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Ichiro was working long hours, at six in the morning he would get himself off the sofa. Then it would be off to work by quarter before seven, by then he would have had a few drinks to help him work up his courage, or so he said.

"Breakfast,"Ichiro said, he had already taken the equivalent of five shots by drinking directly from the bottle he woke up with, "I already had it. There are some hot dogs in the fridge, then again, nevermind. I'll order something into the shop, you can eat there. Let's go."

"My little boy?" Ichiro said, somewhat sadly, "He's not too bad if overlook the fact he's, lazy, worthless, shiftless, nasty, and a little psychotic at times. One thing about Gil, if you can like him, you can like just about anybody. That's my boy for you. Honestly, best thing to do is completely ignore him, he's only workin' for me cause no one else would put up with him."

Soon they had came to a street corner that had been empty and non-descript the night before. But now a crowd was gathered, as what appeared to be a young woman stood on a bus stop bench and spoke with authority. Her skin had all the color of a dime store mannequin and her facial expressions were limited, as were the tones of her voice. Her limited abilities disguised the passion of her rhetoric. It was fairly obvious she was an andriod of some type. The speech was about oppression of the cyborg and andriod denizens of Aekea, and there were many calls for peaceful demonstrations from the speaker, though some in the crowd were advocating violence. One slogan that was repeated often by the crowd was: Flesh does not equal superiority. There were a few disgruntled bots in the area as well, artificial intelligence not designed to look human and with no human past. They were disgruntled not primarily with their lack of rights, but because the andriod and the cyborg activists had not included them among the oppressed. There were murmers that the cyborgs and the andriods didn't understand the bots. There were even murmers among the differing classes of andriods, those andriods who felt they had a human soul behind their programing feeling superior to those that were, in polite terms, bots shaped to look like humans. With all the murmering within the crowd, it looked as if they'd soon turn on each other rather than take cohesive action to campaign for the rights they desired.

"Damn," Ichiro said, turning backwards, "I want to avoid this mess, follow me,"

"Honestly," Ichiro said, "The local government has a slew of cockeyed legislation classifying anyone with prosthetics as a cyborg. If you have a wooden leg they won't let you leave the city with it, well, not that bad, but a people with prosthetic parts are restricted and treated like robots. So they legitimately started to campaign for their rights as human beings, but then the damn bots got it in their head that they deserve the same damn rights, starting with the andriods down to the heavy labor bots. Robots don't seem to realize that their claims are baseless, cyborgs have souls, AI robots don't. Giving rights to an AI robot would be like giving a pencil the vote. The damn stupid robots are ruining everything for people who have legitimately deprived rights."

Ichiro laughed, "I bet you didn't think I'd care one way or the other, well; I guess I'm full of surprises."

They reached the garage soon enough, first one's there of course, Rizzo wasn't due to till nine, nor was Gill. Ichiro had a bottle with him, though he wasn't drinking nearly as heavily as hard as he was last night.

"What would you like for breakfast?" he asked, grabbing the phone in his office, "Pizza or Far Eastern Cuisine?"

Breakfast would pass peacefully enough. Ichiro ordering some rice for himself along with whatever Stephanie ordered. She would have a good hour to eat before Rizzo arrived, and an hour and fifteen minutes before Gil made his grand entrance at quarter after nine. Ichiro wasn't quite drunk enough to let an outsider attempt the taxes, he always insisted on doing the tax filing himself. Rizzo had a job for her though, he wanted her to help him strip a 1985 toyota camry that had been involved in an accident for certain components he needed to complete another job. The work had to be done outside, as the front of the vehicle was too mangled to pull it in the shop.

"Nice moves," Rizzo said, "I'd fight you myself, but I couldn't bring myself to smack a girl around. I want to take out the steering mechanism of an old Toyota, can you give me a hand. Parts of the transmission might be good as well. We use the parts or exchange them over the net so we can repair older vehicle when they come in. We like to get the good stuff before we send junked vehicles to an auto recycling facility."

Somewhere else:


In a back alley a few blocks away from the garage, Gil had gathered a few of his drinking friends. Besides Gill, a man in a tank top smoking a cigarette leaned against the brick wall. There was another man with a mechanical arm, the hand of which was a mere two-pronged claw, a teenage boy with slight fuzz on his chin stood by himself, and the finally there was a tall man with twisted blood shot eyes.

"Don't kill her or anything," Gil said, "Just help me beat her up a little bit. I want her to know she's not welcomed here, and if we scare her good she won't come back ever again. All we have to do is find a way to get her alone, and then you guys ill get the rest of your money."