Scrap, p.1
SCRAP, page 1
To Ruth
For always coming with me
(Especially to the emporium)
~ GB
To my Love, friends and family, who are the source of my inspiration and motivation. Thank you for being part of my journey
~ AT
Title Page
Dedication
A Brief History of Somewhere
Episode 01: The Pile
Episode 02: The Humans
Episode 03: The Hunters
Episode 04: The Stink
Episode 05: Boom-Bang-A-Bang
Episode 06: Bad Knees
Episode 07: The Outskirts
Episode 08: Smells Like The Pile
Interlude One
Episode 09: The Pink-Footed Goose
Episode 10: Hummingbirds and Giants
Episode 11: Gunner
Episode 12: Welcome to New Hull
Episode 13: City of Upgrades
Episode 14: Corpus Coil
Episode 15: What's In A Code?
Episode 16: Return of the Hunter
Episode 17: Escape From The Emporium
Episode 18: In The Shadows
Episode 19: The Strongbox
Episode 20: Morten Prometheus vs Scrap
Interlude Two
Episode 21: Underfoot
Episode 22: King of the Robots
Episode 23: One Robot Against A Thousand
Episode 24: At Home with Morten Prometheus
Episode 25: Trapped
Episode 26: Attack of the Hunter
Episode 27: Morten's First Humans
Episode 28: Enter, Harmony Highshine
Episode 29: Return of the King
Episode 30: Paige Against The Machine
Episode 31: Morten Shovels
Episode 32: The Ivory Tower
Episode 33: Piles For Miles
Episode 34: The Last Two Humans On Somewhere 513
Episode 35: The Rescue
Episode 36: H15-HN
Episode 37: Battle Among The Cases
Episode 38: K1-NG
Episode 39: To The Elsewhere
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Illustrator
Coming Soon…
Copyright
This isn’t my story, but I’m the only human left to tell it.
I wasn’t there for the first part, mainly ’cause I hadn’t been born yet.
The year was Something Something. Humans had spread like peanut butter across the galaxy, looking for new planets to call Somewhere.
One of those planets was Somewhere 513.
That one, the little one.
I know – it doesn’t look like much.
Sometimes big stories come in small packages.
With new planets, you always send in the robots first. Servants with servos, loyal to the core, programmed to prepare the planet for humanity’s arrival. Give them time and they can turn an alien wasteland into Somewhere not bad at all. And that’s exactly what they did. They even built a whole city, and got it all nice for the humans’ arrival.
But this time something happened that hadn’t happened before. The robots sort of got to like the city they’d built. They got to like the little back-of-beyond world called Somewhere 513.
I guess it started to feel like home.
When the humans finally showed up, all bleary-eyed from space-sleep, they couldn’t wait to make themselves at home on their world. But by then the robots had done something that robots had never done before.
They’d decided to keep it.
Keep it? said the humans. What do you mean?
It means, we’ve had a change of core, the robots said. The planet belongs to us now.
Uh, OK, said the humans. You’ll still do everything we ask though, right? You’ll do all the work – all the lifting and carrying and toiling and suchlike?
Actually, the robots said, we’re not doing any of that.
Huh, said the humans. Will you still make us breakfast?
Especially not breakfast, said the robots. It’s horrible watching you eat. Especially knowing how it all ends up. No, we’re not doing anything for you any more.
Fair enough, said the humans. So what time are you serving breakfast?
I don’t know if anyone really got what was happening until it had already happened. But pretty soon after that, being human was outlawed on Somewhere 513. The robots ordered the humans to leave the planet altogether – but Somewhere 513 was a long way from anywhere. Sometimes when you’re Somewhere, you have nowhere else to go.
That was when the fighting started. The robots called it the Difference of Opinion … but you’d probably call it war. Humans vs Robots. Actually, more like one hundred humans vs one thousand robots. The humans wouldn’t have stood a chance except for one thing … and that thing was K1-NG.
One robot. One single robot actually fought to protect the humans. K1-NG stood against his fellow machines, one robot against a thousand. He fought cog and nail, and he never gave up. Not even when he knew he couldn’t win … not even when he sacrificed himself so that the humans could escape. Even then, even when he was battered and broken and beaten, he never gave up. Deep down, at his core, K1-NG was unstoppable.
OK, nearly unstoppable. See, in the end, it wasn’t the robots who defeated K1-NG. It was the humans.
They did something to K1-NG he could never forgive. They betrayed him … betrayed everything he’d fought for. On that day K1-NG finally gave up. He vowed never to fight for another human being as long as he lived.
So I suppose this is his story. The story of K1-NG.
The humans called him King of the Robots.
I called him Scrap.
On the Pile, the one and a half suns could never set soon enough.
Every day was the same. The robot woke with the dawn upon his small patch of junk. Among the small mountains of debris before him he saw ruined robot parts – limbs … heads … torsos … even whole bodies … decimated robot cases. These cases piled up in their hundreds, their chest cavities open and empty, motionless and inert without their life-giving cores.
The robot watched the Pile’s other residents – junk cases – rusting robots on their last metal legs, trying to make the best of a miserable existence. He watched them build crude houses out of cast-offs, and call them homes.
But the robot did nothing.
He just sat there and waited for his core to run out of charge.
It never did.
Even though he saw countless junk cases grind to a halt, he did not lose an ounce of power. Not a single ounce. For the robot’s core had been built to last, like a battery that never ran out … a heart that never stopped beating. He was never going to fade away, as he had hoped.
So he watched the suns set again.
And again, and again.
On the eve of his tenth year on the Pile, the robot woke up with the dawn and stared out as normal. Makeshift shacks now dotted the landscape. The robot had watched dozens of junk cases build humble homes and humbler lives, before unceremoniously running out of charge. The robot looked back at his empty patch and realized something had changed. He realized he was tired of waiting to fade away.
He didn’t want just to be there.
He wanted to belong there.
It took the robot a full month to build his house, a ramshackle cabin made from leftover parts even the junk cases didn’t want. But as he chiselled the word WELCOME on to a sheet of battered tin and laid it outside his front door, he realized that he had made himself a home.
A week later, as he furnished his home with the final piece of improvised furniture, he realized he had given himself a small sense of belonging.
And a week after that, as he tended the flower bed in his tiny front garden, the robot realized that for the first time since he had arrived on the Pile, he had not thought about humans. It seemed he had finally found a way to leave the past behind.
For that he was eternally grateful.
“It’s him,” said a voice. The robot dropped his trowel and spun round. Silhouetted in the glare of one and a half setting suns stood two figures. They were no more than a metre away – one slightly taller than he was, the other a little shorter. Their bodies were covered by thick, pocket-ridden ponchos. Hoods pulled over their heads cast dark shadows over their faces. One had a large satchel strung across their chest. A small power battery poked out of the top.
Junk cases, thought the robot.
“This is -zk- my patch,” he said, gesturing back at his house. “Get lost.”
“It’s not him,” said tall.
“Is too,” short replied.
“Can’t be.”
“Can too.”
“But look at him.”
“Exactly, we finded him.”
“Found.”
The short one turned back to the robot. “You are him, aren’t you?”
“Who are -zk- you?” the robot stuttered. Short lowered her hood.
The tall one shouted, “Wait!” but the robot had already seen her face. He stumbled backwards, suddenly weak at the knees, and fell, rump first, into his flower bed. He stared up in horror, hardly able to believe his eyes.
Human.
A human child.
Which was impossible.
Because there were no humans on Somewhere 513.
Tall lowered her hood then too.
Another human.
“How…?” he gasped. “What -zk- who are—”
“I’m Gnat and that’s Paig e,” interrupted short. “Gnat”. Brownish skin. Reddish hair. 5.7 years old. Grubby. Missing central incisor. 60% water. “We came to find you,” Gnat continued. She prodded at the gap in her teeth. “We had a little moon-buggy but we crashed it on the first day and my tooth fell out but it was loose anyway and we walked the rest of the way on our feet and now is now, and we’ve find – founded you.”
“I’m telling you, this isn’t him,” said tall. “Paige”. Much the same as short, but older. 10.3? No, 10.4. Less grubby, no less scruffy. Strangely familiar. 100% impossible. She pulled her poncho off her arm and inspected a metallic armguard fixed to her left wrist. “Tracer must’ve conked out,” she added with a tut.
The robot shook with disbelief. He had hoped never to see another human face again … hoped never to be reminded of the life he had lost – of the robot he once was.
Yet here were two of them, watching him expectantly.
“You -zk- can’t be…” the robot whispered, staring up at them. The light from his left eye flickered slightly and he wondered if faulty wiring could be causing him to hallucinate. “No -zk- way,” he added. “You can’t be real.”
“Can too,” replied Gnat, her gap-toothed smile wide and delighted. “Paige, tell him we’re real.”
“Let’s go,” said Paige, peering at the robot. “It can’t be him.”
“Him who?” asked the robot.
“It’s so him,” insisted Gnat with a gleeful grin.
“But look at him,” said Paige. “He’s junk.”
“Hey!” snapped the robot. “That’s -zk- our word. You don’t get to say that word.”
“No offence,” said Paige with a shake of her head. “But also, seriously, look at you.”
The robot looked down at his hands. They were spindly and dull and creaked with rust. He ran his fingers across his simple approximation of a face, little more than a pair of eyes and a small, hinged mouth, and then regarded his body, a battered, grey cylinder covered in rust, dings and dents. His legs didn’t seem to belong to his body, nor to each other. His right was yellowish, with two pistons and a wide, flat foot, while the left was spindly and dull and had no foot at all, ending in a simple metal rod. There was no doubt he was the most downgraded robot on the Pile. Even among the junk cases, he was an unimposing sight.
“I know what I look like,” he huffed.
“Don’t listen to her – I think you look nifty. You’re all bits and pieces,” said Gnat. She nodded to herself and added, “I’m going to call you ‘Scrap’.”
“No, you’re not,” insisted the robot. With a tinny whirr, he managed to get to his feet, tottering unsteadily like a newborn calf.
“What’s it like being a robot, actually?” asked Gnat, peering at him. “Do you get hot and cold ’cause I’m always hot, and does your brain think one thing or one million things because I think one thing or two things but that is it and I’d definitely like to be an actual robot. I’d be like you –” she leaned in and added, as if to remind the robot what she had done for him – “but not called Scrap ’cause that’s your name.”
“That is not my -zk- name,” insisted the robot.
“So what is your name?” asked Paige bluntly.
The robot paused. He hadn’t spoken his name in ten years. Indeed, he had vowed never again to speak it aloud.
“Doesn’t matter what my name is,” the robot grunted, jabbing his rusty chest with a rustier finger. “You can’t just go around namin’ folk.”
“Why not?” asked Gnat.
“’Cause you can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you can’t!” Scrap snapped. “Names are -zk- important.”
“Sorry,” said Gnat. Then she turned to Paige and added in a loud whisper, “I bet he’s called Scrap.”
The robot let out a grunt and looked around.
“Might as -zk- well be…” he sighed, unaware that, from that moment, he would forever be known as Scrap. “Just a good-for-nothin’ junk case…”
“Junk case?” Paige repeated.
“This body – if I was any more downgraded, I’d be nothin’ but rust and dust,” the robot replied. “There’s nothin’ on the Pile that’s in a worst state than me. Trust me, I’m not the ’bot you’re looking— Wait, who are you? You’re… Humans are outlawed on Somewhere 513. What are you gubs even doin’ here?”
“Founding you,” replied Gnat. “We need your help.”
“Me? Why?”
“Why do you think?” said Gnat as if the answer was obvious. “You’re King of the Robots.”
“What did you say?”
The words echoed around Scrap’s head – memories of a life he had tried hard to forget sparked and fizzed in his brain-frame.
King of the Robots.
No one had called him that for ten years.
“I said,” replied Gnat, “you’re King of the—”
“Gnat, for the last time, it’s not him,” snapped Paige, grabbing her sister’s arm. “Does he look like a king of anything to you?”
“Maybe he’s changed – when it was ten years ago, you wore nappies and smelled like nappies.” Gnat tutted at her sister before turning back to Scrap. “Do you know Dandelion Brightside?”
“Gnat!” Paige hissed.
Scrap felt his core run cold. That name. That name.
He peered at the humans, and immediately realized it was her he was seeing in them. How could he have missed it? It was in their searching dark eyes, their defiance, their will, their hope. It was their mother he saw. Their mother, who he had tried so hard not to think about for ten long years, might as well have been staring him in the face. In an instant his brain-frame was flooded with memories. The last day he saw her, and all the things he had said on that day, that he didn’t regret – he didn’t. He remembered leaving. He remembered her calling after him. He’d somehow always thought that, despite everything, they had managed to find a way off-world … that someone had come looking for them … that someone had sent help … that they had been rescued … that they had blasted off into the void and escaped this unforgiving, doomed Somewhere.
But it looked like they’d stayed, all this time.
And they’d had children.
“Our mum made you!” Gnat proudly declared. As Scrap gazed open-mouthed at the humans, Gnat helpfully mouthed her mother’s name: “Dan-dee-lion Bright-side.”
“I -zk- I—” he blurted.
“Wait, do you know her?” asked Paige.
“What? Uh, no. No, I -zk- don’t,” he lied. With a rust-rasping shrug, he added, “I just heard the -zk- name, that’s all. Dandelion Brightside designed the cores of every ’bot on Five One Three.”
“And she made the magic glove that founded you,” explained Gnat. “Abradadadadabra!”
“That’s not the word – and it’s not a magic glove,” huffed Paige as she tapped her armguard. It was made from a dull orange metal, and mounted upon it was what looked like a compass together with a small screen filled with blinking lights. “It’s a core tracer,” she added impatiently. “It’s for—”
“I know what a core tracer is,” Scrap interrupted.
“Mum said it would find the King of the Robots,” said Gnat. For clarification she added, “That’s you. King of the—”
“Stop sayin’ that!” Scrap snapped. He cast his eyes across the Pile. Other junk cases, not a hundred paces away, were beginning to pay attention to Scrap’s new visitors. “Now you listen to me – you can’t be -zk- out here,” Scrap hissed. “Humans are outlawed on Somewhere Five One Three. You need to go home and hide.”
“We can’t,” said Paige, pulling her hood back over her head before nudging her sister to do the same. “Not yet.”
“Do you live in there?” asked Gnat, pointing at Scrap’s shack. “Our house is underground, which Mum says isn’t how most houses are but it’s how our house is and it’s called the Foxhole. Mum says there’s no foxes in it, but I don’t know what a fox looks like because I haven’t seen one, or an otter, or an elephump, because there wouldn’t be room for them in the Foxhole, which is why they live Outside.” She held her arms out, pointing left and right, and craned her neck upwards. “And that actually does make sense because you can look and see Outside goes that way forever and that way forever and up forever and—”
“Gnat,” Paige interrupted.
Scrap rubbed his forehead, scraping off a few flakes of rust.
“But the Foxholes are just bunkers,” he said. “The robots built ’em in case of meteor showers or space pirates or alien -zk- invaders. No one was ever s’posed to live there. Your mum and dad have really been there this whole -zk- time?”
