Chapter Text
Prologue
Marvin shook the now metal hand of what once was his former employer, Howard Fluglemire, and was transported 7 years into the future, to a dystopic and horrifying 2005. Now presumed dead by police, he was free to work beside the metal and flesh hands of what could have been his family. After 6 long years making skin into circuits and blood into machine oil, he was released from duty and given the space and resources to build what he’d dreamed about; Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum. Armed with a myriad of failed automatons, rare attractions that no longer delighted his wealthy employer, and his partner, Patrick Tibalt “Chester” Whitmore, he founded the museum, with its star attractions being a set of prototype animatronic employees of Fluglemire Corp. now outfitted in suits and ties and programmed to perform music. The people attending Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum never knew that in order to create such sophisticated “AI”, some actual intelligence had been required. Dare I say… extracted, to put it lightly. A few months after opening, an unknown anomalous event occured within Marvin’s, setting forth a bizarre curse. Here we start our story, in the ruined wreckage of what once was a museum, now a monochromatic cacophony of oddities spreading across the earth like an illness.
At The End
A single metal hand burst from a pile of rubble, scratching at broken brick and tiling. The pile shook slightly as a beaten but intact automaton pulled itself from the wreckage of what was once its home.
“Zubes? Joe? Andrew? Ross? …Bora?”
The metallic mannequin observed the landscape around it, shouting the names of its colleagues. The world had turned black and white, and everything in the immediate vicinity was burried under building material and mechanical parts. The sole fleck of color lie on the automaton itself, with its yellow tie somehow the only thing spared from the wash of greys and whites everywhere.
“I remember this place having a lot more color.”
A single giant cog creaked. Then it fell with a clatter to reveal a second robot, this time with a stripe of blue around its neck.
“Rob? ‘Zat you?”
“Zubin!”
The elated animatronics ran over to each other and hugged. The sound of scraping metal rang out, but it felt more like christmas bells.
“I thought I’d lost you!” Said the one named Rob.
“Where are the others?” Asked the one named Zubin.
“I have no clue, I only just got out of the rubble.”
“We should look for them! JOE!? ROSS!!? ANDY!?!” The blue tied bot yelled into the air.
It started walking up the nearest pile of rubble for a better vantage point. The other followed, joining its calls for their fellow bandmates.
“Hello?” A voice called, somewhere in the mess.
The two robots beelined their way toward the source of the sound, their silver feet scraping over rebar and shattered stone. They turned a corner and behind an enourmous pile of gadgetry and material were three more automatons, dressed near identically to the first two in black vests, black pants and white shirts. Two of them, green and red ties at their necks, were trying to pull a third, donned in a grey tie out of a piece of tubing.
“A little help?” Asked the green tied one.
“Andrew! Of course” Rob replied, and it and Zubin scampered over to the tubing and helped to pull the grey tied robot, known as Ross, out.
Ross popped out of the tube and landed in a heap on top of the other bots.
“Sorry guys.” It said sheepishly, running a grey metal plated hand through its similarly coloured faux hair.
“Anytime” came the muffled reply of the red tied robot, Joe, who had ended up at the bottom of the doggy pile.
As the five automatons disassembled their impromptu metal hill, a nearby TV, aged but somehow relatively undamaged, flickered to life.
“This just in, the tally boys survived the collapse of a building but have still managed to make complete fools of themselves.”
“Bora!” Exclaimed Zubin, having gotten to its feet first.
The voice was that of Bora Karaca, a man who back in the early expermental days of Fluglemire Corp. had willingly volunteered to have his consciousness transferred to a TV signal. After one of 124 simian test subjects survived, he was brought in and successfully broadcast to the Fluglemire family big screen. It was certainly amusing to be a TV broadcast at first, but after the Flugelmire family became bored of him as they did with any new invention, and he learned he wouldn’t be broadcast anywhere outside of the inner sanctum of Fluglemire Corp., he began to think that becoming a living transmission may not have been such a good idea. Until Marvin was, after much convincing, allowed to broadcast him to a single TV inside Marvin’s Museum. He spent the months following the opening of the Museum delighting children and adults alike by responding to their questions and displaying images on the screen. But that was only one TV. So why, Bora wondered, did he somehow now have access to hundreds?
“Do you guys know what happened?” Bora’s tinny voice spoke from the old TV’s speakers. Bora was in monochrome like everything else, although he always had been black and white on that particular TV.
The TV flickered and died before any of the automated players had a chance to answer.
“I have a bunch more TVs, showing all sorts of views, but everything looks almost the same.” Said Bora, this time from a larger screen behind the assembled robots. They twirled around to face him.
“Hey I didn’t know your shirt was orange buddy!” Said Joe, momentarily distracted by the now colored broadcast.
Bora glanced down, but seemed unperturbed. “It’s always been like this, I just haven’t been on a color TV in a while. Speaking of which, when did I get broadcast to more TVs?”
Ross pondered for a moment “didn’t you say you only had 4 TVs you could cast to?”
“I DID, now I have…” the screen of the television flicked off for several seconds, before returning. “368.”
The tally bots all stared in disbelief.
“It’s probably something to do with all the stuff everywhere.” Andrew offered unhelpfully.
“369! I’m getting more!” Bora interrupted “370!”
“Either you’re getting broadcast to every TV in the state, or… every TV in the state is somehow getting tuned to your specific signal. And the only TVs that can do that are ones from… Fluglemire Corp.” Ross continued, thinking it through.
“Guys?” Rob’s voice called from the top of the huge pile of rubble “You gotta see this, the place is… spreading.”
The bots clambered up the mountain of junk, conglomerating at the summit. Ross had snagged a small screen which Bora, now in sepia, was playing on.
“Holy crap, you weren’t lying about the spreading part.” Gasped Joe. Its eye was twisted out to form a telescopic lens, allowing it to see farther than the others.
It watched as the monochrome spread across the ground, covering everything and sapping color from every surface. It saw everyday things being turned into oddities a-la Marvin’s; streetlamps becoming spinning barbershop poles, mailboxes becoming arcade cabinets and cars turning into tiny coin-operated versions of themselves. It watched in horror as a woman, too slow to evacuate, was swallowed by the infection and turned into a marionette with strings around its extremities.
“This can’t be good” muttered Zubin.