Vroom. Truck Kun revved as the door leading from his cab to the little girl’s bedroom opened, and the little girl, scruffy, unkempt, and still in her pajamas and clutching a mug of coffee, shambled in and plopped into the driver’s seat.

“Goooood Mooooorning,” the spirit moaned, “Woooooo…”

The little girl groaned.

“Would you please stop doing that,” she said as she picked up a crumpled pack of cigarettes and opened it with her free hand.

She frowned.

There was one left.

“Buuuuuuttttt Iiiiii’m hauuuuuunting yoooooouuuuuu.”

“Yooou are getting on my fucking nerves,” the little girl grumbled as she successfully managed to put the last cigarette in her mouth and light it while remaining attached to her coffee.

“Thaaaaattttsss theee pooooiiiiinnnn— Hey!” the spirit exclaimed as a crumpled pack of cigarettes flew through his head and bounced off the side glass. “Don’t do that! It feels weird!”

“Stop cosplaying a douchebag, then.”

“I’m the douchebag?” the spirit huffed, “You fucking killed me!”

“Are you still going on about that?” the little girl asked as she drew heavily on her precious last cigarette. “(relaxed exhale) You gotta let stuff go, man.”

The spirit looked at her, completely dumbfounded.

“Are you listening to yourself right now?” the spirit demanded, “You killed me!”

“I kill a lot of people, man,” the little girl replied as she looked out at the countryside rolling past. “Don’t feel special.”

Vroom!

“Sorry,” the little girl replied as she took another drag, “We kill a lot of people,” she smiled and patted the steering wheel.

“You are such assholes!”

“That’s a bit harsh.”

“Harsh? Harsh?!?” the ghost yelled, “You took my life!”

“Yeah,” the little girl shrugged as she finished her last cigarette. “So, what? It wasn’t like you were doing anything with it.”

“What?”

“You heard me,” the little girl replied as she turned to face him. “We don’t pick people at random. You were picked for a reason, and that’s not a compliment, by the way.”

“You don’t know me! You don’t know my life!”

“Mortimer Butler,” the little girl said as her eyes faintly glowed, “Age, nineteen. Occupation, none. Residential address, your parent’s basement. IRL friends, none. Online friends, four. Hobbies include anime, hentai, playing the same two games over and over, and…”

The little girl made a face.

“…edging. The only skills you have developed are playing Cloudrim and touching yourself.”

The ghost dimmed a little and looked away.

“Your greatest contribution to the world was some mildly amusing rage comics. What, exactly, have we taken from you?”

“Fuck. You.”

“No, seriously,” the little girl said. “Think about it. You were already a shut-in and a NEET. The only thing we have taken away is your pee bottles and the need to bathe. You don’t have to worry about school, a career, your parents constantly on your ass for being the worthless fuck you were, or anything else ever again.”

“…”

“You don’t even have to sleep. You can spend eternity watching anime and listening to shitty audiobooks. Hell, I bet that, with a little practice, you will be able to play video games, too. We figure out how you can jerk off, and your new unlife will be complete.”

Vroom?

The little girl made a distressed face, looked out the window, and sighed sadly.

“Truck Kun, we’ve been cut off. That means that either that realm has been destroyed or that our master has raised the firewall. That means that the master is gone or that he’s… gone. Either way, if we haven’t heard from at least Trixx by now…”

Vroom.

“Yeah,” the little girl said grimly. “That means that we need to start thinking about what we are going to do… long term. We might be stuck here for a long time, maybe forever.”

Truck Kun’s engine made a whining grinding noise.

“I don’t like it either,” the little girl said, “And I hope I’m wrong, but it’s been days now. You tell me, when has that happened before?”

Vroom.

“Exactly,” the little girl said as she polished off her coffee. “This isn’t some minor hitch like I was trying to believe…”

She choked up a little before gritting her teeth and getting a grip. She couldn’t fall apart, not now.

“We have to face facts,” she said as evenly and calmly as she could manage, considering the fact that their god had abandoned them, “There is a high likelihood that master is, in one way or another, gone for good…”

She drew her knees to her chest, hugging them.

“…and we are not important enough to come back for…”

A single tear rolled down her cheek.

“We… are easily replaced. He will just make more of us.”

Vroooooooooooooooooom… Vroooooooooom…

Unable to hold it together any longer, the little girl burst into tears, too.

***

It’s impossible to cry forever, even if you want to, so the trio just traveled in silence for a while.

The spirit could endure the silence no longer.

“I was thinking,” he said, “you have a point.”

“What’s that?” the girl asked with a leaden, dead voice.

“If… and I can’t believe I’m saying this…” the spirit said, “If you… overlook… the fact that I’m dead and you killed me… This isn’t that bad, at least not for me. You’re right. I wasn’t doing anything or going anywhere.”

The ghost laughed ruefully, and hauntingly, the first truly scary thing he’d done. “My life sucked. Even this is an improvement… I honestly don’t care that… Wait. I don’t care that I’m dead?!?”

“Corporeal disconnection,” the girl said in a flat emotionless monotone, “You have lost connection to your body, including your brain. A lot of what you call emotion is tied to that body. Body gone. Mood juice gone.”

“You sound funny.”

“I can switch off my emotions,” the little girl said. “I was having trouble with them, so I just put them on pause while I catch my breath and try to figure out exactly what the fuck we are going to do.”

“Switch off your emotions?” the ghost asked, “Are you a robot or something?”

“It’s complicated,” the little girl said flatly, “Both Truck Kun and I are created consciousnesses bound to artificial corporeal foci. It is the gross oversimplification of gross oversimplifications, but, based on your appallingly limited knowledge of well… anything, the closest I can come to communicating what we really are to someone like you is to tell you that we are androids.”

“You didn’t have to be a bitch about it,” the ghost pouted.

“I am not being anything,” the little girl said with that same dead tone. “Not now. This is my default setting.”

“Well, then your default setting is as bitch.”

“Considering who built me that is completely (pop)”

The little girl twitched oddly… and then blinked.

“Woah,” she said, shaking her head, “I haven’t gone full Barbie in a while. Sorry, dude…”

She paused and looked skyward for a moment.

“I can do better than call you stupid and ignorant,” she said, “Not that it’s wrong,” she added with a grin, “but I can do better. You know on Star Voyager, they have those replicators?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s kinda like that. My consciousness was written, and then my body was built around it. Truck Kun was made the same way. Each time we are sent to a new world, we get a new body to match.”

“So, this isn’t the first time you’ve done this?”

The little girl laughed.

“Oh, no,” she chuckled, “Truck Kun and I have been doing this for centuries. Where we do it changes, but what we do does not. I’m the lure. He’s the hook.”

Vroom!

“You back with us, buddy?” the girl asked.

Vroom.

“Now that everyone’s here,” the little girl said, “I’m calling a meeting.”

Vroom?

“I still don’t know exactly what is going on,” she said, “but we’ve never been cut off this long before.”

Vroom. Vroom vRoom vrooM.

“Well put,” the little girl said, “I have nothing to add. Let’s put it to a vote.”

“Wait,” the ghost said, “What did he…”

“All in favor?” the little girl said, raising her hand.

Vroom.

“Wait.”

“Two votes yes, one abstain,” the little girl said with a clap of her hands. “Moving on…”

“Wait just one goddamn minute!”

“(sigh) The floor recognizes the representative from the state of Dumbass.”

“Why did you say I abstained?”

“I was giving you credit for not being a moron,” the little girl replied. “Only a moron would have voted no. I was doing you a favor.”

“That’s not how this works!”

“It is where we come from,” the little girl replied. “It’s nice being able to have a voice, isn’t it?”

“But…”

“Moving on,” the little girl said menacingly.

“Could you at least tell me what ‘we’ agreed to?”

“Fine,” the little girl huffed, “We all just agreed to acknowledge that we have been disconnected from our master, and that plus the fact that you are clear proof that there is no way to deliver the product…”

“The product?!?”

“Please stop interrupting,” the little girl said officiously, “Since there is no way to deliver the product, we will cease harvesting operations indefinitely, pending contact from our master or one of his representatives. This is in agreement with our directives since we have been strongly cautioned concerning leaving disincorporated consciousnesses like you scattered about. That gives us the wiggle room we need to stop production. We don’t have to keep killing.”

“You didn’t want to kill me?”

“Not really,” the little girl replied. “But it is what we were made to do. It’s our sole purpose for existing. We find candidates, and we deliver them. We don’t really think about it.”

She shrugged a little.

“But, I mean, it isn’t nice,” she said, “Would I rather have given you a box of cookies? Yes. Am I what you meaties call ‘losing sleep’ over it? No. Still…”

The little girl sighed.

“I would much rather just drive around, you know. We’ve driven past all sorts of really neat stuff over the years and never stop to look at anything.”

Vroom.

“Really?”

Vroom!

“And Truck Kun has always wanted to be a food truck…”

The little girl looked out the window for a moment.

“That could work!” she exclaimed, happy for the first time since their abandonment, “A food truck! We could drive around and be a food truck! You can be a food truck, and I can see the world!”

Vroom? Vroom vr Vro om.

“We can just hire some adults,” the little girl replied, “I can sound like a grown-up on the phone,” she said with a friendly, deep, male voice. “And payroll wouldn’t be tough… after I play ‘catch a predator’ a couple of times.”

Vroom.

“Never said I didn’t,” the little girl smiled wickedly, “It’s nice when you can make money with your hobby. Besides, I’m out of cigarettes.”

Vroom?

“Oh yeah,” the little girl said and turned to the ghost, “What do you want to do? You are welcome to stay with us, but we aren’t going to chase after you again if you want to split.”

“I’ve been thinking,” he said, “Before I died, I didn’t really want to do anything. Now that I’m without my body, I want even less. Hanging out with you guys and living the NEET dream sounds like a pretty good deal to me.”

“Happy to have you,” the little girl said, “If nothing else, misery loves company, and we do sort of feel responsible for your unlife… considering the fact that we murdered you and all.”

“Water under the bridge,” the ghost shrugged. “At least you won’t freak out if I ask you to play a video for me. Besides, your plan sounds fun. Hey! I can be a shut-in, see the world and not have to talk to anybody all at the same time!... I can’t believe I’m saying this, but… um… Thanks for killing me?”

“I know the feeling,” the little girl replied. “I would have never thought being abandoned was a good thing, not in a thousand aeons… buuuut…”

Vroom!

“You said it,” the little girl said as she patted the dash. “Let’s go to the Grand Canyon first! Ooo! Pick out some dangerous stops along the way, someplace where an innocent young girl can grab a pack of smokes or two.”

Vroom!