by Toby Weston
The older policeman smiled at the sleepy boy.
“Say good morning, Segi,” Ayşe said.
He looked up as if noticing the two strangers for the first time.
“Hi,” he said, still sixty per cent asleep. He took a bowl from below the sink and some oats and raisins from a jar. “Do we have any milk?”
“No, just the powder.”
“Oh, man!” Segi complained, spooning in some yellowish powder and running hot water from the kettle into the bowl. He stirred the mixture with a spoon, went to a clear bit of work surface and leant on one elbow, while proceeding to shovel the food into his mouth.
“Right, Wolfgang. Enough sitting around and drinking tea!” the old policeman exclaimed, breaking them all out of a spell. The adults had been watching Segi, who was quite oblivious to any tension or atmosphere, as he ate his breakfast.
“Yes, boss.”
“Well, very nice of you to stop by,” Ayşe said. “If you give me some warning next time, I can bake something for you both.”
Anosh was astonished at how relaxed Ayşe was able to be.
“Absolutely. It was a pleasure to meet you and your lovely family,” the cop said sweetly, while taking her hand.
Anosh thought he might even kiss it. Instead, he turned to Anosh.
“Take care of your family, Mr Karum,” he said significantly, his voice losing its jovial tone for the first time. “There are a lot of hungry, angry people around these days.”
“Yes, of course,” Anosh stammered. “Thanks.”
Ayşe showed the policemen back down the steps to the door. Once they were gone, Anosh allowed himself to slump into a chair.
“He knew!” he said to Ayşe once she returned.
“Of course he knew! He just wanted to make sure you weren’t a psychopath and weren’t going to make a habit of shooting people. Now, don’t worry; it’s all okay,” she said, squeezing onto the chair next to him and holding him tightly.
They ate a small breakfast together, and the boys went off to their school around the corner. About thirty local kids attended. It was run by two retired schoolteachers out of what had once been a CoffeeHut. There was some good-humoured speculation whether the two women were spinsters or lesbians. Parents paid what they could afford, usually in barter or MeshCoins, but most of the funds to keep it going came with the kids from the walled estate up the river.
There, corporate employees and other members of the vestigial official economy still lived in a 1990s parallel universe theme-park. Their left-wing, champagne socialist parents mollified their wealth guilt by sending their kids to a community school. This patronage, more than anything else, was probably responsible for the tolerant attitude of police and local government to all the Dock’s squatting and self-sufficiency.
In the afternoon, after lessons, it was time for chores. Anosh was working on the plans for a photo-bioreactor, basically a broad ladder of transparent tubes connected for farming Spirulina and other algae. Ayşe was preparing dinner and would probably spend a significant portion of her afternoon waiting in line to cash in the family’s cheese and butter vouchers. Zaki and Segi had been given the job of delivering eggs as a down payment against the bioreactor’s crucial Perspex tubes. By complex negotiation Segi, the youngest, ended up with all the walking, while Zaki promised to provide close air support, POVing with their latest quad drone. Anosh had listened absent-mindedly to the discussion, but decided that, at thirteen, Segi was old enough to stand up to his brother’s badgering and a walk across town would do him good.
***
Segi slammed the door and set off up the street. A few people were about and some smiled or waved as he passed. After a couple of minutes’ walk, he left the Docks community, and people began merely to nod or ignore him entirely. He steeled himself for the trip across hostile territory. Best to look confident, busy and angry, rather than like a defenceless boy out on his own with a bag full of precious eggs.
Getting into the role, he kicked at a bottle lying in his way and sent it careening into a wall, where it smashed into shards. He was startled at the result and quickly looked around, then up towards the faint, high-pitched whine. Nobody seemed to have noticed his wanton vandalism. Nobody was watching. He was walking beside the mostly deserted pot-holed road, which curved around a huge traffic island. The roundabout was chequered with small allotments, and there were several people weeding or watering. He was approaching a run-down street with a multi-storey car park on one side and a derelict garage on the other.
Much of the infrastructure, formerly devoted to automobiles, was unused or abandoned. This part of town had none of the vibrancy of the Docks. Nothing was made or repaired here. This was where the broken pieces of society came to sleep and pass their lives. Some ladies were standing by the dead traffic lights at an intersection. A chunky auto thundered past, drawing their attention, but there was nobody at the wheel, and it had no intention of stopping. After it had gone, they looked over at Segi, possibly evaluating him as a future customer, but he was not interested in their questionable charms, and there was not enough certainty in their world for them to plan their lives far enough out for him to be relevant.
A group of Penners shuffled past, pushing carts full of blankets and newspapers. They were busy with something secret; huddling, swearing, and muttering amongst themselves. They ignored him. He turned off the main road. He hated this bit. The underpass was dark and fetid. Thankfully, there was another way and he wouldn’t have to walk through it, but even the expectation of proximity to the mouth of Hades had been enough to fill his whole morning with dread. He walked to the intersection where the autobahn was bisected by a ring road. It was dark in the pedestrian tunnel that once provided a shortcut under the big dual carriageway and now provided dry, ‘no rent’ accommodation. As he walked past, he pulled out a powerful little torch and let it shine into the tunnel.
Filth covered the floor: shit and slime and old cardboard boxes. Huge, bloated worms turned away from the intrusive beams, muttering in their Penner speak, “verpisdich, dreck,” “Arschloch.” Out of the shadows, a bundle of rags staggered towards the light like a filthy moth. Siegfried turned off the torch and backed away. The Penner was muttering nasty things and randomly shouting. Segi just stood and watched as it shuffled up the stairs towards him. He was terrified, transfixed. He nearly dropped the eggs his mother placed so sceptically into his charge. He turned and tripped.
The Penner was at the steps. Suddenly, a green beam slapped down out of the sky and slashed across the Penner’s face. It was followed by two small projectiles that fizzed as they flew overhead. One veered off to the left, before exploding mid-air two metres away from Siegfried's head. The other flew straight as a dart and detonated on contact with the reeling Penner's chest, issuing an impressive puff of smoke. Siegfried grinned up at the whirring shape that was their tiny hovering quad drone. It dipped him a curtsey. With one last glance at the hopping, coughing Penner, Segi started on his way again towards Klaus's Schrot Eck. A faint sting of capsicum pepper followed after him.
The rest of the journey was uneventful; quiet stretches of dual carriageway, under-populated terraces, micro-farms growing exotic or mundane produce hidden by condensation in long, transparent plastic tubes. Eventually, he got to the old railway yard that was, according to its proprietor, the best source of scrap this side of Akihabara.
He pushed through a gap between the loosely chained gate and the mesh fence, then trudged up to the once grand motorhome where Klaus lived amongst his junk. A massive ridgeback came barrelling towards him, barking furiously, but the murderous dash turned into a playful skid. This was followed by copious licks once Klaus shouted for him to calm down. His master’s tone of voice and Siegfried’s familiar smell labelled him as Friend.
“Eggs! You hear that Benny? Eggs!” The dog looked at his master as if expecting him to say more. Klaus, coming down the steps, grinned at Siegfried and took one of the eggs out of the bag. He broke it into
a pale blue, plastic dog bowl, where it was immediately and happily lapped up. This act seemed to give equal pleasure to all of the assembled mammals.
“So, twenty eggs today, eh? Don't let your daddy forget to keep them coming! It’s twenty each for these little beauties.” Klaus pulled back a sheet of tarpaulin and revealed a cluster of Perspex pipes, filmed with green mould, standing against the side of his caravan. “I stripped these from a factory; don’t know what they carried, so tell your daddy to give them a good wash!”
“Dad said he'll pay you a hundred for the lot, but you need to drop me and the pipes back today, or it's no deal.”
“Sent you to negotiate, did he?”
“No. He just said to tell you that.”
There was an uncomfortable pause, which Benny sensed, his tail motionless as he looked eagerly between the two humans. Finally, Klaus chuckled and reached out to ruffle Siegfried's hair with his grubby, oily hand. Benny barked and joined in, jumping up at the boy and licking at his face.
“Okay, okay. You bloody tinkers drive a hard bargain!” Klaus grumbled.
While he was inside grabbing his things, Siegfried attempted to wipe the dog spit and engine grease from his face. They carefully loaded the pipes into the old methane-powered manual drive Toyota, and Siegfried plucked the hovering drone out of the air. The whine died and he climbed into the cab with it on his lap.
“To save the battery,” he explained. Klaus looked sceptically at the black chunky drone, with its projecting rotors, and set off to Siegfried's house, with only the minimum of suspicious muttering.
When they got there, his parents were at the kitchen table, talking and drinking tea. Klaus joined them after what seemed to Siegfried to be excessive handshaking. His mum thanked him for delivering the eggs and, finally dismissed, he dashed off to the room he shared with Zaki.
“Let me have a go!”
“I blasted him! At least say thank you!” Zaki chided, but he was grinning. The copter had been their project for the past six months. Building and programming it had mostly been Zaki's work, but they had scavenged the parts together and pooled their income to buy any bits they couldn't find or borrow. Today was the first time it had seen action.
“Did you see the rockets? They were awesome!”
“One nearly blew my ear off!”
“Yeah, we need to work on them… but that was so cool!”
“Let me have a go!” Siegfried asked again.
“Go on then, but be careful!”
Siegfried took the two offered Companions and checked out the telemetry. One tablet showed the location of the copter on a satellite picture. He put it down on the bed and sat with his legs crossed in front of it. The map updated itself with video from the drone’s cameras superimposed over the satellite texture. The other showed video facing forward and a bunch of menus. He held this one like a steering wheel and used it to pilot the drone, still outside resting on the roof of Klaus’s truck. Segi commanded it to hover. Zaki stood by nervously, ready to snatch control if anything looked critical. Siegfried smoothly swooped it up, round the side of the building, until it was bobbing just outside their window. He shot the laser through the window onto the wall. The boys looked at it and laughed.
“That's just dazzle mode,” said Zaki. “I'm gonna change it, so on full power, it will make paper smoke.”
“Cool!”
“You better let me bring it back. It’s nearly out of power.”
“I can do it!”
“No, give it back. It’s really difficult to fly in through the window.”
“Okay, but can I fly it next time?”
“All right.”
Siegfried gave the Companion back to Zaki and pushed open the window. His brother expertly piloted the little vehicle into their room, where it buzzed at shoulder height then dropped gently to the floor, rotors quickly spinning down. The boys swarmed like old-style formula one mechanics around their car.
***
A week later, it was Zaki’s turn to deliver the eggs. He carefully wrapped them in towels and placed the bundle into his rucksack. Segi was riding shotgun, remotely piloting the nasty-looking black drone. Ayşe also gave Zaki a bunch of bay leaves and two slices of thick, cheesy potato omelette for Klaus. He dropped these in on top. He had come straight home from school and was about to disappear into his room to get on with some crucial hacking, when Ayşe ambushed him and reminded him of his promise.
He set off at a jog, glancing up occasionally to see how Segi was piloting the drone. He got to the underpass and, conscious of the time he was losing to the stupid chores, took the shortcut under the road, through the dark tunnel. He remembered it from years ago, when they had parked at the big mall complex and came back this way towards the trendy Docks. It was tiled with murals of rivers and animals. Segi even had an octopus on the wall somewhere. He had sent it in for a competition and had won the under-fives or something.
The lamps were out, but it was still light enough to see. Zaki decided to risk it. He trotted down the steps and ran along the tunnel. The mural was still visible in places, but much of it was covered in black grime or smeared with shitty handprints. It stank of piss. The floor was thick with cardboard boxes and plastic bags, full of shit and miscellaneous filth. Zaki quickly regretted the decision, but was already deep into the tunnel and, behind him, worm-like creatures were rearing up and growing arms and heads as the Penners clambered out of their sleeping bags. He was two-thirds of the way through, but the commotion of his running feet and the shouts of the disturbed human ghouls behind him were rousing the whole tunnel into a seething, swearing confusion. An arm grabbed him by the sleeve, but he pulled away. Far behind him, he heard the amplified buzz as Segi took the drone into the tunnel.
Damn! Segi should have taken the other way to come down from the front. A bunch of Penners were forming a wall in front of him at the bottom of the steps. If he could get past them, he could probably make it. He unslung the rucksack and reached in to take out an egg.
“Eier?” he said, softly lobbing the egg underarm to one of the Penners, who instinctively caught it and looked at the clean, white object in his hands.
Zaki stopped running and took another couple of eggs out the pack and placed them carefully on the ground to one side of the passage. The Penners exchanged looks and then shoved each other as they fought for the prospect of the delicious protein. Zaki dashed the other way, though they were barely paying him any attention anymore. He loped up the steps two at a time and into the fading evening light.
A couple of minutes later, Segi eventually piloted the little drone out of the tunnel. At first, he couldn’t see his brother and was about to head off at full speed towards Klaus’s. Then, as he rotated his POV, he noticed a bundle of clothes lying at the curb. As he flew closer, it resolved into the crumpled form of a boy. The rucksack was gone from its back. Blood was on the tarmac, smeared as if the whole body had been dragged through it by the one hand that was still outstretched; its fingers clenched on nothing.
Zaki had barrelled out of the tunnel, straight into a gang of older kids playing some game with a deflated ball. They had pushed him. He had stumbled onto his ass, and they had laughed.
They demanded the contents of his bag, but stopped laughing when he told them to “fuck off”.
He tried to get to his feet, but they beat him down. Then they kicked him. When they could not pry the strap of the bag from his fingers, they kicked him some more. He coughed and sobbed as the kicks landed, smashing into his ribs and face.
It went quiet and he slipped into blackness; but awakened immediately, screaming. One of the boys had grabbed his arm and, after deliberately placing it on the curb, had stamped down, shattering the bones.
A final round of massive kicks to his ribs and they had tugged the bag from his limp fingers and run off.
The drone was too late. Now, it hovered over the bleeding body.
Shapes were shuffling out of the dark towards the commotion.
Chapter 11 – Computational Propaganda
When he lifted the heel of his shoe, there was a sucking click as it pulled clear of the ancient carpet’s black, tarry surface. In a small patch by the wall across from their table, the pattern was still fresh: red and maroon with curling fronds of green. It had been covered for thirty years by a fruit machine, which now, incompatible with the modern world, stood outside on the pavement in the rain.
“You haven't said a lot, Keith,” Deb remarked. “What's your grand plan?”
Keith looked over to her with heavy eyes; he already had the beginnings of a headache. They had been drinking since four in the afternoon, but obviously he had not been drinking fast enough to keep the metabolic penance at bay.
“Still trying to work that one out. I do have an exciting plan for the next fifteen minutes. Want to hear it?”
She smiled, but shook her head and curled her lip. “Nah, been there; done that!”
