by J. I. Greco
Lock poked a fingertip between Roxanne’s breasts. “You’ve brought doom on us all for allowing this heresy, that’s all!”
Bernice walked up behind Roxanne. “The heresy of letting you join?”
“Yes,” Lock said. “And as a duly sworn Acolyte of the Sisters of No Mercy, Wasteland Coven, I can not in good faith let this offense against the imaginary gods I have pledged to hold dear stand. –Mother Superior Roxanne, I officially demand you relinquish your office, resign the coven, and seek out a cave where you shall live out the rest of your life in repentant solitude, as proscribed in accordance with our most holy and sacrosanct Tome of Speculation.”
Roxanne’s eyebrow went up. “The Tome that says you can’t be an acolyte in the first place?”
“The irony is not lost on me, nor is it relevant.” Lock turned to address the coven. “What say you all? Will you bow to the will of your so-called gods and demand this evil woman resign?”
“Ummm…” Xanadu said, speaking for all of them. “No.”
“So be it.” Lock smirked at Roxanne. “You understand you leave me no choice.”
“Okay…”
“You have corrupted the Sisters of No Mercy to the point it and you all are beyond saving. There is but one course of action left to the faithful, the faithful being me. And perhaps Brenda if she’s not doing anything else this afternoon.”
“I was gonna wash my hair,” Brenda said.
“It can wait!” Lock spun around and stormed out of the Orgy Room. “Come, Brenda, we have a religious war to prosecute!”
7
Rally The Troops?
“I’m not going to bore you with clichés, lie to you about how noble war is, that you’re doing a great service for your city-state, that future generations will remember you in song and dance. Screw that noise. Time for a little honesty. You deserve it.” High noon and Trip, hands clasped behind his back and tuxedo tails whipping behind him, paced before the Consolidated Sorta-Army of Shunk, lined up at attention in front of Shunk’s main gate. “This is, inarguably, a terribly bad idea, this impulsive, unnecessary war of mine. There is no practical reason for it. Insane, really.”
The six warbots grunted and nodded their heads in agreement. Hunt-R, standing proudly at the end of their line, hushed them to silence.
Trip kept on talking. “The tragedy of course is that I suspect, if I could remember why we’re having the war in the first place, that it could have easily been entirely avoided–and in fact probably could be called off this very moment if I were so inclined, with no face lost.”
WB–2 raised an extension-lamp hand. “Does that mean we can all go–”
“But that’s not how I roll, and frankly, I’ve got nothing better to do this weekend.” Trip stopped, and shrugged. “So, war on.”
WB-2 sagged.
“And in the continued interest of honesty, I want you all to have no doubt, this insane war of mine is going to get you killed–in all likelihood within moments of taking the field of battle. And not just because we don’t trust you enough to have given you weapons of any kind. No, it’s because the Cthulists, though they talk a good game about having forcibly evolved themselves past violence for violence’s sake, are, deep down, still human, and that human part is bloodthirsty as all fuck, or so I like to tell the children of this fine city-state when they’re making too much noise and getting on my last nerve. Like they were yesterday outside my hovel, playing stickball in the street, all laughing and yelling and carefree, and me upstairs trying to do Rox in peace. Seriously, who plays stickball at two in the afternoon?”
“Focus, Trip,” Rudy said. He was sitting on the hood of the Festering Wound, parked nearby, leaned back on his elbows and puffing at his Calabash.
“Right. Those kids will get theirs.” Trip turned back to face the warbots. “But, yep, you’re all going to be ripped to pieces.”
His head reattached, dented and bent from spending a quarter and a half as the football during the team-building exercise football match, WB-1 let out a slow, mournful whimper.
“I’d be whimpering, too, I was in your tracks.” Trip patted WB-1 on the head and started pacing again. “Because you are going to get torn apart. Just absolutely torn, in the most violent and jarring manner your limited minds can imagine, back into the crap spare parts you are built out of. Your broken metal corpses will be spread out, scattered–and violated. Oh how they’ll be violated, tentacles shoved up into crevices you didn’t even know you had and sexually assaulted in the Japanese tradition.”
WB-3’s pinchers moved around his back to cover his dorsal waste heat vent.
“The humiliation will be all the more unbearable by the fact that, being robots, you will of course remain conscious and fully aware during the ordeal, unable to look away. Yeah, it’s not gonna be fun in warbot land.” Trip stopped pacing. He put his back to the warbots and looked out at the sparse, patchy grain fields around Shunk. He sighed, lit a cig. “I do not envy you your fates.”
Trip spun around, fire in his eyes. “But never-the-less, I swear on William Shatner’s Holy Rug that any indignities visited upon you by the Cthulists will be nothing compared to what I will do to you if you don’t somehow pull a decisive and overwhelming victory out of your collective ass.”
“How the hell are we supposed to do that?” WB-5 asked.
Trip stepped up to WB-5. “I don’t know.” He stubbed his cig out on the robot’s freeze door chest. “All I know is, I’ve got a smelter and absolutely no moral or financial qualms about using it to slag each and every one of you into hot puddles of lifeless metal if you don’t win this war for me.”
WB-5 brushed the ashes from his door. “We’ll figure something out.”
“You better.” Trip backed up, clapped his hands together. “All right, let’s go show those stinking pacifist monsters just what a couple days of intensely lackadaisical training can do. –Hunt-R!”
“Warbots!” Hunt-R clanked forward. “Hup!”
The warbots groaned, and, heads bowed, fell in line behind the Wound.
“Truly inspiring,” Rudy said, sliding off the hood of the Wound as Trip walked up to the car.
Trip nodded, lit a fresh cig. “I thought so.”
“Hey, look,” Rudy said, pointing to Bernice and Roxanne walking through the main gate. “The girls showed up to send us off.”
Trip huffed. “Call that a crowd?”
“I never said crowd…”
“I swear,” Trip said, “this town keeps showing me so little respect, I’m just gonna keep getting them into wars to spite them.”
“That’ll teach ’em?”
“Damn straight.” Trip cupped his hands over his eyes and, scowling, scanned the wall of crushed, concrete-filled cars surrounding Shunk. “Vishnu’s step-daughter, where are those kids I hired to wave flags and cry patriotically?”
Roxanne slowly shook her head as the dust cloud kicked up by the Wound and the warbots marching behind it finally obscured the departing army from view. “I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to that.”
Bernice stopped waving and rested her hands atop her belly. “Seeing the men head off to war?”
“No, that I’m dating an idiot.”
Bernice sighed. “At least you didn’t marry into the family.”
“There is that.”
“Yoo-hoo! Roxanne! There you are!”
They turned to see Lock, Brenda at her heels, walking up to them through Shunk’s open main gate. Lock was back in her usual short-sleeved white tux, but underneath she’d gone full-out naughty schoolgirl: A plain white blouse open to her navel, revealing a black lace push-up bra, a blue and green plaid miniskirt, white thigh-high stockings, and knee-high, black leather laced-and-bowed kicker boots. Brenda had traded in her Sisters of No Mercy acolyte uniform for a white tux and schoolgirl get-up of her own–only her blouse was buttoned all the way to the top, and instead of kicker boots, she wore calve-hugging riding boots and jingling spurs to go wit
h the barb-tipped crop hanging at her waist. Both wore miniature carved-wood sledgehammers around their necks on leather ropes. Lock had a satchel slung under her arm and was all smiles.
Bernice growled under her breath. “Oh, what now?”
Roxanne shrugged at her and cautiously returned Lock’s smile. “Yes, here I am. We’re on speaking terms again?”
While Brenda stood back, looking sheepish and avoiding Roxanne and Bernice’s eyes, Lock walked up to Roxanne and kissed her on both cheeks. “Silly, of course we are. You’re not still upset about that little scene back at the temple, are you? That was days ago, ancient history, all forgotten.”
“I wasn’t upset to begin with… you were the one…” Roxanne took a deep breath. “Never mind. You know, you’re still welcome back with us–I know none of this can be easy for you, adjusting to your new life and everything.”
“It has been just the tiniest bit tiresome, yes,” Lock said, “not being able to simply order you people around.”
“I can… imagine?” Roxanne gave Bernice a confused glance, then turned back to Lock. “Well, then, that settles it. Before the… incident… we’d been talking about putting you through the trials to become a full Sister as early as this weekend. If you’re still interested, I’d still like you with us. You’d make a great Sister. Brenda, too.”
“Great, great,” Lock said, reaching into her satchel. “Wonderful. That’d be lovely. I’ll check my schedule and get back to you.” She pulled out a folded piece of parchment and handed it to Roxanne. “Oh, here, almost forgot. For you.”
“What’s this?” Roxanne asked, turning the parchment over in her hands. It was sealed with a glob of red wax imprinted with a design of a penis being flattened by a sledgehammer.
“An invitation to our rally,” Lock said. “Tomorrow at noon sharp in the town square.”
Bernice scowled. “What rally?”
“The rally to explain to the good people of Shunk that they really need to bring back witch burning, of course.” Lock’s smile broadened into an animal-like half smirk. “It’ll do wonders for the local economy. –You will be attending, yes?”
Roxanne broke the wax seal with her thumb and unfolded the parchment. She gave it a quick read. “I see I’m the guest of honor.”
Lock nodded. “You are. And if you could wear something with a black hat, you know, to really sell the whole ‘I’m a witch that deserves to burn’ thing, you’d really be helping me out.”
Roxanne arched an annoyed eyebrow at Lock. “Should I bring a broom?”
“Oh, could you?”
8
The Road To War
“Damn, that’s the sun, isn’t it?” WB-6 asked, whizzing along on his one wheel at the front of the line, the Festering Wound’s rear bumper just out of reach.
The warbot Consolidated Sorta-Army of Shunk had been marching–single file and double-time–behind the Wound all day and night, over shattered road, through irradiated ghost towns, infertile scrubland, glass crater-pocked DMZs, and eventually, as they entered the valley of the Cthulist enclave at what had up until a hundred years ago been the border of Pennsylvania and New York, back on roads again–freshly paved and well-maintained roads, winding through verdant fields of corn and soy bordered by dark forests of fruit-bearing trees stretching off to the mountains.
Hunt-R clanged along in the rear of the line, wearily keeping his single eye on the warbots. “Either that or a nuke on the horizon.”
“We’re not that lucky,” WB-2 said. “Must mean we’re getting close.”
“Must,” WB-4 agreed.
“That’s it, then,” WB-5 said. “Time to bug out.”
“Stow it,” Hunt-R said.
“You seriously thinking this is a good idea?” WB-5 asked.
“Of course it’s not a good idea,” Hunt-R said. “But orders are orders. Nobody’s bugging out.”
“Try and stop me.” WB-5 spun his refrigerator body around and marched for the side of the road. He stepped off the pavement and “–agghhhahhh!”
“Did I mention the inhibitors?” Hunt-R said, slowing just long enough to grab WB-5 and pull him back onto the road.
Favoring his stinging foot, WB-5 limped alongside Hunt-R. “For Shatner’s sake why do we have pain sensors?”
“Hey, has anybody thought about just walking off?” WB-1 asked, and wheeled around for the side the road.
“1, no!” WB-2 stretched to grab the stubby warbot, but her extension-lamp arms were too short and he was too quick.
WB-1’s front wheel just barely left the road before he recoiled in pain. “Ouchey!” he exclaimed, and quickly spun around, skittering back into line. “Stupid road.”
“Maybe it won’t be as bad as the Generalissimo says.” WB-3 swiveled his beta-cam eyes back at Hunt-R. “Maybe he was just psyching us out. You know, making it sound worse than it’s gonna be? So we’re pleasantly surprised.”
Hunt-R shook his head. “You guys don’t know Programmer Trip like I do. If anything, it’ll be worse than he said. He’s never met an enemy he hasn’t tragically underestimated.”
“Help me dig my inhibitor out,” WB-5 asked WB-2, opening his fridge stomach door and pointing inside.
“Won’t work,” Hunt-R said. “He had Builder Rudy put in backup inhibitors to prevent us from removing the primary inhibitors.”
WB-5 slammed his door shut. “Clever.”
Hunt-R shrugged. “Not really. He just got tired of me removing mine and taking the car out on all-night runs to the In-and-Out Taco Del Castle.”
“Yeah, never brought me back any sliders, you bastard,” Trip said directly into their heads. “Now shut up the lot of you, we’re trying to be stealthy here.”
Aaa-oooga! Aaa-oooga!
“Wake up! Emergency!” Trip fired off the Wound’s bellowing fog-horn with a twitch of his left eyebrow. “Batten down the hatches! Arm the self-destruct!”
“What? What?” Rudy came suddenly awake, throwing his hands over his ears. “We under attack?” he asked, shouting over the fog horn.
“What?” Trip twitched off the fog-horn with a smirk into the rear-view. “No. Whatever gave you that idea? We’ve got a mile yet.”
“Cool.” Rudy sat up, adjusted his leopard-print fez to cover his bald patch. “How many ‘bots did we lose to desertion?”
“None,” Trip said. He twitched and the Wound slowed and turned off the main road onto a clearly defined dirt path bisecting a field of towering corn stalks, ten feet high and topped with enormous heads of corn. He glanced in the rear-view to make sure the robots were following. “Pain sensors are awesome. –What are you doing?”
“Getting the Monopoly board,” Rudy said, reaching under his seat. “No putting it off any longer. Got to make the big battle plan, don’t we?”
Trip shrugged and lit a cig. “No need.”
“No need?” Rudy looked at Trip, all puppy-dog sad, his lower lip trembling. “You been making battle plans without me again? Dude… you know how I like making plans…”
“Come on, little bro, I wouldn’t deny you the pleasure. It’s just this time, we don’t need a plan.”
“Right.” Rudy sat up and tweaked his nipple through his tee-shirt, adjusting his THC-analogue flow from sleepy-time-maintenance-buzz-low to awake-and-putting-up-with-Trip-near-maximum. “It’s obvious we’re going to lose, and lose badly, so why waist the energy making a plan.”
“How is that obvious?”
“Our army consists of you, me, and a whole seven so-called ‘warbots’, with eight working heads and two guns between us.”
“You know, ever since you got hitched, you’ve been a real mountain of negativity.” Trip let go of the steering wheel and rubbed Rudy’s belly. “A growing mountain. What’s that wife of yours been feeding you? She likes ‘em fat, is that it?”
Rudy pushed Trip’s hands away. “Right… You know, it’s almost like you’re not taking this seriously at all–”
“I’m taking this as seriou
sly as I ever take anything. Serious-er.”
“–or there’s something going on here you’re not telling me.”
“What, you think?”
“What is it this time?”
“War’s a total sham. Me and Brad, we’re in cahoots. I show up, beat his troops soundly, and sue his dad for reparations. Split the take down the middle.”
Rudy pursed his lips and nodded. “Of course.”
“Brad needs the money to pay the dowry for his big gay wedding or some such foolishness, I wasn’t really paying attention when we worked out the plan.”
“Why would you?” Rudy asked. “And you didn’t let me in on it before now because... you’re an asshole?”
“And you can’t keep secrets. This was strictly need-to-know. Has to be believable or else Brad’s dad won’t feel inclined to pay reparations. Word gets out it’s all a set up, goodbye big cash settlement. Plus, was kinda amusing seeing you, day in and day out, not figuring it out. Disheartening, too. I really need a new, smarter sidekick.”
“Keep it up, you’ll get your wish.” Rudy plucked his Calabash and lighter from his bandolier. “So… Brad knows the war’s a sham, right?”
“Yeah, of course, why do you ask?”
Rudy lit his pipe around a smile and jogged his cleft, stubble-covered chin at the front windshield.
Trip looked out.
The corn field had given way to a vast clearing. There, shrouded in a ground-hugging, early-morning mist, was an army. A real army. Thousands of Cthulists outfitted for combat in armored battle-togas, high-powered energy rifles at the ready, and behind them, maybe a whole other thousand of what looked like trees–ambulatory, tentacled Oak trees, fifty foot tall with massive barrels jutting out from packs of steam-powered turrets on their backs.
Trip head dipped. “Vishnu’s deflated ego.”
9
Parley, With Squid
