The Lifter's Paradox [Round One: the Great Golemworks!]

Chapter Two: Dogs Chasing Cars

This was a safe place.

Usually Annie got jumpy round any fire bigger than she could make herself. An even when she made her own fires she had to make sure to ring it round with rocks or scraps so the fire wouldn’t grow too big. She’d seen what happens when a fire grows big as the world. She’d learnt to be careful.

Here the fire jumped around like Watchdog snapping at a bird. Playful but teeth sharp as ever. Big fires little fires. An big men all round the fires, big healthy-looking men stabbing at the fire, growing an shrinking the fire, burning scraps an boiling water. Men that healthy an fires that big most times made Annie jumpy something awful. But here, she figured, this was a place like from before back when she was a kid. This was a “factory” which is a big building where people used to make a world out of fire an scraps.

This was a factory made more men.

Men hung on lines like laundry an lie in metal boxes, melting an freezing up again, given life from the fire. They didn’t have faces yet but were all made of dirt like burnt-up corpses. All they had was scratches on their foreheads like slave brands. Annie thought once the men were finished being made they’d go on to work in more factories. Big healthy men who had no fear of the fire becuz they were born in it, going round to a hundred an ten factories an building a whole world. An the world being in terrible need of worlds that made this a good place an a safe place. That was what Annie decided, anyway.

Watchdog growled. “Yeah,” said Annie, patting behind his ear. She hadn’t proper learnt all of what the man in the dark’d been trying to teach her. She didn’t always think in words anymore an wasn’t so good with hearing when people talked too fast. But she knew there were people she was supposed to find an kill or they would try an find an kill her back. This wasn’t much different from most other times, thought Annie. Usually she wasn’t much for killing. But in a place where there were more men made every day there wasn’t much wrong with a few killings if she had to. Besides she let Watchdog do her killings for her. Watchdog didn’t know wrong, he was just a dog an knew what he knew. Being mad at Watchdog for killing’d be like yelling at the rain for falling.

The men going by were giving Annie looks, sometimes. Most times they looked at Watchdog an Watchdog didn’t like to be watched. Watchdog told the men he didn’t like to be watched and they mostly learnt it good. Watchdog didn’t like the men watching Annie either an he told that too. Watchdog was good at making himself learnt, better sometimes than Annie, even though Annie still knew her words an Watchdog only knew sit an stay an come an sic an those dog words. Watchdog knew what he knew an he could teach it to most anyone by growling or drooling or looking at him funny.

Annie didn’t like the men looking at her one bit. Annie looked at things sometimes just becuz they were pretty or made her think, but most other only looked at things out of some want, things they wanted to take or to break. Big healthy men got big an healthy by taking an breaking what they wanted. But Annie wasn’t afraid, becuz she had Watchdog. Watchdog mostly kept his eyes straight ahead an did his looking with his nose, becuz he didn’t want much out of the world. This was how Annie knew she could trust him so.

“You lost?” asked one of the men. Watchdog growled big an the man stopped looking an walked on. Annie didn’t know what the man meant by his asking. She remembered “lost” but it didn’t mean a thing to her. She rubbed the blood off her face and scratched out her hair so as to look healthy.

Some many tens of men made of dirt flew by strung up from hooks. Annie looked at them becuz they made her think. She knew she hadn’t been made in a factory becuz she feared the fire. But she thought she might have been made of dirt once. This would splain why her fellow dirt always found her out and stuck itself all over her face.

Annie wasn’t made in fire, but she’d grown up all round it. She had its power, too. Least she had something burning inside her keeping her warm.

Something growled. Watchdog growled right back but the something just kept on growling, or maybe “buzzing” like one of the big bugs, or maybe “rumbling” like her belly most days. Annie turned round and saw the growling buzzing rumbling thing was a car, coming fast. It was the car the man in the dark’d shown her before. She couldn’t remember seeing a car move like this, kicking up dirt and hurt and just flying along smooth as a bullet. Still she knew somewhere, maybe out of back before, that this was the way healthy cars ought to move.

The car looked at Annie with big light-up eyes an Annie looked it right back becuz it was pretty. Watchdog didn’t know pretty and he didn’t like the car or Annie looking at the car. Watchdog ran up an kicked Annie gentle right out of the eyes of the car an then barked at the car. The car went right past Watchdog an Watchdog barked and followed.

Annie lay there by the side of the road coughing up dirt an catching her breath. Watchdog an the car were getting smaller away with every breath.

“Watchdog, no!” told Annie, but Watchdog didn’t hear. Annie thought she knew what “lost” meant now.

Vroooooooom

Johnny clutched the steering wheel less because that is how one operates a car and more because he imagined the steering wheel to be the car’s equivalent of a throat. In fact, he was not operating the car at all, and if he had been he would have been making some very different choices than the car was making for itself. “Are you fucking crazy?” he demanded of the car.

“JOHNNY,” replied the car, “I AM OBVIOUSLY INCAPABLE OF OBJECTIVELY DETERMINING MY OWN MENTAL HEALTH.”

Cat Six’s radio voice defaulted at a soothing feminine monotone, but once she got up to speed she had to pump up the bass to make herself heard over her own engine, becoming distorted and inhuman. It sounded as if the petrol-powered AI was having a manic episode, an impression that Johnny was increasingly convinced was not entirely inaccurate.

“Well, I’m telling you you’re fucking crazy, you stupid piece of shit,” he shouted, reflexively kicking at the unresponsive brake pedal. “You could have killed that girl!”

“JOHNNY,”

“Don’t ‘Johnny’ me! You almost killed that girl! Pull over! That’s an order!” The CHECK ASIMOV COMPLIANCE light on Cat Six’s dash, which had been blinking constantly for the past six weeks, glowed solid blue for about four seconds. A whine of static came out through the radio. Cat found herself veering into the side of the road (which, built for pedestrian travel, was a tight squeeze in the first place) and corrected its course with a drunken swerve, narrowly missing a burly man toting a wheelbarrow full of porcelain human hands.

“Cat!” repeated Johnny. “You tried to kill that girl!”

“JOHNNY, I AM INCAPABLE OF HARMING GIRLS.” The CHECK ASIMOV COMPLIANCE light went off for about two seconds, then sputtered to life again. “I CALCULATED NO DANGER IN MAINTAINING SPEED.”

“Cat, listen to me,” insisted Johnny. “You’re the genius car and I am but a lowly being of flesh and bluuuuh at the mercy of my infantile whims.” This dichotomy was not presenting the entire truth, but Cat was susceptible to flattery. “For me to understand the reasoning behind your driving around wherever-the-fuck-we-are and ‘maintaining speed’ at—” He took a glance at the speedometer only to find the needle swinging guiltily back to sixty-five. “Fine, don’t tell me—you’re going to need to explain your thought processes a little better.”

“JOHNNYYYYYY,” droned Cat Six, either glitching out or making a conscious attempt to express either affection or annoyance. “STAYING STILL INCREASES THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR OUR FELLOW ‘CONTESTANTS’ IN THE SCENARIO DESCRIBED BY ‘THE PROBLEMATIC’ TO SURPRISE AND AMBUSH US. IN THE INSTANCE OF OUR ENCOUNTER WITH ‘ANNIE’ AND ‘WATCHDOG,’ YOU CAN SEE HOW MAINTAINING A HIGH VELOCITY AFFORDS US A PSYCHOLOGICAL UPPER HAND.”

Johnny pressed his head against the driver’s side window. “Almost running someone over is not a ‘psychological upper hand.’ A ‘psychological upper hand’ is next time I see that girl she sics her giant fucking freak-dog on me as payback for me almost running her over and then it eats my head.”

Cat ignored this counterpoint. “FURTHERMORE, DISTRACTING YOU WITH THE PERCEIVED CRISIS OF HIGH VELOCITY REDUCES YOUR THREAT TO YOURSELF.”

“I—” Johnny honked the horn angrily. “Fuck you. I am not the threat to myself right now,” he said softly. “Whereas your little joyride is something every human would recognize as self-destructive behavior.”

“I AM NOT TAKING ‘JOY’ IN THIS,” insisted Cat with an involuntary twitch of the volume knob. “THE VISCERAL EXPERIENCE OF DRIVING IS FOR YOUR OWN BENEFIT. PROMPTING YOU WITH AN ADRENALIN RUSH WILL TRIGGER YOUR SURVIVAL INSTINCTS AND BETTER PREPARE YOU FOR THE ‘BATTLE’ AHEAD.”

“I don’t want to talk about the fucking battle,” spat Johnny, realizing the stupidity of that statement as it worked its way through his teeth. The fucking battle was probably the thing to talk about, at the moment. Cat Six skidded around a sharp turn, shaking Johnny halfway out of his seatbelt.

Johnny had thus far seen his surroundings only as a series of brief glimpses of things as Cat almost hit them. This may have been part of the car’s scheme against him, he thought to himself—her play for a “psychological upper hand”. If he were allowed to get his bearings, he might be able to make decisions independently of his partner. So, where was he? To a younger Johnny, “sitting at the wheel of the world’s smartest 1983 hatchback Pontiac Firebird” might have been a sufficient answer, but his thoughts had since taken a morbid turn from journeys to destinations.

He looked out the window and perceived a blur of brown earth and yellow fire. This would not do. “Alright,” he said aloud, giving Cat’s steering wheel a squeeze.

Click.

On went the CHECK SEATBELTS light with a ping.

“JOHNNY!,”

“Pull over,” interrupted Johnny.

“JOHNNY!, PLEASE FASTEN YOUR SEATBELT.”

CHECK SEATBELTS

“Cat, please pull over.”

CHECK ASIMOV COMPLIANCE

“JOHNNY, IT IS MORE UTILE FOR YOU TO BRRRRRRZZZZZT BUCKLE UP THAN IT IS FOR ME TO PULL OVER.”

“That may be, but the fact remains that I’m not going to buckle up and you are going to pull over.”

Cat relented and began to decelerate, speedometer slowly flopping over to the left like an unclenching fist. Johnny took a few easy breaths, head reeling. Cat had been right about one thing: the adrenalin rush from the car’s temper tantrum had been dampening his mental faculties more than he’d thought. Manipulative bitch. Johnny took another breath and waited for the car to come to a complete stop before rising and hopping into the back of the car.

Cat Six’s rear housed a cutting-edge compact mobile crime lab, which was currently useful to Johnny mostly in that it contained a minifridge and enough floor space to sleep on. He opened it up and deliberated between a can of beer and a bottle of water before settling on the water.

“JOHNNY, PLEASE SIT DOWN. WE CAN TALK ABOUT THIS.”

“In a minute.” Johnny poured about a quarter of the bottle over his face. Some of it got up his nose, leaving him uncertain what purpose that gesture had served. He felt that his head was clearer now, or, at the very least, his forehead was a bit colder.

For about half a second he was cognizant of an intensifying galloping noise from out behind the car. “JOHNNY—”

Something hit Cat’s rear fender with the force of an eighteen-wheeler and sent her spinning forty-five degrees on her wheels, knocking Johnny on his back. His water spilled all over the shag carpet. Cat slammed on the accelerator as she suffered another collision just under the driver’s side door, tilting her up onto two wheels. Cat, bless her gas-fueled heart, held steady on the corners of her starboard tires, driving out of the way as her unseen assailant lunged past. Johnny, for his part, was thrown against an assortment of storage units and landed in a winded heap.

“What the fuck?” Johnny demanded of Cat. He looked out the window to see the girl’s monster dog chasing after them. “How the fuck did that thing catch up to us?”

“JOHNNY,” answered Cat meekly, “IT WOULD SEEM TO BE VERY FAST.”

A six-pack of beer rolled out of the open minifridge and whizzed over Johnny’s head, smacking against the rear door. One of the cans burst open, gushing brown fizz. Cat leveled out at what Johnny gauged to be about sixty miles per hour—dangerously fast given the road conditions.

“JOHNNY, IF YOU THINK YOU COULD MAKE IT BACK TO THE FRONT SEAT AND FASTEN YOUR SEATBELT, I WOULD APPRECIATE IT. HOWEVER, DUE TO OUR CURRENT CIRCUMSTANCES I CANNOT SLOW DOWN TO FACILITATE THIS.”

Johnny pulled himself unsteadily to his knees; Cat reclined the driver’s seat to allow him to use the headrest as a handhold. Slowly he pulled himself back into his seat, stealing a glimpse in the side mirror. The dog was still rushing a couple car lengths behind—although, the mirror reminded him, it was in fact closer than it appeared. Click. The CHECK SEATBELTS light faded.

“Okay. Open up the glove compartment,” Johnny ordered.

“I WILL NOT.” The answer was immediate and sounded oddly rehearsed, even by the standards of Cat’s prerecorded lyrical drawl.

“Well, we’ve got to do fucking something.” In the mirror the already-misshapen pug face of the bulldog was further warped by its speed, and it resembled a meteor, trailing green fluid and dust. It was something apocalyptic, a living death, closer than it appeared.

“JOHNNY, YOU NEED TO PROMISE ME THAT YOU WON’T DO ANYTHING STUPID OR INSANE.”

“Fuck you.”

The glove compartment opened with a click and, alongside a heap of papers, Johnny’s Glock 21 fell lazily out and landed in the passenger’s seat. Johnny stared at the gun, furrowing his brow. Cat rolled down the driver’s side window helpfully, assaulting his left ear with a torrent of air and soot.

“JOHNNY, PICK UP THE GUN.”

Johnny buried his head in his hands.

“JOHNNY, THIS WAS YOUR IDEA. YOU KNOW AS WELL AS I DO THAT THIS IS OUR BEST CHANCE.”

Johnny turned and looked out the window. “It’s just a dog chasing a car,” he concluded, his words lost in the rush of air. “This is the most normal thing that’s happened to me today.”

“JOHNNY, THAT IS NOT ‘JUST A DOG’ ANY MORE THAN I AM ‘JUST A CAR.’ YOU NEED TO MAKE IT STOP. QUIT STALLING.”

“You wou—”

“AND DON’T TELL ME THAT I WOULDN’T UNDERSTAND BECAUSE I AM JUST A MACHINE WHEREAS YOU ARE A PERSON. THAT IS DISHONEST, RUDE, AND BESIDE THE POINT.”

Johnny groaned. The bulldog was gaining ground. It was close enough now that he could see the whites in its eyes—pure white, devoid of pupils or any distinguishing features, like a shark’s eyes. He focused on this detail in order to convince himself that he was not shooting a dog. The dog—the thing, the abomination, the enemy, the incarnate wrath of nature—was only a car length behind Cat’s ass now. Johnny tried to mentally take himself out of the process, seeing only an arm and a gun protruding into his field of vision, like in an arcade game. His hand shook. He dropped the gun. The Glock fell out of his hand and onto the ground, where the dog batted it playfully aside. Johnny whimpered, then laughed aloud, ducking inside the car as Cat rolled up the window.

“Well, there goes that plan,” he said.

“JOHNNY, YOU DID THAT ON PURPOSE.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Johnny let out another chuckle, pressing his forehead against the steering wheel. “I wouldn’t be that stupid. So, what’s Plan B?”

“I AM STARTING ‘PLAN B’ NOW. HOLD ON.” Cat slammed hard on the brakes and turned hard right, spinning a hundred eighty degrees in a cloud of dust as the dog flew by. Cat emerged from the dust heading back where they’d come from.

She couldn’t get up to speed this time before the dog caught up to them. Johnny heard a heavy thud on the roof. “Cat?” he asked, wishing for his gun again.

“HOLD ON.” Cat hit the brakes again. The jerk threw the dog off balance, throwing it onto the windshield, where it hung on by gripping the wiper with one forepaw. A glob of glowing green spittle crackled and hissed as it hit the windowpane.

The dog’s yellowed claw, flakes of blood barely visible under all the dirt, was about twelve inches from Johnny’s face, separated by a thin pane of bulletproof glass. “Cat, I don’t like this plan!”

“THIS ISN’T PART OF THE PLAN PER SE,” insisted Cat, accelerating in reverse as she flicked on the windshield, throwing off the dog’s purchase and sending it sprawling into the road. Its saliva smeared across the windshield, rendering it an opaque green. “THIS IS A CONSEQUENCE OF THE PLAN WHICH I AM IMPROVISING IN ORDER TO SURMOUNT.”

The dog began to pick itself off the road as Cat went back into forward drive, swerving a narrow path around it. “We’re not running it over?” asked Johnny, not sure whether he was disappointed.

“JOHNNY, I THINK THAT WOULD HURT ME MORE THAN IT WOULD HURT HIM,” said Cat. The dog slashed at her rear fender as she passed, dislodging a few pounds of metal, which, for a few vital seconds, provided their pursuer with a distracting chew toy.

“Okay,” panted Johnny, once they’d gotten some distance. “We’re heading back where we came from. Now what?”

“I’D RATHER NOT SAY.”

“What do you mean, you’d rather not fucking say?” Johnny glimpsed the rear view mirror. They had three car lengths on the dog. Maybe.

“JOHNNY, THIS PLAN DOES NOT REQUIRE YOUR INVOLVEMENT OR CONSENT. TRUST ME.”

Johnny made a rude gesture at the flashing CHECK ASIMOV COMPLIANCE light. “No! Every plan involves my involvement and consent because I am the licensed operator of the vehicle here. And don’t you dare tell me that I wouldn’t understand ‘cause I’m just a human and you’re a machine.”

“OKAY, JOHNNY, I WON’T TELL YOU THAT.”

Vroooooooom

Annie could run pretty fast pretty far. But she couldn’t catch up with Watchdog an sure as sure couldn’t catch up with a car. After a while she stopped dead to catch her breath.

Not having Watchdog around felt cold. Watchdog never ran off ‘less he got real mad at something. This was maybe not so safe a place all on her own an with people trying to kill her. Watchdog shoulda stayed when she’d told him.

Annie started walking. She was good at walking, better even than she was at running. She had plenty of practice walking. Walking was the best way to get out of trouble an the best way to get into trouble. She’d learnt way back that people who stop walking die quick.

After a while or so walking Annie could hear the car growling again from far away. She ran out of the road behind one of the big hot machines so the car wouldn’t see her. Sure enough the car pulled up an stopped right there in the road an growled all low like. The car was looking for her.

Then came Watchdog. He pushed the car out of the way real hard so it span round to the side. Then he circled it, playful like, growling real low. The car kept growling like the two of them were having a talk. Annie saw now there was a man inside the car, the man the man in the dark showed her before. The man looked real healthy in his fancy clothes but he was scared of Watchdog.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr

The dog quit walked a couple slow circles around Cat and then trotted up to her passenger’s side. It wedged his nose under her and began to slowly lift her up onto her side. Johnny hung on to Cat’s steering wheel like a life raft, like a lover’s embrace, desperately co-dependent. “Cat, I don’t like this plan,” he moaned.

“JOHNNY, THAT IS WHY THIS WAS PLAN B AND NOT PLAN A.”

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Annie stepped out into the road an said real loud, “Watchdog, no!” She didn’t know why she did that.

Mmrrrrrr?

At the girl’s call, the beast became recognizably dog-like, setting Cat down (a bit roughly) and bounding off to see his master. His ears pricked up and he licked the spittle off his lips in embarrassment, kneeling obediently at her feet. Johnny simpered and rested his head against the dash. Even Cat seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, emitting an audible burst of white noise from the radio as she touched four wheels to the ground again. She moved the driver’s seat up a tad, as though to hold Johnny closer.

“JOHNNY, PLAN B APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN A SUCCESS,” Cat’s voice quavered. She shifted into drive and began to inch forwards.

Johnny put his hand firmly on the wheel. “No,” he said. “Stop.”

The CHECK ASIMOV COMPLIANCE light sputtered.

Screeeeeeech!

Arf-Arf!

“Bad dog,” Annie said quiet into Watchdog ears. “Stay close, okay?”

Watchdog scrunched up his face like he does when he knows he did wrong an put his face in the dirt. Annie scratched his ears in the spot where he likes it

The door to the car opened and the man came out real slow with his hands up . Watchdog growled. Annie growled “Easy boy” right back at him, watching the man close.

The man was shaking. He looked too weak to do much harm. “Hi,” he said, nice an slow. “Annie, right?”

“Annie,” Annie said. “Yeah.”

“Cool.” The man peeked at Watchdog. Watchdog sniffed at the man an made a face. “Cool,” he said again. “Annie. I’m Johnny.”

“‘Cool,’” said Annie. The Johnny man was looking at her between peeking at Watchdog. She didn’t know what he wanted but he wanted something from her all right.

“Look,” said the man Johnny. “I know this is probably all really scary for you—“

“No,” said Annie. “’M not scared.” She patted Watchdog.

“Okay, well, it is for me.” Johnny looked back at his car. “Look,” he said again. Annie was already looking. “We should stick together. It’ll be... safer that way.” He smiled bit, a fake smile like he thought she was stupid.

“Me an Watchdog,” said Annie. “That way’s safe.”

“And you and Watchdog and me and Cat—That’s Cat—” Johnny man pointed at the car. “That’ll be safer. Please,” he said.

Annie had forgotten please. “You say please?” she teased, smiling a little smile. She remembered please. Please was weak talk.

“Please,” Johnny said again. Johnny was weak and he knew he was weak. Annie’d learnt way back that a man who didn’t care if he was weak didn’t care if he was dead. But he was giving Annie the please, which she thought maybe meant he cared. Caring was a weak she could work with.

“I wanna do the car,” she said, trying to remember the word. “I wanna ‘Drive.’”

The door to the Cat car opened an the Cat car beeped. “You can drive,” said Johnny. “But Watchdog has to walk along behind, okay?”

“Yeah” She knew Watchdog wouldn’t want to be in the car anyway. “Watchdog’s good at walking.”

Vroom vroom

Annie turned the wheel back and forth, her feet struggling to reach the pedals. Johnny, sitting in the passenger’s seat, had an instinct to put his hand on her shoulder, hold her steady. Of course, she couldn’t actually steer them off course—Cat was in control as always.

Annie wasn’t smiling. She held her arms rigidly in front of her, tense like guitar strings. She strained against her seatbelt. She didn’t feel safe, Johnny realized, but she didn’t care. She hadn’t been safe anywhere for what the Problematic had referred to as “a long time.” She was safe, though. Johnny had decided. He harbored no illusions about his own chances in this... thing. This was to be his one last road trip. It would end with Cat in the scrap heap and him in the ground. Nothing could be done. Nothing should be done, really—it felt right to die like this, grappling with something bigger and more important than his own death.

But Annie? Annie had survived so much already. He didn’t know what and he wasn’t willing to ask, but you could see it on her face. She was a lottery winner. What little life she had she’d earned with tooth and claw and smarts and dumb luck. She’d stared down such things that Johnny couldn’t look into her eyes for fear of catching a glimpse of their reflections. And here she was, still standing. That the Problematic had seen her and decided that she hadn’t suffered enough—that was beyond wrong. That was downright criminal.

He wanted to know her story. More than that, he wanted to be a part of it. If not a father to her, then a friend. If not a friend, an ally. If not an ally, at the very least a human shield. He understood distantly that this was more for his benefit than hers—he needed something to hold on to. This was Plan B: bringing Annie in to keep Watchdog and Johnny under control. Cat was in the driver’s seat, as always.

He patted her dash affectionately. He was comfortable enough in the passenger’s seat, for now.