The Vorkian [a dystopian novella]: The 2250 Saga

by Nirina Stone

  I headed to my next client in line, sending her off to peaceful oblivion. By the time I made it to Biff and the runner, it was forty minutes later. I was getting faster.

  Biff did great. He had the client sitting on an isolated park bench, far from the curious eyes of any passing Prospos. It’s not necessarily good for business to have other people witness what we do.

  “Is he hurt?” I asked, though it was clear he was—his right eye sported a nice new purplish red bruise and was half shut.

  “Suckah tried to kick me,” Biff laughed. “I’ll see you later, mate.” Then he turned and made his way to a waiting autobike, on to his next client. There was no need to say more. Job done.

  The client watched me, tears running down his plump Prospo cheeks.

  I took a deep breath and brought Penny out to charge her.

  He sniffled as I slowly granted him a big smile. “There is no rain check or refund for a Vorkian’s services. This isn’t a spa day.”

  For a moment, I was convinced he would cry the entire time. What a weiner. He sniffed aloud. “I just wanted a little more time.”

  Time’s credits, I thought. But then, why would a damn Prospo care about anyone else’s time?

  The weapon dinged and I walked up to him, meaning to make it quick.

  That’s when he jumped up and ran. The damn coward actually ran! Why was I surprised? It wasn’t the first time he did, after all. Still. I couldn’t remember the last time I ran, but took a deep breath and dashed after him, with Penny clutched in hand. There was no way I was losing my license over this fellah. If I was a bit miffed before, by now I was pissed.

  I was probably gonna lose a big commission next month over this fellah, and this was the hardest I’d had to work yet at this job. When my pants leg got snagged on a bench’s sharp edge, I yanked at it, hearing a sickening rip as I ran faster after him.

  The bastard, I thought, as I finally caught up and punched his upper back so hard, he stumbled forward and fell to his hands and knees, his head bent forward. Perfect.

  He gave a really good wail when I put Penny on the back of his neck. What a shameful way to go, howling like an infant.

  “Will it hurt?” he cried.

  How would I know if it hurts? I’m not dumb enough like this one fellah who tried the ROSiE on himself to “experience the pain.” Needless to say—well it’s needless to say so I won’t say it.

  I examined the Prospo’s neck, fighting the temptation to move the ROSiE down an inch. Because we’re careful to hit clients on the exact spots where they won’t feel a thing.

  But miss the spots by an inch in any direction, and it can be excruciating. I’ve never made the mistake. I hear their screams are awful.

  “I can’t guarantee there won’t be some pain,” I’d said. Sure, part of my job is to offer comfort, but I was seriously pissed. Running? I don’t do running. As for where the rip was on my pants leg, I didn’t think it would be fixable. Those were my most exxy pants.

  So yeah, I was pissed. Comfort be damned, I thought. Time’s credits.

  After he was nothing but ashes, I scattered him in the park and rushed to my next client.

  I took no pleasure in it. Or maybe I did. I hate it when my time is wasted.

  Which is why I don’t spend it chattering with these fellahs in the mess hall. I continue to tuck into my meal, ignoring the rest of their convo, just running through what I need to get things done today.

  That’s when she calls me. The girl. My communibot lights up behind my eye and I see her face. She can’t be more than ten, twelve at most. She requests a meeting, inputs her account and address and my communibot blinks out.

  While she waits for me, my auto-responder will fill her in with what an honourable sacrifice she is making, and how her name will be input for time immemorial in the book.

  What the hell does a ten year old need a Vorkian for? I wonder. I’ve never heard of anyone having a client that young. For a split second, I realize she’s the same age my daughter was when she’d died. The thought makes my breath hitch. I try not to think of her, especially in this line of work. I try, but I fail.

  Still, I have a job to do. I crack my neck and try to focus on the work ahead. I remind myself not to ask questions. It’s better for Apex as a whole if we don’t ask questions. Besides, her funds have cleared.

  I still have food left on my plate but stand to drop the rest in a bin. I’ve lost my appetite anyway.

  Gotta get to work, if I’m to make my twenty today.

  Then I head out the veda, on my way back to Prospo City.

  She lives on the Eastern end of the City, in a tall building across from one of the bigger Clothing Factories and a Knowledge Hub.

  She holds the door wide open, tears streaming down her cheeks as she clutches tight to a small yellow rabbit toy.

  She’s only a tiny mouse of a thing herself, with violet eyes and a blue butterfly clip in her hair. My daughter’s face flashes across my mind, laughing and playing in a summer rain and I swallow hard, trying to focus on my client.

  I already decide what brand to get on my skin, afterwards. I’ve run out of space on my chest and back, I’ve started adding them to my arms.

  Flashing her my brightest smile, I walk through the door, meaning to make this as fast as possible. Since she called me, two more clients made contact and I need to get to them within the hour.

  I find that, the longer people have to wait for me, the higher likelihood they’ll change their minds.

  Something else is being shown on my communibot but I ignore it. The Prospo stream info at us about the value in our way of life and I, for one, don’t have time to listen to their nonsense.

  There’s something different about this stream, a familiarity about the speaker’s features that reminds me of another passing face. Still, my full attention is on my client.

  We sit across from each other in her bedroom—everything is pink or purple or orange. There isn’t a lick of the room that’s not splashed with a bright sunny colour. The colours go well with the shades in my necktie today. A pastel nod to fate if one were to believe in such things.

  My daughter’s gap-toothed smile flashes in my head again and I push it back. I try to think of other things, but it proves difficult.

  The north wall of her room is made of a thick-paned glass. It faces the Knowledge Hub, which is surrounded by a slew of artificial trees.

  She’s already clearly distressed, she might very well change her mind so I say, “You will be fine, little girl.”

  “What will happen?” she says. Her eyes dart to the bedroom door, then back to me again. She clutches the toy so hard in her hands, her knuckles have turned white. Maybe she’s worried her Prospo folks will stop me before I help her transition. Another reason nags at my mind and I fight a tremor in my left hand.

  “Well—” I answer, “do you believe in heaven?”

  “I—I don’t know,” she stutters. “What’s it like?”

  I give her room a once-over. There are barely any pictures of her family. A framed watercolour of a puppybot sits underneath a hanging picture of a massive park. I recognize it as a popular vacation spot on the moon that the Prospos visit for sky dive holidays.

  “Fields and fields of green grass,” I say. “There are puppies, bunnies and butterflies. The sky is bluer than any colour blue you’ve ever seen. You can fly everywhere there. There’s no pain and no sadness, just fun.”

  They suffered no pain. No sadness. The words that barely kept me alive in the months after I lost my girls.

  Her eyes widen as she takes in what I say. “Will it hurt?” she asks, as I charge up my ROSiE. Her eyes water and her chin quivers as she wipes away her tears.

  The lie is easy to offer her, especially when her eyes get all big and teary and the water pools and vibrates like she’s a toon character.

  “Not in the least,” I assure her. The ROSiE pings, indicating it’s ready. So’s she, I tell myself. Though I pause again—I
can clearly see she’s not.

  For once in my Vorkian life, I hesitate.

  Her eyes dart back to the door and I whip my head around in time to catch another Prospo, a woman version of her, peeking around the corner. She doesn’t move past the door, doesn’t say a thing to try to stop me.

  I turn my eyes back to the girl. “Did you contact me, little one?” I say.

  Her eyes shift to the woman in the doorway and she nods. Of course she did. I saw her face on my communibot, but there is no doubt in my mind it wasn’t her idea.

  As I consider my options, I hear a muffled boom then a bright light—brighter than any kind I’ve ever seen—illuminates the entire room for a minute. I look up, past her face, to the Knowledge Hub across the way.

  When the light dissipates, and dust clouds roll in shadows, the building that holds the Hub crumbles to the ground. Its sides disappear under smoke and fire and ash. The loud rumble and thunder from the Hub reaches our ears.

  Then it hits me. The speaker on the communibot is in league with what’s going on out there, but I missed much of what she’d said.

  “Is this it?” the little girl asks. “Did you do it? Is this it?”

  I haven’t done a thing. The ROSiE is on the edge of her table where I’d left it.

  She runs to her bedroom door. “Mother?” she says, “Momma?” She’s met with silence. Finding no one past her door, she runs to the large window and puts her tiny hands up on the glass on each side of her head as she peers out to the Hub.

  “What’s going on?” she asks.

  Before I can say I haven’t a clue, the ground underneath us rumbles and the middle of her bedroom floor cracks open. We’re both thrown to the ground. A jagged section with cables and metal juts into the air, bringing down the wall that held her pictures.

  She screams and I turn to find my ROSiE. I’d get in such trouble if I lose the thing. When she screams again, I think, What the hell? and reach for her instead.

  My job hasn’t changed. I’m still responsible for comforting her through this, because death is coming, even if it’s not by my hand.

  So I wrap her tiny form in my arms as we bounce once and start to fall through the crack. I flip us over once, in time to avoid getting impaled on the jutting concrete.

  The fall lasts for a while—several minutes if my timing’s right. I wrap her tighter in my arms though, as we plummet to our deaths. Things fall up past me, ripping into my arms and legs.

  Then I realize I don’t want to hurt her, and ease my arms slightly. Just hold her enough to keep her from feeling pain when we land—on whatever we land.

  “It’s okay,” I yell. “You’ll be alright!”

  I don’t know if she hears me and don’t know if she’s said anything back. I just feel her hot tears on my chest as she whimpers and I hold on tighter.

  Our fall is so fast, the ground rains upside down, past our heads. Then the back of my suit snags on something sharp and we hang for a minute. She hiccups and wails. I hear a long rip and the suit’s material gives, dropping us the rest of the way as her scream echoes and is cut off when we finally stop.

  We land on mossy ground, wet, and hard. It must be dirt, or mulched garbage, waiting for a truckbot to collect it. Too bad it wasn’t concrete, or we’d be dead already.

  To die without knowing it happened—that’s the way to go.

  Now, there’s no more light around us, no more falling, no more movement. She cries softly in my arms, and hiccups every so often.

  I’ve broken something, possibly a few somethings, and my jaw hurts, but I don’t move in case she’s broken too.

  It’s so dark, I can’t tell where we are, and my left leg is pinned under a heavy, concrete slab. A foul-smelling chemical oozes and drips to our right.

  Drrrrip—drrrrip—drrrrip, it echoes, reminding me this is not the place to be.

  “What happened?” she says, between hiccups and wails.

  The little grey old man’s voice comes back to me. “The world’s about to end,” he’d said.

  I wonder how he knew—

  “It’s okay,” I tell her, “you’ll be okay.”

  My training kicks in and I realize this would be the time to put the ROSiE on her neck and send her off in peace.

  But I lost the weapon. I was dumb. So I’ve failed my assignment. Just three years later, I’ve failed as a Vorkian. If we manage to get out of here, I’ll lose my license. Celeste will have to take me on a walk of elimination. All the work I’ve done seems so pointless now.

  Then I remember the girl called me, but she didn’t want this. She didn’t actually want a Vorkian—she wasn’t planning on dying today.

  She keeps sobbing and hiccuping until I wonder if she’s able to breathe anymore.

  “Shhhh,” I say, loosening my hold more. Her tiny fingers are wrapped around the tops of my arms, digging in hard. “Shhhh little mouse. What’s your name?” I ask.

  “Sadie,” she whispers.

  “Okay, Sadie. I’m gonna teach you to meditate. It will help. Just breathe in and out. Slow, long breaths, okay?”

  I talk her through it, and find out her favourite colour is aqua, her favourite animal a bunny. She tells me she used to want to grow up and work with animalbots, to be an Animalbot Doctor. Until today. I tell her she still could, if she wanted to.

  Her breaths steady and her hiccups finally cease. Then her fingers ease up on my arms. She still clutches on tight, but at least I can feel the blood streaming back through my veins again.

  “Something really stinks,” she says and I chuckle. I can barely smell anything, but I swallow the urge to say, “I’m sorry. It’s just my job.”

  Instead I dig in my ripped suit for my kit, bring out the scentralizer and help her plug her little nostrils with it.

  I see a small light ahead, to our left. It’s tiny, it’s bright, and I hope it’s the way out of here. The light illuminates a little bit of the dark, and puffy red clouds billow all around us. Must be dust, settling on the ground and on our heads. At least nothing else is falling on us.

  If I can get us to that bright light, we’d have a chance of getting out of here alive and figuring out what happened. It’s a slim chance, but it’s a chance.

  So I keep shushing and comforting her until she’s calmer in my arms.

  Then I tell her we must get out of here. I tell her to keep her eyes on the light. She helps me push the heavy thing off my leg, not worrying about whatever’s broken or bruised.

  Then I pull her alongside me, towards the light in the corner.

  Towards a new life.

  THE END

  Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed The Vorkian—and I hope you did—please leave a review on Amazon or anywhere you prefer to leave them. There’s nothing more powerful than word of mouth. And please, share the story with your friends. Thank you.

  About the Author

  Nirina is a reader, occasional country-hopper, and novelist. She inhales psychological suspense, mystery, horror, speculative fiction and the odd comedy.

  Her writing may or may not touch on all of the above.

  She is one of those rare Canadians who hates snow but loves a stormy summer rain. That’s led her to live in Sydney Australia with her hubby, awesome twin kids, and one crazy Tortie kitten.

  The Vorkian is a novella based in the world of the 2250 Saga.

  The story began with Romy [Book I of the 2250 Saga] and continues in Romy’s Legacy [Book II of the 2250 Saga].

  Book III (the explosive Finale!) will be available in end 2016. To receive news and special deals, sign up to Nirina’s exclusive Readers-only list here.

  www.nirinastone.com

  Copyright © 2016 by Nirina Stone

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the express written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief qu
otations embodied in critical reviews and certain non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Edited by Laura Kingsley (any mistakes are the author’s alone.)

  Cover Design by Shardel (Selfpubbookcovers)

  ASIN: B01HFUZRS2