Hadrian's Rage

by Patricia-Marie Budd

  Quick to smooth away tension, Sid launches in with an explanation. “Too much of a hassle; damn near impossible, I’d think, to change every single point in the system with your name attached.” Cantara relaxes. So does Dean.

  Back in focus, Dean finds his digital design. He opens the file to ensure it is the right one—colorful stick men holding hands—and then issues a vocal command, “disintegrate file.” It breaks into particles of light and vanishes.

  There is a collective murmur: “Cool!”

  Cantara utters her approval, “I like this friend of yours.”

  “He abandoned his son because he was straight.”

  Admiration turns sour and Cantara spits out, “Bastard!”

  There is a moment of silence. Everyone knows the name of the boy in question: Todd Middleton.

  Prasert, ever the pragmatic, gets the group back on track. “Okay, so the file’s gone. Now what?” Apologetically, he adds, “We still need a logo.”

  “It’s okay, babe.” Turning now to Dean, Sid asks, “What are you thinking?”

  “Well, I was hoping we could come up with something to reflect Tara’s haiku ‘Humanity’s Sun.’”

  “Oh, I love that one.” Cantara smiles and, even though everyone has heard it before, she recites it for her peers: ‘We are each of us/rays of light shooting forth from/humanity’s sun.’”

  “If we could come up with an image for humanity’s sun, that would be ideal.”

  “Well,” says Sid, turning to kiss Prasert on the cheek, “we’d love to stay and help, Dean, but we have a sociology class. Tara, coming?”

  Tara’s eyes brighten. “Yes!” She lets out a little laugh and there is a sudden spring in her step as she joins the two men. “Cantara,” her voice is bubbling over with excitement, “meet us for supper so we can celebrate.”

  “Okay.” Cantara’s smile stretches over the whole of her face. She knows why Tara is excited. Her sociology professor is going to read her essay about what it is like growing up straight to the class. Tara was practically dancing on air when Professor Politis asked for permission to share it. “I’m hoping it will open a few minds to understanding others,” the professor had said. She also promised not to expose Tara by keeping her name anonymous. Sid and Prasert are the only students in her class who will know it is Tara’s essay. Waving as Tara and the two boys exit their small GSA office, Cantara shouts, “See you later!”

  After the pack leaves, Dean inquires, “What was that about?”

  “I promised Tara I wouldn’t tell anybody, but I think you’re safe. Her professor is going to read her essay about what it is like being heterosexual in Hadrian.”

  “Whoa,” says Dean, his brow contracting, “that could be dangerous.” He knows the essay; he proofread it for Tara, and although he fully agrees with everything she has to say in it, he warned her not to hand it in. Tara seemed to believe her professor was more open-minded than Dean was willing to give her credit for. Clearly, Tara was right, but still, if others learn who authored that piece, Tara could be in for a lot of ugly treatment by her peers. Augustus Uni may be the first in Hadrian to admit openly bi and straight students, but that doesn’t mean that all of the faculty or its student population are accepting of their presence. Most bi and straight students remain in the closet. Even the office for their campus GSA is a well-kept secret. Or, at least, so Dean hopes.

  “You worry too much, Dean,” Cantara chastises. “Politis promised not to share her name. I think it’s great. I mean, someone is willing to share our story and actually hopes to open the hearts and minds of our fellow students.”

  “Yes, I just…” Dean pauses; he can’t help but fear the worst, having experienced a lifetime of prejudice. “I just hope no one discovers Tara’s the one who wrote it.”

  “They won’t; there’s no way.”

  “Well, if you say so.” Rubbing his forehead to ease some tension, Dean politely asks Cantara to leave. “Anyway, I’ve got to get to work and try to do something with this.”

  “And then you have to study your ass off for your anatomy test!”

  “Yes,” Dean admits, “so, if you don’t mind…”

  Before he can finish, Cantara acquiesces. “Okay, I will leave you alone.” But Cantara doesn’t want to leave. She likes being in close proximity to Dean. When they first met, he couldn’t be in the same room with her unless his grandmother was with him. His mimi sure has done wonders with him, Cantara muses. Now she can be alone in the same room with Dean and he hardly has any negative reaction at all. She stands there by the door for a time, quietly watching Dean work, fantasizing about the day when he will hold her in his arms and kiss her.

  Thinking Cantara has left the room, Dean begins musing out loud. “Humanity’s sun—humanity’s sun—rays shooting forth—” Blinking, Dean opens a new design doc. He begins with a circle to represent the sun. Using the eyedropper, he colors in the circle with a creamy yellow. Picking up the holographic pencil tool, he begins drawing thick rays shooting forth from the sun. He paints each sunray a color of the rainbow. Above the image, he types the title “Humanity’s Sun,” and beneath it, he types in the haiku. “It’s not great,” he mutters, “but it’ll do.” He prints a copy of the design and then goes through the arduous process of deleting, retrieving, and destroying the image. He will share this image with the group next time they meet, and if it meets with everyone’s approval, he will create a new one and spread it over the wall screens at the uni using an ad virus. Dean smiles; he hasn’t shared all of Mike Fulton’s secrets with these kids. Assuming Mike is right, Dean should be able to encrypt his poster design with enough security that it will take even the best of Hadrian’s hackers to decode it prior to the 4 a.m. deadline. All he has to do is make sure to trash the viral doc every day at the same time and then reload it with Fulton’s modulating security program. The plan is simple: create, blast, trash, erase—recreate, blast, trash, erase for as long as he can get away with it.

  Finally, Dean opens his anatomy files and begins to study. He is having trouble focusing, though. The stress of exams, running low on credits, and having to hide everything they do as a GSA is starting to wear on Dean. With pain shooting up the sides of his neck and down the front of his collarbone, he stops studying to attempt self-massage. Fortunately, he doesn’t have to struggle to reach his back shoulder muscles because Cantara enters the room and takes over for him. “Here,” she says soothingly. “Let me do that for you.”

  “I thought you’d left.” After a few moments of her hands rubbing into his neck muscles, he smiles. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

  Cantara gently chides, “Hadrian’s Lover, Dean, your neck and shoulder muscles are tight. It’s like trying to soften rocks.” Then worried, she adds, “I’m not the cause of that, am I?”

  “No.” Dean does not want her to stop. Her hands may not be as strong as Geoffrey’s, but the digging into his muscles is exactly what he needs right now. “No, I’m fine. I’m just stressed about getting our logo done. I want to flood the campus screens with our image to start spreading awareness.”

  “Yes, but you can’t do everything. And, you have midterms coming up. You don’t want to fail your anatomy class, do you?”

  “No, you’re right.” Dean moans. “By all that’s gay and glorious, that feels good.” But not good enough, Dean winces as he realizes the hands he really wants massaging his neck are Geoffrey’s. “Could you press a little harder?”

  “I’ll try, but I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Trust me; you’re not hurting me at all.”

  Cantara smiles. “Does it feel good?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  Suddenly, Cantara is in front of him, settling down on his lap. “Dean,” she whispers.

  The room starts to feel close. Dean’s throat tightens. Cantara smells good. Her breathing enhances her breasts. She leans in for a kiss. Dean’s lips reach for her mouth as his heart pounds against his chest. Try as he might, his body begins t
o rebel and he pushes her away. “I can’t; no, Cantara.” He gets up from his chair and begins pacing the room, trying all the while to control his breathing and hold back the ensuing nausea. “Mind over matter. Mind over matter,” he whispers over and over.

  “Dean, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay, Cantara. I’m the one who’s sorry.” Trying now to ease her hurt, he says, “It’s not a good idea for us anyway. You are much too young—”

  Angered, Cantara counters, “That’s absurd!”

  “I’m forty-four, forty-five next month, while you’re only—”

  “I’m twenty-two years old. That makes me a consenting adult. I can sleep with a ninety year old if I want.”

  Dean can’t help but laugh. “Yeah, I suppose you could. I just,” he says, wiping the sweat off his brow, “I can’t. I’ve tried. I want to be with you, but every time we try, I feel residual shocks, and then the nausea sets in.” Breathing more slowly now, he adds, “I’m sorry, Cantara; it’s just not going to happen. Not now. Maybe not for a long, long while. Re-ed has taken its toll on me.” Turning now to face Cantara, hoping to discourage her, Dean concludes, “Don’t wait for me. Find someone you can be with, someone who can make you happy.”

  Ignoring his advice, Cantara changes the subject. “Show me what you’ve come up with.” Dean readily acquiesces; it is easier to be around Cantara when their focus is business. Reaching into his back pocket, he pulls out the print out of the logo he has created.

  Cantara unfolds his work and immediately expresses pleasure. “I love it!”

  “Really?” Dean remains unsure.

  “Absolutely. It’s perfect. It’s just what you said you wanted. Humanity’s sun!”

  The two smile. The tension between them has subsided. For now.

  *****

  9 GSA: Gay Straight Alliance

  Salve!

  An Interview with Greatness

  HNN—Melissa Eagleton Reporting

  “Viewers, it is both an honor and a pleasure to introduce to you today’s guest, Hadrian’s Founding Mother, Destiny Stuttgart. Mother, thank you so much for joining us today.”

  “Call me Destiny.”

  “Oh, I don’t think I can. Forgive me, Mother, but it doesn’t feel right referring to you on such an informal level. You have done so much to help make our country great.”

  “And that’s why I agreed to come here today. I want to keep our country great and not let it fall deeper into the hands of hatred.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You know why. You reported about the many abuses committed against our heterosexual brothers and sisters—not just through reeducation but in the series of hate crimes polluting our culture of love and peace.”

  “Oh, I know, those violent hateful crimes. Mother, how can we stop them?”

  “By educating our citizens. Letting them know heterosexuals are not evil people—Why are you pulling at your ear?—And now you’re wincing. Explain yourself, dear.”

  “But—there is the Heterosexual Agenda that we must be aware of. You must agree, being a founding member and having helped write the four cornerstones. The first cornerstone is very explicit about Hadrian’s chosen sexual identity.”

  “Yes, I am fully aware of that wording, but I argued ardently against it. Which is why I am fighting so hard for its revision, back to its original wording when I first drafted the constitution for Hadrian.”

  “But why?”

  “It saddens me that you have to ask that, dear. Look at me when I talk to you. Sexual identity is not a choice. No one chooses to be gay. No one chooses to be bisexual. No one chooses to be straight. No one chooses to be intersex. And no one chooses to suffer from gender dysphoria.”

  “Yes, but our scientists have done wonders with the human genome, eradicating the heterosexual gene—”

  “And what right do we have to do that?”

  “To avoid procreation.”

  “We don’t want to avoid procreation. All we want to do is reduce human population in the most peaceful, loving, and humane manner possible.”

  “I think we’ve done that here in Hadrian; don’t you?”

  “Do you call the list of hate crimes you shared with us on your last Salve! peaceful? Do you call the murder of a four-year-old boy loving? Do you call the numerous beatings of our heterosexual citizens humane?”

  “No, of course not, but—”

  “There you go, grabbing at your ear again. What does that mean anyway?”

  “No, hate crimes are not peaceful, but…heterosexuals shouldn’t flaunt themselves in public, giving our children the message that it is okay to be straight.”

  “It is okay.”

  “No, Mother, it isn’t—Mother, why did you sign the constitution? Why did you agree to its wording?”

  “I was outvoted. Oh, dear, you are going to pull that earlobe off if you’re not careful.”

  “And now—you are using the current political climate and your power as the last founding family member to—to—”

  “Just say what you have to say, dear.”

  “—to corrupt our constitution.”

  “The word corrupt does not fit this context. No, dear, not corrupt—amend.”

  “I’m sorry, Mother, but our time has run out. I hope you will join us again.”

  “That’s not very likely, is it? And dear, see a doctor about that ear. Oh, oh, oh, let me say it. I’ve always wanted to…

  Vale!”

  A Detritus Fisherman’s Fiasco

  Although the role of a detritus fisherman is a dangerous one, it is deemed as critical to Hadrian’s existence as that of the military. Even so, it is a life seldom chosen out of want, or altruism; rather, such positions are filled out of desperation and need. Few willingly put their lives at daily risk, a risk, if statistics were ever revealed publically, that is actually greater than those known to the military. One need not fear having a bullet piercing his flesh; no, when one fishes out the refuse floating in the Bay, built up over centuries with human waste, one fears contamination. As well as radioactive materials, many dangerous chemicals and biohazards litter the world’s oceans, and much of that litter has found its way into Hudson Bay via its estuaries stretching down from the Arctic Ocean and east from the Atlantic. The average life expectancy of the detritus fisherman, colloquially referred to as “DF,” is said to be anywhere between forty-five and fifty years of age. The oldest known DF died at the ripe old age of fifty-eight. This is why over 90 percent of all DFs are from the re-ed class—that unwanted class of Hadrian citizens that has been discovered experimenting with heterosexual behavior before the age of twenty-one; that unwanted member of society that has required reeducation.

  The detritus fisherman is really nothing more than a glorified salvage-man, but no one working in this capacity feels any sense of glory in his or her work. It is simply a dangerous life, one compounded with difficult times and hard labor. Wolfgang Gaidosch, known by close friends as Wolf, is no stranger to hard times and backbreaking labor. Backing away from his post for a minute, Wolf presses his knuckles between his shoulder blades and cracks his back. Glancing about him circuitously to ensure no pier manager is looking his way, Wolf stealthily removes a half-smoked cigarette from his pocket and lights up quickly. After a few drags, he carefully extinguishes it, hiding the remaining butt in his coverall pocket. He had been employed as a level one DF, first by Hunter Enterprises and now with Hadrian National, and never once has he been offered a promotion or even heard back from any of his applications. So much for fifteen years of service! Bitterness is a hard pill to swallow, and Wolf no longer even tries. He just chews on it and spits when his mouth gets that all too familiar foul metallic taste. Unfortunately, he has been doing this for quite some time. I’d change jobs, he muses, but to do what? This is the only low-end job out there that actually offers benefits thanks to Geoffrey Hunter’s intervention when the fisheries was still a family-owned company. And sadly, he ruminates, thin
gs have only gotten worse since they legalized heterosexuality. No one is forced to go to reeducation camps any longer, but parents still have the authority to send anyone under twenty-one, so the camps still run at full capacity since no one wants a child who acts on strai tendencies. With a harrumph, Wolf spits. No one wants to believe that someone in Hadrian might actually be born straight! Irony, he thinks with a grim chuckle, when nobody in the outside world wants to believe people are born gay. Shaking his head in disbelief, Wolf mutters, “I hate irony.” Walking back to the edge of his pier, Wolf resumes hauling in more of the refuse within depth and reach of his pole.

  Wolf’s pier is the third one out on the northern water border of Hadrian. The border is lined with detritus piers to which DFs are assigned. Every ten minutes, a kilometer or two into international waters, the water patrol boats pass by. Occasionally, one passes close enough to allow male guards to toss a few taunts Wolf’s way. Today is one of those days.

  “Hey, sexy fisherman,” one of the older guards calls out. It may sound like an admiring catcall, but Wolf knows better. There is nothing sexy about a DF in uniform. Muddy fishing boots, with chest high waders, jacket, and hat are all baggy and designed to protect one from the contaminated waters of the Bay. In actuality, a DF looks like little more than a big, yellow, slimy lump covered in grime.

  “Ah, Leon,” the other guard cries out, “leave the little strai alone.” The other man’s shout is just a little too loud to be construed as supportive. Ignoring them, as usual, Wolf plunges his pole as deep as it will go into the Bay before dragging it along the edge of the pier. As always, he snags something. At first, Wolf anticipates more illegal fishing nets—composed of strong synthetic polymer that Hadrian makes good use of by converting it into spools to be later used in the weaving of shoes and clothing.10 The feel of this catch is different, though. The net seems to be caught on something. Tugging, Wolf begins to pull upward on the pole in an attempt to free whatever intractable object this net has latched onto. Whatever it is, it is stuck hard. Wolf releases the pressure he has placed on the pole and dips it deeper, bending deep at the knees so he can place hands and arms deep into the rancid water. Feeling the net under the object, Wolf uses his legs to help him lift the item whilst pushing down with his right arm and pulling upward with the left. Wolf grunts as something silver dangles from a long chain knotted up inside his net. Sunlight sparkles off the water dripping from both chain and object. It is unimpressively small, tubular; it must be the chain in which it is entangled that bears the bulk of the weight. Mustering all of his strength, Wolf lifts his catch high enough to toss it and the chain up into the large bin next to him. Ugh. Whatever it is, it has a rancid stench. Of course, everything Wolf pulls out of the Bay has a reek, but whatever is in his net is particularly pungent. It speaks volumes when a stench can trigger disgust in the nostrils of a DF. No doubt, Wolf reasons, this object must be extremely toxic. “Damn,” he mutters. “I’ll have to report that.” This spells disaster for Wolf: paperwork, detoxification showers, followed by numerous medical tests (the bulk of which are at his expense even with the addition of medical benefits). “Fuck,” Wolf mutters. “I hate this shit!” Before climbing the side of his bin to look inside at his newly acquired catch, Wolf’s attention is averted to rasping, begging off in the distance. “Fuck!” Wolf spits. Nearing the edge of his pier is a small refugee boat. How the fuck did they get past the water patrol guards? he wonders.