The Skeleton & The Carpenter

The Founder's Tale

         Neither the driver nor the passenger knew what it was they were looking at; as they got closer and closer to the hills making up the horizon in front of them, two giant towers were coming into view. The towers were revealed slowly, starting with their peaks. The very top of each tower resembled a giant black marble nestled in a chrome cradle. The next piece that became visible over the hills was wider than the top. Each tower's rounded peak sat atop a tall, white rectangle. Squinting to make out the details of the ever-growing towers in the distance, Roger was sure he saw rectangular arms and legs on each one.

The road ahead took a slight westward direction, and soon Hardware Guy and Roger found that they had to crane their necks to the left if they wanted to keep an eye on the towers. With the distant structures no longer straight ahead, they would never actually reach them and discover their nagging secrets.

Coming up quickly on their left was a dirt road that intersected the main highway on which they were driving.

"Do you see that?" Roger asked.

"The little dirt road over there? Yeah." Hardware Guy replied a little too quickly.

"It looks like it's headed straight for whatever those are." Roger said, nodding his head towards the towers.

"Yeah, it does.... think we should take it?"

"Yes!"

They had nearly passed the dirt road, so Hardware Guy had to take the turn hard. The left-over tubing and bottles of liquid coolant from the construction of Icy Dude's chair banged noisily together in the back of the truck. As Hardware Guy and Roger drove on the dirt road, the towers, now directly in front of them. were growing closer and closer by the second.

The closer they got to the towers, which were, at this closer distance, quite clearly humanoid in appearance, the farther they got from any other markers of civilization; there were no roads (save for the rudimentary dirt path upon which they drove), no power lines, no other vehicles, nothing. And then they saw it. Coming up on the side of the road was a shoddy sign made from a few two-by-fours nailed together that had Future Site of JoeCity spray-painted in black upon it. Beyond it, a stack of lumber, the beginings of two buildings, and a lone man were all dwarfed by the behemoth towers. Now that they had reached the towers, Roger and Hardware Guy got a crystal-clear look at them and suspected their actual identities: they were giant, motionless robots.

"Well, helloooo there! Don't get many visitors around these parts! Come to think of it, I haven't ever had any visitors!" the man, wearing nothing but a pair of faded denim overalls, who was bald but for his thick, black, bushy eyebrows and mustache, greeted Hardware Guy and Roger, leaning on the open driver's side window as soon as the truck came to a stop.

Roger and Hardware Guy coughed upon inhaling the dirt cloud stirred up by the trucks tires. Their greeter was unfazed, apparently quite accustomed to inhaling large quantities of dirt.

"You must be –"

"Joe? How'd you guess?! HA!" Joe joked.

Hardware Guy and Roger each let out a single, polite chuckle.

"What brings you to my neck of the woods, anyway?" asked the eccentric man.

"Well, uh, sir, we were kind of curious as to what those are." Roger answered haltingly, pointing at the robots. "We could see them from miles away."

"Ah, wondering about the EVALs?"

"EVALS?" asked Roger and Hardware Guy in unison.