Activation Sequence 103

Alga Alga Alga

Arena eight, absolute terror for robots.  I bet they’d have nightmares about this place, if they could dream. It’s where automata were pitted against state-of-the-art weaponry, meant to test the strength of our arsenal. Not many robots survived, and those that did where usually beyond repair. It’s what passed for entertainment on those slow, uneventful days. I was especially attracted to them. I mean, I had nothing and no-one to occupy my time and some of the devices used were my own creations. Some thought I was a bit of an oddball; watching robots I have helped create become dismembered.  The guild of Technicians did not usually visit arena eight without an actual invention to test -or any other arena for that matter. I never understood why I had such a fixated fascination at the time, and I never managed to figure it out afterwards. I wasn’t a warped type of kid who relieved in others’ pain (at least I think I wasn’t) but I found something deeply entertaining in watching bullets rip holes through those steel-plated armours.

Today, however, I was not looking forward to seeing an android crushed as easily as a tinfoil wrapper. Alga did not seem to have any ‘memories’ whatsoever concerning the arena. Despite how hard I try to convince her of the true danger lying in wait for her in those free evenings where I managed to find an excuse to enter the lab where she resided, she would simply not listen, seemingly unperturbed by the threat. She still refused to show them any outward sign of emotions. She was stubborn, I’ll give her that.

The walk to arena eight was slow, painfully so. The last few days I had found myself making excuses to enter the Robolgy lab, to Doctor Sechino’s obvious dislike. I was drawn to this robot, fascinated by the mechanisms at work, curious to find out how well its semi-artificial brain could function.

 Hours were spent conversing in the darkness, where I had tampered with the supposedly ‘hidden’ cameras so they constantly replayed a loop viewing me labouring away at my workbench. I had felt a strange rush of excitement and fear course through my systems at breaking the rules.

Our conversations usually began with Alga making a revelation or asking a curious and random question. (Why is a white sheet said to be blank when white is all the rays in the visible spectrum combined?)

I answered such questions to the best of my abilities. The conversation then usually developed into an interview about me. Who exactly was I? Where did I come from? How did I become an apprentice Technician? It was strangely liberating to be finally able to offload some of my inner thoughts to someone –even if they had no idea what I was talking about half the time. I never had anyone to talk to besides Doctor Sechino, and he was stiff about such things half the time.

 I am Fredrick Trace, an orphan and the son of merchants. No-one knew who my parents were, only that they were here to sell their goods to the city for a considerable price. They had died along with many others in The Gas Cell Incident; a fiery explosion caused by a single stray spark in one of the main gas cells in a space beetle, hence the name. The fire rapidly spread, engulfing many in its deadly embrace.

I was found at the doorstep of the training centre, a babe of barely six months, gurgling happily away to myself. It was only later that I found out that it was the babysitter hired to look after me who left me there.

For the next few years, I was part of an intensive training system for orphan, designed to train our youth to join the war effort. Despite having a head start since I was one of the only who had trained from such a young age, I fell behind my peers. There was no denying it; I was weak, feeble, frail and no amount of physique-enhancing drugs and hormones would change that. I could aim and shoot long range weapons with deadly accuracy, but when it came to throwing punches, I was simply lacking. Weapon assembly, though, was another matter altogether. I did it with such speed and ease, occasionally modifying the weapons to work better than they were created to, that some instructors claimed I was cheating, though I can’t see how that’s possible, seeing as we were  given instruction manuals- not that I needed them. It was while reconstructing an animal cyborg- built from the remains of animals merchants brought from earth- that I first discovered my communication abilities.