Renegade Robot

Center. It seems like an unfair shot to put your name and photo in it like that. Glad it wasn't me, though".

  "I'll bet you are," Wyatt said. "Sucks, anyway. So when does this Cecilia figure the whole thing will 'blow over' like you say."

  "A week, ten days, her best estimate, even though she can't remember anything quite like this happening before. Not with our names being so involved and all. Usually the stories are about heroes in the valiant struggle for ultimate reclamation. Isn't that what they call it?"

  "That's the church," Wyatt said.

  "Right, but they got that from the TV news, I'm pretty sure. Taking back the land from the do-gooders, that sort of thing."

  "I saw Jeff Ash yesterday," Wyatt said.

  "That creep?" Jalopy shook his head. "I don't like to think about what happened to him."

  "What? He's rich, happy, successful."

  "Like I said, I don't even like to think about it," Jalopy shrugged. "Hey, you want some help with that? I've got nothing going on."

  "Sure," Wyatt replied, and soon the two were both at work, slapping the bright pink paint all over the exterior walls. A freshly painted house was about the last thing anyone would expect to see in Rubble Land, except for one that color. The few people who drove down that street that day slowed to gawk as if it were an injury accident, but nobody came by with any more posters, and nobody showed up with any more spray paint. It was as if the great traumatic event had never even happened, but there was something underway, a slight vibration in the air, and Wyatt stopped once or twice to listen. It seemed to him that the customary silence in the empty lots of Rubble Land was disturbed every now and then by a vague hum, or buzzing. He thought of the ants of his dream and even half expected to see them as he looked around the streets, but there was nothing to see, above ground. It was all happening underneath.

  Eleven

  It wasn't much of an earthquake, more of a tremor, really. Official reports later pegged it at around a 2.8 on the Richter Scale – in other words, nothing. No one was injured, no items fell off shelves in any stores, there was no broken glass, no reports of anything disturbed in the slightest, in fact. It was enough, however, that the epicenter was determined to be within the boundaries of Rubble Land, to cause the Frantic News and every other news network to descend on the area like crows on road kill. Wyatt and Jalopy barely had time to discuss the slight disturbance before they heard and then saw news vans screeching around the corner, reporters and their entourages piling out, setting up equipment and begin broadcasting from one of the empty lots on the block.

  “All around me, as you can see," cried Laurie Brigger, the channel Seven disaster specialist, “there is ruin and destruction everywhere! How could this happen? Even more urgently, why did it happen, and why did it happen here and now?"

  “Could it be a coincidence?," intoned Harley Cronman, distinguished city beat reporter from the channel Eleven national affiliate, “that this singular disaster has occurred in the very location where the well known Serpent Master resides?"

  “No one should be alarmed," claimed Kris Kintoja of the Frantic News Network, “but could this be The One? Is it The Sign? Has The Singularity finally begun? As we know, it is from a small acorn that the giant oak tree grows, so we must be ever vigilant for the roots of the cataclysm which we know for a fact is impending and impinging upon us at every turn."

  Wyatt and Jalopy stared in wonder at the accumulation of broadcasters. At first they thought it must be in response to some other story, some other event they had no knowledge of, but it soon became clear that it was in fact a reaction to the insignificant temblor which was causing all that racket. One of the reporters who could find no dramatic perch among any of the broken lots came straggling over to Wyatt's house. This was Amy Dragberry, the famous anchor of the hardly-watched channel Three 'News at Four Fifteen'.

  “Hello, hello,."she called out. “You, up there," she pointed at Wyatt.

  “Uh-oh," Wyatt murmured, “time to clear out. Or clear in, as the case may be."

  “Right," Jalopy nodded, and they hopped off their stepladders and made a break for the front door, carrying their brushes and buckets along with them.

  “Wait, wait," cried Dragberry, hustling after them as fast as she could, impeded as she was by her very high heels.

  “So sorry," Wyatt called out boldly, “No talk. No time," and he hurried inside and slammed and bolted the door before she could get any closer.

  “I don't like the looks of this," Jalopy said, peering out the front window as a crowd of newspeople had decided to follow Amy Dragberry and was converging on the house. They could hear cries of

  “Hey, isn't that?."and

  “Wait a minute, I think I know," and

  “Sure it is, it's that Chump."

  “The Serpent Master," cried Kris Kintoja as he joined the fray. “There he is!"

  Soon the doorstep was filled with the crews and equipment and reporters all clamoring for an interview. The whole scene was being broadcast live over several networks. Television and online viewers would not have known that there were actually no other people for blocks around, judging by the self-created mayhem of the newsfolk. They saw the hysterical crush of reporters demanding a statement from the newly coined Serpent Master and they heard the shouts and cries of their colleagues and they remembered from moments earlier the sights of crushed cement and ruined buildings apparently caused by the quake. They could not be blamed if they didn't remember the same sights from the same news stories with the same level of excitement only earlier that year, when Rubble Land what been formed by the out-of-control gobbler bots. No one was talking about that now. It was a new day and a new angle and what was old was being recycled again as new, and it was certainly alarming if it was true.

  On the steps the sound of a chant started small and then soon became a chorus in unison as the crowd demanded a statement from Wyatt.

  “Serpent Master! Serpent Master! Serpent Master! Serpent Master!," they cried. Inside the house, Wyatt could only shake his head.

  “This is nuts," he said to Jalopy. “I can't go outside and tell them anything, because then I would just be answering their call. No one would believe me anyway. They've already made up their minds."

  “Agreed," Jalopy said. “On the other hand, they know we're in here. How long can we hold out? You got any food?"

  “Yes I have food," Wyatt snapped, annoyed that his friend was already heading to the kitchen to rummage around in the fridge.

  “What do you think they'll do?," Wyatt asked rhetorically, knowing that Jalopy, once set upon a meal would never respond. Instead, it was Bilj Bjurnjurd who answered, the voice-to-text-band transmitting every word that Wyatt said.

  “In these cases," Bilj typed, “Bad things usually happen."

  “Thanks a lot," Wyatt snapped. “Like I really needed to hear that."

  “All you can do," Bilj continued, “is sit tight and wait it out. It will all blow over in time."

  “What's with everyone and blowing over?," Wyatt asked, rhetorically once more. “In my experience," he jibed Bilj, “when someone doesn't have any idea what is going to happen, one tends to make vapid general statements that are of no use to anyone whatsoever."

  “Don't say I didn't tell you," Bilj replied.

  “Tell me what?," Wyatt tapped. “You didn't tell me anything."

  As there was no answer to that, Wyatt made his way to the kitchen as well, where at least the noise of the rabble out front was diminished a bit.

  “We could sneak out the back way," Jalopy suggested, and it was true that for the moment the rear of the house was entirely unattended, but almost as if on cue, that situation changed immediately.

  “Too late," Wyatt said, “more reporters are camping out back there."

  “I don't think those are reporters," Jalopy said, pulling down the window shade just as they had been spotted and calls of “Chump," and “Serpent Master."reached them from the yard.

  “Why do y
ou say that?"

  “Because they've got candles," Jalopy told him.

  “Candles? It's early afternoon," Wyatt said, mystified.

  “And Bibles," Jalopy added. “They've got candles and Bibles. This can't be good."

  Twelve

  “Well, at least the doors are locked," Wyatt said, and went around the rest of the house securing the windows and pulling down shades.

  “Mmmph," Jalopy said, his mouth full of ham and cheese.

  Suddenly, the front door opened. Wyatt nearly jumped as his sister Bethany waltzed into the house, as blithe as any summer day, accompanied by a man who looked vaguely familiar.

  “What are you doing here?."Wyatt yelled, rushing past her and shutting the door before any of the accumulated mob could force their way in. He turned both the locks and fastened the chain.

  “You promised to come back," Bethany said calmly, putting her purse on the side table in front hallway and looking around at the furnishings with disapproval.

  “You certainly haven't cleaned up since the last time I was here," she commented. “Don't you have any domestic qualities at all? I suppose not. You never really did."

  “Bethany!," Wyatt shouted at her. He grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around. “I want you out of here, right now, and this character too. Whoever the heck you are, get out!"

  The man, a smallish gentleman with a large head, very well dressed, very photogenic with his slick thin hair and his pencil mustache, beamed gently at Wyatt and said,

  “I'm