Chapter Ten
Words
I see them all around. They laugh and poke fun at me. The children ask their mothers how such a thing can walk around like it does. A thing. A monster of spare parts haphazardly sown together by some mad scientist.
Can they not see me for who I am? I am not a thing. I am not a monster. I am as alive as any man can be. I feel the world around me. I think for myself. I make my own choices. Why do they keep saying I'm not a man?
What's this? Everything is black and white now. Scratchy like some old movie. There's a man in a laboratory wearing a clean white coat. He's moving around all his machines. He's so excited, so involved with his work. Isn't that a wonderful thing? To have such joy in what he does? Everyone should be like that. That's what life is all about.
Life?
Yes. Life. I have a life. I am alive. I know I am. I can feel the blood racing through my veins. I can feel it in every fiber of my being. I am alive. I am a man.
Nothing they say can change that.
* * *
The door opened slowly. Beyond its threshold is a room bathed in darkness. Light seeps through holes in the wall. Dim, flicking light like that made from a candle. The floorboards creak and crack underfoot. The smell of the place is musty, the air choked with pollution and dust. Kino can see little through the darkness. Boxer's orkish eyes are better suited for picking out shapes in the low light.
"This is it?"
"Yeah, Grubber's place. The little shaman should be around here somewhere."
"Are you sure it's okay for us to be walking in like this."
"Grubber probably already knows we are here."
Kino touched the tip of her nose. It's tender. Her nasal passages are clogged. Every breath she takes produces an annoying little whistle. Blood has been smeared over her face from vain attempts to wipe it off.
"You know I use to have a good cure for a stuffy nose." A squeaky little voice piped out.
The voice startled Kino who drew her pistol and aimed it into the darkness. She flinched for a moment as the laser sight traced its way along the old wooden paneling finding no shape to lite on. Until a short, pale looking man stepped out into the candle light. He held a crooked staff and seemed to be favoring his left ankle. Very little of his face was visible. A long, scraggly beard hid almost everything except his nose and eyes.
"Back when in the day, I mean." He added.
Boxer grabbed the top of Kino's pistol and slowly pushed it down. "Grubber," He greeted, "You look like shit."
The little man let out a raspy cough and pointed his walking stick at the ork. "You'd look like shit too if you'd been sitting with your thumb up your ass for a day in a half wandering when Mr. Big Bad & Nasty is going to come knocking on your goddamn door and stick that thumb where it sure as hell doesn't belong!"
"You still got a mouth on you, Grubber."
The little man grinned, which was odd because his beard was so thick that his mouth wasn't visible. The firsts of his overgrown lip hair just sort of twitched. The smile did not last long. "Who's this."
"Chummer of mine. Kino, this is Grubber. Grubber, this is Kino."
"Got shit in your ears or something? I told you to come along."
"I told her I was coming alone too."
"You sure as hell don't look alone!"
"Not a good idea to move around alone these days."
"I don't like it when you bring someone I don't know! Makes me nervous."
"Sitting on the crapper makes you nervous."
"You should have listened to me!"
"You've message did not specify to come alone. Just said that you needed to have some words with me." Boxer cast his eyes to the floor for a moment, then back at Grubber. "What do you know about Trevor?"
"Didn't ask you to come alone? No, I didn't, did I? Could have sworn I did, but I asked you to come to the Stuffer Shack. So I must not have asked you to come alone. The Stuffer Shack is a public place. No, I definitely didn't ask you to come alone. If I had asked that I would not have asked to meet me at the Stuffer Shack. Ah! It all makes sense to me now. Well, no it doesn't because I wanted him to be alone. Now why did I ask him to come to the Stuffer Shack instead of here? Or even my place in the Lands?"
"Great Ghost Dance do you ever stop babbling!?" Kino blurted out. "Fine! You didn't ask him to come alone! There! Now can we get to the point, please?"
Grubber blinked, shook his head, as if to his own train of thought was still boarding at the station.
Boxer groaned. "Kino, mind waiting outside?"
"You sure?"
"Yeah, Grubber's about as erratic as a ferret on crank. I'll get more out of him alone."
"Alright, if you say so, but I'll be right outside the door. Shout if you need anything."
"Fine, go on. Scoot." Boxer gently nudged her in the direction of the door. Even though the light was dim, he could see her prop up against the wall just on the other side of the doorway and tilt her head slightly. She was listening, he had no doubt about it.
Boxer turned his attention to Grubber. "Trevor. You've message mentioned Trevor. What the hell is this about? Trevor's gone, man. I accept that."
"No! No! No! No!" Grubber waved his hands back and worth. "No! You got it wrong! Not dead, no! Not dead!"
"Not dead?!" Boxer grabbed up Grubber by his collar, lifting the little man off the ground. "What the frag do you mean he's not dead? I saw him die! Fuck, I still see his goddamn face when I look in the mirror. You've fucking with my brain, Grubber and I don't much like it."
"Ack! No fuck with mind! I'm telling you the chiptruth. No lies. It's me! Grubber! I was there too! I know what you saw. I saw it. I did! Put me down now?"
Boxer stiffened his upper lip and let Grubber go.
Grubber dusted himself off. "You saw him didn't you? The big one, of metal and plastic, no flesh, all hate, the rampager of death?"
"Tall, Dark, and Gruesome?"
"Yes. You have seen him. He came to my place. Came right in. Knocked real hard, tore my door down. No invitation. Ransacked my home. All cold and gone, his spirit poisoned with something I've never seen. But, I did see his spirit. What little there was left I knew well. Seen it before, many times, before I saw it. Yes I did. How do you know I saw it? How do you know I recognized it? Because I know. Saw it almost everyday for two years."
"Spirits? Poisoned? Speak English, Grubber."
Grubber grabbed Boxer's shirt in his gnarly hands, twisting the fabric in his clenched fists. "It was him! Trevor! I know the spirit! It was his spirit inside! Held here between not really being alive and not really being dead. Somewhere in between. I could see it! The spirit was trying to get away, but the mechanical beast held it inside."
"Trevor is Tall, Dark, and Gruesome?"
"Yes!"
"That's bullshit!"
"Not bullshit! True shit!"
"Trevor's dead!"
"Not dead, not really. There's something there that holds his spirit. Keeps it bound to the hulk that walks around."
Boxer turned away. "I'm not listening to this."
Grubber snarled his lips, making his bread ruffle. As Boxer walked away Grubber thrust out his walking stick and muttered words too ancient for the ork to understand. He instantly froze in his steps, unable to move.
"Grubber! Goddamnit! Don't use your goddamn mojo on me! I'm leaving!"
Grubber jumped up on the ork's back, putting his lips near his ears. When he spoke it was in a shallow rasp, as if he was trying to force his point right into Boxer's brain. "Trevor is not alive. He is not dead. He's inside that machine. That machine knows you. It knows me. That's why it is here. Part of its mind wants to destroy anything of the life Trevor had. The other part wants to be free."
Boxer turned his head slightly, looking into the serious and fearful eyes of the little shaman. He realized that he did not want to admit the truth. It was so much easier to say that Trevor was dead.
"Boxer?"
He looked up, Kino was in the doorway. One hand on the wall while the other held her pistol. Grubber looked at her too. Boxer felt the ethereal hold on his legs loosen. Grubber dropped off his shoulders.
"I told you what you need to know." Grubber gestured with his walking stick. "You are the one that has to put things the way they should have been."
The shaman reached into his rags and pulled out a handful of fine powder. He scattered it to the seven winds and muttered a quiet pray. This disappeared.
"Eh?" Kino stepped forward. "What happened to him?"
Boxer frowned, curling his lip so that his tusks pressed against the sides of his nose. Grubber cast an invisibility spell. That's what he did when he wanted to disappear. Little shaman, always better to run from adversity than confront it was his moto. Yet, at that thought, Boxer realized that Grubber had been serious. Nothing else would have brought the little man out of his shell.
He turned to Kino. "Come on, let's go."
Kino looked at him, then back where Grubber was. "But-"
"Let's go, Kino. Grubber's gone. We won't be seeing him again." He walked passed her.
Kino looked back one last time then turned to catch up with him. "I don't understand. What he said? About your brother? Trevor?"
"It's drek."
"It didn't sound like drek."
Boxer huffed.
"That monster?" She started, "It's Trevor, isn't it?"
"I don't know. Maybe."
"What happened to your brother?"
"It's a long story."
"Tell me."
Boxer grunted, crossed his arms. He walked down the alleyway.
"Boxer! This guy nearly killed me. I have a right to know what's going on."
"I never wanted you at the Stuffer Shack in the first place."
"If I hadn't been there you would be the one dead right now!"
Boxer stopped, looked over his shoulder. "Maybe I can live with that, scan?"
"No. Because then I'd have to be the one who saw you leave one morning and never saw you come back. Only to hear from a friend of a friend that you had run off and gotten yourself killed."
He turned around, his expression quite serious. "You ever lost someone on a run, Kino?"
She sighed. "No."
"How long you been in this business? A few months?"
"Something like that."
"I've been doing this for over a year. I seen a lot of runners go down the hard way. They never got back up. Never really fragged with me head until I lost someone I knew."
"Trevor?"
Boxer huffed again, taking in a breath. He fumbled in his jacket for a cigar. He brought it to his nose, savoring the thick scent of tobacco. As he lite it he drug the smoke into his lungs, letting it fill up the hollow part inside him. Then blew it out, letting it burn his nostrils and leave the sweet flavor behind. "Yeah. I don't have a lot, but one thing I do have is family. Sure, they can get on your nerves now and then, but they're still family. They got a right to in some funny, fragged up way. I lost a part of that family when that door shut, trapping Trevor wounded and bleeding with the heat on the other side. This business claims lives, Kino. When it claimed part of my family it got to me. Fragged me up."
"But, that thing-"
"Is Trevor. I know. I had a hunch even before I talked to Grubber. In the Stuffer Shack, when he was beating the crap out of me, he quoted Shakespear. Trevor loved Shakespear. All the classics for that matter. I just didn't want to admit it."
Kino stepped up to him. She put her hand on his shoulder. "You okay?"
He shrugged away. "No, shit. I should have been smarter. I should have gotten out of this business when that run when to hell in a handbasket. Damnit, why do I keep coming back to this life? There's got to be something better out there. Frag, I'm just in it for the money. That's all I ever wanted."
"The money?"
"Yeah. Frag, when I got out of school, I was up to my eyeballs in debt. Collecting agencies banging on my door at all hours of the night. Couldn't get credit for shit. Every dime I made went to pay off my bills and my deck. I couldn't even support myself. Look what the love of money did to me. I put myself through a toilet of shit just for a couple of 'yen."
Boxer turned and stormed down the alley. "Come on, I need a drink."
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