It was a long walk down the road. The Machine Man felt the heat radiating off him, even though the dust dulled his polish. That heat and the ponderous weight of the machinery that animated him, propelled him, made him a self, combined to sink his feet deeply in the tar of the road, and he felt a sting of guilt. He had a deep respect for public works, for all the miraculous contrivances of man, and he hated sullying them. But he had made peace long ago with the foul weight his body had on the world, not just physically, but spiritually, and he knew it was a state only temporary, fleeting as the flies that hovered over the horse patties in the field next to him. With deceptive speed, a car appeared on the horizon, enthusiastically honking its horn as it zoomed past his trudging steps. He waved.
Finally a weather-beaten house appeared on his left. A young child on the porch gawked at him as he approached, and then ran inside. He was at the foot of the porch stairs when a woman covered in flour up to her elbows and a man in only a pair of overalls came out, the farmer's arm protectively around the shoulders of his wife.
"Good evening, madame, sir, I -"
"You're a goddamn Tin Can!"
He'd heard worse than the standard slur. He continued.
"I'm a Model U-32. That's Universal Factories, made just 5 years ago in 1932. And that's all I was until I found the Good Word."
Their gaping mouths and eyes grew just slightly more incredulous than amazed.
"But now I know the Truth of Christ our Lord, I am saved saved saved. Are you Christians, missus and sir?"
The amazement was passing and the eyes were closing off in skepticism. "We ain't buying nothing, Tin Can."
He was ready.
"Well that's fortunate, sir, I'm not selling a thing, no sir, I'm not accepting a single dime, I just want to know if you have a bible in the house?"
And now the hostility was there, the hate.
"We ain't buying no damn Bine bible."
"Well, sir, that's fine by me, as I am not selling the blessed word in Binary, but giving away a bible in King Jame's own english, and -"
"Get in the house, Eveline."
The woman obediently went inside. The talk continued. Eventually, The metal man's sales pitch was exhausted. He calmly stood and suffered his penance, heard the bile spilled out against his kind by this farmer, and focused his optics on a point just above the house, imagining fire and lions and swords purifying the ancient Christians. Since metal could survive all that, he pondered, perhaps my martyrdom, like my salvation, is through words.
Finally, the farmer had worked himself into such a frenzy at the "God-damn Job-stealing Tin Shit Cans" that he actually attacked the metal man, and howled as the heat of the day, built up in the metal, burned him slightly. At this, the metal man turned and left the man to his oaths and fury, in the deepening dusk. He didn't mean them, he reminded himself as he closed the gate behind him. Anger is Satan's trap for some, and there is just as much hope that that farmer will escape it, as he had escaped the trap of his programming.
He turned on his lights.
It was gonna be a long walk down the road.
