It didn’t matter then, but it mattered now. Morto watched as Leopard, the sly bastard, slid his hand stealthily on Patricia’s leg. She and Leopard were talking with members of the Revenants, an ancient rebel team renown for their efficiency in fighting the machine. Obviously, as Morto figured, they were trying to play it out and see if they could join the Revenants. But he and common sense both knew that to join the Revenants, you needed more than a smile and promiscuity.

As he sat at the back of the underground bunker bar twirling his empty shot glass in the dim light, he couldn’t imagine a better scam. Those two, man, you just couldn’t…trust. He realized that Patricia had even left her husband to be with Leopard, leaving also three kids, and, if it meant anything, a damn dog. Leopard himself didn’t need to leave anything behind, because there was nothing to leave to begin with; he was a drifter who got what he could when he could.

Personally, well, obviously, Morto didn’t trust him. It wasn’t because he hooked up with every female that was willing, even corrupting those innocent virgins with his finely tuned suave tactics, but personally…he didn’t trust him. Maybe that was part of it though: if he could seduce a woman, he could trick a man…and, if so willing, could sell out that man to the enemy. Deceptive personalities made Morto’s blood boil. Suddenly he heard glass crack. Looking down, he could see that he accidentally crunched the shot glass in his hand. That night at the bar, he left two bits of flattened metal on the table before re-surfacing to the torn world above.

In the remains of Lost Vegas, Morto rode his bicycle fast. He hated Lost Vegas: the smell, the look…even the people ticked him off. At least, though, the sidewalk was fairly decent. While buildings crumbled, dogs ate at the dead; at least the sidewalks were decent. A man in an overly huge coat suddenly crossed into his path. Morto’s disc breaks were a little worn, so when he tried to stop, the bike slid as far as to brush the man’s side. The man jumped back from being touched, and pulled out a pistol and pointed it at Morto.

“Relax, buddy,” said Morto glaring at the man, who finally submitted and hobbled away. As Morto himself left the scene, he wondered what the most popular drug was now on the market. These days, there were so many drugs that anyone could find just about anything for any given price. Yeah, sure, Morto could checkout too. It wasn’t as if he wasn’t tempted, but the of laying prostrated waiting for something to kick his ass just didn’t suit him. He needed all the intelligence possible to stay alive. But, as he knew, intelligence wasn’t all that kept him alive, but it helped. In his backpack now was a dinosaur of a book. It was dated…in around the 1800’s; a time in the world that Morto couldn’t even fathom to try to comprehend or visualize. This book was…he jolted because of a pothole in the cement, his bike nearly skidding into a pillar…the book was called The Story of Liberty, by Charles C. Coffin. As rain pattered into his eyes, Morto wondered how this guy got three parts to his name. What was the C for anyway? How’d he get a last name? All he could understand was that the 1800’s held far more differences than the present.

Something snagged his back tire, causing him to catapult forward and roll across the ground. As he painfully looked up, he could see that there was a wire hooked onto the tire, and two men on their noisy motor vehicle revved their engines and sputtered towards him.

“You just got snagged, you stupid son of a bitch!” said on of the men, poking his head outside his shattered window.

They put their noisy beast to a halt, then the other man, the passenger, hopped out and ran over to Morto’s bike and unhooked the cable. With a nod, the driver pulled a lever and the cable retracted back into the vehicle.

“Why the hell you using one of these things?” said the passenger to Morto, as he lifted the bike and looked at it.

Morto slowly got to his feet.

“I mean, what the hell for?” With a quick movement, the man threw the bike in front of the vehicle, and the vehicle jolted forward and ran it over.

As Morto looked at his crushed bicycle, he realized he hated Lost Vegas a lot more than he thought.

“Kill it,” said the passenger, and the driver cut the power to the vehicle, and for a time all three simply listened to the engine die out.

“Tell me,” said the passenger taking out a pistol and pointing it toward Morto. “Are you a gambling man?”

“No, I prefer to be robbed on the streets, like so.” Morto took out one of his several stashes of money that he held on his person, with this particular stash in a wallet, and gave it to the man.

The man flipped through the money, appeared pleased enough, then looked up at Morto.

“Good answer, son.”

The man walked back to the vehicle, the driver revved the engine back to life, and the two drove off in a cloud of smoke, leaving Morto alone to reminisce about the good days when he used to ride a bike.

The explosion threw Morto sideways and crashed him into an abandoned car’s window. Glass slit across his throat, and he painfully held his hand to the area. His ears, too, poured freely with blood. A fragment of something caught his eye as the explosion settled, causing everything that was caught in the blast to come back down to the earth gently, or in this case, harshly. Laying prostrated on the ground blind, deaf, and unable to speak, clasping one hand on his throat and the other one over his eye, he wriggled around and tried to think. ‘God,’ prayed Morto, looking up at the smoky sky with his one good eye. ‘God. Please…deliver me from this.’

He fainted in pool of his own blood. His face collapsing into a small pothole that filled with his blood like a swimming pool. Had a man named Ralphus Lancaster not sped by on his motor bike and decide to stop and put Morto on board and take him to his underground bunker far away to his wife, who was a doctor, Morto likely would have drowned in his own blood. But as it were, Ralphus was a good man. But more, he was also Morto’s brother; neither of them would know this until Ralphus took Morto to his wife and laid him next to the fire.

“Hold it, Ralphus.” “I’m holding it!” He’s bleeding from there too, cover it!” “These damn bandages!” “Alright, I’m sealing it… keep him steady!”

Outside the bunker, the world tore itself apart: man fought machine, man fought man, everyone fought everyone. Inside the bunker, Morto fought himself, and stayed alive in the process.

“Brother Ralphus,” wheezed Morto, looking at amazement at his brother. “When was the last time we met?”

“I believe,” said Ralphus leaning back in his scrap metal crafted rocking chair. “I believe it was after we found that stream in California 6. We got separated when the place was bombed again. You remember that don’t you?”

Ralphus’ wife, Sarah, came over from the other corner of the underground bunker that served as the kitchen holding her son, Stanley. The entire bunker itself had no separated rooms; it was more a large room, or fairly large room, that was sectionalized simply by appearances.

Morto watched his feet lay on a rug that was in front of him. Already he loved the place he was in. The rampant poundings of artillery was less, and it was warm, and well carved out with smooth walls. All in all, it was homely. Because his own childhood was dominated by his father always taking his kids on the go, never staying put for any long amount of time, the change of pace was…inviting. Suddenly he realized he remembered something, and he lay back in his cotton-padded chair thankfully; any memory from the past meant he knew more about himself, and that gave him confidence. He closed his eyes.

“So you don’t remember that?”

Sarah put her free hand on Ralphus’ shoulder. He looked up at her holding his son and smiled, then looked back at his brother. Morto sat huddled up in his blankets, bandages and all, fast asleep with a smile on his face.

Early the next morning, Morto left Ralphus and his wife without saying goodbye. He traveled the entire day to a bunker that he was heading to all along; the bunker was going to be a meeting place for a new rebel team, and he didn’t know what they were naming it…but truthfully, he didn’t give a shit. Bunnies, Cobras, Cupcakes, it made no fricken difference. He breathed in heavily, and then realized the chemicals in the air could be affecting his mood. He tripped on a clod of destroyed machine and tried not to curse aloud-not just because he wanted to stay kosher- but because he didn’t know what could hear him. The machines were creating more and more technology that was sound advanced, able to detect everything from the last insect on the decaying Earth.

Finally he reached a man named Joe, and he was led to the underground bunker. He was told that the team would meet him shortly, or in a while, depending on conditions of travel. Joe closed a vaulted door behind Morto as he headed toward a well-used couch. As he plopped himself down in the sofa, he realized he was very tired.

Ralphus Lancaster? How the hell did his brother get that last name?

Morto had no last name…or was it that he didn’t have a first? Either way he was a man named Morto, and as of now he was waiting for his team of rebels who would fight to the death against an evil scientist named Dracu and his horde of terrible and beastly robots; he waited in a shelter that was of his friend’s: he enjoyed the peace the shelter gave off because in the world now the state of peace was often unheard of: lasers, missiles, flame-throwers, and all sorts of murderous destructive weapons and materials dominated the space of the atmosphere.

Morto’s mind slipped into a relaxing stupor that allowed him to think of things he had otherwise tried to forget, or that he had simply forgotten. His first commander was a real gentleman. He was religious, a very vigorous Christian believer. Morto had to admit that some of that commander’s faith had rubbed off on him in ways he could not have suspected.

The first time Morto flew out with him nearly all the crew was killed after shuttle hounds shot the ship down. Morto was in love then, with the assistant pilot, but she too was killed. He knew that without that commander’s prayer and wisdom, Morto probably would have gone out, done something incredibly reckless, and would fill a trench like the rest.

That commander, that damn commander, was like a father to Morto. But now he was dead, Morto was alive, and the whole mess started over again. He waited for his team of rebels, even though somehow everyone one of them would die and he would be left alone again, to fill in a space in another group of survivors.

Dracu, how Morto hated that name. He remembered studying a little bit of history in his earlier days, and he came across a figure named Hitler. Yeah, Morto could compare Dracu to someone like Hitler: psycho, brainiack, mass murderer.

How people became, he thought, flicking a toothpick he was using to clean his teeth straight into what appeared to be a garbage. He started to gaze around himself, and suddenly realized how humorous everything was. He was in an underground bunker, various noises of who knows what echoed with the shakes and shudders of who wants to know what that caused sediment and other things to just pop, drop, and break all over the floor.

But Morto had a couch, so he was thankful. He felt little tremors running throughout the couch, and for that reason he guessed the rats were also thankful. It was funny that the only types of animals he had ever seen were various species of rodents, of all different sizes. If he were to consider himself a hunter of animals, he knew he could never get himself much of a trophy. But if ever he did see something bigger though, perhaps like a deer he’d read so much about, he knew he wouldn’t kill it; because it would be too damn beautiful.

A knock at the door brought his teeth to a grind. Knocks couldn’t be trusted: a knock meant friend or foe…why wasn’t the password being said?

Screw it, thought Morto, grabbing his Repulsion Charger 601. He aimed the weapon at the door and tweaked the diameter aimer.

“Say the password you bastard!” Morto was poised, ready.

“Hemlock grows on a Saturday morn,” the door echoed back.

Morto pulled the weapon back and walked to the door.

“My apologies First Squadron Leader Ellis.”

He unbolted the locks and typed in the code to call off the lasers.

“And a fine morn it is!” Morto swung the door wide open. ‘Oh,’ he thought to himself, ‘they use voice enhancers now.’

A hot gust of plutonic energy pulsed through Morto’s body. He let go of the door handle. He let his knees crumple to the floor. He let his last breathe seep out of his lungs.

But his body wasn’t left there in that bunker to rot, nor was it left for any passerby to bury, but rather, it was collected. After realizing Morto’s disappearance, his temporary rebel team replaced him with a man named Leopard.

Morto hovered with eyes glazed over. He couldn’t see, hear, or feel. He wasn’t supposed to think, but he began thinking. He wondered why gravity defied him; he wondered why his life was continuing on, in blackness.

He was in a holding tank, filled with a type of blue gel. Any movement resulted in an instant shoot of pain that rang all the way through the spine and fingertips. Unconsciously, his brain had told him not move due to this shock, but now that he was awake, he had to relearn the message. The pain was so excruciating, that he began to grind his teeth. Grind his teeth? Suddenly he could feel his fingertips. His eyes tried to push through the blue gel, to bench the weight of its formula. Blurry at first, he began to see activity beyond the glass of his holding tank. Figures…humans? Objects in hands… guns?

A bright flash filled every corner of his peripheral, and suddenly he could hear. The noise came screaming at him and seemed to enflame his eardrums to the point of bleeding. The gel, glass from the tank, and Morto spilled across the floor in Laboratory 09, an experimenting facility created by Dracu.

As Morto wiped caked formula out of his eyes and ripped out a piece of glass from his elbow, he found himself starring eye to eye with one of the most infamous rebels to the cause: Rex Malcolm. Morto knew that this man would set nukes off all across the world if the probability of an incinerated Dracu was but slim.

“Good morning,” said Morto, trying to ease the tension between himself and nearly a hundred armed rebels surrounding him, not to mention Rex.

“It looks like you guys did a hella good job infiltrating this place, I don’t see a single robotic mechanism alive, that is of course, except for that.”

Morto gestured towards Rex’s bionic arm.

“She does her job well,” said Rex. “I reckon she could work well against you.”

Rex quickly shot down towards Morto and grabbed him by the throat with the bionic arm.

“Tell me, are you betraying The Cause?”

Morto gagged for breathe, then kicked Rex’s legs from under him. Rex released his grip as he fell backward to collapse on some rubble.

“My legs aren’t robotic,” said Morto, “but they do their job well too.”

“You’re a nuisance Morto,” said Rex getting up hastily, “and I have never condoned to your methods.”

“What?” said Morto, also shifting to his feet. “Preserving human life?”

“War calls for the appropriate measures… War is about victory!”

“War is about the people! Particularly the ones that get caught in the middle of it...”

Rex pointed a bionic finger at Morto. “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem! And I instigate that message to my men.”

There was a pause. Morto suddenly realized he was in the buck.

“Dammit,” said Morto briskly walking over to one of Rex’s dead men and taking from him his overcoat, pants and boots.

“One day I wish that they would have the decency to preserve a certain…manner.”

Rex smiled at Morto through slitted eyes. “They’re machines. They can’t feel, and would care less about the ‘decency’ of…manner.”

“Hmm,” said Morto taking a rifle from the dead soldier and checking the ammunition. “Sounds like a few humans I know.”

“Watch yourself, Morto.” Rex turned around and his men began to follow his lead.

Rex turned around. “By the way, they’re cloning you.”

Morto’s heart stopped.

“Check the back, that’s where we stored the bodies. A few may have escaped, and one day I might accidentally kill you thinking you are one of them.”

“How intelligent are they?” asked Morto.

Rex turned away, and continuing his leave. “I don’t know.”

Suddenly Morto remembered that he been shot with a Cutter 601 and he had…to his vague recollection, died. Opening the overcoat, he could see where the plutonic energy had pulsed through his body; there was white scar tissue. He rubbed some of the blue gel that was still on his arm and sniffed it.

“Formula 405,” said Morto, shaking his head. “Now that’s expensive.” He grabbed a small vile from a charred laboratory table and crouched down and started scooping up some of the healing agent. “I never thought I would live to see this stuff, yet alone have it used on me!”

After the vile was full, he tore some fabric from his overcoat and stuffed it into it to create a seal.

Morto got to his feet, and slowly turned around towards the back of the laboratory. The building was huge, like a warehouse, and the thought of excavating it for some of his clones seemed...Morto let a grin cross his face. Seemed interesting.

Checking the rifle once more, he let his boots crunch on glass, bits of metals and other materials as he began towards the unknown.

“Listen to me. Listen to me!”

In the dark confinement in the back of Laboratory 09, one of Morto’s clones shook his head and smiled, clearly irritated.

“Listen t