An Exchange in the Wasteland

by Rudi Dornemann

The camel-car sway-legged across an industrial wreckscape. A rider occupied the middle of its three cockpit domes. The other two were packed to the glass with spinmenders, implosive engines, and tangle-nets of aerophonic wire.

Beside a leaning but not yet fallen smokestack, it locked both upper and lower knees in all six legs. A rope ladder let the rider down from the car’s belly.

A man in a ragged pigeon-feather poncho came up out of the rubble to watch.

“Morning,” he said.

She looked at him over the top of her rebreather, then shot a grappling line to the top of the smokestack.

“Careful now,” said the man. “Might bring it all down.”

She pushed her voice through the mask, “It should hold.” She didn’t mention the stressline analysis she–or rather the car–had done.

The man settled with a ruffling of feathers. “Certain about that?”

She began to climb or, rather, the rope began to pull her up.

“I’ve got water,” said the ragged man.

“Oh,” said the rider, halfway up. He must have seen the condensation scoop spirals on the sides of the car.

He wasn’t offering because he thought she needed it.

She busied herself prying open the corroded lump that had once been a cleaning door in the stack’s side.

He might not be offering at all.

“Care for some?”

The car had taught her to recognize the question as a test: to refuse would insult by implying her water was better. To accept insulted by the implied comparison–he offered what was large portion of his reserves, but only a small fraction of her own. The car hadn’t taught her how to answer.

“You’re generous to offer,” she said.

“I’m sure no more generous than you,” said the man.

This did not track at all to what the car had coached her to expect. She was sure it must mean something.

“You’re prospecting carbon,” said the man. “You’ll find more and better over there,” he pointed to a hill of tumbled brick. “That was a warehouse, full of wooden things that burned before the walls fell in.”

“You are generous,” she said. She put the retrieval beacon back in her pocket.

“I am not the only one,” said the man, pursing parched lips.

She nodded.

She’d plant the beacon on the brick-mound as soon as she’d given him all the water he wanted.

Reanimated

by David

Oxford blinked again. It was easier this time. Liquid dripped into his open mouth. Repeat. Eventually, he could whisper. “Who?”

The two masked figures turned to look at each other, then back at Oxford.

The humans (?) were completely covered in tight-fitting blue garments, yet no physical details showed through. No nose, no chin, no breasts, nothing between the legs, nothing. The figures were not only sexless but speciesless.

“How? When?” Only single words could force themselves past his swollen lips. He felt restraints at ankles and wrists.

The two stepped back, then beat a hasty retreat.

“Wait!”

They were gone.

Perhaps he was imagining their haste. If they weren’t human their body language might be completely different, his inferences about them all wrong. He wiggled his toes. He knew one thing for sure. They’d healed the severed spinal cord that had sent him to cryo in the first place. They had some kind of plan for him.

He was fed by a smooth-featured robot (designed by aliens?) until he could feed himself from a bowl. Over the next few days his strength returned. When he was able to stand the bed lowered itself to a few inches above the floor and the restraints vanished. He explored his cell. The ceiling was hidden in darkness, as were the walls, but he was able to find those. He was in a square about 20 feet across. A weak source of illumination above the center, and a bed directly beneath the light, were the sum total of its features. Food and drink appeared at intervals, apparently materializing on the floor in plain dishes (which proved unbreakable). Somehow he was never looking when the food appeared, and it did not always appear in the same place, so, clearly, he was being observed. Wherever he eliminated waste, the spot was clean in moments, even the bed (he’d had no bedpan in those first days). The dishes disappeared unobserved, just as they had appeared, no matter how fixedly he stared. If he held them, they vanished when he slept. He saw, heard, and smelt no one and nothing save for himself and his meals. He cajoled, implored, sang, composed letters, ranted, declaimed, jabbered, howled.

A man can only take so much.

His fruitless attempts at communication escalated over a few weeks to self-mutilation.

—

“I win again. Want to go for best out of 3?”

“No. Let’s try a different specimen this time.”

End