Archive-name: Fantasy/robocop
Archive-author: Nikolai Kingsley
Archive-title: RoboCop
gratuitously rude text alert
w a r n i n g
`...superior fire-power, combined with, in the revision B
firmware, an extensive neural-network pattern recognition
storage/retrieval system, makes ED-209-B, `the' urban law
enforcement solution...'
OCP advertising brochure
`...here he comes now,' breathed Genesis. his companions shrank
back slightly behind the dumpster. rivulets of muck that ran from
the holes in the rusted corners of the huge metal bin gleamed as the
ED-209-B's lights swept the alleyway, searching for potential
offenders. Genesis whistled the signal to Kely, who was hidden
behind a set of water pipes that ran up the length of the building.
she stepped out just as the ED-209-B turned to leave. the sound of
her footsteps made him pause, and with gyros whirring, he turned and
stepped into the alleyway. his xenon lamps bathed her in a
blue-white glare momentarily, before he switched to ultraviolet. he
assessed her `miscreant potential', decided that she wasn't breaking
the law, and was about to depart when she produced something from
underneath her flak jacket. it was a cylinder, about three inches in
diameter, twenty inches long, painted black on one side, with regular
bar-code markings in ultraviolet-reflecting paint on the other.
ED-209-B quickly recognised the bar-code; it was a cannister of
`HarXene 23', a powerful chemical explosive favoured by terrorist
groups. the machine instantly hunkered down with hissing pneumatics,
lowering his centre of gravity and presenting a shallower profile to
any potential blast.
`Put down your weapon. You have twenty seconds to comply,' the
machine grated in his barely understandable synthesised voice. this
was the part that Kely hated. she counted a careful fifteen seconds,
and then rotated the cylinder so that the matte-black, non-reflective
surface showed. ED-209-B paused, and cautiously lifted from his
defensive crouch. he waited for about ten seconds, then turned to
leave. Kely turned the cylinder again, and again, ED-209-B crouched
with pneumatic squeaks, and issued his warning. another fifteen
seconds.
and so on, for almost three hours.
`was it slower that time?' ivo muttered to genesis.
`i think so... look!' ED-209-B's batteries had been low when they
had set this trap up, and he had finally reached the point when
recharging had become a higher priority than catching a potential
terrorist.
`Do not leave the vicinity,' he growled, `you have been tagged for
further surveillance. this is your only warning.' he punctuated the
threat with a sampled Alsatian-growl, and turned to leave. at the
alleyway entrance, genesis' compatriots had set up a mock-recharging
station. the red flashing light was completely authentic, though; it
had to be, otherwise ED-209-B wouldn't recognise it. the machine
stumped up to the station, settled down into the recharging cradle,
and beeped its `commence recharging' command. the mockup responded
with a very plausible imitation of the `station out of service'
signal. ED-209-B paused briefly, and then got up. he turned a slow
one-eighty degrees, and spotted the other mock-recharging station
that genesis had hurriedly set up at the other end of the alley.
with noticeably slower steps, he tramped the length of the alley, sat
down in the cradle, and signalled for a recharge. this station also
beeped `out of service'. ED-209-B got up, turned a slow one-eighty,
spotted the first recharging station...
and so on...
until half-past-four in the morning, when ED-209-B finally ran out
of juice. just before shutting down completely, he locked his
twin-turret machine guns down, so that potential miscreants couldn't
break them open for the ammunition. bullets, however, were not
exactly what genesis and his friends were after. Kely cautiously
approached the machine, knocked on his leading edge.
`anybody home?' she giggled. genesis had shoved aside one of the
mock-recharging stations and was backing a small electric loader up
the alley. together, they tipped Ed-209-B backwards into the tray,
covered him with a tarpaulin, and whirred off.
Ed-209-B stood under the bright lights of the AnarchArtist's work
room, rear maintenance plate removed, a mass of leads dangling from
banks of packed circuitry. his twin guns had been detached and
stacked in the corner, the ammunition removed for sale to the
`BananaLand Arts Irridentist' movement.
genesis and ivo were arguing about the disassembly of Ed-209-B's
code. ivo pointed to a block of hexadecimal digits, `4E71', repeated
halfway down the page.
`i tell you, it's some sort of jump-table. it just looks like a
series of NOPs in the listing, 'cos the code isn't contiguous.'
`well, okay, although i still think that they stuck them in for
some sort of timing loop.' ivo snorted cynically.
`what sort of asshole depends on a bank of NOPs for timing? i
mean, what happens when you port the code to a faster processor?'
genesis grinned, raising an index finger to illustrate his point.
`i thought you knew, that you have to be an asshole to code for
OCP. it's in the job specs.' the door slammed open, and Kely burst
in, waving a sheaf of printout.
`never fear, Camden's here!,' she proclaimed. `hot off the
presses... original documentation, stolen from right under
Jonesy-babes' cocaine-powdered nose!' genesis and ivo grabbed the
printout, and began sorting the pages into areas of interest.
`gyro assimilation... nah, that's, what's-it-called, that, um,
recoil/ranging actuator differentiation... there! that's where the
Motivation and Restriction codes get filtered through the Situational
Engine, and - what's that? Christ, Kely... that thing would've blown
yer fuckin' head off as soon as look at you - see that bit of code?'
ivo was grinning. Kely looked at the printout, and turned pale.
genesis slapped ivo on the back, and said with forced joviality,
`next time, you can do the song-and-dance in front of the
double-barrelled motherfucker.' Kely grinned.
`by the time we've finished with him, Eddie-baby'll be entirely
single-barrelled.' she shoved a disk of pirated code into their PC,
and moved around to the front of ED-209-B. she began to unbolt the
plate that covered the servos between its legs.
later that morning: genesis clicked on the `play' gadget. ED-209-B
said, in a husky voice,
`Ohh... bay...bee...'
`nahh, 's too slow, and you can hear the anti-aliasing a mile off.
Up the playback rate to twenty K... okay, again.'
`Ohh, bay-bee!' in addition, genesis made the droid wiggle his
ass. Kely smiled.
`I'd buy that for a dollar,' she murmured.
they had moved their work-benches out and had three videocameras
set up under the lights. ivo focussed two of them on the end of the
brass bed that Kely and genesis had wheeled in, strapped on the third
camera, adjusting its Steady-Cam balancing weights. he waved it
around, checking the autofocus. he nodded to genesis, who was
manning ED-209-B's hastily dummied-up control console.
Kely was wearing nothing except a tattered shirt, spotted in
jungle-camouflage green, and a Mao cap with a forlorn single twig
poking out. she looked the very caricature of the urban terrorist.
she was handcuffed to the end of the brass bed.
genesis counted down:
`three, two, one... okay,' he continued in a parody of the
serious, concerned news-reader's voice: `in today's violent society,
we here at OCP have to deal firmly with terrorists...' he pressed
some keys on his console, and ED-209-B stumped into shot behind Kely.
A huge rubber penis had been attached to the plate between his legs.
it waved comically as the droid sidled up to Kely, who was cowering
in mock-fear. another key press, and the penis inflated with a
sultry hiss.
`oh, MY!' Kely squeaked.
`Oh, bAY-BEE!' ED-209-B replied. it nudged the penis between her
legs, and began to thrust rhythmically. as ivo dollied in for a
close-up, genesis cued some music, the theme from a currently popular
news show. it didn't quite drown out the squeaking of bed-springs
and Kely's put-on gasps.
it was then that ED-209-B spotted something in the monitor ivo had
set up for Kely's benefit. it was a cylindrical something, that kept
appearing and disappearing between the suspect's thighs... he
thrust forward - there it was again. something triggered in the
faded neural-network of ED-209-B's pattern-recognition system. he
suddenly crouched down, angling the tip of the penis upwards.
`r-r-r-t- your weapon. you have twenty- b-z-z-z-z-t' Kely, ever
the improvisationalist, hitched her behind up, and settled down on
the end of the rubber penis.
`come on baby, do it -' and suddenly, ED-209-B thrust forward
again, propelling Kely over the end of the bed. her hands still
cuffed to the bedstead, ED-209-B began shaking like an epileptic,
pushing the end of its dick in and out at a frantic rate. her hair
flying in all directions, Kely's gasps weren't put-on any more, as
ED-209-B pumped away like mad, standing up on his toes, emitting a
grinding buzz that was part scrambled audio-sample, part electronic
shriek of lust. ivo backed off slightly, framed his camera's view
around the tableaux of Kely cuffed to the end of the brass bed,
suspended on the end of ED-209-B's swollen dick, just as he gave
a final thrust, flipping Kely right over, forwards onto her back,
and, shuddering in some digital epiphany, ED-209-B spurted about a
gallon of bright-green machine-oil out of the end of his dick. ivo
took a close-up of the oil running over Kely's face and down her
breasts, genesis superimposed the familiar OCP logo, and said, as the
music faded,
`O... C... P. we know how to do it.'
nikolai kingsley 1991
not (c)opyright...
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