Re-Evolution
Re-Evolution is a science fiction story written by David Harland in 2013. It was posted to his Facebook page.[1]
Chapter 1
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.”
Chapter 2
Re-evolution
Chapter Two
The rhythmic hum of the engines changed pitch, and Ironpaw readied himself. He could be in for many more hours of flight, cramped into his small cassette alt. mode in an inauspicious cargo hold, or he could be moments away from a gun-fight.
This was the life of an undercover agent, and - unglamorous as it was - Ironpaw wouldn’t have it any other way. Long gone were the days when he felt marginalised and underused; now he tested his competencies to their very core on an almost weekly basis.
As he’d correctly surmised, the engine shift was the start of a landing process, as his inner equilibrium circuits started to stabilise themselves. He’d been tracking an underground ring of black marketers for months. It seemed like it was all he’d be doing since he returned to Planet Cyber. In fact, he’d been so caught up in it, he hadn’t really noticed a lot of the civil unrest that was rife on the planet, nor even noticed the malaise setting in with entire segments of the populace. He took his work seriously, and with the signing of the CyberPax and the dissolution of the factions, he had happily replaced working under the RoBot council with taking direction from the newly formed, and democratically elected, Maxibot Tri-Council of Leadership. He had only been dimly aware of the Perestroika Reforms, leading to the de-centralisation of the war machine and the return of individual enterprise. Had he been keeping track of exactly what he’d been doing, he may have been aware that more and more of his time was being spent protecting private interest rather than serving the public good, but he was a good soldier, and he did his job well.
As the ship came into land, he readied himself, making a mental note to prepare himself for audio recordings; it was a throwback to his early duties as a spy during the war effort, but a useless tool nonetheless. Sure enough, voices filtered through the stacked crates, but only in fits and starts: single syllables, partial words, certainly not clear enough to make out who was talking.
“…hawk…”
“…format…”
“…energise…”
“…glasnost…”
“…new faction…”
He needed to hear more. He took a risk and de-magnetised, hoping the faint noise from deep within the cargo hold would go unheard as he tried to improve his position audio-wise.
In the busy cargo depot, the noise he made was minute, and could have easily been written off as the sound of the cargo settling, so long as it hadn’t been heard by one of an elite group of the best hunters who had ever lived.
“Something moved,” observed War-Panther, coldly and calmly, and he looked towards the cargo crates.
Rhinohorn, Reverb and Resound made their way deeper into the bowels of one of the oldest structures in the city of Khan.
“You’re not the only one who feels this way Rhinohorn; we all paid our dues, and with the war over we’ve been treated like we’re obsolete,” explained Reverb. “There is a growing movement,” furthered ReSound, “people who have little faith in the new government.”
“Or the election process,” added Reverb.
“You think it was rigged?” asked Rhinohorn.
“Who knows?” shrugged Resound awkwardly, “but I’ve heard the exit polls looked a lot different.”
“Okay, that’s it”, said Rhinohorn, who’d stopped abruptly mid stride. “Exit polls, political reform, electoral rigging! I’ve had enough hearing about it, what are we going to do about it? Just talk forever?!”
Silence filled the air.
Reverb flew ahead of them.
“Well, that’s the thing isn’t it?” said Resound. “Sometimes, in order to go forwards, you have to go backwards.”
Reverb had flown ahead far enough to reach the power generator and, grasping a gargantuan switch in his claws, used all his strength to flip it. At that, all the lights came on, revealing the colossal gladiatorial arena, the former seat of power in Khan, and the base from which the mighty RoCon Army began its ascension.
A minimum of three, thought Ironpaw to himself, a minimum of three voices. This was crunch time. Should he wait to see if he would be discovered? Or should he attack now while he had the advantage of surprise?
“Go get reinforcements,” came a voice.
That forced Ironpaw’s decision, because, in a moment, three would become two, but in a few more moments, two would become many.
He transformed from his compact cassette mode into his lion form, stretching as he landed, but disguising this action born of necessity as a ferocious roar. What Ironpaw couldn’t have known before he revealed himself, was that the disembodied voices didn’t belong to some low level criminals, or to downsized Maxibot smugglers; they belonged to War Panther and War Rhino; two of the deadliest members of the ferocious Beasticons team.
They looked at Ironpaw, then at each other.
Then they laughed.
Had Ironpaw been a lesser bot, he would have either panicked and shut down with shock, or been embarrassed into surrendering on the spot. But he had long since made peace with the limitation of his lion mode, and used their mirth as the distraction he essentially needed.
He leapt at War Rhino, offloading both weapons into his shoulders the moment before impact, and he kicked off him, using the momentum to carry him towards War Panther. War Panther was quicker to react, and drew his sword, but Ironpaw clamped on with his teeth and refused to let go, biting through to the servo in a bid to make War Panther drop his weapon. Calmly, and without showing pain, War Panther casually swapped his sword into his free hand. Ironpaw took this as his cue to leave, dropped to the ground, turned, and ran away. War Panther shouted at his comrade, “Get after him!”
War Rhino tried to transform, but as he landed in Rhino form, his shoulder gave way where he’d been shot, and he started to realise there had been real method in Ironpaw’s madness. Similarly, as War Panther tried to transform, the servos in his arms shot pain through his entire system. The ferocious bellow he released upon weightbearing was deafening, and it chased after Ironpaw as he ran, drowning out all memory of his now seemingly feeble roar.
War Panther ran after him, a very slight tell in his step as he tried to keep the weight distributed between his three good limbs, but if it slowed him down any, you couldn’t really tell. War Rhino also tried to start after his target, but his shoulder betrayed him. Ironpaw had already made it clear of the launch pad, and was a clear halfway through the building - darting quickly in and out of rooms - by the time War Panther approached the end of the landing pad.
War Bull however, having failed to return with any reinforcements, was much closer to the action, and walked into a corridor just in time to see Ironpaw dash past. He immediately transformed, and gave chase. Although War Bull wasn’t the fastest of the Beasticons, his form did allow him to take the most direct route; as Ironpaw quickly changed direction to navigate through the corridors and adjacent rooms towards an exit, War Bull’s pace gradually picked up, and he charged through all the walls as if they weren’t there, quickly gaining on his prey.
Ironpaw shot through an exit, only to realise he had miscalculated the size of the building he was in, and he stopped inches short of a sheer drop. Thousands of feet of nothing disappeared into darkness below him. He turned and faced the coming onslaught, a barrage of noise preceding his approaching foe. Suddenly the doorway exploded into a thousand shards of metal, Ironpaw was already backed up to the ledge and War Bull was bearing down on him
