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!”