A Boy and His Bot by Daniel H. Wilson

Author:Daniel H. Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2010-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

12

The Leap

The Great Disassembly:

T–Minus Twenty-eight Hours

The abandoned exoskeleton lay where it had fallen, one arm outstretched and the other tucked under its chin. It looked like a giant statue sleeping awkwardly on its stomach. Code examined it hesitantly.

“Well?” asked Gary. “Get in!”

With a grin, Code eagerly wriggled into the robot exoskeleton and lay down inside. The soft interior was padded and dotted with glowing buttons. Code pushed his arms into the exoskeleton’s arms and slid his legs inside its legs. The whole thing fit like a glove. Code heard clanging laughter coming from outside.

“Your human butt is visible through the hatch.” Gary laughed.

“Close?” asked Code, hoping the machine was voice-activated.

The back of the exoskeleton hissed and snapped closed. Code yelped in alarm as the interior of the exoskeleton rapidly inflated until his arms, legs, and torso were wrapped up tightly. Peep clambered out of Code’s shirt pocket and perched on top of his head, which was encased in the darkened dome of the helmet.

“Activate?” said Code.

The inside of the helmet powered on and Code could see out of the exoskeleton. In addition, he could see information flicker across the screen regarding the status of the suit, the positions of all the thousands of auto-lifters linked to the suit, and even the names of the identical buildings in view.

“Wow,” whispered Code.

Code tried to stand up and found that the suit amplified all of his movements. Whenever Code moved his arm, the exoskeleton moved its arm, too. There was no doubt about it: Code was now in charge of a giant robot—one that was even bigger than Gary! Testing out the machine, Code jumped straight up into the air—and the entire city shook from the impact as thousands of heavy-duty auto-lifters jumped upward and slammed back onto the ground at the same time. Inside the exoskeleton, alarms began to blare and red lights flashed.

“Stop that! You’ll destroy the whole city!” shouted Gary.

“Oh, sorry. Unlink from auto-lifters?” suggested Code. The suit beeped an affirmative.

Gary approached, peering into the eye visor of the huge albino robot. “Code, is that you? Are you okay?”

When Code spoke, the exoskeleton projected his voice outside. “I’m fine, Gary. I feel so … powerful!”

Gary was amused to hear the high-tonnage exoskeleton speaking in the voice of a young, smallish boy. “Good, because there’s something I’ve been waiting to do.” Before Code could reply, Gary grabbed hold of him and delivered a crippling bear hug. The force was off the scale for any hug ever delivered by man or robot. But instead of being crushed to a pulp, Code gave Gary a squeeze back that made the smaller robot yelp for mercy.

“Okay, now show me a map to the boat docks,” ordered Code. A map appeared on the inside of the helmet and an arrow pointed at the road ahead of Code. A message popped up that read: “Last ship departs in fifteen seconds.”

“Oh, no, we’re about to miss the boat!”

“We’ll get the next one,” said Gary.

“There isn’t another one. If we don’t catch this boat, every robot in Mekhos is going to be disassembled—including you.

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