Dinosaur Marshmallows

       Rad storms peeled across the desert.  Sheafs of old metal—big, red-painted ads for Blue Panda Cigarettes, Misericord Stilettos, The Leassin X-9000—tumbled on between the dead skyscrapers, bounding off the broken windows and rusting beams.  Somewhere within the dusted carcass of a shopping mall, You Are My Dream by Phyllis Kenny droned on old speakers.  A plastic bag bustled down the street; an automated taxi rolled lazily through the gutter.  Through the green-stained winds and their uranium-laden lightning fronts, the sun beamed happy and endless.  Its light reflected off the thousand plasteel satellites floating above the once-building buttes.  

            Billy wheeled slowly down the way, his motors jingling uncomfortably in his undercarriage.  Red-and-blue paint chipping along the sides of his cage, Billy stopped and observed himself in a scratched window.  Inside, watches and jewelry sat on velvet beds.  His camera-eye apertured down.  In some other life, he was a tall, dark-haired man with gleaming teeth and a suit that never dripped oil.  He’d be adjusting his cool-blue diamond watch before dinner when his wife would walk in—all red-headed and beaming.  She’d be in her ruby dress and kiss him on the cheek.  Then they’d hit the town—nothing special, just down the grocery mall where they’d get a little auto-cart just like him.  ‘William,’ his wife would say, ‘we should get the cereal with the dinosaur marshmallows tonight.’

            Buckshot blew the window into a billion little stars.  Spinning around, Billy scanned the street.  His sensors were made to detect shoppers and static soup-displays, picking up anything else was a challenge.  Pushing his little Best-Shop CPU to the max, he picked out a muto-bandit crouching behind a mail box.  Billy started, gears grinding for a moment.  He, turning, wheeled up the hill.  Barking something Billy hadn’t been programmed to understand, the muto-bandit chased after.  Half-twin dangling by tendrils of plasticine flesh, the once-shopper whooped and hollered, blasting off more shot from a crude bespoke made from a bus’s exhaust pipe.  A pellet of lead streaked over Billy’s handle, scrapping the stegosaurus sticker a little girl had put there six-hundred years prior.  Billy squeaked.  His camera blinked between objects.  Sedan, corpse, warhead, mailbox, truck, warhead, pothole…

            Wheel catching in the fossilized remains of some thirty-foot-tall bio-terror the USP Government had built to level buildings, Billy flipped.  Axles spinning wildly, he landed on his side and screeched to a halt.

            The muto-bandit approached, mouth twisting into something like a smile.  Its three eyes lulled around stupidly; its half-twin screeched.  

            This was it, then.  Billy’d be ripped for parts, his cage used as a wasteland chariot and his circuit board resolved to an ornamental codpiece.  Gyroscopic stabilizers shakily turning his camera to watch the oncoming doom, Billy diverted all power to his sideways motors and swayed like an upturned turtle.  The muto-bandit drew nigh; Billy shut off his camera.

            In some other life, he was checking the time on his cool-blue diamond watch.  Seven-thirty: almost time for bed.  Real bed, not just docking into a bent power-jack.  His wife would kiss him on the cheek and hand him a bowl of dino-marshmallow cereal—they’d bought the Best Shop brand.  It had the best marshmallow-to-cereal ratio and was part of a balanced breakfast.  They’d kiss under the light of a neo-tungsten chandelier while re-runs of Something Special played on the holo-tube.  At last, they-

SHRKA-THOOM!

            Billy’s camera shot on in time to watch the remnants of the muto-bandit’s head explode.  A 50mm grenade had just been lobbed into the back of the poor bastard’s cranium; the shock pushed Billy down the street.  Using the explosion’s momentum, Billy shifted his motos into overdrive, managed to shift his gyro-servos, and flipped back up to his wheels.

            A cloud of soot and red mist hung around the street.  When it parted, the gargling, bubbling form of the muto-bandit swayed and tipped over, hands still clenching the gun and tongue lapping headlessly at the asphalt.  Billy, shaking, shifted his camera upwards, scanning the parting smoke.  A trio of hi-beam blue lights coursed down; a still-hot barrel smoked beneath a servo-arm gatling laser.  Rad storm parting over the buildings, the sun shone down, and bathed his savior in holy light.

            She was beautiful.  

            Tall, well-oiled, and rustless.  Her chicken-leg struts purred with hydraulic anticipation, and her ovular, government-mandated frame of white plasteel was draped with a fine necklace of fleshless raiders, strung together with wire that glistened like gold.  Her egg-like head—suspended on a slender neck of fine-tuned, interlaced black—bobbed smartly above the smoke, capped in a splash of brilliant red where the muto-bandit’s brains had landed.  Her gatling gun sat elegantly below her frame, its silver screws glistening like diamonds.  Till-3 MK IV was stenciled just below her neck.

            Billy’s camera apertured wider than it’d ever been.

            Still shaking, he wheeled towards her.

            She, snapping her optics down, aimed her gun at Billy and readied to shoot.

            Billy froze.  His CPU misfired and his camera went blank for a moment.

            When he’d booted back up, Till-3 was marching away.

            Billy rushed after her, motors grinding along to the hum of her servos.

            For the first dozen or so miles he followed, Till-3 seemed unsure.  A few times she’d ready her gatling to warn him off.  Learning after a time that doing so would not dissuade the little auto-cart, she allowed him to follow.

            They trudged on through the crypt-streets of yester years, observing the mutated creatures that had once been their masters.  Rummaging through old things—dilapidated busses and heaps of polished skulls—Billy found a fossilized box of dino marshmallow cereal.  Till-3 didn’t seem to care much; Billy pushed it along with them all the same.  

            A gunfight between rad factions had broken out in the main plaza of an indoor mega-mall.  Goons with three eyes and crude augments shot off junk weapons between racks of lingerie and still-water fountains littered with pennies.  Billy and Till-3 passed between it, micro rockets and viscera erupting overhead like little pop-fireworks at a wedding reception.  A hydro ganger in bright blue BDSM gear tried to use Billy for cover.  Without a second thought, Till-3 crushed the ganger underfoot, sharp toes shearing flesh from the little man, stripping him down to bone and waggling eyes.  Other gangers greeted her with molotovs and laz-blasts.  Till-3 danced cooly between them, her ruby bandit dress swishing slowly to the rhythm of gunfire.  Her trio of eye-lights twinkling, she sent a scorching blast of energy through a ganger’s chest.  Gulping, his heart drooped out through the hole and he followed it to the floor, his blood sparkling slow-mo beside the gracious jewel-screws of Till-3’s neck.  A suicide-nuker jumped at Till-3—she swatted him away with her gun arm.  Flying through the dusty glass ceiling far above, he exploded.  Radiated fire sparkled in a dozen places, like floating bursts of happy memories lit up along a microchip.  Chunks of human rained from the explosion.  Chunks of human and flaming glass.  Billy, studying the shapes, saw blazing dinosaurs galloping through the daylight.  They swam around Till-3 as she spun like a starlight ballerina, pumping round after round of lead into the remaining gangers.  

            Night came with a heart-shaped mushroom cloud.  Till-3, her solar-sensitive plasteel grown cold in the dusk, folded her legs and lay along the precipice of an ancient overpass.  Still pushing the box of cereal, Billy stopped there too.  His cage creaked in a post-nuclear wind, half-busted axles grinding softly.  Whatever warhead had been triggered out in the distance, it had set fire to the desert.  The flames lapped up and reflected off the dead satellites, glittering like the myriad lights of a reasonably-priced bistro.  Billy rocked back and forth.  Till-3 shot her eyes towards him.  Billy stopped moving.  In the city behind them, the sounds of Phyllis Kenny cycled on and on, boosted by his vibrational detectors.  He looked up.  Fresh starlight was kissing the crown of dried gore atop Till-3’s head.  Billy wondered if she’d lean down and kiss his cheek—Billy supposed he didn’t have one.  He looked down.  In some other life he’d be noting how late it’d gotten after checking his cool-blue diamond watch.  Till-3, in her pretty, ruby dress, would smile.  She’d say, ‘Hold me, William, and let us share this cereal beneath the light of the moon.”

            Billy started, cybernetic reverie paused.  Till-3 had gone into rest mode, her body leaned lightly against his.  Gazing up at the night sky, Billy let his own CPU drift into a slow rest.

            Billy wasn’t sure where Till-3 intended on going, but what did it matter?  They passed together across the long marshes where Dayton had once sat—now haunted by binary-ghosts and the tech-priests of silly human cults.  The cultists tried to take Till-3 for scrap.  She painted them across the Dayton Recreational Center.

            Following Till-3, Billy saw so many things he’d never dreamt of.  Great, dusty once-seas where towering cyber-beasts walked slow and sad, dragging whole haulers with them.  Over ancient bridges spanning green-glowing seas; under bunkers where digi-vampires argued over which re-runs of Something Special to watch.  With Till-3’s help, Billy had put the cereal box in his basket—they carried the many treasures of their honeymoon in him now.  An artisanal toilet lid, a mutant’s skull, a little nuclear warhead overturned and filled up with cacti and muti-flowers.  Till-3 blasted away anything that got in their way, Billy followed.  It was a perfect, symbiotic relationship.      

            The sun peered down hot and green-tinged through an apocalyptic haze.  Billy and Till-3 skirted around a mire of bubbling waste.  It glowed toxic blue in the gloomy midday.  Overhead, a lone satellite swayed kite-like at a very low orbit.  Till-3 kept her optics trained on the floating plasteel fossil.  Much more concerned by a billboard nearby advertising ‘Happy Living in Green Oaks!’, Billy wheeled unevenly at her side.  The couple on the billboard swung a smiling child between them, a helper bot floating just behind.  It was the kind of family Billy had no doubt enjoyed cool-blue diamond watches and dino-marshmallow cereal.  He imagined he and Till-3 swinging a child of their own.  Or, not swinging, probably—maybe he could drive the child around in his basket.  The child would have his thermal sensors and her optics—it’d like facts about space and eat dino-marshmallow cereal.  Billy, so enraptured by his vision of the future, didn’t see the satellite as it finally gave up and plummeted toward him.

            Till-3, at least, did see it.

            To spare Billy the shame of being squashed into disorganized bits, Till-3 butted him out of the way.

            Billy snaped-to as he was pushed and watched flaming plasteel smash into Till-3’s frame.  Disoriented, she stumbled to the side and into the mire of sludge.  Immediately, her leg hydraulics began to corrode.  She let out a long, digitized screech.  

            CPU flickering under the stress, Billy reeled around and back and forth and to and fro, searching for anything that he could use to save her.  

            Till-3 slumped down into the glowing muck, optics growing cold and dim.  The corrosion was up to her knees.  Her struts were a fine, shiny steel meant for speed, not intended to protect her from such gunk.  Billy, however—his under-carriage at least—was design from crude, heavy-duty, industrial slag.  Without a second thought, he raced into the mire.  Till-3 screeched again.  As he plunged, Billy’s camera popped and went black, goop leaking in to fry the ancient circuits inside.  Still, his motors pushed on.  His cage melted away in a blink, taking the trinkets he and Till-3 had kept, burning away the stegosaurus sticker on his handle.  With little else than his thermal sensors left, Billy aligned himself behind Till-3.  Digging his wheels into the muck, Billy gave his motors everything he had. 

            Till-3 screeched.

            Billy—his world dark—pushed up.

            A hydraulic line exploded on Till-3’s upper strut.

            Billy’s front axle snapped—his rear pushed on.

            In all, it took twelve minutes for him to finally push Till-3 out from the muck.  She stumbled ashore, dragging herself by her head and gatling-gun arm.  A moment later, Billy rolled slowly up to the shore.  There wasn’t much left of him.  Near the end, the toxic sludge had even started to eat away at his ancient, heavy undercarriage.  Copper motors and what was left of his sensors gleamed wetly between his broken plate.  His camera was gone—caved in and melted into a sad, drooping arc.  Only one set of tires remained, and their motor almost gave out as he rolled up.  He would have slid back into the muck, but Till-3 caught him.  Pulling him to safety with the crook of her neck, Till-3 gave out one last shriek.  She was silent, then, studying Billy with blinking optics.  After a moment of stillness, Billy moved.  It was only slight, but enough to show he was alive.  Unable to walk, Till-3 lay her head down on the toxic beach and leaned against him.  There wasn’t much left of Billy’s CPU.  What was left, thought of Till-3.

            In some other world, they’d be vacationing on a peaceful beach beneath swaying palms.  Billy, after a spoonful of cereal, would check the time on his cool-blue diamond watch.  Phyllis Kenny played on a little radio nearby.  Till-3, leaning over, would kiss him on the cheek.  Overhead, the satellites winked like the dozen lights of a reasonably-priced Italian resteraunt.