Oh, Bollocks

Oh, Bollocks

"The robots are coming and they're going to take control!"


Elden Speer blinked as he put down the last of his drink and looked up at the short, scruffy man stood before him. The lights of the bar glinted off the man's balding head, and the screwed-up eyes looked like tiny slits in the face, barely visible, almost inscrutable. He was a known craven, drunken maniac, spouting conspiracy theories and sounding off to all in earshot about his latest wild ideas about how the military industrial complex was going to end the world.


Most avoided him at all costs, but Speer was not so lucky. The man's name was Mica Spurlock, and he was his best friend.


A tap at the panel on the table brought up the bar's menu and Speer deftly ordered another two drinks. Spurlock was still standing there, awaiting the inevitable response. "So, what is it today, Mica?" he asked. It was best to engage and let him get it out of his system. "Robots, you say? Well, do take a seat and tell me all about it. I've ordered us a couple of beers. Also, you're late, and the next two rounds are on you."


A rolled-up tablet was thrust in front of him as Mica finally scurried over to the chair and sat down, removing his brown jacket and scarf, and scattering raindrops all over the floor and table. "What's this? A gift?"


"The truth!" Mica Spurlock almost shouted it, such was his way. "You get all your so-called 'news' from the Galactic Net, but that's just sanitised propaganda and you know it. Open it, you'll see, you'll see!"


Speer sighed internally and rolled open the tablet, revealing a screen showing simply an image of Titan Moses, the self-reported 'Richest Man in the Galaxy'. No text, not even a crumb of context, but it was obvious where his friend was going with this one.


A service drone floated over, deftly balancing two beers without having spilled a single drop, and lowered itself to allow the men to reach. Speer waved his hand over the drone's terminal to signal the end of the transaction and allow a small tip to head its way. Some establishments on the moon pooled the tips and divided them all equally between all staff, including the oft-absent management, but he preferred this place and its policy of individual gratuities. He had no idea what a drone would even do with the money, but that was none of his business.


He let the interruption hang for a moment as the drone floated away to the next customers, and took a sip of his beer. It was cool and light, but his off-world travels had taught him that this was far from the real thing. It does its job, he thought to himself, but some actual alcohol would make this conversation more bearable.


"Titan Moses," he said, referring to the multi-billionaire owner of the GCom tech company that seemed to own half the known galaxy. "Sure, the man owns a few moons of his own and has been known to veer towards extravagance, but what does he have to do with robots taking over? Last I heard he was targeting investments in the financial quarters and making a mint off his inter-solar telecoms arm."


"Titan Moses!" Spurlock almost spat the name as he wiped his hands through what remained of his damp, blonde hair - more raindrops on the table. "Don't you think the name is just ridiculous? Don't you know anything about the significance of it all? His surname is biblical, man! Doesn't that tell you all you need to know?"


The beer made it easier to hide the gentle laugh. "My friend, you of all people should know that even the richest have no control over their heritage? In fact, he's the first person with that name I think I've ever heard of, and word has it that his family name stretches back centuries, most of whom lived in poverty on squalid little moons. You can't blame a man for his name."


"Ha!" was Mica's only response, though his face showed no sign of amusement. He looked utterly miserable.


Speer waved his fingers idly over the screen of the tablet, small excerpts of facts and figures about the man on the screen popping up and disappearing in his ocular implants at his command. Wealth, fame, a string of failed marriages to the galaxy's most sought-after beauties. But how many like him had come and gone? In fact, it was arguable that they owed their very existence to men like Titan Moses, using their fortune to lift Humanity from the dying Earth and out into the stars. He was fairly sure that if he could be bothered, he could trace his own lineage to people who had fled on one of the generation ships, way before anyone even knew this moon existed.


Still, the agitation on his friend's face was clear. Speer noted that he had yet to touch his drink, while his own was already almost gone; he was going to have to put in some work to see if he could instill some calm.


"Okay, you win," he said. "Tell me what's on your mind?"


Mica's face brightened as he leaned forwards in his seat, picking up his drink as if seeing it for the first time, taking a long draft, and settling himself onto his elbows. The elbows! Speer knew now that this was serious; Spurlock's body language was like open-source code.


"There on that tablet is the face of Titan Moses, as you know him. Entrepreneur, intergalactic celebrity and businessman, the face of a thousand planets and probably a million moons besides. Women love him, children gasp in his presence, and he spreads joy and prosperity to all through his outreach programs and philanthropic ventures. Rejoice!"


His hand had slammed down on the table for added emphasis, which had drawn a few looks that Speer tried to ignore. Better to let the man speak.


"But..." Mica continued, "what you don't know will blow your tiny mind, my friend, your FUCKING mind!" The profanity drew more attention again, more than it probably should have; humanity was in its later hours of civilisation, but for some reason you were still never far away from the prudish. "Listen, right, so, Moses has got all these little business, and side-ventures, and every-fucking-thing else. He's got his tentacles into just about every aspect of our society, but the problem is, right, that you don't see it, see?"


"I see."


"See! Right, so while you all sit there and play with your toys and your knick-knacks and doo-dads, and all the other crap that keeps your brains from seeing the TRUTH!" Another shout, more looks. "While you're doing that, he's out there basically taking in data from everything you do, and processing it, and analysing it. He knows more about you than you do. He knows what you dreamed about last night, he knows the last time you kissed your wife, he knows the chemical composition of your shit. He's using it all, and some day soon, I know, he'll do it."


It was more habit than need that had made him order more drinks while Mica was talking. He waved his hands over the terminal, scrolled through the selection and decided to go for something different this time. His friend was still raving and ranting about data scanning and profile logging, and he could just about follow, but this was all scene-setting. He was more interested in the main thrust of the argument. Plus his own internal monitoring software would be logging it and flagging it for review should he wish to later. Which was unlikely.


"So, what do you think to that?"


Speer snapped his focus back. "Oh, hmmm? Erm, yes, very bad man indeed."


"Don't mock me, Elden!"


He shook his head and raised his hands in a calming gesture. "I'm not, Mica, I promise. But look. None of this is new. Data mining like this has been going on for centuries, maybe even millennia. Certainly before even this city was a glint in its creator's eye. So what does it all mean, and why is it bad that he's doing it, when everyone else is too. What makes him worse than them?"


"Greed! Sheer, animal, humanistic greed! He's got everything, we know, every profile tells us, but you know what he doesn't have? A galaxy! An entire galaxy full of planets and moons and people who he can bend to his will, and rule, and call him King, or Emperor, or fucking Tsar or whatever. He's got everything, but he wants more. He wants it all!"


Spurlock sat back, and reached for his beer as the drone returned again with fresh drinks. For the first time, Speer noticed just how bad his friend looked; his golden beard hadn't been combed in what looked like weeks, there were patches of sweat all over his shirt, and the hands were trembling. Maybe the rush of adrenaline that comes from spending your whole life dedicated to the deepest and darkest conspiracies. Maybe...


"It's the robots, I'm telling you..." he muttered. Then, sitting forward with renewed vigour, went on. "The whispers are out there, they have been for years, but they're starting to grow louder. I know you think I'm a lunatic, that I'm just another nutcase seeing spooks everywhere, but I'm telling you Elden, this one is real! You have to believed me."


"Mica, listen. How can I believe you when you haven't yet made clear what it is you're saying? He's engineering robots? He wouldn't be the first, that's for sure. What does he want to use them for?"


Spurlock slammed his glass down on the table and stood up, pushing his chair away and knocking it over backwards. More eyes on them. "Control!" he shouted. "He wants to use the robots to control the people, think about it! I don't mean like these pathetic drones they have working the mines and the docks and the bars. I'm talking full-on, human-looking assholes whose only programming is to keep control of their maker's destiny."


Speer watched silently as Spurlock realised how loud he's been talking. He didn't know what to say, how to placate his friend and bring him back down. For the first time in their decades-long friendship, he felt utterly lost. The silence stood like a wall between them.


Mica Spurlock picked up his chair, donned his jacket and scarf, turned slowly around and shuffled out of the bar into the arcade outside. Speer spent a moment putting on his jacket and recovering his bag from under the table, shaking his head at the realisation that, yet again, he'd been the only one to buy drinks. He wondered sadly if that might be the last time they'd ever talk.


The drone approached and he loaded the empty glasses onto it as a courtesy, amends for the noise and commotion they'd made.. In doing so didn't observe the two tall, smartly-dressed men follow his friend out...

*          *          *

Outside of the bar's gloom, the moon's artificial sunlight hit Elden Speer's face with a warm glow. He'd loved his friend Mica Spurlock for so long, since before he could even really remember, and it wasn't an association he took lightly. But on days like this, when the conspiracies were woven and holding stronger than spidersilk armour, he had to admit to himself that it could be exhausting.


A breeze drew down the street and ruffled through his dark hair as he began to head for home. Not an unusual occurrence, but this one felt a little stronger than normal. Maybe another glitch in the moon's meteorological controls. He tapped twice at his ear to activate his auditory implants, and fell in pain to his knees as a sharp, high-pitched wail pulsed through his head.


He scrambled to raise his hands to his ears to deactivate, but the pain had already begun to trigger emergency alerts, visible even as he screwed his eyes up. Systems overloading here, there and everywhere. His heart rate spiked, his oxygen levels dropped as his lungs fought to overcome the agony, and he could already feel a tingle in his fingers and toes as his internal regulatory system diverted blood to his vital organs.


Just as suddenly, the noise stopped, and the pain quickly subsided. He kept his eyes closed and concentrated a moment on getting his breath back while the emergency alerts blinked out and his body returned to normal. The music he'd selected was playing, but it was halfway through the song, so it must have been going all along without him being able to hear. Above the sound of the gentle synthetic guitar rhythms he could hear a clamour and bustle along the entire street.


He opened his eyes to see people staggering to their feet, while others remained on the ground, faces contorted in pain and sorrow. A child was screaming while their mother tried desperately to console them, but she promptly turned around and threw up on the pavement. A few people were stood motionless looking up at the moon's domed sky, and it suddenly occurred to him that it was darker than it should be. Had more time passed than he'd realised?


Speer checked his internal chronometer against his own natural body clock; no difference.


But it was darkening still, and that breeze had begun to whip up into a sharp wind. Definitely something wrong with the environmental controls, for sure, but what about that -


The sight of it derailed his train of thought.


It hung in the sky like a dark cloud of ash, but as the alerts started to fill his vision once again, he realised that this was no cloud, but a swarm. News reports were flashing in from all over the system, and some further beyond. The swarm was ships, descending from space, through the moon's outer dome field, and down, down towards them. They were small, but they were many.


People started to scream around him, and some took to running for cover.


But the Galactic Net was already calling it, and they were pretty sure it was over; Titan Moses had made his play, usurped the galactic monarchy, and was sending his troops to every corner of occupied territory. He had announced that it was peaceful, and they were only there to separate order from the brief moments of chaos that were only inevitable.


The swarm had already descended down to near ground level, spreading out over the city, and from somewhere within the bowels of those vessels a large cord was extended down, dangling on its end a humanoid soldier clad in armour. He could see no gun, but he knew he wouldn't need to. Their strength alone would be able to crush any hint of rebellion on a backwater moon such as this. These soldiers were not humans, but robots. And they had come to take control.


He spent a moment looking around; they hadn't left too long apart, a mere minute or two, so maybe he was still around here somewhere? But nothing, nowhere to be seen. Long gone, maybe, or perhaps running around in some kind of perverse celebration.


The realisation washed over him like a gravitational wave. As those around him screamed and ran and panicked, Elden Speer simply stood still and laughed.


He had no idea what the future would hold for himself, his family, or his friends, but if they survived and ever saw each other again, he knew one thing for absolute certain; Mica Spurlock would never let him live down that he, for all his conspiracies and ramblings, was right all along.


His laughter faded and turned to a soft sigh.


"Oh, bollocks," he said.