Again, and again.

'He'll adjust. How was your visit to old man Grommik?' the dark man said, his visage droughted by electronic boxes and hexagonally formed wall-blocks.


'Barely worthwhile.' he replied. The response was cut from a dryness duplicant of rubbish-bins toiled for not fortnight but perhaps several. 'Grommik's senile- talked a whole lot of garbage...'


'Schematics, survey maps... we should be able to determine the facility's exact coordinates.'


'Let's take out Leksande, first.' and his wrists were outlandishly decorated with stabilizers inset with lcd panels, readings showing statistics requisite for galactic travel.


'But... a lot of this territory is unexplored. Locals talk about the Dusted ones, communities of them, dragons the size of starships.'


'Well that's plainly ridiculous, and not worth even a single percent of mention.' came the stalwart reply. The conversation was diluted by the systematic rainfall dumping buckets of bleakness across the barren city streets. The two men parted ways just then, destined to assimilate this new-found knowledge, and impart with it a gesture of fortitude harkoning back to the ways of black-and-white investigators, whose intriguing cases were once painted graciously upon vacuum-tube televisions encased by imitation wood panelling. 

'Never again...' he said, 'Never again.'


And the streets themselves seemed to be alive. The buildings took on human characteristics. Every window and sculpted concrete wall, the obliqueness of it all, within which activity on a daily basis occurred; individuals mining computer screens for the purpose of data-processing. The rain never stopped then, either, but the people continued on their way down paths of destiny inscribed on the pavement; careless, indicative of mindlessness. 

And many years later they would be defined as being partially robotic, arcane subsystems whirring about with an intoxicating grace. The system of gears grinding solemnly one day after another in an endless sea of progress, never to be seen of or thought of again.