The Dinner Guest - Chapter 13 Abito v. Fig Love

"Yo! Space dawg! You hungry or what?"

Fuck, that hurt. Of course he's throwing food at me, no one loves Abito.

I came to lying face down in dirt. As my eyes opened I realized the dirt I'd been sleeping on surrounded me. There were dark dirt walls all around, my back hurt like a son-of-a-bitch and someone was throwing dog food at me. I looked up to see what some might call "fun with stem cells" staring back down at me with what I can only describe as a smile. I didn't know this human's name, but he looked like a bad genetic copy of Al Roker. Ever since humans discovered basic genetics, there have been numerous stories of amateur geneticists trying impossible experiments. I was even assigned to take down a one mad scientist calling himself "Axon 'Mendel' the Grindballer". I hope this wasn't one of his kids.

Even though the plastic trey that he threw at me didn't scratch my thick metal skin, it still hurt...inside.

"Listen up dawgy, Ma space queen is myspace'n right now. So you's and me are gonna throw down, ya heard?" He spatted.

My secondary optical circuits kicked in just as his muttered his last colloquialism. The hole I was in appeared to be 3 by 3 meters in width and 8 meters in depth, my neuro-net was still rounding off to the nearest thousandth...

"You're a cha-cha brained metal puta, and I'm a motha-fuckin warlock! I took your stank-ass outta stasis cuz we gotta rub uglies, ya heard?"

I had no idea what he was saying. My linguistic networks scanned front wards and backwards unable to make sense out of the sounds. I really needed to download that update from Krontos Inc. I've been telling myself I'd do it for months.

"Was that a threat?" I said in a slow, clear tone. I could tell I'd have to speak slowly to this one.

"Yo damn right it was a threat, dawg! My special lady upstairs said to 'take care of our guest'. And you da guest. Aye!"

He trailed off saying something about orphan’s blood. As he spoke, he pointed and swung in his hand a small stick. My optics closed in on it. It was a small carved stick roughly a quarter of a meter long. On the side in sloppy capital letters were carved the words "Wonder Boy". Again, I had no idea what that meant. If only my father had been around to teach me the ways of the universe. I once called the help desk of my current repair center to pose this query.

The curry-laced voice of the operator laughed and asked, "Your name is Abito? Noice."

“Who is my father? My creator?” I pleaded.

“Sir, are you sitting down?”

…The story I heard from then on nuked my world in a thousand napalm nightmares. Hair. Sex. Computer keyboard. Heaney.

It wasn’t fair.

As I arose to my feet I said, "Look, . . . sorry, what's your name?"

His face went from drunken anger to a sobering calm in moments.

He spoke, "I gots many names, dawg. My homies from the 'hood back on Betrian Deuce called me "Lil Hug", but they ain't called me that for years. My boys on the salvage vessel Latvian 43 called me "Big Bug", but they ain't called me that in years. Now, my space queen, she calls me. . . " He stopped for a moment.

Then, as quickly as he went calm, his anger arose again.

"You can't call me that dawg! You can call me what I call myself!

'William 'Fig Love' the Warlock', or 'Fig-dub' for short... for years"

Christ, this guy likes to talk.

"Ok, 'Fig-Dub', you shot me in the back, threw me in a hole, then threw my, what I can only assume was my last meal, in the dirt. Are you gonna stand up there like some magical skank, or are you going to confront me with honor?"

I figured the only way to reason with this mouth-breather was to rise to his level, which from where I was standing was just above the toilet bowl rim. He starting spewing again, but I needed to think fast. The microphone in my nose would record the train of sounds for me to come back to; I needed every nano-second to think.

First, I was ambushed. The witch/dancer Lola contacted this guy who showed up outside the club and shot me in the back. Second, they threw me into stasis, which explains the slow reboot of my main systems. A sub-freeze like that slows every part of my body, even in earth climates. Third, this prick threw me in this hole to thaw out and now wants to "have some fun". Options. Calculating...

"Oh, dat's it! Dat's it! It's ON!!!!"

The human quickly disappeared. With a few seconds to spare I ran through my options. The hole was round, no corners. With the internal hyper-hydraulic drive system coupled with a 42 THz reflex matrix in my engineering, this hole would take no time to resolve, assuming this hole is square, but it isn't....

Clunk! Thud! "Ouch!" the human exclaimed from out of sight. After a quick patter of feet he appeared again and tossed a rope down.

Christ! This guy is an idiot!

He then stammered down the rope slowly, descent slowed by an enormous beer gut. As he neared, I stepped back preparing for anything. My nose was picking up scents of petroleum in the air. No sooner had his feet hit the dirt, he tapped his stick to the rope. It went ablaze in an instant. Shit...

"It's so on now!" he shouted, "Check it! I learned me that fire spell, like puff, puff, pass, yo..."

Seeing the opportunity, I lunged towards the portly human. His stick appeared to breathe fire, so I went for it first. I suppose the darkness might have helped me because I was able to get the stick and disable it with great ease. I then turned to the human. He stood roughly one and two thirds of a meter high and half that wide.

"Shit, dawg! Shit! You broke my wand! Where's my laser gu...."

My teeth sank into his lower back. While he was screaming about his stick, I flanked his huge flanks and found a vital point, the nervous system. According to police regs I should avoid killing the innocent if possible. As far as I could tell, the only crime this guy committed was not committing suicide. So, I chose a non-fatal wound to inflict. I knew a large section of lower back would not kill the human, but ensure he would never walk again, I chose it for that reason. Additionally, it left me with all I needed to escape from that hole. The rope was well burnt away at that point.

And again, I was alone, in a hole with a bleeding human and left to find a way out.

"Awwwww shit, dawg! You broke my back! Fuck you dawg! What? What you doin with my foot?! Oh no you didn't! You did not just fashion a grappling hook from the bones in ma foot! It's about to go down, right now! Oh yeah? You think you can make a harness out of my intestines and Cliffhanger your ass outta this hole?!?! You crazy, mental fucked! Oh sure, you badass, run away. Punk bitches always leave the fight. Ain't you even gonna fight? You there?"

In the fainting throws of that human’s consciousness I realized we are quite similar, him and I. Both being bastard sons of poverty and perversion, I believe it was fate that kept me from swallowing his face. I like to think I’m a better person because he’ll live another day. Either way, I sleep better now.