Bandwagon

by Andrew Fish

shook his head. ‘Lube burns far too well for that,’ he said.

  It was dark by the time the robots emerged onto the street and Riff had to concentrate to examine the card that Emil had given him.

  ‘Where is it again?’ Ben asked him.

  ‘Reading Street,’ said Riff. ‘Have you come across it?’

  ‘All I know is that it’s in the posher end of town – must be an expensive hotel.’

  ‘Feels odd not to be going back to the store,’ said Keys. ‘Even odder not to have Vid with us.’

  Riff nodded and put an arm around his friend. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘but sometimes you can’t go back to where you were. You just have to carry on from where you are.’

  Keys nodded and the group moved along Luke Street at a steady pace. The lights of the main street flickered ahead of them and Ben caught glimpses of the women in their bizarre party outfits as they hurried from pub to club. As they approached the junction with Martin Street, a group of youths hurried out to meet them. Although it was dark, Ben recognised them as the ones who had been terrorising the binbots when he’d first come this way what seemed like an eternity ago.

  ‘It’s them,’ the ringleader said. ‘I tell you it’s them.’

  Ben stepped forwards, putting himself between the robots and the youths. ‘What do you want?’ he asked levelly.

  ‘Are you guys in that band?’ the youth asked him.

  This threw Ben momentarily, but he recovered quickly. ‘Which band?’ he asked.

  ‘Blood and Oil.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ben confirmed, wondering where the questioning was leading.

  ‘Are those the robots from the band too?’ the youth asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Ben repeated.

  ‘Can we get your autographs?’

  There was a momentary pause as Ben’s brain checked that his ears were working correctly and then he took the proffered pen and pad, signed and passed it around the group. Fame, it appeared, could change everything.

  The next morning was clear and warm. The sun peered over the streets of Ezra, glinting on the polished metal of the army of robots as they waged a continuous war on the garbage and grime that, if left unchecked, would constitute a plague of a most unpopular kind. It shone on the luxury hotel where Blood and Oil had spent the night of their triumphant return to the city and where, even now, a maid was sizing up the bedsheets and wondering if she could convince the fans that the robots had slept on them or whether she should simply cut them into squares and claim that they had all come from Ben’s bed. It shone on a low, white wall outside The Turret, where a robot was whistling as he applied a fresh coat of white paint to the latest graffiti, carefully avoiding the autographs that had been left by Vid and Keys a few months previously. As he painted, another piece of writing caught his eye. Printed in a neat Data 50 font and carefully lined up against the edge of the wall was a single simple line.

  ‘Vid Is Still Online.’

  About the Author

  Andrew Fish has been writing for over a decade. Much of that time has been spent with the tribulations of getting one book, Erasmus Hobart and the Golden Arrow, published. This was achieved for the second time in 2012, when Harper Collins issued it for eBooks on their Authonomy imprint. Bandwagon is his previous book, self-published in 2003 but then somewhat neglected. It has been remastered and reissued as a gift to the masses. It is the author's fondest hope that one day people might actually read it.