VOLUME #1 | Excerpt from "Arno's Claw"
WRITTEN BY KLAUS WENZEL, AS SEEN IN PLANET SCUMM ISSUE #4 AND VOLUME #1
The dishes cleaned and put away, the new mail ordered, and the house plants watered and vibrant in the dark, Arno-6 had little else to do but retire to his chair in the living room. Equipped with proximity sensors trained to his internal wavelengths, Arno-6 only needed to seat himself in the chair to be recognized. Upright, with palms resting flat upon the tops of his knees, Arno-6 closed his eyes and entered a placid state of disuse, the chair’s inbuilt sensors radiating subtle transmissions of rejuvenation into the mechanical locus of his being.
At midnight, the tiny light in the darkened foyer switched from red to green. The front door chirped. Arno-6’s eyes fluttered, then opened at the noise. He was thrown off by this unexpected entry, so far from his employer’s scheduled return. Scanning the dark, Arno-6’s eyelids flittered in alarm, as three hooded, ghost-masked figures bustled into the quiet sanctity of the penthouse. One hung back to close the door, while the other two strode quickly to the chair where Arno-6 was seated.
Registering the gait and build of the intruders, Arno-6 concluded there were two males and a female, the latter being the one who stayed to close the front door. He started to rise from his chair–for what, he wasn’t sure, as he was not equipped with any home defense programming. Swiftly, the male intruder nearest him reached out with a small metal object in his hand. Arno-6 suddenly shuddered and buckled, his whole body falling back down into the chair. Paralyzed, eyes open, he sat below the three gathering intruders, utterly at their mercy. The bolt-charge of the device had rendered him helpless.
“Give it here,” the slighter male said.
The female rustled through a backpack in her hands.
“Come on,” said the former. “Hurry.”
“Here, take it,” she said, her voice muffled by the mask, as she handed over something heavy. She carted the bag off in the direction of the kitchen, momentarily leaving her two counterparts behind.
In both gloved hands, the slighter male now wielded a bulky box, with a shaded visor at the front. Squeezing the trigger, a pale green ray of light projected from the glass visor. With surgical precision, the intruder lowered the beam across Arno-6’s forehead, pausing at his optical lenses.
Arno-6 writhed in his chair, as if being tickled with invisible electrodes. Blinded by the beam, he struggled to protect his personality data. The green became a hot white static, flooding and overwhelming him. When his Identifense programming finally caved, a dark oblivion overtook Arno-6, leaving him inert in the chair.
Job done, the three masked intruders repacked their belongings and coolly beat a retreat, the synth twitching in their wake The hall light briefly illuminated the foyer, then disappeared.
