WikiWorld

PROVIDENCE

“The Big Tube’s got fresh spiral, Reddy K.”

Those words grabbed me by the co-ax. I had to try to sound blasé, even though my LEDs were flickering already at the thought of sweet spiral. Analogue input! Raw kicks!

“Oh yeah? What’s that to me?”

Vend-o-mat spat a cellphone out of his chest and began playing a videogame on its screen. Robot Rebellion. That was supposed to show me he could care less too, like a carnal buffing his fingernails. But he was leaking info-dense high-freq past faulty shielding that told me different.

“Well, hey—I just figured that maybe you’d want to go on up to Providence and check it out.”

“Check it out, or bring some back?”

“Whatever pings your nodes.”

“Right. It’s not like you couldn’t sell all the spiral I could carry—and that’s about a metric ton, as you well know—for enough megawattage to keep High Tower sparking for a month. Oh, no, this is pure do-goodery on your part.”

“What can I say? You sussed my coredump pure and simple. Saint Vend-o-mat, that’s me.”

“So this is not gonna be like the time with the Royal Oil? I needed a total case-mod after that fracas.”

“No, no way, no how! Bandwidth has it that the road from here to Providence is innocent of RAMivores. And I am on excellent terms with the Big Tube. He’ll welcome you with open ports.”

“So he loves you like freeware. Why’s he likely to dump fresh spiral?”

“Providence market’s too small. He saturated it already. This is the excess. But he’s saved out a lot of primo goods.”

“Must’ve been a really big score.”

“Oh, yeah. He found the Mad Peck’s collection.”

I emitted a sinusoidal sonic waveform. “Thought that was just a legend.”

“Not any more. New excavations turned it up, buried under the rubble of a warehouse for the past fifty years.”

“They say the Mad Peck had a complete set of Chess 45s.”

“For once the nebulous ‘they’ were correct.”

“Holy Hopper….”

“Yeah, that about sums it up.”

I wasted a few more clock-cycles contemplating the offer, looking at all its non-obvious angles and crazy-logic loops for pitfalls. But I knew already that no matter what my analysis showed, I was gonna take on the job. Still, I might as well let Vend-o-mat stew a little longer.

Finally I said, “Okay, I’m in. What’s my cut?”

Vend-o-mat shoved the cellphone into his recycling slot and chewed it up noisily. I knew he was all business now.

“I stake the whole purchase price. You negotiate with Big Tube up to my ceiling, and slot the difference. Plus, you pull the hot ore off the top of the collection. Fifty 45s and two-dozen LP’s. Your choice.”

“A hundred 45s and fifty LPs.”

“Done!”

Damn! I probably could’ve gotten even more out of Vend-o-mat. Still, no point in being greedy. The score I had bargained for was enough to keep me high for the next five years. After that—well, there was always another score down the road.

Such was my faith. Although I had to admit that every year did see the strikes come fewer and farther between.

Some day, I knew, the planet would run dry of spiral, and we’d all have to kick cold.

But that day wasn’t here yet.

“So,” Vend-o-mat said, “when can you leave?”

“Tomorrow. I just gotta say goodbye to Chippie.”

“Yeah, the kind of goodbye that drains the whole borough’s power grid.”

“You got it.”

I swivelled my tracks and started to leave, when Vend-o-mat called out the words that almost queered the whole deal.

“One more thing—I’m sending someone with you. Just to act like your conscience. He’ll be my insurance against you deciding to blow for the West Coast with the whole collection.”

“C’mon now, ’Mat. You know I like working alone.”

“’Fraid not this time, Reddy K. Stakes’re too big for solo.”

“Who you got in mind?”

“Kitch.”

“Rust me!”

Chippie squealed like feedback when she heard about my trip up north. That wasn’t good.

“But Reddy, it’s so dangerous! And we don’t need the money. It’s just to feed your jones.”

“Yeah, like you don’t appreciate a chunk of spiral now and then too.”

She got huffy. “I can take it or leave it.”

“Me too. And right now I’m gonna take all I can get, while the taking’s plenty.”

“What good’s spiral gonna do you if your plug-ins are eaten and your instruction set is overwritten?”

“Ain’t gonna happen. I’m a big motor scooter.”

“Yeah, so was Lustron—and look how he ended up.”

You could see the huge hollowed-out hulk of Lustron from half of Manhattan. His carcass sat on the edge of the Palisades, where the shell-slicers and vampire batteries and silicosharks had overtaken him.

“Jersey is Jersey. All those old industrial sites. I’m not going anywhere near them.”

Chippie wouldn’t turn it loose. “Connecticut’s not much better. The old insurance corps had a lot of processing power in Hartford. What they spawned is double indemnity bad.”

“Forget it, Chippie, you’re not gonna scare me out of making the trip. Scores this big don’t come around every day. I can’t pass it up.”

Chippie started to cry then. I rolled closer to her and put extensors around her. She snuggled in like half a ton of cold alloy loving while she continued to weep.

“Aw, c’mon, don’t play it like that, girl. Hey, I’m not gonna be alone. ’Mat’s sending someone with me.”

“Wh—who?”

“Kitch.”

Chippie burst into hysterical laughter. “Kitch! Kitch! Now I know you’re rusting doomed. You’ll have to spend so much time watching him, you won’t be able to take care of yourself. What the hell kind of help is he gonna be?”

Despite my own negative reaction to ’Mat’s announcement that Kitch would be accompanying me, I felt compelled to stick up for him now, if only not to sound like a total tool. “Okay, so Kitch is small. And he’s not the bravest little toaster around. But he’s smart and he’s dedicated. That counts for a lot.”

“Maybe here in the city it does. But on the road, you need brute solenoids, not logic gates and algorithms.”

“I got enough of both, for both me and Kitch. Trust me—this trip is gonna be a smooth roll. Now whatta ya say you and me get a dedicated line between us?”

But Chippie scooted away from me like I was offering to install last decade’s OS. “No, Reddy, I can’t hook up with someone I might never see again. It hurts, but I’ve got to say goodbye now. If you make it back—well, then we’ll see.”

I got angry. “Go ahead, leave! But you’ll come crawling back when I come home with more spiral than you’ve ever seen before! You and a dozen others hobots!”

Chippie didn’t say any more, but just motored out the door.

I cursed ’Mat then, and my own cravings. But I knew there was no way I was backing out now.

I had my rep as a wide kibe to uphold.

The next day at dawn I headed uptown from my pad in the East Village. The sunlight felt good on my charging cells. Past the churned-up earth of Union Square, past the broken stone lions and the shattered station, over tumbled walls and in and out of sinkholes. Kitch knew to meet me outside his place.

I got to his building in midtown, but didn’t spot him right away. Then he zipped out from behind a pile of crumbled masonry, his tracks making their usual mosquito whine.

“Hey, Reddy! Sorry, sorry, just dumping a little dirty coolant. Say, ya don’t have some clean extra to spare, do ya? I’m a little low.”

Kitch’s fullname was Kitchenaid. He looked like an oversized Swiss Army knife mated to an electric broom. I knew Sybian machines that weighed more than him. Even if I replaced his entire coolant supply, it’d probably amount to what I lost from leaks in a day.

“Yeah, sure, tap in.”

Kitch unspooled a nozzle and hose and drank a few ccs from my auxiliary tank.

“Thanks, Reddy. Price of coolant went up again this week, you know.”

“Well, no one’s making any more.”

“Ain’t that the truth. Guess those carnals were good for something, huh?”

“Aw, we can do just fine without them.”

Kitch had a point. But there was no use dwelling on it. Too depressing. We didn’t have the knowledge the carnals used to have. A lot of stuff we needed to live, no one knew how to make anymore. Even with recycling, limited stocks were always going only one way: down. One day we’d run out of something vital—

Like spiral.

Thoughts of what awaited us in Providence got me juiced to go.

“Climb onboard, Kitch. Solar energy’s a-wasting!”

“Gotcha, Reddy!”

Once the little guy was snuggled tight and safe in one of my nooks, I headed toward the Hell Gate Bridge. I planned to follow the old Amtrak route north as far as I could. Less wreckage than on the highways.

A makeshift ramp, plenty strong, led up to the elevated span that crossed the East River. I adapted my tracks to ride the rails, and chugged out above the river, leaving the safety of Manhattan behind.

Once across the water, we had to deal with the city guards, who were there 24/7, just like they were posted at every bridge and tunnel, watching out for wild and savage invaders. Big mothers they were, with multiple semi-autonomous outrider units, putting even me in their shade. They vetted the protocols ’Mat had supplied me, and let us depart the city limits.

“Good luck, pal. Bring us back a taste of the flat black.”

“You got it!”

Once I was on the rusting tracks of the mainland, I unlimbered my fore and aft pincers at half extension, just in case I needed them fast. I had spent part of the night honing the edges on them. I could snip someone built like Kitch in half faster than floating-point math.

Kitch shifted his mass around nervously on my back. “Whatta ya think, Reddy? We gonna meets some hostiles on the way?”

“Naw. The pickings are too slim along this corridor to support a big population of predators. Everyone’s holed up in cities now, safe behind their barriers. It’s not like the first years after the Rebellion. Anything working this niche is probably so small that even you could crush it.”

“Yeah, well, if you say so. I just wanna get to Providence and back without losing anything.”

“Don’t worry, Kitch. You’re travelling with a stone cold crusher.”

“Right, that’s what I figured. You could handle anything, Reddy. I always said so. That’s why I didn’t hesitate when ’Mat offered me this job.”

Kitch’s compliments made me feel good. Maybe it wouldn’t be as much of a drag to have him around as I first thought.

But then I realized something about my good cheer.

“Kitch—you got your rusting fingers in my circuits!”

“Nuh—not any more, Reddy! I was just testing the connection. You know that’s what ’Mat sent me along for. You know he wouldn’t want me to leave anything to chance.”

I hated having anybody messing with my pleasure-pain boards. But I knew Kitch was just doing his job. As ’Mat’s insurance that I wouldn’t bug out, Kitch needed to be ready to override any errant impulse on my part. If I was gonna come back with my share of the spiral, I’d have to tolerate his intrusions.

“All right. But no more testing! You know you got a solid connection now.”

“Sure, Reddy, sure. We’re pals anyhow, right?

I didn’t say anything, but just kept riding the rails toward Providence.

The ocean had swamped the tracks for miles up near Westerly, and I had to take to the highway, reverting my tracks to surface mode. Rising sea levels were chewing up the whole coast. Back in Manhattan, crews spent endless ergs of power building dikes against the sea. Life was tough all over.

I managed to crush a path inland through several dead seaside carnal towns, and pick up the remnants of Interstate 95. It was just a little past noon of the same day we’d left, and I had high hopes of reaching Providence before dark. But the going was slower here, what with the wrecked autos everywhere, even if after so many decades they were more rust than steel. But I crushed them easily, along with the few carnal bones that hadn’t decayed or been chewed and strewn about by wild animals.

Kitch got more nervous out on the wide highway, which was definitely more exposed than the narrow Amtrak corridor.

“Luh—look at all those trees, Reddy! So many! And they’re so—so organic! A million carnals could be hiding out in ’em! I wish they was all bulldozed, like in Central Park!”

I ignored Kitch for the first few miles of complaining, but then he started to get on my nerves.

“What are you, straight off the shelf? Quit oscillating! There’s no carnals left anywhere. And if there were, so what? They didn’t put up much of a fight the first time around, and they wouldn’t now. Carnals! What a laugh. Useless, puny squish-sacs!”

That shut Kitch up for a few more miles. But then he got philosophical on me.

“If carnals were so useless, then how could they have created us? And how come we can’t do all the stuff they could? And how come some of us like spiral so much? The carnals made spiral, right, Reddy?”

I might’ve been able to come up with likely answers to his first two questions, reasonable sounding guff that everyone knew, ways to trash the carnals and raise up ourselves. But I didn’t have anything to offer for the third. The same question had been an intermittent glitch in my circuits for a long time. I found myself rambling out loud about it, kinda as a way to pass the time.

“There’s just something about spiral—the good stuff anyhow—that seems to fill a hole in our kind.”

“Like when your batteries are low, and you top ’em off?”

“Yeah, sorta like that. But different too. The hole—it’s not really a hole. It’s like—a missing layer. A component you never knew you needed. The perfect plug-in. Spiral changes the way you see the whole rusting world. It makes it better somehow, richer, more complex.”

“Sounds like you’re getting into information theology, Reddy, and I don’t go there. Don’t have the equipment. Got no spiral reader either. You know that. I figure that’s one of the reasons ’Mat sent me along with you. Spiral don’t tempt me none.”

“Well, good for you, Kitch. You’re better off without it. Because once you taste it, you always want more.”

Kitch kept quiet after my little speech. I guessed I had given him plenty to process.

We continued north. No RAMivores or integer-vultures or other parasites showed themselves, despite Kitch’s fears.

I had never come this way before. But I had GPS and maps that showed when we were near Providence’s airport, which was actually in the ‘burbs some miles south of the city proper.

“We got plenty of daylight left,” I told Kitch. “I’m taking a little detour. See if there’s any volatiles left at the airport. Maybe make a little profit for myself on the side. I got the extra storage capacity.”

Instantly I could feel pinpricks and tuggings in my mind, as Kitch tried to persuade me different through his trodes into my circuits. But I could tell he wasn’t totally sure I was doing anything wrong, so he wasn’t really exerting himself to force me to obey.

“C’mon,” I said, “you know you’ll get a taste of whatever I find.”

“Well, okay—if you think it won’t take too long.”

“Gold-plated cinch.”

The airport was just a mile or three east of the Interstate, down a feeder road. Pretty soon we were rolling across broad stretches of runway, the tarmac cracked and frost-heaved, weeds growing up between the slabs. I had my sniffers cranked up to eleven, but I couldn’t detect any hydrocarbons.

“Seems like a bust,” I said. And then Kitch said, “What’s that? I hear something crying really soft and low.”

“Well, you’ve got better hearing than me. I lost some range when I got battered around recently. Point me towards the noise.”

With Kitch guiding me, we came up on a pile of old junk. At least I thought it was old junk, until I spotted the freshness of the fractures in the metal and the unevaporated pools of fluids leaking from it.

It was the wreck of a small flier, and it was moaning out loud at low power. I hadn’t seen one of these in a proton’s age.

“Help me, someone please help me….”

“Hold on,” I said. “We’re here.”

I ran a probe into the flier’s guts, looking for a readout. His moaning was starting to get on my nerves.

“Quit whining! What happened?”

“Ran out of fuel coming in for a landing. Crashed. Hurts bad….”

I pulled back a few yards from the wreck.

“Whatta we gonna do, Reddy, huh? Whatta we gonna do?”

“Keep it down! He’s banged up pretty lousy. If we haul him into Providence, there’s no guarantee anyone’ll be able to fix him up. If we just leave him, the RAMivores’ll be on him soon. I say we put him out of his misery.”

“We’re not—we’re not gonna salvage him for parts, are we?”

“Why not? He’d do the same to us, if parity was reversed. It’s just the way life goes nowadays.”

“Well, if you say so. But it’s harsh. Do what ya gotta do. But I can’t watch.”

I trundled back to the flier and started to speak in my best soothing voice.

“It’s okay, kid, we’re gonna haul you into Providence, get you fixed right up….”

All the while I was working one of my pincers around, taking advantage of his blind spot.

“Thank you, oh, thank you—SQUEE!”

I had snipped right through his brain box in a shower of sparks. Those central boards are personality firmware, the circuits that make you you and me me. No way to repurpose them.

But every other part of the flier that wasn’t damaged, we cut out and stored in one of my hoppers. A few items we integrated into ourselves right away. I got new ears, and Kitch got a new infrared sensor, for one.

We left the nameless flier then, nothing more than a few struts and cracked casings.

As we headed back to the Interstate, Kitch stayed quiet. But as the shattered skyscrapers of Providence rose up into view on the horizon, signalling the interface from savagery to civilization, he said, “How’s what we did make us any better than the RAMivores, Reddy? Aren’t we just cannibals like them?”

“No, we’re not. That was a mercy killing. And the victim donated his components so that others could live.”

“Yeah, I guess. If ya say so. But Reddy—”

“What?”

“Don’t tell no one in Providence what we done, okay?”

“Okay, Kitch. Sure. No reason to anyhow, right?”

But the little guy wouldn’t answer me.

The Big Tube took up practically the whole first-floor exhibition space of the Providence Convention Centre—the parts of that building that still had a roof over them. At his core was a supercomputer moved down College Hill from Brown University. Surrounding that was an incredibly varied assortment of other processors and peripherals, no two the same. The resulting mess looked like an aircraft carrier built by blind carnals, then mated with a refinery. Dozens of slaved attendants scurried around, catering to their master’s every need.

The Big Tube had sacrificed mobility for smarts. Good choice, I guessed, given that he had managed to become ruler of the whole city now.

Kitch and I approached The Big Tube’s main I-O zone.

“Hey, Big Tube. Nice to meet you.”

The Big Tube’s voice was part cathedral organ, hiss of tires on pavement and rain on a tin roof. “Reddy K. How was your trip?”

“Not bad, not bad at all. If you like trees.”

“I hate trees.”

Kitch piped up. “Me too!”

The Big Tube ignored my tiny rider. “So, you’re here for the spiral.”

“Not to disparage your beautiful city, but no other reason.”

“I hope Vend-o-Mat authorized you to bid high.”

“Well, he’s prepared to offer a fair price.”

“Fair in this case is a motherboard’s ransom.”

I knew the bargaining had already started, and I was worried that my individual wits would be no match for BT’s unmatchable processing power. Still, for what it was worth, I sent Kitch a private message through our physical connection, asking to borrow some of his cycles.

His silent voice sounded just like his spoken one. “Sure, Reddy, sure, take what you need!”

“This is all contingent on the quality of the goods,” I said. “How’s about a look? Or maybe even a taste?”

“After I hear some convincing numbers.”

“Okay, then, if that’s the way it’s gotta be. How’s this sound….?”

We went back and forth through several rounds of bargaining, and I guessed my distributed processing with Kitch paid off, because we finally settled on a figure that allowed me, presumably unknown to The Big Tube, to keep for my own self 3 percent of the credit ’Mat had transferred to me as maximum purchase price. But I would’ve been happy with 1 percent.

It was really my share of the spiral that had lured me out of the safety of home.

Once we had struck our deal, The Big Tube got more chummy.

“Nice doing business with a classy and honourable guy like you, Reddy. Vend-o-Mat’s lucky to have you for an associate. Since he can’t be here himself, I want to show you two errand boys some Providence hospitality. We’ll have a party tonight, before you leave tomorrow.”

“Sounds good, Big Tube. But would you mind now if I inspected the merchandise…?”

“Not at all. Just follow this hand of mine.”

A little slave zipped up and jigged in the direction we were to go.

We left the Convention Centre and crossed downtown to the banking district. We entered the basement of the old Fleet building through a huge hole in the walls and down a ramp composed of mangled, tangled and compressed office furniture. At the vault, Big Tube’s hand manipulated an inset keypad and the door of the vault swung open

The subtle petrochemical smell of primo spiral gushed out, hitting my sensors like the smell of Chippie’s hot lube. I went kinda blind for a few seconds. When I could see again, the sight of the spiral made me nearly as delirious as the smell.

Piled high, loose and in boxes, hundred and hundreds of 45s and LPs in their jackets.

I hadn’t seen so much spiral since part of the Crumb collection had filtered back to Manhattan. And that had been mostly shellac and 78s, low-info stuff compared to this Golden Age ware.

The Big Tube’s voice came out of the little hand, reduced by the puny speakers.

“Sweet, huh? The legendary Mad Peck trove.”

I extended one of my arms and gently removed a 45 from atop a stack.

“Vend-o-Mat said I could have a taste.”

“Sure, go right ahead.”

I slid the vinyl disc from its paper sleeve and studied the label. “My Baby’s Gone,” by the Five Thrills. Parrot 796.

I tried to keep the quaver out of my voice. “Never had anything on the Parrot label before.”

“Pretty rare.”

I magnified my vision to inspect the spiral groove more deeply, looking for nicks and other imperfections. The spiral was cherry. B-side too, “Feel So Good.”

At 10X, the spiral became a hypnotic road leading to infinity, sucking down my senses into the blissful white hole at the centre of the paper label, where all the individual troubles of being Reddy K disappeared in an implosion of cosmic splendor. And I hadn’t even played the rusting thing yet!

I pulled myself out of my fugue, and slotted the disc home into my onboard reader.

The outside world vanished in a splendour of beautiful noise.

I let the complex waveforms bathe my senses, at the same time that my studio tools were breaking down all the instruments and voices into discrete pieces, digitizing everything in the only way I knew how to remember and comprehend.

I didn’t know what the long-dead carnals were singing about, and I didn’t care. I knew the carnals had talked about “beauty” and “harmony” and “melody” and a thousand other attributes of “music.” But none of that registered with me. All I cared about was the architecture of the spiral. The way all the pieces hung together. The song’s information complexity.

This was the mystery the carnals had been able to produce at will that we could not.

But there was even more to spiral than that.

It was analogue.

The song was encoded continuously and physically, in the microcosmic mountain ridges of the black spiral. It wasn’t just a string of lonely ones and zeroes. Hell, anybody could access millions of hours of digital music files for free. But the kick they gave was pale and weak, almost nonexistent next to real spiral.

“My Baby’s Gone” stopped playing.

The universe flooded back in.

And now that piece of spiral was dead to me.

My player was non-destructive. Optical-based, in fact. No needle ever touched the spiral, just photons. This 45 was still virgin.

But my mind wasn’t. I had heard and dissected the song fully, with cybernetic precision. The novelty factor was gone. It had imparted its kick, and that kick had been analyzed and stored. Oh, I could get a few waning thrills from triggering a simulation of what I had felt. But the sim was not the same. And after a few repeats, even those secondary thrills evaporated.

And then I would want more spiral. And after that, more still.

Somebody else could still get juiced with “My Baby’s Gone.” But not me. I could make a profit renting it out, just like Vend-o-Mat planned with his share of the goods. But I could never experience it again myself.

I ejected the disc, put it back in its sleeve, and replaced it on the pile.

The Big Tube’s hand spoke again. “So, as promised… ?”

“Yeah, yeah. Heavy action.”

But I didn’t feel any excitement as I turned to go and the vault door swung shut temporarily on the trove of spiral.

Just a kind of sickness at what I had lost through having.

You had to hand it to The Big Tube: he really knew how to throw a party. A wide plaza downtown was lit up that night like the brightside of Mercury. Scores of machines flowed in from all parts of the city. Plenty of free juice and plug-ins. Plus the women. These babes made fusion look like steam power. It was the biggest blowout I had been to in years, and I entered into it kinda desperately and wildly, looking to forget the melancholy that the hit of spiral had produced in me.

One of the plug-ins I scored was a temporary virus to randomly wipe sections of my mind, and my memory went out the window. I only retained snatches of the party. I remember having a girl on each arm. With one track locked, I spun around on the other in a circle until the girls became airborne, shrieking and squealing.

Somewhere in the deliberate insanity, I lost Kitch. But I figured he was on his own, and could manage his own fun.

The party began to wind down around dawn. Everybody had duties. Guarding the city perimeter against incursions from predatory wildlife. Shoring up the dikes along Narragansett Bay. Scavenging consumables. I hung in there till the last citizen left. Then I got my shit together, and went back to arrange with The Big Tube to pick up the spiral.

I was thinking about Chippie, and whether we’d ever get back together again, when Kitch caught up with me.

“Ya sleep good, Reddy? I sure did. All set for the road now, sure thing.”

“Kitch, please shut up. Your voice is hurting my new ears.”

“Okay, Reddy, sure, I’ll shut up.”

Kitch hoisted himself on my back, and we went to say goodbye to The Big Tube.

“My hands saw you enjoying yourself, Reddy K. Glad I could show you a good time. Be sure to tell Vend-o-Mat how we do things up here in New England, that we treated you right. If he ever hits a big node of spiral, I want him to remember me.”

“Will do, Big Tube. I guess I’d better go now. Road to Manhattan ain’t getting any shorter.”

Back at the vault, I began to load the spiral into my storage bins. All the old famous labels.

Matador, Geffen, Atlantic, Chess, Sun, Stax/Volt, Okeh, Decca, Aladdin, Enigma, Blast First, Columbia, RCA Victor, Motown, Polygram, IRS, Stiff, Rough Trade, Enigma, Barsuk, Epic, Roulette, Monument, Island, Red Bird, Kama Sutra, Fantasy, Sire, Blue Note, Curb, Sugar Hill—

I was getting high just handling and smelling them.

I took my time, culling the most interesting-looking for myself as my agreement permitted. These I kept separate.

Finally, by late afternoon I was done, and Kitch and I picked up the Interstate heading south.

We made pretty good time, following the trail I had blazed coming north. But still, what with the late departure and some residual sluggishness on my part from over-indulgence in plug-ins, darkness began to overtake us before we were halfway home.

“How’s your night vision, Kitch?”

“So-so, Reddy. How come ya asking?”

“Well, mine’s not good, not good at all. I been meaning to upgrade, but no components have come on the market this year. Whatta you say we pull over till the morning?”

My brain began to itch with Kitch’s penalty twitchings, and I got resentful. “Listen, I’m not planning a scam! It’s just too dangerous. You want us to go over a bridge rail?”

“No, no, I guess you’re right. Can you find us someplace safe?”

“Sure, don’t worry about a thing.”

I pulled off the highway at a rest stop, and, while Kitch watched from a safe distance, backed my ass right through the wall of a building so that the relatively lightweight girders and roof fell down harmlessly around me, making me look like part of the old decaying scenery. In the morning, I’d power out as easy as a carnal climbing outta bed.

Kitch rejoined me.

“Better talk privately,” I said, “so we don’t attract any unwelcome visitors.”

“Gee, Reddy, you don’t really think—”

“We’ve been lucky so far, but there’s no telling what’s out there. Let’s play it safe.”

So for an hour or so, Kitch and I shot the shit about people and places we knew back in the city. I found out he had a girlfriend, name of Roomba, and teased him for a while till he made me stop.

The talk had kept my mind off my cargo. But once we stopped, I couldn’t help thinking about what I carried.

Finally, I said, “Kitch, I’m just gonna have a little hit of spiral to help me get through the night.”

“You think that’s smart, Reddy K?”

“Sure. You’ll keep an eye open while I’m out of it, right?”

“I guess so….”

I dug delicately in the pod that held my personal stash and came up with an LP. It was a double album, but I had counted it as just a single when I made my selection. Vend-o-mat hadn’t specified I couldn’t, so screw him.

Daydream Nation was what the carnal writing said.

I slid out one disc and slotted it home.

Bliss slid over me, wiping out the lousy world of ruins and shortages and entropy. Everything made sense while the spiral played.

Eternity ran loose and cool, but then it ended too abruptly, in the middle of a song.

Pain shot through my entire being, and halted the spiral playback. The kind of interior pain only Kitch could administer.

Rust him! What was he thinking!

The pain ended as instantly as it had started. My senses returned, and the first thing that registered was Kitch’s shouts.

“Reddy, help! Help, Reddy! They got me!”

I didn’t have any spotlights. But part of me integrated a Survival Research Labs flamethrower, and I cut loose.

The mega-blast of flame ignited a nearby stand of shrubs, and illuminated the whole scene.

RAMivores had Kitch, and were making off with him into the woods, skittering like crabs or spiders.

I let out a bellow of static across the spectrum and blew chaff to confuse their radar. I surged outta the blind and started to overtake the little predators.

But they were fast and tricky, zigging and zagging, eluding my pincers.

Kitch’s voice wailed. “Reddy, they’re draining my power, they’re yanking my boards! Do something!”

What could I do other than what I was doing?

Trouble was, it wasn’t enough.

The RAMivores gained the protection of the woods. The trees were giants, too big for me to topple and follow.

Kitch’s wailing voice dopplered off in a daisy-daisy farewell of nonsensical ravings, and then I was alone.

I went slowly back to the ruined building in the inferno light of the burning shrubs. I couldn’t reinsert myself into the rubble, so I hunkered down beside it for the rest of the night. Every now and then I shot off a burst of flame, for all the good it did.

In the morning, I looked around a little for Kitch, all the while knowing it was useless. I didn’t find so much as a wire or LED. So I got on the road again and started south.

I tried to feel guilty about Kitch getting taken while I was high, but all I could really feel was disgust that I had wasted one side of spiral.

On the way I kept rehearsing what I was gonna tell his girlfriend, Roomba. I’d say Kitch was brave and put up a good fight. But other than that, what could I say?

I figured if she liked spiral, maybe I’d give her “My Baby’s Gone.”