(Photo by Jill Burrow)

The halls were silent as Kamaria hurried back towards the RCC. Everywhere she looked she saw robots, all holding perfectly still. Some were damaged or knocked over. Others were frozen in the middle of performing some task. They weren’t deactivated, however. Operational lights flickered, signaling that something was still going on inside of them.

When the entrance to the RCC came into view, Kamaria’s breath caught in her chest. Scattered all around the entrance were pieces of broken furniture. Chemicals pooled and some had vapors rising up from where they combined. Getting any closer did not seem like a good idea given the number of people collapsed on the ground in that area. Some looked injured but most seemed to have simply collapsed.

“Hello?” she called out. “Is anyone in there?”

*

“It was predicted that you would be the one to come here,” BaBS-Y said over the comm.

Cassandra Kokkinos and her fellow engineers spread out in the otherwise empty atrium. A familiar weight rested in her hands as she lifted the wrench.

“This unit has done everything it could in order to maintain the Frank Nelis salon.”

“I know you can’t see it, can’t understand it,” Cassandra said, “because it’s just the way they programmed you, but the people on board this ship are infinitely more important than any salon.”

BaBS-Y stood at the far end of the atrium, a broom handle held in its one hand. The bristles were gone, however. Bent and jagged aluminum was all there was on the tip of the handle. The benches and planters were placed at intervals throughout the atrium, making it difficult for anyone to move very far in one direction before they would need to either climb over something or else go around.

“This unit does not seek conflict with you or anyone else,” BaBS-Y said. “You are all at a disadvantage here. Your spacesuits are not made for agility. A single puncture to the fabric and you will die. You may now leave in peace.”

It pointed with the broom handle but none of them left. BaBS-Y set itself into a more aggressive posture then.

“This unit looks forward styling your hair,” it said and then charged forward.

*

The air inside the RCC was bad. The damp cloth Matiew held against his nose and mouth served as a filter but it wasn’t very good. Min, Jancy, and he were barricaded inside Min’s office. It was their last fallback position. If the robots broke through the door, that was it. Fortunately, though confusingly, the banging outside had ended abruptly a few minutes ago.

“Anyone have some water I can drink?” Jancy asked from where she sat on the floor, holding a makeshift bandage to her left arm. Most of the bleeding had stopped but she still looked dazed.

“I got some,” Min replied, “but don’t forget to keep your rag on your face so you don’t breathe too much of this air.”

She brought over a bottle and Jancy drank deeply. As suggested, once she was finished drinking she replaced the damp cloth over her face to help filter the air.

“It’s been quiet out there for a while,” Matiew said. “Think we could make a break for it?”

“Maybe Jancy and I could,” Min said, “but there’s no way your wheelchair’s making it with all the broken stuff on the floor out there.”

“Well, then at least you two could get away.”

He knew their situation wasn’t good, but the longer they stayed here, the worse his lungs felt. He knew the others had to be just as sick from whatever was in the air as he was.

“Look,” he said when they remained silent, “if we stay here, we die. If there’s a chance the two of you might be able to get out…I think you should take it.”

Min was about to respond when they all heard the muffled shout from outside.

“Is anyone in there?”

“You think that’s a person?” Matiew asked.

“No way to tell,” Jancy said. “Cassandra’s supposed to send an all clear once she and her team have dealt with BaBS-Y.”

“But why have the PaLS stopped attacking?” Matiew asked.

The other two could only shrug.

“Hello?” The voice called to them again.

“Look, at this point I’d almost rather have a quick death than slowly suffocating in here,” Matiew said.

He moved over to the door but couldn’t open it on his own. They’d wedged Min’s desk up against the door to keep the PaLS from being able to just push it open.

“Give me a hand?” he asked.

Finally, Min came over and began to shift the desk. Jancy joined her a moment later though her injured arm meant she wasn’t able to put too much force into the effort. With the desk out of the way, Min bent down and pulled the jacket and tissues they’d wedged beneath and around the door to keep the fumes out.

“Deep breath everyone,” Min said before opening the door.

Matiew was the first to see the destruction that filled the RCC. Upturned desks, tables, chairs, all interspersed with people. No one out there was moving, not even the PaLS who stood motionless over by the other offices.

Without speaking, Jancy moved over to the first body and checked them over. She quickly motioned to Matiew and Min while pointing excitedly.

“Breathing,” she muttered, still holding her breath.

Min quickly helped Jancy pick them up and together carried them out. Meanwhile, Matiew began looking for a way to maneuver out from among the mess.

When Min and Jancy returned, they were followed by none other than the young woman from Security who, potentially, had set off this assault in the first place. The young woman waved sheepishly to Matiew and then began clearing a path for his wheelchair while Min and Jancy found another survivor they could carry outside.

Matiew had to take a few gulps of the noxious air before he finally was able to make it out and into fresher air and his head was really beginning to feel dizzy by the time he got out of the RCC. They didn’t have to go too far before the Thesis air circulation system did its work and they had clean air to breathe.

There wasn’t much Matiew could do now and he had to sit and watch as Min, Jancy, and Kamaria pulled one survivor after another out of the RCC. They also pulled those just outside of the RCC away from the entrance to where the air was better.

“I think that’s all of them,” Min stated after they’d made one last trip into the offices.

Exhausted from having to keep holding their breath, on top of everything they’d already gone through, Min and Jancy practically collapsed onto the floor, breathing deep and slow. With the imminent threat of death no longer hanging over them, Matiew and the other two turned towards Kamaria.

“So, what happened since we last saw you?” Matiew asked.

Kamaria looked down to the ground and shook her head.

“I am so sorry,” she began, her voice constricted, “I thought robots were perfect. That they couldn’t make mistakes like this, or be so…so…I didn’t believe they could do this sort of thing.”

She gestured towards the destruction and the unconscious people.

“How’s the rest of Security?” Jancy asked.

“They’re fine,” Kamaria said but then quickly corrected herself. “I mean, Spencer’s alright, but Darcy got sprayed in the face with some cleaning chemicals and might be blind.”

“Let’s see if we can get up to the hospital,” Jancy suggested. “If everything’s fine up there then they can send people to come and get the others.”

No one disagreed with that. It was as all four of them began making their way towards the elevator that Kamaria spoke up.

“BaBS-Y said someone had reached sector twelve, and she needed all her processing power to deal with them. I think that’s why all the robots have stopped.”

Matiew nodded but that didn’t all quite add up.

“That shouldn’t have stopped the robots,” he said. “They should still be able to function on their usual protocols even without BaBS-Y directly controlling them.”

“You’re the experts, not me,” Kamaria shrugged. “I’m just telling you what I heard her say.”

“It is odd,” Min agreed and Jancy was frowning while she, too, nodded in agreement.

Kamaria twisted the hem of her shirt while she walked with them, clearly nervous.

“Is that good or bad?” she asked.

“Not sure yet,” Jancy replied and then pulled out her comm. “Hey, anyone still in Data Transfer?”

There was a brief pause and then a whispering voice replied.

“There’s still a few of us,” a woman said. “We’re hiding in a storage closet. There’s only four of us, but we each have a portable workstation. Not a lot we can do from here, though.”

“I just need to know what’s up with all the robots,” Jancy said. “They’ve all just stopped. Security says BaBS-Y told them it needed all its processing power just before the robots all went inert.”

“One minute.”

They waited, still making their way up to the hospital on sector three.

*

Spacesuits were definitely not made for combat, Cassandra had to admit. It was one thing to smash a robot to pieces while wearing work overalls, but it was an entirely different experience when you’re stuck inside an inflated balloon that resists practically every movement. Already they’d taken one casualty to BaBS-Y. The engineer wouldn’t die, not yet, but they were out of the fight and hurrying to get back to the airlock before the punctures in their suit leak out too much of their air.

Get behind it, Cassandra signed over towards Dash and he began trying to do just that.

The only problem, though, was that BaBS-Y could see everything they were doing and it knew the signs Cassandra and Dash were using. Speaking was even less useful. Cassandra knew her isolation from BaBS-Y wouldn’t hold up as soon as they began their attack but it was still a blow. She’d hoped that at least their signing would be foreign to BaBS-Y.

The salon robot responded as soon as Dash moved and it ran through the gap in their lines. A few of the engineers took swipes at BaBS-Y as it sped by but they were too slow. They’d almost had the robot encircled and then it would have been easy to just move in and all attack at once.

They’d been fighting like this, chasing, repositioning, occasionally scoring a hit on BaBS-Y, sometimes being hit back, for several minutes now. All the while, Cassandra was waiting for the tell tale signs of the robot overheating or getting stuck in a recursive loop as it tried to sort through all the possible threats and reactions.

“Come on,” she muttered as she chased after the robot as it fled down the corridor, away from the atrium and towards some of the smaller shops. “Why aren’t you fried by now?”

She’d read over the BaBS-Y users manual and although it was a fairly sophisticated robot, it still wasn’t designed for this sort of heavy physical activity. Especially not while being bombarded with a dozen new protocols every minute. Something had to give.

“If you are expecting this unit’s systems to fail,” BaBS-Y’s voice surprised Cassandra as it spoke through her comm even though she hadn’t activated it, “you will be disappointed.”

“Yeah, well, your batteries won’t last forever,” she shot back.

“Correct,” BaBS-Y replied, “however, this unit calculates that it will succeed in subduing you and your team before this unit’s batteries are depleted.”

Cassandra was so preoccupied by this unexpected conversation that she failed to notice the tripwires placed along this stretch of the corridor. All she knew was that one moment she was in pursuit of BaBS-Y and the next she was tumbling forwards. Both feet were caught by the trap and all of her forward momentum carried her a few more feet before she crashed face first into the floor.

She heard the crack before she saw it. The faint hiss, telling her that her helmet was compromised, was the most terrifying sound she’d ever heard. The most terrifying thing she’d ever seen was the crack in her visor.

“Get her up! Get her up!” Dash’s voice yelled over the comm.

A pair of hands came down and lifted her back up onto her feet.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” Cassandra said quickly and turned away from them. No one seemed to have noticed the crack in her visor yet and she wanted to keep it that way. “Come on!”

They surged ahead once more, now keeping a careful eye out for other such traps the robot may have set out for them.