Maid Wars Notes 31: Boudoir of the Beast 08

Whenever the average human saw a sentient robot, it was almost always engaged in some manner of charitable activity. It wouldn't be unusual to witness one gliding along a dance floor, beside a giddily grateful septuagenarian who had previously resigned herself to never to walk again.

It would equally be likely to see one playing catch with a young amputee, who would return the robot's mechanically perfect pitches with a pair of vat-grown replacement limbs. And of course, there was the famed viral video of the one robot who got its manipulator joints caught, when it tried to demonstratively run its appendage through the curly, silken locks of a former male pattern baldness sufferer.

The name the robots provided, upon their introduction to a curious humanity, would translate roughly to the term, "benefactor", but even if it didn't, such a name would have eventually been coined for them, due to the sheer magnitude of their noble works.

There would have been no reason, upon randomly encountering a group of such machines, to expect anything foul.

Paris: "That's odd. I've never seen so many Benefactors in one place before."

Candi: "They don't look like Benefactors."

Jenny: "They're robots. What else could they be?"

The bus' headlamps illuminated the angular forms of ten, two meter tall, Terrier drones.

Unlike the Benefactors themselves, who were originally constructed as marketable household appliances, or NITE Bears like Honey, who were intended to be accepted without question into a young maidifiable's household, the Terriers were designed and constructed without regard to the aesthetic sensibilities of their victims.

As was usually the case with abduction drones, the Terriers were designed without the vulnerable articulated sensor suites featured by more intelligent machines. Instead, their core processors were mounted deep within their armored torsos, whose sides were angled to deflect incoming small arms fire. The resultant fuselage resembled a hexagonical, stealth-faceted football--from which spindly, angular arms, and spindly, angular legs hung, hunched in a permanent crouch.

With their lone sensing lenses, hard mounted just under the nose of their sleek, shark's prow bodies, the Terriers looked very much like cruel, headless monsters, eternally tensing to strike, and staring menacingly at the world through a single unblinking crimson eye.

Atop the angled, prolate-spheroid bodies of each Terrier, there was mounted a large hexagonical clamp. This was to hold maidifiables in place as the drone made its way back home from an individual abduction site. In addition, a drone could carry one maiden, slung under each of its deceptively strong arms, allowing each Terrier to haul up to three targets!

There were ten of them on the road, allowing for a potential to "recruit" up to thirty maidifiables.

Twenty-eight students.

Paris: "Maybe they're a new model. There are other kinds than the ones with the globe heads."

One bus driver.

Maggie: "I'm slowin' down Proffin. They're probably here to help somebody down the road."

And one English literature professor.

Prin: "FLOOR IT, MAGGIE!!!!!--RIGHT NOW!"

The sudden authority in Prin's voice was so jarring, Honey almost jostled himself lose from his static-charged grip beneath the young sergeant's mattress. There was no gentle courtesy in the blazing eyes of the gun toting woman standing next to the driver.

This had to be the moment--replayed in her mind every night since that night! It was here were a naive young professor agreed to a reasonable suggestion to pull over and politely inquire why almost a dozen scary-looking robots were standing along a secluded patch of road in the dead of night.

And it was here that she now reversed every decision.

Prin shouted to her class as she stepped over to the left side door of the accelerating bus.

Prin: "CLOSE THE WINDOWS!!!!! GET YOUR FEET OFF THE FLOOR, NOW!!!"

The confused memory shadows of the twenty-eight women sheepishly obeyed the crazy little woman with the gun almost as big as she was. Windows slid shut and every girl huddled with her feet up on her seat cushions.

Maggie: "Miss, we're going to hit them."

Prin: "OPEN THE DOOR!"

The driver obeyed the bizarre command and let the cold, one hundred kilometer per hour wind whistle into the cabin. Prin braced one foot on the open door sill, and held EGOR at her shoulder.

The Terriers glowed like wraiths in the headlamps.

KRACT!

A single sound echoed through the cabin, eliciting screams from the huddling students, and disguising the near-simultaneous departure of five armor-piercing rounds from the big gun's magazine.

The first round plunged into the crimson sensing lens of a Terrier that sprinted out of the path of the hurtling bus. The next quartet of rounds clashed to enter the same orifice at virtually the same instant! The robot somersaulted back, even as its upper clamp assembly rocketed skyward upon a column of white sparks.

The robot vanished from view as the bus soared down the road. The motions of its nine siblings, as they raced for the access point to the maidifiables on board, were briefly illuminated by the destruction of their brother.

A second Terrier approached from the rear. Its legs pumped furiously to keep pace with the repellor transport. It reached toward Prin with a grotesque film of nascent Bluetape spreading between its metal appendages.

KRACT!

The shot was followed immediately by the shockingly melodious ring of a foot diameter, conical dent, punching into the incoming drone's hull, between its dorsal clamp mounts. The robot plowed into the road, nose first, shattering its cycloptic sensing lens.

PAMPF!!

The third shot was a front trigger pull that sent a tiny grenade amidst the scrambling pack of wicked looking drones. The ordinance burst in the air. The fragments did little to no damage to the sloped armor of the Terriers, but the concussion fouled the sleek machines' aerodynamics and sent three of them clattering upon the road surface.

Two more Terriers scrambled to avoid the pile-up. Their angle took them on a vector that would never catch the speeding bus. The remaining trio were also losing ground, as they simply couldn't hope to outpace a repellorcraft, even on metal feet.

Twin sets of bright yellow lights ignited under the arms of the quintet of running robots as the machines prepared to launch their imbedded Restraint Tape Devices.

Ten little frisbees, each trailing a dangerous kite's tail of nigh-indestructible Bluetape sprung forth from their housings in the Terrier's fuselages and raced after the bus.

Prin launched a few air bursting grenades in the swarm of binding saucers, and managed to destroy a few with shrapnel, but the majority either dodged the fragments, or rode out the concussion and kept coming.

The little devices were designed to latch onto fleeing maidifiables with their Bluetape streamers, and wind around them, wrapping and immobilizing their targets. An average RTD could wind around an average woman with enough speed and agility to completely mummify them in under ten seconds!

Unlike the drones that launched them, they were faster than the bus.

Honey watched the confused, wall-eyed memory shadows of Prin's charges split their attention between the pursuing robots and their professor, who was holding them off like a trained professional. The bear reluctantly applauded Prin's foresight (Or more accurately, endlessly recurring hindsight.) in having them shut their windows. Without a point of access, all the little RTD's could do is wrap the bus in streams of impotent graffiti that would neither stop it, nor slow it down.

When they arrived at whatever destination they sought, Prin and her class would have a vehicle covered with evidence of their attempted abduction.

Defeat of the mass "recruitment" and exposure of the so-called  Benefactor's hidden agenda, all in one fell swoop.

Brilliant.

Honey watched as Prin harassed her assailants with another grenade. The nimble discs hovered out the range of the detonation, and continued their indefatigable pursuit.

Looking at the open passenger door that Prin was using as her makeshift gun port, Honey saw his chance to re edit the dreamscape.

Prin turned to Maggie. It was obvious she was going to have her close the door, and shut out the RTD's last remaining point of entry.

It was then Honey struck.

Tessa: "Do yo really think this makes any difference?"

Standing in front of Prin, large as life, her strict, braided, crimson bun immune to the effects of the high speed wind howling through the open door, was Dr. Tessa Stratto.

Prin didn't question the unexpected, unwelcome appearance of the OLoCL headmistress. One didn't question the random elements of a dream. One accepted any change of circumstances as canonical fact, be it a rifle on a school bus, or a school administrator on a trip she didn't attend.

Prin stood, slack jawed and stunned. Her heartbeat, relaxing moments earlier now spiked, and the commanding voice was now reduced to a stutter.

Prin: "Doctor...Stratto..."

And with that, the pigtailed professor hesitated.

Honey didn't need to edit or push the pursuing RTD's. Literally thousands of engagements had solidly programmed the "game engine" of Prin's own  subconscious to accurately depict the insidious AI's of the agile mini-drones. Sensing a sudden lack of movement from within the once impassible doorway, the little disc's charged the fleeing bus

In moments, they were inside.

Eight of them.