Chapter 2: Chapter 2 – Stopped at the city gates
Rob and Liana had been walking for quite some time, she was drenched from the rain even before the two of them met. Having an almost supernaturally bright and clear lightsource made navigating the forest almost too easy, supermodern LED lights were practically no different from magic to this primitive human.
Though that said, she had to change course a few times as she saw a specific tree, rock or other landmark. Though navigating was much easier due to the light it was still somewhat local, meaning that the navigation of seeing things in the further distance didn’t work.
The rain was still pelting down, even the rubberized exterior of Rob didn’t do well enough to hide it, though it took most of the metallic sounds away there was still a weird unnatural tone to the impact of the droplets. The blood was long since washed away as they trekked through the forest.
Their walk lasted for some time until they came to a compacted dirt road, it had deeper tracks from drawn carriages and showed signs of heavy use. Liana looked happy as soon as she saw it, seeming to now have proper control of their location.
Bouncing off the grassy floor onto the road Liana turned towards Rob with a smile.
“Ah, I know where we are now, it’s this way!” She looked happy and walked with a much lighter step in one of the directions of the road.
Rob showed no signs of reacting to her statement as he updated the internal map he was creating of the areas he had seen, he continued to follow her as he illuminated both her and her surroundings.
They kept walking along the road, her soaked leather shoes squelching against the muddy dirt road as Rob’s rubber-soled metal feet made oddly little sound at all. Any sound that escaped either of them would not carry far due to the blanket of falling water around them. Though not visible to the human eye, Rob could see that the forest was clearing in the near distance, a few more minutes along the road and they would leave the dense forest for a large clearing. There were small spots of lights in the distance, coming from buildings with attached farmlands. Behind the farms there were large stone walls not unlike what one would assume to be around medieval cities, this was further backed up once he zoomed in and took a closer look; there was a massive door, towers and even some human guard-looking people walking along the top of the walls.
“So...-” The awkward silence had lasted for quite some time even before they got to the road. But before the feeling of being lost in the woods with a weird metal man, shortly after seeing two men of less repute being straight up murdered, didn’t do wonders for smalltalk. You are reading story A Robot named Rob at novel35.com
Having been walking with ‘it’ for a while in the woods and now on a road, she felt much more comfortable and this seemed to have lightened the mood. “-Where are you from?”
She sounded honestly curious but there was a strange uncertainty in her voice, perhaps from asking the metal man questions, perhaps from having seen how dangerous it is or just being tired.
“That information is classified.” Rob replied in his almost monotone synthesised voice.
“... Classified? Is that like a secret or something?” She seemed to be clever enough to at least understand from context.
“That is an acceptable understanding.” As there was never any tone to his voice, it was impossible to guesstimate if that was a complimentary or insulting idea behind the statement.
“I am a X11-5-1 model, Serial number 13198134. I am a mass produced light-combat robot. You have given me the name Rob.” The explanation stopped there without further detailing of anything.
“So... nothing new, then.” She had an unsatisfied tone.
A few minutes went by in silence, eventually they came out through the forest into the much flatter landscape.
Now that the forest path didn’t narrow down the field of view he could more properly see what was going on. There was a large city behind a stone wall, around it were many houses along the roads through the city. A river came out through the castle walls and led into the countryside, it appeared to connect to the ocean or a large lake, the city was hard to see from this angle as the walls obstructed everything but the taller buildings.
Outside of the river that snaked through the countryside were several farms connected to the massive farmlands.
There were only the bare minimum of people around, most likely due to the weather and time of day.
“What do you plan to do now?” Liana asked, sounding oddly cheerful about it.
“I was activated because my power cell needs recharging, I need to find somewhere to get a new cell or recharge my current one.-” Changing the flow of conversation, Rob changed his reply to a question. “-Do you know of anywhere I can get a X11-5 Power cell, or recharge the one I currently have?”
His monotone voice made it hard to know if this was a request or threat.
Liana turned towards him with a curious and confused face. “I... have no idea what that means. Perhaps you need to speak with a mage? They know more about constructs than I do.” She was still under the impression that Rob was a construct, and all things considered she was not entirely wrong.
“Understood, do you know where I can find a mage?” Not entirely knowing what a ‘mage’ was, in context it sounded like a title.
The walk continued, save the rain and footsteps, the trip until they came to the first farmhouse was silent.
Liana stopped and turned around, using both her hands she made a stopping and waiting motion not too different that you might make towards a large animal.
“I... Think you should wait here, let me prepare my parents...” She sounded hesitant but oddly interested.
Rob nodded but didn’t reply. He stopped where he was instructed to and remained still like a statue as she quickly walked inside.
He turned off his flashlight as he increased the gain of his microphones and filtered out the sound of the rain. This was something he had done a while ago. Since the people inside spoke with raised voices for several reasons, he didn’t have any problems finding out what was going on.
It started with two people, an elder man and woman, explaining that they were very happy for her return, wondering what had happened to her. She explained the whole story, leaving out the gory details of how Rob killed them, and rather defaulting to having taken care of them.
She explained that he was a metal man, some construct or something, she had never seen anything like it but he helped her and she wanted to return the favour.
“Is... Is it outside now?” A male voice asked, sounding more scared than anything.
There was no reply, but footsteps walked closer to the door, and once the door opened an ageing man of surprising good physique stepped out, tailed by Liana. He had short brown hair, the expected physical build of a man who has been handling a farm all his life wearing simple linen clothing late in the evening.
He used a few seconds to spot Rob, most likely due to the black on black of the weather. As he did so he jumped a little as he was clearly startled by the weird construct standing in the rain.
“W... What do you want..?!” The man shouted at Rob. Liana seemed to want to reply to the question but the man lifted his palm in front of her in a ‘stop talking’ motion. She complied.
“I need to find someone that can recharge my power cell, or a way I can obtain a new one.” Rob’s sudden voice, volume and strange sound had the man react even more negatively.
“We don’t have that here. Go away!” The man clearly disliked Rob, not something Rob cared about but it was a curious reaction nonetheless.
Looking over the man as well as Liana, she didn’t seem to respond or deny the order to leave, Rob already had a destination that seemed to be to the limit of her knowledge about the topic, so there was no need to argue.
“Understood.” Rob nodded as an acknowledgement of the request. Turning towards the city he started walking into the night.
He overheard some arguing between the man and Liana, him not being happy about her bringing strange arcane devices back home, it could get her killed, or worse.
An argument started where she defended Rob in that he protected her against the bandits, he was a ‘good guy’. The man retorted again about arcane magic and how this was a horrible curse, the Inquisitors was going to fuck them up just asking about it, something Rob didn’t understand but at the moment this didn’t really affect him.
Using the information about the doors being closed during the night, Rob needed to wait until the doors opened before he could gain access. He walked until he came to the river that seemed to separate the farmlands from the shanty town that was expanding outside the wall along the areas between the roads. Before he entered the shanty town he found a spot off the road he could stand and wait, there was no need to forcefully enter the city and cause problems, nor invade people’s homes, so he took a few steps of the road near a large tree and activated power-saving mode until the doors opened.
The sun had risen as the weather had cleared, it was still overcast but it was brighter. The farms had started with some minor activity, preparing for the day of work alongside daylight. The shanty town had similarly started with a little activity, but it was much lazier than the farms, people were hanging out signs, opening doors, brushing out dirt from their floors and it seemed like people were preparing shops and road-stands.
Rob remained motionless for another solid hour, there was no activity around him so he was not interrupted until the doors through the wall opened, this triggered an activation sequence that had Rob wake from his seeming slumber. A quick boot-check of all limbs, spinning of fingers and joints later he started walking towards the city.
He walked over a small well-travelled wooden bridge with a chest-high railing that led him over the river snaking through the countryside. Though his night vision was incredibly sophisticated, it was much easier to see details and spot everything now that there was natural light, or light at all. The people near the walls were dressed a bit better than the ones near the edges, although all of them were dressed finer than Liana. He could see into the open city gates which were guarded by four men in what looked like primitive leather armour. They had short swords on their hips and were carrying a spear, on the top of the walls were similarly dressed people but they were carrying crossbows as well.
Through the door he could see buildings as the road gently curved to the right, the buildings were mainly of stone make, some had wooden support structure and a thatch covered roof, others had more proper shingling or just wooden boards. The buildings he could see were mainly one or two stories, and to the right sort of attached to the outside of the wall was a castle keep, with its own outer walls the building seemed to be about 4 stories tall, easily the most fancy building that could be seen from this point.
Rob continued on, his programming explaining that he would most likely be looked at oddly, have slurs or strange names thrown his way, perhaps even attacked.
As he walked into the shanty town, people had started looking weirdly at him before even got there, but now that he was closer there were more stares, people stopped what they were doing, kids were pointing and asking questions but were stopped and brought inside by some adults. There were questions and murmurs, Rob heard them all; nothing of interest nor anything one would not expect coming.
Not passing any of this any mind, Rob continued to the guarded gates.
“H-Halt.” a hesitant voice commanded. It was one of the guards, his helmet covered most of his brown hair, his brown eyes had a sense of fear but wonder peaked through a little.
He stepped closer but stayed out of any arm range, but rather stopping barely within spear range.
“What... What are you? Who do you belong to?” His voice didn’t break this time and sounded both curious but had a tone hinting blame as well.
“I am a X11-5-1 model, Serial number 13198134. I have been given the name; Rob.” On purpose he didn’t reply to the belonging aspect, there was no need to refer to classified information without reason.
“X...11.. Serial.. What?” The guard was confused, nothing of this made any form of sense, but he seemed to at least get a name out of all of this. “Ok... Rob-” There was an insulting and almost fake tone when he said ‘Rob’. “-Who owns you, on what business are you here?”
Rob had already checked for potential threats, there were two more guards on the inside of the thick stone wall, three on the top with crossbows and the two in front of him. The threat level was zero.
“I am here to find someone that can help me recharge my powercell or obtain a new one. I was told that a mage might be able to aid.” His cold and emotionless synthesised voice didn’t seem to do wonders in persuading them, however this might have been accidentally beneficial.
“Hey, Hyd-” The man who was in command spoke to the other guard. “Go get Lyever.”
The one apparently named Hyd nodded and left the area, he went into a small door on the side of the wall.
There was a vast majority being humans, but a few others had passed them during the wait, some talked amongst themselves like the others had done before; wondering what this thing was and what was going on.
Rob didn’t react.
A few minutes later Hyd came back out, this time with a grey robed man with a strange ornate sun-like badge, a wooden staff with a crystal on the top in his hand and a book fastened to a chain that was again fastened to a sash.
The man immediately stopped in his tracks as he saw Rob, his eyes filled with wonder and intrigue, the first person showing this kind of reaction so far.
“This is the thing.” Hyd said to the robed man as he walked past them all, back to his post.
The robed man waved his hands in the air, without having anything in them a yellow circle formed, this was followed by what could best be described as a square with runes within circles placed on its corner. This light was projected from nothing, had an incredible clear line resolution and there was nothing Rob could place that would make it possible to create it like that. Holograms in his own world didn’t have this resolution or were able to project something in the air that in turn cast its own light.
This instantly became a moment of curiosity for the robot, but before he got a chance to comment or ask about it, the whole thing imploded into a sphere of light in the man’s hand, which in turn disappeared once he closed his hand and sort of crushed it in his hand.
Rob could sense an odd field in the air around the man, it was something strange he couldn’t find anything in his databases on.
“It’s not magical.” The man mentioned a few seconds after the sphere was crushed.
“What is magic?” Rob asked, the investigation module triggered to learn about a new phenomena, completely ignoring the zero-threat guards around him.
Like everyone else, the robed man reacted with a sudden, almost startled jolt as he heard Rob’s voice the first time.
However, the robed man seemed halfway delighted about this question.
He did another movement in the air, a similar circle formed, this time with a triangle and three different symbols than before, it imploded like before but this time it also exploded gently sending ten small golf ball sized glowing spheres into the air.
The spheres were giving off the same wavelength of energy as the other sphere, but it had a different frequency to it. The small orbs of light were indeed emitting their own light, one flew close to Rob letting him try to catch it with his hand, this allowed him to take a lot of readings, none of which made sense according to his data. It slipped out between his fingers even though the area between them was smaller than the sphere itself. It continued to hover around the robed man.
“Enough showing off, Lyever. What the fuck is it? It wants a mage, I don’t want to let it in.” The man in charge ordered, he didn’t seem happy with Rob at all, not something Rob didn’t expect but the concept of this magic was higher on the priority list.
If this Lyever was a mage, perhaps he was someone who could help with recharging.
“I require someone that can obtain a X11 power core, or recharge the one I have. I was told a mage might be able to help.” His current directive was again shared, but it didn’t seem to land well.
Lyever stared at Rob blankly, like everyone else he didn’t really seem to understand what this was. “I... Am afraid I have no idea what any of that means...”.
Rob processed for a second. “I require electricity.” The updated request was boiled down to the baseline concept. He could recharge through a cable in his wrist if he just got access to a relatively stable source of power, though everything he has seen so far hints that the people in this area are of a medieval age, this weird energy could hold some hope.
“Oh, why didn’t you just say so?” Like he had been hoping for this the entire time.
He made yet another circle in the air, it was a bit more complex but it had a teal colour to it, more runes and other geometric shapes.
He brought his hands together as the illuminated construction collapsed into the cup of his hands, when he pulled them apart a strong electric arc was violently jumping between his hands, there was no other way to explain it; he was sustaining a lightning bolt between his hands.
Rob’s main lens was fixated on the arcing current, a quick scan and processing of the phenomena like light, distance, thickness, air density and so on explained that if this man could control the power a bit, he could easily recharge the powercell.
“It seems this is adequate. Some adjustment is needed but this can recharge my powercell.” Rob’s cold voice started without any hint of emotion in either positive or negative way.
He changed his gaze to the man producing the illogical phenomena. “How long are you able to sustain this?”
The other guards seemed to be just a bit taken back at this conversation, as Lyever stopped the electric arc and started replying with “About ten m-” he was interrupted by the man in charge.
“Enough! We’re not here to chat.-” The order was to them both, he sounded angry and fed up. “-I demand to know who owns you and what your purpose for being here besides the lightning.” He took an aggressive position, it was an understandable reaction.
People here seem to have referred to him as a ‘construct’ before, so there seemed to be a vague idea about a living object as himself, but the way they spoke about it, in context with getting Lyert, confirmed that there was no magic in Rob. Everything hinted to things Rob didn’t have any fact on, but since they wanted to know his owner it was clear they knew he was an object.
“My owner is classified.” His programming refused him the power to disclose any of his owners. He knew enough to recognize them for the sake of chain of command, but he was not able to disclose this information.
The guard lowered his spear towards Rob, this caused the others to react similarly, even the men inside the wall prepared themselves, one with a spear as well and the other took out a crossbow. People moving in and out of the city stopped at this point and pulled back, making sure to both not be in the way but also not be in the line of fire.
“I’m warning you, if you do not comply I am under orders to use force.” The man didn’t seem to like not knowing who owned or sent Rob, and Rob was not allowed to disclose.
“I am not permitted to share that information.” His cold voice had not changed in the slightest, hinting to aggression, complying or anything, there was no body language to read.
“Final warning; who is your owner and why are you here?!” The man was agitated, it was clear he wanted to threaten Rob before violence became the option. However one cannot easily intimidate someone without emotion.
“I cannot disclose my owner, and I am here to recharge my power cell.” Rob replied as the aperture blades in Rob’s main lens contracted a little, limiting the view into it, at the same time as the weak teal hued light coming from within the lens faded into a deep red.
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