Eyrie Productions, Unlimited - FI Mini: Ultimate Weapon

Atomic Robo looked up from his book to see his creator, Nikola Tesla, entering the workshop/townhouse they shared in a bit of a dudgeon, and with a bit of a limp.

The former Robo had been expecting. Tesla was an altogether more sociable creature than he once had been, if the accounts of his first life in the 19th and 20th centuries Robo had read were accurate, but he still disliked crowds, noise, and general jostling. So why, therefore, he had chosen to take an early evening walk on Foundation Day, when pretty much the entire population of the city of New Avalon would be out on the street celebrating and watching the fireworks, was not something Robo felt qualified to speculate about.

The limp, on the other hand, was surprising, and if Robo had had eyebrows he'd have arched one as he said, "What happened to you?"

Tesla put his hat on the stand next to the door and gave his mechanical son a half-hearted glare before limping across the workshop and taking the first-aid kit off the wall next to his workbench. Then he sat down on a settee near the bench, hiked his pants leg up, and regarded a small trickle of blood on his right calf with annoyance.

"The one year I decide to take the air and attempt to get into the spirit of Foundation Day," he grumbled, "and some clod manages to stab me with an umbrella. On a perfectly cloudless evening, no less."

Robo sat up straight in his armchair, putting down his book. "An umbrella? Are you sure?"

"Yes, Robo, I believe I can recognize an umbrella when I see one," said Tesla dryly.

"Not much of one," Tesla replied, not looking up from the first-aid kit. "I - ach, who organized this? Or rather disorganized it - was somewhat distracted, and the flow of the crowd separated us almost immediately. A foreigner of some kind."

"This city has no indigenous life forms of any kind," Robo pointed out. "Everyone's a foreigner here."

Tesla looked up, shrugged acquiescence, and went back to delving. "Fair enough. I sometimes forget this is not New York. In any event, he wasn't human. A saurian of some kind, I think. He had a tail, which I can only hope he's more adept at keeping to himself than his umbrella."

"Yes, Robo, a saurian," Tesla repeated patiently. "A reptiloid. To use a phrase more likely to have appeared in those appalling comic books you read, a 'lizard man'."

Robo dashed to the front door, yanked it open, and plunged down the stoop to the sidewalk, looking this way and that. The effort was completely futile, of course, and he was nearly carried away from the premises by the flow of pedestrian traffic before he could lunge back into the townhouse. Having accomplished that, he strode to the settee, stood over his creator, and said urgently, "You need to get to the medical scanner. Now."

Tesla ignored him, rummaging in the first-aid kit. "It's a very small wound," he said. Holding up the items as he named them, he went on, "What I need is some antiseptic ointment and a bandage, not a bioscan." Then, with a wry glance upward, he added, "Perhaps I should've pressured you to pursue a medical degree."

But Robo would not be denied, and finally - primarily just to placate him - Tesla permitted himself to be half-led, half-dragged to the Medicom 1500 diagnostic unit in the corner of the shop and subjected to a full-body scan. This, as he had expected, reported only that he had a minor puncture wound in his right calf, and recommended that he apply some antiseptic ointment and a bandage.

"Hmm, well, what a surprise," said Tesla mildly as he finished applying same. "I trust you don't require a recalibration," he added. "I never thought your automatic intelligence could develop paranoia..."

Robo stood looking out one of the windows at the passing foot traffic and didn't reply for a few moments. Then he said distractedly, "No... sorry. Must just have been something I read."

"Mm." Tesla finished bandaging himself, brushed down his pants leg, and set about rearranging the contents of the first-aid kit.

"You know," said Atomic Robo conversationally, "I can't decide what's more embarrassing. That you actually captured me again, or that I honestly have no idea what you even came back to town for."

"Bah!" the saurian figure at the controls of the giant electromagnet replied dismissively. "There is no shame in being defeated by my superior reptilian intellect! I defeated you with genius! And a magnet."

"Yeah, see, that's what I'm talking about, right there," said Robo wearily. "I have got to see about developing some kind of diamagnetic frammistat so this stops happening."

Doctor Dinosaur hissed. "You insist I cannot really be a dinosaur and yet you still persist in your pathetic robo-mammal superstition about diamagnetism!"

Robo closed his optics, stayed entirely still for four seconds, then opened them again and said, "Can we just move on to the part where you tell me what this is about, please?"

"Certainly," Dr. Dinosaur replied with exaggerated cordiality. "I called you here - "

"You were caught on a security camera robbing a Babies 'R' Us," Robo interrupted. "Speaking of which, why?"

"I called you here," Dr. Dinosaur overrode him, "to witness my final triumph and know the shape of your impending doom!"

Ignoring him, Dr. Dinosaur whipped away the cloth cover of the object standing next to the magnet controls, about which, though he would never have admitted it out loud, Robo had been powerfully curious since regaining consciousness.

Gesturing over the item thus revealed with one clawed hand, the reptilian scientist declared grandly, "Behold! - the ultimate weapon of Doctor Dinosaur!"

Then Atomic Robo said, in a completely baffled tone of voice, "... That's a baby. How can a baby be a weapon? Oh God you know what don't even answer that."

Dr. Dinosaur smiled a jagged, gleaming smile and said, "This is no ordinary mammalian spawnworm. This is the key to the fall of all you hold dear! Using my reptilian genius, I easily unpicked your maker's simplistic monkey DNA from a sample of his blood, which I obtained through bold and daring action!"

July 4, 2396

Dr. Dinosaur struck without warning - without mercy - without restraint, jabbing the point of his umbrella into the unsuspecting inventor's leg, then sprinted away into the crowd. Unnoticed by the witless herds of primates, he reached the underground train station in moments and, safely headed uptown in the hindmost car of a Gold Line train, carefully transferred the precious blood sample to a sealed vial.

Only then did he permit himself a triumphant laugh, which welled up from within him and rang to the far corners of the subway car - indeed, in his triumph-soaked mind, to the far corners of the city, of the pseudocontinent itself.

"Hey, buddy," said the transit cop at the front of the car. "Keep it down, willya? This ain't your secret lab in here, Dr. Frankenstein."

"Ahem. Of course. My apologies, Officer. Behold, a quiet, law-abiding citizen."

"I did far better than simply clone him," Dr. Dinosaur replied stuffily. "I improved on the original! My version is one of your mammal females - "

"Pff. Where do you do your 'research'? It doesn't even say that on Galactipedia any more."

" - and I will raise her as my disciple," Dr. Dinosaur went doggedly on, ignoring all of Robo's interruptions. "She will grow to adulthood believing wholeheartedly in my superior genius! And then, once her brain is fully grown, I will - with her willing cooperation - wrest from it every secret of your maker's inventions, past, present, and future! I will then have countermeasures for everything he will ever think of - including whatever replacement he may devise for you! MUUUAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Dr. Dinosaur recoiled, his fanged jaws opening wide in scorn and disbelief. "Whaaat? It's brilliant! You are misinterpreting the sensation of being dumbstruck with awe."

Robo appeared to consider this in all good faith for a moment, then shook his head. "Nnnno, I don't think so. Pretty sure it's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."

"Bah! Your primitive metal brain is merely incapable of perceiving the grandeur of my plan!"

"I gotta admit, you do think big," Robo said. "But only you could simultaneously be smart enough to make a Heinleinian she-clone of Mr. Tesla and stupid enough to think that genetics or neuroscience work that way. That's - I don't even - that's not even Lysenko-Lamarckism, it's... " Robo searched for the word, then gave up and said, "It's dumb is what it is."

Dr. Dinosaur folded his arms. "Hmph," he said. "Well. If you can't appreciate the magnificence of my victory, then I suppose I have no further use for you." He reached toward a large red button on the magnet control panel. "Except as scrap metal to be incorporated into my disciple's toys," he added.

Before he could reach the button, the reptile was distracted by the sudden, incandescent disintegration of the warehouse's main rolling steel door - and in strode Nikola Tesla, the cooling vanes on his Mark XI Tri-Polar Oscillator Pistol glowing a lambent orange.

Dr. Dinosaur hissed and looked as if he might be prepared to make a fight of it, until the company of TacDiv bluesuiters and grey-coveralled Action Science League personnel flooded into the place behind Tesla; then, cursing, the reptilian scientist reached to snatch up the baby basket and make his escape.

"I really wouldn't," said one of the bluesuiters, shouldering his blaster carbine.

"Be careful, he's - " Robo called, but before he could finish the sentence, Dr. Dinosaur had lashed out with his tail and knocked the man down, then run him bodily over and sprinted out of the warehouse with the rest of that squad on his heels.

A few moments later, Tesla switched off the magnet, letting Robo fall from the wall, then holstered his Tri-Polar Oscillator and stepped over to look down with some bemusement into the basket. Robo picked himself up off the floor and hobbled stiffly over to stand next to him. Together they regarded the baby in silence for a few moments.

Then, slightly to Robo's shock, Tesla smiled. "Hello, little one," he said. "You've had an exciting day, eh? But you don't seem to be letting it bother you."

The baby blinked large brown eyes back at him and, unsurprisingly, said nothing, but Robo noted that - in spite of the chaos and noise that had lately filled her world - she didn't appear particularly put out by it. She was looking around with what seemed like an air of distinct interest in spite of her infant status.

From outside there came the noise of a vehicle; then one of the Action Scientists rounded the disintegrated door and limped toward Tesla.

Tesla smiled slightly. "Ah, well, he won't get far. They don't work beyond the city limits. Best inform Headquarters, and then get started securing and dismantling this facility."

"Right away, sir," said Carruthers; she didn't salute, because it wasn't the done thing in the Action Science League, but there was something of that in her bearing as she turned and limped back toward the door.

Tesla watched her go, then looked down at the infant again. "Well, Robo... what is the story here?"

Tesla turned to regard him for a moment, then reached and picked up the baby's basket by its overarching handle.

"I suppose we'll have to take her home and raise her," he said, the same way a normal person might have said, "I suppose we'll have to buy groceries."

"I came online with a mental age of about twenty," Robo pointed out. "And I don't... you know... poop."

"Pssh," said Tesla, starting briskly toward the door. "You worry too much, Robo. How hard can it be?"

"Dr. Dinosaur's Ultimate Weapon" - a Future Imperfect Mini-Story by Benjamin D. Hutchins
based on Atomic Robo by Clevinger and Wegener
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