A VISIT TO REDWOODLAND

Chapter 9 from the huge short story/novella REDWOODLAND,
available on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/REDWOODLAND-ebook/dp/B0050D2WTE/ref=pd_sim_sbs_kstore_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2


FROM THEIR SEATS on the thick green grass so perfect it could almost be fake, Joe and Leanne took in the Haunted Fernden view stretching below before them. Off to the side, a bright green tent was pitched. Hers.

“It’s beautiful,” Joe said. In the distance could be heard mad howls of glee as the train picked up speed and went through the trees. Leanne leaned back on an elbow.

“What should we do for dinner?” she said.

“That’s a good question. I think they have some places to eat in the middle of town. There used to be real restaurants down there. I can barely remember—I guess I was about two or three—my mom and dad thought it was a pretty big deal when the town got bought up for Redwoodland.”

“Big deal in a good way?”

“No, big deal in a bad way.”

“Well, I hate to change the subject but it’s five-thirty now. What do you say we head over and find something? I’m starving.”

“I don’t suppose we need to take our stuff with us?”

“I’m just taking my card. I’m not worried about leaving my pack in the tent. Everything’s on camera. Besides, I haven’t really seen anybody else around.”

“I saw one couple walking through town.”

It sounded to Leanne like Joe nearly said another couple. He almost did, and it almost spoiled something magical and dream-like by being manifest and rushed. Neither was attached. Both felt relaxed. They knew everything about each other and nothing at all, and when Joe realized how uncharacteristically quickly the clicking was going for him—as indeed it was for her—there came to his mind rich with resonance and sounding just like Taj Mahal an inner voice which said, “Everybody’s got to change sometime.”

It was the off season. Also, people were having to save more and more longer and longer to finally get to go in the summer when the cool clean air of the tall green trees was a strange safe haven, and if people weren’t spending their lives saving for summer then it was winter they were saving for at Redwoodland instead. The park was far from empty. Still, the colorful homes and shops of the stately Victorian town, simultaneously possessed of quaintness and majesty, frozen spotless in bygone time, today all ran for Joe and Leanne.

They reached a restaurant. A menu placed in an ornate window with white and blue trim was available for perusal. Both agreed it looked good, but were surprised to find inside that the sounds of cups and utensils clinking in a low hum of chatter belonged to the animatronic guests, activated when Joe and Leanne broke an invisible beam not far outside the door.

Off in a corner played a player piano. Joe and Leanne grabbed a couple of trays and examined the foods displayed in windows to be unlocked by swiped cards. Joe got the Zesty Herb Chicken Supreme dinner plate, a chocolate mousse and a Guinness. Leanne went with the Dungeoness Delight dinner plate, a chocolate mousse and a glass of chardonnay. In each case, the removed selection was immediately replaced by another exactly like it from behind.

Upstairs at a balcony table the lighting was low, just a few tables lit with what appeared to be candlelight dimmed by the tinted glass of small round candle holders glowing on the middle of each table. Joe and Leanne sat down next to an animatronic family.

A turtleneck-wearing man sporting sideburns and a perm sat opposite a woman with feathered hair and a large open collar. The kids, a boy and a girl, were hanging on the ornate wooden railing, swinging their lifted knees and hanging with the rail under their arms. The couple seemed to have just recently received their drinks.

“By the way dear,” said the woman, “did you watch ‘The Bob Newhart Show?’”

“No dear,” said the man. “I watched ‘Starsky and Hutch.’”

“I can’t wait to watch ‘The Brady Bunch,’” proclaimed the beaming animatronic boy. “I can’t wait to watch ‘Scooby-Doo,’” announced the smiling animatronic girl.

After dinner Joe and Leanne took in the theater. Every step of the way, the necessary sights and sounds were activated, effects tripped by unseen beams broken by the strolling pair.

While they watched the Fernden Theater production of “Camelot”—the animatronic cast all convincingly local—the only thing Joe could think about was whether he would be seeing any action that night. He hated to reduce the magic down to bare terms, but he really did want to know. It seemed like she was putting off some heavy signals in that direction, but then again, perhaps she was merely feeling comfortable and friendly, and totally capable of setting him straight in a firm and unmistakable manner at any given moment should he take any liberties and instigate the need to define clear boundaries. Which would suck to have to hear.

“It says here in the playbill we’re welcome to explore the theater,” said Leanne. “Want to?”

“Sounds excellent,” said Joe. “Let’s explore.”

Backstage in the wardrobe area, upstairs in the costume department, then back onstage with the animatronic cast singing about how there used to be a really great place and time seemed strangely depressing to Joe, mostly just from still not knowing, but he brightened up heading back to the cemetery when Leanne crooked an arm through his and walked with him that way all the way to the top of the graveyard’s biggest crypt.

It was night, though due to the lights not especially dark, and had been a big day, but Redwoodland never closed and Joe and Leanne were hardly tired at all. The crypt was made of some sort of stone, flat on top with a raised lip running the circumference on which they sat. Except for a large faux two-handled concrete urn at each corner, the top of the crypt was bare.

“So are you going to sleep in the tent with me tonight or what?” Leanne said.

“Well, I kind of figured.”

“You liar.”

“That’s true. Do you…want to head on over?”

“What is wrong with you? You have to say the one thing that ruins the entire evening?” Leanne laughed. “Look at those stars.”

The stars were not as bright as they used to look. Redwoodland never closed.

“Okay,” she said. “I guess we might as well head on over.” She took him by the hand. “Did you just hear that sound?”

“Sounds like one of the effects in there must be broken.”

“They have scary robot things in the crypts?”

“Well, I guess so. Sure, why not?”

Whatever it was, it certainly sounded odd. They stepped from the top of the crypt to a low wall near some stone stairs and went around to the front where they tried to peer in through the bars of an iron door.

“I can’t see anything,” she said. Now the noise had stopped.

“Me either,” he agreed. They gave it another moment.

“All right.” She took him by the hand again. “We may as well go get the damn thing over with. But remember, clothes on, no touching . . . .”

TABLE OF DISCONTENTS

VISIONS FROM THE GUTTER . . .

Six edgy stories concerning the

marginalized, the disenfranchised . . .

and the dehumanizing forces of the corporate machine.

In the Table of Discontents we find:

“Resurrection of the Lizard” – A Jim Morrison android living in the redwoods develops a cult following.

“I Am Become Celebrity” – In a world where genetically-engineered pop stars reach their peak before they’re even born, unemployed Serling Young finds himself ready and willing to do anything for fame.

“Age of Indigents” – Homeless conservative Everett Fagle experiences inner growth living in a hollow redwood.

“Rhapsody Grove” – Growing success with Victory Eviction Services rewards Rich Christianson with the coveted chance to attend a prestigious private gathering, but at what cost to his beautiful, dutiful wife?

“Trip Van” – A Hippie wakes up one day to find the world is not at all what it seemed.

“Redwoodstock” – For desperately unemployed George Hicks, a Woodstock-like concert held in Humbaba offers an out-of-this-world opportunity.

From "Rhapsody Grove"...

            Women weren’t allowed at Rhapsody Grove. Cops out front screened everyone coming in, and did their damnedest to make sure that the rich white men inside enjoyed a nice safe private time together doing things they had to hide. Here they could do their Hillbilly Heroin unhindered by fear of reproach, for here they all had something on each other. More punitive punishment, greater freedom for government torture, increased weapons contracts, ideas for new invasions, ideas to increase corporate freedom and crack down on the people, these of course were the topics of choice always on everyone’s mind.

            This was during daylight hours. Father Hatter introduced Rich to friend after friend after friend. This was a warm and accepting assemblage of open-minded, like-minded, conservative-thinking men who shook hands with well-oiled techniques geared toward economic opportunity and financial advancement, it still being daylight hours. Rich spotted the giant owl, the forty-foot owl carved out of wood that towered on the far side of the secluded lake, and wondered as he followed Father Hatter from friend to friend to friend, what was going to happen there before the owl that night . . . .

http://www.amazon.com/VISIONS-FROM-THE-GUTTER-ebook/dp/B0050D8RAM/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_8

From "Age of Indigents"...

Nobody knew about the tree. It wasn’t like he stayed there all the time, squatting in the little cave provided by a redwood hollowed by fire, staring out the hole, staring at Tree Vee, watching his life go by, blaming it on the liberals. There were cans to collect, lots of bottles with deposits waiting. Two months there seemed like two years. He was thirty-seven, and lost twenty pounds already. Most of that was beer belly, but he could see in the loose flesh of his forearms and feel by the sharpness of his cheekbones that the hunger which he now felt all the time was eating away at him, hollowing him, leaving his insides charred like the silvery blackness of the fire-ravaged redwood.

            More and more of his days were spent simply sleeping. Partly this was because he was simply so tired. He didn’t have the energy for all the walking required to go anywhere. Also now he was a month into the worst case of athlete’s foot he ever had. He tried washing his feet in a creek running through the forest, but the creek had the yellow foam of some secretly dumped pollution collecting in places where shiny black mushrooms lined the banks, and even though he tried to avoid it, his feet developed a rash all the way up to the ankles at least as bad as the athlete’s foot.

            So what he did was he went out at night. There was a drinking fountain at the junior high school that would have been perfect in terms of seclusion, but the junior high was shut down due to lack of money. Everett blamed the liberals for that and took to rinsing his feet in a fountain at the high school, always only late at night, when the relative certainty that no one would see, coupled with painful desperation, temporarily overcame his fear, and he wouldn’t only rinse his feet but load up plastic bottles he had found and take those with him back down to his tree. That wouldn’t be until nearly morning, because the animals were active at night, and the subtle furtive sounds of their activity filled him with terror of being nipped or worse by something with rabies or without . . .                                                                             

                                                                                         

HUNTING ROBOPOE - incomplete rough draft

by Stewart Kirby

NOTE:
CHANGE EVERYTHING INTO
3rd PERSON PAST TENSE - I've already gotten up to COONSKIN (II)

PART ONE

STRIKING EAGLE (I)

AT THE Chevron the artist saw a guy who pumps gas mopping the floor and sporting a new haircut. "Sieg heil, dude," bemused by the beer cooler the artist addressed. "You gonna grow the little mustache or what?"

Dude was sporting the all-time Hitler. As though Hitler's weird side-swept hair was a plastic shell that snapped right onto his head. He was about 25. Quiet guy. Wore thick glasses that distorted his eyes, had a goofy grin, and usually talked about his favorite TV show, the one with the murdering android on the loose. "Oh, I thought about it," he sheepishly admitted, "but I'd probably only wind up getting my ass kicked."

Chuckling, the artist agreed.

In pyoint of fyact, in this very establishment the artist had a similar night some months ago, upon procuring my Sumerian ambrosia, issued unto the night crew stentorian manly challenge.

"Here's what's gonna happen," the artist pronounced, well aware in this as in all things that he was the only customer, "I'm gonna beat all three of you at arm wrestling, both arms, right now, and then I'm gonna walk out of here with these beers, for free. Let's go." 

The night crew, all brothers, looked at each other. The biggest said he was too tired. The youngest was right out, no way willing. And the oldest faced the artist only on the condition that he get to use two arms. Right there over the Lottery tickets they did wage immortal battle. Till finally with his two arms straining at the artist's one--and with an expression on his face like Peter Lorre hanging onto the doorknob for dear life in M--he did fairly beat the artist, and the artist had to pay for his own beer after all. 

He liked the kid with the Hitler hair. "He's not really Adolf Hitler," the artist thought. "He only has his hair. Which might have been kicked around flea markets for decades. If I ever see anybody try to give the kid any trouble, I'll protect him, for it is his right to snap on Hitler's hair, and he provides me with much amusement."

"I never understood how anybody could get behind fascism," the artist said aloud forking over beer dough. "Click-click, click-click. You do what one asshole says or else. Christmas, who the hell wants to get on board with that shit? Well, take ease."

"Later."

"Don't forget to watch Hunting RoboPoe!"

"Ain't got no TV. Take ease."

"Auf wiedersehen."

Standing near a pump outside, maybe asking a guy for change, or... whatever, was a woman with a face pinched in deep at the cheeks as though she had no teeth. Because she didn't. She was thin, officially rangy, and moved constantly around on her feet and with her arms twisting in contortions like a spider on a warm stove while it slowly shrinks.

The artist passed by the dead lawn house with the old blind dog that still barked like a prophet upon my return hovelward, noting the likely senile canine's black limbs a-tremblin'. Another dog sat next to it, evidently used to the other's eccentric ways. Never did see any people there. Just the dogs. If they played poker inside with neighbor dogs, the artist doubted anyone would listening to the black one with the trembling legs. You'd have to be crazy.

Tire swings hanging from corner trees, occasional wind chimes and lawn mowers gracing the breeze, he passed sections of sidewalk where cats appeared by old iron gates with bent handrails and low stone walls under shaded places where ancient trees lined the streets with arching boughs interlaced, chalk on the sidewalk left from kids' games and lots of flags hanging, too. Old houses with interesting gables and fantastic landscaping hid the odd grow-op. Working people drove trucks they couldn't afford and when they got home it weren't to no Taj Mahal. No problem there. All you ever really have are your experiences, anyway. 

Ascending the sagging steps to the front porch of the aged hovel, he stopped at the top and turned around to survey the serenity of the delightful little community. Ah, how nice. Then he turned back around to the swinging varicose vein-lined legs of sneering prozzies perched in open windows, kicked an empty bottle toward a couple of rats, and climbed up to his apartment stepping over, best he could, the corpses on the stairs.

Inner sanctum attained, he slid inside like a trapdoor spider and closed the door, not all the way, just enough to allow him to spy approaching prey and spring. And ordinarily he certainly would spend most of the day quietly positioned to attack and consume a human being, but this time was different. For inspiration had struck in the form of an eagle with a serpent in its talons.

The sublime vision appeared to him alone in the mountains. Over a river in fact. And it lifted his mind for once off his troubles. 

It was time once again, he realized, to sluice himself in cascading Alpine cataracts. To become once again heavy with wisdom, like a bee that has gathered too much honey, and needs hands outstretched to receive it. Images from the Franco-Prussian War took form and loomed in roiling skies to the growing opening notes of Das Rheingold.

Once again the hour of the Overman rang within his soul like the brazen conch shells of gold-robed votaries and giant gongs resounding. 

Whereupon he realized his true name, Striking Eagle. Or, alternatively, The Eagle, or Eagle, or He Who Moves With the Spirit of the Striking Eagle.

The next day being an off day, he decided to pay the used book store a visit to see if he could find a copy of Friedrich Nietzsche's letters to aid him in the writing of his longest ongoing project, the definitive screenplay on the premiere philosopher's life, his own copy being either out of state--his ex, jealous of his writing, abandoned him on summer vacation years ago the night before an important book reading and signing--unless he traded it in a dark hour for cash (he got nothing out of the divorce, which happened because he wrote books, and nothing is what he had to start over with) to the very place where he was now heading.

As always, heads of loved ones spun around before him. His dad saying, "Good-bye!" and angrily slamming the phone. The pupils of his ex's poisoned spider eyes twitching: "Do you know how often I get to write?" To which he used to reply, "Do you know how often I get to profess?"

Beethoven's dad, who let it be known yeah, sure, he loved Beethoven warts and all--emphasis on warts and all--but he sure didn't believe in Beethoven's Beethoven-ness--always remained steadfastly critical, and his dismissive opinion of Beethoven inevitably served as fuel for the composer's fire.

Graffiti art on the train cars played frame-by-frame as the train passed by, showing the scene of his ex abandoning him by surprise that summer night before his big woo-hoo author event. After twenty years together. After all those years he helped her focus on her career.

He entered the book store and headed straight to the back wall, fairly certain He'd seen a copy there, maybe his old one.

Good-bye!

Edward Abbey...John Muir...

Do you know how often I get to write?

Really, the betrayal of suddenly abandoning the artist after all those years wasn't so very different from what he'd already experienced his whole life. He remembered a time in Grade 4 that certainly helped set the stage of his life in terms of his relationships with people. He hadn't made it to school on a Monday. Sick or something. So he showed up on Tuesday...and found that everyone had subtly changed. They all behaved coldly toward him. He could feel a difference in the energy around him. The teacher, who looked like a bobblehead because he had a spindly little neck and a small weak body under a round, retarded noggin, hated being unable to conduct an interesting life, and seemed to see kids the age of nine and ten as competitors in life. Ah, how this douche bag hated the young artist in particular. Him, and one other, a kid whose parents were just beginning their divorce. The boys perceived themselves as being a lot like Hawkeye and Trapper from M*A*S*H. And, aside from the fact that they weren't surgeons in Korea, but were instead in Grade 4, yeah, pretty good call on their part. Turns out, on the Monday the young artist missed, the girl with the bladder problem pissed her pants at school again. So fuckin' little half-ass Trapper laughed. As per usual. And of course anybody else who saw couldn't wait to start snickering, too. This made the pants-pisser bawl her pissy head off so much, that the bulk of the herd started moving away from his half-ass Trapper sidekick. Bobblehead got wind of the pissing and started figuring, hey, time to get back at some little kid to try to make up for all the times kids laughed at him for being such a douche. But right before the punishment could come down, half-ass Trapper turned like a rat and squealed, "No! No! It's not fair! Hawkeye's always doing way worse than me! Take him, take him!" This caused everything to stop. Only a tumbleweed rolled. Bobblehead pondered. "It's true," Bobblehead thought. "Hawkeye is my greatest enemy. The thing to do is wait. Yes, wait until Hawkeye returns." So, after lunch-time recess, the children, who had been instructed to in no way warn the young artist, filed into the classroom with a palpably conspiratorial air. They all knew to go directly to the reading area. The place with the books. There was a sofa in that corner, one no longer fit for a home, with a big fuckin' stain in the middle from all the times the bladder-problem kid had pissed herself on it. Now for the first time ever they started acting all nicey-nice to the pisser. "I wanna sit next to the pisser!" "No, me!" Oh God, they gave her such a gigantic crown. A truck rolled up with a lifetime supply of diapers. Anything to avoid getting in trouble for having laughed. Anything to get revenge on their leaders for being the stars of the show. Bobblehead's little plan was to just let everybody else in the class get to air their hate. So they did. "They think they're so cool!" That was the complaint. Individually, collectively, they were all encouraged to say that. And they did. After a while, half-ass Trapper started crying. But not the young artist. His reaction was to start telling off every single one of them. Didn't take long for him to start clearly winning. And right at that point Bobblehead looked at the clock and wrapped it up. They think they're so cool! Do you know how often I get to write?

Nietzsche.

So completely misunderstood. Appropriated by a-holes who never fuckin' read him. So very maligned, so deeply wronged. All because he happened to be Dy-no-mite and missed one goddam Monday.

Book in hand, the artist made his way toward the counter in order to purchase it. Now, the aisles in this book store can get a little tight. There's always new crap stacked up all over the place. Why? Because the country's a fucked up lie from the start and nothing works right, so people have to piddle around with boxes of old shit to try to trade in for a couple bucks. The  artist happened to notice a fuckwad standing in his aisle. And as he approached, he further happened to notice that the fuckwad wasn't accommodating the necessary physical adjustment for his passage. Everybody does it, you make a little room, maybe even say, "Excuse me." No big fuckin' deal. He'd encountered this kind of thing before, sometimes a beggar who doesn't want to have to budge, but usually on the sidewalk.

Certainly there was no way he'd be backtracking to take another route. He shoved his way right on through. He turned his face toward fuckwad so fuckwad would have to feel the artist breathing down on him.

There was somebody else at the counter. The artist could see that was gonna take a few minutes. So he moseyed back on over toward fuckwad. Got real close, like he wasn't there. Reached across his line of sight. Didn't say excuse me. Stood there real close.

He could tell he got to him. Because a couple minutes later after he moved away and perused elsewhere, fuckwad tried to do the same thing to the artist. The artist stymied the moment with ease, just with his aggressive body language. He never once said a word. Neither of them did. And this little game went on a couple more times until the artist ramped up the aggression and fuckwad left. The artist moved quickly, got right up in fuckwad's face, but acted like he wasn't, just all calm. Fuckwad's widened eyes amused the artist. Fuckwad left fast.

Good boy.

Bought his Nietzsche book, the artist did. Casually looked around for fuckwad on the leisurely stroll across town. But he didn't see anything all the way back to his apartment.

It wasn't for another couple weeks till the artist saw that piece of shit again. Quite by accident, unless you count help from a benevolent God. The artist recognized him right away. From a distance. And he realized: Hey, whaddaya know? I just found out where that asshole lives.


COONSKIN (I)

SEEMED LIKE MOST OF THE HOMES you saw in town weren't really real anymore. Folks sold quietly out. Now the neighbors in the houses were machines for the park, while the people who used to live there were probably on their way to the moon. Either that or one of those floating cities, or maybe Mars. Most preferred the moon to Mars, was what Coonskin heard, the moon being closer for return visits to see how poor everybody was.

Coonskin took a walk down to the river and saw the trees and the rocks on the way somehow differently. How would these things look one last time before leaving? he wondered. What if some other place looked just about exactly like this? Wouldn't that be a letdown?

He wished they'd upgrade to more androids around there. Animatronic neighbors were boring. Immobile cuckoo clocks doing the same thing over and over. Now, maybe if there was some kind of an interesting android woman around, that might change things. Hmmm. He could at least invite her over for dinner. Coonskin heard about how there were all these jobs available fixing animatronic people and animatronic pets, but none of the work ever panned out for him. Coonskin never saw no Gold Rush repairing puppet neighbors.

Some folks in town rented parts of their property to the park for the paying public to see, and got to watch improved animatronic versions of themselves go through the motions of life in fixed positions while they themselves rode out their less-viewed existences aging.

What must it be like on Mars, with all the radiation? he wondered. And the moon, too. Always being stuck inside, everything tenuous, dangerous. Plus all the less considered adverse effects. On the other hand, if you thought about it, it was probably kind of bizarre that visiting androids sometimes stood around watching the humans. Coonskin certainly included. He was far from immune to that. A lot of the androids with any sort of wherewithal you saw looked like dead celebrities brought back to life. Android versions of dead celebrities were always a big hit. Sometimes the celebrities weren't even dead yet. Everybody saw plenty of those. They had an android William Shakespeare open a play there not long ago. And then there was always the ongoing hunt for RoboPoe.

Hunting RoboPoe. Coonskin used to wonder why anybody would watch it. It's all such bull, he thought. First serial killer robot, yeah right. Isn't that strange that there's always security camera video of RoboPoe morosely skulking around some crime scene, taunting the public and the police with stories and poems he left behind, and yet no one could ever find him, he was always just barely slipping out of reach and into the next episode? The whole thing was totally staged, he thought. They excited everybody about catching RoboPoe and getting the gigantic bounty as a distraction while they dismantled the world. Sales of RoboPoe hunting kits galore.

Then Coonskin saw the show. And he had to admit, the more you got into it, the more you wanted to be the one who got him.

When he wasn't working, he was training. Supposedly RoboPoe moved around in hiding throughout the county trying to reach the park because there was something he wanted at park headquarters. Either that or the supposed Area 51-type underground Dreamland base they had somewhere nearby. Some of that might have been true. He also might have liked taking advantage of the coverage in the forests. The trick to catching RoboPoe, Coonskin thought, was to get inside his head. It wasn't like they had a regular economy around there anymore. Best he could do was try to get as many hours as he could with the park. Paddling canoe in his coonskin cap down at the river afforded him lots of opportunities when working to train not only physically, but mentally, as well.

Got into an argument with his closest remaining flesh-neighbor over his training. She had the lot adjacent to the back yard and came over to the fence while he was shooting arrows at a target with RoboPoe's face. (You could get stacks of those cheap, by the way.) She wasn't attacking how he trained so much as why. For someone who had never even seen the show, she sure acted high and mighty. He used to think she was an all right neighbor, too. He used to be glad that she hadn't sold out.

"Whatever happened to Due Process?" she said, basically blaming him.

He told her, "Yeah, I know, I understand, I get it, but there's nothing I can do. I need money to live. That's not my idea. Personally, I think we can do better, way better. But until that happens, it's all just fantasy. In the real world, dumping the body of RoboPoe on the Slab of Justice will solve my problems. I'll finally be able to get out of this hell hole and afford to live offworld."

"Anti-gravity cities!" she scoffed. "They're all going to fall right out of the sky."

"No," he said, "they're not. You have no idea what you're talking about."

Coonskin sure wished RoboPoe would show up around there and stuff his neighbor up a chimney before Coonskin killed him. Obviously she had no idea how hard Coonskin had to paddle in order to keep a robot from getting his job. Obviously she didn't care in the slightest about those innocent people RoboPoe killed, supposedly. Coonskin read what RoboPoe did to that old man. How they tore the floorboards up and found him. Left another guy chained in a basement behind a wall he'd built. RoboPoe knew to do those things because of the stories. It was all part of his Poe-gramming.

STRIKING EAGLE (II)

The baseball bat cinched tight in the vise took a dozen staples from the gun when affixing five or six feet of razor wire. That much wire is right where you want it. Less is too little and more is too much on a baseball bat. The artist favored a prime maple Louisville Slugger. She's sturdy, well-balanced, and gleams like a million bucks all decked out in her steel finery. The fresh razor wire looked every inch like a tight sexy dress on his best gal, and it sure was nice thinking about making that dress red.

Upon completing the task of constructing the tool, he beheld the product of his craftsmanship with swelling pride. See the pretty girl in all her glory, held aloft like a newborn babe, razor wire so sharp and shining, he thought, or maybe said aloud. 

He placed the sacred instrument in a specially constructed truck bed-liner case, and placed the case reverently in the back of his pickup. Letting the engine warm allowed him a moment to visualize the directions to his destination. On the passenger side of the seat he had his black close-fitting cold weather ninja hood with a slit for the nose and the eyes stretched out waiting.

At the end of the street rose a commanding series of stone steps toward the university. Gray and cracked and thick with moss, the old stairs and wrought iron-topped walls gave a good feeling every time. The maples were beginning to turn. He enjoyed the crisp brush of the leaves in the breeze with the window down. On a night such as this, he thought, a man might walk home his gal and sit on the front porch swing together sipping lemonade, or maybe take a baseball bat wrapped with razor wire on over to Oak Street.

Then at an intersection looking like a corner in a town straight out of any number of episodes of The Twilight Zone, there she was getting into an SUV: the Golden Woman, the shockingly beautiful brunette with the inhumanly perfect features and otherworldly golden sheen to her bright bronze skin. Beneath the streetlight clearly visible. And once again, ahh, the eye-contact. Yet he was unable to stop, unable to meet her, unable to talk with her at all. Merely another maddening glimpse. This was going to cost Oak Street extra dear. He really couldn't wait to get there now.

At a stoplight he checked hisphone for the time. "Good good good," he said aloud. "The next time I see the Golden Woman, I will stop no matter what and speak with her somehow."

"Elm Street," he said, passing it. There was an episode of The Twilight Zone with Elm Street in the title. Wasn't there? Or was it Maple?

Maple Street, he decided. But couldn't remember the rest of it. Elm Street is the one with Freddy Krueger.

Boy was she a beaut of a bat. True, there was much to appreciate in a kukuri, but he liked being a bat-man. "I'm a bat-man," he liked to hoarsely announce when alone.

Oak Street.

He took the turn, cruised on down a bit, found the right address, continued on a block before turning. Pulled a U-turn, parked facing Oak with a view of the address. Turned off the lights and the motor, sat and waited, appreciating old trees rising around, making fantastic silhouettes against the deep rich blue of the new night sky.

He checked his  phone for the time. "Should be any minute now." Thoughts of the Golden Woman crept at the edges of his mind.

Lights coming down the street made his hand move for his ninja hood. The problem with the kukuri was being too clean. One good swing severs a leg mid-thigh. For sheer brutality though, ah, a razor wire-wrapped bat.

Sure enough, the car contained the artist's quarry. It turned into the correct address. Whereupon swiftly flying into action, the artist became silence, became shadow. He donned his mask, grabbed his case. He opened the case just a crack, so that it stayed closed only by his holding the handle. Crossing the street quickly, he approached his prey from the blind-side of the vehicle. His prey had parked in a dark driveway shielded by twisted old trees. Appearing from behind he dropped the case and grabbed the bat.

"Hey, scumbag!" he hissed, aiming at the knees. "Next time fuckin' move, piece of shit!" And the artist whaled on him about ten or twenty times thrashing his prey's trashy worthless body and head and flailing limbs, razor wire bat chopping in hard and tearing back out. "The Eagle! has! landed!" he said, chopping with each punctuation.

Naturally, as predicted, the bested crybaby had to start screaming bloody murder.

Well, no point sticking around now, the artist figured. He tucked his best gal with her pretty red dress back into bed and got a move on as the screams started to really get loud.

He put the case in the back of the truck, hopped in, started up, and drove off, removing the ninja hood only when safely around the corner. Then, carefully as he came in, he calmly headed out of town to the bridge over the river. There he parked and cleaned his hands and the bat and the case in the current.

Only when he stopped washing did he really hear the river, and listening to it he thought of the Golden Woman. How every time they see each other, their eyes always locked.

Stashing the bat in a pre-scouted spot under a thick clump of brush in the boulders near the bridge, he hopped back in his truck and drove away.

He overheard some people talking in the Chevron. Evidently there was some discussion about an incident. A violent incident, and terribly so. But the thing was, no one knew who did it. They wanted to know, yet no one had any idea. And the artist thought about this after he bought his $3.09 beer with the 42 ounces and the 8% alcohol by volume. He thought, gosh, why would they want to know who did that? They never cared about the books the artist wrote. If you're not gonna care who authors the great books, why would you care about who authors the great social justice? It just didn't make any sense. More importantly, he found that in order to do Nietzsche justice, he would need to read his works again. 

"It's not only about a screenplay," the artist reminded himself aloud atop many an icy peak, and whilst sluicing himself in raging Alpine cataracts, "it's about really, truly, actually being the Overman."

COONSKIN (II)

He'd been reading Poe's works as part of his training in order to get inside the killer's mind. And he had to say, Poe's stories were inspirational as hell. Tortures leaped out of his brain regularly now. Before he started watching the show, Coonskin probably would have thought that coming up with tortures was a sad indication of being dehumanized. But it wasn't true. Not this time. RoboPoe wasn't human. In reality, Coonskin only wanted to do a good job. He wanted to get as many points as he could from the scoring audience when the time came. When somebody spotted RoboPoe last week behind a mini-mart, she got a brand-new sofa for chucking a Molotov cocktail at him. Not only that, she got to meet Rutger Hauer in his new body, looking exactly like that android he played in Blade Runner. RoboHauer presented her with the Medal of Vigilance right in front of the Slab of Justice and everything.

Some guy up north made the news for shooting up a room thinking RoboPoe was inside.  

Coonskin knew it the show was awful, but after you watched a few episodes, he noticed, you got sucked into it. Mostly, everybody on the show just kind of stood around looking poor and saying this was their greatest adventure ever, same as the producers done told 'em. "But that one guy's sister-in-law," Coonskin thought, "she's got a sweet rack and cusses funny."

"He's around here, my enemy," Coonskin further thought, "skulking in the woods nearby. That ol' skunk. Where's a dog? I need a dog to drink my beer with and talk a little trash 'bout RoboPoe. If I had a plastic rocking chair and a plastic shotgun on my lap, I could park it next to my trusty ol' animatronic dog and keep a real good lookout for that ol' skunk and arch-enemy. Maybe get a loop of cricket sounds piped in. I can feel it. I can feel the show getting closer. And I really do have to get that money. It's the only way I'll ever get out of here and be able to make a real life. I overheard some visitors while I was paddling canoe, trying to ignore the increasing feeling that I'm over-training again. Can't cut a single hour. It sounded like they were scouting locations for the show."

The day prior, Coonskin had taken the bus an hour north by car. Took three times as long on the bus because they went a weird roundabout way, frequently stopping. He had all his gear packed up as carry-on sufficient for him to camp out a couple nights, there being an area he researched which held a lot of terrain suited to RoboPoe's sensibilities. Initially Coonskin planned on reading Poe's works aloud in however many Gothic locales it took until RoboPoe 's hearing "his" work respectfully presented drew him out. That was the ideal plan, if Coonskin got lucky. However, after meeting a woman on the bus, Coonskin figured he'd get better hunting results if she was the one doing the reading.

Taking the bus was a tawdry experience. Seating so compact as to verge on inhumane. Half the people there all sharing hacking coughs, threat of disease on every surface. The people in back said there was a guy just off who sat talking on the bus for literally fourteen hours straight and never stopped talking for even one second the whole time. The woman next to Coonskin, who had a pretty face, a nice figure, and intense eyes, wore a hoodie that hid her hair. By the paint on her clothes Coonskin surmised she was an artist. She was dressed quite well. But there were a few tiny bits of paint splash--almost as though placed there for effect, like the torn spots in the form-fitting jeans which hugged her legs. Those she held straight in the air against the back of the tall vacant seat in front of her. Coonskin thought she seemed impressed when he responded, "I'm hunting RoboPoe." Some passengers around them listened in. One was a repo-man with a Ph.D. in something mathematical. Another guy knew everything Coonskin knew about off-world colonies and life in the anti-gravity cities drifting high above. There was also a woman on the bus who talked to herself. Most of what she had to say was lewd. A woman who got on and who stayed till the next stop asked Coonskin if he had heard about the earthquake. "What earthquake?" Coonskin said. She said it was all over the news, that an earthquake was going to happen. "What?" he said. "Since when do they predict earthquakes?" To which the woman replied, "No, it's for real. It's on all the news. There's going to be a gigantic earthquake. It's over. It's all over." Coonskin asked her a little more, and finally she said that she knew because God had told her.

Lizzie, the young woman with her legs up on the seat and the intense eyes, showed me some of her favorite videos on her laptop. Ads kept popping up with dead celebrity android endorsements looking exactly like the real thing and all saying the same thing: "I want you to know...I'm Hunting RoboPoe!"

We're all Hunting RoboPoe! Together, we can show him what for. We will never forget what this monster has done. Honor the heroes. To enter a book burning event near you, click here. 

We want you to know...we're Hunting RoboPoe!

"Your ass is grass, boy!" Coonskin heartily pronounced after the ad, following up this statement with an uncontrollable whoop as he looked at Lizzie's legs bouncing around and thought about killing and winning money and prizes. Lizzie loved how much Coonskin wanted to kill RoboPoe.

"Why don't you join me?" Coonskin said. "Join me in my hunt. My hunt...to bring this android piece of shit to justice by shooting him. What, are you too busy?"

"No, I'm free. Freer than you. Are all androids pieces of shit to you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I'm not sure I like your attitude toward AI. Is everyone not like you a piece of shit. Because if that's what you think, fuck you, you're the piece of shit."

"Are you AI?"

Lizzie looked out the bus window next to her. Didn't reply.



STRIKING EAGLE (III)


He decided to breeze through The Birth of Tragedy and Untimely Meditations and devote more attention to Human, All Too Human and The Wanderer and His Shadow because he preferred the aphorisms. Nietzsche's early works he did find interesting, but Nietzsche simply hadn't yet put in his 10,000 hours of practice required for proficiency. By the latter two volumes he spoke loud and clear because he had conquered his addiction to Wagner. He was pissed off by then, and had nothing to lose.

Do you know how often I get to profess?

Human, All Too Human (HATH) hath an aphorism to which the artist happened to randomly turn opening the book, number 178, titled The Effectiveness of the Incomplete which reminded the artist of a blog post he wrote about how leaving something to the imagination counts. He wondered, did his copy of the book open most readily to a page he used to visit years ago, and which may have influenced his thought without his even knowing it? "It's possible," he thought. "I've been addicted to Nietzsche for a lot of years."

NIETZSCHE DOC
DYNAMITE

He's the German philosopher in the 1880s depicted with the giant mustache who says, "What does not kill me makes me stronger."

          

Misrepresented in death by his sister, who altered a book he had abandoned and gave it to Hitler as an all-purpose excuse for evil in a moral vacuum, for decades the misplaced idolatry of the Nazis for Nietzsche ruined his posthumous reputation, but in the 1950s scholarship revealed the error and his thought has been widely used ever since by disparate groups and individuals for varied ends.

          

In the excellent 2016 BBC documentary "Genius of the Modern World--Friedrich Nietzsche", engaging host historian Bettany Hughes cogently distills Nietzsche's often notoriously elusive ideas. And she visits scholars with their own observations.

          

For example, one scholar responds to the question of who is a Nietzschean Ubermensch or Overman, "An Overman is one who is no longer reliant on external goals." It is someone "who is able to commit to goals that you set yourself."

          

The documentary travels to the areas in Europe where he lived, showcasing the panoramic views of Sils Maria, Switzerland, the forests, rivers, and snow-capped mountains that inspired a philosophy of celebrating this life here and now and finding joy in overcoming obstacles and thereby reaching new heights.

          

Born in Rocken, Germany, in 1844, the philosopher who said, "I'm not a man, I'm dynamite!" began life as the son of a Lutheran minister in a household that, according to Hughes, "lived and breathed Christianity." It has been said of Nietzsche that he did not speak until he was four. It was at that age that his father died, an early event which shook young Nietzsche's faith.

          

In his early twenties he decided not to follow in his father's footsteps, but instead became a professor of Philology (Linguistics today) at Basel, Switzerland, the youngest professor in the university's history.

          

At this time he met Richard Wagner. Wagner was thrilled to have the young philosopher as a fan whose academic stature lent the composer additional weight. But after the opening of the new theater in Wagner's honor at Bayreuth and the production of his opera, The Ring, Nietzsche was deeply disappointed.

          

Itching to spread his wings, Nietzsche cited ill health (accurately enough) and resigned from the university, crisscrossing Europe and spending "the rest of his adult life in a state of nomadic solitude."

          

But he had, as Hughes observes, "his mind for company."

          

COONSKIN (III)

On the bus, Coonskin found, pretty much everybody knew what was up on any given subject. He made this observation to Lizzie casually. The woman who talked all the time to herself, more or less hoping somebody would join in, Coonskin thought, happened to mention that she'd been on the streets off and on since childhood. Since childhood, imagine that. Coonskin wondered how the people on the bus knew that one guy had been on for fourteen hours. "Some people," Lizzie said, still looking out the window, "stay on the bus as long as they can because they have nowhere else to go."

To Coonskin it felt weird to sit without paddling. The foliage was incredible. Muted mustard and brilliant explosions of deepest orange dotted the tall green forest rising all around. The day was gray, and heavy gray clumps of fog drifted over the river and held fast throughout the mountains. At one point the bus driver pulled over, got up from the seat, stood facing everyone on the bus, and in an authoritative manner declared, "All right! I smell weed!" To which everyone on board correctly yelled back as one, "IT'S A DEAD SKUNK!" Apologizing, the driver sat back down and pulled off. When Coonskin called out, "Not that we wouldn't smoke a dead skunk," everybody got a kick out of it. Lizzie couldn't believe Coonskin was single. She said she bet his girlfriends all loved coming to the park for canoe rides.

"All of them, right. You're so nice to me," he said. "I can't believe you're single, either."

"Oh good," she said, "because I'm not. Although I might be soon," she quickly added, followed up by a subject-changing question: "Which of Poe's works will you read first?"

"Well, you know, I was kind of hoping you would do the reading." They had been spending so much of their time looking at each other as they talked, neither of them noticed the stop until they were suddenly on it. For a long moment Coonskin had to wonder if Lizzie was going to get off the bus with him. He couldn't ask her though, not in the rush of having to grab up his carry-on and swiftly vacate. Moving as fast as he could meant no time to even turn around to see if she was following him, like in a Greek myth. Was it really too good to be true?

Then, ah, he saw that she had gotten off with him, just the two of them in front of the run-down gas station where the bus had stopped. The excitement he felt watching the bus roar away in a cloud all its own was a million times better than anything he had ever felt before, and as they adjusted their packs pretending to care about old notices on the cork board outside the tiny market adjacent, looking at Lizzie's wild eyes and heart-shaped face he wondered what it would be like to hold her in his arms.

STRIKING EAGLE (IV)


Moderation in all things is immoderate.

Affirmation of life is in experience.

The vitality substitutes of external validation run the world into the ground.

These thoughts and a thousand others turned over and over again in the artist's mind as he pedaled his bike out to the mountains early in the morning. He wore a black knit cap and a dark hoodie with the hood pulled up and loosely cinched sufficient to resist falling back in the misty morning wind while he rode, seeing only a few drivers pass. One was a rig with the tailgater's lights illuminating political bumper stickers.

"HATH 465," he chuckled. And later on when he started to think about the whole thing with the razor wire and the bat and all, he thought, "The Wanderer and His Shadow number 38, by golly," and chuckled again.

In the dark gray backpack which the artist wore were several items valuable to him, chiefly the notebooks he had going on and the hatchet he brought.

He thought about times he'd had to discipline his fellow man. Times he'd had to deliver fuckin' piledrivers to the face in the goddam street. He thought about the bizarre fact that people detested hearing him relay his sundry asskickings. The hypocrites. They loved violence in the movies because of imagining themselves doing the punching. But they hated to hear about the real thing from him.



COONSKIN (IV)

Inside they left their packs behind the counter with a greasy-haired young blonde woman wearing a t-shirt that said Now In Decadent Candy Bar Flavor. The TV bolted securely into a corner at the ceiling trained everyone's eyes on the hunt for RoboPoe. Coonskin didn't want to advertise the fact he was in on it himself, and was glad that Lizzie didn't mention it. He grabbed a couple orange juices, a few bags of peanuts, some chocolate, a package of four baked tofu squares, and a mini-size mouthwash.

"They're making a RoboPoe movie now," the cashier said. Coonskin and Lizzie were the only ones in the sliver of a store. "Gonna use actual androids in some roles, they say."

"It's enough to make your mind shift in your skull," he said as he paid, "like a frog re-positioning itself in mud." Recalling the Doors line he laughed aloud without explanation and they left. Not long thereafter while they were walking down the old dirt road, enjoying the silence, or so Coonskin thought, Lizzie remarked on his inexplicable bark of laughter in front of the cashier.

This reminded Coonskin that those who jump quickly into favor with each other tend to jump just as quickly out, and put him in the slightly awkward position of having to defend himself successfully without making her feel foolish or beaten. He managed, barely. Mostly because it started raining.

"You aren't going to record me reading anything aloud are you?"

"No way," he said, anxious to avoid any further kinks in the carpet. "I will not record you reading anything at all."

"Don't you think RoboPoe suspect a trap?"

"Absolutely," he affirmed. "But I intend to shoot him before he spots me. He thinks he's so smart. His ego is his weakness. If you look at the history of Poe, he can't turn down a challenge. Thinking of Napoleon's bravery facing his own troops, and hearing Beethoven, he accepts any challenge assured of his extremely satisfying victory and his conquered adversary's ignominious defeat. If I read this egotistical android right, he'll show up, sooner than later, thinking he'll be able to best me and win you."

"What makes you think he won't?"

"Because I'm better. Way better."

He was glad he brought protection. Didn't want to rush anything too fast though, so he started pitching the tent. Lizzie had her own, but Coonskin's was bigger and he noticed that she left hers packed. He felt good about that while he checked his weapons. Bow assembled, .44 pistol loaded, kukuri machete sheathed at his side, he grabbed some throwing stars and a couple of swords and found a spot between two trees concealed in a stand. They were in a sandy, rolling high river bar spot with little groups of trees here and there. In the distance they could see a house on a hillside flat, looking to Coonskin as though it were ready to sink into a dismal tarn. Ragged mountains rose all around. Nearby, the rain-brown river carried occasional limbs which, slowly spinning, got caught against the verdure hanging at the bank. In the shadows of the towering mountains, the night would come soon. He got everything all set up, figuring exactly where she should stand and read aloud based on the terrain and Coonskin's position.

"Now remember," he said, "I'm a really good shot, but even I'm not perfect, so as soon as he shows up, you make sure to squat down inside this stump. I'll hold my fire for as long as I can."

"Ae you serious? You're really going to shoot him?"

"Honey, I'm in it to win it."

"Well, be sure you don't shoot when I'm in between!"

"Don't worry, I'll be careful. You just be sure to duck. Go down deep inside that stump when I tell you and stay down till I say you can come up. Got it?"

"I like the danger. Danger makes me feel alive."

"Which story are you going to read first?"

"I will read 'The Premature Burial' unless you prefer another choice."

"No, that sounds fine. You have my flashlight?" Lizzie clicked it on. "Remember to read slowly," Coonskin said. "Enunciate and project. You can do this. Don't worry, I'll see him long before he reaches you. You'll be safe in the stump. Once he shows up, just crouch down."

"What makes you so sure he'll be here?"

"This is Gothic country, ma'am, highly Gothic terrain. Reckon the show's been steadily movin' this direction, and I've seen signs, Poe-tents. Hold on...what's this?" Not far off he spotted it. The shadow of a skulking figure. "Get down," Coonskin whispered and pulled out his pistol. 

STRIKING EAGLE (V)


"Well well well," said the artist, having found a nice scenic Alpine-looking spot to catch his breath, adding, "what have we hear?" with increasing interest indeed as he saw a vehicle appear on a switchback of the winding road below. It was a truck. He recognized it immediately. A truck from where he used to work.

Whereupon the artist went down the mountain alone, for even at a distance through the windshield from above he recognized the old man in the truck.

He reached the rig remaining careful to stay out of the old man's line of sight until he was nearly upon him. The old man said the artist surprised him and that he looked different.

"I have something for you," the artist said, slipping off his backpack and withdrawing the hatchet. The old man cried out, "God!"

"Haven't you heard?" the artist replied, chopping away voraciously, "God is dead!" thereby butchering both Nietzsche and the old man in one fell swoop. "Fuck you, liar!" the artist spat, chopping harder and harder. "I never did you any wrong! You talked shit about me! Fuck you! Fuck you! Worthless piece of fucking shit! Hypocrite! Look at me! Look at me! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!"



PART TWO



STRONGBOT (I)

THE BOSTON STRONGBOT'S naugahyde-like skin, durable as a truck bed liner, reflected the midday gleam of the chemtrail sky with a dull vinyl glow. Robokilrain pounded away, but nothing could stop the Strongbot's onslaught.

A clubbing left crushed Kilrain's nose, smearing wiring everywhere.

"Goddam you John L., rot in robohell."

"Eat roboshit, Jake," the Strongbot replied, delivering a blow to his opponent's midsection--the solar plexus, they called it--with the force of a horse's kick as the crowd roared.

The majestic serenity of the towering redwoods remained intact. Especially in the groves where every square inch sparkled in protective spray-on plastic like a vast department store Pompeii.

After the fight, when they had gotten paid, John L. and Jake stopped off at the cafe. Used to be the place didn't have anything to offer. Then a local contractor hired a bunch of androids. After that, the cafe started offering android-friendly energy items. But that wasn't what brought the Strongbot.

"Hey Robeo," Jake jeered, smashed parts of his face still shooting occasional sparks, "you gonna show some nuts this time?"

The town was crawling with tourists. Used to be hover cars were the rare ones.

"Must've hit you harder than I thought," John L. said. "You just mind your own business. That means you know them wires floppin' out your face? Shove 'em."

It was true, though. The waitress. She was a woman. A real woman. How would she react? Would she see that he was for real? As these thoughts passed through his artificially intelligent mind, the Strongbot, so closely resembling the long ago flesh-and-blood John L. Sullivan, first heavyweight boxing champion of the world, called in his day the Boston Strongboy on account he was from Boston and he was a very strong boy, noted a genteel contingent of Civil War re-enacting androids on loan assembled upon the patio beneath the welcome shade of the table umbrellas. The Civil Warbots called out heartily to John L. and Jake--John L. in particular--and praised them for the entertainment they had recently provided.

Upon receiving this information, a little human boy who had been watching asked his little human parents if that man over there really was the Boston Strongbot.

"Why don't you go ask him?"

The boy went over.

"What the hell do you want?" the Strongbot said.

"You don't sound like you're from Boston."

"You don't look like you'd know."

"What makes you so great?"

"Everything about me," the Strongbot said. "You always like this?"

"Everything like what?"

"Sonny boy, you just happen to be looking at the world's greatest fighting machine."

Sparks flew out of Robokilrain's face as he laughed.

"And the reason for that," the Strongbot went on, not noticing, "the one main reason even more than my piston-powered punches and durable, easy-wipe skin, is simply knowing that, eventually, everybody hates me. It's in my programming. Makes me a better fighter that way. The best."

"It's in your programming?"

"It's in my programming. When they made me, in order to get my personality just right, they studied the psychology of the toughest dudes ever prior to me."

"You mean not just the Boston Strongboy only? What dudes?"

"Well, this one samurai. Mind your business. Dammit, where's my sword?"

"Can I have your autograph?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"If you were a real robofan you'd know I'm completely illiterate."

"You mean you can't even write your own name?"

"Did I stutter? Don't be stupid. Of course I can't write my own name. I just told you I'm completely illiterate. It's in my programming."

"Why does not being able to write help?"

Robokilrain spoke up. "Because if he was writin', then he wouldn't be bustin' folks in the ch-ch-ch-ch--"

The Strongbot slapped Robokilrain on the back.

"--chops."

The boy returned to his table. Swivel stools groaned as the bots sat down at the bar.

"Hey Robeo." Robokilrain nudged.

The Strongbot looked up. There she was.

"You boys ready to order?"

She had what they called a million dollar smile. And she didn't treat bots different from anybody else.

"You go on ahead," John L. told Jake. "I ain't decided yet."

"Yeah, you work on that decidin'."

"What'll it be, sweetie?"

The Strongbot's chair groaned.

"Did you hear that?" said Jake, turning his bashed face toward John L. "Never mind. Let's see, can I get a pint of Durasell?"

"Will that be all?"

"Yeah, that'll do. Didn't make as much today as I'd hoped."

"And what can I get you, sweetie?"

Sparks crackled as Robokilrain chortled. "You heard it. She called me sweetie first."

The Strongbot's fist slammed into Jake's face so hard, it knocked him off the stool and into the wall several feet behind. The imprint of John L.'s fist was left in Jake's demolished face. The sprawled body of Robokilrain lay lifeless on the floor.

The boy pleaded with his parents to watch while the Boston Strongbot bashed open Robokilrain's head to get the chip inside, but they wouldn't let him. They turned him away and shielded him so that all he got to hear were a couple of thunks and the loud crack when the head burst, followed by the robust cheers of the Civil Warbots.

"Make that just the one Durasell," the Strongbot told the waitress, pocketing Jake's chip.

"Are you gonna put that chip in a new robot?" said the boy.

"I won't be the one to do it. But yeah, that's what'll happen."

While the Strongbot watched the waitress work, he imagined driving her. Together they could head out to the beach. He could see his reflection in the sliding glass door of the beer fridge. In the right light his eyes glowed laser red. He imagined being tender with her. Of gentle places to touch her. The small of her back, behind her ear. He imagined touching her face. What must her skin feel like? Soft, probably. Tender. He would be so careful. But it wasn't just touching her he wanted. She was exciting, yes, but in the end he wanted to give her something real. He wanted to take care of her.

Lines between organic and artificial life were crossed all the time. Legal cases kept cropping up where it was hard to make the call. Sometimes people took on roboparts, and sometimes the other way around. Generally speaking, if you saw a celebrity, it was actually artificial. Then of course you saw people dressing up in costumes so that tourists would think they were androids. Fleshbums and robohobos alike equally eking existence, finding shelter in the woods wherever possible.

"Busy today," the Strongbot said as the waitress passed by. Packed to capacity, the cafe rang with a cacophony of multiple animated conversations and the clinking sounds of people eating. Music from out on the patio blended with the noises of the televisions inside.

She smiled and nodded. "They keep me hoppin'!"

Her voice was like music to him.

Wiping down a table, she glanced up at the clock. "Only ten more minutes and I'm free!"

Apparently studying the better part of the pint of Durasell in his mitts, John L. grew contemplative with this news. Was this the time to ask her if she'd like to maybe do something with him sometime? The Strongbot wondered this while a commotion at the window drew attention.

The boy had his face pressed to the glass."It's him," he said, "it's really him!"

One of the Civil Warbots standing at the window let loose a long, low whistle. Then looked over at John L.

The bell on the cafe door jingled.

"Well, well, well," a voice pronounced in the doorway. The cafe hushed as a dapper figure entered.

"You're Gentleman Jim Corbot!" the boy cried aloud.

The Corbot ignored the boy. "Well, well, well," he repeated. "Look what we have here."

The tortured seat squeaked relief as the Strongbot rose and stood nose-to-nose with the Corbot.

"This ain't 1892," said John L. "Ain't been no three damn years since my last fight, neither."

"No point arguing with progress, old boy. You're looking at the face of the future."

"You about ready to get that bank clerk face of yours bashed the hell in?"

"Ha! You think you want to try? You don't have the skills! We all know how this turns out."

From among the Civil Warbots, the Nathan Bedford Forrest android spoke. "Alrighty fellers, let's take this on outside now," RoboForrest said. "No sense bustin' up the cafe."

""Mom! Dad!" cried the wide-eyed boy. "Did you hear that? We're gonna get to see them fight!"

A palpable excitement arose, quelled quickly by the waitress stepping around from behind the counter and pulling at the Corbot's arm. "Come on," she said, "there's nothing to prove. Besides, you promised you'd take me to the fair."

The words struck the Strongbot like sledge-blows to his head. The Corbot...was her date?

Dapper and smirking, Gentleman Jim Corbot escorted the lovely young woman outside to his waiting hover limo. A small crowd followed the pair out, marveling at their beauty. The Strongot watched while the two got in the car. When they were in, a black window descended. The Corbot motioned to the boy, who stood nearby visibly disappointed in the absence of the fight. The Strongbot watched the boy receive an autographed glossy photo, and a message from the Corbot which the placated boy relayed as the hover limo swiftly slid out of town down the Avenue and into the serenity of the majestic redwoods.

"Hey, Strongbot!" cried the boy, holding up the signed glossy of the smiling Corbot's face for everyone to see. "He said to tell you that in a week and a half you have to be at the fair for a scheduled fight and everything, on account that's when he's gonna kick your ass!"

From among the Civil Warbots came a couple more long, low whistles. Only longer than before. And a good bit lower, too.



STRIKING EAGLE AND ROBOPOE (I)


The artist was covered in blood. The blood of his former coworker completely ruined his clothes, and that bothered him very much because he didn't have any money for more clothes...

NOTE:

Thread in remaining material where required.

A hollow feeling filled the Strongbot which he had never known, and did not understand.  He dealt with this feeling the only way he knew how, and that was physically.

Long white stockings donned, bold black sash wrapped about his waist, the bare-chested Strongbot chugged along redwood grove trails winding well-shaded hillsides with his perpetually shaved pate and an uncommonly dour stamp writ upon his dark and glowering visage.

The first android fist fights ever held, originally precise renditions of the earliest filmed bouts, gradually became so well-known to the robocombatants that they increased the speed, power and overall performance of each programmed fight, until eventually the bots found they could originate movements of their own. The Strongbot and the Corbot weren't the first bots ever constructed, nor even the first robofighters. They were, however, solid samples to have around town, Madrani never being an A-list robo draw.

Seeking solace in the redwoods, the android aimlessly roamed, sometimes encountering colorful transients who stepped respectfully aside and nodded in deference to the famed bot, fleshbums and robohobos alike, some of whom the Strongbot recognized. Among the transient artificial life forms, or TALs, to be found in abundance throughout the southern half of the county, John L. knew of many, notably one named Yuka, who had escaped from an android-staffed hotel, and several totally incredible but lesser-draw celebots, such as the Beethovebot, whose tortured robogenius produced symphonies, and none other than the great California robowriter himself, John Steinbot. Though the public did not know it, the Strongbot and the Steinbot were in fact good friends. Much like Aldo Leopold inspiring Steinbeck's creation of Doc in CANNERY ROW, John L. even served as the inspiration for a character in a largely non-fiction novel the Steinbot wrote, a study of TALs titled BOT AND SOULED: THE STARTLING PHENOMENON OF TRANSIENT ARTIFICIAL LIFE.

All around town, down in the grove, anywhere was a good place and anytime the perfect time for John Steinbot to start reciting to a real audience again. For actual pay, back when. Now just for respect.

Robohobos: We've all seen them. Robots on the road. Robots that accost. Whether some androids choose to drop out and congregate in the forest and in public places, or whether this global crisis lies in the fault of the programmers is a topic of heated debate. Broken androids trapped in cycles of disrepair. Yet despite the controversy, Transient Artificial Life forms rarely are allowed to have their voices heard. For the purposes of this article I visited a grove reputed to hold a community of TALs in numbers estimated between twenty and forty. According to one anonymous resident, "It's probably closer to a hundred." Where the androids came from, the purposes for which they were produced, what they did, how they were treated, and how they got away is all subject of much speculation. "People call us Robohobos," another resident says. "They don't care about us. We're not real to them. And they're not real to us, either." Self-harming TALs describe the dim awareness of their own assembly, and how they felt when they learned that the Czech word robot means worker slave.

The Steinbot's writing used to sound like bad Steinbeck, until eventually the android began to develop his own style. He wrote from his own experience as an android originally installed secretly in a community, thought by his neighbors to be human like themselves. The plan at that time was to sell the public on the idea of artificial life through years of a trickle-feed campaign, so that by the time everyone was ready to accept the idea, it would already be implemented.

The Strongbot didn't want to be illiterate. The image of the Corbot sitting with the woman in the hover limo and autographing the picture of himself still blazed in his chip...