right away. Bethany was still not yet forty years old and spent a generous percentage of her royalties every year on youth and beauty treatments. Blair, she suspected, was spending the allowance she gave him on gifts and grandiose promises to other women.
"Nothing much," Wyatt said. "Except I did get this really weird phone call from her last night. I couldn't tell if she was laughing or crying. She was definitely freaking out, though. She kept screaming that the kids' rooms were all neat and clean. Neat and clean, she was yelling, neat and clean. Do you know what that means? she asked me. I said, uh, maybe they picked up their stuff? She called me an idiot then.”
"Sheesh," Jalopy shook his head. "I wonder what that's all about.”
"She wants me to come over after work, and to bring our stuff. She said that everything's falling apart and it's not natural.”
"Sounds pretty natural to me," Jalopy shrugged. "Marriage gone down the drain, kids probably trying to help out, do something nice for mom. Sounds like what I did when my own folks were splitting up. I did the dishes, sweeping, laundry. Didn't help any, but I was trying.”
"You're probably right," Wyatt said. "These days nearly everybody's acting crazy. Every little thing they want to blame it on machines, as if we can't screw things up on our own. Heck, if we couldn't, we wouldn't have ever come up with the bots in the first place.”
"What are you two yakking about now?" demanded Hazel. They hadn't noticed her sneaking up on them, and now it was too late. They were caught.
"I saw what you did," she glared at them both. "Everybody knows. You two! I can't believe you two. The sooner we get rid of you both, the better," and with that, she turned and stomped away.
"I wouldn't worry about it," Jalopy said as they watched her depart. "We've got our two years. We can always hook up with another crew. Experience counts, you know."
"I just hope we don't get split up," Wyatt grimaced. More than anything, he needed his friends, his real ones and his unpresent ones too, but mostly the real, and of them, mostly Jalopy.
"Nah, don't worry," Jalopy said. "We won't let that happen.”
Wyatt wasn't so sure. It was hard for him to trust anyone, even Jalopy. Hadn't his so-called friend promised to find his dream girl for him? Hadn't he even said he knew who she was, where she lived. That was a long time ago, and what had come of that? Not a trace of the girl. Nothing. Even his best unpresent friend could not be relied on. What had that one ever really done for him? Precisely nothing at all. Some friends, Wyatt thought. And now I'm going to get fired again.
Five
It wasn't long before they heard Randy bellowing for them to get their asses back to the truck pronto. Wyatt and Jalopy shuffled slowly, in no hurry to get yelled at some more, but their pace only fueled the fire. Randy was furious by the time they arrived.
"I suppose you know what you've done!," he shouted. "And I suppose you're pleased with yourselves! I should've known I was sheltering a couple of no-good do-gooder traitors. What's your game, anyway? Only tag the small fry just to let the big fish get away? Is that what you're up to? Who're you working for anyway?"
Wyatt held up his hands as if surrendering and said,
"Boss, Randy, woah, slow down, man. We don't know what you're talking about, do we, J?"
Jalopy shook his head.
"No, man," he said, "What gives?"
"What gives?" Randy nearly screamed. "What gives? Besides you two giving me a heart attack? Jesus H. Crickets. Why'd you let the snake get away?"
"What snake?" Wyatt asked.
"We didn't see any snake," Jalopy stated.
"Of course you did," Randy said. "I've got it all on video. What? You didn't know you were being taped? We all are, all the time. City, county, state and federal. All of them see all of us and everything we do. I'm going to catch bloody hell because of you two, but you, you've done got yourselves out of a job, as of today, as of this moment, as of right now, you got me?"
"We didn't see nothing, boss," Jalopy insisted.
"Oh no," Randy waved his arms around, "Don't give me that. Hazel, you got that queued up yet?"
"All ready, Randy," she replied from inside the tanker.
"Let's take a look, shall we, boys?" Randy sneered, "and then you can tell me you didn't see nothing."
They followed him to the driver's side door, where Hazel had pulled out a tablet computer and played them the video - as seen from Wyatt's extinguisher's nozzle. There it was, the little ape-like creature spitting out the note, and Jalopy reading it, and saying the magic word which made the creature vanish instantaneously into the dirt. Wyatt and Jalopy exchanged puzzled glances. Surely it wasn't a snake. Anyone could see that. It was more like a mini-gorilla. They both started saying the same thing at once.
"It was just restoring butterflies. See the note?" and Jalopy handed it to Randy who snatched it, stuffed it in his jacket pocket and said,
"I suppose you believe everything you read?"
Jalopy could only shrug. Wyatt was only wishing he was miles and miles away.
"I know you boys think I don't know squat," Randy told them. "I know you think old Haze and me are just a couple of redneck bumpkins, but we've been in this business since the very beginning. We knew right away this was going to be a job for professionals, so we ditched our termite gig and headed West to the nearest major infestation. Contrary to your popular belief, she and I know exactly what we're doing, and we know what's a snake and what is not. And this one here, this is the big one. I know it. They call it the Renegade Robot. Goes around pretending to be one of those do-gooders, but its plans are anything but doing good. We had some solid data it was here. Why do you think we came? Because we had nothing better to do? We're out to catch that thing, not just say hello all polite-like and then just wave it bye-bye."
"We didn't know," Jalopy said.
"Yeah," Wyatt piped up. "You could have filled us in."
"I've never been sure about you two," Randy said, "Now I know I was right. Consider yourselves finished, boys. Finito. Better find yourselves some other line of work, because this door is slamming shut in your faces," and with that, Randy climbed into the cab as Hazel moved over, and he literally did slam the door shut in their faces. With a roar, the tanker lurched and made off, kicking up pebbles and dust in the faces of the two newly unemployed former botniks.
Six
"It's not supposed to be a snake snake," came the text of Bilj Bjurnjurd through the wristband. "It's a metaphor, referring to the biblical serpent in the Garden of Eden".
"Oh!" Wyatt said aloud.
"Oh, what?" asked Jalopy. They were still standing in the parking lot, several moments after being abandoned by their team leaders.
"What what?" Wyatt replied, unaware he had made a sound.
"You said 'Oh', like you just thought of something."
"Right, right," Wyatt bobbed his head. He was quick to recognize he must have done something he had done so many times before - vocalize his part of the silent conversation - so he repeated what Bilj had told him. Jalopy thought it made sense.
"Although," he added, "It could also be a reference to the Hydra myth, a several-headed serpent which grows two new heads every time you chop off one."
"Could be," Wyatt agreed. They relapsed into silence once again for a few minutes. This time it was Jalopy who broke the quiet.
"Guess we ought to get out of here," he said.
"I can't believe they just ditched us like that," Wyatt said. "Way the heck out here at the lake, too. Was that nice?'
"That was not nice," Jalopy agreed, "But the 78 Corcoran runs a few blocks from here on Stanlan Avenue. We can catch it at Jerrell Street".
Whatever other faults he may have had, Jalopy knew his bus routes. The pair were aboard the 78 headed for a transfer to the 29 in practically no time at all, and Wyatt found himself back home before noon. Jalopy had gone on his own way, but not before promising Wyatt that he'd check in with the Board first thing the next morning.
"After all
," he stated, "We're Board Certified and have the two years. There's no way they're going to freeze us out like Randy said. We've got grievance if it comes to that."
"Yeah, okay," Wyatt said, knowing that while they did have their two years, and while they were certainly certified, he was never convinced that anything would ever end up going his way, and while he was thinking of that, he remembered he'd promised his sister he'd come over at the end of his shift, and even though he didn't really feel like it, he pulled out his old three-speed bicycle, climbed on, and headed off toward The Gathering, the walled-garden semi-gated enclave where his sister and her quasi-community tried to feel safe from the outside world.
The Gathering was surrounded by high pink stone walls surmounted by broken glass and total surveillance. The checkpoints were guarded by youngsters in uniform who merely waved Wyatt through without slowing on his bike. Inside, the narrow, winding sidewalk-free streets were well-paved and lined with excellent lawns. There were precisely three hundred and nine homes in The Gathering, a number determined to be optimal by the neighborhood's founding fathers, who were literally 'fathers' in the sense that many of them were ministers in The Church of Ultimate Reclamation, and one of the requirements of being a member of that church was being a father of at least one child. Only members of the church were permitted to live in The Gathering, and as no members of the church were allowed to live anywhere else, it was a matter of simple math to determine that the church was not and