Junkyard Jungle & Creation (Deleted Stories Double Bill)

Junkyard Jungle (Deleted Stories)

A long time ago there had been people on Hephaestus . They were all gone now but they had left behind their progeny; the robot beasts that grazed and hunted, reproduced and evolved just like old Earth’s organic life forms.

The rabbitron was one of those peculiar creatures. Programmed to guard its young, it was now deep in its burrow, sitting upon a metal, cuboid egg and waiting for that electronic buzzing and vibrating which would tell it that its mechanical infant was about to hatch.

But, moving its tall ears slowly about like radar antennae, it could detect that, just above the surface was a predator; a wolfoid, that was using its deep scanning sensors to sniff out rabbitron eggs to eat.

Instinctively, the rabbitron reached out one of its metal paws and searing, crimson hued lazer claws extended from it in preparation for close combat.

Suddenly, the rabbitron could hear a shrill, high-pitched whirring sound as the wolfoid used the rotating drillbit like horn upon its nose to drill down into the burrow and the rabbitron let out a synthesized growl from the loud speaker in its throat.

But the wolfoid was easily twice the size of the rabbitron, not to mention that its head, which it now pushed down into the burrow, was armed with a snout mounted pulse cannon that, striking the rabbitoid from a distance, blew the long eared robotic creatures lazer wielding paw clean off.

Then, its sharp steel jaws flexing into an evil grin, the wolfoid used one of its powerful, magnetic fore paws to drag the metal rabbitoid egg into its greedy grasp and, examining the size of the cube, a thought flashed through its primitive computer brain.

“I will feast well on this one”, it thought, sinking its can-opener like jaws into gold coloured, metal egg shell.

Staying still, the rabbitron mother seemed to look on helplessly through large camera lense eyes, lubricant leaking out through metallic tear ducts and rolling in beads down her copper coloured cheeks as the wolfoid wolfed down her egg whole.

In truth, however, she was only waiting for the right time to take her revenge; to activate the self-destruct mechanism within the egg.

Exploding like a hand grenade inside the furnace like belly of the wolfoid, it blew the mechanical carnivore into a hundred smouldering bits of scrap metal and, sensing the heat of the explosion through their infra-red scanners, a flock of scavenging copteroids with whirling helicopter blades upon their backs, flew down to feast.

Meanwhile, inside the body of the rabbitron an alarm sounded. She was about to have another baby
and this one, she was determined, would survive.

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Creation (Deleted Stories)

“Soon there will only be ten seconds left”, thought Karl Darkwind, looking up at the glowing red digital countdown on the wall of the steel grey ‘termination’ room as it bleeped ominously towards the moment of his life’s end.

“Mr Darkwind”, the black clad judge had said, gazing down at him like an old crow from the perch of his floating anti-grav podium, “The court of the Inquisition finds you guilty of attempting to spread the irrational and dangerous belief called ‘Creationism’, the belief that we were ‘Created’ rather than being the result of evolution, over the course of many billions of years, from a much more primitive form of life. The minimum punishment for such a severe crime is ‘Execution’ and so I have little choice but to sentence you to be taken to a place of execution where, at exactly Zero-eight hundred hours, your life signs shall be terminated”.

And so, he’d waited, knelt before the polished chrome alter of execution, for that electric death alarm to blare and signal the end of his brief unsatisfactory existence and, now that there was only ten more seconds to go, somehow he didn’t really feel so afraid.

“Ten”, said the black, visored executioner standing by his side, “Nine…Eight…Seven”.

Karl wondered what it would be like being dead. Would there be anything else afterwards? He hadn’t a clue but he hoped so. He imagined green fields and apple trees and maybe there might be angels;angels with golden wings glittering in heaven’s never setting sun.

.
“Even if it’s not true”, he thought, shouting within himself, “I have the right to believe it. The right to hope”.

“Six…five…four…three…two..”, continued the executioner.

Then the death alarm moaned from a large, silver klaxon upon the wall; the last sound his ears would ever hear, and the executioner, swiftly and dispassionately, pushed the ‘OFF’ button in the back of his head and the Robot slumped, face downwards, onto the altar in front of him.

“Now, hopefully”, sighed the Judge, through a speaker in his aluminium torso, as Citizen Darkwind’s body was taken away to be scrapped, “This ridiculous idea that we Robots were created will die with him”.