Deadman

Bill and Jeb worked with a number of circuits and machinery spread out across a table. They were putting pieces together, soldering, and occasionally flipping switches on and off. I’d read about something that existed in the old world, before the bombs fell, called a rube-goldberg machine. They were machines meant to perform a simple task that did so in the most convoluted way possible. A very old world concept. Nowadays, things needed to be practical, machines were made for purpose, not for fun, and the entire point of them was to accomplish something as quickly and efficiently as possible, often the alternative was death. It had probably been a few hundred years since someone had made a machine that was purposefully obtuse, but here we were, at the first step with our own rube-goldberg machine.

“This device will allow you to detect whoever had the most contact with those speakers?” I asked. Bill had set up near the town square and a number of people were passing by.

He looked at me, his glasses obscuring his eyes. “Yep.”

Jeb put down his soldering gun. “It actually detects the number of transverse waves that have passed through a person using a-”

I held up my hand. ‘That’s enough. I don’t need details.” Details could easily damn us if someone heard them. “How much longer do you think it will take?”

“Mostly done today. More work in the morning and it should be ready,” said Bill.

I nodded. “You know, with all the work you’ve been doing here, we might need to find you a new sign for a second location in Medina.”

Bill stopped working. “Good idea.” He started working again.

I nodded to them, and marked the device for special delivery so I could keep track of it. The rube goldberg plot had been kicked off, now was the time to go through the remaining convoluted steps. I took a deep breath and located the Khan, Atlan, and Leroy in the same spot, along with Nix, Mercy and a few others. It seemed that some kind of plotting was under way. That worked for me, meant that I could tell everyone at once.

I made my way to the Khan and his allies meeting area. There was no need for introductions or even hellos at this point. We’d all been in each other’s midst relatively constantly since the siege had been broken.

I went directly to the Khan, who was silently listening to Carmila, list off the status of vehicles in his fleet and the state of resources to keep them repaired. He waited for her to finish, nodded, then looked at me expectantly.

“Remember how you mentioned creating a device to discover who planted the devices?” I asked.

The Khan nodded.

“Turns out Bill can do exactly that, and he’s almost done.”

“Really?” asked the Khan, incredulous.

“I was surprised too, but he says it’ll be ready by the morning.”

“Is he some kind of wizard?” asked Leroy.

Bastien nodded, “A Hoodoo practitioner, eh?”

I saw a raised eyebrow from Mercy and the others there as well.

I shook my head. “It’s all science. I trust him on it. He was able to identify which gun shot the Khan and create a device to detect the speakers. At this point, I’d be surprised if he said there was something he couldn’t do.”

“What if the culprit has already left Medina?” asked Nix.

“Then it doesn’t matter anyway. In that case the device will still help to prevent that kind of espionage from happening again.”

The Khan shook his head. “I’d rather find them, wrap my hands around their throat.”

I nodded. “I think that’s a shared opinion.”

With my message delivered and the next phase in motion, I went to leave when I heard the Khan speak again.

“Donovan. This woman among the deadmen, who vies for leadership. Mama. Tell me your opinion of her.”

I blinked, surprised by the question, my mind still focused on my plot. “She’s the reason I’m alive today. She and the Undertakers that found me.”

“She’s strong?”

“Yes.”

“She’s capable? Reasonable?”

“Yes.”

The Khan nodded. “I will vote for her then.”

“What!?” asked Atlan, beating me and Nix to the question.

“It was not as if I intended to vote for the candidate the Remnants provided.”

“What about you?” asked Atlan.

The Khan laughed a booming laugh that I found surprising. “I am not suited for such things. Debates? Policy? Voting? I am not a politician. I am a Khan. I do not win with words, but with actions. The deadmen may have this battle of words, and I will support them against our mutual enemy. Your people’s actions have shown that you can be trusted with that.”

“Khan, surely we should not leave such power in other’s hands,” said Atlan. I noticed her guards exchanging a glance.

“If we are divided in this, the Remnants will take it for themselves.” He turned to Atlan. “My word on this is final.”

She seemed on the verge of saying something else, but held her tongue. “Understood fath-, my Khan.”

Returning my attention to my original purpose, I nodded and left. I found that I wasn’t that surprised by the Khan’s decision. What he’d said was true, he was no politician. He was a king, a feudal lord that wasn’t sorted for that kind of work. The system was a powerful tool, but whatever changes were made to it, he’d still have an army of warriors, a fleet of vehicles, and the fear and respect of everyone in the wastes. Besides, he was right. The Remnant’s territory contained an enormous amount of people, every vote would count, even those several thousand brought forth by Pott’s. If we divided our votes among multiple candidates, we’d surely fail.

I shook my head and returned my focus to the task at hand. I checked the coordinates of the device I’d marked as ‘special delivery’. It appeared that it was still where it had been when I’d first marked it, meaning that Jeb and Bill were still working on it, as planned.

I’d set all the pieces in motion, so I found a nice piece of leftover battlement, took a deep breath, and started tracking everyone who came near the device by scent. With all the complicated steps out of the way, now came the completion of the simple task.

…

It was very late at night when the device was moved. I could smell the person moving it, and was surprised at who it was for a moment, before the reasoning behind their actions clicked in my mind. I saw the “Special Delivery” marking vanish as the package was destroyed. It had been placed in a makeshift workshop off of one of the garages for storage.

Terrible work postman! You’ve failed to perform the primary goal of your job 'Delivery’! You receive no patriot points! Failure to do your job is a weakness of character!

I stood up, and began walking toward the device's destroyer. I was in no rush, they almost certainly wouldn’t leave the city. I got within a block of them when I realized that they were headed to where Bill and Jeb were bunking, a small former brothel near the edge of town. That made sense. As far as the saboteur knew, they were the only two who could make such a device. If they destroyed it, but those two lived then it wouldn’t matter. They could simply build another one.

Before they reached the brothel, I turned down an alley to cut them off, and waited until they were about to pass me. I stepped out of the darkness between the buildings and into the path of Ba’al.

“Headed somewhere?” I asked.

I saw his eyes dart around. “Atlan requested I check the status of her bike.”

“Before dawn? On the opposite side of Medina from where the Garages are?”

He was silent, clearly thinking over his options.

“You broke the device.”

He didn’t answer, which was fine, it was a statement rather than a question.

“You didn’t have to do that, you know,” I said, smiling in a way that showed all of my teeth. “The device didn’t work. There was no way to detect who had been placing those speakers.”

Ba’al’s face scrunched up in something between rage and confusion.

“It was just bait. I appreciate you taking it though.”

He let out a kind of groan.

“Alright. You can come quietly, or you can fight and lose.”

He was a large man, but in that moment he made himself small, seeming to surrender to the inevitability.

I nodded, and approached to search him for weapons.

When I got close, he went to bring something out of his coat. I froze him before he could complete the movement. I sighed, opened his coat, and saw what looked to be a modified las-pistols with a massive barrel. I peeled it from his waist and holstered it. Before he unfroze I drove a punch into his gut, holding back to keep from killing him, but putting in enough force to lift him off the ground and wind him. After that I grabbed him by the collar and started dragging him through town. I checked my notifications. A simple task completed, my Rube Goldberg Machine had worked.