Escape from Metal
Chapter 12: Standing on metal ground.

Location: Inside the makeshift machine base.

Ben groaned as the beeping in his room continued, he pulled his makeshift pillow over his head as he continued groaning but the harder, he tried to sleep the louder the beeping grew and the more intense it got.

Finally, after a few minutes he conceded to wake up and dragged himself out of his bed and hit the off button on his makeshift alarm.

Ben had made himself some items to bring the familiarity of home back to him. Which wasn’t much at this point, but he had made himself a alarm clock although it didn’t always wake him up at the correct time. His pillow wasn’t exactly the best thing he had made either. It wasn’t that it wasn’t comfortable anything was better than metal beds at this point, but it wasn’t super soft either.

Ben had gotten into a routine after the few weeks he had spent with his new robot friends as he came to later call them.

After they had dealt with the mechanical birds a couple weeks ago. He guessed that that kind of thing happened when you saved total strangers from death. They then took Ben to their home which was a bucket like metal structure pressed into a mountain of scrap, the scrap mountain reached towards the black abyss above them. Seemingly ready to fall at any moment. Ben kept glancing at the top of the mountain every few seconds expecting it to fall on him.

Ben had wondered how they survived so long without getting overrun by the sea of lights, he only found out later when he accidentally dropped some random piece of metal over the wall that they had rigged magnets to pull anything that got too close into a wall of spikes and only they knew how to turn it on and off. Ben didn’t even know how it worked after all this time or how they set it up being metal themselves.

Baloo enthusiastically and perhaps a little too excitedly gave Ben a quick tour of their home. It was more spacious than it appeared on the outside. Ben guessed that it ran under the scrap mountain.

Outside their home was pretty simplistic with most of the scrap flattened around it so that nothing could ambush or hide from them.

“A clear and clean path is needed to see where one is going” Nio always said.

Two spotlights were always fixed to the left and right sides of the entrance and even if they weren’t able to see what approach was, they sure did hear it as it got impaled by the rusted and sharp spikes that rang along the perimeter of their home.

A great screech was usually heard in the very least. When Ben heard it the first time he had nearly jumped in surprise. Ben had thought of the implication of Nio and his gang killing their own kind and how they had felt about it.

He had tried to ask Nio on a couple of occasions, but he had just waved him off and mumbled something about trying to work. Seeing as they were all basically the same entity not too long ago.

Ben caught himself chuckling slightly at the novelty and thought that they could feel emotion or even comprehend human emotion, but they weren’t exactly the same horrific machines that they used to be and well… out here they all needed each other to survive.

Sometimes Ben would catch Baloo stare even for the briefest of seconds at the spike perimeter and his former brethren impaled on them. When Ben asked Baloo why he didn’t just erase that part of his memory. Baloos’ usual friendly demure sank as he became sorrowfully quiet and walked away from Ben.

Strangely enough the first thing Ben noticed when he arrived was that their home wasn’t a ramshackle assembly of bits and bobs scattered around but seemed to be something that had been purposely built for some or other unknown purpose. He wasn’t sure how or why he noticed it but he did.

As they approached home Tremendous would then remotely activate a gate and deactivate the magnets, which led to some sort of resting hanger for tremendous. It was at least 8 times the size of a regular room but was mostly empty save for the clamps on either side of the wall that were used to lock tremendous in place when he was recharging and several other stations to keep him entertained like his punching bag. Which was just a ball of metal hanging from the ceiling.

There was a side of the room where they dismounted Tremendous. Using a extendable platform which was adjacent to a door that led to the rest of the building although crude in appearance Ben was just happy he didn’t have to rappel down Tremendous.

On the opposite end of the room was shelves that ranged from normal sized shelves to one obviously built for someone as big as tremendous.

A bunch of parts and scrap was stocked there. Ben took a guess and thought that the parts were for Tremendous’s expeditions or any damage he took on them.

The rest of the building was surprisingly much more decorated than Ben expected. Racks upon racks held things that they had collected over time, that was the majority of the building. Just a assortment of collectibles.

It was quite jarring when he stepped in the first room like that. All the various items some made for machines other obviously made for people but the thing that he noticed the most was the old run-down appearance of the building in comparison these collectibles were somewhat of a soul to the old ramshackle building.

Then there was Baloo’s and Nio’s rooms which were basically just charging stations stuffed into a room, unfortunately for them there wasn’t enough space for Baloo and Nio to have separate rooms. So they ended up having to share a room with both of their charging stations standing next to each others. This lead to an almost routine amount of arguments and debates.

“No, I didn’t disconnect your charging station. Of course, I tried turning it on and off.”

Was something he would in time almost start to feel comforting as these types of conversations was one of the few pieces of normalcy that he had.

Further inside the building they had their workshop which had several pieces of heavy machinery and workbenches where they could modify parts and perform maintenance as needed. Machines fastened against the wall Stared at Ben with their empty eyes as they slumped forwards. Spare body parts scattered about.

Ben had thought that it was a bit strange seeing a place such as this, he certainly wouldn’t be comfortable with a room full of spare parts for him, he guessed it’s a part of their base programming that they never changed.

Fine spare parts such as eyes and intricate circuits were also carefully stored. A workbench which looked like a miniaturized forge. They probably had to smelt down scavenge metal to stay functioning for so long, however long that may have been. Months? Years? Centuries?

The thought of it being centuries long made his stomach turn so he quickly threw that thought aside.

*

Ben put on his last boot as he prepared himself for the day. There was something that had been bothering for a while and he couldn’t get the thought out of his mind. There was one room that they didn’t show him, they said it wasn’t safe for organic beings to go into but something… something felt off.

He hadn’t exactly got to see a lot of the rest of the base, mostly just because he had so many tasks he had to do.

‘Fix this Ben, carry this Ben, take this Ben.’

He had thought that the one who actually needed to heal and wouldn’t be able to just slap on a new pair of legs would be allowed to get some rest but no he had to work almost as hard as the machines too as Baloo had said ’Earn his keep in this hellhole.’

He had guessed it made sense, sort of.

It’s not that Ben thought he was living with homicidal robots or anything, but he couldn’t help but wonder what they were hiding from him. Ben had to find out what their intentions were if they had any at all.

But for now, Ben pushed these thoughts one side as he prepared himself for the days labour. He had to survive he wish he could say he had people counting on him… no he couldn’t let his spirits sink.

He had to survive.

If for nothing else than to find out how they got in this situation, he couldn’t remember it being like this the last time the machines woke him up. Waking it was putting it mildly it was more of being dragged and thrown out of your bed as you awoke. Except in this case, you were a slave, and it gave you a headache for a several days.

First, he had to run his daily chores, none of them were glamorous at all but he probably knew the most about machines than anyone else did well, besides for the machines themselves. He guessed this is why they had given him the menial mechanical jobs instead of you know the ones that could cause the machines to break down.

Ben put on the final items of clothing and fastened his shoelaces as he prepared to start the days tasks. As he passed the slightly cracked mirror in his room. He took a moment to look at the exo frame now hugging his back. It was a mechanical frame that follow the path of his limbs and his spine.

He had made his own adjustments on the lower back and legs of the exo frame, mostly to give him extra support and to allow him to move like a normal person would be able to in spite of breaking his back.

Nio said he wasn’t programmed to make medical assessments, and neither was Baloo although he wasn’t sure he’d trust Baloo even if he was able to. Nio estimated it would probably take a year or two for his back to heal up to the point where he wouldn’t need the frame. Which wasn’t the worst thing ever, the frame allowed him to move normally although it did make him look a bit robotic and the almost daily recharges were getting a bit annoying.

As the metallic dented door of his room slowly shuddered open, he was greeted by Nio eager to give instruction with his digital notepad in hand. He ran his finger down the list until he came to Ben’s name. Ben couldn’t help but see that his was noticeably longer than his and Baloos.

“Righty-O Ben, time to get to work. Today is Tremendous’s turn for maintenance so off you go. He is a big fella, and he loves to be clean down to the micron.” Nio said, not giving Ben any time to react and walked away.

Ben couldn’t help but hear the smile in his words, they were getting some sense of enjoyment out of Ben doing all the menial labour. He couldn’t help but wonder if some of their previous versions existed somewhere inside them.

Some part of Ben still felt as if he was a slave. He had to drown out these thoughts for now after all they saved each other. So, he guessed they sort of had to trust each other for the time being. Mortal enemies wouldn’t usually save each other out of the blue.

Ben headed over to the workshop to pick up the equipment he would need although begrudgingly so. Searching through the pile of tools he needed it was as if even on a subconscious level he didn’t want to do his tasks. It took Ben much longer than it usually would to find the tools he had used for several weeks. Hearing the distant footsteps of Nio’s distinctive however slight hobble he quickly scrambled to grab the equipment and slipped out of the room as quickly and slightly as one could with the bulky equipment.

Ben quickly pressed the button for the door to close, when it finally did Ben breathed a sigh of relief. He had narrowly avoided Nio berating him for not doing the most menial of tasks. Thanks in part due to the natural echoing properties of the metal shell they were living in. Ben’s relief faded away when the lights in the room started flickering for a good few seconds.

Ben stopped dead in his tracks as he carefully looked around him with his eyes narrowed. Nothing like this had happened in who knows how long he’s been here. Ben went into high alert mode, had the sea of lights breached the barrier, had those flying monstrosities come for them again after all this time or had something new and worse come to find them.

After a couple minutes of survey his immediate area with a blowtorch in hand Ben allowed himself to relax slightly. Ben wrote this off as some sort of glitch in the power grid. He was sure his mechanical friends would fix. Speaking of which he had one last idea to waste time.

Baloo and Nio were both hard at work constructing and fixing some spare parts and something that Baloo tried to quickly hide as he entered the room.

“What do you have there?” Ben said prodding Baloos response.

“Oh, you know… the usual maintenance we get to do… you know us machines always breaking down.” Baloo said nervously as he tried to put more scrap on top of it.

“Well, in that case don’t mind me I’m just here to pick up some extra gear for Tremendous.” Ben said as he loaded some more equipment which he probably wasn’t going to use into the cart he used to haul everything around.

“But before I go, you didn’t happen to notice a flicker in the power for a few minutes?”

“No.” Both of them said at the same time.

“Well, I guess it’s just my imagination then.” He said as he chugged along with the cart of heavy machinery. “I’ll see you guys after I’m done, and can I have something besides paste for dinner?”

“Now Ben you know all we can synthesize is paste, you should be grateful that we even have one of those… as distasteful as the food might be your body still maintains its critical functions.”

Ben chuckled to himself before he left.

“Sometimes I forget I’m literally living in a robots hell, I guess the occasional power fluctuation isn’t the end of the world.”

“Yes, yes.” Nio said already engrossed in his work again waving his hand in th air as Ben left.

“I’ll have a look to calm those human nervous of yours.”

Ben took the longer way to Tremendous, mostly because he wanted to look at some of the things that they had collected. Most of what they considered collectibles was some piece of machinery that couldn’t be used for repairs or modifications.

Although every now and again Ben would find a small toy or something that was the same bland metallic look as everything else but mostly Ben would just find some machine part and fiddle with it till it did something or till, he made it do something else.

Recently he had found a cube like machine thing. If he was being honest, he had no idea what it was but one day he was digging in the far back corner where no one really goes to look at anything. That’s where he found this cube thing and ever since then he’s tried to figure out what it was, no luck as of yet but he kept coming back to try and figure it out. Not today though Nio was already hot on his heels.

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