Pump's World

How does an automaton think? Does it even think? How could you describe that process to a human, to any organic mind?

You might compare it to an assembly of gears, a perfect, metal symmetry that clicks and winds and creaks. A sublime machine, all angles and straight lines that add up to a smooth and chilly awareness.

Or perhaps you might compare it to a city at night. Flickering torches represent bubbling thoughts. A human mind is direct, the streets picked out and neatly ordered. All the thoughts are directed, neatly aligned. ‘’Hunger’’ ‘’Desire’’ ‘’Want’’ and ‘’Need’’ all characterised and in their places.

Now imagine instead of the streets being lit up, the whole city is. Each light a flashing thought, so many lights overlapping, merging and splitting. Each one coldly evaluated, judged, and doused or magnified by the overriding intelligence. A sort of orderly chaos.

A machine can be aware of so much more than a human.

Or maybe none of those are accurate. Who could say but a machine itself? And no one had ever been interested enough to ask.

But whether he could think or not, or whether his awareness was anything that a human would recognise, Mister Pump was at work. The metal door was heavy and thick. It had dropped down from above, its own weight combined with a spring mechanism to bring it screaming down as quickly as possible.

It was reinforced, tempered, an alloy of steel that was proving annoyingly difficult to bring down. One part of Pump, split off from the rest, considered that it was probably the bulkhead of a steamship. He considered this thought but disregarded it as irrelevant.

What it was mattered less than that it had to come down.

The metal shirked, reverberations filled the tiny hall. It flexed under the impact of his fists, sparks flying as bronze met steel. It was clear to Pump right away that this was not the sort of door he could simply power through.

Fortunately, that was not his plan.

Under the rain of continuous strikes, it began to dent. His steam-assembly throbbed with heat, and his servos began to scream as his blows became stronger and stronger. Hidden vents beneath his coat opened up, dispelling a hiss of burning vapour.

The door held.

The sound was deafening now. The screech of metal under pressure filled the corridor, the organic cover across his knuckles was quickly being worn away but Pump did not consider that particularly relevant either.

Whoever had made this door had been good at what they did. On some level, Pump had to admire their craftsmanship.

But even the best human was still only human, and any forging process would naturally include flaws. That went double when it was also a process of alloying. What was meant to bring strength could bring weakness.

Pump’s fists blurred, striking like thunder, hammering blow after blow after blow with a relentless, cold fury. The metal flexed, the metal bounced, the metal rattled in its socket.

Suddenly, it dented. A point of weakness. A flaw. Pump did not know if it had always been that way or if age had weakened it, but the exact origin did not matter.

It was a way in.

He intensified his strikes, now switching from a scattered pattern to a singular target. His primary steam generator boomed, throbbing like a sun in his chest. The assembly to which it connected expanded, pipes pressing outwards as pressurised steam roared through his body. A cold note of warning sounded in his mind.

He could push himself so hard only for a limited time.

The metal dented again, twisting around his balled fingers. With one final blow, his fist punched right through! The metal screamed, and Pump felt an icy rush of satisfaction.

But the job was not done yet. He **** both hands through the hole, squeezing as hard as he could. Each one took an opposite side of the ragged metal.

And then he pulled.

This was the moment of most effort. The same warning sounded in his mind, louder this time. A part of him calmly began a countdown that would end with a total meltdown.

Unimportant. He’d be done before that.

Pump heaved. His servos strained; gears ground so fast that they began to spit sparks beneath his skin. For a few crucial seconds, he leveraged his full and complete strength.

And with a jagged, metal cry, the door split in two. Pump heaved, pushing the sides outwards to allow him entry into the room. His assembly thrummed, and he finally allowed his generator to fall to a lower setting. Warnings danced across his thoughts, but he silenced them. No permanent damage had been done.

Within the workshop, it was dark and cavernous. Vast and complex machines sat in sullen silence. Pump was big by the standards of humans, but to these machines, he was a gnat. Their vast shadows played across the room, creating all sorts of nooks and crannies in which to hide.

“Mister Gearheart,” he called. “As you can see, I have come for you. This time, there will be no more games. I am not here to play. I have been asked to bring you to Isabel. I must say, I do believe this to be a mistake. Nevertheless, I shall deliver. If you do not resist, I promise a minimum of pain.”

“A minimum?” came an echoing voice. It was Gearheart’s, but the reverberating qualities of the workshop made it hard to pin down. Pump turned, his audio systems already starting to tune and filter. He needed a few more samples and he would have the man’s location locked down.

“None would be optimal,” Pump agreed. “But we both know you are far too dangerous to bring intact. If you come with me now, I will merely break your arms.”

“Hell of an offer,” Richard’s voice came again. This time, Pump was able to narrow his location to the back half of the room. Hiding somewhere among the forges?

“If you don’t accept,” Pump said, “I will do the same with the addition of your legs.”

“And you wouldn’t enjoy it at all?”

“I did not say that.”

“You’re a sick thing, you know that?”

“I have been told.”

“Well here’s the thing,” Richard’s voice came again. Pump divided his attention, breaking his mind into cold little chunks as he calculated exactly where the man was coming from. He had enough data now. The region of possibility was rapidly narrowing.

“I have an offer for you too.”

“Really?” Pump said. “And what would that offer be, Mister Gearheart?”

“****.”

Pump tilted his head.

“And I should find that appealing for what reason? I assure you, I enjoy existing.”

“Maybe you do,” Richard said. “But I ain’t sure of that. I talked to Kara about you. To Bennie too. They tell me you’re a mimic. You’re just a thing, not a person. And maybe you are. But I figure there’s something more in you. You’re a right bastard, but to be a bastard you gotta be a person first. And you were made by Kara. Do you remember that? Do you even know what you were like then?”

“Irrelevant question.”

“Interesting,” Richard noted. “I think I touched a nerve. First time I saw a machine get pissy. Well, let me put it like this. You were made by Kara and that means that what you are now? That’s not what you were meant to be. You were meant to help people. I don’t know exactly what you were, but I’m damn sure she didn’t make you to be a killer. Isabel got to you, messed you up inside. I don’t think you can be saved and frankly, I don’t intend to try. But it does mean one thing. I pity you.”

“You pity me? That’s rich, Mister Gearheart. I know where you are, by the way.”

Pump started to move, striding towards the dark point between two large foundry machines. His steam generator kicked up a few notches in preparation for combat, flooding strength to his massive arms. He did not doubt that Gearheart would have a trick or two up his sleeve. But he also didn’t doubt that such things would be irrelevant in the end. When steel met flesh, steel always won.

“I feel pity for you,” Richard’s voice came again. “Because if there’s anything - anything at all left of the Pump who was before. Then I’m pretty sure he’s in hell right now. I hope for your sake that you’re not a person. Because no one deserves that.”

“Noble words.”

Pump could see a figure standing behind the machines, exactly where his calculations had told him it would be. He broke into a run, starting slowly but gaining speed and momentum like an unstoppable ****. Already, he was running a new line of thought. Working out how much **** he’d need to cripple but not kill.

Then, something hit him from behind and his world was engulfed by fire. The **** of the impact spun him around. The explosion whipped across him and his human skin was shredded, withering under the **** temperature. The heat flashed across him, burning hot enough to distort his exterior shell.

When the flame cleared, Pump was kneeling on the ground. His eyes burned red, and his copper skin was exposed. His disguise and his clothes had been burned clean away to reveal him for what he was. A towering humanoid figure, a giant of copper and steel and cogs. Intricate patterns of spinning gears traced across his body, Steam vents in his back hissed, expelling waste heat as he rose to his full height, deadly height.

“I see now,” Pump boomed. “Clever.”

The black-skinned machinist lowered his gun. A plume of smoke rose from his pistol; a design that Pump had never seen before. It looked like a flare gun, but the rounds it fired had certainly been no flares.

With one smooth motion, Bennie snapped open the pistol. A spent cartridge toppled to the ground and another one was slotted into place.

“You’re a damn fine machine,” he said. “Pity I have to wreck you.”

“I would say the same in reverse,” Pump said. “But I assure you, I will feel no pity.”

The man raised the gun again. Pump didn’t know exactly what it was, but he had a good guess. A heavy-duty pistol modified to fire single-shot explosive rounds. They were meant to hammer through armour then detonate, using a combination of **** heat and **** to wrench armour, break servos and shatter internals.

Automaton killers.

But it would do no good against him. His external shell was strong and had been further reinforced since his fight with the Conquerors. He was confident it could weather at least two direct hits. Which he calculated to be one more than he would need to deliver a lethal blow.

And then Richard emerged from the shadows. He was accompanied by the whining sound of gears. His form was massive, clad in some sort of exo-armour. It was sturdy though not of spectacular design. Certainly, it was not inspired in its workings. But it was solid, dependable, and reliable. A generator was thrown around the back, the massive fists were bristling with hydraulics. Gears churned like teeth along its chest. A blast of blistering steam echoed from two pipes which emerged from its shoulders. Like the war cry of a giant.

“I’d say to tell Isabel I’m coming for her next,” Richard growled. His face was pale, his head had been left bare - a notable design flaw in the armour - and his eyes sparked with fury and anger. “But you’re not going to get the chance. Pump, you’re scrap.”

Pump looked left. Bennie was already drawing a bead with the pistol again. Not only that, but Pump detected the sound of many skittering feet in the distance. w To the right, Gearheart was squaring up. The powered armour thrummed with life. It was constrained by Gearheart’s human reflexes, Pump knew. He would still be faster.

Quickly, coldly, his machine mind put forth a pattern of action. In the blinking of an eye, Pump sorted his priorities and chose his actions. First, Bennie would die. He would charge, the man would fire again in response. Pump would refuse to dodge, taking the shot head-on. If he braced against it with his shoulder, Pump calculated he would take minimal damage. It was a single-shot weapon, so once the current round was expended, Bennie would have to reload.

He would not get the chance.

With Bennie dead, Pump would be able to take Richard to pieces at his leisure. Even if the armour made him as strong as the automaton - which Pump doubted - he was still too slow to win a fight. It would simply be a matter of attacking its power supply and ripping into its vital systems until it ceased to function.

The only unknown factor was the skittering in the shadows. Knowing that this was a workshop, Pump thought it likely that it was another automaton. But that did not concern him overmuch. He was by far superior to anything below a Conqueror class and he very much doubted he was facing one of those.

“All right, Mister Gearheart,” Pump boomed. “It’s time for your final dance.”