Ok. so it took some editing work, but here it is volume one of Dan's shoppe of Oddities:

https://www.royalroad.com/amazon/B071F6F52N

please consider supporting me(and special thanks to those five people who bought the book in the first five minutes it was out...)

now then, lets do a little preveiw of the next upcoming novel shall we?

(Have yet to figure out a name for this one...)

The funny thing is, you always hear that you never know what you have until you lose it. Everyone knows the saying; it is one that has been lost to the antiquity of human culture. As long as we have congregated together, this saying has held true.

Loss is something hard for anyone to cope with. Loss of property, dignity, or God forbid the loss of a loved one.

The toxic smell of smoke, burning flesh, and blood drifted. And the tears, the salty taste of tears as they slid down her face.

“No, not like this. Reese, please God, not like this… ” she wailed, as he looked up at her and smiled, or at least what was left of him. He had only one limb remaining, his right arm, and with a shaking hand he reached up and brushed back a strand of her hair that had fallen loose.

“Ah, sorry, I got blood on your face,” he laughed lightly, but she knew, he was in pain, and it hurt her. He was making light of the situation, like he always did in the tough times, it was one of the many things she loved about him. “Well, I’m gonna have a hard time making you that house on the beach you wanted; hard to drive a nail and hold a hammer with only one hand, huh?” He laughed, and when he did blood streamed out of his mouth, staining the short blond beard he had always been so proud of. “We might have to find a contractor.”

“Stop talking Reese. Please just, don’t talk,” she was able to choke out.

“Let me talk, this is the last time I’ll see you, I want it to be something joyous, not mournful.” He smiled again, he just kept smiling.

“No! We will get you patched up. The A.R.C will be here soon. You’ll get through this.” She could hardly see him through her tears. They both knew it wasn’t true, she knew, there was no coming back from this, not when they had to wait for help to arrive.

“Ari, I need you to promise me something,” his voice got stern. She wiped away the tears in her eyes and focused on his face, he was covered in blood and ash, but those eyes those clear blue eyes still shone with the same light that they had when she had first met him. “When I’m gone, I want you to move on. You have so much to give someone.”

“You know I can’t do that,” she whispered.

“Stubborn, always so Goddamn stubborn. Can’t even grant a dying man his last wish, that’s why I love you so much, hehe.” And with that he closed his eyes.

“Reese?” she asked, she already knew the answer, but she still had to ask, “Reese?” She put a shaking hand on his face, but there was no response, “I can’t Reese, I can’t, because I love you.” Tears and blood mixed as she leaned over and placed her forehead on his and gave him one last kiss...

She sat up with a start, breathing hard, the cool wind blew in through the broken window letting her feel exactly how wet her face was. It took a few seconds to get herself oriented, this was far from the first time she had relived that moment in her dreams.

She also doubted it would be the last.

She regulated her breathing, bringing herself back to a calm. She turned her head and looked at the man whose leg she had just been using as a pillow.

Well, perhaps not a man. He was a third generation Bio-Android, created using Reese’s brain post mortem.

Bio-androids, or Biros for short were a subject of controversy, in fact if you looked at it they were the reason the entire world had become a warzone.

World war three in the most literal of terms.

Their creation had brought about a fracture between people. They were entirely organic, they were by biological design human, everything, there skin, there bones, everything except their brains. They were at the core A.I.s, mapped from the human brain. They sent electronic impulses through it, mapping out its every detail and then converted it to a digital format.

He had all of Reese’s memories, his personality even.

“Can I put forward a petition to change my name to Reese, so I cannot feel so jealous of my donor every time you fall asleep?” he joked, but she could see the hurt in his eyes.

He had the same blue eyes.

“Motion denied,” she chuckled, “Sorry,” she said as she looked down at his leg, there was a wet spot where her tears had fallen.

“It’s fine,” he said, he leaned back against the heavy concrete wall of the building they were currently squatting in. if you could call it squatting, after the war broke out and subsequently ended the entire world was thrown in chaos, no one bothered with laws anymore, at least not here in the L.A. Boneyard.

“How much food do we have left?” she asked, she ran her hand through her raven black shoulder length hair.

“Three days,” he said, he pulled out a can and opened it up using the flat of his blade under the pull tab. Once opened he skewered one of the small sausages inside and popped it in his mouth. “Next time we find food we are leaving it behind if it is these,” he growled as he chewed the meat, he skewered another of the salty sausages and offered it to her.

“I’ll pass, thanks.”

“To hell you will if I have to eat this shit for the hundredth time then so do you.” he growled, pressing the sausage up against her non opening mouth.

“I don't want it!” she said, but that was her fatal mistake, as she opened her mouth the piece of meat shot into it, and before she could spit it out he covered her mouth with his hand and tilted her head back. “Fine, fine i'll eat the damn thing!” she growled. “Stupid Blain, acting like my mom, you know I don't need to be fed right? I can do that myself thanks.”

He actually didn’t have a name. His designation code was BL89E, when they had paired her up with him they had called him that, it was just so damn impersonal. And she could never call a man that was a replica of him by a serial code, so she had just started calling him Blain.

But that was a long time ago, back when the two of them were part of the military, there was no military anymore, like everything else it had fallen to shit.

He smiled and skewered another sausage, “Here comes the airplane, open up the hanger.” he said with a laugh in his voice.

“Asshole,” she said, but there was a smile in the corner of her mouth. “Give me that,” she said as she snatched it out of his hands and took a bite of the overly salty packaged meat. She sighed, “What do we do now Blain?” she asked, “where do we go?”

“We go wherever we need to,”he said simply with a shrug, before he stopped moving altogether. “Heavy assault suit incoming, South-Southwest, and it’s coming right for us.” He stood up, looking exactly like Reese, only taller by over a head and a half. He even had that same blonde scruff. He grabbed the matted, gray combat armor, a relic from there past service to the country and slipped into it, covering his torso and neck, before grabbing the helm and slotting it into place.

Ari followed suit, equipping her own gear and grabbing the 5.56 ap. assault rifle she had stashed in the corner. The rifle he grabbed was actually an anti-armor material revolver rifle, something usually mounted on vehicles or bolted to the ground, but in his hands it was no different from a rifle in anyone else’s .

“Blain, how far out are we talking?”

“300 meters and closing. New tech; not prewar. It doesn’t sound the same.”

“New tech?” she raised her eyebrows. Who exactly had the resources to build new assault suits? There was no more centralized government; it was a wasteland out here, as it had been for the last 3 years that she and Blain had wandered. “Are you sure?” He looked over towards her. She couldn’t see his face behind the steel gray visor of the helm, but she knew him well enough to know the look he would be giving her right now. “Fine, fine, I trust you.” Of course she did. This was Reese. Even if he was not the same as before, it was still her Reese, he was just called Blain now.

This was one thing they disagreed on; Blain saw himself as a different person, something or someone new. Even though he had all of Reese’s old memories, he saw him as a donor, someone whose loss gave birth to him. Ari on the other hand, couldn’t help but look at him and see Reese. He was Reese. She even would have called him that had he let her, but at first he had only allowed her to address him as BL89E, and had finally given into letting her call him Blain.

He propped the rifle on the edge of the window. “Tango in sight, lethal or not?” She bit her bottom lip.

“Disable the suit. I would like to know who has been shadowing us for the past few days,” she said, before kicking open the door and disappearing outside into the evening shadow.

“Roger,” he said, before regulating his breathing and sighting the mobile armor suit in his crosshairs.