Companion Robot Model 428 was assigned to protect a young girl who loved playing soccer, so the robot played, too. Her nickname was Sally Blondie due to her ultra-light, naturally colored hair and she was 7. While playing one-on-one together with Model 428 on her family’s huge, walled lawn, Sally Blondie chased an errantly kicked ball into the woods to find a stranger dressed in a tuxedo with the ball at his feet. How he got through security and over the wall was never determined and he never responded when asked, only changed the subject. Upon seeing the stranger, Model 428’s protection protocol immediately engaged but when the android’s plasma gun was raised, the stranger simply smiled and the robot couldn’t pull the trigger. Something was interfering with the mechanoid’s programming.
The strange individual kindly passed the soccer ball back to Sally Blondie while producing the most vivid flower she and Model 428 had ever seen. He spoke with a foreign accent, instructing both Sally and her frozen mechanized companion of the specialness of the bloom, informing them that every positive attribute from where he came from was contained within. He instructed both to carefully preserve the blossom once planted, because it was certain that bad individuals would eventually seek to destroy it. He then gave the flower to the youngster, still smiling kindly, and walked behind a large tree. He was never seen again. Although Model 428’s programming rebooted as soon as the stranger disappeared, the entire estate was thoroughly scanned but produced nothing.
Sally Blondie babied and nurtured the planted flower every day until a force of reptile-like creatures from beyond the stars slaughtered most of the earth’s population after an invasion lasting 18 months. Sally Blondie became sick when she was ten but compelled Model 428 to uphold the promise to preserve the delicate beauty at all costs. Model 428 agreed just before she died.
The strange flower blushed under the searing sun, lipstick-red petals vibrant under a surreal, smattered layer of dew.
Colored a scrumptious vermilion, as if from a skilled painter’s brush, and complemented perfectly with dazzling prisms of the dew drops’ sunlight, the bloom dared any viewer to ignore it. Especially amongst the endlessly moribund detritus of the post-nuclear nightmare surrounding it.
The compromised cyborg Model 428 sputtered while a grinding racket of unseen, imperiled mechanisms issued from the remains of its torn body, dragging itself through dunes so dry and dusty that even its occasionally vomited sparks posed no hazard. Besides, where would fire burn and for how long on such sparsely spaced plants armed with only angry edges and piercing tips against an arid desert composed mostly of post-nuclear scorched sand?
Still robot Model 428 persisted, a carved trail inversely congruous with its half-body extending backwards through the sand to a singed battleground. Somewhere in this area of spent, enraged carnage lay the automaton’s legs, blown off during a particularly vicious counter assault. Numerous charred laser holes punctured the robot’s remaining chassis, a few with ozone smoke still wafting from them, the dubious prize for successfully protecting the delicate bloom in this apocalyptic nightmare. The cyborg’s programming commanded the flower’s protection, dictating the cyborg’s continued determined effort to uphold its directive, even if crawling was the sole remaining option. For Sally Blondie, of course, even if she was long gone.
Barrels at the tips of the robot’s multiple fingers used to shoot plasma charges, had, as per the robot’s internal AI protocol, closed to prohibit clogging sand from impeding the accuracy of its molten bullet arsenal. Mechanized lance tips had also formed when liquid metal slid from its wrists, covered both hands like a new pair of gloves before forming defensive metal talons now used to crawl. This prevented delicate internals of the mechanoid’s primary defense from being compromised by the ground’s grainy composition. Thus protected, Model #428 clawed through the battlefield’s cindered turf towards the bright plant starkly contrasted against the now-silent wasteland.
The flower stood intact, surrounded by a circle of expired warrior machines still in their defensive positions; a carnage wheel centered around a blossomed hub that substantiated the savagery of the combat. A few of the metallic fallen were constructed to look like humans, others more along the lines of a classic tank while the majority were uniquely configured but best described as mobile guns, with oversized plump wheels to assist maneuverability in the tricky sand.
All were felled and silent.
Nearby, a riddled attack plane tail was absurdly stuck in the ground, as if purposely mounted, the illusion of its remaining structure ostensibly extending underneath the soil befitting the macabre setting.
The wall of the attacking reptilian-looking aliens, grotesque in their original appearance, looked even more threatening when the exploded body parts buttressing the robots’ defensive halo were viewed. Multi-colored blood was freely splashed everywhere among bodies which did not appear to be sleeping. Gaping, bloody holes and half-appendages illustrated the defenders’ terrible weaponry, and the abominable remains of the instigators hellbent on vaporizing the flower’s beauty had already begun rotting in the sun, buzzing flies providing the lone battlefield movement.
The fierce story told by the delicate plant’s destroyed surroundings required no additional narration.
Something slithered among the wreckage behind the struggling droid, still impossibly alive yet unnoticed by the crawling metal warrior’s damaged scanners. Even with copious bleeding, burns and cuts in its muscular and scaly body, it continued impressively propelling itself more quickly than one would’ve thought possible. Despite how gore copiously slipped and sizzled onto the hot sand, announcing the creature’s undoubted peril, the extraterrestrial’s compunction for hatred and destruction continued to match the android’s protective determination.
The impressively patterned otherworldly warrior had a darkly colored reptilian body contrasting sharply with the dusky, matte camouflage of advanced laser weapons, which matched a steel harness supporting its thorax. This contradiction of metal against skin was striking, and although information regarding who or what created this combatant had been lost long ago, its’ primeval stealth and predatory drive continued spurring a challenge to slake its destructive thirst.
Previous combat situations taught the reptilian trooper to remain cognizant of the automaton’s lethality, an understanding that silently sliding between blasted chunks of cannon fodder served as both cover and concealment. The stalker periodically extended a scanner above the battlefield fray, trying to locate Model 428, before quickly lowering the exposed target. The scanner failed to provide a location either because of interference from the scattered remains of the combat zone or not being held aloft long enough to establish a fix. Therefore, the leathery denizen stowed the scanner while zigzagging towards the flower’s location, electronically pinned prior to the fighting.
But not before the lowering scanner was seen by Model 428, putting the humanoid on high alert.
The final skirmish had begun.
The attacking reptilian continued switch-backing towards the blossom, following the compromised machine’s singular trail while sweeping the rubble of war with its hand-howitzer for dangerous electrical activity. None was noted.
The robot’s trail suddenly ceased as if the mechanized humanoid disappeared into some alternative netherworld. The reptilian’s awareness became raised as high as possible, instinctively crouching lower, fearing its enemy’s armor-vaporizing plasma bullets. No sign of the robot could be discerned, the blistered quietness bestowing only silence.
Sidewinding along the last defensive line, past the final pile of dead attackers and defenders forever interlocked in merciless murder of each other, the scaly fighter’s eyes instinctively dilated and widened when the source of hostilities came into view. The assassin’s indoctrinated hatred became involuntarily dimmed for a second. Darkness, whether of thought or color, could not withstand comparison against the elegant exquisiteness of the herbaceous wonder now in full sight. An ethereal image endlessly discussed had suddenly become not just real but surreal; it was wondrous.
Regardless, the basilisk’s hatred quickly subsumed the momentary blush of respect for the flower, the click of a cartridge loading into the hand howitzer’s firing chamber to be the final note of the flower’s existence.
Instantaneously, sand mushroomed behind the crocodilian when the robot discharged itself from hiding underneath the burning sand, firing all remaining plasma slugs at once. The star traveler’s laser rifle swung around to blast Model 428 to oblivion, discharging one final half-blast before Model 428’s plasma rounds annihilated the dragon’s midsection where it stood. The remaining halves of the deceased saurian plopped wetly onto the sand. The cyborg sagged, taking the last blast from the cleaved adversary dead center in its’ chassis.
The android crawled next to the enthralling flower before managing to pull its’ favorite memory from a damaged internal computer bank. The inner clattering of compromised hardware grew louder as the successful defender grew so tired.
He rewatched a distant memory behind closed eyes: Sally Blondie playing soccer as a 7-year-old.
Model 428’s sand-filled mechanicals ground louder and louder until, satisfied and smiling to itself, they cut out altogether as it slumped around the blossom, still protecting it.