptly stop talking and burst out laughing.

  Jackson turned his back on them, cradling his throbbing ear in his hand. It felt like the grommet had detonated on his eardrum, the thunderous aftermath of the bang bouncing around inside his skull. Even his virtual display was affected, the view out of the front of his machine shuddering and shifting for a good few seconds.

  ‘Yehaa!’ As Brooke let out the triumphant cry, a crippled MeX1 robot came tumbling backwards towards Jackson, sparks flying from its underside as it ricocheted uncontrollably between the walls of the narrow, improvised passageway.

  ‘Ah, the Bass Bomb,’ said Lear. ‘Its very battle-cry is forged of sonic fury.’

  ‘That thing is off the hook!’

  ‘Indeed it was, Ms English. It produces a low-frequency shock wave capable of blowing an opponent back. And for your future reference, it will seriously impair a human target, usually making them defecate.’

  ‘Eugh!’ said Brooke

  Jackson brought his vehicle alongside the stricken saucer. He knew that with one command he could end Master Kojima’s attempts to recover and put himself and Brooke in the lead. But the bot looked so helpless, twitching and jerking like a fish marooned on a mudbank.

  ‘We must not allow ourselves to be drowned by fear, Farley, but hold our chins aloft and fight!’

  Jackson felt a wave of frustration. He wasn’t scared. But hitting the twin when he was down didn’t seem right. Nevertheless, this was a ‘deathmatch’ and if that’s what was required, then so be it.

  No sooner had Jackson’s lips begun to form the fire command than there was a sudden burst of light, vivid flashes of azure and turquoise that threatened to set alight Jackson’s right eye. As the effects of the Dazzler wore off, Jackson saw the fuzzy outline of a revitalized Kojima bot escaping through the gap its teammate had found earlier.

  ‘Why didn’t you toast that sucker when you had the chance?’ asked Brooke, who had been struggling to free her craft from a farrago of tail pipes and had just made it out of the square, only to see the craft she thought she’d scuppered slip away.

  ‘I thought he was out for the count … it … it didn’t seem fair.’ Jackson was suddenly realizing that he was the only one who was thinking this way. He was going to have to toughen up.

  ‘It’s the shielding …’ Lear’s voice interrupted Jackson’s thoughts.

  ‘The what?’ Jackson asked.

  ‘The vibration from Brooke’s Bass Bomb blast would wreck most conventional electronic devices, but your robots are shielded. So, if you want to KO the Kojimas, Farley, you’ll need to get closer next time.’

  ‘I’ll get so close, they’ll be able to smell what I had for breakfast.’ And with that, Brooke was off, her MeX1 shooting past Jackson’s and plunging under the space in the fridge pile. Jackson followed suit, tipping his machine into a dive and giving chase.

  ‘They must be in there,’ declared Brooke. With no trace of the twins on their maps, she and Jackson had spent the last ten minutes scouring every centimetre of the scrapyard. They were hovering outside a crumbling barn, the entrance to which was shrouded in strips of jagged plastic that looked like yellowed teeth in the giant mouth of a demon. ‘Whatcha wanna do now, master chief?’

  ‘Get in there and finish this thing!’

  ‘Booya!’ yelled Brooke.

  Jackson was done with planning; he’d taken an eye-load of Dazzler, his ear was still aching and, worst of all, he’d been outmanoeuvred at every stage.

  The two saucers slipped silently through the plastic teeth and into the gloomy building. The barn was bare but for the outline of a monster combine harvester in the beams of light from gaps in the wooden cladding. Jackson’s machine cruised slowly past a few scattered hay bales, none of which looked a fit hiding place.

  ‘Would you look at that … a 1969 Ford Mustang.’ Jackson sent his bot over to Brooke’s, which was hovering a few metres away from a collection of old tyres and hubcaps.

  ‘You can tell which cars those rusty old things belonged to?’ said Jackson, looking at the line of metal discs propped against an old workbench.

  ‘Yes, siree. I read ’em like headstones. The big red ones are from a Chevy and the ones in the middle are from a European Ford … I’m guessing early 1970s.’

  ‘What about these?’ Jackson was pointing the nose of his vehicle at two grey discs at the end of the line of hubcaps. No sooner had he asked the question than he realized what he was looking at.

  The Kojima saucers sprang from the darkness and, before Jackson had time to think, the harsh glare of a Dazzler seared his eyeball. It was all the more unbearable because he couldn’t cry out as the cafe in which he sat had filled up with lunchtimers. So he just writhed in his plastic chair and wa
tched helplessly as his MeX1 was engulfed in a flare of electrical energy, sparks fanning out like a Catherine wheel as it spun wildly before flipping on to the workbench.

  ‘Bravo, Master Kojima!’ declared an obviously impressed Lear. ‘But the deathmatch doesn’t end until all weapons have been expended or your dot.robots are incapacitated!’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m licked!’ Brooke’s vehicle had been flung violently backwards during the melee, toppling over a stack of wooden pallets, several of which now had the bot pinned down. Not that she could have done much anyway; her savaged electronics were now incapable of delivering anything more than a few defiant twitches.

  Jackson was moving his pen around every axis in attempts to find enough lift to right his capsized craft. His efforts were fruitless and all he could do was look on, upside down, as the two Kojima robots floated towards Brooke to finish her off.

  ‘Now would be a good time to serve up that Dazzler you’ve been saving, Brooke.’

  ‘I’d love to, skip, but my electrics are fried!’ Jackson realized that Brooke’s saucer had absorbed most of the Dazzler’s magnetic pulse. There was only one thing he could do.

  Jackson’s Bass Bomb surprised everyone, not least Brooke.

  ‘What the heck are you doing!’ she bellowed over the din.

  But Jackson’s plan was working. Billows of sonic vibration broke across the surface of his machine, causing it to jiggle along the bench’s wooden surface like a jumping bean and eventually fall off. The moment it tipped over the edge and the powerful lift fan finally had some air to chew on, the robot saucer launched itself across the barn, glancing the side of the combine before hitting the twins and scattering them like skittles.

  Jackson completed a whirlwind circuit of the barn before pulling his Mex1 into a breakneck vertical climb which saw the twins form up on his tail. With the Japanese hot shots now mirroring his every move, he knew it was only a matter of time before they unleashed their final salvo.