Mechano-Pastoral

A weak moped putts down the dirt road leading to 73’s house. It’s early morning Sunday, dew strewn across the stalks of corn in the fields around her. The small town of Bethlehem was doing its weekly farmers market, and since it was the third Sunday of the month of June the junk trader would be coming into town. 73 has her own wares to sell, serving boards and wooden toys that delighted locals and tourists alike. She sets up, as usual, in the booth next to a blacksmith who sharpened knifes for free, old Earnest.

She goes to the junk trader during a lull in business, just before lunchtime. The man went from town to town on a four week rotation, making himself known everywhere when harvest time came around. He’s a greasy man, younger but with prominent crows feet. His main wares were farming equipment parts, many of which could be used to fix 73’s woodworking tools and moped. She also buys some solenoids and used EPROM chips from the man, hiding them under a tarp in the milk crate strapped to the back of her bike. The market was a success, with a few custom orders coming in for decorations to be put up at the Stern manor’s fourth of July party.

The ride back from the market is far dustier than the ride to, the morning dew having evaporating and leaving dry land in its wake. 73 has to wash all of her produce to get the grime off before putting it in the stasis chest and carrying her new parts back to the woodworking shed. There was no time to waste in getting the new custom orders ready, her lunch of a single tomato would have to suffice for the time being. She doesn’t have to eat much, anyway. She works hard, keeping her prosthetic fingers away from the saw blades, but grazes one against the belt sander by accident. She pulls it away fast, braced for the worst but nothing ever came. When she opens her clenched shut eyes she’s still in her workshop, the piece she had been sanding went flying off the belt and into a nearby trash can. She retrieved it and got back to work.

Dinner was pretty simple, a bit of mushroom soup she had in stasis leftover from the night before. Its savory flavor danced across her tongue, a constant reminder of why life was so worth living. After the meal she goes to her writing room, connecting herself to the computer terminal and downloading the contents of her consciousness. When asked if she wants to mark this version as important she says yes, as she always did with days where she was injured. She goes to bed and was pleased to wake up in the morning.



---



Wash up, redress the interface ports on the small of her back, eat a quick breakfast, back to the shop. 73 was going to go to town today, but decided to go scraping instead. After applying a coat of varnish to a table she was working on she got back on her moped and rode the five miles or so to the crash site of her old frame. Almost ten years had passed since the crash, the recovery, the constant fear of deactivation. She was free of that life now, she tries telling herself, reversed the process of dehumanization and returned to the classification of human again. Most pilots don’t get so lucky. Her frame, Archimedes, continued to rust away in the backstretch of Mr. Jenkins cabbage farm, vegetation taking over the outside edges.

She was surprised to see a truck parked by the wreckage, and after parking her bike she could hear a faint singing coming from inside. She climbs up to the chest, where the circuitry was most easily accessible, and the junk trader became visible among the rubble. His singing is as rough as his appearance, and he stops on an awkward note when he sees her. They exchange no words, only looks, and carry about their own tasks. 73 had already picked out her personal effects from the cockpit, bobbleheads and trinkets and a few photographs of her old girlfriend from before she went full-time. She never took the interface seat, or its controls, they were too ratty and stained with sweat and blood.

“Excuse me, junk man, have you seen any, uh..” She checks her list of needed parts again, “RP-2239 backplane’s around here, have you?”

The man popped his head up from a hole in the neck of the beast. “2239’s? On this frame, no I haven’t seen any. Plenty of 2235’s though, and the pin-out is mostly the same. Here, I can print you out a diagram to help you rewire it.”

“No sir, I wouldn’t want to hassle you that much-”

By now the man had climbed out of the frame and was heading back down to his truck, grabbing a small thermal printer from a toolbox and plugging it into a data pad strapped to his arm. The printout of the wiring diagram was excruciatingly slow going, and after it was done the man still had to find a pen to mark the swapped pins. He clamors back up to 73 and hands her the paper. “Now look, pins 22 and 23 are swapped from the 35 to the 39, and those pins are 12 volt power and ground. The manufacturer did it to get people to buy new parts for things that didn’t need them, classic move. What are you trying to build, anyway?”

73 folded up the diagram and put it in a small tote bag before continuing to look for more parts in the remains of the cockpits brains. “A little project box I’ve been meaning to put together for a while. Something to interrupt some incoming data and give me a log.”

“Sounds sort of sophisticated, but if you were to find the parts for it anywhere it would be in this wreck. Makes you wonder who would let this much good material sit and rot away.

“I ask myself that every day. Thanks again for the help.”

“Any time, happy picking!”



---



73 was as much of a name as she was allowed for a long time, but since its written on all of her tools and business cards she doesn’t bother changing it. Sometimes when she looks in the mirror to do her hair she thinks of the name “Amily,” her name from before she was the property of Altressi Heavy Extraction. It was a pretty name, one she had chosen for herself, but she felt no connection to it now. Any association good or bad was beaten out of her so hard that it was hard to feel it was her name. She realized with a start that she had been staring into the mirror with her hairbrush in the same knot for the last 10 minutes, and takes that as a good sign to go out today. She grabs her special film camera and leaves the house.

Her crappy little bike sputters and whines as it climbs up the only hill in town, a mound of dirt left over from a construction project. Other than the wreck of her frame the hill is the highest point in the county, and one of the only places where you can look over the endless fields of staple crops. The sky is bigger on top of mount dirt heap, the grass that grows there is softer. She packed a lunch of grapes and apricots to eat while she took photos of the cloud formations.

73’s special made camera looks nothing like a traditional film camera. Theres a lens at the front, yes, and a viewfinder above it, but the entire thing is spread out, switches and buttons orbiting around the central lightbox attached to the lens. Her fingers slip perfectly into the notches and elastic straps, it feels like holding your hands splayed out in front of you more than it feels like holding a solid camera. The company replaced her fingers, each knuckle and the parts between move on their own, adjusting pitch and yaw to hit microswitches scattered across the proprietary hand-hold controls of the frame. Every single function of the machine could be accessed with ten well-trained, well kept fingers. The camera was so precise that 73 couldn’t now control the shutter speed, located at the tip of her left ring finger, the one that brushed against the belt sander yesterday. She wedges a bit of a grape leaf into the gap and gets control enough.

The photos she takes of clouds are mostly for herself, but some get sold in town. The Stern family has some large prints in their kitchen, or so 73 has heard, and one of them is a cloud photo she sold them the film strip to. She used to dance among the clouds, shes far happier with the earthbound view.



---



After getting back from her photography trip 73 works on the Stern’s project first. They’re the richest family in town, and on account of the lofty advance they paid they get higher priority. They want giant letters to spell out ‘HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY,’ each with its own American flag painted onto it. 73 really doesn’t understand the local interest of American culture, maybe it’s because she grew up in one of the northern provinces, unexposed to old time patriotism. A state or province or country was just the thing you sent tax money to for new roads and schools and healthcare and things. It was as wholly uninterested in its people as the people were in it. But then again, nobody went hungry where she grew up. The American Dream, as it were, will always be the fancy of people out here. Oh well, a party in the summer is always fun.

Along with the payment the family provided her with some beautiful lumber, a dense piece of oak from somewhere out east. It had some sort of significance to them, but 73 wasn’t fully aware of it. She had finished the stencils for each letter last night, and started today by tracing each one onto the board. She’s able to get every letter fit onto one piece of wood except for the last Y. She thinks about calling the family, but decides to use one of her own bit of leftover oak from a dresser set project a few years back and reuse that. It’ll take some cutting, but with enough sealer they’d never be able to tell.

She works for a little bit before making herself a dinner, just sauteed peppers and onions with some rice. She also oven cooks a bit of marinated tofu she had in stasis, for some protein. It’s hard for her to eat heavy meals, after so long on liquid base rations big meals made her sick. But over the last ten years she had built up the tolerance again, gaining some beautiful curves in the process. Still, this much food is too much, and some of it gets put into stasis for a light lunch the next day. She wakes up early to keep working on the letters, the intiricacies of the ‘R’ were giving her trouble. She tried angling her hand to get the file right where she wanted and-

oh no.

73 bolts out of the shop, leaving everything where it was. A can of glue was left open, if she wasn’t quick it would go off before she could use most of it. She tries distracting her mind with thoughts of glues while running to her computer terminal. By the time she’s in the house she’s lost all feeling in her fingers, by the time she’s at the computer she can hardly move her arms and legs. She rocks her whole body back on the tall-back chair with a male connector plug on the end and it seats itself into the female connector on the back of her neck. The computer, left on at all times for just this sort of emergency, Starts running the diagnostics program that recognizes the lock-up command forcing 73 into a state of paralysis. After a few minutes fighting the malicious code in her back-brain she regains control of her fingers, and slowly can start moving the whole hand up to the keyboard.

Before she starts typing up the damage report she gets a better look at the part of her hand that got clipped by the file, a small line of blood down the middle finger where her grip slipped and the steel file’s sharp edge grazed. An injury that small was enough to trigger the automatic pilot recovery program Altressi left in her neural implant. 73 takes care of the open can of glue and locks herself in the workshop for the rest of the day, still fearing that somebody from the company would see the injury and come to collect her. It’s been 10 years, surely it’s meant to get easier.



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“Morning, 73! I hadn’t seen you in town for a while and wanted to come check on you. Everything ok?”

73 took Suzie Jay to the main house and made them both cups of tea with some digestive biscuits. Suzie’s already promised to help beat up anyone who may come to collect her a dozen times, she could be trusted. She was safe. “I knocked on your house door first and was about to raise the alarm before I heard something in the shed. What are you working on?”

“Oh goodness, this big piece for the Stern manor. Decorations for their fourth of july party, I’ve got a few of the letters cut out now and am working towards the rest.” She sips the catnip tea she made, still too hot but delicious. Worth burning her tongue over which was thankfully an injury that wouldn’t cause another lock-up. “With how much they’d paid in advance I’m trying to deliver this ahead of schedule. What have you been up to?”

“A new girl moved to down, I think she has some body mods like you. A lot of her clothes are tattered and worn but she’s got plenty of money to fix them, odd bird that one.”

“Really, mods? Where is she living?”

“I don’t know, but I’m sure she’ll come into the shop later today to pick up a jacket. You should come meet her!”

And so, 73 does.

Suzie Jay’s tailor shop was really just the front room of her small cottage near main street, clothes racks fill the space, endless boxes of different fabrics line the kitchen. 73 knows the house well, for the first few months after escaping she stayed here, under Suzie Jays care. It was a tough process, remembering how to be human. She tries not to think about it too much. After an hour or so reading the old zines laid on a coffee table the new girl walked in, and immediately 73 can hear the high pitched sound of radar scanners and sense the tension in the womans movements.

She must be a head taller than 73, with great biceps and a strong core. Her face wears the scars of battle, and her mods suggest she wore power armor over a full frame. She has far more mods than 73, mods that suggested she was still working. The woman walks to the counter without noticing 73, and asks for the jacket. “first name J-998, last name, uh, non-applicable.”

While Suzie went to look through the racks the woman finally noticed 73, locking eyes with her mechanical fingers and patch of replacement skin on the left side of her neck. She approaches her slowly, like an animal who would get too startled otherwise. “You’re Altressi, aren’t you?”

“Why would I tell you, stranger?” The venom was palpable in both of their voices, J-998 walks back to the counter without another word. Suzie finds the jacket, and the mechanized woman pays and leaves with only a sideways glance at the other woman. 73 looks out the window just in time to see her get on a motorcycle, a bagger painted blood red, and ride off to who knows where.

She was kind of cute.



---



ex-pilot 73 spent the night not getting much work done, thinking about J-998. Another woman with mods, someone she had to meet. Bethlehem was a small town, only a few hundred people made their home there and most of them were farmers who lived out in the sticks and only came into town to go to the general store. The next day she went to that general store to get the red, white and blue paint she needed for the decorations. If you had a sense of humor you may call it an open-air market. It was an old superstore that had rotted out, some parts had their roof intact but most of it was gone, letting in beautiful sunlight. The general store had built inside the already developed space.

While she was there the woman also visits the electronics section to get some more wires and things for her personal project. By total coincidence she runs into J-998, whose looking at infrared sensors. 73 had stared down the barrel of pulse cannons bigger than she was, why was a single buff lady making her lock up? She gathers her courage and spoke.

“Hey, sorry we got off on the wrong foot yesterday-”

“Are you Altressi or not? You’ve got the mods for it.”

A deep breath, “No, but I used to be. I’ve been out of the system for just about 10 years.”

998 looks uninterested, picking out a box of sensors and looking over the specifications. “Wow, congrats on leaving, proud of you squirt. Any reason you’re talking to me?”

“Well, you asked an intrusive question so I’ll ask one too. What model of power armor do you rock? You’re clearly built for it.”

The strong woman starts A/B comparing two options, looking at their tolerances and weighing the benefits. “I ran a spin-fusion homebuilt for a while, but I sold it, got out of that world.”

“Spin fusion? On that scale? That had to have been seriously inefficient, I mean just considering the inverse proportion effect-”

She turned, faster than 73 was expecting. It set off alarms in her brain, tingles going through as something in her tries to pull data from sensors that aren’t there. “Look, shortie, I’m certain you’re very excited about meeting a new cyborg friend but the last thing I want to talk about is my power armor or what I did with it. Buzz off.” And she walked off, carrying both boxes of sensors in her hands. 73, for her part, quickly checks out and leaves the store. On the way out she sees the motorcycle 998 had been riding the day before, glistening in the sun.

That Saturday it was rainy, and already 73 was starting to run low on provisions. She had been eating the fruit she had bought while she worked on the letters and had run out yesterday. The farmers market was tomorrow, and all she has left to eat was a few ears of corn and one more slice of tofu. She mostly filled herself on tea instead of going through the last of her provisions. True, she had some emergency base solid rations in a cupboard somewhere, but she’d rather walk through a field of broken glass than eat another solid ration.



---



73 took a break from her woodworking on the last day of June to help Suzie Jay with a backlog of dry cleaning, the demand for cleaned up suits and dress wear before the Fourth of July party was high. Of course, she also secretly hoped that J-889 would come around again. Sure enough, later into the day she did. Suzie Jay signaled for 73 to come out of the back and talk to her, hoping for an improvements in relation between the two.

“Hey shortie, I’m sorry I pushed the Altressi thing the other day, I can see it was sort of a sore spot.”

“It’s okay, I guess. It was so long ago that it doesn’t sting as much anymore.”

“Yeah… did you ever do any work on Saturn, during the methane extraction project?”

73 lights up with the memories of comeradery, it was an immersion job, but with all of the pilots locked in for nearly a month they got very friendly very fast. She had even done a lot of flirting with one of the techs that went along with them to the orbital base. It was one of the only enjoyable times she had as a pilot for Altressi. “I did, yeah, I was with the 227 crew for three weeks!”

“Okay, well I was there too, fighting with the locals on the rings. Some frame or another started extracting while I was down there and I almost got flung into space. That better not have been you.”

“Oh gosh I’m sorry, I don’t think that was me. It’s so funny you were there, though, did you ever go to the company canteen?”

“No, I was with the marines, I wasn’t allowed to leave base.”

“Well that explains the scars, I guess. I’m, uh, really sorry you got dragged into that mess. It wasn’t fun for us either, it was one of my first immersion missions and it almost killed me living off saline and liquid ration for that long.”

J-998 hands Suzie, who had been listening to the conversation, her ticket and she goes to the dining room slash storage to grab some tailored pants. “What was your longest immersion?”

73 looks out the window to the street, some kids are playing catch with a baseball and an oven mitt. “Three months, actually. I went down to 85 pounds and couldn’t think without the computer for a while. That’s what made me quit, albeit with a little resistance.”

“Jeez, three months. I did five days once with amphetamines and injections and that was a last resort during a siege on Polaris.”

“Hey, five days in power armor wears just about as hard as a month in a 30-meter like I ran. It’s actually crashed on the outskirts of town if you ever want to-“

“Got your things, J-998!” Suzie Jay comes out with a few pairs of tattered blue jeans covered in patches and stitches. There’s a decorative patch on the left thigh, the insignia is unfamiliar to 73.

“Thanks Suzie, I hope I’ll see you at the Sterns party in a few days 73?”

“Maybe. Depends on how patriotic I’m feeling.” And J-998 walked out of the shop, clothes in tow. Suzie snaps 73 out of staring wistfully out the window at 998 walking away.

“You fancy her, don’t you?”

“Nothing fancy about her I can promise you.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.” Suzie goes to the back as 73 shakes herself out of the haze and gets back to work folding dress shirts and pants.



---



Time was running out on the Sterns party decorations, but once all the carving was done and all was left was to wait for paint to dry 73 went to the computer room to wrap up another lingering project. She tries not to use the internet much except to find new books and recipes, but once upon a time she had frequented a forum for ex-pilots like her. She doesn’t need that kind of support anymore like she did then, but she still has saved a few articles of note. One of them was an ongoing community project for a small project box that plugged into the interface port on the back of ones neck and prevented lock-ups after injuries. She had checked the forum again a few months ago and found the project finished with easy to follow instructions. She had all of the parts gathered, and it was time to put it together.

It took a few hours but the box was done. Sleek, it formed to the back of the neck and only stood out about an inch from its surface. She had carved the box by hand, burning vines and flowers on as decoration. It was a beautiful thing, and it should be for something 73 will be wearing for a good long while. She plugs the circuitboard inside into her computer and starts to flash the software. While it loads she thinks about how she’ll test it. Cutting is out of the picture, just about any intentional self harm would be too extreme. Maybe she can climb up some hill and fall down it? Or maybe, well if it still worked after all these years...



---



After a light dinner she takes her bike and rides out to the rotting frame. The path through Jenkin’s cabbage farm is as rough as ever, 73 does her best to stay in the small dirt clearing but the bumps and dips make her bike jump left and right, ruining a few cabbages here and there. After a few minutes of riding she comes across the wreck of her frame, grown over with vines and moss. The metal is being reclaimed by the earth which cradled the figure, masculine in some silhouette with cats ears on the top as a decorate piece, one of the few permitted.

The frame was hers, in a way. It was in her name, and hers to modify to her liking but she herself was owned by Altressi, ergo the frame was theirs too. They never chased her when she crashed. No crew ever came out to survey the wreckage or recover the pilot. Her security clearance wasn’t high enough, and the company was too focused on casualties during the extraction of lithium on the moon, the immersion job 73 was given after she had decided to quit. A misplaced spark and the blast knocked out her communications and sent her flying back to the earth.

She unwraps the gauze around her neck to reveal the rear interface port and connects the wooden box she had built. She went stiff for a second as data flows through her brain, but with a few pings the shocks stop and the box reports flawless operation. It’s risky testing it so far from home, but she trusts her handiwork.

73 climbs up the frames side and into the cockpit. She takes out a silver sharpie and crosses off a group of ticks on the cabins interior, signifying ten years since making her escape. She climbs into the seat, a challenge in its current vertical position, and flicks the switch on the seat rear to let electricity flow into the cabin.

She hears the mechanics of the prongs on the male end of the interface port jab out to connect to her neck but the box blocked them, bending the pins at funny angles. She doesn’t need to control the deep engine minutiae of the ship with her mind anyway, and she certainly doesn’t want Altressi seeing that she was online, if they even still monitored this channel. The data visor comes down over her eyes and information starts running down it as fast as it could display it.

“Computer, begin combat simulation, same difficulty and proficiency levels as the last simulator run.”

‘YOUR LAST SIMULATOR RUN WAS: 11 YEARS, 4 MONTHS AND 22 DAYS AGO. PROCEED?’

“Sure, why not.”

The screens in the cabin go dark, save for the ones that had been damaged or lost in the wreck. The wall of panels give a pretty good impression of the world outside the cabin as seen through the frames cameras, before being replaced panel by panel with a simulated version of space. 73 is on a generic moon somewhere, on its dark side. She slips her hands into the control gloves, her fingers adjusting up and down to press every single button and switch in the hand holds. The visor, acting as an overlay with all of the pertinent telemetry information, flashes with a countdown to simulation start.

When the timer hit zero 73 turns away from the moon to see an oncoming combat frame hurtling towards her, rockets brighter than the sun creating spots in her vision. Before she can maneuver an arm up to deflect the blow a pulse cannon is in her face, the familiar glow of plasma and simulated smell of ozone causing 73 to squirm in the chair. The cabin lit up as bright as possible before every screen went black. The visor read out the message ‘SIMULATION FAILED, TRY AGAIN AT A LOWER DIFFICULTY?’

73 is panting, her heart racing and her mind firing off neuron paths that hadn’t been used in a decade. “No, restart at this level please. I’m ready now.”

The panels in the cabin turn on again, showing the same fake moon and the same mining tools equipped to the frame. 73 takes the brief countdown time to see what she was equipped with, an acetylene torch and a drill are her only tools. She knows the armor plating in her arms, her frames arms would withstand a decent blast but the flash would blind her for a moment. The visor flashed the countdown again, and before it was done 73 was already turning to deflect the oncoming enemy. The visor lights up with ship stats, fuel, and a small globe showing her and her combatants position in space.

She rolls left to avoid the pulse cannon, blocking her eyes when she hears the whine before the blast. She wasn’t blinded by it but was unsure what the enemies next move is. The combat frame raises a fist to the cockpit and 73 deflects with an arm before flinging that arm forward and throwing off the enemies orientation. The next blow she tried blocking with a key macro, which finger was it on? The hit sent the actual cabin spinning, simulating a loss of gimbal lock. The fast spin was too much for the frame and a few of the rusted out support structures broke free, the cabin thunked back to center with the pull of gravity, the simulator stopping 73 from making any pitch adjustments. It didn’t stop the next hit from sending her spinning, though. She uses the middle knuckle of her left ring finger to hit the gimbal lock button, thank god she remembers where it was before she got too sick. Eating solid food again means throwing it up during spins and she quite liked her dinner staying on the inside. On that same subject, she’s become too wide, or maybe not malnourished enough to properly actuate the yaw adjustments on the sides of the chair, so both yaw adjusts stayed permanently on, keeping the ship somewhat stable but limiting turning.

73 finds the trigger for the acetylene torch just in time to shine it in the enemies face, blinding it for a moment. She tries to go in with the drill but misses the button on her right pinkie and the other frame takes the opening to grab that arm and rip it off. Sparks shoot through the cabin as another spin sends a broken off support structure into one of the screens. 73 has to turn her head to see the enemy bringing the arm down into her cockpit, the screens again going black. She tries to get her breath back but the simulated hits knock the wind out of her. The entire frame settles a bit more in the dirt, clouds of dust have formed outside the spinning cabin. As she climbs out multiple fingers break off of the hand controls, and she has to pull them off like ripped gloves.

When she manages to get out of the cabin and back to her bike, J-998 is down there with a fire extinguisher and some water. 73 takes the water and chugs it before sitting in the dirt, back against the frames abdomen.

“Did you have a fun ride up there?”

“Wonderful, truly. You know I have this fear that they’ll still come get me, that I’m still good enough for them to chase after and steal back.”

“They aren’t looking for you-“

“I know, but the fear is there. I just got my ass handed to me in the simulator, and I couldn’t be happier. I’m no good to them anymore, they wouldn’t want me back.”

“Good on you, 73. You have a real name you want me to start calling you?”

“No, 73 works just fine. You didn’t bring your bike out here, did you?”

998 looks a little flustered at this, hiding her face. “Well, no, I sort of walked out here to see the rotting frame. I’m just now getting my footing and seeing this giant thing being reclaimed by the earth is, well the symbolism is pretty great.”

“How long have you been out of that world?”

“53 days.”

“Wow! You got your feet under you quick! What’s that been like for you?”

J-998 looks out at the rising moon, stars filling the horizon. There’s hardly any light pollution out here so the night sky is breathtaking. “Well selling my armor got me enough money for the bike and all of the bare necessities, but I haven’t found work or anything. It’s hard getting acclimated to living a life without marine rations and supplements and constant work. It feels… wrong, like I’m not built to be a person anymore. I don’t know how you did it.”

“You have a real name, don’t you?”

“...Julia.”

“Julia, tomorrow marks 10 years for me. The reason I’m so healthy now is because I’ve spent every day of that 10 years healing. I was 85 pounds, half blind and couldn’t walk when I crashed here, now I’m healthier than I ever was before. Yes, my fingers will never be my own and up until very recently I locked up and entered a safe mode whenever I got hurt and if I eat more than 1500 calories in a day I feel very sick, but I’ve learned to live around that. It’ll take time for you but it will happen, I promise. And anything I or Suzie Jay or anyone else in town can do to help we will. Assuming you stay here at all, I guess.”

“I’ve been wandering for a while, I like it enough here to stay. You may be stuck with me for a while.”

73 smirks “Somehow, I’ll learn to live with it.”



------



NEURONICS J-223 NEURAL PROCESSING CHIP INITIATING

GOOD NIGHT, UNIT 73

IT HAS BEEN 10 2 MONTHS 8 DAYS YEARS SINCE YOUR LAST FIRMWARE UPDATE, PROCEED TO CONNECT AND UPDATE?

Oh, 73 hates this dream.

“No thank you, this firmware is fine.”

CURRENT FIRMWARE IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH ALTRESSI HARDWARE AFTER JULY 4 2389. CONTINUE WITHOUT UPDATING?

“No, do not update.”

CONTINUING BOOT OUT OF SAFE MODE.

73 wakes up with the sun pouring through the windows. It’s the fourth of July 2399 and the Stern’s decorations for that nights party weren’t quite done yet. Some of the letters still needed their final lacquer coat, last nights impromptu simulator session put that behind schedule. They would just barely be dry by tonight, if anyone touched one it may be tacky and get on their hands and clothes. It had happened before with clients coming in to see tables and cabinets before they were done.

Since it was a holiday 73 has something a bit more substantial for breakfast, tempeh scramble with a glass of orange juice. She remembers that somehow apple pie was an old holiday tradition and she’d be too busy working all day to bake one. Like she could get apples, anyway. She finishes breakfast fast and goes out to the shop where J-998 finds her around lunchtime. The final coat was on and the ex mech pilot was using a blowtorch to get any bubbles out of the acrylic on the specially made Y piece.

“Happy fourth, shortie. You okay after last night?”

“Sure, just a bit off schedule. Say, could you do me a favor? I need to run this first batch of letters over to the Stern Manor and I don’t think they’ll fit on the back of my bike. Could I borrow yours?”

“You sure you’re classed out to ride that kind of motorcycle? It’s a little different than a moped.”

“Please, I can handle it. I was a mech pilot for crying out loud!”

73 can’t handle it. Before strapping the letters down to the passenger seat she takes a few practice laps and immediately falls and scrapes up her knees. Her project box seemed to be working well since she didn’t lock up, but her pants were a little ruined and the bike was a tad bit dinged. She decides to ride her moped to the Stern manor and ask about a pickup truck, she seemed to remember them having one.

Sure enough the Sterns are happy to help pick up the letters in their truck. The thing was massive, tall and wide and blocky in ways it didn’t have to be. Despite its size the bed was barely big enough to hold all of the letters, what an impractical thing! 73 almost started asking questions on what sort of fool would drive something like this but one of the Stern’s workers handed her an envelope with the second half of her payment and drove off. 73 stood there sort of awkwardly, the party was still a few hours away and it was much too early to start getting dressed. So she took her camera and started taking pictures of her house. The kitchen especially, where the light shone in through windows and reflected through all of the jars and things. So pretty. By the time the light had died it was time to start getting ready for the party, she puts on a nice cocktail dress and does her hair up in a bun before getting on her moped and putting over to the Stern manor.



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Stern Manor is huge, a plantation style mansion that backs up against 2000 acres of land housing tens of thousands of sheep. Wool is their business, and apparently has been for 450 years. Their family wealth is the stuff of legend, the stuff that the American dream was made out of back when America was more than a memory or a joke. Speaking of, the fourth of july! 73 had never really been one to celebrate it but she could always get down with a good party.

Seemingly everyone else in town was here too, hundreds of people splayed across the front garden and inside the house itself. 73 feels so out of place in a crowd like this, but soon she finds Suzie Jay and Julia standing around a statue of George Washington shooting down small flying drones with a rifle. Suzie holds out a cup of something that tastes like cherry cola but without the bubbles.

“We were hoping you’d make it, 73! Everyone’s been talking about the decorations you made, they love them!”

“Well, that’s good to hear. I wasn’t expecting to see you here Julia, what gives?”

Julia blushes at hearing her actual name, one that based on her expression Suzie hadn’t been made privy too quite yet. “Well, free food is always nice. Try the hot dogs, they’re apparently authentic.”

73 doesn’t eat meat. She asks about a veggie alternative to the hot dog and got a piece of celery on a bun with some mustard. Surprisingly not terrible. While she was in the kitchen making the ‘unbecoming of the holiday’ request for accommodations she notices one of her photos of a beautiful sky above the stasis box. Her and her small group all left before the fireworks show, the lights and noise still got to Julia and 73 and Suzie Jay just didn’t like it. They go back to Suzies house in town and set up in the front room of the laundromat with folding chairs and cupcakes adorned with icing stars they had stolen from the party.

“Todays ten years for you, right 73?” Suzie said, mouth half full of cake.

“Ten years since the crash, yes. I guess it’ll be ten years of knowing each other tomorrow then.”

“Yep, and next week will be ten years since you were able to eat solid food again.” They all have a bit of a laugh about that, Suzie recounts the tale of the rescue to Julia, who listens happily. Somewhere in the distance the sky lit up with colors and sparks as rockets took flight and fulfilled their purpose by exploding in glorious fashion. Julia liked that she wasn’t so disposable, not anymore.