All The Colors of Yesterday
by Elliot Bowers
Chapter 3
…
_____There were, of course, other places out in the toxic wastelands out beyond the cities and the farms--beyond places like the train had come from and was heading towards. These were places long forgotten and--longer since--not visited by outsiders. From the rusting remains of abandoned industrial complexes to the dilapidated buildings of dead farms, to even places rendered unidentifiable by the sand-carrying winds and toxic rains, these areas were generally left alone by the meddling of Zalem. Where there was no identifiable human activity, the powers-that-be in the mighty floating city did not care.
_____When life and control in Zalem went up in a bright, ultra-violent radioactive flash as hot as the inside of the sun, these forgotten places were made doubly secure from prying intrusion. Passive surveillance of the world had been shut down when Zalem's machines died. It made the wastelands even more forbidding, more unknown.
_____Maybe some day, explorers from the cities would brave the vast flatness of the desert and search for those forgotten remains of long-gone years. Maybe, with laws against the development of flying machines gone, people would take flight and see these places. Or maybe, they would be too frightened to approach the places…because of eerie rumors: gossip and speculation.
_____People were not generally religious, being too concerned with earning a living and drowning their problems with the awful drinks from bars and the loud action of cyborg gladiatorial battles. But people had time to talk. And when people talked, rumor mixed with imagination to make for the most amazing stories.
_____There were reasons why people stayed away from those places, too. Why were those places still standing--after all of these centuries? Earthquakes, warfare and pollution ought to have destroyed half of everything from the past, and the erosion of blowing desert sands should have destroyed the other half. Something, or someone, must be keeping those places standing…
____ Large, dark and strange figures were said to stagger among the ruins of abandoned cities, their arms bristling with distorted limbs. It wouldn't be surprising if some of the leftover fighting machines from the world-destroying wars were still stomping around out there--prepared to attack and obliterate anyone who dared invade their territory. The limbs could be unknown and terribly destructive weapons from long ago, ready to destroy strangers with a little bit of the insane fury used to destroy the land all of those centuries ago.
_____Or they could be mutants: lost generations of humanity made into twisted, sadistic creatures from toxins that leaked up from the ground and rained down from the sky. There could be entire tribes of mutants out there… Everybody knows that the pollution from the factories makes for mutations in the city--some mutants gone insane and becoming murderous creatures killed by vengeful cyborgs. Imagine the results of them being left to thrive out there--left to reproduce and continue.
_____Maybe it was best to stay away from the places of yesterday. Leave them alone, and keep going wherever you're going. If you don't, you could end up being blown to bits by one of those dying war-machine of long ago, its rusted weaponry still working. Or some of the mutants could catch you and make you into a meal. Cyborg or full-flesh human, they'd get you. If you were still human, they'd eat all of you, even the bones. If you were a cyborg, they'd probably find out how to open up your head to eat your brain--then use your body parts for shrines or makeshift weapons.
_____So, stay away from the forgotten places, like that place of forgotten happiness. Stay away from that city of metal statues, gaudy framework structures and paved streets. The streets are now dusted with sands, and the paint on the structures had been scrubbed away by wind and toxin-bearing rain. The windows are cracked, showing the dark insides of the buildings.
…
_____Stay away, because this place was still alive. Deep within this forgotten place, there was a control room at the end of a short hall. A cl-click of the doorknob, and the door leading in silently opened on oiled hinges. Light little footsteps came into the room--followed by bigger slower ones. There were no windows as this room was underground. The walls were metal-reinforced concrete mixed with a sort of plastic--never to crack or buckle. A very light breeze gently through this place as the circulation systems were still at work, humming low.
_____Flick! Low-powered lights came on--simulating the color of sunlight. With the extra light, other details became apparent. There were six life-sized dolls neatly lined up along the left and right walls, dressed in maid uniforms, their jointed metal knees stiff and still while their hands were folded in front. Dolls? No, their eyes moved to track the two who entered this place. They were robots.
_____Fl-flick! One entire wall seemed to come to life: a control console. There were at least nine screens above the row of keyboards, knobs and buttons. Yet only six of them were active. They showed specific views of other places, far away. A large, plush seat was set in front of this setup.
_____Footsteps crossed the dark, solid floor. There was the sound of someone sitting down in the seat, followed by the sound of something being eaten. Crunch-crunch-crunch… A space of silence followed after the food was swallowed. It was popcorn--a large bucket of yellow popcorn, eaten more out of luxury and amusement than actual nutritional need. Popcorn was supposed to be a fun-food--the sort of thing people ate while watching movies.
_____Crunch-crunch-crunch… The smooth, pale hand took more from the bucket of popcorn and carried it to the pert mouth. Munch-crunch-crunch… Hmm, nothing much was happening on the city monitors. A tap of a button by a butter-stained little finger, and data appeared on one of the higher screens: numbers and readouts on economic activity, food consumption, fusion energy production and such. Bo-o-oring!
_____But "boring" was also good in a way, because it meant that nothing stupid was happening right now. Things were easier that way, more predictable. Flick! Another tap of a button, and there was a roving view of an office in the city on one of the monitors. The visual feed was actually from the perspective of someone important in the city--a crime-lord. However, the crime lord wasn't aware that what he was seeing was being broadcast to a large antenna mounted on a tall building--the signal boosted from there--then relayed out to this place.
_____From this control room, one could see--and understand--plenty. There were cameras in the most amazing places. Some of them poked up from Deckmen, now tossed into mountainous scrap-heaps. And there were more cameras right in the heads of cyborgs and robots. After all, cyborg eyes were essentially high-resolution video cameras. Some cameras were even put into place by security-conscious people. They did not even know how easy it was for an outsider to patch into the video feeds through old data networks.
_____Like the cameras in the train, for example… Click! There was now a high-up and angled view of the lounge car in a certain nuclear-powered freight train. It showed one of the cyborg-girls looking at another monitor. The zoomed-in view on that monitor showed that something big, nasty and practically indestructible was following the train.
_____The twins were worth attention because they had interfered with Barabbas' plans. Those big dummies…! Didn't they know what they were messing with? Oh well, they were worth leaving alive for now--just because they made things a little more fun. The same was true for that great big nasty metal monster coming after them! Crunch-munch-munch…
_____Ooh, this is getting good--better than those old archived movies because this was real! Crunch-crunch-munch…! The city could take care of itself for now, not worth monitoring. And if it didn't… Well, then it wasn't worth maintaining, was it? Maintenance? Ha-ha-ha…! That's for workers! Control is the name of the game here. And since her father was dead, she could play this "game" all she wanted! Better yet was how the participants in the game didn't even know they were playing!
_____"Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…! Fun, fun, fun!" squealed the girl's voice. It was all one big game, how the world worked. And if some of the toys broke, so what? There were always more: There were always plenty of other cyborgs to play with. Plenty of toys! And because daddy was dead; he couldn't stop her from having all the fun in the world! The little girl's carefree laughter echoed throughout the control room, while the mouthless metal robotic maids and large robotic teddy bear stared on--awaiting commands from their mistress.
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2.
…
_____One of the twins emerged from the train's incredibly noisy engine room, a worried look on her synthetic face and her long dark hair looking a little wild as she turned to look at the video monitor bolted to the lounge wall. A few button presses, and she saw that it was still following them along the rails. She muttered a curse to herself before shouting, "It's still following!"
_____The other twin shouted something obscene in return from the engine room, sounding garbled over the rattling racket before she yelled back something more sensible. "Of course it is! I'll fire the guns until they're cooked! Keep watching to see if that slows it down!"
_____While this was going on, Ritchie was still huddled on the train lounge's bed. He held his ears clamped to all the noise. His eyes were squeezed shut. This was all too much madness, too much insanity. Here he was, speeding through the vast desert wasteland, all messed up with toxic wastes, earthquakes, nuclear weapons and who-knew-what-else from centuries ago! And now something very big and very powerful was chasing them.
_____It was a monster, right out of a nightmare. The monsters of nightmares are always big, always strong, and very fast. A person can run as fast as he can, try to hide, try to do whatever. But the monsters were always right there and always getting closer. Any second now, the thing would latch on to the rear of the rear train car with its one claw-hand before coating the rest of this vehicle in plasma fire.
_____Ritchie wondered what it would feel like, being incinerated alive or being hacked to pieces with that gigantic three-tined claw. He had the idea that it would hurt and would continue to hurt until he was dead. It would feel awful, be awful. How long would he see his own blood and insides?
_____The twins were shouting back and forth, one telling the other what was happening from her side. Why did they even care? Why were they even trying? Ritchie had the idea of trying to break open the windows and hopping outside. He then had an awful mental image of his arm or chest being caught on a shard of jagged glass as he leapt out, becoming a bloody mess when he fell the half-story to the ground--to the shredded by the quickly passing scenery.
_____At least that way, he would be able to choose how he would die! He jumped up from the bed and began to pound at the tinted window! His palms felt weak, so he began to kick at it much as one would try to kick at a brick wall reinforced with steel. And like a brick wall reinforced with steel, the annealed glass of the lounge window wasn't giving away under his frantic blows.
_____He panicked, still hit at the window with hands, feet, knees, elbows, anything! It was becoming a mad and blurry frenzy as he continued hitting and hitting... Crack! Something finally broke, but it wasn't the window. Ritchie felt a stinging numbness come over his left hand, a strength-sucking pain that began to spread up his elbow and seemed to wash over his brain. It hurt too much. All the shouting and noise seemed to fade off into nothing as he collapsed onto the bed.
_____The twins were still having their own problems. Her sister shouted another angry obscenity from the engine room. She couldn't even retract the remote guns back down into the train, which was how the train evaded the gun ban in the city. What would happen when they pulled up to the city's border, those guns out and smoking? She had the idea that things wouldn't really go well…
_____All of this noise, all of this stupidity! There was no stopping the Adversary, and there was going to be trouble when they arrived in the city with those guns showing--if guns were still illegal even after Zalem's fall. Why did some jerk back at the farm have to send the Adversary after them? And why did that moron Barabbas have to screw things up? Why did she make the Adversary to begin with? Angry at everything, the frustrated cyborg-girl slammed a solid fist down on a rust-coated metal console--inadvertently hitting two buttons.
_____Her sister gave a yelp of fright--a yelp lost in the noise from the engine room--when she saw the security monitor suddenly flick itself off. Now there was no telling what was happening back there, behind the train. What, had the intense radiation from the Adversary's blasting arm-cannon short-circuited the camera? Yeah, that's what probably happened. She then felt a slight extra thump of vibration beneath her feet as something happened at the back of the train.
…
_____ Cl-click! The two rear-most cars detached from the rest of the train, trailing snapped wires that hadn't been properly disconnected. They began to slow itself down, slowing due to wind resistance. These cars was no longer part of the speed and the progress dashing through the desert and was getting slower still… Slo-o-o-w-w-w-e-e-er…
_____The Adversary's thick electronic mind was vaguely confused for a moment as it saw the rear cars coming closer. There was no accounting for it at first, as the Adversary was sure that it was not going any faster. It was already going the maximum rate of speed allowable without losing its balance on the two rails. How could the train be coming closer?
_____Soon enough, the detached train-cars were edging closer to the speeding metal beast. Seeing that its progress was impeded, it gave a mechanical growl as it raised its huge left claw-hand as the train-car came closer. Shwoosh…
_____Ka-clank-k-k! The Adversary's alloyed claw was embedded in the train's rear-wall. It then stopped firing its arm-cannon like a rocket and pulled itself up as so its silvery hooves were no longer skidding along the rails. Then it took aim with its still-hot arm-cannon--aiming towards the lower-portion of this car and let loose with a blast of burning blue-hot plasma-flame. Someone screamed when the detached train cars were blasted through with ultra-burning energy, and then there was a blast of heat and sound a little like the end of the world.
…
_____"Ha-ha-ha…!" The smiling twin shakily stepped out of the engine room and closed the noise behind her, her long dark head of hair looking as wild and uncombed as her sister's. She slumped down on the lounge car's couch, laughed some more. Her sister looked at her and began laughing too…though she wasn't sure why and sat down too. "I climbed up to the cockpit and saw what happened. The rear cars detached, and the thing was caught in an explosion!"
_____"Hmmph! Why didn't I do that from the start?" asked Kyrie, realizing what her sister was laughing at. "Pretty silly of me, thinking that I could slow the thing down with those silly little things atop the caboose! Nothing could!"
_____"Think that's crazy? I thought about climbing up to the top of the train and running to the back and operating the guns myself! Would've… Ha-ha! Would've been a blast!" laughed Harrah. "My balance really sucks too! But then again, I am the smarter one and wouldn't have done that."
_____"Ha-ha… He-e-e-ey! Wait a second… I'm the smarter one!" whined Kyrie. "Not only that, but I'm the prettier one, too!" She looked at her identical sister, trying her best to look serious for a moment. Both stared…before both again burst into laughter. Things were going to be okay after all.
…
3.
…
_____The huge claw sifted through the blasted, darkened remains of the rear cars, beginning with the rearmost one while its visual sensors analyzed the debris. Although the Adversary lacked solid data on the Ritchie target, there was an seventy-three percent probability that the Ritchie was homo sapiens--a human being. The Ritchie was positively identified as being male as well. Therefore, the target profile was sharpened by a degree: a male human.
_____No, there were no human remains among the debris of the car analyzed first. Heavy plodding steps brought the Mercenary over to the next part of its investigation, the second ruined train car. It too had been obliterated--pieces and parts everywhere. Parts… The Adversary's main processor requested more data from the visual recognition systems. Currently, among the scattered chunks of metal, there were some severely damaged remains of bodies as well. There were arms and legs, along with the occasional spare torsos of cyborgs. Some were even without heads. On further analysis, the bodies were actually of metal. Also present were non-functioning Deckmen--their rubber faces charred and cylindrical can-bodies ripped open by debris. Still analyzing…
_____The results of data analysis indicated that the second car was either a storage container for spare cyborg parts or a place in which hidden passengers secluded themselves during transport. To distinguish the two probabilities, there needed to be some additional data. There was pertinent data stored in video and audio storage memory.
_____Then the Adversary's main processor loaded the data from stored memory. The visual resolution was lower, and the digital sound quality was reduced due to data compression, yet it was enough. It "replayed" the time the plasma from the arm-cannon blasted the inside of the train-cars--analyzed the visual and audio data of the event...
_____There it was--between the sixth and ninth frames frame of stored video memory: the sound of a scream, two deci-seconds before the plasma blast penetrated the train-cars. There was a loud and high-pitched human sound, the characteristics of one voice-print. But it was not that of a male human. The Ritchie did not generate a "scream," nor were there any human remains among the debris--merely metal components to destroyed cyborgs.
_____Conclusion: Four to five humanoid cyborgs had been destroyed, along with three Deckmen. If the Ritchie was not here, then the Ritchie was somewhere else. And if the Ritchie was in the train and not destroyed, then the Ritchie was still in the train. Move to the next search location.
_____Recalling previous tactical data from memory, the Adversary chose not to follow the same means of mobility. It turned in the direction of the long train-tracks, stretching off into the sun-baked desert distance, then began clomping in the last-identified direction of the train.
…
_____In the meanwhile, Duct was sitting down and looking at the remains of the vehicle repair lot. Well, the fenced-in lot itself wasn't damaged. But the home and workshop building that belonged to he and his brother had been blasted through by a massive explosion--the insides gutted by blast and heat. Duct just sat in front of the ruined building and asked himself, What in tarnation happened here?
_____"Look at that!" he blurted, glancing at his brother in a similar seat close by. "Just look at that! Doggone it! We jus' go away for one minute… One minute! And then the whole dang-on place gets shot to heck by who-knows-what. Everything's done."
_____"Hee-hee-hee… Yeah! Or maybe we're lucky we weren't inside and eating cinnamon oatmeal when it happened!" giggled Duct's skinny brother. "Well, or maybe we aren't so lucky. Cinnamon oatmeal just tastes so good! I mean, goo-o-o-od… Mmm-m-m-m, hmm! Especially when what's-her-name makes the cinnamon flavor straight from the reconstituted powders. I know, I know… Real cinnamon plants are hard to raise. But the way she uses the fake stuff…"
_____"How the heck can you think about cinnamon oatmeal at a time like this?" blurted Duct. "Fer goodness sake. Our place was just blown up! Most everything we done worked on, everything we made, it's all messed up! We got almost nothin' left. Almost nothin' but some clothes, some storage boxes, and…" He paused, his eyes going unfocused as his big round face went calm with a sudden thought. "You know what?" he said, very calmly. "Let's go."
_____"Go? Hee-hee-hee…! You mean, go?" asked Scotch. "Makes me wonder what's gonna happen this time." He then stood up, crossed his skinny arms across his coveralls-covered skinny chest, then puffed himself up in his best imitation of his big brother's stance--tried his best imitation of his brother's gruff voice. "'Harumph! We go away fer jus' one minute…!'"
_____"Huh? Whaddaya mean?" grumped Duct, looking at Scotch. "You tryin' to tell me that they need us 'round here fer security or somethin'? That ain't all true, though! Think 'bout it fer jus' a few doggone seconds. If we ain't been here in the first place, maybe Barabbas wouldn't have come 'round here. Then none of this probably woudn't ever have happened. Or heck! If we ain't built up here in the first place, we wouldn't have lost anything." The big man in matching coveralls and work-shirt slowly got to his feet--still a little weak from heat exhaustion. Just a little. "We've still got enough stuff to store food, clothes, an' enough tools in the dune buggy. We bolt ourselves some extra storage-space on top, an' we can be on our way."
_____It turned out that there was a little more left over from the Adversary's destruction than Duct had guessed. Scrounging through the ruins of their former home, the two mechanics found all the tools they needed--along with some spare coveralls and work-shirts. It was a little tricky, but they managed to rig two metal storage-boxes to the top of the dune buggy's tube-framework and one more just above the big engine in back.
_____They organized what they had packed. One of the storage boxes held repair tools and a few spare RTG repair units. The next box held a few sturdy sacks bags of money-chips they had saved up and never really spent. The third box had food: plenty of dried peanuts, some canned creamed corn, and just as much water. Plenty of water.
_____It was getting around sunset by the time their quick preparations were done. They motored their dune-buggy out towards the train depot, then hit the accelerator and sped off. Navigation was going to be easy. All they had to do was follow the tracks. Allowing for one rest-stop tonight, going nearly full speed, and not counting possible engine failure (which was almost impossible), they would be in the city by around this time tomorrow. Duct switched on the headlights, illuminating the darkening sandy flats ahead.
…
4.
…
_____Kyrie opened her eyes, squinting against the yellow-white morning sunlight that glared in through the train lounge windows--as seen from the floor. Her sister was also just waking up, her fingers stroking long dark strands away from her face. They had slept on a blanket, leaving Ritchie to sleep on the bed. The two cyborgs then went into the train's small bathroom to wash up--paying extra attention to their hair and faces. (There was, of course, as much hot water as they could ever want: The train's nuclear turbine generated plenty of it.) They wanted to look neat for their entrance into the train station in the city.
_____"Get up, sleepy!" they said together, smiling. Ritchie squirmed in the bed, sprawled out, and did not want to wake up. A few pokes on the shoulders and continued coaxing, and he did get up. They didn't have any fresh clothes for him, but he was able to at least shower in the bathroom. Well, they could buy clothes for him in the city.
_____Oh yes, the city! First it seemed like a jagged profile across the far-horizon, a bit hazy as the industrial smokestacks were getting fired up for another workday. The jagged line on the horizon became thicker and more detailed as the train sped closer still. Some signs indicated that freight trains should be below a certain speed at this point. Oh, right! They went to the engine room and began slowing down the train. In all their haste and relief on finally getting close to their destination, they'd almost forgotten about driving this big thing.
_____While Harrah stayed at the main engine-room controls, Kyrie climbed the ladder up to the overhead, glassed-in train cockpit. There were simplified train controls up there, used to guide the train into rail-yards and stations. It also gave a much better view of where they were going. They were really getting there, almost there. Seeing the upcoming urban landscape brought up faded, long-away memories of interesting times about being there. Kyrie remembered, and she was sure that Harrah had the same memories.
_____This train slowed down, getting to the vast wide wall that acted as a city border against the hard grit and sands of the flat-out desert. They were going at a slow-cruising speed when they came through the opened gates, and the city seemed to grow all around them. These travelers were now in a landscape of concrete buildings, hard streets, and machines of metal.
…
_____Everyone climbed the ladder down from the train's engine room and onto the raised concrete platform. The train depot looked almost exactly as the twins remembered: a cavernous indoor industrial place, busy with cranes and working cyborgs to unload loads--other trains being parked on rotating sections of track. There were some important differences Harrah and Kyrie noticed right away. Among the freight workers in gray work-clothes, there were some fleshies and cyborgs wearing black business suits and white shirts. The businesswomen wore skirts and stockings with their tailored jackets and shirts, seeming as severe as the businessmen.
_____And there were no robotic representatives of Zalem in sight. The once-familiar sight of Netmen and Deckmen humming around on mobile setups or preaching from installed platforms was no more. The people in dark business clothes, then, must be part of the group that took over this city's administration: the organized crime syndicates that once operated on the fringes of the law. Now that Zalem was no longer the law…
_____"You three…!" came a shout from the left of the train platform, and the twins turned to look. Two people were striding hard in this direction: a dark-suited fleshie and a cyborg in coveralls. The full-flesh man glared at them, his pasty face getting red. "The manifest said nothing about there being three drivers. And you're missing two whole cars of electromechanical parts. Who are you, and why'd you screw up my shipment?"
_____The twins glanced at each other while Ritchie stood stock-still. "Umm-m-m…" went one of the twins. "Well-l-l… It's like this. We were attacked out there and almost got killed. There was this huge war-machine chasing us on the tracks. We tried using bandit counter-measures on it…"
_____"But the big thing was way too strong for that," added the other. "It just kept getting closer and closer. We had to do something… Or it would've messed up the whole train! It had this huge gun-arm thing that fires blasts of focused plasma and a claw on the other arm that can smash anything. It was trying to kill us, mister! What could we do?"
_____"So that's your story, huh?" mused the man in the business suit. "You still didn't tell me who you are. For all I know, you're just a bunch of stowaway bandits who killed the driver and planned on selling the leftover goods in an unofficial market. My friend Jumbo doesn't know you, and he's supposed to know all the train people from that farm…" The man jerked a thumb at the cyborg in coveralls standing close by. "What are your names, huh?"
_____They introduced themselves. "My name's Harrah," said the twin on the left. "And my name's Kyrie," said the one on the right. "This is Ritchie… His father was killed during some trouble back on the farm, and we had to leave. It was either that or be killed. So we…" She stopped talking as the business man's smirk grew even bigger.
_____"Harrah…? Kyrie…? You have got to be kidding me! And that lie about the war-machine sounds about just as phony!" declared the man in business suit. "I guess we'll have to show you farm-headed bumpkins how the Black Market deals with phonies." He just pointed to them, and then at least twenty large-bodied cyborgs seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere around the platform--grabbing the twins and the boy.
…
_____They were half-dragged, half-carried out of the train station by the solid metal hands of big freight-worker cyborgs. Ritchie yelped at one point when a rough-looking cyborg pulled a little too hard, nearly pulling his arm out of the socket. The pain brought tears to his eyes. Kyrie and Harrah weren't experiencing physical pain, but the emotional shock they felt was numbing them to all of this.
_____Dumbstruck was the word. Both twins were numb with the suddenness of their situation, letting themselves be rough-handled and forced along as they were taken to wherever that crime boss wanted to go. Then again, crime boss was the wrong term, since that group called the Black Market was in charge now. And they were going to prove it to these three newcomers.
_____The place wasn't far, a rough-looking square structure next to the station. It was in the city proper, with short buildings all around and paved streets lined with sidewalks-and yet more buildings. They were hustled through a ground-floor area littered with cyborg body parts and unconscious people, some more business-suited gangsters standing around. The sign next to the elevator said "Athoglog."
_____Up the elevator, they were taken to the roof--which was covered over with shiny sheets of metal. Why? Because the sheets of metal better reflected the heat of the coming sun--all the better to punish those who would be tied to the many crosses up here. There were already some cyborgs here, heads lolling in the heat and limbs tied to the braces with loops of steel cable. For the cyborgs whose limbs had been buzz-sawed off, bolts held the metal stumps to the metal crosses.
_____Both twins were put on the same upside-down crosse. "N-no… No-o-o-o!" They screamed and struggled at the last minute when they realized what was being done to them. But the work-cyborgs were stronger than their weak struggles, holding them to the structures while they looped steel cables around their legs, hips and arms--and even around their necks, leaving their dark hair to hang straight down.
_____Then they again sank into that dazed, lost look of theirs as the reflected sunlight on the baking metal began to heat up. The temperature regulation systems of the twins' bodies did what they could to keep their brains alive within the safe limits. Still, this set them both off into a feverish feeling of dizziness and disorientation, the state of mind between…sleep and consciousness…
…
_____As their minds floated in that sickening and feverish dizziness, they began to see things… A bus…rolling down a city street. Ro-o-olling… Rolling down...the street… The bus was on fire, all full of wide, roiling flames that constantly gushed from the broken windows and the slow-turning wheels. The wheels were on fire too…
_____Both twins gasped when they saw what happened next. The bus slowed to a stop, its ever-melting rubber tires smearing streaks of darkness. Someone stepped out of the bus, an old blind man dressed in work-clothes and silk-white shirt, a cane in his right hand. The twins were sure he could see them, somehow, though he had no eyes. They were dark, gaping sockets seemed to see nothing, yet also everything…
_____Something was wrong with this, wrong about everything. It was the kind of horror a person experienced during a nightmare--everything being wrong. Something was going wrong with this place, and the burning bus was somehow connected to it. The burning bus…! They had to get away from the burning bus!
_____Their scream came out as a low moan, as they were feeling so weak. And somewhere, far away, they heard someone say something about "down…" Get 'em down. They were being pulled away, and the hot nightmarish vision was obliterated when cold wetness splashed their faces.
…
_____And they were looking up at the sky. They were taken down from the upside-down crosses by people in coveralls. Someone…poured water on their heads--cooling their brains. The cyborgs in coveralls even gave them some of the water to drink. It had a somewhat metallic taste to it, but the twins both drank until their artificial stomachs felt full.
_____"The boss found out that you guys weren't troublemakers after all," said the big cyborg in gray coveralls, the one called Jumbo. "Sorry about that, but he said we can't have people messing up the train shipments in from the farms. Those shipments in from the farms are really important. We're still finding out ways to make our hydroponics food-manufacturin' places up an' goin', but that's gonna take a while. So we still need all the stuff from the farms we can get… No hard feelings, okay? That's just how my boss does business…" Jumbo and his assistants helped the girls and Ritchie to their feet. "And hey… Welcome to the city."
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5.
…
_____They were allowed out of this building and into the city--almost pushed out. The twins were still feeling hot, dizzy and sick. To them, the world looking as if it was tilting and swaying… There were reasons why people didn't stay on building rooftops for long, especially during the afternoon--health reasons. Not only was it ridiculously hot atop buildings due to the heat-reflecting surfaces, but the air itself was also very bad--very contaminated. Noon-time was when the manufacturing machines of the industrial buildings were going full-tilt: churning out manufactured products and plenty of noxious smoke. Some days, the air became so bad that it made the sky look like an airborne chemical soup of rotten colors.
_____How long were they up there? Staggering along this sidewalk, they didn't know and couldn't be sure--clinging to each other for balance while Ritchie was somewhere ahead…or behind. He was somewhere close by, probably just as dizzy and sick as they were. The tone of the sunlight seemed a little darker and redder as afternoon grew into late-afternoon. But that could also be due to the air-pollution. They couldn't be sure of the time of day or even be sure of where they were even going now.
_____Everything looked and felt dizzy and wrong, tilting and whirling, the sidewalk and the buildings all around while people occasionally walked on by--stepping past. Some glanced at them staggering along, but kept going. It was usually a good idea to mind one's own business around here. A common saying in the city was this: Stick your head in where it wasn't welcome, and it was likely to get cut off.
_____Despite the sickening haze of nausea filling their heads, the twins also noticed the heavy noise of the vehicular traffic on the streets now, mainly large heavy trucks. Since they were still in the outer fringes of the city, close to the train station, the trucks must be carrying goods brought in from the farms and other cities--goods brought on the trains. Maybe some of the goods on some of the trucks came from the shipment on the train they had ridden here: the very shipment they damaged and had been punished for.
_____Then something slow and very hot seemed to go by on the street, making them feel even worse… A vehicle with an extra-hot engine, maybe--hot enough to be felt on the sidewalk. That was it: That extra bit of heat was finally too much.
_____"H-hold on…" said Harrah, gasping for air. "I can't…." Then she and her sister sat down--or fell down. They then crawled across the sidewalk and set their backs against a gritty gray wall, heads together. This felt like a bad hangover from even worse wine. It was another reminder to them of why they didn't visit the drinking place too often: Feeling like this was the usual result the next day.
_____Another person walked by and stood there, seen as a blur through the dizzy eyes of the twins. Their head were clearing up a little, but not enough to see clearly. Looking up to see who it was took an effort. Squinting against the bright slanting sunlight, they eventually recognized who he was. Ritchie! He had had caught up with them. They struggled to stand up, using the building wall and each other to get to their feet. Kyrie reached out and…
_____"A-a-a-agh!" screamed Ritchie when the metal hand came a little close. He shook his head and stumbled backwards, tripping over his own two feet. The front of his shirt was wet with vomit, and his eyes looked red and wild--lost in confusion and madness. Then he turned and made a run for it!
_____Before the twins could stop him, he was getting too far away, swaying and staggering as he moved. "Wait!" they shouted. To keep their balance, they kept their heads angled downward. This way, they were able to keep from falling over as they moved at a slow jogging pace--still a little woozy, but still able to move. "Ritchie! Don't run away!" they shouted in unison.
_____But Ritchie wasn't hearing that! He must have thought the girls were strangers coming for him or something. Or the thick nasty mix of various pollutants must have affected his thinking. He had lived on the farm all of his life and had never before breathed city air. Then there was the noise and shock coming into the city itself: all the noise and activity. It was the shock and different-ness of it all, especially when the city was in its most busy time of day.
_____As he stagger-ran on along the sidewalk, his head was full of insane chaos. The rumbling trucks were filling the street to the right of this sidewalk while the tall buildings stretched up to the left and right and all around, with the air above being nasty to breath and even look at… No telling what was going to get him in all of this noise and confusion, the toxic wind blowing and carrying city air, filling his ears and mouth with machine-engine noise and chemical-stink. All he could do was keep running and hope he didn't fall down again and get attacked by the crazies who live around here, especially the ones chasing him… Monsters and machines, big nasty metal things and little metal things that sounded like girls, everything was after him! He nearly fell when his left foot hit something, his right foot missing a step and making him suddenly go bumbling and stumbling in a random direction--the wrong direction.
_____Able to see a little more clearly now, the twins suddenly stopped when they saw what was happening. They saw him stumble and veer towards the right: Yes, right into the street. Of course, with all of those trucks moving and going, there was no time or room for any of them to stop. So they didn't. Ritchie must have been killed immediately when that dark-colored truck smacked him down and kept going. And if he wasn't, then the rest of the traffic that followed must have surely done the job.
_____Please, no… Please… Please..! The twins went to their knees, eyes wide and staring at the place in the street where they saw Ritchie last standing--a place filled with trucks moving too fast and too heavy. It couldn't be true. Ritchie just couldn't have been killed already. But the thick red smears on some trucks' front bumpers and tires was all the evidence they needed to see, wanted to see…
_____A shocking thrill of sickness suddenly filled their abdomens, making them get to their feet again and run for the nearest alley. The scene was too disgusting for them to even see, to even think about! Leaning on the alley wall, heads down, they gasped and wretched while their previous meal was coming close to coming up and out of their mouths. Electromechanical insides don't become "sick" in the way of organic ones, but severe emotional shocks from the brain and into the body could make for strong physical reactions.
_____ A gust of wind seemed to carry away the racket of the traffic, and then this alley seemed a little more quiet. Harrah and Kyrie stopped retching, began to stroke wayward strands of hair out of their eyes and straighten up. Indeed, everything was suddenly more quiet, more calm--a change in the air.
_____"Terrible things happen to innocent people sometimes," said someone, followed by the fwip of a playing card being laid down on a makeshift table: actually a few wooden planks laid across a chunk of metal machinery. Another chunk of metal served as his seat. The old stranger was wearing blue coveralls over a dull red short-sleeved shirt, his beard getting to be as gray as the hair atop his balding head. Fwip went another playing card… "Things happen. What can be done?"
_____"Who the Hell are you?" shouted Kyrie. She huffed, then began to rant. "What do you know about anything, huh? You know, there are some people who deserve to die, bad people! People who rob and steal, people who hurt others! There are people out there who don't even deserve to…be…alive…! But some people…" She felt tears coming to her eyes, bit them back.
_____ "I can see how you view things," said the man sitting on the twisted chunk of old metal as he shuffled his deck of cards. Fwip-fwip-fwip-fwip… "For you, maybe, everything visible seems to be what matters. You work to buy food, to survive. And you take care of the people that you care about." Fwip-fwip-fwip… Then he stopped shuffling his cards, took some cards away from the table. "But is that the only way to see things? It's just that this blurry, flimsy thing you call real life may actually be more than what we want to see. You don't know all there is to know, and maybe you can't understand."
_____"What do you mean by that?" asked Harrah as the old man laid cards down on the beat-up old wooden table, his eyes still generally in their direction. "What, are you some kind of drugged-up mystic or something? You know, you should stay away from some stuff," she said, angry. "It'll mess up your head forever. Some of the stuff they sell could even make you deaf or blind…before making you dead."
_____"Hmm… What you have said is more interesting than you know," responded the old man, his eyes seeming to look past them. In fact, during this entire conversation, he never once met their dual stares. Fwip-fwip-fwip-fwip… He set down one more card next to the others he'd already set, them smiled as if enjoying the thought of a nasty joke. "Five cards on the table, plus one more…" he muttered, somehow audible in this unusually quiet alleyway.
_____With Harrah and Kyrie staring and angry at that rude and strange old man, he gathered the cards down on the table without looking at them. All of the cards in hand, he put them in his pocket. Without saying goodbye or anything, he then walked away. He opened up a metal door on the right side of this alley and went in--closed the door behind him. Wind blew across the entrance to the alley, making it seem to howl as it blew between the buildings.
_____With that gust of wind, the noises of the city returned. Another few trucks rumbled by, and everything felt normal again. So here they were, left shocked, miserable, and angry. Ritchie didn't have to die, hit by a truck. But who could they blame? The driver couldn't stop, and Ritchie couldn't stop. They couldn't blame the gangster who ran the train station and had them punished: They did ruin some of the shipment. Could they blame themselves, then? Maybe…
_____There was nothing they could do. Feeling low and miserable, the lingering sickness still in them, the female cyborgs sat down. They had to figure things out now; they had to think. Things were different now with Ritchie gone. But they had to keep going somehow… That was important.
