in a diner when in walked… in walked…
Shit. Wait. They had names.
OK, got it.
Chester A. Arthur XVII, William H. Taft XLII, Queen Victoria XXX, Thor, Mark, and a suddenly very self- conscious Catrina were all sitting in a diner when in walked a sentient piece of string.
The diner host got up and stopped the string before it could go any further.
“Sorry, buddy,” he said, pointing his thumb at a sign that read “No Strings Allowed.”
“What the hell,” said the string.
“Diner rules,” said the host, shrugging and ushering the string back outside. “Nothing I can do about it.”
Mark, bristling at both the obvious racism and the economic stupidity of the gesture, called out to the man from the table.
“Man, you can’t do that. He’s got just as much right…”
“Look,” said the host, putting up his hands, “it’s not my rule. The owner, he’s crazy strict about it and I need this job. I can’t do anything about it.”
It was at this point that the string walked back in.
“Buddy,” said the exasperated diner employee, “you gotta go. Please. If my boss sees you in here…”
“Look, I just want a cup of coffee,” said the piece of string. “I can take it to go.”
“Sorry, but I can’t…”
“Oh, come on, that’s bullshit,” said Mark. “You can get him a damn cup of coffee.”
“Fuck, man, would you keep it…”
The owner of the restaurant emerged loudly from the kitchen.
“What’s going on out…”
The large, balding, diner-owning bigot, spotting the string-man, stopped mid-sentence.
“You got three seconds to get out of here, string.”
“Why the hell should I?” said the string.
“Because I own this diner and I can refuse anyone or any…
“Fuck you, asshole, I haven’t…”
“Fuck me? Fuck you, you…”
“Hold up, guys, hold up,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, raising his hands in a placating gesture. “I’ve got this.”
The cloned president got up from the table and, placing his arm around the sentient fabric cord, walked it toward the door.
“Oh, come on, Chester,” said Catrina, “you can’t seriously be…”
“I said I’ve got it, don’t worry,” continued Chester A. Arthur XVII, walking outside with the string.
“Told you he was a douchebag,” said Thor under his breath.
“I heard that,” said Queen Victoria XXX.
“Oh,” said Thor. “Uh, what I meant was…”
Thor never got to explain what he actually meant. No one cared. By this point, Mark had removed himself from the table and begun verbally accosting the diner owner. All eyes in the diner—robotic, organic, or otherwise —were on them.
“That string has every right…”
“I don’t give a shit about its rights, or your opinion, or…”
“Excuse me,” interrupted Chester A. Arthur XVII, “but my friend here would like a cup of coffee.”
The sentient piece of string strode up next to Chester A. Arthur, looped and twisted around on itself, with its hair messed up and raveled out.
“Oh, you got some balls,” said the diner owner, pushing Mark aside and approaching the president and the string. “Let me spell this out for you. There are no strings allowed in the diner. And you are a string, aren’t you?”
“No,” said the string confidently. “I’m a frayed knot.”
Fifty-Eight: It’s On Now, Bitches
Bill and Phil made their way through the blood and guts and laser guns and metal fragments and severed limbs and more guts and more metal fragments until they found Quetzalcoatl.
“Quinn,” said Phil, “we…”
“One second, girls,” said Quetzalcoatl, pinned against one murder-drone by another murder-drone. “I’m a little busy.”
Quetzalcoatl was immediately, and violently, beset by three more murder-drones.
Bill and Phil waited patiently.
“Fucking… ball sacks, man,” said Quetzalcoatl, punching the metal head casing of the nearest robot repeatedly. The robot didn’t seem to notice.
A few minutes passed and two more homicidal automatons joined the fray.
Bill and Phil continued to wait.
Quetzalcoatl said some undoubtedly profane thing, but Bill and Phil couldn’t hear it over the sound of the seven mechanical assassins attempting to eviscerate, behead, stab, burn and quarter him.
A small stream of blood spurted from the fracas and landed on Bill’s loafer.
“We… should probably help him,” said Phil turning to Bill.
“What the… blazes are you talking about, Phil?” replied Bill. “Maybe you’ve… found a way to channel your… inner barbarian, but the only thing I know how to do is think… and that’s nearly gotten me killed twelve times… in the last hour alone.”
“Well, we have to do… something,” countered Phil. “He’s being…”
Six of the robots surrounding Quetzalcoatl were hurled into the air with tremendous force. Some were intact. Most were not.
“… murdered?”
Phil’s question was not uncalled for. The man he had known as Quinn was now hovering above the battlefield, breathing heavily but otherwise seemingly unfazed by the fact that he had just hurled six tons of angry metal across a half mile of robot-on-human bloodshed.
He also appeared undaunted by the fact that he had grown wings and a tail.
In actuality, Quetzalcoatl was marginally surprised to have reverted to his feathered serpent form, even if he didn’t show it. Mostly, though, he was pissed. That part he made pretty evident.
Quetzalcoatl tilted his head and looked down at the lone robot still clinging to his torso.
“Error,” said the remaining, and clearly most tenacious, murder-drone. “Impossibility made manifest.”
“Not exactly, my metallic nemesis. Religion was disproved. Not faith, not philosophy.”
“Does not compute.”
“No, of course it doesn’t. You’re a robot. You can’t think. You can’t believe. You’re just numbers and programs. At the end of the day you have no idea how much power faith can give you.”
Quetzalcoatl lifted the robot with one hand.
“No, Mr. Murder-Drone, you understand about as well as a lobotomized garden gnome might. I’m not a god because the Aztecs thought I was, or because these pedantic layabouts believed in me, or because anyone else thought anything at any point.
“I am a god,” continued Quetzalcoatl, putting his fist through the murder-drone’s face, “because I think I am.”
Fifty-Nine: Unless You Want to Get Dead, Of Course
