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The Ballad of the Junk Heap Gun Man and Mistress Bullet

M. Todd Gallowglas


The art and entertainment of Quisquiliarum are as jury-rigged and recycled as the rest of that junkyard planet’s society. Take the hai sixtina, for example, a complicated and complex poetic form that uses both prose and poetic stanzaic structures to offer readers a multilayered narrative that traditionally explores the strange interactions between discarded human technology and the remnants of the previous alien inhabitants. Word repetition, slant rhymes, and permutations on old Earth phrasings are paramount for this form. I offer, for an example, one of the oldest known recorded hai sixtinas of Quisquiliarum.

—An excerpt from Esoteric Poetic Forms of the Galaxy by Turner Bryant.

Was it a chance that got the old timer to pick the perfect night to ride into town on that cyborg steed? A rare breeze at dusk cleared most of the rust particles from the air, and many of the town’s citizens had gathered in the saloon. Without bothering to ask, that stranger stepped into the light shining above the piano. We all stopped our chatter to lean forward and listen to what they planned to say. Off came the hat, duster, and gun. Under all that travel gear was a lady, not a man. While rare, t’wern’t too unusual to hear ’bout a woman traveling these parts alone. The way her finger played on the trigger, when she set her iron aside, spoke volumes that she’d be able to handle herself just fine when it came to action. She opened her mouth, and we were ready. A lady that old, carrying iron like that, almost certainly had something for us to learn.


1

Patrons, put down your drinks and listen.

Scavengers, put down your cups, lend an ear.

Warriors, take your fingers off your triggers,

open your minds so you may learn

ancient secrets from that day of violent action

between Mistress Bullet and the Junk Heap Gun Man.


I see by your expressions, you know of that dreaded man.

Perhaps if you turn from your drinks and listen,

you might avoid membership within that faction

of victims left bleeding, groaning, dying between there and here

because they would not, could not learn

these lessons and avoid that clenching rigor


mortis gripping harder than a greenhorn’s trigger

finger hoping to keep from becoming a grave man.

Out among the black, man had much to learn

for not all life was as we knew it. On planets there and here,

strange species adapted to our incursions, those reactions


became real-time darwinistic interactions

where selections natural did not always side with vigor,

size, or intellect. Pray, heed me, and hear

how one such life form, the Junk Heap Gun Man

rose into being with its cogs, gears, and pistons.

Once again, my tale can help you earn


a victory over that vile, gun-blazing, ever-learning

creature of death. Though only a fraction

of you will commit yourselves fully to listen.

The rest of you might as well pull the trigger

against your own heads, for each is a dead man

walking. If I could force each soul here


to leave his pride in his cup and truly hear

this vital lesson and live. Have we not learned

that every soul on this garbage-strewn sphere—man,

woman, child—is sacred. When bullets flare to action,

and that ambulatory, garbage alien touches its triggers

it will be too late. So, heed me, iron slingers, and listen.


Each man and woman glanced at each other. The lady’s words triggered dark dreads in our deepest parts. But, we’d take no action to stop her, standing and speaking under the performer’s light.


2

Just how did the Junk Heap Gun Man

come to be? That demigod alien other

sprang into its semilife through a chain reaction

between digitized memories and spare parts

from dozens of worlds—oh, and a bit of alien ichor—

created a perfect technological storm, causing light


to flare in camera-lens eyes out in the blight

of the Scavenger’s Wasteland. Alien, machine, man—

a seemingly incompatible triumvirate—jury riggered

by this planet’s bizarre ecology, unlike any other

on the star charts, where disparate parts

merge together in demonic transactions.


On Earth that Was, machines could make a retraction

Of painful memories, removing them to lighten

the burdens the mind carried, those parts

of their pasts that made them feel like lesser men.

Wouldn’t you, my audience, like to reject or smother

All the terrors of growing up on this world of trigger


happy scavengers, always blasted and blasting from liquor?

Out in the Scavenger’s Wasteland, chance interactions

of neuro-drives storing disparate minds connected with other

minds tormented by perpetual purgatory took delight

in communion after such long loneliness, because Man

should never exist in pieces outside the sum of all his parts.


Sometimes, the Scavenger’s Wasteland shifts and rumbles. Parts

roll, slide, fall, and collide. One day, neuro-drives fell quicker

than quickest silver into a pool of alien ichor left eons before human

ships left Earth that Was. The volatile chain reaction

led to that unnatural warrior’s very first fight

when human and alien imperatives struggled to smother,


overwhelm, and extinguish all trace of the other

entities vying for control. They rallied on virtual ramparts.

Garbage churned and integrated until a creature rose into daylight.

That monstrous metal maniac keeps gravediggers

across this world employed, for death is its only satisfaction.

And, that is the origin of the Junk Heap Gun Man.


Another verse begun and gone. We settled in for the part. Light from the day faded with the sun setting under the jagged horizon. Still, even with our dusters wrapped tight, we couldn’t shake the chill.


3

You’ve met the villain, but this tale’s only just begun.

I’ll tell you now about Mistress Bullet, her long duster

and even longer range. Hailing from strange parts

unknown to all be the oldest scrappers, she wandered under

stars, moon, sun, and sky stretching above her

and seeking the Junk Heap Gun Man to remove that blight


from this world. She traveled in constant flight

from her past and in hopes she’d find the Junk Heap Gun

Man’s weakness. Years before, a girl and her brother

worked to clear debris from a field. That day was dustier

than most with rust and loose dirt. But the Plunder

from a field of bare earth with irrigation made from parts


of a starship’s coolant system could become the start

of a new life for their family. Except in the fading light

of dusk one evening—clank, clack, clunk—metallic Thunder

churned its way into their ears and the Junk Heap Gun

Man followed close on its heels. They stood, dusters

flying wide open, hands drew iron, and sister and brother,


sun at their backs, face off with that scrap-heap other.

“Go,” the brother said. “Warn Pa.” At first, the girl refused to depart,

but the enemy drew its own iron, and the girl’s duster

billowed out behind her like leather wings in flight

through the garbage fields. Retorts of rapid-fire gun-

shots chased the girl scrambling over junk and under


the night’s new stars. The following silence made her wonder

but deep down, she knew what fate befell her brother.

Close to her family’s ramshackle home, she had begun

shouting for Ma and Pa. Somewhere behind her, that spare-parts

assassin came clacking, clunking, clanking to revel and delight

in killing. The girl had no illusions the garbage demon would dust her


and her parents. Almost home. Sweat soaking inside her duster.

Breath burning throat and chest. Legs aching. Stomach heavy under

the weight of imaginary nuts and bolts. Almost home. Lights

in the windows. Screaming for Ma and Pa. Hoping her brother’s

sacrifice gave her the time to get her family out of these parts

to safety. Clunk. Clank. Clack. And the whir of alien-powered guns.


Ask any of us later, and we’ll tell you her voice was able to hold us under some kind of spell with no chance of escape. Her words hit like bullets shot from the gun of her mouth. Every duster in the place got pulled a little tighter.


4

Now that you know the primary warriors of this fable,

listen, hear, and learn on the minuscule chance

you scrappers and reclaimers find yourselves under

unfortunate circumstances like facing a Junk Heap Gun

Man. Oh, did you think the girl gone? Not so. Trust her

more than that. “How is this possible?” you might ask.


After slinging iron and reveling in that murderous task

the garbage-alien-demigod, as always, felt safe and able

to move on. One corpse wasn’t a corpse. Strips from her duster

staunched the blood flowing from wounds, giving her the chance

to heal, to train, to take her father’s and brother’s guns,

and put that spare parts killer at least twenty-six feet under.


The Junk Heap Gun Man continued wandering under

skies of falling garbage from far-off worlds. He basked

in the trail of blood and tears left by his whirring guns.

Even those ironslingers who were quicker on the draw were unable

to damage that alien-powered metal form. “No human stands a chance

against me!” the slaughterer intoned when posses would muster


at edges of towns. The girl traveled in her brother’s duster

filled with bullet holes and covered with bloodstains. Under

the weight of familial spectres in her dreams, she advanced

town to town and through the scrap yards, her face a mask

of grim determination. She set no particular timetable

on her vengeance. She trained with each gun


until her movements blurred faster than the Junk Heap Gun

Man’s. Tapping into Telewaves, the alien cyborg killer heard about a duster-

wearing mad woman, faster than any human should be capable.

Mistress Bullet, the people called her. A true wonder

to behold. Slayer of bandits. Killer of Warriors. She wore a mask

of rust and blood. Our villain followed those signals for the chance


to test metal against this Mistress Bullet, yearning to dance

against an opponent who might be an equal with a gun.

After so long and so many empty victories, that’s all he asked

for. But somehow Mistress Bullet, it seemed, could readjust her

path one, two, three steps ahead of him and never blunder

into a firefight finality that would end her hopeful fable.


She stopped then and asked for something to drink. A man hopped to action, quicker than a trigger on a well-greased zipshooter. The sooner she got that drink, the better chance we’d be able to know Mistress Bullet’s fate.


5

It wasn’t luck that kept Mistress Bullet from the Junk Heap Gun Man’s

firestorm of lead. You see, she was a bit of a trickster,

and knew when her home exploded, the only possible action

she could take to save her life was to assume the mantle and mask

of death: bleeding, only the faintest breath, and limbs at twisted angles.

Deception, that night and in this chase, was her only chance


To survive the inevitable confrontation, that final dance

between Mistress Bullet and the Junk Heap Gun Man.

Mistress Bullet knew she could make her enemy unstable

if she could just stay out of range of that hair-trigger

killer. That part-alien, jury-rigged automaton in a rusted iron mask

chased and chased—clackity-clunk, clickity-whir—with no satisfaction


because Mistress Bullet remained an ever-elusive abstraction,

always behind the next garbage pile or over the horizon. Chance

had no place in this game. Mistress Bullet has set herself the task

of taunting her foe by matching the numbers of dead men

brought down by the tricked-out scopes and tipple-action triggers

on her .75-caliber revolvers. No outlaw or ironslinger was able


to outdraw that self-styled angel of death. She was willing and able

to sacrifice any and all desperados to gain permanent traction

in her enemy’s mind. She became the ultimate thimblerigger—

herself the pea, the scrap fields her cups. Alas, circumstances

conspired against Mistress Bullet. The Junk Heap Gun Man

has a few tricks hidden deep in his holsters. You might ask,


“Why didn’t he use this sooner?” Might as well ask,

“Why didn’t it just broadcast how anyone might be able

to bring about the demise of the Junk Heap Gun Man?”

She wasn’t the first to dream of ending this demonic contraption.

No one else came this close, stood this much of a chance

because those men believed they could stand trigger


to trigger, eye to eye, toe to toe, gun to gun, all of them trigger-

happy idiots, too ready to die. With any near defeat, our villain asked

how they could get so close. No other ironslinger would get a chance

to come that close the same way. The scrap-field murderer turned the tables

on Mistress Bullet by spilling his alien blood and sending a fraction

of its mind through the discarded circuits to find that walking dead woman.


She bade us listen, hear, and learn. So we leaned in, breathing close to stopped. She looked us over, meeting the gaze of each man, and pulled the trigger on the final action of her tale.


6

Using this trick, from its alien origins, the Junk Heap Gun Man

located Mistress Bullet. The chase was on. It adopted the action

of the tiger, stopping every so often to connect and listen

to where the circuit system said she was. There and here.

Here and there. With every linkup, the recycle metal monster learned

He was gaining on his prey. With each link up, the killer’s triggers


sent twitches and itches through souped-up and over-clocked trigger

fingers. Little by little, bit by bit, that garbage-born boogeyman

closed in. However, on this harsh world, Mistress Bullet learned

the hard way not to take anything for granted. Her triple-action

revolvers were always at the ready, her ears cocked to hear

any out-of-the-ordinary sound. One night, she noticed a circuit glisten


at the edge of a junkpile. She crept closer, with her fist in her

mouth to stay silent so she could try to figure

why cast-off computer bits would be lit up out here

in the scrap fields. Then, she shot the circuit, and man, oh, man,

did Mistress Bullet gain a sense of extreme satisfaction

when a shower of glowing goop splattered around. You can learn


something new every day if you open your eyes. Learn

so you can fight another day. Mistress Bullet had listened

to her guts and took decisive and immediate action.

Glowing processors surrounded her. Fingers squeezed triggers.

Metal and silicon shattered. Alien ichor splattered. That artificial man

Felt a new sensation. For the first time since its formation, fear


spread through all its wires. Gunshots grew closer, and here

that brutal killer stood, while Mistress Bullet burned

it down, piece by piece. That revenge-bent woman

blasted away. The hunter became prey, and could only listen

to each gunshot. Weaker and weaker. Fingers slipped off triggers.

Steps became slower. The mechanical murderer could take no action


by the time Mistress Bullet caught up to him. A smile of satisfaction

glowed, and she put a bullet in its final lit circuit. Did you truly hear

how Mistress Bullet defeated the seemingly undefeatable? Figure

out the secret of her triumph? Did you honestly learn?

When your guts shout to get your attention: listen!

That’s the lesson of Mistress Bullet and the Junk Heap Gun Man.


And that woman finished her drink, replaced her hat, duster, and gun, and walked out of the performer’s light over the piano. The old saloon man asked if she’d offer another tale for his patrons to hear. Her smile barely showed under her wide-brimmed hat. We all figure we only chanced to see that smirk on account she wanted us to. No way we’d been able to otherwise. Her final action before setting off was to hand the saloon man a single bullet. Once she departed, we all learned from the saloon man that the bullet had a word written on it. Protected. That triggered years of speculation from everyone in our town. I swore if she ever returned to these parts, I meant to ask her about that gift. Not surprised I’m still waiting.



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