Towel Failure (A story of Mechs and the idiot that loved em)

[Zablorg]

"This is what you spent your funds on?"

The factory was abuzz with activity, its production lines whirring cheerfully as metal was forged, paint sprayed, frames assembled. A cool blue glow eminated from the lights above, giving the place the feel of a morgue in winter. It certainly looked like that, but the fact was that it was very hot, far too hot for the man who was in a stifling suit comprised of at least three layers of cloth. Not far from where he was standing, a sweaty half-naked man was suspended from the ceiling by leather straps inside what looked like a wire mannequin. He didn't seem to be doing a great deal except standing there, but around him many people in lab coats were busy reading displays and fiddling with dials on a console.

It was certainly an interesting piece of work. You could sell one as a very expensive toy to an eccentric zillionare who enjoyed such gimmicks. It was glistening and majestic and imposed a sense of power. It was useless. He turned to the head of this whole operation.

"We commisioned you to make us a tank, son."
"Well, it is a vehicle of sorts"
"I see that, yes."

Both of them stood gazing at the machine for a while, trying to get their respective arguments into perspective. The inspector fellow was the first to break the silence.

"I think the main problem I'm seeing here son...."
He furrowed his brow. He knew the problem with it, he just couldn't really put it into words.
"Is there any practical advantage this vehicle offers that a standard tank doesn't?"
"It has arms, sir."
Inspectorman looked down at the base of the machine.
"It also has legs"
"Yes, the idea was to have it interact with its envorinment in much the same way standard infantry forces can."
"So what you're telling me is that it's not really a tank so much as anything else."

Shroom glanced at his feet. His collegues had told him that this idea would be hard to explain. They said that they were supposed to be making tanks, not giant metal men. Shroom told them giant metal men could be considered tanks under a loose definition. They said that it was a pretty stupid idea, too. Shroom had retorted quickly that it was in fact a pretty fucking AWESOME idea and anyone who though different could eat their own genitals. They conceeded that it was actually pretty cool, but disturbingly ate their genitals anyway. Sexual harrassement in the workplace was way down since then.

The fact was that Shroom didn't actually initiate this project with military applications in mind, and once construction started he spend most of the day sitting in his office trying to think of reasons that would retroactively justify the program. He had thought of a few, but they were pretty feeble to be honest with himself. They mostly revolved around things like pot-holes in roads and rocky cliffs and stuff. He would cross that bridge when he came to it, he reasoned. Shroom decided to jump off the bridge instead.

"How about a field test? We've got twenty of these things made already and I understand there is a conflict in Testingistan that could use some help."

Inspectorman considered this. Why not, he thought. The way these things looked it didn't seem to him that twenty lost would make much difference between twenty functional. They just might prove their worth anyway.


---

The TOWELs and their pilots were escorted to the drop site by hundreds of helicopters. The outskirsts of Testingistan was a very hilly desert, which Shroom had claimed the TOWELs would be suited for. He had dubbed the vehicles "TOWEL" because when he was racking his mind for suitable acronyms he thought of "Tanks With Legs", which suited them quite nicely, but left the things with the silly name of "TWL". So he just filled in the blanks.

Once the Towels were dropped on the ground and the helicopters retreated from the vile land never to return, the pilots slid into their Responsive Mannequins, and climbed awkwardly into the torso of the giant machines, which served as the cockpit. Inside it was cool and dark, with just a heads up display of the Towel's view and status illuminating it. After everyone was inside, communications with their command center began and they were ready to mobilize.

The speaker crackled to life.

"Ok, units T-1 to T-20, you are ready to mobilize. Your mission as par your briefing, is to destroy a small force stationed 50 miles east of your current location. You will then retreat to the rendevous point where we will escort you back home. We are now activating your Mannequin Response Units. Please stand still in an upright position for calibration.

It was very important to do this. It told the Towel that this position counts as standing. Any subsequent movements would be refelcted in its movements.

They were off shortly after. The Towels giant legs meant that each small step their pilot made in the cockpit would traverse 30 feet or more. The reaction between their mannequin suits and the giants who's torsos they were sitting in was incredible. Many times the pilots would put their hands in front of their faces and wriggle their fingers just to see the giant metallic ones on the screen do the same.

The first issue the squad encountered around 6 miles into the mission was when pilot T-7 decided he really needed to pick his nose. This would be no problem, he reasoned. The Towels didn't have noses after all, so all that would happen would be a giant finger probing the air in front of the Towel's face. However, the Towel's body proportions were not entirely to scale. The fingers were a great deal thicker, and the face was more squshed. So when T-8 extracted a satisfying piece of mucus from his nose, he accidently poked his Towel's right eye out.

Aside from that the progression to the munitions factory went pretty much unhindered, and the squad's moral and faith in their vehicles were high. Until they began to get tired. Piloting a fighter plane could certainly be greulling, but it wasn't exactly physically exhausting. The Towel's were driven by their user's movements, and as of now there wasn't an automatic travelling program. This could have been solved easily if the machines had wheels or something under their feet, but Shroom had insisted that this would remove the entire point.

After a rest, they had managed a final push to the enemies position. It was a pretty large camp, with a good fifty soldiers standing around the perimeter.

"Ok" T-1 broadcasted to the others. "Weapons".

With a verbal command, a rocket launcher and a machine gun sprung out of each of the Towel's forearms.

"Let's go".

The entire camp was soon alerted to the fact that twenty giant metal men were charging them, and were now all outside with their weapons. There were around 200 in all. At first the pilots thought this wouldn't be much of a problem, as the Towel's were mostly bulletproof. But things began to go pear shaped when they had they all started shooting T-3's leg, which after twenty seconds was in no shape to support the weight of the Towel. It crashed into the sand. It's pilot attempted to get the thing up but was faced with two problems; The first was that because the pilot's body was at 90 degrees to the Towel, it misinterpreted his movements. The second was that the pilot was miming getting up with the use of his right leg, which was unavaliable to the Towel. These two issues resulted in T-3 floundering pathetically in the sand.

Even the mobile Towels were suffering. They were having difficulty getting the Towel's guns to point where they wanted. The initial design was to have the guns held in their hands like everyone else. But it was difficult to get pilots to hold a gun they didn't actually have in their hands, so it was put on their forearms. But the difference in scale between the pilot's arms and the Towel's meant that it was a difficult job aiming indeed. They were considerering getting closer, but then one of them noticed that people were coming out with bazookas. The bipedal nature of the Towel's meant that if they were shot in the leg or the torso with such big weaponary they would be taken down quickly, especially if they got close up.

"FALL BACK!" T-1 ordered. And so they ran as fast as their legs would allow to the rendevous point. T-3's pilot had gotten out of the cockpit at this point and was attempting to jump onto T-16's foot which would carry him to safety, which he succeeded quite well until T-16 as well as 14 and 4 were shot down by the bazookas, and T-3's pilot was crushed by the bulk that fell on him shortly after.

The rest of them managed to get out of range safely, and as they sped to the rendevous point they realized;

"These things are a god damned death trap..." was the general concensus, and only the crazy would even consider their application in combat.

Shroom was waiting for them at the point, as was Inspectorguy.

"How did it go?" he gleamed at them as they exited their cockpits, carefully ignoring the fact that 4 of them were missing and the ones who were alive were staggering away from the Towels in fear.

He recieved a report of the mission with grim satisfaction, and once they and pilots were boarding their helicoptor rides home, he turned to Shroom.

"I think that settles the matter, son. These things aren't fit to fight."
"Perhaps you're right.." sighed Shroom as he collapsed onto the bench. Even though he handn't participated in the mission he was looking flustered, regardless.
Inspectorman continued. "How many of these things can you make in a month?"
Not realizing the significance of this statement, he responded resignededly "Oh? Uh, with our prototype production factory, two or three."
Inspectorman gave the youth a smirk.

"I've just recieved word from the secretary of defence. He loves the idea. Sandwich?"
He extended a stale ham sandwich in a bag to Shroom, who declined.
"Well, he's going to be a bit dissapointed then, won't he?"

Inspectorman's smirk was replaced with a look a great deal more serious.
"No, you don't understand. We've got reason to believe that other nations would be eager to recieve some of these things. Nations like the "Axis of Evil". Russia. Korea. Korea especially, but I haven't a clue why."

He gave another smirk as he saw the Towel's being flown away by other helicopters out the window. Still observing them, he continued.
"Your test squad lost a fifth of its numbers in less than ten minutes. If our enemies took up the idea...."
He turned back to Shroom, unsure exactly how to conclude this idea.

"Well."

[Shroom Man 777]

Damn, I'm an awesome idiot, aren't I?

[Zablorg]

As it later turned out, seeding America's enemies with harmful technology wasn't nearly as easy as it sounded. It didn't sound easy in the first place, so it was practically impossible.

Shroom wondered back at home why he had even suggested a field test instead of a different testing method in which less people died. Inspectorman wondered why he had approved such a retarded idea. Subsequent medical checkups would reveal that both were clinically dumb.

The Secretary of Defence had taken an interest in the Towel project despite the Testingistan Mission report. Although despite how eager he was about the prospect of dangerously unstable giant metal men, he generally wished for the 'dangerously unstable' part to not be there. So Shroom had been set to work again.

He first began with analyzing the mission report. He began to think of when T-3 fell down and couldn't get up simply because its pilot had also fallen down. He finally came to a solution that would have saved the man's life had the priorities of safety came before Awesome. The Towel would be redesigned so that the cockpit was turned into a large sphere, that would be able to swivel in a socket. The bottom of the cockpit was weighted so that no matter which direction the actual Towel was, the pilot would always be standing up.

The concerning thing about this was that it took all of three weeks for Shroom to even come up with the idea, when any bastard brainstorming in front of a keyboard could have thought of it in less than an hour. The Secretary was not dettered though, and decided instead that Shroom be transfrerred to the Special Weapons Developement exchange program. The 'Special' part of it referred less to the weapons project and more towards it participants.

"Who's running the program?" Shroom inquired in the car as he sucked on his sippy cup.
"Oh, the fellow is terribly enthusiastic about the program, don't you worry." replied Inspectorguy as they crossed the border
"So he's a good person, then?"
"I wouldn't... I wouldn't say that, exactly."

Shepistan was founded in 2002 when it's founder decided to take advantage of the WMD terror and proclaim that if the United States didn't get the fuck out of Oklahoma he would blow up the world. Whether it was a bluff is hotly disputed, but it remained undisturbed ever since, mostly because no-one in the United States cared enough about Oklahoma to try and reclaim it.

The first thing anyone notices about Shepistan is that it is made entirely out of tanks. This was supposed to keep the nation's inhabitants in the right state of mind.

"Ah, here we are!" Inspectorguy slowed to a halt on the side of the road, which was made of tanks.
"Now we... oh, hang on..."

Several of the tanks surrounding them began to make beeping noises as their missile funnels slowly began to point at them.

"Ho-ho! He's still up to that, eh? Cheeky rascal."
He accelerated as fast as the car would allow, while the missles screamed past them.
"Why is this happening??" Shroom screamed.
"Oh, this is to keep the student's wits about them, see." he said casually, as he turned the car sharply to the right.
"The students wake up every morning and proceed to the Command Center, which is around 200 meters away. Saves the country a fortune on coffee."
"AND I'M GOING TO BE HERE HOW LONG EXACTLY?"

"Relax, it's not as hard as it looks. Oh-kay..."
The car turned a left, and drove into a building that said, in big red tank; "PARKING", where it stopped for a while as the dust around them jumped up and then settled. Shroom heard the remaining missiles that were after them whizz past the parking lot and explode.

"There, that wasn't too bad, was it? Ah-ha, there's the man we're looking for!"

Inspectorman got out of the car, and Shroom followed him. In the small dusty carpark was a large man with a manic sort of expression that made Shroom wish he was back outside with the tanks. He was dressed in camo
"Oh, Specty, my good friend!"
The man spoke in a thick accent that he had developed himself for the purposes of creating a national identity"
"Hello Shep! I trust you are well?"

The two of them exchanged friendly banter for a while, and Shroom just sat on the front of the car and looked at the impressive tank architecture. Finally, the conversation came to him.

"Ah yes, I have heard... very impressive, but I hear you are having a little bits of difficulties, yes?"
"Yes. We've sent him to refine his design."
Shep gave a hearty laugh.
"Ha! There is nothing I cannot improve in killing ways! By the time your man is done here, you will have a formidible army of metal mens indeed! Has he got the prints?"

Shroom nodded. He brought the blueprints for the Towels everywhere he went. He had hoped ideas for improvement would come to him, and like a bright prodigy he would spend every minute of the day scribbling and crossing things out, but it hadn't worked like that so far.

"Well then!" Shep exclaimed "We can start first thing tommorrow. Just sign here."

Shep had extended a form and a pen. The pen was actually a tiny, thin tank, with an ink fountain stuffed in the barrel. He signed the form as instructed, and then handed it back to his new teacher. As he gripped the pen tightly in his hand, the ink fountain exploded out of the barrel.




China


"I'm not interested! I'm here about the metal men."

The sheriff turned to her.

"Oh, the tin soldiers? We got word from the kid they were returned."

"I didn't fly all the way from Australia to talk about a box of toys, sheriff..."

Lusankya passed him the picture.

"I'm here about a weapon. This weapon"

[RogueIce]

You know, when I saw the title "Towel Failure" I thought it was going to be something totally different. Like the setup to one of those scenes you see from those movies on late night Cinemax and Showtime.

So is TOWEL some kind of Testing in-joke or did you just pick a random word?

[Shroom Man 777]

I think the Big Z is being just incoherent...

[Zablorg]

It's an anagram of Tanks With Legs with some vowels inside.

It makes sense.

[Themightytom]

This is like the "Army of Darkness" of fanfics, its amazing!

[Themightytom]

So is TOWEL some kind of Testing in-joke or did you just pick a random word?

it explains the title right in the fanfic, what kind of detective are you ::narrows eyes::

[The Romulan Republic]

When I read the title I thought it would be another Hitchhiker's fic.

[Zablorg]

The beeping started next morning out of nowhere.

After Shroom had signed the form he was given a quick tour of the city, or at least the parts that he would be working with. It was actually kind of boring and awesome at the same time, because while it was true that every single building he visited was made of the same old tanks, it was also equally as true that every building he visited was made of tanks. There was the Central Command, the Bunks, the Research Center, and the field, which was a good few square miles of un-tanked territory, reserved for testing the weapons the facility came up with. After a quick lunch which was served on a plate made of a malproportioned tank, he was sent to sleep in the bunks, which were made up ingeniously stacked tanks. There were around fifty of them, most of them already full of sleeping arms-makers.

And when the loud beeping went off, they all leapt out of their beds, and rushed outside of the bunk building without paying him a glance. Shroom heard the familiar sound of the tanks outside firing indiscriminantly. However, in his sleep he had somehow managed to tangle himself in his fine-woven tank sheets, and by the time he had managed to tear himself out of them they were all gone. No-one had stopped to help him and the tanks fired more rapidly the longer the drill went on for.

"You... you..."
Shroom struggled to find quite the right words for this disgusting act of betrayal from his comrades whom he had never spoken to.
"You... WHORES!"
He tore out into the open as fast as his dumb-dumb legs would take him.

"YOU WHORES! WHORES, WHORES, WHORES!!!"
Which way to the Command Center again? He knew he could find it if he stopped to get his bearings, but stopping would mean that the tank missiles would find him. So he just kept running. Around the whole damn complex. He ran full sprint for around twenty minutes, which would normally be impossible for him, but the promise of death tends to make people temporarily super-human.

Although Shroom didn't find Command in as much time as he would have liked, he never went in circles. This was because the path that he had been running for his life was clearly outlined by an ugly path of blackened craters.

Finally he managed to reach the Command Center, which like the parking lot was labeled clearly in red tank. Those also tried to shoot him. But he was there. He limped past the reception desk and into the meeting room.

"Hello guys..." he wheezed. The others sniggered.

The meeting room consisted of an enormous long table, and obviously some chairs. The other developement teams were already seated.. Shep offered him a seat, and continued issuing the day's activities to everyone.

"Okay mister Fox, your team is still working on the nuke machine gun, very nice... Yes, we've ordered the parts you need..."
There were a whole lot of lethal projects being worked on, most of which were largely impractical. Shroom didn't actually care much about what they were up to. Finally after all the other teams were dispatched, there was only one left. A woman.

"Now, Shroom, you will be working with me today. I have a lot of ideas for your machine that I think could really improve it. Your team will be made of of you and... Sorry, what was it?"
"Lusy." the woman responded.

Shep continued.
"Yes. Lusy here signed up for the Special Weapons Developement program around the same time you did, Shroom. She's taken great enthusiasm towards your project, and has volunteered to help."
If she was eager to help, it didn't look like it. She looked terminally distracted.

The three of them exited Command where they took another deadly sprint towards the Developement and Research building. This one was by far the largest. It was also the loudest. As they passed through the corridors there was an almost constant sound of motors, explosions, and screaming. Shroom arrived at their designated room feeling somewhat rattled. It was a very big room, mostly empty except for an exact scale hologram of a Towel in the middle.

Shep wasted no time pointing out the various things he thought would improve the design, such as giving it treads, making the legs a great deal shorter, fusing both the arms into a giant barrel, and removing the head. Oh, and coloring it green.

"Sir?" Shroom inquired. "Isn't what you're suggesting... Sort of a... tank?"
"Certainly not, man! Look at it! It's got legs, hasn't it? It's got an arm!" Shep gestured vaguely at the projection which had now been altered to resemble a green brick with tank treads and a tank barrel.
"I suppose you're right". No point arguing with the experts.

For someone being 'eager to help', Lusy hardly spoke a word regarding the actual Towel, only speaking to occassionally chat with Shroom.

"I hear China was attacked by one of these things." she whispered. "Took down nearly a whole block before they took it out."
"Dunno about that. These things haven't even been commissioned. No-one except Testingistan knows that they exist, and no-one takes them seriously."

Lusy looked slightly suprised about this, and then turned back to Shep. It must be pretty covered up if it destroyed an entire city block and it's just a rumor, Shroom thought. This wasn't quite the case; everyone had heard of the attack. Shroom was just an idiot.

[Shroom Man 777]

Shroom was just an idiot.



LUSY-CHAAAAN!