The three remaining half-mechanical bitches ganged up on me from behind. One encased me in a powerful bear hug I couldn’t break, another bounced out a mechanical net, which the first one threw me into and tied up above me, and then the third one, while I was trying to open the net at the top, did a Spider-Man with her wrist and shot some piping hot, bubbling grey liquid at my mechanical side. I wasn’t able to move in time, so it covered me all over. Holy shit, did it sting!
“JESUS CHRIST!” I ejaculated, in the midst of my pain.
Now, as I am normally invulnerable to the works of Man, this came as quite a shock to me. I soon reasoned what was going on as I saw my powerful mechanical arm give off sparks, shut down, and go limp, and my bionic right leg go likewise. Steinberg had, likely through his connections, managed to find a store of liquid mercury – the one material in the universe to which natives of my planet are vulnerable – and surreptitiously charged one of his robot-strippers with it to wound me. That he did, and soon as he did, the three of them took advantage of my reduced circumstances and started beating the shit out of me.
While I took their hits, I lamented my fate and beat myself up mentally.
What the hell am I gonna DO? I said to myself. My guns and weapons are gone. I’ve just got my body and my wits, and that might not be enough.
Yet that stereotypical minute of self-doubt existed for only a couple of seconds. I suddenly remembered what I did have. A brain. The mightiest weapon of them all. A brain will get you out of things even superpowers can’t, if you use it and nurture it right like I do. Sure, I know that those cyborg types have brains, too, but they’re fake brains, run on electrical impulses rather than natural nerve generators. No substitute.
This I showed them with the still active – and still powerful – left, organic side of my body. Once I had freed myself from their trap, I dislocated their mechanical parts from their organic ones. That being done, I caught Steinberg trying to make his exit out the back door.
“No, you fucking WON’T!” I snapped.
I overtook him, lifted him above my head, and threw him into one of the abandoned tables of the club. He was down and out.
I proceeded to give him the same ruminations on the brain I just gave you, as well as more profanity laced ones about how important the metal half of my body is to me, how he was going to personally pay cash money to replace every single part of me the mercury damaged, and how I was going to personally escort him back to Earth, and jail-after that. I particularly emphasized that he should STAY there if he did not want any more trouble.
“You got any PROBLEMS with that?” I concluded.
He didn’t.
5.
Oops. My pager. I gotta go, man. Let me know when the story comes out. And, for your sake, it better be flattering!
……………………………………………
David Perlmutter is a freelance writer based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The holder of an MA degree from the Universities of Manitoba and Winnipeg, and a lifelong animation fan, he has published short fiction in a variety of genres for various magazines and anthologies, as well as essays on his favorite topics for similar publishers. He is the author of America Toons In: A History of Television Animation (McFarland and Co.), The Singular Adventures Of Jefferson Ball (Chupa Cabra House) and The Pups
Approaching
43,000 Candles
Guy T Martland
When the moon stopped time, he struck out across a dark blanket of sea. After clambering up the rocky coast, he leapt over the headlands and the fields, past the assembly of ruined tin mines, before moving up the country with long, loping steps. He passed by sleeping villages and stilled towns caught in the stuttering gasps of yesterday evening’s revelry. A beam of light shone from his face, illuminating his path, casting the landscape into sharp relief. Sometimes, the moon would help, poking her way between the low clouds that scudded across the nightscape, and he’d dim the projection, letting the heavenly body instead play over the rolling earth that was England.
“The first day of the year,” he mused, thinking about the past fifty-two weeks and of any stories he could relay to the others. Not that he had much to tell. He wasn’t one of the celebrities like the Bishop Rock, with its rolling slot as a BBC ident. Or La Jument, made popular by that photographer Guichard – she’d been on walls across the land, her keeper poking his head out of the door when the huge wave struck; everyone knew that picture. He remembered the fuss when Virginia Woolf wrote about Godrevy all those years ago. He wasn’t like them. At most he’d accumulate modest recognition in a few people’s photo albums. The run of popular postcards from the late nineties had even run its course.
He was Round Island, based on the Scillies, like the Bishop. In Cornish, this was ‘Golowji an Voth’, which was why everyone tended to call him Voth. He was now fully automated—his keeper had left years back, and being in such an inaccessible place, he rarely had visitors, apart from the sea birds. He didn’t mind the gulls, but when the puffins came to visit, they kept him awake all day with their incessant chatter.
He walked across Dartmoor, feet crunching through the bracken. He nodded as he passed the telegraph poles and the windmills, although they hadn’t been granted access tonight; they were as still as the sheep in the field he tiptoed through. For a moment he thought he saw a light behind him, but it was just the moon reflecting in his glass, as if watching him. He’d thought for a moment it was the Bishop, and began to wonder about when he had left. Once they’d travelled up to the North European conference together, but never again. The house was so full of itself. Voth had moved to the Scillies for a quiet life. They hadn’t got on.
Soon he saw other beams flaring across the hills like distant fires. All were converging on the centre of Birmingham for the annual get together. It was always a landlocked destination so no-one became distracted by the sea. Last year it had been Cambridge. He was looking forward to catching up with his old Scottish friends – inveterate drinkers, they’d be the first propping up the bar.
After registering, he took a cursory glance at the series of programmed events. The usual guff about increased mechanisation. There was even a session on the newer radio lighthouses – if you had the money that was the way to go it seemed. Innovations in GPS and the diminishing usefulness of lighthouses were also scheduled. He slid a programme into one of his windows and consulted the course organiser about the evening reception.
As he walked through the city centre, he trod carefully around the huts of the German Christmas market to Temple Row, where the temporary bar had been erected. Skerryvore was already in his cups, shouting loudly at Voth as he entered the open space. A whisky was shortly pressed into his hand and Skerryvore launched into a long anecdote, much of which was hidden behind his thick accent. Despite this, he managed to keep up.
“… these army folk. Lived in my belly while they tried to find the downed Tornado. I thought I could drink, but they put it away.”
“Still getting the Stevenson visitors?” asked Voth, as Skerryvore finished his story, slammed his glass on the bar and demanded another.
“Aye. Those literary types show up every once in a while. Keeps things ticking over…”
At that moment, the Bishop sashayed into the bar, La Jument on his arm. He passed his beam over the assembled in an almost condescending manner.
“Wanker,” muttered Skerryvore.
“I’m glad it isn’t just me who thinks that,” said Voth.
“I don’t know how you can put up with him all year round…”
“He keeps his distance.”
He lost Skerryvore sometime after the reception. The Scot had staggered up to him, suggested they go clubbing, flickering out a strobe of light in anticipation. But after the long trip up, Voth just wanted to head back to the hotel. He left Skerryvore to it, wandering off through unfamiliar strange city streets. After a wrong turning, he found himself somewhere near Gas Street Basin, his light dancing over the Victorian canals.
As he tried to orientate himself, he heard some voices. Peeking around the side of a red brick brewery building, recently converted to expensive flats, he saw three of them in conversation. One was the Bishop, the other two Wolf Rock and Longships, more of the Cornish contingent. The Bishop towered above both of them, his helipad like a mortar board. The other two had a similar, squatter structure, and appeared to be cocking their heads up to their taller colleague.
“In the July fog, we’ll do it,” said Bishop, his well-bred tones reverberating around the space.
“The tankers will be passing closest on the 7th, 12th and 18th,” said either Longships or Wolf Rock.
“Co-ordinated switch off,” said either Wolf Rock or Longships.
“The tide will take it straight over to the rocks near Tater Du. She’ll be blamed.”
Voth felt condensation creeping over his lens. They were planning an act of sabotage? But why? What had the lovely Tater Du done to them? Voth racked his brains, but couldn’t remember anything about the relative newcomer to the Cornish coast. He tried to still his breathing, his mirrors spinning faster in the dark.
