Last Playground

by Geoff North

  “Still works pretty good, so long as I keep it out of water. It sparks and short-circuits when any moisture at all gets inside.”

  “What—how did you know about my Uncle Neal?” Brinn was stunned. What else could she ask the strange man in front of them showing off his mechanical muscles? Did he have a trap door in the center of his chest? Would he want to show them his android heart and lungs next?

  “There was more to your uncle than most people realized—a lot more. There are very few people with his kind of power, his unique gift. I think you know what I’m talking about.”

  Brinn knew exactly what he was talking about.

  Williams rolled down his sleeve and continued. “All kids have great imaginations…they can create all sorts of crazy worlds to play in and characters to play with. I’m one of those characters. Your uncle thought me up after watching a television program called Manchine.”

  She had watched a re-run of the show once with her dad a few years ago. It was pretty cheesy, and she hadn’t bothered to watch another episode. She looked at Oscar closely. The hair, the clothes, it all fit. “You’re the guy Dad called Oscabot! What was his name in real life? Ryan something? You’re that actor, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know any television actors, but I’ll take your word for it. That’s probably the guy I was based on.”

  Selma was still grinning. “Weird…this is absolutely nuts.”

  “Yeah, nuts and bolts…that’s me alright. But please, just call me Oscar. I don’t much like the sound of Oscabot. I’m from that world your uncle created. I was with him when he died… I should’ve stopped that from happening. But I had no idea he was really drowning. I thought it was all just part of the game.”

  “Drowning? What game?” Selma asked. “What the hell is this weirdo talking about, Brinn?”

  “His game… All of his games. The world he made was real, the people, the creatures…all real. But he was a kid. He was just playing. I should’ve known better.”

  The details of her uncle’s disappearance had been a taboo subject even before Brinn’s mother had passed away. There was too much pain, too many open wounds in the family that had never healed. How could they? But still, Brinn had always wondered. Deep down she had always wanted to know more. Oscar Williams-Manchine-Ryan—whatever his name was—seemed to have some answers. Or at least thought he did. Curiosity overrode her better judgment. That old need took over. She had to ask.

  “How did he die, exactly?”

  “His foot got stuck in some mud on the bank of an old pond behind the farmhouse. He tried working it out, but he slipped down into the water. Your uncle couldn’t swim…and I made the mistake of assuming he could.” The last few words came out quietly, barely more than a whisper.

  “My uncle’s body was never recovered. They would’ve found him if he’d drowned on the very farm he was growing up on. It would’ve been one of the first places they searched. He ran away from home and was never heard from again.”

  “I took the…I took your uncle somewhere else.”

  Fear rushed through her body. Brinn had her answers and she didn’t like them. Oscar Williams was a creep—a dangerous, lying creep.

  Selma looked puzzled. “Seriously, Brinn. What’s this guy talking about?”

  Brinn warned the girl with a quick shake of her head. They had to get away. Selma’s confrontational attitude wouldn’t help them. “Doesn’t sound like it was your fault. Did you at least try and save him once you realized he was drowning?”

  Oscar nodded, his handsome face turned down to the weeds and overgrown grass. “Of course… I tried my very best to bring him back…but it was too late. Neal was gone.”

  “You have to let go of your guilt then. It was an accident.” She took a step towards the lilac bushes. She made eye contact with Selma and the girl followed.

  He looked at Brinn and smiled. It was a kind, genuine expression. “Thanks, miss. Coming from you that sure means a lot.”

  “Why have you come to see me, Oscar?” She took another step.

  “The world Neal left behind never went away. You’d think after his death it would just cease to exist, but no…it’s still there, and things aren’t good.”

  “What does that have to do with me?”

  “You’re his niece—it has everything to do with you. We need someone with your uncle’s power to help jumpstart things again.”

  “I’m really sorry, but I can’t help you. I have to get going.” She took two quick steps backwards, still facing him, ready to kick out.

  He jumped forward and for the first time since they met, he touched her. His hand wrapped around her wrist in a tight, almost painful grip. It felt cold, mechanical, and very powerful. She didn’t doubt for a moment that there was enough strength in those fingers to crush the bone beneath her skin.

  Selma pulled at his arm. “Let her go, you freak!”

  The android ignored the other girl. “Please, miss, we need you.”

  The pommel of a broadsword thudded down on the top of his skull. Oscar released her and staggered down onto one knee.

  “Don’t you ever touch me again,” Brinn said.

  “What?” He rubbed the back of his head and turned slowly to see who had struck him.

  A six-foot-tall warrior woman scantily clad in chainmail with armor-plated shoulders snarled down at him. Held menacingly above her head was the broadsword she’d hit him with. Her long hair was jet black and wild, her eyes green and savage.

  Brinn smiled. “Say hello to my imaginary friend.”

  Chapter 2

  If you don’t look after your stuff, your stuff will turn to crap. Kind of like the big lawman’s rifle. If he didn’t clean it on a regular basis—if he didn’t keep all the parts nicely oiled and polished—then there was a good chance the thing could jam with dirt and other junk, maybe blow up in his face when he needed it most. And that need was more urgent than it had ever been. Only a handful of laws remained. The biggies like not murdering and no thieving were easy to abide by. There were too few humans left to kill one another, and nothing left of consequence for them to steal. The other laws—those thousand other rules and regulations that kept a place nice and civilized—nobody gave a damn about them anymore.

  Blasting old whiskey bottles to bits for practice was about all the marshal did in any official capacity these days. He straightened up from the rock he was leaning against and took aim down the length of the barrel with one eye, past the petrified tree stump and its litter of shattered glass. Past the dead gray ground and up slightly where the dead gray ground met the dead brown sky. He followed the barren, flat horizon slowly to his left. Not much left to shoot; nothing that could be considered alive, anyway. The last living thing he’d killed with it was his own horse, Wind. That still hurt like hell when he wasn’t too drunk to remember.

  Poor old Wind. At one time he’d been the fastest animal on four legs that all the worlds had ever seen. Not so fast near the end, though. Nothing was fast minus eyes to see with and a belly of fresh water and food to run on. Wind had been his most faithful companion since Sally had passed on. Marshal Lowe never thought about Sally, drunk or otherwise. Putting an animal down is a difficult thing to do. Putting a bullet through your wife’s brain is worse.

  How long had it been? Three years? Four?

  Lowe dropped the rifle to his side and surveyed the rest of the land with both eyes. He had to squint slightly when his view settled on the dull yellow blob setting in the west. It wasn’t much of an adjustment. The sun didn’t have the bite it once had. Never rose in the sky as high, and didn’t bother sticking around for long. It was like a pocket watch with only half its wind-up left. The days were shorter and the skies depressingly dull most of the time. Very rarely did you see blue, and never ever could you spot a cloud overhead.

  He wiped the sweat on his brow off with the sleeve of his shirt. It still got hotter than a devil during the day. That was a hard one to figure, what with how tired and lazy
the sun had become. No clouds, no rain—plenty of dust and stagnant, scorching heat. He removed his hat and ran a hand through the graying curls stuck to his scalp. He mopped more dirty sweat from beneath his eyes and cheeks before putting the worn Stetson back on. Crud had a way of building up in the deep wrinkles of his worn, leather-tough skin.

  A sound came from the east, a mechanical noise of grinding gears and dried-out rubber treads rolling across the flat Plains of Stauch. He turned and saw the device heading towards him. The robot reminded Marshal Lowe of a woodstove he’d once had in his law office. Those were back in the days when he still had an office, a jailhouse with two cells, and a town to protect.

  The machine continued on and he could now hear it singing one of its terrible songs from some future time or world Lowe himself had never bothered to visit. The nonsensical words repeated over and over in a monotonous, rythymless tone.

  “Miniskirts and hula-hoops, disco balls and loopty-loops.”

  “Shut up, Reginald.”

  The machine, Reginald, rolled to a stop ten feet away and quit singing. “Sorry, Marshal. Perhaps you would prefer something more country?”

  “I’d prefer if you just shut the hell up altogether.”

  The four-foot-high, three-foot-wide automaton swiveled about on hidden wheels set between its rubberized treads. Lowe thought about his woodstove again, of how it would appear set up on one end. That’s how Reginald appeared to him: blockish in shape, ridiculous in function. His entire body was linked together by a smaller series of raised squares. Each side was comprised of the same number: six squares across, eight squares down. Depending on the robot’s mood, the squares would change color uniformly. If they were red, Reginald felt threatened. When Reginald was sad or especially thoughtful, they would glow blue. On those rare occasions when he wasn’t speaking, the robot pulsated a creamy white. He had no head to speak of, and no mouth to speak with. The colors let you know what he was feeling. It was a damn strange setup, but the marshal had grown used to it.

  “I have good news, Marshal.” He rolled forward another foot and swiveled around. His movements could also let you know what was going on inside.

  Marshal Lowe spat a dark brown wad of tobacco to the ground and dug into his vest pocket for another pinch. He bent over and picked up the only bottle left intact. He tucked the fresh chew against the inside of his cheek with his tongue and swigged the remaining alcohol down in four big swallows. “You ever get good and drunk, robot?”

  “I once rolled too far into a mud puddle. The water worked its way to my central processors and created a temporary short circuit. I wouldn’t classify it as inebriation, but I believe the experience left me—how would you say—slightly shitfaced?”

  Lowe stared silently at the machine for a few moments with a pained look on his face. It was a look Reginald was accustomed to. “What’s yer good news?”

  “Agent Williams has found a way into the First World.”

  “Bull.”

  “No bull, Marshal. No bovine excrement of any sort. It’s the truth.”

  The sneer on Lowe’s face deepened. Oscar Williams was all about truth, honesty, and integrity. They were values the lawman had once shared and upheld. Back when it still mattered. “Where is it?”

  “The house where Neal lived as a child.”

  “Don’t yank my gun belt, machine. We went all through that place in the beginning. How could Mr. Perfect find a way over now? Nothin’s changed.”

  “That is true, Marshal. The old farmhouse is exactly as it was. Perhaps a bit more rundown, but all is essentially in the same state as the day Neal died over three decades ago. Oscar has found a new way to enter the house. It’s changed everything. And might I suggest you refrain from calling Oscar ‘Mr. Perfect’ or any other derogatory name. He is much stronger than you.”

  “Oscar wouldn’t hurt a fly. He ain’t got it in him.” Lowe threw the now empty bottle high into the air directly above them. He waited until it started to fall back down before he drew his rifle. He fired once, blasting the neck clear off. It continued to fall, spinning crazily end over end. He fired again when the bottle was less than six feet above Reginald’s platform-shaped head. What remained showered over the robot in a harmless rain of white slivers and crystallized dust. The echoing sound of the gunshots reverberated across a darkening plain and into distant hills where the tired sun had silently surrendered a minute earlier. Lowe looked down at Reginald, who was still maintaining a respectable distance between them.

  “Are you finished?” the robot asked.

  Lowe’s marksmanship and ornery nature had little effect on the machine. He would have to save it for Williams. “A new way? What does that mean? There’s a front door and a back door. What other way is there to enter a house?”

  “Perhaps if you accompanied me there I could show you exactly what I mean. Oscar has been gone for some time now—the whole day in fact—and when he returns, he may not be alone.”

  Marshal Lowe looked up into the mauve-gray evening sky. The first few stars had begun to glow a dull white. They no longer twinkled bright in a blanket of black and navy blue. There used to be thousands of them, arranged in recognizable constellations a man and his horse could rely on. Now there were just a few dozen left and they never seemed to be where they ought to be. You couldn’t count on them anymore. It was the same way with the moon, only worse. It had just up and disappeared one night over a year ago. Never rose again. Lowe missed it, and he feared—he knew—that one morning there wouldn’t be a morning because the sun wouldn’t bother to wake up either. That non-morning was fast approaching: tomorrow, the next day, a week or two from now. All there was left—and there wasn’t much—was going to get a whole lot darker. It was just a matter of time.

  “God Almighty, Reginald.” His deep voice, rough from a lifetime of drinking hard whiskey and smoking harsh cigarettes, took on a soft tone. “You tellin’ the truth?”

  An arm of rubber snaked out from the automaton’s side. On the end of it were a dozen slithering tendrils of greasy metal. Lowe presumed they were meant to resemble fingers but he always thought they looked more like worms. Reginald used them in a mock salute against a front corner of his body. “Scout’s honor!”

  Lowe wanted to blast the fingers off with his rifle. “How far are we from there?”

  There was a pause as Reginald processed the information. “Walking distance from our present location is five hours, four minutes, twelve seconds.”

  Lowe rubbed his unshaven chin and nodded. “I’ll do the walking. You roll or do whatever it is you do. Should be able to make it there just before daybreak.”

  Reginald did a half-swivel in the dirt and his squares blinked red. “I highly recommend we travel during the day! There are…dangers in the night. My repulsor field isn’t what it used to be, I’ll have you know.”

  “Ain’t none of us what we used to be…them dangers in the night included.”

  They turned to the west and started off for their destination. Lowe’s boots crunched in the cracked earth, Reginald’s treads ground the dirt further into dust.

  “Correction, Marshal. Where we have weakened and slowed over the decades, the creatures…out there…have grown in numbers and become more desperate.”

  Lowe cracked a smile and his face broke into a series of deep lines. “I may have slowed up some, but I’m even meaner than I was back in the day.” He reached out and brushed some glass dust off the top of what could be considered Reginald’s noggin. He winked at the bouncing machine. “Better shot, too.”

  Chapter 3

  Erin Stauch seldom had company these days. Those rare visits from her son-in-law, Michael Addam, were usually followed up by a quick phone call from the public health nurse, or whatever public official deemed her too old or too mentally unstable to continue living on her own.

  Seeing her young granddaughter trotting up the lane with the other girl was strange to say the least. Brinn was a good kid—or so Michael had told
her. A bit mixed up maybe, a little lost perhaps. Erin hadn’t seen her since Nancy’s funeral. She had grown. Brinnie, as Herb liked to call her, wasn’t so little anymore. Probably old enough to drive a car now.

  The man that followed them a few minutes later was a stranger—maybe. Erin had seen his like before; she had seen plenty of odd things when Neal was still alive. Costumed heroes with flowing capes running around down behind the barn, washing machines with wheels and blinking lights bouncing along the horse pasture trails, big cowboys and savage, half-naked Indians running through the forests. Yes, Erin had seen a lot when her boy was growing up on the Stauch farm.

  The man poking around the lilac bushes surrounding the old farmhouse was beginning to look awfully familiar, she thought, lifting the rifle up from behind the coat rack.

  She had been waiting decades to see his like once again. She loaded the gun and left the trailer. There were questions that needed answers.

  ***

  “I knew you had it in you,” Oscar said, getting back to his feet with a few noticeable creaks.

  Brinn felt safer next to the warrior woman, but the stranger’s cold grip had unnerved her. Its alien touch made him seem all too unreal, considering how human he appeared. “It’s been a long time. I really didn’t think I’d be able to summon her again.”

  Selma stood next to Brinn, her mouth open wide but unable to utter a word.

  “What’s her name?” Oscar asked. The woman’s top lip curled up in a sneer. “If you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Bertha,” Brinn answered.