The Vending Machine Challenge

by Ronin Fox

“Let’s get one thing perfectly clear, you rusty, outdated tin can.” Crash slid a coin into the vending machine and poised his hand over the biggest button it had. “You’re going to make me famous.”

Crash Conway, stuntman and all-around nice guy had tried everything he could think of to get his personal brand famous and had sold out to every company in the galaxy willing to plaster his smiling face and fetching name on their product. There was Crash brand spaceship lubricant, Crash brand pretzel snacks, Crash brand foot massagers, Crash brand alien pet food and even Crash brand marriage counseling services.

The result was nothing but an avalanche of cheap, sketchy and sometimes dangerous products that broke at the worst time and filled up garbage dumps everywhere. Now he was trying a challenge: he had seen others gain online fame by reaching the winner’s circle located about three kilometers inside the abandoned and crumbling Gonzo Galaxy amusement park he was currently standing in.

Crash deployed his live-streaming camera drone and double-checked his inventory:

Crash brand ‘XTRA Strong’ work gloves... check.
Crash brand ‘3-D Digital’ jogging buddy... check.
Crash brand ‘Rock-It & Roll-It’ shoes... check.
Crash brand can of original recipe ‘Crackling Cajun’ cola... A spicy and refreshing check.

Crash punched the button and bolted the other way. Muscles spiked with blood; adrenaline flooded into his veins as he streaked towards the other side of the park.

Behind him, a computerized voice counted down:

“10... 9... 8... 7... ” The vending machine lifted from the ground on two mechanical legs that sprang out from the bottom.
“6... 5... 4... ” Four metal arms sprouted out from the sides, each ending in a set of clawed fingers.
“3... 2... 1... ” A pair of blazing red eyestalks popped out from the top, and the coin slot mouth clanked open.

The vending machine exploded out from its spot and barreled down the street on all six appendages like a mutant metal cheetah. It hit full stride in seconds, ripping up chunks of the pavement and locking its sensors onto the human it was going to assimilate.

Crash’s heart rate spiked as he recalled the videos he had seen of those things ripping cars in half and wrapping up criminals with those long arms. Called an E.A.T.E.R. (Extreme Armed Threat Eliminator Robot), they were obsolete, ex-military, hunter/tracker robots that had been bought by other companies and converted into personal fitness trainers or automated security guards or novelty vending machines that sold convenience snacks.

Crash swerved around the corner of a building to get out of direct view of the E.A.T.E.R. and activated his Crash brand 3-D Digital Jogging Buddy. An exact holographic copy of himself appeared beside him, matched his running pace, and began spouting canned, feel-good lines about how extraordinary the weather was and how sensational everybody was looking today. The image wasn’t high quality and it sputtered and slurred its speech, but he only needed it to last for a few minutes.

Crash hit the auto-pilot function on the jogger, turned off the road, and ducked behind a pile of rubble. The jogger continued running down the street and babbled on as if nothing had happened. A few seconds later he heard the rumble of the E.A.T.E.R. galloping around the bend and down the street in pursuit of the hologram.

Crash gave it a few moments before he popped his head back up. The jogger hit a corner in the road but, instead of turning, it went straight forward and ran right through a chain link fence, a concrete barrier, and a metal kiosk.

Realizing there was an error but, not having any sort of backup contingency programmed into it, the software reset itself and the holographic image reappeared right back beside where Crash was huddled, looked down at him with a frown and asked him why he was hiding down there instead of seizing the moment on such a swimmingly fine day.

The E.A.T.E.R. screeched to a halt and turned around to face Crash. The eyestalk on the left bent itself into the shape of half of a skull and the eyestalk on the right bent itself into the opposite half. It pushed them both together and it screeched out a metal-on-metal wail that stabbed right into the center of Crash’s brain.

Crash scrambled to his feet and darted towards a line of buildings close by. He weaved through rubble-choked doorways and jumped through empty window panes, zigging and zagging as much as possible. The camera drone was small enough to keep up, but he counted on the vending machine and its hulky bulk to be unable to navigate through it quickly.

He wasn’t disappointed and got to the last building in line before the sound of the E.A.T.E.R., smashing and wrecking its way straight through the walls behind him, put a cattle prod into his step.

Crash flew through the last doorway, found a flat stretch of pavement, and activated the low-speed setting on his Crash brand Rock-It & Roll-It shoes. Wheels sprang out from the bottom, and two tiny rocket engines fired a lance of fire out of the back of the shoes. He wobbled and danced with the extra burst of speed but got his balance and remained vertical. He leaned forward, put one foot in front of the other, and started eating up ground.

“You cannot escape me, human!” The E.A.T.E.R. burst through the wall where Crash had just exited from and locked back onto him.

“You’re artificially incompetent!” Crash shouted back. “Artificially inefficient and artificially insufferable! My Crash brand pet rocks are faster than you!”

Crash activated the high-speed setting on the shoes, and whatever juice they had left in them ignited all at once. The speedometer red-lined. An inferno belched out of the back. Crash turned into a missile, and all he could do was hold on for dear life as he hurtled down the street.

“Got you!”

Crash was trying to figure out what the vending machine was talking about until a second E.A.T.E.R. stepped out from an alcove ahead of him. He hit the brakes, but that particular button was only painted on and Crash slammed into it at cartoon speed.

Air crushed from his lungs. Muscles turned to mush. Darkness closed in around his eyes.

The vending machine didn’t budge even the teensiest of a microspeck of a whiff of a thought of an inch, and Crash hit it so hard he knocked the front panel out and bags of Crash brand snacks spilled out of the front and onto the street.

The second E.A.T.E.R. grabbed Crash by the collar and hauled him up off his feet, face to not-really-a-face. “We have protocols in place to prevent us from harming any of our robotic brethren,” it said, “but we have no such programming to prevent us from grinding the life from inferior lifeforms such as yourselves.”

“Two-on-one eh, sparky pants,” Crash managed to wince out. “I’m an all-around nice guy and I don’t think that’s very fair.”

“Fair?” The machine laughed like a metronome. A copy and paste sound devoid of anything that could be called an emotion. “We will drink a toast from your hollowed-out skull to this absurd concept of what your race calls ‘fair’ when we finish dissecting your corpse.”

“Cheers,” Crash said and popped open the can of Crash brand Crackling Cajun soda from his belt and let it fall onto the snacks at the robot’s feet.

The combination of the two reacted instantly and violently and boiled into a sticky, black sludge so thick it rooted the vending machine to the spot.

The E.A.T.E.R. threw Crash to the side and reached down to pull its legs out of the gunk but succeeded only in getting those limbs trapped as well while the stuff expanded by the second.

Crash was sure he had a concussion. His ears were ringing, nothing would stop spinning and three camera drones instead of one skittered around his vision.

“Stay right where you are, human.”

Crash craned his neck around and spotted the first E.A.T.E.R. down the street. It had sunk low and was raking at the ground like a bull that sent plumes of dust into the air. It bent its left eyestalk into the shape of a stick figure human and bent the right eyestalk into the shape of a sledgehammer. The eyestalks glowed red-hot and the sledgehammer bashed the stick human over and over and over as it charged.

Crash tried to get up, but the cola goop had oozed onto his shoes, and they were cemented down. He reached down, yanked open the buckle on his shoe, and wrenched one foot free.

“Your death will be fitting!” The E.A.T.E.R. shifted gears and put its head down. “Trapped in the filth you created!”

Crash flipped the other buckle, but it was mangled from his collision and his foot was stuck.

“You will die, human!” The machine screamed towards Crash like a runaway train.

Crash pulled with everything he had.

“RAMMING SPEED!”

Crash wasn’t going to make it, and his camera drone closed in to get a close-up of the imminent money shot. Crash snagged it and thrust it out in front of him.

Lights flashed and emergency sirens blared from the E.A.T.E.R. and it swerved to the side. It smashed through a wall, caromed off a pile of rubble, and catapulted out of control. Pieces of it flew off everywhere as it tumbled end over end and skidded to a stop a hundred meters down the road. Sparks shot out of the top, and it twitched and sputtered trying to get back up.

Crash hauled his other foot free and stumbled into the building beside him and up the stairs. He made it to the fifth floor before the stairs ended, and he burst through the exit door and out onto the roof. He ran to the far end and looked over the ledge. The winner’s circle was on the street fifty feet ahead and fifty feet below him. There was nothing but a straight drop-down and a frayed telephone cable running directly over the winner’s circle to the next building across.

“Target acquired.”

Crash whirled around. The second E.A.T.E.R. had broken free from the cola gunk and was at the top of the stairs, dragging itself across the roof towards him with its one remaining arm.

Crash pulled on his Crash brand XTRA-Strong work gloves and dropped over the side of the roof.

Metal wires poked through the telephone cable, and he could feel the sharp edges shredding his gloves away with every shift of his hands. The outer layer tore off within seconds and revealed the next layer, which was nothing but a thin foam that stripped off almost as quickly. More of the gloves fell away as he shuffled down the wire, and Crash got to the halfway point when something yanked on it.

The second E.A.T.E.R. was perched on the roof edge, trying to rip the telephone cable out of the wall.

Crash’s arms were on fire and he couldn’t hang on much longer. He moved as fast as he could hand over hand while the gloves got thinner and thinner and thinner. He was directly over the winner’s circle and just a couple of hands away from reaching the other rooftop when the very last layer on his gloves began to split.

Crash could only watch in dismay as the tear opened up at his wrist and made its way up to the palm of his hand. Crash could only watch in utter dismay as it continued up his palms and all the way to the bottom of his fingers and Crash could only watch in helpless, frozen, powerless, utter dismay as it continued past his first knuckle, up to the second knuckle where he hung on by only his fingerprints.

There was nothing Crash could do; he was all out of ideas and he prepared for the inevitable but, at the very last moment, on the very last stitch on the very last tippy tip of his fingers, the rip stopped.

Impossible. Unimaginable. Against all odds. Crash realized he had just witnessed a miracle and had never felt so relieved in his entire life. It was better than all his birthdays rolled into one, smothered in all his New Year’s Eves into one, and topped with that time in third grade when he stood up to his childhood bully in front of the entire class.

It must be noted, however, that said bully did catch him after school and reminded him via an atomic wedgie about the cost of ever crossing that line again but, up until that point, Crash was king, and it was a memory he always cherished.

Crash reached out to grab the rooftop, and a familiar logo crossed his sight. Stamped on the wire was a picture of his smiling face and “Crash Brand Telephone Cable.”

He didn’t even have time to get to the first letter in irony before the cable snapped.

He was falling. Everything turned into slow motion, and his life flashed before his eyes. Crash wasn’t worried. He had plenty of Crash brand life insurance and a line of Crash brand funeral supplies. He was confident his passing would be a fine celebration filled with nothing that could go wrong. In fact, he felt like everything seemed all right with everything about now and he closed his eyes and made his peace.

Crash got yanked back to reality so hard his guts turned inside out.

The first E.A.T.E.R. had caught him midair and had him wrapped up in its arms dangling above the winner’s circle.

The machine crushed him tighter. “Obsolete human. Your kind likes to shove their filthy coins into us so much.” It reached inside its wrecked frame, scooped up a handful of coins, and cuffed Crash over the side of the face with a loaded fist.

Crash’s head swam. Fire stabbed through the side of his skull.

“Your race is pathetic in every way.” The machine clocked him again. “Are you ready, pitiful human?” The E.A.T.E.R. scooped up a huge handful of coins and cocked its fist back. “Are you ready to taste the kiss of defeat?”

Crash raised his head, a single coin clenched between his bloody teeth. “Kiss this.”

Crash planted one right on the coin slot, and the disc plunked inside. The E.A.T.E.R. reset into vending machine mode, and Crash dropped into the winner’s circle.

* * *

A while later, all the celebrations were said and done, and Crash Conway sat in his brand-new chair in his brand-new living room in his brand-new house. With his challenge video gone super-viral and his newfound fame, he was relaxing and recovering from his chase with the E.A.T.E.R.

He slid a coin into a slot in the chair and pushed the button labeled ‘V.I.P.’ In fact, all the buttons were labelled ‘V.I.P.’ and it didn’t take long for a familiar-looking robot to step around the corner.

The original vending machine having been repaired, reprogrammed, and rebranded into a Crash Home Edition Autonomous Trainable Entertainment Robot (C.H.E.A.T.E.R.), stepped up to the side of the chair and reached inside one of its compartments for a can of Crash Special Premium All-Around-Nice-Guy Edition cola, poured it into a frosted mug, plopped in a bendy straw and presented it to him on a silver platter.

“And?” Crash said.

The machine bent its left eyestalk into the shape of half a heart, bent the other eyestalk into the opposite half and pushed them together to make it whole.

Proceed to Challenge 1096...