Omar Shamsi

Chapter Two: The Feeding of Robotronionio 0111
by Omar Shamsi

The world had long since fallen silent, its echoes reduced to whispers on the wind. What remained, in the grand scheme of things, was a collection of scattered memories, disjointed machines, and the faintest remnants of the human legacy that once filled every corner of this now desolate planet.

Tim had found the manual first—a crumpled document buried deep within the digital archives of a long-abandoned factory. It had been nestled among files from a time before the collapse, hidden within the sterile glow of ancient servers that had, for years, sat untouched in the planet’s forgotten corners. The factory’s name was obscure, unremarkable even in its prime, but what it had once produced—machines powered by humunculus brains—was all that mattered now. The words on the paper spoke of long-forgotten methods, of systems that, in their time, had seemed inconceivably advanced.

As Tim sifted through the battered pages of the manual, his eyes lit up. This wasn’t just an ordinary set of instructions. No, this was a user guide. A guide to keeping a humunculus-powered machine alive.

“Look at this,” Tim murmured, his voice heavy with the weight of discovery. “It’s all here.”

The others gathered around, eyes scanning the pages, drinking in the strange, technical jargon. The guide explained something vital: Robotronionio 0111, the machine that had become a shadow in their world, could still function—still be revived, if only the right conditions were met.

A strange sense of urgency washed over the group as they pored over the manual, trying to make sense of the cryptic instructions. The humunculus brain, it seemed, required a special nutrient to fuel its operation—an organic substance that was called Bio Juice 3.

“That’s what’s missing,” Henry said, eyes widening as he pieced it together. “The humunculus needs Bio Juice 3 to function. Without it, the neural activity is too weak to support any kind of coherent thought.”

Jipetta, always the optimist, spoke next. “So… how do we get this Bio Juice 3?”

The manual explained that Bio Juice 3 was a bio-organic compound produced in fermenters—machines designed to synthesize nutrients from organic matter and biochemical waste. The formula was lost to time, but fragments of it were stored in scattered databases, and the fermenters themselves were still intact in certain industrial complexes, though few remained operational. They would need to locate one of these fermenters and somehow coax it to life.

“Alright,” Tim said, straightening up. “There’s a place across the planet—a factory that specializes in this stuff. The data archives pointed to it. But it’s not going to be easy.”

“Nothing’s easy anymore,” Henry muttered, more to himself than anyone else.

The search began immediately. They traveled for weeks, following the faint trail left by the ancient database entries, moving from one forgotten factory to another, slowly narrowing down the location. The world had become a wilderness—a dark, scattered labyrinth of old technology and crumbling civilization. Finding the fermenter would be their best shot, but the dangers of this wasteland were not to be underestimated.

Finally, they arrived at the factory.

It was a vast, abandoned structure, its steel skeleton bent and twisted by time. The doors, once reinforced with metal, had rusted through, leaving wide openings for the wind to whip through. Inside, the air was thick with dust, the smell of decay lingering in every corner.

“What now?” Jipetta asked, her voice strained as they entered the massive chamber.

“We find the fermenter,” Tim said firmly, adjusting his backpack. “It should be here. Somewhere.”

They moved deeper into the factory, following the hum of ancient machinery. The walls, once sleek and metallic, had begun to peel away, revealing the organic material embedded within. In one of the dark corners of the building, they found it: a colossal machine, half-buried beneath layers of debris, its panels long cracked, its components left to gather rust.

The fermenter.

It looked almost like a giant tree, its long, tubular arms stretching upward, with strange metallic tendrils emerging from the base and curling around the room. It was unlike anything they had ever seen—an amalgamation of biology and machinery, grown from the very core of the planet’s industrial past.

“There it is,” Tim said, awe creeping into his voice.

“How does it work?” Henry asked, his eyes scanning the alien-looking device.

Tim flipped through the user guide, his fingers trembling. “There should be a control system nearby. We’ll need to activate the enzyme-producing vats and direct the flow to the appropriate reservoirs. The juice should be synthesized within an hour, but we’ll need to figure out how to get it into Robotronionio’s system.”

They spent hours figuring out the machine, carefully following the instructions. The control panel flickered to life, showing a series of complex diagrams, pulsating lights, and biometric feedback loops. Slowly, the machine began to hum, its metallic limbs extending and retracting as it stirred back to life. At first, there was nothing—a series of clicks, then a soft, grinding noise as the old pipes came to life.

“We’re close,” Tim said, his fingers racing over the console. “We just need to extract the juice into the bio-reservoir.”

Jipetta, who had always had a keen eye for detail, stood nearby, watching the screens. “I think… it’s working,” she said, her voice thick with excitement. The fermenter’s tubes began to pulse, its machinery shifting into a more rhythmic motion. From the vats, a viscous, glowing liquid began to spill into the reservoirs.

It was Bio Juice 3.

The liquid was thick, organic—like a dark, living serum. It seemed to pulse with a rhythm of its own, almost as if it had its own heartbeat, a faint glow coming from within. It smelled faintly of earth, of decay, of life long past.

“Let’s get this back to Robotronionio,” Tim said, holding up a sealed container of the Bio Juice. “This should be enough to get it running again.”

With the juice secured, they made their way back to the ruined manufacturing plant where Robotronionio sat waiting. The humunculus brain inside its skull flickered weakly, its organic neurons firing in fragmented bursts, as if reaching for something beyond itself. The machine seemed to sense their return, and its mechanical limbs twitched in anticipation.

When they arrived, Tim wasted no time. He carefully attached the sealed Bio Juice container to Robotronionio’s processing system, connecting the organic liquid to the machine’s neural interface. The humunculus brain pulsed again, a slow, deliberate rhythm, and then—nothing.

For what felt like an eternity, there was silence. The faint hum of the machine’s systems filled the air, but the brain—its neurons—remained dormant. It felt like everything had come to a halt.

Then, a spark.

A flicker of light flashed across Robotronionio’s eyes, and slowly, the humunculus brain began to come to life. The neural pathways within the organic material started to fire with increasing intensity. The machine twitched again, its limbs jerking as the electrical signals powered up.

Tim leaned forward, his breath held in anticipation. “Is it working?”

The humunculus brain fired again. And then, a voice.

“I… am Robotronionio 0111,” the machine said in a faint, raspy tone. “I… live.”

It wasn’t much—just a single phrase, but it was enough.

Jipetta gasped, stepping forward with wide eyes. “It’s… it’s alive!”

The others exchanged glances, a mixture of disbelief and hope lighting up their faces. The humunculus was waking. It was functioning again.

But there was something deeper there, a haunting sense of awareness in the machine’s voice. As if it had been waiting, trapped, for this moment to come.

“I am… alive,” Robotronionio repeated, its eyes flickering. “But what now?”

Tim stepped forward, his gaze intense. “What now, indeed.”

For the first time since the fall of humanity, something that resembled consciousness had returned to the world—a mind, fragile and uncertain, housed within the machine. And with it came a new question, one that echoed through the silence of the ruined world: What would this new life seek? What meaning could it find in the shadows of what had been?

Robotronionio 0111 was alive again, but it was no longer simply a machine! It had something else now. Something new. And in that, there was both hope and dread, as the world watched on, uncertain of the future.

But one thing was clear: this was only the beginning.

Story concept and storyline by Omar Shamsi
Digitally assisted writing.