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Subject: {ASSM} The World Wreckers (intergen, cons, sci-fi)
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Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 06:10:02 -0400
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Title: 	  The World Wreckers
Author:   MeatBot
Keywords: intergen, cons, sci-fi

http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/MeatBot/

	Copyright by the author. Permission is granted to archive,
repost, or publish in no-cost or low-cost archives, periodicals,
anthologies of this type of material if unaltered and attributed to
the author.

     Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to
reality is accidental and would be damn surprising. Be warned that
this story may involve explicit descriptions of sexual activities,
including some defined under law as "Weird Shit". Do not read this
story if you believe that fictional characters should not have
fictional sex, or if you are less than the age of consent in your
social or legal group, or if you live under a repressive, totalitarian
regime in an out-of-the-way place such as the USA. If you like it, I
did it. If you hate it, I didn't. If it offends you, it was a
misprint. If you want to sue me, I don't exist. Sue the internet
instead. Nobody's twisting your arm. Leave if you don't like crap like
this. These are just words, people. Just words. 

Be warned, this is a goofy, infantile, poorly written, disgusting and
depraved story with bad punctuation, bad grammar, and lots of
misspelled words. I am not an English major. Deal with it. This story
is all made up. It's sci-fi crap. This story is long on story, and
short on sex. If you don't like it, read something else. Don't bitch
at me. You have been warned.

This story is graded <TAME> compared to some of the shit I've read in
this newsgroup.

This story is what happens when you have too much free time at work.





There wasn't much left of the village, when the grinder appeared on
the horizon. The grinder would take two days to arrive at the village
proper, so everyone had plenty of time to get most of their stuff
packed up, and leave. A few people stayed, mostly old people, sitting
on their steps or in their living rooms, waiting for the end. For the
grinding. Some people's spirit was already broken. Some people seemed
to welcome the end. And the end was on its way.

Dutch's family fled the day before, when the grinder was just a cloud
of dust on the horizon. The thing had a path almost two klicks wide,
so they needed extra time just to clear the blades. No waiting till
the last minute. As Dutch was helping pull the platform he could feel
the vibrations through the earth beneath his feet. There was no
stopping or even slowing down the grinder. It came.

He'd seen, long ago, a projection of the grinder's path around North
Am. Three grinders operated on the planet. They ground up the big
cities first, their paths decided by computers to be the most
efficient routes. Lots of little towns fell to them during the start,
even, of course. After the big cities, came the smaller. Twenty years
ago this one had started on the simple towns. Now it was basically
cleaning up the villages and tiny towns. In another ten years it would
be done. Destiny Six would no longer exist, as an inhabited, civilized
world. The savers would have finished up by then, and the slavers.
Destiny's people would be spread throughout the galaxy, some as free
citizens, some as slaves, and most as just more displaced refugees.
The galaxy-wide war was slowly tapering down into little smoldering
brush fires, but there was still plenty of time for suffering.
Destiny's people had done their share, and would still do a little
more.

For the next four days, Dutch just felt like they were running away
from the grinder. Finally the ground no longer trembled, and clouds of
smoke and dust no longer billowed up behind them. They got the grav
engine on the platform working the third day, and they made pretty
good time after that. Dutch's father was voted out as leader of their
little group, but the man that took over still followed his plan. To
the south. The further south they went, the safer they were. That was
impossible to argue with. If they could make it out of the plains and
into the mountains, they would be safe from everything except slavers.
And they even had a secret weapon for that problem, a neural grenade
that somebody had come up with. Although, it was only good for one
shot.






Dutch's status had dropped, when his father fell from the pedestal of
leadership. Another neighbor forced Dutch to care for his kids, by
secretly threatening Dutch's invalid mother. Dutch silently promised
himself to kill the man, but gave in, and cared for the man's
children. He hated the boy, but loved the girl. She was young and
sweet, a jewel in the rough. And she liked him, too. He idly thought
about taking her one night and just striking out on his own, on a
ninety degree tangent from the group's path. He knew they wouldn't
waste time hunting him down. If he could just take one of the
rifles... he'd do it, if he could lift a weapon from the group's
stash. He'd do it.




He was selected for guard duty one night, walking around the floating
platform, carrying one of the group's four beamer rifles. He carefully
got his charges ready for bed, but made sure the girl was prepared to
move quickly. He got all her stuff in a bag, and put it under her
head, hushing her when she acted curious. She trusted him, though, and
she accepted all his instructions. That night, about an hour before he
was supposed to wake up his replacement guard, he stepped to the side
of the platform where the girl was sleeping. He put his hand over her
mouth, and shook her awake. She could see him clearly in the light of
the moons, and he felt her smile beneath his hand. He removed it
slowly, making the "hush" sign with his finger over his mouth. She sat
up, and he helped her down from the platform, and took her bag, and
his. She followed him without question. They crept away, into the
darkness.





When the sun came up, they were at least four or five klicks away. He
finally stopped, and they sat on an escarpment while he talked
seriously to her.

"Lotus... It's only fair that I ask you this," she smiled and nodded
expectantly at him. "As you may have figured out, I am leaving the
group. Do you want to come with me?"

She almost looked puzzled at that. She just gazed at him.

"Do you understand? Leaving them forever. I'm going out of my own. I'm
heading south, into the mountains, where the grinder can't go."

He gazed at her. She finally just shrugged. He wondered if she
realized the foreverness of what he was talking about. That part about
going to the mountains wasn't really fair, the other group was going
to the mountains, too. She could go with them as well as him. But for
some reason, maybe just simple loneliness, he really wanted her to
come with him.

"Lo... if you go with me, you'll never see them again. Anyone. Your
dad, or anybody. If they do see me, they'll probably try to kill me.
Do you understand? Never."

"Yes, I understand. I don't care," she finally said, seeming to
realize a little what he was saying. He sighed, and they stood. The
continued on their way. To the south.





A month later they crossed the grinder's path for the first time. For
a solid kilometer all they saw were the little pellets the thing spit
out, and finally they were walking on nothing but grinderdust. The
rain had glued a lot of it together in this area. Dutch finally got a
loose handful, and he held it inches from his eyes, trying to identify
anything. He couldn't. It was just a crazy mix of ground-up stuff,
rocks, trees, houses, people, anything that the grinder ran over. It
didn't even smell.





"Dutch."

"Yes, darlin'?"

"Why did the grinder come, anyway?"

"Uhm. That's a good question. They gave this world away, in some peace
treaty or something. They gave it to the Freaks. And the Freaks didn't
seem to want our stuff on it, our cities and stuff. Part of the deal
was to return it to its natural state. That's what the grinder does.
It just... grinds up the cities. Crazy, but that's what it does."

"Were there a lot of cities on Destiny?"

"Hell yeah. It was as populated as the core worlds at one time. I
mean, that was before my time, and yours... but, hell yeah."

"Silly."

"Yeah, silly. Lotus. Some people say... some people say that Destiny
is where... where our people started from. That it's the world that
humans came from. Our home planet."

She was silent for a while. Surely, he thought, surely she's heard
that theory before. In her lessons, if nothing else.

"Yeah, I know that... theory." She finally said. "I don't guess it
matters much anymore, though... does it?"

"Nah, I guess not. I mean hell, they're giving it away... to the
Freaks..."

"Yeah. Crazy."

"Yeah. Crazy."





One sunny day, the girl proved her worth to him. She was about fifty
meters behind him, and she was carrying the rifle. He was passing a
large clump of stones, when a man stepped out behind it, followed by
two others. The first thing Dutch noticed was their legs. From their
knees down, they had spindly metal artificial legs. They were all
clothed in dark plastic sheeting, their faces covered, and each had a
large steel blade of some kind in their hands. The blades were all
pointing at Dutch, and he backed up hurriedly, wondering what this was
all about. One of the men displayed a small computer strapped to his
forearm.

"You are logged into the Ephrium, sinner," said the man, in a sonorous
voice. "Your sins are all entered, sorted and spell-checked. Prepare
to be penitent. Say goodbye to your feet and legs. You are a kneeler
from now on."

A loud crack split the air, and the man fell, blood spraying behind
him to splash on the other two men. They regarded it with surprise,
but made no move to save themselves. The girl carefully shot each of
them, and then advanced to stand beside Dutch.

"Lo... thanks, darling..." he finally said. "They were gonna cut off
my legs. Thank you."

"No problem," she said, holding the gun balanced on one hip jauntily.
She looked sexy to him, in her flat black bodysuit, holding the
weapon. She looked hot. He felt a surge of lust for her, and realized,
to his surprise, that he loved her. Just because it was the two of
them? he wondered. Just because they were thrown together like this?
How had that happened, without his knowledge?





That night they holed up in a cave, after running a herd of squealing
pigdogs out. He set up the invisible fence, and turned on a peeper,
setting it for anything larger than a sand shark. They had a meal from
roasted bi-corns, and drank from their devaporators. Finally the girl
stretched out on the groundsheet, still looking sexy in her bodysuit.

Dutch stood. He began the slightly laborious process of stripping his
bodysuit off.

"Darling. Lotus," he said, and she looked at him expectantly, also a
bit surprised that he seemed to be taking his suit off. "Take it off,
girl." he had the top off by now, and the cool evening air felt good
on his skin. He motioned her to stand, and she finally did. He ran his
fingers down her seals, and she helped him take her top off. He
stopped for a moment and stared down at her, helpless. She was
captivatingly beautiful to him. Her little chest was flat, but her two
nipples were fat and puffy. He wondered again how old she was. Her
stomach was flat and hard, and rippled with muscle. She was completely
muscle, no fat. For a kid, she looked hard. And sexy. She really
looked sexy.

She began stripping off her leg guards, and he dropped his, also. He
removed his crotch-guard, and the air felt doubly good on his naked
genitalia. She stopped for a moment and stared, and he wondered if
she'd ever seem male genitals before. It was so rare for anyone to get
out of their suit, anymore. She just stared for a moment, and then
went back to undressing herself.

He performed some tricks for her, with his penis, just to make her
laugh. Prehensile penises were always good for a laugh. When he was
young he could even tie it in a knot, but he hadn't done that trick in
years. He got a smile out of her, at least. 

Finally she stood before him, as naked as he was. She took his breath
away. Her muscular thighs were hard, and he hungered to feel them
under his touch. Her long dark hair reached almost to her waist. He
could imagine smelling it. He looked down. Her beautiful little pussy
peeked out from in between her legs. He imagined smelling that, too.
He knew it would smell divine.

"Lotus," he spoke, and she looked at him expectantly. "Have you ever
done sex stuff before? Do you know about sex?"

She nodded shyly. Finally she spoke. "With my dad... we made love most
every night... he showed me... stuff..."

He idly wondered why his penis had interested her so, if her dad had
fucked her every night. Surely she'd seen her dad's penis. She still
seemed fresh and innocent to him, in spite of her sexual experience.
He knew that the next few hours were going to be wonderful.





He was right. They were. And she tasted... divine. He bent his head
down, and licked her sweet cunt for all he was worth. It tasted
fabulous, sweaty and tart, just the right amount... deadly sexy. He
knew her bodysuit kept her clean and aired out... but still, pussies
developed their own tastes. Their own wonderful tastes. She was
totally hairless, she was still that young. Well, she could have been
depped, true... but he knew she was young. Hell, she didn't even have
tits yet. Her clit was huge, as big as the tip of his index finger. He
wondered, not for the first time, if she was enhanced.

Though he figured there wasn't much danger of it because of her age,
he had asked her if she'd had the shot yet. Yes, she replied, last
year. Good, no danger of babies, no matter where she was
developmentally, then. He was relieved.

Her beautiful puffy nipples were exquisite. They felt fabulous in his
mouth. He pulled as much of them as he could into his mouth, and
sucked, feeling them stiffen. He wrapped his arms around her waist,
and sucked on her tits. Gods, she was beautiful.

Dutch hadn't had a lot of sexual experience... times had been hard,
the last few years... he hadn't had time or energy to get out and
look... but this. This was unreal, to him. And she was so sexy. It
didn't matter to him that she was still a kid. She was sexy. 

He finally lay her down on the sheet, and turned her over. She seemed
willing to let him do whatever he wished. She seemed to be enjoying
herself, especially the pussy licking. He raised her little butt in
the air, and bent down, spreading her ass cheeks apart. He fitted his
face into her, ass, and licked her asshole. Oh, her asshole tasted
good, he thought. It definitely tasted, and it tasted good. It was
spicy, and tasted like ass. Bitter, with just a hint of shit. Perfect.
He licked and lapped, and finally drove his tongue into her body,
feeling her sphincter muscle tighten on his tongue. She tasted the
sexiest, then. His dick was as hard as iron. He imagined his dick in
her sweet asshole, then and there. Maybe it would happen. Maybe it
would happen, tonight.

She finally wiggled around a bit, impatient, it seemed. He decided to
see if she wanted play. He lay her back, and lay beside her, face to
crotch. As he began to lick her upside-down pussy, he felt her hands
on his hard dick. Yes, she did want to play. She stroked him and
rubbed him, and finally he felt her mouth take the cap of his cock. He
could have come at that moment, but he did not, he held it. She
finally sucked him all the way in, hard and deep. She was good at it.
Her father had taught her well, he decided. She slurped him in and
out, in and out, running her tongue over the cap and down the bottom
side. Damn, she was good.

He let her squeeze his head between her legs as he probed deeper and
deeper between them. He wished there was a way to lick her asshole
while she sucked him, but that would require practice and flexibility.
He'd heard of people using wormholes for things like that. A nice,
body-sized wormhole would be fun to have. Damn. Of course, he'd
probably spend most of his time sucking himself off if he had one of
those. 

He felt like they had been doing this for hours. Maybe they had. He
finally stopped her, and turned himself to be even with her.

"Darling, make love to me," he said, and she giggled. She came to him,
and clung tightly, hugging him. His cock was so hard it had lost its
motility, but he wiggled and squirmed around until he felt the mouth
of her sweet cunt on it, and he began to push in. She was tight, was
she ever tight. He pumped in and out slowly, wetting his cock with her
juices, and at last his groin touched hers, and he knew he was all the
way in. He began to stroke in and out, and she wiggled and squirmed
beneath him. She seemed to draw so much pleasure from just simple
fucking that he wondered again if she was enhanced, somehow. He had
barely started fucking her when she came, and she came a dozen more
times, until at last he let himself cum. He felt his legs lock, and
his muscles tighten until they almost snapped. She was a good fuck,
goodness, she was good. Her little pussy almost milked him dry.

They just lay there, and hugged after that. She felt so good, she was
soft and warm, and she smelled like heaven to him. The night got a
little cooler, and she warmed him up. Her smooth bare naked skin... he
felt himself getting turned on again, getting hard again. This was
better than he'd ever dreamed. He was glad all over again he'd taken
her and ran off. He had no idea now, looking back, why he'd decided to
take her, he wasn't thinking of sex, then... he'd just known, somehow.
Maybe his subconscious had seen how sexy she was.

Four hours later, they were kissing again. He pulled back, and said,
"Darling... Lo... can I... can I put it in your butt?"

She just looked puzzled.

"Lo... did your dad ever do that?" he asked her. "Did he ever put his
dick in your butt?"

"No..." she said, shyly. He almost laughed. She was shy, after they
things she'd done so far?

"Can I?" he asked.

"I don' care... I guess..." she said. He slowly turned her over, and
pulled her knees back, sticking her cute little butt up in the air.

He stopped for a while, and bent his face to her ass, again. She
tasted as good as she had the first time. There was just something
about ass... He licked and probed, and she wiggled beneath him. He
played with her clit with his finger, just in case the ass stuff
wasn't doing it for her. She seemed to be having a good time, at
least.

He finally slobbered saliva all over her sweet asshole, and then
raised himself up. He swished the cap of his cock in the spit, and
then began pressing it into her wonderful little asshole. She moaned,
and positively growled at one point, but she seemed to take it well.
He got the cap all the way in, and began pressing deeper, finally
having to go in and out to wet it with her juices.

"Do you like it, darling?" he stopped and asked her. "Does it hurt?"

"Yes... no..." he hoped he understood her answers in the correct
order. She had sounded breathless. He laughed softly and pressed
deeper into her body. Finally he was at the bottom. She was tight, way
tight. He could feel her pucker up, and tighten some more. His hands
were on the sides of her hips, pulling her to him. He began to pump in
and out, in and out. She sighed and moaned beneath him. He could tell
she was getting some pleasure, at least, from it. He knew that if she
was enhanced she would have clitoral nerve tissue around her asshole,
too, and she'd enjoy it. Hell, just taking a shit would be a pleasure,
if she was enhanced. He hoped, for her sake, that she was. 

He came quickly, he didn't want to wear her out, and it was hard to
hold back, she was so tight. He filled her ass with sperm, moaning as
she moaned, pumping hard. He finally pulled out, and collapsed beside
her.

They lay there for a while, holding each other, loving on each other.
She finally dragged herself up, and crouched by the side of the sheet,
and pooped out his sperm, giggling. She wiped her butt with a rag,
sniffed it, and tossed it into the back of the cave. He was turned on
just watching her. She was sexy. How had he not noticed that, until
now? So what if she was a kid, she was sexy.

He pulled a thermal blanket out of his pack, and they cuddled up
beneath it. She felt nice and warm in his arms. He loved her a lot, at
that moment. He was glad he'd taken her with him.





"Dutch." They were walking down a narrow canyon. They'd spent three
nights in the cave, just devouring each other. Dutch was almost worn
out. Lotus had seemed insatiable, once she got started.

"Yes, Darlin'?"

"Can we do that again, sometimes? If we find a safe place?"

He laughed. "Oh yeah, hell yeah. We'll do it again, even if we don't
find a safe place. But we will. We will. Yes, Darlin', you bet your
ass we'll do it again."

They walked a while in silence.

"Lo? Did you really like it?"

"Yes... it was fun... it was better than when my dad did it... he just
wanted to put it in me, he didn't do all the licking and stuff."

"Damn, he was missing the best part, then."

She laughed.

"Yeah. He was."





Later, Dutch had no idea how he'd gotten the idea. Why he'd gotten it.
It just didn't seem fair to him that a bunch of suits in a boardroom
somewhere had decided that his world must die. That it must be turned
over to the Freaks. Wiped clean of all sign of human occupation, and
turned over. Crazy. Destiny had belonged to humans for over twenty
thousand years. And then some big shots gave it away, in the hopes of
ending a war a little quicker? Double crazy.

The grinder was big, but he knew it was vulnerable. Any big machine
was. It was just a matter of finding its weak points. Well, if he had
a nuke, screw the weak points. But where the hell would he get a nuke?
He'd have to look for weak points.

Dutch stopped, one day, and thought. He knew where the grinder was,
roughly. It moved fast, but not that fast. It was probably a month and
a half's walk north of them, by now. He slowly, without much thought
involved, began turning their path around in a big half circle. He
talked to Lotus about his plan, but she didn't seem to give a damn, if
she understood at all. Hell, she was just a kid.

He knew the trouble he'd be in if he got caught. They'd just kill him
out of hand, zap him. But the more he thought about it, the more he
felt like he just had to try. It gave him a purpose, a meaning, he
felt like. And, it was the right thing to do.





Dutch ran. He could hear Lotus pounding along right behind him. In
twenty minutes, he was out of breath, panting hard. In another ten,
they were in the grinder's shadow. A few thousand meters further, and
a giant tread loomed. Dust filled the air. The body of the grinder
started a few hundred meters above them. They ran around the tread,
and looked between it. Damn. No stairs. They headed for the next one.

Five treads later, Dutch was ready to give up. And maybe die. "One
more!" he gasped to Lotus, and they headed for a particularly large
one a quarter of a klick away. They arrived in the middle of it, and
ran around the end. At last Dutch was pleased. A stairway ascended
into the body of the grinder. He was not pleased to see a guard
sitting near the bottom step, lighting a choker. The guard saw them
about that time, and jumped, reaching for his rifle. Lotus nailed him
with the stunner, as she ran. Damn, the girl was good. The guy tumbled
off the step, and rolled to a stop on the smooth, still smoking
ground. Dutch rolled him over so he wouldn't choke on the grinderdust,
and they ran for the stairs.

Damn, the grinder moved fast. For a machine as big as a major city, it
moved right along. He was intensely aware of the huge steelex treads,
just fifty meters to his left and right. They were passing by at a
pretty good clip. The noise was deafening, rollers hissing, metal
things pounding together, and an overall loud squealing of metal on
metal that could not be ignored.

Dutch and Lotus ran. She was younger and quicker than he, of course,
and she finally reached the steps and leapt aboard. She grabbed a
railing, and leaned out, her hand reaching for his. He didn't figure
she was really strong enough to pull him on board, but she did a
pretty good job, yanking and straining. He finally got a foot on the
first step, and jumped aboard.

Dutch picked up the guard's rifle as they climbed the stairs, and he
was pleased to see it was a stunner. A full sized, long-ranged
stunner. It had a UFP sticker on it, even. The Feds were involved in
this? That surprised him for some reason.

They climbed for two hundred meters. He held his breath as Lotus
pushed the button on the door, but the door hissed open. Good. Not
locked. They were inside the machine.

Up another flight of stairs, and they were truly inside the machine.
They were in a room hundreds of meters across, filled with
incomprehensible machines. It was noisy, but not nearly as bad as
outside. Pathways led here and there. Dutch hurriedly checked the
compass in his fone, while he still knew which way the front of the
grinder was. They headed forward.

They crept through the machine for two hours before they saw their
first person. Dutch and Lotus had been going slow the whole time,
being careful, stopping at each open area and looking all around
before they moved. Finally, Lotus poked him, and pointed. There,
obviously working on some machine, were five or six teks, with a
floater full of tools. Dutch pulled her back into the stacks of
machines, and they gave the guys a wide berth. Several other times
they passed other groups, almost always teks working on stuff. He
could imagine the maintenance crew this monster needed. He was
surprised they hadn't seen more.

Hours later, they were moving way slower. They had finally passed into
the more populated area of the grinder, it seemed. Dutch was surprised
to see younger people, like Lotus. Kids. Did they live here, too? What
a life, he thought, growing up on a machine that ate worlds. But it
did give him an idea.

That night, they found a cranny between two apparently idle machine
clusters, and crawled beneath, to find a comfortable hiding spot where
they could sleep. Dutch was tired, and ready to sleep, but Lotus had
other ideas. They made soft slow gentle love for an hour, and then she
got up on her knees and he pounded her. They tried to keep quiet, but
there was so much ambient noise from the machines it probably didn't
matter. Lotus came like the little volcano she was, and collapsed in a
heap on the floor. After that they just wrapped their arms around each
other, and slept. They were both pretty tired from chasing the machine
for the last few days. 

Before he went to sleep, Dutch had tentatively reached out for
networks with his fone, ready to slam it down if anything saw them and
tried to get a location on them. He had some ill-advised software for
network cracking that would hide his location and other things, but he
knew they could be pinned down pretty close just by the network
itself, much less the nodes on it. He tried to be careful, but warned
Lotus that they might have to move quickly.

The networks he found seemed pretty simple and open, and he saw no
signs of tracing. He didn't find much of interest, either, just
massive industrial control crap, and a little "our world" kind of BB
thing that showed him that people did truly live on board this beast.
He caught a video feed of an aircraft landing on top, and one of a
wheeled vehicle being dropped from underneath to scout something. It
was interesting, but ultimately didn't tell them much about the
grinder.

He finally found a map, buried in a maintenance site. That was better.
He found the bridge, quickly. It was at least a kilometer on into the
body of the thing, and quite a ways in front of them. He copied the
file onto his fone, and finally dropped the networks completely. They
slept.

After they'd slept a while, a noise woke them both. A few meters in
front of them, a small 'bot crouched, and spoke again in some funky
dialect. Dutch has no idea what it had tried to say. He had no idea,
either, if it was simply a maintenance 'bot, or something sent to
investigate them due to his network snooping. He jumped as the 'bot
disintegrated into a shower of shards as Lotus blasted it with her
handgun. He kind of wished she hadn't done that, the 'bot seemed
harmless, at least it had tried to talk before it had done anything.
And the noise. They grabbed their stuff, and got out of there.

They headed in, towards the center, now, as they made their way
forward. Finally Dutch decided that they had to fit in a little
better, and they holed up alongside what seemed to be a major
thoroughfare. A few dozen people passed them, before the right ones
came along. Dutch nodded to Lotus, and they stepped out and blasted a
couple from behind with the stunners. A man and a girl. Perfect. They
dragged them back, and into a machine room. The clothes were crazy,
but they finally got them stripped, and got themselves dressed. The
clothes were adjustable, thank goodness, and fit well. They left their
bodysuits for the people, for when they woke up. Dutch was still
trying to be as nice as he could, in spite of breaking into the
grinder, and in spite of whatever he intended on doing to it. He was
having more ideas in that department, too.

Lotus found a tarp in the room, and covered her beamer rifle with it,
in such a fashion that she could keep her hand on the grip. It didn't
look that weaponish, they decided, at a casual glance. Dutch fitted
the pistol in his waist, and it hid pretty well, too. They had to
leave the large stunner, though. That was alright, Lotus had her stun
pistol in her waist. He felt reasonably armed, for people who
shouldn't look or be armed at all.

The man's suit had some kind of symbol on it, but he had no idea what
it meant. The suit Lotus had on was bare of symbols. They bravely
walked out into the walking lane, and took off for the bridge.

At the first meeting with grinder folk, Dutch was surprised. A knot of
people they had passed had greeted them with enthusiasm, and
recognition, it seemed. By about the fourth time, he realized that it
must be the symbol on his breast. The man must have been important, or
something. Finally they both acted like it was no big deal, and strode
down the walkways like they owned the place.

The mood and the style of the interior of the grinder slowly changed,
as they made their way forward. It seemed more like a city. Like
people lived here. Obviously, people did. There were people
everywhere, now. Men and women. Kids, younger than Lotus, even. The
thing was basically a giant, mobile city. A giant mobile city that ate
other cities. Dutch idly wondered how they'd got it here, if it had
been built on site, or if they'd flown it in from orbit. The thing
might have gravs, even. If it had gravs, though, why the treads?
Crazy.

The thing he worried about the most was the language. If someone tried
to talk to him, he'd be lost. What they'd heard so far was
incomprehensible, with no hint of irregular standard at all. Many
people had made signals to him, salutes, and hand signals, but luckily
no one had tried to talk to him. He imagined he had seen puzzled looks
on a few faces, and wondered if they were people who knew everyone of
the rank he pretended too, and they were trying to figure out who the
hell he was.

Why are we here? He asked himself again. He had it made, with Lotus.
They could live out the rest of their lives in the hills, the
mountains. They would be here long after the grinder was gone. And if
the space Freaks did come, if they moved into this world, they could
worry about it then. Who knows, maybe they could steal a ship at some
distant point in time. He could be happy with Lotus, he knew. He was
happy with Lotus. Why was he inside the grinder, plotting its
destruction? Why had this mattered to him so much? He didn't have that
much love for this world... did he?

They were suddenly confronted with a gate, and a guard. The guard
snapped to attention when he saw Dutch, rather when he saw the symbol
on Dutch's chest. The man opened the gate, and they passed right
through. Easy. Was it going to be this easy?

Two more gates, and two more guards. Now they were in a whole other
atmosphere, quiet and serene. Important. It just felt important.
Offices were off to the sides, and occasionally rooms full of
underlings, busy at terms, most of them never even looking up as Dutch
and Lotus passed by.

For the first time, he saw a sign on the wall in irregular. It
basically said "bridge" although it translated a little more like
"control room", but his mind fed him "bridge" when he saw it. He knew,
at least, that they were on the right track.

At last, at long last, they approached a last guarded gate, and the
sign on the door behind it read, in irregular, among others, "Bridge."
They were there, it seemed.

The guard bowed his head respectfully, and said something in a
language that Dutch did not understand. Before he could figure out
what to do, Lotus spoke behind him. She reached up and touched his
throat, still talking to the man. Shit, thought Dutch, she is handy to
have around. The way she chattered, he knew she understood the
language very well.

The man pressed a button, the gate opened, and the door slid up into
the wall. Dutch nodded his thanks to the guard, and they passed
through the door. They were in a corridor that seemed to be a
kilometer long. He stopped and grabbed Lotus, after the door had shut
behind him.

"What was that about? What did he say?"

Lotus smiled. "He told you that a man named Orville was already here.
He said to go right on in. I told him you had a virus and couldn't
talk."

"Thanks, Lotus," he hugged her. "What language was that?"

"It was something called Central Redux. It's all they speak, in the
core now."

"Damn. I'm glad you knew it."

She nodded, and they continued on down the corridor.

"Dutch..." she said, and he made a noise of assent.

"What are we going to do here?" she asked.

"I don't really know yet..." he said. "If I could keep everyone out of
the control room long enough, I'd drive this thing into the sea. But
we must be a thousand klicks away from the sea. Maybe I can find a
lake big enough. If I could get it mired down to where they could
never get it out... or I could flood the lower floors of it... I
dunno... there's gotta be a way to stop it, though."

"I guess," she said. "Dutch. Will we get captured?"

"Probably," he said. "But don't worry, they'll let you go, you're just
a kid."

"Dutch. I want to be with you. I don't want you to be thrown in
prison, or zapped."

"I know, Lotus... I'm sorry... we're not caught, yet... maybe
something will work out..."





They passed through four or five anterooms and control rooms before
they finally entered the bridge. It was huge. Dutch's heart sank as he
realized the real estate he'd have to control, if he took over the
bridge. A sniper could nail him from a few hundred meters away.
Amazingly, it seemed totally deserted, though. Damn.

They walked down a walk-way, and along the front of the bridge. Huge
windows looked out over the world below, though it was a little
difficult to see right below, because of the height of the bridge.
They were above the dust, at least.

Everywhere were huge vid screens, showing things going on all over the
grinder. A lot of them were ground views of where the grinding took
place, of what would happen a few hundred meters below them. Right now
it was just the ground racing by. In the lower right hand corner of
each screen was a stylized heart, in green. Dutch knew that was the
grinder's health status. He wanted to see it red.

They walked a few hundred meters, and then came out into the center of
the room. It was truly huge, and almost no one was in it. That was
incredible. Of course, a machine like this would be so automated,
probably just one person could drive it. That's the way machines were
made, now, anyways.

To the front of the area was a half-dozen consoles, manned by teks.
Several of them had neural helmets on, and Dutch figured they were the
guys actually running the grinder. Probably the pilot, and a few teks
to keep things going in order. The men were relaxed, leaning back,
with their eyes closed.

A man sat in an elevated chair, and watched a screen with a stylized
graphic on it. He finally looked at them, his eyebrows raised.

"Pardon me. Is this the bridge? Is this where the grinder is ran
from?" Dutch said, feeling stupid. He knew that he was basically
giving himself up, with a question that dumb. The man would know
instantly that he didn't deserve the symbol he wore.

The man acted like it didn't bother him, though. Maybe he thought this
was for the benefit of Lotus. Maybe he thinks she's my daughter or
something.

"Yes, this is the brain trust," the man said, smiling. He motioned to
his chair. "Would you like to sit in the captain's chair, darling?"

Lotus nodded, handing Dutch the gun, still wrapped in the tarp. The
man held her hand and helped her into the captain's chair, and she
nodded her thanks to him.

Dutch had studied the map in front of him, on one of the large vid
screens. The grinder was easy to identify, at the bottom of the
screen. Above it, and off to one side, he identified what he thought
was a large lake. It was blue, big, and irregular shaped. The line of
the grinder's path went off to the side of it, quite close, actually.

"Okay," said Dutch. The man turned from his attentions to Lotus, and
looked at Dutch quizzically.

"Okay," said Dutch again, loudly, this time. "This is a stick-up." He
brought the beamer rifle out from the tarp, and brandished it in the
man's face. The man blanched. He knew what a beamer was, apparently.

Dutch turned to the men at the console. There were six of them. They
knew something was going on now, it seemed. All but the three in the
neural helmets.

"Okay," said Dutch, a third time. He was having trouble getting
started. Even Lotus appeared impatient for him to say something other
than "Okay." 

"Get those guys out of those helmets," Dutch said, waving the gun at
the men. The three of them did just that, tapping the others on
shoulders, and the three men finally took their helmets off.

"What is it?" one man asked. "Look, I gotta..." his voice tapered off
as he noticed the beamer rifle. "Oh shit." He finally said.

"Look, you guys, I know you're just doing your job, but I'm just doing
mine, too. My job is to run this machine into that lake." He nodded to
the screen. The men just gazed at him.

He swept the beamer across them, and they all flinched. Lotus had
gotten up from the captain's chair, and joined him. He handed her the
beamer.

"Lo. Don't let them move, or flip any switches. And please don't shoot
anyone unless you just have to. We're trying to be nice," he said. She
waved her stunner to reassure him, and held the beamer in one hand and
the stunner in the other. He approached a console, motioning the guy
sitting there to move away. This was where he imagined the actual
driver sat. Dutch sat, and put the neural helmet on his head.
Instantly, with an almost palpable vacuum in his skull, a million new
pathways opened in his brain. In an instant, he was the grinder. He
felt it. He saw from its eyes. He listened from its ears. Its blood
pulsed in his veins. He felt alive, and a million times larger.

The grinder's force blades were off at the moment, they were just
racing across the plains, headed for their next appointment. Their
next town to eat. Dutch looked out, and saw the town, maybe twenty
klicks ahead. Everything from cameras on the top of the grinder to
drone eyes to satellites fed into one immense image in his mind. He
saw the lake, off to the side. It was huge, as large as an inland sea.
It was an inland sea. He tried to guide the grinder towards it, but he
didn't understand how to pilot it. He snooped around further, and
finally found the directional controls. He turned the forward treads
three degrees, and felt the whole machine shift in his mind. Lurch,
almost, goodness, he thought. This big baby builds up a lot of
inertia. 

Within a few seconds, all kinds of alarms began going off. A large
presence made itself known in his mind, the presence of the AI that
ran the grinder. It was projecting inquisitiveness into his mind, and
he knew that it was basically asking him if he was sure he wanted to
go this direction. Towards the lake.

Yes, he sent to it. There is an emergency. This is the only
resolution. The presence backed off a bit, but was still there, strong
in his forebrain. As far as he could tell, the grinder was still
headed for the lake. He cranked up the speed as far as he could,
feeling the whole machine accelerate. A slight vibration shook the
floor. This was incredible, he thought. How much does this bitch
weigh? The computer dropped the answer into his forebrain. Eighty-six
hundred million metric tons. And it was burning across the plains at
almost sixty kilometers an hour. Just incredible. He wondered if the
lake was deep enough, if the mud went far enough down to mire the
tracks. In... let's see... four hours we'll know. 

He removed the helmet. The prisoners were sullenly sitting on the
deck, guarded by Lotus, who was looking sexy and tough. Dutch, on
impulse, pulled the stunner from his pocket and knocked all seven of
the men out. That made life a little easier. He took Lotus's arm, and
walked her down the aisle, back to the door they'd entered the control
room from. To his surprise and satisfaction, it had a physical lock on
it, a bar that could be lowered and screwed down tight. He locked it,
and they spent the next thirty minutes going along the back wall,
looking for more lockable doors. They found four of them, and locked
them all. He was sure there was hatchways and other secret and
semi-secret ways to enter, but this got the obvious ones, at least.
They returned to the main console.

Dutch put the helmet back on, and on impulse, motioned for Lotus to
put one on, also. She did, and he felt her prescence in his mind,
seemingly right beneath him, strong and unmistakeable. They puttered
around in the system together, looking out at the countryside as it
raced by, seeing the lake ahead of them growing larger and larger.

"Unknown human," a voice spoke to him. It was the grinder, the AI that
was the grinder.

"Yes?" he replied.

"What is the nature of the emergency? I am unable so far to discern
any type of emergency, in fact."

"Machine. I am sorry. It is a purely human emergency, a mind thing.
Machines will not understand it or even be aware of it."

"I see. That is hard for me to understand, but I accept it," the
machine seemed satisfied with his answer. He knew that machines were
easy to fool, they were so guileless. He hoped that had done it.

"The alternate day shift is seeking entrance to the bridge. Should I
tell them anything?" the grinder spoke again.

"Yes, tell them an emergency is in progress. Tell them to return to
their quarters immediately and talk to no one."

He heard nothing more from the grinder. Good.

He felt Lotus touch his arm. He felt her, inside his mind, gesture
towards the window in front of them. An aircraft was hovering directly
in front of it, obviously trying to see in. He searched through the AI
as fast as he could for some kind of anti-aircraft weaponry, but found
nothing. He finally settled for opaquing the window. The craft finally
got discouraged and left. The lake loomed larger in front of them.

He smelled something burning. He raced around inside the AI, and
finally found a graphic from the other side of the door. Sure enough,
they were burning through it with firearms. Crap. He turned on the
fire control system, and foamed them, watching the men run down the
corridor with satisfaction. He sprayed some electrical foam in front
of the door, knowing it would harden quickly, and take hours to
remove. That was such a good idea he did it to all the other doors,
and also to half a dozen access hatches the AI located for him. He
felt reasonably sure they'd be locked in now, until they hit the
water.

The AI told him it was less than an hour until they hit the lake.
Cool. It looked like this was actually going to work. He stopped for a
few minutes, and talked to the AI about what would happen if the
grinder did go into the lake. The AI wasn't too happy about that
scenario. If the lower decks flooded, which they probably would, the
lake being deep enough and dropping off quickly enough, the grinder
would be stuck. The tread system was large enough that it might get
them out, but way too many things would short out in the lake water.
The grinder would be stuck for a long, long time. And the hardware
didn't exist on this world to pull them out. Spacecraft couldn't lift
them. Aircraft couldn't lift them. It looked like Dutch's plan was
going to be a success, if he could just keep the bridge locked up for
another hour. That would be increasingly hard, now that the crew of
the grinder knew that they were in here.

Dutch spent a while inside the AI, looking for an escape route from
the bridge. The best he found was a series of kick-out panels on the
top of the window structure, that could get them onto the roof. He
finally took Lotus and the pair of neural helmets and found the
panels, on a spidery walkway far above the floor. He put the helmet
back on, and tried to find out how the attempts to enter the bridge
were going. The fire control systems had been turned off, and some
kind of large burner was being wheeled into place. That should make
short work of both the foam, and the door. Dutch shut down the power
mains to the whole area, hoping the burner was plugged in and not
self-contained.

Dutch spent some time back inside the AI, trying to solidify their
path into the lake. He did everything he could to shut down the AI's
contact with the outside world, finally locating some emergency
systems, and using that to strengthen his grip on the poor machine. He
tried to make it understand that it must go into the lake, no matter
what. He found all kinds of safeguards, and stripped what he could
out. By the time he was finished he was reasonably sure that he had
convinced the machine that it wanted to go into the water, that it
believed that it was the only course of action. If he could just keep
people off the bridge. He left the walkway and returned to the bridge,
and destroyed the remaining neural helmets with the beamer. After a
moment's thought, he blasted all the control panels he could see,
also, and finally returned to the catwalk. Lotus helped him remove the
panels, and suddenly they were buffeted by gusts of wind. They moved
out onto the roof, and Dutch sent one of the remaining neural helmets
over the side, to crash to the ground two thousand meters below. He
didn't know the range of the things, but he kept one, just in case. 

The grinder was complex and convoluted, on the top. Antennas and
dishes were everywhere, and walkways snaked here and there. They moved
down one, towards the back of the grinder, a few kilometers away.
Dutch stopped occasionally to try the helmet, and finally it showed
him the large beamer burning through the wall.

"They're about in," he told Lotus, and he checked their location with
the AI. They were less than ten minutes from the lake. He knew that
they would succeed, now. He felt confident. He pulled off the helmet,
after one last chore. He had looked for a hanger with an aircraft, and
found one, less than a kilometer from their location. He grabbed
Lotus's hand, and they ran towards it.





From the air, it didn't look that impressive. A huge wave was headed
out into the lake, from the front of the grinder. Most of the treads
were underwater, as it made its way into deeper water. The body of the
grinder was still close to a hundred meters above the water, though.
He hoped that would change, soon.

The helmet had stopped functioning shortly after they had taken off,
and he'd opened the window and tossed it out. The last thing he'd seen
through it was the grinder's health icon, now completely yellow with
lots of red blobs. He was letting Lotus fly, and she was doing a good
job. They were in a long slow circle around the grinder, as it plunged
into ever deeper water. At least a half-dozen other aircraft were in
the air, also, watching the giant machine attempt to drown itself. The
grinder was completely in the water now, leaving huge deep ruts in the
muddy shore where it had gone in. He knew eventually the treads would
get mired, or short out or something. He just hoped it was in deep
water by then. He had left the AI with instructions to stop in the
middle of the lake, if it made it that far. He didn't figure it would,
though.

"Dutch. Look," Lotus spoke, motioning towards the back of the grinder.
Sparks and blue fire were shooting up from something, and he figured
that something had shorted out. Still, the grinder bored on, into the
lake. Lotus had the flier out in front now, flying backwards, watching
the beast go, when the front treads went off some kind of undersea
shelf or something. The whole structure lurched, and pointed
downwards, and huge waves erupted from beneath it, where the pylons
down to the treads were. The water rose rapidly after than, and within
a few minutes they could see the waves touching the bottom of
structure. Dutch cackled with glee. Lotus laughed at him and shook her
head.

The grinder went slower and slower after that. Finally, maybe forty
minutes after it had gone into the water, it halted completely. The
belly of the beast was at least a hundred meters deep in the water by
then, and Dutch knew that, just as the AI had feared, the water was in
the lower compartments. The AI had equated that with the death of the
whole machine. Dutch hoped that it was so.

Lotus turned on the wave receiver, and every channel was full of
shouting and excitement. The people below were freaking out. Dutch
felt a little sorrow for the normal people, the everyday people just
doing their jobs whos lives he had disrupted, but he still felt like
he'd done the right thing. This wouldn't stop the Freaks from getting
Destiny. But it was the right thing. Even if the other grinders were
still operating, and even if only a few villages were saved, it was
the right thing.

They finally turned away, and headed south. The pile in the aircraft
was almost brand new, and Dutch knew it'd last a dozen years. They
could find a nice tall hill, settle down, build a shack, and relax.
Keep the aircraft in a barn, for emergencies. When the Freaks showed
up, no telling what, then. From what he understood, in spite of what
Guv had tried to tell them, the Freaks were just normal folk, too...
just a little different. Maybe they could all get along. He wondered
how long Lotus would be impregnable. The shot was usually for ten
years. That would be okay, if she could spit out a few rugrats
someday. He would be ready, by then. 

He reached out, and took her hand. She squeezed back. He loved her
even more, in that instant. They'd done this together. They were
bonded, now. They were a pair, a couple. Together, they'd brought the
grinder down, just the two of them. And gotten away with it. He was
happy. On they flew.



http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/MeatBot/

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