Thank you for your support. I hope to keep earning it. I still have a lot pnned for both stories I have up on Scribble Hub.

  Note 1; I'm still on track for a sequel release ter this week. It will be Book 3 for The Last Mage In Minnesota on Amazon, closer to the 20th probably. (Editing is a pain...)

  Note 2; Something is wrong with my website. Namecheap, which is a web hosting service LOST my website somehow. I want to warn you to avoid them if you do your own websites. This is very scary. I did everything I was supposed to and there wasn't anything wrong. So my website is missing despite no interruption in fees or service longer than 8 days between billing from when I brought it over to them in 2024. This affects people that were trying to read my Life Wizard story, which was a free story up on the website. I'll have to decide what to do with that story or if I'll put it up elsewhere.

  Chapter 15

  The doorbell rang. I answer the door with gusto. I’ve been sweating bullets all day for this. The door had just rang.

  Still waiting to hear from Barbara on how they will handle my android’s theft too. That part worries me more than this really but these things can’t be ignored either.

  Of course this isn’t Barbara, but it’s the culmination of my pnning coming to fruition. I’d hoped it was still working.

  “Thank God!” I opened the door. It’s the same outdated and ancient android before that did all my grocery runs. He’s gotten really efficient and was here by right before sundown. He seems to be Mr. Punctual.

  “Sir, I have the order for your grocery order number 2517938, confirmation code,” he said in clipped short and obviously robotic tones. Again he’s staring off into space. It’s like he doesn’t see me there. He knows I’m there but something is off with how his eyes don’t focus or look at people. He moves like a tin man too. Must be a really old android model.

  This guy is the worst android I’d ever heard of at blending in.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” I acknowledged.

  I was desperate and very nervous after what had happened to my sister.

  What if he hadn’t gotten my groceries before tomorrow? Would it have become impossible then? And how much time is left where I can still get other grocery deliveries still before that mess from Wisconsin gets here?

  This male android looks like the worst android I’d ever seen in terms of shape and maintenance, and ability to blend in with society. But with everything that’s going wrong I don’t mind. Male androids are even more rare because there seems to be like a 90 percent ratio in favor of female androids.

  This guy looks like everyone is mean to him. So I think he didn’t understand why I accidentally hugged him.

  I was expecting all hell to break loose in our state after getting the call from my sister before the network was cut off. So of course I was grateful for the groceries to make it. I didn’t know if this was going to be the st grocery run of my life even or if we had a few more days before it got to my area. All evening there were news articles specuting on why Wisconsin was basically completely dead while also specuting on the social colpse hoax that had hit the news at the same time.

  Another news cast blew it off as a power shortage and that they’d be fixing the power soon.

  Then they’d also put some mega billionaires on interview in the news expining how it was just a temporary cloud that was going away and that it was part of a bigger cycle that renewed itself. People didn’t believe those kind of guys anymore though.

  It seems like my sister was one of the very few people that managed to manage a call out before the network went dead. Almost nobody knows anything right now, and it kind of makes sense since if people were being chased by violent psychopaths then they wouldn’t exactly be able to call for help until they got to a safe spot or were able to put a barrier between them and their attacker. But most of them never achieved that I suspect.

  People were skeptical about the Governor and FBI messages on the news too, since neither of those two people were avaible for comment.

  People were getting scared fast, but it wasn’t conclusive as to what was going on. They were thinking it was an affordable utilities corruption scandal and not a violence against androids scandal, according to comments on news net feeds. At least many of them did. But as usual news comments could go in all kinds of directions. There were even a few alien enthusiasts.

  I saw people hurrying when they were walking pces too like they were more stressed out than usual.

  “If it’s OK, I’d like to confirm the items on your order,” the android said like nothing was out of the ordinary and nothing stressful going on. His voice modutor was somehow really bad.

  Weird…

  I hadn’t noticed it before, but his clothes were torn up like he’d been in a fight. His sleeve on one side was completely gone. The work suspenders he wore over that shirt had only one suspender working and the other had something like a red brown stain spshed across the front but that was nearly dried.

  It also didn’t look like android fluid…whatever fluids his type of model used. Actually that’s something to pick Barbara’s mind about. I still didn’t know which models had fake blood or what it looked like compared to which androids were entirely mechanical. I suspected it was the non-Mellifera androids that were all mechanical though.

  Oh there was also some kind of gash in this android’s bicep too. It was too shallow to be much damage but it didn’t look good. This android was made before synthetic bio upgrades were added so there weren’t any synthetic fluids coming out or whatever they were; it just showed like, metal parts and wiring poking out from under the gash in the skin. But the newer models wouldn’t show metal parts if you cut them open I believe.

  His fake skin was cracked unnaturally in a lot of pces too from ck of proper maintenance.

  Jeez this guy was hel old then. It looked really suspicious.

  “Sir, Is EvErYtHiNG oK?” he asked with his bad voice modutor.

  “Fine. Everything’s fine,” I said. “Let’s go over the order again, to confirm,” I said going along with it, while he stood there like a door post. I didn’t want him getting worried that something was off.

  “Are you an older model?” I asked him, trying to be polite.

  “HoW DiD YoU KnOW I’m ANDroid?” he asked.

  “How could I not?” I sighed. “Look itt doesn’t matter. Actually people are so dishonest you being an android is good. It may have helped you get through whatever you did with less trouble,” I countered. It was pretty well known some of the more robotic based androids sometimes were really durable and rugged.

  He took a minute and came back and forth to my door several times. He was bringing in the groceries two sacks at a time. Finally he was ready to confirm the list and it did look like everything was there.

  Except the sack of onions had blood spatter on it; yeah I probably wasn’t going to be able to eat those onions now. I could probably pnt them in the garden still. But they were just onions right? And the blood if it didn’t come from the android suggested more of what I’d suspected.

  Yep, sure enough he’d probably been attacked while leaving the grocery store or something. His truck was more banged up than it should be too and the windshield had been spshed with thrown bricks it seemed. But maybe asking him about it wouldn’t be a good idea right now.

  “Potatoes, a dozen twenty pound sacks, flour also six sacks, fifty pound bags of rice of which there are ten in number. How unusual, you bought rice but not soy sauce. Did you malfunction?” The android leered at me strangely.

  “I did forget the soy sauce,” I admitted. Still, this would st awhile. With that many huge bags of rice it would be bnd but I wouldn’t die anytime soon.

  Shit…what’s the point of rice with no soy sauce; already the level of despair was now +1.

  “Perhaps you need to do more maintenance sir,” he fpped his jaws at me.

  “Maybe so.” I wasn’t going to argue with him that he looked like he needed it more.

  “Do you want me to sew up that hole in your skin?” I asked.

  “Uh…...no. My owner wants me to finish the other orders. Quickly. I’ll be in trouble if I don’t,” he frowned.

  “If you need me to sew that up ter you can come by. But don’t bring any trouble with you,” I said.

  “Good. You seem…kind. For a human,” he said in his monotone.

  “Thank you. Let’s keep going over the order.”

  “Wax candles, a box full of rolls of duct tape, several coils of rope, as many 5 gallon buckets as I could get, matches of which there are enough for several arson activities…just kidding,” he said slowly. He ughed mechanically.

  “Are you making a joke?” I asked in shock. He was kind of funny. No one would expect a robot this old and obviously sounding like a robot to make a joke.

  “HaHA HAAA,” his voice modutor sounded sick or like he’d copied his ugh from a chicken calling out in the morning. Then his mouth snapped shut.

  “40 tomato seed packets, 40 lettuce seed packets, 40 bean seed packets, 40 pea seed packets, 40 carrot seed packets, 40 swiss chard seed packets, 40 he kept going on and on…” It was an extensive list.

  He kept reading for quite a while. I’m lucky that seed packets are the cheapest things on the market because of people’s gardening hobbies. He of course thinks I’m trying to be a farmer and I can’t tell him that the end of the world looks like it might just happen …tomorrow?

  “So does your owner treat you well?” I asked him near the end.

  “My owner performs routine maintenance as per regutions once a month,” he said.

  Was that evading the question?

  He was obviously not even being treated as an android but more like a wn mower to farm money I think. But still I was grateful. I paid him the amount with a good tip and watched him walk back to his truck. It was a small economy size truck mag model with a wind hatch over the back. I’d worked on them all the time.

  He waved to me politely before getting in his work truck. I hit the electronic security door and watched him pull out. I closed the gate quickly since its night and keeping the lights out.

  I wanted to get to bed soon.

  But why hadn’t Barbara called me back yet? I couldn’t go back inside and just veg out on movies while waiting for some kind of sign from her.

  And I was waiting for her to call because we weren’t sure yet if the stolen androids was a total loss or if they’d recover them. In theory, if they caught the guys that did it then it would be returned.

  So far there was no sign of trouble as I watched the oldest of the old androids driving away. He was a pretty efficient driver too. He’d made me really tense when he’d come through with the dried blood on his overalls. It had even made me afraid he was a killer or malfunctioning. But unexpectedly he’s nice. And funny.

  I closed my eletronic fence gate behind him as he left. I’m lucky that my property has one of those old school tall heavy iron fences. Then I watched him pull out while I walked back to the house.

  I lived on a street with a good view in both directions and was surprised by what happened after he’d pulled out and gone down the street. Just as he was about to go into the intersection with a green light about two or three hundred feet away he was hit by another car. I still have good eyes because I’m young so it’s not hard for me to tell something bad really happened even though they are far enough away to seem like ants.

  Oh wow. That was unexpected.

  But after that I got even more scared.

  Another car hit him from the other side of the road. That’s also weird too because it’s not easy to disengage the autopilot systems in magnetic rail cars. They don’t wreck on autopilot driver-less mode anymore. So car wrecks are unusual now. Society in general accepted that the traffic networks controlled and drove their cars better than they did. So its not easy to hit a car like that.

  They’d hit him on purpose.

  Holy crap. Holy crap, holy freaking crap!!

  My heart is pumping so fast that I don’t know what to do. I can’t run and save him either with my injured state. I can’t do anything except watch and maybe report it.

  And before he can get out of the little work truck, I can hear and see gunfire from both sides of him peppering the little truck like a swarm of bees on prey. With the little popping noises there is little bright white flickers that are so far away it’s hard to see what’s going on as they are storming his truck and destroying it.

  Gunfire?!

  What?!

  But gunfire is very easy to tell what it is, since it’s so noisy and it carries a long way with how it echoes loudly, particurly certain rifles for hunting big game. For a full three minutes they are firing non-stop into the android’s truck. They don’t stop for awhile but the timing between shots dies down as they can see the android in the truck isn’t going anywhere anytime soon or they just want to keep up their targeting practice.

  Everything is still while I’m trying to back up.

  They are small specks so I can only pick out the gunfire at first. But then I see like a small flicker and something being tossed. Then I can see fmes in his truck cabin.

  ...

  The anarchy from Wisconsin was it here already? Or was this an isoted incident?

  I wasn’t sure which it was yet. There didn’t seem to be any other gangsters, but just these guys. But even they were enough to cause trouble.

  I got in the house as fast as I could, which is hard for me with my bad spine. But the robotic leg caging supports my back and legs safely; I just can’t go fast or do any real work with it yet. I’m healing pretty well but it just isn’t easy. Even before those guys tossed the Molotov cocktail into what’s left of the truck down the road I’d been trying to retreat but it’s hard with my legs not working right and slow. That heightens my fear tenfold.

  I’m lucky my house doesn’t stand out in any way from the other nearby houses. Other houses also have fences. And so does mine, but mine trumps all other houses at looking down trodden and old, because years ago I’d had a vandalism problem from people stealing from my shop before people converted away from hard real cash money and went to credits.

  People targeted people that had stuff, so I went out of my way to make things look old and beat down, and under par, to make it look too troublesome to go through.

  The Corporations also thought electronic credit chips would solve crime and stop robberies. They were wrong and just trying to sell one more thing to the public. If you need a thumb print or a DNA scan to sell or buy with your credit chip… it just means they’ll cut off eyes and hands. Or bring the person under gunpoint with them for money withdrawals.

  There’s always a way they’ll cheat.

  But I was grateful for my fence now.

  From the angle of the way the street winded I doubted they could tell where that android had come from but I’d still shut off all the lights. Anything that made it look like someone was here I hid or turned off or put away. The other houses on my street all looked more tempting to burgrize too. Several of my neighbors had nice backyard pools, and beautiful gardens and masonry that practically screamed they were wealthy.

  I had to go slow doing it. Lucky I didn’t have anything in the yard anyway. And most of my lights were already off, which saved me a lot of headaches. The shop area I just close up and lock up and its good. But that was already done.

  I got inside. I shut the door, and activated the voice automated system in my house to kill all the lights on my property just as one of the killer bandits turned up my ne. They shouldn’t have seen me before because I had other houses in the way and they didn’t right? I’m not completely certain but very hopeful. The uncertainty grips me like terror.

  How do I really know if I got inside in time?

  I was tempted to panic.

  I’m thinking they’ll do lighted houses where they know people live first. The most down trodden houses will be poor targets, which is in my favor. Those guys, if they are really robbing people they’ll do the big nice houses first.

  It’s a close call turning off the lights before they get here.

  I am peeking out a small corner of the heavy dark drapes through like a sliver so small I can hardly look. At the same time I’m holding my thick dark drapes so they don’t rustle or move around while I peek out this small sliver.

  Sure enough, a small old mag pickup, that was probably stripped down and stolen, is being hand driven very slowly through our neighborhood at about 5 mph. They are looking for any sign of people anywhere. As they approach I can see the mag car has two gunmen with dark blue bandannas over the faces of the two riders in the back of the truck with pantyhose covering the tops of their heads. There are also two up front, one of which is the driver. All of them have piercing harsh stares that sweep the whole street constantly. Looking for prey. Looking for easy pickings.

  They seriously look like wolves. They are human. Not wolves. But its like the spirits guiding their bodies are insane wolves. No… it’d be unfair to compare the wolves to those guys. Even wolves don’t deserve that.

  They even shoot the yellow Labrador a few houses down just for being there out in the open. Honestly it was so overfed it was too fat to bark anyway. Its good they didn’t see me.

  How cruel. Now they are getting closer.

  But then they stopped and 2 of them got out and put the dog’s body in the back of their track. They were ughing at how much meat it had on it.

  Then they shot another dog in another yard. But decided it looked ‘ill favored’ and left the corpse there.

  “Wow,” I whispered.

  They are armed well too. One of them has a high powered deer rifle, while the others just have handguns. They are looking for people to see if someone saw them jump the android obviously. Plus whatever psychotic dream fantasy that’s promoting their current agenda.

  I’m lucky I got my lights killed in time. Other houses on my street still don’t have their lights out like I do.

  The gunmen or gang let loose a whole volley of shots into the 63 year old widow three houses down from mine. They must have pumped over twenty bullets in her, and were still trying to get their kicks. While ughing about it. It’s a shame because she was half blind and probably didn’t even see them when they were only like twenty feet away while she was doing some evening gardening in her front yard near the porch. I’m sure she didn’t have that much money either.

  They still decided to rob her.

  Her hand hedge trimmers sunk into the flower garden point down and were quivering in the air long after she’d hit the ground.

  But now they are arguing. They are VERY loud. Its strange how loud they sound.

  One of them wants to search the houses in this street door to door.

  The other fellow disagrees.

  One guy asked if the granny’s meat was any good. The others said its disgusting to eat old people and that they should go for younger people instead.

  Now the next guy suggests they vote on it.

  What will happen?

  They are right in front of my house.