The mashed up humachines all got shoved into the biofuel tanks and that’s the first my daddy knew about those tanks.
And after two days carrying this little wee boy around on its shoulders, picking him up and putting him down again whenever it was needful, the humachine finally had to take him to the Recyclers, which is where the humachines inside the Pale City got their repairs, or else got heaved into the biofuel tank if they couldn’t be fixed. By this time, my daddy said, he knew that his humachine companion was called Tad, and he knew that Tad should by rights ram him straight in the biofuel tank.
Only that never happened. Tad made sure that my daddy got kept alive and put with the new-hatched humachines to train and get strong, and that’s how my daddy got all those extra features on his body, why he grew so sturdy and why he lived so long. He always said that it was his greatest enemy that taught him the most about living, and the most about what is important.
He believed that because Tad, the great humachine that should by rights have killed my daddy and made biofuel out of him to feed his fellow humachines, instead he carried that little boy around and grew to love him like it was his own child. Tad found a way for my daddy to live even among his enemies, and many years later when they left the Pale, it was Tad’s love that gave my daddy his vigour and his long life and his love for all of us here in the Uplands where we live today.
