AmerIndian 2192

by J. Scott Garibay

CHAPTER 21

  Derek grabbed his comp and pulled on his tattered Oh’Rioz jacket. It was tight, ragged and covered him with little more than shame. He got on his knees, put his back to the floor and reached high and far under his bed. He felt for plastic and pulled a portable comp out from the tear in the underside of the mattress. He clipped it to the inside of his jacket. He left his room and tried to be quiet as he made his way down the hall.

  His mother was in her usual spot, the center of the view room. She did not see him. He looked at her now. Despite her youth she looked tired and worn. The view room was showing a special on the new mansions being built for this year's UDA intergalactic lottery winners. Mother was intent on the special, “oohing” and “ahhing” every now and then. The wall screens showed her walking through the house with a Reis clone companion close at her side. Derek shook his head, his anger rising.

  The Henderson family consisted of himself, his mother, a sister and two half-brothers. His father, George Harold Henderson, left his mother five years ago, not for another woman, but for two. George had landed himself one of the polygamist marriages that were becoming popular on outposts.

  Every month mother got a total of 250 UDA creds each for Derek and Karen. His mother collected 350 creds each for his two half brothers. His half-brothers were each allotted one hundred extra creds because they were born out of wedlock (the UDA Outpost Psyche Department had determined such children needed additional care). Another 800 creds were allotted to his mother because she was diagnosed as bipolar, bringing the monthly total to two thousand creds.

  New Angelos, the Henderson’s home, was a shipbuilding outpost where frames for beta class UDA prime ships were assembled. The outpost had a relatively low tax bracket (forty percent) and the two thousand creds was only cut to twelve hundred. The rent for their spacious three-room apartment came to eleven hundred creds every month taking the sum down to 100 creds. Food enough for the five of them cost 600 creds - that was why his mother sold her vote.

  Since the 2080's UDA citizens had been able to sell their votes to the highest bidder and the megacorps were more than willing to buy. Derek's mother had signed a three-year agreement with Sledge for twelve thousand credits a year. (She was looking forward to the end of that period so she could sell her lifetime voting rights to Rowan Cartel for one hundred and fifty thousand creds.) The extra 1,000 creds every month should have been enough to pay for everything the family could need and a few luxuries to boot. It was far from enough after Xanic.

  Xanic was the number one drug used on all the colonies and outposts in the UDA. Now in use by UDA citizens for forty years, Xanic doubled the life expectancy of anyone who took it. One pill a day (starting at puberty) and a person could live two hundred years, instead of the expected one hundred. Megacorp Holstice, who produced Xanic, did not advertise that due to lack of exercise the average UDA citizen’s actual life expectancy was only 55. Xanic only took them out to 110 or 120. Xanic was produced as a mild barbiturate, which made the drug addictive and increased user lethargy. Xanic’s cost of 750 creds a month for a single user was steep. Derek's mother bought Xanic for herself and Derek. Fifteen hundred creds gone. Which meant the family had a deficit of 1,000 creds a month.

  This financial problem was then compounded by the last of the Henderson family’s expenses, five hundred creds borrowed biweekly from the UDA to play the Intergalactic lottery. The family accrued debt to the UDA at a rate of eighteen thousand creds annually. The UDA knew the family had no way to pay the loans back. The debt was extended so that the family could never own land or ever send their children to a physical school or college. Instead, the Henderson children would learn Tanglish, a language based on English and Tamil. Anyone who spoke it could never circle into an executive or management position of any kind. English was the language of the business world.

  Derek's often wondered why his mother gave five hundred creds a month to the Intergalactic Lottery. Why not two-fifty, or twenty-five, or as Derek had pleaded a hundred times, zero? Each year the UDA Intergalactic Lottery Bureau released the average lottery expenditure for a UDA citizen. It currently hovered at four hundred creds. Derek's mother wanted to make sure she was at least twenty-five percent over that mark and she still groaned over whether she was buying enough. The prizes were tempting, including raw creds, parts in movies, dates with celebrities, boats, cars, starships and the ultimate prize - one to twenty years of Earth residency.

  UDA law mandated a percentage of the major prizes had to be given to colony and outpost residents. The UDA Intergalactic Lottery Bureau ensured every neighborhood had at least one winner of the minor prizes, a new car or a sizable cred amount. The UDA contended the intergalactic lottery was a healthy element for society, giving some way for the billions of low income, icon literate people to pay into the economy. Derek was sure the lottery and Xanic were keeping his family weak and hopeless.

  Derek stopped his attempts at silent movement when he realized no one in the apartment was looking or listening to anything other than the wall screens. He closed the apartment door behind him and walked down the dark dirty hall. The names and status of every family unit shined on the display at each door. He came to the end of the hall and looked down out of the glasteel window. Vertical and horizontal sprawl loomed above and below. He lived 425 levels above the south edge and 218 levels below the north edge of the outpost where starships came and went. He watched as autograv taxis shuttled workers to their stations. It was mid-day and the streets were not busy. There were few workers on this outpost. Less than five percent of the outpost's population held a job. Most of the shipyard was automated. Few workers were required to run the yards and some of that small number was off-worlders on short stays.

  Suddenly from behind a support beam a figure appeared. The figure shuffled forward and Derek could make out the ragged lining of the man's coat. He was obviously homeless. There were few homeless on Derek's level. Anyone could apply for UDA government assistance and get a rat hole apartment with enough food to live off of indefinitely. But like most homeless, sation discs or designer drugs had taken this man over the edge. He could no longer function within the confines of the UDA system.

  Derek heard the schwink of a plasteel blade locking.

  “Th-th-throw the bag, boy.”

  Derek did not hesitate. He pulled the bag from his back and tossed it to the homeless man. The man moved forward and Derek caught sight of twenty centimeters of plasteel as light hit the blade. The man scrambled forward snatching up the bag.

  “What you got, pup. Wh-wh-what's in bag for Bornie?”

  Derek spoke up and taking a guess said, “Lucy Love's latest from Earth.”

  The man began to shake. Derek was right. The vagrant was a sation addict. Derek didn’t need to see the port at the man's temple to know he was equipped to experience the full sensation disks that now dominated fifty percent of the entertainment market and had challenged designer drugs as the new life parasite of the twenty second century. The man tore at the zipper, forgetting Derek was still in front of him.

  Derek stood still. The man rooted with his right hand and pulled the bag to his face. A brilliant arc of light crackled out of the backpack sending thousands of volts whipping through the man's system. He and the bag dropped to the ground. Derek picked up the bag with his hands on the outside of the nylon and reactivated the stinger coil inside. He looked down at the vagrant, a pathetic shriveled excuse of a man. Derek wondered if his mother, brothers and sister would be able to avoid sation addiction. There were thousands of addicts occupying the lower levels of the outpost.

  The vagrant addict faced one of two futures. If he beat the seven to one odds and was able to make it into a rehab he would have a ten percent chance of kicking the habit. If he didn't make it into a rehab he would be dead within two years, a conservative estimate. Derek knew from the news feeds he heard that sation addiction was one of the few sociological pattern that was offsetting Xanic’s extension
of UDA citizen’s lives.

  Derek made it to the point where he could pass from his outpost level to the one below. He stood still silhouetted in the streetlights for a moment and listened. A whistle echoed up from below and he peered over the edge of the five meters of steel. Derek dodged back quickly as Choi swung up and over the edge and landed like a cat before him. Choi was a thin, handsome Chinese youth. Derek had met him a year and a half ago and now the two were closer than brothers. Choi traveled the rest of the way with Derek to the gathering place, the two together avoiding the dangers of the outpost.

  Choi and Derek finally made their last few steps to their destination, an abandoned gymnasium where forty youths were gathered. They were not a homogeneous group. Some wore plothing, plastic out-dated clothes with large company logos emblazoned on them like Derek’s jacket. Plothing was free to anyone who asked and was a sign that the wearer was poor. Some wore biker leathers like Choi. Others wore the rare materials of cotton or denim. These clothes denoted status of the highest levels in the outpost.

  At the center of the room a young man stood apart from the rest. He wore simple clothes; jeans, a white cotton T-shirt and a coat that bore no logos. As soon as he glimpsed Choi and Derek, he silenced the group around him and headed straight toward the two. He spread his long arms and hugged Choi tightly. Choi returned the gesture in earnest. Then the young man hugged Derek. Derek tried with difficulty not to bristle at the embrace. He could not remember the last time he had hugged any of his family, including his mother. An embrace was the only way Lucas greeted any of the members of his group. It was a part of who he was and Derek believed it had something to do with why Derek felt closer to Lucas than anyone in his family.

  “Our paladin is here at last,” Lucas yelled to the group behind him.

  Derek followed Lucas back to the fire and made his way through a dozen youths. He sat down on the only crate left that faced the fire in the center of the room. Eleven other crates, with a youth sitting on top of each, fanned out in a circle. The rest of the group sat behind the crates, crowding around Lucas.

  “When we can'ts stands no more, we sit!” Lucas laughed at his own joke. “There's clean, cold water and grubs against the far wall. Help yourselves, you don't have to ask but don't forget that only fraggers take the first, last or most. Before we get to what we all came here for, does anyone have an addition to the war chest?”

  The group erupted in shouts, “Seventeen”, “Nineteen”, “Twenty-one.” The numbers rolled out and Derek called out “Twenty.” Only the newbies did not call out a number.

  Choi keyed the numbers into his comp set. “That’s 476,” he called to Lucas. “Brings our total to 2,354 creds.”

  Lucas spoke. “Does anyone need funds? Speak now.”

  A small boy, perhaps twelve or thirteen stood. “I've been breaking my bearings on this board.” He held up a battered Wolf Ten grav board. “I can Ollie, acid drop ten meters and rail slide three segments of the Korgan monument. I am ready for slinging. I need flexi-cord and a harness. Ruba, if I can get it. Askin’ for 270 creds.” The boy slapped his grav board down and hopped on, twirling in a tight circle. The others whooped and laughed.

  One of the boys stood. “I can say he's been crackin' his bones and while his vertical still miniscule, I know he'll work hard with the equipment if we give it to him.”

  Lucas rubbed his chin. “I know we bought boarding equipment in the past and it's important that all of us are able to move around the outpost quickly, but I have to deny this request. Jake is going off planet in just another two months. You can have his equipment then. Keep working. By the way, we received an encrypted message from Dean, serving on a Tsimshian lodge ship. He is doing well and thanks all of us for our help in getting him off of New Angelos.”

  Another boy stood. “I request a personal comp, delta grade. I know how to read and I have taught two others. I wants to code.”

  Lucas smiled, “A delta grade personal comp is a thousand creds minimum, Malcolm. That's a big chunk of change. How would this help the group?”

  Malcolm shifted a bit. “I think I could learn to break and make standard code in just a few months. I could book us space to meet up in the upper levels. It would not be so dangerous for us all to get together.”

  Lucas paced, “You are one of the best reading guides we have. If we buy you a personal comp will you neglect your duties as a reading guide?”

  “No, no. I promise not to backslash at all. “

  “I trust you, Malcolm. Twelve hundred creds. Get a solid model. No fluffer chumbles. Does anyone question my decision?” Lucas gazed across the room. None of the youths spoke.

  The money talks continued with another youth getting one hundred creds to buy extra food for his brothers and sisters for the month because his father was now triple dosing on Xanic.

  “But enough talk of business. Let's get to what we all came for.” Lucas's steps became lighter and a glorious smile spread across his lips. “When we last left off, Quell's Band was deep in the Great North. Quell had lost a finger to the cold.” Lucas pointed at one of the youths. The boy sneered back at Lucas and the audience laughed. “But Quell had driven his rag-tag band of heroes farther, for he knew each step brought them closer to the seventh and last section of the Staff of Cronos. The staff that could pierce the hardened skin of the Drakolos, the creature that even now held all the villages between the Hearth Mountains and the Life River captive.”

  Lucas raised his arms like Dragon's wings and suddenly the brilliant young man became what every youth here had come to see - the gamemaster, the storyteller.

  “You,” he pointed across the line of youths, “Now stand on a frozen tundra. Ice and snow stretch in every direction but one. Before you gapes the opening to the Black Ice Caverns. Consult your character sheets. What weapons, armor, spells will you ready? What will remain in your pack?”

  The twelve youths on the crates consulted their character sheets. The youths behind them huddled around the players eagerly discussing strategy, tactics, and what magic weapon could get the players the most experience points. Each player read carefully all the items on their character sheet. That they could read was what allowed them to be players and not spectators. Lucas opened the game to anyone who could read at a sixth grade level. Only the twelve boys who sat in front of him could do that. The others were studying hard to win a spot on one of the crates. With twelve players it would not be long before the group would need a second gamemaster or even a third.

  Derek had taken Lucas' lessons to heart. The UDA and the megacorps calculated to keep its citizens and its customers weak and hopeless. Derek could see it all around him. His brothers and sisters didn't play, they barely paid attention to the two hours of educational wall screen viewing they were required to complete each day. He knew Lucas was right, if he didn't fight to stay mentally sharp and physically strong he would never leave this outpost. Lucas also talked about a group of nearly four hundred thousand people traveling the stars, fighting the UDA. Lucas's dedicated his roleplaying group to helping the AmerIndian Confederacy. The AmerIndian Confederacy needed sympathizers on the colonies and outposts. Lucas’s group would be the strong, literate insurgents proclaiming the AmerIndian Confederacy's message when the time was right.

  The youths called out the status of their characters.

  “Short sword and buckler ready and I'm burying the two hundred gold pieces in the snow before we enter the cavern.”

  “Strength rated composite longbow with a silver tipped arrow at the ready.”

  “Long sword, no shield. All else packed.”

  Lucas listened and smiled. “So you have readied yourselves. You look down into gaping maw of the cavern. How do you proceed?”