Our destination of Phoenix took us through Las Vegas and Sarah, coming from a small town in Oregon, requested that we stop or at least drive slowly through this ‘wonder of the world’. So I steered our vehicle down the main drag at a snail’s pace. It was mid-afternoon on a cloudless day and the marquees glittered like sequins in the bright sunshine. Of course their nighttime glory was gone, the town silent and the streets dead. But it was an imposing avenue all the same, what one would call an ‘eyeful’.
Dora, who was peeled to the front windshield as much as Sarah, sharing the front seat, touched my shoulder as we were approaching the circular entrance to Caesar’s Palace and said: “There are people inside.”
We pulled up through the arch to the cascading steps of the entrance, I strapped on my holster from under the seat and almost as an afterthought donned my cowboy hat. Ted and June each slung one of our machine guns over their shoulders before we stepped out. None of the others had our extensive, somewhat paranoid, practice sessions. We almost discontinued that routine after Sarah and Hanah and the other Oregonians joined us.
Dora, I believe, with her stainless steel frame just a centimeter beneath her soft skin was a weapon in a class all her own. She could probably crush a man’s skull with her hand as easily as I could pop a grape, an experiment I neither wanted to see or know, but which I thought of on several occasions as she lay beside me caressing my face and my long, brown hair, toying in its tangles with her meandering fingers.
We entered the magnificent glassed-in lobby then up a few steps to the casino floor and there in the middle were six people seated at a black jack table playing cards, drinks and ashtrays beside them as they were all smoking cigarettes. They looked up from their game as we approached and then stood up in surprise. I led our procession.
“Why howdy strangers,” one corpulent, red faced old man shouted out. He was also wearing a cowboy hat.
“No need for any guns here. We’re all friendly” he continued.
“So are we” I said, taking off my gun belt and setting it on the green table next to theirs. Ted and June followed suit. I now had a good look at this crew. There were four men and two women, only one younger man my age among them. The rest were late-forties or older, wrinkled and all of them obese. One woman with extremely large breasts half-revealed by the outfit of a casino black jack dealer stood across from us with a worrisome smile, cigarette in hand and a large glass bowl full of butts below it. Besides the ridiculous sight of a tight, lacy costume on an old and wrinkled, overweight woman, she had rouged cheeks and painted eyelashes and reeked of perfume. I suppose from her get-up she assumed the roll of leader of this set and with a gravely voice began:
“We haven’t seen any other folks here in ages. Where you from?”
“Up north near San Francisco, just passin through, headed for Phoenix. I’m just as surprised to find you people. You know we’re pretty scarce these days.”
“Aint that the truth” she replied. “Why don’t we all sit down and get acquainted. We could all use some fresh conversation and there’s plenty of spare rooms and food if you folks want to spend the night.”
We moved to a large circular table, probably some tournament table, and sat down, the casino group bringing their ashtrays and drinks with them. Then our hostess noticed Dora’s titanium neck.
“My lord, and what are you young lady?”
“I’m a robot. My friends here helped build me. We’re going to Phoenix to find the parts so they can construct another.”
“Wonder of wonders” she exclaimed. Then she noticed the goggles slung around June’s neck with an even greater look of surprise or horror on her aged face.
“You know those things are mighty dangerous, don’t you my girl?”
I replied: “Yes, they used to be. But they don’t do anything anymore. She’s just wearing them in case they pick up a signal from somewhere. Then we can investigate.”
We had brought this one pair of glasses along for exactly this purpose, so we could communicate with any hive that still put out a signal. But even Dora didn’t know what the range might be so June wore them day and night around her pretty neck.
“Well make sure she doesn’t put them over her eyes and stay away from tall buildings.”
This told me that these people must have witnessed the reckoning, or at least glimpses of it. So I immediately asked them how they managed to survive. The dealer began:
“I hadn’t worn mine for weeks before it happened, house rules, no visors at tables. People were using them to count cards and some had a trick of seeing in other peoples glasses their hands, cheatin. So the casinos lobbied the state for pinless models and won. Otherwise we would have all had to close.”
As I glanced at the faces of this sorry group of gamblers with their cigarettes and drinks in hand I suppose something in my gaze posed the question and they replied one by one.
The red faced man began:
“I lost mine in a bet.”
“Me too.”
“Same here. You know they were worth near two thousand dollars.”
“Someone stole mine” the other woman said.
That left the young man among them. I turned to him.
“I had a bad night at the table before it happened. I must have lost them. I woke up in the parking garage and it was already over.”
So here we had the dismal stories from this pathetic crew, losers at cards, winners at …I wouldn’t call it life but at least survival. Then another question flashed across my mind:
“But there must have been a lot more survivors if you could all take off your glasses while gambling, hundreds or thousands.”
“Oh no” said our hostess. “The casinos reversed that rule the day before it happened, made it mandatory for everyone to wear them, wouldn’t let you in without them. I was sick those two days in my camper out in the desert and my friends here, well, they just didn’t have glasses to wear. What a horrible sight I saw when I returned, bodies everywhere on the streets, fallen off buildings, and trucks cleaning them up. But the people drivin them wouldn’t tell me a thing. They just went about their business. And when they were done they just walked off straight into the desert all in a group, all of them wearing the damned goggles and sayin nothing.”
