Mechanoid Terror

CHAPTER ONE

It was June 2025, and John Johnny Wilson, all of 22 years, yet the highest paid driver in the country, stood and watched as kid after kid tried to best the game only to fail miserably. Officially called Space Battle, the game was deceptively simple: destroy your opponent's drone before he destroys yours. The problem was you only had boomerangs for weapons, and a limited number of them to boot. Destruction only occurred if a minimum of thirty boomerangs hit a drone within a specified number of seconds. For example, if you could hit your opponent with thirty rangs in the space of one second, you would destroy it. Take too much time and your opponent's hit counter will reset. The game was designed to be either player-versus-player or player-versus-computer. It was the computer opponent which was giving everyone fits.

Hey, Johnny! This game is dope, but no one can beat it, a fellow driver yelled as he stepped away from the control console. Maybe you can work your magic? The crowd made their opinions known.

Any game can be beat, Johnny noted as he sat down at the console. After inserting his PayCard, Johnny set the game to its maximum level—one hundred hits in five seconds. The crowd went silent except for one woman who scoffed, Are you crazy? Everyone has lost at the lowest setting.

You're making it too easy for the computer, he said as he switched to training mode and fired off several boomerangs at targets, deliberately missing the targets so the rangs could hit them on the return leg of their flight. After a minute, possibly two, of practice, Johnny switched over to play mode. He took a breath and hit start.

Immediately, a drone appeared firing rangs at Johnny, but he dodged them while keeping an eye on the computer's rang count. Both he and his opponent had a limited number of rangs to use, and both were getting close to the forfeiture level.

Johnny came to a stop, opting to dodge the computer's rangs. Without warning, Johnny let all his remaining rangs fly at the other drone. They all passed by without a single hit.

The young lady laughed herself into a fit of coughing.

His opponent started firing at Johnny as Johnny backpedaled. Rang after rang bounced off Johnny's exterior as he came to a stop against a barrier.

His opponent, probably programmed by a bored twelve-year-old, gloated as it waited for Johnny's hit timer to count down to one second before firing the kill shot. Johnny had noticed this flaw while watching the others lose. Johnny let go of the controls and waited.

With 1.1 seconds to go, the crowd gasped as over one hundred of Johnny's rangs caught up with the two drones. The opponent never noticed that it was now standing in the exact spot from where Johnny had thrown his inventory of rangs. All 150 of Johnny's rangs hit the computer-driven drone simultaneously, causing it to explode and ending the game. Johnny reached down and typed in Johnny for the high scoring player name before walking out of the arcade. He was about to be late for an appointment, and Johnny was never late for anything.

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After leaving the arcade, Johnny found himself speeding down the street with no less than four federal SUVs following close behind. Ahead of him was an on-ramp to the freeway. Once he was on it, and clear of all commuter traffic, he could open it up and get the hell out of the city while leaving his new fans in the dust. The problem was getting on the damn freeway.

As he weaved between much slower traffic, part of his brain was wracking itself wondering why he was being chased. All he had done this morning was meet with some dude named Jimbo who needed a driver for a jewelry heist. Instead of three guys waiting for him at the coffee shop, he found four SUVs filled with feds waiting for him with no Jimbo in sight. As he fled the scene, Johnny wondered what the hell he had gotten himself into.

The traffic suddenly opened ahead of him, so he pressed the clutch and down shifted. Before he could hit the gas, a large man in a strange armored suit dropped down in the middle of the road and aimed a large gun at the fleeing car. Before Johnny could react, the man fired the weapon. Bullets tore into the engine, destroying it. Johnny swerved to avoid hitting the gunman, flipping the car over onto its roof. Just as he passed out, Johnny saw the man walk over and kneel next to the driver-side window. He had no face or other discernible features except for the word SECURITY stenciled across his chest.

###

Johnny woke up in a hospital room, at least he thought it was a hospital room. He was wearing a hospital gown and had an IV in his arm. Attached to him were several monitoring devices, some of which he recognized. He looked around and saw a large piece of equipment in the corner. Whatever it was, it stood at least seven feet tall. He got the creepy feeling it was watching him.

A knock at the door was followed by a woman wearing blue scrubs and a lab coat wheeling in a cart. Johnny looked past her and saw two armored SECURITY guys standing on either side of the door. She stopped and smiled at him. How are we feeling today, Mr. Wilson? she asked with a smile. Johnny just stared. She was almost seven-feet tall with pale skin, piercing blue eyes, and long, blonde, shoulder-length hair. It was her eyes, though, that caused him concern. He'd have to guess they were at least half-again as large as a typical woman's eyes.

Mr. Wilson? she asked again.

He looked at her name badge and saw the word Nay'Treet. Sorry. I'm fine, Dr. Nay'Treet. He looked at his wrists and saw they were without handcuffs. Um, where am I?

The hospital. You were knocked out in the accident and have been unconscious for three days.

Hospital? Accident? Then he remembered the armored guy taking out his car. Now I remember. That security guy had some gun.

Our security people are wearing the latest in power assist armor and use advanced weaponry even outside the fence.

Why the blank face plate?

They are a secretive lot who got tired of black ski masks. Nay'Treet walked over and took his pulse. Her touch felt normal, but those eyes.

Excuse me, but do all the ladies in your family have such large eyes?

Yep. All the better to see you with. She ran some device over his body without touching it, then wrote something in his chart. She looked up and saw him staring again. What now?

That box you ran over me, what is it?

She held up the device. It looked like a smart phone. We call it a medical scanner. It reads your life force and translates it into measurements of various vital signs such as heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, aural stability, chakra stability, and brain wave activity.

He didn't understand half of what she just said but nodded anyway. Any idea what happens next? he asked.

Everything will be explained shortly. Good day, Mr. Wilson, she said as she wheeled the cart out the door. He noticed the cart had nothing on it nor did it have wheels. It floated in the air.

Thanks Doc, he replied to a closing door. He slowly got to his feet and looked around the room. The first thing he noticed was the writing on the monitoring equipment. It was unlike anything he had ever seen before. He walked over to the corner where the large something-or-another stood. What the hell are you?

My name is Margaux, and you and I are going to be best friends, it said as it stepped out from where it stood and extended a hand. He jumped backwards and nearly fell into the bed. He grabbed the call button and punched it about a dozen times before Nay'Treet walked in. Is there a problem, Mr. Wilson?

He pointed at Margaux. Giant robot in my room, he sputtered.

Nay'Treet turned to face the behemoth. You had to scare him, didn't you? she admonished the mechanism.

Margaux shrugged. Hey, a girl has to have a little fun.

Right. Mr. Wilson, this is Margaux. She's a mechanoid from the Omega Nebula. Margaux, this is Johnny Wilson, a ne'er-do-well getaway driver who happens to have just the right genetic mix to fix our problem.

Excuse me? Ne'er-do-well? I'll have you know that I'm the best damn driver on the east coast... She handed him a folder that had suddenly appeared under her arm. How the hell did you do that? Are you some kind of mutant?

She shook her head. I'm what's known as a Nordic alien or Nordican. I hale from the Pleiades. You might say Margaux and I are not from around here.

He swallowed. And here is where?

Area 51 in Nevada. You are in a secure underground facility where the truth is far stranger than all those stories you've heard. Now, I'll let you two talk while I get back to my rounds. She walked out leaving Johnny to stare at the robot. He slowly backed over to where a chair sat next to the wall. Sitting down, he closed his eyes and tried to calm himself. Opening them slowly, he saw Margaux sitting across the room with her legs crossed while watching him.

Hell, of a thing to find out that all those conspiracy theories are true, at least most of them. So, where do you want me to start? she asked.

Why are you here? Invasion? Mind control? You need Earth's resources, he said as he built up to a full-blown panic attack.

Calm yourself. I think it will be easier if I just show you. Feel like taking a walk?

CHAPTER TWO

So, this is Area 51? How the hell do they keep all this under wraps? Johnny asked as he drank in what he was seeing. The corridor he and Margaux walked down was the central hallway of Level 4, the office and administration level. Hundreds of people were using the corridor to get to their destinations and many of them were not human by any stretch of the imagination.

Tell me, Johnny, what do you see? Margaux asked as she dodged something that looked reptilian.

Without breaking stride, he looked around and shrugged. I see people going about their business. Sure, some are a little odd, but they're just people. What the hell is happening to me? I should be hiding in fear. Hell, even you seem normal, he said with a crooked smile.

Why thank you, I think. Your brain is quickly adapting to the situation, one of your abilities that brought you here. Many of your species would be having a psychotic break by now, but not you and not the people who live and work here. Someday, if things work the way we think they will, there will be hundreds of species walking these halls and the planet. This corridor will seem empty by comparison.

So, what's your story? he asked as they entered an elevator.

My companion and I were part of a protector squadron guarding the mechanoid worlds from an invasion force when, at the height of the battle, we and one of the invaders were dragged into a micro wormhole, a phenomenon not uncommon in the nebula. We emerged just outside the orbit of Mars. She was mortally wounded but lived long enough to get us to Earth where she died after landing outside Nellis Air Force Base.

I'm sorry for your loss.

Thanks. She's in a better place. They stopped in front of a large, armored door. Her body is on the other side of this door.

Excuse me? Johnny exclaimed as the doors opened onto a huge open and well-lit pit. At the center was a piece of machinery about the size of a Ticonderoga-class cruiser, say 600 feet long with a 50-foot beam.

Johnny, I would like you to meet Iona, or at least what's left of her.

Johnny stared. She's dead?

My kind don't die the same way carbons do. Buried inside each of us is a diamond with a unique EM field impressed on it. That is our essence, our soul if you would. That is the part of us that is alive. The rest of our body is just stuff we accumulate during our lifetime. Her diamond has disappeared, leaving behind about 10,000 tons of stuff.

Disappeared? Where did it go?

Don't know. When I landed on Earth and explained my predicament—I was stranded here with this soulless pile of tech—the Area 51 crew, along with reptilians and Nordicans, sent out teams to where Iona and I emerged from the portal. We found no trace of her soul anywhere within a cubic light-year search volume. We also found no sign of our adversary who I swear followed us into the worm hole.