The overwhelming motif of Rolling Fuck was “aftermarket.” The spindle-towers had originally looked like scaffolding, and mainly existed to offset the weight of that titanic arm. But they’d been built on and added to with a series of treehouse-looking contraptions. He saw people, hundreds of them, climbing from door to door via a series of ladders, ropes, and what looked like vines. Below the main body of the city, a series of vehicles surrounded the vast, rolling building that made up the city’s foundation. Manny saw long-haul trucks, deuce-and-a-half army transports, and at least one old Abrams tank. Hundreds of sets of solar panels glistened under the Texan sun.

“Good god,” Reggie whispered, awe temporarily overwhelming his pain. “I didn’t realize any of the road tribes were this large.”

There were easily two or three thousand people visible in the sprawling camp. Mike glanced back at Reggie, a somewhat stern look on his face.

“This is not a tribe. It’s a city.”

“Oh,” said Reggie, “that’s just how a lot of people back home refer to–”

“I get it,” Mike interrupted. “But there are actual Indigenous tribes out on these roads. Comanche bands in the Panhandle, roving up from New Mexico to Colorado. We’ve got defensive and trade agreements with a few different groups of Apache out west. The Navajo have the only stable territory south of Mormonland and north of Albuquerque.”

Mike glanced back at the road long enough to steer around a pot hole and turn them in the direction of what looked like a greeter station. Then he continued, “Anyway, there are tribes out west. But we’re a city. The fact that we don’t hold any land or control any territory is important to most of the folks here. Think of it as a kind of rebellion from people born to a settler culture.”

“Ah,” Reggie nodded, “that’s absolutely fascinating. I have so much I want to ask–”

“In good time, buddy,” Mike said. “Let’s get y’all settled in first.”

Manny knew that every foreign correspondent he’d ever met would kill to have the opportunity Reggie had just lucked into. The road people were a popular topic in world media. He supposed that wasn’t surprising. They all led visually spectacular lives. Rolling Fuck was just the grandest variation on a theme.

Rolling Fuck was famous across the West for having the highest proportion of post-human citizens. Something like a third of them were chromed enough to no longer fit in the “Homo sapiens” category. Manny had never heard of them traveling this close to Dallas before. They were banned in all of the Republic’s cities. People with military-grade mods were uncontrollable. That, and cultural-PTSD from the war, made them pariahs pretty much everywhere.