Chapter 51 - Teaser! (Patreon)

That now rather familiar feeling of forced unconsciousness followed by intense disorientation after I jumped dimensions was back and in full force. And of course, my armor’s systems were deactivated once again, but this time I felt them slowly reactivating, seemingly in time with my own return to consciousness. That, admittedly, was a prudent move on Q’s part. My armor systems could do a lot of damage if my sluggishly awakening mind accidentally triggered something, or I accidentally commanded my ship’s weapon systems to fire on the planet.

For the moment, rather than my 24th century sensors, I had only my body’s formidable, genetically enhanced senses to rely upon. I could feel a bright star heating my face with the wind simultaneously cooling it. I could smell and taste the fragrance of familiar flowers from Earth on the wind and could hear the sounds of human children playing together, carefree and happy. That tended to be a great sign that things were ok. Thankfully, from the sound of things, I hadn’t been dropped into yet another post-apocalyptic Earth, but it was definitely Earth again if all the English I was hearing was to be believed.

The question remained, what dimension I was in?

Along with all these pleasant sensory experiences was the distinct pain of something digging super uncomfortably into my back. What the hell was I lying on?

“Sir, are you all right?” a pleasant, but artificial sounding female voice asked, like the voice was coming from a speaker rather than a living person’s throat. To an Augment whose hearing had been enhanced, the difference was glaring. It was patently obvious that this voice hadn’t been made by organic vocal chords, no matter how pleasant it had been made to sound.

My eyes snapped open in alarm and I was met by a smooth, non-emotive face, but one that had been designed to appear humanoid, with two eyes, and a mouth approximation. It was also a few feet away from me with hands outstretched to either lend assistance or do harm. Given my recent experience upon waking in the Walking Dead universe, I had no desire to risk it, so violence was my default response to an unknown like this.

My left hand knocked the outstretched metallic ‘hands’ away hard, twisting its body and torso unnaturally to the side, while I simultaneously sat up and kicked the legs out from under this…robot. Since it was made to look humanoid, thankfully the knees had been designed to bend like a human’s would so it fell to its ‘knees’ now facing away from me. Now standing, my fingers dug grooves into its thick metal neck as I gripped it tightly and my antiproton pistol materialized in my hand. The weapon’s powered up whining was loud and ominous as I pressed the barrel flush against the side of this thing’s head, about to pull the trigger and melt its head to molten slag when the shocked exclamations of people around me intruded into my thoughts.

“My most sincere apologies for startling you, sir,” the robot offered apologetically, its reaction decidedly unnatural when you considered that I had just knocked it down, damaging it in the process, and had put a gun to its head. “I only wished to offer aid.”

“Don’t hurt her, please!” a couple of young children, a boy and a girl nearby shouted, staring at us in terror. “That’s our nanny!”

‘Their nanny? Was this thing these children’s nanny?’ I thought as my eyes caught those of the frantic children who were begging me not to hurt their robotic nanny.

I quickly glanced down and sure as shit on the thing’s back and front were the words ‘Nanny Bot.’ Other details I hadn’t noticed were the softer colors the thing was painted in, a light comforting purple, with feminizing accessories like a flower headband around its forehead. Children had an amazing ability to anthropomorphize just about anything, so these kids calling this robot their ‘nanny’ and ‘her’ probably shouldn’t have surprised me.