Yeah, I’ve been ridin’ the rails since I was installed on the rails.

Listen, kid. You might think you’re one tough robot now, all alone against the world, but I’ve been around the block long enough to know you ain’t gonna make it long without a little kindness from your fellow bots. I don’t just mean handouts, neither. I’m talkin’ about the code.

The Robo Hobo Code! No one told you about the code? Aw, cripes, kid. You’re worse off than I thought. Listen, when you make your way from town to town you gotta notice the little things. Every robo hobo keeps a small laser engraver installed to be able to notch out a binary barcode on a fence post or a trash can or somewhere inconspicuous to let the others know what’s what. You don’t want to just stumble into some trouble, so we all use these codes as a way to help each other out.

For instance, if you see 01100001 00100000 01110000 01101001 01100011 01110100 01110101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100011 01100001 01110100, that means there’s a nice woman living at that place. So you can probably play on her sympathies and get a hot meal out of her, maybe some 10W30 or some synthetic diagnostic repair strips. And if you see 01100001 00100000 01110010 01110101 01100100 01101001 01101101 01100101 01101110 01110100 01100001 01110010 01111001 00100000 01110100 01101111 01110000 01101000 01100001 01110100, that means the same thing except it’s a malebot living there, so you’ll want to impress him with how you’re looking for work, got a family to feed, that sort of thing.

Take note if you notice someone’s engraved 01100001 00100000 01100011 01110010 01101111 01110011 01110011 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100011 01101001 01110010 01100011 01101100 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01110010 01100101 01100101 00100000 01100100 01101111 01110100 01110011 anywhere. That means there’s a mechanic nearby who will patch ya up for free. But if you see 01100001 00100000011000110110100101110010011000110110110001100101, move on. It means there’s nothin’ around worth checkin’ out. No, what you’re really lookin’ for is 01100001 00100000 01100011 01101001 01110010 01100011 01101100 01100101 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01100001 01101110 00100000 01111000 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01101001 01110100. That’s the signal that there’s somethin’ to be had.

Be careful if you see 01100001 01101110 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100011 01101000 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100100 01101111 01110100 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01101001 01110100 anywhere, though. That means the robo-cops are out and lookin’ for types like us. See? It pays to know the signals, kid. And it’s robo-hobo etiquette to engrave them yourself for the next fella passin’ through as well. We maybe rejects of society, but we gotta stick together.

Wear this shirt: While petitioning to bring back that show BattleBots. Remember that show? That was kinda neat.

Don’t wear this shirt: If you could afford to donate it to the Robo-Goodwill.

This shirt tells the world: “I’m a leaking-engine robo-socialist.”

We call this color: From the rough silver of the tracks.

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