Benjamin Wallace
Copyright © 2016 by Benjamin Wallace.
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by J Caleb Designs.
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Everyone should have a friend like Jim
PRELUDE
He hated walking. It went against everything he believed in. Physical exertion of any kind wasn’t really his thing at all. He was completely against manual labor. It’s why he became a farmer in the first place.
No lifting. No sweating. It was the farmer’s life for him. All you had to do was sit back and watch the drones work.
On a bad day you might have to take the controls and pilot the drone yourself. That was about as bad as it got. He’d heard stories of some farmers having to go into the field to check on malfunctioning equipment, but until now, he’d never really believed it. He figured they were stories farmers passed around to scare off the masses from such a cushy job.
That’s why, when the alarm first came up, he assumed it was the day shift pulling a prank on him. Those guys had a hard time telling the difference between being funny and being dicks. Even at that, this wasn’t their best work.
A few keystrokes sent the drones to investigate and he kicked back to plot his revenge. The day shift foolishly left their food unguarded in the communal fridge overnight, and spiking their drink with some Nanolax would be a good start to the retaliation. He figured they could laugh at him all they wanted as long as a million microbots kept them glued to a toilet.
A chirp indicated that the drone had arrived at the site of the alarm and found nothing. Nothing at all. The equipment that was sending the alarm wasn’t even there. He set a search path and the drones began running the preset pattern.
He kicked back in his chair, much to the dismay of its springs, and put his feet up on the console.
Watching the cornstalks zoom past the fish-eyed lens had made him queasy. Every row was the same. Every stalk was identical. Every leaf and ear was pitched at the same angle. They had been designed that way to ensure maximum exposure to the sun, but the whole effect worked to lull him into a trance.
He spent an hour searching the cornfield for the missing machinery to no avail and was on the verge of passing out when a series of damaged stalks broke the monotony and provided the first clue as to what was happening. Seizing the controls, he piloted the drone back down the row then turned to follow the broken plants.
Something had crashed through the crop. Someone was making off with the equipment.
He sat forward in his chair and willed the drone to follow the trail. He smiled. This was no longer work, it was crime fighting. Capturing the thief on the camera was all it would take for the authorities to identify the culprits. But he would be the hero, and for the second time in his life he might even trend. He smiled at the thought of this story supplanting the old one in the feeds. Finally.
“‘Never live it down’ my ass,” he muttered to himself as he pushed harder on the control pad.
Sweeping through the crops, he followed the busted stalks and fallen ears of corn. He wasn’t a farmer anymore. He was a fighter jockey piloting the latest generation WarBird through enemy canyons. The whir of the rotors played through his monitor’s speakers, but they weren’t quite fitting to the mood so he made his own scramjet engine sounds until he reached the center of the cornfield and stopped the drone.
There it was. A shadow moving quickly between the plants. Each time the figure darted, another plant fell to the ground with the dry crack of firewood.
He chased after the shadow for two rows and turned right to follow. But there was nothing there. The trail of destruction had ended. He flipped the drone 180 degrees in a deft move he would have to recount to the reporters later.
For a brief instant, the figure filled the monitor. Then everything went dead.
The drone dropped from the air and landed with its camera pointed toward the night sky.
Corn swayed in and out of view through a cracked lens, but the machine no longer responded to his touch. He could hear nothing but the breeze.
“No!” he screamed as the headlines faded from his daydreams. He shot up with such speed that his chair sailed back across the room, spinning as it went. He didn’t wait for it to stop. He pulled a denim coat from a hook by the door with one hand and a shotgun with the other as he dashed out the door into the night. He had to bring these evildoers to justice. He had to have another fifteen minutes—a better fifteen minutes—of fame. They could take whatever busted piece of farm equipment they wanted from the company, but they couldn’t take that opportunity away from him.
The utility vehicle whirred into action. Knobby off-road tires skipped on the concrete before biting into the dirt with an unbreakable hold and catapulting him into the cornfield. A thousand acres separated him from his prey, but he wasn’t going to let it get away. He kept the pedal to the floor.
The cart’s suspension ate the uneven soil without complaint and kicked the looser earth into the air behind it as it went.
Much like the view through the drone, the rows of corn blended into a mesh of green silk as he zipped past. This time he accepted it. He kept his eyes forward and let his peripheral look for the trail. The broken stalks would be a sore thumb sticking out in the genetically engineered pattern.
They were. He stood on the brakes when he spotted them and turned the cart into the path. The ride grew rougher as he crossed the furrows and the cart threw him back and forth, left and right, but he pressed on and let the cart jostle him about until he found the downed drone.
The cart idled in complete silence as he stepped into the field. He was alone.
Breathing heavily from the excitement, he was startled by how loud his breath was in the middle of the night. He swallowed hard once to try to hold it back and exhaled slowly before approaching the fallen drone.
The device was peppered with holes. The rotors were shattered. Shot clean off. He bent to examine the wreckage more closely.
There was a snap and a nearby corn stalk fell.
He hurried back to the cart and grabbed the shotgun. He racked a shell into the chamber and turned back to the crop.
“Show yourself.”
There was no response.
He took a cautious step away from the vehicle. “You’re not supposed to be out here.”
Again, there was no response. There was no sound at all.
He racked the shotgun. The unspent shell fell to the ground and he closed his eyes at his mistake. “You’re trespassing. Do you know what that means?”
He bent down and grabbed the shell off the ground. “That means I can shoot you. Legally. That’s what that means.”
He plugged the shell back into the bottom of the gun.
“I don’t want to shoot you.” He so wanted to shoot them. He was terrified. But being the hero behind the trigger instead of the hero behind the camera was going to ensure him at least a half-day in the top fifty stories. Number one in the farm feeds for sure.
Another stalk cracked a few rows over and he dove into the corn. The leaves whipped at his face as he fought through the tight plantings and burst through into the furrowed earth.
He turned and saw the figure a few yards away.
The shotgun bucked in his hands as he fired from the hip. He felt the blast in his ears, then
heard it, then watched sparks dance as the shot bounced harmlessly off the metal scarecrow rooted in the field.
The robot stood on spindly, telescopic legs that enabled it to set its head above the crop. Its straw hat flopped around, leaving only the lower half of its face visible.
“Good thing the news didn’t see that.” He chuckled to himself and fired at the lanky sentry again. “Damn thing scared me.”
The scarecrow took the blast in silence.
Its eyes began to glow red.
“What are you… You’re supposed to be offline at night.”
The machine looked right at him. Hydraulics in the legs lowered the body into the cornfield. Then it took a step toward him.
He ran.
Against everything he stood for, he ran. He broke through the stalks and sent them falling to the ground as he scrambled back toward the cart.
He had only made it two rows when he heard the scarecrow’s Gatling gun begin to whir.
1
It was a bright cold day in September and the clock struck thirteen. Nothing in the office worked right.
Jake took out a long list entitled “Broken Shit” and added the clock to the bottom beneath everything else that needed his attention.
He scanned the list. This needed that. That needed this. This thing was making that noise. This was leaking something most likely hazardous. It went on.
The list had been shoved in and out of the drawer so many times that the paper itself was falling apart. There were more important things on the list than a broken clock, but none of it was going to get fixed without money. And to get money they needed a job.
He looked at the phone and willed it to ring. He willed at it for five minutes before giving up. He shoved the list back in the drawer, stood up and pulled the malfunctioning timepiece off the wall. He gave it one last look before tossing it in the trashcan. Even if the phone did ring and even if the job did actually pay, it's not like he was going to spend the money on a stupid clock.
Since the phone wasn’t cooperating and he no longer had a clock to watch, there wasn’t much reason to stay in the office. He did the books by moving the envelopes on the desk marked “final notice” to the trashcan and stepped into the shop to see if he could help with anything.
The first thing that hit him was the sound of work, clattering, clanging and some grunting, the crew pounding something into place somewhere in the back. It didn’t sound like it was going well.
The next thing that hit him was the question of the day.
“Hey, Jake, do you think ankles are sexy?”
The man behind the question was kicked back in a chair, behind a book, with his feet up on a coffee table. His name was Mitch Pritchard, but since he was full of cybernetic parts and horrible ideas everyone on the team called him Glitch. Glitch had been big and strong before he started adding parts to himself. Now he was twice as wide as a person should be and whirred when he walked. He called these enhancements “oddmentations” because even though Glitch tried to sound smart, he really wasn’t.
The ankle question rolled through Jake’s head, trying to land in a place where it would make sense, but nothing stuck. “What?”
“Do you think ankles are sexy?” Glitch pulled up his pant leg and pointed at his own ankle like he was presenting Exhibit A.
Jake put his hands up between himself and the ankle. “I’d really rather you leave me out of your upgrades, Glitch.”
The big man laughed and leaned forward. He held up the book and tried to explain himself. “I’m reading this book about the court of King Charles Vee Eye Eye and there was this woman named Agnes Sorel that started a fashion trend. She’d show up with her boobs all hanging out. That would be the modern equivalent of walking into the White House with your nipples saluting the President.”
“Glitch…” he tried to interrupt, but he had lost the manmachine to either a vivid imagined scene or a hardly safe-for-work reference image on his optic implant.
“And then other women started doing it, too. They wore dresses with their boobs all hanging out. BUT, they always had their ankles covered because it was considered scandalous to show ankles. And I thought, I never thought the ankle was really hot, but I don’t know, maybe I’ve just seen too many, you know? Like I’ve been overexposed to ankles and I became desensitized to their inherent sexiness. And then I thought, maybe we’re really missing out on this ankle thing.” His eyes wandered to a wall and a smile grew across his face. There was no telling what he was seeing.
“Glitch…”
The cyborg’s attention snapped back to Jake. “Well what do you think?”
“I think, for the first time ever, reading has made someone dumber.”
“Says you. But I could be onto something big with this ankle thing. It could be a big market.” He leaned back in the chair and returned to his reading.
Jake shook his head, hoping any memory of the conversation would refuse to stick. Thankfully the thought was replaced by another. “Hey, Glitch?”
“Yeah, boss.”
“What’s everyone up to?”
“I don’t know. Working or something.”
“Do you think maybe you should help?”
“Nah.” He pointed to a mechanical joint that served as his elbow. “You see that regulator? It’s been giving me fits lately. If it acts up while I’m helping out, I hate to think of the damage it could do. I could kill somebody. But don’t worry. I’m going to get it fixed.”
“Yeah? And when is that?”
He shrugged and turned the page. “I’m waiting on a part.”
“Everything around here is broken.” Jake muttered, and walked away, leaving Glitch to his book and his assortment of dumb ideas.
The diamond plate stairs rattled beneath his feet as he descended into the garage. There was an alternating stream of clangs and curses coming from beneath a monstrous red, white and rusted truck. A pair of legs stuck out from beneath the vehicle and kicked with every grunt and stomped with every swear word as their owner beat at something on the Beast’s underbelly.
The Beast was a 1974 Travelall from International Harvester. It was seventeen feet long, just as wide, and illegal in every state. Its operation required a host of special permits, certifications, and the blessing of the local constabulary. And you had to have a really good reason for driving it.
In their line of work they needed a vehicle that was off the grid. Almost half their business, when there was business, came from shutting down gridsmart cars that had become a little too smart for their own good. And since being connected to the city’s traffic system made for a pretty ineffective and extremely unexciting chase, they needed the ability to move independently of the highway systems.
The Beast weighed more than two tons before their equipment was loaded. A massive 401 cubic-inch engine made it go, while drum brakes and hope made it stop. It didn’t go extremely fast, but the machinist had managed to bore, beg and coax the massive V-8 into putting out over 500 foot-pounds of torque. It would move if it had to.
More swearing found its way from the floor and up through the open hood. The voice behind the curses was soft and sweet even if it was damning the truck’s mother to horribly foul acts in hell and other uncomfortable locations.
Jake gave a gentle rap on the fender. “What’s the matter with her now?”
“It’s an ancient piece of shit held together with nothing but my genius and your empty promises. Guess which of those is broken.”
“You know I’d never blame your genius, but what’s wrong?”
Casters rolled against concrete and the machinist’s legs disappeared under the truck. He heard the creeper spin and a moment later her head emerged from under the chrome bumper.
She wore coveralls and engine grease like other women wore ermine and makeup. She had fine dark hair that she refused to keep short despite the safety hazard it caused to both herself and the people around her that she distracted with it.
“This thi
ng is older than both of us put together,” she said. “That’s what’s wrong with it. The patches are falling off the patches I patched the patches with. I need parts.”
“Parts aren’t cheap, Kat.”
“No, but you certainly are.”
“If I had it to give I would. But you know things have been slow. We all have to make do with what we have right now. You don’t hear Mason complaining, do you?”
There was a red flash, a white spark, a quick dimming of the lights and a blue streak that ended with the word sonofabitchinlittleprick being shouted from the back of the shop.
Kat smiled, tilted her head and disappeared back under the truck.
Jake hurried to the back of the workshop. It smelled like a thunderstorm had rolled through which, he had to admit, was more pleasant than it usually smelled.
Mason stood back from a disassembled disrupter pack and alternated between waving his hand through the air and shoving it into his mouth. The man was in mid-suck on a finger when Jake rushed up.
“Mason, are you okay? What was that?”
He jumped up and down for a moment before shoving his hand between his thighs. Bent over, he pointed a damning finger with his free hand at the device on the workbench. “That little shit bit me.”
“Is your hand okay?”
“It’s fine.”
“Let’s look at it.”
Mason stomped his foot, straightened up and let the arm hang at his side. “It’s fine, Mom.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s fine.”
“What were you doing?”
“I’m fixing this damned disrupter. It’s been shorting out.”
Jake tried to spy a look at the hand, but Mason tucked it behind his back. Jake shrugged away any concern he had left and asked, “Why don’t you let Savant do that?”
“Oh. That’s a good idea, Jake. We’ll let the technician do the technical work. I should have thought of that. You kids are so damn smart. Or maybe I’m just old and stupid.”
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