The Festival didn’t change Hunter’s life immediately. There wasn’t much farming to do in the winter, but there was still school, playing with his friends, and all the various things that add up in someone’s life and get in the way of preparing for their nebulous I’m nine future. He didn’t deliberately try to forget about how being in that open space felt, the ride through the clouds, or having his fortune told, but it wasn’t his focus as much as he thought it would be back on that day. There really were too many things to do that didn’t make him as nervous as growing up, leaving the redoubt, and being an integrated adult did.

Spring seemed to come quickly that year, and brought his birthday with it. He didn’t remember what his birthdays were like when he was younger, but they were pretty good now. When the outside world calmed down a little and Willard got its SysPols, enough people moved into town that he and Miracle were no longer the only children near his age, and that meant parties. The year before, his uncle had somehow smuggled buckets of water balloons into the redoubt and hid them all over, which turned Hunter’s party into a running, ducking, and hiding fight for the entirety of the afternoon. It was a tight vote between that day and Miracle’s eleventh birthday, when his dad had made an entire wooden castle twice as tall as a house out in the eastern field with magic, every time the children tried deciding who had the more exciting party.

This year, though, Ernie couldn’t make it out, although he had sent a present, and Hunter’s younger brother was getting to that age where he seemed to need both parents’ attention as much as possible. That’s why, for his first double-digit birthday, Hunter was dragging a toy wagon filled with snacks out the north gate and up the old road, toward the river. When he arrived, he found Ellie tying the last of three large innertubes, each of them nearly the size of her, to a tree on the bank.

“Hey! How did you-?”

“Get these all the way up here? Secret,” Ellie grinned over at him. “What’d you tell your parents?”

“Fancy picnic,” he responded, grinning back as he dropped the wagon’s handle. “How about you?”

“Bumper wrestling. Couldn’t think of anything else.” Ellie flopped onto one of the tubes, almost bouncing herself to the ground before she got settled. At Hunter’s look, she continued, “You know, strap them on and run into each other real fast or something? Seems fun, we oughta do it sometime.”

“For sure! Want a fruit soda?” Hunter pulled a pair of clear, plastic bottles out of the bucket of ice at the back of the wagon and handed one to her.

“What are they?” Ellie followed his lead, twisting off the top, then took a big drink, coughing and spluttering after, “It’s tingly juice! And it’s good! Where do we get more?”

He took a smaller sip of his own drink what’s pineapple, and then shrugged. “The trader guy came last week, had a bunch of new stuff. Everything was more expensive though, Dad says. Then he went off on bloodsucking, post-apocalyptic corpor-, cor-, something, I dunno. You know how he gets.”

“Oh man, last week, my mom?” Ellie paused for a fit of giggles and more coughing on her soda. “She got some new kind of work from the Pols? And she spent all night grumbling and drinking her holiday wine! What did she say, umm. It was like, ‘How is there paperwork without any paper?’ and ‘Why do I even have a sword if I’m just working for the DMV?’ It was funny, umm, for a little while.”

“DMV?”

“I asked, got a don’t worry about it.”

“So, bad. I got one of those when I asked if we were getting any farmhands this year.”

“Oof,” Ellie muttered, taking a slower drink from her bottle. “That’s a rough one.”

They rested in silence for a while until they caught sight of Miracle, the taller boy wobbling as he walked up the road, balancing three long wooden poles across his shoulders, each easily as long as three of him end to end. He waved, then quickly scrambled to right the tipping poles, while the other two children ran over to help.

“Before you ask, I couldn’t think of anything. I just said, ‘Dad, I need these, don’t ask questions,’ and that was that.”

“Spoiled!” Ellie gasped, grinning. “You have to try these fruit sodas!”

“Also, why aren’t we telling our parents about this? We’re just going on the river, right?”

“It’s, umm, Hunter?”

“It’s practice,” he said. “In case we ever want to do anything really sneaky, then we’ve got one success under our belts already.”

It took them a little while to set up their secret, against the rules, don’t tell anyone birthday party, but they had a plan. Hunter split up the snacks and drinks into waxy cotton sacks and tested them by dipping them into the river before he tied them to the innertubes. It took two kids at a time to wrestle the tubes over to the riverbank, and the third to keep the ropes untangled, but they managed it in a few minutes. Then they stripped down to swimwear, climbed onto the heavily patched but still inflated tubes, and used the poles to guide themselves out to the middle of the river, to have a nice, lazy spring day.

Hunter was just drifting off, full of sandwiches, candy bars and soda, enjoying the bright sun shining down, when the other two tubes jostled into his.

“So, Schmidt,” Miracle started. “You’ve been, you know, kind of down lately. Your mom always says if we see someone having a hard time, we should ask if they need help, because it’s, you know, hard for them to ask. So, do you need help?”

Hunter exhaled a little sighed and struggled to sit up straighter to look at his friends. Miracle was frowning, and Ellie had a soft, nervous smile instead of her usual energetic one. He started to answer, to dismiss it out of hand, but then he really thought about the question, if his friends could do anything for him.

“It’s the Festival, guys. Or maybe just growing up? I’m ten now, and when I’m sixteen everyone’s going to expect me to do something, to be something. Everything outside of Willard seems so exciting, but dangerous. I dunno,” he trailed off.

“It’s not all like that, Red. Willard’s the third place we’ve lived, and it’s the quietest, yeah.” Ellie scratched her head, head tilted, as she put on her thinking face. “Boulder was kind of scary sometimes sure, but not all the time? Outside isn’t like, all fighting, all the time.”

“Yeah, and inside isn’t totally safe either,” Miracle mumbled. “That’s why there’s people like my dad and Ellie’s dad, defenders and Pols.”

“I’m not worried about going out and fighting, I guess? More like I don’t know what’s going to happen if I get it wrong. Sure, Dad said he wanted to be a kind of farmer before Infra, and even after when he didn’t know what was going on really, he enjoyed it. I dunno about Mom. But all the old folks, they didn’t get much of a choice about what to do, and we do. I just don’t wanna make a bad one.”

“I think that makes us lucky, Schmidt.” Miracle and Ellie slowly pushed the tubes back to shore while he talked. “Ellie’s parents are going to make sure she does well in SysPol, whatever she ends up doing, my dad’s going to try to teach me magic and let the defenders help me with the rest, and your parents, well, oh.”

Hunter sighed for real at that. “I don’t think my dad even wants me to be a farmer. And I mean, that’s fine, maybe I don’t want to be one either, but all I know how to do is carry stuff around.”

“That might be a good thing, too? More options? I dunno, Red. Back in Boulder, I was still pretty young so I didn’t have to do anything, but sometimes it got bad enough that kids had to help, a little older than us maybe? They’d run around and do whatever was needed, but then they’d hit sixteen and just be doing the same stuff. They’ve got a lot of shield bearers and ammo loaders there. I don’t know if it’s automatic or what, but you don’t want to wake up with a fancy new thing in your head, and keep doing the stuff you’ve already been doing, right?”

“I guess. I just wish I had an idea of what I’d be good at,” he replied, crawling off his innertube and pulling it back up the bank along with his friends. Miracle was looking off into the distance as he helped the smaller children with their ropes, chewing on his bottom lip. When they were all settled again, with the tree to shield them from the midday sun, the mostly quiet, dark boy spoke again.

“Does your mom ever teach you anything, Schmidt?”

“I mean, everything? She’s a teacher.”

“Well, yeah. But anything special that’s not in class?”

“Umm, manners and stuff, and now a lot about taking care of two year olds. Oh, and our morning exercise stuff. You know, like greeting the sun and the ground.”

Miracle shook his head a little, brows pinched together. “Can you show us?”

Hunter shrugged and rolled off the tube, moving a couple steps away to a level patch of dirt. He rolled his shoulders and worked on calming his breathing as he moved his feet into position. After a moment of hesitation, fighting down a flush on his cheeks that threatened to match his hair, he mumbled, “I always forget the real names of the moves, but don’t let my mom hear what I call them, ‘kay?”

He moved into his first relaxing position, suddenly glad he’d skipped this morning for his birthday, or else he’d have been way too sore to do it all over. He started to move one palm up, the other down as he incrementally shifted his feet apart, keeping all his weight on one until his arms and legs both burned from the effort. Eyes shut tight, he murmured, “This is how we greet the sun and ground. I think maybe it’s a farming thing?”

Inch by inch, concentrating on his breathing, balance, and keeping his movements steady, Hunter went from pose to pose of his usual morning stretches, from arms full with punch bowl, through balancing three sticks, to hold up this wall for a while, occasionally mumbling out the next step before demonstrating it. He had just finished push away person and dog with only a little wobble when Miracle called out.

“Schmidt! Can you do that last one, but like fast?”

“No? Umm, well, maybe?” He rocked back and forth a few times, moving his center from over his front foot to his back, more quickly with each repetition. He stepped forward, arms up in the previous position, palms held outward, then shifted onto his back foot quickly, kicking his front leg up and out as he shoved his palms forward, somehow staying balanced on the one leg after.

“So cool!”

“Huh? It was?” Hunter whipped his head around, forgot his breathing, and lost his balance, ending up sitting down with a thump.

“It really was, Red!”

“I think I need to tell you a secret, Schmidt. At least, I think it’s a secret. No one ever talks about it,” Miracle said as he and Ellie walked over, sitting down with their friend. There was a real serious look on his face as he continued.

“You probably don’t remember much about when we got overrun, huh.”

“No, not really. Just after.”

“Well, I do. I was six, and we were out looking at one of the walls, me, my dad, and my, my mom. They were looking, umm, I was just out with them, I mean. There was all this noise all of a sudden, and then there was a hole in the wall, right in front of them. Mom got in the way of Dad, and then grabbed me, and I guess she got hurt because we were running away and her arm was all funny.”

“Oh man, that’s so scary,” Ellie said as she leaned over to give him a hug.

“Yeah, it was. But umm, so Mom’s leading us to one of the shelter buildings in the middle of town, and everything’s getting noisier and noisier, and we get around the corner and there’s this big like, crab thing, and it’s taller than my parents probably. Except it’s blue, bright blue, and made out of metal, and sounds like a tea kettle screaming while you bang it on a table.

“So, Mom’s got me under one arm, she’s got her shield on her hurt one, and I don’t know where her axe is anyway. Dad’s not very fast at magic but he still tried to start some kinda spell, I dunno. I, I think Mom was going to do something super brave then, because she set me down on the ground, but she didn’t get a chance. There was another big loud noise, but muffled like it was far away? And your mom was standing there, in front of us.”

“Wait, my mom? Why?”

“I dunno, but she saved us. Her hair wasn’t tied up like it usually is, it was big and red and frizzy like yours when you grow it out, so I didn’t really recognize her at first. Like, she wasn’t there, and then she was, and the crab thing wasn’t. She was standing there, with her arms and leg out like you were, and the metal crab monster was tumbling down the street, making way less noise but a lot of dust. Then she turned and smiled at us and that’s when I knew it was your mom, she had that same smile as when we do a good job in class, or she’s giving us cookies. Then she led us to the trading post, and pushed or slapped or whatever that is at least two more metal crabs on the way there.”

“Crabbots,” Ellie murmured.

“Crabbots, right. So, she saved us? Then things got worse, after, but I was hiding by then. And then no one ever talked about it again. Not my dad, not her, no one.”

“Mama Red, Secret Fighting Genius? We should investigate!”

“No!”

“No, Miracle’s right,” Hunter nodded a little as he spoke. “If no one’s talking about it, it’s a secret for a reason. Dunno what it could be, but yeah.”

“So maybe your mom is teaching you stuff to help, it just looks like exercises? She just can’t come out and say it.”

For the rest of the afternoon, the children ate snacks, lounged around in the shade, and showed off what they’d been learning from their parents. Hunter thought maybe the other two had been afraid to admit they’d been getting training without knowing he was, but he figured he’d have been interested anyway. Miracle was mostly doing real exercises, but he said his dad was going to get him weights once he was big enough. Ellie, though, was getting secret lessons from her mom like Hunter apparently was, that at first looked like dancing, but when she picked up a stick and swung it around, he could tell was some kind of sword fighting. After a stumbling, complicated routine he suspected she made up more than half of, she lunged and smashed her stick against the tree before turning around and shouting at the two boys.

“Presents! We haven’t even done presents!”

“Aww, man, you guys didn’t have to. I only really get birthday presents from Uncle Ernie, you know that.”

“No, it’s ok. We kinda thought this would be a good year for it,” Miracle smiled over at him as he rummaged through his pile of clothes, but Ellie beat him to it, jumping up with a small bundle of paper twisted up like a hard candy.

“Here! Open mine! I picked it out and everything, Red.”

Hunter took the little present and tore it open at her insistence, instead of unwrapping it like he started to do, and pulled free a milky white crystal about the size of his thumb, hung from a leather cord. It was really kind of pretty, a little diamond shape with etching on it that he couldn’t make out, and Ellie beamed her biggest grin as he put it on.

“It tracks your heart rate, or something? And when you’re really happy it takes a holo picture! Then later you can make the pictures pop up and see what you were happy about. I, I wanna see you put a lot of pictures in it, ok?”

“That’s so cool! I promise, I will,” Hunter nodded, glancing down at the necklace after it suddenly made a tiny, blue flash. “See, like that!”

“I, umm, I didn’t wrap mine. My dad made it, but I told him what I wanted,” Miracle said, a little shy as he handed over a bracelet made of twine woven through wooden slats. Hunter pulled it onto his right wrist, feeling more than a little fancy at having two pieces of jewelry now.

“Stand up,” Miracle continued, “and then think about, umm, what’s in the bracelet and how you want it in your hand, instead. I think.”

Hunter got up, frowning, looking between his friend and his present, and held out his right hand. He opened and closed it, thinking about what’s in it the weird instructions, and how’s there something in it what exactly he was supposed to do. He closed his eyes, still flexing his hand, give it give it and didn’t open them again until he felt the weight of something in his grip, and heard Ellie gasp.

“Wizard stick!”

He looked up and found he was holding a long, straight length of wood, a gnarled branch that had been smoothed out, longer than he was tall. It felt a little big in his hand, but he still had some growing to do.

“Wow, how does it do that?”

“No idea, Schmidt. Just magic my dad did. You can’t put anything else in the bracelet or anything, and it’s really just a pretty stick, but it’s neat right? Oh, and you can put it away, like, the same way I think.”

“It’s a wizard stick, Red!”

“That’s so cool. Thank you both, so much,” Hunter mumbled, starting to sniffle but bursting into laughter as his necklace flashed again. “Hey, umm, I brought my uncle’s present, too. You guys wanna open it with me and play with it? They’re usually pretty fun.” He banished the stick back to wherever it came from, easier than getting it out, and went over to his wagon, pulling out a big package from underneath the remains of the snacks. He popped open the lid as his friends crowded around him on either side and found a note on top, pulling it out to read.

“‘Hey, kid. Sorry about missing your birthday, but the group had some things to take care of that I couldn’t miss out on. This isn’t the first one I haven’t been to, but I bet it’ll be the first one you remember, and that’s on me. I hope you and your friends,’ ooh.” Ellie bounced in excitement next to him. “‘Enjoy the tablets I sent. You can use them for almost anything, including messaging your dear old Uncle without having to bother your parents about it. I’ll see you and the family sooner than you know it. Love, Ernie.’ Oh wow.”

He took the tablets out of the box one by one, each not much smaller than a piece of paper and thinner than his littlest finger, and handed them to his friends before sitting down with the last one. After a few taps and shakes, he found the button on the top and gasped as the entire panel lit up a shimmering blue.

Initializing Infra Limited Plus v. 904.16… Welcome, [New User]. Please choose a name for the [Messages] program.

“Aww, nuts! Someone already took ‘World’s Greatest Detective.’ What a jerk. Ok, guys, I’m [skEllieton witch], add me!” Ellie was talking fast, like when she got really excited, but Hunter just kept staring at the screen, not sure what he should put.

He considered [Tai Chi Jesus], but the conversation with his mom about that particular name didn’t go very well. He didn’t want to offend any of the old folks who he might message in the future. He almost just settled on [Red Hunter], but that one was already taken, probably by someone whose name wasn’t even Hunter. He was just about to give up and make it a later problem when Miracle patted him on the shoulder and reached over, typing on his screen.

You have chosen [smashbot Schmidt]. Is this acceptable Y/N?

Hunter looked questioningly over at Miracle, who just said, “Like your mom. For good luck,” so he pressed down on the Y with a grin. “I just put [FBGuillen]. Add me too.”

They spent the rest of Hunter’s birthday sitting around in a circle, giggling to each other as they made full use of the [Messages] function on the tablets. His camera necklace flashed more than a few times that evening and they figured out how to share those pictures back and forth, too. Finally, Miracle decided to be the older, responsible friend, and messaged their parents to come pick them up, thinking it was too late and too dark to bother walking home alone. As Hunter walked home, propped up on his new wizard stick, his two friends slumped over in the wagon and being dragged by his mom, he decided this was going to be his vote for best party so far.

The next couple years seemed pretty nice to Hunter. One day bled into the next, mostly following the same pattern. He’d wake, exercise with his mother, go to school for the rest of the morning and early afternoon, come home to help his dad with chores around the farm, then spend the end of the day and evening goofing off with his friends. He knew he wouldn’t ask his mom, ever, about her secret fighting ability, but he also knew that if he thought about it in her presence she’d figure out he knew. He also had the idea that if he specifically didn’t think about it, she’d figure it out, too.

So, instead, he concentrated more during exercise and school and found he improved faster in both. His mom started teaching him more difficult movements, and then a few patterns he could do holding his stick staff, call it staff, and finally even partnered exercises where they’d push against each other while shifting from pose to pose. It was a hot morning in the middle of summer, straining to both move slowly and push at the same time, when the twelve year old lost concentration, fell into a heap, and muttered something uncouth in front of his mom.

“Would you like to repeat yourself, Hunter?”

“No, Mom, no, sorry,” he mumbled, pushing the sweaty mop of red hair out of his face. “I just, I just don’t get why we’ve gotta do this part. It’s just so hard.”

“That’s a good question, if it was a question. It sounded a bit like a complaint,” his mom teased, leaning over to help him up. “We exercise in the mornings to become healthier, stronger, and more in touch with our bodies, correct?”

“Right,” he replied, trying to keep his mind blank, so she couldn’t read his real answer smashbot.

“One thing I want you to realize, bump, is that humans are extraordinary creatures.” Hunter blushed a little at that old pet name as she continued, “Or rather, they have the potential to be. However, there’s only so far one can go solely on one’s own, only so fast you can run even if all you do is run. Instead, you push more than just your body with your legs, perhaps by lifting weights, perhaps pushing around heavy things. So, if you want to be stronger and more balanced than exercising in open space will make you, you give yourself resistance.”

“Huh. Does that work for everything, or just exercise?”

“Regrettably, it seems to be the case for everything. People never travel nearly as far as when they’re pushing against something that is attempting to hold them back. Now, back into position. We have plenty of morning left before school.”

Hunter thought about that conversation for a few days, and then he decided to test it out. He’d been doing his fast version of exercises some afternoons while he spent time with Miracle and Ellie, and while it was fun, he wasn’t progressing like he was with the regular, slow kind he did with his mom. He still stumbled in the same places, found himself worn out quickly, and overall still felt a little silly pushing and slapping nothing but air. So one day after school and chores, he sent his friends a message, “out doing something stuuupid. talk ltr,” and headed out the west gate to Mr. Jenkins’ farm.

He really only knew three things about Mr. Jenkins. First, most people in Willard thought he was “an odd duck,” “a misplaced city folk,” or “a Californian,” and they didn’t mind saying that around town. Second, his dad thought he was some kind of faker, but that overall he was a good guy. Hunter remembered a conversation from a while back, an argument really, where his dad ended up yelling at a group of the older men in the redoubt, shouting, “He may act a damn fool, but if that’s all he walked out of that mess carrying, he’s doing just fine!” His dad could be grumpy sometimes, but he only ever told off the old folk on things he really believed.

The last thing he knew was that Mr. Jenkins had robots, and that fact was why he was visiting him. Hunter passed a few working in the fields as he made his way to the house. Each was a little taller than him, maybe just shy of five feet when they stood up fully. Also, they looked weird. Take a big, beige plastic cone, rounded off at the top, about three feet tall and two wide and tip it backward about halfway to falling over, then stuff it full of telescoping, dull metal limbs, and Hunter figured you’d have one of Mr. Jenkins’ bots. Some of them had rectangular screens fastened halfway up the cone, some had cameras on stalks, and some just had a strip of what looked like paint across the same spot. They walked slowly and carefully on three or four legs, their flat pincers knuckled under, and worked with two or three others, tugging at weeds or pushing carts through the fields. He was paying too much attention to the deliberate way the robots balanced, and not enough to how far he’d walked, because he was startled to hear a shout from not far away.

“That looks like the Schmidt boy, or one of them now, I should say! I’d recognize that mop from a mile away, I reckon.”

Hunter laughed a little and ran a hand through his hair, which was getting a little long and unruly, not that it was ever very different. “Hi, Mr. Jenkins! How’s things and such?”

“Not bad, not bad, Hunter. You know, I’m not sure I’ve seen you since your folks were kind enough to get me settled in here, nigh onto five years back now.”

“Umm, yeah,” he mumbled in reply, looking down as he felt his cheeks color slightly. “You know how it is, with school and chores, and umm. I’m sorry I haven’t been more neighborly.”

“Naw, it’s no worry, son. Can I get you anything now that you’ve made it out to my neck of the woods? I think I’ve got cold lemonade.”

“No, sir. I wouldn’t want to, umm, bother you too much. And I’ve already got a favor to ask.” Hunter closed his eyes briefly, knowing this wasn’t how he thought this conversation would go, knowing his friends would have done a much better job.

“It must be one heck of a favor, to come on out here on a summer day and turn down a lemonade. What can I do ya for, son?”

Hunter steeled himself and looked up at the man before answering. If he thought about it, Mr. Jenkins was kind of odd. He was tall and gangly, towering over most of the other people in Willard, but especially the under-sized boy. He wore vividly dyed blue jeans, when Hunter’s and most everyone else’s were more of a faded gray canvas, and a white tank top that strained to cover his round middle. Combined with his big leather boots and wide-brimmed straw hat, he really did look like someone who stopped in town on vacation and never left. He was even chewing a shoot of wheat, and a quick glance confirmed to Hunter that the fields surrounding him weren’t growing any. He shook his head briefly stalling and smiled his best, copied from Ellie, we did nothing wrong smile.

“I’d like to fight one of your robots, sir.”

After some laughing, and Hunter patiently trying to explain his conception of resistance training, Mr. Jenkins sat down on his porch, let out a high-pitched series of whistles, and smiled crookedly at the boy.

“Ya know, these ain’t really fightin’ robots. And the way I see it, you ain’t really fightin’ age, either.”

“Well, umm, wait. Aren’t all robots, like, fighting robots? Isn’t that what they’re for?”

“Naw, that’s not how it works. Robots are just machines that do the things people don’t feel like doin’. Say you were a preteen boy that hated keepin’ his hair combed. I could fix you up a robot to do it for you when you wake up. That robot would only be about the size of your noggin and no good for any kind of fightin’.”

He stopped talking as one of his farmbots ambled up to him, close enough that Hunter could hear the soft whirring of gears and hissing of air from the limbs when it sat down at the man’s feet. Mr. Jenkins popped open the top of the plastic cone with a screwdriver as he continued to talk.

“Now, these here robots are a fair bit bigger than a hair-comber, that’s for sure, but not the size of a man. They also aren’t very tough, and I reckon a good thump most anywhere on one will cost me a day in the shop, fixin’ it back up. But, they are pretty quick, seein’ as not only are they in charge of pickin’ and plantin’, they also got to zap any varmints that come on my property, and these days, varmints is speedy.”

“Zap?” Hunter rocked back on his heels, eyebrows raised.

“Yeah, they got themselves a little crackle gun. It’ll knock out a gopher or a crow long enough cage ‘em up and drive outta town.” He snapped the bot’s top closed after rooting around in the hole while he spoke, pausing to watch it stand back up and flex out all its limbs one by one. “I’ll make you a deal, son, since I don’t feel I rightly paid your folks back enough for the kindness they done me. You can fight this here robot twice a week, as long as you follow two simple rules.”

“Yes, sir! Anything, I can follow rules.”

“First, you don’t get yourself hurt, you hear. This guy’s in trainin’ mode now, which means he’s going to learn what kind of varmint you are, and what’s the best way to get you zapped. That means you’re gonna have to get better too, since you’ll be trainin’ him as much as he does you.”

Hunter just gulped and nodded eagerly. “And?”

“And second, you don’t hurt the robot none either. The size you are, I don’t think I gotta worry about you punchin’ a hole in one, but these are interesting times we live in, and I can’t be sure. But I think I got a solution that oughta butter both sides of this bread.

“A long time ago, there used to be folks around these parts that had the same kinda problem you’ve got. They wanted to get better at fightin’ and feudin’ and sometimes they didn’t want to bother hurtin’ anyone else. So they’d do a thing where they’d find somethin’ worth fightin’. Maybe a big shaggy buffalo, or a feller from the next town over. Then they’d run up hollerin’ and wavin’ their axe, or they’d sneak up real quiet-like, dependin’ on the situation, and they’d get up so close that nothin’ coulda stopped that axe from what axes are good at doin’.

“And then ya know what they did? They’d take their other hand and give that buffalo or that other feller a nice fair slap, and then they’d run off to tell their friends. I reckon you can probably manage that, right? Get all the hard work out of the way early, learnin’ how to get inside someone’s guard, and just give the bot a nice push or slap. Leave the breakin’ things into a million pieces for later, when you’re bigger. We got a deal, son?”

“Yes, yes absolutely, sir.” Hunter jumped up to offer his hand to shake, giving the farmbot a quick side glance. “So how is this gonna work exactly?”

“You just got to tell it to E-N-G-A-G-E and it’ll come after you. Yell out ‘desist’ if you need a break and it’ll quit. If you knock it down or tap the carapace a firm one, it’ll quit, too.” Mr. Jenkins grinned as he backed up further onto the porch, then nodded at him. “Go on then, give it a try.”

Hunter took a calming breath this is, finding the right rhythm as he squared himself gonna be, settling into one of his favorite stances so bad. He rocked from heel to toe as he made sure he was in balance, holding the fingers down fingers up position, and then calmly said, “Engage.”

The robot stayed ominously quiet as it rushed at him, its four legs thumping at the dirt in an ungainly manner, reminding Hunter of a puppy barrelling across the yard. Awkward as it may look though, it was fast and before the boy knew it, it was sweeping one of its spare legs up diagonally toward him, and he barely had time to notice the blue arc lighting up the open pincer oh there’s the crackle before he had to move. Hunter stepped forward smoothly and flipped the handkerchief, the back of his right hand sliding underneath the attacking clamp and deflecting it upward. He only let himself have a moment of triumph before he shifted his weight back toward the reverse sky and ground greeting, but before he was halfway through, a second, sparkling robot limb swung in from his blind spot and shocked him right in the side.

He thought he’d scream but all he let out was a strangled urk kind of sound as he tumbled to the ground, landing on his side with a grunt before rolling onto all fours. He coughed up some spit, then somehow remembered he was still fighting, rolling again and just out of the way as one of the metal arms slapped the ground with a soft thump of dust. Hunter managed to get onto his backside, scooting away from the robot and its menacing, swinging lightning hands with a scramble of his arms and legs. Just when he thought he was going to take another zap, he managed a deep enough breath to yell out, “Desist!” before promptly falling over onto his side.

Jenkins was already up and halfway across the yard, muttering “Damn it, Dale, that was what you shoulda expected,” by the time his bot sat down on its haunches, calmed. He knelt down by the boy, who was curled up, convulsing, but when he rolled his body over to check him, it wasn’t from shock or sobbing.

“Oh man, oh wow! I gotta do that again!” Hunter practically howled with laughter as he sat up. “I mean, can I go again? I didn’t do that great that time, but I got ideas.”

He fought the robot all afternoon, only stopping when he couldn’t catch his breath from laughing again, and then for good when it was time to head home for supper. The score, if he remembered correctly, ended at Humans 2, Robots 13, and Hunter figured that was pretty respectable considering he wasn’t allowed to use his wizard stick. Mr. Jenkins said he’d come up with a solution for that by next time, though, so he was pretty optimistic he could get things closer to level soon. He spent most of the walk home reenacting the fights in his head, particularly proud of the time he accidentally swept all four legs out from under the bot while doing squat with your leg out, and tried to come up with a plan to do it on purpose next time.

At the dinner table, he was bouncing and animated, barely even letting on that he’d been shocked all over by a murderous not really farmbot. The boy quickly felt his energy draining by the end of the meal, though, and excused himself for an early bedtime, dragging his feet on the way to his room. He checked the messages on his tablet and giggled softly at his friends’ responses to his earlier proclamation.

You have entered the [cool kidz of Willard] messaging group.

[smashbot Schmidt]: out doing something stuuupid. talk ltr

[FBGuillen]: ugh, ok. stay safe, lemme know wat’s up.

[skEllieton witch]: whaaat? w/o me? u jerk! >:[

[skEllieton witch]: that’s an angry face, 4 when ur angry

[skEllieton witch]: mom showed me how to make all kindsa faces, i’ll show u ltr

He sent a quick message back, “didn’t die, tired, might die ltr. tell you all abt it tmrw,” and then flopped into bed. The last thought he had before drifting off, aching and wondering what electricity does to a human body, was that morning exercises were going to be extra hard the next day.

Somehow, Hunter managed to fit twice-weekly robot fighting into his routine without wearing himself to the bone, but he started to really appreciate lazy Sundays with his friends. They’d sit around and chat, or just enjoy the companionable silence, or usually argue about what Infra classes were the best in what situations. The older they got, more and more of their focus seemed to be on official, Infra-recognized adulthood, even when they weren’t in class or their personal training sessions. Even his mom, who usually tried to veer discussions away from his eventual integration, started to mention some tips, especially during morning exercise.

He learned, in a very offhand manner, what things he could pick up in a variety of environments to replace his staff, the kinds of people he should in no way ever even begin trusting, what articles of clothing work best in multiple climates, and more. Hunter was all but sure that his Secret Fighting Genius mom had lived a very interesting life, either before or after the apocalypse happened.

So, as time went by, he got older and he got better at the things he’d been working on, and somehow he grew comfortable with the idea that the future was coming at him as fast as it usually did. By the time he was nearing thirteen and winter had hit Willard, he could comfortably take on two of Mr. Jenkins’ robots at the same time, either with his bare hands or the padded plastic staff he used to practice, and he was learning to fight three. School was going, as it did, and while he wasn’t shooting for head of the class or anything, he thought he did alright. He even thought he was getting along pretty well with his dad. While he wasn’t learning anything that seemed to do with actual farming on the scale that the redoubt practiced, he was picking up a lot about how to grow things and the forethought it took to have enough to eat every year.

Then the disaster in Plano happened, and everything seemed to go off the rails.