*Chapter Nine: A-head*
I kept my hands in my pockets and watched from a respectful distance as Jeff carefully stepped into the pond, making sure her feet wouldn't suffer the same effects that mine had; and then pushed through the semi-liquid to immerse herself. After a reasonably short time, she stepped right back out, looking much the same - but with many subtle differences. She was sleeker, more streamlined - and smiling. She bent her torso forward, backward, all around; broke straight into a gallop and bounded around us, laughing.
After Sarah had repeated the process, and the two of them were quite literally rolling in the grass, I let myself smile a bit.
Joe wandered my way. "I'm surprised the Quebeckers convinced the spirits to do that."
I shrugged. "Maybe the spirits' minds are close enough to human that they responded to my little speech about compassion. Maybe the Quebecois have a politically rising star, and the spirits respond to that. Maybe they're testing the waters to see how well a less absolutist immigration policy does in the real world."
"They look like they're having fun. I always enjoy having four legs - I'm tempted to jump in and see if the spirits will let me join them."
"What, and leave me as the only biological bunny? However would you fulfill your job of giving my bunny-hugs?"
"With more limbs, I could probably hug you even harder. Or maybe the spirits would let me have another me try their shape out."
"Well, if you're going to, you should do it soon. I plan on rolling Munchkin out of here in, oh, ten minutes or so."
"Why the rush? Have somewhere to be?"
"Let's see - the robo-fac is breaking down and I don't know how long it'll keep working, or if I can fix it; I've got piles of warning signs to drop off on the roads leading to Buffalo; I've got an infestation of snake-oids to neutralize, which may require tweaking the paragliders into crop dusters; Joe One still hasn't come back, so I should check in on what he's been up to; I've got heliograph stations to drop off, squiddies to work out the equivalent of a tax system for, and that's not even starting to get into interacting with groups of humans. Oh, and I should probably drop those three off somewhere along the way, assuming they're not going to be living here."
"That's a lot of things to do. Are you sure you can-"
Joe was interrupted as one of the blue foxtaurs practically skidded to a halt in front of us, immediately followed by the other. I noticed that their scent was at least as strong as ever, though even that odor had improved. I also tried to pretend that their fur made an adequate substitute for clothing for preserving their modesty, or at least that we were all part of a culture in which naturism was an unremarkable lifestyle choice.
"Did you say you're sending us away?" asked the first one, who then let her tongue hang out to pant a bit.
"Well," I shrugged, "Not exactly. If you want a ride, I'll be heading out soon, is all."
The two of them looked at each other, tails wagging. The second one said, "Lady asks if /we/ want a ride."
The first said back, "Lady is very silly."
The pair of them both took a step closer to me - and after a very confused few seconds, I found myself sitting on the back of one, holding onto her frontal anatomy to keep myself from getting flung off as the pair ran through the grass.
Once I managed to collect my wits, I snorted, rolled my eyes - and let them have their fun.
I could come up with a very rational and proper excuse for why, a few minutes after I was back on my own two feet, I came out of Munchkin bearing more than enough water-firing weaponry to outfit the whole gang, introducing the activity by yelling my head off and plastering the blue-furred twins with a water balloon each, before letting them 'steal' the various water-guns from me... maybe something about trust-rebuilding exercises or the fact that I was riding high after making my number go up to ten or that it really was a hot and sunny day that the water nicely helped us all cool down from... but why lie?
(Of course I cheated - I kept the bun-bots in reserve as a firing line in case Bear Joe felt grumpy about not joining in. When Red jumped on his back and rode after the fox-twins, I figured that was a good enough excuse to go out in a blaze of glory, let the others 'accidentally' see me lining them up on Munchkin's other side, and then chase me around to trigger my own trap onto myself.)
Once everyone was tuckered out, or at least willing to lean back and relax a bit, I said, "So, Sarah - uh, which of you is Sarah?" One raised her hand, and after a moment of thought, I pulled a white kerchief out of my pocket and tossed it to her. "To tell you apart," I explained, and she tied it around her wrist. "Anyway, I wanted to ask each of you - do you have any plans? Is there a particular place you'd like to go?"
"Plan was, hit city, grab loot, buy ticket, ship west, find Zone, change back to human. Or to anything. Now - well, still feels weird, weirdest to have big giant mouth in what feels like belly-button, but... not as bad weird."
"Still going to try to change back to human?"
Jeff spoke up, "Maybe, maybe not. Not so important now. As long as we change together, or stay together, I'm good."
"It sounds to me," I mused aloud, "that you might be at something of loose ends."
"Hunh?"
Toffee interjected, "Lady says you got no job right now. Lady prolly dancing and not getting to point and wants to offer you job."
"Er," I said expressively, "Something like that. You, too, Toffee."
Sarah's ears perked forward, and asked, "What job?"
"Well, I'm tempted to offer you the positions of official royal steeds... but more seriously, my plans require some digging up of old cities, to try and find out what happened to them. It's not quite the same as looting, but I'm pretty sure you don't need to worry about dying from poisons just from walking near the places..."
The trio looked at each other, then back at me. Sarah asked, "What's the pay?"
"That depends. What do you use for money?"
--
The answer turned out to be 'almost anything'. The good people of Erie were still American enough to measure all prices in dollars - they just didn't bother using any actual, you know, dollar bills. (Anyone who wanted those was free to find an old suburban bank and empty a vault.) Some preferred gold (or, more usually, silver), some signed and countersigned IOUs, some bartered fish or chickens - and, somehow, it seemed to work well enough, at least as far as the trio of Erieans were concerned.
"In that case," I eventually nodded, "I'm sure we can work something out. In the meantime - I started making something for you earlier, and it should be ready by now." I headed over to the Chamber of Secrets, and just in a few moments returned, with a few bundles draped over an arm. "I remember once reading that the surest way to tell an intelligent species from a non-intelligent one was... pockets." I grabbed one bundle and unfurled it, revealing a light tan safari vest. "I'm pretty sure these will fit you, without having to come up with a custom design for your other-than-human anatomy. And trust me, I know how annoying clothing is on fur, so I went with the most comfortable lining I've found so far..."
Jeff and Sarah seemed happy enough as they donned the garments, and I'll admit I was at least slightly more comfortable when they were dressed. I glanced at Toffee. "I got one for you, too, if you want." She just nodded and accepted it without even a single 'bleep'.
"Those," I said, "are gifts. "These," I opened my palm to show what was inside, "are symbols. The royal crown-and-leaves, in lapel pin form. I'll admit that it's fairly understated for a uniform - but we can always work out minor details later. The point is - when you wear these, you are showing everyone that you are in my service, under my orders, and I am ultimately responsible for your actions. I'm... /hoping/ the ideal appeals to you. If it doesn't, we can work out a more ordinary sort of employment arrangement."
Sarah asked, "Do we decide now?"
I shrugged. "You don't have to. You can take the pins without agreeing, while you think it over - just let me know before you put them on, and we can work out exactly what that will involve."
As the trio plucked the bits of metal and enamel from my hand, Red asked, "Don't I get clothes and jewels, too?"
I gave her a 'really?' expression. "If you want me to make you something else to wear, just ask. As for the pin - sorry, but you're already under orders from the Council, and it would be a conflict of interest for you to be under my orders at the same time."
"Maybe I like being conflicted."
"Taking the pin means you're not allowed to tell Bear Joe to sit on me again."
"Maybe I don't like being conflicted."
"That's what I thought."
Joe Three softly spoke up. "And me?"
"You're still under orders to hug me and all that jazz?"
"I wouldn't put it that way. Yes."
"Then no, no pin for you. Joe One, maybe - as far as I know, he's gone so far outside what he had to do that he's pretty much following his own conscience these days. Don't ask me how this is going to work once you start merging and splitting up again - I worked out my protocols for such things before I knew people like you even existed, but you're not bound by them."
"You are starting to talk fast again."
"I can live with being a bit manic. Especially after a good day like today."
--
I parked Munchkin just outside the factory's front entrance. "Now," I said to the gang, "the parking lot is supposed to have been cleaned up of toxin, but the cleanser is, uh, kind of messy, so if you really want fresh air, you can head outside, but you might prefer Munchkin's roof. More importantly, I'm going to be working on some sensitive stuff, and there are all sorts of ways things could go wrong if you came in with me, including some dangers that it would take me longer to explain than I plan on being in there for - so if you need me, just send one of the bun-bots in after me, alright? There's brownies in the food machine, water in the sink, reading material in the lab, and whatever chairs and beds you want to arrange in here. Everyone got all that?"
I got nods from everyone but Bear Joe and Wagger, so I nodded back, pulled on my utility vest (which could hold many more electronics tools than the bat-belt), and slipped into the factory.
I had a fairly simple idea I wanted to try out: When a computer starts going wonky, one of the first things to attempt is a simple hard reset, turning the power off and on. One of the problems with doing that to the factory was that whoever had designed the place had put in enough backups and redundancies to satisfy even my urges toward being Crazy Prepared. On the one hand, that might have been what had kept the place in running shape until I found it; on the other hand, it made it hard to separate any given piece of computing equipment from all the direct power lines, indirect UPSes, and internal battery backups. On the gripping hand, this was an industrial site rather than a home computer, and trying to reboot anything without a manual might be impossible, so I wanted to find a relatively useless piece of computing machinery to try to power-cycle first; but, again, everything was so redundant with hardwired data connectivity that isolating a single computer wouldn't be easy.
I was elbow-deep in cables behind what I was fairly sure was some sort of rackmount server, Gofer-Bun holding a light over my shoulder as I tried to sort out the Gordion-esque tangle, when noises started. I looked around, but they seemed to be in some far point of the factory, so I went back to work. However, just when I'd finished identifying which cables were for power and which were for data, the machinery in the industrial-sized room I was in also came to life. Even pressing my ears down on the back of my head, I winced at the volume; deciding not to test Bun-Bun's ability to regenerate hearing loss, I put in a pair of earplugs.
The nearby printers, presses, mills, and less identifiable machinery were all whirring away madly. I couldn't really make out what they were making - or even make a good guess about what sort of product would require /all/ of them. I was /fairly/ sure that my fiddling with the cables wouldn't have triggered anything, since I hadn't started unplugging any yet. Maybe I happened to be around during a maintenance interval, or a backlogged order was just now hitting the top of the scheduler, or...
I pulled Gofer-Bun out of the way of an automated forklift, which was going fast enough that its prongs would have put the realism of her innards to the test if she hadn't moved. It was carrying a simple drill press - and, to my astonishment, dumped it into the feedstock hopper of another machine, which rapidly tore the smaller machinery into small chunks of shredded metal.
A sharp light started throwing intermittent shadows from the middle of the room. Squinting and peering between my fingers, I was just able to make out some sort of arc-welder being applied near one of the room's main support beams. A deeper squint, and a correction - being applied /to/ one of the room's main support beams.
That was /not/ any sort of standard maintenance procedure I could imagine.
I froze in place for several long seconds, as alternative courses of action raced through my mind - try to stop the self-destruction (and risk becoming feedstock), run away screaming, try to salvage whatever was most valuable...
I finally managed to move, to look at the computing machine I'd chosen. A couple of feet wide and deep, and twice that high - and, on the very bottom, caster wheels.
I made a choice. Maybe a bad one, but it was better than standing like a deer in the headlights. "Gofer-Bun," I ordered, "Unplug /all/ these cables, as fast as you can."
The thing weighed, as best as I could figure, somewhere over half a ton. Forklift-bots were racing back and forth down the main walkways. The lighting was abysmal. The roof was groaning as its supports were fed into machines that would be crushed when the place collapsed.
I was tense, dodging every random robot that came by, getting ready to abandon both computer and bun-bot to run for my life if things got one step worse, flinching at every new form of cacophony that made it through my earplugs, trying to keep my eyes open for any clue about /what/ was going on...
... and abruptly, we pushed through the door to the lobby section, where all was perfectly calm and peaceful.
Mostly.
From another entrance to the factory floor, I saw a forklift-bot drop off a pallet, carrying a pile of shiny metal things. Jeff calmly stepped over, started scooping them into bags, and slung them over Sarah's back. She staggered a little under the weight, then started trotting to the entrance; Toffee was just coming back, carrying empty bags.
Behind me, the door opened again - and the harsh light of a welder announced the doorframe itself was now being taken apart. The trio looked up at the light, squinting in my direction.
I gritted my teeth, consciously controlling as much of my body's movements as I could. "You three," I said, without elaboration. "Help me get this aboard Munchkin," I tapped the top of what I hoped was a server. "As gentle as possible, but as fast as possible." There was a great grinding, groaning, rumbling noise, and a cloud of dust billowed into the lobby, turning the fractalline decorations into mere oddly-shaped lumps. "Emphasis on /fast/." I tried not to breathe in until I'd pulled a filter mask from my vest.
Outside - another welder thing had started on a lamp-post. With five bodies, several of them with non-human advantages in leverage or strength, it was a lot easier to roll the computer to one of Munchkin's airlocks, and up and through.
"Get aboard," I stated.
Toffee declared, "But there's more-"
"Get aboard," I repeated, "or be left behind. Argue later."
They got.
Once they, and Gofer-Bun, and I were all aboard, and I'd closed the door, I called out, "Munchkin: Bug-out, bug-out, bug-out." Without any further commands, the vehicle started running through the pre-arranged emergency escape sequence, heading at maximum speed to a location at least one klick distant. The acceleration knocked everybody onto the floor. Or, in Jeff's case, onto one of several piles of shiny metal things.
I'd known to brace myself, so I was still standing. I reached down and picked up one of the shinies: it was the size and shape of a credit card, made of a silvery metal which the embossed letters claimed (in Free Press letters) to be silver. Specifically, three point five zero cubic centimeters of silver (at twenty degrees Celsius), massing thirty-six point seven grams, or one point one eight troy ounces. The crown and leaves were drawn with etching. On the other side were my own profile and name (in classic English letters).
I picked up one from another pile. Titanium, fifteen point seven grams. I wiped my glasses free of dust, and squinted - I could make out nickel, copper, aluminium, lead, bronze, and there were more piles I couldn't see from where I was standing.
"By any chance," I said, as various species pulled themselves onto various forms of legs, "Is the explanation for what I am seeing that you noticed the factory self-destructing, and so you decided to... extract as much metal as you could?"
The foxtaurs glanced at each other, but Toffee just shook her head. "No, ma'am."
"Ah, I'm a 'ma'am' now. I thought that was a term given to people you respected."
Sarah spoke up, "We /do/ respec' you, Lady-ma'am."
"Very well. Then please. Explain what happened."
Toffee took a step forward. "Well, you see, it was like this-"
I cleared my throat. "And please," I added, "respect me enough to skip the more obvious lies, and the ones that I can disprove by looking at camera recordings."
Toffee said, "Oh. Um - well, the front part didn't /look/ dangerous, and Joe Three said she'd been there, so we went and looked around. I saw something asking me what I wanted, and I said 'money' - and, well, piles of it started-."
She broke off as Munchkin skipped a half-step forward, sending us all to the floor.
Jeff, wide-eyed, asked, "What was /that/?"
I called up a virtual window of a rear view. "At a guess," I commented, "given the lack of flame - possibly a compressed-air tank blowing. Or maybe a large section of roof." I tried taking a deep breath, and letting it out. "Well," I said, as steadily as I could manage, "I suppose that means I'm going to need to adjust most of my future plans. And re-evaluate the decisions I made leading up to this one, so that I never have to kick myself and say 'I should have seen that coming'. ... I'm suddenly thinking of the bun-bot I left manning the heliograph on the roof. It's a bit of a long-shot, but I'm going to try relaying a message to the university tower and back to tell her to abandon her post. Be a bit tricky at this speed - don't want to lose another bun-bot to a tree-branch here. Gofer-Bun, retrieve heliograph."
As I started fiddling with one of the roof accesses, Sarah whispered, "There was - is - somebody still there?"
"Just a bun-bot," I said. "They look like me, and now there's no way any more can ever be made, but they're not people. They don't think, just follow orders." I ignored her for a while as I balanced giving orders to Munchkin, helping Gofer-Bun lift the heliograph, and recalling the signals I'd need to give to get the order relayed. Assuming there was still a bun-bot left to relay any orders to.
After a few minutes, that was done, and I closed the roof hatch, cutting off the noise of the wind.
Toffee spoke up, "Look, I'm sorry-"
I interrupted without looking at her. "I doubt that."
"What?"
I continued packing away the heliograph. "I suspect you are simply at the whipped puppy stage, trying to avoid as much punishment as possible. A real apology involves an acknowledgement of how much the offender hurt the victim, and an announcement of some sort of intended behavioural change to prevent a recurrence. You are not even fully aware of the magnitude of what you have done, so how can you be truly sorry?"
Sarah asked, "Mag-ni-tude?"
"The facility that is now self-destructing, if it had not been tampered with, had the potential for building a wide array of medicines, fertilizer, farming machines, vehicles, bun-bots like Gofer-Bun here, and many more objects of true worth."
Toffee objected, "But we've /got/ worth! Just look at all this money!"
I finally looked up at her. For some reason, she took two steps back, and Joe Three slid her shoulder in front of Toffee's. "You really think this... /money/ has any value?"
"Well - yeah, of course! It's money! A little funny-looking, but silver's silver!"
I rubbed my forehead, and pinched the bridge of my nose. "Would it be safe to conclude that you have had absolutely no training in either microeconomics or macroeconomics?"
"You don't have to say it like /that/."
"Then I can only conclude that you are completely unaware of the Spanish and Portuguese empires, of four centuries ago, more or less."
"What about 'em?"
"When they discovered this continent, they decided to exploit it by bringing as much gold and silver as they could back to their homeland. They brought so much /money/ that they flooded the market, dropping the value of precious metals precipitously, ruining their economies. Before they did that, they were the most powerful empires on the planet. A couple of centuries later, they were barely also-rans. All their power, all their influence, their armies and navies, their overseas colonies - frittered away, because people grabbed hold of all the /money/ they could, instead of wealth."
"But-"
"Toffee - if you'd had all this silver before we'd met, how much of it would you have been willing to pay to be cured? Or, more to the point, how much would you have wanted to hold on to, if holding onto it meant you would die?"
"But-"
"You are, apparently, completely clueless about the true wealth that you and your greed for /money/ have destroyed. What is worse, I can't even blame you for your actions. I /assumed/ that a group of people planning on looting a city would understand the concept of areas that looked safe but were dangerous; and even if I hadn't assumed that, I could have prevented this whole mess just by locking Munchkin's doors."
Joe Three said, "Bunny, that's enough. You should go back, get some sleep-"
Wagger coughed a brief lungful of dust out, then I continued interrupting her, "I don't see why. Just because I lost the main tool I could have used to save countless lives is destroyed doesn't mean I don't still have lots to do. Warning signs to cure, the snake-oid poison to distribute, and so on."
Jeff spoke up, quietly. "What about us?"
I shrugged. "You can do whatever you like. You can get off wherever you find convenient, with as much of this /money/ as you care for. After all, you arranged for it, so if you wanted to argue the point, it probably technically counts as yours-"
Red Deer finally spoke. "Bear Joe, sit on her."
"What?" I blinked in surprise as the large creature made his way over. He looked at me, I rolled my eyes, and sat down so he didn't have to work to get me down. I grunted as his weight settled onto my lap.
Red Deer stated, "You are not thinking straight. You are angry."
"Of course I am. That doesn't mean I'm making incorrect decisions."
"How is insulting and demeaning these people, people you saved and gave new bodies to and offered to hire, a correct decision?"
"I planned on hiring them because I thought they had at least some modicum of intelligence. As that doesn't seem to be the case, I don't envisage them being of any more use than bun-bots, simple bodies following orders instead of thinking for themselves."
Red Deer crossed her arms. "Is that how you see me?"
"Of course not. You don't even follow orders."
She rolled her eyes at me. "Is that how you see /people/?"
I managed to shrug. "I have a job to do, that's more important than anything else I can think of. People who can help with that, I'll work with to the best of my ability. People who can't, are most likely wasting my time."
Joe Three sat down next to me. "What about friendship?"
"I understand for most people, it's a pretty fundamental drive. I've never been particularly good at it."
Joe waved at Sarah, calling for her to come over, pointing for her to sit down on the other side of me. Sarah seemed nervous, but stretched out there. "Put your head on her shoulder - hug her, if you like." Joe looked at me. "You saved her life. You pulled political strings I didn't even know you had to fix her body. You're telling me you don't feel /anything/ positive for her?"
Uncomfortable, I shrugged again. "About as much as I do anyone else I've met."
Joe frowned. "And she's just set you back by - years, maybe. You don't feel... betrayed? Angry at her? Want her to ask you to forgive her?"
"There's nothing to forgive. Like I said - it was my fault."
Sarah whispered, "Was our fault, too. My fault." I blinked, and tilted my head as I looked at her. She looked back. "Should have spoke, I. Should have - stayed on machine. Done your orders. I can, now?"
"Er - can what?"
"You order, I do. Anything. Everything."
I coughed slightly, then shook my head. "I... appreciate the thought. In... a few ways. But - the idea makes me uncomfortable. In all sorts of ways."
"Isn't that what you asked? Apology part is making change?"
"Sarah," I put my hand on hers, "Right now - I look at you, and I see a child, someone who would rather go exploring than heed any warnings. It would be - unfair of me to take advantage of a child's promises."
She pulled her arms away. "Am /not/ a child! Fuck Jeff often! Daily, some days!"
I felt my face heat, and I looked away. "That's - not the point. Uh - Joe, a little help here?"
Joe said, "I think you're doing fine digging your own hole."
I sighed, rubbed my forehead again. All the tenseness I'd picked up while running through the factory suddenly drained away, leaving all my limbs heavy. "It's been a long day," I stated. "I'm going to lie down. Um - maybe tell Munchkin to hit the sign drop-off spots first. Set an alarm for when we stop, to set the signs."
Joe asked, "Can that wait?"
I glared at her. "How many people do /you/ want to die, wandering into VX residue with no warning?"
"Fine, fine. But you don't have to do /everything/ yourself."
"Eh, I suppose not. I think I can tell the bun-bots what to do before I crash."
"I meant, us."
"Oh. Well, I suppose it's not that complicated of a job, and would save me the effort." I put the back of my hand to my mouth to hide a yawn. "Bear Joe, you joining me?"
As my life-sized teddy and I headed back to our usual mattress, my bunny ears overheard Jeff ask, "She fucks him?"
Red answered, "Not yet, anyway. Just sleeps beside him. I don't think she does anything but sleep, with anyone."
I called back, "I can still hear you, you know."
Red called right back, "I know!"
I rolled my eyes, grunted, and flopped into bed.
