“Wow. You really did it, man.”

“Yup. I decided that if I’m gonna get into historical re-creation as a hobby, I shouldn’t mess around. No expense spared. It was even kind of fun, since I had to forge a couple of things by hand. There just wasn’t any other way.”

“So it really runs on gasoline?”

“Yeah. I had to build my own mini-refinery. The permits were a pain in the ass, and I thought Cindy was going to divorce me, but…syntheline just isn’t period, you know?”

He’d always wanted to be the Bombay Kid.

He tried telling this to his friends when they’d played cowboys and indians. They’d ask, where’s Bombay? And he’d have to answer, well, actually it was called Mumbai now. And it was in India. They’d heard of India, so they’d ask why he wanted to be the Bombay Kid? Well, he said, that’s where I was born. So, you’re an indian. Yeah, sure. Well, you can’t be the Bombay Kid. That’s a cowboy name. You’re an indian.
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“My name is Augustine Hand. I understand you want to hire me as a writer for your magazine?”

The old man looked at him. They were sitting in a small wooden building in the Nevada Desert. “I’ll be frank, boy. Your writing is terrible. But your ideas, well…they’re first class. That’s what we’re looking for at this organization.”

Hand wasn’t happy to hear this. “Look, I don’t want to be an idea pimp, I want to write. I know I’m not the best writer, but it’s just sci-fi, we’re not talking literature here.”

“Oh, but we are talking literature, boy. Myth, in fact. And a very important myth. You know all about this business with us trying to keep ahead of the Ruskies, what with them having the bomb? Well, you’re about to help us with a much more vital part of the campaign.”

The old man stood up, and walked to a closet. Opening the door, Hand saw an elevator. “Come with me boy, and let me tell you about the Fiction War. About the UFO tech the Ruskies have. And the UFO tech we have to make them think we have.”

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