Crossing the threshold, Frost was in a dim, wooden hall lined with lumographs of some far-off coastline. The large man that had collected him was marching a short distance ahead. Frost followed, his footsteps light until they met the bare floor of the larger space. It was a saloon, dark and musty, filled with smoke that hung above tables of patrons, each wearing ten-gallon hats or hooded robes.
There were flashes of lighting and rolling thunder, suppressed by the sound of rain hitting the outer doors and a silvery, slow song that was playing on an elegant radio resting on top of one of the crowded tables.
The barman nodded as the two men entered, spitting some dip into a spittoon while he finished polishing some glassware. Once done, he collected a tray and placed on it a pot of simmering tea, along with cubes of sugar, some milk, butter, and several slices of bread.
“Ah! I’m so glad you were able to join me, Your Honor!” said Frost, happily taking another swig of his drink.
He was speaking to Mayor Randolph, who was settling in at the only open table near the center of the place. Dressed in a plain but very tight evening coat and top hat, a sopping cloak was thrown over the back of his chair. On either side of him, an elite sentry bot was positioned. Both were wearing rigid bowler hats, maroon shirts, and waist-length suit jackets; the rest of them uncovered, their coppery cladding shone with each flash of lighting.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Randolph spewed like a deflating balloon as the barman set down the tray of jostling things. “You did say that there was an urgent matter, did you not?”
“Yes, of the utmost importance,” Frost replied, watching Randolph lunge for the butter. He scraped a huge glob of it over some bread and took a large bite.
“Then you should have come to Grand Hall!” Randolph said while chewing, waving around his half-eaten slice of limp bread. “Or even my manor! Instead, you’ve decided to have me come to this…hovel.”
The barman cast a menacing stare Randolph’s way, but the mayor didn’t catch it.
“A certain amount of secrecy is required at times,” Frost replied.
“Times such as this, I gather?”
Frost nodded while sipping.
“Well then!” Randolph said flatly. “Out with it.”
Frost set his glass down on the tray – there was no room elsewhere on the small table – and placed his hands at the back of his neck, rubbing.
“Wherever do I start?” he said troublingly.
“At the point,” Randolph scorned, tempted to grab at his pocket watch to see how much longer this meeting would be, but a cup of tea worked just as well.
“Have you noticed that Mr. Winthrope has been distracted?” Frost began. “Ever since taking this new woman in his life?”
Far too many sugar cubes plunked into Randolph’s cup, causing it to splash then overflow.
“Really, Lucas!” Randolph snapped. “Had I known you wished to discuss Jesse’s private love life this badly I would have added it to the agenda of our meeting earlier this week! Instead you’ve dragged me from the safety of the core boroughs into dangerous –”
“Excuse me?” interrupted the barman, his gruff voice loud. “I thought you were the mayor for all the people? We ain’t good enough here in the dangerous parts of town? I’d have thought these parts would be needing the most attention!”
“Yes, I am in this for all the precious voters,” Randolph replied, “no matter the rat hole they reside in…”
The barkeep slammed his fist on the top of the bar, several glasses breaking, and Frost immediately shot his hand up.
“Case in point,” the mayor said smugly, peering over his cup at the barkeep. “We didn’t have to wait long for that.”
“Gentlemen! Enough!” called Frost. “Your Honor, it is not about what Winthrope is doing I have issue with, it’s who he is doing it with.”
Randolph left his cup in place and waited for more.
“Can you not see that his judgement has been compromised somehow by that girl?” Frost insisted. “I am concerned about the supply of metals in the future. Winthrope Limited could do with, or rather needs, better control at the top.”
“And that better control would, in fact, be you?”
“No, but he is in this room,” Frost said, pointing straight ahead.
Randolph let out a blubbery laugh and lowered his cup.
“You know that officials do not control corporations? Other than laws and taxes of course. You suspect that sliver of a girl Winthrope has on his arm is nefarious?” he said with doubt. “She makes a fine arm band, Lucas, but is hardly some kind of spy.”
“I did not say she was a spy!” Frost downed two huge gulps of whiskey, banging the near empty glass on the tray. “Do you not see? Winthrope has lost his mind and the cause is that unsophisticated girl! He has forgotten who and what he is! Not to mention she was spotted coming out of raider territory – Pitchfork – before entering the city!”
Randolph looked bothered, pushing himself away from the table as his chair let out a pained scraping noise. Frost belched and shook his head drunkenly.
“We have plenty of traffic that passes through that area, Lucas. It is apparent to me that you are the one without full control right now. Please, get yourself sober. The matter is closed.”
Frost’s eyes narrowed; there was a menacing gleam in his mechanical one. He shot upright, his chair falling backwards with a loud crash against the floor.
Randolph jumped at the noise. Flustered, he stood up and reached for his cloak as his bot guards prepared to leave.
At the same time, Frost reached for his firearm.
“The matter is NOT closed!” he shouted over the roaring rain.
Sweat poured from Randolph’s forehead and collected in his armpits.
“Lucas…”
BANG! BANG!
Randolph’s arms had risen in terror. Realizing he was still alive, he frantically checked his body for bullet holes. There were none. However, there was a loud boom to his left; the guard had collapsed, sparking from its head and chest.
“What is the meaning of this?” Randolph shouted, his fists now clenched and trembling. His face was so red he looked like a plump tomato about to burst.
“Doing what I should have done earlier.”
Randolph shuffled his way behind the other guard, pointing his fingers at Frost.
"Why are you just standing there? Shoot him!"
The sentry remained motionless.
Grabbing what was left of his drink, Frost swallowed it all then flung the empty glass over his shoulder. It shattered on the floor.
Unexpectedly, the barman didn’t say a word about the damage or the mess. He slipped off down his side of the bar to an alcove at the end, pushed a hidden door open, and was gone. One of the hooded patrons sitting at the bar got up and eerily took his place.
Randolph looked around nervously, breathing hard through his nose.
“You know, Mr. Mayor,” Frost said, pacing, his pistol waving flagrantly, “obedience is a wonderful thing, is it not? At least for those of us in authority who are being obeyed. People like Jesse, they don’t believe that they need to, doing whatever they want, even if it means undermining the very principles that makes this civilization so grand. I think of them as cracks, you see, weakening our foundation to the point of collapse.”
“And your perversions with sex bots, attraction to the same sex, and even that ink you try so hard to hide are not such corrupting cracks?”
Frost scowled before continuing, “That may be your opinion, but opinions only matter when the people who have them matter, too.”
Randolph scoffed.
“Which brings me to control, which makes you matter. Simply put: I have it, you do not.”
“How dare you speak to me like this! I am the mayor of this city! Elected…”
“Three times yes, but are you the one in control or the people who put you there? I don’t recall the number of petitioners who helped with your funding right off
the top of my head but I can recall that none of them have faced much scrutiny from the officials because of it. So, I repeat: who is really in charge?”
Randolph stammered.
“Did you notice how smoky it is in here?” Frost asked, stepping over to a neighboring table. He positioned himself behind one of the customers. “Yet, somehow there is no smell of tobacco. I wonder why that is?”
Frost yanked back the man’s hood and instead of flesh and hair, there was cold, unfeeling metal. The rest of the saloon followed, revealing them all to be bots. All but one, who kept his hood up over by the bar.
“Something is very wrong here…” Randolph muttered.
“There you go again with your opinions! You see, the good thing about those who have control, Mr. Mayor…”
Frost removed a cylindrical device from his jacket pocket, looking it over lovingly. It was short and had ridged grip on it, along with a blue button at the tip. The hooded man by bar leaned forward, his eyes flickering with worry as if he knew what it was he saw.
“…is that you always know where the pieces are and thus, the outcome.”
Frost mashed the button with his thumb and grinned.
At once, all the robots in the room started to buzz and shake as if having seizures. Randolph watched, tucked in safely behind his guard who, strangely, appeared unaffected by the mechanical massacre. Steam violently hissed out the others and filled the rafters with more haze. Clockwork parts fell to the floor, jangling in a multicolored gear-strewn mess. Arcs of blue and white electricity erupted from their heads, some of the more powerful bolts jetting around the room. It was chaos.
Then, as quickly as it began, the calamity stopped and all the bots collapsed where they sat or stood. The silence that followed seemed to amplify the sound of driving rain and another slow song on the radio ten-fold.
Randolph was drenched in sweat and his eyes shook as he looked to Frost with dread.
“That’s one way to make sure their memory banks are cleared. Don’t you worry, Mr. Mayor, I was never going to do anything to you,” Frost said reassuringly, looking at Randolph. “Your guard is going to do it for me.”
Randolph jerked his arms away from the bot he was clinging to, looking worryingly at its emotionless features as it raised its arm.
“Stop! I order you to stop!”
The bot did not comply, a barrel unfolding from its forearm. It planted the end right between the mayor’s throbbing and sobbing eyes.
“Lucas, make it stop! Lucas ple–”
BANG!
Mayor Oscar Randolph was dead in an instant, the bot then turning the pistol on itself.
Frost stood alone in the saloon, everything around him dead or inactive. He took a moment to let it sink in before turning. Walking over to the radio, he flicked a small, recessed switch on the side. The music was replaced by static, then silence as he unclipped a microphone from the back of the unit. Pulling up a chair, Frost sat down in it and kicked his boots up on the tabletop.
Frost depressed a button on the side of the microphone.
“Come in.”
“Passcode?” a static-ridden voice replied a short time later.
“Winter.”
“Message received. Clean up gang is now on its way. You should leave now so you aren’t around when they arrive, sir.”
“Yes, yes I know. Be sure the body is placed in Sucio as discussed,” Frost said.
“Understood.”
Frost took a moment to consider all the bots around him.
“One last thing: let A3R0 know that he best be ready for me when I get back. I need relieved of the stresses from tonight.”
“We have not seen him, sir, though he may be off wandering again.”
Frost sighed, but his happiness prevented him from getting irate.
“Very well. I’ll just punish him harder.”
Turning off the radio, Frost stood and stretched casually.
It’s all coming together quite nicely, he thought, and victory is within my grasp.
Frost buttoned up his coat and walked over to the hidden doorway the barman had used, looking at the hooded figure lying awkwardly with head teetering on the edge of the bar. He smirked at all the mechanical carnage, grabbed his umbrella, and exited through the passageway.
Once sure Frost was gone, the hooded man at the bar rose to his feet, his contorted joints fixing themselves on the spot.
“Oh, Master… what have you done?” said Aero as he looked took in the death and destruction that was around him.
He started to approach the mayor, who laid in a puddle of blood with a good chunk missing from his head, though his mouth was still wide open in a begging plea. Aero didn’t have long to loiter; as the lighting flashed, he could make out the shapes of several rough-looking men approaching the saloon’s front entrance. Retreating into the shadows, Aero made way for the back door, racing off into the rainy night with the memories of everything that happened still burning bright.
JESSE AND JENNY were eating a light breakfast, perched high on the roof of Winthrope Limited.
“I’m so glad we got to do this; I thought the rain was never going to stop,” Jenny said as she nibbled on a warm, buttery crumpet, a little of it drizzling down her chin.
“I know,” Jesse replied, quick to catch the honey-colored streak with his thumb. Wiping the butter away, he gave it a teasing lick. “It’s been murdering your hair.”
Jenny’s cheeks went a pale shade of red and she sent up a hand, inspecting. Sure enough, her hair had grown bushy since the rain had started earlier in the week and was frightfully a mess that morning.
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier!” she retorted, giving him a nudge with an elbow. “Anyway, the same could be said about your beard!”
Jesse recoiled in feigned shock, saying, “Nobody talks bad about this beard!”
They both fell into carefree laughs, spirits higher than the birds that soared overhead.
Jesse lifted a thin glass off the breakfast tray and took a long sip of freshly squeezed juice (Logan’s mechanical arm had talents beyond fierce punches). Looking out at the city, there was a vibrant sunrise to the east, bathing the normally drab buildings with a gorgeous sheen of liquid gold. Rising above that were two structures, nearly as tall as Winthrope’s tower.
Jenny recognized one of them from her time in Comprass.
“What exactly is that?”
“Hmmm? The metal tower there?” Jesse asked. “That’s a radio antenna. Owned by Gibson and Large, Inc. They broadcast most of the music you hear, but also handle the communications traffic for the officials – sheriffs mainly – and the larger companies like mine. Even holotube broadcasts are directed through there.”
“Ah, I thought so,” Jenny replied, quite pleased with herself. “We had something that looked similar back in the Gulch.” Her eyes saddened for a moment, then recovered. “Not as tall obviously, but I thought it served the same purpose. Good to know I was right. What about the other one, over there?”
“That would be Frost Enterprises,” Jesse said with loathing, speaking of the imposing pyramid and spiraling tower off to the north.
Jenny needn’t ask more; she had learned over the past couple weeks all she needed to know about Frost and his ways. As she looked back to Jesse, the wind swept through the strands of ebony dancing on his face and the sunlight hit him in such a way that she was reminded about a dream – the one she had out in the wastes the night of the attack.
“Jesse,” she said softly, “now that we’ve started to get to know each other…”
Jesse’s brows crumpled together and his face became a blend of dread and confusion.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Just preparing myself. That phrase often prefaces something surprising, or negative, or surprisingly negative.”
“What does that even mean? It’s nothing bad, I swear. I just figured I could tell you about a dream…”
“Oh no, that’s bad…” he sa
id with a wince, bobbing his head rapidly.
“Stop it! A dream I had not too long ago. I hoped to tell you and you not think I’m insane.”
“I know you’re insane, Jenny, that’s what attracted me to you.”
She wanted to punch him in the nose so badly, but his brown eyes had an effect of vanishing anger with the slightest effort. At least it worked on her that way.
“We’ll see if that’s still the case when I’m done telling you,” she giggled, then began to recount the details of her dream – from the desolate wastelands to the city in the distance to the man and woman swept up in a storm.
As her words filled Jesse’s ears, his eyes seemed to grow with familiarity and Jenny carried on for a few more rambling seconds until she noted his expression.
“Oh gosh! You think I AM insane!” she cried.
“Jenny, no… no… far from that,” Jesse replied. Visibly stricken, he set down his juice, reached for her hands, and clasped them. “You are not going to believe this, because I really don’t even believe it myself, but after hearing what you just told me… I might have had the same dream not two weeks ago. Well, not as a woman, but you get the gist.”
Jenny sat in silent disbelief as her eyes darted everywhere other than on Jesse. Then, suddenly they snapped back.
“You’re insane!”
She was positive that he was teasing her again, searching for a hint of it desperately, but when she looked deep into his eyes she realized that there was no joke behind it.
“That’s impossible!”
“I know!” Jesse replied briskly, as if that would make the fact it was true disappear. It didn’t work of course, and they both sank into thoughts about it.
Jenny was the first to say something.
“Hmmm, the figures are obviously searching for something,” she said, trying her hand at some dream interpretation.
“Look at you, being all witchy,” Jesse said flirtatiously. “You know, they used to kill people for that?”
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