by E. R. Jess
Makz nodded and said mockingly, “It will be beautiful."
Nick rubbed an invisible mustache and continued, “So you have to wonder, as hungry as we are now, what would it take to get in there? With our oh-so-clever minds and patent individuality intact, that is. Maybe a cocktail of counter agents to offset the drug treatments? A few pre-implanted thoughts to trick the mind control and subliminal messaging? And some very high-tech anti-imaging software to be virtually invisible to Outernet cameras? We could be fat and sleeping in clean beds and be aware enough of our surroundings to enjoy it. Of course there's a few problems.”
“Beer,” Makz answered, glassy eyed.
“Beer,” Nick agreed, “Where do we get beer, exactly? Sounds like a lot of trouble to go through to pretend to be alive. We could take that same effort and keep on moving out of the way of their manifest destiny. Seems to me that after a few months of sleeping well and eating governmentally approved nutritious foods, then hell, we'd want more. A lot more. Like something to read or do besides drool at propaganda. We'd get so sick of faking it all the time that we'd end up believing the bullshit. But it's all a dream based on a false premise. Let's not forget The Core.”
“The Core.” Makz said into his shot glass. He tugged on it and forced the rum down.
Nick nodded reverently, “The Core is where the roots rotted. Where we found out that the City-State could be the most dangerous place on the planet; fat, full stomachs or not.”
“So the dream dies.”
“Yes, but wouldn't it be something? To break into paradise, piss in the milk, and come out on the other side with nothing but a bar code and a t-shirt. That would lift my spirits. It just might be worth all the trouble and resources to black-eye that shining symbol of humanity over there.”
“But who would know?”
“We would. That's enough. It might just be worth it.” Nick punctuated his speech by raising his glass to the night sky and downing its contents.
Makz smiled and nodded. He dropped a piece of paper on the bar. “Recognize any of the names here?”
Nick pulled the paper away from his eyes to focus, “Yeah, my name.”
“No others?” Makz queried with a little smile.
“No. What is this? Who are they?” Nick chuckled.
Makz, in one motion, shoved his knife hard under Nick's ribs and covered his mouth until he passed into the next world. “Wild dogs.”
Vade Mecum
The sky was a blinding blue. A man named Omo sat crouched in a steel alcove. It was the City-State, the air was clean. Omo, a plain man, a diminutive man, his skin layered with a patina of concrete dust and soot. Union blue jumpsuit, barefooted and staring blankly into the stone ground. His alley stretched and bent around a factory complex devoid of human life. Robots toiled in a symphony of white noise and roaring engines. Omo watched the stone walkway and studied its face. He ran his hand over the smooth pavement, finally noticing the dirt on himself. He panicked, stood and tried to brush himself off. Omo tried in vain to wipe his skin and clothes clean. He spit into his palms and rubbed his hands, making more of a mess. He attempted to yell out, but something inside kept him quiet. He instead pulled some composure together and walked down the alley.
At a junction of walkways an android walked passed him, looking back at Omo with apparent curiosity. Omo felt a pang of fear threaten to paralyze his legs, but he kept walking. The android watched Omo walk away, then continued on. Another robotic being blocked Omo's path, a wheeled armature that wasn't much smaller than the alley's width. Omo looked at his own feet and tried to ignore the robot. The armature turned a camera mounted on its frame towards him. It stopped short and sent out a series of pulse sounds. Omo kept walking, turning sideways to get past it. He swallowed hard and kept calm.
The alley maze opened into a wide avenue crowded with living machinery. Loads of materials being hauled by a hovering truck, a line of over-sized androids marching about, a fleet of miniature robots flying above. Omo held onto the corner of a building, feeling a wave of dizziness smack into him. He helped himself to the ground and sat for a while, hiding in his legs until darkness shuttered the city.
Omo got up after the sun dropped and breathed in deep. Above him up in the sky, directly above the city, was a second moon, something artificial floating in space. He looked on it in confusion. Nothing seemed familiar. He walked off quickly, ignoring the robots and charging towards the north with a new resolve. He felt a sense of confidence that had escaped him earlier. Some of the robots paused and watched him, unsure of what they were seeing. Omo ignored them and walked until the city was populated by actual humans. The factory walls parted, revealing a mammoth complex of streets upon streets, thin and tall skyscrapers, and even the ground opened for level after level of open underground buildings and roadways. Thousands of souls in his immediate view, all walking quietly as the echo of loudspeakers fell into the city playing recorded speeches. Building-sized screens flashed fascinating images. Cars silently hovered around on pristine highways. Windows sparkled in the bright glow of streetlights. Omo felt the dizziness again, but put it out of his mind. He saw the people dressed in plain colors and patterns, all neat and clean and he looked at his own disheveled appearance. He once again dusted himself off and straightened his jumpsuit as best he could. Omo walked across the street towards a series of shops.
He was walking along the windowed shops looking for something that seemed familiar, but it was all alien. He didn't recognize anyone or anything. The people didn't notice him at first, but soon whispers floated up. Omo kept his head down, kept walking quickly. His heart raced, he could feel his pulse pushing up through his skin. Someone made eye contact with him and stopped. A business man of some kind, he gave a sour look and went immediately to his handheld and started typing. Omo's eyes went wide and he started running. He charged through the crowd on the sidewalk, accidentally pushing some down, forcing others to hug the walls.
He was a lost cog in a strange machine. Omo looked over the walled edge of the sidewalk into deeper levels of the city, all bustling with scores of people. Tens of thousands of blank faces meandering around the night. It was a foreign experience for him, the open air, the claustrophobic masses pressing around him. Omo was pushed into another sea of people and he couldn't tell up from down. Regardless, he found a break in his crowd and ran full tilt. His muscles burned in unfamiliar ways and he was forced to a halt after a short while, breathing heavily and clutching a light post. Citizens crowded around him, in awe and in shock.
Omo, a man in disheveled clothes, with pale skin that almost shone blue in the light. His eyes took people aback; they had clear irises reflecting back the dark pink from behind his eyes. He was hairless and oddly sterile beneath the soot and dirt. The people around him murmured to each other. What is it, they asked, where did it come from? He wasn't sure.
Someone reached out and grabbed his arm violently. The crowd began to anger itself. Another pushed at his shoulder. Is it an android? Someone asked. Omo pulled himself up as people started to push at him. He cowered as he limped away, getting out of their grip as quickly as he could.
He started to run again when light blasted him from the street. Omo stopped dead and covered his eyes with his arms. Men shouted things. The crowd surrounded him. He felt a scrap of courage again and he looked for escape. There was none and his head pounded. He felt his blood boil and his heart felt like a jet engine in his chest. His skin tingled with a layer of electricity and his eyes went instantly dry. The air shook. A wave of clear light burst off of Omo.
Omo saw a man out of the corner of his eye lose his footing and fall backwards, a woman was knocked sideways. The spotlights on him sparked and burst. A handful of people began floating in mid-air. Before his eyes, a hover tank began spinning in its place on the pavement. A soldier screaming and pointing a gun at him flipped end over end and stood in the air as if suspended by liquid. A gun went off. Bullets started flying towards Omo and he hit the ground. His
bones rattled and a deep sound shook the concrete.
The people around him were all floating in the air. The businessmen and the shoppers and the police, some drifting out of control, some latching onto lamp posts and flagpoles, were suddenly flung out across the street, down into the further levels of the city. Omo stood slowly. In a neat semicircle around him was a blast of wrecked city sidewalk. A hover tank crashed into a building several meters away. Omo reeled with dizziness. He put his hand to his forehead as he stumbled away. He found a clear alleyway and used the walls to help himself down it. He glanced back at the chaos left behind him and choked and coughed.
Omo walked until his legs gave out, leaving him in a pile of refuse blocks away. He looked at the ground. Studied the face of the dirty pavement. Learned its cracks and crevices. Omo didn't know who he was or where he belonged, but he knew that he had to escape.
Chapter 3: A Treaty With the Dark
“He left without a trace; without good-byes most definitely, and completely without a sign of his passage. I am drained by these things. They take my hopes and twist them.” Dernen, the oldest member of the pacifist group, spoke as they all moved through a steel canyon.
Sheets of icy rain hit the earth outside. Steam rose up from the ground and stained the windows gray. Older by half a century, he finished speaking with a direly exasperated sigh, “And it is welcome news, as horrible as that is to say. One less mouth to feed.”
“The idea is a simple one, Dernen, and nearly impossible. Leaving the city won't guarantee any one of us a better life. The fact that he came among us in the first place is an accomplishment.” Alessa said.
Kagan swallowed lightly, concentrating on the path, watching the alleys and high places warily. “One less pair of eyes.”
Dernen shook his bald head slowly, still disturbed by the news. “It was our failure, not the young man's.” He tread on as best he could.
“Dernen,” Kagan said, “If he really didn’t want to stay, with all that we did for him... we can’t expect to change anyone's minds.”
Alessa started to respond, but the elder man spoke up. He had a powerful presence. “I am not going argue on that at this time. It is just that the manner of his disappearance has me worried. He left his belongings and among them was literature about some suicide cult out in the wasteland.” Dernen held up a hand-written pamphlet.
“We're all vulnerable out here, it could be someone took him,” Alessa said as she looked at the younger man, “but I believe he plainly wasn’t meant to stay with us.” She pulled her coat tight.
Kagan turned his head aside and thought to himself. He liked the man, Veren was his name. Veren was once a violent man like Kagan used to be, but they didn’t talk about that much. Veren was reclusive and a little strange, and he thought maybe Alessa was wary of him. Alessa usually liked everybody, she loved people, especially the hurt and lost kind.
“Maybe he’ll come back. He was a nice guy.” Kagan murmured to the path behind them.
Dernen took the arm of a young woman in the group who helped him over rough parts in the road. Alessa and Kagan fell back a few steps.
Kagan cleared his throat and pointed west. “There are few outposts between here and nothing. We should start scavenging now to get in the habit of. When we walk, we scavenge.”
Alessa nodded. She knew. It was all part of the plan. They'd be on their own in the deserted remnants of America. They would wander until their feet found them a home. They would head north into Canada if the wind felt right. She looked at Kagan and got a chill down her spine for the effort. He was steely and distant. She spoke up instead of keeping it to herself, “Have you been all right? I know it may seem like a luxury to be anything but miserable, but you don’t talk to anyone for very long, you seem lost. Have you been feeling...?” Alessa’s questions trailed off as Kagan sighed down at her.
“Not for a long while. I get mad, I look a wall and want to hit it, to knock it down, but no. I haven't had any real violent urges. I'm just trying to concentrate on the task.”
Kagan had been genetically predisposed to fight. When the time came, he did, and he broke open waves of riot police in his heyday. Now he used that energy to protect. And all the while he spoke with his compatriot, he never took his senses off the path. Nothing bad would ever happen to the pacifists while he was their defender. Everyone knew it, he knew it, and while they had sworn off hurting people, he would destroy the world entire to protect the people he loved.
The silence was broken only by the now passive rain falling on them. Alessa inhaled the after-storm air. Kagan shook his head, adjusted his air filter and whispered, “I have been less than all right. My vision is filled with images of Daria. I see her everywhere. I see our son. I am the opposite of you and Eight, I need to lose my memories, not relive them.”
She gave him an empathetic look. Her hand went to her throat, where her fingers felt along the silver bar code tattooed there. Alessa spoke, watching her footfalls on the tattered pavement, “They aren't going anywhere, the people in your memories. And if they did, you might end up missing them.”
“You are an angel, Alessa.” Kagan stated with a grin, breaking the gloom.
And they laughed quietly so the city couldn't hear.
0
The air was dry and chemical; like breathing a substance designed to conflict with breathing. The insects were intolerable. They seemed to feed off of the raw negativity. Airborne winds picked layers of dry earth from the barrens of the old Midwest. The air was a chemical made to break the will.
It was a shadow of a breathable substance. Not many went without a gasmask or filter of some kind adorning their faces; tubes extending below over-sized goggles. Makz kept one eye on the people wandering the city. He kept his guard up high and had to remind himself to unclench his fists.
The waste dam spanned a good kilometer east to west. One standing at its edge would doubt that it was perfectly straight from bank to bank, as the structures’ immensity created an illusion of curvature. Massive concrete buttresses stained night-gray started just below the top of the dam, and dove along with an ocean of falling water, all the way to a black reservoir, six hundred meters down. All above was a desert of blue-green clouds, sent tumbling and racing by a breeze that barely touched earth. There was no life in the night. The buildings on the other side of the bank were dressed up to appear in better shape. There were solar lights in some of the windows. Some trouble was made to make it look like people lived there. A Potemkin village made to make the Free City look more alive. No one lived there.
“Give me some fucking help or something.” Downe was running himself out of breath, cursing and yelling freely. “Jesus Christ, Mack, just give me a little freaking room if you're not going to lend a hand. This is not my problem.” He spat and pulled at the container and Makz could see him straining, but the weasel persevered. And he always said ‘It’s not my problem’ or 'has nothing to do with me’. He was hard-assed enough to see that most every problem around him had at least some small part of his influence, and that he couldn't care less either way.
Downe also called him Mack. For every fifth time he was called the wrong name, Makz would hit him somewhere. The thief had yet to notice the pattern, and even if he did, Makz would end up using one of the other four dozen reasons to hit him.
“OK,” Downe vocalized, seemingly with great difficulty, as his lungs were full of a liquid noise louder than his voice. He had finished his task of rolling gray and black plastic containers over the West bank of the river canyon. The infernal noise was at an end, at least until he had the strength to open his mouth.
Makz patted Downe on the back. “Alright, get the fuck out of here.” Downe walked away without spewing some useless comment. They disposed of another body, an outcast from the Redlist. Makz took one last look around the water dump outside his city.
He had killed two more fringe residents off the Redlist he took from the UCM team. The rest were already dead or recently kille
d off by other UCM officers, officers that he had managed to avoid since his encounter. The last person on the list, he had trouble finding. Kagan Burnport.
Makz paid an apostle in credits that wouldn't be good for very long, if rumors were true that the fringes would be razed. The apostle was eager enough to share the information. Pacifists, leaving the city, a few dozen. No guns. If the guy was leaving the city, he was as good as dead anyway, Redlist or not. And Makz learned that among them was a citizen from the City-State. He laughed at that one. Some teeth pulling revealed a general direction that they would be heading.
Morning wasn’t one of those things Makz was good at. He slept badly, for the whole two hours that he had been asleep. He found the makeshift fringe hotel a quiet refuge from trouble he got into, and to keep Glori out of it. A rhythmic metallic buzz from by his pillow saw to that. His handheld rang until it was in danger of being lazily smashed by Makz's’ wildly swinging backhand. He even smothered it with his body until the sound was just enough to ignore, but day was starting to creep into his mind. Something told him that that call was going to be a reason to wake up.
He was ripped out of a drunken dream state, a hell that Makz visited ever since he stopped pulsing. He answered the phone. He was certain that something like: ‘This had better be good,’ or ‘Who died, if the answer is no one, then we can arrange a death,’ would come out of his mouth, instead Makz just said: “What.”
The sound from the handheld was different. More annoying, strangely natural. There was no picture, only static. He waited a while then fell back to his pillow, leaving the handheld on the bed. A pain in his neck made him sit straight up. The implant in the back of his head felt like it was trying to burrow down his spine. The anger that surged through him was primal, like a confused and frightened animal. The pain was a little more than he could handle. He prided himself on handling pain.