Industrial Evolution

He retreated, but in the maelstrom he had to have staggered in the wrong direction. He found himself right up close to the machine that clawed out of the earth, and the crackling blue energy reached out for Frank Socol.

The vehicle crawled onto the level surface of the desert. The lightning vanished, allowing the clouds of sediment to settle like sifted flour. A light breeze carried the lingering dust away from Jack’s Earth Drill.

The hatch opened.

“Holy smokes! It’s hotter out here than at two thousand feet!”

Jack Fast slid out of the hatch feetfirst and stood blinking in the powdery sand, then saw he was not alone. “Hey, cool!”

Fastbinder emerged, merely happy to be alive and back on the surface of the earth again. He found his son examining the blackened, burned remains of a human being perched alongside JED.

Frank Socol was kneeling, his arms stretched out to either side, as if frozen in a state of worship. The static discharge of the earth drill had burned and blackened his flesh and bones halfway through his body.

The false idol to which he was praying was the gleaming, spotless earth drill.

“You like yours extracrispy, Pops?”

“No, thank you.” Fastbinder, to be honest, was nauseated by the remains—-and now he was worried about who else might be around.

“Don’t worry, it’s still early. Nobody for miles,” Jack explained. “Let’s go shopping!”

Fastbinder saw they had surfaced alongside Route 66. Miles to the east along this road were the abandoned remains of his own precious museum.

This place was also on a similar deserted stretch of Route 66, with the quiet mountains rising out of the dry earth a few miles behind it. It was old, but not a bad-looking retail establishment.

They emptied the antique, hand-built wooden shelves of This Little Piggy Market. They took over-priced foam coolers and filled them with everything from the refrigerated display cases.

“Told you, Pops,” Jack said as they each navigated a shopping cart through the desert weeds. “It’s too early for tourists.”

Fastbinder held up a small box of his favorite sugar-glazed popcorn snack. “Zees Screamink Yellow Zonkers would be a dollar and ninety-nine cents at zee zupermarket, but he was zelling it for six bucks U.S.”

“You talk like a real kraut when you get worked up, Pops,” Jack observed.

“I like zis place very much,” Fastbinder admitted. He typically restored antique machinery, but he could see that a lot of love and elbow grease had gone into restoring the market. The expensive furnishings in the living quarters, and the spotless new Land Rover parked in back, proved that This Little Piggy was quite profitable.

As Jack was tossing groceries in JED’s hatch, Fastbinder used the boy’s mobile phone to reach his lawyer in Cologne, Germany.

“Herr Fastbinder, I am so glad—”

“Shut up and listen. There is a property I want you to buy for me as soon as possible.” Fastbinder described the market.

“A grozery store?” his lawyer asked. “Eet duss goot bizeeness?”

“A tourist grocery store,” Fastbinder said. “And soon it will be zeetop tourist destination on zee famous American Route 66.”

Jack Fast was grinning. “Pretty savvy, Pops. Americans love this kinda bizarro unsolved-mystery stuff.”

“And zee Finns,” Fastbinder reminded as he ducked back into the earth drill. “Never underestimate zee buying power of zee Finnish tourists.”

Jack’s Earth Drill rolled into the tunnel and the flashing of lights didn’t appear again until it was a hundred feet down.

Nobody was there to witness its departure. Frank Socol, late owner of This Little Piggy Market and Gift Shop on America’s Historic Route 66, was too extracrispy to notice.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo and he was tossing people out of an airplane.

“Three, two, one, go!” He hoisted the skydiver through the open floor hatch with one hand.

“Ten, nine, eight!” Remo said loudly over the wind and aircraft racket, staring at his watch.

“I will exit under my own power,” declared the next skydiver, words muffled by the helmet enclosing his entire face.

Remo, who took his job as jump coordinator very seriously, shook his head. “Six! No room for error five! Four!” At zero the skydiver jumped, but not before Remo gave him a quick shove that sent him spiraling away from the plane at an unplanned trajectory.

The next skydiver curled his lip as Remo counted down the next jump.

“You touch me, I kill you,” the squat, powerful-looking man called.

“Four! Eat shit ’n’ die three!”

The skydiver stepped through the hatchway on three, only to find himself dangling in the thin subzero wind just outside the belly of the aircraft. The jump coordinator was gripping him by the harness in one hand as if he were holding an alley cat by the scruff of the neck.

“One! Wait for it, zero!” Remo released the jumper with a twist. The skydiver with the bad attitude went flopping end-over-end toward Earth.