Foo Factory

Down below, mass tangles of wiring hung between flickering screens and bays of valves, beam tetrodes glowing violet or lime-green. Rainbow lights pulsed along ionized gasses in glass tubes and flasks. Heavy-duty High Tension cables hung from ceramic insulators and harsh strip lighting dangled precariously from chains and improvised scaffolding. High on one wall a huge screen showed:

Project Deadline

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Don’t let the Mayans down

“We can’t use the water pistols with all this electricity about – remove your magazines and pass them to Ferdy,” ordered Boz.

They could make out several assembly lines trundling inwards towards the centre of the cavern floor. One carried copper tanks like oversize water heaters.

“Vril accumulators,” pronounced Slasher sagely.

Another line was doing pipe cots, with robot arms sewing canvas covers and welding joints. Yet another bore printed circuit boards, technical bits and electronic pieces, between robots that soldered and snipped, towards half-finished, splayed-bell shaped craft, like bizarre giant hub caps, their shell plates being welded, riveted and spray-painted by beavering robots on the outside, whilst metal mechanics rushed in and out with the fittings as they arrived on the lines. One completed Reichsflugscheiben sat on a flatbed, narrow-gauge railway truck receiving the finishing touches to its paint job. A Chat Souterrain in a silver radiation suit and fish-bowl helmet was stencilling alien symbols around the hull.

µƒß ç¬ø∂^øñ +      

“Looks a bit like Sanskrit to me,” said Phoebles, to everyone else’s surprise.

The pals grouped and squatted in a circle to discuss a plan of action while an apparently uninterested Ginsbergbear opened a nearby junction box that had caught his attention, marked as it was with the inscription ‘DON’T!’ on the door in large, red letters. Once inside he snipped through some of the wiring, mostly blue wires, and a fat bunch of filaments that had all been taped together. He unscrewed a connector block and began swapping connections, yellow wires for green wires; brown wires for the pretty little striped ones. Finally he took two red wires and shorted them together with a crack and a spark. Down below some of the banks of valves flickered and went out. Some of the valves began to glow brighter and brighter. Then they all began to strobe neurotically. The robots lost control, mechanical arms waved and jerked, welding arms lanced and riveting arms sewed. The humming and crackling of barely harnessed alternating current soared orgasmically. White lab-coated overseer Chats looked uncertain, worried, panicked. Bolts of lightening began to arc over the insulators and a maniacally frenzied laser arm sliced a ruby pencil of lethal light through a dangling power cable. The severed conduit swung down till its exposed core shorted against one of the bays, sprayed sparks above the growing pandemonium.

“RUN!” cried Ginsbergbear as he rushed past his comrades, and a small explosion shook the stalactites.