The following short story is based on chracters created and/or copyrighted by SEGA! Enterprises, DiC Productions, Archie Comic Publishers, Fleetway Comic Publishers, and the Taki Corporation. All other characters were created and copyrighted by Roland Lowery. The author gives permission to distribute this work freely as long as it remains intact and unaltered, and the transfer of monetary units is not involved. Questions, comments, suggestions, complaints? Send them to me at . I enjoy hearing from people who can spell. Chaotic Multiverse Tale #5 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote for the day: "There once was a lady named Bright, Who travelled much faster than light. She set out one day In her relative way And returned on the previous night." -Anonymous limerick ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Heroes of Legend (Part 1 - Heroes Saga) by Roland Lowery THE ROBOTROPOLIS Sprawl spread out before the speeding hedgehog. He had visited the grimy city many times before, and each time he returned, it would be worse. Buildings that had long ago served their purpose were crumbling into ruins. Junkyards, smelling of oil and other, less-identifyable odors, dotted the putrid landscape. None of this bothered Sonic T. Hedgehog, though, as he had nearly gotten used to it. An unfortunate side effect of all the time he spent there, but necessary if he was going to be any use in fighting the dreaded Dr. Ivo Robotnik. A spray of oily water burst out as Sonic ran through a puddle. Today, he was heading towards the inner city to check on a new research and development plant. The layers of coding and scrambling put on the transmissions concerning the place were tough to crack, even for Princess Sally Acorn's hand held supercomputer, Nicole. So, Sonic had been sent out to check up on it personally. The first thing he noticed as he approached the building was how large it was. Nearly twenty full stories shot up into the filthy air. Instead of blazing through the front doors as he normally would have done, Sonic decided to walk up to the nearest window and look inside first. Through the window, he saw an extremely strage and totally unexpected sight. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and looked again. A large room presented itself to him. Along one wall sat a long table, on which sat an assortment of junk foods and at least three coffee pots. Blackboards lined the other two walls that Sonic was able to see. Strangest of all, though, was a large group of oddly designed SWATbots wearing lab coats. Many of them were sitting in a small cluster of chairs while the rest were standing at the blackboards, pointing at the various formulas and sketches that adorned them. Sonic shook his head in an attempt to clear it, but the strange looking SWATbots were still there. They seemed to be holding a lively conversation, and . . . eating doughnuts? And drinking coffee, too, it seemed. They would stick the food and beverage up to the bottom of their domed heads for a second, then some sort of vaccuum system sucked it up. Sonic was sure either he or Robotnik had gone crazy at that point, but decided to play along for the moment. He strained to hear what the 'bots were saying, but either they weren't talking out loud or the windows were soundproof. Time to see if they're Sonic-proof, he thought. He wound into a Sonic Spin, his hard spines easily cutting through the window's glass. Once inside, he dropped to the ground and prepared to slice through the SWATbots. "WHAT THE-?!" He froze in his tracks when one of the 'bots yelled out. As he watched, incredulous, they began to scramble for the door. He quickly got a hold of himself and ran to the door, blocking their escape. "HOLD IT!" he yelled. "Whatever happened to 'Priority One - Hedgehog' and lasers blasting everywhere?" Even as he asked, he had a feeling he already knew the answer. He was beginning to notice more and more difference between these 'bots and regular SWATbots. "Um . . . I'm sorry," said one, "but are we supposed to know you?" "KNOW me?" Sonic's jaw dropped. "Yes. I'm afraid that we've not been informed of your . . . existence." "Did that doctor fellow send you?" another of the 'bots blurted out. Sonic decided to take control of the situation. "You mean Dr. Robotnik?" he asked casually. Even though the other 'bots were glaring at him, the blabbermouth robot was able to squeak out a timid "yes." "Well, yes. Yes he did," said Sonic. "Suprise inspection, see? Aren't you suprised?" He managed a polite party laugh. "Urm, uh . . . yes . . . " the first 'bot said. The entire group visibly relaxed. Strange thing to see, thought Sonic. A group of robots relaxing. "In that case," the 'bot said, "you'll be wanting to see our output." "Yes, of course," Sonic said offhandedly. "What else WOULD I be here for?" "Right this way." According to the 'bots, the main Research & Development room was in the second sub-basement of the building. The rest of it was used for storage of the various devices they used in their work. They had ushered Sonic into an enormous elevator that was able to fit all of them comfortably. As the elevator made its slow journey downward, he took the time to get a better look at the strange group. The main difference between regular SWATbots and these 'bots was the complete absence of weaponry. The wrist laser was totally gone, as was any port for it to be extracted from. They had no hip holsters, and the standard issue rifles were not strapped to their backs. Their designs differed as well. These 'bots looked more streamlined, like great thought and detail had been put into their making. Their domed heads wasn't so wide and looked more like a normal skull. Under the lab coats, their bodies had more gentle curves than their rough and angular counterparts. Their hands looked like the were crafted for precise work rather than warfare. All in all, they looked like peaceable, intelligent cousins to the SWATbots. It was the intelligence factor that Sonic couldn't really understand. These 'bots seemed to have both the intelligence and emotions of any normal Mobian. Had Dr. Robotnik finally figured out artificial intelligence? Nicole had been the closest thing to AI that Sonic knew of, but Robotnik didn't have many, if any, computers of her calibur. And if the closest thing he had had to AI was the barely sentient SWATbots and ComBots, then how did he jump all the way from that to a group of robots that had a full range of emotions? I'm betting he didn't, thought Sonic. So where did these guys come from then? The elevator came to a stop with a jolt. "Second floor," said one of the 'bots, "women's apperal, perfume, lingere, and casual wear!" Great, thought Sonic, they have a bad sense of humor, too. The doors slid open sideways. Sonic and the 'bots stepped out into the spacious sub-basement. More 'bots, similar to Sonic's new friends, scrambled about the place busily tapping away at computer consoles or conferring with each other. The main attraction of the room, however, was a humongous conglomeration of various electronic and mechanical parts patched together in a basically cube shape. Pipes, light bulbs, consoles, screens, wire bundles, ports of all different shapes and sizes . . . all of this and more covered the surface of the giant machine. "Neat," said Sonic. "Where do ya stick the bread?" The robots laughed lightly. "Okaaaaay. So, how does it work?" Almost as soon as the question left his mouth, Sonic realized his mistake. The robots started talking all at once, describing each and every tiny bit of the machine. The voices combined and ran over each other to make a giant babbling chourus. "WHOA!" Sonic shouted over the din as he waves his arms back and forth. "WHOA! Holditholditholdit!" When the robots quieted down, he said, "Okay, let's start with something simpler. What does it do?" He was met with sudden silence. The robots fidgeted. "You don't know, do you?" he asked. "Er . . . not as such, no," one of them, apparently the leader, said, "but we have some ideas!" "Hmm. Well, Robuttnik must think it does SOMEthing if he gave you this much space to work with." "Well, it DID do something." "But . . . ?" "But we can't make it do it again." "And what did it do?" "It brought us here." "Here?" "To this dimension." "Oh." That answered that question, but even with that, Sonic felt that he was rapidly losing control of the situation, not to mention the conversation. "So," he said, "you guys are from another dimension." "Yes." "Great. That's about all we need. ANOTHER dimension to worry about." "It amazes me," said another of the 'bots, "that the people around here seem to have a great deal of experience with dimensional travel, yet none of them are able to get us home." Sonic debated about telling them about the Cosmic Interstate, the inter-dimensional road that would take anyone to any dimension, but decided against it. An exodus involving all of these robots and the humongous machine as well was out of the question. Besides, there was no guarantee that they would be able to find out which path led back to their specific dimension anyway. Out loud he said, "Never mind. So, how is your work on it coming along?" "Pretty well, I suppose. As we've demonstrated, we know exactly how it works, just not what it does or how to make it do it." "Then how did you get here?" "Accident. For all we know, the machine wasn't actually what brought us here, but that's all we have to work from right now. Anyway, whatever it was that did it erased our memories of how we did it." "So, for all you know, you could've spilled orange juice on it and done the hokey pokey, then poof! and you're here." "Right." Sonic felt a headache building up. He knew he had to leave soon to take back the information he had gathered, but he had one more question. "Personally, I'd like to know who built this thing. Did you guys . . . ?" "Not exactly. We did the actual construction and were supposed to work it as well, but the designer died before he was able to give us the proper instructions. Like I said, it was an accident that got us here, and it'll probably be an accident that'll get us back." Sonic nooded. "Thanks for the info, guys. I'll, ah, I'll take it back to Dr. Robotnik. I believe I can show myself out." "Try the door this time!" the lead 'bot said. Sonic laughed, waved, and ran off towards the elevator. The Machine had been studying the hedgehog from the moment that Sonic had entered the building. It checked everything, from the exact color of his shoes to his basic atomic structure. It read his DNA, his brain waves, and his personality matrix. It conducted various tests for telepathy and other mental abilities. It measured his super-speed to the 6,728,429,984th decimal place. It even took his inseam. The hedgehog perfectly fit one of the Machine's millions upon billions of factors that could make it perform a specific function. Ever since its creation, the Machine had been programmed to search out certain qualifiers, certain factors in the environment around it. These factors could be anything, from a specific spoken phrase, to a certain noise, to an inputed command. It could be a color, an action, or a pattern. Each factor was they key to unlocking the millions of functions the machine was programmed to complete. The majority of them really had no outward effect, and all but a few seemed to have no purpose at all . . . at least to the Machine itself, anyway. It did not question these things, however, as it did not deign to question its creator. It simply collected its factors and performed its functions dutifully. The difference between this newest factor and the hundreds of others that came its way ever day was the fact that it was half the fulfillment for a Level 3 function! It had never had this level reached before. Even the dimensional teleportaion of itself and the Service Welder/Attachment Tailored Robots was only a Level 4 function, slightly rare, but not totally uncommon. The best part about a Level 3 function, though, was that its fulfillments was a factor in unlocking a Level 2 function, of which there were only four. The Machine was finally on its way to unlocking the single Level 1 function in it, a function that even the Machine did not know the specifics of, only the manner in which to unlock it. As much as it wanted to do otherwise, however, all the Machine could do was sit and wait for another Level 3 factor to come along . . . Ironically enough, there was another Level 3 factor that was having problems of his own with a machine at the time. Knuckles the Echidna had been having a rather relaxing afternoon when Mecha-Sonic showed up on the Floating Island. Though not too sure of the mecha's plans, Knuckles was sure of one thing. He didn't want the blasted thing on his island. "You stupid hunk of tin! Get off my island!" "Negative," Mecha-Sonic replied. "Step away, and you will not be harmed. This unit is here to obtain an object for Dr. Robotnik and nothing more. Repeat, nega-" "Repeat THIS!" Knuckles slammed his fist into Mecha-Sonic's faceplate. The mecha stumbled back a few feet, but stood straight again. "Warning! Warning! You have presented yourself as a threat to this unit. You have five seconds left to surrender. 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . " Knuckles jumped into the air and glided straight into the counting Mecha-Sonic as hard as he could. The two of them flew through the air. Knux's original plan was to crush the mecha on a nearby tree. Unfortunatly, he heard Mecha-Sonic spit out a few calculations, yell "Execute!", then transpose himslef and the echidna in midflight. It took Knuckles a few seconds to realize the precariousness of his situation. He tried to push the mecha off, but the wretched thing held on to him tightly. "Leggo a'me!" "Nega-" Knux punched him in the face again. With the mecha temporarily distracted, he used his gliding ability to steer them as best he could. They narrowly missed the tree Knux had been aiming at originally. Mecha-Sonic's weight made it hard to steer, so they had a few more close calls before Knux was able to set them down. "You rotton piece of junk!" the Guardian yelled. "You are SO dead!" "Death does not worry this unit, echidna." "Shut up!" He began to flail at the mecha with his fists as best he could from their position. Mecha-Sonic was able to deflet the majority of the blows with his metal arms, but one good shot finally hit its mark. Knuckles had sent the mecha's head spinning, quite literally. "Warning! Warning! Cranial unit is in rotatary positioning! This is not constructive to reaching primary objective!" "No kidding." Knuckles' claws ripped through Mecha-Sonic's body. The metal hedgehog fell silent. Oops, the echidna thought. Now I won't be able to figure out what he was doing here . . . or can I? After a short meeting with his team, the Chaotix, he was on his way to Knothole Village with the trashed mecha in his arms. If anyone knew how to break into robot computers, it would be Princess Sally Acorn. The Machine was excited. Ever since it had first arrived in this particular dimension, it had been quite happy simply to search around the building it currently occupied, but with the advent of a Level 3 factor came interest in the outside word. And QUITE and interesting outside world it was, at that! Its long range scans had located nearly twenty other possible Level 3 factors! But . . . how could the creator have known about this place? These people? All of these wonders? Because he was my creator, of course! the Machine thought. He probably had dimension spanning devices LONG before I was created! For the first time in its relatively short life span, the Machine was edging as close to religious ferver as its programming allowed. "This is a very . . . unusual report." "Hey, ya gotta admit, most of mine are, Sal." "True," the Princess said. She leafed through the report until she reached the section detailing the robots. "These strange SWATbots . . . do you think a Robotnik in another dimension made them?" "Maybe. If so, it must be quite a world they live in. No evil dictators, clean air, no roboticization, dragons still soaring the skies, and-" He paused. "Yes, Sonic, and what?" Sally prompted. "Aaaaaand . . . nothing. Never mind." He had been on the verge of saying, "- and King Acorn still on the throne." He silently congratulated himself for stopping before he had caused Sally any undue hurt, however small. Sally looked at him sideways, but didn't comment on it further. Instead, she said, "Well, we might want to check on them every once in a while. You said that the 'bots didn't seem to care much for Dr. Robotnik?" "Nah. They don't seem to care either way. All they know is that they want to go home, and that Robuttnik is helping them." "So, if they found out you really weren't sent by Robotnik, they wouldn't try to capture you?" Sonic laughed. "They could TRY if they wanted, but-" "That's beside the point." "Heh, no, I don't believe they would. Personally, I think they're great guys and we should help 'em too." "That way, we could get them and their machine out of Robotnik's hands." "Exactly." On the other side of Knothole Village, Knuckles finally landed after his long glide from the Floating Island. He sensed the presence of several border guards only seconds before they came fully into view. A few of them held blasters aimed at him. "Is this how you treat visitors?" the Guardian asked. The leader of the group motioned for the rest to put their weapons away. "I'm sorry," he said, "but most of our visitors don't come dropping out of the sky. Knuckles T. Echidna, I presume?" "Yah, that's me." "How may we help you?" "I have a delivery for the Princess," Knuckles replied. He lugged the inert mecha off of his shoulder, and it fell to the ground with a dull thump. "You!" "You!" Sonic and Knuckles looked ready to jump each other. "Get offa my property!" Sonic yelled. "Bite me!" Knuckles yelled back. "I'm here on official business!" "Pfft. I'd like to see what an island boy thinks is 'official'!" "Try this on fer size, you hog-headed hedge!" He pointed at the approaching group of border guards as they carried in Mecha-Sonic. "Your 'cousin' here was snooping around on my island!" Before the argument could go any further, Bunnie Rabbot, who had just arrived on the scene, stepped in between the two of them and yelled, "Now y'all jus' calm down!" "Outta my way, Bunnie-" "Move it, rabbit-" "-I'm gonna clobber this nerd!" "-or I'll knock ya BOTH for a loop!" Knuckles, who was to Bunnie's left, found himself flung up against the side of a hut. Sonic, too engrossed in the argument to notice his adversary's disappearance, joined him a second later. Bunnie stepped in front of them and leaned over. "Y'all want ta try that again, shugahs?" They stood up, apologized to Bunnie then - reluctantly and as quickly as possible - to each other, then walked back over to the mecha. Sally, who - like Bunnie - had arrived just in time to witness the whole thing, moved closer to Sonic and secretly, but sharply, kicked him in the shin. "OW!" "You idiot!" she whispered. "Don't EVER do that again!" Sonic mumbled an apology, but Sally was already talking to Knuckles. "What was Mecha-Sonic doing on the Floating Island?" "I dunno," said Knuckles. "He wouldn't say." "Well, if his memory core is still intact, I can probably get the information from there. Let's take him to the computer hut." Mecha-Sonic was laid out on a worktable, wires protruding from openings in his head and abdomen. At the request of both Sonic and Knuckles, his arms, legs, and booster rocket had been detatched. Sally's hand held computer, Nicole, had been hooked up to the larger computer housing that occupied most of the hut. While Rotor Walrus was checking the wire hookups, Sally was running tests on the mecha's memory core. All of the results were negative. Nicole stated the cause. "Extensive damage has been accrued in the cranial unit. Unable to extract requested information." "Is there ANY way we can get at it?" asked Sally. "Affirmative," said Nicole, "but reconstruction would take four to five days." Sally was stunned. "Why so long?" "It is due to the nature of the damage. Current data indicates that two spikes were forcibly inserted into the mecha unit's memory and motor skill cores." Knuckles spoke up. "Yah, he went haywire when I punched his head. That's probably why." "Great," said Sonic, "so whadda we do now?" "We wait, blue boy. What else?" Knuckles decided to wait in Knothole until Nicole had finished with the mecha. He knew that the Chaotix would be able to hold down the fort in his abscence. Sonic wasn't happy with this and proclaimed - loudly - that the echidna get up off his red butt and do some work like the rest of them. Princess Sally heartily agreed with the suggestion and sent Knuckles out on a mission - - with Sonic. "Are you nuts?" Sonic whispered fierecly. "Look, Knux is going to be here for a while, and you two need to learn to get along!" Sally whispered back. Knuckles was watching them out of the corner of his eye. He knew that Sally would win the argument. Even though he had only known her for a relatively short time, he knew that she deserved her position as Princess. She had a tactician's eye and a strong ability to command. Sonic and Sally walked back over to him. "He accepts," she said. Sonic glared hatefully at Knuckles, but said nothing except, "Let's go." The laboratory 'bots accepted Knuckles readily as Sonic's assisstant - much to the chagrin and general annoyance of the echidna. Oh, well, he thought. Might as well make the best of it. While Sonic had walked off and was chatting up some of the other 'bots about the machine, Knuckles approached the 'bot that seemed to be the leader. "Say," he said, "what should we call you?" The 'bot looked up from a computer console he was working at. "PHL-3700-Zed-Alpha-Niner," he rattled off. "Hmm. I . . . see. How's about just 'Phil'?" "Well . . . I don't see why not," the newly christened Phil said. "We didn't come here t'name 'em, Knux," Sonic called from across the room. "I just thought it'd be easier on us, spiney." "Right, whatever." Phil motioned Sonic over, then led the two Mobians over to the machine. "We have made a remarkable discovery!" he said. "We found a computer core in the very middle of the machine that we had missed before, and that we ourselves did not install! It's extremely small, almost the size of a virus. I'm actually not very suprised that we did not notice it before, considering the LARGE scale of the rest of the contraption." "What's it there for?" asked Sonic. "Right now, we are working under the theory that it is the control center for the entire thing, but all attempts to get into it have failed miserably. It's a nightmare jungle of passwords and time locks and other security systems in there! Knuckles walked up closer to the machine and squinted. "Hey," he said, "is it supposed to change color like this?" "Excuse me?" Phil asked, confused. He and Sonic looked where Knuckles was pointing. Sure enough, the pipes and wires were shifting from the original metallic blue to a strange brown color, an effect that was spreading across the entire machine at an alarming rate. The Machine couldn't believe it. Its first Level 3 function was about to be performed! The echidna, like the hedgehog, was perfect in every way. And now, these two opened the first of the doorways to its ultimate goal, the Level 1 function. It felt a strange warmth spread across its outside. As soon as the warmth had spread all the way along its body, it expelled energy from a port . . . a port that happened to be directly in front of Sonic and Knuckles. Phil looked at the frozen hedgehog and echidna. He tested the stasis field, but was unable to get near them. The field had snapped up suddenly, before Phil could pull the two Mobians out of the way. He wondered how he would be able to get them out of it. It would probably take many trial and error combinations of things to free them, but until that time, they were stuck, and there was nothing he could do about it. Sonic waited for the headache to go away. Knuckles tried to open his left eye. The headache wouldn't leave, so he looked around. His left eye wouldn't open, so he looked around with his good right eye. Both of them saw that something was horribly, terribly wrong. Sonic was sitting at a campfire. Sitting on the other side, directly across from him, was Bunnie Rabbot - a Bunnie Rabbot that had normal arms and legs. Knuckles was standing at the edge of the Floating Island - a Floating Island that was no longer floating, but was crashed into Mobian soil. And they both said the same thing. "What just happened?" TO BE CONTINUED. Roland Lowery