Mon, January 13, 2003

I washed ashore on the Western coast of Mata Nui with a bag of assorted silverware and nothing else. I had been forced to remove my J.Crew sweater in the night when a school of eels had become entangled in it and refused to get out. I was soaked to the bone and shivering.

I spent a few minutes trying to dry off as I watched the sun rise over the island. It was a bright, clear day without a cloud in the sky. I tried to keep the bag out of the sand for fear that I may need the silverware in the future, and I wouldn't want it to be tarnished. After getting my bearings as best I could, I wandered inland to search for fresh water to wash myself and my clothes and silverware. I figured if I worked it right, I could use the soup tureen as a makeshift canteen. I had no idea where I was or whether the island was inhabited, so I kept the cheese knife close at hand.

Without much effort I managed to find a jungle stream with a small pleasant meadow where I could sit in a patch of sun. I washed the silverware and my clothes carefully and stretched out in the sun to dry. I closed my eyes for a few moments and dreamed that I was on a futuristic game show in which I had to race against a stopwatch to crochet a blanket of a specified shape in order to win a seven-dollar bill, a Wendy's franchise in Cincinnati, and a trip to a camel farm. The host of the show reminded me of Josef Stalin, but it couldn't have been him because it was a rotund Asian woman with pink hair.

I was just getting to the lightning round (something about explaining the benefits of a bicameral legislature while attempting to rope a wild emu) when I was awakened by a noise in the bushes behind me. I started upright and looked around, but saw nothing. I collected my wrinkled and soggy clothing and dressed quickly. When the noise came again I was able to discern its source: a small robot-like creature approaching me through the underbrush with a tribal staff. I steadied myself and kept my hand on the cheese knife in my pocket, but made no immediate gesture, waiting to see if this creature came in peace.

He introduced himself as Gary, but will likely be known to readers of Lego's Bionicle stories as "Matau." I began to explain my story, but he hurried me away from the stream and toward his hut outside the nearby village. He told me to keep quiet until he could figure out what to do about my appearance. It became clear that the island was populated with other robot-creatures like himself and he wasn't sure if they would accept an outsider like me.

Gary lived in a smallish dirt hut like you might have seen in the Ron Howard movie Willow, separated from the rest of the village. From my vantage point I could see the rest of the huts collected together at a distance of a few dozen paces. Once we entered the hut (difficult for someone my size) we encountered a series of levers and knobs. He cranked a few and the floor below us began to descend. We were in an elevator, lowering into the main room of the house underground! This was an enormous, palatial expanse, with marble floors and high ceilings even for me. I kept thinking if my cruise line could see this place they'd have some great ideas for new ballroom designs. The elevator lowered us all the way to the floor and Gary led me through the room to a pair of enormous French doors in the opposite wall.

Through the doors we walked into a hallway with large doorways on either side opening into various other rooms. The doorways were so large I couldn't tell if they had been built oversized in the interest of appearing opulent or if perhaps some of the islands robot inhabitants were larger than others. The only creatures I saw in any of the rooms we passed were Gary's size, and working industriously. In one room, robots were massaging other robots, in another they were creating a television show of some kind complete with elaborate green-screen photography and a wind machine. A few other rooms seemed to contain scientific research of some kind. Gary continued to lead the way down the expansive hallway.

At the end, the hallway intersected another corridor stretching in both directions. There was a small fountain, like a birdfeeder, at the intersection and a gear mounted on the wall with a diameter approximately equal to the length of my thigh. Looking to our left, a small robot was about halfway down the length of the hall and toddling toward us. Gary reached up and gripped the gear with his staff, and turned it very slightly counter-clockwise. The corridor to our left vanished and in its place stood a river with a high waterfall and tropical birds flying all around. Gary turned the gear a bit further and the corridor returned but instead of a parquet floor as before, there was a large carpet down the center. Everything else was identical, including the small robot, who seemed not to have noticed anything.

At this point, Gary guided me down the hall toward the other robot. He made some sort of clicking noise in the direction of the robot as we passed, and the robot stopped dead in its tracks and lowered its head, seemingly deactivated. Gary looked up at me as if to reassure me that the robot would be okay, but I couldn't really read his expression, partly because he was a robot with limited facial features. Gary led me to a large room and showed me inside. It was appointed like a luxury hotel suite, with a bedroom and a lavatory joining a large living area. Gary gestured for me to set down my things and sit on the sofa. He pointed out a bathrobe and a change of clothes that not only seemed perfectly my size but actually appeared to be a set of my own clothes that I had seen a few weeks before when I packed for a weekend trip to Albuquerque. Because of a mixup with the trains, my luggage had been lost and I was surprised to see that the outfit had somehow ended up here.

Gary told me to clean up, change clothes and get some rest. He would be back for me in a few hours, with a decision about my fate, and he would present me to the village at that time to resolve everything.

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