Silverlakana
- RvA
They're building a new playground house for Silverlake. The street is a mess. Coming home yesterday, up the incline on W. Silverlake just before you see the lake, I noticed on the right a homo homeless ambling towards me. Suddenly he stumbled over a rock. His rigid body rotated about some point in the air. Then, completely horizontal, stiff as a broomstick, hands still in pockets, he dropped the remaining 10 inches in perfect alignment with a footwide receiving strip of broken pavement. I had the radio on, the windows closed, but I heard it.
I stopped my car just past the landing site and got out. An afternoon lake walkabouter a few yard up must've followed my gaze. We both rushed to the facedowTi body that lay aimed downhill. I damned myself for not having a car phone as we studied the dead body before us.
The walkabouter walked around to the body's head and said. as a matter of formality judging by his tone, "Are you allright?" To both of our surprises, the head lifted from the pile of rubble, turned sideways and through a sheepish grin over a small cut on the jaw informed us that he was fine. Having delivered this good news, his head dropped back into the rubble. He'd discharged a tricky social obligation.
However, Walkabout and I, possibly relieved Homeless was alive, found ourself with a new set of obligations. A car phone wouldve been of no help. It looked like Homeless was going to require first aid, not paramedics or morticians.
Homeless' pants had slid down to his thighs and what at first appeard to be a diaper turned out to be a bandage affixed to the base of his spine. Visible above the bandage was a big hole the size of a golf ball. And through the hole where you would expect to see vertabrae I saw nothing. It looked like a crater on the moon when the inside is completely in the shadow. After an exchange of meaningful glances, Walkabout and I gingerly brought up Homeless' pants to cover the somatic anomaly.
Was this an ET? I looked around for other people. But the 3 or 4 other people in the vicinity were studiously ignoring the drama on our side of the road. We tried to get homeless upright. He looked like one of those fragile emaciated 50-60 year olds you could lift with a finger. But even together we could barely get him to his knees. How heavy are robots, I wondered. They never mention it.
Apparently Homeless contained intergalactic technology not to be trifled with. Starting on hands and knees, then clasping the chainlink fence with his left hand and his loose pants with his right. Homeless slowly pulled himself wobbly vertical. I retrieved his shoe from behind the karmic rock, placed it on his foot, and stepped back. He offered us both a disarming smile and rotated 45 degrees to face his original direction. We tensed, ready to catch him when he swayed perilously.
But he regained his balance and without any further dallying proceeded with dignity down the hill, albeit clutching his pants to hold them up. Walkabout and I untensed, exchanged AOK signs, and merged back into our respective world lines.
