City of Slow Dreams: Chapter 13 (by Elliot Bowers)

Thunderhorse had patience. He had patience in proportion to his life span. And given his unofficial—but true—lifespan, he had plenty of that. That patience in place, he went through to the kitchen and sat at his table—waiting for those two finish with one another. Interesting how deep and extensive cyborg desire went…

It was almost an hour beyond midnight when they were done. No more of those sounds came from the side room. Instead, he heard low talking and occasional low laugh. If they were not synthetic bodied, they would have likely fallen into sleep. Especially after all of that.

Mr. Thunderhorse stood up from his table, going back to the short hall, to the room on the left. His bedroom. He did not sleep there, because he did not actually sleep. But kept the room maintained to store clothes—and for alleviation of suspicion. A dresser drawer, a bed, a closet. No mirror, as a mirror could reveal a truth about Mr. Thunderhorse, a truth that no should know yet.

He went to the dresser and selected two random robes. Both were sky blue for no particular reason. Both unused. These robes draped over his thick left forearm, this presumed human being walked out of his room and through the short hall.

And he came to the door of that side room, the room with the happy talking coming from within. He tapped on the door… Knock, knock. “I take it that the cybernetics upgrade was… Ah, successful, my young friends,” he said.

Sailor’s enthusiastic voice came through the door. “Oh, man, was it ever! Mr. Thunderhorse, I don’t know how the Hell you did it, but we were never able to do that before. And Lolita had herself a good time, too!” Slap! “Ow! What’d I say? It’s the truth, right?” Mr. Thunderhorse heard Lolita giggling.

Then Lolita said aloud from in there, “I thank you, Mr. Thunderhorse. You gave us yet another gift. And I adore it. Cherish it deeply… Ahem! We will be out in moments… Allow us to dress.”

“No bother. I have robes and will leave them just outside the door…” he said. Next he heard quick-pattering footsteps. The door parted, revealing Lolita’s peering face. Her red hair astray over her face and cheeks. He proffered the robes, and Lolita’s lithe pale arm reached out to lightly take them. The door closed.

Four seconds later, the two youths came out in the sky blue robes. Mr. Thunderhorse turned and went toward the kitchen. The two followed, both becoming more somber in mood with passing steps.

In the simple kitchen, the business-suited being went around the table and sat at one seat. Sailor and Lolita, moving nimbly and mindful of their extremely casual outfits, sat down opposite the being they saw as a man. Mr. Thunderhorse put his hands on the table and interlaced fingers. “Now that we are in a more convenient venue,” he began, “we can better discuss certain results regarding the upgrade of your tactile sensibilities. Do either of you two experience any disorientation outside of the ordinary? Out of what would be normally expected?”

Sailor crossed his arms and emphatically shook his head “No way! It was fun all the way! At least, that was the way it was for me.” He looked rightward, looked at his girlfriend.

Lolita looked down at the table. Seconds passed in silence. No noise in this house save the sound of synthesizers and microtensor cooling in the refridgerator. She looked up from the table. “Whatever you propose, Mr. Thunderhorse, I agree to it.” Real resolve underlined Lolita’s voice. “In exchange for what you have given, I will do it. Anything stated. That is the way I feel about what you have given both Sailor and me.”

Anything? Sailor regarded Lolita. For her to use the word anything so open and freely was completely the opposite of the girl he knew—if “girl” could be applied to someone synthetic-bodied. Did their recent enjoyment diddle her sensibilities? Sailor trusted Thunderhorse and all, but to be willing to do anything for him? Anything?

Mr. Thunderhorse gave one of his gentle smiles, a kindly look on his face. Sailor and Lolita looked. And, for a sliver of a second, they saw something emanating from beneath Mr. Thunderhorse’s tan-swarthy skin. Whatever it was, it made the two reflexively return the gentle smile. Just a glimpse…

The business-suited being gave a kind laugh. “Lolita, such a broad word! Ha, ha… Well, I don’t ask for the broad anything you offer. Rather, I ask for a simple, solitary something. It is moderately risky. Likely not deadly, but there is chance of perhaps some retribution from the mayor himself.” He looked at Sailor. “Something more or less illegal.”

Sailor leaned forward, both hands on the table and extending beyond the thick robe sleeves. His robed chest angled closer to the kitchen table, he asked warily, “What kind of illegal? Illegal illegal? Or just a little bit?”

“Gravedigging,” said Mr. Thunderhorse. He saw Sailor sit up straight and roll his eyes, a gesture that reflected the thought, Oh, great! Continuing, “I sincerely request this of you both, the extracting of a certain artifact. A necessary artifact.” More necessary than you could ever know in your current lives, he mentally added.

Lolita played with the belt of her robe, her knees together. Looking down, she spoke. “I stand by what I said, Mr. Thunderhorse. Yes, I will take up your request.” She turned her head left, using her fingers to pull lengths of her long hair behind her ears. “I suspect Sailor’s hesitancy regarding this comes out of some misunderstanding. That is, Elio seldom wants each and every law flawlessly enforced. And the ban on gravedigging hasn’t been enforced since the establishment of his regime. His laws are not iron-bound.”

Sailor met Lolita’s very serious look. He knew that look. That was the look that he could not counter. And she was right about that law. Still, the mayor’s laws are the laws. “Lolita, I’m having a real hard time considering breaking the law.:

Now Lolita rolled her eyes. “For goodness’ sake, Sailor! The mayor is not anal-retentive on law enforcement. He even lets some laws lapse—deliberately. Don’t you remember? Like, for example, the law banning cinnamon in oatmeal? Or, his law against walking backwards down the street for more than a block? Or, moving on with extremely minute examples, the ban he set on florescent-colored clothing worn while playing sad songs? Need I compound the examples?

“But know this, Sailor. You say no to that man across the table, that human who has been so dearly kind to us for years, the human who has even given you kickboxing, and perhaps you will lose me, Sailor. Lose me after what we have gained together.” She unselfconsciously stroked the place between her breasts. “Would you want that?”

Sailor was beaten. On all of those points, Lolita had to be right. In happenstance meetings with the mayor, he had been told about why so many random laws had been passed.

Said the mayor, Because I don’t want people being anal about my regime! A loose-and-cool regime outlasts a government with emotional constipation. So I concoct legislation to let it out. Get it? Sailor got it.

Recalling the general statement, the Ganglander looked at his girlfriend. Mouth puckered and cheeks bellowed, he led out an audible breath from his artificial lungs. “Okay, okay… The ban on gravedigging sounds like one of those not-serious laws.” He looked at Mr. Thunderhorse. “And I do owe ya. Big time.”

The powerful, business-suited being nodded. “Thank you for agreeing to this. You cannot know how important this is. Let me prepare the necessary items to ease the task.” He stood up. “It will take minutes to do so. In that time, you may wish to dress again.”

They did. They returned to that side-room in the short hall and put their Ganglander outfits back over their synthetic bodies. Mr. Thunderhorse went to the third side-room of this house of his. As he did something in there, there was the sound of a breeze that went across windows.

The two stepped out of the room, clothed again. Thunderhorse came out from the rightmost door along the short hall. In his left, he held two black-metal contraptions. Ten inches by ten inches, an inch thick. And in his right, he held a three foot-long stick. As he approached, there came a sweet flowery smell.

Not the cloying thickly sweet smell of perfume, but actual flowers. Given what genetic engineers had to do to plants since the change in the weather, Lolita almost forgot the smell of real flowers. When Thunderhorse stood close by, she suspected the smell came from the flexible stick. But that was tens of years ago; how could that stick retain that smell or even remain alive?

Sailor must have suspected something odd about the stick as well. He put his hands in his jacket pockets. Dark eyes regarding the stick. Maybe in wonder.

Thunderhorse explained. “These three items, these are more or less types of ‘holdout’ technology. These two metal items in my left, they are made from designs not used since the Old Days. Back when the design was needed, that is. They were called ‘entrenchment tools,’ used in the early days of the War to dig shelter. Despite the name and original design, they are just folding shovels. Not quite holdout technology…

“And the slender stick I hold in my right is infused with quite a controversial holdout technology. You would not understand or quite believe the extensive workings of it. But, suffice to say that it will function best the closer you get to the graveyard.

“Once there, use the stick as best as you can. Doing so will take you to one particular grave. Normally unnoticeable and normal—save for what is buried within. Dig up what you find, and bring it back.”

Sailor and Lolita each took one of the compact metal contraptions, the folding shovels. They held them in their right hands. Lolita reached for the long thin stick with her free hand, inhaling the scent. Then Thudnerhorse pulled the stick back a bit. “No. You must take it with your right hand. At least, for the best effect.”

Lolita shrugged and held the shovel in her left. No bother, she was made ambidexterous—as were all Ganglanders nowadays. She took the scent-emanating stick with her right. Odd, as the top area of the stick seemed flexed. Thunderhorse reminded her, “Remember, it will work in the graveyard.”

That said, Mr. Thunderhorse walked with them to the door. The two Ganglanders smiled and gave goodbyes to him. He raised a hand in parting. As they walked out the door and walked away—toward the night-dark street—he looked on. And he closed the front door.

Well, off to a graveyard. Sailor and Lolita walked beyond Thunderhorse’s house, into the dim-lit suburban night streets. Houses quiet and leafy trees dimly lit by streetlamps. Only those two seemed to be present and about. The humans were asleep, so there were no sounds coming from inside houses.

From habit, the two walked along as if on patrol of their territory. This was part of their afternoon patrol, and they had already done more than their standard scheduled duties—by saving that girl from that RVH-syndrome maniac. And, the silence between those two—after what they experienced together—was uncomfortable.

Lolita took a particular right turn. What the Hell? Sailor quickly turned right and jogged to come walk by her side. Whispering, “Lolita, what was that for? I thought we were heading for the central graveyard? You know, since it’s the one that the local humans used?” Then, visible in his enhanced sight, he saw Lolita holding the long thin stick before her. And he noticed the scent.

Lolita did not slow her walking pace, instead continued to look ahead and hold the stick alight in her right. She said, “Why do you whisper We are not patrolling at this time.” Quietness for a few footsteps. “To give answers to you, I’m using this to take us to the graveyard. Note that Mr. Thunderhorse said the graveyard. He did not indicate which. Also note the upper curvature of this stick. I can tilt it so, and….”

For moments, Sailor thought his eyes needed tuning up or checkup at a hospital. He saw Lolita tilt the stick to the left or right of the direction she was going. Though she tipped it in directions, the top part of the stick kept flexing in a particular direction. Like, the stick was attracted to something.

Something was really freaky with this. He wasn’t a tree doctor or anything like that, but he knew that sticks weren’t supposed to do that—especially if they were already cut from trees. He asked her, “What kind of holdout technology is in that stick?”

Lolita shrugged, veered slightly to the left of this sidewalk in following the pointing upper tip of the thin stick. “I can only speculate. Maybe, a kind of embedded microcircuitry with modified olfactory sensors? And about the stick flexing, I would surmise myogel. For that, this stick would need a powerful electrical supply for that, and the myogel would make the stick feel softer. But it feels like an ordinary stick.” She smiled. “As did yours tonight… No, yours was so much better.”

Sailor slowed his walking, fully getting Lolita’s reference. The comment made him quite uncomfortable. Lolita giggled as she continued on. She believe she found a slight dimple of discomfort in conversational matter. Well, he would have to live with it; she liked the idea of being able to have sex—even with an artificial body. Something that no other synthetic-bodied person ever had…

Swish-swish! Elio knew something was up. Something weird and noticeably irritating. Noticeably notable even where he was now, which was his usual place nowadays. A bit over fifteen miles from the irritation.

He was in his hilltop mansion. The vast mansion made from the same building that once housed the Town Hall. The hill was at the northwestern corner of Slow Dreams, and it was a hill situated on a mountain incline—allowing him to look out over the town if he were to step into the front yard. Right now, if he stepped out of his mansion, he would be able to see the town below: a vast valley suburb coated with night and sprinkled with bright yellow streetlights.

But right now, in the building-sized house of a white mansion, this tee-shirt-and-slacks mayor had work to do. Here at this big wooden desk, seated in this grand leather seat, with the flat computer screen and low keyboard at the left, with reports to read and memos to write at the right. He had this red-carpeted, auditorium-sized office in the middle of the mansion, he sure as heck had better keep to his work—even into night. He put himself into power as mayor, now he had to keep this town running decently. Not like he never had fun being mayor sometimes, like with his visits to parks and pubs to pull some pranks… Heh, heh, heh

Swish-swish! Elio put down the paper he was reading: one of his eyebrows up, the other one down, his mouth puckered into a small o of discombobulation. Thinking, Dang-nabbit, there it is again! And it’s just darned irritating!

Elio had to do something about it, this swish-swish feeling he got at haphazard seconds. He stood up from his big soft leather chair, his cape slightly crackling at his back. He reached back and brought the cape over his head, rubbing his cape like a towel over his head and hair…. Then the swish-swish feeling stopped.

That’s handsomely better improved, he thought, releasing his cape and letting it fall back to his back. And he sat down. The irritating feeling was odd—a combination of somewhat-imagined sound and feelings. He imagined a swish-swish of something long and thin being swished through the breeze.

Don’t give a diddly wop, he thought. And he set himself back to work: reading reports and typing up memos for his Ganglanders in the town proper. The irritation was gone, but the lingering after-feeling was still with him. He could not get that imagery out of his freaking head: someone going swish-swish with a long thin stick, making it swish-swish through the breeze. Well, the feeling wouldn’t bother him any more tonight; he had reports to respond to by morning—not that he cared if the citizenry would be thankful or not to him.

Meanwhile, Lolita and Sailor continued along the nighttime suburban streets. Sailor followed closely at Lolita’s right as she walked slightly ahead, the curvature of the stick leading the way. It was nearing 0230 by now, and those two should be back at their respective houses—sleeping to rest their still-living brains. But they had a favor to fulfill.

Several blocks more, thought Lolita as she regarded the curvature of the stick as she walked through the light of streetlamps. Then she heard the footsteps of another party. She deliberately took the folding shovel Thunderhorse gave her and tossed it onto the grass of the yard on the right. Sailor did the same. Both of them stopping their walk, standing in a pool of a streetlamp.

“Hey, dudes! Wait up!” came an average teen male voice. Then came the sound of jogging. Someone in jeans and white tee shirt came jogging up—the Ganglander outfit without the leather jacket. In two seconds, the one with the teen male voice was nearby: a blonde-haired teenage-looking Ganglander of average athletic build and average height.

He was an exuberant presence. “Wh-o-oah! Huh-huh-huh, it’s Sailor!” This blonde guy pointed at Sailor with two fingers, smiling face glowing in the light from overhead. “Dude, you’ve got some real fighting skills! Saw how you totally thrashed that cheap fighting robot yesterday. You rock! So, what’re you two dudes doin’ out here at this freaky hour? You stuck with an extra patrol or something? And groovy stick,

dude-ette.”

Sailor and Lolita both felt caught. What they were planning to do was only vaguely illegal. Still, it was illegal. They had to find the way out of this, had to find a way to bullshit their way past Joe here. They looked at each other…

Before Lolita could come up with a good lie, Sailor spoke first. “We’re out for a night walk. I’m walking with my girl here…” Sailor grabbed Lolita, big arm wrapped behind and around her upper arms. “Just out, thinking. Some kind of meditation to help me think. Helps my skills and all…. You know?”

Joe’s eyebrows went up, making Sailor think, Joe’s not buying it. Then Joe shouted, making both Sailor and Lolita jump in surprise. “Cool!” said the blonde Ganglander. “Meditation sounds truly awesome. Think if I walked with my girl Leela, I could get fighting skills as cool as yours, Sailor?”

He bought into Sailor’s bullshitting, thought Lolita. Continuing the lie, Lolita said, “Perhaps that could come to be. But meditation is not the sole component. Joe, consider visiting the library and asking about archives on archaic fighting styles. Maybe you could find some sort of skills to read about. Then practice up! Practice makes for the…coolness you desire. Coolness in fighting style.”

The Ganglander looked at Leela. “Wh-o-o-ah… That’s like, deep. I gotta try that.” His eyes were far and away. Then he blinked. “Well, I gotta continue my patrol, dudes. Can’t shoot the breeze all night, though it’d be totally cool to hear about that. Catch ya later! Huh-huh!” Joe threw up a hand in a curt wave, then began walking away.

Both waved at him as he left. “And nice hair configuration!” shouted Lolita after him. She and Sailor watched the average-looking teenage Ganglander walk up the street and around the corner—away from the direction the stick indicated.

Joe looked to the right, down on the dark grass near the sidewalk. He looked long enough for his artificial sight to adjust to the gloom and pick out the folding shovels… There the were.

He picked up the book-sized metal contraptions, handed one to Lolita. “Joe is a real talker, isn’t he? I don’t think anybody else has that sort of way with words. Probably from reading plenty of archived novels or something.”

Lolita tried pocketing the folding shovel into her left jacket pocket, found it was just a bit too big. Instead, she would have to port it. “Well, working with his talk allowed us to pass. And having passed him once, we should move on to avoid another random encounter.”

“That’s a Hell of a good idea, toots,” responded Sailor. “Lead the way!”

A block’s walking, and they came to a certain graveyard. It was a graveyard given a residential block of its own—a graveyard once reserved for humans. It was in use before the mayor came to power, before the mayor brought policies and techonogies: With body replacement, not enough people chose to die anymore to warrant funeral rituals. This was an abandoned graveyard, now in the dark of deepest night.

The wind blew across the nearby street, through the steel gate, among the stones set in the grass—this place of the dead… Lolita’s attention was on the thin long stick in her right hand, Sailor close behind. She not only had to give attention but also give strength in wielding it: Even with the inhuman strength of her synthetic body, it was hard for Lolita to keep her grip on the thin stick as she walked in the direction it indicated.

Because the stick was now truly trying to pull itself out of Lolita’s hand—pulling toward the forward-right corner of the graveyard. Sailor saw the difficulty she was having, and he stage whispered something loud to her. Her attention was on the thin stick in her right hand, so he carefully took the folding shovel Lolita held in her left… “Thanks,” she said, now gripping the tugging stick in both hands. She had to, because she wasn’t sure if she could…

Shri-i p! The thin stick whipped itself out of Lolita’s grip, so fast that it made a sound in tearing the palms of her hands. Lolita and Sailor stopped, Lolita looking at her own open hands. In the light of the moon and the far-off streetlamp, she saw that her skin had been sliced, vertically in how she held the stick. There was not blood or real pain, of course. But seeing exposed slits of her white synthetic muscle tissue beneath her “skin” was worrisome: How could a stick damage her skin when not even thousand-degree flames or five hundred-pound bludgeons could not do the same?

Sailor dropped the folding shovels, rushing to stand by his girlfriend. “Lolita, you okay? Any damage to your mobility or something?” loud-whispered Sailor. He also looked at her palms.

“N-no… No harrowing damage,” Lolita whispered back, pressing slit palms to the thighs of her jeans. “Merely cosmetic concern. But the stick’s gone! It just…tore itself from my grasp! We have to find it!” She looked at Sailor worriedly; then she heard Sailor sniffing the air.

“It ain’t lost, babe! Just follow your nose!” Sailor whisper-said. He knelt and picked up the folding shovels on the night-dark ground. Nose sniffing and head going side-to-side, he began walking in the direction they had been going. Lolita following this time, they continued to go further away from the graveyard entrance back by the road.

Sailor stopped sniffing so loudly, instead too whiffs. The flowery smell of that stick was heady an d strong… Lolita coming from behind and the side, she saw the stick before Sailor did. “Regard, Sailor,” she told him. “We found the stick, and the particular grave he said to excavate…”

Sailor stopped sniffing, looked down. Indeed, he saw where the stick ended up in this dark yard of the dead: in the right-most grave at the back, near the metal gate. “O-o-h, shit!” he whispered loudly. “What the Hell kind of holdout tech is that?”

The stick had impaled itself in the dark ground, through grass roots and into the soil. At least half of it was hidden in the ground; the other half of it was above ground—slowly waving back and forth as if alive. That creeped out Sailor.

Her boyfriend stunned, Lolita took one of the folding shovels, the one he loosely held in his left. She looked it over, then began to unfold her shovel. And, unfolded, the black contraption was about two and one-half feet in length, with a nice wide end for digging. So, she knelt and began to dig at the base of the impaled stick.

Sailor shook himself, knelt by Lolita, also managed to unfold his shovel. And he began to dig. They sank shovels into the dark grassy dirt, tossed the dirt aside. In minutes, they had themselves a hole four feet across and up to their knees. Into the darkness of night, they dug onward.

These two were not tireless, though their bodies were so. Their brains were living organs, tiring from the day. Life-support components in their chests increased carbohydrate production, increased the amount of sugars in their contained blood supplies, but their brains still tired.

Into the night, still digging… The anti-stain treatments of their clothes were being tested now, the dirt sliding off jeans, tee shirt and jacket. But their hands and faces were dirt-smeared. The stick continued to sink into the soil as they dug, the stick guiding their exploration into the soil. Shoveling on… Klunk!

“Damn!” shouted Sailor. Lolita shushed him. And then it began to rain. The cloud cover for the next day must have already moved in without them noticing. Now, cool wet rain came down from the dim cloud cover above.

About ten miles away, up in mansion’s grand office, Elio knew something was up. It was just a random whim, one of his hunches. He stopped typing, then leaned back in his seat. Something was not right at all.

He crossed his arms. Thinking, What the double-deck heck-a-beck is wrong? There was nothing too deeply immediately detectable. He double-regarded all the reports. And he followed the economic extrapolations done up by the municipal computers, along with utilities maintenance. But it wasn’t business that was wrong.

Ah well, let me do something, he finally thought. Action was probably better than inaction, so he had to do something. With a few dozen keystrokes of the terminal keyboard, he called on the weather control computers in the weather station behind this mansion. Then, regarding the upright flat monitor on his desk, he had the weather change to a nice night rainstorm. Not that he had any specific idea as to how that would help, but it was something to do.

One late-night rain-drencher was coming up. Humidity rapidly increased with the cloud cover. Barometric pressure went up. And the rain was on its way. Not that this helped Elio’s irking feeling too much, but he felt a touch bit better. That left him with nothing else to do tonight, so he closed his eyes, put his crossed arms on the desk, and slept there. Not at all knowing specifically what the rainstorm would do…

Back in that graveyard, Sailor let out a loud breath, looking up from the shoulder-high pit. There was the dim, cloud-covered sky above as the rain began wetting his face, and soaking clothing, soaking hair. Not minding the rain, Lolita crouched down where Sailor’s shovel struck. Mindful of the still-unrepaired slices in the palms of her artificial skin, she used her fingers to take away some soil from near Sailor’s own. That exposed flat gray metal, with a handle.

“Sailor, we have likely have found what Mr. Thunderhorse expected,” she whispered up. She shook her head to get some loose lengths of hair away from her face, then she began to manually pull more dirt away from whatever it was down here.

“Sorry about that…” said Sailor, putting aside his own shovel and beginning to help. “Careful with your hands. You know, it’ll take longer for your body to autorepair your skin if you get too much dirt in the wounds.” He took another double handful of soil, tossed it aside.

“Never mind that,” she said, the rain coming on heavier as she continued to dig with fingers. “This object is three feet across. I’ve found the edge. It is boxy, so dig out the edges…” Indeed, their pulling away of the dirt—becoming mud in this rain—exposed the sides of an unpainted metal box. They could see it clearly with their artificial sight in the gloom, but the color was lost. It was probably gray in full daylight, without the downpour.

They worked hurriedly, faster. The rain was beginning to puddle. And if they took too long, the object would be stuck in mud. They still managed to get their wet fingers on the front and back sides of the square metal box. Pressing so hard that their titanium-boned fingertips formed dents in the sides.

With a shl-u-ump, they were able to pull the metal box completely up from its increasingly muddy grave—the wet mud making that sucking sound when they got it out. They then lifted it above shoulder-height, putting it on the side of this pit they were in. They then hop-climbed their way out of the pit. The rain began coming down so hard that whatever mud stuck to them was washed away.

Moving to kneel by the box, Lolita spoke above the pattering of the rain. “Sailor, we should get this box over to… Aaigh!” She gave a short shrieked when the box began to open itself.

A crack appeared in the metal casing of the box’s top. Sailor said, “We’d better get what’s inside the box and carry it in our jackets or something. That box is not going to be waterproof for long! Don’t know why it’s cracking now all of a sudden, though!”

Lolita agreed, blinking with water in her eyes. She put her fingers against the edges of the crack, the “skin” of her fingertips being pricked by the jagged sharpness. This way, she managed to peel back the metal like thick foil. With a nice-sized hole in the box, she reached in, grabbed the ball-sized smooth object inside, and pulled it out: a titanium skull somewhat smaller than her own.

“What the Hell, Lolita! What the Hell! What the Hell! What the Hell!” said Sailor, very loudly above the rain. “This is getting to be too freaking much! What the Hell!”

Lolita shook her head and unzipped her leather jacket. She put the cool metal object inside, against her tense abdomen, then re-zipped her jacket before rain could soak her tee shirt beneath. “Okay, we move to Mr. Thunderhorse’s house.”

“You mean, after we fill up the grave again?” he asked. Then he said, “No, you go ahead. I’ll do it. Just get that over to him.” He then kicked the cracked metal box into the grave, then leapt down after it to get the folding shovels—which he could no longer find.

Chest deep in this pit, he looked for the shovels. Not here, and he had to re-fill the grave. Damn it, the sides of the pit were caving in. Stupid!

Lolita knelt and extended her right hand, left hand against the round ball-like bulge on the left side of her jacket. “Hold my hand!” she said. Sailor did. He grabbed her skin-damaged hand with his right, using his left hand and both feet to get out with Lolita’s help.

Out of the pit and standing again with Lolita, the rain cleared away the mud on Sailor. And the rain’s action must have caused mud to slough back into the pit. And in the hard rain, it was hard to distinguish the fresh dig from the surrounding grass.

Lolita tapped Sailor’s shoulder once. “We have something. Now, we move to Mr. Thunderhorse’s residence. And we should move quickly.” Sailor nodded, and they ran out of the wet-soaked graveyard—soft soil under their boot heels. They then ran along the street, running through rain.

The rain still coming down, they came running down this street, over to

Mr. Thunderhorse’s one-story house. Front porchlights off at this time of very early morning. With Sailor looking around, Lolita clasped the round shape in her jacket. As soon as she raised her right hand to knock, the front door opened. He was waiting for them. Door open, he gestured for them to come inside. He closed the door.

Inside, the two stood near the door, dripping clear rainwater on the carpet. Lolita opened her jacket, her pale and now less-damaged fingers reaching inside. Out came the titanium skull, gleaming in the indoor simulated candlelighting. “This is the object?” she asked the business-suited man, her fingers holding it up.

Mr. Thunderhorse smiled. Using his right hand, he kindly took it from her. He held it by the sides, not touching the bottom. “Yes, this is it. Once in the breeze, but not forever. I am quite glad she didn’t quite cross over…”

Sailor looked at Mr. Thunderhorse sideways. In the breeze? Elio used that sort of talk. The Ganglander thought that, when the caped mayor talked that way, he was just being his deliberately peculiar self. Now Mr. Thunderhorse used the phrase, along with cross over: another phrase Elio ranted out at times.

“Uh, Mr. Thunderhorse,” tentatively asked Sailor, “are those words out of some kinda holdout tech? I mean, I heard the mayor use some of those phrases before. He gives up pep talks. And he talks that sort of way of his, you know? Makes his words go all screwy…”

Mr. Thunderhorse slightly shook his head, chuckling. Still carefully holding the skull, he said, “No, my young friend. My terms are not as…screwy as those of Elio’s. My words are not at all screwy. The terms I just used are quite valid, regarding what I would call an ultimate holdout technology: that of magic.”

This time, Lolita was taken aback by another one of Mr. Thunderhorse’s statements. “You used the noun magic. Or did you use it as a metaphor? I fail to have understood you, or my auditory systems were fouled somehow by rain.”

The gentle being in the business suit regarded these two Ganglander friends of his with eyes both understanding and kind. Smiling. “Indeed, I have immense explanations to give you both. But I must first do some preliminary tending to this. You two may use the dryer in the utilities room to dry your clothes while I attend to this…” He turned and walked several paces from the door, turned right and opened the side-door. To the right of the living room was a brightly lit utility room: washer-dryer machine, climate control and such. Concrete for flooring, like a basement.

They both thanked Mr. Thunderhorse and went into the utility room. He went off to the kitchen, probably heading for the side-room with his private research laboratory. For the meanwhile, Sailor and Lolita could dry their clothes.

Unmindful of modesty in the bright utility lighting of this utility room, Lolita took off her jacket, then stripped off white tee shirt, boots and jeans. Sailor stared, then went to taking off his own sopping clothes down to underwear. He found and opened the waist-high gray washer-dryer machine: a low-water and highly efficient tensor-vibrations machine that washed and dried clothes in several minutes.

Both stood in underwear, watching the spinning, humming machine go to work, Lolita with her lithe arms crossed. Sailor put his right arm around her shoulders, kissed her on the right cheek. Lolita tilted her head towards Sailor, responding immediately… Not now, she thought firmly to herself—regardless of the feelings she felt.

She said, “We best be careful, more controlled. These re-awakened emotions can make for distraction.” Lolita tried to sound firm, but her voice still held a languid tone. “I do…mean it.”

Sailor stopped, gave difficult thoughts. He would control himself. “You’re right, doll. Couldn’t be more right. It’s just so damned tough, now that we can do it with our fake bodies.” Agreeing to that must have been one of the damned toughest things Sailor had to say, ever. Lolita never looked more beautiful, more delicious.

“Agreed, then,” she whispered, voice harshened. Still, she stayed in Sailor’s touch. She did not want to leave him. And, she hoped, Sailor would never leave her. Just being close to him. The clothes were done.

They were done: dried and ready for wear again. The two slowly put them back on, shaking their dripping heads to get out some more dampness. With her lengths of red, Lolita had a slightly more cumbersome time of it—damp lengths clinging to the back of her now-dry jacket. Almost totally drip-free, the two walked into the dim-lit living room.

The two ceiling-mounted reading lamps on: one over Mr. Thunderhorse in his reclining seat, the other over the short couch. “Ah,” exclaimed the relaxed man in busineswear. “So you two are more comfortable. Feeling more presentable. Then let us talk. Or, rather, let me do some talking.”

Sailor and Lolita moved over to the short, comfortable couch. Seated, both leaned slightly forward. Listening and intent. They wanted to hear what there was to say. Anything.

“Not to leave you two in too much suspense,” he began, “but some of this will require just a bit of background. Given the hypno-education given to all citizens of Slow Dreams and the free availability of texts from the main library, I take it you two know about deceased parts of humanity? Namely, you must know about elves—the branch of humanity that emerged from hiding immediately before the years of the War.

“What is not in too many textbooks is this: Elves are not a branch of humanity. No, not at all. Declaring elves on par with humanity was just a political ploy. Elves could not interbreed with humanity. Their genetic disposition had been preciously different.

“Still, elves were so deeply assimilated into human society that they were divided when the War came. Divided within humanity. One-third of humanity took to body replacement technology and developing humanoid robots, and two-thirds of humanity—calling itself human—did not like such radical ‘denaturalization’. When that schism developed among humans, it also developed among the elves—the elves among humanity….

“The story was to result into the inevitable from there.” Thunderhorse raised his right fist, extending the thumb. “One side offended the other…” He then extended the pointer finger. “The other side countered…” He brought thumb and pointer together, forming a circle. “ And the first side countered that, counter after counter, and then most all of the world’s people—cyborg or human was wiped out with cloud-catalyst poisons, burst guns, bombs, the like. And as elves were a minority, they were the group to go extinct. But…”

Mr. Thunderhorse raised his pointer finger. “Artifacts remain from the War. In that a pitiful percentage of cyborgs from the War remained relatively intact, they sometimes dig themselves up from the plains—their bodies autorepaired after extensive slumbers. Such cyborgs are called ‘antiques,’ much like anything left over from the War.

“And now, cyborgs stumble into the cities and settlements that grew up out of repopulation and scavenged technology from the Old Days. This, though the number of antique cyborgs in from the plains has been reduced; the few left relatively intact must have already re-awakened.

“Which brings me to that which you brought in. Coming here, I do not think you had time enough to note aspects of the titanium skull. The forehead is slightly wider than average. And the incisors were several millimeters longer. Further, the eye sockets were quite large. Any cyborg could have their skull reconfigured in minute ways, but I tell you that the skull you brought in was configured to match the original body…”

Lolita’s mouth went open, a gape of surprise. Sailor’s mouth formed a small o, eyebrows going up. He began making asking noises. “Wh-what’s that supposed to mean, Lolita? Mr. Thunderhorse? I’m lost here. Could use a little help with the descriptions.”

Mr. Thunderhorse explained. “The specific differences indicate that you have brought the titanium skull of a metal-bodied elf. Not quite extinct anymore, then, because I intend to use the skull to revive quite a holdout technology. Hah, hah, quite a holdout technology, indeed.”

Sailor slapped his hands together, smiling. “Can’t wait for the mayor to hear about this! More stuff to experiment with…” He saw Mr. Thunderhorse’s quiet—but very steady stare… “Or he won’t hear about it?”

“He must not know about it…” said the business-suited man in the big armchair. More friendly, “Not yet. The technology I seek to revive—that of elfin magic—will not be directly usable by human beings, cyborgs, or full robots.”

Lolita raised her right hand, making a pressing motion with her palm. A gesture that said slow down, stop! “Mr. Thunderhorse, this talk of elves and magic, it is so much for me to accept. Elf magic was just part of fairy tales, of lore out of the Old Days. Like dwarves, demons, or Elvis Presley….”

Mr. Thunderhorse gave exaggerated slow-nods. “Of course, I understand your mindset, Lolita. Nice and solid rational mind. Well-versed in reason. An advanced hypno-education made you an extremely reality-minded thinker. However, even after so many years of Elio—alias of The Cloaked Man—being in power, you yet believe reality to be immensely solid? How about…this?”

Lolita first saw Mr. Thunderhorse seated across from her, the bookshelves to his back. Lighting all around. Sailor was at her side. Then, everything seemed to…go to the side. And everything seemed as if slow-coated with wax. Or as if everything were wax.

She heard an onrush of sounds, like the wind. But full of voices. Then the voices ran away The lights started to flicker and melt down from the ceiling. She looked up, and the lights were not there. The light had to come from somewhere, though.

Mr. Thunderhorse laughed. Or was that laugh coming from his chest? His mouth wasn’t moving, and he smiled. Sailor was by her side—but without his skin! He looked terrible. She looked down at her own hands, and there was a breeze that felt wrong… Lightning struck a few times nearby. r. Thunderhorse laughed backwards, and…everything became normal again.

Normal? No, that would not go this time. Lolita looked down at the coffee table for no particular reason. There was now a pitcher of coffee there. Half-empty cups... No, empty cups.

Mr. Thunderhorse spoke apologetically. “I am sorry for the severity of the demonstration, Lolita. However, you needed helping along to gain a workable perspective….”

Those effects were quasi-real. Drugs couldn’t have been the cause; most all mind-altering substances save Brennan’s Special are blocked out of cyborg brains. And fouling up the lighting would have just produced that: fouled lighting. “I… I… want to go home now, Mr. Thunderhorse,” she said, feeling off-balance.

“How right! You must have been up quite late!” said Thunderhorse, ebullient and up from his armchair. He saw Sailor help Lolita to her feet, and he led them to the front door. “Off you two go to your homes, to bed. Rest your brains. There is plenty to do on the morrow, right?”

Sailor held Lolita’s arm as he helped her out the door. And Sailor himself staggered a bit. “Okay, Mr. Thunderhorse. See you around…” Then, they went off into the very early morning, so early that sunlight was still several hours from coming back to the land.