Hotrod
Roddenbury’s workday was off to an irritating start.
The man was passing by the huddle of mechanics while doing his pre-delivery safety checks when he heard the monotonous report of a news reel. Some of the men in oily overalls were talking quietly amongst themselves about what they were hearing, and some were looking at the small monitor with captivated eyes. This portable informax had a striking resemblance to the CRT televisions of a bygone age. It even had the same warble to its audio output and flicker to its display. The monitor was placed conveniently atop a tall tool bench to accommodate the viewers, but from his place by the tractor’s grill, Roddenbury was an unintended audience member as well.
He could just about make out the title in the banner in spite of the low resolution of the screen. Mysterious Tar Sightings Getting More Common! The news anchors had finished regurgitating the story written well in advance by the media moguls; the same story that was being run on the other news outlets, and now they were engaging in the requisite banter to sell the notion that they enjoyed sitting in front of cameras for hours while hot spotlights beamed down and baked the artificially tanned skin under their tasteful suits and dresses.
Mysterious tar. Nothing mysterious about it, Roddenbury simmered. All he had to do was look at Straya to know that the stains and putrid piles left on the streets were the remains of the doomed members of her kind. The man hadn’t said anything to the fluffy to spare her sensibilities, but as the days passed by, he noticed that the blackened stump appeared to be growing. Not in the sense that it was getting physically larger, but rather, that the deadened flesh was creeping ever so slightly further across the mare’s chest and shoulder. The fur around the boundary was thinning, and noticeably darker than the surrounding pelt.
Roddenbury knew deep down, though he tried to deny it to himself, that Straya was dying to this affliction. There was nothing he could do about it, either. Veterinary service as a profession fell to the wayside in direct proportion to the decline of petkeeping across the years leading up to the present. Only the rich could afford veterinarians, who functioned more like personal family doctors that made house-calls to their mansions. Another aspect of the past revived in the age of Ubermetros.
It was fantasy enough for Roddenbury to imagine getting in contact with a vet; there was no need to even entertain the notion that the vet would know how to treat a fluffy. The burden of knowing what would befall Straya was a cargo of bleakness that the trucker had to haul with him. He did not need to hear updates on the unjust slaughter masquerading as current events on top of it. They did his heart no favors, clouded his thoughts, and generally detracted from his one man cause. Roddenbury could not afford that. Straya needed him to be collected, intelligent and precise. The trucker could not afford to gamble with time that the fluffy simply did not have.
He climbed into his seat and shut the cabin door. The ‘whump’ of the weighty hinge closing had a strangely spiteful connotation in that instance that Roddenbury hadn’t noticed before, but he thoroughly appreciated now. The sound signaled his rejection of the uncaring industrial complex outside of the truck. All of it was locked out, figuratively and literally. Roddenbury placed the duffel bag in the passenger seat and unzipped it enough for Straya to sit up through the opening.
“Nu wike duffew baggy!” she whined. “Duffew baggy do shakies an’ – an’ – , hawd to do bweavies! An’ nu can ma’e talkies; is saddies, wonewy and scawy!”
Straya sobbed in the way that fluffies did while Roddenbury stroked the back of her head and neck comfortingly. He felt for her.
“I’m sorry, but if you’re seen outside, the bad people will come looking for you and me,” the trucker explained somberly. Naturally, he did not want to give the surveillance state cause to review the evidence of his crime even sooner, and then have to deal with them sending the hounds before he was ready. Roddenbury figured that the longer he could keep his life as a nothing dot in the gigantic canvas that was Zen Angeandres, the better his overall chances of success. Whatever success in his mission could possibly be defined as.
Straya soon ceased her fussing after Roddenbury pulled out of the parking bay, if only because she was terrified. Whatever she had experienced was replaying itself in her head, and the fluffy stared blankly ahead as though she were entranced by the subdued rumbling of the semi’s engine, and the slight rocking of the cabin’s vibrations. Little by little, the azure mare started to slink back into the duffel bag that she disliked so, as it was a better alternative to the scary world around her.
Roddenbury took note of this from the corner of his sight. He needed both hands on the wheel and his focus on the road, which meant he couldn’t reach out to Straya, so the driver hoped that his voice would suffice. His voice was gruff and tired, and he never had to deal with sensitive matters in his life. That was what a life as a human drone would do to a person. Yet he felt that he had this capacity. No different than comforting a child.
“Straya? Straya, it’s okay. It’s alright. You’re safe in here,” Roddenbury reassured her with the softest voice he could manage.
The fluffy blinked a few times, and swallowed hard. “S-safies? S-stwaya am… nu moa huwties?”
The man replied, “I’m not going to hurt you. I already told you that.”
“Nu wet baddies huwt Stwaya anymoa?” Straya inquired, but Roddenbury heard the sad plea wrapped up in the question. She was not asking if the trucker could do this. He was asking him to protect her.
“They won’t lay a finger on you,” Roddenbury swore once more.
This exchange went on for a few more minutes. Straya was very much like a child, her questions escalating from attempts to assuage her fears, to silly hyperboles. The string of queries led to, “Wod be Stwaya fwend foweba an’ eba!?”
This question was bittersweet for Roddenbury. “Yes,” he answered her, trying not to sound as crestfallen as he felt. He had experience with the mare’s perception of time – forever could be a span of ten minutes if she was bored enough, so he did not feel as bad for lying to her like this. He would be her friend until her final moments. That was forever enough, wasn’t it?
“Fank 'ou Wod. Stwaya wub Wod. Wod nicies mistow, ma’e heawt huwties go 'way! Ma’e scawedies go 'way!”
"I – " Roddenbury tripped over his thoughts. That was phrase he hadn’t heard since childhood. Only on a handful of occasions, that that, even back then. With the dissolution of the nuclear family, it had become uncommon for people to freely share affection like this. Roddenbury was perplexed. “You can’t possibly mean that, Straya. You’ve only known me a little more than a week.”
“Buh Stwaya do! Stwaya wuz so saddies, buh Wod hewp Stwaya! Hewp when nuone ewse hewp!”
There would have been a moving sentimentality about the little fluffy-synth, had Hasbro not scrambled her speech mannerisms with their bizarre and unethical science. For all of her charm and innocence, Roddenbury remained skeptical as to the authenticity of Straya’s supposed love; how could something so delightfully simple understand what it meant to truly love someone? How could she form such a bond so quickly?
“I appreciate the gesture, Straya, but I’m going to protect you because you can’t protect yourself. You don’t have to make this a conditional friendship,” Roddenbury told her.
Straya rested her head on her one foreleg. “Wod say too biggies wowdsies! Wai Wod nu say wub Stwaya? Am Stwaya bad fwuffy? Am nu-weggy bad?” The mare’s eyes went wide with her anxiousness. Her tail started to swish inside of the duffel bag. One hoof started to tap pensively.
Roddenbury’s jaded instincts told him that these responses were all devised by Hasbro’s sociopathic brand executives to play the hearts of the wealthy like harps. However, something inside the man could not be swayed into writing them off as purely shallow manipulations. Straya was not pretending to be sweet and innocent, she just was. It was the nature she was given by people for nefarious motives, but their greed did not make her greedy. Her want for affection was not diminished just because it would have benefited those that now wanted her dead, had things gone differently.
“No, Straya. You’re a good… good fluffy. I… love you, too.” The phrase was awkward and unfamiliar to Roddenbury’s ears. He had to ask himself if he understood love enough to doubt Straya’s, when he barely had any meaningful relationships to speak of.
“Yay! Wod an’ Stwaya be fwends foweba!” the azure mare cheered.
Roddenbury felt himself smile. This felt nice. Just the idea of another being wanting to extend its loyalty and compassion to him… it was something the man never knew he was missing until just that moment. Suddenly, Roddenbury did not care for whether it was all some grand illusion or not. Hasbro’s intentions became null when they marked the fluffies as expendable products.
The man steeled his resolve.
He would protect Straya, not just because she was a defenseless creature, but because she was his friend, well and truly. It did not matter how short a time they knew each other. It did not matter how long Straya had left.
What did matter was putting a stop to this injustice before the remaining fluffies were wiped out by the black vans roving the roads. But how? Intuitively, Roddenbury concluded that he had to arm himself. If he was going to defend Straya from those who wished her harm, he had to be able to defend himself in equal measure. And once he was able to defend himself, he would have to go on the offensive and engage his fellow man –
Oh. Oh.
Roddenbury was not looking forward to that part. He was a fugitive, but he wasn’t quite ready to walk the path that could potentially pit him against law enforcement, playing the numbers by the trajectory of bullets. Maybe it did not have to end that way. Perhaps there was a way to go about this cause without resorting to the might of a firearm. But that did not negate its need.
Roddenbury was a fugitive. A low priority fugitive, but through necessity, he had to commit a few more crimes.
After Roddenbury was through with the day’s deliveries, just before he left the depot, he made sure to throw an indistinct overcoat on over his uniform. The duffel bag, with Straya inside, was underneath. The resulting bulge in the plastic-like fabric gave the appearance that the truck driver had a hunchback, but that was fine. Serendipitous, even. The goal was to make identification by street camera a little more difficult, after all.
The man huddled into the stream of people, the constant motion of the Ubermetro. The way he walked was not towards home. He walked through glamorous plazas lined with stores strung top to bottom with strobe lights and gas tubes. City squares with strings of electronic lanterns buzzing and humming overhead. But in time, the gilded nightlife gave way to darker streets lit by dotting lamps at the intersections. The partitioned road was ill-traveled.
The streets were still full of people. Not the people one felt safe around. But that was the point.
Roddenbury soon reached his destination. Another one of the Ubermetros’ open secrets. In this region of neglect, there stood one building with an entrance encircled by purple lighting. The portal to Hell, in the poetic sense of entering the underworld. Because that was one of the entrances to the catacombs.
For the rough crowd that surrounded it, Roddenbury did not have a hassle getting to the door. He did not do anything to set himself apart from the other figures, hooded and slouched, preferring to stay in the shadows. The trucker did not meet anyone’s gaze.
He slipped through the lighted doors, and found himself standing in an expansive hall. At the far end of it, was the bombed-out hole that served as the tunnels into the lawless subterranean.
At some point in the past, this was an ornate bank. Now, the wide foyer was divided up into a makeshift bazaar, and the vaulted ceiling was covered in strips of color-changing lights that pulsated and transitioned to the tempo of thumping drums and guitar riffs. The stalls were numerous, with a great assortment to choose from. Food, clothing, drugs, even sex. In the old world, the building stood for money. Nothing changed in the present, except for the means that the money was made and circulated. The building fell to the common folk, and the people in poverty.
This was the result.
Roddenbury was numb when he went to one of the illicit stalls. It had a flickering projection of a pistol to advertise its wares. The man exchanged a number of chrome disks for a humble firearm, a number of magazines, and an ammunition can from which to load them. The supplier provided an inconspicuous container to conceal the ammo crate. The gun and magazines went into the duffel bag when Roddenbury went away from the market stall.
“Don’t touch,” he instructed Straya. She complied.
“Otay, Wod. Nu touchie 'ou toysie.”
“That’s not a toy. That’s… not important right now.”
Roddenbury had a sense of why the concerned parties called the catacomb-hubs entrances into Hell on the way back to his apartment. It wasn’t just for the vices that could be found past the doors. The man felt as if he had lost more than his money when he completed this transaction.
Stepping further out of routine, the man lost some more of his integrity.
-Author’s Note-
Some of you readers may recall how I used The Long Haul Is Too Long as the benchmark of my most ambitious textpost, despite it being my first.
Yeah we’ve already blown past it’s 12K word count, at over 16K now. And there’s still the second and third acts to go!