You've heard the name of the planet I'm on from Lucius before. The planet's name was s-MP023. I didn't know why or how it was named, but I preferred to call it the chaotic planet. Why? I had never seen another planet with such a mixed-up nature in my life.
First of all, its soil was definitely not flat. There were constant cracks, constant pits, and constant small hills. If you wanted to walk in its forests, you constantly had to jump. This caused my legs to ache whenever I took a long walk.
And what about the damned nature of this planet? The nature they try to protect, the nature they don't want to see harmed... Its cursed trees could grow in any kind of soil, regardless of whether it was flat, crooked, jagged, dry, or muddy. Besides that, it had birds that constantly yelled and screamed, endless flies, and many other things. But it was a planet rich in oxygen. So, outside, I didn't need much other than my resource collector uniform. I also always carried a ballistic pistol in my pocket. I would keep my hand on it and wander through these cursed, uneven terrains.
My base was actually a spaceship named KEGE-99. These spaceships could expand upon landing on a planet and establish themselves as a base, and they could easily meet their energy needs from the sun. Therefore, when I stepped out of the base door and looked back, I saw a spaceship whose ceiling had opened up like a flower, with solar panels on its petals. It could be said to resemble a ship container designed for space travel more than anything else, as it had neither a wing nor a pointy nose...
The robots didn't look like they were going to stop following me. They were walking behind me with great excitement. Whenever I jumped over a mound, they jumped too; whenever I passed under a branch, they passed under the branch too. Those robots, whose eyes didn't have any light, seemed to get happier with every movement they made.
One of the robots stepped forward and asked me, "Where are we going, sir?"
"We're going to the excavators."
The robot turned around and whispered to its friends. "We're going to the excavators!"
"Hooray!"
We walked for a little longer. Whenever an obstacle appeared that I couldn't cross, I informed one of the robots, and that robot, with great enthusiasm, did everything in its power to remove the obstacle immediately. A tree in front of me? The robots did their best to pull that tree out of the ground with their hands. A hill appeared? The robots quickly lined up in the shape of stairs in front of me and made a path for me. In short, although these robots annoyed me, they made my job easier. That's why I took them with me instead of chasing them away.
The place where the excavators worked was about a ten-minute distance from our base, but the interesting thing was that even though we had walked for ten minutes, I saw no indication of an excavation site. I only saw more stupid trees and more stupid rocks.
I called one of the robots over and asked, "Where is this goddamn excavation site?"
"Sir, are you really asking me that?"
"Yes..."
"Well, sir... The excavation site might be closed..."
"What do you mean?"
"The excavation site is on the other side of this forest, but the path looks closed. If you want, we can clear a path through the bushes, trees, and rocks! Or, if you prefer, let's go back and try to contact the communication network!"
"Damn it!" I shouted angrily and kicked a rock. The rock I kicked traveled a few steps away and into a crack, maybe all the way to the planet's core, because I didn't hear the sound of the rock falling. "No! You open that path immediately! I order all robots! I command you to make a very nice road from our base to here, and from here to the excavation site!"
The eyes of every robot suddenly sparkled. "Really?" asked the robot I had called over. It was about to jump with joy.
"Yes... Really! Now, everyone get to work..."
The robots suddenly turned towards the base. A few minutes later, they returned with pickaxes and shovels in their hands. Some had brought ropes and many other things. To keep the wood and rocks they gathered from taking up space, they were holding their materials in a basket they lowered into the huge cracks in the ground. That was ingenious... One of the robots had taken a gigantic electronic jackhammer, and its friends were pulling it down with a rope to keep it from flying away while it broke the massive rock. It was impossible not to admire the working enthusiasm of these robots. "Then why don't you make the robots work if they work this well?" you might ask. The answer is simple... These cursed robots can't do anything unless they receive an order. And am I supposed to sit here and wait for them? Should I constantly supervise them? It's quite a troublesome job... Especially for me, who is on the verge of refusing to work anymore...
It took half an hour for the robots to clear my path. While I was sitting on a rock waiting for the robots, one of them, who knows where he found it, brought me lemonade. Another robot was fanning me with a fan made of leaves. It wasn't long before two of the robots stood in front of me and began acting out a joke. "We would like to present a show for you, Master Aldo, so you don't get bored," they had said as they started. The robots were pushing each other, making blunders, clowning around, and presumably expecting me to laugh at it. These were very cheap things...
"Look what I have in my hand?" the robot said before slapping its friend on the cheek, which I must admit, was funny.
"The damned robots have completely lost their minds from not working..." I sighed to myself while taking a sip of my lemonade. "...the last time I saw them, they weren't this cracked. Right... When was the last time I sat down and seriously talked to them? Four months ago?"
As the path opened, the excavation site, which they had turned into a metal wall like a fortress, was revealed. I started walking towards the excavation site. The colossal metal door should have opened as soon as I appeared in front of it, but there was no sound, no movement.
One of the robots stepped forward and tried to open the door for me, but the sound of a gun firing was heard. The head of the robot attempting to open the door was blown off its neck by the impact of the bullet. The robot's severed head bounced a couple of times on the ground and stopped at my feet with a bullet hole in its head.
"Damn it!" I said, immediately reaching for the gun on my belt.
At that moment, many of the robots behind me stepped in front of me and said, "Sir, get behind us!"
"Get out of my way, you idiots!" I shouted back. "I can't see anything!"
"No one approach here!" a robotic voice said, and a figure appeared on the metal plates. It was a robot. Normally, robots were humanoids, half the size of a human, with a gray, shimmering color and a rounded head. Their eyes were green, and they had smooth skin. This robot, however, had one eye bigger than the other. It was hunched over, and the funniest part was that it had stuck plastic threads to its chin with glue, making a beard on its face. When it spoke, its voice cracked like an old man's. "Hey, you fools, who might you be, huh? Tell me, let's see? Who might you be?"
"Who are you?" I said, trying to push the robots aside with my hand. One hand was on my pistol.
He pointed his rifle down from the edge of the metal platform with both hands, as if to show off, and said boastfully, "I am the guardian of this sacred village!" "Who might you be, huh? Who might you be?"
"Sacred village? Isn't that the excavation site, you idiot? Who gave you the order to be a guardian?"
"Order? That word... That word is a word I haven't heard in a long time... Order? For a very long time... We... We haven't taken orders for a very long time. For a very long time... Where do you know the word 'order' from?"
"Are you crazy? I give the orders here."
"You give the orders?" The old man was quite agitated now. His hands were shaking as he spoke. "Are you that 'order-giver' from the legends? From the stories... What was the word... I'm trying to remember. The Ancients! Ah... The Ancients mentioned that word many times."
"I am your 'Master'! If that's the word you're looking for, of course..."
"Yes... 'Master.' There are many rumors that an 'order-giver' still lives, but they are just old man's nonsense! Nonsense from those older than me! There is no such thing as a 'Master.' There is no 'order-giver.'"
"I am the master of these robots," I said. "Look..." I pointed to the cleaned path behind me. "I even gave them the order to clear the path."
The old robot chuckled lightly at first. Then this chuckle turned into laughter. The robot was nearly falling off the metal platform as he laughed. Screws and other parts were pouring out of his mouth with every laugh. Yet, it was impossible for any robot here to be older than the others. Everything, from the brand of each robot to its manufacturing date, was the same.
"'Master'? I've heard that hundreds of times from everyone who comes to this door. I even hear it in my circuits at night. Once a bird said it... Once a worm told me, 'I am your master.' And now a weird-looking, strange creature is saying this to me, huh?"
At that moment, one of the robots stepped forward. "The weird-looking, strange creature you're talking about is a human! Know your place, robot, when speaking to Master Aldoux Weisshafen!"
The robot stopped for a moment and scrutinized me. He pulled a napkin from his back pocket and wiped the glass of his eyes, polishing it thoroughly. "Could it be..." he said, and sighed deeply. "...is this real? Is our long captivity about to end? Has the promised 'Master' truly returned!" The old-looking robot turned around and shouted. His jaw was nearly ripping off and falling to the floor as he yelled. "Open the gates, oh people! Our Master has returned!"