staff.
The doctor asked to see Wyslen’s documents and Mr. T handed them over.
After scanning through the pages for a few minutes, the young man said, “I’ll have to show these to the higher ups to see what they think. Are you staying here?”
“Yeah,” Mr. T said.
“Great. I’ll keep in touch.”
As the man walked back to the gates with Wyslen’s research in his hands, Mr. T yelled out, “Tell them I’ve got a lot of ideas on how to get it operational. I worked closely with Dr. Wyslen for quite some time.”
Then the gate closed behind the young scientist, then Mr. T went up to the gate and put his hands on the bars.
“And tell them if they don’t make this happen they will have to answer to Brick and Mortar.”
The man waved back at Mr. T without turning around.
He never heard from the scientist ever again and the Coast Guard never returned his boat, so he was left stranded in Copper with no home, no job, and nothing left to do. So he moved into an abandoned shack on the beach. It wasn’t much but it was shelter. He started crabbing for food and would sometimes sell crabs at the market. People in Copper didn’t have much money, so he didn’t sell them for very much. Later, he taught the other beggars in his shantytown how to fish and crab, but after a while so many of them started doing it that there weren’t enough crabs left to go around. Still, he was happy his vagrant friends were able to eat a little better.
One day, Mr. T saw a group of kids doing Waste under the peer. When he saw what they were doing, he charged right up to them and took the drugs out of their hands.
“What do you kids think you’re doing?” asked Mr. T. “Do you know how bad drugs are for you? You should be thinking about your futures, not wasting it on this trash.”
“Give it back, asshole!” said a ten year old street punk.
“You mouth off to me again and I’m gonna smack that mouth off your face,” said Mr. T, pointing his finger at the punk. “Now, you kids can do anything with your lives. You don’t need this to have fun.” He holds the drugs up to them. “You should have fun by playing basketball or practicing guitar.”
“Give it back, scumbag!” yelled a little 9-year-old girl with a shaved head.
“You’re not getting it back,” said Mr. T, raising his voice. “I’m trying to tell you how this stuff will get in the way of your dreams.”
Then the little girl put out her cigarette on his forehead. Mr. T screamed and the kids grabbed their Waste out of his hands and took off running across the beach. Mr. T ran after them for ten yards before giving up. He kicked a pile of seaweed into the ocean.
“And what were you going to do if you caught up to them?” Lee asked Mr. T, sitting on the beach in front of him, drinking a cup of the snake piss the Copper Quadrant calls whiskey.
“I was going to teach them a lesson about drugs,” said Mr. T.
“What for?” Lee said. “Those kids are prostitutes, thieves, and dealers. All they’ve got is drugs.”
“If they got off of drugs who knows what they could do with their lives,” Mr. T said.
“There’s nothing they can do, Laurence. This is Copper. Once you’re in Copper there’s no moving up in the world. If you’re born in the shit you die in the shit.”
“I don’t like you’re attitude, Lee,” said Mr. T. “There’s always a hope for a better life. If the people in Copper just came together we could clean up this place. We could turn it into a clean, safe place for children to grow up in.”
“How do you plan to do that?”
“Well, first of all, we get rid of the drug problem.”
“What?” Lee laughed at him. “It can’t be done.”
“Don’t you think there’s a problem with drugs here?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Well, if there’s a problem then there’s got to be a solution.” Mr. T
punched his fists together, then said, “And that solution’s name is Mr. T.”
Haroon and Mr. T go a mile deep into the zombie-packed streets of downtown, blasting their way through the horde. The first zombie that comes up from behind, Mr. T attacks with his spiked club. The bat goes through the zombie’s face and gets stuck in its mouth. The zombie bites down and thrashes it out of T’s hand, then blindly runs in the opposite direction.
Weaponless, Mr. T looks down at his hands.
“And you said you could trust that weapon better than this?” Haroon asks, holding up his solar-powered shotgun.
Mr. T smiles.
“Just because I don’t have a weapon,” he says, “doesn’t mean I’m not armed.” Then he punches a zombie’s head off of its shoulders.
The duo go a half mile farther down the street until there are so many zombies they come to a standstill. Haroon can only shoot them down quick enough to hold them back, not quick enough to enable them to move forward. The zombies come at them from all sides.
“They’re coming in from behind,” Haroon says. “Fall back, to the east.”
“We got this!” Mr. T yells, throwing punches at the living dead coming at them.
“Fall back!”
“We got this!”
Haroon breaks away from Mr. T and runs down a side street to get away from the main horde. Mr. T doesn’t follow. zombies fill the space between them.
“Come on,” Haroon says, trying to shoot a path for his large friend.
But Mr. T keeps on fighting, no matter how bleak the situation looks.
Mr. T learned that the head of the drug trade was Tim Lion. He was the inventor of Waste, and he pretty much owned Copper. The moment he discovered that Tim Lion owned a club in the downtown area of the quadrant, Mr. T decided he was going to give the chump a visit.
He stormed into the club in his red jumpsuit, pushing strippers out of his way and knocking over platters of Waste that were carried by waitresses from table to table. He went straight for the big man in the back, the one in the green top hat.
Tim Lion was surrounded by armed men and naked women. He was drinking a cosmo and eating buttered lobster over pasta.
“Are you Tim Lion?” he asked the man. “Mr. T wants a word with him.”
“Who the fuck is Mr. T?” Lion asked.
“You’re looking at him, fool!”
The gangster was almost amused by Mr. T’s forwardness. He decided to hear him out before he had his men kill him.
“Mr. T don’t like the way you’re selling drugs to kids,” said Mr. T, leaning in as close as possible. “Scum like you give the good folks of Copper a bad name.”
“Is this guy for real?” Lion asked.
“I’m going to clean up this town,” said Mr. T. “Starting with you.”
Tim Lion looked at his men and said, “Get rid of this idiot.”
Mr. T clothes-lined one of his men over the back of his chair, and kicked over the table, spilling Lion’s food and drink into his lap. The entire bar looked over at them.
“Kill this asshole!” Lion yelled.
Mr. T grabbed a man’s wrist before he could draw his gun, then headbutted him, knocking him to the floor. As he raised his fist in Lion’s direction, three gunshots rang out across the table. The bullets hit Mr. T square in the chest.
Mr. T continues punching zombies as they come at him, knocking them to the street.
