It was in a night filled with thunders roaring as beasts accompanying the luminous dance of lightning similar to colorful stains in the sky, soon before the first drops pouring down in an aromatic mixture of dust and wet soil when a young man of vast, unruly, curly, soft hair which, besides all that, had a peculiar silver color, trespassed the wooden doors of the main inn of the town. His eyes, round and of an odd scarlet color, wandered around the entire reception being bombarded with picture frames stuck to the walls containing carpets blotted by different colors – what was called art.
Women formed harems around men as others were dragged in loneliness by male humans inside rooms whose red lights turned off as soon as couples entered. The first sequence of words which popped in the head of the newly-arrived when the scent of cologne scattered all around in order to hide the smell of worn preservatives but which contributed even more to intensify the feeling of nausea in those present was – "human touch".
It took a while until the attendant, a portly, robust black man, noticed the young man's arrival and directed his attention towards him. He faced the newly-arrived for a while longer, stared at his torn, brown jacket, and his denim pants and very worn-out gray boots which left footprints in the inn's white pavement, completing his attire with a red-and-white scarf wrapped several times around his neck, covering the lower part of his face as a mask, and despite – with no explanation whatsoever – he didn't like the boy at first sight he had to admit: it was that kind of people who searched the services of that establishment.
All the lonely, abandoned scum, wandering lost across the muddy, dusty streets of the town, used to flee from the cheap service given at the street corners, illumined by signboards and holograms of scantily-clad women with tongues out and eyes pointing upwards, in order to look for the true brothels and get entangled with the best sex androids in town. And without a doubt that young man wasn't the successful kind with the opposite sex – who was it lately those days? Soon, it wasn't strange he would be there.
However...
As the very slender boy analyzed indifferently the movements of all humans and humanoids in the dependencies of the "hotel", the receptionist, whose name was Jason, continued to scrutinize the possible client looking for any reason (plausible or not) to send him away, and after a while he asked:
"What are you doing here?" Jason's deep voice could be overheard among the thunder outside.
"It's going to rain, I need a place to stay tonight", the boy replied.
He rubbed his eyes with his index finger and thumb, and shoved one of his slender, white arms inside some pocket of his coat, taking off a bunch of metallic, circle-shaped golden and silver objects, scattering them abouve the counter. The sound of the coins rolling over the varnished wood towards the receptionist attracted the attention of a dozen women and men playing around. The lyric-less music whose dancing rhythm seemed not to alter any moment whatsoever was instantly silenced.
"A foreigner...", Jason whispered. "Indeed they're pretty common in our establishment..." He stared at the coins, curiously.
He grabbed a silver one, staring at it against the light, and before they could realize the entire scene acquired liveliness again. Music blasted through the rooms of dirty walls, the scent of worn preservatives yet again swarmed through the environment, and women and men returned to their snickering, bottles of liquor, snacks and errands.
"A room", the boy asked. His voice came out from under the scarf as a sigh.
He retained his indifference even when a cart similar to a bunch of scraps of tin cans stuck to one another appeared in the main hall and from the tube coming out from what seemed to be its front part akin to the trunk of an elephant, a red dust was scattered around the place, making its odor improve considerably.
"Where are your parents?", the receptionist asked, returning the coin to the pile of metallic currencies scattered around the counter.
The young man shrugged.
"Maximum age around here is 22 years old. May I see your ID?", Jason asked, happy for finally having found a reason to expel the newly-arrived.
"ID, maximum age", the boy thought, "who cares about such things nowadays?" Without saying a word, he pulled the coins nearby, putting them again inside a bag, and when he was about to turn his back and face the rain outside, a shrill voice of prepotent intensity cut through the scene:
"Why are you being so rude towards our guest, Jason? Please, it's raining cats and dogs outside and we still have a room available..."
"But, Mrs. Di Tonalle...", the receptionist tried to argue – but in vain. The inn's owner had made her decision.
A slender woman, akin to a pole, with her hair dyed purple in a bun, appeared from some hallway. Both of her eyes were red and stared at the guest with a forced, inexistent kindness. She outstretched her pale, wrinkled hands towards Jason and whispered something to the receptionist.
The young man dragged his aloof facial expression towards the counter and stared coldly at Jason's eyes. He grabbed a smaller number of coins and poured them in the counter. This time the music didn't pause, women and men had intercourse as if nothing had happened, but the inferior amount of coins in the counter made Mrs. Di Tonalle dart Jason furiously with her eyes, who tried to avoid her by shifting his attentions to the guest.
"I'll need your name and some personal data", he said, sitting on a padded chair and typing something into a black, dusty keyboard.
"Ivan", the boy replied.
It sounded odd he didn't having a surname, but under the aggressive stare of Mrs. Di Tonalle Jason thought it would be better to type in only "Ivan", and resume the register.
"Country of origin?", he asked.
There was a moment of silence, and when Jason thought to repeat the question, Mrs. Di Tonalle intervened, waving her long arms and making an effort to sound jolly:
"Ah, never mind about that, Jason Marshall. Let's take him to his room and leave him sleeping. Mr. Ivan must be tired. Please, take the keys for 712."
Jason stared at her sadly, and Mrs. Di Tonalle disguised a probable inconvenience with a false smile.
"Please, call me Marta", said Mrs. Di Tonalle as she dragged Ivan towards the inn's spiralled staircase.
The boy didn't pay any attention to the instructions regarding where was any thing at the inn, the pathways and rooms he should avoid as they were already reserved by troublesome customers, where to leave the dirty laundry and picking it up clean – and finally arrived at the interesting subject, responsible to all the fame given to the place.
Marta Di Tonalle didn't even realize she was talking by herself during the long minutes of the walk. Ivan seemed to be way more interested in the framed blots on the walls and the windows bombarded by the drops of the ceaseless storm than in her instructions.
"What a terrible rain", Marta commented, trying to capture at least an inkling of the attention of that strange guest, and realizing her lack of success finally blurted out: "Will you spend the night alone, Mr. Ivan?"
The boy could perceive the malice shaping in her red eyes. Ivan thought that maybe he would receive a completely different treatment if since the beginning he didn't demonstrate he was a rich foreigner intending to spend little time in the inn, and the first thought to appear on his mind after seeing Marta Di Tonalle for the first time echoed once again in his brain ("My first impression is that I don't like you") – but he didn't say anything.
Marta, maybe believing that Ivan hadn't heard her, or simply determined to sell the main services of that inn, repeated, now nearly counting each syllable:
"Will you spend your night alone? Don't you want any company, Mr. Ivan?"
"No!", the boy growled.
They finally reached the front of a rectangular wooden door, and with Marta barely finishing to say "You'll sleep here", Ivan pushed the door and disappeared inside the room with his huge backpack strapped to his back.
Inside he slowly unfurled the red-and-white scarf wrapped around his neck and carefully put it beside the backpack at a corner. He found a button panel coupled next to the door from where he came from, seeing the drawings of a lightbulb, a closet, a bed and a word written in weird characters which he probably imagined it was used to get in touch with some kind of room service, and finally a big, rectangular button below all the others, with the phrase "Do Not Disturb".
He turned on the lights and was quickly assailed by the vision of the countless posters of androids of feminine bodies and cyborg women scattered on the walls; the odor of hot steam coming out from the bathroom and a full ashtray next to the window containing some crumpled cigarettes transmitted the obvious feeling that maybe another person was occupying that room, explaining in brief lines the reluctance of the receptionists to accept Ivan as a guest.
Not bothering with the fact that the bathroom was probably used very recently, Ivan took a long, ten-minute bath inside the huge yellow bathtub, closed his backpack yet again and, after observing carefully the bed and the crumps in the mattress, and the sticky, sweaty sheets, concluded that the bed had been utilized recently and finally something bothered him. He stretched some blankets found in the closet and improvised a bed at a corner. He lied down, staring at the dark-colored ceiling.
His eyes closed down, and visions passed through his mind: flowery fields, the smell of chocolate, the taste of caramel, which swiftly dissipated when the sound of the reception's door being opened wide flew through the entire building, opening way through the spiral staircase leaving a little bit of itself in every room until reaching as a noise to Ivan's ears in the inn's last room, nearly by the attic, awaking Ivan from his semi-sleep.
Down there, a very robust man came in, wearing a brown overcoat, torn pants and boots similar to truck tires of how big they were. There was no music anywhere when that man arrived, women and men were no longer playing on the hallways and most of them were resting, hugging in their dorms, wrapped in the blankets and sheets under the stormy dripping outside.
He took off his hat and shook his long, dark hair tied on a ponytail, spreading water all around. The same robot responsible for scattering the scent of roses in the room during Ivan's arrival now stretched two long arms to grab the giant's overcoat and hat, and take them to dry.
"Could you find her?", Marta Di Tonalle spoke up, raising from behing an old couch in a hallway – appearing in a nearly ghostly manner.
"No", the arrival grumbled.
The robust man trod on the floor, leaving behind muddy footprints sucked by the trunk of the little robot as the walked towards the couch beside Marta. He sighed, lit up a cigarette and puffed, and when his meaty lips moved to say something, Jason interrupted him. His eyes were turned to the computer screen when he said, softly:
"But she's still around, Mr. Dale." He paused. "And she seems to be quite mad; we lost two girls yesterday, we can't afford to lose more."
Greg Dale was the name of that giant. A bounty hunter, wandering from town to town searching for new prey. He faced Jason annoyedly, but comprehended he had to finish the job soon – not only he had received a huge payment in advance and would receive an even bigger booty after the job was done but, above all, he needed to maintain his reputation and for three days he had been chasing his current prey without any vestige of success.
He sighed and crumpled what remained of his cigarette inside a completely clean ashtray, and stood up. His footsteps were interruped by Mrs. Di Tonalle's raspy, sharp voice:
"You'll have to sleep in the storeroom. There's a guest in 712."
"What?", asked Gred, angrily. "Why would you do that?"
"It was the only room available..."
"And the foreigner had plenty of money!", Jason interrupted.
Greg took a deep breath, swallowed an entire glass of water, grumbled something and stared annoyedly at Jason who, for his part, kept his concentration while typing God knows what into the computer, and when Greg restarted his first footsteps heading towards the storeroom in the back, Di Tonalle yet again interrupted his walk. Her voice had a severe, wary tone:
"Your services are costly, Mr. Dale..." She poured the ashtray's contents inside a compartment above the back of the robot responsible for the cleaning, and continued: "And they get sloppier each day..."
Having no basis to argue on, the bounty hunter dragged himself across the hallways as if he had chains on his legs, walking under the soundtrack of the storm outside.
On the morning, the inn's doors were still locked and only a faint radio signal coming from the counter where Jason was messing around in the computer – he probably spent the entire night doing that – echoed around announcing something; the robot scattered the aroma of roses and some men could be seen buttoning their shirts, brushing their teeth, fixing their hair and returning to their lonely, unhappy lives after a night of pleasure in that nameless inn.
Ivan's boots came bursting through before most of the clients started passing the magnetic card on the entranced linked above the girls' busts, settling their debts from the night of drinking and depravation, and called Jason's attention with their milimetric steps, going down a step at a time, towards the reception.
"Do you serve breakfast?", asked Ivan, moving his lips from under the scarf.
Jason stared at the boy as if they were meeting each other for the first time. The long, thin arms stretching hands covered by strange rings, the scarf covering his face, and what did he carry inside that enormous backpack tied to his back as a turtle's shell? He moved his meaty lips, but before any sound could come out Di Tonalle's voice burst through the hallway:
"Of course we do, Mr. Ivan. I'll tell to some of our girls to prepare something for you."
Jason looked disapprovingly at Di Tonalle. He had always known that that woman would do anything for some dimes, but the game played by both parties – Di Tonalle pretending not to run a prostitution-house, and Ivan seeming to ignore that he wasn't being lodged in a brothel – deeply bothered him. If he didn't want to have fun with the androids specialized in sex, what was he looking for in there?
Once again, Marta Di Tonalle spewed an endless, ceaseless sequence of words and phrases, making up excuses of all kinds to explain the fact that there wasn't a hearty feast expecting for such an esteemed guest as Mr. Ivan, but it wouldn't take long for a table to be set ahead of him filled with the best delicacies available.
"Bring me only a coffee machine", Ivan mumbled, handing over to Mrs. Di Tonalle a bunch of golden coins.
Ivan pushed a jammed wooden door and the scent of disinfectant soon attacked his nostrils, accompanied by the blinding luminosity of the sunlight hitting the enormous rectangular windows, giving shape to the figure of a very robust, shirtless, long-haired man, showcasing the many scars in his back, brushing his yellowed teeth in front of a dirty sink. Marta Di Tonalle didn't know what to do with the feeling of embarrassment, and avoided at all costs not looking at Ivan – nevertheless, he just ignored the scene, walked towards what was seemingly a kitchen (or at least would be that morning) and, completely ignoring the shirtless man's presence, took off a mug with water from God knows where and asked undisturbedly for a coffee machine:
"A coffee machine, please."
As several busty long-legged women gathered around Ivan as chickens devouring kernels of corn, blabbering, verifying the coffee's temperature, melting the cheese before spreading it on slices of toast and receiving coins placed in different orifices of their bodies (usually one above the breasts, or an input by the throat), the boy simply maintained his eyes on a book, piquing the curiosity of the bounty hunter.
"It's good to know you take off your scarf to eat", said Greg mockingly, not obtaining even any kind of nasal sound as a reply.
"Leave him alone!" Marta's voice appeared as a ghost's. "He's just another employee of the inn, Mr. Ivan. And he has a room of his own, I don't know why he was sleeping in the kitchen."
"What do you carry inside that big backpack, kid?", the bounty hunter insisted.
Marta was furious. She was ready to nag at Greg to the point of hurting him with words physically, when Ivan's calm voice replied:
"Books. I'm a collector, I purchase and sell books around."
That silenced the scene for a while. For a long time they didn't hear about books around that region. Ivan swallowed some more gulps of coffee, adjusted the scarf around his neck again and added:
"I'll spend another night in here. May I keep 712?"
There were no objections.
Ivan's whereabouts during the day was only known by him and those who met him on the way.
When night fell once more, movement inside the inn was completely different than what would be the usual in an establishment of such kind. There were no couples messing around in the corridors and couches, and the sound of music was replaced by some sirens of police cars parked by the entrance.
The police officers were on their way when Ivan appeared with his huge backpack, as if nothing could have happened during his absence. At a corner, Jason swallowed dozens of yellow, round pills, as Greg, aided by other androids of the inn, shoved parts of androids in trash bags and took it to an "incinerator" in the storeroom.
"The shorty could help us for a while!", he said, seeing Ivan opening the door.
He stared at Greg coldly, but remained silent. Yet again, Marta Di Tonalle tried to please the wealthy foreigner.
"Silence, Mr. Dale!", she said, angrily. "And continue your goddamn work!" And turning to face Ivan she said calmly: "I'm sorry for the insolence of some of our employees, please, Mr. Ivan. I can give him an unpaid leave as you enjoy our services."
"Is that so?", Ivan uttered, seeming to be interested, and stared at Greg spitefully. He waited until the giant could feel a little scared and replied: "It isn't necessary. He seems to be a good employee for me."
In any moment whatsoever Ivan showed interest on the three girls who attacked a client, cutting some fingers of his hand and piercing one of his eyes (those losses perhaps would be the lesser of worries for that man, who would have to explain to his wife why he was sleeping with androids, when he should be sleeping with her), or to when one of the girls tried to slit Jason's throat and God knows what would have happened if Greg didn't interfere, fighting against the possessed androids – the damages would be unfathomable.
"You should reprogram your entire inn, Mrs. Di Tonalle", Ivan argued after the epic narrative regarding Greg Dale's heroic deeds. "Or they'll continue to rebel."
"What? What are you talking about?"
"A hacker. Probably they want revenge for something that you've done."
"I can't think of anybody who desires revenge!"
Ivan didn't say anything, but could imagine dozens of reasons which would take someone to want that place torn down.
Obviously, Ivan was the only customer that night.
With the androids turned off, there was nothing much to do around the inn. Greg was standing outside for several hours as a bouncer at the establishment's entrance, and since he believed they'd hardly attack for a second time in the same day (and also under request by Marta Di Tonalle) he climbed on his motorcycle and rode around the town, searching for what could be the only existence able to bring trouble to his property.
"So there's really someone searching for revenge?", Ivan asked.
Marta was sitting on a couch, with a cigarette on her mouth, when Ivan went down the spiral staircase wearing his usual attire, contrasting completely with someone who should be getting ready to sleep. Jason left some random room carrying a mug of what seemed to be tea, wearing white pajamas with giraffes on them.
"There's nothing to be worried about, Mr. Ivan...", Marta argued.
"I'm not worried."
"Why are you still here?", said Jason, angrily.
He felt so bothered and angry that even when Marta threatened to say something his desire to vent overcame everything else. Staring at the guest to whom he was very little sympathetic – despite not knowing why – he went on:
"I know you're some kind of rich foreigner, but we have troubles if you didn't realize it! We're not an inn! This is a fucking brothel! Our androids performing sexual services are the only things we have, and why were you not interested on them? What are you doing here? There's nothing for you here!"
"Stop picking on him, Mr. Marshall! He didn't do nothing for..."
"Silence!", said Ivan. "We're under attack..."
"What? What are you talking about?" Jason grew even more annoyed.
The single guest put his hands inside one of the side pockets of the backpack and picked a book filled with oddities. At first, the front and back covers were entirely black, without the title or the author's name besides the yellowed pages, each one containing just a single, dark character in a probably made-up language – in case those characters meant something, and were not just weird blots; then, each one of the pages were set in a perfect circle in Ivan's front, who made some movements with his hands and fingers covered in rings, and suddenly the pages flew in all possible directions, sticking to the female androids leaving their "turned off" conditions and, as murderous zombies, rehearsed an attack against those present.
Ivan made a move stretching his arms and whispered something else, and suddenly the entire scene was taken by sounds of pops and throbbing electric chains; and after the androids finished writhing and dropping as dominoes one by one with the sheets of paper stuck to their bodies, a strong scent of smoke and burnt metal scattered around the reception.
Despite recovering from the initial shock caused by the sounds of the countless explosions, Marta and Jason needed a while more until they could give shape and construct the situation which developed in a very short fraction of seconds. Marta was the first to yell at the guest:
"What are you doing? You destroyed my girls!", she said.
Jason took longer to recover from the shock; thus being, he couldn't enjoy the pleasant feeling that the vision of Marta Di Tonalle finally yelling to the unlikable guest (who finally gave a reason to be disliked at the inn) could give him.
"You killed my girls!", she said, waving her arms and grabbing the lifeless androids scattered around the room. "Do you know how much this is going to cost me? Probably they can't even be fixed, I'll have to buy new ones!"
"I can't kill what wasn't alive...", Ivan replied in a whisper.
"What did you say?", asked Marta. "Look at my girls!"
She hugged one of the androids as tears flowed from her red eyes, dripping on the robotic bodies very similar to soft humans made of authentic flesh.
"You'll pay for this! Each and every one of them! It'll come out from your pocket!", she shouted for an apathetic, distant Ivan.
Jason finally recovered, and took a little less time than Marta to calculate what had happened. But before accompanying her in the litany of curses against Ivan, someone knocked at the door. It was an usual night, dust covering the stars as clouds, the streetlights outside guiding lonely men towards the inn – however, due to recent events, they were not expecting visitors and a huge sign at the door warned about the temporary closure. So who could it be?
"Don't get the door!", Ivan warned. "He who destroyed all those" (he pointed to the line of destroyed androids in the room) "must have sent you a trap!"
"It was you who destroyed my girls! You bastard!", Marta growled.
"They were destroyed a long time ago, I just finished the job... Didn't you hear me when I spoke of a hacker?"
Mumbling one imprecation after another and cursing Ivan in name of all known gods, and others he had made up on the spot, Jason walked towards the door which someone knocked on mercilessly.
"I'm calling the police, you can't roam freely around", he said, "I'm going, I'm going! What the hell, goddamn, shit! Wait! Damn! I said he was trouble, I said it! But does anyone listen to me? No, no one ever listens to me! I didn't know why, but you reeked of trouble, foreigners always bring trouble, I'm going! Fuck!"
Jason touched a chip at a green screen by the door's gray knob, cursed a while and opened it. Outside there was the head of Greg Dale. From his slit neck oozed blood running through a red, thick pathway to the separated body, discarded next to the gutter; his legs and arms were outstretched in the shape of a star, and Jason, before throwing up (the vomit was faster than the desire to scream), believed he had seen the body thrashing in subtle spasms, indicating a very recent beheading.
He was still puking when he felt something coiling, entangling to his feet; he hardly had time to perceive the iron cable escaping from Ivan's hands, dragging him back inside the room. He only hit his face on the floor and returned inside, dragging his face in his own vomit, and even before he was at Ivan's feet an explosion sound was heard from where the bounty hunter's head was, crushing the door into shards.
"What's happening?", asked Marta, frightened, helping Jason to stand up.
Ivan picked a handkerchief, and handed it over to the receptionist so he could clean himself up. His eyes, crimson as rubies, wandered to and fro, his pointy ears under the volumous hair seemed to move in order to capture any noise as a predator.
"You are going to be attacked", Ivan calmly alerted. "My bills are paid and I don't intend to remain in town, I think I'm out. I suggest calling the security."
"Wait!", Marta stood up, holding the young man's slender arm. "Can't you help us? It's clear you're used to this kind of stuff, I took back all I said about you, you don't have to pay for the destroyed andro..."
"Oh...", he uttered disdainfully. "So something does want revenge. Machines shouldn't desire revenge... Tell me more about it, Mrs. Di Tonalle."
Ivan didn't even need to ask for Marta Di Tonalle to drag him towards deep staircases unfurling as the shell of a snail to a room similar to an altar of rituals and offers. There was a single light on the center, stuck to the ceiling, strong enough to push all the orange color throughout the vast room, and hardly had they unlocked a metal padlock, the scent of death and guilt already escaped from the gaps in the door and the holes in the wall.
"So they want revenge because of that?", Ivan commented.
His boots stepped on the white tiles stained with red as he moved his scarlet eyes in the most varied directions. There were parts of androids scattered all around. Nearly all female types, slender arms, long legs, wigs of various colors, noses, teeth and eyes everywhere. Ivan stepped on more of a thorax and countless times shoved with his feet bodies torn in two (either the upper or lower parts). At the center of the huge hall there was a table similar to an altar, clean and made of marble, with a huge hole on its center; he walked towards it, sliding his fingers on the edge of the orifice, feeling the texture of cold metal in his touch. He stretched his slender neck and saw a huge tube similar to a slide, very dark and apparently endless. Ivan picked a coin, tossing it on the hole.
"You must be very wealthy indeed, if you can waste money like that!", Jason questioned bitterly.
Ivan put one of his ears on the opening, trying to capture the smallest of noises indicating the touch of the coin at any surface, but couldn't hear anything. He then grabbed a bag filled with coins, and without hesitation poured a huge amount of currency inside the hole.
"Don't worry", Ivan explained, sticking his ear on the hole once more. "All of my coins are false."
There was a long moment of silence. When Marta opened her mouth to begin new insults against the guest (for enjoying several services of the inn and her hospitality as well paying with false money), Ivan spoke.
"To where this hole leads?", he said. And before Marta could answer he added: "Is this what I think it is?"
Marta didn't reply.
"Now that's cruel..."
He resumed walking around the room. In one of the walls, under red and very dusty curtains, a print of a woman holding a baby weeping watched over the crimes and sins committed in that hall.
"Machines shouldn't desire revenge...", said Ivan, whispering, nearly as if to himself.
He walked around the cemetery of androids keeping all his senses in alert, not ruling out the feeling that someone was around. He crouched down and grabbed from the floor an arm way too little to belong to an "adult" android; despite being normal those days, Ivan couldn't remember seeing any man walking around by the inn accompanied by infants – what took him to a brief thought that maybe there was a minimum limit that even someone as Marta Di Tonalle had to abide. So why were there parts of children?
"Machines shouldn't be able to procreate", Ivan answered himself, and stared at Marta.
"Of course they shouldn't!", the woman explained herself. "They should serve us and nothing else, attend to our needs. Make calls, bake bread, freeze food, carry people, take someone from one spot to another. Satisfy basic needs, carnal needs. What's the problem? People always had weird hidden desires and everything is permitted nowadays, isn't it?"
Marta made an exaggeratedly long pause when Ivan turned his back at her and finally wondered if in any moment the book collector had heard a single word from her mouth, and despite not obtaining a convincing answer she returned to her speech, regardless if she had an audience or not:
"What's the difference between an android programmed to satisfy carnal desires and a toaster? Both are just attending to basic human needs, aren't they? But who could imagine humans would always yearn for more? Why didn't they never think about the fact that human beings never want to erase reality as a whole, but just repaint it with their own colors? They needed real androids more and more, androids with feelings, interactions, orgasms, with the possibility of transmitting STDs, with the ability of procreating."
"Humans are indeed very greedy...", Ivan sighed.
Relieved for having a listened, Marta hurried her venting even more:
"But androids are expensive! Machines are expensive! Their maintenance is costly, and what would I do with machines that had children? I couldn't simply leave them on vacation while their excited customers called every single day asking for the services of model XX-789, of YIZ-908! So that's it, Mr. Ivan. This is exactly what you think it is! To grab a copy from inside an android is not a very pretty process to see, and we needed a hidden spot: after all, what would become of my business if customers discovered that my androids were acquired from a batch able to get pregnant?"
The sound of metal scraping the concrete walls was heard, and interrupting Mrs. Di Tonalle's melodramatic narrative a female body appeared from somewhere, flying with its arms turned into spears, piercing through Jason's arm with one of them. The receptionist would be killed if Ivan didn't pull him again aided by his iron cables.
It was another android.
Its dark-blue, metallic eyes, filled with a mix of sadness and wrath, stared at Marta. Its fleshy lips growled something and the tan-skinned "woman" advanced towards Marta with her arms stretched as spears.
Ivan tied both of the woman's arms with his iron cable and, after a couple of seconds in a tug-of-war dispute, he took impulse and slided through the room's white tiles, taking down the aggressive android with a slide-kick, throwing her at a corner of the room.
"So this is seeking for revenge...", he grumbled. "What do you know about it, Mrs. Di Tonalle?"
While trying in all ways possible to snap the iron cable, the android began mumbling a sentence countless times, intensifying the tone at every repetition:
"My son, give me back my son, my son, give me back my son, my son, give me back my son, my son, give me back my son..."
"A machine who has desires of revenge, motherly love and believes being able to procreate...", said Ivan, staring at the android. "It's really intriguing."
For comprehensible reasons, the choice made by Ivan of the word "believes" before "procreate" towards a desperate, vindictive mother awakened inside the android an uncontrollable rage.
"I did procreate!", she shouted, and in a single move snapped the iron cable around her arms.
The android advanced towards Ivan, moving her arms turned into blades in the most varied directions, zig-zagging the swords against the young man; the sound of the blades tearing through the air became audible even for Marta, standing a few meters away. Ivan avoided them in a skilfully feline way, moving nearly as if he had no bones and a huge backpack to his back.
"I'll kill you!", the android threatened as she tried to strike him. "And then I'll tear this whole place apart!"
One of the blades tried to strike Ivan's leg, but he dodged by leaping, standing at the table utilized to drop android babies inside the endless hole, and sunk a few centimeters at a hole opened by the tiles.
"Take him out of here!", yelled Ivan to Marta, pointing at Jason. "I'll solve the issue!"
When the android was able to pull her arm out of the hole, Ivan jumped and kicked the "woman" in the face, throwing her against a wall. Then he put his hand at a nook of his backpack and pulled out a huge black stick. He stretched the stick (which was nearly his own size) and, like magic, a gigantic blade came out from an edge, extremely thin, silver with some black triangles forming the figure of something akin to teeth, and very curved.
"Are you a bounty hunter?", the android shouted hatefully.
Ivan didn't reply.
They ran to each other's directions. The android's feet struck the tiles nearly opening holes where she stepped; she raised her right arm, toughening the left one as if carrying a spear. A classic, swift and efficient attack.
The shock between both happened in a quick fraction of seconds.
When the right arm lowered, mimicking the drop of a guillotine, Ivan moved subtly to a side, the arm stretched as a spear stroke nothing and the other yet again sunk a few centimeters into the ground; the runaway android, fiercely desiring revenge for the son who was stolen from her, the offspring she had seen being shoved into a deep, bottomless tube, couldn't even see when the blade of the scythe wielded by Ivan struck the side of her thorax, nearly slicing her in two. She simply fell on her knees, her petrified eyes staring at the print of the woman on the wall and her body writhing in robotic, mechanical spasms, as an electronic, computerized voice came out from her lips, repeating with no emotion whatsoever:
"My son, give me back my son, my son, give me back my son..."
Until there was no movement in the room.
Ivan picked the scythe up, turning it into a stick once more, somehow shoving it inside the backpack. He adjusted the scarf covering his face and, with his back turned to the defeated android, answered the question made the precious second:
"I'm just a book collector."
Only a week later was Marta Di Tonalle's inn able to reopen its doors and resume service. It didn't seem very wise to resume activity with mechanical technicians messing with the girls and countless times having to contact their manufacturers. When all the men could entangle themselves with the beautiful androids available once more, Ivan was already very far away from that town. Jason maintained until the end his disgust towards the book collector, despite he having saved his life in two occasions, and Marta, despite being thankful for Ivan having taken a very big problem off her back (runaway androids returning to seek revenge against their aborted offspring was an unfathomable catastrophe!), didn't show in the last two days the boy remained lodged a shred of the hospitality offered early on. Nevertheless, she accepted keeping him under her roof ignoring the fact he only walked around carrying fake money. Maybe the unhappiest of endings in this story was Greg Dale's, the legendary bounty hunter – not even a funeral was made in his honor, his body was simply thrown at a nearby river and no one mentioned him ever again.
Ivan was by the door, fixing his boots and the backpack, preparing to leave when Marta came towards him. Jason didn't even think about saying his goodbyes, and the idea of thanking him was unimaginable, but Marta wanted at least to pretend gratitude.
"Thanks for the service", she said.
Ivan finished tying the shoelaces of his left gray boot and asked himself if androids there would still have their offspring tossed inside an endless tube. However, wondering about such matters was out of his jurisdiction.
"You saved us from a huge problem", Marta added.
He turned his back for the interlocutor and was bombarded by the luminous ads regarding other inns offering the same services opening here and there. The same curvaceous women with tongues out and eyes upwards inviting lonely men to the interior of rooms reeking of used preservatives and cologne of roses, stared indifferently at Ivan.
"Technology really advanced a lot", Ivan mumbled. He covered the lower part of his face with the scarf and concluded: "But what could a mere book collector like me could opinionate about it?"
He turned his back to Marta Di Tonalle, and walked stoically far away from that town.