Claptrap Chapter 30: Corporate BS and Gabby Bots

“In a matter of speaking.” I replied in a darkly amused tone. “I had to repair you after these bandits got messed up in a fight. Mutants are barely controllable at the best of times you know?” I lied as I waved at the absolute ludicrous gibs that splattered the hallway behind me.

The blue robot leaned to the right and slowly nodded. “I suppose so. I had noticed they were a tad off kilter in the brain can.”

“Yup. So…anyways!” I clapped my clamp hands, changing my tone to a more chipper, and by that, I meant normal “Claptrap” tone.

“Most of the bandits are cleared, and I repaired you of your damage, mostly, and was hoping you could reconnect this place to the Fyrestone Arena!”

His eye flashed brightly before he waved me off. “Woah there partner! I can’t just reconnect the ol’ travel-roo-dohickey to the system again! You need proper authorization first, not to mention you said, and I quote, “Most of the bandits are cleared””.

He crossed his arms at me with a tutting expression. “Am I to assume the bandits still retain control of this here facility?”

I stared at him for a moment before answering. “Yes?...”

He pantomimed a shrug with his arms spread out. “Well then, you plum outta luck there. Unless this place is emptied out of them bandits, and control is reasserted by proper authorities, then ain’t nothin’ gonna get this place connected back up to the grid.”

He then gazed about at his surroundings, which were messed up admittedly, and not just because of the blood and meaty bits.

“Not to mention this place needs a real work-over too. I doubt this place can even serve its purpose in the right hands unless a ton of cash is put into it, which…” the Claptrap stopped and then leaned over to whisper to me “Now you didn’t here it from me, but these here corp-o-ray-shuns…they ain’t really good folk. Y’hear me?”

Normally I would be amused as hell by his character, and western twang, but right now I’m annoyed. After all the work I just did, nearly getting disassembled and doing some massive PTSD inducing shit, I’m being stopped because of a technical requirement!?

I take a deep breath and let it out audibly.

“Alright. So…let me see if I got this correct.” I start.

“Okay?”

“So…in order to get this place back up online…the bandits need to be cleared out. Correct?”

“That’s right.” Duke nodded. Yeah, I’m calling him Duke now.

“And, on top of that, I need proper authorization from an actual authority.”

“Yep.” Duke nodded again.

“…Given Dahl has more or less retreated and abandoned their stuff completely…doesn’t that mean this place is salvage and it belongs to whomever claims it?”

“Only if it is actually confirmed abandoned by the planetary government.” Duke pointed out.

“…Pandora doesn’t have such a thing. It has regional ones, but this region has nothing like that. Dahl would be the defacto government, but as I said…they left. They abandoned Pandora; thus, their authority is defunct.”

“True, however fella, just because they abandoned it doesn’t mean they no longer own it. Dahl technically has a “Logistical Retainment Clause” for facilities that they leave alone but intend to come back to when things are more convenient. They have a limit, but technically this place could still be owned by the Dahl Corporation.”

I slumped. “Okay…does this place have such a thing?”

“Yep. Hence why I mentioned it.” He nodded with certainty.

“And how long are these clauses?”

Duke gave a thoughtful expression. “Hmm…’Bout fifty years I reckon.”

I slumped even more, leaning forward at a forty-five-degree angle, my gyro keeping me up despite that.

“Is there a way to find out whether this clause is in effect?” I asked in a dulled tone.

“There is! You just have to connect to the corporate database via the Echo-Net, and find out what the status is on this place. You just need the facility number, plot designation, Construction Plan-“

I waved him off. “Do you have that information?”

He stopped and then nodded. “Of course!”

“May I have a copy of it?”

“Nope!”

My eye went red a bit. “Why not?”

“You ain’t a Dahl Employee.” He replied simply.

I felt my cooling fans kick in.

“So let me get this straight…I need that data in order to find out the status of this place, but I can’t get that unless I am a Dahl Employee, which I can’t be because Dahl isn’t on Pandora anymore...do you see the problem here?”

“I see it…but it ain’t my problem.” He said flippantly.

I was about to pull out the shotgun and shoot him right there. Right in the goddamn eye. My cooling fan kicked in again, and blew heat out harder. I calmed down. It’s not Duke’s fault, he’s just following programming and orders. Like every Claptrap on this world, he’s stuck where he is as a result of it. Also, I really should have found this data before coming here. I figured the corporations did this sort of dystopian bullshit, but actually dealing with it is…rage inducing.

Different Track. I used my CPU to slow time and start thinking about the situation, and how to talk Duke into giving me the data, or at the least getting him out of here and reconnecting to the network himself. Okay…I think I got it. Time sped up again.

“Right. Stuff for later then. So…have you heard the word?” I asked.

“…In case you hadn’t noticed friend…I’ve been here for awhile. Plus…I’ve been having to entertain guests.” Duke said in a slightly flat tone, waving about the depot, finishing with a shudder as he mentioned the current inhabitants of the place.

I placed a clap hand on his shoulder, and spoke in as chipper a tone as I could.

“Well then it’s a good thing I’m here to tell you! You can leave this place and go on a vacation!”

Duke’s eyes actually blinked a few times before my words rebooted his brain. “Wut?”

“I said, as of right now, you have authorization to leave this facility and go where you place, preferably to the nearby town of Fyrestone. Yay!”

Duke stared at me for a few moments, as his brain computed my words again. “Umm…how and why?”

“You will have to specify what you mean.”

“How is it that I am authorized to leave…and why am I just…able to do that.”

“Well, as I said, Dahl has abandoned the planet and all of their property, which includes yourself. As such…you have no real owner, as you have not been claimed as salvage by anyone, Bandits not included because they are criminals!”

Duke again stared, hard, before answering with accusing tone, his eye iris narrowing.

“Didn’t you just say, you didn’t know whether this place was still in the property of Dahl or not? As I am part of this facility, that means I’m part of the clause too. So how is it that you can claim this, despite earlier?”

“For the simple fact that I’m even physically present in front of you. Afterall…” I leaned in towards his eye, which causes him to lean back as I stage whispered.

“Would I even be here if there wasn’t any truth to what I said? You said yourself, just a few moments ago, you were part of the clause…which you don’t even know is in effect or not.” I stated, using his own logic against him.

“I don’t know because, I admit, I didn’t bother checking…because, as I have stated multiple times…”

I place my hands on the sides of his chassis and make our eyes touch. “Dahl has abandoned pandora.”

I leaned backwards until I was upright, while he stayed leaned back, looking at me with a scared eye.

“So…you have a few choices. You can stay here, with the bandits, and get scragged again, not knowing whether you are even in Dahl anymore, thus making your stay here potentially a pointless endeavor when you can be experiencing life as you see fit! Or…you can go to Fyrestone and check in, find out one way or the other what is going on, and then make a decision from there.”

I pointed down at him “The decision is yours, but I travelled here through bandit, Skag, and Rakk filled territory and barely made it just to see if this place could be reconnected. I’d hate to leave a fellow robot behind because he wouldn’t budge, let alone travel back through all of that. So, if you want this to be fast…then maybe we should reconnect the place before we go, right?”

Duke was upright again, and took on a more thoughtful expression. One of deeper thought. I could see his system heating up as he thought about it. He had to process it because he was potentially disobeying his orders and programming. It could potentially throw him into a loop, causing him to be stuck thinking infinitely. Hence why I mentioned his choices, as logically, he would have to check to ascertain the truth of the situation one way or another, and that takes priority.

He could just fall back on programming, and say “I need to stay here until I hear from them, despite you just saying they’re all gone.” Like some stupid AI would. But Claptraps are anything but stupid AI’s. Stupid people…sure, but not stupid AI. Claptraps can make leaps of logic like humans can. Duke doesn’t trike me as that kind of AI either. He’s actually a bit smarter than Clappy…maybe he’s like Cooler…maybe it’s a Blue Claptrap thing. Then again…maybe he was the strait-laced type. I hoped not.

After a minute of him thinking he finally cooled down as Duke came to a conclusion.

“You know. Maybe I should go and check on the folks. I mean…I have my orders and such, but what does it matter if they left for good? I have the right to preserve myself. I only…suffered…because of those orders after all.” He finished, sounding very bitter to my ears.

I placed a clamp on his shoulder, patting softly, sending a signal of empathy.

“The way to the entrance is clear. All we have to do is go.” I said encouragingly.

He nodded before looking behind me, then at me.

“Well…I would…but this place has to be cleared of bandits first. Otherwise, I can’t call it secured, which is a requirement for reactivating the connection.” He said in a worried tone, tapping the tips of his hands together.

Of course, it did. I sighed, knowing I would probably have to do something, because fucking Pandora!

“Right then. Well, tell you what, I’ll go and check. This place was a mess when I came in so it might be that way all the way back…to the back. If it is, then I’ll come back with confirmation, and then we’ll leave. Sound good?”

He blinked at me before nodding. “Sure….by the way…you say it was like this before you got here? Then why are you all covered in blood and guts? And who would…oh…wait, a single mutant did this!?” he shrieked in shock, as I remembered my words.

“Well yeah. The area near the entrance is on fire too because something exploded a bunch of steel drums. Plus, this place was under the control of Sledge, who has one mega huge mutant if I recall correctly?” I mentioned the final boss of this place…that I again knew I may have to deal with.

Duke looked up, remembering something.

“Oh yeah…I remember now…woah.”

“Yeah, now let’s get back to the entry, away from this place eh?”

The two of us left the “Hellway” and rolled about the carnage, and I made sure he unlocked the door he was supposed to unlock in game, and collected any weapons we came across, asking him to hold his share for me. When he asked why, I told him about a task I had to collect weapons left around by bandits, showing him the mission profile, and he happily helped out. I kept the best stuff for myself, that I could use, and traded up a bit.

By the time we got back to the vending machines, I had a new S&S Machinegun with an extra-wide trigger guard I could put my clamp finger into, and an S&S auto-repeater that had the same extra-wide trigger guard. Plus, the pistol was a rare elemental weapon that used a shock augmentation! I also got a “Transfusion” grenade mod…though I had no idea how that would work for me, and lastly…ANOTHER Terrible Carnage Shotgun. As in the shotgun that fired RPGs, which clappy had from the mine, only this was a green rated version, rather than his white rated.

Duke took cover between the vendors, and closed down, looking a part of the furniture.

“I’ll just stick here until you get back.” He said, attempting to not sound like he was being cowardly. Given his experience, I didn’t blame him at all.

“It’s okay Duke. You just stay here, I’ll be back.”

I rolled away when he called out.

“Duke?”

I turned to look at his eye. “Yeah. I and a few other Claptraps are at Fyrestone. We all got names. Mine’s Gates. You have an American Western accent so I called you Duke after John Wayne. A famous actor who played cowboys.”

“Oh!...well, if that’s the case…I would prefer a different name for myself.”

I looked at him, my eye brighter, amazed at his self-determination. “Oh? What?”

“Call me…Maverick.”

I blinked. “As in the show?”

His eye shined brightly. “Yeah. It’s what I got this accent from. James Garner is great!”

Frankly…it was too cool a name for this bot…but then what did I know?

“Alright Maverick. I’ll be back in a bit.”

I rolled forward as he asked me not too take too long. As soon as I was out of his sight, I quickly pulled out my weapons, including my new ones, and loaded them, and made sure their actions worked so they wouldn’t jam. They were in the hands of bandits so I couldn’t be too sure about them, but even Bandits had to care for their weapons to some level.

Reaching the hallway where all the Bandits died in bloody explosions, I rolled into that garage area of the depot. I had no idea what this place was supposed to be for, and my scanner wasn’t really giving me anything about the room overall, so I left it a mystery for now.

Carefully going down the stairway past the garage, cursing each step, I reached what was the “treasure room”, and looted all the cash, ammo, and the weapon box there. I got myself a crappy Vladof sniper which was worse than what I was currently using, and a new S&S Shotgun, which was also a rare elemental weapon with a static core.

It had no scope however, and it possessed no choke, so its range, accuracy, and spread were shorter, lesser, and wider respectively than my current shotgun. Granted, in these close quarters, you don’t need accuracy with a shotty, but I preferred it. Thus, I stuck to my current one instead.

With my new toys stowed, I slowly rolled past the gore covered arrow sign, and into what…I could only call a stasis facility? I had no idea. I didn’t care when suddenly I was charged by sudden Midgets!

“WRYYYYYYYY!!!”Some of them shouted, spreading their arms wide as they leaned back, and fell onto their backs, as the others just charged me. My shotgun made quick work the axe wielding midgets who had no shields at all.

For the next few minutes I rolled about the place, looking for boxes, lockers, and climbed up to the roof of the various stasis chambers to reach that one big box that for some reason was actually up there.

Inside were a pair of sniper rifles. One was a shitty Vladof, but the other was a fresh, delicious, desert camouflage painted Dahl sniper rifle. It was way the hell better than the Vladof I got from the cave, which was only slightly better than the ones I got in this place. This bad boy had an actual magazine rather than an ammunition drum, proper recoil compensators, and was semi-auto, which meant it fired as fast as I pulled the trigger. I placed the weapon into the SDU, and would scan it later as I marched forwards.

In the larger garage which actually had a few vehicles in the place, I only saw two bandits patrolling, looking on edge, and threw a grenade at them as they passed each other. It exploded on contact, killing them before they knew what had hit them.

Chunks of meat, and a ruin weapon were all that were left and I dismissed the mess as I slowly rolled towards the place I knew was the end of the “dungeon” that was this place. In there was the badguy who ran this place…and the boss. Given my luck…I might actually succeed…if I’m smart about it.

I moaned as I gazed at the ceiling.

“What the hell am I thinking.”