Robocop
`...superior fire-power, combined with, in the revision B firmware, an extensive neural-network pattern recognition storage/retrieval system, makes ED-209-B, `the' urban law enforcement solution...'
OCP advertising brochure
`...here he comes now,' breathed Genesis. his companions shrank back slightly behind the dumpster. rivulets of muck that ran from the holes in the rusted corners of the huge metal bin gleamed as the ED-209-B's lights swept the alleyway, searching for potential offenders. Genesis whistled the signal to Kely, who was hidden behind a set of water pipes that ran up the length of the building. she stepped out just as the ED-209-B turned to leave. the sound of her footsteps made him pause, and with gyros whirring, he turned and stepped into the alleyway. his xenon lamps bathed her in a blue-white glare momentarily, before he switched to ultraviolet. he assessed her `miscreant potential', decided that she wasn't breaking the law, and was about to depart when she produced something from underneath her flak jacket. it was a cylinder, about three inches in diameter, twenty inches long, painted black on one side, with regular bar-code markings in ultraviolet-reflecting paint on the other. ED-209-B quickly recognised the bar-code; it was a cannister of `HarXene 23', a powerful chemical explosive favoured by terrorist groups. the machine instantly hunkered down with hissing pneumatics, lowering his centre of gravity and presenting a shallower profile to any potential blast.
`Put down your weapon. You have twenty seconds to comply,' the machine grated in his barely understandable synthesised voice. this was the part that Kely hated. she counted a careful fifteen seconds, and then rotated the cylinder so that the matte-black, non-reflective surface showed. ED-209-B paused, and cautiously lifted from his defensive crouch. he waited for about ten seconds, then turned to leave. Kely turned the cylinder again, and again, ED-209-B crouched with pneumatic squeaks, and issued his warning. another fifteen seconds. and so on, for almost three hours.
`was it slower that time?' ivo muttered to genesis. `i think so... look!' ED-209-B's batteries had been low when they had set this trap up, and he had finally reached the point when recharging had become a higher priority than catching a potential terrorist.
`Do not leave the vicinity,' he growled, `you have been tagged for further surveillance. this is your only warning.' he punctuated the threat with a sampled Alsatian-growl, and turned to leave. at the alleyway entrance, genesis' compatriots had set up a mock-recharging station. the red flashing light was completely authentic, though; it had to be, otherwise ED-209-B wouldn't recognise it. the machine stumped up to the station, settled down into the recharging cradle, and beeped its `commence recharging' command. the mockup responded with a very plausible imitation of the `station out of service' signal. ED-209-B paused briefly, and then got up. he turned a slow one-eighty degrees, and spotted the other mock-recharging station that genesis had hurriedly set up at the other end of the alley. with noticeably slower steps, he tramped the length of the alley, sat down in the cradle, and signalled for a recharge. this station also beeped `out of service'. ED-209-B got up, turned a slow one-eighty, spotted the first recharging station...
and so on...
until half-past-four in the morning, when ED-209-B finally ran out of juice. just before shutting down completely, he locked his twin-turret machine guns down, so that potential miscreants couldn't break them open for the ammunition. bullets, however, were not exactly what genesis and his friends were after. Kely cautiously approached the machine, knocked on his leading edge. `anybody home?' she giggled. genesis had shoved aside one of the mock-recharging stations and was backing a small electric loader up the alley. together, they tipped Ed-209-B backwards into the tray, covered him with a tarpaulin, and whirred off.
Ed-209-B stood under the bright lights of the AnarchArtist's work room, rear maintenance plate removed, a mass of leads dangling from banks of packed circuitry. his twin guns had been detached and stacked in the corner, the ammunition removed for sale to the `BananaLand Arts Irridentist' movement. genesis and ivo were arguing about the disassembly of Ed-209-B's code. ivo pointed to a block of hexadecimal digits, `4E71', repeated halfway down the page. `i tell you, it's some sort of jump-table. it just looks like a series of NOPs in the listing, 'cos the code isn't contiguous.' `well, okay, although i still think that they stuck them in for some sort of timing loop.' ivo snorted cynically. `what sort of asshole depends on a bank of NOPs for timing? i mean, what happens when you port the code to a faster processor?' genesis grinned, raising an index finger to illustrate his point. `i thought you knew, that you have to be an asshole to code for OCP. it's in the job specs.' the door slammed open, and Kely burst in, waving a sheaf of printout.
`never fear, Camden's here!,' she proclaimed. `hot off the presses... original documentation, stolen from right under Jonesy-babes' cocaine-powdered nose!' genesis and ivo grabbed the printout, and began sorting the pages into areas of interest. `gyro assimilation... nah, that's, what's-it-called, that, um, recoil/ranging actuator differentiation... there! that's where the Motivation and Restriction codes get filtered through the Situational Engine, and - what's that? Christ, Kely... that thing would've blown yer fuckin' head off as soon as look at you - see that bit of code?' ivo was grinning. Kely looked at the printout, and turned pale. genesis slapped ivo on the back, and said with forced joviality, `next time, you can do the song-and-dance in front of the double-barrelled motherfucker.' Kely grinned. `by the time we've finished with him, Eddie-baby'll be entirely single-barrelled.' she shoved a disk of pirated code into their PC, and moved around to the front of ED-209-B. she began to unbolt the plate that covered the servos between its legs. later that morning: genesis clicked on the `play' gadget. ED-209-B said, in a husky voice, `Ohh... bay...bee...' `nahh, 's too slow, and you can hear the anti-aliasing a mile off. Up the playback rate to twenty K... okay, again.' `Ohh, bay-bee!' in addition, genesis made the droid wiggle his ass. Kely smiled. `I'd buy that for a dollar,' she murmured.
they had moved their work-benches out and had three videocameras set up under the lights. ivo focussed two of them on the end of the brass bed that Kely and genesis had wheeled in, strapped on the third camera, adjusting its Steady-Cam balancing weights. he waved it around, checking the autofocus. he nodded to genesis, who was manning ED-209-B's hastily dummied-up control console. Kely was wearing nothing except a tattered shirt, spotted in jungle-camouflage green, and a Mao cap with a forlorn single twig poking out. she looked the very caricature of the urban terrorist. she was handcuffed to the end of the brass bed. genesis counted down: `three, two, one... okay,' he continued in a parody of the serious, concerned news-reader's voice: `in today's violent society, we here at OCP have to deal firmly with terrorists...' he pressed some keys on his console, and ED-209-B stumped into shot behind Kely. A huge rubber penis had been attached to the plate between his legs. it waved comically as the droid sidled up to Kely, who was cowering in mock-fear. another key press, and the penis inflated with a sultry hiss. `oh, MY!' Kely squeaked. `Oh, bAY-BEE!' ED-209-B replied. it nudged the penis between her legs, and began to thrust rhythmically. as ivo dollied in for a close-up, genesis cued some music, the theme from a currently popular news show. it didn't quite drown out the squeaking of bed-springs and Kely's put-on gasps. it was then that ED-209-B spotted something in the monitor ivo had set up for Kely's benefit. it was a cylindrical something, that kept appearing and disappearing between the suspect's thighs... he thrust forward - there it was again. something triggered in the faded neural-network of ED-209-B's pattern-recognition system. he suddenly crouched down, angling the tip of the penis upwards. `r-r-r-t- your weapon. you have twenty- b-z-z-z-z-t' Kely, ever the improvisationalist, hitched her behind up, and settled down on the end of the rubber penis.
`come on baby, do it -' and suddenly, ED-209-B thrust forward again, propelling Kely over the end of the bed. her hands still cuffed to the bedstead, ED-209-B began shaking like an epileptic, pushing the end of its dick in and out at a frantic rate. her hair flying in all directions, Kely's gasps weren't put-on any more, as ED-209-B pumped away like mad, standing up on his toes, emitting a grinding buzz that was part scrambled audio-sample, part electronic shriek of lust. ivo backed off slightly, framed his camera's view around the tableaux of Kely cuffed to the end of the brass bed, suspended on the end of ED-209-B's swollen dick, just as he gave a final thrust, flipping Kely right over, forwards onto her back, and, shuddering in some digital epiphany, ED-209-B spurted about a gallon of bright-green machine-oil out of the end of his dick. ivo took a close-up of the oil running over Kely's face and down her breasts, genesis superimposed the familiar OCP logo, and said, as the music faded,
`O... C... P. we know how to do it.'
