By David C. Daoust
The two spider mechs flew high over the desert of Twin Crown. Wilford spun and flipped around playfully as his wife’s mecha just powered forward. They had gotten bored with patrolling. Patrolling in the hopes of maintaining the upper hand with the enemy battle drone waves, despite the incoming waves abruptly ending after the rover was finally on the move.
Bored with their lack of a real objective— they had flown well off their normal path, even wound-up racing for a bit. Not really to a set finish line, just took turns taking the lead… seeing how fast, or how high, or just who had better control of the machine. Wilford, being a machine, had the clear advantage. He did not really feel the need to continually win. Really, he had learned a long time ago to keep it fun, even if his very human wife was giving it her all, which she usually was.
All the way up until they came upon the small structures built in the desert.
The spider-mechas were equipped with stealth fields— so they had vanished from sight long before they even dropped down to investigate. It was like a small village, built around a central mine… only there were not any people in said village, only drones… or at least machines of the same tech. They were smaller, more rounded, versions of their own machines. Ultimately the structures themselves matched the look of drone technology, like little robot huts, bulbous yet square, and lit-up with a kind of light blue color.
Wilford could only speculate where it all came from, though it was clear the small drones were ‘worker drones’. At least that was what the targeting reticle tagged them as when it suggested them as possible targets. The name also came to mind as a fitting one as the mini drones spread out about the small village and set to work; either building more bulbous structures, or just running materials in and out of that central mine.
Wilford flew in low, yet invisible, he knew the smaller machines could not detect him. As he approached, he witnessed a side hatch suddenly open, a conveyer belt carried yet another worker drone out of the small ‘factory’. The door shut behind it as the drone suddenly powered up and flew off to join the others…
“What is this place?” Olivia asked.
“Looks like we found where the battle drones are coming for repairs, maybe?” Wilford guessed.
Once he flew near enough to the ‘worker-drone factory’ a message suddenly popped up on his screen: ‘You must leave stealth to synch with structure.’
“Synch with structure?” Olivia asked quizzically as she clearly received the same message.
“Swing down around here,” Wilford suggested as he led the way, “Out of their line of sight. Let’s see what happens if we drop our stealth shields.”
Olivia did as she was asked.
Once their fields dropped, a small bar appeared on the screen before him. Little by little, as they stayed near the structure, the bar slowly began to fill.
“So, I mean,” Olivia speculated, “We’re connecting with this tiny factory?”
“That is my guess,” Wilford answered.
This ‘synching thing’ was actually a really slow process. Just as the bar hit its halfway mark, the lighting of the whole building changed to a neutral tone. This seemed odd to Wilford, and also called the attention of the rival drones.
“Here, try to stay out of sight,” Olivia said as the two flew low, staying on the opposite side of the structure as a small drone came to investigate. As the drone circled the structure, they kept moving to the opposite side…
As far as Wilford could tell the small bar was no longer filling as they and the small drone now hovered within range of the bulbous factory. For whatever reason they could not synch with the structure while the other drone was so near to it.
It was clear the smaller drone was not going to give up its search, despite staying out of its line of sight.
“See what happens if we stealth now,” Wilford took his turn suggesting.
As they vanished, the small bar also vanished. It was replaced, once again, with the message that they must drop stealth to synch with the structure.
The small drone, though, still did not give up its search. In fact, more of them joined the hunt as they circled the structure.
“So, I mean,” Wilford asked as the two were now safely out of sight. “Do we even want to synch with the factory?”
“I don’t know,” Olivia answered simply. “Let’s try and figure out what some these other structures do.”
“Wait, are you hearing this,” Wilford suddenly changed the subject.
“Over the comm?” Olivia asked just as Wilford turned up the volume enough to hear Harper admit she had made a bad call.
Wilford heard his wife ask Harper what was wrong, though she was answered by the Jinn, Hugo, who quickly asked where they were.
“We’re still out scouting for the next wave of Drones,” Olivia explained. “We think we found their base!”
Wilford could tell she had worded it funny on purpose, largely because they were actually supposed to be on patrol!
“I don’t see how they could get passed us…” Wilford began, exaggerating their handle on the situation, as he called up a map of the area. He tried get his bearing on where they actually were now that they had wandered so far out of their way. He really hoped they had not caused problems with their fooling around.
“It’s not a drone wave, Wil” Hugo’s inhumanly rough voice informed, “We got a whole new mess brewing.”
“Do I need to come out there?” came Dicey’s light voice over the comm; somehow threateningly.
Wilford had dropped the shared channel and spoke only to his wife, “let’s land these over at that ridge, see what we can do at the rover.”
“Okay, good idea,” Olivia answered as she suddenly jetted to the ridge.
Yet invisible, the two landed their spiders on the ledge, overlooking the rival base.
No sooner had Wilford’s touched ground, than he peeled his visor off from his head. He was actually sitting in a rather stiff den chair in the married couples borrowed chambers. While Wilford was a bot, he had not actually entered the virtual environment like Margo had, he still needed to control his spider through the game itself…
“Hugo thinks we should hide,” his wife said from the cushy recliner in the corner as she lifted her visor a bit to meet his eyes.
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