One More Mission for Lucy
01/30/2023
(NYC Midnight Challenge submission)
Genre: Action
Location: A machine
Character: A spy
---
“Wait, wait, hold on…what the fuck? You want me to do what, exactly?”
“We want you to save the world.”
—
Theo exhaled deeply, even generously considering the company currently in his abode. Three imposing men, tall, wide-shouldered and custom-suited, sat in near perfect alignment on Theo’s favorite couch. Which they had not asked to do. He hated discourteous people.
The man in the center stirred ever so slightly; the two on the outside vibrated, like a visible echo. Even behind the gray-shaded lenses of his Ray Bans, the man in the center produced a whole-body stare that penetrated whatever object commanded its line of sight.
Except Theo.
He stared back at the shoes not so delicately placed heel-first by the man in the center. Right on his favorite coffee table. The shoes rested there: unmoving, comfortable, and arrogant. This was the dirty, intentional subtlety of the game he left. Now it was back, leaving soil, dogshit and crushed insects on his favorite fucking coffee table.
“My grandfather made me that table, you disrespectful fuck. How do you take your coffee, Rick?” Theo glared at the man in the center.
Rick stirred again, sending more echoes throughout the room. He leaned forward ever so slightly and the men beside him stood up, belt holsters exposed and unlatched. Theo read the words “Magnum Research, Inc.” on one of them, clear sign of a Desert Eagle .50 cal. Enough diameter and propulsion to create fifteen thousand foot-pounds of force and cause neurological damage at close range.
“A powerful handgun for a weak man,” Theo thought out loud, directing his gaze to the man sitting to Rick’s right. That one was wearing a Gamecocks pin on his coat lapel. Theo had gone to Clemson, with the intention to become an electrical engineer, and not the world’s most decorated spy.
“Fuck USC,” Theo spat at the man to Rick’s right.
That felt really good, Theo thought to himself as he rose to make his way to the kitchen. The space in which he lived made perfect sense for anyone who knew him. Well, anyone still alive, of course.
His house was unusually shaped, one large, open-spaced arc, like a small airplane hangar. The metal ceiling beams, as wide as a standard door frame, bent from one side of the house to the other in an elegantly perfect mathematical equation. The beams peaked at exactly half the width of the floor, itself a perfectly locked array of hardy maple planks that also aligned perfectly to the beams under which they rested. Theo’s professional neuroticism on full display.
The kitchen was set back against the north wall, simply outfitted with a standing metal sink, a few small appliances, and cabinets half-full of basic kitchenware. Theo moved deftly between chair and couch to the French press waiting patiently on the butcher block counter stained the exact shade of reddish-brown maple as the floor.
“Theodore. We do not have time for coffee,” Rick sternly whispered. “We need you in the air right now. This is our last shot or it’s all over. Everything.”
Theo paused his step and grimaced. He had only heard that tone from Rick once before, that genuine, sliver of fear masked by austere professionalism. This was not a ruse.
“What’s the mission?”
—
“About two weeks ago, we stumbled upon a giant machine below the surface of the earth. We’ve had tech exploring beneath the Earth’s crust since the 50s, gathering data as we discovered new layers, proceeding with extreme caution, but on the lookout for something specific. And we found it, Theo. Or rather, it found us…” Rick’s voice trailed off as a dull, blinking light on the horizon took his attention.
The radar-cloaked plane glided just one hundred meters above the surface of the Atlantic, guided precisely by a computer program, seemingly impervious to the forty-five knot winds buffeting it from the north. They had left Camp Smith two hours ago, and already found themselves closing in on the Canary Islands, just off the coast of West Africa.
I wonder how Manny and Claudia are doing, Theo mused.
Two of his close friends from before his spy life had opened a seafood restaurant on their home island, Tenerife, a long time ago. He had visited many times post-mission to spend off-grid time with his past life. It was a nice reminder that once he was awkward, unskilled, scrawny, and normal.
“Ok, so. Giant, sleeping robot. Alien tech buried underneath the Earth’s crust. The US government not telling anyone until it’s too late to do anything REASONABLE. Classic fucking you guys, right?”
Rick blushed ever so slightly, exactly the reaction Theo wanted. These fucking guys have no idea what they are doing, as usual. Fuck me.
“So, what exactly is the plan here, Rick? Dropping into an Armageddon machine buried in the Sahara for millennia, and turning it off before it goes ‘boom’ doesn’t exactly wax positive on success probability.”
“That’s the best we got, Theo. And you’re still the best we got, too. It’s either this, or humans as we know it are extinct, tomorrow.”
“You guys are total fucking assholes, you know that, right?”
—
Theo very liberally poured weeks old milk into Rick’s coffee, happy to ruin the guest service the way Rick’s shoes ruined his coffee table. He picked a clean spoon out of the drawer to his right, spit on it, and shoved it rather aggressively into the coffee mug, swirling salty revenge. He could feel Rick’s eyes on him, wondering. Fuck him.
Theo turned around while expertly placing the spoon into the sink, and sauntered over to the light-brown leather chair opposite the couch. The two on the outside vibrated again. Always on high alert those two mid-level goons.
Theo handed the coffee to Rick who, without breaking eye contact, took a large, salty, milky gulp. Touché, asshole.
“Theo, we need to get you in the air immediately. This isn’t a question of in or out. We need you in, now.”
—
Alarms blaring, Theo ducked through another dimly lit hallway, navigating his way to the robot core by guts and instinct. And a digital map Rick had loaded onto his mission device.
A shitty, useless map, thank you government scientists, why do we even fucking pay you.
The blood seeping out of his leg had slowed, and so had Theo, but he was on-mission. And at no point in his career had he said yes and failed. He was the best. This was humanity’s only hope. Pushing through the pain was part of his training, part of his legacy. So was cursing.
Had to say yes, didn’t you, you fucking dumb dumb.
Another troop of alien automaton guards raced by the dark, corridor cubby he had chosen as cover. They were stark, silent creatures made of twisted, black something: tall, lithe, ruthlessly programmed. Their near-sentient eyes glowed deep amber, the only sign of robot life Theo had noticed in his brief encounters thus far. One of those machines had graciously bestowed the hole in his leg during a fracas near the giant’s inner ear chamber. But that guy isn’t glowing anymore, is he…fucking leg wounds.
Shit! I completely forgot to close Lucy’s fuse box again…
—
“Lucy! I got the power back on for ya!”
Damn, I am really good at this electrician thing.
“Thanks, Theodore! You are always such a lifesaver. And so handsome in that uniform and toolbelt too!”
“Lucy, you know your hubby would be really pissed if he heard you flirting with me like that! But yeah, I look good in this honkytonk, overalls bullshit, ha.”
Theo climbed down the ladder he had used to access Lucy’s fuse box - not the only box he’d access if given half a chance. He clapped his hands together, reveling in yet another job completed. The work reminded him of his collegiate academic pursuit, electrical engineering, and how wonderful a lens it was to look at the world. Everything in it, after all, was a power equation.
And he’d immediately taken to friendly, electrical work once officially deactivated from international espionage. It was simple. Just a bunch of direct and alternating circuits, lines that pretty reasonably connected power to outlets, some math to make sure nothing overloaded and the fuse box was prepared for all of Lucy’s ridiculous appliances. All of them.
This was the third time this month he’d driven over to Lucy’s cabin to help her get the lights back on. She really couldn’t help herself, especially when a late-night infomercial belled and whistled her wallet-connected neurons to purchase the unnecessary, like a second air fryer. Or a mechanical lemon squeezer that took more time to attach than it took to cut and squeeze a lemon by hand. Or meat-shredding claws.
But that fucking margarita machine…that will literally be the death of her. Classic Luce!
—
Theo did not surprise or stun easily. But what he saw in front of him was simply stunning.
A massive crater rested below him, several thousand feet deep and wide, at least. They had arrived late at night in that supersonic plane, cruising onto the African continent and right into the middle of the Sahara. A cold, bitter wind rose up to meet the plane as it landed vertically on a small, sand-covered runway. The moon above was blood red, perched at its apex, foreboding. A sign of the end of days. Theo shivered.
The crater just below them stood peacefully in bloody moonlight, surrounded by a ring of anxious, artificial human lighting pointed downward. Theo’s eyes moved to find whatever the light was seeking, his feet carrying him toward the end of the runway. Rick let him go; after all, Theo needed to see the end with his own eyes so that he could prepare to prevent it.
Peering down into the darkness, Theo’s eyes quickly adjusted. One of his master spy skillsets was his keen senses, near immediately adaptable in any environment. It took him only a few seconds to catch the shape of something just as massive as the crater, deep below the ridge line.
“Oh my fucking God...”
—
Theo emptied an electrified magazine into a large, yellow machine that wore his face to the wrinkle. Wardens, he had heard another robot call them in a fingernails-on-chalkboard voice. He wondered if he’d actually killed himself for a second, staring down at that lifeless face.
The robots had started changing as he made his way to the giant’s core. They became more sophisticated, more human, more like him. Smoothly gliding from one trained movement to the next, quick to act violently, precise. He hadn’t felt this type of challenge, well, ever. This was actually quite fun! But damn if he wasn’t slightly concerned about the escape.
Focus and stay alive, dumb dumb, otherwise the mission is over. Focus! Find the core. Shut it down. Get the hell out.
—
A huge, shiny golem head peeked out of the crater’s sandy depths. Theo could make out an eye, half a nose, a sturdy chin. It looked like it was sleeping on its side. It also looked like it had been there for a long time, since well before humankind. Resting. Waiting.
A dull sound whipped around the crater, like the low rumble of a bear waking from winter. The human-installed lights all around the crater’s edge blinked in unison. Was that thing alive? Or about to be perhaps. Fucking Rick, he wasn’t lying: it’s a giant, sleeping, fucking robot.
Theo immediately closed his eyes and accessed his breathing technique: short breaths in, long breaths out. All the while, he wiggled his eyes side to side, disrupting vagus nerve signals to the brain, moving his senses along his body to ready each core system before mission. He found his center easily, as he had done so many times before, creating a blank space in his mind. In that space, a dark singularity formed. And into that singularity, he fed his emotions one by one until all vanished.
Rick, noticing Theo in his ready routine, made his way over. “It’s time.”
—
The core rippled, millions of metal bits changing configuration the way a wave changes speed and shape on its break. It sensed the threat. It had sensed it since the plane landed near the crater, and the human had tumbled into its body.
The timer that had begun so many eons ago drew steadily closer to its end. The core fumed, if a metallic, sentient core could do so in a human-observable way. Whatever approached it now, making its way through the giant robot, could not be taken lightly. What was this ‘Theo’ the Wardens had identified, and how could ‘Theo’ still be alive? We must wake!
—
Theo’s left arm hung to its side, useless. His body armor was shot to shit. His head ached badly; one of the core’s robotic defenders, a burly, alien sentinel, had picked him up and flung him into a column. Theo dispatched it with the last of his EMP rounds.
He was out of ammo. And out of time.
Right in front of him, the core remained unstirring. It almost looked scared.
Goddamn right you’re afraid. I killed all your robot friends. Time to finish the job.
Theo gathered himself, initiating his breathing technique one last time and for one last offensive. This was it, now or never, one last kill. One last mission.
He stood straight, eyes staring at the core, mind blank, one thing only on his mind. He reached deliberately for the item at his belt, the one thing Rick said he could not lose or damage. A small thumbtack-shaped device clicked free. The needle was made of an alloy found off-world; Theo hadn’t asked as it seemed moot. The base attached to the needle was oval, thin and transparent. Inside that oval swam trillions of nanobots programmed to consume the core’s specific, alien metal. Theo hadn’t asked about that either. This was going to fucking work or it wasn’t.
Core killer device in hand, Theo sauntered forward. A smile slowly drew upon his face, his competitive ferocity gaining one last mile of traction before the final hit. The core sensed this, and screamed, a shrill so high-pitched and magnificent that everyone above ground at the crater’s edge went silent.
This is it. One last save. Fuck…I forgot to tell Lucy goodbye.
—
In her own graceful, country way, Lucy stepped out of her beat up, green Mini Cooper, and skipped up to Theo’s front door. She knocked, wide smile planted firmly between her nose and chin. He’s never gonna believe this.
A man in a suit opened the door, stern face projecting all the seriousness of one who knew how close the world came to ending just yesterday. Lucy stepped back, confused.
“Who are you, and where is my friend Theo?”