Neon Sands Trilogy Boxset: The Neon Series Season One

by Adam J. Smith

  It would cost maybe four or five credits to cross town, but it would be worth it. Ever since daydreaming about lying in the pool it was all he could think about. The sun was arcing towards the dome, the air was still, and he’d lie in the pool until dusk.

  ***

  Elissa’s shift would begin soon, and so would Avery’s, her neighbour. Their daily routine had become ritual; sleeping in until late morning after a late night, then heading to the roof to eat breakfast beneath the awning, while Elissa watched as Avery scanned the radiowaves for something interesting to listen to. Sometimes there was breaking news: a fight in the Farm District over the price of cows perhaps, or a drunkard caught pissing into the local water tank. Other times there was live music: improvised banjo strumming or even the odd soprano who could hold a tune. And there was always a play going on; the ladies in and around the palace formed theatrical groups and enacted old classics like The Harris Experiment – an existential piece about the reformation of society after the worldwide implosion of something called Capitalism – and Barnaby’s One Night to End it All, about the death of humanity through its own hubris. Sometimes there was a new play, which was often hit-or-miss, with titles like Lovers at the Doors of the Dome, and Bite Me Before the Sun Comes Up. These would be performed once a day and then repeated on loop until the next day, where it would be re-performed, for that authentic edge, and for lack of anything else to do.

  Avery tuned to a station discussing current affairs and reclined in his deck chair. He wore tan knee-length shorts and a white T-shirt that was too tight for his belly, emblazoned with the WellWorks logo across his breast. He had thinning dark hair and a stubbly beard on a round face. She liked living next to someone who wasn’t a brother; it kept her grounded, and although she knew he was probably in love with her, he hadn’t acted upon it. He was about ten years older than her, though looked older than that from the stress of working at the well and fixing the plumbing issues that arose.

  She wasn’t sure what she would do if he did make a move on her, or rather, how she would let him down without ruining their friendship. Luckily, he was a smart guy, and probably already knew what the answer would be.

  “You came back later than usual last night,” he said.

  Snacking on some dry rice cakes, she replied, “Keeping tabs?”

  “As someone once said, ‘Cloning represents a very clear, powerful, and immediate example whereby we are in danger of turning procreation into manufacture.’ You know I don’t entirely trust that the brothers won’t one day come together and rise above their masters. Starting with you.”

  “I’m not their master, Avery. I’m their friend.”

  “You tell Rohen that?”

  “Don’t even mention his name, please. I’d like to begin the day on a positive note.”

  “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Technology often comes with unexpected and undesired side-effects,” he continued. “Maybe the same person said that, I’m not sure. Who knows anything anymore.”

  “What side-effects?”

  “That world in which we live is the only world that we can possibly ever know. And if that world is a side-effect, how would we know?”

  This was why she couldn’t be with him, she smiled warmly. He was sweet but often found himself veering into tangents and down alleyways of thought that tied her in knots as she tried to keep up.

  He bit into his baked cheese, and it dribbled down his chin as he talked. “So if I hear you leave in the middle of the night I get worried. Wouldn’t want you to run afoul of darkness, for there is much darkness in this world. And I wouldn’t want you to fall foul of some man’s spurious advances, and leave this wretched apartment-space to me and myself alone.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not leaving any time soon. That is unless you’ve come up with a way to quicken old Phoenix so I can win the next race.”

  “If my calculations are correct, and they usually are, there’s just no-way of injecting the magna coil with any more power.”

  “Yeah, yeah; ‘The electromagnetic power couplings, if overloaded, would destabilise the magna coil solenoid’s delicate balance and risk overheating the liquid nitrogen.’”

  Avery pointed a greasy finger her way, and winked. “They’re already at optimum. It’s basically all or nothing. Anything less, and they wouldn’t work at all. Anything more, and they’d explode.”

  “You always know how to reassure a girl.”

  A blush bloomed on his cheeks.

  “Anyway, I’ve gotta get ready for work. You live tonight?” She stood and headed for the exit staircase.

  “Tonight’s my night!” he said. “The topic of discussion: what use is innovation if our engineering abilities are usurped?”

  “You wanna be careful you don’t run a-foul of the Queens with that kind of slander.”

  ***

  If it could be said that they had summers, for they seemed perennial, it was the times at the pool that Rohen remembered most fondly from his childhood, the brothers pouring from the doors of the orphanages and relocating like a winding, human centipede to the Northern District. There they camped for two weeks beneath twelve-man tents, farting under thin sheets and eating barbecue. It was the only time of the year they had off from blood-duties, and the only time they could mix freely with others their own age. Though the parents of the true-born watched closely, at least for the first couple of weeks. By the time the boys had all turned a deep tan, suspicion disappeared along with the flakes of peeling skin, and potential friendships were freed up.

  Young and playful, he had not been like some of the others – sticking to the edges of the pool and kicking feet listlessly. He had been in amongst the sprawl of bodies playing water polo or lifting girls onto shoulders to fight it out. Part of the splashing fracas in the middle of the pool. The problem came when knees scuffed the edge of the pool as they all climbed out and went back to their homes, or their tents, for the night. Or midway through the day when the girls decided it was time to relax a bit, to lounge on reclining deck chairs. Rohen and many others would look across at the born-sons plying sunscreen to de-laced backs and shoulders, who themselves winked back with smirking faces.

  They just weren’t interested: these girls.

  The brothers were an amusement. A summer attraction (and not in a good way). And Rohen couldn’t blame the girls; how could you fall for a boy if that boy was everywhere you looked, their heads floating like red apples on the water that no-one wanted to bob for?

  He stretched out his legs now, holding on to the edge of the pool, enjoying the lifting sensation on his back as he floated, and the weight off his shoulders.

  The dome hung high in the distance, but it was easy to ignore: bearing over the 500-metre pool was a ten-story clubhouse where the families with enough credits could stay. The tent-ground was a five-minute walk away – just far enough for comfort. Food and drink vendors under umbrellas lined the pool on three sides, and lifeguards patrolled; young and old – not many people emigrated to new careers in this town.

  In a raised and cordoned-off section beside the clubhouse, women in bikinis or topless bathed in the sun, while waitresses hung around with silver trays. There’d be men around, somewhere, probably relegated to indoor jobs; handyman and janitorial work, or cleaning the rooms. Rohen stared, but the women were all demystified; either by the distance or the cold, human nature of their shared, half-naked bodies. Less was more, was something he had always thought. But it was less that and more, probably, the location, and how one summer had affected him.

  Because there’d been one girl – Nya – of the bloodline of Frita, whose legs had found their way around his neck as she perched on his shoulders, and whose skin through its proximity he had become mesmerised by. She had a tanline running across her thigh. Where the sun had long been exposed down to her knees and calves, her skin was almost full-dark; the deepest of coffee. Pressed against his cheek however, the hairless thigh had not see
the sun for months, and was a paler brown, and he had wanted nothing more than to taste the chlorine water on those thighs. This was probably what brought him back to the pool, he knew, whenever things got bad. He’d held on to her thighs for all his worth, transported suddenly into a world where girls didn’t look at him with disdain, or pity.

  It had ended – it had to end – when Nya lost the fight and was toppled. She’d erupted, dripping, from the water, flinging back her hair and laughing. That had been the start of a week-long simultaneous nightmare and dream-come-true. His thoughts like particularly bad post-lettings, all thin and gauzy, as he searched her out and worse, found her, meaning he had to watch her every move and even, if the chance arose, talk to her. He recognised this behaviour in his fellow brothers, lost in reveries, faces gormless, which fuelled his growing self-hate.

  Desperation and hormones didn’t mix well. Lying in the pool, he ground his teeth as he recalled asking Nya, on the day he knew to be her last, if he could escort her to the loungers. Maybe share a drink. And as she started to shake her head, he blurted out that he thought he was falling in love with her. “Okay then,” she’d said, splashing towards the edge of the pool where her friends were climbing out. Whispering to them. Pushing up with her arms as those friends turned, and laughed.

  Rohen stood, humiliation filling the void that anger would later replace, and even in that moment of shame, feeling weird as he enjoyed watching Nya’s backside in the bikini bottom rise out of the water and hurry off to fetch her towel. A flash of the anger that would later come, came in the form of jealous thoughts of someone else claiming that backside.

  Not Nya, Rohen considered now. It wasn’t the person who Nya was and that would be ‘claimed’ by someone else that had made him angry, it was that her body could not be his.

  He understood this on some level. He knew it wasn’t her fault, any less than it was his. It went beyond hormonal. But he’d never really left the pool.

  ***

  “Hey, brother. Do you think you could move down to the other end?”

  Rohen looked lazily to the muscle-squared lifeguard putting him in shadow, and told her to fuck off.

  “I’ve asked nicely, now. We’ve had a couple complaints and, rather than ask you to leave completely, we’ve decided to let you go down the other end, where it’s quieter.”

  “You’ve decided? You? And what exactly have I done?” He splashed a little water on her feet as he gesticulated. Half-intentionally.

  She knelt down. “A couple of us saw you get in, leg all black-and-blue. And I can see now,” she looked at his eyebrow tattoo, “that you are indeed the one called Rohen.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “Look, we know you can’t help who you are, but it would put us at ease a bit if you did go where it was quieter, away from the children and families and such. After all, we can’t help our unease any more than you can help how you are. And, sorry to say too, the complaints we got were more specifically because of the smell.”

  “The smell? Over the chlorine? You can smell me over the chlorine? What is this? The pool is for everyone.”

  “Yes,” she said, standing. She stood tall in silhouette, over him.

  Rohen could see a stand-off coming, one he’d never win.

  “I don’t won’t to have to make this a matter for the Matriarchs.”

  Oh, come on. That was the problem with this fucked up town: everyone running crying back to their mommies.

  “They’ve no doubt had enough of your particular face.”

  He bit his lip and pushed himself out of the pool. The heat smacked him, but he tried to ignore it, pretending he hadn’t been enjoying the cool water all that much at all. His face dripped as he leaned in close to the lifeguard, who now seemed less imposing. “Listen you little bitch,” he sneered.

  She pulled her head away from him in an instant, swiping her hand across her nose. “Good Grace take a shower, man.”

  Rohen snatched her top. “I could smell your cunt from under the water you fucking cry-baby.” He saw other lifeguards running to her aid over her shoulder, but not for long. She kneed him in the groin, immediately doubling him over.

  “I’ve got this!” she shouted back to her colleagues.

  The pain was immense and sharp, shunting the breath from his lungs (not unlike slamming the boulder, he thought).

  “That’s the problem with you men. Always the same weak spot. You think just because you’re a brother that you get to talk to us like that? Learn your place.”

  He tried to straighten up, clutching his midsection. His eyes watery.

  The lifeguard stepped in and put an arm under his armpit, lifting him up. “Now, come on. I did that to teach you a lesson. Maybe you never had that lesson before, and so you weren’t conditioned to do as you’re told. Next time you take it too far, perhaps you’ll remember, and you won’t get yourself into this kind of mess ever again, eh?” She began to lead him to the toilet block. “There’s soap in the men’s. I’ll let you shower, and then I want you gone. And next time, use the quiet end. No doubt you’ve got to exercise that leg of yours.”

  ***

  He sat in the back of another rickshaw with each jolt jarring his balls. At least the lifeguard-bitch had given him some ice to compress them, but they’d turned slightly blue as he showered, and they’d be even bluer now.

  The town passed by; he took little notice. He hadn’t met any pairs of eyes after the knee-to-balls incident, but he imagined the people who’d seen it; could envision the women smiling and the men biting their lips and the children laughing.

  Silence was the way forward. Deep breaths and silence. Say as little as possible, stay under the radar, and hope that people forgot his name.

  And if that failed, kill them all.

  He yawned and let his eyes close.

  Nya’s thighs transfused into the lifeguard’s bronze knee.

  He continued the fantasy he had started in the shower; of blocking that knee and pushing the lifeguard into the water. And strangling her.

  That’s right, Rohen, my boy. Cleaner this way. Georg’s crackled voice rose up as though from some distant loudspeaker. Laughter cackled.

  He lost the fantasy: suddenly, Nya once again rode his shoulders, only this time she was heavy. Pushing up felt like pushing against the boulder with the hoverbike pinning him: impossible. Water filled his mouth and nostrils and he woke with a start and a yelp.

  “Hey, man, you alright?” asked the rickshaw driver.

  ***

  The orphanage looked like a prison block with its facade of square windows set within beige-coloured adobe. A tic-tac-toe of bars ran across the windows in place of glass. Without air-conditioning or fans, the frequent draughts were all the boys could rely on to cool them down. The dorm bunk beds were moved closer to the windows in summer, and further from them in ‘winter’. Only because the nights could get chilly.

  There were other orphanages, but this one was the biggest, and the one in which he had grown and now worked. Just like the pool, he had never really left.

  None of them ever really left.

  The only way would be to get into the city, and he felt a flicker of anger again as he imagined walking those streets and not seeing his own face at every turn.

  He climbed the imposing brick steps and pushed on the heavy wooden double doors that served as the entrance to the lobby. The glass shook as it always did (it was on his list of things to do, but he wasn’t that confident working with glass). Besides, the way the brothers ploughed through it when they were free to play outside, it was a wonder the door remained on its hinges at all. He’d more likely fuck it up and cause the glass in the door to fall and smash and then it would need to be added to the list of city requisitions.

  Black-and-white chequered linoleum splashed across the central foyer, and the walls thrummed with stampeding feet. The plasterwork, cracked like wrinkled skin, hid the aluminium and steel hoardings that were the fabric of the larger building
s in town. For some reason the orphanages were less well-built than other buildings, and sound travelled, often through and down the walls and the plasterwork frequently needed touching up.

  His midsection burned lightly from the knee-blow, and his leg hurt more than it had in days, yet that paled in comparison when he looked across to the reception and saw Matron Stead behind the desk. He lifted a hand and waved, and then continued walking.

  “Where you off to?” she bellowed.

  Rohen continued to hobble towards the lifts, and shouted, “Just up to the offices!”

  “Why don’t you wait here?” She squeezed past the end of the reception in her blue tunic, buttons bursting, and headed towards him. Her blonde beehived hair frozen in place. She must be around forty, Rohen guessed, but looked older.

  “Just wanna check in upstairs.”

  “Head Matron Kline isn’t in the office at the moment, she’s filling in for one of the sick nurses.”

  “In the clinic?” he turned to her.

  “Of course. Hey, Rohen,” Matron Stead had the habit of very deliberately naming the brothers when she was speaking to them, as though it fortified who they were. Usually, he didn’t mind. “The word was you might be out of action for a while, what with the leg. That you might not even be coming back at all.”

  She was concerned about his leg, he thought. Not about having a murderer around the place.

  Somewhere, a credit dropped. Even now he wasn’t considered dangerous. His violence had been contextual. In erstwhile everyday situations he posed no threat.

  Only Elissa had shown any sign of seeing through him.