Street Science: Part 2

The elevator came to a grinding, crunching halt at the bottom of its miles-deep shaft. Its bell gave a half-hearted ding. She didn’t know how that thing was still working after all this time. Sheer stubbornness, maybe. Ariag opened the doors and stepped out with a sigh of relief. She was home at last. 

Home, in this case, was an old abandoned warehouse five levels down from any inhabited part of the city. You couldn’t call the place empty, though, not with the amount of shiny stolen objects cluttering every horizontal inch. Ariag had a magpie’s habits.

She let herself in through the only door that wasn’t boarded shut, then locked it securely behind her. Although other humans never came down here, there were still plenty of dangers. Humans weren’t the only creatures who had mutated during the portal crossing.

Dogs had been the worst affected. They'd transformed into grotesque, hump-shouldered creatures that looked more like the offspring of a kodiak bear and a sabertooth tiger than anything truly canine. Plenty of those roamed around down here, and Ariag had no plans of ending up on their dinner menu. 

Once inside, she closed the blackout curtains she’d put over all the building’s tiny cracks before grabbing matches from her backpack and lighting the candles in tupperware containers that she’d scattered around the building. Then, she fumbled her way to a switch embedded in the wall and flipped it, grinning. Strings of colorful lights in all shapes and sizes flickered on, illuminating her piles of jewelry and clothes, along with the jumble of cabinets, worktables and other repurposed furniture lining the walls. Ariag made an over-the-top bow to the robot and gestured grandly at the space surrounding them. 

“Mr. Clinker, welcome to the Workshop.” 

The droid, still flopped over in the awkward position she’d dropped it in, made no response. Ariag shrugged, poking at one of its sightless eye-lenses. 

“Okay, you can wait until you’re powered up to gawp. C’mon. Let’s get you fixed.” 

She quickly stowed her backpack’s contents in her rickety mini-fridge, then hauled the robot over to her largest worktable. Picking up a roll of canvas lined with slim pockets, she unrolled it to reveal a series of small tools. Some of them were makeup brushes, some were old toothbrushes, but most of them were pliers, tiny wrenches and screwdrivers. Ariag had been accumulating her toolkit for years now, and it hadn't failed her yet. 

She wrestled a magnifying visor on over her dark pigtails, switched on the nearest lamp, and got to work. 

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