00107




During the next few days following Fuzzy's fight with X-9, Albert Zoeniga and Nina McCleer had brought their supplies and the tent from the main lab, to the back of the Research and Development building, into the foyer before the back exit. They set up the tent on the floor. Without the fierce winds outside knocking it, there was little difficulty in stabalising it where they set it up.

And Fuzzy waited for them all those days, lingering just outside, beyond the door, often licking his chops or roaring or whining with hunger.
The green blizzard raged with very few intermissions.

Nina and Albert used the heater inside the small tent. The more enclosed the space, the easier to warm that space with the heater.

Nina McCleer warmed a cup of coffee on top of the heater, which continued its operation night and day, taking off the sharp edge of the frigid chill. She went back out the tent to stretch her legs in the foyer, bringing along her coffee.

The middle-aged woman and the young adult always wore multiple layers of coats and jackets to fend off pneumonia. From time to time they took turns reading from Albert's state-unapproved Bible. The pages felt so cold to the touch, so usually they wore gloves even for that.

Albert checked conditions outside via the back door's tiny peep window, which managed to maintain its anti-frost, anti-snow properties. "I can't even see the place where poor X-9 was lying. He's covered under so much snow, and the drifts are moving all around, so that I can't find the mound under which was his body anymore. Poor guy. He was a good robot."

"Yes, he was," Nina McCleer seconded. She looked over their foodstuffs. Some were from the supplies they had brought along for the trip, and some came from the kitchen of the R and D Lab. "If we continue to ration our food as before, with what we found here, we can go for almost a month. Maybe the blizzard'll die down by then, or maybe Fuzzy will leave us- or starve to death."

"Maybe," said Albert, trying to sound optimistic.

Nina chuckled with little humor. "Oh, Bro. Al, you sound so convincing. I guess as convincing as I am. Some days I feel optimistic, and some days... But either way, at least I know Who holds the future, so in the end I expect good things."

"Yup. Some days that's all we can do," agreed Albert.

They sat on chairs set up in the foyer, outside their tent. The chairs had been taken from one of the living quarters of the vanished staff. The two sipped lukewarm coffee. Earlier, Nina had made a hot pot in the kitchen. The kitchen's power, like the rest of the place, did not work, but Albert kindled a fire in the stove- using things from the large mess of tossed about items leftover from Fuzzy's slaughter. Al had had lots to pick from to make the fire. But the coffee cooled quickly when they carried it back to their living quarters in the foyer. Now, as they sat, each contemplated their current predicament.

Albert Zoeniga broke the silence. "When I last looked, that miserable so-called pet appeared to be fast asleep. The snow was falling over him, about an inch thick already. I hope he gets buried down under so much snow, he can't dig his way back out."

More quiet, except for their coffee sipping. Lots of time to think, to silently pray.


A tiny, almost imperceptible tap-tap-tap knocked at the door. It came from the outside. Albert and Nina listened, but neither said anything to the other, and then it stopped. They went back to drinking their coffee. Maybe the door creaked from expandsion and contraction due to the heater on this side of it, and the blizzard on the other side.

Tap-tap-tap.

"Do you hear that, Nina, or is it my imagination?"

"I thought it was mine, or just the door making noise because of the temperature differences it's subjected to."

"Hmm." Again the tapping stopped.

Albert Zoeniga set aside his coffee and got up. He peered once more through the peep window. "Well, it's not Fuzzy. He's still sleeping, but I saw him stir a bit. He knocked off the snow covering him. I think he heard the noise, too. It caught his attention, even in his sleep. Oh, how I wish I had the mini-blaster here, so I could peg him off!"

Albert sat down again. "It was nothing, I guess."

They heard a tiny scratching, a little louder than the tapping.

Both Nina and Albert stood up and jumped over to the peep window to catch a glimpse of whatever it was making the noise.

"Now look at Fuzzy, Al. His ears- well, one, anyway, has shot up. I think he's as curious about the noise as are we."

"He's stretching and turning over on his side. Again the blizzard's snowing all over him. The beast doesn't mind the snow in the least! He hears us talking and assumes we are making the noises. I think he's lost interest in the noise. Unless we are coming outside to him, I don't think he cares what it is."

The hushed tapping again, then silence once more with only their breathing and the snow blowing.

Albert shrugged, baffled.

Nina McCleer tapped back on the door, as if answering, also very quietly.

And the outside tapping replied to her. It sounded like it came from the very bottom of the door and on the other side.

She pushed her face against the peep window pane, trying to get herself at an awkward angle so she could see from that tiny window downward, to see what was at the bottom of the door on the other side. "Nuts! The window's too small to get a decent angle of view."

Albert Zoeniga bent down to the floor, and called softly through the door, "Hello? Is anyone there?"

A low, tinny voice replied, "Of course there is, Mr. Zoeniga. You know Morse code cannot simply just randomly tap on the door without somebody tapping it.”

"X-9!?" Nina cried out joyously.

Albert's face beamed just as much as hers, but he shushed her. "Let's not wake up Fuzzy."

Nina lowered her volume. "X-9, I can't believe you are still alive! We saw Fuzzy rip you to pieces!"

"Well," his tinny voice said, "I am pretty much slag at this point, Mrs. McCleer. Perhaps you can let me in. I have had a lot of time to think while out here. I think I know how to get the power back on inside there. It might help your situation if I can."

Happy and grinning, Albert whispered back, "Oh, X-9, even if you can't turn it on, we'd still be glad to bring you in. We missed you, robot-buddy."

"Likewise... human-buddy. Be careful when you open the door. You must turn the unlocking wheel very slowly, very quietly, so as not to let Fuzzy know-"

"Huh," grunted Albert, "the way that wheel turns without the electric power on, I am pretty sure we will be turning it very, very slowly."

"Yes, of course. Then, once you hear it click, as fast as you can, you and Mrs. McCleer pull open the door, just a hair, and I shall scramble inside. If you are able to help drag me in, so much the better. As Mrs. McCleer has pointed out, Fuzzy has indeed torn me to pieces. But I'm not dead yet. But we must be very fast, because of Fuzzy. However, it may be dangerous for you two to try it, so if you fear you cannot be fast enough, then it is best to let me stay out here. Even if you do not get the power back on, you will not freeze to death, not when you still have the heater which we brought along on our trip."

Albert and Nina didn't waste time discussing it. Instead, as if one person, they both grabbed the wheel in the center of the door and began to tug it, trying to turn it- very slowly and quietly- enough so the crossbar retracted and the door could move and be opened.

Little by little, they moved the wheel. Slowly, slowly. It was indeed hard work to turn it quickly, but they still had to be careful, they had to be sooo slow so as to not make any noise at all.

"Good, good," the robot whispered in his robotic sort of way. "That's good, perfect, keep going, slowly, like that."

Nina grunted, "Ugh... it's not... like we have... much choice." Despite the cold, perspiration beaded her forehead.

The crossbolt retracted just enough and made a slight clicking sound.

Albert and Nina yanked as hard as they could on the door, pulling it open a half inch, a foot, two feet. It moved a little easier than they expected, because, on the other side, X-9's remaining arm- even tho halfway ripped off his body- poked up from the snow and helped push the door.

The squealing hinges brought Fuzzy into an immediate alert state. He jumped up on his four legs and looked over at the hatch.

"Quick, yank me in!" called X-9, popping out from the snow bank, and crawling over the threshold.

Albert Zoeniga reached down and did just that, grabbing X-9 and pulling him the rest of the way inside, as Fuzzy growled and charged across the green drifts toward the slightly open door- and food!

They had no time to assess X-9's terrible state. All they noticed at first were lots of wires hanging out, and the missing leg and arm. Nina and Albert pushed as hard as they could on the door to slam it shut. X-9 lay on the floor, a mangled mess, but still functioning. With his one leg, he, too, shoved at the door. His leg kicked the door a terrific kick, like a mighty piston, and that was enough to clang the door shut in a the startled Fuzzy's face.

Albert and Nina held the door in place while trying to turn the wheel's crossbar back into locking position.

Fuzzy roared on the other side, trying to force his way into the building. He pushed and pushed on the door, straining all the muscles Albert and Nina had, as they tried to keep it shut. The wild animal took a few steps back and rammed his head into the door in mad fury, causing the hatch to shake and move open a fraction of the inch.

“Uh oh-” gasped Nina.

X-9 kicked back at the door with magnificent force, once more pushing the the door back into its place.

The two humans groaned and managed to hold the door closed, still trying to turn the wheel. X-9 crawled under the locking wheel and reached up with his lone arm, halfway detached already from his body, twisting the wheel with the two humans, struggling to move the locking wheel, while Fuzzy kept banging on the door from outside there.

The severely, nearly destroyed robot arm amazingly retained much strength and functionality, and so he added his strength to theirs, all three struggling to turn the wheel.

"Hurry, X-9," urged Albert Zoeniga. "We can't hold this door shut like this for long!"

Nina McCleer added, "Fuzzy's attacking the door a lot harder than before- I think his lack of food doesn't make him any weaker! Instead, he is more desperate and insane with hunger!"

The crossbar clicked quietly as it once again locked in place. As it did so, Fuzzy howled and this time, when he rammed the door, the door screeched and buckled from Fuzzy's crazy actions. But the door held in place. And, once more locked, it would be able to withstand all of Fuzzy's assaults upon it.

Nina and Albert gasped and collapsed from exertion onto the floor beside X-9. "Thank you, Jesus!" Nina managed to wheeze out while she and Albert tried to catch their breath.

Outside, enraged again at having been cheated of his dinner, Fuzzy continued unsuccessfully to try break down the hatch.

As their breathing returned to normal, Albert sighed, "Whew! That sure was close!"

Nina shivered at the thought. "That gave me a few more grey hairs! But we did it, X-9!"

And with the excitement over, the humans slowly rose to their feet, and gazed down at their mechanical friend, studying his damaged body.

The robot's mangled body had been torn and smashed. His battery, half-smashed and leaking, hung out his open, broken chest, held there only by a few frayed cables. All kinds of wires snaked out his ripped-apart body, and where the missing leg and the missing arm should be, there were only stumps of metal rods with more torn wires dangling out the socket holes, sometimes sparking as they contacted each other, depending on how X-9 moved. He tried to put himself in a sitting position against the door, ignoring Fuzzy's thumping on the other side.

Fuzzy paused long enough to shriek out his anger at having lost his opportunity.

X-9 realized, "I should have found the blaster in the snow and brought it in with me. Or that device we used to open the aircar lock. Maybe I could have used it to find the codes for those blasters in the guards' locker room, making them operative"

"Never mind that," said Nina, full of questions. "Tell us how you got here from where you fell, so far away from the door. And how did you keep from being noticed by Fuzzy- or even by us, as you made your way over to the door??"

The robot gave his story. "As Fuzzy and I battled, I saw Fuzzy got the better of me, so I played possum, since I realized that, with the damage he had already inflicted on my body, I did not stand any other chance. I saw you two already were safe inside here, so I had no need to continue the fight. And I just lay there, unmoving, and Fuzzy turned away from me, assuming he had won. I lay there for awhile, letting the snow cover me from Fuzzy's eyes. It did not take long to wait for that to happen in this blizzard. After that, I slowly, very slowly, crawled beneath the snow, hidden out of his sight, burrowing toward this door under the cover of the snow. I made sure to not disturb the snow above me. And I only moved when I no longer heard Fuzzy's pacing, indicating that he slept or at least rested. I wondered if my smashed battery might not split open as I moved, and everything would leak out, and I would lose power before I made it over to the door."

Once again, Albert Zoeniga surveyed all the damage Fuzzy had inflicted on X-9. "Your body's a mess! Does it hurt?"

"No. But my body is almost useless. Getting in here took much of what was left of my body's functionability. Snow collected inside my surviving limbs, and, in here, near the heater, the snow is melting, and shorting out many more circuits. But since my body is ready to be recycled, why not see if we can cannibalize some of the parts which still work, and try to repair the damaged electric power distribution box, so we can get the power back on."

Worried, Nina asked, "What about you, X-9? What'll happen when your body shuts down? With your battery so broken, it can't take long before you run out of power."

“I will be fine, Mrs. McCleer, if you and Albert can successfully remove my head while simultaneously connecting it to my auxiliary battery. The extra battery is not very big, but it is inside my robot body, so that, if my body shuts down, it can still keep my electronic brain from dying. If you can remove it and properly install it in the back of my head, and reconnect it to my brain, without accidentally flushing my brain by inadvertantly crossing the micro positive pathway with the negative, I see no problems.”

Nina asked, “Is it a hard thing to do- I mean, hard for Al and I to do? Is it dangerous for you, if we screw up?”

“It can be dangerous, yes,” admitted X-9.

"Yeah, and you'll be without a body if we do succeed!" said Albert.

"Do not worry. I will be fine. Now, here is what you must do. Bind up my battery somehow, to keep it intact yet, until the operation to remove my head. Carry me over to the power utility room, where there are tools of all sorts in the maintenance area next to the power section. I will guide you through several different kinds of exercises which you will do inside there. These will improve your dexterity skills, so that you will be able to do the job right, and will teach your fingers the correct ways to move. Now, when you actually begin the separation process, you will only have one chance to do the procedure properly, or- Well, you know what will happen. But, if you can do that procedure correctly, then, afterward, you also shall be able to remove my body interface unit without damaging it, and with it, fix the power distribution box for this place

“I know there were spare circuit boards- We saw them, Mr. Zoeniga, when we found Dr. Kitchen's personal screen device. But the damage to the distribution box had also damaged the interface unit, and I did not see any spares among the circuit boards. No, a new interface has to be made from scratch- for a place like this, that kind of interface is not something you can just stock up on, but it must be custom made and booted to the correct range- but the staff was killed by Fuzzy before any of them had a chance to do it. Or, as another option, one can be taken from a robot. Me. I can use alligator clips hooked up to my empty port in my head for where my tracking device is supposed to be, and to the interface when it is installed in the fixed distribution box, and I can find the proper range and get it working. Since I won't need it, because my body is now slag, we can use my interface unit, and adapt it to the distribution box. Then, we can turn the power back on, and so, you two can then wait out this blizzard in warmth and comfort."

Nina McCleer and Albert Zoeniga both nodded agreement with the robot's plan, at the same time, thinking about the fateful task ahead of them. To save their friend, they must risk killing him... Well, one step at a time. First, they must practice, practice, practice, to hone their skills and manual dexterity, as X-9 said..


And, meanwhile, at that very moment, far to the south of the blizzard, in Sparkle City, on the Governor's Hill, in the Governor's House, Gov. Bright considered the state of his plans regarding Earth as he headed toward his office. So much to do, but now he bought more time, at least, since he had warned the Earth authorities that he had made Osmo Martin his hostage. He hated to upset Sheila over it, but this was what life was, after all. He had just left her by her rooms, after she had obeyed him and had taken Osmo Martin his clothes from his former rooms at the Security Agency building.

Xavier Bright's plans moved along as he had expected, but there was one thing that bothered him, one big loose end which made him uncomfortable- the Research and Development Lab.

The blizzard cut off all access to it, and to whatever devices that might be up there. Well, if he and his people could not reach it, neither could anybody else get there- he hoped. If only he were able to somehow set off that self-destruct mechanism!


His call-unit interrupted his reflections. Gov. Xavier Bright grabbed his communications-device. "Yes? Oh, it's you, Warden Ung. Why are you calling? Oh, yes, the gladiator match. In a few minutes? Great; be sure to make a video for me. What? Ha ha, why, yes, I can spare a brief amount of time for that, since you went through all the trouble to make it available for me to watch it live, broadcast to my own personal screen. This should be good! I expect it shall not take long for No. 317 and 248, teaming up against Clyden. Two against one! But Clyden is a seasoned fighter! I don't usually do this, but would you like to make a wager on the outcome?"

Gov. Bright chuckled, despite being aware of the monumental testing that he knew lay ahead in the coming days for the World of Hope. "I think this will be a pleasant diversion. I find myself most eager to see this match!"

(c) 2011 drk