Riders in the Sky

“Let me tell you how I got here, yippie-i-oh.”

Those were the first words the stranger said to Wayne.

“I said, let me tell you how I got here,” he said again. Wayne looked up from his bottle. Even in this dimly lit backwater dive, the stranger stood out. The bandana tied around his neck was printed with a ranch brand, the sort they just didn’t make anymore. Tattered, worn gloves hung from a bright, braided belt. And on his back was a jacket that almost looked like leather, but it was not any substitute material Wayne recognized.

Wayne returned his attention to the bar counter and emptied his bottle. He signaled for another. The robot bartender buzzed.

“Make that two, yippie-i-ay.” The stranger scooted into the barstool next to Wayne.

“Listen, friend, I’m in no mood for company,” Wayne said. The stranger nodded.

“I can imagine you ain’t, not after the union bust. Not with the whole of the Greenertons searching for you.”

For an instant, Wayne considered breaking his bottle over the stranger’s head and making a run for it. But the empty bottle seemed, in that moment, so heavy. The full one the bartender planted in front of him was much lighter.

Wayne took a slug of his beer. “Do me one courtesy and let me finish this before you take me in, would ya’?”

The stranger chuckled. “I ain’t no bounty hunter. Fella in the corner, however…”

Wayne turned his head. In the booth near the back sat a man reading a holo-newspaper, his drink untouched. The stranger next to Wayne wiped his chin and placed his empty bottle on the bar. He stood, pulled the tattered gloves from his belt, and winked. A moment later he had the bounty hunter’s collar between his fists, yelling that the old so-and-so had done him wrong and stole his girl years ago.

Wayne never knew if it was the beer, or the noise, or something about the stranger, but he felt a burst of energy and bolted for the door.

Dust kicking up under his boots, Wayne ran into the darkness. He’d come in on the train, but the station was the first place they’d look for him. So, he just ran.

“Hop on, friend.”

Wayne nearly tumbled into the dirt as the stranger pulled up next to him, seated atop a grumbling chrome rotorcycle. It shuddered, sensors watching him.

“A steel horse?” Wayne stuttered, staring at the bio-mech. “That’s not possib…I’ve heard…but I never…”

Wayne’s head spun. He was exhausted. He’d barely slept, barely eaten. He looked up at the stranger.

“No, Riders aren’t…you’re not…”

In the distance, sirens blared. Green lights pierced the sky. The Rider pulled on his goggles, the lenses a hellish red. He grinned and held out his hand.

“Yippie-i-ay, partner.”

Wayne glanced back at the sirens, then leapt onto the rotorcycle. It roared to life, speeding over the prairie, the Rider cackling and hollering into the night.

 

The boy snugged the reins around his hands. It felt tight. Secure. He supposed.

“You ready, Cody?” His father asked. Cody clenched his jaw and nodded. His father rested a hand over Cody’s trembling fingers.

“It’s alright, son. Take your time. The ranch ain’t going nowhere. The union ain’t going nowhere. You’ve got me. You’ve got your fellow Riders. Ain’t that right, boys?”

 

Whoops and hollers filled Cody’s ears, and he blushed. He pulled his respirator bandana over his mouth, fitted his goggles with their red lenses over his eyes. He gripped the reins and kicked the steel horse to life. It shot out of the corral, plummeting off the edge of the ranch and into the sky below. Cody’s father cheered. The other Riders jumped on their mounts, singing as they chased Cody through the clouds.

 

“Let me tell you how I got here.”

Wayne eyed the stranger, barely more than a shadow in the light of the small campfire.

“Listen, friend, thanks for your help and all but cut the bit, okay?” Wayne said. He ran a hand through his hair. “Riders ain’t nothing but an urban legend. Folks gone mad from the climate catastrophe, fleeing the responsibility of fixing the world, disappearing into the sky, doomed to chase the clouds forever. It’s something you tell kids to make them behave. Sort your recycling or the Riders will snatch you up, take you to live among the wicked.”

The Rider leaned into the fire.

“And why do you think I came for you?” he asked. Then he chuckled and reclined against his rotorcycle. “Better me than a Greenerton detective.”

Wayne scowled.

“Unions are illegal, yippie-i-oh.” The Rider said. “And you’ve been sneaking from town to town trying to organize workers. Worse, you’ve been successful. State can’t have that, can they? After all, this crisis demands centralized authority. Curfews. Work schedules. Zone restrictions. Obedience. You, sir, are a threat to law and order.”

“Then why save me from the bounty hunter? What are you going to do to me?” Wayne asked. His mind readied to fight, but the adrenaline had worn off. Even clenching his hands felt too hard.

“Like you said, Riders come down to snatch up the wicked,” the Rider grinned. “But I’ll ask you one question to determine if you deserve to remain here. Why’d you stop?”

Wayne sighed. His shoulders dropped. He warmed his hands by the fire. “They sold out. Turned me in. The other organizers. Everything we did, everything we fought for…I’ve got nothing left. Nowhere to go. And I just can’t run any longer.”

The stranger nodded. He scratched his chin.

“Think you could ride?” he asked. “I’m separated from my herd. Help me track them down, help me get back to Magonia, and I can take you away from all this mess.”

Wayne looked up. The steel horse glistened in the firelight. Those sorts of bio-mech rotorcycles weren’t supposed to be possible. Not according to, well, State experts. Wayne’s gaze shifted to the Rider’s bandana. He stared at the brand stamped on it. An M overlapping a sideways R, set within a circle.

“Magonia Ranch is…real?”

 

“Votes have been tallied and the new boss is…Cody Hester.”

 

 

Cody smiled, body rocking as Riders clapped him on the back. Barely 17 and already a boss, but few were surprised. His father, God rest him, had been elected boss more times than any other Rider on the ranch. Record number of seasons. And it seemed the raindrop hadn’t fallen far from the thunderhead. Even the most stubborn Riders knew Cody could be called upon for a calm head during a dispute. His reasoning in ranch assemblies was unquestioned. And his quick thinking during that jet stream anomaly may have saved two dozen head of cattle from falling.

 

 

The old boss shook Cody’s hand, smiling as she showed him around the office. They discussed rotating the jobs on the ranch, cattle maintenance, harvesting, cooking, algorithm glitches, dispute management, and of course how to compile data on weather, air pollutants, toxicity, radiation. Stuff that would be useful to help the General Assembly of Ranches collectively coordinate grazing.

 

 

Cody squared his shoulders. It was a lot of work. He was up to the task.

 

 

It looked odd, out of place among the prairie grass. Its bulk was covered in some kind of rough fabric, maybe mycelium leather, its back coated in moss and mushrooms. Soil spilled out of its side. Its ocular sensors shone bright red as it bucked, leaving scars in the earth.

“It’s programming went haywire,” the Rider explained, crouched behind a rock. “Shouldn’t be down here, now it doesn’t know where to go or what to do. Here, take this.”

The Rider handed Wayne a thin rod. He’d heard about these, signal lassos that were used to prod wayward drones. Wayne peaked out from behind the rock. The bio-mech spun and bucked. One whack from that thing could do a man in, easy.

“I’ll tag its oculars; you secure the rear rotors. Yippie-i-ay partner, let’s go!” The Rider jumped out from the rock. The bio-mech bolted, stampeding into the sky. The Rider cussed and leapt onto his steel horse, pulling Wayne with him. Into the air they zipped, chasing the out-of-control unit.

“Now!” the Rider shouted, aiming his signal lasso. Wayne tried to locate the rear rotors of the bio-mech. It spun like a jig, tethered on one end by the Rider’s lasso. Wayne steadied his arm.

The pull from the bio-mech nearly yanked the lasso from Wayne’s hand. He gripped the steel horse with his legs. The Rider yelled instructions to secure the lasso and they eased the bio-mech back to the ground. After a brief tussle, the Rider was able to flip it to sleep mode and the machine fell quiet.

“Nice work, partner,” the Rider breathed, wiping his brow. “Help me get this open.”

Together they pried open the bio-mech’s access panel and the Rider set to work tinkering with its programming. Wayne looked over the strange creature. He’d heard of organic machines, computers interfaced with mycelium, but he’d never seen anything like this.

“What is it?” He asked finally.

“An autonomous aerobovine unit,” the Rider answered. “Sky dogie. Cloud cow.”

Wayne opened his mouth to ask a question but too many piled up at once, sputtering through his lips in a nonsensical jumble.

“Easy, friend,” the Rider chuckled. He looked up at the clouds.

“There’s a whole ‘nother range up there,” the Rider said. “Pure openness. No fences. Just a vast ecosystem of aeroplankton and air currents. And we take care of it, yippie-i-oh. See, this climate crisis has thrown the aerial biomes into chaos, shifting wind patterns and humidity and everything like that. Results in these massive blooms of overcompetitive microbiota. Bigger than you’d believe. Messes with the rains, messes with temperatures, everything. Our bio-mechs graze the overcompetitive aeroplankton, turning that energy into heat, water, and nutrients so we can grow food. These aerobovine units are roaming greenhouses.”

He snapped a compartment closed and flipped a switch. “That’ll do it,” he said. The sky dogie trembled, beeped a few times, then lifted into the air and out of sight.

“Searching for its herd,” the Rider said. “It’ll find ‘em soon enough.”

“Shouldn’t we follow it?” Wayne asked.

The Rider shook his head.

“We’ve got a half dozen more to find. And anyway that one doesn’t have the Magonia brand. It’s grazing for a different ranch.”

He turned his eyes from the sky and walked back to his steel horse.

 

 

Cody reached into the sky dogie and pulled out a handful of tubers. He dusted them off, then poured fresh soil and compost into the growing bin. He wiped his brow. Another Rider prepared to switch the dogie back on.

 

 

“Not this one, Nick,” Cody said. “It’s being sent to Laputa Ranch. There’s a massive bloom out that way and they need extra heads to graze it down. General Assembly needs to rebrand this dogie before we reawaken it.”

 

 

Nick scoffed.

 

“Why not just do it yourself?” he asked, arms crossed. “You’re a big fancy delegate now, ain’t ya? You’ve seen fit to vote away our dogies. Easy enough to manually hijack the neuro-link signal, so do it.”

The Rider next to Cody grimaced. “Don’t even joke about that. There’s not much that would cause the assemblies to convene a justice tribunal, and not much that would get the unanimous vote needed to ground a Rider, but messing with a brand…”

“Liz is right,” Cody growled. “I don’t want to hear that kind of talk again, Nick.” 

Nick hmmphd and walked away, leaving Cody and Liz to finish harvesting. Cody knew Nick was a hothead. It rarely bothered him. But there was one thing Cody couldn’t shake. 

“Liz,” he said, “is Nick right? Is it possible to manually rebrand a sky dogie?”

“Why do you ask?” Liz narrowed her eyes. Cody shrugged. 

“I feel a bit silly, I suppose. My first term as a boss was over ten years ago. I’ve worked other ranches, gone solo for a spell. Now I’m a delegate to the General Assembly. Thought I knew everything there was to know about our herd.”

“Best not to think about it,” Liz responded after a moment, and she returned to her work.  

 

The Rider snapped the compartment shut, smacked the sky dogie and sent it on its way. He watched it disappear into the clouds, then kicked at the dirt. 

Over the last few days, they’d dodged surveillance drones, ditched a particularly tenacious Greenerton detective, been reported by a say-something busybody at a diner, and tracked down five additional aerobovine units. The Rider laughed through the chase but turned more and more despondent afterwards. And Wayne thought he knew why.

“That one didn’t have a Magonia brand either, did it?” He asked. The Rider looked surprised, but chuckled.  

“No, it didn’t,” he said. He scanned the sky. “I thought at least one Magonia dogie got separated with this bunch. Just one to help me get home.”

“Can’t you signal Magonia Ranch? Request coordinates or something?” Wayne asked. The Rider didn’t respond, instead focusing on cleaning his steel horse’s rotors. Wayne decided the change the subject.  

“Is there someone in charge of all the ranches?” he asked. The Rider lit up. Each ranch was fully independent, he explained, governed by its own workers’ collective. However, they met up periodically to coordinate rotations of their aerial feeding grounds, redistribution of cattle, all that. Wayne asked if it was difficult to change ranches, to ride for a different brand. The Rider just chuckled. 

“Riders are free to come and go as they please,” he said, tying his pack on his steel horse. He pulled on his red-lensed goggles. “We’re even guaranteed by the union charter a stock of 5 sky dogies if we ever want to go at it alone. Most Riders do, at least once, just for the absolute freedom. They usually rejoin a ranch before long.”

Wayne nodded. That at least explained what the Rider was doing here. 

As they sped over the prairie, the Rider told Wayne to keep his eyes on the big clouds.

“Our cattle graze overcompetitive aeroplankton, but they incubate and disperse other microbiota and spores. Makes excellent cloud seeds.”

“Doesn’t the State see you up there?” Wayne asked. The Rider shrugged. 

“We have signal jammers and the like. And the ranches aren’t so big. It’s the herds you can actually see, if you know how to look. Dozens of sky dogies cascading over the clouds, rumbling like thunder.”

“Sounds like quite the sight,” Wayne said. 

“It is,” the Rider whispered. Then he chuckled. “Know why the State never tells you that?”

Wayne shook his head.  

“Easier to keep us a myth,” the Rider answered. “If they publicly acknowledge we’re real, they’d have to admit that people can live free and still be in harmony with nature. Look at us; no centralized power to coerce us into ecological responsibility, no state violence, nothing but freedom. Even the ranch bosses can’t enforce jack. Voluntary participation from everyone. Heck, bosses don’t even pick where we go. Sky dogies do that. The herd scans the atmosphere for favorable winds and aeroplankton blooms, and their collective programming directs their movements. We just follow, keeping strays in line and protecting the herd from rogue wind gusts. We round ‘em up to harvest their gardens and then set ‘em loose again. An endless drive through endless skies. And speak of the devil…”

The Rider slowed his steel horse. He tapped the radar display. A lone dot appeared on the margins. 

“There it is,” the Rider breathed. “Last one.”

He ran a scan through his steel horse, then he nearly tipped over. 

“Magonia,” he said. “It’s got the brand. It’s one of ours.” 

The Rider’s fingers trembled. He mumbled under his breath. The Rider seemed distracted, Wayne thought. Distracted enough that he didn’t hear the whirring. 

Wayne spun, signal lasso in hand. He grunted and yanked, and the drone crashed out of the sky. The sound startled the stray aerobovine and it darted over a ridge. The Rider cussed. He tapped the drone with his foot, then scanned the horizon.

“Greenertons,” he said.

 

Liz grunted in agreement. It didn’t seem fair. They’d lost more than a few head of cattle in that last storm, and it felt like a slap in the face to have the General Assembly reject their petition to redistribute some cattle from the other ranches. 

“You know who led the opposition to the petition, right?” Cody grumbled. He rubbed the graying hairs on his chin. “Boss Nick.” 

“Nick?” Liz rolled her eyes. “Haven’t seen him since he switched ranches a decade ago. He always was a pain in the…anyway, it is what it is.”

Cody spat. “His ranch is the only one that can spare a few dogies right now. If I was a delegate right now-”

“Well, you’re not,” Liz reminded him. “And you’re not boss this season either. I’ll submit an appeal. There’s a right way to do this, Cody. Your old ass knows that. In the meantime, would you clean up those rogue dogies we found? I don’t know which brand they have yet so don’t switch them on, but let’s at least get them ready.” 

She left Cody alone with the hibernating aerobovine units. Cody grumpily washed them out. Not many bosses would lose track of this many dogies. He could guess where most of them came from. Once again it was Cody’s job to clean up Nick’s mess, even with Nick the boss of another ranch, even with Nick impeding their petition for units…

Cody’s hand passed over the neuro-link signal lockbox. He paused. 

 

The wind blew harder. Clouds churned in the ragged sky. The Rider pushed his steel horse onward, speeding over the prairie. Wayne tweaked the signal jammer. Every time they threw off one drone, another appeared. 

The Greenertons were bearing down, fast. But the steel horse still had a lock on the stray. Thunder rumbled nearby. And behind that, the groan of armored trucks and rotorcraft.

Finally, the pair caught up to their quarry, the last of the Rider’s wayward herd, the lost sky dogie of Magonia Ranch. They managed to lasso it, and the Rider tethered it to his steel horse. Towards the storm, the Rider urged. He couldn’t reset the unit’s programming, not here, not yet. But closer to the storm, the Greenertons would be forced to land their aircraft. That was their window. It would be one hell of a ride, but if they made it, they’d be free. 

Battered by dust, Wayne asked if it was too risky, if it would lead the Greenertons to Magonia Ranch. 

“You still don’t get it,” the Rider said through gritted teeth. “They’re the ones who can’t risk it. You think the State couldn’t find us if they really wanted to? I told you before, they won’t. Because they need us. For all their talk about responsibility and solving the crisis, it’s our herds cleaning the atmosphere and seeding clouds. We bring the rain. And they know it.”

“They…know?” Wayne asked. “You mean, all this time, they’ve actually known that workers’ collectives in the sky are the reason we have clean rain?”

“Of course they know,” the Rider guffawed. “So if we can get to Magonia, we’ll be safe. They can’t risk interfering. Hold on.”

The wind buffeted them, the sky growing darker. The Rider strained, pulling on his reins. Then another gust swept under them and the steel horse spun out of control. 

Wayne slammed into the ground, rolling over a bluff. He groaned, clutching his dislocated shoulder. He scrambled up the dune, grabbing onto prairie grass with his good arm. The Rider was there, blood dripping from his forehead, arms wrapped around the aerobovine unit. Beyond the ridge, Wayne could see dust. Greenerton trucks were coming. 

Wayne leapt onto the sky dogie and helped the Rider pry open the access panel. 

“Climb on,” the Rider said. Wayne stared, confused. 

“Steel horse is bent up,” the Rider said. “I can bang it back into shape well enough to distract the Greenertons while you make your getaway. It’s going to be a rough ride through the storm, but the dogie will take you to the ranch.”

“Magonia is your home,” Wayne protested, “You go, I’ll stay.”

“There’s no time. Get on the damn cow.”

“It’s me they’re after! You go on-”

“I was banished!” The Rider shouted. He cussed and kicked the dirt. “Riders don’t come down to grab the wicked. Down here is where the Riders send their wicked. Do you know what it’s like to live in absolute freedom, then to lose it? It’s torture. And I deserve it. I rustled, Wayne. I got greedy and I rustled cattle from another ranch. Tried to manually reprogram their brands and they went haywire. That’s how they ended up down here. That’s why I needed to find a Magonia dogie to find Magonia, because I don’t know where the ranch is. But I can’t return without making amends, without adding another hand to the ranch. I can’t go without you.”

Wayne stood, speechless. The wind blew harder. The sound of trucks grew louder. Wayne opened his mouth to protest. The Rider spun and punched him in the gut, then seized Wayne and threw him onto the sky dogie. The Rider pulled the rope from his belt and tied Wayne down, securing him to the bio-mech. He pinned Wayne with one elbow, then removed his respirator bandana and red goggles, and pulled them over Wayne’s face.

“Ride true, partner. Yippie-i-ay!” 

The Rider smacked the sky dogie and it bolted into the sky. Wayne screamed as he watched the rider cheer from the ground, saw the Greenertons closing in. He shouted that he’d tell Magonia what the Rider had done. He knew his voice was drowned by the storm. He still shouted it and shouted it until he was so far above the clouds that there was nothing else to hear but wind and his raspy voice. That, and something in the distance that rumbled almost like thunder.

 

 

Cody collapsed against the ridge, his body aching. He grasped his throbbing side, then grabbed onto his steaming steel horse. He sat up, groaning. End of the line.

 

 

The wind rattled the prairie. Dark clouds loomed over head. Just like the day he sent Wayne home.

 

 

Cody had spent months on the run after that miraculous escape. He’d been tracked down, caught, escaped, tracked down again. He winced as he pulled himself up, then turned to face the oncoming vehicles. He threw his gloves on the ground, held up his fists. If this was as far as he could go, at least he’d go out like a Rider.

 

 

Then, a shimmer of red caught his eye. Cody looked up at a silvery break in the clouds. He dropped his fists, and grinned.