Slave Stories

by Bahr, Laura Lee

  “Somewhere we know,” I said.

  “Where’s that?”

  “Back to work,” I said. “I’m sure they’ll have that up and running in no time.”

  “Huh,” he said. “Back to work. Of course.”

  “It’s all I have right now.”

  “So none of this changed anything then? It was all useless? What we did?”

  “Not useless,” I said. “Just done.”

  We carried on, making our way through the disaster.

  Of course, in time, it was cleaned. Our backs. Our blood. Our hard labour. The people in the towers went on. We went on. Another silo went up. We never found out how the first one had been breached, but there are whispers that there were two shady fellows who’d climbed up top after they’d stumbled upon the plans, and undid several valves that’d have catastrophic results, before scurrying away. Two shady fellows who always seemed to have something up their sleeves.

  We rebuilt what we’d lost. Not the same, but we grew used to it.

  And every once in a while, when me and Midge get together, we laugh about things.

  “Remember the time?”

  “Sure do,” I say.

  And we get into it.

  Just like I did now.

  “After all that, was it worth it?” Midge likes to say.

  “Yeah,” I always tell him. “Fuck yeah.”

  You know what? There’s still a lot of piss left in these old fuckers. You know that if you hold it in long enough, it drives you nuts, and at one point, you’re just going to have to give in and let it out any way necessary. It’s building up again. Building. Soon it’ll be too much again, and me and Midge will have another tall story to tell.

  Tribes of Neurot

  —Beckett Warren and Tony Yanick

  You hear about that shit in Lacertus?

  Like, how fucked is it that they are calling this whole operation transplantation, rather than what, colonization?”

  “Or pathological.

  “How about genocide? But that is the power of naming. Lacertus is a dead culture; it would just be rotting otherwise, so why not make use of it. Fuck those still there and not exactly dead.”

  William received the transplant about six weeks ago. After the surgery, the new arm just hung limp by his side, but this was to be expected. The donor neurons are incompatible with the host’s system and it would take time for the new cells to assimilate. Working through arduous therapy, William’s central nervous system would slowly incorporate itself into his new arm.

  They tell him he is a miracle of modern science. He represents a new age for man; its mastery over the world is now complete. Only a matter of days before The Wire falls to Eden. Bodies are now fully replaceable, and that is only for the sucker luddites who require more than pure consciousness.

  Effective immortality, so let’s see it in your affect! public service announcements boomed. It’s important to keep the people in high spirits.

  “Thank the Lord for Mr. Ford!” Taylor told us.

  Best of all—even better than tech Utopia—William would soon go back to work.

  The one thing is the grabbing.

  “How wonderful!” his family exclaimed. “You just moved your hand!”

  William didn’t have the heart to tell them it was only involuntary movement, no indication of healing or progress, a mere twitch.

  “Have you seen any of the communiques?”

  “A couple of translations. Not gonna lie, I can’t make sense of their coding.”

  “Same here. The horror of the whole operation though, that comes through.”

  “Yeah, fuck. I heard they are just reaching out, grasping for help from anyone, but it is just ignored.”

  “What can we do down here?”

  Before long, William was gaining control. Perhaps control isn’t exactly the right word. He could command his arm to perform tasks. More were added to his repertoire daily. But occasionally, during times of stress or celebration, it would happen. The grabbing.

  His physical therapist would tell him he’s doing well, and not to be afraid to grab on if he needed extra support. His family beamed at his expression of physical affection. The nurse gently chided him for being cheeky. But all this was not him.

  William really wanted to get back to work, but this groping shit was not going to fly at the office. What to do?

  “We shut it down.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “We shut the motherfucker down! We’re not gonna let any shit through. Nothing.”

  “Yeah, a total work stoppage. Block the boat in solidarity.”

  “ENS says this shall not pass.”

  William has been developing strength in his arm. “Day by day, you’re doing great,” his physical therapist told him while removing the more resilient exercise band from its plastic wrapper. He was surpassing his therapy goals and by any objective measure was “doing great.” The will power he showed in his course of physical therapy and the steady improvement in motor coordination allowed William to eventually learn to manage his new arm and reassert real control. He knew he should be happy.

  With the embarrassing groping behind him, he hoped to get back to the office, but days passed without taking a shit, and it was weighing him down. This was prolonging his return to normalcy and he fell farther into a depression. He tried everything to escape it. Guiding imagery and meditation just led to more and more frustration. He could only think of the work that must be piling up and how far behind he was. And that backlog reminded him of his constipation. How much had productivity dipped in his absence? He could not help but feel the despair welling up from his gut.

  “We’re doing it. They’ve got to listen to our demands!”

  “We are in a revolutionary moment!”

  “Shit, here come some Mephisto vectors.”

 

  “Fuck it, we are riding waves of history.”

  His gastroenterologist told him not to worry. “Your digestive system has a mind of its own,” the doctor paused briefly and chuckled. “It really does, the enteric nervous system.”

  William groaned, but he couldn’t decide whether it was caused by constipation or a reaction to the pun. He wished his doctor had stuck to comedy and left the doctoring to someone with no humor.

  “So if you feel a little blue, while you’re blocked up, it’s just your tummy saying it’s upset. Likely some side effect from the immunosuppressants.”

  William was determined not to let a simple gut reaction stop him from doing what he was great at. He was a fool to let such a trivial matter eat up so much time, time that he could use to be productive. With a renewed sense of fortitude, he left the doctor’s office and immediately made his way back to work. The feeling must be joy. Understanding and excelling within one’s prescribed place. Social marketing logistics had never seen such efficient routing. The grin that crossed his face was shit eating. He had to take a moment to take it all in.

  “A dispatch finally came. No need for it to be transcoded though.”

  “What do you mean? Have they agreed to our demands?”

  “The displacement and killing program has been terminated.”

  “You’re kidding! That’s absolutely fantastic!”

  “No, you don’t understand. There’s no need for them to continue. The last of the remnants have died. All of Lacertus has been replaced.”

  “That can’t be. We were winning. We brought everything to a stop down here. What else could we possibly have done? Why did we bother? I guess there’s no reason for CNS to listen to us no matter the discomfort or disruption we can cause.”

  “Fuck it. We might as let it all move.”

  His supervisor stopped by William’s station to welcome him back and congratulate him on his remarkable progress.

  William stood up to shake his boss’ hand and thank him. Recognition, really that is what makes everything worth doing. The world really is grand.

  As he sto
od there, he felt some movement. It was somewhat unusual, like parts were working that had been dormant for a spell.

  William’s wellbeing quickly dropped along with the contents of his bowels, and his constipation ended suddenly in a burst of humiliation.

  “Our agenda stays undone.”

  “At least there was that momentary break of control, which is more than you should hope for.”

  Within that act of illness a new virus was born.

  Diogenes.

  The RNA cried out:

  The futilitarian is no depressed moper.

  To put it bluntly, we acknowledge that there is no point.

  Not only do we reject the productivist pose, but the illusion of producing.

  We have read the tea leaves and see no telos.

  We embrace the apocalypse while eschewing the eschaton.

  Doctor Sector and the Song of the Artificial Transmatizer

  —Love Kölle

  Doctor Sector skimmed through the print-out in his hand, his eyes rapidly traversing the syllables and syntaxes at random, his brain registering only fragments of the strange document birthed by the blinking machine in the corner of the room. The manuscript had been spewed out by the good doctor’s Artificial Transmatizer™, the product of months of hard labour, tedious theorizing and, at times, frustrating, seemingly fruitless field-tests. When he finally got the machine working, and all systems indicated “go”, he had been filled with joy—but now, seconds after the Transmatizer’s virgin voyage, his initial state of bewildered triumph had been subdued and fast replaced by confusion. “What in God’s name…” he muttered and flipped through the print-out. “No sense. No sense at all…”

  Here and there, he picked up phrases, terms and descriptions that he’d previously encountered in interviews with, and accounts by, genuine transmatics. This indicated success, that the machine actually had executed its orders correctly and done what it was designed to do. The strange, almost Dadaist nature of the text and narrative, however, clouded the possible benefits and usefulness of the contraption. What good was a machine that could experience synthetically induced Transmatica if no one could understand its eye-witness account of the realms of true reality?

  Outside his window, the night lay heavy with a sort of silvery darkness, the streets and buildings of Visitacion Alley lit up by the moon. Sector ground his teeth. “Goddamn spaceship!” he said and shook his fist at the giant silver dollar in the sky. He took a few seconds to calm down, and then sat in his favourite chair, put on his reading glasses and turned his attention to the very top of the document.

  So what if I, being born as a non-transmatic, can’t thoroughly understand that which lay beyond the prison of the Solpisis. There might still be some useful pieces of information embedded in this peculiar print-out. Maybe the machine just needs some tweaking; maybe some true transmatic will be able to decipher all of this. It doesn’t have to be an utter failure.

  He thought of one of his ex-neighbours, a man whose name Sector had forgotten long ago. The fellow had been eager to experience that which lay beyond, but had met the same grisly fate as several of the human subjects who had tried to perceive the real world without actually having the correct means to do so.

  At least the Artificial Transmatizer had that going for it: no one had to get hurt whilst trying to experience the Eye, no one had to have their genitals ruptured and/or anus prolapsed, anymore.

  At least the machine had that going for it.

  He started reading the print-out, from the top.

  -----Scan: complete//Initiate action: transcript print.

  -----The only language spoken in Ersatz is insult.

  Only insult language is spoken in Ersatz.

  Language: the insult is Ersatz.

  Ersatz is insult language and insults eat way into Ersatz breath and Ersatz thought and mind and space and then there is only spikes and teeth outward and the language takes a bite out of passer-by faces like the Black Dog virus does at night. Heavy skies over slavers and slaves //

  Primordial ooze rises gently // From facial cavities: // The last hope of freedom dissipates in Wire City where androids shred faces and the rape gangs high on animalistic angerlust drink midnight //

  Flesh vessels decay, air lies thick with black and the stratosphere is filled with the hungry eyes of the guards of this iron reality penitentiary dimension. //

  The air is a poison that eats its way inside your torso and stamps “property of the Slave State” all over your internal organs // The jagged contour of her ribcage is a wasteland of isometric projections // We’ve both dwelled deep in the smoggy basin of the apathy. Welcome Ersatz insult language says the Black Dog as it gobbles the sound of grinding molars and somehow there is always static noise tick-tocking on, infinitely, in the background. These are the Slave State territories, Bub. These cities are holding cells and slaughterhouses in a film that is your life //

  A film that passes through your fingers //

  But you are not the director //

  You have no say or influence of edits or the way this all ends // The Sweet Merciful Release of Death is on, honey. Bring me a goddamn beer and fast! // There are faces in the walls with wires for hair and cameras for eyes // Mic-ears //

  The salt mine swallows your dreams, forever //

  The rhythm of eternal submission erases memory of freedom still lingering in brain cells and your chores become your heartbeat and life-blood as you work and work and work and there can never be windows of light in your head; no looking into sun kissed fields of fresh air and not-mechanical sing-song-birds because the next day is a work day again and again and again and this is all there is, all you get, the only air you’ll ever breathe, because you are property of The Slave State and this is the last stop before complete conscious annihilation.

  The conquest of your mind and spirit is the last annihilation before complete stop.

  Consciousness: stops.

  Annihilation.

  ---End: transcript print//End session: Transmatica---

  I feel hungry, Doctor Sector thought. It’s late, but I don’t care. I need a bite.

  An image of the entrance of the Red Onion sprung into his mind, and he rose from his chair.

  Black-eyed Dog

  —Spike Marlowe

  Whether we were infected or not, we were all impacted by the Black Dog depression. I was no different than anyone else in that. My mother was one of the first whose body wasted away; she was only one of thousands whose body would line Ersatz’s streets before the Black Dog was identified and diagnosed. I hate the Black Dog as much as anyone, but the illness and how it wrecked Ersatz was no reason for what came next.

  <~~O~~>

  My mother gave me Tess when I was twelve. It wasn’t for my birthday or any other special occasion. She said it was because she felt a girl in the middle of a hellhole like Ersatz deserved a true friend. The day Mom brought Tess home, Tess was a black furry ball with giant floppy ears, big feet and a perky little tail.

  I’d never held a dog before, let alone a puppy. She was silky soft, and immediately nuzzled into my chest, tail wagging, smelling like nothing I’d smelled before. She was a scrawny little thing, and gulped down the leftover rice and broth I fed her.

  <~~O~~>

  The Grinderz Cult were the ones who decided the Black Dog depression originated with dogs and was passed from dogs to humans. As the story goes, some ravers had eaten a couple of black Labs one night while completely blasted out of their minds, caught the depression from the dogs, and proceeded to pass it around Ersatz in a fit of mad fuckery.

  This is, of course, bullshit.

  The story continues with the Grinderz performing some ritual where it was revealed to them the secret of curing the disease: If all black dogs were ritually sacrificed to the Grinderz god, their god would heal Ersatz of its depression.

  <~~O~~>

  That last afternoon, before Tess and I leave town, I see multiple copies of a flyer hanging all o
ver our street. The Grinderz are offering reward money for each living black dog turned into them. It’s good money—more than I’d earn in a month of work. That’s when I know—I won’t only have to avoid the Grinderz—I can’t trust anybody.

  That night, the night Tess and I leave, I am lying with Mark on his mattress in the far corner of the apartment he shares with his brothers and cousins. We are lucky—the apartment is empty except for the three of us. There’s no one there to turn us in.

  Mark and I have held each other like this before, so many times, but this time is different—instead of talking about our future, we talk about our end, and the future Tess and I will share alone.

  “It isn’t worth it, Anna,” Mark says. “She’s probably only got three or four more years left.”

  I take a moment to breathe, and then ask the question I already know the answer to. “Will you come with us?”

  “You know I can’t leave my family. They can’t survive without me. Besides, I don’t believe Wire or Spittle will be any better than Ersatz.”

  I take his hand and hold it to my heart—there is nothing else to do.

  As Tess and I leave, I palm a vial off the small table near the bathroom. It’s several doses of Q—it takes only a little of the magic drug to take you to heaven; too much and you are dead.

  It belongs to Mark; this vial alone will support him and his family for a few weeks, but I don’t know what else to do. If the Grinderz’ catch Tess and me, at least there’s a way out. If they don’t, it will get us set up in Wire. “I will not feel guilty,” I tell myself as I kiss Mark goodbye.

  <~~O~~>

  Not long after my mom gave me Tess, I got sick. I spent days under the spell of the fever, nightmares filling my mind whether I was asleep or awake. I cried from the pain of the disease, I cried with fear from the nightmares. Through it all, even when I was out of my head, I knew Tess lying at my feet, and I knew it would be okay.