A segment from my upcoming short story Adventures of a Semi-Sentient Robot I.
Then the idea hit him like the sting of a Desert Hammer Wasp of Relgon. He would just need to get someone strong enough to lift him up there. Johnny quickly navigated through the dense mass of confused aliens. Scanning to and fro he decided that if there was a creator of the universe he – or she – sure had a funny sense of humor. Any creature tall enough to lift either him or someone holding him up high enough were incredibly fragile looking. The ones that looked strong enough to hold him were short and stout. Johnny suddenly imagined a team of Ternarians, standing no taller than two feet, holding him up to the vent in a pyramid – much like the cheerleaders of Astorack, the most popular sport in all of the Milky Way and it’s satellite galaxies. You can also find some Astorack fans in about one-third of the Andromeda Galaxy, specifically the third facing the Milky Way. The rest of the residents of Andromeda find the sport rather confusing and overwhelming, preferring their sport of pick-up sticks which carries a name so unusual that it is unable to be displayed by the electronic device you are using to read this – or printed by the machine that made this book if you’re a Milky Way Hipster who reads paper books. So typical.
It was just his luck that he came across two of the largest aliens this side of the Scutum-Centaurus arm. These people were massively large. Standing at about 10 feet tall with sturdy looking – well, Johnny had to assume that it was arms. The only problem was how to communicate with them. He was never outfitted with language constructs so he only knew a handful of languages, maybe 200 or so. Johnny rolled up behind one of the creatures and tapped it on the limb protruding from its lower half. It turned around and glared with its one eye with what Johnny thought was rage but was really hoping was their version of open kindness.
“Excuse me, do you speak Galactic Common?” Johnny’s robotic voice chimed. Unfortunately the response was less than helpful as whatever language it was the creatures responded to him with sounded like they were chewing a mouthful of rocks. The other alien joined in and the sound was just horrendous. He imagined if he was thrown into the scrap heap at the end of his usefulness the sound that he would hear as the machine ripped all of his parts off would probably sound just like the noise that was coming out of their mouth.
He decided another tactic. Tapping one on what he sure hopped was similar to a shoulder, Johnny then pointed towards the vent, then he pointed at himself, then the creatures large arms, then to himself, then to the vent. He could almost physically see the light come on in the being’s eye. After a few more painful grunts and growls the two aliens walked over with Johnny to the wall. The first creature picked up all 300 pounds of Johnny without a problem. Then the second alien picked up the first one with just one arm. Quickly he found himself higher than the vent and had to motion for them to lower him. Finally the vent was in front of Johnny and he set to work on opening it. Using his utility arms stored in his chest, he pulled out a standard galactic screwdriver set. Eight screws out and the vent popped off, falling onto the floor with such a noise that all conversation in the room died and everyone stared at the ridiculous scene in front of them. A service robot being held high by two Beta Geminoriums. Johnny was concerned that someone would notice the sudden silence in the room of freshly kidnapped galactic soldiers. Oh well, he thought. He was already compressing all of his parts so that he could fit in the vent. He had gone this far, there was no turning back.
His head-mounted antena scraped the top of the vent which caused him some concern but he continued forwards. There was no lighting to speak of so he switched to infrared. Unfortunately he wasn’t quite sure where he was going. What was the design of the ship? Were they even on a ship? Johnny had a distinct feeling that they were in artificial gravity so hopefully this answered at least that question. Passing an exit from the ventilation system every once in a while Johnny would see no activity in any of the rooms. At least he knew there was other rooms around. Finally after twenty minutes of winding through the tight corners and a few near misses where the air system dropped many feet Johnny found an exit with a little activity. Looking through the grating he spied on the people.
Yes. I spent a portion of my morning making this field on a Minecraft creative server. Since each block in Minecraft is one meter this pitch is to scale.
