Now we can cross the shifting sands chapters 1,2 and 3

                                                  Episode 1
The blue haired-boy rode his mumble-jumble across the green shifting sands of the barren dunes of Forget me not Desert.  He wore a copper-colored close-helm that was barely tolerable because of the heat, even with his shemagh-headwrap separating him from him from the unbearable heat of the metal. Likewise, his (Halloween-orange with purple stripes) thawb under his cuirass-armor left him unburned but feeling all of the weather. Like reaching into a hot stove with an oven-mitt.
   The Mumble-Jumble wore nothing but a leather saddle and hackamore around its head. What is a mumble jumble? You may ask. It is a giant kangaroo-mouse with pink fur and black zebra-like stripes. It does not usually walk but instead hops like a rabbit through the sand and earth (though it can run faster than most critters). 
   The boy's name was Zia, and the mumble-jumble's name was Resham. Zia had been out in the badlands of the desert looking for a cure for his beloved Soha's illness. He had fought many of the Mekolds over the weeks since he had Soha with her guardian in the cave to the north that he now returned to.  
   Zia's qareen walked beside as his mumble-Jumble hopped up a green dune.  "you will never find the cure because it does not exist." said the qareen. "you know nothing" said Zia. The spirit that was now running beside the mumble-jumble Said: "then why haven't you found it?" "again you know nothing," said Zia. Then making a clicking sound with his mouth and Resham now hopped at full pace up the dune. And the qareen exasperated lifted his arms as if to say "what can I do?" than evaporated from his feet upwards into black smoke.
   "I was made clay, lion flesh, and the blood of a dead god. Now I am followed by the ghost of that dead god who was using my soul and life against me. Haunted by my father all the while serving Mami the goddess who gave me life. Mami willing I will save you Soha, Mami willing I will find the Jubjub fruit." and so Zia thought as Resham carried him the miles to see his sweetheart.
   I was a cold night in the forget me not desert. The fire flickered and danced in the light of the three moons. Two were a faint reflection of the red sun that rose and set on the world. While the third was large and you could see oceans and what looked like cities all across it. Oceans and masses of the mountain like spires protruding from its seas. With forest's covering most of the moon's visible surface. Zia lay back on the gree sand and thought "If I rode Resham as fast as he could go and we he hopped at full speed...we may just with a sudden leap make it to the living moon and visit Mami and the other gods..."
   He slept with his breastplate on, and before the sun came up, he put on the helmet that had laid beside him. Rasham watched him as he drank from his canteen, long slow gulps, and swallows. The mumble-grumble did not drink water but instead lived off the moist insides of the giant grasshoppers its rider hunted for it and the rare scarab that while not as large as the deserts grasshoppers was still a big as a football.
   They rode again through the red light of the giant red sun begin to come over the horizon.  Zia, muscular and lean beneath his robes and armor with the sword that he had always carried with him, for as long as he could remember. Its scabbard was wrapped with old yellow fading rags. But the blade was lite and black forged from the wings of a zmey-gorynych that had tried to seduce her. She killed it and came down to the world with a gift for her adopted son. He saw her holding the blade, a gold light behind her. And she stabbed him in the chest with the mighty blade. When he woke, the sword lay beside him and he had a foot long scar through the center of his chest.
   Off on the distance, we see them the Mekold's they are walking, now running at us. Zia pulls out his blade and charges down into the valley of sand at the two Clockwork androids. Pulling out his sword and leaping from his mumble-jumble. Then standing still as they twenty, or so feet away continue there charge speaking in the foreign tung that can only be represented as gibberish such as "gieh wj fjkw f fwkf"their round balljoint bodies. And helmet like faces (Zia's helmet was made from one of there heads he had collected and gutted) each with a buzzing stinger droid floating beside it.
   Zia swings his blade at the first one's stinger droid cutting it down. Then stabs without looking a thrust under his arms and behind him hitting the other Mekold oil spurting out from its body like blood or juice from a crushed grape. Than swings down maiming the other (hacking an arm off) while it's stinger zoomed and buzzed dancing so it could get a bight in. Zia swung the blade that looked like a batwing chopping the final of stingers as it swooped in to paralyze him. The mekold swung it's only good arm with an electric shock bursting from its palm and paralyzed Zia. He fell to his knees looking up, barely able to hold his sword. But the mekold reached out and was about to zap him again when a piece of steel burst through its arm that looks like a pipe but cut a thirty-degree angle on both ends though in opposite directions. 
   The mekold turned its head looking to where the pipe had come from when an X  shaped device about an eight inches wide including the four-inch fingers latched onto it like a magnet with a wire leading off to an old woman who pushed a button that paralyzed the mekold and the eyes of the machine nearly hidden by its helm went from glowing red to blue.
   "it takes quite a young man, to be able to take on a couple of mekold with a sword. well, one mekold with a sword." said the old women her face hidden by a burka Zia stared her up and down. "you checking me out?" she said laughing again. "I am old enough to be your granny," she said.

Zia - "no I was just trying to figure you out."

Granny - "I'm flattered, but I am a married woman."

Zia - "What kind of weapons did you use?"

Granny - "the kind that gets the job done."

Zia - (He began to speak than thought the better and said) "Well why did you wait so long to help out?"

Granny - "didn't mean to help out I was hoping you could take care of them on your own. so I could collect the scrap."

Zia - "I think I best be on my way."

   Then he reached down for his sword but the old granny leveled her pipe gun at him, and he stays still. "Where you going?" said the old granny.  "To find the Jubjub fruit." said Zia "No, I think you're going to the slave traders," said Granny. Just then an old war-machine came crawling over the dune. It's treads leaving a snake-like trail in the sand. The rest of it was old bolt's and steel one of the tanks from the ancient wars but as large as a small house. "put your hands behind your head your coming with us" said the old women. And when Zia didn't reply. The old women shot Resham his mumble jumble. That let out a yelp then quietly died, and Zia stares down at the sand thinking nothing but feeling disgusted.


                                                            Episode 2
His cell was tight and full of rust, and baking from the day's heat, kind of like sitting in a microwave set to defrost.  Granny and her husband locked him away took his belongings and left him naked locked in a closet inside of the living fortress. They had tried to hack his nervous system, but the firewall was beyond there ability to override. His spiky blue hair still thick with the blood of the dessert worms he crushed and spread through it to kill bacteria, so he didn't have to wash it.  Protruding from each disk of his spine a sheet of steel lining his back. With the only thing separating him from the other models of his design a piercing between his eyes A steel stud of small bolt's separating his eyes.
   The door slid open, and granny said: "grandpa is going to try to delete your software again, so be a good dear and come and have a seat." Grandpa patted a black leather chair with steel needles sticking out from it. Zia got up watching the pipe gun leveled at him. Sitting down with the steel of his spine opening like wings and swallowing the needles that now moved like snakes made of water. His body went into Reservice mode, and automatically he leaned into the things that took away the control of his muscles. His face moved forward like a drawer revealing steel skeletal bones and bio-organic muscles that looked more like the gums in your mouth than the meat under your skin.
   Grandpa jacked his tablet into the USB port between Zia's eyes and ears. "it's weird seeing a scar on a C-02 model. I was taught when I was a boy the pleasure models had nanomachines that left them pristine to the eyes." said Grandpa "I kinda like it, maybe I should take him for a spin just to make sure the nanomachines kept the rest of him working." said Grandma with a smile.  the old man punched the left side of Zia's face then said: "I can leave him with more if my old bones aren't good enough for you?" "don't damage our meal ticket you big old baby, I was just teasing." then he looked down at his red knuckles and said, "it's broken!" "well, you senile fool you did just punch a steel skeleton."  Said granny. Zia could hear and feel all of this even if he could not control his body. He still was conscious and didn't care. He had failed his sweet-heart Soha.
   Granny was messing with the Batwing shaped sword, having discovered that it gave off a wifi signal she tried to log into it but not knowing the password. She smoked her pipe and like a fool inhaled the poison into her lungs, and grimaced at the computer screen in front of her. "well your not giving up your secrets tonight..." she said looking at Zia then marched off to her bedroom where grandpa was already laying down, his eyes glaring at the white cast that his wife had wrapped around his forearm.  "I hate that android..." said the old man. his wife trying to comfort him said: "don't blame the hardware for your mistake." then the door closed and Zia could hear no more.
   Zia had a dream, Mami came to him and said something he could not remember even while he heard it.  He saw that she had I lion cub on a leash. And found that he empathized with it like someone seeing a childhood photo of themselves. She held in her other hand a mace and raised it sticking the lion cub on the head killing it. Zia abruptly awoke: eyes open. Than the batwing sword flew across the room, drawn to his scar like a magnet but following a clear path like it was on rails. It stopped in front of him floating in the air still as a rock on the ground. Then stabbed into his chest. And Zia collapsed into a black hole and in the same way a creature crawled out of it. One hand at a time pulling itself free. Its head was white as a bone with the shape of an alligator mouth open wide. With a human mouth made of shadow inside of it. On the side of its head were three eyes on either side. The rest of its body was made of shadow but gave off the impression of a Greek statue. And between its legs a monstrous bullhorn almost twelve inches long protruding like an erect penis.
    The old couple had woken up and screamed unable to fire a shot before it killed them then raped their corpses with its horn. After an hour of this, it left the way it came. Being swallowed back into the basketball-sized black hole but this time Zia crawled out of it stumbling onto what he thought must be, or, what used to be granny and grandpa. He pulled the sword out of his chest and watched as the black-hole disappeared as he did. Then stood up and began to search for his other belongings. Taking nothing that wasn't his but the pipe gun and a bag of the pipes that it fired with him. 
  
  


                                                       Episode 3
The light from the red sun rose on the horizon off in the distance swallowing up the sky with its haunting warmth.  Zia but an ant in the in the embryonic light of a dying world. He didn't need food, he ate and drank for the pleasure of others and now that she was somewhere else he didn't care. He didn't need love for Soha consumed him. All was obvious in her light.
   Vascular Ehlers-Danlos or, VEDs is what Soha suffer from.  When she wakes up, she can dislocate up to ten bones gently getting out of bed. Zia would watch his owner the women he was sold to. The women he was supposed to please. Every day he felt feeble.  He would ask her what he could do, and she said: "not a damn thing." in a soft bitter voice. He adored her and took purpose from her existence. Took purpose from his job, for all the tragedy of humans the worst was they could not find a target. While most of his kind could not relate to this or empathize with there affliction. He most of all knew the misery of an overabundance of meaning and the lack of clarity that came with it.  The fact that you can not reduce life to a single sentence to explain to its doubters why it was worth living was the at once the great joke without a punchline and tragedy of existence. 
   His feet stomped through the green dunes and red rocks of the world. His eyes always in a dream world, not with more purpose but a purpose satisfied.  Not his but hers, he remembers the day she sent him out into the desert. He would do everything he could, though nothing he did could alleviate her pain. At last, she said, "the Jubjub fruit can cure my illness...go and find it." "where can I find it?" said Zia. "Out there...somewhere..." she was pointing out the cave of red rocks. while sitting on a queen mattress with its silk sheets and dozens of feather pillows surrounding her. The small demons that served her, cleaning out the cave and preparing food. Zia nodded and thus began his journey.
   It had been two hundred years since he had started his quest. Searching the endless desert for the Jubjub fruit that would cure his mistress's ailment. The android had no concept of time. It was not in his programming. As a C-02 model, he technically had no artificial intelligence. Only programmed responses to elicit emotion. He could think, he could rationalize but was unable to change actively. He only did as he was programmed to do without passion. Ounce Soha told him "you are my cockroach-angel. Only your instinct isn't to survive; instead, you make perverts want to live." then she laughed. Zia knew it was meant to be cruel but felt nothing. He understands the painful logic of taking her pain on a lesser creature and so when she sent him out into the desert he did it with a smile, assuring her he would return with her cure.
   Soha has been dead for one hundred and ninety years. If you ask me the whole thing is a Greek tragedy. Except to Soha who wore the mask with a smile making it into a comedy but for her suffering and longing for fairness. While Zia roll is that of the tragic hero, but behind the mask of sadness is a joy. The irony is not always a bad thing. Much of the beauty of life comes from the nuanced pseudo-ironic behavior of parts in a clock being aware of what they are but unable to change time.