Chapter 2

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

Norm awoke with a scream, turning off his alarm without needing a morning pill. If this was any other day, he'd proceed to let out a sigh of disappointment as he realised he got the full 8 hours of sleep that only babies and weaklings needed. But that was the furthest thing on his mind right now. 

What the hell just happened???

Norm wanted to write the whole thing off as a dream- I mean, that would explain the Croatian guy with the murderous nutsack- yet things still wouldn't add up. For starters, a quick rummage around his pill bag revealed that all his anxiety pills were indeed gone. And the date on his phone said it was Saturday. A whole day after the events of the supposed "dream." Did he sleep a whole 24 hours? Norm did not want this to be true. 

After another hour of sitting in bed pondering the possibilities, Norm decided enough was enough. Regardless of whether there was a Croatian cyborg on the loose or not, it didn't change his current situation. It was the weekend and he missed his chance to do overtime. So he might as well enjoy his break in a socially acceptable way and watch the football game he was so hyped about. But even as the first batch of adverts flew across the screen, Norm could not get invested in the big sporting event this time around. All he could think about was the man who killed his boss. Why did he do that? Was he still on the loose? And would he be going after the employees next? 

Quickly, Norm opened up GoyBot. A few prompts later, GoyBot confirmed that the boss wasn't dead, he had just decided to take a long long vacation to a tropical island and his younger brother would be taking over District 67's Soyberg tower. Norm breathed a sigh of relief. Now it was time to research the cyborg. Yet GoyBot couldn't find anything about him. It was as if he didn't exist. Norm swiped through articles on various rich people who got cybernetics, and various poor people who had to make do with mobility aids or death, and how this one rapper called another rapper a lame-o or whatever, until he gave up. Norm wanted to just turn off GoyBot and go back to watching his football game. He wished he could confidently say that everything was alright. But deep down inside, he knew that wasn't the case. 

"Ok," he said to himself as he turned off his TV. "I'll do a bit more research just to make sure my life isn't in danger, and THEN it's back to normality for me." The next step would be to see if the cyborg belonged to any organisations. Criminals hardly worked alone these days; in a country where a ruthless robot police force observed everything from the sky, you'd need all the help you could get if you wanted to go against the law. The fact this man was a cyborg meant his organisation had to be pretty rich and influential. Heck, maybe he wasn't even a criminal. Maybe he was a secret agent of some kind. Could another country be planning an invasion? Norm prompted GoyBot to find him a non-conspiracy theorist political channel, and listened in to see if there were any foreign countries that had less-than-friendly relations with his own. 

"It's the Russians and the Chinese!" the channel host exclaimed. "And the Arab terrorists too! They hate us here in the West, they're out to get us, and they're probably controlling our government behind the scenes as we speak! 

"Oh my god, you're right!" his guest speaker agreed. "It won't be long before any one of these foreign powers occupy our political system and start siphoning our money for nefarious schemes. But then again, there also seems to be a more domestic threat too." 

"What do you mean?" asked the host. Norm could see the hulking figures of a golem squad standing in the background behind the 2 speakers. 

"Well, have you seen the news?" the guest asked. "Some Hollywood producer called Shmiel Kosherberg was caught diddling kids. And another one called Mohel Talmudstein was caught doing the same thing. And this porn website owner Shlomo Akiva was making tonnes of money off of clips of the assaults, which he still refuses to take down. They all had the same lawyer, Alan Rosenthal, who managed to get each and every one of them no jail time at all. And then there was that one guy Eli Silverwitz, who planned to bomb the capital and then blame it on other countries so we'd start a war. Don't, uh... don't all these guys have something in common?"

"Holy shit," breathed the host. "You're right. We've got a serious problem with..." Both of them took a deep breath before yelling the obvious answer:

"White supremacy and the patriarchy!" 

Norm's stomach sank. He felt rotten to the core. All his life, he'd been living with this unfair privilege- the same privilege that let fellow whites like Kosherberg and Talmudstein get away with pretty much everything. He was a part of the problem... wait, maybe that was it! That's why the cyborg killed his boss. The cyborg must've been so ashamed of his white privilege that he did the natural thing and went around killing other white people. Nah, that still wouldn't add up. There were tonnes of white people in the tower besides the boss, and he left them alone. Maybe he was only after the super duper rich ones? No, they were all part of the problem!

Norm's self-destructive trail of thoughts was cut off by the mellow ping of the doorbell. He went to answer, and was met with a hulking golem clad in a black suit and sunglasses. 

"Hello, Norm Beta," the golem said in a gruff voice. "May I come in?"

"Uh... sure," Norm said, trying in vain to hide how absolutely terrified he was. "I-I-I was er... w-watching the game. Do you support the Dodo Bandits or the Dark Birds?" 

"I wish I had the time to watch football," said the golem. "But I'm afraid I have a very busy life. And it just got a whole lot busier thanks to that incident yesterday." A heavy silence permeated the room. Norm clenched his fists. After a while, he managed to let out a gulp. And some time later, he had regained his capacity to speak.

"...So, I take it you're the guy who found out about those 2 Top Goy candidates. You know, the ones who were found diddling kids and sacrifing them to-"

"Shut up, conspiracy theorist," the golem cut Norm off. "What are you, a terminally online no girlfriend literally Hitler?" 

"You're 1/3 correct with that," said Norm. "Ok, so... the cyborg with the, uh, interesting choice of weapon. You're after him. And he is totally 100% real."

"That's right," confirmed the golem, pointing to his wristband. It was slightly different to a regular golem wristband, having an eye emblem next to the ordinary cube one. "I'm Agent Iron of the Sector Surveillance Squadron. When robots and ordinary golems either can't deal with a threat or would cause too much of a scene, that's where we come in."

"Holy fuck it's just like this show I was watching on Circusbread+!" exclaimed Norm. "Do you take down evil terrorists?"

"...Yeah, let's put it that way," Iron said after a pause. "Anyway, I came here to inform you that you have a choice. You can either forget you ever saw that man, and never mention it to anyone, or you can join your boss on his tropical island if you catch my drift."

"Dude I can barely afford to pay rent for this tiny apartment, what makes you think I can afford to stay on a tropical island?" scoffed Norm. "Guess I'll never talk about that man again... after I ask you a few questions about him." Norm opened his pill bag and took an entire sheet of confidence pills. "Firstly. Is the balls cyborg putting an end to white supremacy?"

"What made you think that?" Iron asked with a puzzled look. "He's no social activist, he's a petty murderer. He killed your boss, for crying out out-"

"WHAT?!" screamed Norm. Tears began to well up in his eyes. Only a day ago, the boss was giving Norm uninterested looks as he did his best for the company. And now... no. This couldn't be true. It could NOT be true. "You're the conspiracy theorist here, asshole! The news said he went to a tropical island! YOU said he went to a tropical island! How can he be dead if he's off having fun on a holiday?!"

"You were in the room when the incident happened, Mr Beta. I saw you. You watched as several rockets tore your boss apart. I thought it was obvious that he died."

"Yeah but the news didn't say that he died! How am I supposed to go against the news?" A realisation hit Norm at that very moment. "Wait. When you said I had a choice of going on the island, you really meant... No. That's not important right now." Whether it was the confidence pills, or grief over the boss, or just plain stupidity (it was probably the confidence pills) Norm made a proposition that would change his entire life forever. 

"I don't choose any of the options you gave me, agent Iron. I choose the third one: me joining you in taking that metal-balled bastard down." 

"Calm down, Mr Beta." Iron opened up social media on his phone and showed it to Norm. "I know just the thing to do the trick... Look, this short video is saying 'When you forget to do the laundry because of work!' So relatable, huh?" Norm said nothing. He continued to face Iron with a determined look in his eyes. "Ok, ok, relatable content isn't cutting it, how about SHOCKING content?" Iron put on a short video of someone speaking in another language, and in that other language one of the words sounds vaguely like the n-word if you strain your ears enough. But the determined look still hadn't left Norm's eyes. 

"You like Circusbread+, right?" Iron said, forcing an awkward smile on his usually stoic face. "Take a look at this! This short video is showing highlights of the #1 new anime series on there, accompanied by obnoxious flashing lights and techno farts for the soundtrack-"

"The most important person in my life is DEAD, Agent Iron!" yelled Norm. "He's fucking dead! And there's no telling if the murderer will be back for more!" Norm let out some heavy breathing before continuing. "I lied. I wasn't watching the football game. I was sitting there terrified thinking of what happened yesterday. I'm sorry to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I'm sick and tired of all this worrying and being afraid about when he's gonna turn up next. I'd like to defend myself, or even better, just take the fight to him and kill him before he can kill me."

"You don't have training though, and you're just an ordinary goy," Iron pointed out. "No offense, but if you go after a skilled cyborg killer in your current state you don't have much of a chance, to put it lightly."

"I'm not a golem, but you don't need big muscles to carry a gun. Unless it's a very big gun, of course." Norm pointed to a state-of-the-art laser pistol barely visible under the flaps of Iron's suit. "Give me one of those and I'm ready to take the balls cyborg down." 

"What's in it for me?" asked Agent Iron. "I don't know if you realised, but I'm the secret agent here, that pistol is on my belt, and you're an unarmed civilian. I could silence you at anytime I want if this becomes too much of a hassle."

"Shit," breathed Norm, his entire body starting to tremble. The confidence pills were wearing off, and the side effects of taking 10 at once were gonna hit him at any moment. His breaths became shallow. His heart thumped louder and harder by the second. He felt like sinking into the floor and dying. In fact, it was likely he was going to die, given how Iron had drawn the pistol and was fiddling around with the on switch. What should he do in his final moments...? Norm thought if there was anyone he wanted to phone up for one last time. But there wasn't so he just opened up social media and began scrolling. A video of a scantily clad girl of dubious age flapping her tatas around soon reached his phone screen. 

CLATTER! A loud sound filled the room, but it wasn't that of a laser firing. It was the sound of a pistol hitting the floor. 

"Woah... that girl was so hot!" said Iron, running to Norm's side. "Scroll back a bit, will you?"

"You can't scroll back though."

"Try!" Norm tried and when nothing happened Iron let out a groan of disappointment. Suddenly, an idea hit Norm. It was a pretty stupid idea, but it was better than nothing. 

"I do happen to know her @" he lied. 

"Give it!" yelled Iron. "Give it or I'll shoot you!"

"But if you shoot me, how will you ever find the @?" 

"Mr Beta, be a good citizen and hand over this information right this instant." 

"I have a deal, Iron." This was the most Norm had ever confronted anyone in his life, and his pants and trousers were soiled from both ends as a result. His body was trembling and he felt like he could pass out at any moment. Yet through some miracle, he just about managed to persevere.

"I'll hand over the @ AFTER the balls cyborg is defeated. And I get to join your secret agency, and help you, and you get the idea."

"Urgh, fine. Deal." Norm and Iron shook hands, with the latter rolling his eyes as he did so. "My limousine is parked outside," Iron said, walking towards the door. "Go sit at the back and I'll take you to HQ. And since you've pulled this card, don't EVER expect me to share any of the internet models and porn stars I know about."

"Fine by me," said Norm with an exaggerated shrug of his soldiers. "Don't drive off just yet though. I need a change of clothes."