What’s It Gonna Be,Tyrone?

A Neptune Road Story

written by Betsy Streeter

Neptune Road is Copyright ©2013, 2014 Betsy Streeter. All Rights Reserved. All stories, characters and incidents in this publication are fictional. Want to

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NEPTUNE ROADWritten by Betsy Streeter

Humans are living on Neptune, such as it is. Most of the people who make the trip out there are escaping the stifling bureau-cracy of EarthAdmin on their home planet. They seek a fresh

start, even if it’s on a globe with borrowed sunlight and violent storms. And questionable characters.

They are fugitives, hackers, criminals, children. They are lost, hiding, escaping, restarting, reinventing.

All of them face a future where one thing is certain: Everything they have will be made up, salvaged, hacked or repurposed.

Even the maps will change all the time.

Welcome to Neptune Road.

This story is dedicated to the fabulous Streeter/McFarlane clan, Neptune Road’s Kickstarter Backers,

Sam at Perihelion,and anyone looking to make something out of nothing.

WHAT’S IT GONNA BE, TYRONE?

The hand juts out of the ground at about a thirty-degree angle, fingers straight, ex-posed down to a few inches beyond the wrist. A bit of paper trash blows into its palm, hangs on there for a few minutes, then comes free and continues its journey across the empty landscape.

***

Tyrone gathers up his metal detector and checks the battery life, because today is Salvage.

He climbs the short ladder leading out of the underground shelter. The trap door at the top demands a hard push, as a great deal of dirt has come to settle on top of it from the outside. Dust cascades downward as Tyrone heaves upward with his shoulder. Finally the door flips open and Tyrone is free to blink in the sunlight, half a person emerging from the dirt.

Tyrone pulls down his wide-brimmed hat and lays his trusty metal detector on the ground next to him before climbing all the way out. He retrieves a mapping device from his pocket and notes his position so as to facilitate an orderly sweep across the area. The Salvage process done properly will resemble mowing a large, grass-free lawn.

Tyrone takes a moment to get his bearings and confirm he has everything he needs. He pats down his thick vest, large pockets ready to receive any valuable finds that he can carry along with him. He’s got communications, mapping, metal detector. His thick boots will keep out the dust. He is ready.

“Ah,” says Tyrone, noting a change on the map. “Hey Cybil,” he calls down, “mar-ket’s closer now. That’ll save on fuel.”

“Good to know,” comes a voice from below.

Additional news of importance pops up on the mapping device, as folks emerge and signal their new positions. The violent storms on Neptune clean the slate, and after each one people and things bloom back up like flowers after a fire. And then it’s time for Salvage.

“Alright, goin’ on Salvage,” says Tyrone.

“Could use some copper wire, Love,” says Cybil. The opening into the ground lights up green and orange as Cybil welds something together down there.

“I’ll do what I can, my aim is to make you happy,” says Tyrone. And he is off.

Others are off too, trap doors flipping open and shedding piles of dirt, liberating hundreds of person-shaped specks across the landscape. Metal detectors hum and beep, calibrate themselves, respond to their owners’ instructions.

The jutting hand is about fifty yards from Tyrone’s door, but he doesn’t investigate it right away. Salvage is a discipline, an art of systematic scanning. He will reach

that particular spot only after he has traced with his boots about twenty concentric circles around his initial starting point outside his front door.

When he does finally reach the hand, Tyrone takes off his hat to exhibit proper re-spect. He stands silent, then mutters a few words of philosophy and musings on the

fleeting nature of existence.

Then he bends down at the waist and takes the hand as if to shake it. “Sorry man,” he says to the unseen unfortunate, “this planet deals most harshly with the unprepared.”

Tyrone leaves the hand as it is, since there’s no proper way to bury it sticking up out of the ground like that. He crosses himself and goes on scanning, tracing bigger and bigger circles until the hand is left behind, just a speck in a huge sand labyrinth.

After an acceptable period of time has passed, Tyrone pauses and leans his metal detector on his hip so he might extract a snack from his pocket. He chews deliber-ately, the ration being a tough bit of jerky that can withstand most anything, up to and including being eaten.

His lunch concluded, Tyrone resumes careful Salvaging. The metal detector has not uttered so much as a sound yet, the ground yielding nothing of any value thus far.

It goes without saying that if many individuals in an area make ever bigger circles in the dirt, at some point those circles will overlap with one another. Unstated Sal-vage rules dictate that he who finds, keeps. Therefore the tension level rises as the circles around each Salvager’s starting point grow and the neutral territory around them shrinks. It is easy to let your eagerness get the best of you, to speed up and miss something. Tyrone knows this so he whistles to himself a tune, so as to keep his pace consistent.

Sure enough, before the hour has expired Tyrone has come to a place of intersection with his neighbor, Brad. Brad of the magnificently shiny metal detector and broad shoulders and unappealing attitude.

“Brad.”

“Tyrone.”

The two metal detectors light up simultaneously. As is customary, the Salvagers at-tend to their own readings first to determine the exact position of whatever they might have discovered. There’s no point in a border war if there’s multiple separate items to be had and everyone can go home happy.

But in this case, the object in question lies exactly between the two Salvagers. It’s big, it’s metal, it’s probably a vehicle from the shape of it. Possibly it belonged to his

expired friend back there sticking out of the ground. Tyrone zooms in on his screen to get a better look. Yes, a vehicle. Oh, a rich find indeed. Packed full with electron-ics, and wire, and maybe even fuel. The kind of thing you use to greatly improve your

standard of living, then sell the extra. A luxury item.

The two men face off, feet apart and shoulders square and manly.

“What’s it gonna be, Tyrone?” says Brad, making a show of flexing his knuckles be-cause he knows taking out the relatively slim Tyrone will not require much effort.

Something in Brad’s pocket begins emitting an insistent beep. Brad attempts to ignore it and maintain his confrontational posture, but the beeping continues and finally he must break eye contact and fish out the offending device.

Brad stares down at the message, his eyes growing wide. WHATEVER YOU GOT, LEAVE IT. SOMETHING HUGE NEED HELP TO SALVAGE GET OVER HERE. NOW. Plus some coordinates.

Realizing he has an audience and wanting to avoid divulging any information on this apparently superior find, Brad collects himself and looks back up at his neighbor.

“Well, Tyrone, I’ll leave you to it. Turns out my team requires my attention elsewhere. A good day to you.”

With that Brad touches the brim of his hat, turns on the heel of his boot and takes off in a straight line that cuts neatly across every one of his carefully-scanned circles and points toward the horizon.

Tyrone remains there, barely moving, until Brad has shrunk to just a speck trailed by a wisp of dust. Then, he reaches into his pocket.

“Nice work, Cybil my love,” says Tyrone.

“Why thank you, darling,” comes the reply. “Dee Cee and Sonny should reach your position shortly to assist in the extraction.”

“You are a glorious shining genius,” says Tyrone.

“Before Brad discerns that we’ve hacked his communications, anything you’d like to say to him on this channel or should I just shut it down?” says Cybil.

Tyrone thinks about this, and the ideas that come into his mind cause a broad grin to spread across his face.

“No, nothing to say that won’t land us in a mountain of troubles, best to let this one lie,” says Tyrone.

“Very well,” says Cybil.

Tyrone begins preparations to resurrect the treasure, marking the ground and taking readings. Sure enough, it’s not long before an armored Salvage vehicle bearing his friends appears in the distance, hauling behind it a trailer large enough to carry the whole thing back to the workshop.

THE END

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