The view blinks to life. Massive swaths of mist thick enough to cloak all color but white trickle through the valleys like grazing sheep. Canopies of the tallest rainforest trees approach in rumbling jitters, only to recede by the corners of its field of vision. Their bushels of the deepest green leaves and rich, dark wooden trunks lunge for the sky; draping all mountainsides and valleys like a blanket. The world vibrates to every step. A hydraulic hiss heralds a thud. Metal scrapes and wood snaps under every step, which marches to the tune of a heartbeat; hiss, thud, hiss, thud, hiss.

No thud. A thunderous whoosh bellows throughout the valley. Silence trails after it, lingering with the sudden halt of movement. A tiny whir comes to life. The gaze goes left at a controlled pace. It stops, then points downwards in a straight line. It halts, taking in the intricate metal work which forms its arms; tiered ridges as wide as balconies on an apartment building catch a glimmer of sunlight. The gaze swivels right with a tiny whir; it glides over a metal chest with the label “PORCH-625” painted onto its right chest. It stops as it looks to its other arm. Text flashes in the lower right-hand side of its view; No lifeforms detected.

The whir comes back. The gaze rises exactly straight into the sky. It passes by the green canopies of the rainforest, gazing over white swirls of mist. A tiny whir of a motor guides the view back to cen—.

The world blurs with white and green. Metal screeches. The world blends like it’s turning into a green and brown smoothie. The view whips against the earth, bouncing from impact onto its side. Warning alarms blare across the corners of the view as it all goes from its blue tint to a bright red. The view snaps to the sky. Trees line the edges of the view, looking right to the sky. A titanic robot hurdles right for its view. Metal screams and buckles. The earth cracks. Trees all around shake. More warning lights and sounds holler across the view. The white, grey, and black robot wails on its body like a punching bag.

Hydraulic pistons roar. A metal clang to deafen all miles around rings out. The titanic robot wailing at the view’s chest catapults into the horizon, shrinking away. The view snaps downwards, catching the attacker crunch onto the side of a mountain. It quakes from the impact. Its arms lay out as if the landscape catches it. The world rumbles. A distant thunder of stampeding rock careens down a mountain in the distance.

The view snaps to a fallen rainforest tree. It’s at least as tall as a ten story building, yet fits just like a baseball grip in the robotic hand that lunges for it. Wood crunches on the grip. Leaves shake and rattle louder than a hurricane. The view cuts back to its target. The massive tree trunk whooshes in the air, whacking the attacking robot on its waist. A trench extends for a mile as it lands. Birds smaller than dust specs flutter away from trees brought to their knees. The attacking robot stumbles to one leg. Hydraulic pistons and grinding motors wheeze into the air. It’s painted name - PORCH-523 - scratched but still gleaming on its right chest.

Hydraulics and machinery booms like thunder. The view charges at the stumbling robot. Immense, metallic hands clasp into each other as it regains its stance. Piston hissing dominates all sensors as both robots lock to each other. The lower section of the view blares bright red words against a red tinted view of the world; “WARNING! WARNING! SYSTEM PRESSURE CRITICAL LEVELS! WARNING!” Danger alarms scream in its ears. Metal crunches like soda cans where their hands interlock in their grapples. The robot’s black visor reflects into the view, showing the same face back.

The attacker leans back. The hiss of pressure snaps at the air from its shoulders. It falls back like crashing onto a bed backwards. Dark grey metal conquers all the view. A metal clang to outdo any church bell shreds through the sensors. Earthquakes pull at the seams of the earth as, a second later, only the white mist sky fills the view. The red tinted view swells with pop-up warnings, exclamation marks, and small pie charts. DANGER reads one. WARNING reads another. ‘CRITICAL!’ blares the text across the point of view. It moves its gaze to one of its arms. A spire of mountain cuts clean through its arm like an iron spike. Hydraulic oil gushes from the wound and drenches both earth and metal.

The view snaps back to the sky. Hiss, then thud, then hisses again fills the air. The sun catches the scratched, bent metal of the titanic robot over it. A massive foot rises into the sky over it. Hydraulics screech. The grey metal lunches at the view. The deafening, agonizing sound of metal caving in like a crunched soda can fill the air.
The world is black. Only a red border outlines it, with a single line of red text overlaying it; “End of Recording.”

—

A stoic gaze with solemn eyes remains unblinking as a small green paw glides to the laptop’s top. It closes the screen like tucking a baby into bed. “End of Recording” disappears from view with a soft snap shut of the laptop, but the gaze remains as if its still open. A soft huff leaves his nose. He gazes up to the crunched head of PORCH-625; where countless cracks in the wide black bar for its helmet visor grab every ray of sunlight it can. His gaze follows devastation; where warped metal and cleaved mountain stone still simmer with meek smoulderings of combat. Thick rainforest leaves drape over the wreckage like mechanic grease rags over a car wreck; Already he could feel nature rub its hands together, eager to reclaim this section of its domain.

“How goes the report?”

The anthropomorphic gecko glances from its laptop cover and down the large wrecked arm. Another one of his kind - a gruff gent with a trimmed moustache, wearing a uniform with more medals than a PORCH robot - clears its throat.

“Surely you have something for the governor. The, ahem, ‘Incident Committee for the Planetary Operational Robots for Colonization and Habitation’ is eager for your news. I hate they make me say the full name every time.” He says, grunting out the word ‘make,’ like it’s an insult to his family name.

“Unfortunately. No,” the other gecko says, disconnecting its laptop from large cables hooked to the robot wreckage. “PORCH-523 stopped a rogue PORCH-625, and that’s all the report can say.”
The military man huffs a grunt out.

“I suppose it’s our turn now to stop a rogue. I have word we captured the traitor responsible for 625.”

“You have no proof any worker did it.” The other says, adjusting his ‘PORCH Programmer’ lanyard clipped to his chest pocket.

“625’s code went wrong, and it’s not like it rots like fruit.” The military man says, like he aims for his colleague with a dart. “I bet it was a programmer who lost it. Maybe they lost their job, or a loved one, or a lover. He wanted to see the world burn, so he hijacks habitat 625 and launches its PORCH for giggles.”

“Sir, with respects,” the programmer says. “No terminal shows any log in data. Not one habitat shows signs that someone hacked in.”
“They could have wiped the terminals after they were done. It’s a traitor. I’m damn sure of it.”

“Perhaps the wildlife played a part in this?”

“Those lumbering titans here on Gaentol? They’re oversized ogres that use trees as clubs. Like they’d have the smarts to hijack a PORCH - the thing we built to defeat them - let alone know programming.”

“Programmers call malfunctioning software bugs for a reason, sir.” The programmer says, as he climbs down the metallic arm the size of a two-story house and takes his leave.