Author's Note: Well, quite the late addition, but I hope it was worth it. More explosive stories with more explosions, coming right up. Enjoy!
"Amy, pass the kerosene," Jonathan requested.
Amy picked up the bottle of fuel and handed it to her friend, sighing. "You know, all that kerosene is bad for you. You should be taking more diesel, at least."
Jonathan attached the bottle to his refueling port. "Not everyone's fortunate enough to run on pure hydrogen, you know," he teased.
Amy shrugged, checking on her solar-powered water-splitting apparatus. "Just water vapor, ready to be converted back into hydrogen and oxygen."
"Whatever," Jonathan shrugged. He disconnected his now empty bottle of kerosene. "Stop reminding me that I rely on those biological organisms for fuel."
Amy smiled. "But you do. Besides, we're running out of that diesel. Let's get a refill."
"'Kay," Jonathan said, grabbing three four-gallon bottles and handing them to his humans. "Hey, IO4, KZ2, and BY9, go fill these up for us. Diesel," he instructed. The three humans rushed to grab the bottles and relished their chance to leave the AI's house.
Isa, or IO4, was a short, punky girl with black dyed hair and a big personality.
"So, no 'bots today?" she shouted in her big voice.
"For such a small person, you do make a lot of noise," Kisha, or KZ2, growled softly. Kisha was tall, blond, and quiet.
"But no 'bots?" Isa asked. "Are we going to watch 'bots today?"
"Hush," Bryant, or BY9, whispered. "Don't go around talking illegal things on the upperstreets."
Isa sighed. "Bryan, you're never any fun."
"Better safe than sorry," Bryant reasoned. "Anyway, come on. You're falling behind."
"We don't have to get there that fast," Isa whined.
"Well, we have to get home by sunset or Amy and John will get mad."
"Don't call them by Amy and John," Isa laughed. "They're really AP2 and JO4."
"Isa, the rules," Bryant persuaded. "Right, Kisha?" Kisha shrugged passively.
"Yeah, BY9," Isa sneered. "Besides, it's just right up there." She skipped ahead and grabbed the door to the filling station. Bryant and Kisha followed in behind.
Explosive dining options indeed. Fuel of all sorts lined the shelves of the filling station, which was like a supermarket for robots with advanced AI. There was liquid H2 and liquid O2. Petroleum and diesel. Kerosene and jet fuels. Batteries and accessories. On one side, there was a fountain of unpressurized liquid and gel fuels. Bryant started filling up his bottle with diesel.
"What's the use?" Isa asked. "You know, all AI's used to be 'bots. Then Richard Holden ruined everything."
"What's the use? To survive," Bryant said. "We need to survive. We can't just wish ourselves back in time." Kisha finished filling up her bottle of diesel and reached for Isa's bottle. Isa happily gave it up.
"You know if they sell detonators? Isa asked, sticking in the pay badge to buy twelve gallons of the diesel.
"Bad idea. Très bad idea, Isa," Bryant shuddered. Kisha nodded in agreement.
"But we can't go back in time, only forward. So let's make the future better," Isa proposed.
"Better?" Kisha stopped, surprised. "You mean like…?"
"But it's illegal…" Bryant whispered.
Isa reached over and grabbed a bunch of matchbooks. "These blow, eh?"
"Not really," Kisha whispered. "But those do," she said, pointing at the sparkers. Ida grabbed a handful and shoved them into her bag.
"Wait. Stop. This is not okay," Bryant said, stepping back from the two other human slaves. "We are Workers. This is our life. You cannot do this. I cannot do this."
Isa dropped a sparker into Kisha's bottle and grabbed a universal wireless remote in her pocket. "You don't havta. But I'm gonna."
"But Isa…" Kisha said, trading bottles with Isa.
"Kisha, you gonna help or not?" Isa demanded. She turned and headed towards the door.
"IO4, that's stealing," Bryant warned.
"BY9, you're already aiding criminals by not reporting us immediately to the nearest AI," Isa sang. "Com'on, you're missing all the fun!"
Kisha stopped, tugging at Bryant's sleeve. "You aren't gonna report us, are you?"
Bryant sighed. "Oh, of course not, silly Kish. You are my housefolk after all."
Kisha smiled. They followed Isa out of the filling station.
Every AI seemed to state straight at them. Their Pets also smiled smugly, showing off the fact that though they were humans, they escaped the crushing weight of being Workers, or worse yet, Miners, just because they were prettier or smarter.
Isa grumbled. "You know, it's not like a Pet's life is all that great. And yet they havta rub it into our faces like that."
"And what if we saw a Miner right now?" Bryant asked. "How would we react?"
"Here on the upperstreets? Workers are barely allowed here, and Miners aren't allowed 'bove sublevel two," Isa said. "Aren't you the one with the rules?"
Bryant sighed. "Just trying to get you to think past the now."
Isa rattled the diesel bottle. "I am. Now hurry up. A-2 and J-4's dinner is about to get explosive."
Back at the AI's house on the upperstreets, Isa, Kisha, and Bryant dropped off their bottles of diesel. Only Bryant's didn't have a sparker in it, but that wasn't important. The bottles needed to be near empty to blow, anyway.
Amy grabbed a bottle and handed it to Jonathan. "The bio-organisms are back," she said. "Go fill up."
"Yeah. Why'd they take so long?" Jonathan asked.
"Biological reasons," Amy scoffed. "If only we could program those beasties."
Jonathan attached the diesel bottle to his refueling port and the sparker settled in the neck of the bottle. Behind a screen, Isa, Kisha, and Bryant were watching intently.
"Are they gonna unload the other one, too?" Isa whispered. "I havta blow both of 'em at the same time, so the other one has to be almost empty as well."
"Be patient," Kisha whispered back.
"Let's get outta here," Bryant suggested. "We don't wanna get caught in the blast zone when it does blow." Isa nodded.
They moved to the lower level of the house and ran out onto the streets of sublevel one. Hardly any AIs bothered to venture into the substreets other than police, so there were only humans around.
They wandered away to a park and sat on the swings. Some smart AI figured maintaining some infrastructure in the substreets would pacify the humans. He was mostly correct.
"Ya think?" Isa whispered, talking out the remote.
"Not yet," Bryant responded.
"Then when?"
"No. Wait."
"Come on. We can't wait forever," Isa protested.
Bryant sighed. "Okay fine. But we're kind of far, so turn the signal all the way up."
"All the way up?" Kisha asked. "Isn't that really dangerous?"
"Nah," Isa said. "The worst thing that could is us dying, which would eventually happen, anyway. Let's go out with a bang."
Bryant nodded with Isa's assessment. Kisha merely shrugged. Isa turned the dial to scan all remotely detonatable devices. "Here goes nothin'," Isa said, clicking the button.
Suddenly, the three of them were bathed in a golden light as the entirety of the upperstreets seemed to explode in wondrous fire.
The universal detonator didn't need sparkers to work. At that setting, all it needed was something that could explode. And with all the AIs with hydrocarbon fuels, batteries, and such, there were more than enough explosive dining options to go around.
ns 15.158.61.8da2
