Hunter, Hound, Priest

Places didn’t really have names anymore, not since there were blue skies and open pastures of green, as the ancients say, when they describe what their great grandparents had told them. The question of how much of it was true, how much myth, always lingered at the back of Buddy’s mind. How could it not, when all he was used to seeing was a pale sickly sky, and swathes of ochre sand, where the only things that grew from the ground were the bleached bones of long dead animals he couldn’t imagine flesh on. He stopped by one such set. 

Animalia were few and far between, reserved only for ritual consumption whenever a bargain with one of the fabled Growers was struck. He’d never seen one of them either; neither had he eaten the flesh of a living being. Well, not since he was an infant, before his first replacement.

He breathed, or rather, he sucked in with that replacement, a complex system of silicone and circuitry, receptors, filters and nano-pumps, that compressed and filtered what little moisture was pulled in with the toxic air through fine mesh grilles beneath his armpits. The newfound liquid would be circulated through the microscopic mineral deposits scattered throughout his body, then carry them to the remaining wetware, namely his brain, yet remaining mostly unchanged. A very sterile, though efficient, breath of fresh air.

He caressed one long rib jutting out from the sand, the bleached skeleton of some colossal sea beast. It felt smooth, almost polished, against the tactile receptors at the ends of his seven phalanges. Stripped of most of the nutrients long ago, as expected. All it was good for now was calcium, and weapons.

He broke off a piece without much effort, crushed it, and inserted it into the recycle cavity in his chest. Then he continued his journey.

His legs, from the knees down, were long and narrow cones, terminating in wide half spheres where the feet should be. Traversing the desert was easy and quick on such legs, though what little ease they granted him, was counterbalanced by the fact that he had to stay in the valleys of the dunes to minimize exposure to the winds, and keep in the shade, making his trek far longer. His gray and red poncho, with tight patterns of squares, lines, and circles, like the mainframe of an ancient semi-thinking machine, flapped wildly even in that relative shelter. Every time he risked cresting a dune, he also risked having it torn off by a sudden gale.

The poncho, and his headwear, a wide-brimmed hat of woven strands of glass and steel, about a meter in diameter, with a vision slit cut in the front, were his only articles of protection against the elements, and the unforgiving, scorching sun.

Though mostly machine, and immune to most dangers thrown at him by the dead world, Buddy still shied away from the burning rays. Overheating was a very real threat and meant sure death in a place like this. The winds on the other hand, they were just a nuisance, and he really didn’t want to lose his poncho.

The chronometer forever in the top right of his vision, a ghostly semi translucent cluster of numbers ticking, ticking, tocking, forever and anon, showed him that it had been ten thousand and eighty minutes and twenty, twenty one, twenty two… seconds and so on, since he had embarked on this little mission of his. By his internal systems calculations, if the most direct path were taken, he had two hundred and twenty minutes left. Too bad he couldn’t; so, a healthy double the amount thrown atop the estimate would be his actual remaining time.

Hopefully…

“Hello!”

Buddy snapped towards the call, seven fingered hand falling to the holster at his hip; who in their right minds would be out here this time of the year? Sounding so chipper no less. His eyes, long since swapped to machine optics capable of several forms of vision, zoomed over the shimmering desert sands. Heat vision was useless, and night vision would blind him, so he switched to contrast monochrome. With a click of a neuron, the sands became blacker than night, and the sky became a wash of gray, he then activated motion aura overlay and widened his field of view to 270, raised his hat, and waited.

“Hello!” came the barking call again.

The aura overlay coalesced on a form trotting over a dune a few hundred yards in the distance; quadruped, two tails, hard to distinguish in the current vision form; Buddy switched to regular and zoomed: it was a big dog.

“I know you heard me, sir. Quite impolite not to answer.”

Buddy drew his atomizer, aiming at the dog, “Pardon me for being cautious of a hiding man in the desert. Far as I know, you might have your sights on me. Come out or I’ll shoot your dog here,” he said, his auto aim locked on the oblivious canine advancing on him.

“Well, sir, that would be far ruder. Who goes round shooting innocent dogs anyhow?” The voice was closer now.

“I do when necessity calls for it. Come on out,” he said, the atomizer whining up a charge, “don’t make me ask thrice; let’s be men about this.”

The dog, a long and lean thing on tall bent legs, its faux fur fallen from all but the spine, was a yard from him now, sniffing at the killing muzzle with its chromed smell receptor. Wide and tall ears, the tips worn down round, were perked and attentive; its dull neon green eyes flicked back and forth from gun to gunman.

“You’d not really kill me, would you?” it asked.

Buddy snapped his other hand to the hilt, adjusting his stance, tiny waves of sand splashing from his cup feet, “What the hell. Dogs can’t talk. What’s the trick?”

“No trick, sir,” the dog cocked its head, “it is me that’s speaking, look.” It opened its maw, and at the back where the opening for a throat would be for a biological creature, it had a cluster of tiny speakers. “Why should it be so strange that someone built me to speak?”

“You tell me. Why were you built that way? And whatcha want? I got no treats, you hear.”

The dog wagged its tails, its cloudy translucent silicone ears twitching, and coughed in a strange high pitch way. “Very funny, sir. Don’t worry, I don’t eat much. And as to why I was built this way, well, I’m trying to figure that out myself.”

Buddy, sensing no threat, yet remaining wary, holstered his weapon, “I ain’t looking for traveling companions, hear. Why don’t you go on your own way.”

“We’re going the same way, might as well travel together.”

“Now how’d you know where I’m going?”

“You’re traveling southeast, the nearest town is not long from here. A simple assumption.”

Buddy worked his copper jaw, realigning his hat as he thought. The thing could be a spy. God knows he’d met more than one faux animalia with audio and visual capture capabilities; that, and the ability to explode on impact if whoever pulled the strings wanted their target dead. But this one didn’t seem like a kamikaze critter, even though it had come straight up to him. It seemed genuinely sentient; that or he was hallucinating from the heat. He could shoot the thing dead, but that seemed a waste; and a little cruel even for him. What to do, what to do?

“Why would I travel with you? What might I benefit?” he finally asked after coming to a decision.

“I’m light, fast, and I can scout ahead when needs be. Check for dangers and stuff. I also don’t need a lot of food, and I’ve been built with an internal heater, so if you get cold during the nights that could help.”

Buddy mulled it over, hands on hips, then nodded, “What’s your name?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Well, what should I call you then? Can’t go around just saying dog all day long; it’d get tiresome.”

“I am open to suggestions. Most cyborgs or androids I’ve met just call me mutt or pest, but I don’t like those.”

“They’ve been far ruder than I it seems. Well, I’ll call you Hound, that good?”

Again, it laughed, “better than mutt and pest, thank you.”

“Good! Well, Hound, I’m Beaufort Limbo,” he introduced, bowing down and offering a hand, which the dog shook, “relic, and bounty hunter extraordinaire. Call me Buddy, though, only my mother calls me Beaufort.”

“A pleasure,” Hound nodded.

“Indeed. But I warn you: if you go and get me in more trouble than I do myself, I’ll not hesitate to use ol’ atomizer here. The wastes are a treacherous place, can’t go round having liability as traveling company.”

“I agree wholeheartedly,” Hound said, “and if we’re set upon by too many nasty things to handle, be sure I’ll skitter away faster than it takes you to die.”

Buddy smiled, something he rarely did, brandishing a catalog of various metal teeth. His golden incisors glinted in the light of the setting sun, “I’d expect nothing less.”

 ---

Late that night, when the broken moon hung high in the sky, its little shrapnel pieces glinting with a wan light overshadowed by the Mother Mass, the two newfound companions found themselves on the outskirts of town.

It was too dark to sparce out detail, but if limited to a one word description of the place, the one to use would be ‘lopsided.’ Each little chipped paint shack or house was tilted just slightly, the roofs never symmetrical, nor did their doors seem to fit their frames. Streetlamps burning with dead-wax, along the only road cutting through the town, were all bent or leaning just enough to annoy.

On the south side of the street were all the domiciles of those who made this place their home, on the north, the sheriff’s station, church, tavern, and bank. With small shacks and houses in between where there was space.

“Where to first?” asked Hound.

“As much as I’d not like to, we need to go there,” said Buddy, pointing one long metal finger at the only building with a semblance of symmetry: the church.

“Why is it so disagreeable?”

“I hate Purists.”

“Oh. Are there many here?”

“You never know. Pilgrims come and go. If we’re lucky, it’ll only be the priest.”

“And if we’re unlucky?”

Buddy said nothing, merely sighed through his armpit vents. Purists were dreary and uninspired folk. Too locked into old pre cataclysm ways. They accepted tech implants, sure, and necessary replacements, of course, but if one made the mistake of even thinking of gene augmentation to correct some mistakes from the past, they’d go buck wild and start preaching their dribble. No neural stimulants, no cranial bio-implants, no emotive enhancers. It would be a sin, they said, to play with the wetware as the ancestors did. They could go ahead and be as soulless as they pleased. Buddy on the other hand preferred some spice to life, some emotion.

“Stay here, keep a lookout just in case. I’m going in to see a friend.”

“Lookout for what, exactly?” Hound asked, “it’s dead night and I read max forty life signs, all hibernating.”

“I need to see this friend privately, ok. Just wait here, I won’t be long.”

“Has it something to do with the relic and or bounty you’re hunting?”

“Yep.”

“Won’t you tell me what?”

“Nope.”

“I can track scents you know. I can help.”

“I’m sure you can, but see, that’s why I’m going in. I don’t know what my prey is; my friend does.”

“Lead with that next time,” Hound said sardonically, and clicked his teeth.

“Now, now, don’t be nasty,” Buddy pouted, lurching up the steps to the wide doors with his long legs, “See you in a jiff,” he said, disappearing within.

The church was, thankfully, completely empty. The shrines of uncountable and foreign saints were lined in rows near the walls, coming up to the nave, leaving a narrow walkway to stretch towards the altar at the far end beneath a domed ceiling. Incense smoke rose in languid strands, curling around fluted pillars; yellow tongues of flame flickered from dead-wax candles, casting long shadows on the plethora of faded icons and sculptures.

Always on edge in churches, Buddy took careful, though confident, strides across the pockmarked granite floor, his clinking metal footfalls echoing off the smoke muffled walls. As he walked past the tight-knit altars, with their strange asymmetric beatific faces painted on red slabs of wood, the flickering candlelight made those long-since-dead men seem alive again, in a weird uncanny way. Their chipped and worn eyes followed him, all the way up to the end of the nave.

There, under the dome, was a giant slab of metal, almost the height of Buddy, draped in white cloth. The ends of the thing were rounded down, and the surface itself was strangely curved. Where metal was bare, gray-white candles stood stock still in bunches, affixed to the surface by their own melted wax. All around the curved walls of the sanctum, great paintings and murals of biblical scenes played out in no particular order. All space between was filled with intricate bas reliefs of cherubim, seraphim, and ophanim, going all the way up to the apex of the dome, where, in the center, an eye within a triangle pierced through a cloud, all made of burnished brass.

The inanimate brass eye, a jewel as its pupil, made Buddy feel uncomfortable. He whistled, and spoke, “You’ve polished the place up a bit since last I was here. Shouldn’t there be pilgrims this time of the year mucking up the place with their grubby fingers and kisses?”

“Beaufort,” came a grumbling voice, all bass, echoing off the sanctum walls, “you came.”

Buddy fell on his knees before the altar, melodrama and sarcasm oozing off his words, he raised his arms and intoned, “oh great one, only thou callest me by my name. I’ve come in heed of your summons.”

The altar shook, “Stop that, Beaufort. I tolerate much from you, but I draw the line at blasphemy,” it said, and rose.

Rising on hissing pistons and grinding gears, what had once been the slab metal altar of the church, slowly unfolded to reveal a massive, though squat in proportion, bipedal mech. It turned on legs thicker than the fluted columns in the nave and let down wide cylindrical arms that had been crossed over its chest. Incense burners hanging on gold chains rattled all around the massive frame; long strips of tanned animalia hides with inked scripture flowing down in ones and zeroes, unfurled and hung loose. Nearly all even surfaces of the thing were acid etched with similar scriptural writing, or artistic renditions of historical moments, inlayed with gold leaf.

In human terms, it had no head, as most mechs, and was instead just a massive torso with arms, attached to the hip module from which the elephantine legs sprouted. In the center, though, was the domed cockpit cupola where once in history a pilot would’ve sat, controlling the mech in a semi-symbiosis. Within was a skeleton, fixed in place with gilded chains and draped in holy vestments, wearing a barbed wire crown of thorns. Though Buddy knew it wasn’t technically the things’ own face, he looked into the empty eye sockets anyway when he spoke.

“Hello, Father. I see your pilot is still entombed inside.”

“Saint Julienne will always be entombed within me;” said the priest, gently caressing the glass with his giant mechanical fingers, “she was my pilot when I was activated and will be until I am naught but rust and dry gears. But you’ve not come to speak of that, now, have you?”

“Correct. So, why don’t you go ahead and give me the data so I can get this over with. Who’s the poor sod, and or priceless artefact, and where can I find ‘em?” Buddy said, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, intentionally displaying anxiousness.

“That I cannot disclose.”

“What? You called me here for a job, but you won’t give me the details?”

The priest shrugged its massive shoulders, causing some of the candles on them to blow out, “It is a delicate situation, and the less you know before going in the less risk there is of outside forces intercepting and interfering.”

“So what? Completely analog? No data shard, no telemetry, no coordinates; just word of good-old-God’s honest mouth? And what outside forces?” Buddy listed off.

“Many questions; but yes, analog. All I can say that you are to find your target, retrieve it, and bring it back to me. You’ll be well compensated for your efforts.”

“Ok. Where is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Father, you called me here. Don’t waste my time.”

“I’m not. I’m simply answering your questions honestly.”

“Ok. Then how am I supposed to find whatever this thing is?”

“There is a rogue Grower in one of the stone groves three miles south from town, impossible to find him there, but he frequents this town every week or so. When next he comes, tell him I sent you, and he will give you more detail.” The priest rumbled.

Buddy tapped a finger to his copper jaw plate, hiding his piqued interest at the prospect of meeting a Grower, however exiled, “Might you have anything of this Grower’s?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, father,” Buddy began, leaning back on one leg, “I’ve come across a companion of sorts. A dog.”

“A dog? What grade?” the priest asked, genuinely curious.

“I believe full-cyber, possibly corpse-chassis in origin. Call him Hound; he can track scents. Just letting you know; seeing as you’ve failed to elaborate on them outside forces you mentioned,” Buddy said, folding his arms, “and who knows, maybe I already, albeit unknowingly, led them here.”

The priest took a step, the speed unbelievable, the reverberations making every candle and torch flicker, the light making the grotesque, gothic carvings of the angels look as though they were moving, mobilizing for the final battle. “Do not joke of things like this. The forces I speak of are in opposition of the See, already they’ve murdered some of my fellow priests, even a Cardinal.”

Buddy whistled. “Damn, a Cardinal? Really?”

“Afraid so,” grumbled the machine, “and as far as I know, they don’t employ corpse-tech or any other forms of Animalia servants, so we should be safe. Though I recommend caution, nonetheless. And don’t swear in the Lord’s house.”

“Pardon me Father. Well, do you?” he asked, “have anything of the Grower’s?”

“I’m afraid not, but he does go by the bank every time he comes here, first place he visits before the shops. Try there.”

“Alrighty, Father, will do. I’ll come a running as soon as I find whatever it is I need to,” Buddy said, turning around, walking out a fraction faster than when he had come in.

“Stay safe, Beaufort,” the priest called after him.

“Happy prayers, Father, see you soon,” Buddy called back, waving with a lazy hand. He stopped by an altar before leaving, going through the motions of a quick prayer, placing his hand reverently on the surface.

When he came out of the church, Hound was there, sitting by the stone steps on the ashy dirt road, “So, how did it go?” he asked.

“I’m only a tad less ignorant than when I went in.”

“Oh?”

“Yep, we got to find a guy who knows where I’ll find whatever it is I’m trying to find.”

“How complex,” Hound mused.

“Inane,” scoffed Buddy, “Let’s get some rest. Bank opens in the morning; I’ll be needing that nose of yours then. Sound good?”

“Depends. How big is my cut if I help you?” Hound asked, as the two made their way to the tavern.

“Ten percent,” Buddy offered.

“Thirty.”

“Fifteen.”

“Twenty-five.”

“Twenty.”

“Deal.”

The two shook on it, then entered the dingy building that constituted a tavern and inn. Other than the two travelers, one or two locals, and the barmaid, the place was empty, with memories of violence etched into patched up tables, pockmarked walls where stray bullets had whizzed past their marks, and patches of discoloration on the floor where fuel grade liquor had been spilled. The smell of oil, grease, and intoxicants permeated the dim, half lit common room. Neon signs behind the bar shimmered and flickered with failing power, their buzzing the drone of extinct insects.