Phil.
The pristine chrome and semi-rubberized seat was really starting to hurt his ass. Phil’s fingers wrinkled the top of his foam cup as the miserable coffee within cooled, utterly ignored.
He’d certainly had worse before—or he thought he had. But lousy coffee was lousy coffee, and this particular brew was a triple threat.
How, in a world where machines cooked in place of humans, a simple pot of black could still somehow taste sour, ashy, and bland was a contradiction of common sense that existed simply to spite those who enjoyed a good brew.
Admittedly, his mood was already lingering on the precipice of frustration, his knee bobbing wildly while his boot tapped a staccato rhythm on the polished floor. He was on edge, angry and confused, and maybe even just a bit ashamed.
He’d completely lost his marbles, his nerve deciding to piss off at nearly the first moment the going got tough, and it had done so right on his very first afternoon out.
Yes, it was technically his first day on the job after two whole weeks of intensive training, but Phil had honestly thought, after what he’d gone through, that all of this would be a cakewalk.
Instead, he’d come face-to-face with a body that looked like it had been put through a blender, only to then be told he didn't have the chops for the job.
His pride was wounded.
His expectations of his new career skewed like a rat-meat kabob. Worst of all was the look of exasperated pity he kept seeing in the older tech's eyes each time Phil found himself staring at the data pad. Almost as if he were wishing something would magically appear and, all of a sudden, his worst fears would be realized and ratified.
Sadly, at this point, he was going to have to admit that his paranoia might genuinely have been getting the best of him.
They’d been monitoring the android's systems for ten damned minutes, and not so much as a blip of abnormality had shown up in its log. If he didn't know better, it was almost as if it were too perfect, too curated. But that couldn't be the case, could it?
Oof, and he’d been so sure the damned thing really was messing with them…
Oddly enough, after dropping out of college, his MIP career all but flushed down the drain with the decision, Phil had thought he’d won the lottery when his application to Paradise had been accepted.
Decent money, fifty-percent copay health benefits, a free apartment, tiny and in the Meadows, as it was. Indeed, it had been a deal that seemed too good to be true, and now Phil knew why.
He was getting compensated for hazardous work.
Although Frank had boldly proclaimed that there was no way one of their machines would go rogue and attack a Paradise technician, Phil hadn't heard a single story about the machines attacking clients, even in the news.
So, in his mind, it really wasn't a leap in logic to assume the company was doing the same thing to the public as it did to its own employees.
Mix that in with a warning that the job had a high turnover rate and that he’d all but signed his soul away under the mountainous contracts, NDAs, and waivers he’d been told were only proper procedure, and—
“Shit…”
Needless to say, there was a sinking feeling in his gut that was the reason Phil still held an intense distrust for the android upstairs. Idly, he lifted his cup to his mouth, deciding that, while the coffee was awful, he still wanted his caffeine.
Frank's arm shot out and held his wrist, the other man's gaze locking on his own before nudging his chin at the cup. “You fucking tore the rim right apart, son. There’s more foam in your coffee than coffee.”
Blinking at the floating mass of garbage that was now collecting on the surface of his drink, he sighed, put it back down on the table, then grumbled while slumping in his seat. “And exactly how many of these sorts of calls did you say you got in a month?”
“Heh. Eh, only two or three, lad. Honestly, most techs don't ever see this sort of thing, unless we're short-staffed. But those of us assigned to the Meadows on a full schedule, like we are? Well, we see it fairly often.”
“I feel like I’ve been lied to…”
“Nobody said anything to that accusation. Trust me, Paradise’s hiring division is meticulous and good at what they do. Ha, I mean, surely you assumed there was a
reason
why such a massive company would hire a flunky like yourself, no?”
“I just assumed three years in the program was enough for them to say, why not? You know?”
“Well, it was, and it wasn't,” Frank chuckled, merrily sipping with a loud slurp. “If you didn't have at least some background in the field, you wouldn't have gotten the shot you did. That said, not too many people who actually finish their degree would tolerate working out here, let alone what it, uh, well, entails, if you know what I mean.”
Phil glanced at the conversation distorter that Frank had deployed on the table. His gaze lingered on it for several moments before he tore it away.
Evidently, Paradise was so tight-lipped, even when it came to its own employees, that they were forced to deploy a conversation jammer while agents were taking a break in public.
Insanely, the little drone had actually shot out of Frank’s robotic arm the moment they sat down; though, as to whether it was fully autonomous or simply something the other man consciously activated, Phil still wasn't sure.
Teams like their own always operated in pairs, with a senior agent acting as their leader and a junior meant to assist. At some point, Phil would be considered experienced enough to lead his own little duo, at which point Frank had not-so-cheerily stated that he’d be saddled with yet another rookie.
The fact that so many techs assigned to the Meadows abruptly left Paradise's employ wasn't something the other man was too keen to comment on. He’d said something along the lines of most people simply can't hack it; however, Phil was starting to put together a much darker, alternative explanation for that discrepancy.
Why, when a job had so many benefits, would senior technicians leave? It was a question that had seriously been gnawing on him all this time, doubly so after he’d witnessed what had transpired upstairs.
Well, maybe the reason was one with a more lighthearted cast?
Maybe people simply left for bigger and better things after getting some experience under their belts.
That said, Paradise offered better pay than sixty percent of their competitors, so the math was already on the wrong side of things.
Worse was, of course, the darker option—the one where the turnover rate wasn't at all related to people moving on with their careers. Instead, dying and passing on to wherever it was people went when they were brutally pulled inside out by a lunatic sexbox.
Again, Phil glanced at the data pad, his mind just tuning out all the ambient noise around him. Hell, even Frank’s voice distorted to a yawning garble as the young man felt his pulse skyrocket through the ceiling…
His lips twitched, eyes shooting wide, breath catching in his throat as, through the stream connected to the android’s eyes, Phil watched as a gore-caked arm lifted itself, palm flat and out, pointing at the locked apartment door mere heartbeats before it slid open.
“F-Frank—”
“Get down!”
All at once, Phil’s world was consumed by the rapidly approaching floor. His eyes bugged out while his partner's hand pushed him down. Something wet and weighty passed over the top of his head, thumping heavily against the nearby wall at speeds that beggared belief.
His ears were screaming as Phil, moving on instinct, scrambled behind the overturned table that Frank was already flipping. Exclamations of pain and numbing confusion all coming together to scramble his frazzled thoughts.
Frank risked a chance glance over their impromptu barrier as, from the left, a woman abruptly got smacked by a large heap of mashed vegetables that snapped her neck sideways with a sickening crack.
She fell in a twitching and convulsing heap, eyes wide with terror as drool spilled from her gurgling lips, her body jerking with the telltale signs of spinal injury.
Phil’s breath was coming faster and faster now. The whistling hiss of projectiles constantly flying through the air and the subsequent snap of food splattering against walls, people, and furniture made it sound like the stuff was being shot rapid-fire out of a damned cannon.
Swallowing, Phil chanced a glance as well, peeking around the side of the table only for his head to retreat a moment before a massive wad of goop tried its best to brain him.
“What the fuck is happening?”
“Malfunction,” Frank grunted, dropping back down to his ass and picking up the relatively durable data pad that had conveniently fallen nearby.
Though not right beside them, Frank's mechanical arm reached out, distending and extending in strange unlocking patterns as the limb practically stretched itself just long enough for the man to flick the tablet their way!
A massive heap of chunky gravy nearly sent Frank spiraling as it hit him in the shoulder. Frank cried out in a moment of surprise as he was nearly dragged out into the open by the force of the blow, but Phil had him, taking hold of his jacket and keeping him behind cover.
“Appreciate it…” Frank heaved, an almost maddened gleam filling his gaze, winking at his junior partner as though this insanity were another damned morning for him. “Don't worry, I’ll hack the fucker right, good and square. Might get a little slap on the wrist, but it’s better than a broken neck, right?”
“Frank, the fucking android was moving on the screen!” Phil shouted, uncaring that those around him heard him. Even with the shitstorm that had abruptly manifested at the worst possible timing, Phil felt like he needed to alert the other man to what he’d seen.
For his part, Frank just looked at him with a raised and very bushy eyebrow, all his mirth and chaotic amusement for the situation faltering as he glanced down at the tablet, then back up at Phil, then back at the tablet.
The stream was still playing, and just as it had for the last quarter hour, the image on the pad was of a familiar scene.
The apartment remained just as they'd left it. The android’s line of sight persisted precisely as it had each and every time he’d stared at it, save for that one lone instance.
With an intensely weary and saddened look, Frank simply shook his head at him, letting out an exasperated sigh as he flicked over from the video and opened up the tablet's available connections.
Then, as he used Paradise's hardware to crack the maddened kitchen-bot, punching through its security with the weight of distant banks of super-processors, Phil could only feel his heart sink into his gut…
"Frank," Phil whisper-shouted, his voice barely audible above a fresh barrage of what sounded like burned fish fillets slapping against the wall behind them with sickening, saucy thuds. His hands were trembling so violently that he had to clench them into fists, and even then, they still shook, the tremor rising all the way up his arms. “Look, I know what you're thinking, but you need to trust me!"
Another projectile, this time a whole, uncooked chicken, surprisingly aerodynamic given its speed, cartwheeled overhead in an eternally absurd moment of flabby, flapping wings and quivering naked thighs.
It narrowly missed Frank’s head and exploded against a support pillar in a grotesque shower of raw poultry. Both of them, along with several others nearby, were doused in shredded raw bird and unpleasant, greasy juices…
"Just—look at the recording log when this is over, please!"
The air was littered with the unending stream of pulverized produce that constantly exploded against anything it found. Phil let out a yelp of pain and surprise as a metal tray bounced off their table, flipping partially onto his head with a long 'gong' that made him duck and wince.
Hot oil from a ruptured fryer spewed across the berserk bot's body, causing everything it grabbed to take on a wholly new and extremely concerning property, as now sizzling foodstuffs were making their way into the action with disastrous results.
If the screams of agony were anything to go by, it couldn't be any more pleasant than the prior weaponized food.
Phil didn't want to think about it. If anything, he just wanted this nightmare to be over.
However, after a nearby vending machine was repeatedly pelted with heavy cans of beans and tomato stew, the stupid thing suddenly ejected its entire contents with a deafening crash.
It sends snacks and sodas skittering across the floor like metallic roaches. Cans of pop exploded, adding more chaos as if it were needed, coating everything from floor to ceiling in sticky, bubbly soda until nothing of the cafe's prior cleanliness remained.
“I swear to Trinity, if I’m wrong, I’ll march right back to HQ and tell them I’m done!” he screamed, desperately trying to be overheard amongst all the other wails of confusion and distress.
Frank, miraculously, seemed somehow unfazed by it all, even after the direct hit his data pad had taken from a rogue breadstick, which easily snapped cleanly in two against the hardened casing, even if it covered them in crumbs.
He spared Phil a glance, his face a mask of amused concentration. The rapidly filling progress bar on the tablet was their only real hope in the escalating food-nado that somehow wasn't looking like it was ready to abate any time soon.
A glob of what might have been blueberry pie hit the nearby table, fully coating an older man and Frank's neck, the filling dripping down his arm in large, gooey chunks. Still, he merely grunted, shook himself off the best he could, then offered Phil a stern frown that told Phil exactly what the other man thought of him.
A single, quick nod was all his patience, thinning as it was, would allow. Their overturned barrier was ringing out a staccato rhythm under a fresh assault of something exceptionally wet but concerningly solid.
Nearby, frozen shards of shattered ice pinged off the chrome surfaces around them, spraying the poor souls trapped with them in rather painful splinters of frozen water. But finally, after what felt like an age, the pad beeped a slight, exultant sound that was almost lost amid the tireless hammering the chef-bot was dishing out.
But, without further word, Frank began tapping furiously, his fingers never stopping even as he ducked away from a ricocheting apple.
Phil kept himself low while his partner worked. Not cowering—at least, that was what he told himself—yet the line was admittedly somewhat murky at this point...
Above them, a light fixture, struck by a soaring pot of soup, shattered, showering several other survivors in boiling-hot bisque and glass fragments. Plunging their immediate area into a flickering horror show as the wails of desperate mercy and misery rose at the same time from people being cooked by their own lunch.
His mind was a tempest of anxiety; each thud, each splat, each thunderous screech of steel on steel and scream from the chaos beyond their flimsy barricade—all of it merely amplified his fears that something horribly wrong and far, far too coincidental was clearly afoot.
His thoughts invariably returned to that brief, impossible moment when he’d seen the android upstairs calmly, deliberately, leave the apartment. And somehow, he just couldn't shake the feeling that there was far more to this 'malfunction' than first met the eye...