Goldstein

by Troy J. Grice

  Devin continued north until he reached Mugabe Ave. Across the avenue was a stairwell down to the westbound train. He waited patiently for the signal to give him permission to cross.

  “Walk (in Vietnamese)”, shouted a voice from a speaker on the signal pole. Devin looked at his multi as he crossed. His current alias was ‘Trung Trac’.

  He crossed legally and went down the stairs into a glass, arbor-like gate. He winced as he went through but it did not lock him in. His multi was bug free again. A faint beep indicated $400 had been deducted from his account. After the naked scan of him was transmitted to the NaPol database, he was passed through. He sat down on a plastic bench.

  Devin waited for several minutes until the next train arrived. He boarded it and sat down fully expecting the autistic fellow in the white jumpsuit from days before to appear but he was nowhere in sight. There was, however, a priest as indicated by his black wardrobe and collar. He was scanning a holozine issue of “Christian Soldier”.

  The subway train accelerated west and for the next two minutes, Devin fought off the grime and encroaching urine-smell of the filthy public car. Would he abandon the city? He was nearly convinced. Maybe the priest might give him a compelling reason to stay.

  “Hold on,” the priest commanded.

  Devin remembered the fault in the rail that had nearly threw him onto the floor the last time his subway car passed this point. Disregarding hygiene, he grabbed on to the grimy pole with his bare hand an instant before the train passed over the gap. The car violently jolted.

  “Thank you,” Devin replied.

  “You’re welcome.” The priest answered as he put down his holozine and smiled.

  Devin, observing the priest’s engaging posture, couldn’t resist. “So how are things going in the soul-saving business these days?”

  The priest laughed. “Not as well as I would like,” he answered. “There seems to be a great deal of saving left to do.”

  “Sign of the times?” Devin asked as the train rumbled on through the black tunnel.

  “What times might these be?” The priest asked.

  “End times?” Devin offered with an inflection that made it sound like a question. It wasn’t so much because he believed it but because he thought it was what the priest wanted to hear.

  “If it is then I need to work a lot harder,” the priest responded.

  “Are you Catholic?” Devin asked, changing the subject.

  “Why? Do you want to make a confession?”

  “No, not today, thanks.”

  “Actually, I’m multi-denominational so I guess you could say that I am Catholic, at least some of the time. I’m actually licensed by the Department of Religion.”

  “So priests work for the government, too? What happened to the separation of Church and State?”

  “If you want to preach in public, you have to have a license. The license just ensures that we are legitimate. We can’t have false prophets out there preaching hate, can we?”

  Devin didn’t even want to try to understand how licensing priests was a proper role for the State. He changed the subject. “Maybe you can answer a question for me…”

  “What is it?”

  Devin did his best to wipe the crusty grime from his hand where it had gripped the filthy hand pole before asking. Then he let it rip. “Can you help me understand what’s wrong with the world?”

  “What do you mean? Spiritually?”

  “I mean how did it all come to this?”

  “Come to ‘this’?”

  “You know, the surveillance, the police state, the brutality of nats, the rudeness of people. Is it a punishment by God?”

  “Hmmm. Perhaps,” The priest pondered. “Or perhaps it’s not as bad as you make it out to be. Do you know what is in your heart? Maybe you need to look there to find your answer.”

  “No, I don’t think so. I think it’s pretty bad here. I’m sure it’s not me.”

  “Then perhaps you’re expecting an explanation from me that goes along the lines of, ‘since there is so little God in people’s lives, they have become full of immorality and hate’.”

  “Yeah, I guess I was expecting something like that.”

  “But that kind of simplistic answer probably wouldn’t appeal to you either, would it?”

  “No, probably not,” Devin agreed.

  “Well, maybe I’ll give you two answers and you can choose the one that best fits your worldview.”

  “Please…”

  “Maybe it’s a matter of not needing help anymore from our neighbors that is causing people to be so un-neighborly and awful to one another.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I mean is that we have everything at our fingertips, now. We have government counselors and social workers that are available to solve all our problems for us. There’s no need to be neighborly when we don’t need our neighbors.”

  “That makes sense. What’s your other explanation?”

  The priest gazed into the smudged windows of the train as it zipped past the blur of dimly lit diodes attached to the blackened subway wall. “Perhaps people are just this way, have always been this way, and we just have romanticized notions. What do you think?” asked the priest.

  Devin pondered, still trying to rub the last of the grime from his palm. “I think I agree with your first hypothesis. I find it very difficult…” Devin trailed off.

  “Find what difficult?”

  “I guess I find it difficult not to despise people.”

  “But you’ll become one of those you despise if you’re not careful. Don’t let your heart be led astray. Always remember that if it was easy to love your neighbor then there would be no reward in doing it.”

  “And what is the reward? Good fortune? Eternal life?”

  “Yes. But we are put here to help one another, to do the things that please God. It is our purpose in life. It should be its own reward.”

  “…To help even the irredeemable?”

  “No one is irredeemable.”

  “I think these people are. They’re barely human. They’re more like farm animals, biting and snarling at each other, waiting for their troughs to be refilled. They’re soul-less. Their government is their god, now.”

  “You need to let the Holy Spirit into your heart. Do you read the Bible?”

  “I’ve read the Gospels,” Devin answered.

  “Did they resonate with you?”

  “I think I understand the message.”

  The priest chuckled. “Tell me then, what is the message?”

  Devin rubbed his chin contemplatively. Don’t fall into his trap, he thought. He’s a professional. He’s setting you up to make you look like a fool. Oh, the hell with it, “I imagine it involves having virtue. You know, having freedom to choose and then choosing to do what’s right.”

  “Hmmm. That’s an interesting interpretation. How did you arrive at that?”

  “Well, it has to do with how Jesus was always hanging around sinners and criminals and how he never tried to force his message onto people. Like he told that prostitute to “sin no more” rather than bludgeon her with a stone. To me, that’s what virtue is about- choosing the right path. If someone forces you to do good then it wasn’t your choice and therefore it has no virtue. Without virtue, you’re just a farm animal waiting for your trough to be refilled.”

  “Interesting,” replied the priest.

  “What do YOU think the message is, father?”

  “That’s easy. Love thy neighbor,” responded the priest condescendingly. Devin choked the priest’s response down with difficulty as if it was some piece of gristle that had to be swallowed as a matter of politeness. “Do you struggle with that?” the priest asked.

  “I suppose that it might be an opportunity for spiritual growth but I guess I can accept it.”

  “Faith is not easy.”

  The train came to a stop and the doors slid open. Devin got up and stepped out the door but turned back to
ask a final question. “Before you take off, father, do you have a Bible verse for me? You know, something for me to ponder as I make my way through this wilderness.”

  The priest smiled but it wasn’t a warm smile. It was more of a smug smile. “Romans 13. I think it will help you to refocus on what’s important.”

  The priest noticed a look of contempt materialize in Devin’s face. It looked as if he were about to wretch. Devin had a heathen’s hatred for that verse. But it made perfect sense to him now. The oligarchs of religion used that verse to bludgeon obedience into the minds of the serfs.

  “You look disappointed, my son,” asked the priest.

  “I guess I should have expected that verse from a government bureaucrat.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Jesus didn’t say that.”

  “No, it’s from Paul. Tell me, where’re you headed, now?”

  “I’ve decided to dust off my sandals and get the hell out of this place. Thank you for helping me make up my mind.”

  The doors of the subway car slammed shut.

  Chapter Ten

  Devin was invigorated by his new found decisiveness. This would be his final night in urban Amerika. He was going to go out, get drunk, meet some women and spend a lot of money on the eve of his escape.

  Tomorrow, he would purchase survival gear and provisions, take public transportation to the cities’ edge and from there hike directly into the foothills. His destination was a small town called Calumet located some three hundred kilometers to the west. He knew nothing of it other than the relative size of its black dot in the mapping program on his multi.

  He mapped out a path following river valleys, abandoned rail lines, and mountain passes that would get him to his destination within two week’s time. Two weeks in the wilderness would do him good, he thought. Devin was no stranger to the outdoors. He had learned how to survive in the wild during numerous hunting expeditions from Goldstein.

  He was almost manic compared to the lethargic state in which he had been mired since the jaywalking incident. He felt like he did when he first arrived at the train terminal— triumphal. Nothing could match the cathartic power of a clean slate.

  His triumph then had quickly withered as there were seemingly no opportunities for him to exploit in this city. In his mind, it was nothing more than a filthy mound of reflective glass, rusting steel and dreary concrete, infested by invertebrates crawling over top of each other. “To hell with them”, he thought. The conversation with the priest had fomented his resolve.

  The Amerikan city was an alien world to him. It was not as he had remembered it but rather more as Roth had warned. “The city demands obedience”, Roth observed when they were back at his cabin. “It demands that you surrender to it. It demands that it becomes your reason for existence. City life is a religion.”

  “How right he was,” Devin thought.

  Roth explained that he had once lived in Los Angeles but the City of Angels had “spit him out”. “City living is like a wave,” Roth explained. “To survive, you’ve got to swim with it or at least float along. Everything in the city has its place and all the forces are symbiotic. Culture and counter-culture, party and opposition, criminal and cop- the existence of one justifies the other. There is no real right or wrong there, only different perspectives. It’s all relative. One force pushes the other under and the other re-emerges to push back. The ebbs and flows build into the wave. And the wave is the cities’ essence. The wave is the master. Swim against it and it’ll wear you down, drown you, or drag you into the reef to be ripped apart.” He continued, “I hate cities. They’re filthy, crowded, and violent places. I like the woods and my cabin with my dogs. There aren’t any waves that’ll drag me under out here.”

  “My struggles here,” Devin decided, “are not a function of poor timing or ignorance. They’re a function of setting. I am, after all, a country boy.” His mental rant continued. “Only an urban serf with a pre-programmed life could ascribe mystical qualities to a geographical location. The urban serfs are just trying to fill some spiritual void in their lives.”

  There were rebels in Amerikan cities, but their method and terms were dictated by ‘the wave’. Devin could not embrace the role of gelded rebel. He could never go with the current, regardless of where it went. So his mind was made up. “To hell with the city!” He would leave in the morning for life amongst the country savages.

  Devin spent the bulk of the afternoon on the plastic grass of City Park pondering his journey. He consumed a real meat hot dog that cost him an additional $175 in Department of Public Health sin tax. While munching away, he stared out between the concrete buildings towards the black foothills twenty kilometers west. Behind them, eighty kilometers further, snow-capped mountains beckoned.

  He sat around in the park on a concrete bench for several hours dozing off twice under the cloudless blue sky with the cool May sun soaking into his face. At about eight o’clock he decided to get moving again.

  He walked south down Broadway Avenue. The magenta sunset faded quickly into gray and then navy blue. The temperature dropped rapidly. Venus burned white hot like a tiny welding arc.

  The cool air swirled around him kicking up un-recycled, recyclable paper which whipped around his legs and up the sidewalk until it was snared by a storm grate or tree trunk or electro bumper. Devin pulled his thermal tight to fend off the chill.

  After several blocks he came to the entrance of a drinking club called “Houdinis”. He walked up the steps where he was greeted by a burly footballer type dressed in a pleather trench coat. His ears had been surgically cropped into elvish triangles and his lizard-like, forked tongue startled Devin a little when he licked his lips before speaking.

  “Drinking license, please,” he ordered.

  “I don’t have one. I’m new in town.”

  “Give me your multi,” he responded. He scanned it. The scanner lit up blue.

  “$3,500 for a temporary license. Are you good with that?”

  “Yeah.”

  The doorman’s scanner beeped. He stepped aside and Devin went in.

  It was dark inside except for the bar area where three slender females dressed in skin-hugging, black vinyl jumpsuits were pouring drinks. They each had straight, silver hair, cropped at the shoulders. Waiflike and pale, the three moved with exaggerated sways and thrusts of their hips. When they stood still, they thrust their hips forward like fashion models. It was difficult for Devin to tell them apart.

  Devin moseyed through the shadows and up to the bar to get a better look and to order a scotch. The waif that approached was somehow familiar to him. Then it dawned on him that she was the one that he had spied on the subway.

  “What are you having?” she asked in a monotone that Devin found oddly seductive. It didn’t appear that she recognized him.

  “Scotch and a glass of water if you don’t mind,” he answered. “It’s dry here.”

  “Where are you from?” she asked. Her face was flawless, satin, almost mannequin-like. Devin was hypnotized by it.

  “Alaska.”

  “Alaska? It must be tough be one of…what…six or seven black dudes in that entire state?” A faint, Mona Lisa smirk crept into the corners of her mouth as she buffed a martini glass.

  “If you ever went there you might be surprised.”

  “Why would I ever go there? There’s nothing there but igloos and grizzlies,” she explained. “Anyway, I thought black people hated the cold.”

  “Now I’m going to have to report you,” Devin joked.

  Her smirk morphed into a full smile as she reached under the counter. She grabbed a tall, frosted bottle and set it on the countertop. Then she set a glass of ice and a bottle of water next to it. She reached down again and produced a bowl of sugar cubes and a silver teaspoon.

  “This doesn’t look like Scotch.”

  “Scotch is for faggoty, rich, white boys. You don’t strike me as faggoty and you’re obviously not white. Are you rich?” />
  “What is this?”

  She poured the contents of the bottle into the glass of ice, filling it halfway. Then she set the spoon across the glass and placed a sugar cube on it. She untwisted the cap on the bottled water and slowly poured it over the sugar cube, filling the glass nearly to the rim. Stepping back, she buffed another martini glass while prodding him to take a drink with a nod.

  He took the spoon off the glass of cloudy liquid and carefully sipped its contents. It was an unexpected taste— intense, black licorice. He took a bigger sip and set the glass down. The bartender set her polished martini glass down as well and poured more water into his glass. He took another sip.

  “You’re the pervert on the subway,” she observed.

  Devin nearly spit out the sip he had just taken. Not knowing quite how to respond, he figured he would turn the tables back on to her. “You don’t think your outfit was a little…uh…provocative?”

  “Don’t worry, pervert. I thought it was cute that you tried to be sneaky. Everyone else would just ogle me.” She swayed away to another patron before he could respond.

  Devin worked his way through the potent drink while scanning the shadowy corners of the club. The establishment quickly filled with wraithlike silhouettes.

  The volume of the music gradually increased. A bending, layered, hypnotic wail of synthetic sounds, it had an Arabic influence with its keyless structure.

  “Need a refill?” shouted the bartender.

  “I’m not sure if I like this. It’s not easy to drink.”

  “Is anything easy worthwhile?” she asked with cocked hips and weight shifted onto one leg. Her boney pelvis thrust towards him as she polished another martini glass.

  “Isn’t this the stuff that made Van Gogh cut his ear off?”

  “Who’s Van Gogh?”

  “Typical”, Devin thought. “How about a martini?”

  “Martinis are for white bitches. You don’t look like a white bitch.”

  “Fine. I’ll try one more of that last drink but you have to tell me your name first.”

  She set out the sugar, spoon and the ice water and the tall bottle with faintly green contents and another conic-shaped glass and repeated the ritual same as before.