Chapter Forty-Five – Uncanny

Chapter Forty-Five – Uncanny

“The Uncanny Valley is a primitive warning system. It tells you that something is wrong, incorrect, or fake.

We don’t know why.”

–Soma Psychologica, 2049

***

I looked at Jennifer who stood rather awkwardly next to a mop and bucket and next to a floor-cleaning robot-charging station. She was bent to the side a little to avoid brushing her head against the shelves of cleaning products at about forehead height. “Comfy?” I asked.

“I have been in more constricting positions before,” the sex bot confirmed.

That was good enough for me. “Alright. You, uh, stay in here and stay quiet. I’m sure the smell of cleaning stuff will keep the aliens at bay,” I said with a gesture to the floor behind me. It was covered in about thirty alien’s worth of shredded flesh and several dozen litres of blood.

I couldn’t get a good whiff of the air–probably for the best–with my mask on, but I imagined it was quite pungent. Fortunately, Jennifer didn’t have olfactory glands. Or I hoped for her sake that she didn’t.

“Right… stay safe,” I said before clicking the door shut and turning around.

Manic had a foot atop a model three’s head and was rolling it from side to side as if inspecting it. “Never really got a good look at these guys,” she said as I walked over.

“Really?” I asked.

“I mean, I’ve seen them on TV and in warnings and the like, but seeing one in person’s different. Like listening to a recording and being at the show, you know?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Doesn’t help that most of the signs for these guys are cartoony.”

The model three was an ugly bastard, even missing a couple of limbs and flopped onto the ground like a sack of potatoes, it still managed to be kind of scary in a sort of primal… wrong way. There was something about a lot of the antithesis that didn’t click with my monkey brain.

I think it might have been some sort of uncanny-valley effect. It had flesh that looked clearly plant-like, but not, and the proportions were just entirely wrong. Things from Earth had… maybe not a common blueprint, but most animals followed a more or less similar look when it came to their proportions, and the antithesis didn’t. The head was too flat, the mouth with its three hinges was off, and… yeah, it wasn’t right.

“We’ve got to rig the place to blow,” I said. “I’d like to get that done with, then we can head back to the city. It’s getting to be late, and I want to be back before it starts getting dark.”

“Scared of the dark?”

“Huh? No? I’m a stealth specialist, and I’m cat-themed, do you think I’d be afraid of the dark? Nah, just don’t want to be caught out in the open at night. Plus, when shit goes wrong, in my experience, it always tends to go wrong in the worst way around morning, noon, and just as the sun’s setting.”

“Mm,” Manic said. She cracked her neck left and right, then stood a little straighter. “Let’s get going then.”

I lead the way again. We’d cleared out the aliens coming from the basement until all that was left of them were these bodies splattered across the floor, but I imagined there would be more once we got down.

The basement access was just another stairwell past a smashed door marked ‘Employees Only.’ The antithesis hadn’t destroyed the entire floor to get down this time, which was nice. It meant we got to use stairs.

Less fun was the model four that came hurtling down from above, tentacles already lashing out towards me.

I threw myself back and onto the floor, my laser pointer coming up at the same time even as I squeezed the trigger.

The alien fell onto a barrage of lead that tore apart its tentacles and bit into its main body. Puffs of gas escaped it, but that didn’t stop its fall.

Then Manic fired and the alien’s entire body was rammed across the stairwell and into the far wall where it crashed with a wallop.

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I stared at the ceiling some more, checked the corners for more ambushers, then groaned and rolled onto my front to stand. “Thanks,” I said.

“Where the hell did that come from?” Manic asked.

“Ceiling. Forgot to check my corners,” I admitted. “They’re quiet when they wanna be. Hey, you’re wearing a gas mask, right?”