We’re Going to War!, the sequel to Take the All-Mart!, is about ready to drop (any week now) and I’m getting all excited, so here’s a little taste.

 

“All right, listen up Dead-Bolts. Dire straits, here.” All seven members of the Consolidated Army of Shunk were huddled in a loose circle, robotic shoulders clanging together, at one end of the dusty dirt field behind the brewery. Hunt-R, a sash draped over his chest proclaiming him Quarterback / Team Captain / Chaplain, was down on one knobby-jointed knee. “Bottom of the seventh and we are down by a not insignificant number of points—”

DB-3 interrupted him. “Four-hundred and fifty-seven to three, to be exact.”

“Did anybody ask you to be exact?” Hunt-R asked.

DB-3’s head—an emptied-out plastic television shell with a pair of Betacams for eyes—drooped. “No.”

“No, what?”

“No, Squad Commander Hunt-R, Sir.”

“No, Squad Commander Hunt-R, Sir what?”

“No, Squad Commander Hunt-R, Sir,” DB-3 said, and did this little shuffling pirouette, complete with Jazz hands at the end of the third spin around.

“That’s better,” Hunt-R said. “You’re really getting good at those.”

“Been practicing at night in the barracks.”

“Well, it’s showing. Marked improvement. Keep it up. —The rest of you could stand to learn a little something from 3, here.”

“Yeah, like how to be a kiss-ass,” DB-‘Fridgerator’-5 said. “Why are you even practicing end-zone dances when we never actually get to the end-zone?”

“We got there once,” DB-3 said. “Hunt-R got there.”

“Yeah,” DB-5 said. “But it was our own end-zone. He got tackled so hard it pushed him back into it.”

“Still,” DB-3 said. “We got the three points for it.”

“Because the Ref felt sorry for us,” Hunt-R said. “And rightly so. We are terrible. Anyway, where was I?”

“You were about to remind us how we’re fucked,” DB-5 said.

“Oh, yeah,” Hunt-R said. “Yes, we’re fucked. Big time. We are going to lose. Nothing we can do about that now.”

“We could,” DB-4 said, synthetic voice booming out of the four dozen speakers in his ghetto blaster head, “strap a bomb to 2 and send her long.”

DB-2 crossed extension-lamp arms over hub-crap breasts. “How is blowing me up supposed to help us win?”

“Help us what now?” DB-4 asked.

“Much as I’d like to strap bombs to all of you,” Hunt-R said, “this isn’t about winning or losing. This is about teamwork. Generalissimo Trip arranged this game to demonstrate how teamwork can make or break even the most well-armed and equipped military force. And judging from our performance so far, I think it’s safe to say lesson learned–without teamwork, we are going to lose, and lose big time, every time. And not just at football.”

“Maybe it’s not so much a lack of teamwork,” DB-6 said, making constant micro-adjustments to stay balanced on his one wheel, “as a lack of working knowledge of the rules of the game.”

“Yeah, it would have been nice to have been programmed with the rules,” DB-3 said. “I thought we were playing hockey the first five quarters.”

“We’re not playing hockey?” DB-6 asked.

“Regardless of what game we’re actually playing,” Hunt-R said, “it’s clear to me now that we’ve gotten our asses kicked solely because you idiots have refused to work as a team.”

“I like to look at it as more you sucking at giving orders we actually might want to carry out,” DB-2 said.

“Never-the-less,” Hunt-R said, “there’s just this one play left, and all I’m asking, begging for, is that this one time, we show a little teamwork.”

“I dunno,” DB-5 said. “What’s in it for us?”

Trip’s voice crackled over the radio directly into their heads. “The Generalissimo won’t have you melted down and turned into door-jams, that’s what.”

“Sure, there’s that,” DB-3 said, “but can we also still get pizza after the game?”

“Pizza is for winners.”

“He’s got a point,” Hunt-R said. He swept his glowing cyclopean eye across the spare-part, dirt and oil smeared faces of the Shunk army. “So, we’re agreed, then? To avoid being melted down, we actually try this one time to carry out the plan?”

“If there’s not going to be any pizza, I vote for melting,” DB-3 said.

DB-2 whacked 3 in the side of the TV set. “Shut up. –We’re in.”

“Good,” Hunt-R said. He stretched a hand out at DB-5. “Ball?”

DB-5 opened his chest freezer and pulled out the frosted, half-deflated orange rubber ball. He held it out for Hunt-R. “So what’s the plan again?”

“What’s the plan?” Hunt-R yanked the ball away from DB-5. “It’s the same plan we’ve had each play since the beginning of the game!”

“Count of three, we toss them the ball and run away?” DB-3 asked.

“Head for the hills, yep,” DB-2 nodded.

“So say we all,” DB-6 said.

Hunt-R rubbed his temple with a fingertip. “That is not the plan.”

“But it should be,” DB-2 said. “They’re murdering us here. Literally. 1’s head has gone missing.”

They all turned to look at DB-1, leaned back in tripod speed mode, his cylindrical torso topped by a jagged-edged smoking crater of wires. A light on his chest flashed out Morse code: “I… j…u…s…t… w…a…n…t… t…o… g…o… h…o…m…e.”

“We all do, 1.” DB-2 patted DB-1 on the shoulder. “We’re seriously outclassed here.”

“Not to mention in serious pain,” DB-4 said, and looked over his shoulder down the field at the other team, waiting impatiently at the 101st Parallel. The four eight-year-old members of Bernice’s Third Grade class glared back at him and he shuddered. “That little pig-tailed one can really kick,” he said, rubbing his dented shin.

“Yeah, about that,” DB-5 said, “why do we have pain sensors, again? And why can’t we turn them off? I mean, we’re robots. We don’t need to feel pain. There’s no reason—”

“Pain builds character,” Trip said over their head radios.

DB-2 lowered her voice. “I’d like to build him some character.”

“Save it for the field,” Hunt-R said. He thrust his hand into the center of the huddle. The others placed their hands/pincers/lampshades on top of it. “All right, let’s get this over with. Somebody give me a mournful dirge and… break!”
Hunt-R looked up and they were all running off. For the sidelines. And right on past.

“Sorry!” DB-4 yelled back over his shoulder. “We’ll send a postcard!”

They rounded a grain silo and were gone. Hunt-R’s shoulders sagged. “Well… at least they’re finally showing some teamwork.”