Ding Dogs at the Mecha Expo

I never got a mecha as a little girl, like one of those massive ones with a bow on its collar, tied to a stake in the backyard on your birthday. We weren’t that kind of family. For one thing, mechas are for rich kids. Our backyard was so small that a mecha wouldn’t fit. And my Pops wasn’t the kind to put bows on things anyway–our presents weren’t usually wrapped up at all. He’d just hold something behind his back and say, “Guess!” Maybe my Mums would have liked wrapping things up with bows, but she died when I was seven. 

So yeah because I never got one, I always wanted one. And when I saw that the Mecha Expo was coming to the pavilion where Tippy worked, I knew that this was it. It wasn’t super rational, okay? But I just knew that this was going to be the thing that would fix my life.

I asked Tippy to try to get me a pick-up job timed with the Mecha Expo. She had almost no pull with her boss, Mirandia. But when Derek blew out his knee in a dirt-biking accident, she put my name in and Mirandia was desperate so I was in. 

It was a three-day event. Tippy works in security, which is dumb because she’s actually pretty shy. And both of us on security was doubly dumb because we’re both short and, to be honest, a little tubby. We went halvsies on a Boogie-Booty workout program and we did like four minutes of the first workout together and gave up. Plus, we both hate conflict and would literally look the other way if anything started to get tense. 

Honestly, though, it wasn’t a very dangerous crowd. Day One we were in our matching blue uniforms with yellow SECURITY vests and only worked the lobby. We couldn’t see much of the mechas because they were so far away. But we got to know the crowd. They’re mostly young rich teenagers and their pops and mums and aunties and uncles. 

There was this one old relative, like androgynously old–you know, the short monochromatically white hair worn in a bowl-cut, the face lost in wrinkles, the voice all scarred up from a hundred years of idle rich-person chatter–buzzing around on a hover, saying, “In our day, mechas were made of metal and had electrical wiring and hand cranks and levers to move its arms and legs and a cockpit right in the middle of its chest with a little look out window and I got my first one when I was fifteen before I went off to war…” No one was paying any attention, except me, but I was actively thinking, Stop talking. No one cares. So I don’t think that counts. 

“I wish these old people would use avatars,” I said to Tippy. “It’s rude to be that old in public, reminding everyone of mortality.” 

Tippy smirked and shook her head. When I said mean things, she kind of liked it but also disapproved. She’s nicer than I am. I broke my arm when I was twelve and never got it really fixed right so my elbow sticks out like the handle of a teapot. Sometimes Tippy sings to me, “I’m a little teapot short and stout…” But it’s not mean because, like I said, Tippy is pretty kind-hearted. She has the most moonish face in the whole world–just a big huge white expanse of cheeks and this fringy hair that sticks to her forehead when she sweats. And we’re the only ones allowed to call each other Teapot and Moonface and weirdo and dipshit and fugly turd… because we’re true friends. 

We weren’t allowed to have guns, but we had weighty Tasers that made our belts sag on one side. They dangled like big low-slung off-kilter dicks and it made me wonder what it would be like to have a dick. I assumed it would feel powerful but also really vulnerable–having something on the outside like that. 

“I really want to see one up close,” I said to Tippy. “Do you think you can angle to get us working the Main Showroom tomorrow?”

“Hold up,” Tippy said. “Don’t do what you always do.”

“What do I always do?” I knew what I always did.

“You get all obsessed and pushy and insistent.”

“I won’t! I just want to see them up close. That’s all!”

I have a history here. I got pushy and insistent on things like–dying our hair blue and getting matching haircuts like a certain Japanese anime character and working on a dance number for her brother’s wedding (where we were specifically asked not to “draw attention away from the bride”), and to make giant puppets and become street performers. We didn’t do any of these things except the blue hair which led to a disastrous summer between junior and senior year. 

“Promise?” Tippy asked.

“Promise.”

The rest of the day I wondered closer to the doors to the Main Showroom to glimpse the mechas. Most of them were made for only one person to climb inside of them at a time. But, still, they were bigger than I’d ever imagined, this up close and in person. They weren’t robotic or mechanical. But also not fully animals, not hybrids either. Most were four-legged with wide bodies, fluid and strong. Their skin types varied. Some glinted and rippled. Some seemed like they would do well underwater, rubbery like whales. Others were lightly furred. Sometimes you could see a ridge on their backs–like where a backbone goes on an elephant–and it was a seam of sorts, interlocked ridges that would open to let someone in and close, locking up tight, to keep them safe. 

I also saw these hired model types–fancy people in fancy outfits–climbing up the grooves on some big huge mecha and climbing halfway into the seam on their backs, waving to the crowd–big hero waves–and then disappearing down below. 

I peeked into the showroom as often as I could, telling Tippy how amazing this whole thing was. “Look at us, Tippy! So close! Tomorrow we’ll be in there,” I said, just being super positive. “We’ll be up close and in person! It’s going to be amazing.”

*

Tippy had to go into Mirandia office to ask. She hated Mirandia because Mirandia was all about “empowering young women in achieving their dreams.” And she was always telling Tippy to take on more leadership opportunities, to visualize her success, and rise to the occasion! So I felt guilty because asking Mirandia for a favor meant enduring so much of this stuff. 

She was in there for a total of twenty-two minutes. That is a shit-ton of empowerment. 

When she came out, she said, “We got it.” 

“Thank you thank you thank you,” I said. “How many times did she tell you to…”

“Reach for the stars? Seven. Seven times.”

“I owe you big time,” I said. 

“Seven big times,” she said. 

“Seven.” 

*

So, Day Two we were on the showroom floor. 

We walked past the mechas on display in the Home-Arsenal section. These could hold four or five grown men. They were combat-ready with armor-plated clinker-built scales, 360-degree head rotation, and locked and loaded weapons. 

“Interior seating like a four-person golf cart!” the salesman was saying to a sunburnt man in his fifties. “Do you golf?”  

This one display would flash different backgrounds and the mecha within its little three-walled display area would change to blend into each one. Woodlands? The mecha’s skin would shift to a wooded stripiness. Desert? The mecha would turn all sandy-colored. Jungle? The mecha seemed lush and green and almost disappeared. 

And we circled the Discount Section. These were low-end but still way out of my price range which was zero. The mechas’ movements were choppy and they made rattling noises, like their parts were grinding together or something. Instead of that chemically scent of newness, these mechas smelled musky and animalistic–more like the funk you’d find at a zoo. The muzzles and snouts and nostrils and horns were blurry like they’d been rushed through the process.

What process? How are mechas made? I don’t know. 

These were the only mechas in the whole Expo that were in cages. 

The salespeople in the Discount Section came in two varieties: 1. I’ve completely given up. And 2. I’m am so desperate I could swallow you whole. 

Tippy and I kept our distance. 

We liked to linger at the Main Pavilion–the high-dollar displays with the newest most beautiful models of mechas. Tippy was into them too. Not as much as me, but still the mechas could take your breath away. They were on massive slow-turning stages. Beautiful women in shiny, tight-fitting unitards and giant brightly colored hairdos stood beside the mechas, gesturing to them with elegant hands. Like if the women in unitards weren’t there to show us the mechas, we might miss them altogether. 

A man’s voice was piped in from speakers. He was saying things like, “Once inside, you can control your mecha completely. Our state-of the-art mechs are perfectly synced! You think, they act! Become one with your mecha today!”

“Do you know how amazing that would be,” I said to Tippy. “You’d get inside and suddenly you’d sync up and be this total badass.”

Tippy wasn’t so sure, I could tell. She looked at the mecha like she felt sorry for it. “They say how smart the mechas are. State of the art! Hyper-smart high functioning minds! But they treat them like … well, like ding dogs. You know?” Ding dogs was this thing–it had a whole back story between us. 

I wasn’t thinking about the mechas now as much as I was about being inside one. “Do you think there’s someone inside of this one right now?” I asked. 

“Gotta be,” Tippy said. 

I took a few steps closer than you’re supposed to get. I can do that because I’m security. “Helloooo,” I said softly. 

And the mecha on the closest rotating stage shifted. Its face had been in the other direction. And, it’s hard to explain because it didn’t turn to face me. No. But a small furred ear popped open, a jawbone rose up, then a muzzle and a snout and finally one bright blue eye. 

I couldn’t breathe for a second. I just kind of seized up. Then I waved.

“Don’t wave,” Tippy said. 

“I have to touch one,” I told Tippy.  

“You said you just wanted to get close to the mechas!” Tippy said. “Don’t do it! Don’t get all worked up!”

“What’s so bad about touching one?” I said. 

“Let’s go,” she said, pulling on my arm. “Keep it moving! Keep it moving!” It was a line she used a lot in SECURITY. 

*

Here’s the Ding Dog story. 

See, Tippy’s older sister wrote on her face while she was asleep–DING DOG. She’d meant to write DINGDONG but messed up. Not like Dingdong is a lot better than Ding Dog. But whatever. My mums made Tippy a juicy drink from a pouch of sugar powder and put it in a glass with a cartoon rabbit on it. My Mums said, “Tippy, permanent marker isn’t permanent because skin isn’t permanent. In a week or so, your old skin will slough off and your new skin won’t say Ding Dog. Okay?”

Tippy was crying and crying. But she snuffled and said, “Okay.”

“That’s the thing you have to realize, Tippy. We’re always being made new.” 

I was probably there but I don’t know if I’m remembering it or just remembering how Tippy tells it. But I think about it a lot. 

And I wish I believed it. But, deep down, I don’t. I think we don’t change much at all. I think that if your sister writes Ding Dog on your face while you’re asleep as a little kid, you’ll always feel like you’re a Ding Dog, on some level. 

Forever. 

Me and Tippy, we’re stuck. We’re Ding Dogs. And we always will be… 

Unless. 

Unless what? 

Unless something big comes along! 

This was how I kept hope alive. I was biding my time, waiting for this big thing. And as we moved into Day Three–the final day of the Expo–I revved up. I had to make something happen. 

*

Mirandia let Tippy keep the assignment in the Main Showroom because she’d shown real initiative in asking for it. So we were circling around, swinging our Tasers and generally ignoring people. 

“Eff it, Tippy. I’m going to ask to test one of the mechas.”

“Test one?”

“I’m going to get inside of one.” I tapped my badge. “I’m security!”

To be honest, this was my plan all along. And didn’t Tippy kind of know it? That’s why she’d said Don’t get pushy and insistent. And made me promise. It was because she knew I would get pushy and insistent. So I was bracing myself for her reaction. 

Tippy looked at me. At first, she was furious. But then her expression changed. She looked at me with–I don’t know… She looked at me the way she looked at the mecha–feeling sorry for it. And for a moment it was like her face was, in fact, the moon–bright and luminous and steady and full of a distant sadness. 

“What?” I said to Tippy, a little defensively. 

Tippy blinked, like she’d been caught. “Nothing.”

“It’s something. Tell me.”

“You’re security.” She straightened my badge. “Go for it,” she said–completely flat, zero positivity.

“Okay,” I said. “I will.”

“Okay,” she said back.

I wasn’t sure what this meant but I accepted it.

*

First off, I walked up to the woman running The Wonderful World of Mechas display. Tippy stayed about fifty feet away, scanning the perimeter as they say in SECURITY. 

There were mostly child-sized mechas designed for little kids. But they had matching mechas for parents, and I figured I would jump in one of those for a few minutes. “Excuse me,” I said to the stern older woman in charge, “but I’m going to have to do an inspection of one of the mechas.”

“Inspection? I don’t think so.” 

“Well, I do think so.”

“Insurance would never let us put someone without training in one of these things. We only hire pros.”

“What’s inside of those?” I pointed to a row of pink and purple mechas with unicorn horns and small flappy wings. “Professional children?”

“They’re blank,” she said. “Nothing in them.”

“I wouldn’t if I were you!” the woman said.

“I’m security!” I said and then I glanced back at Tippy whose face was still kind of slack and annoyed. 

“Touch at your own risk,” the woman said. 

I opened my hand and laid it on the bright yellow fuzz. So soft. So incredibly soft. Its skin seemed to ripple. And a spot next to my hand bulged a bit. Then an eye popped open. 

And I leaned closer. So that my face was just inches from this one large eye. It wasn’t a singular wet lens. It was almost as if the eye held a thousand more eyes. This close, I saw the knob of my chin, the narrow bridge of my nose, this little scar on my cheek that I’d had a really long time–Tippy knows how I got that scar and only her. 

The eye held a thousand reflections, a million little mirrors. 

When I turned my head, all of my heads turn. When I dipped my chin, all of my chins dip. “Does it understand emotions?” I asked the saleswoman. 

“It’s probably only programmed to understand the subsets of love, need and loyalty.”

*

“Need and loyalty,” I said to Tippy. “The subsets? Is that right?”

“I don’t know if they’re subsets at all,” Tippy said. Her voice was still a little cold and pissed-off. “Especially loyalty. That seems like a big chunk of what love is, right?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I really don’t know much about love, I guess.” 

We moved to the Main Pavilion display. One of the salesmen was taking a break, sipping from a flask he’d pulled from his interior jacket pocket. A mecha behind him was shifting from all fours to a bear-like pose, rising up on hind legs. “Inspection!” I said. “I’m here for the inspection!” 

“What?” the salesmen said. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.” 

“Of what?”

“The mechas.”

“Are you in the union?” the salesman said. 

“What union?”

“Fuck off.” He screwed the lid on the flask.

“Excuse me?” I said, really stink-faced, like foul language upset me.

“Only union workers can get inside of a mecha, dumbass.” 

“Don’t call me a dumbass!”

“If you don’t want to be called a dumbass, stop being a dumbass,” he said and then he walked over to a group of models in their shiny unitards. 

I looked up at the bear-like mecha. Someone was in there. Someone in a union. 

I walked back to Tippy who’d been keeping her eye on the perimeter–we didn’t really know what that meant but we said it sometimes. “They’re union workers,” I told her. 

“Huh.” Tippy has always wanted to be in a union–the benefits are always better. “Not everyone can afford union workers though, right?”

“Right!” 

We quick-walked over to the Discount Area. 

The first few salespeople I approached just stared at me, dead-faced and shook their heads. Hell no.

When I walked up to one of the desperate ones, she gripped my arms and pulled me close. “Oh my God. Will you buy one? Will you please just buy one? If I don’t sell one of these mechas, my whole family will lose everything. We live in this trailer right near the airport. It’s so fucking loud that the baby…”

I was scared. Need. A subset of love. Her need was like love. Like she was in love with me, she needed me so much. I pried her hands loose and backed away, as quickly as I could.  

*

Tippy and I went home that night to our studio apartment. And, look, we don’t sleep in bunk beds. It’s just that because we don’t have much space I sleep in a loft bed. And she sleeps on what’s really–during the day–a sofa because we put these pillows on it and we watch TV there the way it is with all good sofas. 

As I was falling asleep, Tippy said, “You always do this and it doesn’t work.”

“I always do what?”

“You put your hopes on something. You think it’s going to be The Thing. And then it’s not and then you’re sad and …” She trailed off in a way that made me think she was going to cry. 

I didn’t say anything because I knew she was right, but also knew that I still wanted to get inside a mecha. And I couldn’t figure out why she’d care if I was all excited and then sad. I wanted to say, What’s it to you? Who cares if I get excited about something and it’s a total failure? But I didn’t want her to really start crying. I didn’t understand what was going on. 

It was quiet. Too quiet. The neighbors who fight a lot weren’t fighting. The neurotic dog next door that whines and whines and works itself into a full-blown panic attack wasn’t even clawing at that spot on the floor. 

“Your life is okay,” she said. “The way it is. And your childhood wasn’t great but it was okay too.” She was talking about my mums. I could tell. She was going to quote her. She was about to say, We’re always being made new. I didn’t want to hear that garbage. 

“Fine, okay,” I said. “If you don’t want me to do it, Tippy, just say so.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

“You’re telling me that I’m just going to fail. Nice!”

“I’m not saying that. You’re not hearing me.”

I imagined Tippy lying there, her moon-face almost glowing. I wanted this conversation to be over. “Good night,” I said quietly.

She took a moment and then she gave in, too. “Good night.”

*

Day Three, I gave up. I wanted to say, Are you happy, Tippy? I wanted to say, Look at me! Accepting failure! I wanted to say, Mirandia is right! You don’t reach for the stars and you don’t even want me to reach for the stars! Look at us, a pair of Ding Dogs, not reaching for anything!

Instead, I moped around with a nagging sense of dread. Like this was about to all go away–all the beautiful weird stunning mechas. Gone. And I was going to stay behind. Stuck. 

Tippy and I didn’t talk much. She told a janky teenager who was about to put gum on the wall not to. And he stopped and put the piece of gum back in his mouth. Looking back, that was the only actual security-like thing either of us accomplished. 

We sat together at the Eatery, in silence. 

And that was when something happened. I didn’t know it was something happening–really happening–at the time. It seemed like a simple thing, but it wasn’t.

Mirandia offered us a second shift. The message popped into our handhelds at the same time. “Loading docks, overtime. You want in?” 

We looked at each other. 

“I’m in,” she said. 

But I was still moping so I said, “Why would I go? Just to torture myself? To get closer to the mechas and have it all go to shit. And our lives stay exactly the same? Our stupid shitty lives!”

“Screw you,” Tippy said. “Don’t tell me what my life is like!” 

And with that, she got up and dumped her food in a bin and put her tray in the stack and strode off to the Exit to the Loading Docks. 

Tippy and I didn’t make plans for the future. We were day-to-day-ers, by nature. We didn’t talk about how we were supposed to get our own places or grow the fuck up. We were in it together, you know? Without ever saying: We’re in this together.

But this moment is something I’ll never forget. Tippy walking away from me across the Expo’s Main Area toward the Exit while people dismantling their displays–letting air out of blow-ups, taking down life-sized cutouts and cardboard signs and the undressing of the parade-float paraphernalia… All the unpinning of nametags, loosening of neckties, and letting down of big huge hair-sprayed hair. And the big beautiful mechas were being herded off stages and lined up and marched across the floor. 

Tippy. She saved me from this guy at a party that summer when we had the matching blue haircuts. She saved me from being taken by him, in a bad way. Taken, in a very bad personal way. That’s how I got my scar. He had this kind of raised ring and when I fought him off in this side room–Tippy searching for me, searching and call my name over the loud music–his ring caught my cheek and ripped it. Then Tippy burst in the room and the light poured in and the guy was caught and she grabbed me from him. She took off her hoodie and pressed it to my bleeding cheek and we got me out of there, fast.  

Tippy. Her yellow vest like a small beacon… getting lost in the crowd.  

I stood there and I thought, Maybe I love Tippy. Maybe I want to be in-it-together with Tippy. 

I don’t know the word for this kind of love because it’s not sexual–I don’t think it is. (Could it be? Maybe it could.) 

But it’s not just friendship either. It’s more than that. 

It’s definitely not just me biding my time until my real life starts. Tippy is my real life. And I’m hers. And I wondered–right there with noise of forklifts and drills and mechas (moaning, bucking, growling, trumpeting): Is this a kind-of becoming new? This moment. Right here. 

So I ran and the running wasn’t great. I was slow and my zigzags around the displays and the beeping forklifts were awkward. I got pretty breathless really fast. I called out, “Tippy! Tippy!”

She turned around and saw me just as I slowed down and put my hands on my knees to catch my breath. “I’m coming!” I called to her. “I’m in!” 

*

What happened next made national news. Who got blamed? Security. But the Security Crew was like, What the fuck were we supposed to do with a stampede? We weren’t trained for that. So the blame went up a few levels higher than us and landed on some sad-sack scapegoat who’s now on home arrest for a couple years. There are still a bunch of pending lawsuits and sometimes Tippy and I are called in for depositions. 

Whatever.

We never tell them what really happened. 

Never.

But this is what really happened. 

Tippy and I were hiding out behind a dumpster not too far off. We were sitting on overturned buckets, staying off the radar while earning overtime. 

What were we talking about? 

I didn’t tell her I loved her. I didn’t understand the love yet, but I did say, “I know why you don’t want me be waiting for my life to start, and when I think something is going to change me and be that start to my life and then it isn’t and I’m sad, it’s hurtful. Because when I do that, I’m not getting that I’m living my life and you’re in it. And I’m lucky to have you in it.” 

“I’m lucky, too,” she said. “I like us.” 

And I felt good and full of hope. The feeling reminded me of my birthdays as a kid because even though my dad didn’t wrap presents, it was exciting when he stood there, holding the present behind his back and said, “Guess!” It was like, for that moment, my present could be absolutely (almost) anything! I just had to start imagining it. 

This was around the time someone got tased. Straight-up. Human on human. It was actually over a recent sports match. And the taser popped out of a hand and rolled. It hit a mecha. The union workers who got paid to demonstrate mechas from within had already clocked out. (Most of them were in a bar nearby. Someone messaged them to help with the corralling efforts that followed, but, as a group, they decided to keep drinking.)

The first mecha bucked hard and sent some kind of urgent alarm that flitted through the central nervous systems of the surrounding mechas. 

A mass-panic response. 

Tippy and I heard the roaring, the pounding of hooves and heavy clawed paws across the lot. We jumped up and saw the mechas charging through the floodlights. They heaved themselves forward. Some galloped. Some galumphed. Some darted. Some just glided through the light, sleek and powerful. 

The ones that had already been loaded into trucks were kicking and throwing their bodies around. One truck tipped in one directly, righted itself and then, when the mecha swung itself into the innards again, the thing went over, landing with a loud heavy gong. 

Within a minute, maybe two, all of the mechas that had been in plain sight were now gone. 

“Let’s go find one!” Tippy said. 

“Are you sure?” I said. “I just want to be clear that this is not me, hoping for some big change and–” 

“I’m sure I’m sure,” Tippy said and she grabbed my and we ran after the mechas. 

*

Going after the mechas was our job. But the way we did it was not. 

There was this quick huddle. A manager type started shouting directives, sending teams off in different directions. 

South, across the highway, there were the suburbs. 

East and west, the mechas would find industrial complexes. 

Tippy and I were smart though. “North, north,” we whispered to each other and when the time came, we volunteered for that. It was the last spot to volunteer for and so there weren’t many of us. Just Tippy and me and two other pairs. The manager said, “If you find one of them, don’t take action. Just call it in! Okay? Just report on your handheld! Reinforcements are coming!” 

Tippy and I tromped through a low-lying swamp, through a foul-smelling wasteland, through two abandoned factories. It was quiet and, weirdly, kind of pleasant. We sometimes would hear a strange gurgle or drumming of what we swore were hooves or paws or claws or whatever these creatures had going on … And we’d pivot in that direction. 

We were so far away that we could see the helicopters buzzing over the city, but they were really far away, distant thudding in the sky. 

Eventually, we came to the landfill. It was now a grassy mound that rose up before us. A hill of garbage, really. And some ways up, I saw a dark mound. “Look.”

It moved a little.

“That’s one, there,” I said. “Definitely a mecha.” It was one of the really huge ones that could hold a bunch of people. 

And then, weirdest most beautiful thing, Tippy started singing. It was this song we learned when we were thirteen and in a terrible French class together. It was about someone telling a little mermaid not to cry. But Tippy, she’s got this great voice–thin and light and sweet and clear. It threaded through the air and the mecha heard it. 

It took a few steps toward us. It quivered. 

She kept singing and the night was a little cold and the sky was really inky. 

The mecha walked closer and closer until we could see it pretty clearly. It was the most majestic mecha I’d ever seen. Not as huge as the others but stunning with a rack of thick curled horns. Its entire body was shiny and black. Then it shivered, and its skin flashed with iridescent colors. 

There was a spiked row of sharp knots running along the ridge of its back. The seam that opened up and could let us in. 

Tippy got to the end of the song. I forgot how sad it was. And when everything was quiet, eyes popped open across the mecha’s body. My heart was pounding impossibly hard.

I looked at Tippy. She scraped her full bottom lip with her front teeth and smiled. For a second, I remembered the two of us making the loft bed together and her in French class and her as a little kid with Ding Dog written on her face in permanent marker that wasn’t permanent after all because nothing is.

“Let’s get inside of it,” she said. “See what it’s like to be something else. Powerful and strong and bad-ass!” She was lit up. 

I looked at the mecha and walked up to it. “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right. It’s like cheating or stealing or …” I reached with both hands and put them on the mecha. There was a light electrical buzz to the skin. My fingers tingled. “Try it.”

Tippy put just one hand on the mecha. Her eyes went wide and she teared up. “Amazing.” 

“Tippy,” I said. “I feel love for you. I feel the subsets of love too–need and loyalty. And probably a bunch of other subsets that I don’t even know about.”

“I don’t know what we are to each other,” she said.

“Me neither.” 

“You know I’m a ding dog,” she whispered. 

“If you’re a ding dog then I am too,” I said. “And so fucking what?” 

The mecha seemed to have a lot of loose skin at its neck, and I noticed that now because there was this puffing up, filling with air and tighten–shiny as a frog’s gullet. It seemed like it was saying, I’m a Ding Dog too.

In fact, I felt those words–which were unspoken–appear in my head. 

“Did you hear that?” I said though it was not really hearing. 

“I did,” Tippy said, her voice all hushed. “We should just let it go.” 

“I agree.” And I did, completely. 

I said to the mecha, “You see those lights in the sky over there.” I pointed to the helicopters. “You should go in the opposite direction from them, as fast as you can. Okay?” 

The taut pocket of skin deflated slowly. The wrinkles sagged like a collar around the mecha’s neck. Its claws dug at the dirt a little and then we heard the rustling. We looked up and the hill seemed to break into pieces and come apart. 

But it didn’t bust up. Not at all. The hill was filled with mechas that had camouflaged themselves to blend. This mecha in front of us had alerted them somehow. And now they began to move–quickly–darting in away from the helicopters over the city, up over the hill. 

The mecha bowed its head, showing its beautiful horns. And Tippy and me, we bowed back.

Then, one by one, its many eyes disappeared and, like the others, it ran off and was gone. 

Tippy and I sat down, our butts on the dirt, and then we leaned back and looked up at the night sky. It was wild. And she reached out and took my hand. We stayed like that for a long time. 

Finally I said, “I don’t think they’ll ever get caught.”

She said, “I hope they don’t.”

And we were right, turns out. Because nowadays, there are sightings of mechas–feral ones, out in that part of that country. An invasive species, they call them. Hunters have tried to track them down. The hunters’ bodies are never found. They’re just–boop, gone! Devoured? Hard to say. 

Tippy and I still live in the same studio apartment and every time some hunter goes missing, we pour ourselves tipples of booze and we raise our little glasses and say, “Long live the ding dogs! Long live us all!”