Maybe I’ll just move
Yo Sam I said one day to my foreman How’s stuff?
Why hey there boy! How’s the Texan? Sam replied. Sam was the shift foreman. He was a vet also as well as an amputee, although I'd been in a different war than the one I had been in. Sam was missing one leg below the knee. He had, what he called a wooden leg.
Fine, fine, I replied. Ready for another day at the salt mine?
How you doing you old buzzard? the small dragon on my shoulder spoke up.
Sam’s eyes sparkled. That thing sounds better all the time boy, moves natural too. It damn near looks real. If it was a parrot or something I’d not give it no never mind. Why did you choose a dragon for your puppet?
Some places won’t allow parrots. There aren’t any laws about dragons. I said.
Sam sighed. You got THAT right. So many laws. It’s not like the old days.
That’s why we went to war isn’t it? I asked sarcastically. To protect our liberty?
Sam looked at me a little odd. He decided not to comment on the political remark. Instead he said I guess everyone needs a hobby.
I said Yes and I have two of them. I’m a smart ass and I’m also an animatronic tinker. Sam grinned at the self deprecating remark. It was true that my wit was sharp. Sam thought I was a genius. God knows why he thought I stayed on that glass bead machine. Sam had offered me any number of promotions into engineering but I declined. I liked it fine where I was. No responsibilities. At the moment I didn’t feel that I needed any responsibilities.
After a minute Sam replied. Animatronic? Is that what it’s called?
We chatted for a while until it was time to clock in. The business made a point of hiring the disabled, the majority of whom were veterans. I ran the glass bead machine, a type of sandblaster. It had a bench in front of it for me to stand on. I rolled my wheelchair close to my work station then grabbed a roof support beam by one hand. With no apparent effort I lifted myself up and out of the wheel chair. Then I swung around and sat myself gently onto the bench. Still with one hand. Two workers who were walking by stopped dead in their tracks to watch me. I ignored them
Dayam! one of them said to the other. That old fart is STRONG!
Stronger than you think the other one said. Have you heard what he did to those gang-bangers who tried to mug him the other day?
No, what happened? The two walked off talking. I heard some of what we said, I had good hearing. The story got bigger and better with each retelling. The truth of the matter was that I’d only broken a couple of arms. Well maybe a leg or two also, and cracked a skull, and some teeth, a couple kneecaps and maybe, just maybe an eye gouge or three. Maybe. Maybe it had been four or five eye gouges. Nobody died at least. I was pretty sure about that.
That reminded me. I was getting seriously tired of my archaic wheel chair. I remembered fondly, the arachnoid ex-walker that I’d worn during the last days in the tunnels. I wondered what ever had happened to it. I had no way of knowing, then, that Viper had it. If I had known I’d have been concerned.
I was half tempted to make another exo-walker. It wouldn’t have been all that hard. I recalled the techniques that I and the voice had used to build my equipment in Cu Chi. I could extrude a diamond sharp fingernail in a few minutes that would cut through almost anything. A smear of my blood would allow the blood-nanites to work their magic. Elvira could control the fiddly bits just as well as the Voice had. It would be easy to do.
I hadn’t done so because I had second thoughts. The public backlash toward too much technology might get hairy. There was no telling what kind of conspiracy ‘theories’ it might spawn. The religious right could be even worse. Hell, some right wing fundamentalist might call it the horse of the devil, Satan's Steed or some-such. Then where would I be? No, on careful consideration, I decided, that I’d keep that card up my sleeve, for now. I’d have to think about it for a bit.
Irregardless, (if it’s not a word, it should be) I needed to do something about that damn wheelchair and soon. It was hard, even for me, to carry it up so many flights of stairs to my apartment. It was nice having one of the so called penthouse apartments. I really liked sitting on the roof at night and watching the sky. But still, hadn’t they ever heard of elevators? Sadly, I knew the answer. Of course they had. The building had them and they were busted like so much else in the building was busted. The building owners would rather use the government subsidy money for something else. Why use it to repair things that broke down? The money was better spent bribing, cough, that would be lobbying, congress for more grants. Thus, once broke down or worn out, things were rarely ever fixed, so they never got around to fixing the elevators.
I had been leaving the wheelchair in a closet on the bottom floor. Then I’d scuttle up the stairs like a monkey. I could get around just fine without the damn thing. I really only used it to avoid offending other’s delicate sensibilities. I had to be careful though, if I frightened the other tenants, too badly, they’d complain. If enough of them complained, well, I’d rather not deal with that.
I'd have to come up with some kind of solution that didn’t look TOO alien and cause the poor darling’s to get their panties in a wad, maybe. I'd have to think about that. Luckily my job wasn’t mentally demanding and I could daydream while I worked.
Hell, maybe I'd just move.
I wasn’t really tickled about that old apartment anyway. Perhaps I'd squat on one of those abandoned barges along the river. There seemed to be quite a few of them. From the look of it, I wouldn't be the first to have that idea either. It looked like others lived there, lots of others. Hell they might be all taken already.
I settled myself onto the bench, turned the machine on, stuck my arms into the gloves and went to work. I looked through the window into the blast compartment as I held parts in one hand and directed the glass bead nozzle with the other. I leaned against the front of the machine and thought about a replacement for my wheelchair while I worked.
Hell, maybe I'll just move.
To Be Continued
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The Hobo Picture is a Public Domain image from
Samantha at the Worlds Fair
by Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
Illustrated by
Baron C. De Grimm published by
Funk and Wagnall's Company 1893
Unless noted
All other Illustrations are from
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