Appointment with a Particularly Nasty Death Robot

 

        Trevor Steed fiddled the note in his sweaty stubby fingers, as he assertively walked the three blocks from the bus stop to Bradbury Street. The words of that odd note he had long since memorized.

        "Trevor Steed, the time has come for the ultimate showdown. I hereby challenge you to a duel in the finest Platinum-Notion tradition. Meet me and my modern Knight on the corner of Bradbury and Kubrick Street just as the sun is fading for the night, on the next Friday the thirteenth. If you win, you will forever earn not only my respect, but notoriety and fame that no amount of money could ever buy."

        It had been signed in Platinum ink by the extraordinary well manicured hand of none other than the genius Phil House himself.

        Trevor also carried with him as he trudged along, as was his custom, a large brown paper carrier bag. He wasn't foolish; he had come prepared… Having spent the last few weeks buying various things from the incredibly vast, and frequently weird, internet marketplace known as G-bay to fully armor himself. Trevor had even brought an authentic replica of a Samurai sword… Only to discover, to his chagrin, that it wasn't even made of metal, but of poorly assembled paper mache that had been simply painted in metallic paint… The first and indeed only time he used it, he directed it with a frenzied flurry at an audacious fly that had made the unfortunate decision to land on the end of his spoon, which was immersed in his bowl of morning cornflakes. The sword had disintegrated into ten thousand pieces upon impact, and the fly was left only with a slight, albeit annoying, headache and a strange story to share over the next pile of dog poop he encountered. However, other G-Bay purchases he had acquired were going to be of more value, he reasoned as he plodded along. Trevor had managed to outbid similarly sad people with no life on a slightly used man's bullet proof vest, brought from a widow's estate in Oregon. Apart from the rather ghastly blood stain in the back of it, the vest appeared to be in perfect condition… The widow also had on auction several other interesting pieces that caught Trevor's attention including a handgun that she vehemently claimed had only been fired once and a pile of love letters written out in pink handwriting by some young and very talented young female author named Shauna that she had apparently found in her husband's desk drawer. Trevor was unfortunately outbid on the letters by sometime who had the G-bay identity of BigJorge, who made a last moment sniper bid and beat him by a quarter. However, he was far more successful bidding on offer a hand held catapult, perhaps spurred on by some story his grandmother had told him as a wee child.

        Also contained in his trusted brown bag was a Barry Man-im-low's greatest hits loaded into his J-pod, which had long been made illegal as being far too terrifying and dangerous. Apparently the pitch of Barry's voice had caused a lot of psychological scarring in government testing.

        Trevor, thinking out of the box, considered the classic and thrilling story of a robot called Blake, (I am sure that you have heard of it…) In particular he recalled the seventh in the series, aptly called Blake's seventh. Blake was a death robot of incredible proportions, yet he had major flaw, an Achilles heel of near epic proportions. As he re-read it on his lap-top he called Orac, a country-rap version of Styx's Mr. Roboto came over the radio. How doubly appropriate he had thought… Apparently Blake's flaw was really very silly, you see. Blake was particularly partial to poetry. Apparently there had been a lot of poetry reading when the robot was being made, and somehow the robot learned to associate poetry with his creation… and simply would lie on the ground completely still and go into some sort of deep thought cosmic state, and his eyes would glaze over.

        So Trevor had placed a volume of his favorite poet Fifi Saysmore in the bag.

        If that wasn't enough (and by Jove, don't you think it should be?), Trevor also concealed in that bag a jar of mayonnaise that he had left at room temperature for several weeks, and was now a rather fetching green color, which matched nicely Trevor's rear teeth.

        And finally, apart from a rather tasty lunch he had picked up earlier that morning, Trevor also had Harry Dagwood's latest short story… Trevor, quite reasonably, I feel, figured the sharpness of Mr. Dagwood's incomparable wit and pointed dialogue would be useful if he ever had to do any hand to hand combat.

        As he made his way within a block of the chosen meeting place, Trevor harked back to that morning. It was six hours ago when he had contemplated what he was going to do when he arrived. It was when he was feeding his rabbit—Logan—in his back yard run. In Logan's run Trevor always got strange ideas, most of them wondering if the world he knew was merely an illusion and if anything more interesting lay beyond… He also had considered long and hard that he was going to have to face fear directly on if he had any chance of defeating his opponent. What was most alarming was that he had no idea of what sort of opponent he was actually going to be facing. All sorts of mechanical warriors played through his head… many inspired by some particularly inventive and brilliant ones he had found and eagerly read on the internet website run by the very folks now challenging him into combat—Platinum-Notion..

        As he approached, he saw that all the usual Platinum-Notion bandits were assembled… I really do not have to tell you the names, do I? If you hadn't read about Trevor's far more thrilling adventures, you surely would not be reading this. And repeating and describing all those characters would be a horrible waste of literature real estate, and I do like to be succinct and brief in my storytelling. Cut to the chase, so to speak, and not ramble on mindlessly saying stuff that completely has no bearing on the story at hand.

        Then he saw it, looming at least forty feet high into the overcast Seattle sky… All shiny and menancing. As Trevor approached, wondering why he simply did not turn and run, the Platinum-Notion folks, you know the ones whose names I am not going to repeat, began to loop hands, and as Trevor walked nervously past, they created a circle about him and began cheering and hooting.

        Trevor, not one to waste time, quickly delved into his brown paper bag…

        Now, what happens next might seem a little silly, even for the not particularly bright Trevor Steed. For at that very moment Trevor was overcome with hunger… fear apparently spurring quite an appetite. Always being prepared, he once more dipped into his brown paper bag of goodies and promptly pulled out a Styrofoam container with the name Peggy on it. As all those Platinum-Notion folks, whose names I am not going to mention, looked on in bewilderment and the robot watched cautiously, Trevor opened the container. Inside were a dozen of Peggy's extra special, incredibly hot, I dare you sucker to eat me, Buffalo wings… You know, the lunch I had mentioned Trevor picking up earlier, and thought would have no relevance to the story. Furthermore, there was extra sauce—loads of the stuff; Trevor always made a point for asking for extra sauce, as he figured that is what essentially made a good wing…

        The robot's patience at this point was, by all accounts, running thin… and there was a rustling noise, a bit like how I would imagine a really large blender full of steel ball bearings tossed with some Madagascar flying cockroaches would make.

        Then it happened.

        Trevor dripped some of the potent sauce… which landed directly on the homologized electronified reinforced tungsten and steel composite that Trevor suspected the robot's foot was made of… The foot, however, was no match for the sauce, which promptly burnt a hole in it.

        I suppose, if I felt so inclined, I could describe the following scene with remarkable clarity, elaborating with flowery adjectives and poignant word choice precisely how the proceeding scene played out. If that is what you were expecting at this point, then I am afraid you have grossly overestimated my abilities. And besides, it is not as if this story is going to be appearing in any anthologies or anything, now is it?

        But I shall jump forward two minutes and eighteen seconds.

        Trevor, after admittedly with much reluctance, had by finding a divine purpose in the catapult hurled ten Buffalo wings in quick succession at the giant metallic warrior. Holes were now all over the machine where the offending chicken parts generously coated in the potent sauce had landed… This sent the death robot into some sort of crazed state, and he began to lunge at the Platinum-Notion writers with Dagstinian force.

        Regrettably, the ending is a bit anticlimactic, but staying faithful to truthiness—one really couldn't make this kind of stuff up, after all—here is what really transpired. As Trevor looked on the scene in front of him with a mixture of amazement and relief, he realized that he was still hungry and simply, without anyone noticing, headed for the nearest Peggy's Dynamite Wing Shop… to reload.

The end.