#120: Melvin's Marauders -All that remained was sand

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The Fabricator arrived about dark. The kids clammed up instantly. It was frickin’ SCARY. It was much bigger than a greyhound bus and looked like a huge catfish with tentacles.

Melvin said “It’s called a Fluffy. God knows why.”

The marauders nodded in awe, one said “‘Frickin Lovely Upscale Fearful Ferocious Yaffle’

Melvin just shook his head. Where did the kids come up with such names? He didn’t understand half the words they used nowadays. He suspected they were making them up just to mess with his mind. They were succeeding at that.

The VERY first thing that Melvin did was make SURE that Fluffy had a sample of each and every one of their DNA for a code lockout. Melvin made absolutely SURE that Fluffy identified each and every one of them as FRIEND and comrade if not master. Fluffy had the potential to be so deadly as to make a T-Rex pee and run away. A kodiak bear would faint at the sight of it. Fluffy was definitely something to have on their side.

That done they all filed aboard. Fluffy was in the default internal configuration. TigerMom put a stop to that nonsense right quick. She reconfigured Fluffy’s interior to suit herself and the kids. Melvin would just have to make do. It wasn’t so bad really to have a private captain’s cabin, with a private bath. He’d never had anything like that before.

That night in virtual reality Melvin, TigerMom and all the kids examined the ‘instruction manual’ They talked to each other via mind-link, a skill they were all honing to perfection. It beat the pants off of texting on a cell phones. One of the nerds called it cybernetic telepathy.

“Hmm...lookit this. It can make SmokeCrystals!” TigerMom explained.

“Well yeah.” Melvin said “ I guess you didn’t hear me talking to Shelby. That’s kind of the point. He wants as many SmokeCrystals as we can send his way. He wants them by the truckload it sounds like.”

Oh” she didn’t sound the least bit disappointed. She was exploring. Every so often her she’d chirp via mindlink...”hmmm...lookit this...”

So it went through the night. Melvin told them ALL about the anti-tamper provisions and explained to TigerMom, and the kids, repeatedly about the danger of hacking Fluffy. Fluffy wouldn’t like that, he stressed, and would kill them all, regardless of the DNA lockout. Incidentally it would leave a really big crater on the lake bed. TigerMom was very still for a moment then nodded. She had an abiding hatred for bombs. In a manner of speaking however, this bomb was on their side. In the long run at least.

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Melvin actually slept very well that night, for the first time in a very long time. For one thing he was in a bed. THAT hadn’t happened lately. The bed adjusted itself to his unconscious wants and wishes. He was more comfortable than he could remember ever having been.

For another thing he was snug in the belly of a cybernetic monster machine that was on HIS side that could eat white sharks as a light snack. For the first time in a long time he didn’t sleep with one eye open. He felt safe. He dreamed but they weren’t bad dreams.

He actually rested and didn’t wake up until the crack of noon. TigerMom fixed everyone something to eat in Fluffy’s well appointed kitchen then Melvin announced. “We have a job. This is what we need to do. This is what we have to do it with. We need to figure out a plan.”

They talked about it. Some of the talking got rather intense and that was ok. This was exactly what Melvin wanted. Planning was like training to some extent. The more you sweat the less you bleed. Of course there was Murphy. “no plan ever survives contact with reality”, but you did the best you could with what you had. For the first time in their lives Melvin, the TigerMom and the Kids had quiet a lot. They had bleeding edge technology as they say. They were going to make the best of it.

“Back to the drawing board.” said for about the fifth or fifteen time. “You all have a day off tomorrow. Don’t go far.”

Another redesign, another rebuild, and that was ok. When he was good and ready he would be READY! Finally they come up with something he thought would work.

Tomorrow they ride!

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There had been a small town nearby according to Melvin’s GPS. More of a real estate development rather than a town, just houses. Now it was under about fifty foot of water. Just right for pillaging.

First thing. The Valkyries went in. The most recent upgrade. The choosers of the dead. They were highly specialized fully automated drones. They searched the area diligently to identify all of the human bodies they could find. No need to subject a human to such visual trauma. They consumed the bodies and converted them to death crystals to reverently be returned to the Banana Slug. The Banana Slug maintained a memorial for the dead. A crystalline structure, in a place of honor in the dome, made from the Death Crystals of the fallen.

That grim but necessary job done, the scouts went in. The scouts were tele-operated by the older kids via VR from their bunks inside of Fluffy. They surveyed the terrain, located carbon, marked it on the map, and had their drones drink all the liquid feedstock, the gasoline and the diesel fuel. Behind them came the locusts. Thousands. They didn’t require close control and the youngsters directed them by the Scout’s map and only gave them vague, broad sweeping general commands. (swarm go here, swarm go there, kind of thing) The locusts consumed everything that contained carbon. When a locust was full it returned to Fluffy and was gobbled up. Then Fluffy spit out another empty locust, and so it went.

The marauders arrived at dawn, by dusk the small housing development no longer existed. Nothing that had carbon in it remained, not even the asphalt on the roads or the asphalt shingles on the houses, or the houses.

All that remained was sand.

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The Next Episode Is
#121: Henry Drake -Shovel on the Coal…
The Previous Episode was
#119: Daniel Freemartin - All that was left was sand…
The First Episode was
# 1 : Prologue…
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Book One: SoulStone
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