Page 9 of Smart@ss Cyborg

Paco scrambles to his feet, his excessively hairy ears swiveling in every direction before folding flat against his neck. His sides are heaving.

The moment the shot rang out I instinctively dived for the ground. I’m tucked beside the shanty steps, uncomfortably resting on what I believe I’ve identified is a boot scraper, which is a raised wrought-ironblade—thankfully dull. Carefully I edge off of it until it’s no longer digging into my torso.

I’m about to announce myself, and explain that I’m not here to hurt the homesteaders, but I don’t get the chance.

“GET LOST!” a man bellows.

“No!Please! Help us!” a woman cries—and then she screams.

Dirt flares under my nose as I exhale. What an unusual situation. And not only because that woman sounds as if she’s in distress. No, I was so distracted by my recalcitrant mount’s behavior that I missed scanning the abode I was about to enter. My inattention nearly cost me my life.

I remedy this oversight immediately, looking behind me not with my eyes, but with my senses. I’m able to see through the wooden walls and identify four biological lifeforms. Two human men, one human woman, and a small agitated spark.

One of the men is dying.

The other man, the one responsible for shooting at me, I’m certain—is positioned near the door of the home. The door is open, giving him a clear line of sight if I want to risk standing up and being shot.

The dying man is lying supine in the same room, and at his side is a kneeling woman. Inside of her body is the spark. She must be gravid.In the family way,I amend.

The tadpole-sized form she’s carrying possesses only a tiny brain, but very visible are the lit-up sectors for fear and agitation. The small body is active, rolling and moving in its watery sac.

Its mother clutches at it from the outside, cradling it with one arm, her other arm braced with her hand against the man on the floor, at a wounded point on his stomach where he’s also clutching. Her brain is pure havoc: fear, anguished misery, fury.

The dying man’s brain activity is active in the area for remorse. But also fear and fury.

The aggressor male’s brain at the door of the dwelling is… difficult to read. Oh, I recognize excitement, the thrill of challenge. But his skull contents are otherwise lit in an unsettling pattern that I’m unfamiliar with.

Not willing to stand and make myself a target, I find Paco’s electrical field, and turn my focus to his brain. Some of my people have honed this natural skill of ours so finely that they can alter emotions. All I’ve ever done underwater was control movements, and thankfully that’s the only skill I need now. I begin using extrasensory force to tap regions of his lobes. My intention is to encourage him to move to the porch. I don’t believe the aggressor male inside will shoot him. It’s more likely he’ll mistakenly assume that Paco is a rideable animal and therefore a valuable commodity.

Before I can find the spot in Paco’s head that will encourage him to walk forward, he does so of his own accord, his strange tail alternating from side to side as he agitatedly whacks his haunches. His neck lowers and his ears slowly creep forward with curiosity. His steps are soft and careful. To my surprise, he gives me a cursory snuffle and mounts the porch steps with startling agility for such a portly creature.

Serendipitously, I’m not the only one taken aback by the donkey’s ascension; the areas for surprise light up in the gunman’s brain too. And taking advantage of his distraction, I stand, bound up the steps, and tackle him.

We crash to the floor, with him cushioning my fall. That is the only benefit to landing on top of him. I don’t like his scent. I wish to be away from it as soon as possible.

However, with direct contact, I suddenly have absolute control over his brain’s motor function. I can see the areas in his head lit up for alarm, disbelief, and rage—but he can’t so much as struggle against me.

I give him a cursory look. He’s sporting black striped burgundy twill trousers, a cream-colored work shirt, and a brown vest. His riding boots are scuffed but of decent quality. His hat has been knocked offhis head and it smells as strongly as he does. I rise off of him, keeping him prone on the floor by not allowing him access to his locomotive skills.

With him neutralized, I look to the other two human occupants, or try. There’s a donkey in the way, taking up much of the home’s humble kitchen. Which is wooden walls and wood board flooring. Surprising for a shanty. From my research, most have serviceable dirt floors.

“Move, Paco,” I tell the donkey.

He doesn’t. He stretches out his neck and brings his nose closer to the dying man.

The dying man is in brown canvas trousers and a flannel shirt with thin vertical stripes in a faded shade of green. He has the beginnings of a rather enviable beard.

The woman hunkered over him makes a broken sound. Sobbing, I realize, looking more closely at her.

Her hair, contained in a braid, is the color of prairie grass. That is, it’s the color of Prairie Fire, a type of brilliant-topped summer switchgrass.

Her dress, a saddle brown thing with lighter speckles, is torn clear off her shoulder, the sleeve and some of the side panel hanging down loosely, exposing a swath of collarbone and cloth-bound breast tissue. Her neck is elegant in shape but mottled in color, with dark spots, each one perhaps a finger length in span. Her face is long rather than wide, and when she throws me a wild-eyed, frightened look, I see her face is also discolored, bruised perhaps; although I’ve read about humans who have birthmarks, so perhaps she simply has one of those across half of her face.

But as I scan her, I decide that the state of her dress leads me to believe it’s more likely a bruise. Still, in all the movies, men always ask the obvious question—and thus, politely, I do too. “Are you hurt, little lady?” I ask her, adopting a respectful form of address that I’ve often heard vid heroes use with women in an effort to be chivalrous.

She hunches over, shuddering instead of answering me. Paco stretches his neck until his nose lightly grazes her back. He wuffles her braid, but she pays him no mind. Her brain activity is chaotic. It’s heavily centered in the lobe opposite of reason, so she may be in this unreachable state until she calms herself.

I glance around, mildly curious about my surroundings. We’re in a small kitchen, with newspapers neatly plastered to the walls. It’s something settlers do as a form of insulation, or so my studies have told me. Interestingly, at the lone window over the sink, the homesteaders have crenulated the bottom of the newspapers to make a decorative edge, as if it were a curtain.

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