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When Lola woke up in the morning, she was blinded by a ray of light that came through the walls of her wooden radio shack. She immediately covered her eyes and started groaning. It was no use to stay in bed any longer since this pesky sunray would not go away for a while. So instead of moping about it, she decided to get up and start her day.
Next to her bed stood an old wine bottle crate that she used as a nightstand that she almost knocked over. After she got dressed, she looked in the mirror shard she had nailed to the wall and decided she looked good enough in her clothes. She was wearing light blue jeans, covered in many patches and seams and a sun-bleached red t-shirt that was at least one unit too big for her. She slipped into her pink Crocs and sat down at her desk. There was radio equipment scattered everywhere, with no cable management or a sense of order. She put on her clunky old headphones and started listening to the radio.
“You are listening to Rainwater Six , the best and only radio station in nomad territory. Hey everyone, have you heard about what was going on in Buffalo last night? BIG PARTY BABEY! Anyways, Stone’s girls also asked whether anyone saw a cyborg creepin about. A cyborg? Really? I guess they just had one too many bottles, ey? In other news, a new supply of purified water has arrived in Buffalo, so get your goods and get ready to barter!”
“Woodsdale here. Yo Jekyll, the party was C-R-A-Z-Y. Wish you were there. But we gotta keep the stations runnin’ eh?”
Lola listened to the news and chatter for a while until she heard everything there was to hear and was about to put her headset away, when she saw a little blinking light indicating an incoming call over a different frequency. She switched the channel and heard her station name being called out.
“Niagone calling. Rainwater Six, Woodsdale, Desert Beacon. You listening?”
“Woodsdale here. Yo, what’s up old gal?”
“Rainwater Six here. Heyy there! I’m listening!”
“Desert Beacon in. Hi granny Cough Drop. What do you have for us today?”
The old woman on the radio chuckled. “Great to hear that you are up this early Lola. Listen. I got some bad news for you guys out there.” She became very serious. “People have spotted a group of-” The old woman started coughing, but then continued her message: “soldiers out in the wasteland so be on alert and stay safe everyone. Rumors have it that they are looking for a robot. I’m not sure what that means.”
“Fucking hell. Thank you, gran. I’ll report back when they come in proximity. Better to warn everyone over the radio. Rainwater out.”
“Shit, soldiers? What’s that bitch up to? Thanks for the warnin’ Niagone. Woodsdale out.”
“Heard you Cough Drop. Soldiers out here? That’s some bad news… I’ll report if anything happens in the wasteland. Desert Beacon out.”
“ This isn’t good. ” Lola thought. Fort Anne has been creeping more and more into their direction and it was only a matter of time until they arrived in LSC or even Buffalo. But they usually don’t go that far out of their territory without a reason. She put her headset back down and walked outside to ease her mind.
From inside, she heard Jekyll broadcasting the warning on her radio channel.
The sun was burning mercilessly from the sky, but it was still bearable, since the nights tend to be rather cold out in the wasteland. Her shack stood on a rocky hill with a good view over the barren land surrounding it. She looked at the horizon for a while. A dark cloud was starting to creep into her direction, probably a sandstorm. It was going to hit the station in a few hours.
Lola sighed and sat down on the light blue, sun bleached lounger chair on her “porch” and started to relax.
She was all alone up here in her little home, but she liked it that way. She wasn’t made for living in cities like Buffalo or even LSC. Meeting too many people at once just made her anxious. She also didn’t like living on the road, it was too much trouble and too much uncertainty. Their chaotic living style wasn’t for her. So, this shack was just the perfect place to be. Since it was the only settlement in the area, lots of people stop by every now and then. Her home was a shelter for sandstorms and cold nights, a pitstop, a place to take a rest on a long journey. Her home.
She sank deeper into her chair. No work, no responsibilities.
She was almost falling asleep as she saw someone come over the hill and into the viewing distance of her station. It was a person, riding a bike. She opened her eyes wide and quickly got up to watch the stranger. They were heading into her direction, but as soon as she stood up, they noticed her and turned around.
“Noo, don’t leave!” she said, even though she was still far away from the person, and they wouldn’t be able to hear her. She observed the dark cloud on the horizon that was now a little bit closer than before. “...there is a sandstorm coming.” she mumbled. She had no idea why the person turned around, but there was no other good shelter around this place besides her shack.
Nobody would turn down a place like this in a sandstorm. Except they didn’t know that one was coming, which would be proof of someone with poor knowledge. Maybe they’re not from the area and didn’t know better. She had to let them know.
The person at the foot of the hill slid away on a sand dune and crashed their bike into the coarse ground. “Pfft, idiot.” she chuckled. That was her cue to help. Lola quickly went inside her house and grabbed a simple wooden sled that was perfect for riding on sand dunes and down the hill.
“Let’s goo!”, she screamed, while rushing down towards the stranger with the bike. As soon as she got just a bit closer, she saw that it was a young man, wearing a dark green cloak.
“Heyy you!” she shouted when the mystery guy spotted her and hurried back on his legs. But he only got to stand for a second, before Lola crashed into him with her sled, wiping him off his feet once more. Metal was creaking and clanking loudly as they toppled over.
Lola started laughing hysterically: “Yo dude! Where do you think you’re going?”
“Oww…. uh. Nowhere?”. Poet was bewildered.
He asked himself all sorts of questions in his head: “ Ok, she just came out of nowhere and attacked me. Are ALL people here like this? Attacking anyone unprompted? Why was someone out here anyways… or… is she associated with Stonehenge? Was she sent to get me? ” he started to become anxious as he continued to come up with more reasons about why someone might want to attack him.
“Awww, come on! You can tell me!” Lola teased as she got up and shook the sand off.
She took a closer look at her crash victim and realized that his limbs - all of them - were shiny and golden, almost glistering in the sun. His arms looked like bones. She thought he was wearing headphones for a moment, but quickly realized that it was two metallic discs in place of his ears. He also had a bad case of road rash all over his face.
“Wh- wow dude what the heck. Your… oh jeez.” she stuttered in surprise.
Poet tried to ignore her, while he got back up on his feet, lifting his bike and getting ready to leave. But as soon as he had the bicycle upright, the strange nomad girl grabbed the handles. He looked at her angrily: “ Don’t touch it. ”
“You should come to my shack.” she sounded almost patronizing.
“No.” was his short answer.
“Well, then-!”
Lola gave the cyborg a kick that sent him into the sand once more: “Ow!”
Then she got up on his bike and said: “This is mine now.”
“No, it’s not.” Poet answered promptly.
Before he could decide what to do, Lola stuck her tongue out and rode away from him, but only for a small distance, before she stopped again and started waving.
“You want it back? Come and get me!”
Poet hesitated at first, but then followed her. He felt really tired suddenly. The steeper the hill got, the slower he became and it became more exhausting and hurting to climb it.
“Almost there!”, she said teasingly.
Poet tried not to fall while he felt his body quickly deteriorating. If he only had his bicycle to lean on to.
“Hey, are you alright?” Lola noticed how his movement had become slower, more sluggish and wobblier. She sounded worried. He was looking towards the ground with a heavy head.
The exhaustion of the past few hours of riding aimlessly through the wasteland all night and under the burning morning sun had taken a toll on Poet. “Give it... hh... back hh.” His eyesight became blurry as he collapsed to the ground.
“Shit.” Lola quickly slid down the sandy hill to get to Poet who had his eyes barely open. “Stay with me dude.” She quickly decided that she had to get him out of the sun and into her shack as soon as possible. She tried to lift him up, but he was surprisingly heavy for his size.
She went back to her shed, got a rope and tied it under his arms, then pulled it over her shoulder to pull him up the hill. She had a hard time moving up the uneven ground but was determined to help. Poets’ feet made clunk noises whenever they hit rocks in their way. Once she was up the hill, it was easier to pull him, and she got him all the way into her little house. She sat him upright, with his back leaning against the wall.
“Finally!” she exclaimed, breathing heavily in exhaustion. “Are you alive?” she wondered and poked his cheek. He grumbled weakly.
“Sorry about that. There… is a sandstorm coming and I thought it’d be better if you spent the time in my shelter rather than out there in the wide open. No idea why you wanted to run, but, I thought, maybe you are not from here and didn’t know.”
She paused for a moment. “Okay, yeah, to be fair, I should’ve explained that earlier.”
“You aren’t listening, are you?”
She got no response.
Lola sighed and decided to wait until he would wake up again. If he does. If not, she got a nifty new bicycle. In the meantime, she could radio her folks about the upcoming storm.
“Desert Beacon here. Anyone listening?”
Lola tried a few times until she got an answer. “Woodsdale here. Hey Lola, what’s up?”
“Driftwood! Hii! There is a sandstorm heading northwest. Good that I got you, it should head towards your direction. It will be here in maybe half an hour. Maybe later today in your area.”
“Dang, again? Lots of storms out here lately.”
“Yea. Thought I’d warn you beforehand.”
“Thank you, I’ll prepare and warn the other folks around here. Take care! Woodsdale out.”
She then switched her frequency back to Rainwater Six, which was now playing some music.
Lola looked at her unconscious and unintentional visitor. The storm would hit them soon and she didn’t know when the cyborg would wake up, so she took out some of her materials - trash that she collected - to make artsy sculptures. It was one of her favorite pastimes.
While she was busy combining a rusty can, a stick and a piece of plastic mesh, the storm arrived, and it got dark. The wind whistled through the wood and even though the patchy planks would hold back most of the sand, some of it got through. Lola had been through many of those storms in the past 4 years she had been living here, so she wasn’t too fazed about it.
Suddenly, her door was opened, and sand and wind rushed inside the shack. Poet had woken up and the loud storm had covered up the creaky movement of his metallic joints. He saw that she was distracted and thought he could sneak out unnoticed but was greeted by the raging storm.
“Ah! No don’t,” Lola screamed and hurried out of her chair to slam the door shut again.
“Fuck, man. Don’t do that!” she shouted at the cyborg.
“I... I didn’t know?!” he gestured with his arm, bewildered.
Lola pinched the bridge of her nose. “Why were you in the middle of the desert if you have no idea about storms and shit.” She let out a deep sigh. “Look robot boy . I know you want to leave, but that would be a very bad decision right now. So please stay put, wait out the storm and rest. Kapisch?”
“Fine.” Poet really didn’t want to spend any more seconds in this place or with her , but he also didn’t fancy stepping out into a sandstorm like that, so he had no other choice than to comply.
He went over to a little table with two chairs and slowly sat down. He was still tired and maybe thirsty, and his back was hurting. He felt uneasy in this place. It felt small. A knot formed in his throat, and he had to swallow. “ I’ll be fine. ” He tried to reassure himself.
“Here, some water. You must be thirsty.” Lola offered him a plastic bottle with clear water. “Wait.” she hesitated. “Do you even... you know, need water?”
“I… uh…” Poet frowned. “...yes?” he didn’t sound very certain.
Lola felt awkward about her question and tried to cover it up with a more joyful demeanor: “Sure you do! Sorry about that. Have some.” she shoved the bottle into his hand.
“Hey so… how did you get that nasty road rash?” Lola asked curiously, while Poet took a small sip from the bottle.
“I fell.” Poet felt too ashamed to admit the truth and it was none of her business anyways. He avoided eye contact.
“With your bike?”
"Yeah." He looked away. “ Don’t remind me about it. It’s still burning. ”
Lola wasn’t satisfied with that answer, but she was sure he had his reasons to disclose information. They were strangers after all.
“So, what’s your name?”
“Poet.”
“I’m Lola. And this is my radio shack, the Desert Beacon Station!”, she posed proudly, with her arms stretched wide open. Poet seemed unimpressed.
“Why are you alone?” he asked out of curiosity.
“I uh,” Lola was taken aback by his question. “I like it this way. Why are you alone?”
“I’m lost.”
“Oh. Where did you want to go?”
“I don’t know. Where is my bike?”
“OH SHIT!” Lola said out loud. “I forgot about it! It’s outside!” She became nervous. “It’s just a bike, I’m sure it will be fine. If… if we can find it after the storm.”
“Get it for me,” he demanded. “ It’s your fault, you left it outside. ”
“I can’t, bud. There is a sandstorm outside if you haven’t noticed.” she pointed at the door with her flat hand.
Poet followed her gesture and looked at the door.
“So, stay put until the storm is over, alright? It will be the best for both of us.”
Lola went back to her desk and went back to her little art project. She picked up a bottle cap and folded it in half. She had no idea what she was going to do with it, but she quickly found a nice place to stick it - the opening of the can.
Meanwhile, Poet sank his head into his arms. The metal touching his cheek was cold and not comfortable at all. He pulled his cloak up and put it between him and his arm to make it a little softer. He thought about the past day, the weird place he woke up in with the stone arch and dead people. The people who kidnapped him. And Stonehenge who seemed nice at first but then attacked him, and the creepy tape recording he found later that day. Even though he could not remember anything from before he woke up, at least he could remember the past two days. His eyes became heavy as he drifted off to sleep for a while.
When the storm finally weakened, Poet was still sleeping. Lola let him be, as he seemed very exhausted and in need of a good rest. She put on her desert goggles, which were just a pair of ski goggles and set out in the storm to retrieve Poets' bicycle. Luckily, it wasn’t too far away from the building and only half-way buried in sand. She quickly pulled it out and pushed it up to her shack. Then she saw a person in the distance. “ Another new visitor today? ”, she wondered. Then another person came into view. And another. And another. It was a whole group of six people.
One of them pointed at her shack. It was still windy and a bit gloomy, but the group came closer. Lola felt that something was off about them. They were wearing dark clothes with red accents. They looked uniform. Was it the group of soldiers she was warned about?
She quickly returned to her shed, put the bicycle to the side and shut the door. “Shit.”
Poet woke up and looked at her.
“Shhhh!”, she gestured that he should be silent and started whispering. “There are some soldiers outside. That’s not good. Those bastards are evil, I-”
Someone knocked at her door.
Lola panicked. It might be the group of soldiers that were looking for Poet. Because if there was anything out here fitting to the description of a robot, it was him.
“Shh, go there and stay still.”, Lola pulled Poet up from his chair and into a corner of the room that had a bunch of some of her bigger trash sculptures stuffed in it.
“There’s some bad guys there who might be looking for you. Try to act like, uh, a sculpture,” she whispered quickly. Poet looked very confused.
Lola pulled Poets' cloak over his body, threw a towel over his hip and quickly put a rusty bucket over his head.
Poet whimpered as all sound turned into loud static. He quickly pulled the bucket off, but Lola pushed it back down. He could only hear some fragments of what Lola said, through all the pain inducing electric noise that rushed through his head. “Keep - on - quiet- or dead.”
He could barely even hear himself think, but Lola seemed very concerned and in panic. The last words she said were very alarming. If he moved, the people that just arrived are going to kill him? He didn’t want to die… he still needed to find out who he was and who took his limbs and why.
Though he couldn’t bear it any longer and pulled the bucket slowly off again and the noise faded. He looked over to the door, but it was out of his view.
Lola took a quick look back to Poet and hoped he understood what she wanted him to do. Then she opened her door and nervously greeted her visitor. To her surprise, it was only one person. The others stood further down the hill, waiting. In front of her was a tall, lanky woman with a long ponytail, in soldier uniform, wearing red army goggles and she had a red cloth tied in front of her face to protect it from the sand.
“Do you live here?”, she promptly asked.
“Y-yes.”, Lola was quite intimidated.
The woman looked at her radio equipment. “So, this is a manned radio station?”
“Yes. I’m the operator.”, Lola answered quickly. “Uhm, ma’am what are you-”
“Shut up. Have you seen any strangers around here? A robot maybe?”
“A robot?”, Lola laughed nervously. “You gotta be kidding me, in this apocalypse? What else? An airplane? A working car?”
The soldier pulled her gun up. “Have you seen it?”, she asked sternly.
Lola gulped. She was stretching her luck. “Uh. Neither seen nor heard of it ma’am.”
“You must’ve heard of it. They told you over the radio. This is Desert Beacon Station, isn't it? I recognize your voice.”
Lola started sweating. “Y-yes, this is Desert Beacon. You’re right. I’ve heard about it, bu-but I didn’t see any robots today. T-there was a sandstorm, you know.”
The bottom of the bucket looked very rusty and just out of curiosity, Poet poked at the flakey brown parts of it when his finger suddenly poked through. He quickly looked at the door in hope nobody heard it. The wind was still whistling through the roof. He poked another hole in it adjacent to the other.
“Is there someone with you?”, the woman lowered her gun and looked around the room. “I saw a bicycle outside.”
Poet quickly put the bucket back on his head. His antennas slid through the holes and the effect on his hearing wasn’t as bad as before. They still scratched on the tin a little, but it was fine.
“That’s mine.” Lola said quickly. “There’s just me and my sculptures here. M-Maybe the wind knocked something over. That happens quite often.”
“You mean this trash?” The soldier stepped into the room and grabbed Lola’s work off the desk and crushed the tin can in her gloved hand.
“It’s… art.” Lola pouted. She did not expect any soldiers to be nice, but that was rude.
The woman started to laugh and then noticed Poet amongst the pile of trash.
“Is that also one of yours?”
Poet tried not to move.
“Yyyyeeeaah.”, Lola said slowly. “It’s still a work in progress. I was collecting some artificial limbs and wanted to build me a buddy. You know, because I’m all alone here.”
The soldier gave her a strange look, then looked back at Poet and gave his leg a kick. He flinched ever so slightly, really trying to hold back any reaction.
Lola tried to quickly distract her and pulled an actual prosthetic out of another pile. “See I have more of them.”
“Disgusting .”, she noted. “I’m not here to gawk at your so-called art .”
She turned around and went towards the door. “We’ll continue our search. If you, by any chance, find that robot, make sure you tell your friends on the radio.” and then mumbled “You’d be dead if we didn’t need these stations too.” as she stood in the door frame.
Lola followed her to the door and put on a fake smile. “Of course, ma’am, I will.” The woman then left and Lola closed the door behind her.
Lola sighed in relief and looked at her crushed can. She needed a moment to realize what just happened. The soldiers were out for the guy that she somehow successfully hid from them in plain sight. She was so close to being shot dead. If Poet had just moved slightly more or the soldier was a little less distractible it would’ve been it. She crumpled the shirt in front of her heart. It was pounding quickly.
Then she heard a metallic rattling sound and flinched. She almost forgot that the cyborg was still there. “Shh” she hissed towards him and added a “Not yet,” while whispering.
They waited. And waited. Lola went back to her art to distract herself and Poet watched her from a distance.
After a little while, Lola got up and pushed the curtains of her one window out of the way and looked outside. She couldn’t see anyone. Then she went outside and walked around her radio shack. The soldiers were gone.
She went back inside to find Poet still sitting amongst her art, poking the things with his metallic finger in confusion.
“They are gone. That was… scary. I thought I was dead a few times. I can’t believe that worked.”
Poet looked at her with a disgruntled face.
“Can I go now?”, he asked.
“Uhm... the soldiers might still be close by.”
“I don’t care.”. Poet sounded clearly annoyed. He had enough of this place and her. The room was too small, and he missed his bicycle. He had to wear a stupid bucket on his head for too long. He could barely breathe in it. He just wanted to get out.
“Alright. Your bike is just outside the door.” Lola pointed at it.
Poet did not hesitate to get up and out. The moment he stepped outside he felt relieved. Like a pressure getting lifted off his chest. It was a lot better out here in the open.
Lola slouched in her doorway and watched him, as he clumsily got on the bicycle with his robotic prosthetics.
“You know the hill is stee-”
She earned an angry glare from him.
“You do you.” She shrugged.
Poet didn’t say goodbye or even look at her. He just wanted to get away from this place as quickly as possible. He started pedaling and promptly slid down the hill, quite artistically and only actually fell off his bike after he was at the bottom of the hill.
Lola chuckled. “ What a strange guy ,“ she thought.
“ Good luck out there, Bicycle Boy. ”