Usu (6 page)

It was at that moment he too heard the sky break as the gentle pitter patter of death danced around him.

Two steps forward, one thousand back.

Tinker the digital and mangle the analogue, I struggle while others simply wait.

I won’t let her lose herself, even if I’m worn to bones and ash, her light is more important.

Blinding.

But without sight, I at least need not see the day we part ways.

Not quite accustomed to the idea of being shredded apart by the environment, you’d be hard pressed to blame either character for having second thoughts regarding this particular journey. You’d be especially hard pressed, because they didn’t. Each having their own goal of such worth that even fate struggled at times to keep up appearances, cautiously reminding itself that if it wasn’t menacing enough we might just get a chapter without melodramatic undertones for once.

Hours had passed since Usu suffered the most abusive medical care he could imagine, and he now found himself resting against Rain’s stomach as she slept. She held her arms across her raised knees and her head limp upon them as if she was further sheltering Usu from whatever cards this frightening world still withheld.

The weather calmed as weathers oft tend to do, given enough time and paragraphs, of course. Rain awoke but pretended rather poorly not to have done so, if only to justify the mortal-coil bending squeeze she gave Usu before opening her eyes proper and letting out an exaggerated yawn. Her wounds were long gone, Usu had watched as each one slowly filled with a white paste, only to vanish in seconds. Rain seemed entirely oblivious to this, her concern waxed only to how good of a stitching job she’d managed. Dangling Usu from one arm and spinning him around to confirm a job well done, she proudly roared in a somewhat tactless expression of self-satisfaction, “Good as old!”

She stood and, with Usu still dangling upside down, carefully opened up their crumpled map. After spinning it enough degrees to make even the most stalwart protractor blush, she handed it to Usu for a rather dizzy deciphering. Being capable of the ancient art of telling upside down from not upside down, it didn’t take all that much for him to point out where he estimated they were and, more importantly, where they needed to go. Probably.

“Rojah!” Following with a salute faster than adjectives could be bothered with, Rain tucked her fishing pole back in―Usu entwined once more―before taking a starting position you’d sooner see from a bobcat than an Olympian. The speed of her launch would scoff at both, however, allowing no time for dust to settle before leaving Lake Tahoe and the nightmare it bore far, far behind.

Some distance away, two fine and literal examples of shock therapy stood guard outside the very bastion of their kind which they had sworn to protect. At least they thought they had sworn to protect it, neither really remembered much; most of their usable memory appeared dedicated to some sort of penguin related trauma. A trauma soon to be far out-done by an encroaching blur.

Synthetic hair fluttered wildly, a wide smile began to reflect, and the very ground before the pair appeared to cry out as she landed, cracking asphalt with little regard. Steam still freshly wisping from her bare feet and a trail of ash thick in her wake, the rather human-looking girl stretched out her joints, leaned backward and declared victoriously, “Rain got faster!”

Military-grade robots had never been known for their intellect, adaptability, or lack of masochistic tendencies, but they were pretty well known for thinking everything was going to kill them, which made them vigilant guardians during the brief moments they faked lucidity. “It's, it's,” began the right-most of the pair before the left-most said, “No, no, don't you says it! Don't I says it either! A bloody huma―” an outburst cut short by a simultaneous, and perhaps instinctively by this point, copper-wire pike to each other's hard reset buttons. Now grounded―in more ways than one if puns be forgiven―the arguably saner of the pair struggled to his feet, neatly adjusted his 'Inspector' tag and maintained enough false poise to say, “Rights, passport then. Chop chop.”

Rain, wise in the ways of the world as she clearly wasn’t, responded profoundly, “Passport? Rain is Rain, not passport! Pfff.”

Confounded by an intelligence perhaps parallel to his own, the inspector continued. “Now nows, look, I suppose I’d best explains. Firstly, me here is Inspector Cog.” He made sure to puff out the part of his chest with the label, hoping none would see the words 'Janitor' scratched over ever so feverishly. “And that there is me sub-inspector, Wheel.” A serious look overtook his already permanently serious fa
ç
ade, as he leaned in to say, “I know, I knows, but we’ll have none of that silly punfoolery here! No jokes about WheelCog or the likes!”

Perhaps even more lost now than she was before, Rain found little to say and was rather haphazardly spinning Usu by his ears while Cog continued, seemingly unburdened by reality. “Nows! What I was going to have saids earlier was about your passport, you see.” His eyes squinted ever so slightly. “Your kind―”

He was interrupted by Rain’s logic circuits actually functioning, in a manner of speaking. “Rain is kind? Of course, Rain is kind! Meanies are boo.”

Shaking his head, Cog tried again. “No, no, you… you know… the word we's can't have saids but did almost say,” Wheel began screaming from the ground behind them, a small siren prematurely peeking from the tip of his head, “You don't mean hu―”

“No Noes! Yous don't says it!” Facing Rain again, “F-Fine we says you’re something else, you’re a… can you be a flamingo? We han’t got one of those prissy buggers around. Go on 'en, make a flamingo noise!”

Challenged by the challenged, Rain searched her centuries of experience, her wealth of knowledge, and her stuffed rabbit cohort that was desperately trying to explain things to her through excessive sweating and arm waving. Somewhere deep, deep down, and then marginally deeper still, she found the answer, the answer to everything, but she sneezed and dropped that bit so she picked up the one next to it instead and confidently onomatopoeiad, “Meow?”

“It's a cat! It's a cat sir Cog, sir! It's come to eat the pengui―” Was as far as the hysterical Wheel got before being interrupted by a minor stab-induced electrical seizure. “Yes, you's no flamingo, definitely a cat. We's usually only let the birdses in but, I don’t think poor Wheel can take many more stabs today. So against me better juryment, you’re cleared Miss Cat! Just… don’t eat all the birds now and do watch out for the primates, you never know when one could sneak by here when I’m not looking!” Cog said in a hushed voice, perhaps to keep his partner from undue distress, or perhaps just for dramatic purposes; no one cared enough to write another poorly comma’d sentence about it. Though, one could suppose the door cared, and probably would have commented too, if a rather disgruntled penguin had not ripped out any speaker related devices the night before in a perfectly calm rage-fueled moment of destructive euphoria. Instead, the door could do little to resist, even verbally. The once prized people appraiser that saw JC Penny reach new heights of personal degradation now silently opened its way for a little girl, her stuffed rabbit, and a fishing pole who soon blurred into the cityscape before them.

This particular chronicle, Old Francisco, was considered a marvel even among robots specifically engineered to be obsessively cynical in an attempt at solving the mass critic-shortage that sneaked up on the 22nd century. 'Sneaked' being your narrator's euphemism for the part where they were all killed. Book critics were first, you remember that now.

Still, inappropriate revelations about career tracks ignored, the city was indeed a sight to behold. None of that flying car nonsense you’ve mucked about with in your head. For all the wire, degrading neon tubes, and fiber the city felt motionless, a silence made eerie by visuals that did little to justify it. The fully spherical structure had strut upon strut of transparent solar paneling inside, a sight marred only by the bare connecting wires sapping life from each one. At its base, the sphere barely pierced what was now a truly dead sea, cycling water from it to cool itself.

Rain and Usu stood on a thick glass walkway, caught between each extreme and a very friendly looking sign that insisted they both 'Sod off'. Then, just as Rain found herself mumbling the words aloud, the silence broke. Awakening from its daily slumber, the chronicle sprung to life and the exceptionally friendly sign swiveled around to be replaced with a far shinier one bearing a far gentler (if generic) banner, 'Welcome'. Robotic birds began to sing from suspended power cables while robotic hillbillies began to shoot at them from shanty rooftops, and in a determined response robotic Europeans felt mild discomfort at the display.

They stood before the hawker's market which, due to trigger-happy hillbillies, had long since done away with any pun related associations to the word hawk. Instead, ancient programming kept them bartering to any prey that would enter their sights, the less self-aware would do so for merchant masters that had long since faded past even the concept of bone meal. Yet, unlike most days which they would spend bartering their own essential parts away to each other, this day new prey
had
actually wandered into their sights.

Amidst the buildings, coloured and crooked in homage to their namesake, swarms of hagglers approached, merciless in their mercantile ways. They offered Rain dolls, makeup, and hair accessories. They offered Usu a box he’d fit in with a low price-tag on it. They were a crafty lot. They were also there at the worst possible time: The time when Rain’s time stopped. She froze again like so many times before, and Usu could only try and keep the scavengers at bay until one noticed what had happened to her. Suddenly, signals spread like wildfire, and dread gripped each one of them as they backed away silently, too frightened to even break eye contact, as if for the first time they were staring down their own demise in this world flooded with immortality. It mattered little.

All beings cowered under death.

I met a total weirdo Diary! I mean okay, okay, he saved me and stuff, after I crawled into the garbage shoot to get away from those meanies, but he was all “Bssshwing” and “Shwwaaaggh” cutting me down and then he was actually disappointed I was awake! So boo!

But… there’s something there, something that feels important.

It felt like if I didn’t follow him, I’d never follow anyone again.

If you’ve been trying to link chapter titles to chapter content this far along, you’ve been trying longer than your own narrator. Although, perhaps crumpets are indeed the perfect metaphor for how Rain’s body froze in motion, assuming you’ve frozen the crumpets, which will taste terrible when you reheat them. You’re an odd one, I’ll give you that, but what you won’t be given is any more crumpets, lest you freeze them like the confectionery tyrant we both now know you to be.

Even fourth walls were looking sturdier than our heroine right now; her arms limp and her upper half concaving. Usu was struggling just to keep her standing, a struggle he’d fought this far for, and a struggle he’d be willing to fight as far for as long as need be. He would not let her get hurt, he would not let her fall, and somewhere in the back of his mind a voice much like his own echoed that he would not fail her, not again. Never again.

Right about now, you’d expect some sort of clich
é
rescue scene; maybe Modbot would come in from a random corner of the sphere and merrily un-muck-up things. He wouldn’t though; he was preoccupied with equally personal matters. Yet, in haste not to disappoint you, the dear valued reader, there was a figure speeding toward them across each rooftop, feet flinging tiles as if they were confetti. This figure landed next to Usu and picked Rain up in a way Usu had long wished he had the might to do himself. It was a slender, feminine figure, obvious even through the black rags she had cloaked all but her eyes with, but she was no android. A darker shade of silver took the place of her skin, and her every movement seemed like clockwork. She looked Usu in the eyes, tied his arms around her neck and whispered, “Hold on tight, knots aren’t exactly my specialty,” before running up the side of the nearest building, a foot casually decapitating a wild hillbilly bot in process.

By now, Usu was rather accustomed to situations one should generally avoid altogether, especially ones involving dangerous women flinging him about at high speeds. Given his earlier experience with Rain, you could say this was an almost calming 300mph stroll across perfectly agreeable rooftops. He found little fear to settle his confusion, and thus began nudging his kidnapper for answers. Little did he notice that she was already engaged in some primitive form of mono-synchronistic dialogue, or at least that’s what we’ll call her muttering repeated curse words under her―albeit artificial―breathe. Indeed the stream of endlessly repeating 'Shit!' whilst speeding along, made her slightly more intimidating, but Usu nudged on despite her fascination with fecal matter.

“Shitbeard is going to wet himself over thi―Oh, uhm, alright back there? I’m sure you’re all full of questions dear, but let's save those for the landing alright? Don’t worry, if anyone can dissassem―er, help her, it’s where we’re going!” she said before immediately dulling her eyes to a half-gaze and returning to her rather abusive rattling.

It occurred to Usu just then that, despite memories of Rain and of his other-self beginning to make him whole, he’d not heard any decent swearing until that moment. Rain would probably start a jar if anyone did it and use the funds to buy a bigger jar, eventually forgetting her purpose in life and seeking the path of ultimate jar transcendence instead. While Modbot, well, he was sure he’d cursed a few hundred or so times, but he was so British about it that he didn’t even take notice, contrary to this 'girl' and her sweet American voice degrading into something verbally pungent enough to raise a middle-school hall monitor’s wrath and ire. Thankfully, all of those were also rather somewhat completely dead.