The Forgotten Planet
Chapter 19 – The Loss Of Innocence

I was ten years old, living with Adan and Pop on the family grape vineyard in the town of Cloverridge, on the southeastern edge of the Tandaran province. It was half the planet away from Oasis, but was only a few hundred kilometers from the Filorian Sea and had a remarkably similar Mediterranean climate to our adoptive home. We lived in a small, wood-paneled house on the edge of the vineyard, bordered by a shallow creek and a smattering of oaks. The house was painted a garish sky blue – a color that Adan and I got to pick out as a reward for a weekend of sanding the previous flaking beige paint down to raw wood.

Mom had passed away a few years prior from ovarian cancer. That’s when my core-deep hate of the Vox began. I knew they had cures for simple mutational diseases like cancer, but withheld them for a variety of reasons: we weren’t worth the expense; it was better to keep our numbers at a certain baseline; they were all a bunch of cruel bastards... Take your pick, there’s no wrong answer.

Adan was sixteen and big for his age. He worked with pop in the fields, repairing equipment, tending the vines and maintaining the fences. The endites, which were little deer-like creatures about the size of tall dogs, would eat the plant’s buds if the fences weren’t continually restrung with barbed wire. It was only twenty hectares in total, but the land generated enough income to keep us fed and clothed, pay our taxes and still have a little discretionary income.

I have to admit, a lot of that extra income was spent on me. Not that I was spoiled per se. I was what you would call a prodigy, and Pop knew it. He had big plans for me. Not to take advantage of me like I was some sort of cash machine though. He liked his life on the ranch and didn’t see me as a meal ticket. He honestly just wanted me to rise as high as I could on the steam of my own talent. He was cool like that.

School was too easy for me, so I just stopped going. I mean, I solved Fermat’s theorem on a whim at six while my classmates were starting their multiplication tables. Plus, I kept getting in trouble for contradicting my teachers and generally being a pompous ass. The faculty didn’t morn my loss. After all, it was their job to create compliant and competent cogs for the rigged system we all toiled in, and I certainly didn’t fit that bill. I was more of a dangerous outlier.

So, Pop bought me all the books I could read and gave me a high-powered rig to, theoretically, tool around the local library servers. Obviously, I went places I wasn’t supposed to go as well, but I always covered my tracks. I wasn’t mischievous per se, just naturally curious. I put the rigs processing power to good use on the vineyard as well, keeping the labor bots running efficiently and making sure that in the winter the sprinklers came on in time to protect the buds from frost. I ran diagnostics on the tractors and transporters, so Adan could replace sputtering parts before they failed. It wasn’t a glamorous life, but it was a good life. Good and honest.

I never wonder how Adan would have turned out, left to his own devices on Pop’s quiet ranch. I know for a fact he would have taken over for the old man. Hermano was built for the work, and he enjoyed the fresh air and the manual labor. He would have found a pretty farm girl with childbearing hips and started his own clan. Would he have been happier? Maybe. Probably.

Me? Honestly, I’m not sure. I was a dodecahedron peg with nothing but identical and boring round holes in my future, lined up in front of me to infinity. I may have ended up exactly where I am now. But thanks to Paul’s casual violence, I’ll never know for sure.

It was a hot summer day and I’d taken cover in the cab of the orange pick-up, leaving Adan and Pop to stake the new vines and weave their young growths onto the thin wire that ran between the rows of plants. I’d said I wanted to run some new efficiency protocols on the labor bots, but really, I just wanted to sit in the shade and teach my bot Clown to dance. Likely, they knew and didn’t care. I was worthless for manual labor – still young and lazy and prone to complaint.

Clown was my favorite. He was a mismatched bot with a bad speech processor and one leg slightly longer than the other. His operating system was ancient, and his processors were packed full of a century’s worth of memories. He should have been wiped clean and reprogrammed ages prior, and was probably closer to sentience than would have been allowed on any world in the known galaxy. I assume his previous owners liked him as much as I did and just let it slide. He could get a few words out now and then, but most of the time he’d make himself understood through exaggerated arm and trunk movements and his expressive metallic face. Just like an iron clown. Well, probably more of a mime, but I was a kid, and the distinction would have been lost on me anyway.

Clown was so old fashioned looking that it would have been believable that his design was part of the manufacturer’s idea of retro styling. His arms and legs were joined cylinders on hinges, rather than the stylized human musculature on newer models, and he was able to make facial expressions by way of fixed metal appendages that slid along exposed groves rather than flexible plassteel polymers.

I never actually programmed Clown. I asked him to do things and he usually did. It’s only when I asked him to do something that was dangerous to him or to me that he refused. Like putting me on his back and climbing one of the tall oaks. He never would no matter how nicely I asked. He would just shrug and frown, his ovoid head slowly shaking side to side. Maybe he was scared of heights. More likely, he knew our combined weight might break a branch. I always thought of him as a friend, really my only friend other than Adan, and I always assumed that clown felt the same way about me. In the end I found out for sure.

Adan had a dog named Fergus. The dog liked me just fine, but he loved my brother best. At night he even slept on Adan’s bed. Fergus wasn’t a generally kissy dog, but he’d clean my brother’s face with his bacteria-infected tongue at every opportunity. Fergus followed Adan everywhere but school. He’d ride with us in the cab of the truck and he kept Adan company when he worked in the field or on the farming equipment in the shop. That day he was sleeping under the shade of a leafy vine while Adan and Pop worked.

So it happened that all the lives that Adan and I cared about were out in the vineyard when Paul and his thugs descended on us from the sky. The men came in an expensive ultralight VTOL craft, whipping dirt around in billowing gusts. Fergus barked up a storm and ran in circles while Pop and Adan shielded their eyes and watched the craft slowly descend and finally set down gently on the dirt road a few meters from their position.

Three men disembarked from the craft, overdressed for the dusty ranch in dark hued, three-piece suits, shiny black shoes and fancy brimmed hats. They approached Pop and started talking in what appeared to be congenial tones. They were a good ten to fifteen meters away from me at the time. It was just far enough away that I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could see that the man that was obviously in charge, Paul, was smiling. The other two men stood aloof at the periphery. Avery was short and thick, with a perpetual look like he was in pain. Vinny was of middle height and thin, with a suit that looked a size too big. I found out all the names after the fact.

Pop seemed animated, but he always spoke while gesturing with his hands, so it was hard to tell for sure. Fergus had his fur up, which was weird because he loved everyone. Obviously, my eyes weren’t giving me all the information I needed. Still, it came as a surprise to me when the scene suddenly turned ugly.

In a flash, Paul’s smile died on his face, and he hit Pop in the face, knocking him down. I gasped as the man proceeded to kick my fallen father in the gut. Adan sprang to Pop’s aid, hitting Paul after a running start and staggering the man backwards a few steps. But then the two other men were on Adan, grabbing him and pulling him back. At that moment I realized that Avery had a gun. Fergus bit the calf of the armed man just before he could pistol-whip my brother. The thick man screamed in pain, and his gun went flying through the air – disappearing into a nearby rose bush. Avery dropped to the dirt clutching his leg, while the second man wrapped Adan in a bear hug.

Paul calmly pulled a gun from his breast pocket and pointed it at Fergus. I heard a loud crack as fire erupted from barrel of the gun and then a sharp yelp as Fergus fell. Adan head butted Vinny and then dropped him with a quick combination, but the sight of Fergus’s lying lifeless quickly stole the fight from him. Paul pointed the gun at my brother and fired anyway, but Pop, who had struggled to his feet after Adan entered the fray, saw what was about to happen and stepped in front of the bullet.

I must have been in shock until then. I didn’t realize I was screaming until Paul looked at me. It was just a glance, then he looked back at Adan, who was kneeling next to Pop. I looked at Clown and screamed at him to save Adan. The bot stared at me for a moment, then nodded solemnly.

Clown turned and lumbered towards Paul at roughly human speed. You have to understand, Clown was an old labor bot, and wasn’t programmed for combat. In fact, he probably had programming to override attacking a human under any circumstances.

Still, he ran at Paul with determination. The man’s hat had fallen off, and his thinning, greased-back hair was sticking up at weird angles in the light, humid breeze. He sneered as he calmly began to empty his clip into the oncoming bot. Fortunately for us, Paul’s bullets were rated for humans, not bots.

Hollow points are what you use for biological targets. That type of bullet opens up after contact and creates a bigger hole going out than it made going in – leaving ravaged organs and tissue in its wake. But that kind of ammo doesn’t pierce metal. To do that you need armor piercing rounds, but they leave clean holes in people and have less stopping power.

Paul must have realized this after the first two shots bounced off Clown’s midsection with loud clangs. He was surgical with the next shots. The third crippled an arm at the elbow joint and forth shot knocked out the servos in Clown’s hip. But by that point the bot was right on top of him. Paul got off one final shot to the bots face as Clown’s working hand gripped the gun by the barrel. Then Clown stopped moving. I didn’t know till much later that he’d never move again. He’d spent his last moments protecting his family.

Paul tried to dislodge the gun from Clown’s hand, first by tugging with his gun hand, then by planting a foot on the bot’s chest and pushing off while heaving with both hands. Neither method made any difference. The gun remained firmly pinioned in place. I realized Adan was struggling with the thin man, who had a pistol in his hand and was trying to bring it to bear. Avery was also up and limping it their direction.

I snatched up a large crescent wrench off the floor of the cab and sprinted at the gimpy man. I could barely see straight through the salty tears in my eyes. Avery heard me coming too late and I brought the heavy metal down where his broad trapezius muscle met his thick neck. I was aiming for his head, but I was too short to reach. Even so, he went down in a heap.

I looked up as Adan pulled Vinny in close and head-butted the man for the second time, this time square on the nose. The thin man screamed and dropped the gun, his shattered nose flowing bright red blood freely. Wind began whipping up, and I realized Paul was in the VTOL and had fired up his vehicle’s vents. It must have dawned on Vinny that his boss was about to leave without him, because he turned and ran towards the getaway vehicle, one hand covering his nose while the other shielded his eyes from the swirling dust.

Adan picked up the man’s pistol and fired at his retreating form. His third shot hit home. Just as Vinny reached the safety of the open doorway, he arched his back sharply and then crumpled to the dirt. At that point, Paul lifted off and the vehicle quickly disappeared into the noonday sun, leaving Adan and I to deal with the fallout.