Chapter 11: Read My Lips, No Nude Taxes

Cody had to admit, the work was impressive. Kimiko’s face was shocked, mostly because her face could now look shocked. She ran her hands over her skin, experimentally.

“I… am I beautiful?”

“Beauty is in the eyes of the beholders.” Ace turned to the others in the room. “Survey says?”

John stuck two fingers in his mouth and let out a long, peircing whistle of approval. Cody yelped and tried to cover his ears with his paws. Drew just stared.

“I think that’s a yes. Now perhaps we should get you some clothing.”

“But I already possess the uniform of a traditional female domestic cleaner.”

“Yes, but it doesn’t fit anymore. I made some extensive modifications to your overall structure.”

John held up a hand. “I for one don’t mind.”

“Me either. You’re an artist, mi amigo. You should put a masterpeice on display, not hide it from the world.”

Drew grabbed one of Cody’s ears and pulled. “Stop objectifying her!”

“I appreciate your respect, Drew. I am also appreciative of the compliments given me by both John and Cody. Builder, if it is alright, I would like to remain like this for a further period of time.”

Ace shrugged. “Sure. It’s your body. Just remember to put some clothing on when going outside. The last thing we need is you getting dragged to the hoosegow.”

***

Johnny tapped his coffee cup absent mindedly. “That was damned impressive. Just taking Drew’s whole basic body and face structure, then acclimating it to anatomical female proportions. And the Asian facial features… holy shit. It took me the better part of ten months to master high cheekbones.”

“Well, it seems there’s some sort of mathematical relationship between noticeable points on the face that determines pulchritude. I just had to go through a hundred and fifty pages to find it and recognize it for what it was.”

“Also, I must compliment you on your use of the human skeletal system.”

“It was necessary to get the right appearance.”

“Exactly what I was gonna say! Quick question though. What were those spinning things on the inside? They didn’t actually connect to anything I could see.”

“You know what chakras are?”

“I’ve heard the theory. I think it is utter nonsense and wishful thinking.”

“Well… that notwithstanding, chakras are how I got Kimiko’s emotions to work. The theory is that there are energy spirals and stuff at points along the human nervous system that link with organs. I just provided the equivalent. And they are, in fact, connected. Why do you ask?”

“Well, when you were rearranging her skeleton and power plant-”

“Power train.”

“Same difference.”

“Not really, but go on. You were saying?”

“Well, you were rearranging all that but you always made sure those things were exactly where they originally started.”

“Yeah. Like I said, they are important. Now I have a question.”

“Fire away!”

“Do you know of a recycling plant around here? One that would recycle glass bottles and jars?”

John tapped his chin. “Not as such. No places that crushes it all up and repours it as new glass. But there’s two or three places around town you can return glass bottles for cleaning and re-use.”

“That may be what I need. Where are these places?”

“Uh… there’s Convenio-Mart. Mitch works there. Then there’s the Naked Chicken. It’s a restaurant. Finally there’s Dale’s Bar and Grill. Also a restaraunt.”

“…aren’t you gonna ask me why I asked?”

John grinned. “My friend, if you don’t tell me the reason yourself, that means either you don’t want to tell me or you don’t even know. Either way, it’s not gonna help.”

“True. Look, I gotta get some rest. The procedure just flew by for me but my feet are filing a restraining order against 17-hour binges on clockworking as we speak.”

***

Ace’s skin burned and his muscles ached. The uniformed man still would not slow down. The path to the castle, now straight, wasn’t getting any shorter. In fact, quite the opposite. Ace tripped again and suddenly understood why.

The path turned into the steps of an escalator, pushing him down, back to the last bend in the road. He scrampled against the motion of the steps, but it simply wasn’t fast enough. He was too tired to cry out as he was shoved over the edge of the cliffside and fell-

***

-into a potted plant. He kicked away the fronds and stepped out onto the tile of the store. He looked back up; no cliff. Just a staircase.

“Nice landing, Iggy.”

He turned and stuck out his tongue at a young girl covered in bruises and sporting a too-short denim skirt. “I totally meant to do that.”

“Sure you did.”

He looked around. They were all there, he knew. Although on a deeper level he wasn’t exactly sure who they were. They being: One old man in a clergyman’s outfit; one heavyset, six and a half foot man with a baseball cap and a shotgun; the bruised girl; her friend the bespectacled skinny guy in the denim jacket; and finally the brown haired man in sunglasses. The last guy was holding a bottle of what looked like hard liquor.

“I swiped this from behind the front desk. There’s also some shot glasses.”

“How dare those fiends! Shooting innocent glasses!”

His voice, but not his volition behind it. Everyone started laughing, and the brown haired man poured out the liquor.

“I hope you don’t mind the alcohol, pastor.”

The clergyman walked over and picked up a glass. “If God had anything against alcohol, he wouldn’t have given us fermentation.”

One by one, they each took a shot glass. The brown haired man held his up. “Here we make our pledge. Our stand. No matter what happens to any of us, they never make it out of the town. This ends here.”

The big man held out his glass. “I’ll drink to that.”

“Amen,” concurred the clergyman. One by one the held their glasses up and-

***

“Ace! Ace! Wake up!”

“Whuzza. Whoozoona? Whoiizat? What?”

“There’s something wrong with Kimiko?”

“What? What happened?”

“I dunno, she just fell down and told me to get you!”

Ace hopped out of the bed and followed Cody into the kitchen. Kimiko was sprawled against the wall, dressed in her french maid uniform. She moved her head slightly and spoke slowly and slurred. “I’m sssorry. You were rit. It dossn’t fit enymore.”

“Shit, she’s winding down! I thought I wound her back up after the conversion. Go get me a screwdriver!” Ace pulled the uniform aside… but the slotted screw wasn’t there anymore.

“No… dammit, I don’t make mistakes like this! Kimiko! What did I hook your power train up to? Answer me!”

Kimiko’s eyes swiveled aimlessly in their sockets, then closed. Reddish fluid began dripping from her nose and leaking from her mouth. Ace stared, then put his hand over where the human heart would be.

Nothing. But there should have been something. Not the throb of a pump, but the vibrational grinding of gears. Ace found his head turning to her legs, where gashes were spreading. He could see white bone and red, twitching muscle.

“No.”

“Yes.”

Ace spun around to look at Cody. “Cody, where’s the screwdriver?!”

“A screwdriver won’t help her. She’s not a machine. You can’t fix her.”

In a fit of rage Ace lunged at the wolf and grabbed its neck, squeezing and crushing Cody’s windpipe. “SHUT UP! I CAN FIX ANYTHING! ANYTHING!”

“What about Cody?”

Ace whirled around again, and Kimiko was gone. Where she was, Mitch stood, with a ghostly spectre of a woman on his left side and a very angry looking man with a gun on his right side. “Cody’s brain even now is dying from oxygen starvation. Can you fix his breathing? Can you fix HIM? Make him a human again?”

The lifeless wolf fell from Ace’s hands. “I… maybe… wait… this is a dream. None of this is real! Everyone’s okay! I’m just really stressed out! This is a dream! It isn’t real!”

Somebody tapped on Ace’s shoulder and his heart somehow got all the way up into his throat. He slowly turned around to face…

“All that a dream needs to become real is for people to believe that it IS real. What is it that YOU believe?”

It was John’s voice, but his face. His face, save for one eye. The Iris was glowing a brilliant blue. Slowly the blue light grew and grew until there was only the blue light and a single black dot at the center.

The pupil.

Watching him.

What is it that you believe?

***

Ace sat up in the bed so fast he almost fell over again before the blood could adjust. A scream died a horrible death in his throat before it could come out of his mouth.

After a split second, he jumped out of bed, tripped over his own feet, and scrambled up again. He ran for the laundry room and opened the door. Only the laundry machinery was inside.

“Kimiko!”

“Yes Builder?”

The response came from the bathroom. Ace rushed in to see Kimiko, still without clothing, examining herself in the mirror.

“Builder, are you alright? You look very distraught.”

Ace tried to control his breathing and nodded. “I’m fine. I’ll BE fine I mean. Had… had a some unpleasant dreams. That’s all. Kimiko, did I alter how your power train was recharged when I remodeled your shell?”

“Yes. The screw-interlock was abandoned when you gave me a navel. Because the hardware already existed in my arm, you linked the pumping machinery to the power train system.”

“Oh. Okay. For a while I couldn’t remember.”

“That is why I am here.” Kimiko smiled.

Ace nodded and gestured vaguely in the direction of the shower. “I think I’ll get cleaned up. Would you mind terribly getting out now?”

“Certainly Builder. It is perhaps best if I don’t keep spending time looking at myself. The novelty may wear off.”

“Precisely.”

***

Ace stared at the medallion. It’s origin and purpose… well, just the purpose really, was a total mystery to him. He couldn’t figure out how it worked or what it did, assuming it did anything. It could have been a key, an ID tag, a tiny clockwork computer, anything.

“You just can’t eat hot soup with your bare hands. You know?”

Ace turned to see Cody lapping water from a bowl. Something inside him felt tied up in knots.

“Hey Cody?”

“Yeah?”

“…hypothetical question. If you could find a way to become a human again, would you take it?”

Cody sat back and scratched his ear. “Well, I’ll tell you something. While I was in that cage, yeah. I would have jumped at it. But now… I’ve been away from my old life too long. All that I’ve tried to make is gone now. I simple don’t have the motivation to start from scratch like that.”

“What about your family?”

The wolf looked depressed. “Eh, I was always a lazy bastard. They wouldn’t help me. They probably don’t even miss me. Black sheep, you know? The red-headed stepkid. Except I wasn’t red-headed. Or a stepkid.”

“…okay. Sorry I brought it up. So you’d rather stay a dog?”

“Until a better offer opens up.”

“I see. I’ll ask around. Maybe we can promote you to chimp or something.”

“Ha. Ha. Also, Hee Hee.”

Ace looked at the medallion again, then made a decision. He walked over to his desk and found at the bottom of a drawer, and extra long shoelace. If it really was a medallion, then it belonged around a neck. Ideally his… until, as Cody said, a better offer opened up.