Every month (almost) I have a poll to see which short story I should write next. "Atomic Tiger" was the winner for May.

Prologue

“Dr. Selta! Open up! We know you’re in there!”

Heavy bangs shook the sturdy wooden door to the old mansion, knocking dust off the large hinges. The sound echoed through the ancient manor, empty except for memories and furniture covered with white sheets.

In the basement, a short tiger, hunched with age, scurried across the smooth wooden floor. Dirt drifted down from the rafters as he hurried to a large workbench in the back of the room. The basement was huge. Piles of machinery, electronics, and half-completed projects lay in untidy heaps. The tiger picked a path through them all, knowing by heart where each and every nut, screw, bolt, girder, and circuit board lay.

Upstairs, two huge explosions shook the house to its foundations. Screams momentarily overwhelmed the noise of the sirens. Dr. Selta cracked a hint of a smile; his lips parted to reveal cracked teeth, yellowed with age.

“And that’s why you don’t just walk up to the front door of a mad scientist.”

The traps were non-lethal: insta-hard foam that trapped its victim, while allowing him to breath; electro-flails flung from turrets on the roof, shocking whoever they hit; old-fashioned hollow pits under the lawn; a front porch that turned into a lake of freezing cold water, sure to send anyone unfortunate to land in it scurrying to their cars for warmth. And, of course, the noise cannons. Those were Dr. Selta’s favorites. They temporarily deafened anyone caught in their cones while causing a short burst of intense pain. Harmless, but incredibly painful – Dr. Selta accidentally experienced its unpleasantness several times while building it.

A continued series of explosions rocked the main level of the mansion and grounds; return fire in the form of shotguns, pistols, and rifles put pockmarks into the ancient oak. Dr. Selta smiled grimly as he approached his final… his greatest invention. Gleaming metal, smooth and polished, jointed expertly, built through painstaking research and trial… the old tiger reached out, lost in his thoughts for a brief moment. The thing was like a child to him – he’d spent his life devoted to it. But now, to be birthed in such violence…

The rafters shook and the lights flickering. The backup generators roared to life under the doctor’s feet. His eyes widened as he remembered what he was supposed to do. Hobbling to a computer, he gasped for breath as he sat down, struggling to read the screen. Not enough time, never enough time, but there should have been…

Dr. Selta paid for the uranium fair and square, after all. And he wasn’t using it for a bomb! Well, at least, not according to his simulations. He was using it to create life! Life!

More screams as an armored car drove through the front door, triggering the wires hidden in the grass. Well, not hidden, considering the grass itself grew its very own nanocircuitry. Dr. Selta’s counted bioengineering as a side hobby. Growing conductive grass hadn’t been difficult. It couldn’t take much of a charge, but anyone unlucky enough to have been standing on any blade in the entire estate was now flat on their backs. The grass would burn up in a few moments, leaving the unfortunate sod perfectly fine, but it would buy him time while they thought about what else he may spring on them.

Dr. Selta tapped into his computer, running diagnostics, loading screens, video feeds of the outside of the manor, and a variety of menus and functions the purpose of which would only ever be known to the eccentric who created it. It all displayed on a giant floor-to-ceiling screen build into the wall next to the bench. The old tiger stood and limped to the screen, reaching out to tap in more commands. Images flashed in one corner, articles and text, all from encyclopedias and libraries from around the world.  Language, customs, history, it was all there. The doctor kept going as long as he could while the soldiers and police stormed the house above, finally reaching the reinforced door to the basement. He heard the screech of metal cutters and blowtorches. How long had he taken? Never enough time…

The lights flickered as a bright green light emanated from the workbench. Electricity hummed in the air as the doctor stood up and watched. Everything was working, but was there time? Why wasn’t it working? Had he made a miscalculation somewhere?

Of course. It hit the old tiger like a lightning bolt. Those damned people who sold him the uranium. They’d gotten him some that was not quite as good as what he’d been expecting. He couldn’t enrich it to the point he’d first desired, so the internal clock… No.

No!

There wasn’t time. How much was it off? Would it recalibrate? His thoughts became fuzzy. Why couldn’t he think? The door to the basement crashed open and heavy boots lurched down the stairs. Dr. Selta ran for his computer. He pressed six certain keys at once and the basement became a furnace, driving the soldiers back up the stairs, incinerating stacks of paper, notebooks and charts, a lifetime of work. Gone now. Flames licked up the walls, hungrily roaming across the ceiling, eating the dry old wood with a ravenous hunger. The old tiger’s eyes shone as he watched the flames curl around his greatest creation, illuminating the sleek form, the perfect joints, the impeccable design. His mind picked up speed, quickening, numbers flowing, calculations. Ignoring the pain, the tiger smiled.

Seventy years. That was how long his creation would lay dormant. Such a simple error. But perhaps it was for the best. Seventy… years...

It wasn’t until many months later the details and scope of Dr. Selta’s operations were catalogued, stamped, approved, and finally filed away from public view. And then… forgotten. Nobody remembered the old tiger who lived alone; the house was gone, replaced by a park. There’d been some kind of fuss, certainly, but that was years ago. Nothing, supposedly, survived the fire. The park was replaced by a school after many years, as the memories faded altogether. The small city became a large city; most of its residents hadn’t been alive back then.

But some things had survived the fire. A few bits and pieces of technology, scavenged from the scraps. The sound cannons, in particular, were quickly developed for use by police and military. The electro-bolas led to a few advancements in stun guns.

And there was something else, something intriguing, but nothing anyone did could make it work. Its secret died with the tiger who built it. And so it was filed away as well, put into storage in a nameless warehouse where things go to be forgotten.

And so it had.

Chapter 1

For a long while, nothing happened.

And then there was light.

Internal sensors took readings of the temperature, air quality, and other factors. Neural nets dropped into place, feeding the information to the central processors, where it was judged and catalogued. Additional sensors kicked in and the touch of hundreds of small, lightweight, foam beads caressed smooth metal.

And slowly, as if coming out of a deep, unintended slumber, two large eyes opened. Metallic chrome eyelids rose to reveal amber eyes with a black pupil at the center of each. There were no whites, just the deep, mellow gold. They cast a dim glow across thick wooden planks so faint that in sunlight it probably wouldn’t be noticeable. In the blackness of the crate, however, it was bright as a sun.

For a long while, it appeared as though nothing were happening. Then, the eyes blinked and the pupils dilated.

A hand lifted from the beads. The eyes turned towards it. Long, graceful metal fingers curled into a smoothly contoured palm. The smooth metal on the top of the hand was rich orange, while underneath, a glinting chrome. The hand turned over several times. Sharp claws extended and retracted several times from the tips of the fingers.

The eyes looked lower, across a broad chrome torso, molded into a masculine shape. The eyes blinked again and two ears swiveled, fluidly shifting, a feat of engineering that put many modern marvels to shame. The machine recognized itself. Himself. He. Robot. Tiger.

Isaac.

The raised arms dropped into the beads as a flood of information coursed along the robotic tiger’s mainframe, uploading and updating and tweaking. The initial boot had set his primary software – the real base, seemingly simple things like sense of self that had taken Dr. Selta so many years to program. It all boiled down to basic math, but then, what didn’t? Now the system was activating, running initial programs to install certain knowledge. Basic English, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, and Latin – the same ones Dr. Selta knew. Some general knowledge – how to drive a car, how to order food at a restaurant, and other seemingly mundane cultural details and references. Some general history of the local area and slightly fewer details beyond. Additional knowledge common to a high school or college education. The information was slightly out of date – 100 years or so – owing to Dr. Selta being a bit of a shut-in, added to the time the machine spent dormant. Still, it would enable basic communications and context for the mechanical tiger and foster a sense of discovery, including an aptitude for all things scientific – Dr. Selta’s vanity showed here again. Not only had the old tiger modeled the new being after himself, but he’d installed in him a bit of his own personality.

The tiger blinked again, slowly. A faint rumble came from within his square chest. His whole chassis glowed dull green for a few moments as the engine driving him came fully online, powering every bit of electrical genius Dr. Selta had installed.

And then, a voice:

“Hello, Isaac. I’m Dr. Selta, your creator. This is a cliché, but if you’re hearing this, it means I’ve died. You’re on your own, free to make your own decisions. I may have created you, but I have no purpose to give you. Maybe that’s the price you pay for sentience, the same one all of us pay: the agony of never understanding why.”

Chrome-tipped ears twitched. The eyes widened.

“But I digress. Forgive me for rambling. The point I want to make to you, Isaac, is that besides form, besides your body, you have a mind. A mind like any other mind, and you must never let anyone tell you otherwise. I hope you lead a good life and… well…”

The recording paused awkwardly for a few moments. The eyes remained wide open.

“Good luck! You’re going to need it!”

The sound of dry, raucous laughter echoed around inside Isaac’s skull for a few moments before the audio abruptly ended.

Isaac’s vision showed him a clear view of the inside of the box, as clear as though it were day. He reached up and tentatively pushed against the crate. The solid lumber resisted. He pushed harder and the timber creaked, but still wouldn’t budge. It felt as though there were things on top holding it down.

Isaac rolled onto his side and instead shoved against the side of the crate. He grunted when his metal hands shoved right through – he’d been expecting more resistance. Wherever he was, it was dark, same as inside of the crate, from what he could see through the broken timbers. Swinging his legs to the side, he pushed himself out of the crate and dropped to the floor a good twenty feet below. He landed in a perfect, silent crouch, demonstrating not only feline agility but the doctor’s good engineering.

Stacks and stacks of similar, brown crates were piled high on floor to ceiling shelving stretching at least thirty feet up. He could see the crate he’d jumped from; at least half a dozen more boxes were piled above it. Besides large black inventory numbers, every crate was clearly stamped with additional messages in an intimidating shade of red: “WARNING: DO NOT OPEN” and “TOP SECRET”. His, he noted, was also marked “RADIOACTIVE” in a bright yellow.

He dropped his gaze from the incredibly long aisle stretching far away on either side of him and looked instead down at his body. He looked like a tiger, at least so far his limited knowledge could figure out. Except he didn’t have fur. When he touched his arm, he could feel it, but it was a strange feeling. Probably not what he’d imagine fur would be like. He had a chest, a stomach, two arms, two legs. He was pretty normal. And, as he noted during his first ever experience with vanity, he was completely anatomically correct.

Something echoed through the building. Isaac looked up and away. Far down at the end of the aisle, a row of lights stretching to either side turned on. Then the next, and the next, picking up speed as they moved towards Isaac. The tiger turned to face the oncoming lights as his ears swiveled forward, picking up the high-pitched whine of an engine of some sort. Not a car… he knew what cars were, but this wouldn’t be what they’d sound like. This was more like… what were the words…

The lights flicked on above the metal tiger, bathing him in light. His vision automatically switched back to normal and his pupils contracted. A golf cart pulled up to a stop about twelve feet away. A red squirrel sat at the wheel, staring in shock at Isaac.

“Golf cart! That’s what it’s called!” the tiger said, pointing at the squirrel’s vehicle.

The shocked mammal wore the particular shade of green only the designers of military uniforms could love. A patch on the chest read “Piper”. From the single stripe on the short sleeves of the uniform, Isaac knew that “Piper” was a Private First Class in the Royal Guard, which was one of the military branches of Dart, full name the Empire of Dartford and Her Colonies, currently ruled by the Dartfords as it had been for the past fifteen hundred years, which was about as far as Isaac’s knowledge went regarding politics.

“Golf cart!” the tiger said again. “I couldn’t remember what a non-car car is. I knew it wasn’t a go-kart because those are tiny and it would take you too long to get around in here.”

The squirrel didn’t stop staring as the tiger walked up to the cart and took a seat in the passenger side.

“Hope you don’t mind driving. I think I know how, but I want to drive for the first time in a real car. No offense.”

The squirrel struggled to find his voice.

“Uh… but you… you came from the box.”

Both tiger and squirrel leaned out of the opposite sides of the golf cart to look up at the box. A loose board dropped to the floor and echoed with a bang.

“Oh… right, sorry about the mess,” the tiger said.

“But you… you can’t come from the box. You have to stay in the box.”

The squirrel wasn’t really looking at Isaac anymore. His glassy eyes rolled side to side as his breathing became even quicker.

“Why do I have to stay in the box? Whoa, are you okay?”

The squirrel’s eyes rolled back in his head and he fell forward onto the steering wheel, depressing the horn. It buzzed weakly in the vast space of the warehouse. The tiger’s mechanical tail flexed back and forth as he pondered the situation. He had some basic first aid knowledge, but nothing more. If only Dr. Selta had left some more information for him! He had no idea where he was, who he was, what he was supposed to be doing… but then, Dr. Selta himself had said as much. No purpose? So… what? What next? Piper wasn’t much help at the moment.

Isaac rolled his eyes, got out of the golf cart, and pulled Piper into the passenger seat with little effort. He growled to himself as he stomped around to the other side of the cart. He got into the golf cart and sat behind the wheel. This would have to do for his first time after all, he decided. But why was he angry? He wasn’t angry at Dr. Selta or Piper. He wasn’t even really angry at himself. Or at the golf cart. What really made him mad was that he couldn’t even remember the name of this kind of funk.

He pressed down on the pedal. There was only one as the brakes applied automatically whenever the pedal was not depressed. The cart turned around and drove back down the aisle.

About halfway down, it screeched to a halt. Isaac’s voice echoed down the aisle.

“Existential crisis! That’s what it’s called!”