Children of Gravity

by E. R. Jess

  why not just come gunning for me?”

  The officer nodded towards his dead partners, “That's why.”

  “Who are the rest of the people on this list?”

  “They are like you. Wild dogs.” The officer deadpanned.

  “I believe in UPC.” One quick shot from Makz's gun dispatched the last UCM officer, leaving a blank expression stuck on his face. Makz finally exhaled. He found a pen and wrote down the names and places from the handheld computer then tossed the machine. He peered out of the door using the officers night vision glasses. No one there. He got halfway back to the fringes before he realized he was blood-soaked again.

  Chapter 2: Shallow Grave

  On the west side of Meridia, a once-thriving business sector of the City-State, the pacifists took refuge from the path in a maze of alleys. The sky was gray-green, boiling hot in the setting sun, and criss-crossed with contrails.

  Kagan and Eight were brought a man that was left for dead in the ruins. He asked to speak with the leader of the pacifist group that had been working it's way out of the Free City. He was soot-covered and grimy. One eye inflated and blackened. Barefoot and tired. He shook Kagan and Eight's hands weakly but enthusiastically. The man was taken aback by Kagan's imposing stature. He stood meekly and stated, “Thank you for seeing me, I've heard rumors of your group. It's good to hear about a group of people helping others.”

  Kagan began, “I'm not sure what you were told, but we're not an underground railroad for the deposed.”

  The man said, “No sir, I didn't presume so. My name is Mathius. I've been out west here warning the more peaceful groups, the apostles and the nomads like you, that there is a man out here cracking down on what he believes is Free City subversiveness.”

  Eight looked to Kagan and added, “We face patrols regularly, just like everyone else.”

  Mathius continued, “This man is different. He's making his way west with a UPC-Sec squad and some serious hardware.”

  “If what you're saying is true, we have to get on the move. And I guess we picked a good time to leave the Free City. Who is it?” Kagan asked and began tallying options in his head.

  “He's a hunter. They say he's a suit who likes to get his hands dirty.”

  Eight interjected, “Name?”

  “Revan, Revan Kore.” Mathius said, and drank from a canteen the pacifists had given him.

  Eight shuddered. Revan Kore. Not a name he'd heard in a long time. He stuttered and said, “We'll pass that along to whomever we come across.”

  Kagan motioned for Mathius to be taken out of the room. “See that he gets some food. And some boots.” Kagan turned to Eight, “One more thing to fear, huh?”

  Eight stared blankly at the skyline. “You know all those souls in the City-State, the ones under thought control, their minds aligned with a collective consciousness, they are all genetically engineered to be docile and compliant. They are human in species only. I've always wondered what they do with the stray thoughts, the lust, the malevolence. What if they put it all into one man, and this one man carries all their burdens. He'd be malice incarnate.”

  15 Years Prior

  Eight was driving a wheeled electric vehicle down a shadow soaked stretch of an unrestricted highway. He was out to help a friend who had broken down. They used to drive between free communities using the old roads. Not a safe commute. He could almost see the ghosts of commuters heading from their jobs in the cities, to their homes in the suburbs. The karmic resonance of a people long gone. Little red taillights, the little white headlights carrying families home.

  The twenty or so meters before his headlights was all that existed in his world, that and a quiet song in his head. Each time Eight thought of the song, it all but disappeared so that only a suggestion of it remained. The words drifted and flew aside from his immediate memory as abruptly as the road that rolled beneath him. He couldn’t quite capture the tune, and when he tried, it was replaced by another that was more familiar. What was that song? He laughed to himself. He knew he had heard it long ago, but he also knew that the memory of it was suppressed for a reason. Eight was usually an expert on hidden memory.

  He knew that it wouldn’t surface without a reason. “Well, it will come to me when it wants to.” He said positively to himself. “I wish someone still broadcasted on the radio.” Eight reached to turn and push the dials and buttons on the cars’ radio. Only eerie static.

  He had four or five pieces of recorded music. Eight was tired of all of it. They where all horribly peaceful and electronic compositions that had been approved by UPC as they started to control the media.

  He almost didn’t notice the hover vehicle parked half off the old pavement. Eight came to a quick stop and jumped out of his car with a small box in his hand. The fingers on his other hand went almost instinctively to the taser controls in his palm.

  A short and emaciated looking young man stood tiredly by the battered vehicle that floated soundlessly a half-meter from the road. He stretched his arms and back like he had been in an uncomfortable position for many hours. The man was visibly shaken. It was no small thing to be stranded out in the middle of nowhere. Eight could read people like a book, and fear was written in the largest type.

  “Vorn, you got any music in that piece of shit?” Eight said casually and gently in a subtle attempt to make him feel more at ease, a subliminal attempt.

  “Yeah,” The shorter man began hastily, as he was caught off guard, “I got some Grieg.” He reached for the plastic box that was offered to him.

  “Uh, never mind. So, are you sure that all you need is that converter switch? I came as soon as I got your call, you okay man?” Eight knew the answer.

  “Yeah, fine. I’m cool.” Vorn shrugged as he fumbled with the package. Eight always knew when they were going to say they were all right when that was not the case. Well, I guess that’s better than a mental breakdown to go along with the mechanical one, Eight mused.

  “Let’s get that bucket floating, I don’t want to hang out here all night.” He threw open a hatch in a body panel.

  They worked for about twenty minutes, sorting through the tools brought with them under the lime-colored headlights of his small conveyance. Eight helped as much as he could, but repair was Vorn’s area of expertise. Vorn was working calmly and smoothly on the stalled engine.

  Vorn was more than a handyman. He was especially good at mechanisms with computer integration, like his mag-car. Eight watched in amazement as his pale and seemingly sickly friend was slamming out commands on a laptop with one hand, and balancing a heavy engine part in the other, both attached by a wide and flat wire.

  Eight was increasingly aware of how quiet Vorn was being. He began to devise a way to relax him, but then gave it up. The best thing for him is to work and get out of here. To get us out of here. Eight was adopting Vorn's nervousness.

  He looked about the wasteland slowly. The Free City stretched as far as he could see on their high plain. It was the size of several states, and from there it was too large to view in one glance. City light cast a great mural of different hues into the clouded heavens. To the south, opposite of the remnants of the suburbs was a series of short and wide structures. They produced a little luminescence, a bit too much for Eight to feel at ease. He knew that those buildings were factories and refineries used for waste management and water recollection, and he knew that they were controlled by UPC.

  Vorn lifted his blood-red eyes from his work and brought them to Eight, to the factory complex in the distance, and then back to Eight. He hesitated before saying, “We'll be out of here in no time, you got nothing to worry about.”

  He is trying to comfort me. He laughed inside and let it escape a little. “Yeah, anyway, it's a free country.”

  A bright, tinny sound blared from Eight's car. Both of them jumped with curses on their tongues. Eight stood from his uncomfortable crouch as fast as he could, but time started to move very slowly. Eight's car radio was blaring odd electr
onic sounds and choppy voices.

  Eight ran over and jumped inside. He was out of breath in two steps. The volume reduced as he ran his finger down a dimly lit slider just as he heard a male voice mottled by static as if it were a computerized accent. “highway C-7112... EM range on visible spectrum... area temperature, thirty degrees...”

  The dark skinned man gaped at Vorn through his windshield. He couldn’t calm himself if he tried, he was sure that was UPC-Sec. “Vorn, how much longer until you’re done?” Eight demanded with caution.

  “One minute,” Vorn answered loudly in the middle of his question. His head was already under his dashboard again. “Go ahead, my car is way faster anyway.”

  “Nothing ever good on the radio.” Eight stated sardonically to himself. He drove off with one hand on the wheel and the other fumbling with his handheld. It rang immediately with a call and he answered.

  Vorn started, “Don't worry, we have papers. If it comes to that.”

  “I don't want to get to the point where we have to show our identification.” Eight sneered as he watched impatiently in his rearview mirror for Vorn's car to start moving.

  “Let’s ride,” Vorn said into his handheld and started his hov-car. It’s nose pitched in the air as it darted down the highway with nothing more than a whisper and the thump of the shutting door.

  Eight was still speeding off, kicking desert sand and ash into the night after him. He pressed on the accelerator and gave himself a smirk. The broadcast did give our basic position, but they could be dozens of kilometers from here. Eight straightened in his seat and cursed at his radio. He spoke toward his handheld that was now pressed against the steering wheel. “Man, I think we're getting paranoid. No one's out here.”

  A row of emerald lights appeared in his rear-view mirror.

  Vorn's car pulled up effortlessly alongside his. “I see them. Go faster, man.” Vorn scolded with some sarcasm, “The east bridge is coming up, we’ll take the tunnel back into town. I'll go a bit ahead of you and watch out for debris.” And with that Vorn's car disappeared from view.

  “Faster? I still have friction to worry about, asshole. And why the hell did you get stuck out here? Couldn’t you pick a bad neighborhood to break down in? No, it had to be some rad soaked desert.”

  There was no response from Vorn so he continued. “I can’t even see you,” He turned on his windshield wipers once to clear some of the silt and soot off and squinted down the road. “You coming back if anything happens right?”

  No answer.

  “Right!?”

  “Turn your lights off, dammit, your lights.” Vorn nagged in a high voice. Eight sighed and quickly did as he was told.

  “Dick.” Eight said before he turned off the phone.

  The vehicles behind him were gaining a little too fast for him to maintain his patented nonchalant composure. Eight began fidgeting and swerving around obstacles in the road that were composed only out of the lack of light and Eight’s imagination. I am getting a mag-car, that’s all there is to it.

  He could see more than their lights, he could make out the front grills and windshields of the four or five wheeled cars and trucks behind him. They were using combustion engines, and Eight was shaken by the roar following his relatively low-powered automobile. He noticed a loud clunk and a more fierce metallic howl. The lead car down-shifted and easily came alongside of Eight.

  He could see into one of their eyes. He had a wild look about him, he was the passenger in the ratty vehicle. The conveyances looked as if they were improvised from a pile of salvage metal and acres of old cars. The ruster had his eyes on the road more than on the little electric car to his right. They sped off, just passed by him.

  The one in the rear, thankfully the last, had tank treads for rear tires. It was a pick-up truck, the back was filled with sneering grunts dressed in clothing and armor that was just as impromptu as their cars. And one person Eight would remember for a long time. One with smoldering eyes. With a frame like a crow looking to pick at his bones. A frighteningly intelligent man amongst the natives. Brilliant eyes that burned a fearful irreverence. The man pointed at Eight through his windshield as the train of desert nomads entered his lane, and laughed when Eight veered off the road a little. Eight was too frightened to slow down.

  They remained just in front of him for a long moment. The man with the strong eyes stood up and put his arms in the air. The next thing Eight knew, his own car was skidding off the road, as the man had jumped right on his car's hood, crumpling it and smashing the bottom part of the windshield. Veering off the road sent the man tumbling to the pavement at speed.

  The pack of rusters didn’t slow when Eight’s car stopped. He picked up his handheld as he turned on his lights. To his immediate left was a body in the road. From his vantage, it was little more than a bag of black cloth. “Vorn, pick up.”

  “Hello?” the voice that returned was just as confused as his own.

  Eight looked all around him, up and down the road mostly, and then opened his door as he spoke. “Someone jumped. Someone jumped on my car.”

  “Is he alive?” Vorn asked, in shock.

  “Alive?! He asked for a ride, but no, I don’t think so.” Eight unhooked the wire from his dashboard to his handheld and stepped out cautiously.

  Vorn chuckled slightly then added, “Well it obviously wasn't UPC. You heard how they pinpointed us by the transmission we picked up, they reported that they saw us on the visible spectrum, and the average temperature of our area.”

  “Yeah, so.” Eight was inching closer to the body.

  “Yeah, so, rusters are just low-tech rednecks. Not to bright.”

  “Whatever. I don't want to come out here anymore.” Eight said absently, the fear fading. He crouched down to the body.

  “UPC doesn’t use radio like I said. Maybe some of those scavengers are evolving their technology, and they realized in mid-evolution that no one uses radio frequencies, so it is free for the taking.” The mechanic paused then went on, “I can see you now.”

  Eight turned the body over. He dug underneath a few layers of clothes and pulled out a thin wallet, a broken laser key, and a gold cigarette case with a lighter attached. All of the items were in a thin plastic bag.

  Vorn pulled up not too far away and got out, the car rocked slightly in thin air. With a twisted grimace on his face he pointed and said, “Eww, don’t touch it.”

  Eight hung up the handheld and looked up at Vorn like he would a child who had said the same thing. He opened the bag and sifted through the wallet. He found the man’s identification and slid it back in the bag. Eight walked over to his car and put the bag in his back seat.

  “Who is it?” Vorn shouted.

  “Revan Kore.” Eight frowned, “He's no ruster or outcast. Unless they buy six-thousand credit wallets.”

  Vorn's eyes went wide. “He's moving, he's not dead.”

  Eight shot up. He stepped back. Eight began to delve the man's surface memories. “I don't like what I'm reading. Something bad. He's a man of influence, or was. His mind is a mess.”

  Vorn looked at Eight, “I've heard enough. Crazy motherfucker. Leave him to the fates. And I don't want to be around when his friends come back.”

  Eight had a protest on his lips, but withdrew it. He considered helping the man, but fear got the better of him. He headed to his car without a word.

  Vorn watched Eight with worry, but stayed quiet. They both drove off into the dark.

  The man, Revan, watched their cars disappear into the jagged city skyline.

  In the weeks that followed, bad luck plagued Eight and Vorn. Their community was razed by UCM forces in what would be known later as the purge. The leader of the Free City, known only as The Elder, had been swept out of power. UPC had disbanded the local governments and left the citizens to fend for themselves. Free City residents became scavengers and nomads. Uprisings were met with lethal force and it divided the wastes and scattered its people. Eight was caught up in the
storm. Eight nearly lost his life in a raid of his flat. Vorn was shipped off to a conformity camp.

  Present Day

  Eight frowned to himself. He went into an adjacent room where they kept their supplies. He dug around in a duffel bag and produced an old radio. He turned it on and listened to the static.

  Kagan, following him in, put his hand on Eight's shoulder. “Don't let it get to you. No one is all good or all bad. Just mostly all bad.”

  0

  Makz couldn't stay in hiding. He knew UCM was looking for him, but he couldn't sit still. There was work to do. Pulse was off the menu so he made his way to an open market and saddled up to a makeshift outdoor bar. He drank bathtub rum until the paranoia turned anecdotal. He saw a contact of his, Nick, drowning his worries, and sat near.

  “Makz, how's the private war business?” Nick asked sardonically.

  Makz slid him over a shot glass. “Bottom fell out. Feels like the city is out to get me, like no one follows the rules anymore.”

  Nick shrugged. He was one of Makz's oldest acquaintances and no friend of the criminal elements that took over the fringes since the vacuum left over from The Elder's ousting. Nick took the shot glass and made a circle around it with his finger. “City's imploding, chump. UPC is drilling out the Free City like a bad tooth, and they'll soon sop the fringes. There will be a hard border between the wastes and the City-State. Well-fed and bar-coded citizenry will be sitting right here soon. After they clean up the place, of course. They're going around wiping out all the wasteland heavies, even the ones farther out, to make the transition smoother. They'll be squads of friendly automatons forcing rusters and scavengers to get coded, followed closely by riot-geared guards. They'll ship all those folks off to camps to get re-educated while their homes are razed and replaced with a slick and shiny utopia. Parks and fountains and shit. Oh, and of course, an average of three-point-five vector cameras per person. Digital recreations more real than real. Any vices or urges that make it through the mental conditioning and the drugs and the subliminal messages are quelled by a jackbooted UCM, then it's off to rehab to enjoy a personally tailored hell."