The Lion, the Hyenas, and the Robot

[Draco Dei† 0]

I wrote this a about 5 days ago in two stages. The original purpose was somewhat different, but I think it works as an allegory for bearing with over-protective parents until one moves out and/or otherwise gains independence. Note that the over-protective one represents ONLY the bad portion of such behavior, not the parent as a whole. This is the most non-D&D writing I have done in a while, so I thought I would post it and see if people thought it was good.

 

 

There once was a powerful lion, a great warrior who lived in a grass hut in a small village on a primitive planet. One day when he was young a starship from a highly over-cautious race of spacefaring elephants landed on his planet and told of a grave threat to the peace of that area of the stars. Slugs who were out to conquer as many worlds as they could. They would not normally trust the people of the planet with advanced technology, but in this case their honor called for them to allow at least one warrior from each world to step forward so that it might be said that ALL stood against this menace. The people of this planet conferred and picked this lion. So he boarded the mysterious vessel and was gone for 5 years won glory one the fields of battle in the service of a this higher tech civilization...

They would not let him keep his weapons when the war was won and he decided to go home, because such powerful things were not good to have available in a society where people lived in grass houses (or so they thought). This did not concern the lion because his teeth and claws where strong, and his machete sharp. So they gave him a huge chest mostly filled with his favorite foods in irradiated form, but a large number of jewels as well. Because of the jewels and military bureaucracy, the chest was built out of the same armor as a tank, and had a paw-print scanner instead of a key-lock.

And so he returned to his family. His wife and cub. One day a dastardly criminal of a hyena attacked his family and he killed him protecting him. The entire tribe of hyena's swore that they would take their vengeance by killing his wife and daughter. For they knew that to be crueler than to attack him directly (and marginally safer too).

In their first attack, the lion stood at the door to his house and killed 3 hyenas, who were fighting with a cowardice that seemed at odds with the fact that they had shown up at all... and then three holes opened in the walls of the house where the hyena had cut through and the hyenas poured into the hut. The lion saved them again, but his foot was chopped off.

His wife managed to stop the bleeding. He activated an emergency beacon to call to his previous employers for help. Asking any from that civilization to come to his aid. And his family and neighbors nursed him back to health for a week until help arrived. It arrived in the form of an elephant who was a traveling robot salesbeast.

With many angry words the lion described the actions of the hyenas telling the salesman in great detail how evil they were, and every word true. Well, the elephant was under very very strict rules about what he could do. He used his medical machines to put what would have been a year's healing of the stump of the lions ankle into a single day, and attached an independent AI foot, for he did not have any way to make a neural interface. But the lion could no longer run... yet he could fight again.

"My family must go here and there to earn their bread, and I can no longer keep up with them, but I an terrified lest the hyenas should attack them while they are away, a lesser lion might sadly entrust their defense to others, but I the greatest warrior in this village, even with a metal foot that can not run fast, and can not bear to leave their defense to anyone less."

The Elephant replied: "I am forbidden from providing any device that may do harm, and indeed my ship is so bent on limiting the amount of chance I have to disturb this place that it will take off with me or without me in 12 hours time. But I have an idea, if I am quick..."

So he put tiny locater beacon under the skin of the lioness and the cub. And provided a small robot, a comical looking thing smaller than the cub, but with 6 arms longer than the lion was tall... small but immensely strong, for it could have lifted the chest, with the entire family standing on top of it, and still run faster than any lion ever ran.

I can not make this smart, and it can only run a little while before it will have to spend many days in the sun recharging with solar panels. I can't give you the access codes to change the programming, once I have set it either, but I will tell the space-navy you served as a marine to get better help here, and in the mean time I have programmed this robot to when you speak the word "Gurback" or it sees a hyena, to run swiftly and find your wife and daughter and place them in the chest, which I shall drill air holes in.

Well, it was a stupid solution, but it sufficed. Three more times the hyenas attacked, and three times the robot ran and hid the 2 female lions in the chest, while the lion killed them. But however many he killed, more would swear vengeance on him and his family for their dead relatives. So it stood when bright lances of fire burned down from the sky after the last attack was seen by the battle-cruiser that had arrived to aid their former college, for they had arrived just in time to watch the last battle from the sky, and their machines could read lips, and saw the threats of vengeance on the lips of the dying hyenas.

Two entire hyena villages were wiped off the map that day by orbital weapons. The remainder crawled to the lion and swore peace. The battle-cruiser left orbit, never having landed nor spoken to the lion. But still that STUPID robot that the lion had not the tools to destroy kept locking his family in the chest every time it THOUGHT it saw a hyena... The lion broke three machetes trying to chop its arms off and never even scratched it. He buried it trying to keep it from recharging, but it used its last reserves of power to dig itself out.

In later years it began to break down, so it would only activate once and again... but the daughter was now grown into a find young warrior of her own, and the older lioness was with child again, so the chest was even more cramped than before.

 

Moral: But... a protector, even a imbecile of one is not the same as a jailer, no matter how much alike the cell might look. So do not call that chest a sweat-box.

 

Epilogue: This persisted until finally a wise race of monkeys, who were even more advanced than the elephants heard of this, and cursing the foolish elephants, came and landed on the planet and reprogrammed the robot into a teller of jokes, painting it most ridiculous colors, so that the lion and his family could laugh at the pratfalls of their well-meaning tormentor.

[Wolvy† 0]

Pretty whimsical bit of literature there, Draco.

 

Someone ought to catch up with that traveling salesbeast and put that elephant back in the box!