I was dead! I swear to God, I was as sure as dead if it wasn’t for The Farmer! I’m getting way ahead of myself, though. Today began much smoother than two days ago, I’ll say that much. I was early to bed last night mostly due to wanting to lie down and rest my sore back. Damn Farmer.

The Farmer had me following him all over The Ranch yesterday, not saying a word other than to tell me what to do. I held a bucket with my robotic arm while one of the horses chewed away at whatever crap their master was feeding it. He got me to walk all the way down to the end of the road and get the mail. It was just the newspaper and some fliers. Hell, he even got me to walk Digby, the little spaniel, around The Ranch a few times. I think he was giving me some easy chores that day after getting a hoof in the crotch and discovering his identity.

Anyway, The Farmer entered the barn this morning as I was just waking up. He didn’t seem to be surprised that I was up already.

“Ready for a real day of chores?” he asked.

“I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

“Nope,” he said firmly, “Come on, then.” He gave me a wave of his hand. It was then that I noticed he was holding a small brown sack in that hand.

“Still got that egg?”

“Yeah,” I groaned as slipped on my boots.

I snatched up the egg and climbed down the ladder (with one hand) into the main area of the barn. With the egg firmly placed between my robotic index finger and thumb, The Farmer hooked the brown sack onto the pinky finger. I looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

“I thought milking the cows was first in the morning?” I asked.

“You’re not done training that arm yet and I’m not putting you anywhere near Paxton again.”

“Paxton?”

“The cow that knocked you out the other day,” he answered. “Today, you’ll be feeding the chickens out around behind the house.”

“Tell me I don’t have to still hold this stupid egg.”

“Okay, I won’t tell you. But we still have excessive work to do around The Ranch today.”

Oh, funny guy. Who would’ve thought that a former despot bent on world domination would have such a sense of humor? The Farmer sat down on the stool beside the cow I had attempted to milk yesterday. He went right to work without another word to me. I shrugged and went outside with my egg and sack of (I guess) chicken feed.

I stepped outside and saw The Ranch in all of its glory. The sun was just beginning to rise, leaving the sky in deep hues of red and orange. I could hear dozens, maybe hundreds, of birds chirping into the morning sun. The air was warm, but the wind was cooling my skin. I was tempted to take off my tank top, but realized that would be difficult while holding an egg between two digits and a brown sack hanging from another. I looked over to the farmhouse where Digby was laying on his back with his under section sticking high into the air. I started walking towards the farmhouse and Digby flipped over onto his stomach and began wagging his tail at me.

“Hey pup,” I said as I continued walking around the house. For some reason, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Digby said ’hey’ back to me. Mind you, I think I was equally relieved that it didn’t. When I made it to the back of the farmhouse, I noticed in the distance three of the windmills with solar panels that The Farmer mentioned. I didn’t see as many of them in the dark the night before. The panels glistened in the morning sun and…man, that sounds pretty poetic, doesn’t it? I’ve never considered myself a writer before, but maybe I should.

The second thing I noticed was the caged area a few feet away from the farmhouse. There was a chicken coop attached to the cage with a small ramp going into the coop. In the small, enclosed pen, I saw about two dozen chickens. They were mindless strutting around the fenced in area, minding their own business. It reminded me of a group of guys I saw in jail once. They were a part of a big gang at one time; The Crementors or something lame like that. Anyway, they ran into one of those meaner psychic heroes and all four of them were mind-wiped. They wound up being totally blank slates; vegetables, if you will. They would wander the prison yard with these dumb stares. The other inmates, including myself, pretty much left them alone. I don’t think there was anything we could do to break them out of that mindless trance, come to think of it. Their minds were wiped like deleting computer files.

I dipped my left hand into the sack and discovered it was indeed full of little grains. I pulled out a handful and started sprinkling the chicken feed all over the ground. The chickens clucked to themselves and began pecking at the food. I continued sprinkling the feed across the ground and even played little games with them. I’d wait until they couldn’t find any more to peck, and then toss some grain on the other side of the pen. Like lemmings, they would scatter over to the feed and swiftly peck it up.

Finally, I realized that not only was the bag empty, but the chickens had calmed down. Some were returning back into the coop to relax or whatever they did. There was a bench inside the pen and I decided to sit down and watch the chickens while I waited for The Farmer to finish milking the cow.

Yeah, this wasn’t such a bad life to live, after all, I thought to myself. It was a quiet place with no expectations except from the animals. And a great view of the Calgary plains to wake up to every morning. Heck, I bet you could watch a dog run away in any direction for three days.

Well, nothing is perfect, I guess, as I was startled to suddenly hear a loud jet engine soar over my head. I looked up high and in the sky was a sight that I had hoped to never see again.

An Overbite suit.

A few quick notes about the Overbite suit: I remember watching the occasional imported Japanese cartoons on TV as a kid. Everything from Robotech to Voltron, I thought the idea of giant robots was kinda neat. I wasn’t really obsessed with them like others were, but they were neat to watch sometimes. I had some friends who would go on for hours about these cartoons with these giant robots piloted by a single human inside. They would come in all shapes and sizes. Most of them were designed somewhat like a large, clunky human being.

The Overbite suits were designed by Dr. Overbite, a mechanical (or maniacal, depending on who you ask) madman who created them to combat SPECs of all shapes and sizes. I’ve heard the designs range as high as level six in power, since anything higher would require a “higher power” or something out of this world to create. They’ve made the news on dozens of occasions and there are websites by mechanists who love trying to figure out the design patterns. All of that bores me, but hey, to each his own. Overbite suits have been considered extremely dangerous and many of us lower level SPECs try to steer clear of them if at all possible. In this case, I was wetting my pants.

The mechanical monstrosity slowed its flight path as it flew over The Ranch. It veered to the right, making a u-turn in the sky. The jets in its legs spurted and the Overbite robot slowly descended into the middle of the field where I had first met The Farmer. It stood there for a moment, probably while the pilot read its instruments. Great, my employers that I was on the run from have hired out an Overbite pilot.

To describe an Overbite suit is pretty easy: it’s a giant set of teeth with a pair of arms and legs. It looks kind of like a metal version of a crab with a set of giant shark teeth. It has two large pincers for grabbing, crushing and other such uses. I’ve heard the legs have a running speed as fast as a hundred kilometers per hour. There are all sorts of weapons hidden in the arms and legs like lasers, missiles, and other armaments. The main threat is the set of jaws that take up most of the beast. Those teeth are said to be capable of biting through titanium. Inside the round main torso of the robot, past the teeth, is the pilot area. From what I’ve seen on the news, the pilot is housed inside a Plexiglas, shatter and bulletproof cockpit. The cockpit itself is a giant virtual reality-like apparatus with most of the controls coming up on a helmet display. The response time between the pilot and the suit is said to be within three milliseconds. Oh, and they’re equipped with the standard loudspeaker; such as when this particular pilot decided to use his at that moment.

“Christian Hargon! You are hereby under arrest by order of The Tribunal! You are to relinquish your robotic arm and come with me immediately!” The speaker took away any personality from whoever the pilot was. Word on the street was The Tribunal was looking to purchase a squadron of Overbite suits for their own purposes. It looked like the deal was settled.

I sighed, stood up from the bench and closed the pen’s cage door behind me. I started walking towards the suit, keeping both of my arms (flesh and metal respectively) high in the air. I wasn’t sure what my game plan was yet, but there was no point trying to go toe to toe with this thing.

“And if I don’t give myself up peacefully?” I yelled back. No doubt his internal speakers could pick up higher frequencies. In other words, the Overbite suit could hear a cricket chirp in Guatemala. Okay, I’m embellishing, but you get the idea.

“You will be terminated and the arm will be returned to The Tribunal,” the pilot spoke from somewhere inside the well armored beast.

“Thought it’d come to that,” I heard The Farmer’s voice say behind me. He stood just behind me and put a gloved hand on my shoulder. He spoke the loudest I’ve heard him speak yet. “This man is under protection while staying at The Ranch. I’m giving him sanctuary.”

I put my hands back down, but not before checking the status of my arm. On a small computerized reader on the forearm of the arm was a diagnostics reader. The energy was at full from a few days rest and no action. Hope that suit wasn’t equipped to take out higher level SPECs.

“Stranger, this suit is specifically equipped to deal with specially powered characters as high as level six,” the pilot spoke while the suit trounced down the field towards us. Meanwhile, I think I may have unloaded a payload into my shorts.

Level six would make sense. Level six was specifically designated for magic-class SPECs. If the Overbite suit was closer, I’m sure I could see various protection circles and symbols etched into the metal of the overgrown toaster. Seven is the highest level ever witnessed by a SPEC. It’s the “get out your Kryptonite” type level. Levels eight through ten are still purely theory. Eight was meant to be a “evacuate the planet” threat SPEC. Nine was “evacuate the universe”. Ten was “evacuate all of reality”. I think everyone is happy those ones haven’t been recorded to exist yet.

The pilot continued, “The Tribunal doesn’t want to make the same mistake as Venice!”

The Farmer looked down at me with a raised eyebrow, “Venice?”

“Yeah, I threw a group of level fives at the last pilot,” I chuckled.

“Threw?”

“Okay, I tricked the pilot and suit to take a detour towards them. It wasn’t pretty. I heard The Tribunal’s still trying to do a media cover-up.”

“Heh,” The Farmer chuckled as he patted me on the shoulder. He walked past me and towards the Overbite suit. The large robotic beast slowed to a halt and the pilot must have been wondering what in the hell this bare-shirted guy in a pair of dirty jeans and work gloves was doing.

“Stranger! I am not authorized to take innocent life! Please move your non-SPEC ass out of the way so I can handle this thief!” The pilot’s personality was starting to show through the speakers of the Overbite suit. He sounded nervous, like this was his first assignment.

The Farmer, a man taller than average on his own, stopped just about a foot or two in front of the Overbite suit. He looked it up and down, rubbing his beard. The size of the Overbite suit was massive in comparison to The Farmer. In fact, The Farmer was only as tall as the length of the suit’s mechanical legs.

“This is your last warning! Move aside so that I may bring Hargon to justice!”

The pilot’s voice was breaking. He wasn’t sure what to make of The Farmer. Finally, the barrel-chested Farmer spoke back to the pilot in a calm and assertive voice.

“You ever met a level seven SPEC before?” The Farmer asked with a smirk. I was still a little far away, closer to the house and away from the action.

The moment The Farmer said that, he reached with both gloved hands and grabbed the Overbite suit’s kneecaps. He forced it down onto the ground in an instant. The robotic joints didn’t buckle, they didn’t sway. It was in a simple instant that the Overbite suit went from standing tall to being brought to its knees. There was a loud boom and the ground shook as the robot was brought to a forced kneeling position by a man who could throw entire mountains. The knees of the robot dug into the ground, bringing up some of the half-grown vegetables still in the soil.

“Uh! Wait, you can’t...!” The pilot, exasperated, was showing clear signs of panic. The metal monstrosity came to life as the two arms began to swing towards its victim.

Without blinking, The Farmer grabbed with one hand each both of the razor-sharp jaws. With a quick movement, he ripped the titanium-chewing jaws away from the suit. The metal screamed and screeched for only a microsecond as they were torn off like wings off a fly. The Farmer swung his arms outwards, taking the top and bottom jaws with him. The jaws were released from his hands and cut like butter through the elbows of the Overbite suit’s arms. The pilot screamed from the cockpit.

“No! You can’t! I’m...”

“Done,” The Farmer calmly interrupted.

With nothing stopping him and the battle suit dismantled like a child ripping apart a fly, The Farmer reached forward one last time with one hand towards the cockpit’s protective bubble. He dug his hands into the metal and glass, which crushed like tinfoil. The Farmer ripped the indestructible layer down as if ripping off a piece of wallpaper. Inside the revealed cockpit, the pilot was shivering among the sparks that flew around him. Half of the wires inside the suit had been ripped out of the walls. The pilot hung from inside the suit like a marionette without a puppet master. The pilot bounced via the wires, hanging a few feet outside the cockpit and above the buckled robotic knees.

Without another thought, The Farmer reached into the open cockpit and snatched the pilot by the collar of his jacket. More sparks fizzled from the panel behind the pilot as he was forcibly torn out of the cockpit. The Farmer stepped back and lowered the pilot feet first onto the ground. Immediately touching the ground, the pilot’s own knees buckled and he dropped onto his knees.

The pilot began weeping. “I don’t understand! The Tribunal said that this area’s highest SPEC was a level four! They know everything about everything!”

The pilot continued to babble incoherently, a defeated, broken man who was just doing his job. I almost pitied him. Almost. After all, he was going to kill me.

“Come on, then,” The Farmer spoke calmly to the pilot, helping him up by the scruff of the neck, “There’s a phone in the kitchen. You can call your superiors from there.”

I whirled around to look at The Farmer as he walked the pilot away from the wreckage of the Overbite suit.

“Are you daft?! I mean, are you completely out of your gourd?! He just tried to kill the two of us!”

“He was just doing his job, weren’t you?”

The pilot sobbed. “Yeah.” He was a broken, beaten kid.

“And you’re just going to invite him into your home?” I asked, hysterically.

“Yep,” The Farmer replied.

“Even though The Tribunal will be fully aware of a level eight SPEC living in the area? They’ll probably send an entire platoon of O-Bite suits next time!”

“They can bill me for the damage for all I care. Ya ask me, they brought it upon themselves. If they kept throwing giant robots into a quiet area without much knowledge of the where, then I think they’re the daft ones,” The Farmer explained. He had a habit of making a lot of good points.

I could see in the distance that the Overbite suit was spitting sparks out of every joint and inside the cockpit. Since they weren’t gas powered, though, I don’t think there was a high risk of it blowing up. It was quite the sight to see one of those overgrown mechanical monsters torn to shreds within seconds. The O-Bite suits are able to hold their own against an entire battalion of tanks. And one guy took it down without even breaking a sweat.

The Farmer stopped in his tracks in front of me. The pilot stopped along with him, looking back at the wreckage. The Farmer tapped my robotic shoulder in a comforting way.

“You don’t really need that thing anymore, you think? Caused ya more trouble than it’s worth?” he asked me, patting the robotic arm, but making sure to touch some of my bare, non-robotic skinned shoulder.

I thought about it for a moment. I really didn’t need the arm. I just wanted to be a cool super-powered guy like the other fifteen percent of the world. I was going through SPEC-envy ever since I was a kid who felt powerless and trapped in the metal monstrosity of my parent’s car. The car had not only wrapped around a tree, killing my father, but also around my arm. God Mom, I miss my dad. I never had a father figure before to give me that tough love a young punk like me needed earlier in his life. I wanted to feel like a big man. I wanted to be given power so I could hurt the world that took away my daddy. I was only five years old, for God’s sake!

I looked up at the Farmer, who was a foot taller than me. I didn’t need to shed a tear for the loss of something that caused so much trouble for me.

Time to act like the person I should be. Not some fake attempt at being a SPEC. And never a very good one, I might add.

“Nah, I don’t need it,” I told The Farmer firmly.

He nodded and grabbed the very top of the metal arm. The arm worked like a combination of a fake arm that amputees used and that inflatable thing a doctor uses on your arm to check your blood pressure. It dug into my skin only a little and responded to muscle contractions in my shoulder. There were no wires that dug into my skin or anything like that.

In a similar easy motion as he did with the Overbite suit, The Farmer crushed the top part of the arm like a soda can. The arm slipped off and I was left with just a stub that extended just a little past my shoulder. It only stung for a moment as the small metal spikes that surrounded the stub were pulled away from my skin. I looked at the stub for an arm and saw the little indents in my skin where the arm’s edges were. It looked like I need to work on getting a tan on that stub, too. I’d worn it for so long that it was just barely a notch above a white pigment.

The Farmer handed the slightly damaged arm to the pilot. The poor guy jerked in shock like a gun had been fired near him. He held the piece of robotics in his arm. I bet he was realizing how futile his entire mission probably seemed. The poor kid couldn’t have been any more than fresh out of high school. He looked like one of those dead men walking on death row.

I followed a bit behind The Farmer, who walked beside the pilot with his hands behind his back.

“So,” The Farmer asked, looking at the pilot, “Where ya from?”

Just like that, I saw The Farmer doing it again: helping people to take a different road down the highway of life. It’s not like he forgot I was there.

He acknowledged me as an equal. Someone that he’d helped enough as it was. It was time to help someone else who probably feared for his own life at the hands of The Tribunal.

The Farmer dragged the Overbite pilot towards the front of the farmhouse and they disappeared around the back. I could hear the pilot telling his name to The Farmer. Just some kid by the name of Marvin Leard from Fredericton, New Brunswick. I wonder if he might’ve been one of those kids in school that was a bully in front of his friends. Maybe he felt like more of a man, sitting in the cockpit of an O-Bite suit. That’s not really my problem, though. I guess it’s The Farmer’s problem now.

Not too long afterwards, Digby raced around the corner, wagging his tail and running circles around me. I bent down, patted him on the head and followed him back around to the front of the house.

Yeah, it’s like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. It’s an old fashioned place with a modern touch on it. But you know what? I think I might stick around for awhile. It’s not such a bad place to get a new grounding on life.