Tin Man, Part 1 Of 4
04 Sep 2020JB Threepwood
The automatic door to Chubby's workshop was stiff and I had to push it the last foot just to get it open. It was somewhat ironic that our resident mechanic's own garage was in such disrepair. I gave the light switch the necessary thump it needed to make it work. The light strips blinked as though the room was waking from a deep slumber.I pulled the sliding door shut behind me, metal screeching against metal as it dragged along it's rails. I walked over to one of the main workbenches (the only empty one of the three) and dropped my pack onto the metal bench with a clunk. I rattled one of the hanging spot lamps down on it's mechanical arm and turned it on, adding a bit more light to the table than the gloomy room was willing to offer. I opened my pack, took out the dismembered head and placed it on the worktop.
I pointed the lamp at the worn metal skull as it sat on the bench, its lifeless eyes staring vacantly forward. It was dull and dusty but, other than the damaged spinal cord at it's base, it looked fairly intact.
The long, dark, solitary hours aboard my ship had given me the idea to take the old AI from a decommissioned medical robot and install it into my ship's main console... to give me someone to talk to out there and help me fix myself up if I got into trouble. I connected one of Chubby's old diagnostic machines to the metal head and flicked the power on, half expecting to be electrocuted by the dodgy old contraption.
I'd had copilots in the past, naturally. When I was a kid I found myself falling in with one of the local gangs, Rapa Bao Blue Boys. As soon as I'd proven myself on the streets I was promoted to their off-planet piracy wing, where they paired me up with an old boy named Rorke. Rorke would pilot his Krait whilst I'd man his ship-launched Taipan. He was a miserable old bastard but he always seemed to have a funny story or a dirty joke. I guess, looking back, he was the father figure I had missed from my youth.
We flew together for years, robbing from anyone who passed through our space. Our wing would always bring back a good haul of credits, much to the applause and back slapping from the rest of the clan... but every time I'd ask Rorke if he wanted to celebrate in the bar I'd get the same reply; "Don't get too close to people, kid," and off he'd go. Old Rorke had been around long enough to regret letting people get close, "Space is an angry place... it's a forge that fashions angry men." That had stuck with me. It was definitely true within the circles we moved. The pirates of The Rapa Bao Blue Boys were, if nothing else, very angry men and women. Although I looked on them as family, I knew I couldn't trust people like that.
I turned my attention back to the metal skull on the table. The green lights of it's eyes finally flickered with life as it looked up at me. "At least I know what I'm getting with a medi-bot," I thought as I looked down at the screen of the diagnostic machine.
"Achilles Model: 1218: Domestic Android," read the first line.
"A fucking cleaning bot?" I fumed internally, "You lying bastard, Diego!"