29Part One: Metal Ashes
The WAL-MART. It is this vile corporation that runs everything in my daily life, that can feed and care for me, that gives us access to the outside world, that puts us to sleep and reads me bedtime stories, and that has the unbridled, unspeakable power to give me personalized nightmares and control my human desires. My mother tells me that somewhere, if there is one, God is weeping. And yet, I pay little attention to these thoughts. So far, I've tried to keep my childhood as ignorant as possible.
That day six years ago that my mother first told me we would be going to the WAL-MART is replaying itself in my mind. Those preschool years were so carefree and sinless; my newly acquired ten-year old crises constantly prick at my skull. But no matter – ever since that day, I've been waiting incessantly for the moment that I would finally visit the place that manufactures hate and candy on the same assembly line, and now that the opportunity has finally come, I'm determined that nothing will hinder my delight.
However…I will admit that these days are rigorously bleak. I've only been around about ten years, but I still understand that the Earth is suffering from a deplorable evil that is still unknown to me. I'm continuously forced to witness the gradual disintegration of our planet, supposedly caused by the WAL-MART, and supposedly by the damage done twenty years ago in the Second American Civil War. But as I have no part in what happens to my home planet, I've always waved these morbid ideas away. But recently they've jammed deep into my thoughts. I stare outside of the smudged window of my mother's car, desperate to scatter my disturbing contemplations.
My mother's old and rundown government-issued BMW ambles through the highway at a pathetic 300 mph. She has the car on autopilot, and is resting her eyes before we arrive at our destination. I'm idling in the back seat of this junk-heap, distantly fiddling with the old WAL-BOT and staring out of the window at the distant enslaved cityscape of Santa Despora – the main core of the WAL-MART corporation.
The road is black now, but as we drive nearer and nearer to our destination, I can see that the road becomes blood-red. I can't see the corporation from here, especially due to the thick, grimy ash that drenches the city. This road leads into the main district, winding around the scarred cityscape like a colossal anaconda. The entire atmosphere of this place drips with a dark red, sinister aura. I blink persistently as we descend into the very pits of Hell.
We drive along Santa Despora's littered and desolate dark-red city streets, spotting maybe one person every hundred meters. The gritty, continuous black dust storm has taken its toll on this city; buildings are aged and crumbling, the sidewalks are cracked and ready to burst with the corruption that this city strives on. And nestled in the deep in the center of this pit is the most evil, heartless, powerful and ersatz corporation known to man. As we venture deeper into the city, I notice an enormous, hundred-foot, white, crooked "W" poking out of the rusted dirt. A few seconds later, "A" passes my vision, then an "L", and a gargantuan five-pointed star is next. It doesn't take me long to realize that we have officially descended into the vomit-covered, power-hungry innards of the WAL-MART's physical worldly power.
The ashy, defiled, poisonous atmosphere of Santa Despora begins to consume our car; my mother turns around in her seat and tells me to put my O2 mask on. The ash in the air begins to seep through the tiny cracks in the vehicle, and I quickly pull the mask out from under my seat, slipping it onto my face and bracing myself as the intelligent tendrils find my throat and dig themselves into my windpipe. The rest straps itself to my nose and mouth, and a thick plastic visor slides itself sleekly around my eyes. It's painful, but the only way we can protect our lungs from the hellish atmosphere that surrounds the metaphorical heart and intestines of the WAL-MART corporation.
The muggy and thick ashy air chokes me, destroys my insides, and suffocates my heart. But my swelling excitement overcomes my uncomfortable surroundings, for I am traveling to the place that can actually manufacture fear, love, desire, pain and hate. This astounds me to a certain degree, but honestly, I'm more interested in the free videogames that they supposedly hand out at the door.
My mind, strolling around the idea of state-of-the-art videogames, is suddenly knocked out of focus. My mother slams onto the brakes, screaming wildly. I can hear her grinding her teeth underneath her O2 mask; I'm almost flung from my seat in the sudden stop.
"Mom, why did…you…?"
My question trails off as I see what she stopped for.
An enormous, blue-and-silver, sleek robotic monstrosity, at least sixteen feet tall, with thick and muscular dinosauric metal legs and menacing claws on its toes, stands towering over our car. It has no arms – the huge and meaty legs make up most of its body. Its boxy torso is white and blue, and several thick, six-foot laser cannons protrude from the top, locked on to us. Transparent veins can be seen protruding out at various places – the blood that runs through this beast is neon blue. This thing has tentacles similar to my toy WAL-BOT – about twelve or so beefy tendrils wave and slither around idly as the monstrous robot stares us down. In fact… this is my WAL-BOT, just much more…tremendously powerful. I glance down at the toy, subconsciously proud that I own a miniature version of the thing that's about to kill us. My mother doesn't move a muscle; I'm frozen as well, bolted down to the spot.
"XV7, withdraw attack!"
In a heartbeat, the massive beast hides its weaponry and stands erect, unmoving as the relentless ashy sands brush up against it. My mother puts her hands down. I twist my head wildly, searching for the body that the voice came from.
"Oh, I'm so sorry! This one is quite aggressive, ma'am; he just attacks anything that moves."
The speaker comes running up to my mother's car window; she makes sure that my O2 mask is on, then presses the button to lower the window. He is a young male cyborg with a WAL-MART logo stamped across his broad metal chest. He has a nice tan, and isn't wearing an O2 mask, despite the raging ash storm going on. His face is almost human, with the exception of his robotic lower jaw and throat. His left eye glows with a neon blue luminance, and his right arm is all metallic, colored with the familiar blue and white colors that I have come to fear. His plastic "ROBOTIC SECURITY" cap indicates that he is a meager pawn in the vile corporation that has changed his life. A run-of-the-mill WAL-MART cyborg.
My mother recovers from her shock, and then says: "Yeah… yeah, it almost killed us!"
"I'm so sorry, ma'am; he won't do it again, I assure you."
She doesn't know what to say. We're both quite familiar with robotics, but neither of us has observed anything as powerful and sleek as the 16-foot-tall hunter that almost ripped us to pieces. She collects her thoughts and manages to spit out:
"Well… I hope not."
The cyborg begins to usher us off, then seems to remember something.
"Oh! Miss, are you part of the tour?"
"Inside the WAL-MART?"
"Yeah."
"Yes, we were looking for the entrance. Can you help us?"
"Well… the WAL-MART doesn't have a specific entrance exactly. Why don't you two step out of the car and follow me."
My mother is hesitant at first, and I nervously scratch my masked throat. She turns around in her seat.
"What do you think, Ricky?" She whispers.
"Um…" I mutter. It's really obvious that we should just get out of the car, but I guess she just needs comforting. Spew, bullshit, spew.
"Well…he's a WAL-MART official, right?"
"Of course he is."
"…I would probably trust him then."
Now was that so hard?
"But what if-"
"Mom. Just get out of the car."
"…I guess you're right."
Christ. She's been jumpy ever since we left home.
We exit the car, my mask tightly clutching my throat, eyes and lower face. My mother ushers me out of the back seat of the vehicle, more scared for my safety than usual. The cyborg guides us toward the giant white "T" in the massive WAL-MART logo. Sliding his robot arm into a round lock and closing his glowing eyes, he opens the concealed sliding door and ushers us in. I happily enter the door, which leads into a luxurious glass MTT (Mass Transit Tube), but I have to pull my cautious mother along with me. A transparent membrane stretches over the door we came in through, and we can see the cyborg waving us off. Looking past him, I can see the enormous WAL-BOT picking up our car with one of its muscular feet and gently sliding it into a storage receptacle. The door closes.
Cut off from the outside world, I try to make myself as comfortable as possible in the MTT before this thing takes off; they can reach speeds of 3 Gs. My mom finds a seat and straps herself in tight, doing a silent prayer in the process. I do no such thing. Religion has proven itself to be useless to me.
The walls of the MTT come alive with the image of the face a friendly robotic tour guide.
"Please strap yourselves in and have a pleasant transport into the soul of the most powerful company known to man."
With that feeble statement, the lights flicker for a moment, and we are fired thousands of feet into the core of the Earth.
Minutes later, I find myself jostled along with about one-hundred other people who paid for the same exclusive tour that my mother has.
The droid at the front of the group, a beautiful six-foot tall chrome-skinned woman with stunning neon green eyes and a shiny blue WAL-MART dress, turns around on her skinny metal legs and addresses the group in a silky and disturbingly-cheerful female voice.
"Hello, tourists of all ages! Welcome to the exclusive outer core of the most powerful corporation known to man! Food drinks and photographic equipment are strictly prohibited from these premises; if these rules are ignored, one of our WAL-BOT XV7s…"
She points to the walking tanks.
"…will remove you from the building. Please stay close to me as we take a once-in-a-lifetime tour into the inner workings and new-age technology that runs the immense empire that is WAL-MART."
We stumble behind the speedy android as the group of about 150 people tries to keep up. I begin to experience claustrophobia; everyone is breathing hard, gorged with the excitement of the moment. The female robot begins to speak again, and I'm jostled along by the crowd as they follow her voice.
"As most of you know, WAL-MART is more-or-less an immortal company. It owns almost 39 percentof the free world and is the most powerful corporation the world has known or will ever know. It is the leading pioneer in advanced robotic technology. Actually, it creates its own free-thinking software and manufactures every single piece of hardware in this very megafactory! Their main robot models are XV3, XV5, XV7 and XV16. I am a model XV3, designed specifically for human interaction. You may have noticed the large sentrybots guarding the door that you came in through…"
May have?! Those things were sixteen foot-tall killing machines!
"These hulking defense systems are the WAL-BOT XV7, designed exclusively for the heartless defense of our grand corporation. They are the most powerful breed of war machine on the face of the earth. With an excess of over 11,000 weapons built into its sleek frame, a powerful and unstoppable agility system and a disturbingly realistic Artificial Battlefront Intelligence (ABI) system, this walking, thinking, breathing, eating, living thing can rip our current human-driven tanks to shreds. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the future of the American super-arsenal."
My toy suddenly becomes an obsolete piece of plastic.
We stop, and I tunnel my way out of the group to the front so I can get a clear view. The android has caught up with a roaming XV7 and whispers to it. The enormous waling tank then nods to her, and begins to pose and boast its advanced weaponry. "Oohs" and "Aahs" litter the crowd of tourists as they ogle at the beastly thing. At this point in my disappointing life, I don't entirely trust the advanced robots that WAL-MART creates, and it disturbs me that it's boasting at us. A robot… a damn machine is showing off.
The android pats the XV7 on the leg and shoos it away as if it were a puppy. She turns back to us.
"Let us continue, ladies and gentlemen. Now that you are familiar wit h XV3s and XV7s, let me explain the XV5 and 16 models…"
I glance at my plastic WAL-MART wristwatch and realize that it's been two hours since the tour began. My legs are beginning to get numb from trekking around this immense facility, and the vile little android bitch at the front is getting on my last nerves.
"What I'm holding is a model FF7 S.L.U.G. missile launcher-"
"When can we eat?"
The little robot pauses, then continues, ignoring my comment.
"This particular model is-"
"Excuse me? I'm hungry, when can we all eat?"
Some agreeing murmurs escape the crowd. The brainless robot tries to analyze my voice, but can't come to a decision about what I am.
"Sir or madam, please be patient. Your human desires can wait a bit longer, I'm sure. Now, this missile launcher-"
"I'm tired! Please, can we hurry up this stupid tour?"
"Sir, please calm down…"
"But I'm starving and I'm tired!"
I can hear my mother at the back of the group, suddenly realizing that I haven't been standing next to her for the past two hours.
"Ricky! Get over here!"
"Sir, please be calm. One of our XV7s will gladly show you to the emergency room if you are feeling a sense of starvation."
The blood leaves my cheeks, and every horrible thought enters my mind.
"…what?"
She quickly presses a few buttons on her wrist, and in a matter of seconds, I can feel a massive rumbling noise in the distance. Two massive XV7s come thundering beside her in a matter of moments; their tendrils whisk me away, clutching my feet and legs so tight that I believe they may rip me apart. I can hear my mother screaming in the distance as the two enormous robots trudge away. The XV3 tries to speak over her:
"Ma'am… ma'am! Please be calm as we enter the MTT to our next destination on the tour."