Everyone called me a hero. Like I was the savior of the town, the savior of all of North Dakota. By the time I had dragged that 100 pound hunk of artificial flesh from the gates to the town square they had already gotten a parade underway. Flashes of colored light hit the air, music played (how I missed good music), and the old ladies started handing out candy to all the kids. It was wonderful, joyful, special. It was like I just ended the war in the span of an hour. It was a brief but much needed respite from the harshness of it all. I had given them that. It was the least I could do.
I was ordered off hunting that morning, and so I grabbed a gun and my cap and headed off. Soon I found it, or him, right along the lake, just resting there, hunched over. They made them small on purpose so they could be nonthreatening, docile like a child. They were anything but. I slowly approached, my rifle over my arm, ready to at least get a shot in it before he would take me down. When I could make out the face I knew it was already “dead.” I looked through the wound on the throat and saw the interior of it, the gross mosaic of wire and flesh, the patchwork quilt of machine and humanity. It churned my stomach.
I laid my gun down to get a closer look but instantly got repelled back. That smell! Did they need to make their artificial flesh reek? As if experiencing them alive wasn’t enough, we had to suffer in their death?
I couldn’t make out what did it to him. Maybe a wild animal, maybe a much better hunter than myself. It was a victory for whoever did it, whoever tore a hole in that aberration. But now it was my victory to steal. Taking my rifle at point blank, I fired one shot into its head, unleashing a burst of blood and metal and guts and plastic. The neck was enough, yes, but I wanted some part in it, some small consolation revenge against them.
Unceremoniously, I slung my rifle over my shoulder, grabbed the skin of its wrists, and began the journey back to town. Martin, who had briefly worked in the City, used to tell me that they’d make ten thousand of these a day.
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