The First Year

It stings the servos. Myomer throbs, in something a human might call pain. Dust sparks at
the back of the mind in a way that cords into patterns. The dulling light of an optic. A child
yelping in fear only to to begin falling next. To fall still on the floor of a home. Cars falling. Stars
falling. Love falling over and over until all that couldn’t fall was the steam of corpses and the
flying black darts of pests. Graveyard and necropoli rising where life’s holds fell slack and
empty.

It stings. The fiery wake. It stings. The machines boiling and blowing out. Young and old,
just and cruel, falling aside to aside in the final act of true equality. It throbs, the backs of throats,
eyes ruddy or sparking, yelling forth in justice and crime. It sparks still on into hate and grief. It
dulls the few hopeful eyes left. It moves and falls those dreams of old and new. The dirt falls.
The final bed falls shut. The prayers fall from lips. It all falls down. What rises are hands to
cover heads, fear rises. The tunnels bustle with each step anew. They move. They talk. They cry.
They laugh. Open and warm these old tunnels.

Grit mixes with the soles. Heavy boots, heavier motions that no longer truly care about
the reality around them. Unclad but to his belt and a heavy shovel locked in augmentic hands.
The earth coughs just a moment. Metal meeting earth. Earth meeting heaven in an arc. The
shovel, the wood and steel and plastic. Little etchings into this hateful rock. Little more by more,
the boxes are dropped in. Quickly enough. But to mechanical eyes, slow. With each body fallen,
the tunnels filled a little more. The laughter, the shouting, the talking. Small rats run from tunnel
to tunnel, dogs, children, chirruping drones. They’re warm for once. They’re happy again. These
old tunnels are infinite as the stars and loves and dreams that once flowed about.

There are no more beds to make today. The shovel set in the little zen arrangement. Stone
headboards. Sleeping optics, gently closed eyes. Young and old. Cruel and just. They sleep well
together. He hopes they dream of tunnels and hope. Of love. Of kindness. He hopes they sleep
sweet finally. Boots meet the soil and rock as they continue off toward the necropolis steps.
Tomorrow he’ll resume. A keeper of these gentle places of sleep. A passed stone pillow adorned
with a small bear. The bed aside capped with a holographic ad for a simple janitor machine,
wisened by factor hands. Sitting and humming softly. The night watchman for this resting place.
The boots trail off. The enclosed green flecked with countless floral green sheets and pillows of
rock, and metal, and plastic. Bears, cups, knives, charms, and even simple change.

The boots trail off. The tunnels bustle with many faces, many loves, and joys. They hum and
laugh the dreams of the sleeping. The unafraid adoration of love and hope. Joyous.
 Year 2
Command lines mixed with myomer in a flush that would make a chem jumper pause.
Them heavy old boots thumping hard as he kept running. In his arms a screaming mess of cloth
and flailing hands. Webbed wings flickering on it’s tiny body.. The grinding behind the poor
metal slab something truly fiercer than fierce. The crunch was hellish and heavy. A devil in the
making. Behind him opti-skin blurred the image from the motion, reforming it in the mind’s eye
of dust and light. It might have been a troll at one point. Whatever could make it that damn fat
was a horror in itself. Tubes and muscles throbbed about a half mad body as tall as most men
wished they could be. The face was more a hole and sensor then elsewise familiar. He kept
running. Rock and debris, burned slag and worse left abandoned in this wake. The low border of
relief tents shot to hell and worse. Rotting and scourged of the life they sought to save. He kept.
Fucking. Running. It wouldn’t shake. shifting side to side through tents this porous. His frame
pulsing in the burned sprawl hues around him.

He tripped. A stray pipe from an old explosion. He fell. In that moment there was
nothing but the fall. His data knew it was merely to fall down, and get up. His body would
survive. His body. The sound broke..sensors confirming it. Impact confirming it. Red light. Red
words. Red. Red. Optic cameras stalled. For the first time he could not think, he couldn’t
process. A cord of thought, of a spirit, cracked out of the core of him. The cloth was red. His face
on the ground, an eye throbbing through not a single line of data.The sewer tunnel had gone
yellow with fungi. It was an odd colour, a familiar colour. The tents above flapped gently. At the
last breath of the low breeze.

Of his fall. It was funny. A sound, the most humorous of them all came about him. The
lack of roaring. The lack of it. Then it dripped..slowly and surely. A flow of red..from above.
Red rain..thick and hot. Crimson deluges from on high. An optical sensor alight for a moment.
Resin worn through in many places. Old skin touched for a moment. Stinging air. The pipe like a
spear, a stake, a pillar. The fat ugly thing had impaled itself on it. Run straight through. It
spasmed slowly. He looked over it in that moment. Heavy genewarped sinews, tumorous and
fat.. Throbbing with lactic acid. Blood from what just revealed itself in the fat, skin and muscle
to be a torso. Near the mid chest. Just off the heart. Taloned feet of synthsteel and a head of
sparking sensors..half crushed in impact. It dripped it’s priceless development costs across the
man. All he could do was stare upwards. Face of few real expressions. Yet something inside
flickered not to the wound, or the pillar. But the headpiece. Bulky and tubeshod. A small light
flickering visibly. Pale red and yellow. Over and over. An assistance light. It twitched as the red
leaked onto the ground. The man felt so much, the machine pang in his body unbred but strong.
His hand reddened hand lifting. Feeling the faceplate of sensors and tubes. There was a voice
inside. He felt it enough. In the sensors at the tips. At the resin. At his spirit. He felt it. It spoke
once. He replied with a torn wire from it’s head. It’s reply was enough, the cloth was red. And
quiet. He had few spare beds here. But the earth would do. A nice you’re welcome, to a final
“Thank you”.
The boots kept going. The tunnels have many things, small and large, cruel and just,
many things walk those warrens. Some even fly. When you do a kindness there, you’re almost
guaranteed a “Thank you.”

Year 3
“I feel like a friggin’ chop out boot leg from Tatanga, man..,” a tone a bit bitter, and
heavy. Buzzing slightly as the electro-cig boiled a cold blue and red light. Synthetic-smoke from
a small projector in the end. “Deal with it, mech,” replied from behind a helmed face. The skull
on the front slightly off balance, and off hue. The underjaw missing for a fiery tongue hololithic.
“Screw you, you dig?” came the calm reply. The stark light raining down before the meeting
turning a half worn, and yet mysteriously clean waiting room into a pale purgatory. Potted plant
guards and a few incidentally armed vegetables around them. Pale, colourless eyes, smoothly set
on lithe frames. Vests heavy. Small comforts ignored for efficiency. The irony not at all lost to
the indignant mech. Sympathy, and..a little disgust pinged in him. The tunnels roiled with sound
and interest, even rare horror Strange enough, but worse was already known to them.

Pale white plating and simple basic blue. Unit numbers displayed under a smooth and
near translucent resin. Vali-Perrun variant Nonlinear Frame Synthetic Model 2785-B.P.S Security
Specialist and Self Improving Tactical Entity. At this point it was simply “Mech.” To his new
company, he returned the favor with “Meat.” It was a healthy relationship built on mutual
understanding, and hatred of that shared understanding. So much easier to spite someone when
you know little of how they think beyond a few bitter remarks and incidentally fridge magnets.
Maybe this is why they sat in the pale purgatory?

The number was called in a data tone in both of their minds. A small uproar of myomer
and plates. He stood. His new friend and guidance counselor rose with him. Taking a slightly
rear and left position. A quick prod over and affirmation he could go with a rather ornate and
industrial security wand of the fully automatic variety and they were off. The dress blues he wore
were slightly scorned on entry. Eyes and sensors glancing over him with confusion in blood and
binary voices. “Why is it smoking?” rose from one amid a seat, a rather neogenic looking elf
speckled in more runes than a forbidden tome. His reply came with a slight twitch of his bulled
neck, “cus, gotta look cool for that there company picture and make a nice first impression.”
There was no humour or reply. The data console about the center of the room flicked open, rising
from simple floors of pale and gray tiles to reveal a hololith clear and perfect. Countless scenes
flickered across it. “Do you know why you are here, machine?” came from another voice
masked. “I’ve got some assumptions, but I don’t think you do either..” Such was the back and
forth as the data flickered about the room. Many worn bodies sitting in old worn chairs that
passed down in other families for generations. Many new voices, few old ones. The tunnels
thrumming with new gasps of horror. A small digital rodent running across his shoulder, staring
and chuffing. An old metal star at his belt, kept affixed and gnarled.

Year 4
Microsensors flickered about at a point of near perpetual alert. The hand that kept agrip
of the rail was strong. The next moment a boot braced and flung him up with a kick off from the
high, high side. The next moment, the man landed, rolling with a burst of static agitation. Then
he slid against a rail. The metal floor felt amazing the seventh time around. Like a failure. Wind
whipped over the skin of him. An arm pulsed rapidly to rise with a hiss of something dislodged.
Fluid cells shifted to fully compensate as the internals gave unpleasant sounds. His opponent
stood calm and smug. Many stains in her hair, long eared and crackling with power. A locket on
her neck, silver and closed. He spat the asphalt coloured fluid of his inner self. He stared at the
thing of youth, of power, of smug pride. He grinned, flipped her off and crossed the sparring ring
again with his guard up, locked, and brash like the metal dinosaur he was. Over. And Over.
Matching power and power. Over and over. Falling. Sensors attuning to it. Slowly, noting the
subtlest spark and motion. By the thirtieth time that day he’d gotten a jab in, by the eightieth, a
kick, by the hundreth, he’d rammed her once. Months passed. The training grounds tastefully
scraped by something heavy into a stylistic worn aesthetic on the orange metal. The wind was
calm today. No crackling power, no mysticism. No icon of youth and ability. Just a small box at
the ring’s center. Inside was a locket. It was empty. The tunnels had a little more life to them
afterwards. Someone lost a locket

Year Five
“Synthehol and Mech-coffee mixed and spiced on a pile of Tinnos, that kind of
crap jams your intakes” said one. “I know but it’s so damn worth it and even then it’s better than
Hunter-Killer or Devilishly Ugly Hobo..first one smells like crap, the second one is made of
crap, and if you like it, bolt eye, you’ll be all the more a piece of scrap crap.” “Shut the hell up
and deal, you ramble like you’ve got a pulse!” Data cards slid about. Glassy with black lining
and flickering with engineered fractal art “Ten of Nukes, pair of Nines of Petrol, and I’ll throw
this wild little number on it to make that a pair of Nukes.”
The mechanical assortment sat in the Oil-Can. Left open to the air. Magnetized to the
undersize of the building’s new array. The police machine turned a card in his grip “Little angel
inside tells me to hold my hand and add ten canisters to the pot, three crowns too…”- the silence
was immediate “Smoke..” came from a cleaner machine half treads, half twisting sensor limbs,
“..you’re talking about that again..”, the riot machine quipped up in a buzzing confusion “Just a
turn of phrase, turn your shit into slightly less awful shit until we get booze…” The cleaner
machine nodded gently at that. “So you hold you hand and add to the pot, you that confident,
Swat-Bot?” The eyes of the riot machine lit up calmly, matching each of the sensors in turn,
“Feeling a little lucky for once..” and so they dealt a new set of cards . A few chuckles from
within the tunnels. The walls of stars and data alive and often asleep. Carven into each side the
names so ill lucked that a ward be a man and machine so brutish and brash. For even in rest,
fortune finds company in a moment, but the unlucky, long joy in each other.