Enter: Ol' Scratch

[Scratch-N-Dent]

Dent had done it again – Scratch’s counterbot defied his programming and went on a cleaning (incinerating) rampage after the toilets overflowed at General Automatics, Inc’s orbital satellite. This time he managed to burn a hole straight through the space station hull. How does an automaton have a meatbag compulsive disorder, you ask? Ask AppDev – they’re the idiots who coded his janitorial subroutine in the first place. As to who blocked the plumbing up, Scratch would never admit to it. When your boss tells you that a day’s work ought to be flushed down the toilet, you don’t ask questions. Especially not when he’s holding a circuit-frying electromagnetic baton.

Scratch tightened his grip on the bulkhead with all his meager strength as deck five was depressurizing through a hull breach the size of a basketball. Jerry, the accounts-receivable guy, screamed the entire time he was being vented into space butt-first. The bulkhead he anchored himself to made a very discouraging sound. Metal fatigue. The brackets wouldn’t hold out much longer.

At least there wouldn’t be anyone left to file a termination notice, Scratch mused as various office plants hurtled towards the expanding fissure. He could picture it now: Dent wading through space in a decaying orbit around Deneb VIII, attempting to incinerate the space station’s debris field without oxygen. With any luck, a salvage rig would beam him in and fix him. He was stupid, but he was both useful and kind.

Trunk Slamchest, the security guy, sailed down the hall and decompressed before he could even hit open space. Based on the trail of blood droplets that followed him through the corridor, he must have made the same rookie mistake that everyone else who watched sci-fi movies – he held his breath. It wouldn’t really matter. The groan of steel composite failing echoed throughout the station as it began to break apart. The bulkhead shook violently.

Scratch lost his grip, though curiously he didn’t start careening towards the hull breach. A white light overwhelmed his photoreceptors.

“What a strange being.”

Code:

Attention unknown F2P Feeder life form: life support is failing. Please make your way to escape pods.

Scratch churned out on his cranky old dot-matrix printer as he waved his arms. Stupid First Law of Robotics.

“I think you’ll do nicely.”

Code:

Attention unknown F2P Feeder life form: command unrecognized. Scratch unit’s logic controls require you to proceed to escape pod. Lord Derp commands it.

“Scratch, is it?” The being peered at him through orbs of sheer white. His entire body shimmered. “Add row: Everything bagel.”

Scratch’s internal processors whirred.

Code:

Add-Row: dba.Everything bagel.
Define “Everything:” all matter in physical dimension.
Add-run-it: Bagel containing all matter in physical dimension.
Requirements: Bagel dimensions must be infinite.
ERROR::::ERROR:::::ERROR::::

Catastrophic Data Loop detected.
If “everything” = all matter in physical dimension
Then row “Everything Bagel” must contain other units of “Everything Bagel.”

BLOB DATA OVERFLOW. Restart.bat initiated

And that was that. The being confused his internal logic, triggered a software restart, and when he booted back up, he was laying at the base of some odd structure on a blank canvas of a landscape.

Code:

Time-space rift detected.
Star-map for current sector not found.
Star-date for current sector not found.

Rebooting

Clearing TimeDate.bat

OUTPUT: Attention, loser tryhards: prepare camper noscope orifaces for interface.

[Scratch-N-Dent]

Scratch laid there for what seemed like three weeks while his internal processors attempted to make sense of what just happened. In his state of torpor, he had inadvertently squeezed off a few staples from his Swingline – the office ‘bot equivalent of nocturnal emission.

Code:

OUTPUT: Happens to the best of us. Hail Derp.

Tearing the sheet of paper from his printer, he dropped it and sauntered off – shrugging his shoulder actuators. It took a bit to steady his gyros as he went through his usual routine of clearing his processors of startup bloat. You’d think after a few measly hours of inactivity you wouldn’t have to refresh your entire database, but that’s General Automatics Inc. for you – automation executed manually. He never really bothered to perform his usual maintenance anyway – he just dismissed the internal alerts as he went along.

Code:

Alert: Software is out of date by 100,300,595,001 days.  Please download new operating system parameters and restart. Expected downtime 12 hours.

He didn’t really have much of a direction in mind. He just picked one. In the distance there was a nice looking steel gate, gleaming against the pale backdrop. Scratch, although a machine, regarded it for a second and decided that he had his fill of being the least technologically advanced thing in the known universe. He instead walked the opposite direction, toward the more primitive gate that appeared to be made of hewn stone. If he could actually smile, and not grind the rusted and bent alloys in his faceplate, he would. For once, he’d actually be exceptional instead of being consigned to the mailroom. It was rather freeing to shrug off all of the drudgery of his day-to-day.

It was about an hour or so into his journey that he heard a heavy thud, just beside him. It was a mechanical arm, not unlike the one he had been fitted with quite some time ago. His first instinct was to look up, and see if there was a flying automaton that had managed to drop an arm. Nothing in sight.

He looked back down, confused, and regarded the arm laying at his feet.

Code:

OUTPUT: Greetings. Have you heard of your Lord and Savior Lord Derp?

The arm responded with a thumbs up.

Astonished to meet another automaton is one thing. To meet an automaton’s autonomous religious body part was quite another. There just hadn’t been a precedent for this kind of thing. Not quite knowing how to react, he waved a goodbye and continued on. Strangely, the arm had waved back at him with the exact same impulse, as though it was his own.

He paused.

Scratch shuddered, and slowly shifted his gaze down at his shoulder to find nothing there.

Code:

OUTPUT: FFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU…