Renegade Robot

One

"Life is no argument, for the conditions of life could include error" - F. Nietzsche 

It was no job for a superhero, but Wyatt Lorenzo knew what he was signing up for, so even when people began to taunt him with names like Jani-Tor and Scrub-Or, he just laughed and shrugged it off. Someone had to take care of the 'do-gooders' before it was too late. He liked to blame it all on his virtual best friend, the one who was forever texting him into doing things he did not want to do, from phoning Jan Johnson in the eighth grade, to pulling a certain stunt on a certain day in high school, to taking this job with his actual best friend, Jalopy, and so he had followed the call of the text and it had led him to this day, where he found himself, in his mid-twenties already, a gainfully employed Botnik in the service of Mankind, living alone on the outskirts of Rubble Land, doing his part to stem the tide of correction. 

Wyatt had discovered the neighborhood while on a mission with his team to clean out some rampaging CGB's (concrete gobbler bots). These little guys, shaped like fat gray packing tubes about nine inches high and five inches thick, with pairs of extensible claws reaching out of the top and bottom and a thin slit down the middle on one side, were designed to break down buildings of concrete, glass and steel, excreting nothing but nitrogen-rich soil and oxygen. Once you discover them it's usually too late to save their target building, but they're fairly docile and easily dismantled. A little Cherry Coke goes a long way towards their final deactivation. Wyatt could've wished they'd let the little buggers do a little more damage before they'd completely neutralized the infestation; as it was, the locale was still littered with wreckage-filled lots only partially consumed. Still, the rents were cheap and the remaining structures were relatively safe, for the moment. 

Two of the team weren't very respectful to Wyatt; Randy, the team leader, and Hazel, his right-hand man. They'd been doing this work since the early days of the first hints there might be a problem with the self-generating helpbots originally designed by Western Lightwave. Randy especially liked to claim he'd seen it coming all along, proof positive to him that nothing good ever came out of California. He was a short, fat loudmouth from The South who sported a sweaty fu manchu mustache and a prized Esso t-shirt most days of the week. His compadre Hazel was equally matched in stature and stoutness, and did her best to keep up with his vocal volume as well. A lot of people assumed they were married or siblings or both, but nobody knew for sure. Randy was a devoted follower of the Frantic News Network, and often spoke in a language Wyatt barely understood, using phrases like “don't bite that apple” when there wasn't even any food around. They would come screaming up in the liquid-deathmobile first thing before sunrise, hoses clanging and dangling off every side of the bright blue tanker truck, blaring the horn and broadcasting to the whole block that 'lazy bones lorenzo better get his scrawny ass in gear or it was gonna cost him sure enough'. More times than not, Wyatt made sure he was out there on the remains of the sidewalk before they could pull that stunt. 

The final member of the team was his impossibly tall skinny friend, Jalopy. With his six foot nine inch bony frame, his pink shades, camouflage coat, khaki shorts and high top sneakers, he was the opposite of incognito. Jalopy was surprisingly quiet, though. You had to listen closely to pick up any of his conversational tidbits. So it was mostly Randy and Hazel making all the noise as the tanker patrolled its officially suspect areas five days a week from dawn till noon. The team was tasked with the easement, as they called it, of any reprobate or otherwise retrograde Class A, B or C type IMA's (intelligent mechanical assistants). It was everything a morbid cynic could dream of. Unfortunately for him, Wyatt was neither. He was merely a dreamer and a drifter who found himself wherever he happened to go. Jalopy was like that, too, and both also shared an ability to take orders and follow instructions, and so the team generally functioned well enough. The two leaders sat up front in the cab, amusing each other by mocking the two followers, who clung to the back like garbage men, enjoying the wind in their hair and the thrill of life in the great outdoors. Wyatt and Jalopy, when they mutually emerged from their daydreams simultaneously, would sometimes flash the goofiest grins at each other and laugh like maniacs.