Ok, this is my first attempt at a proper short story that was not for academic purposes. It may not be too good. It's roughly in the sci-fi genre and is somewhat inspired by the cyberpunk genre in some of its themes. Please criticize brutally.
Red Demon
The day began in a dreamlike haze, and there was no guarantee that it was not a dream itself, for the difference between dreams and real life was not always apparent in the surreal world of emerging consciousness. It was easy to mistake one for the other.
Charlie awoke with the sun. He yawned and grimaced at the slowly lifting lead of sleep, the subtle burning in his temples and scrunched eyelids. He writhed and stretched in his bed, feeling his joints snap out of sleep and his muscles stretch open slowly to the calm morning. Then he fell back, limp in his bed, in the semi-darkness of the room he shared with his brother and mother. He lay there, trying to remember a dream that was dissolving faster than he could was capable of resolving it. There had been a feeling of betrayal, of sadness, and nostalgia. Charlie didn’t know what it was, but it was nostalgia, and he already felt it, at the age of five years, for his old two room house, his aunt, and loving happy cuddles and cartoons he had not seen since they had been forced to move to this new place.
He didn’t know why it had happened. It was like everything had been ripped up, uprooted, and they had had to pack things up and drag themselves to this new shack. Father was not as nice as he had been before, and Mother was also colder, scarier, and sometimes she cried. But this morning Charlie could not help but feel fine, because it was quiet, and his bed was soft and warm. The wall next to him was cool, just the way he liked it when he splayed his arm across it. The gray early light was soft and he could see everyone else sleeping. Mother was there. He felt a bit afraid of her. It could have been a dream, but he wasn’t sure; he’d seen her going green a few days ago, along with his elder brother. They had both gone green in the face and looked at him strangely, just staring. He had known they were in league then, but then yesterday she had been just fine and she had even cuddled him when he had cried out in fear at seeing her. He shuddered. He hoped that she would not be green today. And he hoped that his elder brother didn’t give him any trouble either: no nonsense about playing with the his plastic blocks or getting by in general. He was a selfish bastard, his brother.
Charlie wondered what his loneliness was. It was sad, warm, and it made him feel sorry for himself. He wanted to be a puppy like on TV and beg for attention. He crawled on all fours to look outside the window, through the tainted glass, vomit coloured hard drops frozen on its dull scratched surface. Outside was a frozen sea of corrugated metal roofs, clashing in a quiet tempest of competing poverty. Some roofs flew clothes-lines as their flags. Even Charlie knew they were poor, which meant there was a lot of dust, playful stray puppies and cozy shacks in their lives.
Charlie was growing restless, and soon he could contain himself no longer. Alertness and the need to seek out adventure compelled him to jump off the bed onto the concrete floor. He ventured outside the room to that stained white pillar of hygiene, dish-washing and drinking water: the sink. It was easy to reach if you stood on a plastic stool, and it didn’t fall too easily if you were careful about balancing yourself, and even falling was not that bad. He could fall and not cry now. He could get into all kinds of trouble and not cry; there were much, much worse things than falling. He splashed water on his face. He’d hated doing that before, the cold water used to shock and repulse him, but it seemed to refresh his father and he’d acquired the taste for it now. He came down and quietly slid open the bolt of their metallic door and slid out to play. There was a cracked pavement and wandering pigeons outside. He ran past them, his bare feet slapping the ground in a quick patter. He knew where he wanted to go.
When he arrived at the pond, or what by his standards was a pond, it was there waiting for him. His jet, his racing car, that still bright red contraption he’d seen the day before. It looked new. It was beautiful. He walked to the edge of the pond, the dark chemical rainbows on its surface had ceased to interest him a long time ago, as had the frogs and the strings of shiny, ragged dark-green slime that seemed to be blowing in some watery wind in the direction the reservoir drained. There weren’t any ducks and there was not any grass around his pond, but those things only existed on the console or the megascreen anyway. He might as well expect to see a hot-dog or a T-bone steak or a picnic basket in real life. Some things just never seemed to show up in real life. Charlie waded into the pond, halfway up to his knees, used to the cool slimy sensations now; the need to be dry was a silly revulsion he’d overcome back in the good old days. In that haloed era he sadly celebrated without knowing it. It was so far back, as far back as you could imagine. It was a lifetime ago. Back when Mother had cuddled him often and he’d had a sister as well, and father had not been angry and sad and frightening.
But this thing, it was beautiful. It was like something from the Golden Age, something that was exciting and happy. He put his hand on it, unsure of how to claim his prize. It wasn’t even rusted or too grimy. He pulled like a tiny tug-of-war participant and to his surprise it moved easily and his overkill had him fall back on his bottom into the water. Now he grimaced, disgusted, both with his own miscalculation and the rage of being soaked down to his underclothes. He felt the slimy, dirty cold intrude, and he knew that his mother would moan and yell now, and there would be a rough and uncomfortable bath today. He hated baths, they were cold, and he hated this level of wetness and discomfort. Even he had limits. He didn’t know any particularly strong curses or oaths so he grimaced intensely and punched the water down with a fist and briefly yelled his rage. He sat there for a while, experiencing what adults call self-pity and getting used to this new low, this new indignity, sobbing and grimacing mildly, intermittently. What a way to ruin the mood of his new acquisition. He looked around and saw a wrapped up figure walking past, and he felt humiliated. But after acclimatization and some final sniffling he pulled himself up and looked at his new ride. At least it would not be difficult to drag it the rest of the way, he’d deal with the bath when it came. He put his hands on the handle and dragged it out the rest of the way, its wake rippling quietly behind it, it came almost willingly: a sure sign that this was a nice thing, a wonderful thing, the beginning of a new friendship and a bigger ego. He could see it now. He would ride the red bicycle through the whole area, and they would all be impressed. They would wave and smile and he’d make his elder brother beg to touch it. He’d deny him just as he denied Charlie his bat and watch. He believed he had something truly superior in his possession now.
Charlie slipped into an overconfident euphoria, his little heart pushing him to new heights of elation, uninhibited by a wise or experienced mind. Even through the paleness of cold and mild anemia, one could see a ruddy flush in his face shine his happiness; even his ears and nose were red as beets as he lost himself to obsessive imaginations and fantasies while he stared at his tiny bicycle. It had training wheels on, perfect, no magic required to ride this one. He looked right though it, seeing himself, seeing his father and mother’s faces light up with interest, and his brother asking sheepishly to ride it. He saw the little girl from the shack down the road wanting to play with him, for once her asking instead of him. She had curly hair, green eyes and olive skin: pretty and interesting. But he was dragged out of his meditations by a world that was coming to life. People were moving around, and that made thinks risky. He could hear machines, lathes starting to scream and motors start to run and people start to call out to each other. It was getting dicey. And then he heard his last wakeup call, “Hey you little shit! Get away from that, I’m taking that!” screamed a whore who was wrapped up in a grimy blanket against the cold. He knew she’d be wearing that glittery black and silver costume, that showed her disturbingly large chest, underneath that; it’d come out later in the day and in the night. He sprung into action, his inner animal sharpened by the life he led. He picked up a rock and threw it at her. Bulls-eye. He got the horrible bitch on her right temple. She screamed “Motherfucker!” her witch-like voice ripping the air, and he ran for it, dragging his bike as fast as he could, his heart pounding with adrenaline and a hint of amusement. He heard the three large crows that had settled down beside him to observe disperse with the sound heavy sheets whipping madly in a gale, and the men laughing at the bloody bitch he’d just nailed. Of course Charlie did not know the words “bitch”, “bloody” or even “horrible”, but it’s the feeling that counts, and he truly felt, from the bottom of his heart, that she was a horrible, bloody, bitch.
As he came close to his home, his new and disliked, distrusted home, he could not help but wonder about cleavage. It was so strange and disturbing, yet somehow provocative. The swelled up chests and cleavage he’d seen seemed strange, and there was something taboo there. His mother never showed hers, and thankfully she was not as swelled up as some of them were, but he never could figure out the strange provocativeness of the whole thing. He shook his head. His mother had told him it was shameful to be naked, and that she’d even tried to shield his eyes from a whore once. She said Jesus wanted everyone to be properly dressed. Jesus being Father of course, who had been nailed to a cross once, but he was ok now. It must have hurt to have nails through your limbs, Charlie was even terrified of needles. His father was Adam too, and he’d put bad little children into Hell, he knew, so he tried to be good. He loved Mother and Father. He wished they could be happy like they used to be. “Charlie! Where have you been?!” his mother screamed, running out towards him. He was afraid, he didn’t understand. She hugged him, which was good, but then she looked at him with angry eyes, and then she slapped him across the face.
It rebooted his brain instantly, with a clap of thunder. All his philosophies and meditations and his smug confidence seemed irrelevant and extremely misplaced now. His cheek stung and his soul recoiled and screamed. His eyes swum in wet warmth instantly and he cried, not able to understand, his train of thought completely forgotten. He wailed and cried with all the vigour and gusto his wounded soul could muster. It wasn’t just his voice, his mind did nothing but wail and recoil, and then there was need, desperate need, everything else was pushed out. He might have thought “Why, why this Mother?” if he had in-fact thought in words, which of course he didn’t, but it’s the feeling that counts. Everything was burning and swimming now, and he could feel his body being roughly examined, he barely heard her groan of aggravation as she clawed at his wet algae-stained clothes. She stripped him roughly as he stood crying, and he realized that a bath was now impending.
After the sad jagged haze that followed, finally Charlie found himself in the process of sniffling his own warm tears and blinking his eyes clear while he shivered in his dry shirt. It was all he was wearing, but his mother had wrapped him in a blanket as well so he was actually comfortable enough to be recovering. Things had not turned quite as badly as they might have. Father had not come home yet, and he’d been spared a thrashing by his hard hand. Mother’s hands stung, Father’s hands could make your bones ache deep inside and knock you catatonic for a good long time. He swallowed the salty mucus inside his head, it was strangely familiar and comforting. He’d forgotten all about his bicycle, instead he watched his mother, a mixture of fear and longing building up inside of him.
Life in general was a bit of a haze for Charlie. He’d only recently deduced that everyone had the same cinemascope view on the world that he had, and that to them he looked like a longish upright standing thing too, the way they looked to him. And he’d tried following the passage of time as carefully as he could, noting each passing moment, the present becoming the past. And he’d tried combining that with watching something slow happening, like the morning frost melting. Those had all been spiritual experiences, profound, not that he knew what the feeling was actually called. But all of that was gone now and he was a simple emotional creature again.
Mother was such a heart-breaker. She could be so loving, but when she became cold, it was worse than being beaten by Father. It was the worst thing in the world. He loved her so much, more than anything in the whole shanty, meaning, the entire world. But when she became cold, he could beg and he could cry, and she would just, not look at him, not kiss him or hold him, and then, he’d feel that desolation, that dull fear, that profound all consuming pain. It wasn’t like the sudden rush of adrenaline and shaking, the violence of being beaten, it was just slow death. He’d cry…and cry…and beg, and die inside. He looked at her now, suspiciously. Should he beg? Should he ask for her love? What if she… was cold? He thought what he might do, maybe if he did something new. He would hit his head on something hard until red came out, or maybe he’d hold her foot, bite it, maybe he’d beg extra sweetly, but a sudden defeatist sadness came over him: he should just withdraw and be silent. He felt it again then, that profound intellectual feeling, and he rose outside of himself and watched himself, pathetic and huddled, while his mother attended to meaningless chores and practicalities. He watched her, she looked disturbed, even a bit guilty, and he watched himself. Poor, poor Charlie, he was a good boy, if only Mother could see it.
Charlie drifted back from his profound meditation into a more careless state, and then towards sleep. He did not know when the oblivion came, but only when it suddenly broke and he heard rustling, panicked anguish in his mother’s voice, and the sniffling of another child. He opened his eyes and looked. There was blue darkness fallen over the silhouettes he saw. A girl, he recognized her, it was his sister. She moaned in pain and Mother wept softly as she washed and bandaged her feet. He had not known he still had a sister. Supposedly she had disappeared. Now she was back…somehow, a ghost. But she was different. She was anguished and thinner and taller. His father, magically returned, knelt beside the mother and daughter, seemingly in shocked silence. They spoke in furtive voices, barely containing what Charlie guessed was panic. His mother groaned quietly in the silence, picking something out of the girl’s feet. Charlie could tell they were the mice, rats, of the bigger world. Even their voices had to be hushed and quick, even their fear quick and quiet. The mice must live like this under us, he thought, just as we live under the beautiful world, and they lived under the sky.
“We’ve got to get her out of there Harold… her soles are burned straight off, and their not even paying her, those fucking animals.” Her voice was desperate, rough, like it was sometimes when they slept behind a curtain and father would be pushing her down. Charlie guessed that was how he let her know, now and then, that he was the boss. His father was silent, large and looming as always, his breathing quick, unsteady, deep. The girl moaned quietly, Mother kissed her forehead, “Shhh darling, we’re taking you out of there, I promise. I love you.” Her voice lost its balance at the end and wobbled dangerously; it scared Charlie. He didn’t want Mother and Father to lose control, freak out, ever. “They give her food, they let us stay in this place, you know they’ll throw us out if we take her out.” “I don’t, fucking, care.” Mother screamed in her whispers, “You tell them they can’t make her walk barefoot on acid, they can get a robot to clean the floor. The admin’s rich enough to have a shack of his own for God’s sake, please!” Father hesitated, “I’ll talk to them…” “No, you tell them no more!”, again her voice bitch-ripped in desperation. Father nodded slowly. “I’ll do something.” The sad truth was that their daughter was cheaper than a robot.
Charlie felt afraid, and he felt protective of that poor girl, with her ragged ponytail and now mummified bloody feet. Her hair had been golden once, he remembered, now it was some grimy dirty colour he could not tell in the dark. He felt his bile rise and his soul tremble, about to fall off the tight-rope of sanity; he did not want to feel this. He sought refuge in the oblivion, and soon he found it.
When Charlie awoke the next morning it was at his mother’s prodding. “Wake up Charlie. You have to go to the landfill, get some junk. Billy’s already gone.” He rubbed his eyes, feeling deep heaviness, but he forced himself up against something that almost felt like nausea of the soul. He was always the first one up. Father always said that he was the quickest and the earliest up, so now he was obliged to wake and feign some sort of alertness to keep his position as the alert one. Mother dressed him in some relatively dry and clean clothes. He was quiet, and she was gentle but undemonstrative. He wondered if he should dare, and he almost didn’t: “I love you Mommy.” It was said in a small tentative voice. Mother looked at him for a second, and then tears came to her eyes, and she hugged him quietly, kissing his cheeks. Charlie shut his eyes with relief, relaxing in her embrace. She sobbed, and hugged him tighter, “I love you too Charlie. I’m sorry… I love you. You’re my little Prince ok?” he lingered there, glad as she rubbed his back gently. “You’re going to be something one day, work hard, go to school ok?” she pulled him out of the embrace and looked at him straight in his eyes, her face close to his. Charlie held his breath, and then tried breathing with his mouth, not wanting to show how difficult it was to tolerate the smell of her breath, her brown rotting teeth. He nodded. “Yes Mother, I promise.” She ruffled his hair, she had hope for him. He was the only one who was picking up any reading from her, and there was a Global Opportunity school at the far end of the shanty. He might get in. They didn’t have any money, but she had other ways of creating and giving value, and she knew the admin was a lecher. She smiled happily and stood up. Charlie was glad that the tension of her sobbing and bad breath was over. “Honey, I’ve got some soup for breakfast, Billy’s had his, here…” She smiled as she handed him the tin cup containing his breakfast. It was grimy on the outside, but he was used to that, and he was happy that she happy. He sipped and then coughed badly as the hint of bad vodka hit him. It was cold out, and the broth needed something to keep the children in good stead till the afternoon. Charlie picked out a fly and flicked it away, not wanting to alarm his mother. He loved the taste of locusts, even though most of the broth was made of chicken, it added something, and they were crunchy.
Before heading out to walk the mile to the land-fill Charlie got a rare treat. A manta flew over the shanty. Most people hated them, they were noisy, enough to shatter some windows, and you could smell the jet fuel and the roaring shook you to the bone. But God they were beautiful. As others cringed and plugged their ears Charlie looked up and saw the massive white beast. It must have been bigger than the whole shanty, and you could walk for such a very long time from one end of the shanty to the other. He loved the smell of the fuel, even though everyone hated it. He loved the strange dominating shade it brought, and flying this low it even made the air slightly warmer. It shook and shuddered the air with such ferocity that even Charlie had to cringe while still looking up. It seemed to be flying as fast as someone could run. The reflective white paint and the winking flashes of light under the flying continent amazed him, as always. The sheer vastness of it made it seem like a second sky, but in this one you could almost see a mirror of the whole shanty. He had only recently realized that the gray shapes he saw in the shining ceramic white were reflections of the shacks and huts below. He had tried but failed to see himself waving up at it. He had noticed the elegant simplicity of it, the gently sloping surface underneath curving up subtly to the ending edge of the massive triangle, the giant cones of blue and yellow super-heated plasma behind the flawed, stained reflectivity of the giant nozzles. There were ten of them. It took a good fifteen seconds for the thing to pass completely over his head from nose to nozzles, this flowing shaded under-sky, with huge red letters and flashing orange stars on it, so close and tangible, unlike the strange and mysterious true sky. The letters, written in a mellow serif-free, mildly futuristic red font, read “Dawn Bird 320”.
He knew the Betters rode in that thing. Father knew because he worked some nights for the Betters; he knew a lot about them. Charlie had seen them on the console, and the megascreen just outside the shanty that showed bright advertisements for things he could never have. The women were so beautiful, often not wearing much, and there were whole towns just full of green and trees. They only had a few trees in the shanty, and they weren’t very green. The console also showed other things: marble floors, homes bigger than ten shacks put together, glass and metal that wasn’t broken or tarnished, people dancing in the rain. The rain wasn’t bad where the Betters lived, Father had said. It wasn’t sour. But he was too young to be jealous. He didn’t hate the Betters; they were beautiful. He wished he could be friends with some, and they would show him their places and things. He had seen some of their things, in the landfill. He was sure the manta would be full of wonderful things. He longed to see the inside of one. The people around him began to recover, as the shuddering subsided and the whining of the giant steel nozzles faded. Charlie watched it go, wondering, longing, grinning. That was what God must be like, he thought. Father had said not to say anything bad about the Betters, and not to be go near the “Reds’ kids”. Otherwise the bird-men would come. Obviously Father respected the Betters, and he should too.
Charlie had completely forgotten about his find from the previous day by now. He decided to run as fast as he could till he could not any longer, starting the mile north to the landfill. The run was a jerking joyous blur that continued until he could barely breathe. When he finally slowed down to a walk he was warm, damp and panting. The cold sun that came through the soft roof of smog didn’t seem too difficult to look straight at today. He could manage by squinting alone. Each moment brought new realizations and sensations, new insights that were just as quickly forgotten in the buzzing haze of hurried childhood. He walked for a while, feeling his lungs burn and then mellow into mere warmth. After the passing of his dizziness and a much needed surge of endorphins he was ready to go again, so he took off, jetting forward again so that he could reach the smelling mountains of middle-class detritus.
When Charlie arrived Billy was already there dragging a large plastic trash-bag of choice finds. “Took you a really long time to get here” he said with reprimanding hostility. Charlie didn’t like Billy all that much. Billy was about taking things from him and keeping things from him. Billy was about teasing and meanness. Charlie didn’t know it, but he’d gotten Billy thrashed unjustly quite a few times, so the dislike was mutual. There had been a time when Billy, who was over a head taller than Charlie, had been a protector, when he had walked around with his hand on Charlie’s shoulders, showing him off and defending him at the same time from the shanty’s other children. That was back in the golden age, and early in it at that. “There’s an Apple deck in here that you have to be careful with, Father’s gonna want it, you’d only break it so you don’t get to see it, and there’s a really nice hawk, it’s made of diamond, but you don’t get to see it.” Charlie was instantly activated: annoyed, desperate, plaintive and enraged. “Come on Billy, let me see the hawk, is it really diamond?”, “Yes it is, but you break everything, so you don’t get to see it”, “I promise I won’t break it Billy, pleeeeease?” He walked up to Billy’s trash bag, Billy took the opportunity to push him away vigorously, sending him off balance and onto the ground on his bottom. Charlie started to cry in that forced begging manner that children sometimes employ, with regular and vocal exhalations ending each pathetic moan. Billy was satisfied with his position of power now. He had been given his due, so he pulled out a small crystal bird that had somehow managed to find its way into the waste of the Betters. Charlie stood up, dusting himself off, and walked close to it. It was no bigger than his hand, and you could make out each frosted feather, each rachis and the efferent fibres. The eyes were clear and unfrosted, and they looked at him with convincing life, even having an iris each. The beak too was clear and glassy, and the feet frosted except the claws. It stood with its wings partially spread, its fiery eyes looking down in front of it at some non-existent prey that was supposed to be there. “It’s diamond, I can tell because it’s heavy and really, really clear.” Charlie tried to touch it, and then hold it. Billy wrenched it back and put it in the bag. “I think I’ll keep it, if you don’t tell, I’ll let you hold it now and then.” Charlie nodded in complicity, his eyes wide in awe of Billy
They walked back together. Billy was enjoying his hold over Charlie and Charlie could not help but think about the sleek beautiful contours of that living diamond thing. It was an idol to him; it seemed alive and powerful. As they walked back they saw the distant minaret from Pak-Town. It was a tall metal pole they had painted white and attached a beaten golden crescent to the top of. Megaphones were strung with steel wiring to the top. It started calling out, in its mournful hypnotic voice. Charlie plugged his ears, but Billy didn’t. “Fingers in ears Billy, Mother said so! That’s the devil calling.” Billy shrugged, he’d heard it a couple of times, apparently he was mighty enough to handle the Devil. “Fingers in ears Billy! I’ll tell!” “If you tell I’ll twist your ear off and you’ll never see the diamond hawk again.” Charlie grimaced. The caller’s voice was blurred and tinny through the megaphones, and even though it was clearly a man it had a strange tunefulness and a high pitch that reminded him of fire. The fires of Hell. Mother had told him that the Pakis were infidels, who kept to themselves, and so should they. They didn’t believe in Jesus. Father never said anything about it, but he’d normally grunt or sneer when Mother talked like that. Charlie didn’t know what to make of that. Just then the sky grumbled mightily, angry at the infidels perhaps. From the smell of the wind and the colour of the sky it was going to be a sour rain, Billy took Charlie’s hand “come on, time to run” he said curtly, and then he started to run faster than Charlie could, dragging him along despite his protests for leniency. The moments and senses passed roughly, each profound moment tumbling in and then disappearing in the blank beyond his consciousness, new insights that were just as quickly forgotten, in the shuddering fast winds of unending, stationary childhood.
Charlie had still not remembered his bicycle, his prize, his answer to Billy’s diamond hawk. If he had his position would have been greatly strengthened, but for now he was a beggar and not a chooser.
That night, after he’d given Mother company over some old bread and locust broth Charlie crept outside for one last outing before bed-time. The clouds glowed a faint mixture of green and red: light from the distant city mixing with fluorescing pollutants. He thought it looked enchanting. He looked around casually in the dim diffuse light and saw the ghost of something he’d forgotten. His victory bicycle was parked in a dark corner near the shack. No one had touched it. Charlie didn’t know how lucky he was that it was still there, nonetheless he was glad to see it. All his old excitement, before Mother had pressed the reset button on his brain, came back. He walked up to it. In the faint light he could make out its blood red shining paint. How on Earth had something so new come his way? He could not help but envy the elegant beauty of Billy’s glass hawk, but he decided he liked his red rocket better. It had a picture of an evilly grinning red face on the side, big eyes and horns, like a cartoon bull. He’d seen it in cartoons on the console and sometimes on the megascreen. It looked… naughty somehow, and in spite of his being a good boy and everything, he liked it. He decided to walk it inside before someone noticed.
Mother was not impressed. “That’s a Reds’ cycle Charlie, we’re not having it.” What did she mean by that? How could she? “Mommy, it’s mine, I want it! I want to keep it!” he said in plaintive rage. Mother found his manner quite off-putting. It wasn’t cute, it was just a tantrum. She had to get it out before Father came home. He was unpredictable about these things; he might actually encourage Charlie. “No, it’s going.” Mother said firmly. Charlie clung to the handle-bars and refused to let go. Now he yelled in full violent defiance: “No! It’s mine!” Just then, the best and worst thing that could happen did. Father came home. As it turned out, Father was quite taken by the bicycle. It said “Red Demon” besides the fiery face on the side. Mother tried to reason with him: “You know it’ll get people talking, it’ll get us in trouble.” Father shook his head, “Scared shitless” he muttered, “It’s just some stupid Betters’ toy, it doesn’t matter. It’s nothing, he can have it.” His decision was firm and cold. Mother could only, under the circumstances, look on wounded and contradicted, uneasy and insulted, if she knew what was good for her. But she didn’t. Instead her pent-up privation and indignity overflowed. “We’re not having a bloody commie bike in here, this is my house, you bring the bread, sometimes, about half as much as a real man, but I run this place, not you. You know its trouble and you know we believe in Jesus, and you’re not going to make a bitch out of me in front of my own children, do you understand me?!” Her voice was beginning to rip and whip, acquiring a bitchy edge that alarmed Charlie. He withdrew away from them, into the darkness, horrified. “Shut up Jenna, I’m tired, I’ve said what I wanted to say.” growled Father, getting irritated. “No I’m not shutting up Max, you son of a bitch, you think you’re a red and you had Natasha’s feet burning off? You coward, and you, are going to tell me what to do?” Now Father was still, surprised, injured and enraged. He slowly whispered back: “I didn’t know what they were doing; you know that Jenna. I stopped it.” He knew that he didn’t deserve this; he’d taken a knife to admin’s throat, even compromised the secret of his affiliation, just to put the fear of God into that animal. He didn’t deserve this. Charlie watched as Father seemed to become more grave, more perfectly still, “You say you didn’t know, you pathetic prick, did you really? What else are you letting him do to Natty? Huh? Making some extra cash on the sides…” Mother was interrupted suddenly as Father’s hand whipped faster than could be seen and Charlie heard a loud bone-breaking thwack, and a pathetic little yelp from Mother. She went down as fast as if she had received a sniper’s headshot. Charlie quietly crawled back into the dark corner where his and Billy’s quilt was. Someone touched his arm, he turned and found Billy looking at him with horrified big eyes. Charlie withdrew into Billy, and for once Billy embraced him, silent, as they watched. Mother started to sob, then she belted out a scream “You son of a bitch, for all I know you…” and then there was another pathetic yelp as Father grabbed her by the hair, losing his mind, and dragged her struggling and yelping with pain to their bed. He drew the curtains. “Half Paki self hating bitch.” Billy and Charlie heard her scream, “You bastard, I’m not your bitch, we’re not keeping that…” and then there was another thwack and a bitter scream. They heard her voice muffled, there was ripping, struggling, desperately loud breathy mumbling, fighting. She screamed a few more insults, and he managed to thunder a few threats and taunts. Charlie’s fingers dug into Billy’s arms, and then he felt the warm wetness of his bladder releasing. Neither of them moved, even though Billy could sense his brother’s little failure. There were worse things, they both knew. The sounds changed somehow after a some long moments, becoming regular, with mother seeming to relent, to surrender, in some animal language. They seemed to be in some kind of primitive repetitive agreement by now. It was less alarming, and they both began to drift, brothers for once instead of competitors. The oblivion finally came to them, giving them relief, and by the morning Charlie would find his mother inexplicably reconciled to his bicycle.
The next day proceeded as normally as was possible in Charlie’s world. It snowed, so no one worked but Father, who had left. As predicted, the Red Demon reversed the dynamic between the brothers. Now Charlie commanded respect and authority. Billy had tried to appropriate the bicycle for himself initially but Charlie, who was too guilty about the previous night to raise much of an alarm, was glad to see that his mother enforced his right to his booty. And he got a bath, or at least the lower half of him, for he smelt like stagnated urine. Mother tended the small electric stove at first, quiet and resigned. He had looked at her early in the dim light, her ragged dark brown hair and her angular cheek-bones, her green eyes. She was somehow different than the others in this shanty. But that was on account of her being a gypsy, or so she said, and whatever “gypsy” actually meant. He thought she was handsome, in any case, if a bit brittle. Outside they raced and fell in the fresh thick snow, off the Red Demon. They laughed and they dragged Red Demon up to a shallow concrete slope. Billy sped down first; Charlie was too scared and happy to share his exhilaration with clapping and screaming. Billy, in high spirits, decided to chide and entice Charlie into trying it too. Charlie was at first staunchly against the idea, but even at his age he knew he had missed out on much because of his paralyzing cowardice. Eventually he found himself saddled on the Demon at the top of the slope. “Are you sure it’s ok?”, “I’m telling ya, it’s a piece of cake, and if you fall, it’ll be on the snow. Just do it.” Charlie was grimacing through his numb face, his nose and cheeks and ears were such deep pink even Billy noticed. Charlie would not let go of Billy’s arm, even when he wanted to. It was nearly as difficult as attempting suicide, with genuine intent. But he clenched his teeth hard and let go, and then the Demon started moving, and then sped up, and swerved dangerously to the side. Charlie’s breakfast rose in his throat, and he uttered an involuntary question, “Uhhhhhhh?!” and it got even faster, and the Demon bolted, “Aeeeeeeeeeh!” and it dove down on it’s side with Charlie entangled in it, and as the world violently sped around him he felt the hard steel hit his shin, sending deep burning into his bone, “Billeeeeeeeey!”, and then the sudden dizzying fall slowed to slow sliding on the snow, and then he stopped. Charlie didn’t know if he should cry or not, Billy was above him, helping him up dusting him off, “You ok?” Charlie limped as he tried to stand, torn between betrayal and a strange sense or provocation. “I’m sorry Charlie.” Charlie shook a bit, his breathing trembling, he looked around, becoming calmer. “I’m sorry Charlie.” Charlie looked to Billy, blinking out a tear by mistake and smiling through his trembling breath. “I wanna do that again. Proper.”
That afternoon, when they came trudging back, they passed the megascreen. There was a picture of a crow, a big crow, the eye of the megascreen withdrew slowly from the bird, its feathers fluttering in the wind and snow. Then there was lightning and a serious voice spoke gibberish: “The Raven, by Synth-tek Biota, Uppsala Sweden, the most intelligent non-human animal in existence.” A woman appeared “We’re pagans and I can’t tell you how much I love my Zeus, he’s really made our Yules so much richer, so authentic.” An attractive goth girl in a black tank-top was next, “I’ve, like, always loved birds and, the natural ones were illegal, ravens are extinct, but this thing, I’ve always wanted a an unconditional friend, my Raven, on my shoulder. It’s so amazing. It’s almost human!” then the narrator again, “With a true laminated, enhanced hyperpallium, binocular vision and double the neuron density of a real bird, not to mention doubled nerve conduction velocity, this amazing animal embodies not only the most advanced technology in existence today but also the timeless spirit of intelligence, and animal sarcasm of the raven. It’s the only non-human that can truly use language in context, as effectively as a 3 year old child, and it is the only non-human that has ever been able to draw. And it has the adult personality and the dark mystery of The Raven. It’s been used in treating autistic children, and it’s a true companion to the discriminating bird lover and…” There was more gibberish, ending in: “…technology coming soon also to a line of beautiful Macaws and cockatoos… ” It went on and Charlie sniffled back what was running from his chilled nose. It would be keen to have a pet, and the ad was about a pet, he had understood that much. Already he began to feel some dissatisfaction with his Red Demon. He imagined how it would be if Red Demon could talk, and go as fast as a car too. He lost himself to his imagination until they both arrived home. Father was already home. He smiled for a change and ruffled both of their hair and kissed their heads. It was going to be a warm evening, felt Charlie.
In bed Charlie watched silently, pretending to sleep, as Father switched on the console. The screen came on, vivid but with a row of dead pixels running two-thirds of the way down. It looked like a window into another place, the dead row cutting into the deep image like a lamina of lost atoms. There was an important looking man on the screen, or rather inside it, or perhaps beyond it. It was clearly one of the Betters, but the type that spoke in grave gibberish and held the attention of others for some reason. He was bald and bearded, gray and past middle-age, wearing spectacles, of all things. The camera seemed to shake slightly, it was among a crowd of people listening to the bearded man.
* * *
“Ok, listen up, I know it’s Friday and this is going to be long, but let me just summarize for today where we’ll be going.”
“We’ve debated endlessly,” Charlie was already lost, “about how we came to this juncture, and how it could have gone so wrong,” Father leaned in, silent, “when the answers were simple and obvious, we resorted to equivocating, ideological rhetoric and moralistic challenges, when the truth faced us so plainly that only the willful blindness of faith and illiteracy can explain our current state.” Someone in the audience spoke up, “You mean the conservatives screwed it up, right?” There was laughter. “I think there is enough blame to go around, but primarily, I would say that, yes, American conservatism has brought us to this juncture.”
He was heckled again, “You can only talk like that because this country lets you. Maybe you should look at China to see how good we have it.” The old man smiled falsely, nodding his head slowly, “Alright, well, calm down and maybe I can abuse my freedoms a bit, after all, that is the greatness of this country, is it not?” He paused, “Today we are where India was 40 years ago. We have a prosperous middle and upper class, and many millions of disenfranchised with no chance of a decent life, and no hope.”
Someone whispered casually, close to the camera “He’s a friggin’ Demon. Someone should go to campus FBI.”
“You see, the problem started with ideology, when you stick too rigidly to an ideology, it really becomes the same as religion, and you aren’t able to take practical measures, or formulate policies, to cope with a reality that often requires a mixture of approaches...”
Charlie watched Father watch, while mother slept. He glanced behind to make sure she was asleep. “It should not be a source of comfort to us, that places like South Asia are even bigger gutters than we have become, that’s like Rome competing with some hick Celtic Kingdom with thatch-roof huts. The fact is, there were some limited factors that have led directly to today… Yes?”
“Sir would you not say that even in a society of equal opportunities like ours it is only natural for there to exist an underprivileged class like in Victorian society or 20th century India? Perhaps the first world of the late 20th and early 21st centuries was a mere anomaly and the current status-quo is natural and unavoidable.”
Charlie wondered what they were all talking about.
“Well, why don’t you go and tell someone living in the New York irregular-areas that they’re living worse than your dog because they are ‘anomalies’, as you put it?”, there was polite laughter.
Then the gibberish went on, “Today America is virtually a mild theocracy, due to some creative interpretation of the Establishment Cause, the backlash to the failed militant atheist movement, not to mention the deep involvement of evangelical Christianity in politics, especially foreign policy and education, the primary travesty in the latter field being the allowance of the ideas formerly called ‘Intelligent Design’ into the classroom.”
He continued, “It cannot be said that conservatism of this kind is or ever was universal, but aspects of it appealed to enough people to cause a temporary paralysis while the environmental and social tipping-points came and passed us by, leading to unstoppable decline.”
Someone spoke up quite loudly, “America is a Christian nation, and it always was. You just can’t accept it can you? And we’re the majority.” The viewer focused on a burly shaved young man, square-jawed and handsome, in a T-shirt and baseball cap and some kind of amulet hanging from his neck. He was bobbing his head in a righteous high as and just after he spoke.
The old man replied with cold calmness, “I do give a certain amount of latitude in my classes, in order to facilitate frank discussion, but if you give me anymore of that, Mr. Carron, I’ll have to ask you to leave this tutorial.”
There was an awkward silence and some quiet snickering in the background. Someone close by spoke in hushed tones, “Fucking Red.”
“As I was saying, the large factors, which have their own complex roots, that led to today’s socio-economic situation were: The refusal of the United States of America, and China, to spend on social welfare and the environment, forcing the rest of the first world to scale back social programs and environmental policy to compete economically in the short term, then, the triumphant Right of America becoming increasingly dogmatic, refusing necessary reforms like socialized health-care no matter how… bad things got,”
“What a croc, he just presumes socialized health-care was necessary,”
“the refusal to standardize and aggressively promote better education across the country, and most critically, the development of machines that eliminated most working-class and semi-skilled jobs while the state did not invest in universal higher education or a cultural campaign against rampant anti-intellectualism and other forms of self-defeating reverse-snobbery.”
“Is that a fucking technical term? And they chose stupidity, whose fault is that? State’s supposed to wipe your ass too?”
“Globally, the Middle East catastrophe, which itself was a product of Rapture-ideology influenced foreign policy, I kid you not,” laughter, “ and the subsequent energy crisis contributed to the situation before us today…. Yes, Mike?”
“Sir, it seems to me that you’re ignoring that we could not compete strategically if we’d gummed down our economy with socialism…”
“No, maybe we forced everyone else to stop spending on the long term prospects of humanity.”
“Dr. Feinberg, I think that’s just… biased and anti-American. We have the Global Opportunity Foundation giving a fair chance to everyone and history shows socialism never works.”
Father grimaced and muttered, “Bloody Americans.”
The old man grinned as he shook his head, “I think you have been in this course too long to be seriously accusing me of, of all things, communism, and I think you must be living in an alternate reality if you believe in the farce that is globoschool.”
His voice was becoming a subtly bitter; even Charlie sleepily noted the suppressed sneer.
“Perhaps the biggest factor is the denial of cheaply reproducible educational technology and infrastructure to impoverished populations. Modern teacher-less low-cost education technology, which you very privileged kids have not chosen for reasons of tradition, old-money as they say, is based on artificial intelligence and advanced human-machine interfacing technology. Globoschool, supposedly provides a cheap version of this throughout the world, in every decayed hell-hole you can imagine. Not only is ethical and quality nerve-interfacing not freely available in any of these places, or any place, period, but the problem is that these schools are often administered by tycoon wives on a mission to eradicate their own boredom, or corrupt local admins, who often are involved in extortion and sexual exploitation of students.
Beyond this, frequent electricity outages and ‘ghost-schools’ add up to a picture of utter and complete failure of the so-called Global Opportunities program.”
A female voice, righteous and clear, was raised, “Underachievers blame anyone but themselves. Opportunities exist if you really want to make it.”
There was a momentary awkward silence, “I do not know if it is fair to call a malnourished and illiterate child a goof-off.” He sounded exasperated by now.
A foreign accent broke in: “So we give up our property and our standards and let civilization go to the dogs?”
The bearded man grinned again, but just barely, “So! Continuing with the summary, after the ground falling out from under the college-optional crowd,”
He paused, and there was laughter, “due to semi-intelligent machines, a phenomenon actually considered to be poetically just by many a third-worlder, as many Westerners were considered to be coasting on a first-world economy while harder working and better educated people in other countries had much less, anyway, after that happened, we continued, and continue, to fail to face the challenge of education and infrastructure for the poor, in America, the former first-world, and beyond. The reasons for the failure to deploy mass-reproducible educational technologies have to do with market incentives simply not aligning in that direction. Investors into any particular population cannot be guaranteed that they will have the sole right to milk the population for skills and as a market, especially without violating the sovereignties of the local governments or peoples. Political infighting and cynicism in third world leadership further complicated the picture and the appearance of a massive underclass in the West further restricted the resources anyone would spend on foreign charity. Let’s not forget that a rising population continues to strangle our resources. There are limited resources in the world and a more equitable distribution would further restrict the availability of a first-world lifestyle in the West, or result in a moderated lifestyle for those living comparative luxury today. This is politically unacceptable to us. Ultimately, blind faith in the market correcting the situation and unwillingness to violate the sanctity of the market led to the disaster that we call the modern era. In the next lecture we will discuss these points in detail. There are some nice studies to look at, and we’ll examine supposed beacons of hope for the future, such as synthetic-bio based octanol, lunar mining, near-total-matter-reconversion technologies, so-called “creative capitalist” educational investments as well as the costs of recovery, should we, as a nation, and as a planet, choose recovery. Class dismissed.”
By the end he had sounded fed-up and hurried. The camera moved as people were getting up, and caught two tall girls in skimpy tops chatting under their breaths, their attempts at secrecy defeated by the directional microphone and noise-occlusion neural-net. The first spoke through a cynical grin, “So, are you still sleeping with him or what?”
The other chortled and nodded her head emphatically, looking away ditzy and world-weary at the same time.
Someone shouted in a comically bass voice, “Jesus lives! In Texas.” There was laughter, but Charlie had already fallen asleep, and he wouldn’t have gotten it anyway.
The last thing he saw was the silhouette of the bicycle in the dark. He imagined it was making subtle clicking sounds in the night. Then Father changed the ROM cart in the console.
* * *
The next was a work day. Charlie and Billy had to get out of their quilts in what was normally the bitter cold to get ready. Fortunately the day was unusually warm. Even Father only had the vaguest idea about the “superheated Mexican front”, but that was that gave them strange warmth on some winter days. Father had left and Billy left early to go on some special errand. Charlie would have to go to the landfill alone, and leave the Demon at home. It was too valuable to lose. On his way he was passed by the workers’ wagon. The local extortionists ran it as a side business to shuttle the more affording members of the community to the VTOL station thirteen miles north. They had to be on time for work in New Toronto. Some of the girls got work as prostitutes and some restaurants found that luddites and Christians preferred human waiters, so what work existed required getting to on time. The octanol wagon drove itself along the narrow broken pavement that was the main artery of the shanty, preceded and succeeded by the savage music the driver played perhaps for his own enjoyment, and perhaps to antagonize his clients. Mother had said it was devil-worship music. Charlie stood aside and pressed himself against a leaning electricity pole to give way. The driver had his legs up on the dashboard with his eyes closed, head-banging to the beat of some Czech anarchist machine music. The music mixed classical melodies and sounds with subtle and complex electronica that was so textured that you’d think it was some new physical instrument. Timbres that had never existed before had been perfected into deep soul touching sounds and subtle soul moving undercurrents gave the music evil spirituality. The mood of the music was cool rather than cold, only mildly bellicose, not immature like what was produced earlier in the century. It was the sinister coolness of the tone that made it profound, belligerent. The modern anarchist didn’t need to scream as much as the campy rocker of the late 20th. It was so obviously better, the fans of the mode thought. How could people have been so quaint before? Charlie had to admit there was something provocative about the music, even if it did hurt his ears. The driver was now the dashboard with his fists, going into some mysterious mix of hypnosis and a grand mal seizure. The wagon drove on. Charlie looked up and could see a huge but thin circle of vapour-trail very high in the sky.
Charlie walked on, and halfway to the landfill he passed the strangest scene: a VTOL car, a brand new and expensive one, had landed in a partially fenced clearing between the shanty and Pak Town. There were a few people from either side, no more than ten in total who stood and watched, some grinning and pointing openly. Most people simply ignored the visitors and walked on past, heading to either the landfill, or work, or the market. Charlie could not, would not, resist such a temptation. He walked his way to the clearing to get a closer look at the vehicle and its attendants. He walked past the few gawkers to see the man, the woman, and the little girl. The man was furiously punching away at a bright screened device in his hand and then stuck his head inside the vehicle to check something. A panel on the side of the VTOL was open revealing alloy tubing and control-fibre bundles. The man was unremarkable: tall, muscular, dark-haired and square-jawed. He’d taken his tweed blazer off in the fierce green-house aided sunlight of the day and was wearing a shining white half-sleeve shirt made of material that never needed pressing. There was a squat green dinosaur of some kind sewn into the side of the sleeve, it seemed to Charlie. His arms were only very mildly hairy and his beard and moustache were cleanly trimmed, thin and limited in scope, skin-tight yet dense and opaque. He had the look of a particularly dashing ship’s captain from a console show, Charlie decided. The woman on the other hand was remarkable. She wore an all white dress that stopped shortly before her knees, and almost knee-high high-heel white boots. She was tall, only half a head shorter than her man, and she was blonde and blue-eyed. She was not excessively thin, but not obese by any description. The meat on her bones was mostly well toned muscle, feminine and swooping with curves and the occasional subtle cut. At least you could say that about her calves and bare arms. She even had natural, but very slight and delicate, hair on her skin. Ostensibly, she was an all natural beauty, no leg-shaving necessary, no hair remover required, and she was subtly full while being sleek and slender. Charlie could not quite perceive the details, but he did get the overall impression of perfection. Her hair was tied up in a high, tapering golden bun, while on her forehead her hair was parted a bit to the side and swooped back and to the side to give her a more modern, less ditzy version of an obsolete futuristic look. Her skin was mildly tanned, but with less orange and more wheat. The neck of her costume had a leisurely flattened man-shirt collar around it while the front opened into a v-neck that plunged just low enough to give the intimation of a deep cleavage, with a few “cute” freckle-like spots just above the plunge into secrecy. The fabric of her costume was pressed, while somehow simultaneously being form fittingly delicious. Charlie looked at her with what she must have taken for innocent child-like eyes. Even the fabric covering her was alive: ceramic white at first glance, but giving iridescent hints of red and green and purple at sharp angle and folds. Someone wolf whistled. “Honey, hurry the fuck up before I get raped will you?” she said in a nervous hoarse whisper. She had the bitch in her voice. Someone snickered. “You won’t get raped ok? They’re just, goggling,” replied her man. There was movement inside the car as the little girl peeked out, “Daddy when are we going? I’m bored.” The mother looked at her daughter and gave her a nervous smile. “Daddy’ll get us out in a jiffy sweetie, you stay inside, roll up the windows.” Her daughter didn’t comply; she just stuck her head out further to watch. They ignored Charlie. “Why do they have to be so creepy?” she whispered, rubbing the goose bumps on her arms in agitation. “If you were an illiterate white trash hick with no life you’d be too, as for the Pakis, don’t even get me started.” He muttered just loud enough for his partner to hear. “Shh! Don’t provoke anything with the Bitters, besides, I don’t want you talking in slurs and that kind of hateful language around Cordy. And anyway… aren’t you friends with Haresh?” The man shook his head slowly; Haresh wasn’t a ghetto-bunny. He casually and quietly noted, “You’re the one who just used a slur, honey-bun, and you assume they’re all rapists.” “Look, just hurry, please? You can’t fix it yourself, just call an arc.” She was more agitated as she saw one of the Pakis making a lewd gesture at her. They’re just people, just poor people, just really, really poor people, she told herself, trying to remain calm. Charlie walked in closer while the couple spoke and took the steps necessary to resolve their situation. And then the little girl noticed him. She seemed to be Charlie’s age; she smiled at him and waved. Charlie could not help but smile and wave back. He was charmed by her grin and piercing water blue eyes, the sharpness of her features. “Hello, young man.” said the little girl with melodious sass beyond her years. Charlie felt a certain excitement, to be reaching out and touching the world of the Betters. Without realizing it, he felt honoured. “Hi, I’m Charlie,” he replied tentatively. “I’m Cordelia,” she said with a hint of jovial hautiness. “So Charlie, where’s the chocolate factory?” Charlie blinked, confused. “I don’t know, I’ll ask…” “No, no, no! I’m just kidding!” she said reaching out of the window, Charlie came closer and she ruffled his hair “Such a scruffy young man!” she said, again with that sass. Charlie could only smile shyly, “Yeah, but I’m quick and I have a red bike. You’re really clean.” Cordelia giggled genuinely, genuinely amused. But the touch broke the camel’s back. “Sweetie, back in, right now, you might get a disease!” Cordelia looked at her mother with displeasure, and then at Charlie with some kind of ambiguous proto-guilt. “But Mommy he’s my friend. He can come over and play at…” The woman turned around fully to face the children and bent over to look at Charlie face to face. She noticed he smelled mildly of jet-fuel and the lack of a recent bath. “Hello, look, I’m sorry but we’re going to be leaving soon alright young man? We really need to go and I think you should run off home. Alright?” Her eyes were serious and wide and her tone carried the slightest reprimand. Her man interjected: “Just let ‘em chat a bit, sheesh. You don’t need to be a goddamn fascist.” The woman closed her eyes patiently while she cocked her head in her partner’s direction and answered him. “Look, don’t be such a sop, they’ll want to play next and Cords’ll want him home, I mean, do you realize the diseases and social crap you’re inviting?” She shook her head and looked at Charlie again, “Listen sweetie, you’ll be happiest playing with your own kind, we’re leaving and we can’t come back ok?” She was about to ruffle his hair but she stayed her hand abruptly, an inch before contact and then sighed and withdrew it. “So you go along and do what you were doing alright?” This time she tried to be gentle, but Charlie could not help being wounded. He looked into her eyes; they seemed strange, unfamiliar and protruding at him in some non-physical way. They didn’t seem beautiful this close up either. He felt the deprivation of what could have been such an exciting friendship. It was then that he realized very keenly, deep inside, just how small he and his kind were. Something inside him raged in protest. He bit his lip and looked at Cordelia, she looked back with her own anxiety showing on her face. Charlie stepped towards her and offered his hand for her to shake, “Ok, bye bye.” he was saying when the woman gently intercepted and pushed his hand back with the back of hers. Her daughter had severe allergies after all. “That’s ok sweetie, now you run off,” she said, her voice caught between gentleness and curtness. One of the bystanders could not help himself, “Fuckin’ bitch!” Charlie stepped back still looking at Cordelia, he waved weakly, feeling the strange humiliation strongly enough for his eyes to swim in unshed tears. He did not know it then, but he would never forget Cordelia, or that day, ever. Her strikingly pretty face, her name and the whistful sadness of the moment would be with him even in adulthood, as would the other events of the day. He turned and hurried off.
“Things are getting hot around here, thanks to you,” her husband complained roughly. “You know she has allergies, and you’re the one that wanted to take the VTOL, and over this place? You know that’s dangerous.” Just then, when someone in the crowd was contemplating initiating a stoning, perhaps followed by the exhilarating gang-rape of the tall doll, the cavalry arrived. A Noah-11 rescue-and-carriage copter-truck roared into the skies heading towards the stranded family, red lights flashing underneath with its robotic arms prepared to engage with the crippled VTOL. It came to a precise hover above the vehicle, sending only a mild chaotic gusting over the family. A man in orange overalls and body-armour rappelled down to meet Bruce Sterling, neurosynthetic engineer, and his family.
Charlie was uneasy and occupied as he walked home from work that day. He hadn’t had much luck. He’d found nothing unusual, nothing that struck him as valuable. And he could not stop thinking about the Betters, how he wanted to become one of them, or hurt them very badly, except for Cordelia. He would not hurt her. Animal instinct told him that his remaining conscious hours would be miserable. He wanted to get home, cry and rage, and then sleep. But he knew his parents would not have that. He kicked the dirt and uttered a non-vocal shout of anger. He did not have a suitable obscenity yet in his vocabulary. He thought of Cordelia’s smile, and he kicked harder and yelled louder, his little voice ripping. He could feel the warm dry beginnings of a sore throat, so he let himself blubber pathetically for a moment, having a tantrum with no one in particular. As he walked and sniffled he gradually felt less and less inclined to lash out, his misery was beginning to ease.
Then something loud and fast roared over his head. He looked up in tear-streaked surprise, and saw that same circle in the sky, but much lower. He could see the wings of the thing as it circled. His stomach turned and tried to swallow itself into its infinite depths, leaving him nothing to vomit. He swallowed his spit and ran, for all he was worth, towards his home. He heard screaming, the yelling of men, the rattatat of… something, sharp and loud. Other people also ran, but only in the opposite direction to him. Women screamed and men shouted, and then there was a clap of thunder and smoke and stones flew towards him from a fiery black cloud rising behind a shack. He fell to the ground covering his face, the instinct that had evolved to avoid spitting fires, landslides and volcanoes sufficing to protect him from a distant RPG detonation. He got up and ran ahead, the world spinning and even his primitive thoughts pushed out by adrenaline. Everything moved in zigzags around him as he sprinted home, finding a burning hulk of black metal and broken tinted glass resting on the neighbour’s shack. A dirty upturned lower arm stuck out from under a corrugated sheet, a rivulet of blood running down it and over the open palm, forking over a ringed finger. Someone tried to pick him up and carry him away, “Bird men son, gotta go!” He screamed his refusal without words, and then bit into the bitter and salty skin of the man as hard as he could. He fell and hit the ground. “Ow! you little bastard! Fuck!” and then the man was gone, for a moment hoping the child had not been rabid. Charlie was getting up, but he was too slow, and his legs were filled with lazy rubber. He screamed his frustration as he broke into a slow-motion sprint, the world hurrying past and slowing to a crawl at the same time. He saw his father ducking behind the extortionist’s wagon close to home. A man in a gas-mask was cringing besides him. Father was wielding a two decade old assault rifle while the other man had a semi-automatic handgun. “Dad!” he screamed, but Father did not notice. “Chicken-feet incoming! Get the boss out of here, we’ll slow them down!” “Father!!!” Charlie screamed louder, and this time Father heard him. He turned and looked at his son with wide panicked eyes. “Get inside Charlie, get behind something hard, stay down!” then he tried to peek around the edge of the wagon, and looked back at Charlie who stood where he had first caught sight of his father. “Charlie, get inside or run away damnit! Now!” he roared his command as the now nearer report of weapons continued. He could hear the sound of steps, heavy steps that seemed to crush the gravel and klink subtly on the stone. He ran away then, from his father. It was what he had been told to do. He found a dark corner behind a hard place and scrambled desperately in over rough ground, cutting his palms without knowing it. Inside, the fawn reflex took over and he became rigid and still beyond his control. He was only aware of his rapid breathing and the darkness around him. The fear in his higher mind fought with the security that instinct fought to impose over him.
Max looked around the edge, he could see the rapidly approaching bird-men come around the corner of the street. They looked around with instant exact glances, moving with rapid avian efficiency, not the lazy rolling motions of a mammal. Their faces were turned off, plates of deep dark blackness. He raised the barrel of his gun and tried to spray them as best he could but they darted out of the way, bobbing up and down from behind fallen corrugation and trash-cans. Max took aim, and fired a whole burst into one’s face at precisely the moment it bobbed up. There was a shower of sparks and the sound of shattering glass. Something fell back behind their cover, then he leaned around again and desperately fired at the trash-cans themselves. Perhaps that would slow them down; no one actually knew how they thought. Overhead, Max heard the slow blades of a gunship in stealth-mode too late. It rose out of nowhere, just behind the next four shacks, and launched a slow ballistic black can at his position. The gas grenade seemed to invite itself to pop in over the wagon and land two meters behind him. Max tried to hold his breath as he brought up his wet scarf over his nose and mouth. He leaned out and found the bird-men hopping close on their light feet, their heads hunched forward and their narrow shoulders bunched up in what could have been artificial anxiety. They weren’t here to kill them all, or they would have, so Max saw no problem in leaning out even more boldly and spraying their upper halves liberally with thundering lead. He got another one in the face. They bobbed down and continued moving forward rapidly with their whole bodies hunched down, including the one with the newly shattered face-plate. He could see open tears and bullet-holes in their gray camouflage uniforms, and even leaking black hydraulic, but they moved on, one or two of them whining with mechanical damage. They were close now. He remembered his mission was to slow them, not kill them all, which was impossible, so he leaned out and sprayed again while the buzzing dragonfly above drew closer. Two men raised their shoulder SAMs at the gunship, a Stinger and a Strella. The gunship’s Dynamic-Suppression-System saw them before any counter-measures were necessary; as the gunship continued to focus on the frontline, passing real-time tactical intel., a discrete electromagnetic cannon in its side opened up, with a Mach-3 hail of metal, precisely into the heads of both SAM operators. An additional cursory swipe destroyed the SAM units themselves, lying besides the headless, bloodied corpses. Max tried to open up one last time as the bird-men closed in to 5 meters. He yelled his contempt hoping that it might have some effect, and then he felt the thud in his shoulder and the wet blood pouring down his side and spraying on his face. He looked down to see the stump where his arm had been. Now the bird-men sped up, sprinting in like humanoid ostriches. Max breathed liberally of the hallucinogen he’d tried to filter out with scarf. Everything seemed to whirl around him, including the chicken-foot that now effortlessly sprinted into close range. He looked down to see the three thick long “toes” on their feet. Supposedly that allowed them to climb and even roost anywhere a man could imagine. He looked beside him to see one of them holding his comrade by the neck, up off the ground, with only its slender arm. It ripped off his gas-mask with its bare hands, ripping through the rubber and plastic like thick paper. He felt a distant blow to the face and noticed that everything was flying up very rapidly, until he hit the ground. The pain of the drone cauterizing the stump of his arm was distant. The gas was designed to keep him conscious and, like a fine wine, bring truth.
The face of the drone hovering over him flickered on. It was cold angular and light blue. The eyes were deep black and empty. It spoke, the vector animated face seeming to talk in a firm but reasonable tone. “Maxwell Fletcher, you are under arrest by the Social Security Bureau of the Republic of Canada for being a member of the proscribed group “Red Demon”, and for plotting the detonation of a radiological device in the Promised Land Residential Arcology. If you do not cooperate with the collection of evidence exception 34 to the articles of the Geneva Conventions may apply. This drone is also authorized to act as your counsel temporarily. Do you have any questions at this point?” Max stared up at it emotionally and motivationally castrated. Everything just flowed around him. “You have five seconds to respond before processing proceeds.” Max felt nothing, but for some reason he spoke: “You don’t have any evidence. There were no moles, nothing, you dumb metal fuck.” The drone replied “Embedded Surveillance Audio ROM is an unfalsifiable one-time record of evidence. Processing will now proceed.” The face disappeared and was replaced with a bright red circle over the black face-plate. The Cleanup phase had begun. The area was secure. Max wondered where Jenna had taken Billy, or if Charlie had gotten away.
The primary drone sent a command to the command to a secondary to collect the hard-copy of the evidence, his com-status LED flickering the fact. It walked into Max’s shack with that same exact and light gate they were known for, and picked up Charlie’s red bicycle. It carried it out, holding it by the neck like a dead bird, and placed it in a translucent evidence trunk that had been placed there by a newly arrived human technician-supervisor. The first to leave were the few humans that had come, the last were the drones that had maintained the perimeter, clinging in exactly the same posture, four each, to gunships that had never touched the ground but had just hovered close enough and then lifted off with a final gust of contempt. Silence descended on the remains of the day.
Charlie’s turgid muscles started to melt slowly after about half an hour of silence. His breath slowed and he felt the basal need to slip out from his nook and explore the new situation. He was still tentative and trembling when he stood up to see the empty clearing with the fallen yellow ribbons and a few returnees wandering around in quiet shock. The afternoon was giving way to the red and green fluorescent evening and the balmy air of the warm day shifted and became cooler. Someone was dragging a corrugated sheet back to expose the corpse of his wife, the whore who’d challenged him for the bicycle, the two tributaries of her blood flowing around her ring finger. He looked around, his mind only full of the need to quickly get an idea of his surroundings and find out where his mother and brother might be. It was a practical and wonder-free curiosity. It occurred to him that he didn’t have anyone to stay with over the night, and that slowly gave rise to fear and panic. The Betters had come, obviously, and wreaked havoc, and now he could not find Father. The Betters, better than his kind, already a bitter pill, and now perhaps they had taken Father away. The first precursors of class hatred stirred within him. He realized vaguely that Father had provoked them somehow. He crushed his rising horror at having one of his foundations pillaged. He smothered it under numbness and a dreamlike vagueness of mind. He could not have survived his desolation, his feeling of peril, with his sanity intact, if he had not. Charlie was a good boy, a good little boy. He would be small, discrete. He would be good, and keep to himself and feel innocent, or at least appear so. No one would have any need to hurt him. A strange fearful self-pitying restraint came over him, along with the inner warmth of withdrawal and caution. He imagined himself walking in a beige marble hall of the Betters, good and small and harmless. He imagined himself playing with his bicycle in a green sunny meadow, and there was no one there but him.
“Charlie!” He walked alone, looking at the ground, at his feet. “Charlie!! Where were you? Charlie!!” The panicking sobbing voice was Mother, grateful to the point of hysteria. She was holding Billy’s hand in her own while she rushed to secure Charlie. Charlie barely heard her, he was quietly walking in his sunny garden of escape, hiding, locked away, giving nothing away, until such time that opportunity knocked, for something dark, some kind of release, in that infinitely distant dream that adults call the future.
This is a rhyme that occured to me while thinking about the tabloids and what they publish.
Here it is:
