All The Colors of Yesterday

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 4

_____It was nearing the end of the afternoon in the city, and the dying sunlight was taking on that deeper tone of orange-red... Quttin' time! Time to get out of work for today! Most all of the workers were walking away from the factories and buildings where they had worked all day--filling the sidewalks, some of them going to outdoor cafes and pubs. People were everywhere outside, people of the cyborg and fleshie persuasion. Not everyone was heading straight back for whatever places they called home, be that place a lucky apartment in the downtown area or a converted square space in an unused sewer facility. Some were dropping by places to relax and hang out.

_____Things were easy now in the city. Since there was so much cheap labor, a lot of work was done. In fact, maybe too much work was done, said the smart accountant-type people of the Black Market. They had to limit how much work the workers did and how much money people made. Why? It was all in the complicated formulas and words they used.

_____The fancy explanation went something like this. The accountant people calculated the lack of demand from Zalem and factored in the only slightly increased demand from those on the ground, cross referenced with an already high supply of goods and services… An excess of supply and a lack of economic demand: That was a surplus. If too much work was done, too much was made, and not enough goods were being bought, the accountant-types said that something called "deflation" would happen in the economy: a "devaluing" of credit chips… Well, whatever. So on and so forth.

_____Essentially, most all workers worked morning to late afternoon, and that was it. The only people who "worked" beyond that were the executives of the Black Market itself….like the businessman sitting at this café-table. The square glass of rice-wine sat atop this table as his metal hands clasped a thick paperback book--a collection of short stories. His dark business slacks and jacket still retained its neatly pressed appearance, the white shirt and collar still looking spotless. It was easier to stay neat, being a cyborg. Cyborgs don't sweat. However, the solid joints and segments of a metal body can ruin most types of clothes.

_____ Officially, he was taking a break from going over the accounting records kept by the gambling bookies from the gladiatorial arena. That meant sipping his favorite wine at his favorite café and reading short stories. But unofficially, he was always on call for anything else that needed his attention.

_____He noticed someone standing opposite his place at this table, making him look up. "Excuse me… Mr. Muyamoto?" said the male cyborg, one in an orange business suit and with candy-colored hair atop his head. "There are two guys who want jobs working at an arena, fixing gladiators. They said they were good with machines…"

_____This made him lean back in his seat and cross his arms. Hmmph… Anyone looking for that kind of job at an arena was very brave or slightly suicidal--maybe both. Unscrupulous gamblers would sometimes have certain mechanics killed--just to be sure that rival gamblers lost money when the bodies of their favorite cyborg gladiators weren't repaired on time.

_____Oh, but that wasn't how things were officially explained. No, it was said that mechanics had…accidents. Deadly accidents. But whenever a mechanic had an accident, people just shook their heads and thought of the truth--not saying anything lest they also have an accident, like "falling" into the gears of a metals reprocessing plant or "falling" into the pipes of the water system.

_____Mr. Muyamoto deftly slipped an expensive silk bookmarker into the paperback. The silk was actually a sophisticated synthesized polymer, but it was as pricey as the real thing would have been. The book went into a pocket, and a little more of the rice wine went down into his stomach. "Very well," he said, standing up. "I would like to meet these brave candidates for the requested job position."

_____Giving a quick bow of his head, the candy-color haired businessman turned and began to lead the way between café tables and over to where two rough-looking men were sitting--seated at a table near the wall. The contrasts and similarities between the two was amazing: Both had the same facial features and had similar hair-types, both wearing coveralls and work-shirts. They were enjoying bowls of a thick, spicy stew… Gumbo, it was called. One of the workmen was especially skinny, while the other was especially portly and round. One face was thin and especially animated, the other face was round and more easygoing.

_____They stopped eating, looked up and saw Mr. Muyamoto--who sat down in the chair opposite them. The orange-haired businessman stood close by and did the introductions. "Mr. Muyamoto, meet Scotch and Duct. They told me they were good at fixing machines. Maybe they can help out?"

_____Mr. Muyamoto placed both solid gray hands atop the table. "Good afternoon. I have been told that you two seek positions of certain employment. I take it you are aware of certain, ah…concerns surrounding your career prospects."

_____"Heh-heh! What kind of concerns would those be, mister?" went Scotch. "We're so good with hard machines that nothing concerns us! My brother and I, we've been working on stuff for years. We make stuff work that isn't supposed to, especially vehicles! Yeah, vehicles. But anything else, we can fix too. Fix motorcycles, fix cyborgs…"

_____Duct gave Mr. Muyamoto a puzzling look before saying, "Mister, what my brother is tryin' to say is that we got a lotta confidence and experience in what we do," said Duct. "We got our first work in the wastelands, fixin' whatever we found so we could use it to get by. Makin' a livin' out in the desert ain't been good. So we done moved to a farm. Stayed there for a while 'til somebody came by and said the world changed. Yeah, things were getting' slow. We wanted to get to where the action was, out in the world where things were happenin'. So we packed up some stuff an' drove here. Here we are, lookin' for work."

_____ Looking at them for a while, Mr. Muyamoto thought them over. He strongly suspected that the part about "work in the wastelands" meant that the two had been part of a band of desert bandits. Such was not negative or especially dishonorable: The Black Market association itself was illegal during the time that Zalem's laws ruled the cities. But now that Zalem was out of the game… "And you say, you drove from a farm. Please, tell me of this means of transportation you have used."

_____"Hee-hee, yeah!" blurted Scotch. "We made our ride ourselves, made from parts. The framework's a one-piece setup with joints joined by memory metal. We got a HI-HO electric motor with dual power supply for lots of torque: microfusion and converted RTGs to give it juice! Hee-hee-hee…! Maybe the only hardest part was rimming the wheels! Man! It took us days to vulcanize the rubber knobbies on the back ones and get the front ones just right--mixing all the rubber with a smelly polymer so the tires wouldn't wear away for a hundred years. Then we had to…" His brother gave him a quick glare. "Wha-a-at? I was just telling him about our dune buggy!"

_____Mr. Muyamoto stared down at the table-top. These two were so confident in their own machinery skills that they had ridden their own hand-made creation through the desert. The desert! Most vehicles on the city roads today were rebuilt and refurbished machines. Some of that technology was forgotten, so the factories relied on the old machines to keep turning out certain mechanical components. These two must possess technological knowledge that was once forgotten: even daring to use micro-fusion batteries!

_____It would be a shame to lose these two talented mechanics in the sometimes-unscrupulous world of the gladiatorial arena business. It would be more of a shame to turn these two away to wander the streets and find a job elsewhere--perhaps to be killed by a lowly thief or unregistered organ broker… Or they could be taken away by some of Mr. Muyamoto's less-honest colleagues who ran the manufacturing facilities… Mechanics were being abducted, brought into factories, and never seen again.

_____But if he gave them a job, then his colleagues wouldn't take them. Better for them to work for him than end up in a deep dank factory machine-repair "job." He again looked at these two brothers in coveralls, two who braved the desert life and yet found time to be humble by working on a farm.

_____"Gentlemen, you should be aware that the profession of gladiator cyborg mechanic is precarious and important. I will say it to you directly: You may sometimes be the target of less-than-honorable intentions, and some people may want you out of the way. But your work will be steady and of decent pay. That said, the jobs are yours should you wish it. As you do wish it, I can have my associate here, Mr. Coleco, take you to your place of work immediately. And before I forget, allow me to say this: Welcome to the city."

2.

_____Their once-wet tears of sadness had long since stopped flowing down their cheeks, and they were not sobbing anymore. Sitting side by side at the edge of the alley, Harrah and Kyrie stared at the alley's opposite wall--dim in the late-afternoon shadow of the buildings. People were passing by along the sidewalk, and trucks still drove along the street. It was also getting windy.

_____Still staring at the wall… The concrete at the bottom of it was flaking away, revealing the rough gray cinder-blocks beneath. And the mortar between the rectangular blocks was slightly discolored with an odd blue-green rock-mold that survived the toxins in the air and the rain. There was no telling how deep the mold went into the wall's mortar-work, though. Maybe the building's wall was already cracking. Between the mold and the daily rumbling of heavy trucks along the road, the building's walls could suffer a collapse.

_____Life was a bit like that wall. Little by little, things were getting a little bit worse at a time--eaten away bit by bit, making for little cracks in the solidity of things. It wouldn't be long before the cracks showed and things became worse. Then it would all…come…down…

_____They couldn't go back to the farm--or maybe any other farm. People like Barabbas had probably already made all the farmers a little crazy. And becoming wasteland bandits wasn't an option. Harrah and Kyrie weren't very good at fighting, didn't like to fight. Besides, they didn't like to hurt people. This city was their last hope, at least so far. There was nowhere else for them to go.

_____Tilting her head towards her sister, Kyrie asked, "What are we going to do now? I mean, we came all this way… There's gotta be something we can do around here. You think the Black Market gangsters maintain the water-works? We could get a job there."

_____Harrah shrugged solid shoulders. "Not sure about that one, sis. I think…" A hard breeze suddenly howled through this alley, filling their ears and drowning out all other sounds. It was too loud to say anything. When it finally slowed and calmed down, she continued talking. "Ha-ha…! I was thinking that we could become singers or waitresses! If we had our satchel, we could use our chips to pay for throat modifications… You know, change our voice synthesizers to make for some really good harmonics. And we could do the waitress thing to tide us over between gigs."

_____Thump! Something thick and heavy landed in front of them, surprising them. After a second of shock, they realized that it was just what they thought they'd lost back at the train-station: their satchel! They looked up and to the right to see who was standing at the entrance to the alley.

_____It was a familiar-looking big cyborg, one in train-yard coveralls. They remembered him; he was the one the station boss called Jumbo. "Hiya girls… I, uh…was listening to what you were talking about. I didn't wanna pry or anything like that, so... Yeah, my boss held onto your stuff and told me to deliver it to you…wherever you'd gone off to. He's not a bad guy or anything like that. It's just that he gets really pissed whenever something gets screwed up at the station."

_____Moving slowly, the twins sat up and leaned forward to open up the top of their bag. They didn't sift through it now. Everything was either all there, or it was not. But just the sight of the things they had packed from home was enough to restore their willpower. Maybe things could get better after all. They could buy some food, find a warm place to sleep, then wash up in a bathroom and start looking for a job.

_____Jumbo put his metal hands in his coverall pockets. As his hands were so big, his pockets had to be even bigger. "Listen… I've been thinking about you two and was a little worried myself. I had a few kids once. All four of them were girls… Four daughters in a row. Would you believe it? You two both remind me of my youngest one." His eyes took on a far-off look--as if he was looking back into the memories. "But they're all gone now. They all went somewhere. It's just that sometimes I see a face in the crowd, a fleshie or cyborg girl who has that kind of pretty face and that long dark hair--pretty as a doll.

_____"Not many girls like to wear their hair long, you know," he continued. "I asked some ladies I know about that. They said long hair gets in the way and had to be brushed and washed more often than shorter styles. But my daughters did, wearing their hair long, just pinning or tying it up whenever they had things to do around that little two-room apartment we used to live in… Hmmph, they were just like their mother, always trying to make things a little more pretty for everybody.

_____"Then my wife got sick, kidney problems or something. She had to become a cyborg, and then she left--saying she couldn't love a fleshie. Soon after, the girls left too. I went cyborg a few years after that because work was getting too tough on my old human body."

_____The twins weren't sure of what to do now. They were feeling a little embarrassed for Jumbo, this stranger who was telling them such personal memories to them. But he had been kind and caring enough to personally bring them their bag. And they also had the impression that his explanation about his boss was a cover. The least they could do was politely listen.

_____It brought to mind some aspects of their life on the farm. Sure, they were friendly with most of the farmers. But they weren't close to anyone. The twins spent more time fixing machinery all day and reading at night, their hand-made cassette player playing drinking-place songs. They never really had anyone there to talk to, to listen to their problems. Yeah… Maybe they should start here.

_____He looked down at the cracked, grimy alleyway pavement. "Sorry about talking too much. I think that I've been working too hard, or been drinking too much of that beer. The beer, the ale, the wine, all that's better these days since Zalem's not taking the good stuff anymore, let me tell you! Speaking of beer… How good are you girls at fixing small engines?"

_____They both went wide-eyed. "Are you kidding?" went one of the twins. "Oh my gosh…! It's probably the only thing we're good at! We used to work on a farm for a really long time, years. If we had a job fixing stuff, we could do that all day."

_____"Yeah!" chimed in the other twin. "We can even make stuff." She reached for the satchel and beneath the layer of paperback books--getting out their cassette player. "See this? We made this ourselves. We even made the cassettes with a little multi-purpose press and some nanobot stuff we scraped up. If you want any machine job done, we can do it."

_____"Really?" asked Jumbo, sounding genuinely interested. "I've got an uncle who runs a few pubs close to the downtown area. Most all the good mechanics are busy at the factories, fixing them up and keeping them running. Uncle Patrick can't always find people good at fixing things… You interested? Come on, I'll give you a ride there."

3.

_____The big truck's cab section was large enough as so two could sit in the back, and there was a payload in back to allow for the carrying of heavy loads. Everything about Jumbo seemed big, so it was less of a surprise when it turned out that his truck was big: large enough to run over smaller vehicles and keep going. On the ride to Jumbo's uncle, the girls had time to look around at the city. They thought about dressing up a little for this job interview, but Jumbo said they weren't going in for an especially fancy job. Besides, they looked fine.

_____Hmm… The city really wasn't as busy as they remembered it to be. People were idly sitting on chairs and in outdoor cafes, some more walking along the sidewalk. Everything was in the reddish glow of sunset, with some of the halogen streetlights already on. Well, since the city was working for itself now…

_____This truck pulled into a gritty back area for parking. "We're here! He'll probably be glad to see you," he said. "You can leave your stuff in my truck if you want. Up to you… Hmmph, wonder why nobody's parked back here? Slow afternoon, maybe…" He opened up the side-door and the smaller rear one, climbed down. The twins hopped down, and Jumbo locked his big truck doors with something resembling a thick metal pen.

_____Out front, the restaurant had a brown-painted sign above the door: a stylized picture of a beer mug, along with the word Pub below it. The concrete front had a very neat appearance to it, with large windows showing customers inside at tables. Jumbo opened the door, and the girls went in--one of them carrying their satchel.

_____While the outside streets were hard and concrete, the inside of this place looked warm and comfortable. The tables had incandescent lighting instead of the harder florescent lights common to most buildings, with padded seats. The drinking bar itself had raised stools where more customers were sitting and drinking, with a dark-haired and professionally dressed female bartender cleaning drinking mugs and looking around. From over there, she looked up to see who had come in, nodded and smiled to acknowledge Jumbo's presence.

_____He waved and walked over to the bar, with his two guests following. "Hi, Carlene… Is my uncle around?" he asked. "I've got two talented workers here. They've been working on a farm for a while and want to get started here in the city."

_____"Is that so…?" went Carlene as she appraised them. Up close, the twins could see that the bartender herself was a cyborg--and admirably pretty. Dark pants, dark vest, and white blouse covered over most of her slim feminine body to the neck; the only sign of her not being a fleshie were her exposed metal hands. Her smooth face featured large green eyes that sparkled like deep jewels, her dark hair cut short. "You can find him in the basement…trying to deal with low water pressure. The water's holding up so far, but there only the one pump left. Some Black Market executives took our last mechanic… They wrestled him into the back of a blue limousine, and I haven't seen him since!" She looked left at the dark-suited customers sitting close by at this bar. "No offense, guys. It's just how you do business, right?" They shrugged.

_____"The basement? Okay, gotcha," responded Jumbo, who looked down at Kyrie and Harrah. "This way," he said, nodding sideward towards a door right of the bar marked Staff. They followed as he began ambling towards it, saying things like Excuse me and Pardon to customers he'd accidentally brushed with the girls following close behind. Jumbo was so…jumbo a cyborg that wide that he couldn't help but accidentally brush against backs and elbows in getting through.

_____Standing somewhat sideways, the cyborg walked through the staff entrance to a kitchen, then opened another side-door--leading to the basement. Downstairs… The twins glanced at each other. Was this guy leading them to something besides a job? For all they knew, he could be a parts thief--gas them, cut out their brains, then sell their metal bodies.

_____But they'd already come this far. So they went down the sturdy metal stairs, going into the restaurant's basement. Down here, along with an arrangement of kegs, crates and wine bottles in the center, there were engine-sized machines along one wall for handling the building's electricity distribution, water and even climate control.

_____A strong-bodied, well-dressed cyborg was sitting on a chair next to a tall cylindrical water-tank. His sleeves were rolled up, and his back was to them. Left of his feet, there was an open toolbox. He glanced back once, then stopped tinkering and got up to greet them. "Evening to you, nephew! You can see here that the water pump's gone again…" Then his eyes went to the twins. "Well! I knew you'd find a nice pretty young lady to settle down with one of these days, but… Ha-ha-ha! Two of 'em. Did that crazy girl Lissette finally find some of that pheromone love-potion stuff for cyborgs or what?"

_____"No… Please, Uncle Patrick. It's not like that," almost whined Jumbo, a pained expression on his face. "You said you needed a new mechanic after they took Jake, right? So I found some for you. Meet Kyrie and Harrah. They're from a farm."

_____"Hmmph!" went Patrick, crossing thick metal forearms. "New in town, eh? Good! That means that the pokey folks from the Black Market won't be looking for you to work on fixing and maintaining those oversized factories. They're already taking a cut of my business income. Heh, at least big old Zalem didn't take my money! Anyway, let's see how good you two are." He crouched down and patted the head-sized casing attached to the water tank. "Get this thing going, and you've got yourselves a job. On top of that, I'll even let you have the mechanic's old room to stay in… You'll have to clean out Jake's stuff, though."

_____"Aw, geez… They took him that fast?" asked Jumbo. His uncle nodded and smirked. Yes, the Black Market gangsters took their last mechanic that fast. No wonder why Uncle Patrick needed machine-people on such short notice, the two potential hirees already using the tools from the toolkit to disassemble the motor casing.

_____They had shut off the water pressure, disconnected the wiring, and had disengaged the soccer ball-sized electric motor itself. They took it apart in seconds. At one point, one of the twins went into their satchel and took out another toolkit. Grimy parts--big and small--were cleaned and oiled, and others were re-wired.

_____Also impressive was how efficiently they worked. It was like watching one person in two bodies--sharing the same mind. One would hold a part and another would oil it. Then they would look at both sides of coils, contacts and such--both looking at sides the other couldn't see. And when they re-assembled the electric motor and its casing, there were four hands working together instead of just two separate pairs. One flicked on the circuit breaker while the other listened… They smiled when it worked. "A simple alternating-current motor, one-half horsepower. No problem!" they said in unison.

_____Amazed, Jumbo looked to his uncle--who had a smile on his face. "Wow…" went Patrick. "Today must be my lucky day! I want you two to get to work for me straight away! I'll pay you weekly and, like I said, give you the basement side-room. My own mechanics… Just try to stay away from dark limousines, okey-dokey? I don't want to lose any more hired help to their plans."

4.

_____By the time they had moved all of Jake's things and made the basement side-room more livable, it was really getting to be time for the twins to sleep. They had a sheet-covered mattress on the floor, a dresser-drawer, and a table--with a florescent work-lamp screwed to the wall and shining down. Another brighter florescent light was installed in the ceiling. But that one tended to give off a harsher, sharper light than was less comfortable when it was on full brightness. A rheostat-dial made the light adjustable. Attached to this room was a smaller bathroom-washroom that was lined floor to ceiling with hard ferro-cermic tiles, with a florescent light-tube above the sink and a mirror. There was a shower stall for bathing.

_____For ventilation, there was an air vent that pulled in somewhat filtered air from the outside--the air filter being a low-voltage static-charged grid to pull out most airborne particulates. It was easy to reach in, get out the air filter to clean off, then reinstall. The air coming in was instantly a lot fresher-smelling. That done, they washed their metal bodies of grit buildup and dried off with towels from their satchel. Their cassette recorder went atop the table, along with a few choice books.

_____Jumbo's Uncle Patrick came downstairs to look at their handiwork. He leaned sideways on the open door-jamb and looked around the small room. "Hmm… It looks a wee bit harsh and simple. Being as you two are young ladies, I'd thought you would've prettied up the place with pictures and things like that! But, that would be my peculiar opinion..." His voice then became more businesslike. "Ahem! Come tomorrow mid-morning, I'll expect you two to be ready for work. I'll take you to my third establishment, which I know for certain has a rattley old water pump that needs the kind of miracle work you two can provide. From there, I want you to inspect the wiring and see if something can be done about the air ventilation system. You'll be on duty for just one hour under regular city hours…done in the afternoon, an hour before noon. In addition to free food and room, I'll pay you a decent weekly wage in credits, say…" He then named an impressive sum.

_____Still sitting at the table, the twins looked at each other. That was easily nine times the money they made back on the farm, and they worked sun-up to sun-down: all day! But not here in the city… "Mr. Patrick, " carefully began one of the twins. "Are you sure you want to pay us that much? It won't hurt your business or anything…"

_____"Bah!" responded the well-dressed male cyborg. "It would could me a great deal more not to have a better-working electrical system! It's around what I paid Jake before they took 'em away…." He paused. "Oh-h-h… I see! It's that dirt wage they paid you, right? Young ladies, you're in the city now. Things are different around here…" Someone called his name from the basement stairs. "I must be going. Good night, ladies. I'll see you in the morning."

_____"Good night," they said as he walked out, gently closing the door behind himself. They then turned down the ceiling light until it was almost not visible. Turning off the light completely would have set this windowless basement-room in sharp darkness.

_____But otherwise, this place was so convenient and complete that they suspected that, once upon a time, this basement area must have been a complete living area in itself--or a kind of war shelter. There was actually a part of the floor that had been cemented over--perhaps covering an extra door downward. And part of the wall in the main area of this basement looked as if the bricks were newer.

_____Who once lived here? And when had they been here? It was something to wonder… Clothes still unpacked, the twins laid down on the mattress, a thin blanket over them, they could hear the faint bustle of the pub's night-life activity. The muffled sound of talking and footsteps through the thick and insulated floor began to sound far away… They thought vaguely about having some kind of food--a few cookies or something sugary for a kind of late dinner--but their brains were even too tired for that. The twins dreamed…

_____That concrete had been removed from a section of the floor, revealing a solid metal door. The metal door in the floor, it opened up into a darkness beneath this basement room. It was hard to tell if there were actually stairs or some way of getting down there. There was just a feeling of going down.

_____Somewhere, they hit the floor. Going along, going through darkness, there was a candle-lit table down here--but it was far from being a gentle-lit romantic scene. The six candles, along the edge of the table, were blood red. And, oddly enough, the flames were also red.

_____A random breeze caused the candles to flicker, and the bearded old stranger in coveralls sat down at the table. They remember seeing him in the alley when they first arrived in the city. Here he was again, this time…in a dream.

_____Or a nightmare. He had with him a deck of thick, green-colored cards--differently colored from the ones he originally had.. Fwip-fwip-fwip… He shuffled the cards with old but fast fingers--rather, extremely experienced fingers. Those quick and magic fingers of his moved in a deft and rapid-fire dance that must have rearranged the cards about six hundred times.

_____Then his fingers stopped. Smiling a sad smile, he spoke. "I knew the words, but I sang them wrong…" he moaned. "It's an o-o-o-old, sa-a-a-ad song… An old song, but I knew them wrong. I sang them wrong!" He shook the green deck of cards, then set them atop the table. "Now my love is gone…without me…" Then he set one card down. It wasn't really a card made of paper; it was a card of printed computer circuitry. "Oh, how I sang them wrong…!"

_____The twins woke up the next morning and folded up the sheets they'd used. Bringing a small purse with some credit chips, they went upstairs and found that some of Patrick's working staff was already readying the restaurant for the day. The sunlight was just breaking over the horizon, a golden brightness that lit the tops of the buildings and signaled a new day. An hour from now, the sidewalks would be busy with the morning work-crowd, and vehicular traffic would fill the streets. There were even some trucks on the road right now--bringing in goods from the train depot.

_____Patrick walked in from the kitchen entrance. He saw the dark-haired twins standing aside and watching people work. "Hmmph! You two are early risers. Have you had breakfast yet?" They shook their heads. "No problem! Let's have ourselves a seat at a table over here… Joe, get us some juice! Heh-heh-heh…"

_____"Sure thing, boss!" said one of the workers preparing this restaurant. While Patrick and the twin cyborgs sat down, Joe came over to the table with a platter: three glisteningly clean wine glasses and a tall glass pitcher of sweet-smelling reddish juice. Joe set a glass in front of each person at this table, poured the juice. "Here you go, 'Get-Up-and-Go' juice!"

_____"Yeah, my own creation," declared Patrick. "It's got everything a cyborg needs for a busy day: plenty of glucose, a high concentration of high-fructose corn syrup, citric acid and freshly synthesized artificial flavoring--supplemented with trace elements to keep the brain up and going!"

_____Kyrie and Harrah had drunken plenty of odd liquids in their day, so it didn't especially bother them to try something they'd never tasted before. It really was tasty and refreshed them. And, yes, it really made them want to get things done. "Wo-o-ow!" exclaimed one of the twins. "Yeah, this is good stuff!" added the other.

_____After talking at the table and being driven over to another one of Patrick's restaurants, the twins' work-day passed in a hurry. They were so intent on inspecting and sprucing up the electrical system that they didn't notice time passing. One minute, it was morning. Then it was already time for them to quit--while they were busy testing the heavy circuit breakers they had refurbished and reinstalled. The twins wanted to work a little more, but Patrick said that they had already done enough work for the day; save some for tomorrow! Besides, there were regulations in the city against working too much. There was also the possibility that executives of the Black Market would see them working and want to take them away…

_____They were free to roam the city for the rest of the day. There were all kinds of markets near the downtown area--places that sold all kinds of goods, even the sorts of materials they could use to make another cassette-making press. And there were books, more than they ever expected! That was because one of the shops had an entire electronic archive of texts and had a rough little printing press. It was funny, how few people bothered to try such a setup when Zalem was running the city. Kyrie and Harrah each bought a book, went to an outdoor café to drink flavored coffee and enjoy the first few chapters. Later, as they walked back to Patrick's main restaurant, they thought about checking the restaurant's basement floor for concrete-covered doors.

5.

_____A certain brown dog never did find the way back into the city after having wandered out beyond the wall. This city wall went on for several hundred miles, with only one entrance for every ten miles or so. No one cared if the stray came or went; the dog belonged to no one. It continued to wander along the wall, looking for a way back in. If the dog hadn't stopped to rest, maybe it would have made it.

_____That dog's plight took place hours ago and was no longer a concern. Meanwhile, with the burning shine of the sun blazing overhead, the Adversary pondered a square section of wall. Its scanners and sensors were unable to get beyond the first few inches of wall. The intense rays of the sun were interfering with the infrared and X-ray scans. It would be hours yet before the sun would actually go down, before conditions would be amenable to scans. Yet the Adversary had all the time it needed.

_____"Hey, be careful, man!" went a man's voice nearby. "That looks like something made by those crazy Zalem people! What if it's radioactive? What if that thing came down to kill us all in revenge? You don't know! It's sitting still now, but what if…?" The voice belonged to a scrubby man in baggy jeans and a ragged sweater--a large floppy hat on his head to block the hot sun. The sandals on his feet were made of asbestos and ropy straps--effective at keeping his feet off of the burningly hot hard ground.

_____That thing… He was talking about the monster. To anyone else, it would have seemed as if that metal beast was sitting still--not doing anything. It was a massive metal statue, pondering, analyzing… By this time, a pile of grit had accumulated around its two metal hooves, and more of it made a fine layer of dusty grit. Six hundred clouds must have slowly passed overhead, and over six hundred winds must have blown by since the Adversary began sitting here.

_____It was too bad that the two men here didn't notice the dog. "Don't get all paranoid!" responded the other one here, a male cyborg, approaching the Adversary. He was in a tee shirt and closer fitting jeans, old boots instead of sandals. Because they look cool, he'd always told his drinking buddies back at the parts salvaging warehouse. "This thing could be worth a ton of chips to the Black Market people! I mean, just look at those appendages: One's for close-range combat, and the other has to be for some kind of projectile-throwing. It's got a gun, man! New gun technology's always worth plenty! Even if this thing doesn't have any new technology to sell, we can always sell its parts for scrap. Just let me get a closer look. Then we can bring our truck and tools around and…"

_____Those hours ago, the dog had mistook the tall metal monster for a statue and wanted to crouch in its shade. If the dog's nose had not been clogged with desert grit, it would have been able to smell the faint scent of blood on the Adversary's left claw-hand--the dried blood resembling a grotesque kind of cinnamon-colored paint. The dog was street-wise from its life on the sidewalks and back-lots--should have avoided this sort of death. But being so thirsty and hot, the dog simply didn't know any better.

_____"How do you know that thing still isn't on?" asked the man in floppy clothes and hat, still hanging back. "There's no telling if that thing is still active… No telling at all with what came down from Zalem after the accident up there. Anything strong enough to survive a nuclear explosion has got to be tough enough to still be working!"

_____"Please, will you shut up!" went the cyborg in cowboy clothes. "Look… See? I'm standing right next to it. Blah-blah-blah-h-h! Here I am, next to the big bad piece of shiny monster-junk. Ooh…! I think I'm gonna be eaten alive!" Then he began to dance and prance around the thing, hands waving in the air, kicking up his cowboy-booted feet and making goofy noises.

_____How had the dog died? It died at the hand of the Adversary. When the silvery claw swept down, the life-stopping blow was almost an act of mercy. There was a brief shock of pain, and then there was none. All the sickness and misery the animal was feeling, it was soon over. It was long over.

_____The man in floppy clothes clutched his floppy hat and looked especially worried. He expected that, at any second, something terrible was going to happen. Maybe Lobo was going to get blasted by that huge gun-arm. Or what if the giant metal monster just kicked him? Yeah, with those huge metal hooves, one kick would be enough. As it turned out, the metal claw did the trick.

_____Audio-visual interference has been identified, went the electronic message in the Adversary's heavy electronic brain. If interference, then eliminate interference for optimal scanning conditions. The optical sensors targeted the interference while the mobility processors calculated power and movement, then executed the commands.

_____The cyborg in cowboy clothes was Lobo, by the way. His name was would not matter in a moment anyway. A sound of high-speed motors whirring, the Adversary's three-tined claw-hand suddenly reach up to the sky like a nightmarish gesture of greeting. It was as if the thing was saying, Hello, I'm a big and nasty robot-monster! Won't you be my victim today? But, of course, the Adversary was in no mood for such friendliness--if its simple electronic brain had any room for "moods."

_____There was a massive swooping blur of motion that whooshed through the air, and then the upper half of Lobo's electromechanical body was separated from his lower half--sparks, motor fluids and little parts spraying everywhere. Then the Adversary stomped over to where the upper half of Lobo writhed and struggled in the grit--before bringing down a metal hoof with an awful sound resulting.

_____Dumb-struck with fear for an incredibly long and numb second, seeing Lobo done like that, the man in floppy clothes turned and ran. His asbestos sandals were coming off, and he was close to falling over--flailing his arms and screaming like a madman--but he was getting the Hell away from here! Why didn't Lobo ever listen to anybody?

_____The Adversary scanned the upper and lower halves of the body. There was still a minimum of sound coming from the upper half as the electromechanical innards were winding down, so it stomped the metal torso again… Then again… Before long, the bottom of its left hoof was wet with artificial circulatory fluids and various motor fluids. In the meanwhile, there was the sound of a truck getting fast away.

_____Before long, the noise and interference was gone. The wind was blowing a little harder, blowing some more desert grit through the air, but the Adversary's visual processors could compensate for that. It stomped back over to the section of wall it had been scanning, then continued to scan.

_____"Like, oh my gosh!" went the pink-bodied cyborg-girl, her fluffy emerald-colored hair in pigtails. She was sitting in the payload area of a big-wheeled truck, looking through binoculars while her mouth worked some bubblegum. "Dude, did you see that? Like, that big thing just went wham, and that poor guy in the funky clothes went bang, then splat!" Her synthetic face twisted up in an awful expression, as if she'd tasted too-rotten potatoes smeared with crap. "It was like… Ew-w-w!" She set down the binoculars then began to wriggle her hands in the air as if she was tasting something nasty. "Ew-w-w-w-w! That was so nasty!"

_____"Calm down, Mai," responded Kyle, sitting against one of the wheels and still looking through his pair of binoculars. His baseball cap shielded his head from the sun, and his light-colored pants and shirt did the same. "So long at it is not us ending up like him… What an idiot. In any case, it's something we'll have to inform Barabbas about...later. We have yet to find out if that cyborg or drone is a defensive measure by the city or someone's wayward creation."

_____"Like, whatever," went Mai. "But still… Dude, that was like, so-o-o gross! When I kill people, I'm neat about it, okay? Like, I don't bash 'em up and, like, step all over 'em when they're down! Eww! That's, like, so… Icky! That thing is, like, too big and too gross for me to even look at anymore!"