Watching Yute

by Joseph Picard

  “Hey, I’m looking for the A.R.A.” He had said in many different bars, loud enough that he might be overheard by the right people. He was prepared for the idea that it might not turn into the most polite introductions, but you have to start somewhere.

  Most people told him they didn’t know, and walked away. Some called him an idiot. One bar threw him out, and said a number of very impolite things about him, and the A.R.A., and threatened to call the cops.

  Kirison was about ready to give up for the night, when his question hit the right set of ears. A man approached him who looked to be in his mid forties due to a life of heavy substance abuse, but was probably actually in his early thirties. His clothes were among the filthiest in the bar. He either hadn’t had a job in years, or had been working hard at a rough one all day. He mumbled so that Kirison had to strain to hear him over the general bar din.

  “You think you’re gonna find guys like that in a place like this?” The man looked around. “This place is full of pussies, acting tough. You wanna see tough?”

  Kirison raised an eyebrow.

  “You do?” The man coughed. “You’re a tough guy are ya? I dunno, you look like another wannabe pussy to me!” He grinned a slightly evil looking grin, and chuckled to himself. He wasn’t Aguei, but at this point, a lead was a lead.

  “You sound pretty sure of yourself,” Kirison said, “You know where I should be looking?”

  The man leered around to see if anyone else was looking. “I know a place where some bad shit goes down. Fucked up shit.” He rummaged in his pocket, while Kirison wondered what filthy treasures might be in there. The man finally pulled his fist out of his pocket, and forcibly jammed it into Kirison’s pocket, dropping something in before removing his hand. He put his index finger to his lips and said “Shhh, never got that from me, right? Never saw me, right? Right?”

  Kirison reached to his pocket to get the item, but the man grabbed his wrist to stop him. “Never saw me, right?”

  “Yeah. Alright, alright, never saw you, never heard you, never smelt you.”

  The man released Kirison’s wrist in a jostling motion. “Alright, tough guy. Don’t mention me there, either. And I wouldn’t let em see what I gave you either. And don’t take it out of your pocket in here.”

  “Right, alright, you’re a ghost, got it.” Kirison patted his pocket. “Thanks, man.”

  “Eugh. Don’t thank me. Fucked up shit going on there.” He shuffled off, disappearing between the other, comparatively regal patrons of the bar.

  Kirison went into the parking lot and looked in his pocket. A small, filthy stub of paper. On one side in marker, it said “Ghripy - 1:30 - 250” and bore a small stamped image of a star. On the other side, someone had written an address in ballpoint pen.

  He got into his car. It was 1:10am. He could get to the address in plenty of time. He had a date with “Ghripy.”

  If the bar was in the bad part of town, where he heading now was the “fucked up shit” part of town. Kirison felt the need to be carrying a gun here, but it was too late for that. He drove between buildings that had gone without maintenance for untold years. Signage from stores that had been long abandoned had faded from the sun, broken windows outnumbered the unbroken. Some of the broken ones had blankets hanging across the opening, a likely sign of squatters.

  He came to an intersection with traffic lights that no longer worked. He stopped just long enough to make sure no other traffic was coming across the other way. The fact was, he hadn’t seen another car in motion for a while. He crossed the intersection as soon as he could, feeling like a vulnerable target.

  The address was a warehouse, in almost as bad of shape as the rest of the neighborhood. There were quite a few cars parked here, and loud excited voices coming from inside.

  Kirison parked, but before he got out, a large man showed up at his drivers side window. Another one at the passenger side window.

  The one at the driver’s side knocked on the glass and said loud enough for Kirison to hear, “You here to play, or what?”

  “I… I’m here to see Ghripy.” Kirison said.

  “Aw, that’s a shame.” The man said, his expression becoming slightly more friendly, “Ghripy was great, but he had to be ‘retired’ a week ago. You’ll have to go with someone else.”

  Oh shit. What the hell was going on here? ‘Fucked up shit’, just as the guy from the bar had said, so it seemed. “Oh well,” Kirison said, getting out of his car. “It’s not like I was married to Ghripy. He was great though!”

  “Go on in, man, there’s still at least an hour of action left.”

  “Thanks.” Kirison left his car, somehow feeling confident that he would come back to it later to find it undisturbed with the two goons on patrol. Walking closer to the warehouse, he could hear the group better. They were cheering, as if a sporting event. He opened the thick wooden door, and was overcome with the stench of many flavours of smoke, underpinned with sawdust and drying blood.

  About sixty men stood around, facing the middle. Kirison stepped closer, and heard faint scratching sounds between the cheers.

  In the middle was a circle of sawdust, walled by half a metre of clear plastic. In the middle were two roosters, fighting. But not like roosters fight. They walked sideways around each other slowly, sizing each other up.

  One decided to attack, lunging toward the other. The opponent sidestepped the attack, and jabbed its own beak into his foe’s shoulder as the spectators erupted into cheers.

  Neither rooster squawked as one might expect. They both jumped back, and resumed pacing around each other, seemingly calculating their next move.

  Kirison looked around outside of the plastic wall. There were three desks. At one sat a man with a small terminal, a lockbox, and a few piles of papers that looked very similar to the one he had in his pocket. Betting slips. This man was the referee or something.

  The other two desks were on opposite sides of the ring. Each one had a man in front of a laptop, facing the ring. These two men also had a few cages around them with other roosters, and a few other compact pieces of luggage.

  As Kirison tried to dissect the men with his eyes, the spectators erupted into cheers again. Kirison looked at the ring. One of the roosters had lost a wing. It was laying in the middle as the birds again resumed pacing around each other, as if nothing had happened.

  The bird with the new injury was barely bleeding. Were the feathers soaking most of it up?

  “Aw fuck, he’s not gonna last much longer.” One of the spectators bemoaned. Kirison stepped up beside him and quietly, but casually asked. “Where are they getting this tech? It’s like…”

  The man glanced as Kirison, returning his attention to the fight as he answered. “They say it’s not nanites that keep em standing, but any idiot can see they work a lot like the zombies from Autar. I think they just deny it, cuz of all the new laws.”

  Kirison raised his eyebrows and huffed. Flat denial doesn’t stop a conviction when some sap leaks this fight ring to the cops. He looked at the two men at their laptops, controlling the birds. They didn’t look like the type to develop this stuff on their own. He had heard about Jonathan Coll's 'trials' of his nanites with rats. It wasn't long before Coll had turned that technology loose on humans. Kirison was desperately curious about where this crowd got nanites and the controlling tech.

  However, he was also desperate to distance himself from anything nanite related. What a setback… that prick Jonathan Coll kills a few million people with nanites, and the party’s over for everyone. Well, except for a pile of idiots using the tech to mutilate roosters.

  He considered calling the cops on them. They could get dangerous, but… ahh, someone else was bound to report them. Even making an anonymous call might somehow link him to the mess, and he already had enough mess on his plate. Back to the reason he came here. He turned back to the spectator.

  “Hey, do you guys get any A.R.A. in here?”

  “What’s that stand for?
” He jumped with a shout to cheer on a rooster.

  “Aguei Rights Activists. You know, the guys that do those protest attacks?”

  “Huh? Naw, I don’t think so. I dunno.” The guy was ignorant, but sounded honest.

  Damn, the whole time since he got here, the same two roosters were still ripping at each other. A simple recipe can be really effective. He couldn’t bear to look at the mutilated, vicious birds.

  Kirison scanned the spectators. There were only two Aguei here. An A.R.A. zealot isn’t about to hang out with a bunch of chicken-torturing white northers.

  Still… where did these bozos get nanites, much less such complex ones? Someone’s bound to report them soon. Someone would. It wasn't his problem.

  Kirison quietly backed away and left, the sounds of cheers behind him.

  ~~~

  The next morning found Cassidy and Eliot boarding a chopper, destined for Yute Central. Once they were airborne, Eliot decided to start conversation. “So. Cassidy, was it? How do you like the post so far?”

  “So far so good. The people are certainly friendly enough.”

  “Yeah, can’t fault em there. All the same, I’m a little glad to be out of there.” Eliot had a somewhat grim tone that made Cassidy curious.

  “Why’s that? Dry air getting to you?”

  “No. It’s just... maybe call it burn-out, I don’t know, but now and then... It feels a little odd around there.”

  “For a military installation? I’d have to agree there. First names all the time, for one thing.”

  “It’s… it’s not just that. That’s no big deal. I guess it’s nothing really, I guess I’m just going to enjoy getting back to the rest of the world.”

  Cassidy wrote it off at that, but a thought crossed her mind that provided opportunity for a dumb joke. “Is it the ghost of the statue? OoooOOOOoooh...”

  Eliot coughed, and looked at Cassidy with a surprised expression. “Well…! Now that you mention it. It’s that, partly.”

  “Oh, come on, you don’t take that seriously? Marcus really seemed to like the story and all..”

  “Oh no, Cassidy. Make no mistake. It’s real. I have no cause to think it's bad or anything but it’s there.” He suddenly sounded more like an aging teacher than a soldier.

  “What….?” Cassidy paused. “You’ve seen it? Must be one damn big ghost.”

  Eliot sighed. “It’s not important. You’ll know what I mean eventually. You don’t see it. You feel it. Sometimes when you’re in front of the statue, sometimes other places.”

  Cassidy tried not to sound belittling. “Well, Marcus said it likes our company.”

  Eliot looked at the floor and nodded. “I suppose it does. It just… creeps me out. I kind of wish it would just speak up for itself.”

  Unsure of what else to say about it, Cassidy left it at that. The rest of the flight went with very little conversation. They landed at Yute central, and started getting off.

  “Well, I guess this is goodbye, Eliot!’

  Eliot smirked. “Good luck, Leftenent! Don’t forget we’re back in the land of ranks, here!”

  Cassidy strolled her old turf on the way to the office. It hadn’t been long since she’d been here, but somehow, it felt unfamiliar. Not so far as to say ‘hostile’…. But it didn’t feel right. Why was that?

  She checked in to find out where this hearing was. “Canceled?”

  “Yeah,” the clerk said, leafing across a couple sheets for the day’s activity. “He gave a guilty plea. They don’t need you anymore.”

  “What... So I flew out here for nothing. Nobody figured to call me? Or my C.O.?”

  “Sorry, Sir. I don’t know what happened, I just got on. Maybe the news reached the office while you were airborne?”

  Cassidy huffed. Well, maybe she’d go see how McKinney was surviving without her.

  “Sir?” The clerk said, grabbing Cassidy’s attention before she left, “You’re Leftenent Cassidy Stanton?”

  “Yeah?” She found herself feeling a little defensive. Somehow, the clerk seemed... off. Something about him agitated her for some reason. The whole base was a little agitating. Were the walls always this annoying shade of grey?

  “Well, if you can hang on a sec, I think I have something for you. It was going to be sent out to you in a couple days, but as long as you’re here…”

  Cassidy nodded, dismissing the clerk to run off into the back room. In the back of her mind, Cassidy suspected the truth, but didn’t want to be right. So she stood there, denying the thought until the box was put down in front of her. As she signed for it, she stared at the return address. It was from Brandy.

  It didn’t look like roses. She ripped the corner of the tape, and opened it up. It was filled with the stuff she used to have at Brandy’s. Clothes mostly. A bracelet she had given Brandy once. And a letter.

  She couldn’t face this now. Part of her just wanted to burn the whole box, but serenity prevailed for the time being. She sighed, closed the box, and stowed it under her arm. Suck it up, go say hi to McKinney, and go home.

  It was around shift change, so she felt she had a good chance catching him at his locker. As she walked there with her box full of rejection under her arm, the uncomfortable feel of the central base crept up on her again. She found McKinney easily enough.

  “Hey, stranger.” Only as she said it, did she realize how true it felt. She’d never been super close to him, but now it seemed more so. McKinney looked over to Cassidy ready with a smile, but when they made eye contact, McKinney’s smile... just sort of died. He looked at her silently for a moment, as if he didn’t recognize her.

  “Oh! Hi Stanton… how... how are you?”

  “I’m fine.” Cassidy said. “How’s my replacement working out?”

  “Fine… Stanton... you seem really… relaxed, I guess. I guess your new post is suiting you…?”

  Relaxed? What reason did she have to be relaxed? Hell, a part of her… the part still thinking about the box she was carrying… would be quite willing to go hide in a corner and sob. Not that it was McKinney’s business. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is. Well…I better get back.”

  “Sure. Um. See you round, Stanton.”

  She left him there, both feeling like they had just talked to a stranger. She went to arrange a ride home, and found she had an hour to wait. Not bad, all things considered.

  But she didn’t have anything else to do. She didn’t want to go talk to McKinney again. She sat with her box of rejection, and felt the walls closing in. The box reminded her of the telltale heart. It was an entity unto its own. It made her feel sort of queasy.

  That damned letter inside. Why wasn’t she reading it? The same reason she never returned her calls. Because it never seemed to bring good news. As a form of pressure relief, she pulled out her terminal, and dialed Brandy. Again, it was blocked, but this time she was almost relieved. Not an intelligent way to avoid the letter; if Brandy had answered, it would have been far more difficult to talk to her than reading a letter.

  The letter, and the “BLOCKED” notice wrapped around Cassidy’s throat. It was hard to breathe. This damned place wasn’t helping either. Damn it. Damn it, why won’t that chopper come get her? If it crashed and killed her, at least she wouldn’t be feeling this anymore.

  Open the letter.

  OPEN THE LETTER.

  Open the damned letter. How bad could it be? How much more dumped can she be? Brandy could tell her what a useless girlfriend she was, how much Brandy felt neglected. Brandy could tell her she was worthless. No, worse. She felt that something truly horrible was waiting in that letter. That Brandy would have written something monumentally hurtful. Damaging. But if she didn’t open it, it would just torture her in suspense.

  “Leftenent Stanton?” A deck crewman called to her. “Deck eight, chopper leaving as soon as you get on it.”

  She crammed the thoughts down under the safe seal of distraction. The letter down, under the safe seal of clothes, and packing tap
e.

  ~~~~~

  :::C /10

  ~~~~~

  “What do you know about the A.R.A.?” Kirison said loudly to the bartender at yet another scummy bar, ale in hand.

  “I dunno, Mack. They got their reasons, I guess. I watch the news, and-”

  “Oh the news.” Kirison jumped in, now talking loudly to himself as the bartender went about his business, mostly ignoring Kirison. “The news tells us what they get fed! At best, you get half the story that way, but everyone knows that. The news is good for sports and weather, and half the time, they don’t even get that right.”

  Kirison turned around on his stool, now kind of aiming his talk at the fellow beside him. He was paying attention out of boredom. What Kirison really wanted was to get a chance to look around to see if he was being heard by anyone interesting. “The A.R.A. needs to get off their butts, get organized, and do something that’s going to carve out some real respect. Fucking government.”

  “Oh yeah?” the guy beside him asked, halfheartedly. “Like what? Another bomb scare?”

  “Pffft. Meaningless attention getting. That’s all that is. It doesn’t make a point. It doesn’t cut to the real problems. Some of the crap I saw working for the feds just pisses all over any sovereignty they claim to kindly allow the Aguei to have. That kinda stuff needs a black eye. Getting in the news is nothing, that just makes them tighten the collar a little more.”

  The guy next to him kind of shrugged, and focused on his beer. This wasn’t getting him anywhere. He turned to the bartender and settled up. This was another dry well. What the heck was he expecting? He pocketed his change and went to the washroom.

  The drinks he’d been downing in various bars were catching up to him. He had taken some protective measures though. Nothing fancy. He would have modified his ‘insurance’ to act against the alcohol, but that seemed like pushing his luck.