Tagged: android

Brandita Gathered the Chapstick Tubes

  • by jenHe is a stupid fool
  • copying Mother Nature isn’t always the best approach
  • all he kept was the duffle bag
  • elbows tight against my sides
  • , and the dance begins

Tune in next time part 577    Click Here for Earlier Installments

Brandita gathered the chapstick tubes we’d been using during the Baron’s demonstration, and placed them reverently back in their ceremonial box. All the while, the Baron stared at the postcard, crossing and uncrossing his eyes, blinking one and then the other, and otherwise making a great show of squinting officiously. He is a stupid fool, I thought, at least when it comes to codes. Even with so many clues he still could not decipher the message.

Tessa tapped her foot impatiently. “Are we getting off this island, or what?”

Von Dimpleheimer sneered at her. “The man who built you should have realized that copying Mother Nature isn’t always the best approach, but it seems that when god was handing out engineering smarts, all he kept was the duffle bag.”

“Hey!” I said. “There’s no reason to be rude!”

The Baron swiveled his head to me. He arched one bushy eyebrow. “I am not insulting your lovely robot, just the man who made her. All TSS-A Units are adept cryptographers. The feature is supposed to be well-hidden, but is actually easy to access.”

He directed Tessa to stand close in front of me, arms around my waist, elbows tight against my sides. “And now,” he said, “the music starts, and the dance begins, and the TSS-A Unit’s linguistics operations are mine to exploit.” He turned the crank on his victrola. “I’ll have that postcard decoded in no time.”

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I Wandered

  • by Kenta little cumbersome for you
  • drunk and incoherent
  • into the battery on his belt
  • “I was somewhat stunned.”
  • like busted birthday balloons

Tune in next time part 136                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

I wandered the avenues and byways of Pittsburghistan as darkness gathered, too many things on my mind. Soon I was talking to myself. “Gonna be a little cumbersome for you to sort all this out, when you don’t even have a roof over your head. Better off drunk and incoherent in some back alley, not trying to solve so many mysteries at once.”

“There’s a nice alley right over there,” said a voice beside me. I jumped, literally bounded up into the air in surprise, and the dapper gentleman laughed. He inserted a wire into the battery on his belt and said, “What’s nice about the alley is it has a liquor store right at the end of it. Are you okay?”

“I was somewhat stunned.” More than that I was embarrassed to have had an audience for my solo conversation, but the stranger didn’t seem to be holding it against me.

“I’m a good listener,” he offered. “If you’ll buy me a bottle of rum you can tell me anything you like, and I won’t tell a soul.” He smiled ruefully. “Won’t remember any of it, so I couldn’t tell anybody if I wanted to.”

I self-consciously scratched my chest, the tattoo’s message squirming beneath the dense layer of curly hair under my shirt. Had this friendly man been sent by the White Faces? Their agents didn’t usually talk, but special assignments sometimes required them to. They called it “walking against the wind.”

The man smoothed the battery wire, which went up along his shirt and entered the side of his neck. Perhaps the mime cartel had built androids to bear the burden of speech.

Hoping I was just being paranoid, I said, “Not tonight. You’ll have to get someone else to supply you.” The man no longer wore a warm smile. It was replaced by a disappointedly vexed expression, like busted birthday balloons.

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