Genesis End
By Spinning Demon (Topman) and Gauntlet (Shadowman)
Chapter Three - Rage Against All Machines
It was late in the afternoon when I felt that I had scoured enough dingy alleys and urban ghettos to justify quitting time. The roads began to open up and empty as I moved away from the city's metropolitan centre, and I picked up the pace a bit and felt a cool wind start to build. One of my talents, thanks to our armour upgrades, was the ability to absorb kinetic energy from every turn of the skates' wheels to store for later attacks, delivering an explosive force with every kick. So it seemed sensible to skate around a bit before heading back, to gather up some spare energy, rather than sit alone in an empty base so big that it only reminded me more of how small I'd been feeling lately.
'Get a grip', I thought to myself. 'You're starting to sound like Wave Man.'
I shook off my emo attitude with a smile. Owing much to the breeze on my face as I sped down the streets, my mood had started to improve. The sun above warmed the bright metal of my chest-plate even under the t-shirt I'd casually thrown on, and it couldn't have been nicer weather to be enjoying a moment of free time.
'Not free time', I reminded myself sternly - on alert. Always on alert. Just because I'd been feeling like the team didn't need me, doesn't mean they don't. 'Besides', I thought as I skated past the mango groves that Spark had planted years ago to restore some of Monsteropolis' beauty after the War, 'I should feel lucky that they didn't need me for today's morbid missions.' With the fresh scent of earth, leaf, and sweet mango lingering in the air, I'm sure any one of my overworked teammates would much prefer to be out here having fun than to be looking at crime scenes and corpses... well, okay, maybe not Snake Man.
After a while, the grassy landscape faded to concrete as I hit the more industrial side of Monsteropolis, and my previous exhilaration subsided, suffocated by the heavy smog that hung in the air here from the factories that had risen up like an infestation with in the past decade. Ugly, grey, and depressing, they managed to bring my high spirits down again in an instant. Many of these factories mass-produced robots, and the irony of this was not lost on me, but these were for lesser robots like Mettools and Joes, servant and worker bots; more a testament to human laziness than anything else. At least robot masters had been designed with specific tasks in mind, tasks that while fatal to man were merely a day's work for an RM - and our models had never been mass-manufactured, either. But in the last few years, with some team or another making the news each day, demand for domestic bots started. First it was for protection- even when I joined the Mechs, now over twenty years ago, people were suspicious of us, they thought all robots were potential menaces. Of course, since most RMs were at some point or another under Wily's control, this was forgivable. Soon, though, the demand for protection transformed to a desire for convenience, and robots specializing in servility had become all too common in recent years.
I wasn't the only one who didn't like the factories, it seemed. As I turned a corner, I had to brake suddenly to avoid crashing into a mob that had rallied around one of the nondescript grey buildings' entrance ways. Some of the onlookers held picket signs, but most were just listening and occasionally shouting in agreement with the rousing comments issued from the speaker at the makeshift podium in front of the gates. As I scrambled deeper into the crowd to get a better look, and hear what the demonstration was about, I was suddenly very thankful I'd chosen not to wear my armour but instead one of the standard-issue police uniforms, which hid my robotic form from recognition; the picket signs displayed scrawled messages the likes of "Robots -> NO bots" and "Rage Against ALL Machines". This was an anti-robot rally.
"...have gone too far," I now heard clearly from a closer vantage point, " in the interests of pursuing scientific curiosity and fulfilling the appetites of a slothful and greedy public. And LOOK AT THE PRICE WE HAVE PAID." The voice, booming from the amplification of a bullhorn megaphone, was also high and shrill, grating but equally effective at getting peoples' attentions. It belonged to a young woman, possibly of Spanish or Mexican descent, I noted from her tanned skin and the accent that flavored her speech. She was thin and bespectacled, her unkempt hair and wild expression the trademarks of your typical fanatic. She and others in the crowd wore green work-pants and berets. Typical Emerald Spears attire. "Factories have polluted our air and water supplies to critical levels to create these abominations," she continued, "and they in turn are running amok in our cities! These menaces have invaded the job market, and every year thousands lose their jobs to the 'efficiency' of these mockeries of the human form. Those that do not pursue theft and violence have resorted to vigilantism, punishing innocents and offenders alike without any regard to the laws that govern our society. These 'teams', as they call themselves, are..."
She continued, goaded on by the throngs of supporters as well as her own zealous convictions, but I had by now lost interest and had started to weave my way back out of the crowd. It was nothing new to witness a crowd of robot haters - the Mechs had long been used to the distrust of the public, which stemmed from a fear of the unknown and people's blind prejudices. To many, we would always be seen in the same villainous light as groups like the Ascendant Androids, merely because we were made of steel instead of flesh. This was just a new face to an old threat. Still, I noted with a little bit of apprehension, this activist had drawn a much larger crowd than was usually the case. She was certainly persuasive, and it was looking like more civilians grew concerned every day, with the ever-growing threats of job insecurity and robotic crime. It was unlikely that a robot police force came as any comfort to anyone either... I mean, who hasn't seen one of those movies like "I, Robot" or "The Matrix"?
Still trying to make my way out of the crowd, it became more and more apparent to me just how many supporters she seemed to have gathered, with more joining the fray every second. I was all too aware of it now, as the crowd grew more and more raucous with each passing moment of her frenzied speech. Surrounded by a throng of surging anger, fueled by mob mentality and newly determined to rid the world of us "metal monstrosities", I was suddenly feeling very small and very weak. Magnet Man would probably have fired a live round into the air and told all of them to bugger off, Spark might have tried to plead to the crowd for reason, but it was all I could do to stay upright as the stirred crowd clamored to the gates to try and break them down.
The calamity had sprung up so quickly, so out of my control. I looked at the woman on the podium again with weariness and a bleak rage. She was shouting amid the crowd now, the bullhorn abandoned, and the veins in her neck jutted out with hot blood and adrenaline. It dawned on me how her neck was so thin, nothing but a twig of sinew and brittle bone, and it occurred to me how easily it could snap... how easily I could snap it. It would be so simple, just a push in the right place, and all of her asinine screaming would fade into silence and tranquility as the crowd dispersed in fear... fear of me. And why shouldn't they be? I may be small, but I'm strong. All of them, they were all so feeble, like puppet-dolls waiting for their bodies to fall slack when their strings were cut... just like puppets...
I was knocked off balance by a wayward elbow and fell to the ground, and all thoughts became distant in the immediacy of pain. By the time I'd picked myself up off the ground, any lingering reveries were forgotten amid the chaos that had ensued. The crowd was roaring viciously now, and even fellow supporters lay trampled on the ground following the siege on the factory gates. A small gap had been torn in the wire, and violent protesters were now pouring onto the mostly blocked entrance, like grains of sand in an hourglass, all vying for the chance to slip through.
Turning back from the madness in a final effort to push through to the free streets behind, one final glimpse of the now-turned-riot yielded a curious sight. One man was walking against the current of the crowd, calmly and seemingly without concern. His flesh was pallid, and his crooked, pointed nose and matted stringy hair made him look more like a ghost than a living man. One of his eyes was hidden by the brim of a fedora, and the other turned eerily towards my direction to settle on me. He tipped his hat, and offered an unsightly grin that stretched a little too widely on his face, and I shuddered and looked away.
Logic overcame the unsettling feeling I'd felt and I turned back to look again, but I didn't see him anywhere in sight. I couldn't explain why I'd felt so unnerved, unless the whole thing was a hallucination, a symptom of system exhaustion from the smog and hot sun above. Without looking back at the factory, which had now been breached by the angry and disorganized rioters, I skated back to the base. Humans weren't within my jurisdiction, after all.
