Scorched Earth, Alien Wonders
Chapter 2: Cantankerous Bot-shifter

After we had choked down our nutrition capsules I reached into the case and took out a pair of shiny, black, earth-version binoculars, and sat them gently on the ground.

Bot-shifters had evolved from robot experimentation hundreds of years ago, and they were a symbiotic combination of nonliving objects, and organic creatures. In this case, the inanimate object looked like an ordinary pair of binoculars, but saying it was a very important tool would be an understatement.

“Torie!” Calling out a bot-shifter’s name was the signal for it to break stasis.

The binoculars vibrated briefly then a gray, swirling, form appeared. It settled where the binocs had been sitting and just like that...Torie stood there glaring at me. His organic body could only be described in Earth terms as a two-legged, purple-toed, 5-foot-tall creature with the face of a Siberian husky and Yoda-like features, including ears on the side of his head and googly-gray eyes set wide apart.

“Bloody hell!” griped Torie, which instantly vanquished any resemblance to the Yoda in Earth’s 19th century Sci-Fi epic, Star Wars.

“I will never get used to these jumps. Are all my body parts here? I think my entrails got bruised. How about my ear-whiskers?”

Yep, there’s the complaining, cranky, old fart I know. I kept waiting for him to start choking on the super-heated air, but it didn’t seem to faze him at all.

“What are you whining about,” asked Doc, who was still rattled from his first wormhole jump. “You got to travel in a protective case, while the rest of us had to trust the system to scramble and unscramble all our exposed molecules in perfect order.”

After a quick, once-over, the irritable bot-shifter was assured that he had arrived on planet Earth just as complete and cheerful as he was when he departed Rosen.

Our bot-shifters didn’t have the power of the Force, like Yoda, but they were imperative to the success of our assignments. Torie could change into anything made of mineral, animal or metal composites...except a weapon. Weapons were forbidden by Rosenian law.

I had to admit that a talented bot-shifter like Torie, was useful during covert surveillance, even if he was more irritable than a long-tailed skunk in a room full of robotic vacuum cleaners. Torie’s binocular form included a visual, two-way channel for communicating mission updates, and a data-access panel for a long list of tactical acquisitions. Most importantly, the binocs could be used by Brown for a telepathic link to humans if she couldn’t to get close enough for a direct eye-contact connection.

We would be able to speak the language of any human we encountered, but telepathic explanation was imperative first to prepare people—rather than a person suddenly being accosted by a bunch of over-grown, talking prairie dogs, which would likely make them think they were losing their fritters.

“Okay, let’s get going to Suburbia,” I said to my team. “I want to be there by the time the sun comes up, so we can find shade and try not to get our brains fried.”

“Torie can help us get there faster,” said Moore, rubbing at one of his over-sized ears. “He can change into something that could transport us quicker than these bodies.”

“Yeah,” agreed Brown. “Especially, in this blasted heat.”

“What do you suggest?” I asked.

“How about something fast like that multi-tracked, vehicle we used on the PH-1488 job?” suggested Davis.

“Or how about an electronic, Harley-Davidson motorcycle?” suggested Brown, who had become known as the queen of Earth history and trivia.

“Or how about this?” grumbled Torie, as his form started swirling like a small, gray tornado then a donkey’s body appeared, and brayed a few mocking snorts.

Amid protests and grumbling, my team clamored up onto Torie’s white-faced, burrow-backside, for the journey. After pushing the gray, travel case under some nearby bushes I climbed onto the donkey’s back and took first position then we started out in the direction of Suburbia.

Suddenly, there was a high-pitched metallic screech like someone scraping an intergalactic probe, with the dull, teeth of a solar buzz-saw.

Wait. What?

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