Chapter Five
All of us are prisoners of something, and ultimately of our own mortality.
—Ancient Saying
Visibly upset, three Hibbils marched through the factory looking at all of the assembly lines that had been shut down by the disturbance. In an unprecedented event, the entire sentient machine work crew had rebelled against their robotic supervisor, smashing him into useless metal and killing the Human factory owner.
“This shouldn’t have happened,” said one of the Hibbils, his red eyes glowing angrily. He had flecks of gray fur and a thick, salt-and-pepper beard. On either side of him a furry little companion grunted, and their red eyes glowed nearly as brightly as his.
Pimyt watched as the two others inspected several robots, inserting interface probes into their control boxes and reading the results.
“Doesn’t look good,” one of them said. Squat and overweight, Rennov took his job seriously.
“I don’t see how this happened,” the other said. This one was younger, a Hibbil with glistening, golden-brown fur.
The two of them kept using probes to check the sentient machines.
Overseeing the procedures, Pimyt was unhappy on multiple levels. He and the division managers with him didn’t like to see the factory operation interrupted, since the new robots and other machine components produced there—especially the control panels—were needed for the war effort of the HibAdu Coalition, the union of Hibbils and Adurians. In addition, the last thing he had wanted was for Jacopo Nehr to die, since that eliminated any potential leverage with the human’s powerful daughter, Nirella del Velli. So far, it had been a stand-off with her. She’d accused Pimyt of blackmailing her father and had even threatened to torture him into talking. Not backing down, Pimyt had threatened to release technical information about the workings of the nehrcom instantaneous cross-space communication system—revealing how simple its operation really was. It would be a scandal that would ruin her father’s reputation as a famous inventor, and destroy the Nehr company. Hearing this, she had stormed off.
Shortly after that, Nirella’s husband, Doge Anton, had ordered Pimyt and the former Doge Lorenzo taken into “protective custody.” Enfuriated, Pimyt was ready to make good on his threat, but he and Lorenzo had been placed into solitary confinement at a prison on Canopa, with no one to talk to except for uncooperative guards. And Pimyt had not yet set up a mechanism to release the information if certain things happened to him.
While the two of them were so rudely confined, Doge Anton, General Nirella, and Noah Watanabe had departed on their foolish military venture to the Parvii Fold, an operation Pimyt had learned about just before being taken into custody. Then, from his cell Pimyt had hoped the Parviis would succeed in wiping out all of them with the powerful telepathic weapons they were said to have.
Three days had passed. Finally, one morning the glowing electronic confinement bars on the cells went dark, and the guards said the pair was free to leave. No explanation. Lorenzo had returned to the Pleasure Palace, his opulent gambling facility orbiting Canopa. Pimyt had considered getting even with Nirella—assuming she had a part in his incarceration—but had decided to think it over first. Nirella (or whomever she left in charge) had the power to confine him at any time, for any reason. Perhaps the three-day confinement had been her way of telling him exactly that.
Considering his options (which Pimyt often did), he had slipped away to rejoin his HibAdu conspirators and resumed his involvement in facilitating the downfall of both the Merchant Prince Alliance and the Mutati Kingdom. This had brought him, on a secret lab-pod flight made easier by the diminishment of MPA military forces, to the Hibbil Cluster Worlds.
Even now, through all of his intelligence sources, Pimyt didn’t know what was happening at the Parvii Fold. It did amuse him that the Humans—reportedly with Tulyan allies—were spending so much time and effort going after Parviis. The HibAdus, learning of the military operation from Pimyt, had seen it as an opportunity to strike merchant prince planets that were left inadequately defended, because of the diversion of ships and armaments to a foolish, distant operation. In addition, HibAdu leadership—while Pimyt had never met any of them personally—had sent a message agreeing with his assessment. The Parviis, even if they failed to completely destroy the attacking force, were sure to damage it seriously.
Now the scheming, highly organized HibAdus were almost ready to launch their simultaneous surprise attacks on key planets. Just a few essential details remained to be completed, with this additional complication. The robot uprising would have been just an annoying nuisance, if not for Jacopo’s death.
The division managers completed their inspection, spot-checking robots throughout the factory. Finally, Rennov announced, “Every workbot in the factory will have to be reprogrammed.”
“Get started, then,” Pimyt ordered.
O O O
Ipsy, with the weight of industrial scrap on top of him, burrowed his smashed and broken body into a cavity in the pile and began to rebuild himself, converting the junked parts he found around him. He took on an even smaller body form this time, using microcircuit boards and fiber optics that he salvaged from the scrap heap after testing each of them. His arms and legs were essentially the same, but he was considerably thinner now, and even shorter than before.
Then, as he connected a small, silver and green panel to his brain, he fell backward, his limbs freezing into immobility. The panel had a defect that he had not noticed.
While he lay there, looking upward and trying to repair the problem internally, Hibbil workers started dismantling the scrap pile with a mechanical, remote-controlled arm and claw, intending to melt the metals down and recycle them. Ipsy saw patches of daylight as pieces above him were removed. He noticed a zoomeye on the mechanical arm, and the claw hesitated over him for an instant—bathing him in orange light—before going on to other, larger pieces. But Ipsy knew it would be back.
The little robot was like a paralyzed man, unable to move.
***