8.
The weapon seethed and prematurely halted. Had I not made it behind Sid’s hulking form, it would’ve fried me next. He turned to see what had thrown the canister just as I slipped through his legs. He began to shoot at the grass around his feet, suspecting I was still there. I backed away very slowly while remaining against the house.
Vanessa: Welp, we gave it our best shot. As you may recall, you pay for the attempt, not the success. See you back at the car.
Me: I’m on the property. I’ll be needing your help getting out of here once I’m through.
Vanessa: Um, EXCUSE ME? On the property????? R u fn kidding RN!?
I didn’t know what fn or RN meant, and I understood her frustration, but it couldn’t be helped. I tried to reassure her with the fact that Sid couldn’t see me and I was no longer in the sightlines of The Disassembler.
Vanessa hadn’t liked that answer. While Sid continued to fire randomly at the ground and the surveillance fleet patrolled the surrounding yard–far too high up to see me–she cursed me and my relatives, then threatened to permanently ban me from DDU, sue me for damages, hack everything I owned, have me followed and hounded by collectors, have my reputation destroyed and my information doxxed on every platform.
I apologized and reminded her I was 85… so most of that stuff didn’t really apply.
Vanessa: After this we are OVER!
Me: Totally fair. Sorry again.
Vanessa: I might be a while scrounging up another mob of scouts. Go hide and STAY PUT. If anything happens to that cloak I’ll hire a witch to curse you in your next life.
I said I would… then I took up a rock I’d found next to the house. I crept in on Sid as he was reloading. He was struggling to replace the clip, with jittery hands and sweat pouring down his face. He abruptly stopped and punched a hole in his front door, then tried again. I was ten feet away when he’d put the clip in place.
I took a deep breath and wound back my arm.
I wasn’t exactly sure what I was I hoping to accomplish here. Pain? Brain damage? Tit-for-tat?
This prick had derailed Lisa’s entire weekend over a stupid sword. Worse yet, if I didn’t do something, she certainly would, and the odds of that going well were not in her favor.
It seemed a bit unfair pegging a blind man with a rock. The old me would have looked for a nobler way, something he could report to his friends without feeling ashamed. I guess that’s a perk of outliving most everyone you cared about.
I hurled the rock directly into his crotch.
I expected there to be this big convulsion and cry of agony, but he merely grunted and fell over, curled and writhing around the site of impact–no doubt in a great deal of pain. The handgun had tumbled into the grass, handle forward, as if in offering.
I crawled over snatched it up in my manipulator. My controller glove’s haptic response led me to believe I was handling a real, live gun in my actual hand. It was my first time.
Patrick waltzed in and froze, spilling hot tea on the floor. “Oh my God, Tom–what are you doing?”
I saw the Hi-Def screen from a fresh perspective. Yes, the Beetle was pointing a loaded gun at this man’s head, who was folded in a fetal position in his own yard. It looked pretty bad.
9.
I’d have happily explained myself, but the surveillance fleet spotted this floating gun pointed at their owner and swooped down to rectify that. They moved in so quick, I didn’t have time to drop the weapon and keep out of range, so the closest picked me up momentarily until I shot its legs off, landed, and fled into Sid’s house.
Patrick stormed out, wordless.
I ran down the hall and into the first bathroom I found. If I was pressed to describe what I saw of the interior, I’d say it was woody and rustic, like a log cabin for a person who’s never actually been in a log cabin, or perhaps just wanted a great deal more space. At the end of the hall was a great room of exposed rafters, its walls adorned with swords and animal heads, a bearskin rug pinned down by a strange looking coffee table, half wood, half bone. I cut into the bathroom, planning to douse the handgun in the sink to make it inoperable.
Then I remembered the super-absorbent beads I’d dumped down the sewer to clog Sid’s piping. A sprinkling of them laid in the sink’s basin, pushing up from drain of the tub, sparkling in the bottom of the commode. Call it my senior moment.
I heard the door open and close just as I’d stashed the gun behind a wall of toilet paper rolls under the sink.
Out in the hall I heard him limping–ka thud, ka thud–as I carefully climbed the Beetle up the wall and suctioned its feet to the ceiling. When he walked past, I’d hoped to quickly slip out, make for the back yard under the trees, or perhaps find shelter beneath the patio, stay out of Sid’s way and wait for reinforcements like Vanessa had instructed me to.
As he proceeded down the hall, I heard doors slamming, first mine, then another, another, another. Then down the hall came the grating sound of something being dragged, perhaps that wood and bone table. Obstructing the front door to keep me there.
Part of me wanted to hold on to the gun. Not that I wanted to use it, but I didn’t see any other way I’d be leaving here in one piece to return Vanessa’s No-See Cloak.
After that, I kept hearing random crashes, the settling of debris, and the return of his heavy footsteps on the wood floor. It sounded like he was breaking his own stuff, probably in search of me, but maybe also as a result of that Unpredictable Explosive Disorder. He began to yell amidst the crashes, no so much in words as vocal spasms, like he’d reverted into some prehistoric caveman, afflicted with senseless rage. I guess it was a win for me, but it didn’t quite feel that way. I sized up the little window above the tub, thinking I might be able to squeeze the Beetle through it if I left behind the manipulators… and then it hit me.
If Sid caught the Beetle, how hard would it be for him to trace it back to me? Sure, the Beetle was old, but I’d purchased it new, and I had a dim recollection of registering it in case it was lost. As for the manipulators and the external battery, both I’d recently purchased. No doubt they had their own serial codes and with enough digging, they could be traced to me as well. To my home address. By an angry, hulking man with a sword fetish.
There was a period of silence, then Sid opened the bathroom door.
He was huffing, sort of dragging one leg, his bathrobe torn and parts of him bleeding. He held a sword in each meaty hand.
Perhaps he would have begun chopping at every square-foot of the room had he not seen the beads. He stared at them, flipped the lever to the faucet, watched it fill the basin and absorb into the multicolored balls, rising like leavened dough.
Then Sid turned, as if to leave. He stopped. Directly under the Beetle. Cocked his head, as if he detected some faint hum of the machine’s inner-workings. A half-minute went by, with him nearly frozen in the head-cocked position, bobbing slightly.
I believe he was having a seizure.
Staring down at close range, I recognized old wounds in the form of scars, all up and down his arms, his legs, his chest, traveling up his neck, as if he routinely rolled around in a bed of razorblades. The scar on his face was raised and keloid, irregular and bubbled out like an old, dried out polypore mushroom.
Sid clutched the doorframe and shook his head.
The buzz of a flier mob swelled overhead.
10.
Me: Turn back! Abort! I’m inside the house!
Vanessa: WHAT??? What the f happened?! Am nowhere close to u!!!!!!
Amidst The Disassembler’s sizzles and pops, we heard the woop-woop of Enforcement Drones.
“Sidney Langley, disengage your energy weapon and come out with your hands in the air.”
Sid turned off the sink and limped out, the sound of his footsteps swallowed in Enforcement mob’s buzz.
I crept down the wall and saw the wood and bone table whiz by the doorway, heard it shatter on the other side of the house. When I peeked out into the hall, Sid was clad in ominous body armor, shouldering what appeared to be a small bazooka. He ripped the broken door off its hinges and threw it behind him, missing me by an inch.
I followed him out as some larger Disassembler from who knows where turned Sid’s Disassembler to dust, and cut a hole through the house, burning a long, black trench into his yard. Sid wasn’t deterred.
A mob of Enforcement Drones, on the order I’d never seen before except on television shows, descended upon him as he blasted away.
I fled like a coward as they bombarded him with military grade munitions, the blast percussions bending the trees as they demolished the house and the yard, kicking up a plume of debris, still visible when I turned to look from the opposite end of the park.
Vanessa had been spamming me with questions until I told her I was okay and waiting in the parking lot.
I told her what had happened, fibbing a little about the rock throwing part, painting it more as self defense. She said I was lucky to have gotten out of the house before it came down, and that the police were probably called because of the gunshots, which aren’t tolerated in a rich neighborhood, no matter what a mob of drones are up to. The Disassembler wasn’t strictly legal either, and that combined with Sid’s criminal record was justification for the Enforcement fleet.
“Never speak of this,” she muttered, and reclaimed her No-See Cloak.
“I’m just glad the Disassembler didn’t fire at the cloak.”
“Me too. You would’ve owed a lot of money.”
“And something really bad might’ve transpired.”
“Yeah, like a spontaneous black hole.”
“Is it spontaneous if we know the cause?”
“Shut up. I need to go. In regards to drone distraction services, you’re cut off, but maybe I would consider offering my other services so long as you don’t fall behind on your payments.”
Vanessa handed me her business card, which looked like–and probably doubled as–a ninja star. Its front was a hologram, projecting an assortment of distinct faces, depending on the angle it was held. One was the bald, middle-aged man with acne scars. Besides drone distraction, there was a long list of services, including hacking, life coaching, and hospice counseling.
“I’ll call you when I’m dying.”
“We’ll see. Nothing I offer is cheap.”
And she was gone.
11.
I wish it had ended there.
What a mess I was after that, and I hadn’t even told Lisa yet.
I was sleeping poorly, waking up to the slightest sound. When I did sleep, I had nightmares. Sid was in all of them, his armor riddled with bullet holes and singed from energy blasts, his face even more ravaged. There was no screen between us, no Beetle fighting on my behalf, no No-See Cloak to hide behind, no witnesses. Most were too gruesome to tell here, involving rope and a creative use of swords with me pleading for him to end it. By morning my sheets were soaked, my voice hoarse.
Friday rolled around and Lisa came over. I was in no state to tell lies or even pad the story. We had switched roles. I was the sobbing mess while she listened, only there was no comforting or sympathy. We both knew this wasn’t what she wanted, and I’d betrayed her by lying to her face. I was hoping for a slap, a yelling, a threat to go the police, but she simply said that I needed to find someone else to clean the house and left. Patrick stopped talking to me also, which was so unusual I couldn’t bear to go outside, and when I did it was never into my back yard.
The nightmares continued, probably because I felt so guilty.
I really truly whole-heartedly absolutely considered professional help. But I’m 85 and I’ve never talked to a counselor before. I was too worried there was so much crap I’d have to wade through before ever getting to Sid that I would die there in the office. I know, I know, I’m a stubborn old turd.
Gradually I found my own therapy in mushroom foraging. I had the Beetle’s wings repaired and installed some armor, just in case I ran into any more angry mourners. I became a bit obsessive. I drove out of state, into warmer climates and up into the mountains, sent the Beetle deep into uninhabited stretches of forest, down into caves, onto treacherous cliffs, all in pursuit of rare mushrooms. I dehydrated and ground up the medicinal ones, sliced and fried the gourmet ones. I made a Gist account and uploaded mushroom content. People seemed to like it.
Then one evening, my power went out. It was late and I was in bed. Before I would’ve just thrown another blanket over me and called it a night, but I knew there’d be no chance of sleeping until I checked it out. I parted the blinds and saw the lights were still on in the houses across the street, so I got dressed and went into my bathroom, where I keep a flashlight. When I flipped it on, I saw a stream of multicolored beads pushing themselves up the drain in my sink.
Locking the door and calling the police would have been the reasonable course of action, but it seemed a little late to go back to acting reasonable.
I left Lisa SureFire Facemail. I fully apologized and gave her my love. It was a bit sappy.
I donned my controller gloves and woke the Beetle. It was charging in the back yard.
There was a good chance Sid had already found it and torn it apart.
Don’t feel too bad. I’m quite old.