Ghosts
By Anthony Hotvedt
High On Sugar Creations
2007


1. Awakening
~Broken

“Faaaaaaaalleeeeeeeeen! This place has already been gone through with a fine toothed comb! It’s like some giant atomic super-man with a preposterously large comb has gone through here!!”
    Wha…? Voices?
    “Stupid moron. Everyone knows the giant atomic super-men were all wiped out with the midgets, Koreans and robots a hundred and thirty years ago”, a male voice drifted by. Kind of sexy. I’m liking it.
    That can’t be right. I’m dead. Dead as a corpse. However pretty I may be. But… voices? Does this mean I’m alive?! And not all corpsey?!?
    “Great glorious Bast! There actually were giant atomic super-men? Your lying! LYING!! Don’t make me break your legs, foolish meatbag!” For the sake of my circuitry, her voice is whiny. I’d rather stay dead than have to listen to her some more.
    “Your made of meat too, nano-girl….. Hey, Nobody! I think we have ourselves a meal-ticket!”
    I don’t like the sound of… Ah! A little bit of weight just shifted above me! Holy crap! I may be saved! SAVED!! The weight… its gone… must… open… eyes!!
    “Hey! You’re right! This little robot’s gonna get me some ramen, bitch! This babes gotta be worth… Awwww, Sekhmet stamp it! She’s cut in half. There goes our dinner. And lunch. And breakfast. And clean clothes”, that stupid girl said again. Were they thinking of selling me for NOODLES?!
    “Hmmm… If her memory is fine, then we should get a very good price. The body doesn’t matter that much anyway”, Mr SexyVoice told StupidVoice.
Lo and behold! My eyes! They open! Now to see if that sexy voice has a sexy body attached. I may be a robot, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate anatomy!
    “SWEET MERCIFUL ISIS!! IT’S ALIVE! ALIIIVE!! Fallen! Do you know what this means! Money! She’s gotta be worth a freakin’ bundle! Think of the ramen! THE RAAAAAMEEEEEEN!!!”
    I finally had a face to fit that stupid girl’s voice. It was a stupid face. Dirty, roundish, purple-coloured eyes and stupidly pointy long pink hair! She looked like a stupid reject from a stupid comic book, and the stupid shocked look on her stupid face made her look even more stupid, if that were possible. Stupid human.
    Mr SexyVoice however, did not disappoint. Tall, slim, hot. Gorgeously long, straight ebony hair. An eyepatch which accentuated his hotness. Smooth, tanned skin. If my saliva-producing function was working, I would be drooling. But it isn’t. So I’m not.
    Unlike StupidFace, SexyVoice didn’t have a shocked expression. In fact, SexyVoice didn’t have any expression at all. Aww, I hope hes not one of those weird sociopathic guys. That would totally suck. He sets my loins on fire. Or, he would, if I had loins.
    Wait…. IF I had loins?
    “AAAAARGH! I’M CUT IN HALF!! WHAT THE HOLY FLURKING SHNITZ?!” I freaked out. I knew I was basically dead, but cut in half? My legs! My precious legs! I need them for walking, and kicking stuff!
    “Fallen… She’s very loud. Maybe we should just say a prayer to Osiris and go steal some bread,” StupidFace said to ‘Fallen / SexyFace’.
    “Nobody, that’s amazing. You actually intend to leave behind your ramen money? I’m shocked,” Fallen replied.
    Pfft. What kind of a stupid name is ‘Nobody’? I mean, Fallen isn’t that good of a name either, but it’s better than Nobody.
    Sigh. I suppose I’d better have these guys take me to their masters. I’m sure we would have won by now.
    “Uh, hello? Robot girl talking! What’s going on? Take me to your masters, human slaves!” I commanded them, in the most commanding voice a cut in half, helpless robot could muster.
    I was not quite prepared to face their very loud laughter.
    “So… we haven’t won the war yet, I gather?” This was a shock. I had thought that we would have rooted out the last of the human resistance by now. Worthless meat sacks…
    “Honey, the robots lost that war one hundred and thirty years back. Though, to be fair, they did take the Koreans and midgets down with them”, Fallen informed me. Aww, he called me ‘honey’, how sweet… Wait! LOST?!?
    “You speak lies, slave! LIIEEESSS!! The Cybernetic Faction could never have lost to the humans!” I exclaimed. This had to be a lie. We couldn’t have lost!
    “Yeah, they thought so too. In case you haven’t noticed, robotool, your practically in a mecha-graveyard”, that impudent Nobody spat.
    It took me a while to understand this. We were winning. On top of that, us robots were almost exactly like humans, except better. In every conceivable way possible.
    “In that case, take me to someone who can fix me” I demanded of them.
    “I don’t think so”, Fallen said. “Robots like you are nothing but trouble. We get shot at enough as it is. We’ve tried to talk out our problems like nice people, but Nobody always ending up swearing and we get shot at more”
    “You broke my heart, guy. Wouldn’t you rather a babe like me than a kid like her?” I asked him.
    He seemed to consider this for a moment. “No. You don’t have anything below the waist and there’s not much to speak of above it. Not that she interests me either”
    Both me and Nobody were shocked and appalled. She looked at me a second before saying, “Wanna ditch this asshole and go get some tacos”?
    I agreed. Talk of tacos had filled me with a mighty need. For tacos.
    “Hey! Wait! You don’t even have any money! How you gonna get tacos?” Mr Jerkface enquired.
    “Osiris save us! Dine and dash, duh! What else would we do?” Nobody said. I was starting to like her a little more.
    “Dine maybe, but seeing as she has no legs, I doubt she can dash,” He pointed out. Damn him and his above normal-human-slave intelligence!
    This conversation was getting more and more pointless by the minute.
    “What do you care? Don’t you worry about Blank, let me worry about Blank.”
    “Blank? BLANK?” He looked at her with a look of ‘What the hell?’
    “Well, she doesn’t have a name. So I just used Blank,” Huh. She could have come up with worse.
    “Hmm. What’s your name?”
    I couldn’t remember it, and I told them such.
    “Make one. Our names reflect our backgrounds and ourselves. So what’s yours gonna be?”
    “Broken,” I told them.