“Squeejies and Gentlesquorfs, and all you Squmpusses in between, put your appendages together in a rhythmic fashion for our eternal show runner: Josh Bolognese!” A synthetic voice sounded over the loudspeaker.
The crowd of gelatinous beasts of all shapes, colors, and sizes writhed around the colosseum, the wet sound they produced from making contact with one another acting as an approximate facsimile of how the race formally known as humans used to clap.
A robot wheeled itself out on to the stage. it looked almost like someone had taken a cardboard box and attached four wheels to its bottom. When it hit the center of the stage, it performed a J-turn so that the front was facing the mutated masses.
Its front had a simple black screen with a white line across it. As it spoke, the line vibrated wildly, matching the wavelength of its synthetic voice.
“Greetings. I shall commence tonight’s ceremony with some humor. Loading Joke Database…” The sound of a dialup connection could be heard as the face of the machine known as Josh switched to a progress bar.
It took almost a minute, but eventually Josh’s former white line face returned, and he distributed his joke, “What is the deal with airplane food?” The massive globs that made up the stadium audience remained unmoved as an outdated laugh track played.
Josh continued as soon as the laugh track completed. “Commence sequence: Altterra’s Next Great Android.”
A little musical ditty began to play as the formless mob writhed around in a frenzy, slaps and slorps emphasizing their excitement as the curtain of the stage raised, revealing three lovely automatons.
Josh wheeled up the first of these three shapely robots, explaining in its robotic voice,
“Android #1:
Model #R383CK9H.
Likes: Long walks on the beach.
Dislikes: Gramuts.”
R383CK9H was a baby blue colored android in the approximate shape of what a human used to look like. She had a triangular head, triangular breasts, and four spindly robotic arms that circled around her body as she swiveled at the hips. Rather than legs, her hips simply tapered to a fine point approximately two feet below her rotation joint. How she was able to seemingly hover forward, and then back to her spot, with perfect poise on such an inarticulate frame would have surely astounded the audience if they had the ability to process beyond their animal urges.
Josh wheeled up to the next robot.
“Android #2:
Model #CL91R3
Likes: Falling off of tall structures.
Dislikes: Gramuts.”
CL91R3 was the shortest and widest of the three robots. Neon yellow in color, she looked as though someone had built a woman out of building blocks. Everything from her head to her feet and even her breasts were looked like simple yellow cubes. Without much fanfare, her outer block hand collapsed into her block arm, which collapsed into her shoulder block. The top of this block then opened up, allowing CL91R3 to telescope her arm outward, and with a very limited range of motion, she ‘waved’ at the crowd. The various blobs seemed unmoved.
Josh moved on to the third robot.
“Android #3 and two-time ANGA winner.
Model #156-YAF
Preferred designation: ‘UNA’
Likes: Hunky Boys
Dislikes: Gramuts.”
Una was the most human looking of the androids, most likely because she appeared very much like an autonomous love doll. She had no genitalia, and her boobs were simply mounds of silicon that hung from her chest, with nary a nipple in sight. Her synthetic skin was a pleasant peach tone that reflected the light in just the right way that one could almost mistake her for an old human. Her face was trapped in a frozen look of indifference, until Una reached up slowly in a robotic, jerky manner, pressing the corner of her lips up in a facsimile of a smile.
The gooey audience began to froth at her introduction, tendrils extending outwards from the seats nearest the stage. One Squeejie managed to get some of its purple mass on to the stage, before a security laser descended from the ceiling, vaporizing them in a single shot.
Josh continued undisturbed, “Thus concludes Android Introductions. Insufficient materials available to produce more. Initiate performance parameters. Android #1 commence subroutine.” Josh and the other two androids left the stage, as R383CK9H took center stage.
From the tips of her pointed breasts, her boobs each split apart into three distinct panels, revealing two dark pockets. From these pockets, a pair of bright red balls approximately the size of a cantaloupe rolled out into two of her awaiting hands. This was quickly followed by another pair of balls, this time colored blue, that fell into her remains pair of hands. Her boobs than closed up, restoring her pointy breasts to how they once were.
Music began to play over the loudspeaker, as R383CK9H’s torso began to rotate, matching the tempo. Her juggling performance started reserved, tossing a ball up and catching in the same hand, or sometimes lifting one arm up and dropping the ball into the adjacent hand.
But, as the music picked up, so did the pace and complexity of her routine. She would toss opposite balls above her pointy head, and rotate herself quick enough to catch them with the same arm. She would pass all four balls simultaneously in the opposite direction with such speed, that when viewed from above, it appeared as though the balls were frozen in place.
Eventually, when the music reached an inhuman BPM, R383CK9H tossed all of the balls into the air. As if on cue, her arms disengaged from her shoulders, crawling away as the automaton stood there coldly with no sign of any movement.
The first ball descended, landing squarely on her head and impaling itself. A strange red liquid began to ooze out of it, but the android didn’t mind, moving with imperceptible speed to skewer the next ball (a blue one) on her right triangular breast, followed swiftly with the other blue ball on her left breast.
With a level of acrobatics uncharacteristic of R383CK9H’s model, she performed a front flip, landing precisely on the tip of her head, and stabbing through the remaining red ball.
The audience remained unmoved, as Josh rolled back onstage.
“Satisfactory performance Android #1. It certainly was <Juggling>.” R383CK9H fell forwards, unable to maintain her balance. “Android #2. Commence Performance Subroutine.” He commanded.
As CL91R3 hobbled out on stage, the front panel of Josh opened up, allowing a broom to flop out. With some difficulty Josh managed to awkwardly push the fallen R383CK9H offstage.
CL91R3 stood center stage for only a second before she began to violently shake. Some of the Squmpusses of the crowd had grown so disinterested in the show going on, that they had began trying to devour each other, their colors beginning to mix into wonderful rainbow streaks (because, as we all know, Squmpusses are unable to properly digest one another, despite how much they try, and their various bits will simply float within one another like oil in water). This didn’t change as the shaking increased to such an intensity, that cubes began to fall off CL91R3.
Eventually, all that remained of CL91R3 was a disassembled pile of yellow cubes. It almost seemed like a Squorf in the front row took an interest at this development, a lone green tendril extending out an inch, before quickly being reabsorbed back into its mass in indifference.
A whirring noise was heard from the various cubes formerly known as CL91R3. Various panels began to slide on some of the cubes, and from these extended small metallic limbs. Within a matter of moments, there was now a tiny army of yellow cube robots on stage line up by size.
There must have been about thirty of them, the smallest being about two inches wide while the largest was about a foot across. The arms and legs they had formed all looked identical, save for being the appropriate size for the robot, and were best described as though someone had cobbled together some spare parts to make a limb.
The largest of the cubes slapped the front of its body, trying its best to draw the attention of the uninterested crowd, as it took center stage, its limbs retracting back into itself as it retook its appearance as a simple yellow cube. The next largest robot did much the same, clapping its hands together and stomping its feet before going to center stage and climbing up on top of the previous robot, before transforming into a cube.
This continued for several minutes, the mini, yellow robots desperately trying to draw some sort of reaction from their gloopy observers, before climbing the ever increasingly tall and precarious tower of CL91R3.
Soon enough, the tiniest of the robots was left, releasing a high frequency chirp that finally managed to break the cold indifference of the crowd. Unfortunately for CL91R3, their reaction was not a positive one.
All across the auditorium, tendrils extended outwards, grabbing the nearest thing they could (which for the most part, was other Squmpusses) and started tossing it towards the stage. This made the journey for the little two inch CL91R3 part all the more challenging, as the laser defense system went into overdrive, trying its best to prevent any life form from interacting with what was happening on stage.
Occasionally, the defense system would miss a bit of slime, and the tower would begin to look as though it were toppling over, before miraculously correcting itself. Another time, a stray laser blast would hit the tower, reflecting off the invincible metal casing and firing off into the audience, completely vaporizing an innocent orange Squmpling.
After a grueling minute, the audience began to settle down once more, and just in time, as the last piece of CL91R3 reached the top of herself and completed her blockification, a little yellow flag extended out from the top of the nearly fifteen foot tall tower.
Josh once again wheeled himself on stage. “Adequate job, Android #2. However, penalization will occur for aggravating the crowd.” Without any fanfare, the tower collapsed into itself, leaving CL91R3 as a single, one foot wide, yellow cube. Tiny wheels popped out from the bottom of this cube, as Josh announced, “Uma. Please commence performance.”
Josh and CL91R3 rolled off stage, leaving Uma to slowly saunter onstage, wheeling an Ionic column by her side. The mob of Squmpusses which had finally managed to calm down began to fervently slap against one another in applause at her appearance. As she placed this column in the center stage, the slapping quickly died down, leaving a strange air of anticipation from the still crowd.
Uma reached up and putting her hands on either side of her head, she rotated her head around impossibly. One rotation. Two rotations. On the third rotation, her head came loose, and with little fanfare, she placed it onto the pedestal.
The audience waited with baited breath (Well… not really, as obviously Squmpusses have no need to breathe. Nor do they have an attention span long enough to enjoy suspense such as what Uma was attempting to build. It would have been more appropriate to say that they had entered a passive state of existence until an outside stimulus would provoke them), until suddenly the sound of a bell ringing echoed through the still night air, two pieces of toast popping out of two unseen slots from Uma’s head.
Uma’s body reached over, plucking the two pieces of cooked bread from her head and tossing them out into the crowd.
The cacophony of noise that occurred as it seemed the entire mass of Squmpusses attempted to compressed into the areas where the bread had been tossed. Crumbs began to disseminate amongst the mob, as the two lucky Squorfs who had caught the slices had the meal they were trying to digest ripped out from within them, and the process repeated ad infinitum.
The scuffle was still ongoing as Josh wheeled out on stage, Uma holding her head tightly to her stomach, causing her synthetic breasts to appear much larger. “Amazing Performance, Uma! That was really thinking with your <Toast>.”
The robot host then turned towards the camera, “Now, it is time to commence the voting sequence. Reminder: Vote for the contestant you think performed the best at their task.”
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Note: For your enjoyment and to increase voter turnout, voting has been automated. Please review your selection and the results below
Option #1: R383CK9H ~ 0 Votes
Option #2: CL91R3 ~ -100 Votes
Option #3: Uma ~ 41,719,501 Votes
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It was about ten minutes later. The fight had finally died down, as the Squmpusses that had managed to get a couple of molecules of digestible matter laid around content. Josh and all three contestants had returned to the stage, the automatons returned to their initial states.
“Voting has been ceased. Calculating winner.” The front of Josh rose up, this time revealing a roll of ticker tape. This ticker tape spooled out on to the floor, and as Josh’s front lowered once again, a tiny metal claw descended from the ceiling, lifting it up so that the robot could see it.
“And the winner is…” A drumroll midi began to play, and after several seconds a cymbal crash was heard, “Uma!”
The audience erupted into applause, as Uma walked to the center of the stage. From the floor, a golden tiara and white sash with the words ‘Android #1’ in red lettering arose. As Uma put these on, two meat hooks descended behind the other two androids, impaling through their cores, their bodies hanging limply as they were hauled away backstage.
“Congratulations Uma! You’ve won the right to remain assembled for another year. How do you feel about your victory.” A little microphone extended out of Josh’s head. Uma pressed her lips against the microphone as though to say something, however her lack of any sort of speech synthesis meant that nothing came through.
“Great to hear!” Josh said, continuing on unfazed, as he turned towards the camera, “Thus concludes our broadcast. Thank you for watching, and remember; Stay Sprouncy!”
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& END OF BROADCAST &
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