[To Catch the Fly.]
The Statement of the Director of the Tactical Robotic Organisms Laboratory, concerning the Incident at Kitty Hawk:
As you all know, it was during the Battle of Kitty Hawk that we first used Tactical Robotic Organisms. We were forced to deviate slightly from out original plan, leading to some complications.
To tell you the truth, the problem wasn’t with the robots themselves. The best minds had been invited to work on building these robots, and many of them had responded to the invitation. The robots performed their tasks exceptionally well.
Our fleet was blockading the enemy port, and had trapped a large number of enemy ships there. Our plan was to insert a Tactical Robotic Organisms Team - we call them Animal Crackers - into the command ship of the enemy fleet. And that’s when the problems began.
You see, we were actually the largest supplier of military equipment and vehicles to the enemy. So their battle group was composed of many of the same kinds of ships as our battle group. The Animal Crackers were deployed from a secure ship, and they made contact with the battle at its height. I guess the fog of war was particularly thick, because a mistake was made.
Our battle group was being commanded by the Admiral, who was onboard the Pursuit of Justice, the grand old lady of the fleet. Because this was the first time that we were using Tactical Robot Organisms under battlefield conditions, we wanted to start with something small and easily managed. So the Admiral had ordered the use of a precision satellite guided Fly. We agreed completely with this decision.
I don’t know why, but the Animal Crackers temporarily mistook the Pursuit of Justice for the enemy command ship and released the Fly with instructions to seek out and destroy the ship’s command capacity. The Fly disappeared into the ship, just as the Animal Crackers noticed our flag painted on the hull.
They tried to recall the Fly, but it refused to respond. They called the Admiral, who contacted us. We suggested trying to neutralize the fly. He asked how, and we suggested that Spider grenades might do the trick. So the Admiral ordered the Animal Crackers to release a Spider grenade onto the Pursuit of Justice. The Spider wiggled and jiggled and tickled its way across the hull and into the ship.
After awhile, we began to wonder whether the Spider had found and neutralized the fly. It wasn’t responding to commands, and there were no reports of explosions anywhere inside the Pursuit of Justice. A lieutenant suggested evacuating, but the Admiral would hear none of it, and ordered a Rocket Propelled Bird to be fired into the ship to deal with the Spider.
The RPB had be made to look like a toucan for some reason, and looked quite absurd as it disappeared into the bowels of the ship. Consistent with the other robots, it soon stopped communicating with the Animal Crackers. The Admiral then had us release a Mechanized Cat (if you can imagine that) and a Dog of War, the former to take care of the RPB, and the latter to neutralize the former. The Dog was a prototype, and it seemed a bit much for the Admiral to be hogging so many robots just because a Fly had accidentally been released onto his ship. More people were starting to suggest that he should just cut his losses. In response, the Admiral had the Animal Crackers open a hatch and toss in an Armored Goat. We continued to be unable to ascertain the status of any of the robotic organisms. Some officers deserted the ship at this point, I believe.
The Admiral didn’t seem to care. He had us bring in a Massive Cow Ordinance Burst, which was the biggest robot that we officially had built. I don’t know how it fit though the door, but it waddled off into the depths of the ship, mooing the entire way. We eventually lost contact with it, just as we had with all of the others.
The Admiral was furious by this time. He must have called in a favor from someone in Intelligence, because we suddenly found ourselves confronted by an Executive Order to use the Nuclear Horse to find and destroy the Cow. The Horse had been a secret project, known about only by a select few, and it was still quite unstable, but we had no choice and so we sent over the Horse, and it galloped down into the ship.
You know what happened, of course.
Thursday, April 24th, 2003
permanent url
<<< past things
future things >>>
archive
© 2003 Karl Bailey.