off for an adventure in some of the nearby ruins. One day I came across a building which had been mostly destroyed — it almost looked like a bomb had gone off — roof gone, walls fallen over, and the floor all wrecked from rain — you know… maybe there’d been a gas line explosion in the town? There was a lot of… whatever. I was just strolling through, not really expecting to find anything, when I noticed this door down below, subsurface.
“So I cleared out all the stuff blocking the stairwell, and I pried it open. Behind I found a garage — I hadn’t seen it earlier because the ramp on the outside was too full of rubble. Sitting in the garage, that’s where I found this baby.
“She’d survived pretty well. The garage had kept her safe except for a bit of dampness — that was a huge stroke of luck — and then I lucked out a second time; whoever had lived there must have been a Mechanic. He had a workbench, tools, manuals — everything I needed to figure out how all this stuff worked.
“Which isn’t to say that’s what I did — I was a kid at the time. All the gadgets were neat, but I didn’t think much deeper about it, not then.
“But I didn’t tell anyone what I’d found and I kept going there over the next few years. Just tooling around for the most part. Then one day it hit me — with the state she was in, I might be able to get her operational. See, here’s the rub; even closed up in the garage, she’d still fallen apart over the years. A truck’s supposed to be driving — you leave her idle for long enough and she just dies — that goes for any machine. They’re designed to be operated.”
By this point they’d finished loading up the vehicle, and were driving down the highway at a decent clip. Underneath the hood the engine was making a deep rumbling noise, and Raxx had to almost shout over its growl. To Wentworth’s ears it sounded healthy but expensive. “So what kind of mileage do you get?”
“About twelve litres per hundred kilometers, with a seventy litre tank.”
“Ouch.”
Raxx shrugged, “Yeah, it’s not that great, but it’s got a lot of torque. I think there might be some problems with the alternator — her lights flicker on idle — but I’m still looking into it; the problem could be something else.” He shrugged. “But it isn’t really that big of a deal, since I’m not driving that much lately.”
“So where do you get your petroleum?”
“Well, the town gets a shipments with the caravans that come in every so often,” he shifted down to fourth to climb a hill, “I figure eighty-five’s the best overall…” As they crested he shifted back into fifth. “That’s how I heard of Blackstock in the first place, from one of the guys making the shipments out to here. I’d left Hope with a full tank, and only had to wait a couple of months before the next caravan came through. I told the guy what I was interested in, and he took care of it for me. Guy named Vince — I think he’s coming into town later this week. The nearest city’s a couple of days if you’re got an Ox pulling you like most of the traders do, so he’s not by too often. He’s the one who gets me my supplies, and I try and keep some extra in the station’s storage tanks,” he glanced over at Wentworth, “Don’t worry about this trip, though, it’s free. She’s fully charged, so I don’t care about driving out to your bike. Hell, it’s good to be on the road again. I don’t usually have an excuse, so I don’t drive as much as I’d like to.”
They settled into a comfortable silence. The sun was rising to its zenith and in the distance the road wavered, mirages phasing in and out. The light hit the right angle, and the road turned to glare. Wentworth had been wearing his goggles since leaving the Landfall’s, but Raxx was had to reach for a pair of sunglasses sitting on the dash. The sun drove the night’s moisture from the earth, leaving new cracks in its wake. Wind currents picked up the loose dirt, and dust devils rode across the land, calling it their own.
Staring out the window Wentworth saw all the landmarks from his journey the day before flash by with a rapidity he did not remember. Barns weathered to a lonely grey, homes with their roofs caved in. The orange twines of rusted fences. A brick house, once home to a family, now inhabited by mice, louses, and black moulds and mildews waiting for a bare foot or a pair of lungs to take root in. The hills rolled by. In places the old forest had reclaimed the land, but more often than not it was the dust and barren earth. The grasses eked out an existence between the two.
“You know,” said Wentworth, breaking the silence, “I was surprised to meet somebody as skilled as you with the old tech — to meet a Mechanic. I’d thought I was going to have to abandon my bike — either that or fix her on my own, which wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t really expect to find anyone, especially not in a place like Blackstock, who’d worked on bikes before.”
Raxx shrugged, “Well, to be honest, I haven’t — I haven’t worked on bikes before, just Susie here. It’s not easy to find the machines to practice on. I’m stuck with old manuals, mostly, and that’s about it. But it’s all pretty much the same — motorcycles are just like trucks, only easier. The basic mechanism is a lot less complex — really, there shouldn’t be anything that could go wrong with a motorcycle that I couldn’t fix, as long as I’ve got the tools, which I mostly do. You take my truck, though, and there’s a bunch of things I still don’t understand, and other things that I don’t think anybody out there’s got the right tools to fix.” He shook his head. “I really don’t want to do any transmission work. That’s why I’ve got that other one sitting back in the bay.” He paused, thinking of the crunch he’d felt shifting into second earlier. “So your bike’s going to be kind of new to me — meaning I’m going take it slow — but it’s definitely not a problem.”
Wentworth nodded, “Oh, I trust you with it, that’s not the issue. I was just saying that not many people are educated on the old tech. It’s rare to find someone who is.”
“The problem’s will, not education.”
“Say again?”
Raxx sighed, looking exasperated. “Alright, it’s like this — take Blackstock. It’s been isolated for a long time; there isn’t much trade that comes through there, and they haven’t got any neighbours. But even so — the people are pretty stable, mentally speaking. They’re still in touch with reality. Their biggest weirdness is that tattooing of theirs.”
“Yeah, I was meaning to ask about that. Everyone I saw had them.”
Raxx shrugged, “It shows bloodline. They get them done when they turn nineteen. It’s like — to us it’s a bit odd because we weren’t born there, the same way the metal in my face might look odd to you, depending on where you’re from. But there’s nothing
“I don’t quite read you. You’re talking about cultural traits, right? How can you say that this one’s okay, but that one’s weird? If you’re going to say that one’s crazy, then really; shouldn’t you admit they all are? What are the formal greetings? Do the leaders wear hats? How do grandmothers dress? None of them have any grounding in… in tech; none of them are make sense, they aren’t necessary. They’re just quirks.”
He’d just finished a cigarette, but he pulled out another. “What I’m trying to get at is that culture’s nothing more than a bunch of commonly held, made-up norms — isn’t it?”
Raxx smiled. “I like the way you talk. And yes, that’s true. But what I’m trying to say is that in Blackstock there’s no craziness
“Your problem’s with superstition, not culture?”
“Yes! Exactly.”
“Okay… I think I know what you’re talking about. Too much isolation… well… yeah, it can do some weird stuff. But you’re saying that Blackstock, even though it’s pretty isolated, isn’t bad. They’ve just got tattoos. They’re not crazy. Is that it?”
“Yes… they even speak good, for locals off the trade routes. But my point isn’t just that they’re normal — Blackstock’s actually pretty average, all things considered…
“But then here’s the problem — there’s no new construction in the town. The buildings that aren’t prewar are all scrapped together.”
“Yeah, but it’s like that everywhere.”
“
Raxx reached into his pocket to pull out another cigar, then changed his mind and put it away. “I think it’s because people are trying to forget about the war, forget about the tech — I can even understand why. Every day we’re paying for it — just look around, the war’s everywhere and it doesn’t stop. People just want put it out of their
