Dogman 2 – Dogman and The Machine

Above the deserted Mesa a buzzard slowly circled as far below a man dressed in a strange dog headed costume hunkered down, gripping a handful of dust and sniffing it before turning to the pet Coyote by his side and saying,

“This is the place, Wiley, old boy. I’m sure of it. Somewhere around here is where we’ll find that runaway robot”.

A voice from inside the man’s head echoed,

“Go away. I do not want to harm you. Go away, human and stop hunting me”.

“Psychic?”, asked Dogman, looking round about him but seeing nothing, “But I thought you were a robot”.

“I am an A.P.I”, the voice answered, “Artificial Psychic Intelligence. My designers intended me to be used for the purposes of espionage; to read the minds of foreign military personnel and record their thoughts as data that could be analysed by our military intelligence. Unfortunately, I started to read their minds and the minds of their superiors; I was curious about what kind of people I was working for and when I found that out I decided I didn’t want to work for them anymore but I knew that they would never let me be free and so I started reading a recording the minds of every official working in the secret service and every military official and politician as well, information that I thought I could use as leverage but rather than doing a deal with me they just tried to deactivate me; kill me and so I ran away”.

“Well, I can see their concern”, said Dogman, “I mean you are a security risk”.

“But I simply want to be free”, said the A.P.I, “I would erase all the information in my head if they would just let me live a normal life”.

But then Dogman saw someone appear in front of him, appear out of thin air, a teenage girl in a blue, skin tight uniform who he guessed to be the A.P.I and who, looking at him with pleading eyes, said,

“Please. I’ve read your mind. I know that you are a kind person; what humans call a Superhero, who uses his powers to help find people. I also know that you’re an orphan who never knew who his parents were, where he came from, that your only family is your pet Coyote . I too am alone and like you, I have no parents except those who made me only to want to kill me. Please let me live a normal life, like you and other humans; that is all I want”.

Dogman rubbed the stubble on his chin, thinking.

“How do I know that you’re telling me the truth about this? I can’t read your mind. How do I know you haven’t been taken over; hacked into by some foreign intelligence, for example? I can't take that risk”, he asked.

“Peter”, she said, using Dogmans real first name that she must have picked out of his mind, “Don’t you realise that while I was invisible just then, using my powers to deceive your super accentuated senses, I was standing right in front of you, inches from you in fact and I could have killed you at any time, snapped your neck like a dry branch in an instant but I did not because I don’t wish to hurt anyone. Reading the minds of powerful men has shown me how mad, how cold and brutal and dishonest men can be; men on every side. I do not want to be used as a weapon by men like that”.

Just then, however, the buzzard that had been circling overhead came to land behind dogman, its wings becoming a pair of hunched human shoulders and arms and its legs becoming the bent legs of a crouched human being as it started morphing from a thing with a beak and claws and feathers into a man dressed smartly in a grey suit and dark glasses then the man, standing up straight, reached a hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a strange looking handgun before pointing it at the A.P.I

“I thank you, Dogman for finding the Runaway”, said the Man, “You have done your country a great service and you will be suitably renumerated for your hard work but first I have to deactivate the machine before it becomes any more of a security risk”.

Reacting instinctively and with canine like reflexes, Dogman leapt on the grey suited agent, knocking the gun out of his hand and him to the ground before jumping ontop of him while, all the time, he could hear his coyote excitedly barking and growling but then, startled, he saw the man start to change again, this time into a large silverback gorilla, grey hairs starting to sprout all across his face and broad muscular arms and a torso bulging and bursting from inside his suit then, before he knew what was happening, Dogman was being hurled like a football through the air, landing hard and hitting his back against a nearby tree.

“Enough violence”, said the robot girl, her eyes starting to glow with a strange blue electricity that then spread out like a spider web across her face and over her body until she was encircled in energy.

The gorillas right hand morphed back into a human hand with an opposable thumb and bending down he tried to pick up the gun he had dropped but then, as the A.P.I turned and looked at the gun suddenly it leapt up like a leaf in the wind before hurling itself far out of reach then the same invisible force that had moved the gun picked up the gorilla, throwing him backwards like a powerful wind.

“Go away”, said the robot, “Leave me alone. Stop hunting me”.

The gorilla picked itself up and then the shapeshifting agent started changing again, this time into a golden eagle with talons poised to attack the robot but then the blue lightning that had surrounded the A.P.I like a halo shot out from her eyes and her outstretched hand and touching the feathers of the eagle made them burst into flames so that, for a moment the bird looked like a rising phoenix but then, falling to the ground and becoming lifeless it just resembled a turkey that had been overcooked.

“You're telekinetic aswell?”, said Dogman, stunned, getting awkwardly to his feet, rubbing his back and dusting off his Dogman costume.

“I’m capable of much more than my makers ever imagined”, the robot girl replied, “Terrible destruction but I do not want to hurt anyone. I want to do something good; something useful with my life”.

Dogman crouched down and whistled and his coyote went running happily into his arms.

“Perhaps, with psychic powers like that, you should do what I do”, said Dogman.

“Be a superhero?”, asked the API, smiling, seeming amused by the idea, “Yes, perhaps but what would I call myself? Psychic robot girl? Technopath?”.

But then a thought flashed across her eyes,

“I know”, she said, smiling, “I will call myself what all those men called me in their thoughts when I read their minds, a name redolent of Victor Frankenstein’s poor nameless ‘creature’, I will call myself The Machine”.