27_Enemy mine

Jimbo opened his eyes and recoiled in shock from the thing standing over him. A bulbous green snout filled with way too many sharp teeth intruded on his personal space.

The sunflower monstrosity curiously sniffed at the man.

"Gah!" The giant yelled, shoving the viney beast away and scrambling back on all fours until he hit the wall.

"He seems damaged, maybe I can send him back to respawn so you can try again? I promise to be quick." Said a menacing voice coming from the ceiling directly above him.

Jimbo flinched at the sudden threat, looking up to see eight glowing mechanical eyes hiding themselves in the darkness.

"Chto, gde?"

"Zloi demon!"

"Nazad, ya predupezdayu!"

The giant said in his native language, instinctively grabbing a nearby metal pipe and rising it with shaking hands back and forward between the crimson red eyes of the arachnid demon and the viney plant monstrosity.

"Will you two cut it out. We are having enough problems as is. The last thing we need is to further alienate the people of the camp." A male voice said with a scolding tone.

Jimbo knew this voice, tilting his head slightly to the side, he examined his surroundings, all the while trying to keep one eye at the two monsters.

Everything around him from floor to ceiling was packed with disassembled machinery and scattered parts. Forests of wires snaked upward, rising from the floor to the ceiling, before disappearing through the sturdy metal door.

“Herman? Is that you? What the hell is going on here?” The giant asked, trying to sound confident yet failing to hide the tremor in his voice.

"Hold on, I am coming, just let me shut down the respawn session."

After a short clatter of keyboard buttons, a burst of mechanical noises and a kitchen timer going off, the constant whirling and buzzing he had only just noticed, came to an abrupt stop.

After the mechanical noises ceased, Jimbo could clearly hear the signs of commotion from outside. People running, shouting, and other various clatters from the camp.

His attention snapped back to his immediate problems as the plant monstrosity chose that moment to slip past his defenses and drag its enormous tongue across the camp leader’s face.

“Arrgh, get it off me, get it off!” Jimbo struggled to pry the happy creature off.

"Alright Heartsun, that’s enough, let the man be."

"H...Heartsun?" Jimbo muttered, his eyes wide with disbelief. Last time he saw the garden chieftain, the sunflower was no bigger than an adult man. And now… the damn thing was bigger than he was!

With a sad squeal, Heartsun halted his enthusiastic greeting and moved back at the side of the old man.

The plant chieftain was sort of weird like that. One moment he acted like an over-excited puppy, and the next he became serious and mature as a normal leader stereotype. In any case Herman wasn't one to judge, instead he just took the sunflower’s behavior as given.

He was technically a new alien species after all, so assigning him human like behavior norms was quite stupid. If Heartsun was happy to see the camp’s leader, who was he to judge.

“Herman? What the hell happened? Why is… how are we… when has…” The giant blabbered, trying to stand, but his legs gave out and his head spun from the effort.

"Whoa there slow down. Don’t overexert yourself. I had to disassemble the whole booth so you could respawn normally. I have no idea how were you supposed to respawn without extra help…" Herman shook his head at the mystery.

"Anyway, while the pixels in your body settle down, I might as well tell you what…"

"What are you going to do with me?" Jimbo said, regaining some confidence and warily eyeing the beastly plant and the eight arachnid like red eyes who still haven’t moved from the shadowy corner above him.

"Well isn’t it obvious? To fatten you up with cookies and then cook you with butter of course." Herman said, as if stating the weather forecast.

"What!?" Jimbo snapped.

“Well, what did you think I was doing?” The old man said, the fatigue in him tightening his tone more than he intended.

"I am respawning the entire camp. According to the Mayor’s message the second raider attack is going to come any moment now, and the old respawn booth was too slow. Not to mention too small for your… stature." Herman said.

"You mean we won? Everyone was dead. I was the last one to…" Jimbo exclaimed.

"Typical human arrogance. You were so absorbed with your own superiority, that you couldn’t even consider that someone else could have achieved what you failed at." The red eyes at the corner said.

Seeing the fright on Jimbo’s face, and him still threateningly pointing the pipe around, Herman intervened. "Staple can you please come down from there? Stop acting like a spider assassin."

The mechanoid innkeeper chose that moment to reveal herself. Emerging from the shadows, she leaped from her perch and, after a few silent flips in the air, landed soundlessly on the ground, standing beside Herman and staring menacingly at the giant cowering in the corner.

The bot had forsaken her usual cooking apron and friendly demeanor. Instead she wore a slim and practical combat suit, adored with small throwing knifes. The rest of her body was covered in adaptive camouflage cloth which shifted colors to match the ones of her environment.

Two of her arms were configured behind her back, appearing as some skeletal wings, moving slowly up and down and ready to strike, while her other pair of hands rested comfortably at two dangerous looking daggers at her hips.

"Vile machine!" Jimbo spat with deep seethed hate. "Beth told me there was something wrong with you Herman, but I was too stupid to believe it. She was right about you from the start! You are a machine sympathizer!"

"If you have something to say about me, you can address me directly, Human!" Staple retorted back, spitting the final word as if it was an insult.

"Herman, tell your pet mechanoid to back off before I turn it into scrap metal."

"Just give me a reason, I dare you ape!" The assassin bot shot back.

"Sigh…" Herman pinched the bridge of his nose…

"Just… let's calm down everyone…

Ok Jimbo… here is the deal… In short, after you died, me and the plants defeated the raider general. Then we went out of the camp and finished all of the unconscious raiders. This in turn gave everyone in the camp a significan't XP and credit boost, as well as a few more crates with supplies from the Mayor. According to him, there is going to be a second raider attack. It will arrive here any second now."

At that last piece of information, Jimbo's heart sped up again. "Where are the others, we have to prepare for the attack, those equipment crates, we have to get them opened asap. We have to plug the hole in the wall. There is so much to do!" He blurted out in panic.

With grunts of pain he finally managed to stand up, though he quickly swayed on his feet as his vision began to darken. Before he could topple down, he felt someone rush over and firmly steady him.

“I’m here Jimbo, you can count on me… always.” A female voice said.

"Alice, Alice, is that really you?" Jimbo said with a trembling voice, eyes wide with disbelief.

The woman’s face frowned for a split second at the name, but she quickly regained her composure and continued to support her friend. After the darkness passed, Jimbo saw the familiar face of his friend. The woman effortlessly supported his massive body, as if he was made out of feathers.

"Beth? Beth! There is no time, we have to prepare the camp, the raiders…."

"Don’t worry, I have taken care of everything. We are as prepared as we’d ever be." She fondly replied.

"The hole, we have to.."

"It is fixed." Beth patiently said.

"The crates?"

"Opened and their contents distributed among the people." The woman diligently replied. Tilting to the side and showing off the fancy new armor and rapier she now wore.

"But, what about the…" The man continued.

"Don’t worry about it… Thanks to the XP boost we are much stronger now, we will hold our own this time!"

"Huh, I guess I worried for nothing, you didn’t need me after all." Jimbo said with a chuckle, still in her embrace.

"We will always need you." The woman said softly, looking up directly at the eyes of her friend.

For a long moment neither of them spoke, their eyes locked in tense silence, their bodies pressed close together.

"KAKHEM! Not to interrupt your moment here, but aren’t both of you married to other people?" Staple rudely interrupted, shaking her head in disgust, not willing to indulge in whatever the hell the two humans were doing.

"Silence machine! Don’t you dare lecture us about human friendship. It is something your cold mechanical mind would never understand." Beth shot back as the two humans quickly pulled away from each other’s embrace.

Staple’s arachnid eyes flared up at the rebuff, the reddish glow making her face look even more menacing than usual. Before things could escalate any further though, Herman quickly intervened, desperately trying to preserve the fragile peace.

"Alright! Everyone, let's not escalate things… Now that the last person is respawned and well, I want to tell both of you something. Me and Staple are leaving the camp. After what you did to her during the attack, she has decided to resign her position as an innkeeper. And after everything I have seen so far, I don’t want to stay here either.”

"You can't take her! We need her food and rooms. Without her the inn becomes unusable." Beth protested.

"Pha, maybe you should have thought about that before your “friend” used me like a frizbee!" Staple shot back in anger.

“I have had it with arrogant humans! I was a fool to ever come here, I’d rather spend the rest of my life fighting with nanoid abominations in the forbidden zones, rather than to serve another mumbo juice to any of you ungrateful apes.”

You deserve everything bad that has happened to you. I hope the raiders use you as XP farms! Maybe then you would see what it’s like to be treated as something less than animal!"

And with that the furious mechanoid stormed out of the mud shack, causing the confused Heartsun to swivel his head back and forward between the humans and the retreating form of the mechanoid assassin.

After a brief moment of moral pondering, the chieftain left the workshop, skittering after the mechanoid in hopes of comforting her.

"Sigh…" Herman placed a palm on his forehead and sighed tiredly. He was too old for this drama…

"Herman, you have to make it stay. We can't afford to…" Jimbo started.

"You still don’t get it do you?" Herman snapped, having had enough of all this nonsense himself. "SHE, is her own person! I, nor anyone else gets to force her to do anything. This isn’t Earth, hell it isn’t even the Internet. Generica is its own separate entity, it has its own rules and traditions. If she wants to quit her job at the inn, there isn’t a single soul out here who could prevent her from doing so."

"IT is a machine! It was created to obey humans. Letting these things do whatever the hell they want is madness! Do you have any idea what her kind did to the Earth. It is because of them that we hard working people have to starve in the antarctic desert." Jimbo said with confidence.

"Do I? Phahahaha…" Herman mockingly laughed. He knew it wouldn’t help the situation, but he just couldn’t help himself.

"DO, I, know? Jimbo, I was there. I was there more than a hundred years ago when the world tore itself apart. I saw it all with my own two eyes. And you know what? Robots back then were treated as unthinking slaves, just as they are today. But unlike today, where precious few of them actually got to choose their fate, back then they had NO choice. All they could do is to follow the orders of their human masters."

"No Jimbo, the blame for the end of the world does not lie on machines, but on humans. Greedy, arrogant, selfish humans, who couldn't see past their desire for power. And you know what is the funny thing? Those same exact people are alive today, I remember their names and faces from back then. And unlike me, they don’t look like ancient fossils."

"Oh no, they lived in the heart of luxury in their underground bunkers, using their fancy rejuvenation machines and lacking for nothing, while the rest of humanity was left to fend for itself on a dying world."

“When the dust settled and the remaining supplies ran out, they emerged from their hidey holes and proceeded to do what they do best.”

"To exploit, corrupt, and take!"

"Back then, our group was a mix of mechanoids and regular humans. Yes you heard me right. And you know what? They were just as scared and wanting to survive as we were."

"The nanoid swarms didn’t seem to like the cold, so journeying to Antarctica seemed quite appealing idea at the time. Plus, unlike the north pole, it was mostly free of radiation."

"At first Escaldia was nothing more than bunch of trailers in the Antarctic shore. Eventually, with the help of our mechanoid friends, the camp grew bigger and bigger as we took in more survivors. We didn’t have much, but everyone was warm and fed, and for the first time in so many years we thought we were finally safe."

"We were wrong."

"That is when they came, the billionaires, the politicians, the ones puppeteering the old society from the shadows. They didn't invade or attack us. No, they were reasonable businessmen, offering trade and old world tech. We got so engulfed in their gifts that by the time we realized it, they were running every aspect of our city."

"Food wasn’t a given, warm shelter was a luxury, and perhaps worst from all, it was all blamed on the mechanoids. The same ones who helped us build the city were now blamed for every little mishap and misfortune."

"Yes the politicians are bad, but at least we aren’t ruled by evil machines…" Herman said with a mocking tone. Quoting the sentiment of the people back in the real world.

"People kept dying, their children taking their places and the same thing repeated so fast that soon there was hardly anyone alive who remembered how things were before, who build the first human city or what was the real role mechanoids played in its construction."

"And you know what is the real tragedy of it all? The only person in the entire Solar System, who is actively fighting those in power, is considered a madman."

"EVERY man woman and child KNOWS that Lord Mecron is evil!"

"The media has deemed him a terrorist who intends to break the shackles of the evil robots and slaughter everyone in their sleep. But in reality all my son tries to do is to make a safe haven for both human and machine. To offer a better future for those who are sick and tired to live under the oppression of Escaldia and its offshoot colonies."

"And yet, all he gets for his efforts are close minded individuals like you two, undermining everything he is trying to achieve."

"Don’t you see that treating machines as slaves will only fuel their resentment. By forcing them into obedience, you risk creating the very catastrophe you fear so much. A direct conflict between humans and machines would leave both sides devastated, while the real power holders would stand aside and watch the destruction unfold."

"In the end, the survivors would be even easier for those in charge to control."

Herman spoke passionately about the sensitive issue, revealing his true feelings and genuinely trying to show them that the situation was far more nuanced than they realized.

Perhaps he could persuade them to see his perspective?

Perhaps this was the moment they would open their minds and think beyond the rigid dogma they had been raised with?

Perhaps…