The Flucks is my (Ed) first novel and an experiment. We are independent creators, publishing chapter by chapter as a podcast and text. It’s designed to be heard. We’d love to receive your feedback so we can tell stories better.
Continue reading for Chapter 9, start at Chapter 1, or find where you left off.
Audio performance by Anthony Michael Malec
Guest image by LM Sypher
Text copyright © 2025 Ed Herrington
Last time on The Flucks
Shitmobile crept forward until the front wheels left the concrete. By then it was too late, momentum clutched tightly. Shitmobile tumbled ass over hood and crashed below with a satisfying crunch. Seconds later, acrid smoke leaked out as the batteries caught fire. Moments later, it flared bright.
I turned from the warm glow and rolled to the garage-level entrance of Voltivian HQ.
After his last car took a nose dive, Slacy needs a new ride. At Voltivian HQ, he should be able to find one, but biometrics and access restrictions are a constant problem in the digital age. Good thing he has a friend with credentials.
Chapter 9 — Dance til you’re dead
I rolled to the metal door, a message flaring in its small window at my approach.
❌ Access Restricted
Good thing I had a friend with the right credentials. I pulled Sir Terry Hatchet from his loop. His shaft and weighty head felt powerful in my fist. I swung the blunt end into the small window, glass fragmenting into nuggets and tinkling on the ground. A few more smacks and the wire mesh blocking the hole fell away.
Couldn’t reach from the wheelchair, so I used a crutch and reached an arm through. I squeezed the door release and awkwardly pushed-pulled. Nothing. “C’mon dammit.” I jerked back and forth, gyrating like an off-balance washing machine. Nothing.
Duh. These types of things are mag-locked, presumably with emergency power. I dropped the crutch and leaned on the door, passing Terry through its window. I hit the magnet at the top a hundred friggen times until it broke from its bracket.
With no resistance, the door swung open suddenly, dropping me into the wheelchair, rolling it back into the wall. My head cracked against the concrete, bursting a cacophony of colors into my eye sockets and ear holes. Fuuuck!
Sitting there, dazed, recovering, I considered how if this were my old decrepit body, a hit like that might have killed me. This younger body had advantages. Still, I hoped no cameras caught that.
Since Shitmobile was burning in hellfire below, I needed a new ride. The parking garage was full of all manner of Voltivians. I’d need some sort of key. Since this was Voltivian HQ, there had to be something I could use, right? Right?
Could have gone to the top floor, but that’d be all executive offices. They’d have sporty two-seaters. Fun to drive, but I needed gear space for a roadtrip. No, I’d go where I’d most likely find truck or SUV owners and something to unlock one. To nerd central: the research lab.
I had watched every VidVid post coming out of Voltivian’s labs. Every new car, drone, and software update. The feed was called Level 8 to add some mystique. Probably not the best infosec revealing that, but who am I to complain? I’m just glad I ended up near their HQ instead of the abandoned hulks of Shitmobile’s alma mater.
Terry helped me a few more times with credentials as I rolled through the building. Cubicle farms were still a thing, but Voltivian apparently respected their employees more than that. Instead, hallways split into shorter ones, each with ten small offices, maybe three meters per cubed side.
These cubices were encapsulated in smartglass that could be clear for cooperation or frosty for focus. Every hallway had random assortments of translucent and opaque glass. Some frozen mid-transition, as if the power cut suddenly—pearlescent swirls of fog mixed with void. Abstract art capturing a millisecond of dying energy for eternity.
No computers, devices, or piles of dust occupied any of the cubices. With the Flucks pandemic going on, most people would have been working from home. I started to think that maybe I shouldn’t have pushed Shitmobile over the edge.
Since the electricity was off, and it was overcast, scant light reached the interior depths. Further in, only red emergency lighting illuminated the way.
I might have worked in an office like this. But my generation was too late to join the programmer party before AI took over. Now, the only people working in software were specialists who understood complex systems and made technical decisions for AI to implement. That’s why I became a—
Motion caught my eye—a flicker down the hall.
Someone—or something—was in here. In one of the cubices, windows opaque, a dark silhouette jerked awkwardly. It reminded me of Meat Guy’s inhuman movement.
Good thing rolling is quieter than—squeeeak—shit! The dark figure turned in my direction, then slowly turned back. I continued rolling. squeak-squeak-squeak Another head turn. Gotta oil that.
I sat just outside the office, watching the silhouette do its silent machinations. It was big, taller than me—maybe two meters or so. I could see arms moving about, bulk staying in place. Was someone working?
The sliding glass door was closed. I tapped on it.
“Hello?”
The silhouette turned—faint red eyes peered through milky glass. Shit! And returned to flailing about. Well, they didn’t tell me to go away...
I slid the door a crack, peering inside. The figure loomed from the shadows, skin glistening in dim, red light. A gaping hole where its organs should be. Its pure black surface smooth with occasional sharp ridges poking out. A fucking robot?
It turned towards me, regarding me with digital eyes from its featureless face, two fiery comets in a night sky. Again, it returned to its task. Barely-human zombie thing? No way. This? This I could deal with.
When I came here, I bet on one thing: engineers are lazy. They may tell you they’re being efficient, but since I was almost one, I know the truth—lazy. They hate constantly supplying credentials to unlock their computer and will instead spend hours engineering solutions to avoid ever having to.
In front of the robot was an opened laptop, screen unlocked, casting amber hues. I guess the youngsters called this a devslate. It was hardwired to the robot, feeding off its power.
Meanwhile, the robot was trapped in a cycle, dancing to fend off the screensaver. A multi-billion-dollar robot used to fool the occupancy sensor. Genius.
No dust pile around. This person probably stepped away for lunch, only to be told to go home when the pandemic hit. On the screen was a development terminal with an AI chat window, the last instruction clear:
dance in place until I return
This was better than I hoped. This was probably a prototype robot and the devslate its controller. I moved to reach for the devslate, but the robot’s wobbling arms blocked me.
“Hey, buddy, hold on a moment.”
Digital-dot eyes focused on me, blinked to slits, then angled back to the screen.
“Hey, stop moving.”
It ignored me and kept dancing to music only it could hear. It wasn’t trying to stop me, so I reached over and quickly typed into the chat.
stop dancing
It stopped. Now we’re talking!
back up
It complied. Oh, yeah!
I thought about telling it to stand on one leg and hop, but that would be a waste of—just kidding, I absolutely told it to. After a short kung-fu demonstration, it was time to get to work.
Beside the devslate was a neural interface, but I knew better than to touch that shit. Picking up the devslate and folding its thin keyboard flat against its back, I put it in my lap, wire still connected to the robot.
grab the wheelchair and push
“WAIT!”
backspace-backspace-backspace
gently grab the wheelchair handles and safely push the occupant without killing him
The robot complied. We were in business.
✹✹✹
After a few harrowing moments of the robot nearly driving me broken-leg-first into a wall, it carted me to a plush recreation area. Light trickled through large windows dappled with raindrops. Soft chairs and hard game tables were dotted around.
The nice thing about being at Voltivian HQ is all the Voltivian products just sitting around. A one-hundred kiwah battery was being used as a table. I cleared away a couple half-full coffee mugs to power it on. Fully charged, fuck yeah!
Next to it rested a zero-grav chair. I plugged the chair into the battery and transitioned over, its rhythmic pulses elevating me and relieving my seat-sore body.
I needed to program this blank robot to get it to be useful and not roll me down a stairwell. The devslate’s onboard AI was actually pretty helpful since I had no idea how to screw around with software after sixty years of abstinence.
The computer tried in vain to connect to the offline network. It didn’t matter, it probably would be locked from internet access anyway since it was in a restricted area.
After a few hours working with the AI agent, slowly developing the robot’s personality, I managed to get it to respond directly to voice. I couldn’t figure out how to get it to talk, though.
The devslate had a ton of music from the 1980s through the beginning of the century. Its owner couldn’t have been that old, but whatever, it still rocked. I began loading the music onto the robot, spinning Ash’s fidget toy while I waited. When it was done, I gave instructions to play appropriate clips to communicate.
🎵 Hello, is it me you’re looking for? 🎵
“Why, yes. Hi.”
The robot’s red eyes still freaked me out, so I instructed the agent.
Orange—no. Blue—nah. Purple—nuh-uh. Pink—Yes!
🎵 You don’t have to put on the red light 🎵
It must have sensed me changing its appearance to feel more comfortable. The robot’s skin rippled like a cuttlefish and cycled through a variety of human skin tones before finally settling on mimicking mine. With the hole in its middle, it looked like a human donut.
“Oh, fuck no! That’s creepy as hell.”
🎵 I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo... 🎵
To get us quickly out of Uncanny Valley, I told the agent to make the robot a matte silver for now. As its color shifted, I considered the large cavity in its center. This robot had too many edges for civilian use like the smooth and cuddly homebots. The center cavity’s mount might be for extra power cells and the ridges for mounting weapons.
A growl reverberated off the walls.
“Man, I’m starving.”
The robot held up a single digit.
“Do you know where food is?”
🎵 Untz untz untz 🎵
“Alright, take me there.”
The robot pushed me to a break room, natural light drifting in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Bowls were filled with rotten fruit, and I was not going to even think about opening the fridge. Along the walls were cubbies of shelf-stable food.
The robot picked up a bag of chips, opened it, then passed it my way. I looked at the proffered snack, then took it.
“Thanks. Let’s find a ride and go home, Snackbot1.”
Snackbot swayed side to side, playing a jaunty tune, while its pink eyes turned to hearts.
✹✹✹
Snackbot rolled me car to car. I decided on the Voltivian S524, a four-wheel drive SUV. Only two motors, but more gear space and range than the T444 beast. Should be able to go 1600 km per charge.
I sat in the driver’s seat. More room for my splinted leg than Shitmobile. I jacked the devslate into the car’s diagnostic port while Snackbot loaded spoils: 100 kiwah battery, a few aerial drones, and, of course, snacks.
With the devslate’s god-mode credentials, I overrode all security controls, leaving the car permanently unlocked so I didn’t have to deal with biometrics. You never know when you might lose those. I pressed the ‘on’ button and the car lit up.
“Snackbot, please put my chair in the back and ride shotgun.”
It did so with a tune in its step, understanding my idiom without undue bloodshed. I didn’t expect the car to have enough room for Snackbot’s two-something-meter frame, but its legs shortened, disappearing who knows where, to fit perfectly in the co-pilot seat.
Once we hit the highway, I gunned it—feeling rocket acceleration under my control for the first time in decades.
Author’s Notes
I had a lot of fun with this chapter. Hearing Anthony Michael Malec bring it to life, with singing? Get out of here! Amazing!
When I first read The Cog from RM Greta, I knew I had to be a part of that. When I saw Snackbot, I knew how. I mean, Slacy dreamt about a snack-vending, dancing robot in Chapter 7. I know it looks like I’m just making this shit up on the fly—Slacy certainly is—but being spontaneous requires a lot of work dammit.
So now we have this intertwined lore thing going on. This is Snackbot’s origin. We’ll learn about Snackbot’s future, and how it gets into The Cog in the next couple of chapters.
Snackbot won’t be the only Flucks/Cog crossover. There’s a character we forgot about a few chapters back that finally gets their side of the story told. Well, if I ever get around to writing it. 😅
What’d you think about Anthony’s singing? Even if you prefer to read, you’ve got to listen to Snackbot’s portion at the end.
Next chapter coming soon. Subscribe to be notified.
“Get it, snackbot!” — The Custodian - Ep. 02: A Tale from The Cog
