Usu (7 page)

The scenery, verbally diluted by everything being covered in audible shit, was rather astonishing. It seemed that where they came to was but the proverbial rabbit-hole to this vibrant wonderland. Districts divided areas with massive concrete and wire walls, thick metal gates being the official links between each one. He spotted dozens, from vertical residential areas to the hollow shells of industrial plants; it seemed almost as if they had made this land ripe with the memory of the long-gone race that created them. Was it an homage? Or a hope, a strange twisted hope from a stranger still land?

Casino’s in one corner, patrons coming out with fewer limbs than they went in with, contrasted starkly with the Marina in the other end. It seemed to send orbs out through the bottom of the city into the water below, shooting them with such force that even their direction could be little more than a guess. What was at least slightly alarming was that none ever seemed to come back up, more reminiscent of an escape pod than a transportation system. The idea of being hurled into the dead ocean didn’t seem appetising to him either way though. Usu always had an innate fear of whales and presumed dead ones would be all the more terror-worthy.

Speaking of terror-worthy, Usu, Rain, and the mysterious assailant were about to land, it seemed. She’d moved nimbly enough to satiate even the most hardcore parkour fetishist, leaping from rooftop to boundary, detachable head to asphalt and finally down a time-worn chute. The fall wasn’t long, eight maybe nine seconds, but enough for him to hear a very familiar voice, disgruntled to say the least protesting, “Blimey! Look, all I want is for you and your sharp bits there to come tally-ho and right chop this door voice modulator off of what may or may not be my crotch.” Countered by a hoarse brazen voice, with just enough Scottish in it to make you feel sexually displaced at any given moment, “I am lookin' laddy, 'n whit I’m seein' is ye wanting tae just separate 'hings again. Just choap it aff, aye? Is easy, aye? Just pretend it wasn’t even thar, aye?! Och, ah know yer kind.”

Volatile as things may have been, the sudden landing into the midst of a robo-anatomical bickering match actually proved a positive thing. The duo's mysterious abductor landed in a small crater that barely broke the panorama of steel tiles and busted VCR machines, a comfortable fit for few others. Looking up, she couldn’t withhold her excitement and ran forward yelling, “Shitbea―Dad!” before hugging the most bizarre creature Usu had seen yet.

To only mildly disappoint your descriptive expectations, allow your narrator to elaborate: What he saw was clearly mechanical and clearly robotic, like everything he’d seen thus far, but was first and foremost hanging upside down from a rooftop he wished was further and further away. Masculine in features, a strong jaw, square eyes, and a peculiar beard made from what presumably was a sea of left-over arms dangling about. Not to be outdone, the rest of him was dangling about as well; his body began normal enough, shoulders, a neck. It even had good torso potential! Unfortunately, the reality was an arachnid-like bulbous exterior with half a dozen legs on each side, strange work tools welded into most of them. His powers of deduction having grown exponentially since the whole adventure had begun, Usu didn’t take long to grasp this was the oh-so-elegantly proclaimed 'Shitbeard'.

“Och, we're 'n polite mode are we? Mist be fer th' find. What's this noo? Ah, haven't seen one o' these in weel... in ever!” said the supposedly fecal-bearded mystery as he kicked himself off the wall and toward Rain and Usu. Purely cosmetic defensive instincts as they may have been, Usu’s attempt to safeguard Rain was met with a dual surprise, both at the owner of the familiar voice being Modbot and that he was actually happy to see them.

“Usu! Weather channel! Oh, I missed you both like Thatcher missed her penis whenever they got around to removing it. Now wait… the lass, Rain, I do recall her being a bit more chipper than limp and stony eyed.” Though he was possibly just as pleasantly surprised for the first time in his life, the whole limp, near-death business put a bit of a damper on things. Just when he was thinking how he could get Usu to explain what had transpired, his crotch―now plus one module―insisted, “Quickly, explain through interpretive terror dance!” before Modbot could smack it into submission. “Ah, this, this is well, the door and, we disagreed and, well I’m just trying to get this blathering blout to chop the bugger off actually. I hear he does things like that, probably could help the girl too, or just yell at her for asking; seems best at that last bit actually.” While not exactly the greatest news, it did calm Usu down a fair deal and allow for Rain to be peeked at properly without him lunglessly hyperventilating.

“Laddie, dae ye even know whit this 'ere lassie is?” Stroking his beard as elegantly as one could stroke a 2-foot long dangling set of limbs hanging off of a chin, Shitbeard continued. “Ah rate ye dinnae even know whit ye yerself are, eh?”

Usu could do little to hide his growing insecurities over his own identity, which memories were his, and why he was here in the first place. Rain’s downfall had taken precedence in his mind, ignoring the questions that had been gnawing away at him from the inside out. He shook his head, averting his gaze in the process. “Ha, that’s fin'. Ah don’t ken whit in th' hells ye are either, laddie! All ah know is these ‘ere eyes,” he flipped fancifully through several settings on his lensed orbs. “Nae a thing they ain’t able tae see, 'n in ye? Not a single movin' pairt, just fluffy stuffin'. Yit ye shift aboot mair than me own daughter when you’re popp’n a fuss!”

He let out an overdrawn synthetic sigh, making sure to coat Modbot in most of the passing smog before continuing. “The lass, well, she’s special too, but naught ‘n a good way lad. Androids like her, they were all hunt’d down fer fear, fear they might become the new humanitae. But it's worse in this case; she mighta' avoided the grubbies, but the damn girl went and set off her killswitch.” Now even Shitbeard averted his gaze, he’d done this for a long, long time, and giving bad news never got easy.

Modbot, rather helpful as he was very occasionally known to be, immediately knew both the terror of what this meant and that Usu would need a proper explanation. “Blue-arsed flies, I wish I could say he was lying, but a killswitch is our worst fear Fluffpuff. You know how we don’t age, or even decay much because even rust isn’t alive right?” Usu worryingly nodded, one eye focused in each direction. “Well, humans, arses as they were and all, decided it would only be right and proper to stop us from making more of ourselves. You know, so we couldn’t make an evil robot army and kill them, instead of them suffocating one by one in their colonies or being poisoned by acid rain. No, no. Robot zombie armies were
clearly
the bigger danger there. So whatever tosser was in charge at the time thought it would be clever to set us to shut down if we ever saw any robotic schematics. For most of us, that would mean a short-term memory wipe and a good poke to get back on, but for androids? They were scared bridges to britches of the buggers, so their killswitch it… it causes them to lose
all
their memories and eventually disassemble entirely. She… must have seen one somewhere. Blight, the fact that it hasn’t taken her fully yet is a miracle in its own way.”

Spreading a smoggy sigh purposdentally across Modbot once again, our more medically inclined ally chimed back in. “Aye, haggisballs thar speaks truth laddie. Th' lassie won make it, hells, only reason ah kin repair others is a faulty switch ’n meself. Ah kin wake her up wance, bit th' next time sh’ freezes, she won' be wak’n up again. Ah kin promise ye that either wey.” Reluctantly, Usu agreed; Rain needed to know, she needed to decide her fate, or find some way―trifle or not―to fight it.

Fingers tingled, eyes were wet, and one little girl woke up from one nightmare into another.

He let me in, I didn’t think he would, not like sleeping against his only window was that bad, but it’s… nicer inside. His name is Snow, he got pretty upset when I kept calling him wafflehair boy, but I thought it was waaay cuter!

I never believed in names Diary, but he says they’re important, I don’t know if I want one… but can I call you Dee?

It’s small inside, but it feels warm and he even lets me use a spare room! Though, whenever I ask who it belonged to he gets sad, but one time he smiled instead and said, “It belongs to you now.”

Can things like me have homes Dee?

You’d think making something able to weep profusely might be a low-priority feature, but you’ve read this far so it would be wise not to put much faith in what you think. Instead, the cruel reality drenched Usu’s paws once more, as he desperately tried to catch her tears, perhaps fearing that each and every one was a piece of her, a piece he couldn’t do without.

At that moment, even Rain wished she didn’t retain her senses during her blackouts. She had heard every word, and every part of her body reverberated the truth in them. Minutes of sniffling (and rather pointless paw swiping) passed until she could move freely, and through every ache she pulled Usu close, hugging him tightly before saying, “I’m, I’m sorry Snow. I’m sorry for everything. I’m even sorry I’m crying, silly right?” She pressed her forehead to his and forced a smile across her drenched face.

Manchester, as the disturbingly multi-legged mechanic turned out to be named after proper introductions were handled, was stroking his limb-beard at the sight, occasionally tickling himself into an embarrassed giggle before regaining composure. Then, when he felt he’d probably pass out from the strangling hug his daughter was still curiously intent on giving to him, he decided to speak up. “Now now lass, wipe yer sprockets ‘n polish yer nugge―oh right, ye don’t have those be’n a lass ‘n all. What aye meant t'say is, I n’er said there wan’t a way to save ye, or, at least try.” Pulling himself back into the upper reaches of the room, he proceeded to scratch a strange pattern onto a tile. Moments later, a massive terminal lowered and his endless stream of chin-arms sprung to life, weaving a marvelous tapestry of taps across it. The screen changed a multitude of times, reflecting across his metallic sheen before settling on a single image, casting a blue hue across the room. He faced the pair again, lunging to sexual harassment distance in a heartbeat before finally revealing his cards. “Now, tis true that yer ‘n trouble lass, but trouble’s me middle hand! Somewhere ‘n there at least.” Rain looked up with half-open eyes, trying her best to stop each tear before it began as he continued. “But there’s a way, or half a way at least I’d wager. Yer schematics, likes o' which I’ve naer seen, could be enough fer me to help ye. Better yet, they’re so rare y'd end up paying fer the help at the same time lass!”

“Rain can… can stay with Snow?” she managed before taking one last deep, hopeful sniff.

“Snew? The rabbit? Aye, if you kin get yer soul-scribbles I’ll do wha’ I can. Ye have me word, an'… an' me daughter! Ye kin borrow her fer a bit, maybe teach her some manners?” He was interrupted with a barely feminine growl dangling from what could possibly be called his neck.

“The hell you mean
manners
? Shitbeard, I swear if I eventually find the washer that connects your ass to your fac―”

A rather terrified look crossed Manchester's brow as he interjected, “S-She’s a sweet lass! Charming! Best thing I e’er made!”

Seemingly calmed by a fair degree or two, the still-cloaked and apparently personality disorder-stricken daughter swiveled onto one hand and dropped directly in front of Usu. “Yeah so, we already met and all, but the name is Mercury. Dad over there is probably wanting to send us to what you see on that screen there. It’s the place where they developed your girl. Bit of a suicide trip; he’s been trying to send me there alone for years now. Claims it’s half the reason he built me without a killswitch in the first place.” Her eyes, which were startlingly human-like along with being the only part clearly exposed from her cloak, showed equal parts disinterest, disappointment, and empathy. “But hey, it’s fine, I shut off the power relays connecting him to the solar panel systems earlier, so if we don’t make it back he’ll die too!” she said while scruffing up Rain’s hair in an unusual attempt to lighten the mood.

Laughing in an uneasy terror as his arms tried to reach behind him to confirm her threat, Manchester briefed them in the most long-winded way one could. “Ye see the photo there laddie? That'd be the lab, more than half a millennium in disuse, bit ye kin bet yerself a piece o’ stuffin' that the data ye want is ‘n it! Only trouble is what ye see around it there, all tha’ silly water nonsense ye know. Tis a wee bit… uncooperative.” As he said this, Usu, despite his lack of formal sign language training, was rather sure he saw one of the chin-hands mimic a slit throat and another slap an invisible knee in laughter.

Encouraging.

“The Hatchery, as it was called in its day, was wee more than an electronic part parade tae the public, but I'd bet mah independence the lassie there wasn't just born there, she wis conceived.” Lurching ever closer with each sentence. “Anything ye fin' there, be it designs or pieces o' her kin, could save her.”

Silently observing until then, Modbot spoke up. “I’ll go with you Bunbun. I mean, I’ve got nothing better to do, and Blimey that place is probably in need of a serious cleaning!” he proclaimed while shying away from outright admittance, but edging close enough to impress his dangling nemesis, who then promptly chopped off the extra attachment from his crotch with a swift stroke from a random arm.

“Bastards ‘ll probablae need me t'fix the door eventually anywae.” Manchester thereby unburdened Modbot for whatever lay in wait, or perhaps just took the opportunity to chop his not-so-proverbial knob off. Probably the latter.

Now knobless, Modbot swung Usu around his back so he sat rather snugly between his incineration module and the rest of himself. Mercury was already piggybacking Rain, who was still waning her way out of grand sobbetry, when she gave Usu the sort of wink only someone who has kidnapped you and tried to sell of your body parts can give, and she gave it well. Winks be done, she left little time to waste, leaping out of what was presumably once upon a time a one-way entrance. By the time Modbot had used his extensive set of transversal skills to climb the ladder out, barely an echo could be seen or heard of them, already atop a great boundary and tearing away at any form of flooring that happened to be cursed enough to lay in Mercury’s path.