Story Navigation:
Part 1
THE ROBOTS OF JERICHO
“Hey, college boy! Are you gonna unpack those crates?” Ralph Stevenson barked. “Or are you just gonna look at ‘em all day?”
The maintenance crew boss looked upon Pete with rheumy, bloodshot eyes. His hands were on his hips and his considerable beer belly hung over his utility belt. A smoldering cigarette was clamped in the boss’s mouth. Smoking was forbidden in the plant area of the Stillwater Manufacturing Company; but Ralph flouted this rule whenever the general manager wasn’t around. And he knew that Pete would never dare to say a word to the higher ups.
“I’m on it,” Pete Greer said, as if the older man could not see him straining against the curled end of the crowbar. The business end of the tool was wedged between two planks of one of the giant crates marked: JERICHO ROBOT COMPANY. Pete was slight of build; and even when he used all of his weight as leverage the task was difficult.
Not wanting to give Ralph the satisfaction of seeing him fail completely, Pete took a deep breath, summoned all of his strength, and threw himself backward, his hands clenched tightly around the crowbar.
This effort only succeeded in dislodging the tapered end of the crowbar from the crate. There was the sound of wood splintering; then the crowbar went clattering to the factory floor with a metallic jangle. Pete fell back on his butt, knocking his tailbone against a protruding electrical floor outlet. These pesky things were scattered throughout the floor of the manufacturing area.
Ralph threw his head back and guffawed, his belly jiggling. “That was real good, college boy,” he said through his laughter. Ralph used the term “college boy” as a curse, as if everyone knew that university students were all either subversives, pansies, idiots, or worse. “Why don’t you pick yourself up and give it another try, huh? Only like a man this time. Jeez.” He shook his head contemptuously.
“If you need to, college boy, fish around for a bigger crowbar or a wedge and a hammer in the tool room. But just get it done. I want all five of these crates unpacked by noon. Work through your lunch break if you have to. Then you and me and Walt are goin’ to start on the installation.”
“Okay,” Pete said, lifting himself from the floor. He patted his legs in an attempt to brush the dust from his heavy polyester and cotton twill workpants. His tailbone still smarted horribly; but he was not going to let Ralph know that. “I’ll get it done.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it.” Ralph headed off in the direction of the office area. No doubt he was going to park himself in the company cafeteria, where he would smoke and drink sodas while reading the paper. The plant was closed today for the Fourth of July weekend. No one was here but the maintenance crew, so Ralph could loaf around while collecting time-and-half holiday pay.
When Ralph had gone, Pete paused to assess the task before him. There were five crates, each one about eight feet high and five feet across. They were placed in a long row across from the loading dock, not far from where the truck had delivered them the previous Friday.
Pete walked along the row of crates toward the loading dock. Each one bore the simple inscription JERICHO ROBOT COMPANY in black stenciled letters. The Stillwater Manufacturing Company made welded body components for the automotive industry—door panels, floor panels and the pillars that separated the front and rear seat areas. The robots inside these crates would be huge, like the ones already installed on the production lines.
Pete had been working at Stillwater since early June, when classes at West Virginia University broke for the summer. Next summer he would try to land something better in Wheeling or Parkersburg. Thanks to constant harassment and hazing from Ralph and Walt, the job here had turned out to be a fairly miserable summertime gig.
But he did enjoy watching the welding robots.
Pete had never set foot inside an automated manufacturing plant prior to June, and he had never seen a welding robot in action. Maybe that was why they fascinated him so much. A welding robot consisted of a tall jointed metal body, tipped with a beaklike apparatus that welded workpieces as they traveled along an assembly conveyor.
When welding robots executed their programmed routines, they vaguely reminded Pete of dinosaurs—or better yet, dragons. Like a flock of prehistoric reptiles, the robots dipped their elongated avian heads and bit down on the metal pieces that flowed past them, producing a shower of sparks and an ozone smell with each bite.
The robots were powerful—no doubt that was part of their fascination. When the robots were in their automated operational mode, they were isolated behind a locked metal cage and a prominent warning sign. These precautions were well warranted. One of these beasts could easily crush a man.
And perhaps they were waiting for a chance to do just that.
This last thought made Pete feel foolish, even as it made him shiver. The welding robots were driven by electricity and pneumatic force, nothing more. They only appeared to be sentient beasts. Any notion to the contrary was simply his mind’s way of alleviating boredom—killing time by playing tricks on itself.
And why shouldn’t he feel boredom? After all, it was a beautiful summer morning, and he was stuck in an empty factory building with Ralph and Walt. He looked out the open doorway of the loading dock: the big metal door that received truck cargo was rolled up to a foot below the ceiling. The view it afforded was impressive—at least by West Virginia standards. The open field beyond the loading dock area was a grassy sea of black-eyed Susan, lilac, and chicory. In the distance, the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains rolled in their midsummer glory.
And he had to get all of these crates unpacked by the afternoon.
Pete continued walking. Maybe a closer observation of the crates would provide a clue as to how he might open them more easily. Then he noticed the customs markings on the third crate: Cairo, Beirut, Haifa.
A long way from here. The crates had made a substantial journey before arriving in West Virginia. Had these robots really been shipped all the way from the Middle East? That didn’t make sense. Most high-tech manufacturing robots were made in Japan or Germany.
But it was apparently true.
At the end of the row of crates was a smaller box, also from the Jericho Robot Company. Pete opened this box easily. It contained the installation and user manuals for the robots.
The first page of the user manual contained the following words:
“Thank you for purchasing from the Jericho Robot Company. Our robots are ferocious and fearless, like the Philistine warriors of old.”
Now that was weird. Why would anyone want to describe an industrial robot as ferocious and fearless? Well, these robots came from overseas, so perhaps it was a mistranslation.
“Whatcha doin,’ college boy?”
Pete looked up to see not Ralph, but Walt Crenshaw. The third member of the happy maintenance trio was the physical opposite of Ralph. Whereas the maintenance crew boss was a barrel-chested whale of a man, Walt was tall and lanky.
Walt was intermediate in age between Pete and Ralph—perhaps in his mid-thirties. Unlike Ralph, Walt had no formal authority over Pete. But because of the age difference—and the fact that Pete was temporary summertime help—Walt felt that he had license to lord over the younger man. He had quickly adopted Ralph’s habit of calling Pete “college boy,” and frequently used the moniker with dark enthusiasm.
“I’m just making sure that all the manuals are here,” Pete said, turning back to the book.
Walt stood above Pete and began reading over his shoulder.
“’Philistine warriors’?” Walt inquired.
“That’s right, Walt. You’ve heard of the Philistines. They were in the Old Testament—the enemies of the ancient Hebrews. Remember the story of David and Goliath? Well, Goliath was a Philistine.”
And it turned out that these robots were called “Goliaths” as well. On the next page of the user manual were the words:
“Instructions for the installation and use of the Goliath model 4909 industrial welding robot.”
The name of this particular model of robot was not surprising, given the company’s name and its connections to the ancient lands of the Bible. But this revelation caused a chill to go up his spine, nonetheless.
He continued flipping through the pages of the manual. Towards the end of the book, there were twenty or thirty pages written in another language.
“What the heck is that?” Walt asked. “Japanese?”
“No way,” Pete replied. No resident of Tokyo would have been able to decipher the script on these pages. In fact, to the best of Pete’s knowledge, no one who had been alive for the past few thousand years would have been able to read this—not fluently at least.
Pete had no trouble recognizing the runes on the pages at the end of the manual (although he could not even begin to read them). A half dozen archeology and ancient history classes will fill your head with trivia like that. This past semester Pete had taken a Near East Archaeology course at WVU. The writing on these pages was a dead ringer for the runes carved into the clay tablets that had been unearthed at the biblical site of Ekron, in northern Israel.
These were Phoenician runes—but they had apparently been printed with modern software and printing equipment.
“If it ain’t Japanese, then what is it?” Walt asked. His tone suggested that he would be ready to challenge whatever the college boy said.
“As best as I can tell,” Pete said. “These pages here at the end of the manual are written in the ancient Philistine language, using a Phoenician script.”
Walt shook his head. “Whadda you talkin’ about?”
“The ancient Philistines used a variant of the Phoenician alphabet for a while,” Pete explained. “Or at least that is what historians and archaeologists believe. The Philistines later adopted Aramaic, the principle language of the Middle East in New Testament times.”
“How d’you know that?”
“I’m a history major at WVU.”
“Sure you are. You’re the college boy here. But what I want to know is—who the heck uses that stuff now?”
“No one does. No one has communicated in the language written on these pages for thousands of years.”
“Shee-it,” Walt said contemptuously. “That don’t make sense.”
“No, it doesn’t.” On this point, at least, Walt and the college boy agreed.
“So why would the company print that in their manual?”
“I don’t know, Walt. I have no idea.”
Walt delighted in seeing the college boy stumped. He laughed and said, “Well, I guess even a college boy don’t know everything.”
A few seconds later Pete forgot about Walt’s teasing. He was kneeling down on floor over the box that contained the manuals, and his shoulder was resting against the fifth wooden machine crate.
He was about to respond to Walt when he felt—or thought he felt—the slightest trace of a vibration inside the crate.
“What’s wrong with you now, college boy? You look like you seen a ghost!”
“Did you feel that?” Pete asked.
“Feel what?”
Then Pete reconsidered his question. Of course Walt could not have felt the tiny vibrations that came from within the wooden container. He had barely detected them himself, and his body was touching the crate. Walt would not have felt anything, standing three feet away.
“Did you hear anything, then? From inside the crate?”
“Shee-it!” Walt exclaimed. “Now I done heard it all. You craaazy boy!”
“I felt a vibration from inside the crate,” Pete insisted.
“I’ve got to finish repairing the lights over the stamping area,” Walt said. “I got no more time for you and your foolish yappin’. Best you be gettin’ to work, college boy. You got a lot to git done by this afternoon.”
And with that he was gone. As he walked away, he made one more sarcastic remark about the deficiencies of college boys; but Pete did not hear him.
Pete’s attention was focused on the fifth crate.
He stood and laid both hands against one wooden face of the last JERICHO ROBOT COMPANY crate. The planks were rough-hewn and coated with splinters. He was careful to hold his hands still, so as to avoid getting a splinter stuck in one of his palms.
He could detect no vibrations through his hands, nor any movement from inside the crate. Had it been his imagination after all? Or perhaps it was a very small earthquake that he had felt. The state of West Virginia was crisscrossed by glacial mountains, and perhaps there was an unstable tectonic plate in this area.
But if it had been a tremor, Walt would have felt it too. There would have been more sounds, more things rattling.
Pete leaned forward and placed his ear against the crate. He held his breath.
He heard nothing.
Oh well, perhaps it wasn’t important anyway. The important thing was that he had to unpack five large crates by noon. He glanced at his watch: it was already past ten-thirty.
As annoying as Ralph could be, his last words had contained a kernel of useful advice. This job would go much faster if he could find a wedge and a hammer in the tool room. He could use these tools to make an opening in each crate. Then he could use the crowbar to pry the boards apart. Yes, that should definitely work and—
Just then the sound of metal scraping against metal broke the silence of the empty factory. The noise came from within the second crate in the row of five. The source was unmistakable. This was immediately followed by a loud THUNK! and a cracking sound, as something inside the second crate shifted against the wooden planks and fractured one of them.
Despite being startled, Pete hurried over to the second crate. There was a visible rupture in one side of the crate; he could see a sliver of the darkness from inside the box.
Pete leaned over and held his eye up to the fissure. Nothing but inscrutable darkness. He couldn’t actually see anything.
So he waited.
He stood beside the crate for a minute. Then two. Then three. Like the vibrations inside the fifth crate, this was apparently a one-act show. But at least he could now be reasonably sure that the earlier incident had not been his imagination—because this one was definitely not his imagination.
The most likely explanation was that the robots were not properly secured inside the crates. They were therefore shifting due to gravity acting on their joints. Perhaps the robot in the second crate had been secured with a thin piece of twine, and the twine had finally broken a few seconds ago.
Pete looked at his watch again. It was now 10:46 a.m.
Continue reading (additional navigation controls above left)
Copyright 2009 Edward Trimnell All rights reserved