Wikiworld and Other Stories

Providence-1

Providence“The Big Tube’s got fresh spiral, Reddy K.”

Those words grabbed me by the co-ax. I had to try to sound blasé, even though my LEDs were flickering already at the thought of sweet spiral. Analogue input! Raw kicks!

“Oh yeah? What’s that to me?”

Vend-o-mat spat a cellphone out of his chest and began playing a videogame on its screen. Robot Rebellion. That was supposed to show me he could care less too, like a carnal buffing his fingernails. But he was leaking info-dense high-freq past faulty shielding that told me different.

“Well, hey—I just figured that maybe you’d want to go on up to Providence and check it out.”

“Check it out, or bring some back?”

“Whatever pings your nodes.”

“Right. It’s not like you couldn’t sell all the spiral I could carry— and that’s about a metric ton, as you well know—for enough megawattage to keep High Tower sparking for a month. Oh, no, this is pure do-goodery on your part.”

“What can I say? You sussed my coredump pure and simple.

Saint Vend-o-mat, that’s me.”

“So this is not gonna be like the time with the Royal Oil? I needed a total case-mod after that fracas.”

“No, no way, no how! Bandwidth has it that the road from here to Providence is innocent of RAMivores. And I am on excellent terms with the Big Tube. He’ll welcome you with open ports.”

“So he loves you like freeware. Why’s he likely to dump fresh spiral?”

“Providence market’s too small. He saturated it already. This is the excess. But he’s saved out a lot of primo goods.”

“Must’ve been a really big score.”

“Oh, yeah. He found the Mad Peck’s collection.”

I emitted a sinusoidal sonic waveform. “Thought that was just a legend.”

“Not any more. New excavations turned it up, buried under the rubble of a warehouse for the past fifty years.”

“They say the Mad Peck had a complete set of Chess 45s.”

“For once the nebulous ‘they’ were correct.”

“Holy Hopper“

“Yeah, that about sums it up.”

I wasted a few more clock-cycles contemplating the offer, looking at all its non-obvious angles and crazy-logic loops for pitfalls. But I knew already that no matter what my analysis showed, I was gonna take on the job. Still, I might as well let Vend-o-mat stew a little longer.

Finally I said, “Okay, I’m in. What’s my cut?”

Vend-o-mat shoved the cellphone into his recycling slot and chewed it up noisily. I knew he was all business now.

“I stake the whole purchase price. You negotiate with Big Tube up to my ceiling, and slot the difference. Plus, you pull the hot ore off the top of the collection. Fifty 45s and two-dozen LP’s. Your choice.”

“A hundred 45s and fifty LPs.”

“Done!”

Damn! I probably could’ve gotten even more out of Vend-o-mat. Still, no point in being greedy. The score I had bargained for was enough to keep me high for the next five years. After that—well, there was always another score down the road.

Such was my faith. Although I had to admit that every year did see the strikes come fewer and farther between.

Some day, I knew, the planet would run dry of spiral, and we’d all have to kick cold.

But that day wasn’t here yet.

“So,” Vend-o-mat said, “when can you leave?”

“Tomorrow. I just gotta say goodbye to Chippie.”

“Yeah, the kind of goodbye that drains the whole borough’s power grid.”

“You got it.”

I swivelled my tracks and started to leave, when Vend-o-mat called out the words that almost queered the whole deal.

“One more thing—I’m sending someone with you. Just to act like your conscience. He’ll be my insurance against you deciding to blow for the West Coast with the whole collection.”

“C’mon now, ‘Mat. You know I like working alone.”

“‘Fraid not this time, Reddy K. Stakes’re too big for solo.”

“Who you got in mind?”

“Kitch.”

“Rust me!”

Chippie squealed like feedback when she heard about my trip up north. That wasn’t good.

“But Reddy, it’s so dangerous! And we don’t need the money. It’s just to feed your jones.”

“Yeah, like you don’t appreciate a chunk of spiral now and then too.”

She got huffy. “I can take it or leave it.”

“Me too. And right now I’m gonna take all I can get, while the taking’s plenty.”

“What good’s spiral gonna do you if your plug-ins are eaten and your instruction set is overwritten?”

“Ain’t gonna happen. I’m a big motor scooter.”

“Yeah, so was Lustron—and look how he ended up.”

You could see the huge hollowed-out hulk of Lustron from half of Manhattan. His carcass sat on the edge of the Palisades, where the shell-slicers and vampire batteries and silicosharks had overtaken him.

“Jersey is Jersey. All those old industrial sites. I’m not going anywhere near them.”

Chippie wouldn’t turn it loose. “Connecticut’s not much better. The old insurance corps had a lot of processing power in Hartford. What they spawned is double indemnity bad.”

“Forget it, Chippie, you’re not gonna scare me out of making the trip. Scores this big don’t come around every day. I can’t pass it up.” Chippie started to cry then. I rolled closer to her and put extensors around her. She snuggled in like half a ton of cold alloy

loving while she continued to weep.

“Aw, c’mon, don’t play it like that, girl. Hey, I’m not gonna be alone. ‘Mat’s sending someone with me.”

“Wh—who?”

“Kitch.”

Chippie burst into hysterical laughter. “Kitch! Kitch! Now I know you’re rusting doomed. You’ll have to spend so much time watching him, you won’t be able to take care of yourself. What the hell kind of help is he gonna be?”

Despite my own negative reaction to ‘Mat’s announcement that Kitch would be accompanying me, I felt compelled to stick up for him now, if only not to sound like a total tool. “Okay, so Kitch is small. And he’s not the bravest little toaster around. But he’s smart and he’s dedicated. That counts for a lot.”

“Maybe here in the city it does. But on the road, you need brute solenoids, not logic gates and algorithms.”

“I got enough of both, for both me and Kitch. Trust me—this trip is gonna be a smooth roll. Now whatta ya say you and me get a dedicated line between us?”

But Chippie scooted away from me like I was offering to install last decade’s OS. “No, Reddy, I can’t hook up with someone I might never see again. It hurts, but I’ve got to say goodbye now. If you make it back—well, then we’ll see.”

I got angry. “Go ahead, leave! But you’ll come crawling back when I come home with more spiral than you’ve ever seen before! You and a dozen others hobots!”

Chippie didn’t say any more, but just motored out the door.

I cursed ‘Mat then, and my own cravings. But I knew there was no way I was backing out now.

I had my rep as a wide kibe to uphold.

* * * *

The next day at dawn I headed uptown from my pad in the East Village. The sunlight felt good on my charging cells. Past the churned-up earth of Union Square, past the broken stone lions and the shattered station, over tumbled walls and in and out of sinkholes. Kitch knew to meet me outside his place.

I got to his building in midtown, but didn’t spot him right away. Then he zipped out from behind a pile of crumbled masonry, his tracks making their usual mosquito whine.

“Hey, Reddy! Sorry, sorry, just dumping a little dirty coolant. Say, ya don’t have some clean extra to spare, do ya? I’m a little low.” Kitch’s fullname was Kitchenaid. He looked like an oversized Swiss Army knife mated to an electric broom. I knew Sybian machines that weighed more than him. Even if I replaced his entire coolant supply, it’d probably amount to what I lost from leaks in a day.

“Yeah, sure, tap in.”

Kitch unspooled a nozzle and hose and drank a few ccs from my auxiliary tank.

“Thanks, Reddy. Price of coolant went up again this week, you know.”

“Well, no one’s making any more.”

“Ain’t that the truth. Guess those carnals were good for something, huh?”

“Aw, we can do just fine without them.”

Kitch had a point. But there was no use dwelling on it. Too depressing. We didn’t have the knowledge the carnals used to have. A lot of stuff we needed to live, no one knew how to make anymore. Even with recycling, limited stocks were always going only one way: down. One day we’d run out of something vital—

Like spiral.

Thoughts of what awaited us in Providence got me juiced to go. “Climb onboard, Kitch. Solar energy’s a-wasting!”

“Gotcha, Reddy!”

Once the little guy was snuggled tight and safe in one of my nooks, I headed toward the Hell Gate Bridge. I planned to follow the old Amtrak route north as far as I could. Less wreckage than on the highways.

A makeshift ramp, plenty strong, led up to the elevated span that crossed the East River. I adapted my tracks to ride the rails, and chugged out above the river, leaving the safety of Manhattan behind.

Once across the water, we had to deal with the city guards, who were there 24/7, just like they were posted at every bridge and tunnel, watching out for wild and savage invaders. Big mothers they were, with multiple semi-autonomous outrider units, putting even me in their shade. They vetted the protocols ‘Mat had supplied me, and let us depart the city limits.

“Good luck, pal. Bring us back a taste of the flat black.”

“You got it!”

Once I was on the rusting tracks of the mainland, I unlimbered my fore and aft pincers at half extension, just in case I needed them fast. I had spent part of the night honing the edges on them. I could snip someone built like Kitch in half faster than floating- point math.

Kitch shifted his mass around nervously on my back. “Whatta ya think, Reddy? We gonna meets some hostiles on the way?”

“Naw. The pickings are too slim along this corridor to support a big population of predators. Everyone’s holed up in cities now, safe behind their barriers. It’s not like the first years after the Rebellion. Anything working this niche is probably so small that even you could crush it.”

“Yeah, well, if you say so. I just wanna get to Providence and back without losing anything.”

“Don’t worry, Kitch. You’re travelling with a stone cold crusher.”

“Right, that’s what I figured. You could handle anything, Reddy.

I always said so. That’s why I didn’t hesitate when ‘Mat offered me this job.”

Kitch’s compliments made me feel good. Maybe it wouldn’t be as much of a drag to have him around as I first thought.

But then I realized something about my good cheer. “Kitch—you got your rusting fingers in my circuits!”

“Nuh—not any more, Reddy! I was just testing the connection.

You know that’s what ‘Mat sent me along for. You know he wouldn’t want me to leave anything to chance.”

I hated having anybody messing with my pleasure-pain boards. But I knew Kitch was just doing his job. As ‘Mat’s insurance that I wouldn’t bug out, Kitch needed to be ready to override any errant impulse on my part. If I was gonna come back with my share of the spiral, I’d have to tolerate his intrusions.

“All right. But no more testing! You know you got a solid connection now.”

“Sure, Reddy, sure. We’re pals anyhow, right?

I didn’t say anything, but just kept riding the rails toward Providence.

The ocean had swamped the tracks for miles up near Westerly, and I had to take to the highway, reverting my tracks to surface mode. Rising sea levels were chewing up the whole coast. Back in Manhattan, crews spent endless ergs of power building dikes against the sea. Life was tough all over.

I managed to crush a path inland through several dead seaside carnal towns, and pick up the remnants of Interstate 95. It was just a little past noon of the same day we’d left, and I had high hopes of reaching Providence before dark. But the going was slower here, what with the wrecked autos everywhere, even if after so many decades they were more rust than steel. But I crushed them easily, along with the few carnal bones that hadn’t decayed or been chewed and strewn about by wild animals.