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Stories from the Verse
In Version
Chapter 119: Beam 190
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Kondor 249
One of the LGMs entered the side office where Beam and his companions had set up temporary headquarters while Captain Malacon and Commander Lors dealt with the robot problem. It said something, and a glance at Bob was sufficient for the alien to begin translating.
Emperor.
He nodded toward the visitor. Had it intended harm, he was confident that Bob would already have informed Dawn, and this would not be a problem. The soldier continued.
There are reports of berserk robots killing civilians on level forty-five.
Apparently Norax had carried out his threat. It was a foolish decision. He couldn’t order the robots to kill him and his people, because the robots would then have to interface with the computer to find out who they were, and they would be reprogrammed to recognize him as admiral. The best he could do would be to command that they kill all aliens and anyone supporting them, and the second part would be extremely difficult for the robots to know, so a lot of innocent people would be hurt. Sucks to be them, he thought, but thanks to that transmission Norax had tried to send everywhere, everyone would blame him for this. Besides, already robots were reporting to reprogramming stations to be reassigned to everything from officer’s food preparation to animal control. It was unlikely that any of them would find him before they were all repurposed.
Still, it was time to make another speech. He went to find Malacon, and repeating the same somewhat complicated procedure as before, he was able to deliver this in LGM to the entire ship.
“My subjects: the insane renegade traitor calling himself Captain Norax has decided to attack his own people with combat robots, as he himself threatened to do. Rest assured that your new Captain Malacon and his First Officer Commander Lors are working on repurposing all of those berserk robots, and hopefully within the next few hours the situation will be contained. Meanwhile, stay away from any robot that appears to be outfitted for combat, as their actions are unpredictable. We are working to capture this criminal and end his killing spree, and he will be held accountable for every death he has caused. Thank you.”
He stepped away, and said, conveyed by Bob, “Sorry for the interruption; please resume repurposing the robots.”
Returning to his office, he asked his companions, “I don’t suppose anyone has any ideas about what we do when this is over–like, can we get this crate off the bottom of the ocean?”
They all stared blankly at him. Apparently not, or at least not yet, he concluded.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #494: Warring Worlds. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
