There was a rotten pumpkin in the corner...er, wait. What pumpkin? There was only a little bit of brown-orange mush on the Vagabond's rags covering his mouth.
Behind him was a machine with a little red bar on it. It seemed to be a gauge for a large power cell, perhaps fueled by some type of nuclear reactor. If this was the case, it was relatively low on fuel. But who knew how long it had been running here?
But the Wayward Vagabond (WV) did not care about this sort of nonsense and he disregarded it at once. He was very hungry.
He picked up a can of gravy and held it in his hands. He attempted to use his teeth to poke a hole in the lid of the can, but his teeth were useless for the task. They were blunt like that of livestock, presumably suitable for mashing up plant matter, and not for puncturing metal.
Next he tried using his weak pathetic digits, but they were not strong enough to penetrate the can! His fingers were certainly pointy enough, and his black carapace was suitably rigid, but he just didn't have enough muscle for the task.
He also picked up the can labeled "BEANS," and another which read "MUSTARD." It was sort of cumbersome holding all those cans at once. WV doubted he could hold much more than this. Maybe one or two. He would need to find something to put stuff in if he wanted to carry a lot of things around.
Finding the task of holding all the cans to be meaningless at this point, he dropped them all in order to examine his wrist. On it was a sort of specialized bar code pattern.
This brought back unpleasant memories and he preferred not to dwell on them.
On the ground WV spied a potted plant and gobbled it up instantaneously. He subsequently let out a soft burp.
Beside the now empty pot was his human etiquette book. It appeared half the pages had been eaten already. The daunting volume was considerably lighter than it once was.
He was somewhat skeptical about the nutritional value contained by these pages. However, of the practical wisdom they contained there could be little doubt. He had learned so much.
Next to the machine with the red bar was another purple machine with a door on the front.
WV emptied this peculiar cabinet and took a quick inventory of his canned goods. He had beans, mustard, gravy, bread, shrimp, asparagus, cheese, rice, corn, peas, flour, chestnuts, mayo, ham, potatoes, and squash.
Such bountiful plenty. And yet the delights taunted him from within their small metal prisons.
He peeked into the purple thing in the hopes of finding a can opener but it was empty.
WV had already looked all over the place for one and even made a few electronic inquiries about one, but to no avail.
However, he did have his trusty knife! A rather sharp object. It was actually a…
He was not sure what they were called. It was an old rusted one of those red mailbox arm-swing flappy doodads, either for letting you know there was mail in the box, or maybe for alerting the mailman to outgoing mail to be collected. He didn't know, really.
WV had wrapped a little piece of cloth around it for the grip. But it was useless for opening cans.
A little while later, the Wayward Vagabond had found a riveting way to pass the time. He had taken all of the cans and arranged them into a little town of cans.
As the glorious founder and mayor of Can Town, he had erected a dignified, majestic City Hall out of cans, fittingly capped off with the tome of good manners for the roof. On top of that was the pot with his trusty knife sticking out of it as a fanciful decoration.
He had also given himself a very official and important looking mayoral sash made out of old cables to complete his look of authority. WV stood over his newly established town in glee.
A number of rather civic-minded citizen cans gathered in front of City Hall to offer adulation to their fair and magnanimous leader.
All was well.
WV immersed himself in this beautiful dream of being Mayor of Can Town, where he would be applauded by citizen cans as he walked in the can parade, as he whittled away the minutes, or perhaps hours.
He loved the idea of being a mayor. WV loved everything about mayors, and the concept of an orderly, civil democracy. It all seemed so mannerly and reasonable to him. Everyone was friendly and happy, and the city ran like clockwork. The foundation of the government was based on mutual respect between the leader and its people. It was also built on having a really great mayor that everyone loved who was totally amazing and heroic and brave.
Mayors were so much better than kings. WV hated kings and thought kings were really stupid. They were petty, bossy tyrants and were really full of themselves and were basically awful in every way.
God did he hate kings.
Over to the West of Can Town was the other side of the room. There was another one of those purple storage boxes attached to the wall, and some useless objects scattered on the floor – a box of colored chalk, a glowing green rock, a yellow jug, and a small fossilized bug.
WV picked up the nugget of uranium, intending to try and use it to open a can, but instead ending up swallowing it on impulse for some reason. He burped and felt a green shock go through his body.
That was so stupid. Why did he eat it?
Inside the box of chalk there were twelve pieces in every color of the...
WV quickly ate two of them.
There were now ten pieces of chalk, in most colors of the rainbow. WV was excited by this.
Going to the storage box, he tried to pry it open but it was locked! There must be some sort of release mechanism for this thing.
On the floor next to the box was the yellow container. It looked to be full of motor oil. But this did not seem useful to him right now.
Upon further examination of the fossil, WV saw that it was a small firefly encased in amber. If only there was something he could do for this new friend, but attempting to crush the amber would likely cause it harm.
It nevertheless bravely flashed on. WV found its light alluring. Inspiring. To him it seemed as if it could easily serve as the light of...
Democracy.
He placed the little guy inside City Hall and watched as it lit up the entire town with its flashing.
Next, WV used the chalk to draw some roads. He sketched a handsome network of sprawling thoroughfares for his citizens to traverse. The adoring population applauded its mayor's keen instincts for city planning.
He even added some lush vegetation to his city with a piece of blue chalk, because he couldn't seem to find a more suitable color for some reason.
Westward, he began to settle those fertile plains and claim them for his city. He sectioned off a number of residential and commercial zones arranged in the only logical pattern that occurred to him – a series of squares.
He colored the residential areas with his white piece of chalk, but for some reason none of the colors in the box struck him as suitable for the commercial zones. Perhaps there was an alternative.
He did have the motor oil still to use. So, he filled each empty square with a bit of oil to complete the zoning. It looked rather striking to him, much like a chess board actually. WV could hardly imagine that an up and coming young can trying to make it in the world would not be delighted to live in his fair district.
He was very careful not to get any of the unpleasant fluid on his person.
As he meandered back over to City Hall, he picked up a can of mayo and tore off the label, affixing it to his sash. He then used an orange piece of chalk to add an 'R' to the end of it.
'MAYOR' It read.
Yes, this was good.
But WV was still in search of more terrain for his city. Unfortunately, it seemed he had run out of territory for western expansion. However, there was still a lot of empty wall space. Perhaps his citizens would be happier with a colorful backdrop that would make them feel more at home.
Using most of his imagination and an entire piece of sky-blue chalk, WV rendered a bright and cheerful sky of clouds. He had decided that very closely orbiting his city was a luminous yellow planet, about which orbited a single moon.
He then switched to another shade of blue and continued rendering on the western wall.
Orbiting much further from his city were four planets – a blueish planet with a giant volcano, a red planet with a great black cog behind it, a bright blue and pick planet surrounded by yellow clouds, and a black drippy one with grey clouds. None of these had satellites, he had decided. Yes, that made sense, he thought.
And on the southern wall, beyond an impenetrable veil of darkness (lots of oil thrown about), occupying the furthest orbit yet, there was an ominous purple planet. A moon circled this one too.
To the left of that purple and black mess was the machine with the four screens. And on the top left one was the boy from earlier, rampaging about and killing strange black underlings.
Oh yeah, that guy. WV had almost forgotten about him and his shenanigans.
It seemed like he had things well in hand at the moment. He did not appear to need WV's help, and WV had already concluded that he could not help him, at least for the time being.
He wondered if there was a way to turn on the other three screens, but he had no idea how this worked! There was no mouse for this weird quadra-monitored computer. It could only be operated through text commands from its keyboard.
Perhaps there was a special key or command which would allow him to switch to another monitor?
He cautiously tried pressing the tab button, and as soon as he did so the box over by the western part of Can Town popped open, revealing a stash of pink cans labelled "TAB."
This new discovery was extremely exciting for the Wayward Vagabond who quickly scurried over and picked up a couple of the new cans, looking them over.
He soon freed the heavenly brown elixir from the jewels of pink carapace and imbibed like the wind.
It was so sweet and sugary. He wondered how much sugar could fit in one can. Whatever mighty wizard concocted this potion was truly deserving of his fear and respect.
Now it was time to welcome the rest of them into the city. The Tabs were naturalized as loyal new citizens of Can Town. All cans were welcome and equal in his city, regardless of can content, and whether empty or full.
It wasn't like emptying a can killed it or anything. They were just cans after all.
Feeling refreshed and heavily caffeinated, WV went back to work on the big computer.
He hit 'escape,' which seemed to minimize the action window thingy and revealed a history of all the commands he'd entered. Using the arrow key to scroll up a bit, he read through the commands. He couldn't believe how much he'd already typed into this stupid contraption. What a waste of time.
He scrolled all the way up to his first command. It looked like there were some more commands above it. Maybe someone was entering commands on this thing before him?
There weren't many more. At the top of the list was the very first command, "HOME."
He figured he would try and enter one of them, and tried out "SWITCH 2." This activated screen 2, and turned off screen 1.
But the signal was garbled, and he had no idea what he was looking at. Some sort of filthy beggar statue begging for help?
No one was around and nothing was happening. He seemed to be locked out of any sort of interaction with whatever was happening on this monitor.
Next he typed "SWITCH 3." This turned on the next screen down and on it was another once of these rapscallions. The blonde boy stood next to some sort of impaled, ghostly bird and a torn up stuffing man labelled "Cal."
But this monitor was locked too. WV couldn't tell him what to do. Not that he really wanted to, since it just looked like more confusing nonsense to him.
He considered switching to screen 4, but decided against it. He had a feeling that whatever was there would just confuse him even more, and he didn't really care all that much anyway.
Instead he typed "HOME" and was surprised when all four screen activated. Together, they displayed a countdown, starting at four hours and thirteen minutes.
Alarmed, he tried to enter the command to REBOOT, but he could not! Nothing was working anymore. The timer seemed to have disabled the keyboard.
But enough of this nonsense. He was an important mayor and this absurd contraption had wasted enough of his time. He had a city to govern with a carapace fist! (Which is to say firm, yet polished, and supple as the situation demanded.)
Anyway, this would help him kill some time while he waited for that clock to count down.
He temporarily dismantled City Hall to free up all the canpower available to create a vigilant town militia. He divided them up into two groups, marking them with distinct teams and ranks using the piece of white chalk and the motor oil, making a black and white side. WV then organized them in phalanx across the grid of the countryside, preparing for a stiff training regimen. When he was through with them, his forces would be a well-oiled machine. Chalk another one up to bold leadership!
It was now time for a game of chess with his can armies, and maybe to drink a little more Tab on the side.
He wasted more than four hours on this tomfoolery, and the countdown now had only about four minutes left.