“Stowelowly--please exit with care …” a robotic voice said. Most of the patrons on board stood to their feet to exit. Beaver still sat, holding on to a glimmer of hope of a quick answer to his question. The man slowly rose and turned to leave the transport.
“Call me Morgan…” he said in a whispered tone, as he disappeared from view.
Beaver closed his eyes momentarily. It was as if he had heard this name before, although he did not have a clue as to where.
Not the bunker, or the Church, or the camp--where? He thought to himself.
His moment of contemplation was interrupted with a shove.
“Come on Beaver! It’s about to start up again …” Timmy said, trying to leave.
Beaver leaped up from his seat and once again swung from the rev-pole to the ground below. Timmy did the same maneuver. Once again, there was a faint call from the driver, “Safety is empirical…” as it gained momentum towards The Arcade. The duo again laughed out loud, breaking their former icy setting.
Realizing what had just happened, Beaver spun around looking for Morgan. Even though only a few ticts had passed, he was nowhere to be found. Beaver suddenly had a sinking feeling of dread come over him.
What if he was a turncoat? What have I done-- his mind suddenly flooded with logical fear.
“How could I have been so stupid!” he audibly whispered.
“I don’t think he was a spy … I think he lives here. Academy spies always live in the Acad-bunkers in New Dresden. You know that …” Tim equally whispered, trying to talk sense to his friend.
“Plus--he stunk like Stowelowly …” Tim said with a smile.
“He did … didn’t he?” Beaver said with a snicker.
Timmy always had a knack for calming Beaver and his many moods.
“Let’s get some Parv-Bacon, before they eat it all …”
Beaver nodded in agreement.
The streets of Stowelowly were abuzz with activity, as they always were each decision day. Very rarely, a rogue Elite would show up; usually looking for a medicinal high. But almost all of the Elites kept a far distance from this retched place. It was seen as a great mark of shame for an Academy Elite to mingle with the “pariahs,” as they had come to be known. Stowelowly was brimming with filth and diseases. It was an unwanted place of all the refuse of the Academy’s totalistic society. It was a place to become tainted, marked with the scarlet symbol of “outcast.” This is probably why this place of impurity was much more popular than all of New Judah’s museums and places of recreation, among the Selects of Westbrook.
“Rare timepieces! Shiny things! Plenty to go round! Low costs!” shouted a voice from the side of the pathway. Beaver and Timmy rolled their eyes and began to walk faster. It was Bobble again.
“Hopefully, he hasn’t seen us…” Tim said, trying to jaunt away as quickly as possible.
“Hey wait! Bobble has goodies! Come see!” he yelled upon sight of the duo.
Beaver and Tim started running and laughing, away from their unwanted pest.
Tim yelled as they ran, “Dog! Bobble, you Dog!”
Soon, old Bobble was out of sight, as they turned the corner near the crumbling train station.
“You think we lost him?” Timmy breathlessly spoke.
“If not, I’m going to have to knock him out…” Beaver interjected equally out of breath. Bobble was always a perpetual, annoying thorn in their side. One day, Tim decided to be nice and buy some of his ghastly wares. Ever since, Bobble has acted like an extinct rescued puppy, constantly looking to them for support.
“Bobble is such a bum! He probably has never sanitized in his entire life!” Beaver said, gaining his breath.
“Yeah, bum … yeah.” Tim said still looking for more oxygen.
The crumbling old train station, once a place for antiquated transportation; now is a bazaar of all things deemed goldpence worthy. If they didn’t have it, they could probably get it--at the right price, of course. Beaver and Tim, after regaining their composure; slowly walked up the heavily pitted, concrete steps leading inside. The inner façade of the massive building was filled with mid-ancient murals of a time long past. There were faded paintings of smiling children, family picnics, and locomotive engineers tuning their steel horses; that adorned the yellowed walls. More than all of the vendors and wares, Beaver always liked looking at all of the works on the inner façade. Even but for a moment, they gave him hope that there could be life without the ruling Academy.
“Are you coming?! I can smell the Parv-bacon cooking …” Tim said in his usual high-strung way.
Beaver snapped back into his unwanted reality.
“Oh … sure.” He said, following Tim to the makeshift cart where the aroma originated.
“That’ll be 200 GP…” a scraggly sounding voice said with an outstretched metascanner.
“200! It was only 100 last decision day!” Tim demanded as he quickly retracted his hand. He always made it a point to frequent this particular vendor, however today he didn’t like what he was hearing.
“Hey! Supply and demand! The flocks of parv-kine were pretty slim this span, so I got to go up on my price. Do you want it or not?!” the gruff man bellowed.
“No, you can keep it!” Tim said with agitation, walking away. He certainly didn’t want to miss his ritual portion of luscious Parv-bacon, but he wasn’t going to pay that much.
“200! I can’t believe that! That’s extortion! That’s robbery! That’s…”
“Not the end of the world.” Beaver interrupted.
Timmy was so high-strung, yet Beaver could always calm him down.
“There are many other vendors …” Beaver said, trying to talk some sense into his friend, “you might find it cheaper elsewhere.”
“Well … I really don’t have a stomach for parv-bacon today anyway.” he shrugged, casting aside his disappointment.
“Maybe I’ll get some sim-berries… Oh! this looks good!“ Timmy said as he began to scatter among the aisles of trinkets and foodstuffs.
Beaver shook his head in agitation, and thought to himself--let the buying spree commence.
Other than the murals, Beaver was never very impressed with the Bazaar. He would not buy anything, except for the occasional Occal-fruit; but even then it was in great moderation. By ancient or even mid-ancient standards, Beaver was very rich. Through his workjob, Holopram promotions, and bonuses from the Catholic Parlament; (for ending the lives of rebellious miscreants) he had amassed a great fortune of several million Goldpence. However, he did see a need to use any of it.
Logically, he thought that binging and purging, massive amounts of drugs or food just because you could, was worthless and stupid. Perhaps, it was a part of his sociopathy, making him numb to the inner feelings of want or greed. Or, unknown to him, he was holding on to all of it for a greater purpose. Either way in the face of commerce, the Bazaar was nothing more than a great nuisance to him. It was just something that he put up with every Decision day, for Tim’s sake.
Timmy, on the other hand would binge spend every GP in his possession each Decision day. He would buy lots of consumables, but also forbidden things like medicines, tools, chemicals, and other contraband. He would then take all of his newly acquired possessions to an abandoned building; he called his dugout. (Whatever a dugout is …) Then, he would hide it all in a mystery place, like a squirrel gathering chia seeds for interval. Not even Beaver was allowed to enter the building, when he was hiding his foraged swag. His spoken reasoning for it all was “What if the Academy falls and there is another conflict? How would you survive?” Beaver would always stand in the pathway every decision day, rolling his eyes as Tim stocked his hidden doomsday bunker.
“Are you done yet?” Beaver said with a sigh.
“Almost … I just need to get one more thing.” Tim said with his arms filled with newly-bought miscellanea.
“You are such a hoarder.” Beaver again puffed with an air of discontent.
“So …” T
im said, as if to shrug off Beaver’s growing restlessness.
The Bazaar suddenly began to thin out from its vast crowds. The noise level from a bustling center of merchandise dropped drastically as each of the Academy faithful began to flood the transports. Everyone knew that it was close to dark, and dark meant tally time.
The Tally was an evil part to the Academy’s so-called benevolence. If you were not in your assigned domicile by the exact tict of the tally, you were to expect a night of sheer torture in the sleep chamber. This Tally, also was in place for coming to work and going home. Regardless of the situation, if you were the slightest of late, the nice ceil-bot would become a vixen of great sadism. It would perform its task by sending shockwaves of electrified pain throughout the body. How long this conditioning would commence was based on your tardiness:
One tict or less meant ten,
Two to fifteen ticts meant a full proc,
A half a proc meant four full procs,
And a full proc meant certain, electrified death.
If you did not show within one full proc, the roving sentries or the foot troops would be immediately alerted and given orders to hunt you down. Eventually with their Bio-scanners, they would find you, torture you, and then infuse your weary soul.
“Come on Tim! Tally Time!” Beaver said, stomping his foot on the ground.
“I’m done! Let’s run to the dugout, it will only take a tict …” Timmy said, as he dashed towards a very unkempt part of Stowelowly.
The area was probably the worst in all of New Judah. The beams from partially collapsed buildings littered the streets. There was the dank smell of rotting garbage around every turn that they made. Sar-rats could be seen almost dancing throughout the filth of this yardage of Stowelowly. This emanation of pestilence was why Timmy2845 chose the area to be the location of his storage dugout. This was the one place that none of the high-minded, arrogant Elites would ever go. The duo stopped in front of a crumbling mid-ancient office with boarded up windows. The steel-clad door had an electrolock that only Tim knew the combination. Tim quickly slid his fingers in the correct sequence, as if it were a grand piano.
“Enter … Timmy” the lock bellowed. He quickly slipped into the darkness inside with his arms loaded with wares.
The exterior of the one-time plate glass window was covered with wood, so that no one could look inside. It was obviously done before the Great Conflict, or perhaps at the very beginning. All of the buildings and homes surrounding were in shambles. Some were completely collapsed into rubble. In fact, it was that very rubble that had kept the Dugout, hidden from obvious view. Somehow, this one office had somewhat survived without catastrophic damages. It bore the red painted words still alive in a hurried scrawl upon the weathered plywood. As Tim would scurry in his secret place, Beaver would always stand and wonder if the original occupants of this building actually survived, or was this a written work done in false hope.
“All done! Let’s run--” Tim said, interrupting Beaver’s pondering.
“Yes--Right.” Beaver spoke, in a broken tone. The two ran as fast as they could towards the trackstreet. There was a hidden path that only they knew, leading back to the populated area.
“There’s the last one! Come on Beaver!” Tim yelled, pointing towards the transport. Even though he had almost super-human strength from the Academy’s conditioning, Beaver could never run as fast as Timmy. The transport began to move, as Tim leaped into his seat. A few second later, Beaver once again swung from the Rev-pole into his seat.
“Safety is Empirical” a familiar voice stated.
Tim and Beaver were too out of breath this time to laugh.
“Yeah … Empirical. Got it …” Tim huffed, as he gasped for more air.
“Made … it …” Beaver panted with a slight wheeze.
As Beaver sat in recovery from their sprint, he suddenly remembered the strange man from earlier that sat nearby. He cautiously scanned the transport for him, but he was nowhere to be found.
Morgan--Beaver mused.
He wondered to himself why he didn’t give a bio-numeral with his name. Since the advent of the Academy powers, every citizen was given a unique bio-numeral that was attached to his name. Like the dog-tags of the mid-ancient period, it was a requirement to give your bio-numeral when addressing any Elite or Academy official. It was drilled with military precision, in so much that everyone used their bio-numeral when addressing almost anyone. This greatly puzzled Beaver as to why he simply called himself Morgan. Beaver knew there must be something different about him, but what … he did not know.
The transport whirred down the trackstreet on its slow trek to Westbrook. The pair once again regained normalcy.
“I am still upset about that parv-bacon-- that vendor tried to take me for a fool!” Timmy said, with an agitated look upon his face.
“Well … he probably knew something about you that you didn’t.” Beaver said with a smile.
“You heathen …” Timmy huffed at Beaver, understanding what he actually meant.
“Safety is empirical …” Beaver said in a sarcastic, mocking tone.
The two could no longer contain themselves. They bellowed with loud laughter, in so much that the others on the transport could not help but turn their heads and see what was going on. Like Librarians from the former time, many of them put their fingers to their lips resonating a Shhhh sound.
“Sorry … sorry,” Tim apologized, to all the riders with downtrodden eyes.
“You and your bacon almost got us in trouble …” Beaver dictated with a brother-like authority.
“Me?! No … it was you!” Tim snickered.
The two sat once again in silence, miffed at the situation. The moments passed as the transport whirred along. Soon, it slowly began its descent into Westbrook.
“It was too much …” Beaver spoke, breaking the quiet between them.
“Yes, it was …” Timmy interjected with a careful tone.
Their quick comments seemingly broke the iceberg between them.
“Well, it’s back to work next light … I guess I will break someone’s arm for your misfortune today.” Beaver said, in an almost laughing candor.
“Break both of them for me … and take their lunches.” Tim quipped with a smile. They were never mad at each other very long, especially when it was the start of the daily grind the very next light.
“Next stop – Westbrook …” A robotic voice loudly toned over the transport’s wave system. The duo let out a deep sigh. This was the only real time that they could spend together, and it was soon to be over until next decision day.
“Well … I guess I’ll see you next light.” Beaver spoke with a hint of anxiety. Even though he was of a great stature and strength, he always had a soft spot for his friend. Beaver never liked to go home after Decision. The thought of it, left him with a sinking feeling every time.
“Yes … I guess you will. Unless, the heathens take me under …” This was Timmy’s normal departure phrase. Of course, the heathens he was referring to was the Academy Elites and all their sadistic playthings. Beaver nodded in agreement, as always.
The transport heaved to a stop at its destination.
“One more swing?” Tim questioned.
“One more swing …” Beaver stated as they both rose from their seats. They stood motionless until everyone had left.
“Now!”--Tim baulked.
Like children, they both swung on the Rev-pole to the trackstreet below. The words safety is empirical sounded as the transport descended into its underground park-stop. They could not help but once again laugh out loud, as they ran together down the prismatic lighted pathway towards their homes, hoping to beat the tict of the tally.
Chapter 4:
“Time to awake Beaver2416…” the nice ceil-bot spoke. The new light was an unwelcomed vision to Beaver. “Your work-job awaits you … SdotG.” the Ceil-bot again spoke. The hanging robot then retreated into its former position as the auto straps lo
osened their grip. The sleep vessel then whirred and slowly moved from its 12 degree horizontal angle to a vertical upright position.
“Here is a fresh oversuit for you, Beaver2416--Please raise your arms …” The apendage-like robot dropped down from the ceiling with an open, unfastened oversuit. It engulfed Beaver and seemingly molded itself to the contours of his body. As the ceil-bot retracted, it quickly fastened every chase-snap in its ascension.
“There you go … is that better?”
Beaver nodded with a smile, as he lifted his left foot.
Usually, it was the left foot first. However, sometimes he would be thrown off balance on the right by the vacu-bot’s other mode: shoe-clean and shoe-transfer. Beaver still hated the thing for suctioning and destroying one of his shoes, but that incident happened in vacu-mode not shoe-mode. So, Beaver was much more tolerant towards this mechanized menace in the light. He saw it as a split personality, much like himself.
“Here, left…Beet.” it said as it strapped on his first shoe.
“Right, now… Beet.”
“OW! I’ll do it myself …” Beaver interjected with a morning grumble.
The right shoe had a problem.
The vacu-bot tried to put on the shoe backwards!
“Sorry Beet …” it bellowed as it scurried out of the room, back to its mode of suctioning.
“Tommymop!” Beaver shouted, as he turned around and strapped his shoe, and also left the room. The bad ceil-bot suddenly dropped in front of his face, near the threshold of the sleep chamber.
“Did you sanitize yet?” it said already knowing the answer, as it always asks.
“No” Beaver interjected, as he did every single light.
“Then march, mister!” the ceil-bot demanded, pointing like thousands of times before, towards the Basintory.
“Welcome Beaver2416!” was the redundant call as Beaver stepped inside. The Lev-basin quickly rammed its oral cleaning appendage into his mouth and latched on to his goodi-port. As it cleaned Beaver’s kisser and vacuumed his waste matter as usual; Beaver was still groggy and grouchy. The last thing that he wanted to do, is go to his work-job at Perpetua.
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