A City of Stone!

[Brian]

"Why don't we try getting rid of the robots?" Liao asks.  "Are they afraid of water like cats are?"

[Halbarad]

Phil thinks for a minute. "They COULD be, I guess. They should use electronics, and those always mess up a lot when you get them wet. But there's not really any water anywhere near where they're building all the ships. I guess I could make something like an ultimate water gun or something, but I'd still run out of water eventually."

[Brian]

"Well, we should only need to get rid of a few of them before they run away, right?" Liao asks.

[Halbarad]

"Uh... no, we'd probably have to get all of them. They probably won't run away at all, ever." Phil frowns a bit. "I thought you didn't know what robots were?"

[Brian]

"One animal is much the same as any other," Liao says dismissively.  "Are they poisonous?  We had scorpions near my home."

[Halbarad]

"They're not animals, they're machines. They usually do what they're told until they're told to stop, and I don't know how to tell them to stop." Phil explains. "They'd probably stop working if they got wet, but I don't really know what they'd do if they saw us."

[Brian]

"Oh," Liao says, re-evaluating his plan of attack.  "Machines?  I've never really learned how to fight against them."

[Halbarad]

Phil stopped for a minute, still thinking. "I don't know fighting very much, but I do know machines.... hmm. There's got to be something somewhere that tells the robots what to do. If we can find that - probably some kind of central computer or something - and stop that, we can probably stop all the robots at once. But first we'd have to figure out where it is."

[Brian]

"Well, finding a computer to stop some machines is good, I guess, but I wouldn't even begin to know where to search."  Liao shrugs.  "The elders say that for woodworking you go to a carver, and for food you go to a cook.  Oh, I just remembered I forgot to say goodbye to my mom."  Liao mulls this over for a moment.  "I'll just go home before dinner, then.  Anyway, who do you go to for computers?"

[Dracos]

The officer gestured. "Hey kids, why don't you head towards the offices where it's more comfortable."

Dracos

[Halbarad]

Phil nodded absently, his mind working as he walked on towards the offices. "I bet I could stop the computer if I could get to it, but how would I get to it?" he mused. "And are the robots what are making everyone act like zombies?"

[Brian]

"What does a computer look like?" Liao asks, falling into step behind Phil.

[Halbarad]

"They can look like a lot of different things, but the kind that would control a bunch of robots like that would probably look like a big metal box with lights on it, or a bunch of metal boxes. It's probably somewhere up in the mountains, though."

[Brian]

"Small metal houses in the mountains," Liao muses.  "Okay.  So we have to stop it to stop the robots?"

[Halbarad]

"That's my best guess, yeah," Phil replied. Something that had been bothering him for a few minutes finally made its way to the front of his mind, now.

"Who are you, anyway?"