The afternoon sky over Red Creek Park was a deep steely grey, the clouds so low they seemed to nearly touch the tops of the trees. In the light wind the pines threshed softly back and forth with a dry rustling sound that was only amplified by the thin, insubstantial air, turning big and hollow. The misty scent of rain lingered everywhere, and a thick summer heat seemed to press over the dry grass like a blanket.

A truck drove slowly along the main road of the park, towing a line of yellow dust behind it. It cornered a turn and disappeared down a side road, and the dust kept travelling straight ahead, crashing into the log walls of the manager's office and bursting in all directions until it settled on the trailers nearby. A few women stood in the doors of their trailers and watched it go, not minding or not noticing the dust. One girl leaned against the frame with one bare foot resting flat against the inside of her opposite knee, her toes absently kneading the flesh. Her expression of apathy was mirrored on many of the other park residents now puttering about the compound, seeing to their garbage or loitering in groups near the comfort station. It was just one more truck taking up one more space in a trailer park that was already showing signs of being uncomfortably full.

Dan and Julie's trailer still sat at the west end of the park, over by the picnic area. Already it had remained there long enough that the grass beneath it was beginning to wilt from a lack of sunlight, while the weeds flourished and crept raggedly upwards. Its tires were crushing furrows into the earth, and clippings from the mowed lawn next door were spattered against its white side. The two lawnchairs still sat out next to the front door, and the green awning remained pulled down to provide shade. Dead orange needles that had been shed from the crooked pine tree were beginning to gather on the fabric. Over the weekend the trailer had quickly developed a tired, worn-in look, as if it had been there for a matter of weeks, and not days. By the next Sunday it would look as if it had always been parked at Red Creek Park, and its settled inhabitants were never planning on moving it.

Inside the trailer the humidity hung motionless in the air. The smell of cooking grease and burnt stove elements seemed to be lingering longer than it usually did, and the sour overtone of socks and cut grass was mingled with it. The heat preserved the cocktail of small odours and held them firmly in place; Julie had propped open the screen door with the heel of a running shoe to invite in the breeze, but even the wind seemed to balk at the doorstep, driven back by the wall of hot air inside.

The trailer was dim and gloomy. Soft grey shadows swathed the interior. All of the lights were switched off to avoid distributing any further heat from the bulbs, and the yellow curtains were drawn tightly in the event the sun poked through the clouds later in the afternoon. The windows had been pushed open and latched in place, but the only thing to brush against the screens was the occasional wasp. Behind the curtains the rude buzz of its wings would be muffled and soft, and then it would zip off again.

Very little else was moving inside. A sultry hush had fallen over the interior. The clutter lay strewn and immobile. A small stack of plates sat untouched in the sink, along with a few sticky knives and forks and glasses. Toast crumbs dotted the galley counter, and a mysterious orange powder lightly dusted the dry washcloth folded over the facet. Empty plastic pop bottles made an uneven row against the window. The bananas were yellow and spotty.

THUMP. The dishes rattled slightly, and inside a tall glass a knife quivered on its tip as heavy footsteps rumbled across the galley floor.

Dan sat in the living room. He was slouched down on one of the little sofas with his bare legs stretched underneath the dining table. An unfolded newspaper lay on the table, and a TV guide was on top of that, next to Julie's ring of keys and a ballpoint pen. At the low angle he was sitting at he could see a gritty scattering of salt and pepper on the table as well. They had eaten rice and meat pie last night, and Dan sourly remembered that he had dumped liberal amounts of both seasonings to flavour his. Then there had been the strange grey tubes mixed up in his meat as well, which had required him to spend extra time picking them out while the whole dinner cooled around his fork. Julie, of course, had just shovelled hers down without noticing. It had been an unspectacular end to a very dull weekend.

Now he was wasting away a Monday afternoon in an old Guess Who T-shirt and boxer shorts, and nothing else, tired and grouchy and resenting the trailer and everything in it. His brown hair was dishevelled and his eyes felt paunchy. Even his eyebrows were rumpled. Thin lines of irritation had turned his face into a dry riverbed. Whenever he yawned his throat seemed ready to splinter and crack.

A plastic bowl with macaroni and cheese slopped in it sat on his stomach. Dan was half-heartedly picking at it with a fork, and chewing mechanically. He had forgotten to drop in a teaspoon of butter when he had added the powdered cheese mix to the wet pasta, and so the whole thing now tasted vaguely of cardboard. Dan was eating it because he had just woken up, and he was hungry, and he couldn't bear the idea of opening the fridge and coming face to face with a chunk of cold leftover meat pie mashed up in plastic wrap. Tubes and all.

THUMP, went the galley, as if punctuating its agreement to that unspoken thought.

Dan stared blankly into space as he poked another clump of macaroni into his mouth, and contemplated the morning traffic on Highway 10. The radio sitting on the windowsill next to him was switched on, and he recognised the voice of the woman who had cheerfully rattled out traffic reports as they drove along their route into Newport. Dan listened absently and stirred his fork around the inside of the bowl. From the sounds of things there had been a nasty accident just outside of town last night. It had only been discovered this morning when the sun had come up and early commuters had spotted the tracks of the car leading off the road, and then the car itself. It had smashed itself to pieces against a tree, and the two people inside were both found dead amidst the wreckage. Dan couldn't rouse the energy to care. At that moment he was more interested in hearing Rush than traffic statistics.

The fork hit his teeth like a tine. Dan stared off aimlessly, then began to lightly hum the tune to Tom Sawyer and stabbed the orange mound on his stomach for another tasteless mouthful.

THUMP, went the galley.

"Take that, you little shit," it added after a pause.

"What can you tell us about local sports, John?" trilled the radio.

A dead mouse appeared right in front of Dan's face. Nose pointed down, it rotated gently from its tail until one of its bulging black eyes drifted into view and screamed its frozen mortal agony directly into his own.

"Look what I got," said the voice from the galley.

The lump of macaroni Dan had been in the process of swallowing leapt back up into his throat and immediately congealed there.

He choked.

"Julie, get that out of here!" Dan sputtered, coughing bits of pasta up onto his lips and banging one of his big toes against a metal table leg. "Dammit!"

The blonde girl appeared in front of his watering eyes. This time his gaze wasn't drawn to her naked legs or her white T-shirt, but went directly to the tiny corpse dangling from her outstretched fingers. Its head had been rather emphatically crushed by a heavy object, the skull so badly flattened that both pink ears now touched. The jaw was bent and twisted, the eyes popped out. Four front incisors shot off in four different directions.

"Don't worry, I used my shoe," said Julie, misinterpreting his expression of horror.

Dan wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and set down his bowl on the table. He sat up straight and stabbed the fork into the macaroni and left it there. Disgust radiated from every inch of his face.

"Why are you giving it to me?" he said.

"I'm not," said Julie. She lifted up the mouse and spun it by its tail, getting a closer look for herself. "I just wanted to show you I got it. No more lying in bed and listening to late night scratching in the walls. Kind of a cute little guy, isn't he?"

"I really didn't need to see that while I was eating," said Dan.

"Sorry."

Dan recoiled and gestured angrily at the mouse. "I thought you promised you were only going to stun it and toss it outside!"

"You try stunning a mouse with a running shoe. Have you seen how fast they move? I could barely touch it."

"You could have just caught it beneath a bowl and slipped a plate underneath!"

Julie looked aghast. "And wash extra dishes?"

"I didn't want you to kill it," growled Dan. "I just wanted it chased outside."

"Well then, I'll sit back and let you deal with the next one," said Julie testily, and sloped off towards the front door with the dead mouse swinging back and forth in her hand like a lantern of incense.

Dan leaned forward and put his face into his hands. Then he slowly scrubbed then down towards his chin, stretching out the bags underneath his eyes until he felt stubble rasp against his fingers. His skin seemed like warm putty, and he was reminded that he still needed to walk over to the comfort station to take a morning shower. Between sleeping in late and a lacklustre lunch, it had slipped his mind to properly wash. Even in this pervading heat a blast of hot water in his face and hair would be a welcome treat. Soap and shampoo and toothpaste seemed like precious luxuries that were only to be found in a building that was a hundred feet away.

The dead mouse had left him with the feeling that the trailer was slowly turning rank. He was almost afraid to stand up for fear of hearing the brittle crunch of a cockroach underfoot. Food lurked out of his line of sight and accumulated weird smells. Clothes were now dirty things that lingered in corners and trapped him in a thin layer of unwashed grime whenever he pulled them on. From where he was sitting he could look across the trailer and into the bathroom and see Julie's bathing suit still squelched up inside the sink. He shuddered to think what it was cultivating so long as it sat in the dark and the damp in a ball like that. And then he shuddered to think that that was where he had brushed his teeth a few days ago.

Across the trailer he heard the screen door creak open as Julie leaned out and tossed the mouse off into the grass. Dan wasn't particularly worried about what their neighbours in the next trailer down would think of the spectacle of his pretty half-naked girlfriend excavating small rodent bodies from their homestead. He had already spotted their dumpy little white rat dog using their patch of lawn as its personal toilet several times anyway. On Saturday night the two children living in the camper down the row were caught throwing plastic bottles at a motorcycle parked under the crooked white pine tree. And twice Dan had stepped outside and sat in one of the lawn chairs to get a breath of fresh air, only to spot the older woman in the trailer across the road standing framed in her front window with a tube top and underwear on, and very little else, her hands on her hips and her belly thrust forward as she looked up and down the road with unashamed interest. Dan had hurried back inside shortly after the second incident. He hadn't liked the way her eyes had passed over him.

The more refugees from Oregon that flooded into Red Creek, the smaller everyone's bit of personal territory became. People were closing in from all sides, packed into one another like sardines. There was little room left for privacy. And tempers were shrinking as rapidly as the free space.

Now he could hear the screen door banging shut, and the ring of Julie's bare heels against the floor as she stomped off into the bedroom they were sharing. Dan felt a stab of guilt as he looked down into his macaroni and cheese. They had been fighting on and off all weekend themselves, mostly over little things like dirty socks or broken plates or misplaced books. In the heat and boredom they had become waspish and curt, and spent little time talking. Dan had retreated with the radio in his free time, and Julie spent hers messing about in her truck. Neither of them had got much cleaning done, because that was a job they typically shared, and neither of them had felt very inclined to spend much time together. Even when they were asleep in bed they had kept to their own sides, and pushed the covers into a warm knot in between them.

The mouse hadn't helped matters either. It had nosed its way into the trailer at the exact wrong time, just when things were getting their tensest. At least when they were asleep they had only kicked one another. When they were wide awake and lying in bed and irritably listening to the scrabble of tiny claws galloping up and down the galley floor at two o'clock in the morning they had felt obligated to engage in small talk. The weather had not been the popular subject.

Ever since the first night of chewed up bagels and ragged holes in cereal boxes Dan had suspected that Julie wanted to kill the mouse outright. He would have been happy with trapping it and letting it loose outside. Even the mouse droppings scattered over the same counters they prepared their food on hadn't changed his mind, although the last night gnawing almost had. Before this Dan would not have guessed that such a tiny rodent was capable of making so much noise. They never got mice back in his parents' home. His mother would not permit such intruders upon her spotless house. And never before had he felt such a powerful urge to grasp a helpless little animal by the tail and smash it up against something hard until its head cracked open. The urge had left him feeling vaguely ashamed of himself for thinking such violent thoughts. Now he was just annoyed that Julie actually got to play them out without displaying a hint of guilt or remorse.

Without warning the girl appeared, strolling out from the direction of the bedroom and the galley. She was wearing shorts now, and pulling a little white shirt over her head, tugging it down over the top of her hips to smooth out the wrinkles. Slung across one shoulder was her purse. Her blonde hair was down around her neck, but as Dan set the bowl on his stomach and watched she gathered it up and snapped an elastic around it. A few tugs with both hands secured the ponytail tightly against the back of her head, and then she glanced over in his direction.

"I'm going out for a little while," said Julie.

Dan tried to look as agreeable as possible. He laid the fork flat across the top of the bowl. "Where are you heading?"

"Just to the mall," she said with a shrug.

Dan hesitated. This was the touchy part. They had been so snappish all weekend that he was well aware it would only take one misplaced word to spark off another squabble.

"Are you going to be gone very long?" he said.

Julie shook her head. "Maybe a couple hours."

"When will you be back?"

"I don't know. I just want to poke around for a little bit. I'll be back for dinner."

"Is there any gas in the truck?"

"Yeah, I've got enough to last the rest of the day. I'll get some more on the way back."

"I thought we were watching how much money we spend," Dan said carefully.

"I'm not buying anything at the mall," said Julie, looking at him squarely. "Just looking."

"Oh."

Dan wasn't convinced, but he didn't want to start anything, especially when she looked so alert and he felt so thoroughly tired and encrusted. He couldn't help but notice that her hair looked very sleek, and he bitterly guessed that at least one of them had made it into the showers this morning. Julie always looked nice and clean, even when she was in the middle of dusting or washing the truck, or on her knees in the bathroom pulling hairy clogs out of the drain with nothing but her bare fingers. She had such pale colouring it seemed to glow directly through the dirt.

"Why, did you want anything?" said Julie.

Dan lifted his hands. "Oh, no, I'm okay."

Her gaze grew critical as it ran up and down his body, taking in the rumpled shirt and the boxer shorts. "I could pick you up a few nice shirts, if you like. Yours seem to be getting kind of ratty."

"I like my shirts, don't throw away the money," Dan muttered. "Go get yourself a few if you want."

"I'm fine," said Julie dismissively. "Is there anything we need while I'm out?"

Dan hoisted his bowl. "I could go for some more Kraft if you go by the grocery store."

"More yellow death, got it," said Julie dryly. "Anything else?"

Was there anything else? Of course there was. Nowadays was always something they needed that neither a parent nor a roommate was going to provide. They were almost out of juice and fruit, salt was dwindling, the expiration date on sliced meat was fast approaching, and most of the cereal needed to be tossed out thanks to the mouse. One of the towels had a big hole in the corner, Dan's socks were turning spotty at the heels, and the curtains were bleaching to the colour of milk from the sun. Razors were turning dull, shampoo was mixed with a little water to make it last longer, and the bar of soap in the washroom was shrinking into a sliver. Toothpaste, toilet paper, laundry soap, crackers, air freshener, soda, hot dogs, eggs, scissors, can openers, gasoline, batteries, mouse traps: all items that were in short supply.

Dan wanted playing cards. Julie wanted coffee. The trailer wanted Windex. There were dozens of little day-to-day items that they all wanted, but didn’t necessarily need right away. Items that had seemed so mundane before Portland, but all quietly contributed to the smooth procession of an ordinary life. But in the space of three days after the robots appeared the ordinary lives of so many people had been abruptly, violently wrenched away, and now those same trivial little things were now seen with such petty importance that their absence made daily routine that much more difficult.

And then that just meant that they got into fights about things as silly as misplaced spatulas, little things that would never really have bothered them before, while outside the trailer perfectly ordinary people who had never once thought particular ill of their neighbours were silently coiling up over the matter of who had dumped their garbage beneath the public picnic tables…

“I think we’re okay,” said Dan. “Don’t worry about grabbing anything, it can all wait until we do another grocery run.”

“Sounds good,” said Julie.

She slipped her hands into the pockets of her shorts and frowned. She patted down her back pockets, then picked up her purse and held it between her fingers and gave it a light shake. When nothing jingled she turned to look back at Dan.

"Have you seen my keys?" she said.

Dan reached forward and scooped her ring off the table and flicked them in her direction. The shiny keys splayed out in midair, and then Julie clapped them between her palms.

"Thank you, sah," she said.

"No problem. Hey!"

Dan was staring down at the unfolded newspaper on the table. It was Friday's paper, and Julie had doodled in the margin with the ballpoint pen the last time she was talking on the portable phone. The articles in it were already two days old. He couldn't help but notice that although Portland had been destroyed almost two weeks ago, its horrific story was still scrawled out in bold headlines across the front page. Even in Montana people were still desperate for more news out of the stricken Oregon.

The radio was still playing softly in his ear. A crashed car, two dead people, probably driving home for dinner after a long day's work...

Dan quickly glanced up. Julie was looking at him curiously.

"Yeah?" she said.

"Actually, I just thought of something," said Dan. "Could you grab me a paper when you're in town?"

Julie appeared surprised as she flipped through her car keys. “Okay, I can do that. I’ll nab one when I get some gas. That’s it?”

“Sure,” said Dan. “Have fun in town.”

“Will do. See you for dinner.”

The blond girl slid her bare feet into her sandals and stepped out through the door, her golden hair bouncing and shining behind her. On the top step she looked out across the trailer part to the left and right, then paused and turned back to face the screen. It made her look grey and dirty as she shouted through it.

“And do you want to take a shower and pick up some of your clothes while I’m out?” she added, leaning forward with her hands shading the sides of her face. “It’s starting to smell in there.”

“Hey!” Dan shouted, thumping his feet flat on the floor as he dropped the bowl on the table. “Half of this crap is yours-“

But Julie was already waving at him with the key to her truck. Without further word she turned on her heel and sprang out over the lawn, sandals flapping against her soles and her feet making a muffled ‘whumpwhump’ against the thick grass. Dan could hear a bass male voice call out to her in greeting, and hear the jingle of her keys as she motioned in greeting, and then she was gone, retreating to her truck, which was still parked beneath the crooked white pine tree.

Dan sat in silence and fumed, his spiky hair making a cactus silhouette against the grey light of the window behind it. He pushed himself upright and flexed his toes against the linoleum floor and glared about the inside of the trailer, his eyes taking in the accumulated mess. He had a pretty good idea who would wind up shovelling most of it into either a laundry bag or a garbage bag this afternoon.

He looked down into his serving of macaroni and cheese. Half of the substance was stuck to the side of the bowl in a cooling mass.

On impulse, Dan grasped a handful of his collar and pulled back his shirt. He sniffed it.

His mind was full of music. It danced and slinked around him, thrashing and wild, its strong rhythms playfully grasping and pulling him further into its mad colour pinwheel grip.

Low beats, a steady metrical thump-thump-thump as the drums rolled out a backbone of sound, rib-tickling strokes that resounded far down in his chassis. The patient, sonorous cadence of a smoky bass guitar rode above them, unassuming, old and wise, as deep and rich as molasses. In electric strings the drawling twang of the front guitar sang clearly above both others, sometimes snarling, sometimes furious, sometimes lifting to an excitable wail, stretching itself out into a thin acid note that slid into his neurals like a needle before settling back into the swaggering melody of before, strident, drunken and challenging.

And there were voices as well, human voices, sometimes one, sometimes two, sometimes mad and nonsensical and completely unintelligible, but always ringing like the tone and echo of a struck bell as they roared out in harmony. With his translator on he could understand the words being sung, if not the message. But somehow it still managed to cut him straight to the core anyway, meaning transmitted purely through tempo and passion rather that words. He could hear the message and feel its intensity, the same way one with a mind full of chemicals would feel the vibration when they put their ear against the amplifier and let their eyes sway shut against the concert in favour of living purely in its resonance.

And he could feel every note hitting as cleanly as drops of water, or dancing feet, thousands of them, like caterpillars across his processor, spilling out little ripples of electric thought where they touched. He could feel the music streaking outwards from his radio and across his dash, vibrating through his wheel, the spinning wheel, through the wooden beads draped on his seats, through the pedals, running down and spreading through his greasy undercarriage, to be sucked up into his tires and grounded back into the earth beneath him. His whole interior shook when the singer screamed her chorus, hammering the words with a voice that broke straight through logic and proportion and plunged gleaming shards deep into his head, and he loved it, because each hole was just a window to a chessboard world that lay beyond, and that’s all stars were, really, white rabbit holes in space, and he could see that now, and trace out their shining trails back across time-

Dimly, he could hear words being shouted in the background, muffled and indistinct, drowned out by the music from his radio. They were coming from outside the smoky, dark little world his tinted windows made of his interior, separate from his leather seats and recirculated air and black rubber floor mats. Through the psychedelic haze across his mind he came to realise there really weren’t two voices singing after all. One of them was also very loud, but definitely not female, and definitely not making beautiful music.

“I said, HEY ACE!”

Dreamily, Ace flicked on his visual sensors. Immediately the front end of his car mode swirled into view. The two white stripes on his hood arrowed down the red paint and ended in a pair of black hands resting flat on the metal.

Deuce leaned down on his arms and peered irritably into the red Camaro’s front windshield.

“Could you turn down your goddamn hippy music for five minutes?” he hollered.

Ace reluctantly complied. Inside his cab the volume knob twirled itself, and immediately the music was damped down from a thumping crescendo to a mere background jingle. He briefly mourned the sensation of every one of his metal surfaces falling completely still and motionless, devoid of the shrill vibrations that had filled them completely a minute before. It made him feel curiously hollow and empty, and his audio sensors seemed to be ringing like defective speakers.

"Thank you," growled Deuce.

“Who is Alice?” Ace said.

The other journalist appeared nonplussed. “I have no idea. And keep your voice down. There is no need to shout.”

“I’m shouting?” Ace marvelled.

"Yes!"

The red Camaro quickly ran a diagnostic over his vocalisers and realised that the buzzing in his audios really was making him talk louder than usual. Feeling a little abashed he collected himself and began to take a sweep of his bearings. It was like surfacing from a dream. He was resting flat on the ground in his car mode, all four tires pressed deep into the forest floor. There were dark pine trees all around him, with some electrical equipment scattered nearby, and he remembered that he was back in the clearing in the woods. The air outside felt hot and muggy against his dirty paint, and he could see thin shreds of mist hanging further back in the trees. A damp heat was radiating up from the earth beneath his undercarriage and Ace briefly wondered if it had rained earlier that morning, despite the fact that he knew the invisible Canopy was making a thin barrier in the branches overhead to keep out the worst of the weather. Through the tops of the trees he could see patches of grey sky.

Ace swivelled his wheel experimentally, grinding his tires into the earth to test its softness. Through the ringing in his audio sensors he heard the metallic creak of his suspension, and the tiny cracks of branches snapping beneath his tread. He felt the wood bits splinter and mix up into the loose soil and loam. He was crookedly parked at the very edge of the clearing, underneath the big red pine he had taken shelter beneath a few days before. He was sitting so close to it that he could only open his right door a foot or so before it would crunch into the trunk. A few low branches brushed gently against his side windows, sweeping patterns into the dust there. In the time he had been absorbed by his radio the tree had taken advantage of his preoccupation to drop hundreds of tiny orange needles onto his hood and roof. Ace could see them standing out against the white stripes, and a few were caught in his windshield wipers. They littered the ground around him as well.

He turned his attention back to the radio, eager to catch the last minute of the song he had been listening to. The music was over, however, and the humans had moved onto commercials. So with a clattering noise the red Camaro shook himself instead, rocking back and forth on his tires. Dead needles slithered from his hood and trunk. He swished his wipers from side to side, sending more of them flying. The dust remained on his flanks, but the sleek paint beneath it was still shiny and unmarred. He had been driving a lot lately, and the dust from the roads clung to whatever it touched. Even the rain only dragged dark tracks through it rather than washing it away entirely.

Ace didn't mind. The dirt and grime made him feel as if he were doing real work, actual hands-on research on a foreign planet rather than just puttering about with theoretical study in a dingy little shelter back on Cybertron. He was actually digging his fingers through history here, or history in the making. He was standing upon terrain that no other Cybertronian had walked on before. He was listening to the cultural outlets of a primitive new species that had escaped notice and study by the rest of the galaxy. There was something exotic and dangerous about the whole thing that made all of the dust and needles just part of the adventure. It was really quite marvellous. He resisted the urge to start his engine and spin his tires, just to feel a little soil give way beneath him.

Without warning, the pressure on his hood lessened. His front shocks creaked upwards, the tires no longer flattened against the earth. Deuce had leaned back and removed his hands. The grey robot was looking at him curiously now.

"Have you had that blasting all morning?" he said.

"What, my radio?"

"Yes, exactly that."

"Oh, no, just for the past hour or so," said Ace, embarrassed. His voice rumbled up from his hood, rather disembodied and a little hollow from reverb. "I was compiling data, backing up research material, and originally just had it playing in the background for something to listen to. I guess I got a little carried away."

"Well, I'm glad to see you're reaching out to embrace the native culture," said Deuce dryly.

Ace really wasn't sure how to reply to that, so he crouched over his tires and said nothing.

Deuce was moving on again anyway. The grey robot knuckled his fists over onto his hips and gazed down at him. A few loose pine needles sat lightly upon his shoulders. Save for some ashy black carbon scouring along the leading edge of his wings and the backs of his legs Deuce looked much more clean and neat than the car did. Ace supposed there wasn't much dust up in the sky for a jet to fly through.

"Are you going to be hanging around here for the next hour or so?" said Deuce.

"I'm not sure," said Ace. "I believe so, yes."

"Did you have anything planned for the day?"

"Nothing specific, no. I was thinking of driving into town a little later this afternoon, but that's it."

"Hey, that's great," said Deuce, looking satisfied. "Okay, then you won't miss me."

"Why, are you heading out again?"

"Yup."

Despite himself, Ace was curious. He rose up slightly on his front tires, his red paint gleaming against the dark sweep of the pine branches. Deuce had been darting like a hawk in and out of their campsite all weekend. He never really gave a detailed briefing of where he was going on his patrols. He would leave early in the morning, often before the sun had risen, lifting up into the mist and clouds with dew still beaded on his wings. Hours later he would return and land in the field, perfectly dry, his hands on his hips and his expression displeased. When asked where he went Deuce would only lean back in the trees and explain with a few vague gestures that he was heading further west each day, making expanding circles through the skies over the next state. Idaho, he called it. Ace knew Idaho from the maps he had downloaded before arriving on Earth, but he didn't know what the thing itself looked like, what it felt like, lest of all from an altitude of thirty thousand feet.

Several days ago Deuce had grimly sat down and told him all about the fire that had burned down the human farmhouse in Idaho, or at least the ash and remains he had found of it. Ace had listened in horror, speaking only after the story was over. It wasn't hard for him to put one and one together and arrive at eleven; there were Autobots in Idaho. Maybe only one or two of them for now, a small unit prowling through the state on reconnaissance duty, but they were there, and they were testing their environment to gauge its resistance, and that meant that the Autobot force was becoming rapidly more aware of the alien world it had woken up to.

"Let me guess," said Ace, testing his theory. "You're going west again."

Deuce nodded.

"Back to Idaho?"

"Yessir."

"You're looking for the Autobots?"

Deuce hesitated, then nodded again. "They're already there, I'm sure of it. Oregon isn't going to hold them for very long."

"Have you spotted them yet?

"No," said Deuce, scowling. "But that doesn't mean they're not there. I told you about the fire."

Ace was silent for a moment. He didn't know what had started the fire. There wasn't solid proof the Autobots had done it, even if it was the sort of thing they would do casually, without a second thought.

"Yes, you did," he said. "It certainly doesn't seem to bode well."

"No, it doesn't, and there's more. Do you remember all of those newspapers I've been bugging you about?"

The red Camaro dipped his front end. Oh yes, that was proving quite an awkward request to follow through on. Ace had been diligently fetching newspapers for the other journalist since they had settled into their camp in the woods. Deuce had a perfect excuse for being unable to get his own - it wasn't easy for either a giant robot or a military jet to casually roll into Newport and pick up the daily paper from a newsstand - and so as the only one with a vehicle mode that wouldn't attract undue notice, Ace had been nominated for the job.

Mostly he kept to the fringe of town to perform his theft, where it was a tricky matter to crawl onto the shoulder of a little dirt road long enough to scan for traffic and then sweep up a bagged newspaper where it sat on the edge of a lawn or next to a mailbox, perhaps dotted with dew or grass clippings. He was careful to hunt for them in the late evening, or early morning, when there was few people about to catch him, preying upon newspapers that had been forgotten the day before and left outside. He took a little satisfaction in the fact that at least Deuce was developing severe lens strain trying to read the tiny human print upon delivery.

"I remember," said Ace dryly. "Why, what do they have to say?"

Deuce squinted up at the sky. He scratched his chin. "A whole lot, and it's all the same thing."

"What do you mean?"

Deuce looked down and gave him a level gaze. "You get one guess."

"The Autobots?"

"You got it. All sorts of speculation has surrounded them since they first arrived, and at the moment at lot of it revolves around the fact that apparently the Autobots delivered an ultimatum to the planet shortly after reactivating and smoking most of Oregon, and this country's military forces with it."

"An ultimatum?"

"Yeah, before we got here. We missed the whole thing, unfortunately. It was a fairly standard speech, so far as they go, and straight to the point."

"What did they have to say?"

"In short? One of their officers in command basically stated that human military resistance against their occupying forces will not be tolerated, and will be punished in kind, that peaceable daily activities will be allowed under the Autobot stratocracy. Public works, utilities, schools, etcetera, will be permitted to continue operating so long as there are no further signs of opposition."

"'Sit tight, we'll get back to you later?'"

"Sounds that way, doesn't it?"

"You read all about this from these newspapers?"

"Yes, Ace," said Deuce patiently. "The whole story is covered again and again and again on a daily basis. Human news agencies have been recycling clips and quotes from the speech ever since it was first issued. Pick up a newspaper sometime, Ace, it's all in there in black and white."

Ace neglected to rise to the dry jab, and went on. "When did this happen?"

"That's what I'm still a little hazy on. We were dropped off what, a week ago? This must have occurred at least four days before we got here."

Ace was silent for a moment. Then he said, "It's all very handy for the Autobots, isn't it? They've got Oregon to themselves, with the native military defences effectively neutralized, while the assurance that ordinary life will go on as usual will help dissuade people from abandoning the rest of the continent entirely."

Deuce raised a brow and nodded. "And from the looks of things a lot of people are taking them at face value. Refugees are flooding out of Oregon, and neighbours in Washington and California are likely feeling nervous, but for the most part there hasn't been a very big push for a mass emigration out of the country yet."

Ace's voice grew bleak. "Have the Autobots started collecting energy yet?"

"I haven't seen any concrete proof of it, but I'm assuming they'd do that sort of thing close to home to avoid spooking the natives, and I haven't flown over Oregon to take a look for myself."

"Well-"

"And I'm damn well not in any big hurry to do so either," said Deuce firmly. A flinty look came over his optics as his fingers tightened over his hips. "They're living in that crashed ship of theirs, nicely shielded by one great big mother of a mountain. God only knows what their perimeter defences are like, or what kind of anti-aircraft armament their patrols are toting around. Until someone builds me invincible against missiles, I'm not dangling my jolly bits anywhere near the snake pit."

Ace startled. "I wasn't suggesting you should," he said hastily. "Honestly, I wasn't. I was just going to theorize that if the Autobots have begun collecting energon, there may be a very worrying reason why they haven't taken any further hostile action against the humans outside of Oregon."

Deuce said nothing as he digested this, his gaze unfocused and his expression flat. Then he frowned and said, "You think the Autobots are keeping the herd calm in order to ensure they're within easy reach for a time when they'll need workers to operate their super-fryin' energy machines?"

"That would be my first guess."

The other journalist let out a piercing whistle. "It would fit their old pattern."

"It would."

Deuce glanced at him askance. "You're just loaded with cheery thoughts today, aren't you."

Ace hunched down over his tires. "It's not a pleasant thing to think about, but it's nothing we haven't seen before."

"No, you're right, it isn't," said Deuce, his lip curling slightly.

"I remember the work camps on Cybertron," said Ace distantly. "They used to tell neutrals they were moving us to shelters in order to ensure we couldn't be corrupted by anti-empire propaganda, and thus enticed over to the side of the Decepticon dissidents. You probably wouldn't have been on the planet at the time, you were probably up reporting in space somewhere. This was all happening millions and millions of years ago. But they would erect these great long energy drawing plants in stages following the front line, just like rows in a field, and then they took over all the highways and sky lanes leaning through the area, and connected everything, so you could be taken off a shuttle right away and immediately be shuffled into the combine-"

"Well, for now it's all we're working on is speculation anyway," Deuce interrupted hurriedly, clapping his hands together.

Ace's mind seem to rise from a low orbit of thought. "Yes, I guess you're right. We should wait and see what happens before getting ourselves too wound up."

"You said it," replied Deuce, rubbing his hands. "Besides, we're not Decepticons. We're not here to fight the Autobots, or whatever the hell it is the Decepticons actually do. You and I, we're just ordinary guys on the sideline, and no matter which way this thing goes, I can tell you now that we're walking out of it with a good story in our hands."

"I suppose we will," said Ace.

"There you go. So cheer up. We'll be fine. I'll admit things look pretty dicey, but if we're careful and smart we can take care of ourselves. Is that what you're worried about?"

Ace didn't know how to say that it was only the tip of his concerns. "A little, I guess."

"You said this was your first assignment on a foreign planet, right?"

"Yes, that's right."

Deuce waved a hand dismissively. His tone was breezy as he said, "Well, don't worry about it. We don't even have that much work to do here. We don't have to actually deal with the humans at all, and when the Decepticons show up they can handle the Autobots. All we have to do is dodge a patrol or two, and then sit back and watch these stupid cows stand and gawk right up to the day they're all ground up into beef. Piece of cake, a milk run. If we keep our heads down and stay out of sight, in a year or so we'll be able to wipe our hands entirely of this planet and return to space."

Ace felt a thrill of shock at the words, which weren't spoken callously at all, but matter-of-factly. A clipped smile even rested on the journalist's lips, as if he expected his assurance to be consoling.

"That's a terrible thing to say," Ace growled from deep in his engine.

Deuce seemed taken aback. "What, the beef thing or the wiping of hands?"

"The first- no, all of it!"

Deuce only shrugged one shoulder.

Ace eyed him. "I hope you don't really think that way yourself."

"Why shouldn't I?" said Deuce, his own gaze turned away.

"It's cold. It's terrible."

"Yes, well, that's how life works sometimes."

"It's irresponsible, then."

"That's funny, I don't recall signing up for the job of defending the free universe."

"We're the ones who brought this war to Earth."

"Did we? What, in the trunk or something?"

"You know what I mean."

"Not really, no. The war isn't our responsibility, Ace. We didn't start it, and I certainly have no plans on finishing it. I'm quite happy to leave the whole to people who are better equipped to handle it, and sit back, and make a note on how the whole thing pans out, while cutting my losses as best I can."

It was like boxing on a greasy incline.

"We can't just stand by and watch these people become enslaved or killed by the Autobots," said Ace. "And then write about it!"

"Why not?" wondered Deuce. "We can't do anything about it. We might as well scavenge what we can and get something productive out of the mess."

"That's gruesome."

"I never said it wasn't. But I've got my own job to do, and I'm not going to wring my hands over it."

Ace inhaled deeply and tried a different tack. "Deuce, these humans don't know what they're up against."

Deuce snorted. "You'd think after what happened to Portland they'd have an inkling."

"It's still too fresh, too recent. It's too much to absorb in such a short period."

"Yeah, well, it's not our problem if they get mulched because they're too stupid to get their act together in time to get a move on. Even a dog has enough sense to run off the road when it sees a car coming."

"You don't know if that is what will happen."

"I don't know the orbital velocity of the moon either, but that doesn't mean I want to play chicken with it."

"People are just scared."

"Yeah, and they're sitting tight, exactly as you said."

A pair of orange needles lazily spun into Ace's line of vision, shed from the pine tree above him. They settled gently on his hood, resting lightly on the red paint with their sharp little tips facing his headlights. A shiver ran through the Camaro's frame, rattling his doors against their locks. He couldn't argue that the other journalist was wrong on that point. Because he wasn't.

While Deuce watched over Idaho, Ace himself had chosen to remain behind and turn his optics to the humans here in Montana. He knew very little about them, but he was learning quickly. At first he just wanted to study a foreign new race, and put together a story that might protect others like them against the imperial advances of the Autobot Empire. But slowly he was beginning to realise that what he was observing were sensitive creatures fully tuned in to their social environment, capable of scenting out the subtle influxes of power that might alter the interspecies hierarchy of their planet - and they did so with an innate sense that was far more complex than any of his sensors.

While the residents of Newport went about their ordinary lives he lay quietly in traffic, in parking lots, on street curbs, and he watched them closely, perfectly happy to observe and not interfere. And everywhere he looked he could see the same thing: people were nervous, apprehensive, like a pack of retro rats sensing the first soft vibrations that warned of the gliding approach of a tunnel snake. They had seen the news, and they had read about what happened to Portland, and what was still unfolding in Oregon. Now they were barricading themselves into their homes and watching the state to see what would happened next. Deuce was right about that. They weren't moving. They were too fightened to run.

Sometimes it was safer to sit and hold very still and wait for danger to pass, because flight launched you into the open, triggered the urge to chase and rip and kill in the hunters that sought you, instantly made you prey. But Ace knew the Autobots. He knew they would not bother to pursue. They would simply roar forward like an eruption of lava and bury whatever was caught in their path. In this case, flight would be the only thing keeping the survivors ahead of the fire.

Ace was no soldier. He had seen no other wars save for the one back home on Cybertron, and that one was more than his systems could stomach. But he suspected that Deuce had seen much worse, and this was why he flew west every morning. He was looking for the warning signs in all of the places he had seen them before. Deuce had observed very many wars on very many planets. He knew how they germinated, erupting from small pockets of dissent into vast tangling creepers that spread their influence across a thriving world and dug into whatever purchase they could find to solidify their grip. Soon, they would begin to squeeze.

If their unspoken suspicions were correct, then Autobots were slowly panning out over the west coast, first in patrols, small movements of troops that could move quickly and quietly and attract only minimal notice as they stitched out a network of Autobot intelligence across vast tracks of occupied land. The full force would follow at its leisure on a later date. It would cut a much wider swathe behind it. They would not be able to count the burning homes left in its wake. This was only a matter of time. Neither he nor Deuce could do anything that would put a dent in that terrible momentum. It would be comparable to holding out their arms against a landslide rushing inevitably towards the little town of Newport. Maybe they could catch the first small pebbles as they plinked down the mountain, but soon their would be too many rocks to stop, and then half of the cliffside would be descending upon them. All they could do until that time was watch and wait, and be quiet and cunning and keep their heads down. And brace for whatever was coming as best they could.

But if there was a way to show people what was coming...

Before he could speak again his attention was caught by a muffled thump from high above, like the sound of a sock full of birdshot hitting a skylight window.

Startled out of his thoughts, Ace spun his tires in the direction of the noise. Dirt scattered beneath his undercarriage.

"What was that?" he exclaimed.

Deuce was looking straight up, his wings slanted back and his hands on his hips.

"Son of a bitch," he said mildly.

"What was that noise?"

"Annoying, isn't it?" said Deuce.

Grateful for a way to duck out of their previous argument, Ace said, "Why, what happened?"

"A bird," Deuce explained.

"A bird?"

Deuce was amused. "You've really been out of it lately, haven't you?"

"What is going on with birds?" said Ace, thoroughly lost.

Deuce laughed. "They've been hitting the Canopy all weekend."

"They're what?"

The grey robot looked down and grinned and pantomimed a bird with his hand. "The barrier is invisible, right? Little birdie flies in, expects to land on a nice branch across the clearing, flutters down, and WHACK!"

He smacked the heel of one palm into the opposite hand. "They run straight up against the barrier. It would be funnier than hell if the little carcasses weren't falling around the camp and attracting scavengers."

"Ugh," said Ace, his hind end swinging in distaste as he grated his tires into the earth. The red Camaro flattened himself against the ground, his optic sensors peering warily into the underbrush at the edge of the clearing. "Deuce, I don't suppose we could turn that off during the day, could we?"

"What the Canopy?" chuckled Deuce.

"Yeah."

"Are you mad? That's the only thing keeping the rain and bad weather off of us. I'm not getting wet for the sake of a few sparrows."

"Well then, how about we turn it off on clear days?"

"Why?"

Ace's patience held. "It would cut down on the number of dead birds we're accountable for, for starters."

"Oh, geeze," sighed Deuce, shaking his head at the sky. "Fine, go ahead, knock yourself out."

"Thank you."

Deuce rolled his optics and turned in the direction of the field. He paused with his feet squarely planted and lifted his chin, his gaze alert and focused. Stock still and wordless, he pointed his nose towards the edge of the woods and leaned forward on his toes, and Ace knew that the grey robot was sampling the air with his radar, scenting for traces of invisible reflected radar emissions that would warn of any stationary or approaching vehicles. This habit had become part of his daily routine, and Deuce would not leave the clearing and step out into the open field until he had scanned the area first.

Ace was more than happy to leave the job to the other journalist. The red Camaro was well aware that his own modest ground scanners were nowhere near as sensitive as those equipped on a fighter jet, a machine designed to track targets from great distances and high altitudes. At best, Ace's own scanners just kept him from bumping heads with an enemy on his own level. They kept him nicely informed of other cars on the road, but faltered over a wider radius. He wasn't meant to sweep over wild natural terrains and be aware of every creature that moved beneath him. But he could at least take care of himself on any highway across the country.

With a tolerant air Ace lay in park beneath the red pine and watched the other robot curiously, waiting for any signs of danger that would send him leaping up into his own robot mode. But after a minute or so Deuce only came down on his heels and relaxed. With his back to Ace he called back over his shoulder, "But don't expect me to go out of my way to accommodate a few birds. I'm an advocate for survival of the fittest. If you want to spare their little necks, you can be the one to get up early and turn off the Canopy."

"Fine, I will," said Ace dryly.

"Have fun figuring out which wire to yank."

"Have fun over Idaho."

"Have fun saving little birdies. Chirp, chirp."

"Watch out for those big glass windows when you're flying around up there, yourself."

"Oh, very good."

Ace chuckled, the sound rolling up from his striped hood. "In all seriousness though, try not to get yourself shot down if you run into one of those patrols."

"Trust me, it's high on my priority list."

"What time will you be back?"

Deuce seemed to think it over, scratching his chin. "Early evening?"

"I guess I'll meet you here then," said Ace, feeling better.

"No sweat, boyscout," Deuce barked. "I'll bring you back something nice."

Despite himself, Ace laughed. Deuce looked back long enough to flash him a quick grin and a jaunty salute. Then he stepped off into the trees.

There was a gaseous shimmer in the air as Deuce turned sideways and slipped between the tall red pines at the edge of the clearing, breaching the Canopy. He flicked his wings and needles scattered, peppering the soil with bits of greenery. Ace heard a soft swish as the undergrowth brushed against his legs and sides, scraping gently against the metal, and then the journalist was gone, leaving nothing but a few shivering branches behind him. As the red Camaro held perfectly still and continued listening, he realised he could pick up on the startled calls of birds that were sitting much deeper in the woods, and then hear the rustle of their wings as they darted up into the sky, fleeing the path of the robot pushing a route through the trees.

There was a long moment of silence after as Deuce moved out of range. The warm air stifled the myriad of placid summer noises coming from the thicker woods, and no wind stirred the air to make the tops of the pine trees sway together with a deep breathing sound. An impenetrable hush lay over the area, laced with the light smell of sap and sandy earth. He could look forward and see the trees, tall and solid, with fallen logs wedged between them, bristling with branches. Nothing moved in the windless underbrush, and there wasn't a gutter of dark foliage. He could look up and see a little visibility through the needles, and grey sky, and a circling hawk soaring high the forest, swinging out towards the fields with the trailing edges of its wings standing out sharply against the afternoon light. Ace watched it until it flew out of sight behind the tree tops, and then flicked his wipers once, tentatively. The rubber ends squeaked over his dry windshield, swiping half-circles in the dust.

Ace sighed and sank down over his tires again, until he could feel the scrubby earth tickling against his undercarriage. He waited until the ring of a jet engine in the empty air receded far into the distance, and then turned up his radio. Once again, he was crouched low in nature, and surrounded instantly by music.

Over two hundred miles to the southwest, beneath a wide grey sky, a single car sat on a paved driveway in a quiet suburban street and started up its engine.

It was a nice, clean car, big and shiny and red. The windows were very dark. It had backed into the driveway, so that its front bumper faced the street. It wore Oregon licence plates.

It was late afternoon when the sound lifted into the air, snarling instantly through the drowsy silence. It rose over the large square houses, and beat against their dusty windows. It went unnoticed by any of the other residents of Whitestone Drive. It wasn't that there were other sounds to drown it out, like the muffled roar of a half a dozen riding lawnmowers cutting in tandem, or the plastic whine of a weed snipper, or the rush of traffic on nearby crescents. There was simply no one outside to hear it.

Whitestone Drive extended neat and straight for a hundred yards, then turned a corner onto Southam Street. A few big trees dotted the edge of the street and spread shade over the sidewalks. The asphalt was black and new and littered with leafy debris, as if the forest that once put roots here was slowly creeping back to stake its claim over its old land. Sections of green lawn sat on either side of the street. The grass was overgrown and dry in the absence of watering, but new blades were nosing up fresh and uncut between what was left of well-groomed turf.

All of the driveways were empty, save for two. Most of the people who lived on the street kept their vehicles parked inside their garages nowadays. It wasn't safe to leave a car or a truck or a van outside when the border to Oregon was only a twenty-minute drive to the west. It wasn't that the robots would get it. They were settled deep within the Cascade Ranges, and since the day of Mt St. Hilary's violent eruption those who lived beyond the borders of the ruined state saw them only on television. But leave a car outside and at the slightest provocation, you ran the risk that your edgy fellow neighbours would find it first.

Broken shards of glass made glittering puddles around the tires of the second car, a dark blue sedan. The shards were brown, like the colour of beer or coffee. The paint on the vehicle's hood was chipped in places, but it was otherwise perfectly fine. It was parked on the other side of the street from the red car, and was also pointed towards the street. The afternoon clouds glided across its windows, the reflections bright and sharp.

Down the street, the red car flashed its lights once. Its engine settled into the growl of a lower gear as it released its brakes and coasted down the driveway. Its tires crunched over loose gravel and bits of glass as it slowly drove over the pavement.

Gathered at the end of the drive where the curb flattened out were a couple of bagged newspapers. They were damp and wilted, as if they had lain there for a very long time. Condensation dotted the inside of the bags, and the ink was beginning to blur. The car bumped slightly as it rolled directly overtop of them, crushing the plastic. It then turned out onto the empty street. Its driver did no stop to look either way for traffic. The car simply moved forward, as if he were assured of its isolation on the road.

Driving slowly, it passed the end of the driveway that the blue sedan was parked in. A few minutes later it had turned onto Southam Street without pausing at the stop sign, and disappeared around the corner. And a few minutes after that, the blue sedan also started its engine, rolled down, and followed the red car onto Southam at the same crawling pace. As soon as it pulled around the corner, Whitestone Drive was empty and silent again, save for a few sparrows bouncing restlessly in the bushes outside of house number forty-six. A shifting cloud of blue exhaust lingered in the hot summer air, dissipating unhurriedly across the street.

In a house at the far end of the street, a heavyset woman in a sundress stopped dragging her vacuum across the living room floor long enough to tiptoe across the room, her toes leaving soft prints in the clean carpet. She stood at the side of her front window, far back enough so as to not be seen from the sidewalk, and held back the curtain with the back of one hand. She watched the blue sedan as it peeled out onto Southam Street. And she wondered. She could have sworn that the Claysons had fled their home to live with relatives in South California two days ago. And drove a minivan.

The day dragged out into a late evening. In the grey sky a red sun had appeared, looking like a dim red disk that sat low over the horizon. The overcast remained behind, bereft of wind to blow it further east or west. And the dull, baking heat continued to linger over the North Pacific, sinking with the sun.

The evening light glowed down against earth so broken and dry that anything that moved stirred up a thin cloud of dust into the air, as high as a fence post. It had not taken a very long time for the rain of the week before to dry up beneath the sun, despite the humidity. Soon that evaporated dampness would rise up again, move east, mix with the cold air forced down the sides of the Rocky Mountains, and turn into high rain-heads. Within a day the fog would return, and with it a light spattering of mist that would soon swell into another heavy downpour, and everything green and leafy that flourished in the rolling land between the mountains and the Pacific Ocean would be flattened beneath the rain and turned shiny and wet again.

For now, the sky was grey and empty, save for a livid pink glow around the sun. The overcast might as well have been painted on the sky with a soft brush. The clouds moved slowly, and the air was thick with moisture. In the west the sky was already growing dark, the stars shrouded in cloud. The Rockies sat like a jagged wall to the east, faded with atmosphere and coloured a menacing violet in the evening light. The pine trees made black patches against the dusky ground, and here and there a clear-bodied lake shone brightly against the landscape like a red mirror of the sky.

Just beneath the cloud ceiling flew a plain grey jet, its black nose pointed northeast, towards Montana.

It seemed to melt into the grey clouds above it, its pale underbelly glowing a dull red where the last rays of the sun struck it. Twin contrails steamed lightly from the tips of its wings, stitching white lines into the sky. It left nothing but a shimmering haze of superheated air in its wake as its single powerful engine thrust it through the sky. Dampers swallowed most of the distinct sound its turbines made, and the altitude and the vastness of distance took care of the rest.

At thirty thousand feet Deuce cut a path through the clouds as he arrowed for home with a mind full of thought and a vague sense of disappointment.

He ran his visual sensors over the earth beneath him as he flew, alert for anything else sharing his airspace. As always he could sense the majestic gulf of open air that separated him from the ground, feel the wind from his passage coursing against his frame. Whole forests and hills and rivers diminished into interesting patterns and textures, like patches and thread on a natural quilt, and slid quickly past the ends of his wings. The great rolling shadow thrown down from the Rocky Mountains stretched right across the state of Montana, swathing it in darkness.

Against that calm tract of land he could spot the places where pockets of human civilization still laboured to survive next to their Autobot neighbours. Tiny windows made glowing clusters against the wilderness, criss-crossed and glittering in lines and grids where towns sparsely dotted the landscape. Highways snaked along the hills like strings of electric lights, darting here and there into the larger towns before streaking off into the dark countryside again. Here and there a lamp would blink green and white, a private mark to draw tired pilots in towards local airstrips. Deuce could see four white lights standing in a row just off his left wingtip, and four little red ones further up the horizon. He knew they marked the end of runways, and were designed to guide in fliers on their final approach.

And even further away a single red star of warning shone against the deepening sky, the only indication that a radio tower stood there, black and silent.

Most of Idaho sprawled out beneath his radar in dusky silence, but there were a few signs of life. A flock of big Canadian geese was winging its way south, and with a sense of superior amusement Deuce followed its journey with a flick of his sensors. It crossed beneath him as he continued north and east, the mass of thrusting birds moving towards the distant Utah at a stately pace. The grey jet watched them idly for a moment, admiring the ease of their flight and they way the seemed to float in the air. The geese made the shape of a shifting arrowhead as they flew, each arm of the V undulating gently with every beat of a wing. For a moment they stood out vividly as they passed over a lake, the outline of the flock making a sharp line against the water. Within minutes they had passed over it, and were flying across land again, swiftly disappearing over the dark countryside until only the lonely echoes of their trumpeting calls lingered in the sky behind them.

Deuce shifted in his flight path sleepily, his wings cradling back and forth. The glow from the flat red sun seemed to be lulling him into a state of hypnotic fatigue. He felt drained from another long day over Idaho with nothing to gain from it. He hadn't spotted a single curious vehicle over the state, and certainly no Autobot patrols, despite the fact that he'd flown clear out to Boise today, and then turned south along the Snake River, further than he'd ever gone before. There was nothing there, just open ground and dry mountain ranges and a few bristly forests. Even the highways had been barren, empty, nothing more than strips of tar-spattered asphalt for lizards and turtles to warm themselves upon. If Autobots had penetrated the fringe wilderness, they were keeping well hidden.

The image of a burnt farmhouse remained in the back of his mind though, a soot-black wall leaning against nothing while tendrils of smoke rose up above the tops of the trees...

Deuce knew they were there. He withheld no doubts about this. They were concealed, keeping low, prowling discreetly in their vehicle modes, as sleek as weasels, testing the undercurrents and sniffing out the terrain in preparation for an attack. It was only a matter of time before they decided to expand their territory, and in a bold, violent motion sweep more of the country into their grip. Oregon was only one small chunk of land in a generous continent rich with natural resources already tapped and waiting to be torn up from a thriving network of cities and factories and mines and oil fields reaching out from one coast to the other. One state was not a claim that the Autobots would be content to settle with. Like a butcher quartering a cold side of meat they would cut deeply into the land, decisively, and with each savage wrench carve for themselves greater portions of their kill.

He would go back tomorrow for another trip across the state, he decided, perhaps angling north towards Washington where the cities and forests grew thicker, and the nation's capital sat captive. It was simply a matter of being patient and calculating. If he was smart, and kept his wits about him, and laced his relentless drive with a healthy dose of caution, he was bound to discover something. No matter how well disguised they were, a machine as complex and alien as an Autobot laid down a rich trail of electronic scents his radar was equally capable of tracking.

Whatever had burned down that farmhouse may not have dragged a trail of ash behind it, but it would soon strike again and cast fresh smoke signals into the sky. At that point, it would simply be a matter of following the fires back to their source.

Deuce felt no pleasure at that thought, but took a great deal of satisfaction in it. This was work. This was his job, and he was doing it well. He suspected that Ace thought he was looking for signs of the Autobot advance so that they could take them back to the humans in Montana ahead of time and provoke an evacuation of the state. But Deuce wasn't stupid. He was old and sly, and knew better than to aim that high. All he wanted was first rights to the images of devastation and horror that would inevitably follow in the wake of the Autobots. The first one to find the Autobots would be the first one to claim a front-row seat for the spectacle of the next Portland. He had missed out on the destruction of the so-called City of Roses, but there would be another day and another city, and he would be ready. The faster he got his story, the faster he could take Ace beneath his wing and leave this all of this behind him.

Ace was idealistic, but he would learn. Ace seemed to think highly of responsibilities. Deuce thought a lot about them himself, enough to know that his first responsibility came to himself, and not a foreign planet that had already outlived him thousands of times over. This planet Earth had been around for over four and a half billion years, by his reckoning. It had survived and flourished despite monstrous, violent, and continuous change on a continental level. It would certainly survive the Autobots. There was no fight that he could win that would destroy this planet, or save it. But so far as he figured he could always do a little fighting to save himself.

Beautifully on cue, a target popped up on his RWS radar.

For a moment, Deuce was too startled out of his thoughts to react with anything other than pure amazement as the little green square tracked patient histories across his left multifunction display screen, lighting up his cockpit with an eerie neon glow. The journalist recovered from his initial shock quickly though, and slewed his cursor over to lock down on the unidentified target. The volume of airspace he was previously scanning was instantly reduced as his radar beam focused, burrowing in on the approaching aircraft that was obscured by cloud, but nevertheless sharing his skies.

As information was loaded into his targeting computer Deuce abruptly came to realise that it was flying at an altitude of twenty-four thousand feet, nearly forty miles out from his position, just on the ragged edge of his radar. Had he been flying even ten more degrees to the east, he would have missed it completely, the two planes passing silently in the ruddy evening. The stranger was moving quickly to the southeast on a parallel course to his own, moving at a speed far too great to be a civilian aircraft. With a sensation of numb astonishment the solution immediately presented itself: it was another jet.

Another answer fought and pushed the first one out of the way.

It was a Decepticon.

Deuce jerked in mid-flight, shaking out his wings while his nose traced twitching circles in the sky. The wind buffeting his frame suddenly seemed unnaturally loud. Feeble little angels of hope were fluttering across his mind.

Decepticons?

In Idaho?

It seemed impossible. But the target on his radar defied scepticism. It was clear and defined, and there was little uncertainty of what it identified.

This was no little Cessna Skyhawk beetling away to a grass airstrip and a comfortable barn nestled in the soft green fields of northern Montana. Nor was it a glossy single-engined Moony Bravo dashing for New York in part of a bold escape from the stricken Pacific Northwest. And the heavy civilian airliners had practically disappeared from the skies over American on the first day the Autobots had struck.

This was a jet, undeniable a fighter jet, all muscle and streamlined curves, fully loaded with fuel and thrumming with power.

There were no Autobots he knew with flying alternate modes.

But Decepticon Seekers were built and bred for the skies.

With haste Deuce stomped down a wild rush of optimism. He had heard through his own channels that a group of Decepticons had somehow been carried down to Earth with the Autobots, locked in combat with their mortal enemies right up to the point that both of their ships fell streaking into the atmosphere. Despite the careless assurance he had voiced to Ace about the Decepticons rising up to continue the fight and save the planet from the Autobots, deep down he had felt grimly certain that the rebels were lying smashed and withered in an ocean somewhere, the salt water already beginning the slow corrosion process that would eat away their bodies and leave nothing but rust and mussels behind. A week and a half of Autobot destruction and rule had not done much for his confidence in hearing the sound of proud jet engines roaring over the free skies of Oregon one day.

If the Decepticons had not stepped forward to save Portland, then in his mind they were as good as dead, or scattered, their numbers too severely reduced to provide any sort of resistance against the Autobots taking a foothold in Oregon.

An Earth jet then, perhaps from the demolished American air force?

But with an expanding sense of bewilderment Deuce realised that that seemed equally impossible. The Autobot obliteration of the native military forces had been too complete, too precise, too brutal to allow for such a thing. From what he understood all service airbases from coast to coast had been targeted and ripped apart within three days of the Autobots' reawakening, their operational aircraft wiped out and hundreds of their expensive, meticulously trained pilots killed. And he understood only too well how difficult it was to keep such complex and involved machines in flawless working order, and ready to fly at a moment's notice. It would require proper high-grade fuel to energize them, whole teams of mechanics to keep them in smoothly running, and, above all a good hardstrip airfield to launch them from. They would be nearly impossible to ferret away from Autobot surveillance, and prohibitively difficult to operate in sub-standard conditions.

And in a tense situation where the appearance of a single American military aircraft could provoke an instant and fatal response from the Autobots...

Which left him circling back to Decepticons.

There were Decepticons in Idaho.

Well, there was at least one Decepticon in Idaho, he mentally added. But where there was one, there could be more. Possibilities seemed to be exploding in Deuce's mind like fireworks. This could be one lone Seeker slipping out on a late night patrol, flying a beat over the border of Oregon to poke his scanners in a reconnaissance sweep of the Autobot forces building up in the distressed state before drifting back to join his wingmates in some protected asylum, a little island of security that might one day become a fortress.

The grey jet felt assailed with weak relief. All of a sudden he and Ace didn't seem quite as alone in a foreign new world as before.

Without further pause, Deuce briskly took stock of his position. The ground was rushing past far beneath him, but there was still enough light in the sky to make out familiar winding creeks and rivers, and the gentle contours of hills that shaped the land around the Rocky Mountains. Montana was less than twenty miles away to the east. At his current airspeed it would take him well under ten minutes to cross the border on a northeasterly route and dip back down to their campsite at the hydro tower field. If he were to keep going straight, he could be settling in beneath the trees and the bird-murdering Canopy well before the sun set, his feet up and his body reclined and his processor patiently spindling itself away into a peaceful state of contemplation while Ace prattled on about his Newport humans in the background.

On the other hand, if he made a little detour now and ducked around to follow the strange jet at a circumspect distance, nosing up into the cloud ceiling to keep his own distinctive form safely hidden, he could gather a little more information on its type and designation and make a positive identification before spinning on a wingtip and knifing back to the safety of the Montana skies. If it were a Decepticon, it might even appreciate a little friendly long-distance company, or a private hail over the radio. Deuce was becoming very familiar with the arid countryside of Idaho, and could be persuaded to share his experience about a few of the handier landmarks. A Decepticon might feel moved enough by the spirit of companionship to divulge a little information about their forces on Earth, where they had landed, what armament or defences they had at their availability, what plans they had for organized revolt against the Autobot warriors building strength in a volcano back in Oregon...

It was like scratching away at hard silt and suddenly uncovering the dry smooth end of an old bone; suddenly Deuce had the irresistible urge to bare his claws and dig and dig and dig until the whole length lay gleaming out in the open.

"I'd be stupid not to do this," he murmured aloud.

In the end, the urge proved irresistible. Deuce throttled up and stood hard on one wing, his engine blazing madly as he swung his nose around in a hard climbing turn. The earth spun beneath him, the shining red lakes whirling into circling trails. His wings flexed against the negative forces as he banked away from his flight path and sketched out a new one in the direction of the strange jet, his canopy gleaming crimson in the light of the setting sun. He pointed his nose to the livid overcast and cut up into it smoothly, his tailfin sucking trails of vapour into his wake.

A minute later the sky was still grey and the sun still red, but there was nothing to be seen for miles in all directions, and nothing to be heard but a distant billowing echo, made big and quiet by the empty sky.

Shadows slid over the country road like bars as the indestructible old Nissan pickup truck drove home for Newport, its headlights lighting up the evening air in front of it.

The road was long and empty, and the yellow line glided around every winding curve. Tall red pines trees lashed past to the right and left, the needled branches standing out vividly as a flat red sun flushed through the woods. The sky was a dark grey overhead, turned an ugly pink where the sunset still lingered in the west. In the shady gloom the pickup truck seemed nearly black, save for a halo of green around the front bumper, where the true paint was visible in the glow of the headlights. A trail of dust was dragged up behind the truck as it drove down the road. The pale cloud hung in the motionless air for a long time after the red tail-lights had disappeared around the next bend.

For miles in all directions there were no other cars on the road, and the truck was left alone to coast through the night.

The sound of the engine and the interior fan blowing lukewarm air made a comfortable pillow of sound around Julie, encapsulated as she was by the cab of the truck. The lights on the dash cast a soothing glow against her face as she drove, and she felt her hair being gently padded by the air pushed out of the vents. She had been sitting for so long that the seat had moulded around her back and thighs, cushioning her in a snug and cozy grip. Her left foot rested flat on the floor, and her right foot pressed firmly against the gas pedal, her bare toes basking in the warmth thrown out by the heater. She was leaning far back against the seat with her arm against the window, steering with the underside of her wrist. Blue fingernails tapped lightly against the wheel in tune with the radio.

A green sign on the side of the road glowed briefly when it was caught in her headlights, then vanished back into the night as it went whipping past. It had appeared long enough for her to read that she was only twenty miles out of Newport now, and closing in fast. Julie settled back into her seat with a feeling of drowsy contentment, and watched the road rumble away beneath the front of her truck. By the time she had found a gas station open this time and pulled over to refuel, and maybe grab a cup of coffee and a chocolate bar, she would be looking at a half-hour drive to get home to Red Creek Park. That would leave her plenty of time to curl up and enjoy a quick dinner of beer and chicken fingers in front of the radio with Dan. Maybe she could forgive him for breaking the handle off her favourite mug, and he could forgive her for leaving his copy of The Wayward Bus in the bathroom, and they could get back to being friends instead of a chilly couple.

Then for the rest of the evening they could hide behind the living room curtains and laugh at the folks in the trailers next door as they fought over the barbeque pits. Beneath the glow of the moon and the patio lanterns, just past the screen door, dozens of little petty dramas were playing out every night on the gravel rows and spit grass lawns. Julie's personal favourite had been the pair of brothers who were hijacking air conditioning units from abandoned houses and piling them in the back of their truck. Or the big man with the shaggy beard down on row eighteen who had been storing stolen gin in a plastic wading pool, up to the day he caught the two Texan boys in the Royal Motor siphoning it with a garbage bag and a green garden hose. Brown bats and June bugs weren't the only things to come out at night. Julie reflected that it would be nice to sit back and watch other people fight for a change.

A peace offering sat on the seat next to her, wrapped in tissue and a plastic bag. Her purse sat on top of it, the strap coiled by the handles. It rustled whenever she hit a bump in the road. Julie hoped it would fit him.

"Now I'm falling," she murmured along with the radio, beating a tempo with her fingers hand. "From her skies."

A yellow and black checkerboard sign rushed through the headlights, there and gone again. It felt to Julie as if the truck were flying through the dark woods. The only sense of weight it gave was when it shifted around a curve in the road and its tires gripped the pavement. She could see dusty prints on the asphalt ahead where another truck or car had passed a long time ago. A pair of eyes shone like lamps in the ditch, and she caught a brief glimpse of a fat racoon lumbering into the trees, its fur heaving and rolling and its tail dragging flat behind it.

A twist of her thumb nudged up the volume of the radio, and then her hand returned to the wheel. Julie yawned, blinking lazily as she peered at her reflection in the windshield. It had been a long afternoon, and she would be grateful to finally peel herself out of the truck and out of her sweaty top and shorts, and wash the dust of the road from her body before slipping into a nice cool flannel shirt. The first thing she would do when she got back was collect her towel and shampoo and pad barefoot across the park to the comfort station, where she would take a nice long shower in an empty stall. This was the dinner hour, and there would be few people in the building, which meant no awkward waiting in line with matronly old women in spandex pants just to claim a sink. Then she could brush her wet hair and her teeth, grab a magazine from the rack in the lobby, and dash out the front door, fresh and clean, darting nimbly across the lawns for the trailer before the man in the Rambler Imperial caught sight of her legs again-

Julie reached out to turn up the radio again. This time she caught herself doing it and held back her fingers, listening carefully. The song that was playing through the speakers seemed muted and faint, and after a minute she realised it was because the cab of the truck was filled with a peculiar rushing noise, like the sound of a distant vacuum cleaner running in the background.

Frowning deeply, she gripped the wheel with her left hand and with her right turned down the heater. The warm air blowing against her face and legs immediately stopped, but the noise continued unabated. She twisted the knob back and forth for a minute, then turned it off entirely. She sat back with her hand in her lap, perplexed. The noise kept rumbling through the truck in long sustained waves, and then with dawning understanding she realised that it was coming from outside of the cab.

"Oh, what's wrong with you now?" she growled at the truck, and leaned forward over the wheel, her foot relaxing on the gas pedal as she slowed down and listened intently to the sound of the engine.

It seemed ordinary enough, even to her untrained ears. Julie couldn't hear any peculiar rattles or hiccups in the usual throaty drone of the moving parts beneath the hood that might warn of an impeding trip to the mechanic.

Her fingers wrapped over the stick shift, her foot kneading the clutch. She stomped down on the gas pedal, hard, her toes flattening out against her sandals. The truck leapt forward as if goosed, its tires digging into the road. The engine roared, but the strange noise still persisted in the background. If anything, it seemed a louder now than it was before.

Muttering in annoyance, Julie rolled down the side window and leaned out into the night. The warm air streamed through her hair and snapped her ponytail back and forth like a flag as she cocked her head and squinted down the road, her eyes watering and her ears tuned into the sound of the truck. For a minute or two she could feel the power of the vehicle coursing her arm where it lay across the windowsill. She could drink in the crushed balsam smell of the pine trees at the side of the road, and hear the shriek of the wind and the drumming of all four tires as they wore down the pavement. The summer night seemed to fold around her. Then a beetle drawn up from the ground and pulled hypnotically into the headlights shot directly into the soft flesh of her inner arm. With a startled yelp of pain Julie recoiled sharply and pulled her upper body back into the cab.

The strange noise was all around her now, amplified by the open window. There was a shrill edge to it, like a teakettle full of steam. Julie felt her heart beating rapidly with the first stirrings of real unease when she realised that she couldn't pinpoint the noise; it seemed to be swelling out of the woods and the evening sky, growing larger and louder by the minute, crashing over the road in a rolling crescendo. She wiped the back of one hand over her forehead and tried to concentrate on the road.

The truck began to shake. The pens on the dashboard jittered in half circles and fell straight to the floor, where they rolled underneath the seat. The cassette tapes clattered down after them, and the pieces of paper they had been anchoring fluttered up against the windshield, flattening briefly against the glass before they were sucked towards the open window. Julie tensely batted them out of the way. She couldn't hear the flap of the paper over the noise now, which drowned out every other sound inside the truck. The song on the radio had long been swallowed by it. Even the familiar sound of the engine had disappeared behind the phantom roar blasting out of the night.

The vibrations that had taken hold of the vehicle beneath her shivered the muscles of her thighs. Julie could feel them resonating deep in her bones. Every tooth seemed to be humming inside her head. All of the windows were rattling, and the speedometer lights danced before her eyes. Beads of sweat dotted her face. Her blonde hair writhed madly against its elastic, whipping her cheeks as it was caught up by the wind howling past the open window. She wrapped both hands around the wheel and clenched her fingers, her knuckles flaring white. Every twitch of the suspension was transmitted instantly into her taut arms. The truck felt jumpy against her hands and feet, like the asphalt was cracking and leaping up underneath its tires. It was all she could do to brace her legs into the floor and keep the front wheels aligned with the road.

But years of driving experience still made her gaze flick up to the rear-view mirror.

The sunset was directly behind her now and glowing like a hearth full of cinders, its dying light shining vibrantly in the quivering glass. The trees on either side of the road stood out against the red sky in looming silhouettes, making a natural black hallway. Julie had just enough time to spot a great dark shape gliding swiftly down the middle of it, like a giant bat with outstretched wings. Then it was upon her.

Julie's scream was engulfed by thunder as the black shape roared overhead, red-hot and spraying blazing fuel. Noise pounded through the cab, a moaning wail that erupted straight into the blonde girl's head. The roof of the truck seemed to buckle as the thing tore past, sucking a bellowing tornado of branches and dirt in its wake. Its vast metal wings spread out over the road from one ditch to the other, and it swooped down ahead of the truck with its nose pointed over the yellow line, lighting up brilliantly as the headlights struck it. It was descending into the earth with an unhurried majesty, so big it completely filled the windshield. It wore a wreath of smoke around its tail, and dripped a trail of sparks behind it.

For a minute the air around Julie shimmered and blistered like gas in a barbeque as waves of heat buffeted the truck. Her skin felt like melting plastic, and she was forced to close her eyes and duck her head between her forearms to block out the scorching air, the tears on her lashes turning instantly into steam. A few seconds later the truck began to swerve out of control as a whack of wind crashed into the back of it, crumpling the tailgate. The rear tires scythed hard as the vehicle was hit and thrown into a gentle spin, the rubber burning twin black crescents into the asphalt.

Numb with horror, Julie huddled against the wheel while her stomach hurled acid into her throat and her seatbelt cut hard against her shoulder. All she could feel was the disorientation of drifting through a half circle, a brief sensation of weightlessness, and then a rolling bump as the truck left the road and ploughed through the soft gravel on the shoulder. A sheet of dirt and leaves was carved up and thrown into the air, spattering off into the trees as the old Nissan dropped off the shoulder and skidded sideways down the ditch.

An image of it rolling and tumbling over and over again until she was crushed flat shot instantly through Julie's mind. But a moment later there was a squealing impact against the right door that brought the truck up short, and a sound like a bursting pop can. A window shattered, and the air suddenly turned sharp and glittery with flying glass. Julie felt the driver seat buck upwards beneath her as the truck rocked onto two tires, and then another jarring bounce as it crashed back to earth again. And then there was nothing but a motionless calm, a subtle darkness, and a soft and metallic ticking sound at the edge of her awareness as the truck's exposed engine met the night air and cooled, the popped hood bent in the middle like a pup tent.

A long time passed. The red glow faded from the sky, and clouds swept overhead. A few stray leaves bumbled down the pavement, flicked here and there by a late night breeze. Loose gravel fell through the tire tracks cut into the shoulder of the road and trickled into the ditch. The truck sat askew in the place where it had fetched up against the trees, the right side door rumpled into accordion shapes and the left turn signal blinking rhythmically. The radio crooned softly in the background, musical notes sliding together in the darkness. Julie lay perfectly still on the seat, curled slightly, her fingers still wrapped around the wheel while blood and tears mingled on her upper arms.

For an indeterminable period she refused to move, spent from exhaustion and fear. Then shards of glass plinked gently from her hair as she wiped her nose on her shoulder and lifted her head, her eyes shining in the light from the dash. She dragged herself upright against the wheel, digging her broken fingernails into the plastic as the muscles in her arms stood out like wire cords. Her heart hammered deep within her ribcage, and she could feel the rapid pulse fluttering against her wrists and belly. Her hair had torn free of its ponytail, and was now bunched in tufts about her skull. Bits of leaves and dirt were slithering through the inside of her shirt, prickling against the shivering skin. Her sandals had fallen off. Only one was left inside the cab. The other had been hurled through the open window, and lost. She had twisted in her seat belt and her bare feet lay up on the seat now, toes coiled. They felt bloody and cold.

A wet draft blew through the open window, bringing with it the rich smell of loam and hot tar. Julie turned her head towards it, her sliding eyes staring straight ahead. She felt fresh clean air on her face, saw her reflection in the broken teeth of glass still clinging to the side mirror. The headlights shone straight up the ditch, casting a dim halo into the night. A shining nimbus outlined the edge of the road, picking out every twig and rock that sat there. A haze of smoke still drifted through the air, made pale and opaque by the light. Flakes of ash danced through the high beams, settling gently on the asphalt.

Julie stared up through the window, an ache growing in her chest as a dull terror seized hold of her. Her arms began to tremble uncontrollably, a glaze spreading over her eyes. A pair of giant metal legs stood high above her, the feet resting squarely at the top of the ditch with the toes nudged up against the grass. They gleamed like pillars in the headlights, throwing tall black shadows against the smoke and the trees on the opposite side of the road.

The bulk they supported held itself back, surveying the crippled vehicle below. Then, with measured swinging strides, the whole tower began to deliberately pick its way down the side of the ditch, tearing a dark hole through the light and smoke.