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.