All The Colors of Yesterday
by Elliot Bowers
Chapter 7
…
"Falling"
vocal by Julee Cruise; lyrics by David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti
…
_____Even years after the accident, these were clean and well-kept pedestrian lanes, though there were only metal statues to enjoy the view. The massive metal figures were kneeling at the sides of the sidewalk on specially reinforced marble platforms--designed to bear their weight. Well, no… They weren't just statues. Looking closer, one could see that their metal forms were jointed at the arms and legs, the heads--the faces, had lidded eyes. There were camera-lenses behind those closed eyes.
_____They were sleeping until they needed to work again. The statues had long since removed what little trash there had been on the pristine lanes that ran between the clean buildings and among the large potted plants. Now, they had to but wait for there to be a sufficient amount of trash for them to move again--to clean.
_____As there had not been any people around here for a very long time now, there was no trash or waste--no litter flapping along the street. When the citizens dropped dead from radiation sickness those years ago, most of them were indoors anyway--trying to cower and hide from the invisible and horrible deadliness of hard radiation: beta and gamma radiation, intense X-rays.. They tried to hide, though their hair was already falling out and their stomachs were heaving from intestinal bleeding. Cancerous lesions distorted the faces and skin of the survivors, while their bones became soft and misshapen. The people of Zalem--once healthy, noble, clean and proud--had died sickening and miserable deaths, bleeding and disgusting. So now, there were no humans alive to admire the clean beauty of the place.
…
_____As for the girl of the palace, she wasn't human... Inside the control room, placed deep within the palace, the "girl" was still at the main console--her great big robotic teddybear servant standing at her side. His furry shins were already well-kicked by her, and he hadn't moved for six hours. He was a faithful and loyal servant, more faithful than any human being could be.
_____He hadn't moved from this spot for six hours because the girl hadn't. If the girl had been an actual human female, she would have required many "inconvenient" things, like food and sleep for one. She would have needed trips to the bathroom and shower. At her young age, she would also require someone to care for her. Instead, she was able to care for herself for the several years since her "father" had died. The "girl" at the console wasn't human--couldn't be human.
_____Currently dressed in a pink dress, her frilly head of curls bouncing, the synthetic girl hummed a silly little tune as her little fingers and wrists moved at an incredible blur-fast pace--thousands of keystrokes per second. She really wanted to get control of that gigantic metal beast that was stomping around in the sewers of a particular city. Anyone or anything that powerful or that influential on the ground, she just had to have control of it! Had to, had to, had to…! She wanted a new toy!
_____And she was willing to sacrifice as many of her other toys as necessary. It had already cost her Mr. Coleco, one of her favorites! A favorite, because he was so colorful. Even if Mr. Coleco wasn't as fun to play with as other puppets, she still liked to use him. Oh well… She still had all her other toys down there in that city! Right now, another one of her favorites was becoming a little too independent. So she was redoing some of his thought processes right now--all of those lines of programming code on the screen high on the wall…
_____Blip..? Fwick! What was that? One of the right-side monitors flicked over to another view of this city--a high up view looking along a local street. The view was from a kind of bio-engineered cyborg-creation with dual wings and large single eye--its eye-signal now being transmitted to this control room. The "girl" hated to be interrupted in her work! She was almost tempted to send a self-destruct signal to the winged camera-creature for sending her this image when she saw…
_____Instead, she was angrier at the intruder. "You creepy jerk!" she screamed at the one displayed on the monitor. She then got up out of the big comfy armchair and ran over to the side-monitor on the wall. The robotic teddy bear ambled over to her side, to hear yet another scream. "What are you doing here! This city is mine! Mine, mine, mine! Ooh-h-h! I'm…so…mad! " She stomped her foot to emphasize her point. "Mad-mad-mad!"
_____She turned to the line of robotic maids along the wall and pointed a finger at the monitor. "Look at that! What's that doing in my city, huh? I thought I told you dumb robots to get rid of all intruders! Nobody is supposed to be up here, not even survivors!" Her screaming turned to shrieking. "How did that stranger even get up here, huh? How, how, how!"
_____The monitor gave a closer view of the intruder, the old stranger. He was in his blue denim coveralls and walking along the middle of the street, his feet bare and something in his hands. He seemed to be shuffling a deck of cards. An even closer zoomed-in view showed that he was muttering something. Then the monitor became awash in static, a yellow light in the lower-right side of the monitor came on--indicating that the video signal had gone bad…
_____When the radio signal returned, the old stranger was gone from the street. Instead, there was a roughly man-sized pall of reddish smoke where he once stood. The pall of smoke was just now being dissipated, wisps of it carried away by the breeze. Something horrible must have happened to him.
_____"Ha-ha-ha…!" laughed the synthetic girl. It was likely that the old stranger was hit by an explosive anti-personnel projectile--fired by one of the robotic sentries. Her robots were everywhere--some for cleaning (like the maids), some for fixing…and some for killing. The killing kind of robots--her sentries--were massive two-legged metal machines with multiple heavy guns for arms. Though she didn't see any such one of her robotic sentries from the camera-creature's eye, it must already be stomping away after having blown the old stranger to smithereens. So what if there was no blood? He was gone!
_____As mighty as the city's security drones were, none were so dominating and as mighty as the one on the ground called the "Adversary." Sure, she could design something that looked like the Adversary, but none of her copies would be like the original. She would have to find a way to get control of the Adversary-thing…
_____In the meanwhile, Barabbas was being troublesome. He was far too independent for her liking. She returned to her big comfy armchair and began typing out commands again. Barabbas will obey her commands. Or she will destroy him. If she couldn't play with him, then nobody would!
…
_____"A-a-a-agh!" screamed Barabbas, clutching his head. The muscular bandit leader in tee-shirt, jeans and boots sank to his knees--going down to the hard desert ground next to the cracked highway. "Ai-i-iagh… Aa-a-rgh… Rr-r-r!" He gasped for a few breaths, his strong square-jawed face contorted with inhuman agony and…pa-a-ain! His screams spread across the empty vastness of the surrounding wasteland, going up to the wide blue sky above. "Aia-a-a-h-h-h!"
______The other bandits kept their distance, though they all wanted to come to their leaders' aid. Some of the bandits were new to Barabbas' bunch, having once been farmers and workers from the wasteland farms. Most of them had never seen one of Barabbas' fits before. He really was having a fit of some sort, sickening and twisting pain from something that stabbed around inside of his head!
_____There was nothing they could do. For all their loyalty and willingness to be with him, they could not help him. All they could do was watch as the beefy man squirmed on the hot dry ground and screamed as if his soul was being mutilated with jagged knives, the kind of knives wielded by fanged demons who feasted on pain and suffering.
_____"R-r-rgh…" he gurgled, going breathless and weakly squirming. Then he stopped writhing, stopped the yelling. He went still, waiting… Waiting to see if the pain returned. The agony faded from his head… It was gone.
_____Ah…! He was feeling better! Free of agony, with just a lingering headache, Barabbas slowly stood again. He brushed at his shirt and knees. As usual, other than the grit and such, there was no sign of him having suffered. He wasn't even sweating.
_____Even with the bright wasteland sun overhead, even though he'd just suffered immense pain, Barabbas didn't even sweat. They also noted that he almost never seemed to need to drink as much water as they did. He truly was a physically mighty leader, and he had the strength of mind to match his physical appearance. Even if he did occasionally have those pain-fits that sent him into writhing and screaming agony, they thought that their leader was something more than human.
_____"Well! That was a rather intriguing experience!" He looked at his circle of friends--all of his fellow bandits. A smile spread across his face. "Friends, I now know of our next task in the city." He turned to face the pink-bodied cyborg-girl with dark hair and a pretty face, chewing on bubblegum. "Mai, tell me again of that monster of metal you have observed taken into the city…"
…
2.
…
_____It was the afternoon, and Scotch was in the driver's seat--a satchel of books and some tools in the passenger-side seat. His synthetic fingers gripped the cloth-covered metal steering wheel, and one of his workboot-covered feet was on the accelerator--the breeze blowing on his face. As he maneuvered his big-wheeled dune buggy among the looming heavy trucks and smaller executive cars, thoughts were wading through his mind. They were thoughts about today and where tomorrow was going for him, about how his life was now. Life wasn't that bad now, really. It wasn't really good, either… He was feeling somewhere in the middle.
_____He'd been working at the West-Side Arena all darned day. He had to help more experienced cyborg technicians reset and calibrate the mobility systems of Gogam--an especially big and especially old-bodied cyborg-gladiator with an awful lot of old insides. At least he didn't have to climb scaffolds this time. Gogam, like most cyborg-gladiators undergoing repairs and maintenance, was lying down atop a vast platform while the mechanics tended to his aging electromechanical insides.
_____Scotch liked his work, couldn't really complain about it… He was a mechanic since he was a kid and liked doing what he did. He liked working with heavy metal parts, using nice solid tools, fixing large machines to make sure that they performed well when turned on… Fixing machines was what he did. All the same, there was always that threat presented by those Black Market enforcers.
_____Work…or disappear! He hadn't been made to "disappear" yet, but the metal-handed bullies in business-suits could always come for him and make it so. It was bad enough his brother was gone, and the twins were "gone" as well. Other than the wonderful Dr. Sera (who seemed to away on business all the time now) and some new buddies from the Arena garages, Scotch didn't really have any close friends in this big wide city--all full of buildings and industrial machine-structures.
_____Right now, all he wanted to do was drop by Patrick's pub, do some reading, eat some food and listen to Aikasa's singing. When she sang for an audience, how did she sound? Or maybe he just wanted to be close to Aikasa because she was friends with Dr. Sera. Anyone associated with that amazing woman, he just had to be friends with too.
_____ Scotch couldn't believe it… All of the parking spaces at Patrick's place were occupied. Most all of the vehicles were personal cars--the kind that the Black Market executives drove. Also, the curb-side spaces along this street were occupied by yet more vehicles. He had to park his dune-buggy halfway around the block--around the corner--and walked back to here, his satchel slung over his left shoulder.
…
_____Inside the pub, the tables were occupied and all the stools at the drinking bar were as well. Forget about the couches. All four of the pub's couches were so full that some girlfriends were sitting on guys' laps--and vice-versa if the girls were metal-bodied. There were usually working cyborgs here, plenty of hard-working and metal-bodied people relaxing here after work with manufacturing and services. But now, about half of the crowd seemed to be wearing expensive-looking business clothes. They must have heard about Aikasa. Or they must have heard her singing--and wanted to hear more.
_____Heck, so did Scotch. Saying excuse me and pardon, he edged his way between the tables and made his way over to the bar. Two other well-dressed bartenders and even big Patrick himself, they were behind the raised counter of the drinking bar and all serving plenty of drinks to those thirsty customers. "Hey Patrick! I'll have me a beer!"
_____Patrick looked up and to the left. "He-e-ey laddy-boy!" yelled that familiar bar-owner above the din of the crowd. He handed a glass of wine to a metal-handed businessman and came over to here. With expert speed and skill, he perfectly filled a mug from the tap in two seconds and walked over to here. Scotch handed him a moderate-denomination chip, hesitatingly accepted. "Where've you been? My business is booming big, plenty of thanks to that wee lass with that sweet voice! You're welcome here…" A waitress in pretty skirt-uniform came around the bar and stood on her tip-toes to speak in Patrick's ear. "In fact, Aikasa's going to perform for us now!"
_____"Really? Sweet!" exclaimed the mechanic. His drink in his right hand and his satchel in his left, he thanked Patrick. He planned on doing some relaxing reading, sitting at a table, and listening to Aikasa's singing voice. It was now standing room only now! He was lucky enough to find a place along the back wall. His elbows were brushing those of two other people here in all the dimly lit vocal noise as he looked at the stage across this main room. At least, because he was standing, he had a clear view of the small stage and the musical instruments
_____They were already set up, the backup musicians and their miscellaneous equipment. The low microphone gleaming in a spotlight while the musicians tested their stuff… There was a drum-set, a fleshie drummer tapping and listening to the sound. A dark-haired cyborg-girl in denim jacket and jeans was standing behind a synthesizer keyboard, her metal fingers tapping the keys and making for trickling notes. The guitarist was a male cyborg in jeans, buttoned shirt and cowboy hat--his metal hands exposed beyond the cuffs of his shirt.
_____It was just then that Scotch looked at the bottle of beer in his hands--his synthetic hands. He'd almost forgotten that he was a cyborg now, artificial insides and titanium bones covered over with myogel muscle tissue and artificial skin. His artificial organs didn't let him get drunk. Why the heck did he drink beer anymore? It was probably just out of habit…
_____Then she stepped out from behind the curtain. Everybody shut up as Aikasa gracefully stepped up to the microphone stand. She was wearing a kind of white silken gown that seemed to flow over her slender figure, covering her from neckline to ankles, while her long pale hair had been combed straight back. Her feet were covered with white shoes.. The only color there was to her appearance was the crimson redness of her scarf and the jewel-like glittering green of her big beautiful eyes. The spotlight on her made her seem to glow while the other lights were turned down and the shades came over the windows.
_____In the darkened silence, spotlight on her, she bowed her head when the instruments began to play. First, there were drawn out and echoing notes of the guitar and light bell-like notes from the synthesizer…a mournful melody bringing to mind a gentle sunset behind tall mountains viewed across a green field--a cool spring day… Green fields before a forest, pretty flying animals called "birds" singing in the trees. Birds were extinct, but they seemed to live in the beautiful world of this wonderful melody created by the musicians. Then came gentle, sad singing from Aikasa's throat and lips…
…
Don't let your-self be hurt this time
Don't let your-self be hurt this time
…
The-e-n I sa-a-a-w your fa-a-ce…
The-e-n I sa-a-a-w your smi-i-i-le
The sky is still blue
…The clouds co-o-me and go…go…go…
Yet some-thing is diff-erent!
…Are we…fall-ing…in…love…?
…
Don't let your-self be hurt this time
Don't let your-self be hurt this time
…
The-e-n your ki-i-iss…so-o-o…soft
…The-e-n your to-o-uch…so-o-o …warm
…
The STARS still SHINE bright
The MOUN-TAINS still high…high…high…
Yet some-thing is DIFF-ERENT!
…A-a-are…we…fa-a-alling…in…love…?
….
FALL-ING… FALL-ING!
…Fa-a-alling… Fa-a-a-ling
…In…l-o-o-ove…?
…
_____For thirty more beautiful seconds, the synthesizer and guitar played the melody after the singing stopped. When that gently faded away, the indoor crowd was quiet. They were emotionally stunned, having heard such sad sweet beauty… Someone was even crying.
_____The applause was deafening! Aikasa smiled and bowed while a waitress brought a chair and a glass of water up to the stage. Aikasa kept smiling as she sat down with her knees together, drinking the water. Clearly, just that one song seemed to drain her as she put herself into the music. But the effort was worth the affect.
…
3.
…
_____Cruising along in his big-wheeled truck, Mai in the passenger seat and some fellow bandits sitting in the rear payload, Barabbas took a good look around. He commented, "Just look at that. Indeed, the elitist class of the city has managed to continue its oppression of workers. Notice the downtrodden slouching postures of the pedestrians, the looks on their work-weary faces… Though we have seen them laugh and relax, their minds are exhausted."
_____"Kinda…" added Mai, chewing pink bubblegum that was the same color of her pink metal body. Her hair was green this time, still done up in a ponytail. She looked to the right. Blowing and popping another pink bubble, she stared out the truck's window. "Yeah, they do look sorta tired. Like, they must work almost every day! At least they don't, you know, like…work as much as they used to. And, like, their heads don't get chopped off and traded in for cash. Ick."
_____"Those are prominent arguments indeed," responded Barabbas, slowing down this truck with the slowed city traffic. "However, recall the continued existence of a vicious and well-armed means of enforcing the class distinction between workers and rulers. Unlike the bounty hunters under the old regime, the maintainers of the societal division have guns. The workers are cowed by the existence of such harsh means of law enforcement, the laws of the wealthy and powerful."
_____"Yeah, there are all those guys in suits with guns. It's like they're always lookin' for somebody to shoot! It kinda makes me scared too…" agreed Mai as she eyed the sidewalk traffic. Most everyone out here was in workers' clothes: coveralls or shirts, jeans and hard shoes. It was a mixed crowd of fleshies and cyborgs, going along and moving along in small groups and as individuals. Every so often, this truck passed by hard-scrubbed vacant lots and outdoor cafes--the places full of people sitting on chairs and relaxing.
_____Mai remembered living around here, in the city. She remembered work in the Zalem-run factory-buildings when she was still a fleshie. All day, every day, she worked all the time. She didn't like the idea of cutting off people's heads (Ew-w-w!), so being a bounty hunter was out. Her pert and dark-eyed good looks were enough to make her a girl who "walked the sidewalks," but she didn't want to do that either… So she continued to work in the factory, saving up for a really good cyborg body.
_____Working in the factory wasn't easy, and it was getting worse. Her fingers and nose were beginning to grow numb and discolored from the toxic chemicals she had to work with… She was getting headaches, and her eyes were beginning to get blurry as well. When she finally lost some fingers to a sharp edge of a conveyor belt, leaving her bleeding and crying, she finally left her factory job. She bought her first female cyborg body, had the surface done in pink ceramics. As soon as she recovered from the body-replacement operation, she left the city and became a bandit…
_____Now here she was, back in the city, no longer a slave to the machines. As Mai's thoughts wandered, Barabbas drove this truck by another vacant lot full of relaxing workers sitting on junk. Her eyes came to focus on one old guy in particular.
_____The old stranger looked up from his game of cards over there, looking at this cyborg-girl in the big-wheeled truck. The old stranger and Mai made eye contact, staring at one another. Mai's mouth went wide open, nearly making her lose her bubblegum, when the old stranger in coveralls winked at her! Yuck! "Pervert…" she muttered.
_____Kablam! Fw-o-o-sh… "Oh, for goodness' sakes!" shouted Barabbas when a section of the street exploded upwards. He braked this vehicle just as trucks and people went flying up and away from the blast, tossed like life-sized metal toys. There was then another explosion, this one a clear and bright fluorescent blast of plasma energy that shot up to the sky from beneath the streets. Barabbas' excellent skill and reflexes had allowed him to stop this truck without trouble.
_____Three cars ahead, there was a massive smoking gap in the city street. Hole was a word too small to fit the gaping maw now there. Something huge must have made that explosion. And, right now, that huge thing was climbing up to the surface.
_____Whirr-CLANK! A gigantic, three-tined claw-hand came up and gripped into the edge of the smoking gap. Whir-r-r…! There was a sound of electromechanical strands working as the thick and mighty metal arm pulled the rest of the milti-colored metal beast up from below. Clomp-clomp! The silvery square hooves came to rest on solid ground--street asphalt--and it took several stomping steps away from where it came up from.
_____People began to run, of course. Scared stiff for a few seconds, fleshies and cyborgs got to their feet and made a run for it--at least the ones whose bodies weren't damaged in the blast. Some were still in their cars and trucks, trying to maneuver around the stalled traffic.
_____"Like, w-o-o-ow!" excitedly exclaimed Mai, bouncing up and down in her seat and pointing. "Like, that's the big metal monster-thing we saw out in the desert! That's the Adversary! Oh, wow-wow-wow! Looks like somebody tried to, like, change its paint job or something. Yuck… Like, gross paint-job…!"
_____"REALLOCATE target! O.S. ERROR…!" boomed the amplified machine-voice of the gigantic metal beast. "TARGET probability is increasing! BZZT!" It raised its left claw-hand and swiped the expensive-looking car ahead. "TARGETING!" Then it took aim with its right arm-cannon and began charging up for a shot--terrible plasma-energies beginning to swirl and build deep within the cannon-barrel….
_____The driver was already dead--killed when the claw-hand first came down and smashed the front of the car. But two of the passengers--a man in business suit and woman in white slacks and lab-coat--managed to scramble out as the Adversary's plasma arm-cannon began to glow red…
_____Bla-a-am! There was then a massive, loud and bright blast as the Adversary let loose with its arm-cannon. The businessman was knocked unconscious…or dead. But the scientist-woman staggered to her feet, her white clothes smudged with grit and smoke.
______She stood there stunned and dizzy as the Adversary began to clomp in this direction. From what direction? Her ears were buzzing from the blast, and everything was looking screwy. She had the vague idea that the Adversary was very close by--close enough for her to feel the fusion heat radiating from its metal body…
_____For just a moment, the chunky metal-bodied monster towered over her. The optical sensors in its chest trained on her face and her mane of fluffy red hair. Deep within its simple electronic brain, growling, the Adversary knew that this was not a target. It lowered itself, bending its construction-machine legs as if to kneel before her.
_____Wham-m-m-m…! A truck hit it from the side, making the Adversary go tumbling away sideways. Lying on it side, mighty claw arm and metal legs squirming, the Adversary made growling and snarling noises as its simple electronic brain tried to process what the Hell just happened. It was the metal beast's equivalent of anger.
_____"Tally-ho!" shouted Barabbas, hopping out of his now wrecked truck. He grabbed the pretty scientist doctor, slung her over one of his mighty shoulders as if she was a human-sized doll. Then he turned and began making mighty long-strides in getting away from here.. All of this happened in rapid succession, in seconds.
_____When they were a block away, running with some of his comrades, she shouted, "Set me down, you broad-chested brute! I have two perfectly good legs of my own! I know because I made them myself--along with the rest of my body!"
_____Barabbas stopped running, and so did his fellow bandits. Even with the sounds of screaming in the distance, he stood there and pondered the thought. Made…legs…? This statement struck Barabbas as being odd… Slung over his shoulder, she felt like a fleshie woman. He reached up with his other hand and stroked the curves of her calves--felt the flesh through the cloth of the white slacks… No, her legs definitely weren't metal. Then she began to pound on his back with rather strong hands. "Stop groping me, you pervert!" she shouted.
_____He set her down. Flustered, the pretty red-haired scientist-woman straightened her lab coat and other clothing, then gave him a glare as he looked over her beautiful body in tight white slacks and silken top, somewhat covered by her open lab-coat. "My, my…!" he said, "You're a rather feisty one. But how are you a cyborg? You certainly don't feel like one."
_____The answer came in the form of a loud slap-p-p across his left cheek. It was a nice solid one, too--the kind that left his head turned to the side. He then heard the female scientist's feet pattering away--going at a fast pace. He also heard Mai giggling at him just before the other bandits burst into laughter.
_____"No good deed goes unpunished, as an ancient saying goes," he said as he shook his head. "Oh, the costs of courage!" Barabbas didn't know it, but he had just "helped" (and groped the shapely legs of) the most important research scientist in the city.
…
4.
…
_____Going into the apartment building, Scotch nodded to the security guy--a hefty cyborg--and went for the stairs. He jogged his way up the stairs, still feeling especially quick and agile despite his head feeling like crap. This synthetic body of his never grew tired. His brain, though, was still a living thing; his brain getting tired right about now…
_____He noticed that he tended to get odd headaches if he worked for too long, a kind of headache that dragged down on his thoughts and made him want to go to sleep. Well, he was almost up to the floor where he lived. He would take a nap, read some newsprints about gladiatorial battles, then maybe drive out to Patrick's pub or something to talk to people until it was time to go to sleep. Some friends from work were supposed to be there…
_____Ah, here it was--up on the third floor, the hallway going left and right. His place was apartment 3-6, on the right. It was still the same apartment he and his brother moved into when they first arrived in the city. Scotch wanted to live on a higher floor and have a better outdoor view of the city, even if a person did have to keep the window closed during the day due to the air pollution. But Duct, being the big heavy guy he was, didn't feel like "goin' up an' down 'bout six hundred stairs every day and every night, dang-nabbit." As Scotch unlocked the five locks and chains on the door, he thought about his brother. Yeah, he was going to miss the big guy.
…
______He walked in, closed the door behind him. The single-room apartment was still surprisingly neat and sparsely furnished--with two bedrolls on the floor and two small chests of drawers near the wall, the drawers holding underwear, shirts, socks and (of course) coveralls. In the kitchen area, there was the table by the Venetian-blinded window, used for eating and reading--still with his brother's chair where he left it. He was going to have to do all the dishes alone p now.
_____After walking in, Scotch locked three of the five locks. He turned to look around the place. Because it was late afternoon, deep orange-red sunlight was slanting through the thin metal slats of the apartment's Venetian blinds, making for lined patterns on the table and the floor. The table…
_____Did somebody leave something on the table? He walked over there, eyes on the rectangular object atop the smooth synthetic wooden surface. Yawning, the tired mechanic picked it up. Oh yeah, he was getting that funny tired-headache sort of feeling again… Then he looked all over the object, the card. One side had the Queen of Diamonds on it, the stylized double-image of the playing-card character having dark hair and wearing a red crown. On the other side, the back, there were black and white jagged lines--just those typical designs… He wriggled it up and down, the card making flap-flap-flap noises… It seemed to be made out laminated playing-card paper, though a little stiffer.
_____Hmmph, just your typical playing card, he thought to himself. Wonder how it got in here? Maybe he just picked it up somewhere and forgot about it until now. Oh well…
_____He yawned again and began to stagger over to his bedroll. Man, he really needed a nap! As Scotch laid down on the soft bedroll, the air vent was blowing in somewhat cool air into the room. He drifted off into his nap, glad to know that at least some things worked in this apartment…
_____Wait a second… Since when do playing card queens have dark hair? And red crowns? He must've played a million games of cards in his life with all kinds of decks. But he never saw a red-crowned queen before. Playing-card queens always had sun-colored hair. He thought about getting up to check that card again, tried to…raise his head… Nope, he wasn't getting up! He thought he heard the playing card begin to hiss--putting out smoke…. And was someone laughing?
…
_____ "Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…" The laughter… The deep laughter, it was…carried through the darkness on howling breeze. And it blew right into a dimly lit and narrow alleyway. The familiar red-brick walls were close, left and right. That old stranger was still playing cards at that makeshift table of his, a single low-powered light bulb shining down on a simple cone-shaped metal fixture.
_____Scotch was here before, and the setup was almost completely the same. But some details had changed. The old stranger's coveralls were a rusty brown-red color this time. There was also a different arrangement of cards on the table--three cards for the old stranger and three for the shadowy opponent. That shadowy opponent seemed bigger this time--more muscular-armed and broad-shouldered. Still, the face was still covered in shadows.
_____"I'll sing them right this time," said the old stranger in red coveralls, looking at the shadowy figure sitting across from him at the low table. "I know the words because it's an old…sad…song…" He looked down at his deck of cards--his old fingers becoming a rapid-speed blur. Fwip-fwip-fwip-fwip-fwip-fwip… "I'll sing them right!"
_____Still shuffling the cards, the old stranger's face became more and more worried, while the shadowy opponent leaned back away from the table and began a deep-throated sort of laugh… Hmm! Hmmm-hmm! Hwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…! It was that deep and bellowing laughter he heard when he first got here. Then Scotch saw the shadowy opponent's left hand as it reached out from the darkness to move a card. It was a hand that looked as if it had been badly burned, with thick fingernails at the ends of the fingers.
_____Still shuffling the deck of cards, the old stranger suddenly smiled a crooked-toothed smile. "I knew the words! I knew THE WORDS!" he declared as one of the cards flickered out from the deck the old stranger had been shuffling. Flying out from the rest of the shuffling deck, the green-tattooed card landed on the table--making the shadowy stranger hesitate…and snarl.
_____It wasn't a playing card. Instead, Scotch saw that it was a computer circuit-card. He did not know much about computers, those electrical machines used by scientists and technicians, yet he knew a computer machine-part when he saw one. How did a computer circuit-board get into the old stranger's deck of cards? Where had he been hiding it?
_____The circuit-board atop the table began to take on a glowingly florescent color. He couldn't even look at it as it was just so bright. Sparks began to flick out from it. The shadowy opponent edged away from the table while the old stranger smiled. Scotch didn't understand the rules of the game, but it seemed that this move in the game was a win over the shadowy stranger.
_____"No one will be left and gone without me, not anymore!" declared the old stranger. He looked past the shadowy opponent and directly at Scotch. Scotch tried to turn and run… But in a dream, running is almost always impossible. It felt as if he was running in slow-motion, trying to get away, when a sudden dark gust blew him out of the alley and into the darkness…
…
______"Gya-a-ah!" he gasped, sitting up on his bedroll. He quickly looked left and right, hands gripping the thick top of the sleeping surface. His breathing slowed when he realized where he was: still in his apartment. Yeah, he thought to himself, it was just a dream, gosh darn-it… It wasn't real at all--just something crazy. The orange-red of the sunset was still slanting through the apartment window. His nap was just minutes, though it seemed much longer than that… It was as if he hadn't napped at all--was brought right back to the time when he laid down on the bedroll. Did the dream mean something? He had the strong idea that it did…
…
_____While Scotch recovered from his odd dream, something had just happened in a local warehouse basement--crates and large cube-shaped machines along the wall. Six men in business suits were dead, lying on the concrete floor, their eyes staring blankly as blood leaked from their ears and noses. One of them, a cyborg, was still twitching--a red scarf clutched in his left metal hand. But his brain was dead.
_____Her arms close at her sides, Aikasa took mincing, careful steps towards the still-twitching body-- her little white shoes barely making any noise. Her shorts were smudged and the right sleeve of her short-sleeved blouse was torn, but her outfit was generally intact. They were going to hurt her in a very bad way--one of the worst kinds of hurt that could happen to a girl in the city.
_____Even then, she didn't want to kill anyone. She screamed and begged them to let go and please don't do this as the drunken men in business suits carried her down into the warehouse basement. She really was carried. Because she was just so petite and light and they were so big, one of them just carried her under one of his arms--the arm wrapped around her waist.
_____She shouldn't have let this happen at all. After her last performance for today, Aikasa was just walking along the sidewalk when someone snatched her scarf--and ran to a car. She ran over to the car and tried to get back her scarf. A good friend made it for her, made it from unique materials, and there was no other scarf like it in the whole world. She just had to get it back! That was when the drunken cyborg businessman grabbed her slender wrists and pulled her in--his buddies sitting next to her. They had her netted in.
_____A pretty one, isn't she--so small and cute… Look at that! She's got natural slits on the sides of her pretty little neck. You can barely see 'em unless she tilts her head to the side. No wonder why she was wearing the scarf. So the pretty little girl's a mutant! They spat out that word--mutant--as if it was something disgusting and low. Mutant…! Pretty little mutant doll-girl! Those look a bit like fish-gills! Can you really breathe water, pretty little mutant-girl? Is there anything else different about that nice-looking body of yours? Let's find out!
_____Drive to Jack's shipping warehouse! We got a basement there! No one's going to mess with us there! And we can, heh-heh, do what we want with her… They took her down here where no one would see them or hear her…. Down into this wide and dimly lit basement. They surrounded her, and still she hesitated. Only when one of them reached out and tore her blouse did she pull in a deep breath, close her eyes… and scream.
_____Looking at her, a person would think of her as just being a petite, pretty and young female--someone to be doted over and hugged. They also saw her as being a lonely and defenseless little thing… But there were reasons why Aikasa generally stayed alone, why she didn't stay close to people. It wasn't because she was afraid of what people would do to her. It was because of what she could do to other people.
_____People generally left her alone. Some people became unusually interested in her at times--and even they let her be. There were even times when some people became too interested in her. When that interest became bigger than their senses of right and wrong, that was when trouble happened. They took things too far.
_____Aikasa's voice wasn't just capable of producing sweet melodies wonderful to human minds, singing that gave a person a sense of peace and healing. She was also able to generate extremely intense sound-waves, set at a frequency that resonated with normal brain tissue--especially brain tissue. The frontal lobes of human brains were the most severely effected… When she screamed, she killed the brains. Simply put, the thin and pale-haired little girl screamed the drunken jerks to death. This wasn't the first time she had screamed people to death. And this probably wouldn't be the last time.
_____When the corpse finally stopped twitching, Aikasa knelt down and took back her precious red scarf from the dead jerk. A few shakes, and the special velvet-like material was free of grit. Luckily, it was still moist as well--the synthetic material still retaining water and moistness.
_____She wrapped the red scarf around her neck again and rubbed. Much better. Her gills were beginning to feel a little dry. Where was her purse…? Ah, there it was--conveniently set atop a metal crate. The stairs up and out were nearby. After she left this underground place, an unnoticed playing card fluttered off of one of the crates--snatched by an indoor air current…
…
5.
…
_____Though there were plenty of bright streetlamps, neon signs, and outside of buildings, though the city's mighty underground fusion power-plants had infinite amounts of electricity to spare for even more streetlights, there were still parts of the city shrouded in darkness when the sun went down. These were places behind older factory-buildings and in abandoned basements filled with junk no one bothered to clean out. Some apartments were also shadowy, the electrical wiring not well-maintained. The same was true for some entire city blocks--how the wiring was so bad that there just wasn't any electricity…
_____Those were bad parts of the city, where bad things happened to people who were either not careful or who didn't care. People were sometimes snatched off of the street and taken to those places and sometimes found dead or worse the next morning. What could be worse? Being robbed or just plain killed was one thing. But having parts of one's body being taken, being left crippled and mutilated, that was something else. Organ thieves sometimes took body parts from fleshies, stitched the victims back up (a weak attempt at avoiding murder charges), and left them twitching in garbage-strewn lots. Or sometimes, people…just…disappeared…
_____The dark places were not good. Friends told each other to stay away from those areas without light. Mothers told their children to avoid those places where the light did not shine. People out at night for drinks and good times also stayed away from those places of light-swallowing gloom--knowing what could happen to them if they went close. Even members of the Black Market, having become more legitimate these days, know better than to go to those lowly and shadowy places after the sun went down.
…
_____And it was in such a dark place that Barabbas was holding this night's gathering. It was in the back of a synthetic flavorings manufacturing factory-building--where a moderate-sized company made red-looking artificial sweeteners from all kinds of chemicals. The food chemicals were heated, mixed up in gigantic vats, prepared, then piped directly over to food processing plants and shipped to bottling plants. The bottles were sent to warehouses and restaurants by way of big heavy trucks.
_____It was after sunset, after working hours. The towering machine-building was dark--some machinery still humming beyond barred windows. With work done, this was now a dark place ...
_____Fwo-o-osh! Six flames began to shoot up from six old metal barrels--full of dry newsprint and chemically contaminated waste-paper that burned easily. The flaming barrels were set up in a circle, the dancing flames illuminating the meeting area with its hard-packed dirt. There were over a dozen people here--cyborgs and fleshies. Some were in coveralls, and some were in tee shirts and jeans. All of their clothing was neat and clean, and all of their faces were clean--hair groomed.
_____The small crowd stood there as the chilly night winds blew across, playing with the flames from the burning barrels. Then came footsteps… Barabbas stepped up on the stage and spread his arms in a gesture of welcome. Other than the bandage worn around his head, he seemed to be his typically well-kept self: jeans and tee-shirt, heavy workboots on his feet. Though it was chilly, their muscular leader seemed not to mind--though there was only the thin material of his shirt to protect his upper body from the chilling cold.
_____He lowered his thick and mighty arms. "Welcome…! Welcome to you all! You are all probably wondering why I have called a meeting. If you don't know why you were called here, that would be a good thing: It means that our secretive means of communication are still secretive. A little slip of paper here, a little coded graffiti over there… Yes, we are able to communicate and to have meetings without the Black Market knowing. Even if they did know of this meeting, the Black Market would probably just interpret it as being just another late-night orgy of city dwellers after working hours--another instance of corporate carelessness.
_____"And it is exactly that carelessness that we are going to take advantage of! Yes, careless… The Black Market is careless--like Zalem. Those fools of that floating city were careless: So long as we worked in their factories and did not destroy 'Factory Propterty,' Zalem did not care what we did to ourselves or what happened in our lives.
_____"As for those who think Zalem 'cared' enough when they outlawed murder, that law was only under the premise that workers were property. That's what we were, down here on the ground: property. Zalem was just protecting its best interest when it hired bounty hunters to maintain their laws. Then there we were, struggling with the dirt of the land on wasteland farms and in the hard loud machines of the factories--producing food and goods for those careless wealthy fools up there.
_____"But guess what? Yes, Zalem's dead. Nobody remains alive in the oppressive city of the wealthy. However, here we still are--working in these factories and on the farms." At this point, Barabbas clenched his fists, the meaty muscles of his arms rippling as he growled, "We're still working for an oppressive ruling class that may as well be up in some floating city!"
_____He's so-o-o cool, thought Mai, standing in at the front of the small crowd. To blend in, she was dressed in neat jeans, dark shoes and clean tee-shirt. Her green hair was in a thick braid, the color not noticeable in the low gloom of the firelight. Dressed this way and with the light low, the pink of her metal body was hidden, and the odd color of her hair wasn't noticeable.
_____Barabbas pointed up at the sky. "I'll tell you what happened to Zalem: karma! All of those years of Zalem making evil and hardship, all of the evil done, something had to happen. Again, I use the term carelessness. That carelessness about us here on the ground eventually led to carelessness up there. The result: When their careless maintenance workers didn't maintain the nuclear power facilities, a careless accident happened: flooding the entire floating city with hard radiation and killing everything alive! Though no one we know has really been up there since they went silent, we are sure that the Floating City has become a floating necropolis--a floating concrete and metal corpse of a city!"
_____So good so far, she thought. Or did the saying go, So far, so good? Oh well… Barabbas was behaving pretty normally for someone who had undergone brain surgery an hour ago. Well, it wasn't exactly brain surgery because Barabbas really didn't have a brain!
_____The truth was, he was a replicate. Barabbas was a chip-brained, synthetic-bodied android. She found that out when she went with him to the back-room of a "doctor." It was like a dentist's office from the old days--a small store-front setup with a medical clinic seat--a bright light overhead. Except, the seat had straps. One of the straps went over the eyes, holding the head in place as the chubby guy with the metal hands and the camera-eye went to work by taking off the top of Barabbas' skull…
_____That was why he was wearing a cloth bandage wrapped around his forehead. "Now… Now, another kind of carelessness rules the city, my fellows," he growled, raising a fist. There was the sound of crackling flames from the burning barrels all around. "Zalem is gone, but now the Black Market has taken over. The Black Market was always there, working in the shadows and doing kinds of dark and harmful business to make money and build influence. When Zalem went, the Black Market emerged from the darkness and took over."
_____Mai's mind wandered back to the time she was in the doctor's office. The doctor told Mai that general anesthetic wouldn't work on Barabbas because he wasn't human. Mai didn't understand how that could be true, and the doctor didn't bother to explain any more. Instead, she saw that the doctor use some complicated tools to first cut Barabbas scalp, then undo his metal skull. Strapped down, Barabbas sat very still while the doctor's electronic tools went to work in his opened-up head.
_____If he dies, I'll kill you, she told the doctor. Then I'll kill you some more. The doctor smirked as he disconnected a rectangular piece of computer hardware from Barabbas' brain-chip, removed it from his skull, then closed up the head. Barabbas synthetic body had a small supply of nanobots for auto-repair; the synthetic skin of the skull would "heal" on its own. Until then, he had best wear a bandage to keep people from wondering why the circular slit around his head didn't bleed or get infected.
_____"Will we wait for karma to act, as it did already? No we will not wait for the force of cosmic justice to eventually destroy the Black Market oppressors!" continued Barabbas. "We care about the plight and the suffering of the hard-working city people and the farmers who work in the wasteland farms. Cosmic justice and rightness will be with us as we unseat the Black Market from its saddled position of oppression!
_____"How do we do that? As I speak, there is something raising random chaos in the city, something that the Black Market is unable to stop. That something is known as the Adversary--a metal beast stronger than war machines from Ancient times. With the Black Market powerless to stop it despite their usage of guns, we will take advantage of the anarchy and chaos. When the Adversary strikes and the strong-armed, gun-toting thugs of the Black Market are powerless, we will step in and take over. We are agitators…who care…for the people! Oh-h-h, yes! Let's r-r-rock!"
_____With that jubilant shout from Barabbas, everyone threw up their arms and began to dance around. There was drinking and shouting, chanting filling the gloom and shadows. The flames from the barrels roared higher as some people threw some extra things into the barrels… Mai didn't know where the drinks were coming from and who bought the music players, but things had gotten pretty rowdy in a hurry. It was time to party down!
