shouted, "Get out of my life, you damn green maggots!"
"We ain't come for the weeds," Randy reminded her, but quietly. He didn't aim to get on her wrong side this early in the hunt. Wyatt didn't bother to ask why the leaders were so certain they'd find a snake out here. Previous attempts in the same location hadn't turned one up. It seemed that every month or so Randy got it up his sleeve that there was one out here. He always said it was government orders, and even showed some paperwork now and then to back up the claim. He'd get awful sore when they turned up nothing, not even a scraper or a mole. The team had quotas and it seemed to Wyatt that whenever they were ahead of the game, Randy'd go all snake, as if he could afford the wasted effort. Of course, if they did get lucky, they'd be golden. Nothing was more valuable to catch. Those suckers were for keeps, too. No early retirement for them. They'd be handed over to the zoo for further study. The zoo already had a couple, and claimed to learn of miracles through them.
Everyone was always looking for the master plan. Wyatt didn't think there was one, and neither did Bilj. A lot of people believed that Western Lightwave had a hidden agenda. It couldn't just be plain old bad luck! Now was no time for wondering, though, not with Randy and Hazel yelling in the wild, and Jalopy letting him know they ought to team up, pair up just in case, one go wide and one go short. Snakes were not just rare, but allegedly deadly. They were said to have the ability to evaporate a man completely in less than twenty seconds. Wyatt knew he ought to be nervous, but he wasn't. Bilj had already informed him that there was no snake in the lake. Not now, not ever, and Bilj had never been wrong about fauna.
Three
Strolling through the meadow on that uncommonly warm autumn morning was enough to lull Wyatt into a walking daydream. Naturally, he was thinking about "her". Her image sprang to his mind as easily as a baby cries. He saw her lean, angular body, her soft brown skin, those sharp clear eyes sparking out from under the wide red headband that kept her black curly hair away from her face. He saw those dark green batwing tattoos curling around her skinny arms. He did not know her name, not her real name, at least. He had seen her, in the flesh, only once, and that was a long time ago, in a park, in a crowd, surrounded by her friends and family. He could never forget that face or the joy that spread across it when the music began. Of course he did not go up to her, did not say hello, did not introduce himself, did not ever see her again. It was enough to conjure the picture up in his mind, as he'd done so many times, over so many years. Always it was her smile and the eyes lighting up as she looked at him in his mind. He didn't need to think as he imagined this encounter while ostensibly patrolling for civilization-endangering mechanical threats. He would have remained in that reverie indefinitely, but Jalopy snapped him out of it with a tap on the shoulder and a gesture, pointing down.
There, at the foot of a scrubby bush, was a micro-bot unlike any either of them had ever seen. It was no more than four inches tall, and walked on bent back legs and long front arms like a gorilla. Its shaggy green head was ape-like also, containing bright wide eyes and a wide flat mouth. Numerous folds, like pockets, covered its head and torso. The bot had stopped moving and stood unblinking in the shade of the shrub.
"Well hello, little buddy," Jalopy whispered. Wyatt understood why. Neither of them was eager to announce this discovery to their leaders. Randy and Hazel would have stomped it to smithereens, no questions asked. They were never curious, only murderous. The creature gave no sign it had heard him. Jalopy took a small step closer, and slowly lowered himself onto his haunches. He repeated his friendly greeting. After a moment, it opened its mouth and quietly emitted a tiny printout, like a miniature fortune cookie. Jalopy pulled it out and read, 'Please Do Not Disturb. Butterfly Restoration In Progress'.
Jalopy glanced over at Wyatt, who nodded. They did not need to discuss such things to know they were in agreement. Jalopy smiled and looked back down. He said
"We won't bother you, but you ought to know, we're botniks and ..."
He didn't finish the sentence as the creature had suddenly vanished.
"That'll do it," Wyatt chuckled, "they'll all be underground now".
They knew it from experience. Once one bot was alerted to danger, every bot in the area seemed to know instantaneously. This was one of the reasons why their work was sometimes difficult. Half of the enemy were nearly invisible, the rest almost seemed to be shape shifters, re-structuring and re-manufacturing themselves continually. Wyatt did not know anyone who truly understood what was happening. There were plenty of rumors, of course, and a lot of misinformation, for sure. If everything he'd heard was true, these invaders would eventually accomplish the unraveling of the whole history of human development. It was just a matter of time, but Wyatt doubted it. He tended to side with the Rationalists, who clung to the idea that some of the 'do-gooders' merely misunderstood their original purpose, which was to 'clean up' certain man-made messes. What that actually meant might be subject to interpretation.
Rationalists believed that some bots had taken the phrase a bit too literally, but could be reasoned with, and re-directed along more productive lines. The only problem with this approach was the unhappy fact that no one knew who, or what, to talk to about the matter. On the other side were the Frantics, who were certain these must be the last days. There was a convergence of the religious, the political, the entrepreneurial and the merely irrational among their ranks.
"Come on," Jalopy said to Wyatt. "At least we can go through the motions. They're going to wonder if we keep standing here too long."
"Right, right," Wyatt agreed. "I didn't see anything. Looking for a snake, right? Didn't see any snakes, neither."
"Not a thing," Jalopy smiled and turned up empty palms. "Maybe over that-a-way," he laughed, and they resumed their appearance of scouring the terrain for suspect simulacra. Across the field they could see, and hear, Randy and Hazel grunting and cursing and storming around. The way they carried on, it was a miracle they ever caught anything at all, and yet they considered themselves to be the best of the best of the breed. Randy even had a citation from the City which he never let anyone forget about. Wyatt still wasn't convinced those rats weren't organic after all, rather than the super-advanced simulations Randy claimed they were.
Four
Now that he was temporarily back in the here and now, Wyatt remembered that he'd meant to ask Jalopy what it was he'd said when Wyatt had first jumped on the tanker that morning.
"Oh, that was nothing," Jalopy grinned. "Just checking on the family drama. Seeing if there's any news.”
Wyatt laughed. There had been a lot of drama lately around his sister Bethany and her asshole husband. She'd already been sending out smoke signals by all of a sudden using her maiden name in her socialnet posts, a dead giveaway from any married woman that her marriage is in trouble. Her new full name, Bethany Lorenzo Hayward, had even started appearing on her serialized romance novels. Aspects of her personal life had always been seeping into her popular Christian Erotica titles. If you knew her, it was easy to decode such phrases as "It was autumn, and her trees were large and deciduous". You would know that her husband, Blair, had recently taken to raking his neighbor's leaves in the middle of the day. The neighbor, Clarissa Simpson, recently Simpson Martel, no longer had need of smoke signals. Her main need these days was for a stream of new men, most of whom did more than rake. She did not really care where they came from, or to whom they may or may not be attached.
Blair had an assortment of issues, as did Bethany, as did each of their three boys, Brad, Brian, and Brendan, aged fourteen, twelve and ten. There had never been a quiet time for that missionary family. Ever since her sister had hooked up with The Preacher (as Wyatt called him), there had been one very public performance after another. Wyatt had tried to keep his distance, but he loved those boys and he was their favorite, and only, uncle, so for the sake of the children he'd remained involved, witnessing far too many domestic scenes far too closely to be surprised by anything anymore. Blair
had exacting standards when it came to other people. As for himself, not so much. He also had curious interpretations of the Bible. As with the mainstream of his church, he was fixated with the admonition to "go forth and multiply". He seemed to think it meant to do so constantly, perpetually, and to tell everyone all about it all the time very loudly, for he had a trumpet of a voice and a singular lack of modulation. In summer the whole block could recite his every phone call, word for word, and he made a lot of phone calls, most of them while pacing back and forth on the front porch.
Bethany had been cranking out wholesome smut for years. It was literally how they met. Blair has been one of her biggest fans, always showing up at book signings and sitting in the front row sighing loudly as she read passages from such classics as 'Whispers in the Dust' and 'Fall to Grace'. His pursuit of her hand in marriage knew no limits and she eventually succumbed to the shower of gifts and ever-more grandiose promises. It was the house that finally tipped the balance. He bought her the house of her dreams, with an oak-filled writing room in the attic, and four bedrooms, including one for every child they planned to have. They started having them