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She tried to imagine what the AI thought of the prospective parent if this was what he imagined Jubal would like.
They headed up the concrete stairs to a metal door, Jubal putting himself in front, still not letting go of her hand, in an almost protective gesture.
He tapped on the metal door, and it opened immediately. A helper bot with blinking blue eyes slid backward to allow them room to enter.
“Thank you for coming,” the bot said politely as they stepped inside. “You are just in time to save us all.”
Before Chloe could change her mind, the door closed behind her with a loud metallic thunk, followed by a sound like a bolt being slammed shut on the other side.
She gave an involuntary shiver.
“Save you from what?” Jubal asked, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze.
“The cruel doctor’s beast,” the bot said, blinking again.
Every schoolchild in the sector knew the story of the cruel doctor and his beast. Which made the bot’s words even more confusing.
According to the legend, there was once a wild Ardoovian cat that terrorized the countryside. A prize was offered by the King of the Three to whoever could capture it.
Hunters came from all over the realm, but none could best the wily cat.
Then a local doctor of surgery began building traps.
This was in the time before cyborgs, even before limb replacements. The doctor longed to experiment with these robotic limbs, but it was expressly forbidden by the priests.
Once the first trap was set, he waited patiently in the woods for the beast to come. When its front paw was trapped, the doctor sedated it and brought it back to his surgery, where he amputated its leg and replaced it with a cyborg limb. He kept it captive, feeding it as much as it would eat, until it appeared to have healed beautifully. Then he released it again.
And he set another trap.
Naturally another of the big cat’s limbs was trapped, and then another, and finally the fourth.
It went on like this as rumors of the terrible beast with the metal limbs began to circulate.
Finally, the doctor replaced the beast’s great head with a robotic head, programmed to rule over the rest of the body.
He brought his metal cat to the king, along with the rotted parts of his creation’s original body as proof.
But instead of declaring him a genius and awarding him his prize, the King of the Three cried that he was a mad man and had him exiled along with his deranged experiment.
But in the dark of night, at the border of the Three, the cruel doctor released his beast, which he had programmed to destroy every living thing it encountered in the realm.
Within a fortnight, every living thing in the Three had been wiped out.
When it had completed its programming, the beast lay upon a rock in the shade, awaiting further instruction.
For a generation, no one dared to enter the Three. All the buildings became overgrown and what once had been roads were filled with moss and trees.
But the world grew up around the Three, for the beast would not harm a soul outside the territory it had been programmed to destroy.
When the reign of the priests had its sunset at last, Ardoovians embraced technology. First with helper bots, then droids, and finally drones.
The first drone flight was straight to the Three, where a hive of drones finally put the poor beast out of its lonely misery, blasting the iron creation to dust on the rock where it had rusted for more than a century.
But the story of a scary metal beast lived on in the hearts of Ardoovian children and children all over the galaxy.
Chloe had always imagined it was only a legend, used to frighten children into behaving. It could actually be here.
Could it?
