TK Special #7 - Return to the M'Verse: An Ooorah Anthology

The Shrine of the Toad - by @theidiotmachine

The Shrine of the Toad

by theidiotmachine

Molly gulped down some tepid water from her bottle, grateful for the relief from the heat. She could see a huge farmer robot ahead, and she was fairly sure that it was watching her, so she waved to it, and strolled over. As she walked, a slow, hot breeze rocked the maize, and it gently bobbed and swayed on either side of her.

The robot was painted a brilliant yellow, as yellow as the maize; and it glittered in the bright sun, so much so that her glasses darkened as the machine turned to face her. It unhooked the harvester it was towing, and trundled towards her, and harvested stalks crunched under its tracks, snapping loudly in the hot air.

'Hi!' shouted Molly. 'I'm looking for the tower. Can you help me?'

It got within ten metres of her, and stopped. It had no face, just a black sensor strip, although Molly couldn't help but think that its two floodlights looked like eyes, and the raised bumper like a big smiling mouth.

'Hi,' it said, its voice low and booming, but not aggressive. 'My name's Daniel. You're quite a long way away. How did you get here?'

'My flyer had a problem,' said Molly. 'It dropped me as close as it could and then went back to Pascal.'

The farm robot fell silent. Molly was no worker counsellor, trained to understand the subtleties of the machines, and had no idea what it was doing. She imagined that it was pitying this foolish, fragile human.

'I spoke to the tower,' it said, suddenly. 'They'll send someone to pick you up. You're lucky; if you hadn't found me, you'd be in trouble in this heat before you got there. Praise the Toad! Now, I've got to back to harvesting. Try and shelter from the sun as best as you can until then.'

And with that, it returned to its job, humming gently to itself.

#

The flyer that picker her up was called Graham, and was far more curious about her than the farmer robot had been. In her experience, this was generally true of flyers, who were gregarious and cheerful. Even its synthesized voice was faster and higher pitched than Daniel's; it sounded like an eager teen, although she knew that this meant nothing.

'So why're you here?' it asked as the maize field fell away from them, its huge rotors blowing up a storm of dust as they soared into the cloudless blue sky.

'I'm a journalist from off-world,' she replied. 'Your religion is something that people have never heard of before. I'm interested in talking to your minister about why she decided to worship this frog.'

'Toad,' corrected Graham. 'Wow, really? That's so neat!'

She smiled at the machine's simple enthusiasm, and, not for the first time, wondered what it would be like to be so full of child-like wonder at some things, yet so utterly above adult competence at others. I think, she thought, it would be nice to be a robot.

'I'm glad you think so,' she replied. 'What about you? Do you believe in the toad?'

'Yeah, I do,' said the machine. 'It makes sense. We've learnt a lot of things from you humans; you figured out a bunch of stuff before even the first of us was built, and we're still learning from you. So, yeah, a higher power, why not? And it makes sense that our god is like us.'

She frowned; she had so many questions, and not much time with this flyer.

'Do you mind if I record this conversation?' she asked. 'I'll use it as part of the story I'm writing.'