A soft wind carries the smell of liquorice and dust to my nose, the rubble around me shuddering and shifting in time with the heavy mechanical footfalls on the other side.
RO-OB-OT
I quiver like a lawnmower revving up for the first time in the summer, the tension in my mood reflected in the ragged fingernail clipping clenched between my incisors and the rapid bouncing of my right leg.
HU-MA-NI-TY
And what better song to be bashing buckets to....
ROBOT
Than ‘Robot Rock’?
HUMAN
My manic grin threatens to split my chapped lips as the tension in my legs rips loose, jacket billowing around me, glass bead charms tinkling gently as they trail behind my rebar axe. In a split second I’ve crested the rubble, my earbuds threatening to fall out as I catch sight of my quarry, an old labour model scrounging through the ruins for spare parts. Before it can broadcast an alarm I decide to let out some tension, spitting out that old nail clipping with a sound like a small thunderclap, snapping its uplink antenna cleanly in twain.
I land roughly atop the rubble, a twinge of pain shooting up my ankle and adding to my manic haze. By grin is so wide it threatens to cleave my head as cleanly as that antenna. I stare the bucket in its big FLCL-esque TV face as it raises a clamp to try and sweep me through a nearby wall.
“BE SAFER WI-” A cloud of dust, rust, and concrete chips flies away from where I was a moment before as I fly face-first into the bucket’s monitor, my skull reverberating with the sound of shattering glass and screaming electronics. The bucket’s clamp continues its motion to try and swat me away from its ‘face’, but I’m already flat on the ground by then, the towering labour drone staggering back as it follows up my head-butt with its own fist, the motors unable to brake fast enough to stop its own arm’s motion. These things were really not made for fighting, but that just made them easy pickings.
I kip-up with enough force to send me somersaulting through the air, blood trailing from the numerous glass cuts in my face. As satisfying as smashing their monitors is, they don’t house many parts necessary for functioning, but if I have to hear one more preachy robot tell me I’d ‘Be Safer with Sä-Korp’, I would probably die of boredom. You’d think after 12 some-odd years they’d come up with some new propaganda, but I guess nobody ever credited them with creativity.
My arc through the air stabilizes as I shoot some tension out into my jacket, forcing it to billow out like a parachute for a moment. I begin to feel myself relax a little so I retreat into the back of my mind a bit, letting the industrial thrum of Daft Punk burrow into my subconscious as I accelerate towards the staggering bucket, it’s upper torso sparking and spraying small gouts of flame as open wires meet sprays of oily mist. My fall is punctuated with a metallic shriek as my axe bites into the bot’s metallic hide, the tension letting loose in a storm of sparks and flying metal.
A half-minute later I rise from the dusty concrete, groggy and languid, the tension all spent. Daft Punk has given way to Oskar Shuster’s ‘Vleurgat’, and the falling motes of dust look for all the world like little snowflakes. I survey my kill with the satiated gaze of someone whose masseuse gave them what they paid for plus a little extra. I let the languor seep into the bucket’s wrecked hull, stringing together disparate chunks and quelling electrical fires until the scrap heap was animate enough to lurch over like a giant, rusty koala fresh off a eucalyptus high. I fall onto my back, winding myself slightly as the ex-bucket catches me in its excavator shovel, eventually depositing me into a hammock of rubber tubing and cables slackened with languor somewhere around where its monitor used to be.
I awake an indeterminate amount of time alter to shouts of confusion and alarm. Apparently I’d dozed off while directing the ex-bucket, and we were coming up on the gates to The Duchy. My cable hammock rocks a bit as I make the ex-bucket slow down and slump to the ground. I try to rise but find my bruised body a little unresponsive for the first few seconds, though eventually the languor retreats enough for me to rub the sleep from my eyes and the crusted blood from my cracked lips.
“Wh-who goes up there?”, stammers a cracking, teenaged voice, like a rock that takes two swings to split.
Recognizing the voice I push through the haze in my head, replying, “Sammy, that you? They got you runnin’ guard duty now? ‘s Hound by the by, try not to shoot, ‘m already sure to have a splitting headache once the languor clears, and I’d rather that not be literal.”
I peek out over top of the ex-bucket, parts of it beginning to fall off once more with a dull crash as my eyes catch sight of Sammy. The dusty-skinned teen lowers their rifle shakily, standing from behind the makeshift rampart they’d had for cover, two other guards following suit after it’s apparent Sammy isn’t being shot, crushed, or otherwise maimed.
“The fuck didn’t you call ahead for? Only reason we didn’t blow you and your puppet sky-high was because it was very obviously a puppet. Any closer and we’d have had to anyways to keep it from plowing into the wall!”
My ears redden a little at being scolded by someone two-thirds my age, my reply carrying a small note of shame, “Sorry bud, must’ve dozed off. You know how it is, everything’s a bed when you’re running on languor, ‘specially if it makes a bed for you. Now can ya get the gate open so I can haul this scrap in and sleep in a proper bed?” I wait a moment before adding, “Please?”
Sammy’s eyes roll in an exaggerated circle as their hand moves to the button. “Fine, so long as you promise to set up an appointment with my mom later, k? We need the stamps to get the AC unit fixed up after your ‘improvements’ to it blew it open a couple weeks back.” They look myself and the ex-bucket up and down a moment. “You gonna need some help moving that thing? I’m still running tense, but Dale’s at peak greed right about now, he could probably haul it in.” They jerk their thumb towards one of the other guards, a squat, hairless guy with a hungry gleam in his eye to rival that of a thief in a solid gold art gallery.
I simply nod my head, slipping down the side of the scrap heap I’d been riding for at least the past hour. I feel pain and tension begin to creep back into my muscles, like needles slowly being inserted underneath my skin, and with it my grasp on the still vaguely-humanoid scrap heap slowly waning. The sound of the metal gate slowly screaming open certainly doesn’t help, and by the time it is open enough to admit my haul I can already feel the urge to start chewing away at my nails creeping in again. Thankfully Dale does as promised and helps me to haul the scrap, lessening the strain considerably, though the haggling which is sure to follow won’t help with staying languid.
A few hours of haggling, hauling, dismantling, and honest-to-god begging later, and my mind is a few tonnes lighter while my stamp collection is a couple kilos heavier. So I ping my favourite masseuse’s pager, and go off to pay Sammy’s mom that promised visit. It’ll be well worth it.
So I know the title implies there will be more, and I hope there will be, but as it stands I dunno if I'll get around to it/remember to. In other words if there is a continuation of this the updates will likely be sporadic at best. All that being said helpful feedback is always appreciated, especially seeing as 2:00 am really isn't in the mood for proof-reading.
Submitted June 06, 2018 at 12:02PM by kaelhound https://ift.tt/2sBvKAw
No comments:
Post a Comment