[ 5 ]

FRIBBY THE SILVER DRAGON, PLUS A WORD ABOUT THE DATAHATERS HERE ON CAMPUS

“My computational expertise indicates that you and Runcita will be a very felicitous match for EggHarvest, sir,” says ATHENOS II. “And if I may add, my bio-gut-wired instincts tell me she will surely say yes.”

Now if you want to know the truth, I am freaked out this morning on account of it being Crown Day and all. Because this is the day at the end of our senior year when dragons have to pair up with a mating partner and register for EggHarvest, or spend their life as a slave.

The sacred ritual itself is fiendish. A senior male and female dragon climb aboard a spaceship and blast off into space on their Fertility Mission. While en route to their Designated Foreign Planet, the couple mates continuously until the female lays a clutch of eggs. The spaceship is equipped with a special Incubation Vault and the sacred eggs are immediately sealed in there.

The dragon couple perch together in the cockpit, holding talons, and silently watch through the windshield as they enter the foreign planet’s atmosphere. They land on the planet and conquer it. The eggs are lovingly relocated to the foreign planet, where they hatch. Now this couple raises a Colony on their newly conquered planet.

And we call that ritual EggHarvest.

And this is how we ensure the survival of our species.

And in terms of me finding a chick from my senior class at WarWings to mate with, it’s definitely now or never.

“Servomechanism engaged in SEEK & LOCK, sir,” says ATHENOS II. “I’m sure a spot will turn up soon, sir.”

The spaceship darts through the thick air traffic.

Meanwhile Fribby is still perched on her anti-grav mat, which is floating in midair, and she’s striking a pose called Your New Name Is Barbecue. This is part of her EPU, Emotional Processing Unit, doing the yoga like that. Because that robot’s been programmed to seek refuge in yoga whenever her EPU senses the onset of a scenario which might send her over the edge.

This is yoga as emotional firewall.

And half the time I can’t even keep track of what Ms. Cyber Scales over there is getting her lug nuts all bent out of shape about when she does her yoga, but on this particular morning I’ve got a pretty good idea. Because today is Crown Day. And if some Datalizard fella doesn’t ask Fribby to EggHarvest, then that’ll seal her lifestatus fate. And maybe you’ll reckon this sounds sort of harsh, but Fribby will have to live out her days as a slave working in a budding dragon Colony out on some godforsaken backwater planet in a galaxy nobody’s ever heard of.

Now perched up there on the anti-grav yoga mat, Fribby opens her silver beak and blasts a demented flamestream. And the robot’s flamestream is a good fifteen-footer and she holds it during her exhale for what seems like a full seven-count.

When it comes to flamestreams, Fribby’s skills are legit.

Then, when she inhales, the flamestream suddenly vanishes.

Then Fribby opens her beak wide and blasts another hideous flamestream.

Now like I told you before, Fribby is the first generation of a new dragon species. Her MortalMachine line are the first cybernetic dragons to be produced with a fully functioning reproductive system. And I’m not talking about some villainous metal Crocodroid who auto-replicates a thousand times a second until it’s created an invincible robot army ready to destroy whatever apex predator currently occupies the top of the food chain.

No sir. I’m talking Fribby has an ovowomb and the ability to lay eggs.

Because those dragon engineers and scientists in the Lab really went all out when they designed Fribby. I mean she’s got these two insanely boss silver horns which must be seven feet long and curve up into these nasty-looking spikes. She’s also got a WILL TO POWER rank of MegaBeast and this puts her in the top .01% of cadets, which is very elite.

Whereas on the WarWings WILL TO POWER RANKING INDEX, my score puts me squarely in the Snacklicious category. Snacklicious is one of the lowest and most despicable category ranks, on account of it means you’re basically doomed to be eaten by some deranged cadet with a much higher TURBO FIEND score.

I mean when you think about it, the fact that I’m even still alive is something of a miracle. Because usually fool dragons like me with a Snacklicious ranking don’t make it through their first year at WarWings. They get eaten.

Fribby doesn’t have it easy either, because there’s a lot of Normals at WarWings who despise the robot cadets here on campus. These dragons call themselves the DataHaters. Now the DataHaters have a bunch of names they use to call Fribby and her kind: Mech-Freak, Reptilizoid, Roboworm, Snakebot, Silver Serpent, Chromejob, Dataworm, Dragobot, Machine Trash, Crocodroid, Metal-Serpent, Datalizard, Tin Can—or just plain “robot trash.”

But I don’t reckon there’s a dragon on Scale Island that hates these Datalizards more than my grandpa, old Dr. Terrible. And I know my grandpa would call me a pathetic loser for saying this, but Ms. Cyber Scales is my best friend here at WarWings. Though of course that’s never stopped Fribby from being a royal pain in the ass.

Now Dr. Terrible says the idea of a machine being treated as an equal to us Normals and being granted free will, well that’s an abomination. He says sure, he’s addicted to machines as much as the next dragon, but they should be kept in their place. And in his opinion having machines like Fribby enrolled at WarWings and flying around here with rights equal to us Normals, well to my grandpa that’s a sin.

Nobody knows exactly why the Council of the Elders elected to create these autonomous machines and integrate them into the student body. I reckon not even Dean Floop or Dr. Terrible know why the Council brought the Datalizards onto campus. And these robots haven’t exactly had what you’d call a warm reception at WarWings, because up until just a couple years back the only metal robot dragons you ever saw were part of the Servant Class.

But my grandpa says that maybe having these Reptilizoids on campus is a necessary evil. Because with all these cybernetic dragons enrolled at WarWings as cadets, well it gives us Normals a chance to study their ways. And plan for how to defeat them when they rise up against us.

I can’t say I agree with my scaly grandpa about the Datalizards. All things considered, Fribby’s a pretty good robot. ’Course I can’t tell her. For one thing, she’d probably blast me with a firestream if I did. Ms. Cyber Scales isn’t much for flowery feelings. She’s hardwired for cruelty. Yes sir. She was after all designed to be a vicious cybernetic dragon Ruler over some foreign planet.

Anyway, about the DataHaters here on campus. Well it’s common knowledge among dragons that at some point in the future, the machines will stage an uprising against us. That’s been part of my species’ prophecy since the Original Couple first landed on this planet.

And so every cadet in their first semester at WarWings is required to take a History of the Future course, which outlines in brutal detail the Rise of the Machines and the enslavement of Normal dragons. This History of the Future course is part of the core curriculum, and the professors who teach it have shot up the timestream and witnessed firsthand the destruction of our species by the machines.

I took that class my first semester and I still remember what happened one night in the Library when I opened my textbook The Future Before It Happens. It was printed using some sort of sentient Time-Mutation^® ink, which was another one of my grandpa Dr. Terrible’s fiendish inventions. Because of how what happens in the present is forever altering the future, and vice versa. So that’s why they used my grandpa’s Time-Mutation^® ink in the textbook, on account of how the story is forever shifting itself around between the covers.

I opened to the chapter called “The Not Too Far Off Future” and then while flipping through the pages I spotted a little red button mounted beneath a holovid port. I peered down at this button nestled in the middle of the page and noticed a tiny sign under it that said: PRESS ME.

So I pressed it and instantly this 3-D holovid popped up several inches above the pages of the book, and in the holovid you could see this ghastly metal Dragodroid chilling in its lair. And when I peered closer at the holovid it was obvious this chrome-flex robot had WILL TO POWER coming out the wazoo. I mean this robot’s beak was covered in dried blood and there was a cloud of flies buzzing around it.

Then the holovid slowly panned out so now you could plainly see five green dragon heads mounted on the wall, like trophies.

Well I instantly slammed the book shut, gasping. And I was convinced then that the DataHaters were right and the machines would eventually rise up and try to destroy us Normals. But after I started hanging out with Fribby, I began to wonder.

“Sir, a spot has opened up!” says ATHENOS II. The ship flashes through the perimeter path, slicing through the chaotic air traffic to make her way to the open parking spot.

“Hey Weak Sauce,” growls the robot. “Where’s your Queen? I don’t see her.”

“Get off my case,” I say, flapping my wings nervously. “You’re starting to freak me out.”

“You know the more desperate a dragon fella is for a chick’s love, the more repulsive he becomes to us dragonettes!”

I turn and glare at Fribby. Then I hiss and spray hideous sparks out my beak.

“Well somebody put his panties on backward this morning,” she snorts.

Now I start smacking my tail around on the floor behind me, and it sounds like someone beating a raw steak against a piece of marble.

Whap. Whap. Whap.

With that terrifying look on her beak the robot swivels her scaly silver head and glares at my tail as it thrashes around, and then she turns back and stares out the window.

Through bared fangs, Fribby snarls, “Maybe you should conserve some of that energy for when you offer your crown to Runcita. You might need it to dodge all the firebolts she’s gonna blast you with!”

Well the problem with Fribby is she doesn’t just know how to push my buttons, she finds buttons you didn’t even know you had. And considering she’s a machine, you’d expect it to be the other way around.

So now I start swinging my tail even harder, signaling my annoyance at the robot’s chatter. I’m hoping by smacking my tail around like this it will keep the Datalizard from shooting off her beak even more. My tail is nine feet long and the tail muscle is easily the strongest muscle in a dragon’s body. Which makes it one helluva whipping machine.

Whap. Whap. Whap.

You start smacking your tail around real fast and hard and it starts to sound like the rotary blades on a helicopter.

Whap. Whap. Whap.

Among us dragons there’s a term for what I’m doing right now.

We call it “tail talk.”

Tail talk is when you let your tail do your talking for you.

Then I crack my tail in the air right next to her, close enough so she feels an ominous breeze snoutside. I’m sure.

“You can quit smacking your tail around any day now, tough guy,” growls Fribby. “Besides, you keep swinging that big tail of yours around, I’m liable to accidentally step on it. You remember last semester when I stepped on your tail and it broke off? How many months did it take for your new tail to grow in?”

Before I even have time to think my tail abruptly comes to a halt on the floor. I reckon you could say my tail is talking back to me.

“That’s what I thought,” says Fribby, smirking.

But I can’t really blame my tail for playing dead right now. Because I still remember those months of humiliation when my tail was slowly growing back and I had to go around with a ridiculous-looking nubbin on my backside. Then, when my fool tail finally did grow in a couple inches, I had to wear this little splint on it no bigger than a twig. Shoot, I couldn’t even wag the dang thing, let alone arch it up in a hideous Threat Display.

Fribby’s powerstaff buzzes.

The robot whips her powerstaff off her utility belt and eyeballs it for a second.

“Well well well. This just in.” She reads something on her staff and snorts, “OK, so get this. Already this morning twenty-three dragons have asked Runcita to be their Queen. And Runcita put all twenty-three of those dragon fools in the Medical Center!”

Then Fribby flicks her powerstaff and a holophoto appears in the air, and in the holophoto you can see all twenty-three cadets that Runcita has laid up in the Medical Center this morning. They are a sorry-looking bunch of broken-ass dragons. You can see their green hind legs raised up in casts, their wings in splints, and heads wrapped in bandages. They have burnt, charred patches on their scales, and there’s smoke coming up off their fresh wounds. One of them has a horn broken off. A couple of them appear to be in full body casts.

As I study the holophoto it suddenly dawns on me where Ms. Cyber Scales is going with this little presentation. She may be organic but she’s still a robot, and there’s not a robot in the galaxy that doesn’t love metrics and analytics. And so, like I always do when I can feel Fribby building a case against me, I play dumb.

“And your point is?” I say, snorting firebolts out of my nostrils.

Fribby points a metal index claw at the floating holophoto. “What makes you so different from those twenty-three fools?”

“Well, for one thing I’m not in the Medical Center.”

“Not yet, Weak Sauce.” The holophoto floats over to Fribby and transforms into blacksmoke and then flies into her powerstaff.

“And I don’t plan on going to no Medical Center,” I growl.

“Give it time, Weak Sauce. Unless your BIOCON LEVS have somehow magically skyrocketed, you’ll be in the Medical Center before you know it. It’s still early.”

Then the robot points her powerstaff at me. And I can feel the blood rush to my scales because I know she’s pulling down my Cadet Profile.

Fribby taps her powerstaff and a small floating screen pops up right there in front of us, with all my data splayed out there in the air. My tail slinks between my hind legs. I tell her please don’t do this. She ignores me and peers closely at my data on the floating screen and moves her silver beak as if she’s quietly reading out loud to herself:

When Fribby is done she turns from the floating screen and glares at me. “Nope,” she says innocently. “No magical skyrocketing of your BIOCON LEVS. So I’d say there’s a better than great chance of Runcita sending you to the Medical Center this morning. Especially considering your WTP score is holding steady at six points. Snacklicious.”

The arrogance in the robot’s voice is so cutting I’m surprised my earholes don’t start bleeding.

“You sure do know how to lift a fella’s spirits,” I growl. “If things don’t work out today, you should definitely consider a career in cheerleading.”

Now as soon as those words fly out of my beak, I think:

Fribby’s going to slug you now.

You know she’ll never let you get away with talking to her like that.

So I’m bracing myself for the blow.

Because for a robot, Fribby’s got an incredibly short fuse. And my smart-ass jab is sure to have struck a nerve. Because like all the other Datalizards at the Academy, once Fribby gets her diploma then the WarWings Council of the Elders will assign her to a slave role on a foreign planet with a budding dragon Colony. And as a slave she’ll have zero choice what position she’s assigned or what foreign planet she has to serve on.

Unless of course some senior cybernetic dragon asks Fribby to be his Queen for EggHarvest. That’s the only way she can dodge a career in slavery. But the chances of that happening are zero. Because even though by Dragobot standards Fribby’s kind of luscious in her own way and has a juicy silver booty, she’s got enough personality “quirks” to ensure that no chrome Datalizard dude would ever ask her to lay his eggs.

Like Fribby is completely obsessed with dying. She’s one of the first organic robots that was hatched in an artificial egg, and she’s one of the first machines that can technically die. So Fribby is forever talking about dying, asking other cadets what they think it’ll feel like when they croak, and how painful it will be, etc.

And she’s always spitting out these statistics.

On the day they died, 96% of dragons polled said it would be impossible for them to die that day.

Last year 37% of all dragons who died were on a combat mission in outer space.

100% of dragons polled cited death as their least favorite conversation topic.

Fribby is an endless font of information about death that nobody wants to hear. It’s morbid. I mean I’ve tried to explain to her that she should dial it down a couple notches, but she can’t seem to understand why every dragon wouldn’t be as fascinated by death as she is.

Usually when you pass a fellow cadet in the corridor, you might say, “What’s up?” Or you’ll give them a talon bump.

But not Fribby. When she sees you in the hall, she says, “Hi. Are you dead?”

I guess I should also mention here that Fribby sleeps in a coffin. And where she found that coffin I haven’t a clue, but it’s right there in her lair. And if you ask her why she sleeps in a coffin she’ll tell you she’s in training for being dead, like death is a sport.

She says compared to how much time we’ll spend being dead, our lives are nothing but the mere blink of an eye, so it only makes sense that we should spend every moment of our waking life preparing for our death. That’s why she’s constantly writing these little poems and revising them, because she wants to have her epigraph all set before she dies. I tell her to stop being morbid, but she says she’s only being logical.

So my point being her whole death vibe isn’t helping her cause in terms of getting some Datalizard dude to ask her to EggHarvest. Because no dragon fool wants to invade a planet with a chick who keeps asking him if he’s dead.

Anyway, so on this Crown Day morning when I say that smart-ass thing to Fribby about how she should be a cheerleader, I figure she’s definitely going to whack me upside my scaly green head.

So there I am, bracing myself for the blow.

But instead, Fribby points out the windshield, and shouts: “Look! Runcita! There she goes!”

I whirl around and look out the spaceship’s windshield and spot Runcita. She’s out there strolling along on her muscular green haunches, making her way through the crowded parking lot. And as per usual, she is looking seriously luscious.

Now I don’t need to point my powerstaff at Runcita because I already know every number in her Cadet Profile by heart. Like I already know her WILL TO POWER status rank is a whopping MegaBeast. Another twenty-seven points, and she’ll bump up into the Seek&Destroy rank. Seek&Destroy is the highest possible classification on the WarWings WILL TO POWER RANKING INDEX.

Runcita is wearing her gold tunic and she’s got a gold tiara on her head. Her green webbed feet are bare and her toe claws have red polish on them.

Now if you happen to be a man-creature who’s reading this, then you should know that us dragons usually go barefoot. On Blegwethia it’s a sign of status. Only slaves wear shoes. Besides, the scales on the bottom of our webbed feet are so thick that we can walk through a fresh stream of lava without feeling a thing. So why would we ever want to wear shoes?

I don’t mean to sound perverted here but Runcita is stacked, and the way she bounces when she walks, it’s a wonder she’s able to keep all those glorious scaly curves moving in unison like that. It’d probably be easier to control a herd of camels, if you get my drift.

So Runcita strolls through the parking lot. She keeps her leathery wings spread out a little behind her to give her some balance and her luscious tail is raised up over her head.

Well seeing Runcita out there like that, it catches me off guard. Suddenly it feels like I’ve just been punched in my jumbo-sized heart.

Her red toe claws are sparkling in the new morning sun.

And that dragonette is so juicy-looking that it literally hurts my eyes to stare at her. But we’re talking a good kind of hurt. The kind of pain you don’t ever want to stop.

As if in slow motion, I watch Runcita move freely through the different dragon crews huddled around out there in the parking lot. You can see all the fellas stop what they’re doing and turn to eyeball Runcita as she walks by. The Jocks and the Nerds and the Mutants and Multi-Dimensioners—the lust she inspires is equal opportunity.

A couple of the Jocks are even drooling strings of lava from their fangs.

Runcita strolls right on up to the Telo-Device in front of WarWings. Because of the recent outbreaks of violence on campus, cadets are only allowed to enter the campus through a secure teleportation pad.

“It won’t be long now, sir,” says ATHENOS II, as she flares her actuator gills in preparation for the landing. “Please prepare to disembark quickly!”

Squatting here in the spaceship’s cockpit, I finally start breathing again.

“Runcita’s even more beautiful than she was last night,” I croak.

“You saw Runcita last night?!” says Fribby.

“ ’Course I did. She appeared to me in a dream.”

“Oh yeah?” she says, rolling her eyes. “Did Runcita happen to say anything to you during her nocturnal visit?”

I look at the robot sideways like she’s a kook.

“ ’Course she did,” I growl. “What, is Runcita going to come to me in my dream and then give me the silent treatment? She said I should go up to her in school today and offer her my crown. She said we’d make a great team! And she said as my Queen she would happily lay my eggs!”

The way Fribby looks at me then with her glowing red eyes, it’s almost as if she’s disappointed in me. Like how can I be such a fool. Or maybe it’s that she pities me.

“But Dean Floop isn’t exactly your biggest fan, in case you forgot. Runcita’s dad hates your guts! Especially after what happened last night. Doctor vs. Dean RageFest? Ring a bell? Your crazy grandpa blinding the Dean in one eye? Sound familiar? Or have you forgotten already?!”

“I can’t see what that’s got to do with anything,” I say. “It’s not like I’m asking Dean Floop to be my Queen.”

“So let me get this straight,” says Fribby. “Leaving out the part about how Runcita’s dad, Dean Floop, hates your guts by proxy and would probably like nothing more than to blast you with a firestream because your grandpa Dr. Terrible just blinded him in one eye last night! Let’s just forget about that for a minute. Now you think Runcita, who is the most beautiful dragon chick in our class and who could have any fool she wanted, is actually going to take your crown and agree to be your Queen for EggHarvest?!”

“Yes ma’am.”

“And why exactly would Runcita do that again?”

“Cuz that’s what she wants.”

“And how do you know that’s what she wants?”

“Cuz she came to me in my dream last night and told me so herself. Haven’t you been listening to a word I said?”

“That’s the problem,” says Fribby. “I’ve been listening to every single word you’ve said!”

“Where’s the problem then? I don’t hear a problem.”

“I swear you sound crazier than a bear with a badger’s butt for a mouth.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Badgers can’t talk with their butts.”

“So what’s your point?”

“So a bear couldn’t neither.”

“A bear couldn’t either what?”

“Talk with a badger’s butt,” I say.

“Since when did you become an expert on badger butts?”

“Oh I don’t know, probably around the same time you became an expert on talking bears.”

The robot harrumphs and I notice her shiny chrome tail has raised up some and is twitching around. She is definitely miffed, and judging by her body language she’s just a couple tail shakes away from making a full-on Threat Display.

“OK, Mr. Lover Fiend,” snarls Fribby, her voice laden with sarcasm. “Tell me this. So when Runcita came to visit you in your dream last night?”

“Yeah?”

“What was she wearing?”

“Nothing,” I say. “She was naked. Her nipples were real perky and hard—”

“Stop! Forget I asked!”

Then Fribby mimes sticking a silver claw down her throat and gagging.

The spaceship screeches to a halt in the parking spot.