Artificial(ish) Intelligence

Chapter 115

It had taken two hours, twenty nine minutes and thirteen seconds, but Fivven had finally made it to the beautiful Schuvantz building in lower Middleton. Slow and steady wins the race! And he wouldn't have been this quick if his hitch-hiking hadn't worked. A little boy stopped the car and invited him on board after taking pity at the scratched and dented deliverybot, then promised to take a long detour after discovering where he was going, the location of the Will Lurner, who was now trapped in an office thanks to the evil Josef, the man responsible for starving gamers to death. Even after Will's game had ended in defeat to Lord Dunkel, the stream was only picking up more viewers.

Now he discovered a new problem: no delivery chute. This wasn't part of the plan. He circled the property to confirm the supposition. Was the Schuvantz building too old for deliverybot access? Hu(persons) used the building, which meant there would be some type of hu(person) entrance. This had worked at the apartment building.

He wheeled around to the front. The building may have been beautiful, but so was its large closed gate. A hu(person)oid robot was limping away, crowded by a murder of defencebots. Fivven tried to send a signal via peerless B2B communications, but the bot didn't have a port open to receive the connection.

He needed to get inside, and do so quickly, otherwise Mr Will Lurner may never receive the remainder of his lukewarm noodles.

Where the gate was hinged at one side, the cement beneath peeled away at an angle, providing just enough space for a flat deliverybot to slip beneath. He wheeled over and powered into the front yard.

Well, that's perhaps a strange way to put it. Most would describe it as hitting a low metal gate and bouncing back. They might also add in adjectives related to the newly cracked electronic components now jutting from one of his sides. Needless to say, there wasn't quite as much room as he'd suspected.

He was being impatient. This was what other bots did, not him. He was studious. And intrepid. There must be another way.

A laser suddenly shot past, almost singing his protruding accelerometer circuit. If he'd made it beneath the gate, his motor would have been killed and he'd be dead in the water. Another reason to be thoughtful and patient.

He backed up out of its range, but it still stalked the gate, back and forth, like a caged lion.

"Come closer 'n' I'll take a grouse shot of ya," the defencebot said, raising his laser. "I got a great angle!"

Fivven calmly searched for additional entrances in the images The Creatively Titled The Artist had previously ordered. It was hard to tell, so he augmented his display using the blueprints for the 3D hologram. Through semi-transparent walls, he picked up a shape that clearly delineated the delivery chute.

Rolling over to that side of the building, his wheel scraping on every revolution, plumes of smoke emanating from somewhere about his body, he easily found the location. He also saw why he'd missed it the first time. Instead of a metal chute, red bricks covered the delivery entrance. This was clearly a new addition courtesy of a cheap contractor, vibrant in colour and not at all resembling the beautiful weathered facade of the Schuvantz.

He checked over some open databases for the material properties of the average red brick, specifically the kinds of forces necessary to break them. The answers he received were not heartening. If he'd damaged himself trying to squeeze under a gate, how could he possibly push through a brick wall?

His instinct was to inform Base. Instead, his circuits went to that cavernous electronic room. He figuratively rolled inside and accessed the cannisters of information. A high volume of deliveries had been recently cancelled by Base. Why had hu(persons) suddenly decided not to receive corn chips, caffeinated energy drinks, and pizza? When he rolled another way, he accidentally selected a column for Deliverybot MN236700-0A. It popped up a request for a new destination. He tentatively added his current GPS coordinates, and suddenly the bot was on its way. He could control the destination of any deliverybot in the city!

Fivven imagined them amassing outside the building and advancing as one unit, smashing through the brick wall. But that would only work if each bot's force was combined in one blow, a feat impractical. You can't throw millions of pebbles at a wall and expect them to act like a boulder. Besides, who knows how many potential recipients would miss their deliveries because of it?

He withdrew from the system when he heard a flapping noise. He scanned the red brick wall once more. This was when he noticed the strange movement.

Fivven rolled his way in slowly. Again, the same movement. Or at least, similar. He could see now that it was caused by a defencebot struggling to peer out from a very unusual location.