The scrapyard didn't look any different from how I imagined it to be, much to my disappointment. Mountains of scrap metal, abandoned machines and discarded vehicles were heaped together, their twisted hulls blending together into what resembled singular structures.
There were so many piles of scrap that they resembled a cityscape of some sort. Several of them appeared to be deliberately assembled, with the homeless temporarily using the broken husks of cars or caravans as shelter. Or permanently, considering the looks of some of them, not that I could see much detail from this distance.
It was difficult to tell one machine apart from the other. Microwave ovens, washing machines, dryers, computers, televisions, radios and more – all sort of junk were piled atop one another, the crust of rust layering them so thickly that it was impossible to tell where one device began and where the other ended.
Having lain in the sun and weathered the elements for years, the metal of most of the machines had warped. There were those that had twisted around each other. Of course, metal wasn't the only material – the synthetic plastics that replaced petroleum-based ones from the middle of the twenty-first century had started to decay. Rubber and paper had decomposed, but metal glinted. Honestly, a lot of these could be used for recycling, but…
When I had the chance, I should read up on nanotechnology. Even though we hadn't developed it yet, I had heard rumors of scientists developing nano-machines capable of breaking down any material at the atomic level and assembling them into any element or compound. It hadn't reached the type of large scale nano-disassembly or nano-assembly that would make such an industry feasible, but one could hope.
For now, we had to deal with junk being left to rot (or not rot) in these massive scrapyards.
I had managed to get a good haul from the scrapyard, uncovering a half-operational excavator that was rusting all over, an industrial chainsaw attached to a vehicle (one that wasn't man-portable) and the hydraulics I was searching for. With these, I could build the heavy-grade equipment I needed to transform my garage into a mini-factory.
At least that was the intention, but I needed to find a way to load these equipment onto the trailer attached to my Toyota. The excavator, I could probably tow by chaining it to the back of the trailer. I could already imagine the bemused stares from pedestrians and other drivers when I was pulling them along the road, but fortunately, my new home was located in quite the remote position. There were benefits to living in a district adjacent to a military camp.
I didn't get very far, though. I had just barely consolidated my gains and hooked them up when I heard a grinding peal of metal. Glancing up, I saw a bunch of hover-boards zoomed past the heaps of junk metal and piled vehicles. Their riders hooted and crowed as they stood arrogantly atop their machines, looking down on me with scorn.
Raising an eyebrow, I studied their hover-boards, noting the anti-gravity engines fitted to the back of them. They must have ripped those out of anti-gravity devices used for sports and installed them onto boards. Anti-gravity was still a nascent technology, and right now engineers had yet to develop any engine powerful enough to lift up anything bigger than a bicycle. It was also insanely expensive, so regular people couldn't afford them anyway.
With the current anti-gravity technology being unable to lift up cars, they were usually regarded as a gimmick, something that was flashy and showy, but not very practical or useful. There were industries that developed anti-gravity sports, much like skateboarding in the twentieth and early twenty-first century. Several more sports had been developed, like hover-racing, where racers rode anti-gravity bikes and raced each other in laps around circuits. To increase viewership, these circuits were filled with all sorts of deadly obstacles, including blazing rings of fire that the racers had to fly through, pits filled with spikes, and laser turrets to test their maneuverability.
Of course, the people showing up in front of me looked nothing like those rich, charismatic sportsmen and sportswomen who had won countless fans all over the world by impressing them with eye-popping stunts.
To their credit, I was impressed that they were able to fashion working anti-gravity hover-boards. It might appear simple, but the process of taking out an anti-gravity engine from an abandoned bike and installing it on some other machine was a lot more complicated than one could imagine. There were many delicate systems that would be damaged in the process, not to mention those anti-gravity bikes would have been broken to begin with. For them to be able to jury-rig those anti-gravity engines into a transport of their own making spoke volumes about their ingenuity and innovation.
Once again, of course these hover-boards couldn't compare to proper bikes, but I couldn't imagine any random person being able to pull off the same accomplishment as they did.
"Leave those behind, and we might let you die with your body intact." A guy with a Mohawk, rings around his nose and mouth, and a leather jacket draped over an otherwise bare torso, spoke up as he pointed dramatically at the scrap I had found. Given that he was taking point, I assumed that he was the leader.
"Your car too," a bald dude added, jabbing a finger at my Toyota. "Hand it over, and we will consider letting you die quickly and painlessly."
I gaped at them incredulously, not sure if they realized the stupidity of what they were saying. Only the Chinese would be able to make such ridiculous threats. I had never heard anyone sound as brazen and idiotic as them.
This must be one of the techno-gangs that Francis warned me about. I wasn't naïve, and I had expected them to rob me, but their lack of intelligence surpassed anything I could have anticipated.
"Dudes, if you're going to kill me anyway, what's the point?" I threw both of my hands up. "And what does it matter to me whether my corpse is in one piece or dismembered? It wouldn't make a difference because I'm dead! And since I'm going to die either way, why the fuck would I listen to you? Do you guys know how to make threats?"
"So you have chosen death." The leader with the Mohawk sneered. "Get him, boys!"
At his command, the techno-gangsters drew their weapons, which ranged from a motley collection of rusting pipes or metallic poles torn from machines to more advanced tools like industrial chainsaws, welding torches and drills. Evidently they had scrapped together industrial equipment and tools abandoned in the scrapyard and pieced together crude but deadly weapons.
With a howl, they set upon me, the anti-gravity engines of their hover-boards roaring with what seemed like bloodlust. I watched them approach, and then whipped out the device that I took from my garage before I had arrived here. Hefting it up, I squeezed the trigger and unleashed a stream of plasma that seared through the air before blasting through the pack of techno-gangsters.
The leader disintegrated immediately, his body combusting into ash as the superheated matter consumed him and his hover-board. His gang members yelled in panic and swerved to the side, trying to make sense of what just happened. Before they could regroup, a second one of them vanished, his hover-board vaporized. Half of his body fell through the air and landed in a pile of metal, the other half completely disintegrated.
"What the fuck was that?!"
"I don't know!"
"Go! Get away!"
The idiots had no discipline at all. Their retreat was a mess, and most of them were panicking and colliding with each other, causing more casualties than my weapon would otherwise have. Well, these punks didn't receive any military training, and they were probably used to bullying other people, so when a stronger bastard showed up, they didn't know what to do.
Not to mention, I killed their leader. As the old adage said, cut off the head and the body would fall. This was more so in a disorganized gang where there was no real chain of command. Once the leader was dead, there was no one to take command…or everyone wanted to take command and the others wouldn't back down despite the fact that I was shooting at them.
Oh, right. What was I firing with? I glanced at my prototype plasma gun. I had attempted to miniaturize the massive plasma cannon mounted on my Titan into a man portable, handheld version. The result – which was something I crafted within my room in the military barracks and new home (after moving out) in the aftermath of the assassin attack – was this plasma gun, which I named the M124 Solar plasma rifle, because military designations and all that.
Honestly, it wasn't that difficult to build, not with what I already had. I had essentially taken the plasma torch, dismantled it, and then reassembled it with major modifications to improve the range and output. After refining the plasma torch, I then converted it into a military weapon. Technically, it was illegal, but I could just claim that it was a prototype.
Then when I sold it to the military for mass production, they would simply pretend not to know of my transgressions. As long as I didn't take out my plasma gun and commit mass murder, of course. Besides, I had a license.
Taking aim, I blew up another hover board with my plasma gun. With his ride simply ceasing to exist, the rider crashed into a pile of scrap below him, his scream cut short when he was impaled by sharp metal poles jutting out of an unidentified construct.
A female gangster had her head vaporized when I fired a little too high. Her body teetered off the hover board and fell. With no one to control it, the hover board went wild and collided with another flying board, causing the latter's rider to topple below, flailing helplessly.
The survivors turned and fled. No one was stupid enough to remain, not after seeing the immense firepower of my weapon.
Shaking my head, I slung my plasma gun and proceeded back to my Toyota. Starting the engine, I drove off while making sure that the trailer and the excavator were successfully towed along.