Thumbie Ronin

 

        The creature was a good walker. The creature needed no sleep but it did close down to repair more intensively sometimes, than it did while it was  walking. You could argue that it was not a creature, but a creation, but then, that’s just a disagreement about terminology.

          Its mind was gone. Another matter for disagreement. Did it ever have a mind? Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the “hive” was its mind, and the hive was dead.  How it/he persisted is unknown.
          ZO opened his black eyes. The automatic part of his programming had found him shelter in one of those disintegrating houses that littered the landscape. He had pushed the door in, and finding the house dry inside had entered. He didn’t need furniture. So, as he became active again he was lying flat on the floor.
          He wore a black suit, the usual uniform of a Thumbie. His was nice and fresh looking.  He kept it in repair, just like his body. Of course, that was automatic. Also automatic was his physical need to find his others. Therefore, he walked, and he would have walked until the end of the world, or his very body fell to crumbs.
          One day, this ZO, this walker without thought, walked his way over the Cascade Range with its vanishing mountain pass highways.  He didn’t know it, but he was heading for Milltown. He wasn’t tired. He was as good as new. A fine machine, part biological, part electronic.
          ZO, with his four elbows turned out, and his thumbs turned in, wearing his fine stretchy black suit, walked his way to the two mile river road that led to Milltown.  He happened to be passing the house where Doug and Jen and their five children lived. Gabriel, with Lucille in his jacket pocket, happened to be working in the gardens, pulling weeds as it happened. In his pocket, there was a sound, almost like a discrete cough, ala Jeeves.
          “Gabriel, something has come up,” the voice was almost excited. “Will you take me to the street in front of the house right now? Please now!”
          So, Gabriel ran around the house and out into the street. He stood in front of the house, waiting. About a mile to the east, he could see a strange figure in a black suit approaching.
          “Is that guy down the road the reason I am standing out here OZ?” asked Gabriel.
          “Oh, joyous configuration! That is no guy, Gabriel. That is the sole surviving physical entity of my original build. It has no mind. I could hear it coming closer for days,” said OZ.
          “When it gets here speak to it.  Tell it to stop. It probably will stop for a while.  It’s used to following orders. Then I’ll tell you what to do.”
          Gabe waited in the street.  The strange figure walked closer and the closer it got the stranger it looked to him. But, following instructions, as he was asked, when the figure got close Gabe said, “hey, dude!”
          The figure stopped and looked at him with huge expressionless black eyes. Just as it put out its right foot to take another step, Gabe walked up to it and put Lucille, pistol style up against its left temple. It only took a couple of seconds.
          Lucille lit up inside with colors Gabe had never seen in it. Red and blue lights flashed then went out. It seemed a little warmer than usual in his hand.
          The strange creature picked up its hand slowly and pushed Lucille down. Then it looked at Gabriel and smiled.
          “We did it,” said OZ.  “I have a body!”

All of Gabriel