ORIGINAL FICTION: "Cult of the Undead" (Part 1)

There is no way in hell you people aren’t going to throw the book at me. There’s no way you’re not going to send me up the river, so what’s the point of a trial? Just to pretend that you’re honorable people? You’re not. A sham show of justice? If there were any Justice left here, you’d give me a medal, not try me. It’s all just a kangaroo court, and I don’t care to explain myself to you, so you can just try me in absentia, ok? And then you can just got to hell, ok?

No, you know that? We’re all in a hurry here, so I’ll save us some time: I did it. I totally did it. I was in my right mind, and I feel no remorse, so just send me on to the executioner, or jail, or whatever it is you people do these days, and then you can get along going straight to hell. I wouldn’t want to slow you down any.

I’m not even going to….

***

I’d say it was a simple matter to hack my way through the Trust’s security measures, but in fact there really were no security measures to hack through. Not only had nobody ever done this before, but evidently nobody had ever even thought of it before me. If you’re going to sin, you might as well be original.

Once in, I hooked up all my senses to the security gear. Wow! Huge complex. Bigger than I could see all at once, but that wasn’t an issue. I just hunted around until I found some Waldos.

***

Whoa. That was weird. I didn’t mean to say that. I was in mid-rant there, and suddenly that pours out of me. Well, anyway, I’m not going to even bother to ex…

***

Waldos are basically robots that would keep doing some random task until they came across a variable they couldn’t handle, and then they ask for assistance. You help ‘em through that problem, and they go back to their job mindlessly until they met *another* variable they couldn’t handle, and so on.

I’d been told that the Trust complex had the largest network of Waldos in the world, though now that I was actually in the system the truth of that was a little disappointing: just a bunch of floor-polishers and various maintenance machines. There was nothing cool like a chrome-plated Cylon or a Terminator. I selected a trash collector, which seemed the strongest of the bunch, and which had something like arms.

I plugged myself into the R/C feeds for the thing, and felt its limited senses wash over me - sight, sound, touch in the claws. No taste, (And why should there be? It’s not like this thing had a mouth.). No smell (Probably a detriment to its job as a trash can cleaner). After a quick check to make sure all the functions were working properly, I rolled out the Bot Storage Hangar door.

***

…plain myself to you because dammit, it happened again, didn’t it? Are you doing this to me? What in the hell is going on? Call a doctor. I’m not speaking anymore until you call a doctor.

***

A quick glimpse at the map and the manifest in the Trust’s main computer told me where my quarry was.

It was late at night, and there was nobody around, just a few other bots here and there, wiping up messes that were already invisible to me. There were undoubtedly a few actual real live humans helping the waldos out when they got into a jam.

Wait a minute - Late at night? Where the heck was I? I rolled over to a window and raised my camera eyes to have a look around. I seemed to be in the middle of a desert, but I couldn’t make out any details. Oddly, it hadn’t even occurred to me to figure out where the Trust complex was located before I broke in. Physical location was of such little importance to us Undead virtual people that it hadn’t even occurred to me, I just found the Virtu-net node for the place, and logged through.

Wherever I was, I definitely wasn’t in Nebraska. That was a little surprising. I’d just assumed…well, it doesn’t matter.

Suddenly, there was a security guard - a tall Asian guy in a uniform standing in front of me. I sucked in my breath, then remembered - duh - that he could see the ‘bot, but he couldn’t see *me.* Old reflexes tend