Third Place: Fry Your Motherboard

Fry Your Motherboard, Cyborg:  Flying Drone Xk-313 Is Coming

by Mark Mellon

Third Place

The kerkorix lay in wait, a metric ton of scaled, clawed, fanged muscle, buried in muddy sepia grit by the turquoise spume's bank. Eyes shielded from grit by nictating lenses, with only her nostrils exposed, she breathed noiselessly, intent for any sign of prey. She hadn't fed in two units and was desperately hungry. 

"BBBBWWWAAAAA."

A plaintive call from a lone wahoo calf, separated from her mother, desperate, thirsty. The calf tossed his shaggy head and watched the tempting spume gush past, only a few meters away. Salivary glands involuntarily drenched the kerkorix's snout. She clamped massive jaws shut, forced herself to keep still, muscles tensed, ready to instantly leap forward.  

Doubts overcome by the spume's tempting reek, the calf headed down the gentle slope to the bank. He bent his head low and extruded his long, pink, prehensile straw of a tongue toward the swift rushing spume, close, so very close, an easy leap away. 

The moment was here. The kerkorix burst forth, long fangs bared, claws outstretched, ready to grab the calf by the throat and kill him.

A stratulator's jade green beam bored through the kerkorix's thick skull, deep into her brain, instantly rendered into charred mush. With a heavy thud and a mournful groan, the kerkorix dropped, deader than hell. The calf bawled and retreated to the herd, safe but scared. Atop his autohippo, Sam tipped his broad brimmed hat back and regarded the dead reptile. 

"Guess I done settled your hash, critter."

Massive, shaggy two ton wahoos grazed upon lavender floridae nearby, more than ten thousand head, the herd put into his charge so many revolutions ago. In the pale jaundiced sky, Kepler 452's mighty orb  beamed heat just above the endless, rocky horizon. Bat winged, reptile raptors cruised the turbulent air currents above, giant, bloodshot eyes above grotesquely huge jaws filled with sharp  teeth, in constant search for weak, defenseless victims, held off only by his stratulator's threat. Alone among Newtex's countless gigahectares, Drover Unit Cyborg Sam 289b rode his lonely circuit, last of the cowborgs. 

"Whoa, boy. Steady there."

The autohippo halted with a hydraulic hiss of robotic joints. Sam dismounted. With one easy motion, he heaved the kerkorix's carcass onto the autohippo's croup. The autohippo bent under the weight, threw its jaws wide and whinnied, a loud, shrill mechanical rasp.

"Easy, Gotengo. Only a short way to town. Four hundred Ks or so."

Sam took his plaz lariat and with a few tight, expert loops secured the kerkorix. With one deft leap, he vaulted into the inbuilt saddle, tripped the sensors with a twitch of his cyberspurs, and launched the autohippo in a headlong lope that quickly approached a hundred kph. Sam expertly steered the massive autohippo down a winding trail through a long, deep valley filled with endless, undulating, two kilometer high mesas that reached like twisted black fingers toward the sky.

One potentially deadly collision after another flashed by as Gotengo thundered down the trail, heedless of the adamantine stone columns millimeters away. Undeterred, Sam forked deep into the stirrups and masterfully steered the autohippo with the reins alone, eyes ahead, alert for every bend and dip in the trail. Kepler 452 crawled somewhat higher in the horizon as what passed for midday approached. 

Sam passed through the Black Chimneys out onto the Plain of Judgment, the broad, corrugated, reddish brown terrain like infinite corduroy wales, rife with flowering yellow manna. Hunched, snot green struldbrugs grazed in the distance. Sam's keen, digitized vision perceived a hundred Ks away the few pitiful, plaz shacks that constituted Frontier Hamlet 2306, the Generic Saloon the largest among them.

"Come on, son. Good times ahead."

Gotengo loped over the plain. Sam wiped dust from his face with his shamsheen scarf and grinned. Geneticized to ride alone, the wahoos' care his primary focus, it was still mere flesh that clothed Sam's titanium steel armature, meat that coursed with red blood and pulsed with human needs, for whiskey, company, and a female body's warmth. All of this and more was to be had in town with cred, enough from the sale of the kerkorix for a spree and to buy vapes, nutriunits, kafenion, and dried wahoo jerky.

A short distance outside of town, Sam slowed Gotengo to a trot. The town was more run down and faded than the last time he'd been there, just three revolutions ago, once bright structures faded to cracked, pale pastels. The livery stood at the hamlet's edge. Brought out of suspension by Sam's approach, Nominal Mayor Brave Face stood before the open double doors, a practiced politician's welcoming grin on his top hatted, beard fringed, oval head, supported by a round, squat body. 

"Howdy, Sam. Looks like you're one lucky cowborg. You done bagged a kerkorix, dead between the eyes too, neat as you please. The hide alone will fetch a thousand cred, not to mention what you get for the meat after we freeze dry and ship it. I'd be proud to skin and butcher her, for a modest fee of course."

"A hundred cred. And pay the thousand up front for the hide with your cut to come from the meat."

"Oh, no, Sam. More like two."

"One fifty if you get on with it."

Brave Face ruefully grinned. "You drive a hard bargain, Sam. I'll bring out the skinnerbot."

The mayor went into the shadowy livery and emerged with a rectangular, wheeled, gleaming silver metal contraption, a sharp, four pronged claw in front. He spread a tarp on the ground.

"Ease her down."

Sam dismounted, undid his lariat and gently lowered the carcass onto the tarp. Brave Face pushed a red button. The claw shot forward, locked onto the kerkorix's ruined head, and dragged the body into a gaping maw. Sam and Brave Face stood well away as the bot did its grim business. A transparent tank on one side filled with pale reptile blood as the skinnerbot deftly removed the kerkorix's hide, sliced the raw meat into desirable cuts, instantly freeze dried for intergalactic transport, and spat the bones out from a rear opening with the fangs retained as valuable ivory. The hide slid forth from a separate orifice, tanned and neatly folded.

Brave Face beamed at Sam. "Tell you what, Sam. I'll keep your cut in escrow and add the rest when I get paid for the meat. That way, you'll get two thousand cred in one big payoff."

Sam shook his head. "Pay me now. I need wahoo steak, whiskey, and a woman. You know dern well the Generic don't do anything except for cred so charge this here index finger."

He held out his left hand's digit with a significant glance. Brave Face shrugged and pushed his own right index finger forward. A small jack inserted into a socket in the tip of Sam's finger. They looked one another in the eye and retinally authenticated the transaction. Brave Face transferred a thousand cred from an interspatial, transgalactic, multidimensional, wormhole transmitted, Primary Cosmodemonic Banque credit facility. The finger's wealth meter went from red to a healthy black. 

"Thanks, Mayor. I'd appreciate it if you lubed and oiled Gotengo before you stable and deactivate him."

"Consider it done, Sam. Now you'll paint the town red, huh?"

Sam tipped back his hat and grinned. "I guess."

Brave Face beamed. "You do that, Sam. Raise hell for me too. Give a party like it's your last dern day on Newtex."

Sam paused. He gave Brave Face a puzzled look. "What do you mean by that, Mayor?"

"Just have a real good time. That's all, Sam."

A tinkling honky tonk piano beckoned Sam from the Generic, drew him surely as an winged insect to a predatory flower. He walked to the saloon, short, rapid steps in his high heeled boots. 

Things seemed unchanged at the saloon. The zinc topped bar gleamed immaculately; the tacky, Rubenesque, pink and peach female nude still loomed overhead in a gilt frame; and Barkeep Unit Whiskey Soda patiently, needlessly wiped the bar clean. In the corner, Resident Gambler Unit Fixed Odds dealt himself a hand of solitaire. He doffed his plug hat in greeting to Sam, but didn't ask him to play, a strange lapse of character. 

"Howdy, cowborg." A sturdy yet graceful female form glided toward him, clad in tanned wahoo skin, face open in a huge toothed smile. Soiled Dove Unit Primrose Sally 113s, awoken like the others from dreamless suspension by Sam's arrival, ready to sample conscious life again and whatever it brought for good or ill. Sally put an arm around Sam's waist and led him to the bar as usual, just as she was geneticized, but there was more than a hint of sadness in her multi-lobed, mauve eyes.

Sam overlooked her odd melancholy. He held out his index finger to Whiskey Soda and proudly displayed the black cred meter reading.

"Bagged a kerkorix by the East Megasection. Brave Face skinned and butchered her. I'm flush and looking to live high, wide, and handsome." 

Whiskey Soda looked up from his mop rag. A weak smile creased his faded, wrinkled face. 

"Guess we can accommodate you, Sam. It's just-"

"Just what? What in tarnation's going on? Why y'all acting so strange? You gone plumb loco?"

"Go on, Whiskey. Tell Sam. If you won't, I will," Sally said. "He's a good, hard working cowborg and he deserves an answer."

Whiskey Soda weakly shrugged. "I guess I should. Have a drink first, Sam."

He poured a bumper full of brown liquid and set it down on the bar. Sam eagerly knocked the drink back. Geneticized to  mimic pure busthead's effects, the fluid triggered digital bitter taste buds as it slid past down his latex esophagus. Sally put her hand on his. Whiskey Soda looked him dead in the eye.

"No way to sugarcoat this, son. This here's your last day on Newtex. Get ready to meet your Manufacturer."

Synthetic glycerin tears streamed down Sally's round cheeks. Whiskey Soda poured Sam another round. Fixed Odds continued playing solitaire. "My last day? How do you figure, Whiskey? Ain't I standing here, big and healthy as I ever been?"

"Hate to tell you, yonker, seeing how you're a decent sort," Fixed Odds said, "but a shootist drone's been sent to pecos you." 

"He's due soon," Whiskey Soda said.

"So that's why Brave Face acted all strange like. Wonder why he didn't tell me."

"It ain't like the Mayor to give anything away when he can turn up some cred," Whiskey Soda said.

"You got a point there. That's why he offered to hold my money, the cheating snake. He knew I wouldn't be coming back for it."

Sally put her arms around Sam's neck. She wept some more. "Run, Sam, run. Go on out to the East Megasection and hide out. He'll never find you there."

Sam gently disengaged her. "He'd only track me down. And I ain't the running kind. Why's this here drone want to terminate me anyway? What'd I ever do to him?"

"No one wants wahoo beef anymore. Mammoth meat is what's in demand. Once the drone deactivates you, us and the hamlet will be disassembled and shipped someplace else to service borgs.  You're the last cowborg left."

"What about Duke and Burt and Kirk?"

Sally sobbed again. Whiskey Soda hung his head low and was silent. 

At last, he murmured, "Them other cowborgs suicybered themselves when they found out the drone was coming."

"Duke went out handsome," Fixed Odds said. "Mounted his autohippo, rode to the top of Mount Perdition, and jumped off to crash five ks down."

"What was left wasn't even worth scraping up," Sally said.

Sam waved for Whiskey Soda to pour him more whiskey. He knocked back his fourth shot. 

"I don't figure on going out that way. Reckon I'll take my chances with this here stratulator."

Fixed Odds grimly laughed. "You cowborgs always had more sand than sense."

Sally took Sam's hands in hers, tears exhausted, but still distraught. "Sam, please, don't be so dern proud. Take your chance while you still can and skedaddle."

"I told you before, gal, I ain't-"

Everything around Sam shifted and twisted, images in distorted mirrors. The very air stood at cross angles to him. It was an abrupt, disruptive pause as the entire planet of Newtex was caught in the jarring spatiotemporal shift of interdimensional galactic travel. Three dimensions became four, then five. Corporeal reality transmuted in subatomic granularity to form infinite, disorienting multiplicities. Sam reached for his stratulator, but his arm went wildly astray, in a different plane from his torso.

Existence snapped back to normality as swiftly as it had deviated. There was dead silence, a strange stillness even for rural Newtex, without even a bat raptor's cry in the distance.

The batwing doors swung open. They all looked out at the empty, dusty street lined by a few rundown, shabby buildings. There was nothing but a horned wahoo skull in the road.

A big, black, broad brimmed Stetson hat floated into the saloon, two meters from the floor. Cool and slow, the hat headed toward the bar. A ring of laser beams along the brim intermittently flashed red and yellow.

"Howdy, folks. How y'all doing today? Well enough, I hope."

The hat's voice was deep and low, friendly with no hint of malice. "Spray some whiskey my way, barkeep, if you don't mind there."

Whiskey Soda picked up a can of Old Tub Rocket and sprayed a fine aerosol mist of pseudoalcohol over the hat. The laser lights flashed and popped in a fast, staccato rhythm. The hat shook off excess beads of spray and loudly sighed.

"Aaaah. Sure glad to get the taste of worm hole dust out of my mouth. Tell you what, folks, forking a bucking, sunfishing, wiggling worm hole ain't what she's cracked up to be. Yeah, you get there fast, but a fun, good ride it sure enough ain't."

The hat swiveled toward Sam. "You'd be the one called Cyborg Sam 289b, I take it?" Sam nodded. "Yes, sir. That's sure enough me."

"Then you're the cyborg I'm looking for. Flying Intergalactic Drone Xk-313's my handle. I want you to know from the get go, son, this ain't nothing personal. There's just an end to everybody's tether and I reckon you done run your string out, hoss."

Sam faced the hat square, hand over his stratulator. "Nice of you to say that, I guess. Now if you plan on doing something, Mister, why don't you just get on with it?"

A laser beam emitted from the hat's front, a red ray of death. Despite his bulk, Sam was quicker than he looked. He dived for the floor, stratulator in hand, and brought it up to fire. 

The hat fired another beam from an oblique angle. This time the aim was true. The stratulator dissolved along with Sam's hand. Nerve analogs transmitted paingrams by the billions to Sam's paracerebrum. He writhed in agony on the floor.

"Whoo, son," the hat said. "You showed some real sand there. That's more fight than I've seen in a fistful of sidereal years. My hat's off to you. Get it? That's sort of a joke there. Anyway, fun's fun, but I got other folks I need to kill so I guess I'll wrap her up."

The hat hovered lower, the brim ominously tilted toward Sam. The laser beams serially flashed with increasing rhythm and intensity.

"Adios, motherfucker."

BBBBBAAADDDDAAAMMMMM.

The shotgun blast deafened everyone in the saloon. Eight heavy, old fashioned lead slugs smashed into the drone, tore it into pieces. Battered beyond self repair, what remained of the hat dropped to the floor, a smoking, charred wreck.

"Reckon you done got me," a weakening voice cried. "Never thought I'd go out this way. Dry gulched by a little lady."

Sally stood behind the bar, smoking shotgun in hand. "Reckon you had it coming, you black hat son of a bitch."

The hat tried to laugh, but instead croaked and expired. The saloon stank of burnt silicon. Sally ran around the bar to Sam. She took him in her arms. 

"Don't worry, Sam. Whiskey's got some spare hands in the cellar. We'll get you right as rain in two shakes of a lamb's tail."

Sam got to his feet. "Don't think I ain't beholden, Sally. But that drone ain't the last. There'll be another one along, pretty much directly I figure."

Sally kissed Sam fiercely. "Don't you worry none, Sam. Whatever comes, we'll face her together."

Raw emotion surged through Sam, overrode his geneticized impulses, driven by the deeper need of his human body, the need for love. He looked around him, at the saloon, Sally, Whiskey Soda, and Fixed Odds, even crooked Brave Face by the livery, at the hamlet and, most of all, the monumental vastness that was Newtex. This was his planet, where he belonged, and he wasn't going to go without a fight.

"Yes, ma'am. I guess we will at that."

Winning pieces are published as received.

---

Fiction Potluck

July 2024

Third Place Winner:

Mark Mellon

Mark Mellon is a novelist who supports his family by working as an attorney. He writes two-fisted, hardboiled, blood and guts pulp fiction and has five novels and over a hundred short stories (many as reprints) published in multiple countries. More information about his writing is available at: www.mellonwritesagain.com.