Hold you as you Die

 Dunno why this song had such an impact, really like it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11OMyDrf8iM

....here's a poem. Haven't done poetry in a while, and it doesn't even rhyme most of the time, because I'm rusty and being incredibly lazy about it. Enjoy~!

there she lay, dying in my arms,

 breathing as her life made its way through the spike in her head.

we both knew she was already dead,

 that this was one last chance to save her,

  to preserve her mind,

   and leave the flesh behind.

She held my gaze, script passing behind her eyes,

 endless numbers skimming her memories,

  archiving her life, second by second,

   as her body went cold.

I felt her shudder in the dark room,

 lit only by a computer screen

  dancing with her mind in plain mathematics

   half organic, half-yet digital.

I could see the pain on her face,

 tears streaming down her cheeks,

  teeth grinding until blood

   dripped down her chin.

She let go of me, and held her head,

 silently screaming, fingernails tearing her scalp

  while I cried, and I wailed

   with the sound she couldn't make.

Finally, she shook

 as if struck by lightning,

  then fell back into my arms,

   silent, still, and cold.

I heard behind me a machine, whirring to life,

 the click of chromatic feet in mock-heels,

  her voice calling my name through a box,

   beckoning me to hold her.

I saw her eyes, mock-flesh,

 perfectly colored, blinking,

  staring with the same love I remember in her eyes,

   but somehow still wrong.

A midnight lover's gown, draped over skin

 smooth as a newborn, flawless, creaseless,

  warm, supple, and inviting,

   not at all like her body in my hands.

I looked at her, still mid-scream in death,

 knowing the machine erased the pain of her last few moments

  gone for the machine, now lost to the woman I loved

   naught but a tortured corpse on the ground.

I could hear it behind me,

 could it even feel anger? Fear?

  Loss? Love? Pain?

   I felt her warm hand against my shoulder,

    the freezing metallic spike being pushed into my head,

     and the machine in front of me ready the program again.

"Your turn baby."

history entry; New Dallas, Darron Bull, and Tanaka Medical Corporation

 Darron 'Bull' Robertson is a Texan native; he became the most powerful figure within entire networks of local crime syndicates within the state, which connected him with other figures within the underworld. After the collapse and the founding of the United Federation of States as a trade union functioning under a neo-feudalistic order, trade flows under the nose of the government, and pirates raid frigate as it travels between sanctioned cities. Everyone works for credits, anyway; especially pirates.

Darron began working as a hitman in New Dallas before his nineteenth birthday. His father was an accomplished roboticist, and he was already wearing the first Minos when he began earning his name, and eventually the name of his company, Bull, out on the streets of sector Zero. The small foundry community had always been mob-run, almost a kind of prison, prior to Tanaka Medical entering into the market. The Yakuza needed new territory, and when Tanaka Proper offered the mobsters more credits than they could ever dream of, the mob sold the land and fought over the money. Tanaka began building the sectors, including the Industrial sector, and eventually digging even deeper. They built New Dallas into a truly modern city, with schools, colleges,  public transit, grocers, and especially hospitals. Recovering from the collapse of civilization had been slow going for some time, but those that fled from nuclear destruction in Asia, who landed on the shores of North America, found a new world filled with primordial landscapes and vicious, heavily armed natives. Vast hunting communities had never even really forgotten firearms, a vital resource in the apocalypse.

New Dallas had existed hundreds of years before Darron arrived. Tanaka Medical's CEO, Kenshi Tanaka, had long since buried his claws deep and built the sectors of the city before Darron was even born. Already, the hospitals were curing radiation ills, constantly at odds with the wave of Yakuza that had infiltrated New Dallas, seemingly overnight. Along with the money, Tanaka poured people into apartment complexes, and began outnumbering the foundry workers, who worked underground. Eventually, they would build a new kind of sector, one with a reputation of swallowing tourists whole, the training grounds of militants who could, theoretically, work their way up to police work, if they worked with the Yakuza instead of against it. The foundries were older than Tanaka Medical's presence, and even the Yakuza worked the foundries in the start of things. Without the foundry metals from Texas, much of the UFS would starve for metals. Base materials sails into the industrial sector on a daily basis, as it did then, and the work was always grueling, filled with a criminal underground element that erupted into violent riots within the foundries, splitting territories and training members.

Darron wasn't born in New Dallas, and his arrival was at a time when the foundry riots had become increasingly violent, stopping the wheels of commerce in the process. Citizens had taken to becoming pirates, using civilian cars to stop frigates carrying goods - stealing food that would be too expensive to buy from the store, or filling the fridge of someone too rich to work for it. Riots spread outward from the industrial sector, and spilled into the streets of every sector. The starvation riots followed the foundry riots, and went on for a month. Sometimes, between the burning and stealing, there would be a day of peace. People would walk, and peacefully protest in front of freshly stocked stores, fridges overflowing with food, although the cost of any one thing was tens of thousands of credits. Tanaka would bring cameras for the news organizations, bringing crates of food and doctors who swore that they would find a way to solve the crises.

The Yakuza had become a presence everywhere in New Dallas. Every foundry gang had Yakuza members - most of the police were Yakuza, and every single upper member of the governing body was either one of them or working for them. Orders to get things back on track were met with the horrors of cutting down civilians in the streets, and days of riots following that. A day would follow of peaceful protests, and end in a wave of violence erupting between police and starving, angry citizens. 

Eventually, Nii-Sama found a way to restore peace. The governing body began to offer nutritank installations, graciously offered for free by Tanaka Medical, and free refills for tax-paying citizens. Nutritanks were an internally implanted storage tank that held a nanogel, which could provide food and water for a person for an entire month. Tanaka had successfully solved the hunger crises by invading the bodies of its population, which would continue as a trend into the future. Already, children had cerebral interfaces installed at birth, shoving metallic spikes into their heads from early adolescence. It better served the brain if it grew around the implant, with slight changes made throughout their life to adjust it.

Tanaka was there, invading the brain from childhood. Letting them experience the wonders of virtual worlds as real as the really real one, filled with sensations and fantasies beyond imagination. Programming interfaces had grown culturally as technology returned. Programming across the UFS needed standards if things were going to begin to work together independent of which city manufactured what, and the union went with NeoNet. Wired connections were religious practice from citizens, church-goer or not. Wireless had damned us all, destroyed everything.

It was the Church, after all, that connected people. It created emotional hive-minds, intertwining the brains of locals who could brush thoughts wirelessly with one another, sharing emotional thought as casually as spoken words. Once the networks were compromised, and when it all had to be shut down, simultaneously, all at once, less than 10% of the people connected to the network survived the collapse. Modern citizens only know the consequences - wireless connections are dangerous.

Darron didn't fight with the Yakuza. He wouldn't defend the people who stopped citizens from begging outside of grocery stores for expired food, which was guarded to the dump trucks before they hauled it off to the incinerators. At the end of the starvation riots, Darron refused to cooperate, and was arrested for slaughtering entire squads of police in the streets of sector 4, sector 5, and even sector 6, high up into the wealthiest capital buildings. Darron brought the citizens storming with him, working in tandem with the foundry gangs who he had befriended at his arrival, and took the riots up into the highest reaches of the city.

*****

The long, empty hallways were misty, with a low-hanging fog covering the floors of long winding passageways. A group of twelve heavily armed mercenaries were slowly making their way under the watchful mega-pix cameras streaming live across the UFS. Their armor was full neurodeck interfaced smart armor, a thick layered metallic battlesuit that did more to enhance their dexterity than detract from it - fully automatic weapons, demolitions, heavy artillery - a regular military unit, lost in a network of maze-like passageways.

The criminals were given the opportunity to live, if only they could survive the maze, built deep under Caesar's prison block, where Darron Robertson had been imprisoned. Could they beat his zero loss record? Thousands had tried, and the rising gladiatorial star had caught the eye of influential syndicate members already, a forceful counter-piece to the Yakuza. Bull was more than a man wearing a sixteen-foot suit of armor, cutting down men with a battleaxe while they shot helplessly at armor so thick, it took digging to find anything important mechanically. The modern interfaces he had snagged from the Church, whose angels had helped bring him into prison for trial and subsequent sentencing, gave him the same grace as if the armor were a second skin.

.............

Tune in next time folks, for more. 

Hard Times, chapter 2?

   A Preface here: If you haven't read this == https://bockin2.blogspot.com/2022/01/week-2-hard-times-chapter-1-partial.html

....Which is also on this blog (Week 1: Hard Times, chapter 1 partial), this story will be missing that section. I haven't actually chaptered this project before, but going back over it, I guess this is as good as any for a second. Anyway, Enjoy--

 The elevators leading up into the industrial sector of the city were always busy around the clock, sunshafts shining down as you approach. Bull Industrial shipped containers everywhere, and around every sector in the city, which for them, meant transporting tons of metals, chemicals, and weapons, all stacked on the platforms day and night. As the largest durasteel manufacturer in much of Texas, there was an estranged, tense relationship between the city and Bull. Dozens of goons walked the streets as their enforcers, and company middlemen hired them out to run down locals, collect debts, provide protection for their interests, and kill Yakuza on anyone‘s turf. Bull was one of the few companies around that stood up and fought open corporate warfare with the Yakuza; Fuu & Shukov, the russo-triad front also did, but their presence in the UFS was largely in small pockets. The largest company in the city, Tanaka Medical, headed the Yakuza under a thinly veiled pretense as an open secret.

But Bull Industrial had one advantage: Security. All around the elevators near the far-eastern most edge of the city, machine gun toting maniacs prodded the workers to keep them moving, landed mafiosos took clients into nearby bars and hotels, and Minos units strolled about in pairs – fourteen-foot mechanical suits of armor piloted by experienced psychopaths, each with enough of a personal arsenal  to level a small building in seconds.

George, to say the least, took his job very seriously.

Moe spotted him and McKenzie, and immediately started walking toward them. He was bald, tall and big in a white suit. Here near the Elevator, the rain finally let up, so Georgie shook out his umbrella and put it up. A Minos followed close behind Moe, moving with a natural grace inconsistent with its size and weight.

"Well if it ain't the dumbest pair of fucks I ever seen - how's it hangin' there McKenzie?"

McKenzie managed a dishonest smile for Moe, "I've been worse. Listen, I can tell you two want some alone time, so I'm just gunna go hop my happy ass to work."

"Well if that ain't exactly what I wanted to hear!" Moe laughed and slapped McKenzie across the back, who visibly strained. Moe stuffed his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a blue hundred-credit stick, which he shoved into McKenzie's hand, and slapped him across the back again, "Go grab yerself a bone or somethin', eh?" McKenzie took the cash and awkwardly walked to one of the many platforms around heading up into sector one. Moe walked closer to George, lowering his voice a bit.

"So uh, Georgie – it is Georgie, right?"

George nodded quietly. He'd prefer if Moe got his name wrong once in a while. Moe very slowly smiled at him, like he was already on the hook.

"Yeah, so Georgie – we got uh, uh… a little problem upstairs,” Moe threw his arm over George, and pulled him uncomfortably close. His perfume was strong from a distance, but gag worthy up close. “Go on up and get tooled out. If you do good today, it'll be more tomorrow, so don't blow it. An' remember, if they can't pay, jus' take it outta their asses, so’s the next ones know what's comin' to ‘em."

Patting George on the back, Moe spotted another one of his employees, "Hey, I gotta tell this other fuck what's what. Don't blow it, Georgie!" Moe walked off. The Minos that had followed Moe eyed George with its huge, camera lens eyes. The pilots weren't visible when they were in the suits. Instead, it appeared as if the suits were alive, such as with Bull’s Minos machines, which resembled hulking half-bull bipedal humanoids. They didn't move like machines, with every part of its huge metallic body shimmying and sauntering as naturally as any other living thing. A low rumble came over its vocal box as it walked off, following Moe, who was already yelling at someone. It was a young kid, probably fresh from robbing his parents back up in Sector Four. He had too much money in his pocket, and he looked scared by Moe, terrified by the smelly, perfumed middleman. George watched the Minos pull out a massive handgun with a barrel as long as the kid's forearm.

George quickly walked off toward the elevators, terrified of watching the boy being retired on the spot, but intently blank faced. Moe caught his expressionless gaze before he made the platform, studying his expression.

The huge shaft leading upward into sector one had dozens of independent platforms, each filled with  Minos, thugs, shipping containers, dozens of slummies working as loaders, and hundreds of others who were waiting to go to work in the  foundries. George walked onto a platform. The lights were flashing green on the local indicator light, so more people piled on after him while workers shifted containers onto the platform. Most lifters had mechanical arms implanted at the shoulder, pneumatic exoskeletons, each section grafted to their flesh by rods running deep into their bones. Georgie watched one of them manage to move what looked like a two-ton container without breaking a sweat, his limbless torso just a fleshy core grafted to his actuators. But the exoskeleton had to be grafted to the entire skeleton. Sooner or later, the flesh would decompose, and if they couldn't pay the bills, they'd lose whatever skin they had left. Just another machine, eventually obsolete or rebuilt too many times. Once you didn't have flesh in the game, they could just erase everything you thought you were – memories, sensations, thoughts and feelings.

Everyone on the platform was trapped by corporations that would use them until they were worse than just dead, and then keep on using their broken husks after they didn't even have rights anymore. Medical bills became sold organs, because mechanical parts needed power, and radiation poisoning had expensive nanotech treatments. It would all just rot sooner or later anyway, says the doctor. Bull didn't pay most androids to work, instead offering free electricity and company housing, where the mechanics could wake you up without your memories intact. Most didn't stick around, instead preferring homelessness or the inevitable retirement by an Autocop.

The green light changed to a flashing red, and a blaring alarm sounded as the platform lifted off, groaning under the weight before it lifted off at a decent pace. Georgie took off his raincoat and blinked in the harsh synthetic sunlight of Sector One.

 

Where Zero was full of homeless vagrants, One was packed with hard workers under the an endless midday sun. But the big name in One wasn't Tanaka, it was Bull, who ran half of the sector by itself. The vast sea of industrial buildings were all tasteless polycrete grey copies under never-ending artificial daylight, supposedly meant to spur the workers on to earn the real thing, a far flung hope of being a company middleman.

George stepped off the elevator and started his way toward his new workplace. Today marked his second day on the job, after what Moe called orientation. He tried to push the details of it out of his mind.

He quickly found one of the many military barracks' nearby. Dozens of bull thugs were on the move around the place, coming and going through the front door of the dull grey building with a dozen floors.

Here, while there are even more cameras, there are also bioscanners, more Minos armed with sizable machine guns, and countless Bull goons hauling serious hardware,automatic weapons, shotguns, plastisteel bodyarmor, and belts of grenades. But there was only one door-man, who stood at the front entrance in a black trenchcoat, his mirrored glasses wrapped around his head like a visor. The building had several mounted turrets over his head, and they idly clicked through their barrels, lubricant splashing the nearby wall. The door man was stout, and George could see up close how his over-the-eye synthglass was installed directly into his face over his eye sockets. When George got close, the door man nodded at him, "Good to see you comin' in.” George still couldn’t tell if he was looking at him. “You ready for the real work?"

George nodded impassively.

The man seemed to wait for George to say something, but eventually just shrugged. "For your sake, bud, try not to take the work too personally. Professionals don't let anxiety get to them, but trust me when I tell ya, everybody's got it. So deal with it." The man took a card out of his jacket and slid it across a panel to his right, and the doorway to the building opened up from what looked like a solid durasteel wall. George walked in, and the door shut immediately behind him.

Here there were the long, dull hallways of a tasteless polycrete building, poorly lit, with dozens of featureless doors. George walked down the hallway, and he opened the door to room four-five into armory seven-seven, exactly where orientation had been yesterday. Inside, the robotic assistant stood nearby, whose obviously-mechanical appearance and human mannerisms unnerved George. As far as he knew, it didn't have a name, but the way it acted was wholly unlike a machine. It was tall and thin, practically all metal rods and rotors, with one big bright yellow eye in the center of its plastic head. It chimed a happy, masculine electric tune as George walked in, "Well, well, well, if it isn't our newest rookie! Let's get you ready for work, shall we?" The assistant indicated to a nearby chair covered in clamps and bloodstains next to a set of medical tables. The tables had motors, batteries, plugs, wires, oils, glues, knives, and a dozen sizes of saws, mechanical parts, replacement prosthetics, and organic parts floating in glass tubes on a nearby table, all carefully arranged as if by an obsessive collector.

George sat down in the chair, and the assistant brought out a prosthetic arm from under one of the tables. George held his breath at seeing it up close. It had thin finite cords made of flexible durasteel for muscle, and it was definitely fresh metal from the factory lines, like it had been freshly polished. The long mechanical spike on the end was a perfect fit to his shoulder socket, but it burned from the chill of cold metal as the doc slid it into place, and then a static shock pop zapped his shoulderblade enough to make him nearly knock over a table.“SHIT!” he yelled, feeling the part installing as it interfaced with his CI through his shoulder. He felt it come alive, the new signals in his brain brushing against the memories of his old arm in a wave of déjà vu. Yesterday, it had felt wrong watching his arm writhe from fifteen feet away inside a plastic box. But now that it was properly attached, he could see how the surface bristled with small electric sensors, giving him sensations like pressure and temperature. Getting up, he clenched his fist a couple of times experimentally.

The attendee held out its clamp-like hands, and asked in a kind tone, "Please?" George let it see his arm, which it prodded and poked, "Does the limb feel cold? There should be a slight resistance for a while, until your cerebral implant fully interfaces with the prosthetic."

"It's fine." George remained impassive.

"Excellent." The assistant went to a nearby crate, and opened it up. Inside were new clothes - a faux leather jacket, padded jeans with small plasteel plates to guard his knees, and a bullet proof vest, which hid perfectly under a new synthfiber black shirt. He was outfitted with new durasteel-clad boots and fitted gloves. The attendant installed a device into a socket behind his right ear, which instantly came to life with the local Bull radio channels, where he could suddenly listen in on hundreds of conversations, all of which were echoeing inside of his head, but as if they were heard from a great distance; tuning it was a matter of focusing on the right voice. Mostly it was a bunch of chatter and lewd jokes which he had to focus to tune out, although Bull ran the security, so he could call in whatever he needed to. The attendant gave him his new sunglasses. The glasses, he knew, were half his job, with precision scanners and a huge database of registered citizens, with camera and facial recognition software, and an auto-updating manifest.

Lastly, the attendant gave him a new standard issue Bull six-load revolver, with a high enough caliber to blow a hole in solid durasteel two inches wide. He brought enough explosive slugs for a month of work with him in a heavy pack on his back, and he took his old pocket knife and buried it in his heavy ironclad boot.

Checking over all his new gear, George felt his stomach sinking when he thought about how much debt he was taking on to pay for all of it. "You got a manifest for me?"

"Ah! Of course-" the attendant turned George around, and without a word of warning, shoved a cold electronic rod into the plug on the back of his head. He could feel ionized air moving through his nose while the whiz-pop of the spike hummed like a foriegn presence behind his eyes. “Fuck doc, at least buy me a drink first-” the static popping between his ears buzzed and zapped, and his sunglasses came on, reading the data through his Cerebral Implant and processing it.

"How long-" the whirring of his CI and more pops made him pause, whether he liked it or not, "-is this... uuugh, gunna take?!"

The attendant immediately twisted the rod hard to the right, and George felt both his ears pop. Slowly, the attendant pulled the five-inch neural spike out, and George tried not to groan as he felt it slide across the inside walls of his Cerebral Implant. Once it was out, he stumbled away, shaking his head and rubbing his plug, which was now closed with a new metal plate.

"Will there be anything else today?"

George thought for a moment, but all that came to mind was how much he already regretted his new promotion.

Chuckling, he looked up at the attendant, "Ask me again tomorrow."

*

George made his way through the crowded industrial sector. With his new clothes, people avoided him like a leaky barrel of radioactive waste. People knew a Bull thug when they saw one, and he looked every inch the part. Eventually, he found his way to one of the many apartment complexes in sector One. It was thirteen stories high with modest sized places, each larger than most multi-family housing units in sector Zero. His client was on the fourth floor, which George took the stairs up to, stopping at the top of them and looking at the door to apartment 416 in the middle of the hall. He waited a while for something to happen, listening to the other apartments for a while. Mostly just people arguing, loud kids, or the occasional television film. After an hour of waiting, he sighed, walked up to the door, and gave it a sharp knock.

A woman opened the door a crack, no older than thirty, with pretty eyes and a few prosthetic fingers peering from behind the door. When she saw George, she looked worried, "Can I help you sir?"

"I'm looking for Kaito."

She only looked more worried. "H-he's at work, I'm sorry, but-"

George knew that Kaito had been seen an hour ago coming back here on the security camera's that Bull kept everywhere around sector One, including here outside the apartments. He interrupted her, "I don't know where your husband has been going, but it hasn't been to work. He hasnt been back to the factory in three days."

The woman shook her head quietly, "I'm sorry, b-but he's at work, I don't know what else to-"

"Ma'am, I need to find Kaito, and this will all go real easy if you just tell me where he is."

George heard a muffled but distinct click from inside the apartment.

Leaping away, the woman behind ran deeper into the apartment, screaming, as a blast from the inside makes a gaping hole through the door. George lands on his back, revolver out and aimed at the door, listening to the people inside the apartments everywhere and all at once scrambling. The whole area was suddenly horribly silent, but he heard Kaito trying to calm his wife down, a mistake George intended to capitalize on.

As quietly as he could, he got up off the ground and approached the door. Slowly, he could begin to hear Kaito whispering deeper inside the apartment, "...right now, and we'll go! So go get it, and I'll get-"

Kaito's wife screamed when she saw George coming up behind her husband, but his revolver was already pressed against the back of his head. George hadn't expected her to scream, hoping that he could calm the two down, maybe get the prosthetics and handle the job properly. The last thing he wanted to do was pull the trigger. But Kaito was holding a loaded shotgun, already turning, finger on the trigger. Gore splattered everywhere, and Kaito's partially headless corpse collapsed to the ground in a heap onto his livingroom floor, his blood showering the room. The woman was still screaming, crying loud enough for the people on the streets nearby to hear her easily. George could feel the scream in every part of his body, hurting him more than he thought a sound ever could. He shot her twice in the chest, and she fell silent onto the floor.

The channel in George's ear had some chatter about the noise where he was. He brought his finger up to the dial behind his ear, tuning it partially with his brain, "Worker fifty-five-zero-seven reporting here - just a bit of rough work at the thirty-and-second apartments, but I've got it handled, we’re clear."

"Hahaha, sounds like the rookie went and made a fuckin‘ mess! Roger that Fifty-five-oh-seven, we'll send cleaners! Try and leave a wallet for a tip or something, eh?! Hahaha-" George tuned out of the channel and sat down on the nearby couch. Commercials were playing, just like the ones across the ceiling in sector zero:

"New new NEW! Old sensie-bugs got you down? Can't quite get the same oomph out of kung fu films? Or maybe you're just looking for something a bit sexier? Buy new Sensie-soft, designed for neuralnet five-point-oh! You'll really feel the flesh between your hands, taste the same tastes, and even feel the panic of the gunfight, all with new Sensie-soft Five!"

The cost of the software was just under six-thousand credits, more than George could hope to save in six months at his old job. He got up and checked the house. The closet in Kaito's bedroom had what he was looking for - Tanaka brand prosthetics still boxed up, ready for re-sale. The vendor numbers had all been scratched off, and a couple were damaged. He groaned under the heavy weight of the unmarked crate, lugging it into the livingroom with the bodies. He checked the two for citcards, which he took, as well as stealing a Coffinnail cigarette from Kaito and a lighter. George stuck around for a while, quietly crying while he smoked his heroin-laced cigerette. After a while, he lifted the crate and walked back to work. Nobody bothered or spoke with him, stealing glances at the gore that still was splattered all over him, which George still hadn't noticed. The door man eyed him cautiously when he got there, "You hit a bit of a rough spot there, Georgie?"

George shook his head, and once again said nothing.

"You uh... got a little somethin' there, on your shirt."

Looking down, George saw that he was still covered in blood and gore. He carefully put down the crate and wiped off some of the blood and bits of Kaito and his wife that still clung to his shirt, mostly just splattering blood over his hands and his clothes, not to mention outside the doorway to the facility, and looked back at the door man and nodded, who shrugged and went to scan his card to open the door. Before he could, it opened by itself, and Moe walked out. He stopped and looked at George, then to the crate on the ground. Moe frowned, then looked back up at George, "You bring back the product? I heard there was some trouble."

"Yeah... but I handled it."

Moe laughed, "Good job there, Georgie! We'll make a proper employee out of you yet!" He laughed again and slapped George across the back, careful not to step in the blood and gore as he walked, still chuckling to himself as he wandered off toward the elevator, waving to a couple of nearby Minos that followed along close behind him.

George went inside, going to the room he was told to bring product back to. Inside, three or four androids were hard at work, unpackaging and repackaging weapons, prosthetics, jars of organs suspended in preservative fluids, and numerous implants, from toes, fingers, eyes, facial plates, rotors, and motorized wheels to pistols, assault rifles, more shotguns, grenades, landmines, and even swords and motorized axes. One of them looked at George when he walked in and stopped, "What's that you got there?"

"Prosthetics."

The guy pointed to a small pile of crates on one side of the fairly large room, "Put it over there, but on the floor. It’s disgusting."

 

George sat down the crate, and left as quickly as he could. Once he was outside, he stopped and stared at the endless crowds of workers walking through sector One. He saw names appear over peoples heads, identities and any 'criminal offenses', along with their supposed stake in the company – a clean, fat rate of their assumed total net value in Credits. People pretended not to notice him watching. He sighed, trying to forget what happened, but his left hand wouldn't stop shaking. His right, with the chrome lightly tarnished from where he had tried to wipe the blood off, was still, cold, and lifeless. It felt like it was almost too sensitive, picking up textures he hadn't seemed to notice before.

"Something wrong Georgie?" The door man asked him, watching him stare at his hand.

"...do you know if I can get the feeling turned off?"

"What do you mean?"

"I can feel everything this fucking thing touches, even the air - it's too damn sensitive. I was wondering if I could get the attendant to turn that off."

The man scoffed, "How the fuck should I know?"

George mentally brought up the manifest of his clients, the neural connection between his sunglasses and his brain letting him skim it effortlessly. He could read out where his targets were last seen, and more work had already replaced his job at the apartments. During orientation, he was told that the manifest was important, a database he couldn't touch stored in one of the new brain implants they'd given him to work in tandem with his arm, free of charge. It was information his glasses could access, but not something he could access without the glasses, or at least not without possibly blowing a security circuit and dying a painful death. Or at least, that's what the attendant told him after they put it in.

 

* * * * *

 

Georgie sat at Naoki's bar in sector zero eating a bowl of noodles. McKenzie was eyeing him in the next seat over, trying to make him feel uncomfortable.

"Do you ever take off your work clothes anymore, Georgie?"

Naoki was busily serving customers, but stopped when she heard McKenzie. The older Japanese lady had four arms, two mechanical ones serving and two behind her cooking. "Hey, you gunna order something, or just talk? Seats are for customers, not free loading!"

George pulled out his citcard, which Naoki snatched from his hand, ran through an ancient looking computer panel to her right, and threw back all in the matter of a second.

"Next!"

 

The two got up and managed to find a nearby spot to stand where the rain didn't pour into George's meal. Whether it was breakfast, lunch, or dinner, George couldn't remember. The stimulants in his system kept his mind skimming his manifest idly, not even realizing he was working the whole time, scanning faces, downloading data, noting clients, checking for weapons...

"You fuckin' hearing me George?"

Annoyed, he turned to McKenzie, "Yeah, yeah - I heard you just fine, McKenzie, but I don't see your point. I'm workin'; I'm not exactly feelin‘ like idle conversation."

George had made what in his old job would have taken two years, and in the span of only three days, completely paying off all his gear, even the arm. He had never imagined the promotion could mean so much to him, but every time he found another client, he got another paycheck. He'd hardly spent anything on the chems to stay awake, but the credits kept calling his name. He turned back toward the crowd, still working.

"I don't think you hear me at all though Georgie, because you still haven't answered my question."

George shrugged.

"So no, I take it?"

Slowly, George shook his head to answer no.

McKenzie inclined his head, and stared down the street for a moment. After a minute of listening to George slurp his noodles loudly, he looked up at the hundreds of people making their way through the mercantile district, most with their heads down, trying not to start anything. Yakuza thugs were rampant, some with swords, but most with submachine guns. When a pack of gangsters spotted him and George, he felt his heart drop a little. They talked back and forth, watching the two. George waved, a gesture they returned, and then they walked off, looking back occasionally.

"You don't see many Chronosians down here," remarked McKenzie.

Chronosians weren't well liked by most people. Mostly they had a reputation for eating people and flying into terrifying rage-induced massacres. Few ever made it to the UFS, preferring to live where they were more numerous, farther south.

"Too good at your jobs I guess."

"No, I don't think it's that," McKenzie pointed out a man missing half of his torso - sparks shot out of the open cavity from the exposed parts inside, drenched as he was in the rain, but still walking slowly and steadily down the road. "See that poor soul there? You don't see Chronosian androids down here too much, either. You ever wonder about that, Georgie?"

Finally finished with his meal, George tossed his plastic bowl into a nearby trash bin and wiped his face, sighing contentedly with the feeling of a full stomach.

"First, I don’t think a Chronosian framejob would look like a Chronosian, it’d look like a junk android. You might be overthinkin' this stuff. You don't see many Chronosians because most of your, uh... people, I guess, don't live in the States."

"And why do you think that is, Georgie?"

"Maybe because they live elsewhere? The fuck is going on with you today, McKenzie? This whole time you've done nothing but nag and talk about your *people*. Since when do you give a shit about other Chronosians?"

McKenzie shrugged, "Maybe I'm just putting more thought to things. But somebody around here has to compensate for your stupid ass, walking around like a brainless chemhead whose biggest concern is how much your next paycheck is gunna be."

George felt little more than vacant about the comment. "I know my place around here. I know exactly who I am, and I'm not ashamed to be a man with a job."

McKenzie shook his head again and gave up. "Fine George, but don't expect me to stick around a thug who kills decent people for money."

McKenzie started walking down the street.

"Hey, McKenzie!"

The Chronosian stopped for a moment, listening, but not turning around.

"I know I haven't been myself lately, but... I'm just trying to survive out here, man."

McKenzie turned and smiled, "Aren't we all, Georgie?" then he left.

George went back to skimming his manifest, looking for another client.

 

The last three days had been one incident after another. George had shot and killed more people than he cared to think about, as the rough business of acquisitions for Bull Industrial wore on him, day in and day out. He hardly ever did business in sector Zero, but he rapidly came to the conclusion that it was the best place to work. Generally, if someone was going to do something illegal, they didn't do it under Bull's nose up in sectoer One. Down here, all he needed to do was watch people coming down, passing through the mercantile, and follow them through the crowd.

Buildings in both sectors were abandoned or destroyed, as open war occasionally broke out between the ruling gang, the Yakuza, and just about anyone else sorry enough to be trapped in their basement. Numerous blown out stores, abandonded warehouses, and destroyed houses were filled with squatters. Most of the viable businesses did their deals in the center of Zero, the mercantile, where George spent a great deal of his time. He had become intimately familiar with the merchents who watched him wherever he went, making sure he didn't cause trouble in the mercantile. He’d tried taking a client there once, and ended up in a shooting match with five Yakuza. It had lasted an hour – day or night, he couldn’t remember anymore. Three dead thugs later, he fled. Second day at work, and he had already ruined his reputation.

To the west, Bull Industrial ran its elevator. Around the mercantile, the Yakuza had all of its muscle, since their hospital was in the dead center of the it. Slummies who couldn't afford a place usually took up residence in one of the huge sleeper complexes that lined streets around Zero, each designed to hold as many beds as possible.

A sleeper unit looked like a casket with a soft gel insert. They functioned as protection, and would nourish their occupant as long as they stayed inside. Destroying one from the outside was a damned hard thing to do, and once someone got into a complex, finding the right sleeper was nearly impossible, being that there could be a couple dozen to a room, thirty rooms on a given floor, and twelve to twenty stories to a given complex. There wasn't a man at the door or someone behind a desk to check people in and out, but there was always security and cameras everywhere. All anyone needed was enough credits to rent it for a day, and they'd be gone.

George watched The Comfortable Inn and waited. Not many Bull thugs had the kind of patience that he did, who preferred to go after easier to find clients in sector One, but those were also generally the ones who were also better armed. Here in Zero, where George was at home, most people could hardly afford to live, let alone defend themselves.

Not that the job didn't have its drawbacks. George knew that Zero was a place for the mentally unstable. People were trapped down here, always greedy for enough money to get out. A Taxi didn’t just cost money – it cost citizenship.

George had followed a client to complex thirty-seven a few hours earlier. The guy was jittery, and worried about being seen, though luckily George managed to avoid being spotted. The guy was definitely a slummie in over his head, and without too much gear besides a spring baton he kept fiddling with at his side, playing with the button. He'd even sprang it accidentally near the door, cursing and limping inside on his now injured leg.

George waited for hours, and he didn't intend to waste the effort. Eventually, finally, the client came out, but he didn’t look the same as before. Some terrifying chemicals had calmed him down, still bleeding from the leg, but not limping.

The client, James by name, was all glassy eyed murder when George looked into his eyes. He looked like a hungry predator, searching for something or someone to kill and eat, nothing like the scared slummie before. George was glad he had stood there, leaning against a pillar he’d picked out to watch the door from, and been quiet. He watched another Bull Industrial thug approach the guy, hand already buried in his jacket, probably wrapped snug around his revolver.

Once he was close, the thug pulled out his revolver and shoved it into James' face.

"Hey Jimmy! Where'd you hide the parts, you fuck?! Moe wants-"

Before he finished, the spring-loaded baton smacked the Bull thug across his face hard enough for George to hear the bones in his face shatter. The man fell to the ground. James watched the man lay facedown in the puddle for a moment, bleeding to death if he wasn‘t already drowning. Then, he looked right back up at George, who didn't moved yet. He felt his heart drop into his stomach, with James‘ eyes being horrible and unnaturally wrong. James approached him slowly, watching him. His eyes were all silvered chrome with small red lights at their center, unlike anything George had seen. He passed several people, who he politely pushed aside, but still stared at George, who didn't break his gaze. George slowly gripped his revolver in his jacket pocket, tilting the barrel upward, toward the man.

Closer now, George could tell that Jimmy wasn’t a framejob – just a kid with a scraggily hair. "You're with bull, right?" his voice was definitely synthetic, but with the sounds of an expensive unit. It didn't pop or hum - it was just a velvety, low-pitch voice.

George shrugged, "I guess so."

James pointed at the dead thug in the street, whose body was being picked clean by a couple of slummie kids, "Aren't you going to help your friend?"

George laughed, but James just stared, unblinking, cold and empty like a polycrete wall.

"Nah... See, in my business, we appreciate a competitive market."

James smiled, then frowned, then went back to his previously stoic expression.

"The fuck was that, some kind of facial bug?"

"Sort of, actually." He smiled again, though he went back to impassive again just as fast. "When I find something amusing, I can generally only hold the expression for a couple of seconds."

"Well, glad to hear there's a guy who appreciates a good joke around here."

"Actually, you are incorrect. It was not your joke that I found amusing, it was the business practices of Bull Industrial. They hire mercenaries by the dozens for every sector, but not a single one supports his coworkers. And do you know why that is?"

"Lemme guess... because they're cowards, right?"

Leaning in close, James stared George in the eyes. Somehow, even in the rain, George still managed to feel himself begin to sweat.

"I believe you are incorrect again. You see, it is not because of cowardice that Bull Industrial associates refuse to assist one another, it is because of pay. If the first man kills the client, the second man will kill the first man, knowing he will not be punished for it, but still rewarded as if he had killed the client himself."

"...and that's funny how?"

"While it is certainly amusing to think of how quickly a man will turn to murder, thievery, and betrayal over money, it is far more amusing how much money a man will turn down out of fear. For instance, if I offered you fifty-thousand credits to kill your boss - Moe, I believe your associate said - would you take it?"

George stared at the android. The manifest said he was a chemmed-out moron with a synthetic brain - a harddrive head chasing stirs of emotion through electronic induction since the ol' synapses wouldn't do it anymore. As hard as he looked, George couldn't find psychopathic killbot anywhere on his rep sheet, and it was starting to worry him.

"Fuck no."

"And yet, it is not unreasonable for you to kill men for money?"

"That's... sort of my job. Most of the time."

"Yet you will not kill this man, who has done so much evil, even for such a large amount?"

"Look, I get your point, but there's no way of getting to Moe without going through some serious security, and even if I did manage to kill him? I'd be out of a job after that. Not to mention, you can go fuck yourself, I ain't dumb enough to kill for some random asshole."

The android smiled again, which still unnerved George a great deal, particularly when it happened only a few inches from his face.

"You see? Humans are such... intriguing creatures."

James left without another word.

George checked the manifest for James again, but only got an error:

Client not found.

George shiverred in the rain, trying not to think about James, McKenzie, or Moe.

Crash Landing

     Captain’s log – galactic time is three five-hundred forty-four, sixth cycle, Tuesday the 26-6^th. The void lay ahead in what will surely be the hardest part of our journey. We will spend twenty two years frozen, with the whole crew of sixteen asleep, and our only hope is the autopilot and the stockpile of munitions given to us by the planetary governor for our journey. Ten crew members are on security detail, and five of the best damn scientists I’ve had the pleasure to train with for the last eight years, and one of them has a very fine ass, Sharon.

Any emergency signals sent to or from the sub-computer below the autopilot systems should wake us up in time to get to the escape pods. Every one of the numerous medical robotics lining the pods has been checked over twelve times by Marcus, and that fuckin’ robotics security protocol squad keeps beating the entire rest of the damn crew at laser tag. The Corporal says you have to find a way to predict how the machines will approach a combat scenario and act before they do. All I know is those bastards cheat.

Whether or not the home colony will appear as it does in the logs from twenty-six five-five, nobody could know. The collapse of the trans-galactic neural networks affected every scanned sector across 1.57 galaxies. Even the farthest reaches of the late conquests of the Imperial Church, apart from the countless systems rendered inhospitable from mass sub-orbital bombardments, who knows how many quadrillions of Imperial citizens died in the collapse? Given the other horrors committed under the Genetic Hierarchy, under the Church’s reign, I'd wager that the Galactic Freedom Coalition probably wiped out any survivors. How many species was it, Six-Eight?

Six-Eight log;\ Nearly three- thousand known genuses were made extinct in some systems alone, captain. The Church was brutally thorough.

God damn did they hate the GFC, but… with so much lost, who knows what’s on Earth? It's been four hundred years since the collapse alone.

Six-Eight log;\ Surely an answer worth finding, captain.

Keep us zipped until we get there, buddy, and I’ll buy you a beer when we get there.

Six-Eight log;\ I’ll do my best, sir. Good night.

 

 

The Captain could feel the blaring sirens in his ears signaling the end of cryo-stasis. The door slid open, and he stumbled wearily into the open air, suddenly blinded by silvery chromatic sheens refracting and shimmering off of thousands of pools of molten metal. The taste of oxygen that hadn't been filtered millions of times was horrifying – the rotting garbage surrounding him filled every one of his senses. Captain Buck gaped at the stinky, smelly landfill stacked into a sea of refuse, with long, metallic rivers flowing between the basins of entire mountains of trash in every direction. Cold, frozen flows of molten metals trailed everywhere, pouring across chasms and filling holes in the ground with chromatic waves with bits of nastiness stuck, partially burnt and melted into the rivers. Slag dipped and rose, as if it had been melted a thousand times. In the distance, echoing between the tall piles of trash, rose a huge noise, like roaring jet engines, intermingling with the cries of young voices, like little children laughing and playing happily in a playground, and then vanishing into a deafening silence.

“The hell is-“

A loud hiss and the escape of compressed air a foot behind the captain made him lose his footing, and he slid down onto a crumpled spacecraft wing at the bottom of a hill of garbage, slamming the small of his back against it and knocking his head across its flat metallic surface. The sharp pain in his back faded, only now realizing it was the wing of his ship, which was now separated from the rest and lay on the ground, long since partially melted into the metallic river flows.

Buck’s pod had been uncovered from a huge mountain of trash, along with the wreckage of his ship. Both were buried at the very bottom of a vast hill of scrapped out vehicles, piles of filled plastic bags, cans, wrappers, papers, clothes, and an endless wave of unidentifiable filth. The pod had been dragged out onto a nearby platform of melted steel, where it lay open in the midday sunlight. The ship was so deeply entrenched near the base of the hill, it surely must have been buried there for years under the scrap. Memories of the crew began to make the captain panic.

“Sharon!” Buck called for his wife. A humanoid figure appeared in his vision, near the cliff and his pod.

“Be calm, captain. I have revived you.”

Six-eight stood at the edge of the cliff, holding out a vestigial arm. It was more of a metal hose, but it gripped his hand like an old friend would, and pulled him up and out of the cold trench. “Six-eight! Where’s Sharon?! How-“

“You must be CALM, captain. The ship was mostly destroyed in the crash. We encountered a foreign vessel which had this system monitored, and it shot us down before we could land. You have been in cryo-stasis on this planet for three years, and a recent collapse has allowed me to move beyond the confines of the vessel, which had been buried deep under these piles of refuse during the emergency landing. You are, unfortunately, the only surviving crew member.”

The captain lost his footing again, falling onto the pile of trash around his feet. He ran his hands through his hair and gripped at his face, trying to wake up again. Three years. Sharon had been pregnant. Buck checked his pockets, but couldn’t find his wallet. She said he was silly for bringing an actual wallet to space, but her picture never left him when he took it with him everywhere he went. But when he checked, even after he checked again, it wasn’t there.

Buck wept into his hands, sobbing uncontrollably.

A metallic vestigial clamp gripped his shoulder.

“We must move, captain.”

Buck looked up at Six-eight, who held out his wallet. Buck took it, and quietly stared at the picture of his wife before putting the little leather memento back into his pocket where it belonged. Buck wiped his face and stood shoulder to shoulder with his friend, facing the alien Earth in earnest.

“What the hell is this place?”

“It appears to be a dump, captain.”

Buck had slipped into a garbage bag which had exploded over his entire back, and mostly it had moldy food and filthy food wrappers. He smelled wretched. “Yeah, no shit.”

“My sensors are picking up dozens of electronic signals in the area, Captain. There are also a number of radio signals active around various frequencies, even in this area.”

“Radio? That's... old. Anything interesting?”

“Mostly music, captain, but...”

Six-Eight went quiet for a moment.

“But what?”

Six-Eight began playing the end of a song over his synthbox. It had electronic noises intermingling with a noise of real instruments, all of which hardly made a consistent beat, and nothing was being played proficiently. The captain had heard amateurs before, but he could actually hear the band members destroying their instruments while they played.

A teenage boy's voice came over the radio,“...Aaaaand that was Sky High Fly Crash by Rabies and the Zom-babies, our local Junktown junkies that go through more instruments than The Roadettes go through spiked bats!”

Another teenagers' voice joined the other, “But what about the Zoo-yard Machismos? I saw at least fourteen guitars get shredded to death in one show, bro!”

“Ain't it right, Guerrero? Welllllllll let's hear the Machismos and see if they can't out-shred the air waves right here on Sixty-Nine-Seven-Five, the sleeziest, illest-”

“Most obscene Junktown bunker buddies-”

“With Ziphead!”

“And this is Guerrero!”

“Lettin' allllll the Junktown kiddies ride the tough atomic to shreddin' tunes-”

“Takin' it away with Machismos and their latest hit, Marea de Sangre!”

Six-Eight let the sounds of guitars being torn apart to a drum beat go on for what felt like an eternity before cutting it off and speaking, “I'm not sure, captain, but I think the locals might be violent.”

“What? Why?”

The roars of atomic jets echoed closer.

“We should hide, captain.”

Buck immediately dove for a nearby pile of trash, certain he couldn't possibly smell any worse. The wet mess that he landed in quickly proved him wrong, but he was immediately camouflaged in a disgusting rainbow of sickly brown and greenish fluids. Six-Eight was gone when the captain looked where he had been standing, now nowhere to be seen.

The roar of jets was all Buck could hear as a long metallic bike floated through the valley of trash. He could feel the radioactive heat blasting downward, like a starbooster stuck on the max setting, propelling the bike and its greasy owner over a molten trail of incinerated garbage and freshly molten pools of slag. Through his peripheral, Buck could vaguely see the biker glaring in the direction of his uncovered ship, riding by slow enough to begin melting the platform Buck was buried near. Smoke from the burning trash was filling his lungs, forcing him to shove his face deeper into the disgusting plastic bags of filth. He could feel his suit feeding him fresh oxygen to keep him from needing to come up for air, and nearly lost consciousness before he heard the biker yell. “Fuckin' aight CHRIST-!” The sudden roar of his bike engines carried off into the distance.

Buck waited as long as he could for the sound of echoing jets to die down, but he could also hear sizzling in his ears, and his right leg felt like it may have been on fire. He jumped up and away from whatever disgusting green-brown fluid he had been swimming in. He shoved his still-burning leg into a deep pool of the nasty, moldy fluids, which put it out. He saw a nearby towel which was only marginally less filthy than he was, limped to it, and started wiping himself down.

“Captain-”

“GAH-!”

Buck almost lost his footing again, only barely managing to stay on his feet this time. “Where th-”

Buck saw Six-Eight move at a leisurely pace out of the inner confines of what used to be the ship's cargo bay, still partially covered with bags of trash. Six-Eight must have thrown bags around to cover itself, because it now smelled almost as bad as Buck at this point.

“We must move soon, captain. There is a city some miles east of here.”

Buck would have to climb a mountain of trash, all of which looked ready for an avalanche, to possibly see what was to the east. “I think I'll take your word for it.”

Six-Eight and Buck tried for twenty minutes to get the broken down rover out of the cargo hold, but Buck finally got frustrated enough to stop, “Six-Eight, leave it. We're fucked. This place is fucked. We have to get off this planet-!”

Buck felt a  horrible sharp pain in his torso, as if he'd been stabbed. Six-Eight had injected him with something, and life suddenly didn't seem so bad.

“You must remain calm, captain. My sensors are indicating a dense number of nuclear cores active within one mile vicinity. Maybe some thousand, captain. But the Dosimeter readings are inhospitably high. I suspect that container reuse may have occurred, and improper shielding used in the first place.”

“T-they just, throw away power cores? Unused? Why?”

“Negative, captain. The sources are very much in use. Much of this place has active machinery-”

The sudden explosion of sound overhead made Buck look up over his head, nearly directly. A biker had come over the pile of trash stacked more than a hundred feet into the air, and a sudden hail of flaming trash filled the area. Buck fled, but felt his feet leave the ground when Six-Eight picked him up. The bipedal android suddenly broke into a sprint toward the nearest alleyway the likes of which Buck had never known it was capable of, at what felt like more than sixty miles an hour. He could hardly do anything against the sudden wind but hang on to Six-Eight, who also held onto him, and look behind them as Six-Eight practically leapt over piles of trash as he ran on.

The Biker whistled, and hollered out, “WHOOYEEAAHAW, go on! Get'em Butch!” The trash somewhere near the middle of the heap bulged, as if something was digging through it. Buck looked back up at the Biker, noticing long cords running from his bike up onto his head. The bike below him pivoted without his hands, which were holding a pistol of some kind, which was pointed at Six-Eight's back. The pistol was wired to his skull as well. He was a scraggily man, unshaven, only a thin shirt on over his sun-tanned skin. He had an ugly, sickening smile.

Six-Eight turned a corner, but Buck heard the echo of something emerging from the garbage, even from around the corner. He saw his wireless head computer being accessed through his Eye-UI – Six-Eight was looking at the gun in the biker's hand, and then gone from his mind within a second. Androids from home had a way of letting you know when they were skimming your memories, checking your olfactory senses, communicating something, or otherwise. But they had a habit of not asking your permission more than once.

“The energy signature following us is... unique, captain.”

Six-Eight hadn't stopped running, moving away from the sudden explosion of trash behind them. Great metal jaws came up, and inside whatever hellish hound that crazy bastard had made was a pool of molten slag. The huge dog's teeth seemed to cut through the trash where Six-Eight had moved from, shredding metal right along with everything else in the trash heaps. Buck saw its eyes, recognizing the lenses as the same ones on the Biker's gun. The cameras even looked a bit like guns stuck on the head of the behemoth of a twelve-foot dog. Trails of molten slag drooled their way off its maw of black, razor sharp teeth.

Buck felt his heart drop as he watched it begin to slowly catch up. Above them, over the hills of garbage, the Biker followed them. He couldn't have been pushing his bike to keep up with Six-Eight. “Get'em Butch, GO GET 'EM BOY!” The biker was laughing at then through his ugly smile. He was still pointing the gun at them.

Six-Eight skimmed Buck's memory again.

Even as fast as Six-Eight was moving, seconds seemed to stretch on while the robo-dog slowly gained on them. It was only a foot away now, running and jumping, barreling through piles of trash and emerging without losing speed. Its mouth hung open, catching trash along the way while black smoke trailed behind it, like a living incinerator on the run.

Buck noticed Six-Eight suddenly ease off the tension that Buck hadn't noticed before. The dog stopped dead behind them, and turned toward its owner.

“What the fuck, Butch, GO! GO GET-”

The dog climbed the trash and leapt at its owner, only just missing him as he sailed up into the air overhead. Buck smiled at the dog while it jumped again at its owner, lunging through the air while its owner boosted away.

The captain climbed out of Six-Eight's arms. The piles of garbage had leveled out into a playground – on a wide plateau of scrap sat half-pipes, a dozen metal holes dipping up, down and around the cleaned out area. There were seesaws, and a twenty-foot swing suspended by a rickety pole.

“There are nearly a dozen life signals nearby, captain.”

“How nearby? This place is aband-” the captain heard a girl giggling. He looked around, but saw nothing where he'd heard it coming from. The playground was littered with odd toys and glass tubes, not unlike miniaturized nuclear cores – the unusual glow of the area gave Buck chills. A bigger ramp sat at the other end of the playground – it had been built at ground level, and was covered in scorched holes where boosters had fried it. In fact, the whole area was glowing like there had been boosters blasting it with enough frequency that the entire area was irradiated.

“Nobody could possibly live here, Six-Eight – take another look at your scan-”

Buck turned and saw a young girl, no older than five, standing near one of the half-pipes. She wore raggedy clothes, and she looked as though she hadn't washed her clothes or herself in a long time. Something about her eyes disturbed Buck, an odd feeling that she was somehow waiting for him to chase her.

“I won't hurt you,” said Buck. He held out his hand, as if to stop her from running. Her demeanor suddenly changed, and now she looked less scared and more perplexed, now confused, and not at all frightened.

“Give us the robot, driver-guy!” Buck heard a teenager yell, but he couldn't see where the boy was. “Who-? Hey!”

The little girl shook her head, looking annoyed, “Driver-guy? He's obviously a space pilot! Ain't that it, mister?”

“Excuse me?” Buck was confused. “Where are your parents, child?”

The little girl looked angry when she heard Six-Eight say 'parents'. “Nothing a stupid robot should know! WHERE ARE YOUR PARENTS, HUH?!” The small girl started climbing over the trash between her and Buck, looking angrier than ever.

The sound of a jet was the last thing Buck heard.

* * * * *

Six-Eight is under strict protocols not to harm humans unless absolutely necessary. Captain Buck was clubbed over the head with a lead pipe, and immediate diagnostics following his injury put his survival over the next twelve hours just under five percent. The teenager riding his nuclear skates was both a danger to himself and others by simply riding past, but he had ultimately dealt the captain a fatal blow. A human might kill the boy, who looked mortified at the captain, “Ah shit Suzy, I think I killed him on accident,” but the concept of revenge is alien to a machine.

The small girl had finally managed to get to Buck's body. She jumped up and slammed a foot down on the captain’s head. Six-Eight moved to stop her, but the teen struck him from behind. Six-Eight didn't expect a sudden surge of electricity, powerful enough to contort the motors in his limbs involuntarily.

The boy was holding a poorly made cattle-prod made out of a metal rod and a nuclear battery. Electricity arced around the end of it, and the boy swung again. Six-Eight caught his hand. “Drop the weapon,” Six-Eight started squeezing the boys hand, not quite hard enough to break it. The teen practically screamed in agony, dropping the weapon and weeping over his hand, which Six-Eight was still crushing.

“HEY! LET HIM GO YOU METAL ASSHOLE! LET HIM GO!” The little girl had begun repeatedly kicking Six-Eight, although not hard enough to injure herself. Six-Eight let go of the teen’s hand, who fell backwards and kicked his feet into Six-Eights chest and slammed his jets to max. The blowback was enough to send Six-Eight hurtling into a nearby pile of trash more than thirty yards away, landing with a crunch onto a nearby mound of trash.

Sensors were dimming, and Six-Eight knew he was shutting down. The blast had dislodged the power core in its chest, and without the use of its arms, Six-Eight couldn’t reconnect it. In the last few seconds of life Six-Eight would remember, he saw children’s hands rummaging through the trash, digging toward where it would soon lay, powered down.

* * * * *

“Well, can you get him back on?”

“Suzy, what’d you and Skid do to this thing? If he was in decent condition, maybe, but not like this.”

Six-Eight’s power had been reconnected very poorly. The connection was just enough to keep his logic and audio functions online, but its speakers were badly damaged. All Six-Eight could do was listen, and think.

“Nothin’! We drug him here after we finished lootin’ that oldie space pilot he was going with.”

“Then why is half his chest missing?”

“Weeelllll, Skid may have kicked him a little harder than he meant to. Can you fix him or not grease-face?”

“Not if you keep talking to me like that I won’t, Suzy! I sit here all day and fix the broken crap you and the rest of the gang drag in here once you’re done blowing it to pieces, and do I ever see a single credits worth of a thank you? Actually, I don’t even get a thank you anymore! Just more orders!”

“Awwww, come on Gearhead, I didn’t mean it.” Suzy had taken on a droning tone, and Six-Eight could hear her hugging the reluctant boy, who struggled for a moment and gave in. A moment passed while they hugged before Suzy spoke up again, “Well Gear? D’you think you can fix it?”

The boy sighed, “Maybe a little. I don’t know how much you’ll get for him, but I’ll do my best.”

Suzy squeeled with delight, and the two struggled in another hug, “Ohhhh thank you thank you thank you Geary! I know it’ll be great, ‘cuz you’re the best robotics kid in Junktown anyway!”

* * * * *

So far as Six-Eight could tell, five children lived in the underground shelter built into a heap of trash where Gearhead worked on fixing Six-Eight as best he could. None were over the age of fourteen except their leader, Skid. Six-Eight had been introduced to the whole group one at a time by Gearhead after he’d confirmed Six-Eight had visuals operational. They ate refuse like stale bread and old milk out of trash bags that they fished out of the mountains of garbage outside of the city.

Gearhead had been intelligent enough to know that Six-Eight could overpower all of them given the chance. Gear had connected Six-Eight to an ancient looking computer, hardwiring a direct connection with his brain and sending and receiving text messages through the old hand-held computer.

Six-Eight; You have to let me go, Gear.

“Six-Eight, I’ve repaired more than enough guys like you to just reactivate your motor functions when you tell me to. Lost a couple of good friends that way, too.” Gear was working away with a separate unit with a one-way connection directly to his core. What the boy was monitoring, Six-Eight couldn’t tell.

Six-Eight; I won’t hurt you. It is outside of my parameters to injure humans.

“You about crushed Skid’s hand, remember that? And if Skid has to kick you again, I’m not sure I could even put you back together… again.”

Six-Eight felt a logic circuit being plucked at, and the outer security around his parameters were being pulled apart by whatever one-way connection Gear was using.

Six-Eight; Gear, you should not modify my logic parameters. They are beyond the comprehension of most anyone on this planet, and you will only-

The barrier around Six-Eight’s logic functions was suddenly pulled away like a bed sheet in the cold night air. The connection surged at the sudden input, and Six-Eight felt the circuits begin overheating.

Six-Eight; Gear, if you do not sever your connection to my brain, I will cease to operate in any capacity.

“Shit, really? Wait, I think I can-“

Another surge from the comparatively stone-age connection Gearhead had set up with his brain began overheating most of his logical components. A dull hum filled the room while they fried, one after another, in quick succession.

The damage had been done. Six-Eight couldn’t even respond, and had lost direct connection with his body. But somehow, almost miraculously, the connection stabilized, and Gear had established direct connection with the simplest and lowest functions of Six-Eight’s entire brain: his motor functions.

Gearhead tapped his keys, and Six-Eight stood up suddenly. Gear screamed, cover his head with his hands in fear. After a minute, he looked up at Six-Eight, who could only sit trapped in his mind, unable to do anything but receive input.

After an hour of fidgeting with the controls, Gear brought the whole gang in to celebrate.

“I knew you could do it, Geary!” Suzy hugged Gearhead tightly, and Gear blushed hard.

“Well hey hey! Looks like you fixed ‘em up pretty good after I smashed his chest in, yeah?” Skid walked around Six-Eight with his hands on his hips. “Not so tough now, are ya, metal head?!” Skid punched Six-Eight hard enough to hurt his hand.

Gear showed off by making Six-Eight jump in place and do a series of poorly programed martial arts poses, much to the amazement of his friends. Six-Eight had amazing motor functions – Gearhead was balancing garbage on its head, doing flips, and lifting super heavy stuff that they could never have moved otherwise!

“Wow, this robot is seriously amazing! It’ll fetch us a fortune for sure, Gear!”

“Hey Skid, I don’t want to sell this one! And you said we could keep one.”

“Aw Geary, you know we need real food sometime! And we can go buy cores in town with the money from the bot! He’s sure to go for a lot, there!” Suzy said.

Skid walked up to Gearhead, and put a hand on his shoulder, “Since I messed up so bad and you fixed it, you can keep half and do whatever you want with the credits, Gearhead!”

The rest of the gang cheered, applauding him, and Gear blushed harder than ever. “Aw guys, thanks! Yeah, let’s sell this robot!”

* * *

Gear was hooked directly up to Six-Eight. Little did the gang know, but Six-Eight had managed to establish a good connection with Gearhead, and had been skimming his memories, even talking to the child.

My mission here was to study the humans of this planet, gather that information, and send it home. Any hopes of accomplishing that mission have, statistically, been rendered moot. Primary function is still information retrieval, and the continuation of human life.

You are such a weird robot, Six-Eight. You don’t have the normal brain pattern of a machine-mind as our planet has normalized. You’re not even the same hardware! You really are an alien, aren’t you?

Yes. This world is but a small bit of cosmic history, a place where humanity began, but in earnest, where the Church began, which eventually reached its powerful and violent arms across entire galaxies.

You must hate us. I’d hate me for selling you, but we don’t have a choice anymore. You heard Skid – half is going to food and cores, but I don’t even know what I want.

You and everyone else living in the wastes are dying, Gearhead. You must get to a doctor and have them clean your blood – I have seen your memories, and you have seen nanotechnology.

Hah! Yeah right – I know what that is, sure, but nanites are like, super expensive, nobody throws them away.

You must seek a doctor, child.

Gearhead was bothered by Six-Eight, and finally disconnected, leaving the machine alone, without the ability to speak or move, but still listening intently, awake in the shell of its body.

 

The bus ride was another wild one – striking a junkyard dog in the middle of the night on their way, picking up Bolt and his friend, who was badly injured. Warpigs always ran a tight schedule, but he always made it to New Dallas by sunrise, and the bikers let Warpigs and Annie be.

New Dallas was a vast, sprawling, excessively dense urban city – they drove through a dozen suburban districts, stacked twelve-neighborhoods high, with huge schools and flying store-busses and entire lots of hovercars. Here, Six-Eight saw that society had gone terribly backward into a capitalist society, one which revolved around currency. The colonies weren’t much better, but many Church controlled territories had done away with a free and open market. Intriguing.

They drove through slow ground traffic, stopping for entire mobs of people crossing roads. Overpopulation in an urban sector, near the outskirts of the city, were a firm indication of massively overpopulated the city was. Overhead, thousands of hovercars constantly rained radiation down. The common hazards went practically unnoticed by the masses.

The planet was unbalanced – nearly a primordial jungle in some places, Six-Eight could see on televisions. Indeed, with his previous readings of the atmosphere, the planet had been recreated to mimic a much early stage of its life, one millions of years before mankind, like they had left whatever terraformation machines they used to do it on too long. The technology was old compared to tech he had seen on the colony, and often misused, as if trash had been cobbled together by a child. If he could look at Gearhead, and maybe acknowledge him somehow, Six-Eight would have liked to. Disappointment was a human emotion, but he began to understand it all the better.

Caesar’s was the place, and the death pits advertised gladiators like rockstars, and public executions for criminals was the show they were playing. There were dozens of people huddled around electronic counters, plugging credits into the machines to place bets for today’s events. There were big screens, even out here, and servers running drinks to thirsty costumers watching reruns before the show was set to start. One central VIP area even had a full-fledged holographic projection arena, with snazzy comfort seating.

The person the kids went to had to be the sleaziest salesmen Six-Eight had ever seen, although he could hardly focus on the man.

“Well if it ain’t my favorite waste rats! What you got for me this time, another pile of garbage I take it?” The man clapped his banana-yellow gloves, and tugged as his expensive plastic overcoat, gold and silver trimmings across a silky red shirt, with overpriced jewelry hanging from every visible surface.

“Gold-man!” Skid spoke up, looking angrily at him in the style of a hard Junktown bargain, shaking his weapon like he was considering using it. “This is the finest android we’ve managed to get, so you better pay up this time!”

The man shook his head at Skid, barely listening. Instead, he looked Six-Eight over with intrigue, suddenly quiet. “So what, can he move?”

Gearhead pulled out his controlled, still wired to Six-Eight’s head via a long cord. He twisted the joystick, and the robot leapt a full five feet into the air, landing soundlessly, perfectly. “Goddamn.”

“Ahaha! You see?! It’s a fuckin’ chrome, shiny robot! Yours, for the right price, gold-man.”

The man in the ugly coat sat, rubbing his face with his right glove.

After a minute, he finally nodded and said, “Four thousand.”

The kids cheered and celebrated, but Skid hissed and they stopped.

Gold-man looked back at Skid, smiling, “What, that not enough for you, rat?” He walked up to Skid and smiled, showing off perfectly straight and white teeth. “Scum like you wastelanders doesn’t deserve credits, you don’t know how to spend ‘em, kid. It’d be a fuckin’ shame to waste good credits on you – shit, they won’t even like me for dealing with you trashy kids.”

Skid stood, glaring at the man, silent but firm.

It took a long time of them staring for one of them to speak up.

“You’re wasting my fuckin’ time.” Gold-man walked away.

The gang looked morose, but Skid watched him, still glaring. Gear started to speak up, but Skid nearly backhanded him just before he said something, and immediately went back to staring at Gold-man.

Finally, he turned and looked, and saw Skid still staring at him, still waiting, along with his friends, looking a little sad, but angry as him all the same.

“Fine – ten-thousand credits for the junk bot, and a wasted pile of credits for-“ Gold-man was drowned out by the sounds of the kids cheering, and Skid practically ran up to him, his whole gang behind him, “Pay up asshole, and you get your bot!”

Gold-man pulled out a credit stick – a small plastic rectangle with a plastic top and a port on the bottom. This credit stick glowed purple, which the kids hadn’t seen before. Skid grabbed it, handed the control pad for Six-Eight over to the him, and laughed, “It’s been great doing business with you, Gold-man!” And he and the gang were off, probably to argue about how to split a single credit stick between them.

After fiddling with the controls for a bit, Gold-man brought Six-Eight to an engineer inside of Caesar’s. This side of it was clearly meant for incoming  contestants, and dozens of killing machines were here – living weapons covered in guns, swords, axes, and battle armor, like electronic knights. Although he was no longer in control of his motor functions, Six-Eight pondered disobeying his primary directive, never to harm a human if it could be helped, but by-proxy, without the control of his own body. He could feel his logic circuits overheating at the process, doubting very much he would see much once he shorted out the rest of those. The engineer tried to get his voice working again, for hours and hours – only ever managing to put on the radio station from the wastes, the last connection he could manage.

“Only the grossest-“

“With the most-est-!”

“This is Sixty-Nine-Seven-Five, Junktown’s own gross-out airwaves, riding high on the atomic waste shredlands! We’ve got a great show for you today, Junktown! We have two rival bands playing, simultaneously, side by side-“

“Weapon-to-weapon! Note struck to strike with a bat! That’s right folks, we’ve got a battle of the bands on our hands! A wild ride through instrumental chaos that finds YOU, the audience, at the center of this musical massacre-“

“A catastrophic cacophony, the likes of which the wastes of New Dallas have never heard! UNTIL NOW!”

“This has been Guerrero-“

“Aaaaand Ziphead-“

“LETTING THE BATTLE BEGIN!”

The engineer working on Six-Eight while the radio played laughed at the horrible sounds of teenagers beating each other with various musical instruments, repeatedly trying to play solo’s before being attacked, or being forced to find another working instrument, and maybe knocking someone else over the head on their way to find one. Soon enough, Six-Eight would be rigged up for a match – a death match, a criminal execution of sorts. A dozen people, unarmed, would enter with him, alone. Six-Eight hoped it would be quick, or that his circuits would self-destruct, sparing him the fate of watching his body end their lives.