Down the Psycho Path

by Mandy White

  “Even your little sister Lucy? What is she, about eight years old?”

  “Seven. Lucy works with my mom, on the Cleaning crew.”

  “Cleaning?”

  “The Uppers like everything clean and polished.”

  The sky grew lighter as they neared the city, and the temperature warmed by several degrees, like an ordinary sunlit morning. People came into view, other Workers, all walking in the same direction, toward a small building that looked like a toll booth.

  A bell sounded in the distance.

  “We’re almost there. We’d better hurry up and punch in.”

  “Punch in?”

  “You punch in at the gate when you get there. Keep your card with you and don’t lose it. You’ll need it to punch out at the end of the shift.”

  “The card keeps track of our pay?”

  “The card is your pay. It’s a voucher. You collect vouchers, and then you can spend them in the marketplace.”

  “Huh. Cut out the middleman. It’s so simple, it’s almost brilliant.”

  They had reached the toll booth.

  “Where do you work, Aaron?”

  “Here.” Aaron took his place inside the booth, relieving a youth of about the same age. He punched a card and handed it to Vista. “Remember to punch it again when you’re done, or it will be worthless.” He beckoned to a man standing behind Vista. She recognized him from the encampment. “This is Carl. He’ll show you what to do. You’re both on the same Moving crew.”

  Vista tried not stare as she entered the city of Summerland. She intended to keep a low profile, but her jaw dropped in awe.

  Shining towers rose all around, connected by raised, enclosed walkways, like a giant above-ground ant colony. Workers moved about the streets at ground level, while figures in flowing white robes traveled through the walkways.

  “What is that made from?” she asked Carl, pointing at the towers. “It’s so shiny!

  “Gold, mostly. And some copper.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  Carl shrugged. “We use what is available. The Aldous came equipped with plenty of tools, and seeds to grow crops, but not a lot of building supplies. We mined the planet’s minerals and smelted the metals. There happens to be a lot of gold available. There are other materials, but the Uppers prefer the gold.

  “Of course they do.” Vista shook her head at the absurdity of it all. “So you have gold towers with thatched roofs?”

  “Mostly, yes.”

  “And I thought Earth was fucked up.”

  * * *

  With Carl’s guidance, Vista survived her first shift without asking too many questions. She turned a few heads, but transfers from other shifts weren’t uncommon and nobody questioned her presence.

  The crew was in the process of dismantling a mansion-sized home on the hot side of the city. Each building, she learned, had a duplicate next to it, which the occupants lived in while the other was being moved. Once the first home was rebuilt on the cool side of the city, crews went back and dismantled the second. And so on… building by building, until the entire city had been moved. Half of all buildings in the city were unoccupied at all times. And yet the people who did all the work were living in tents in the darkness! Vista fumed as she worked. The job never ended. As the city moved, the sun advanced.

  Vista pondered what the Uppers would do if they had nobody to move their city for them.

  The Uppers did nothing for themselves. Household servants prepared meals, cleaned their homes, shopped in the market for them and brought them everything they needed from the outside.

  All buildings were connected by walkways, allowing Uppers to travel anywhere in the city without coming in contact with the ground. They were obsessed with cleanliness; their shoes never touched dirt and they wore spotless white garments. All the Uppers Vista saw were overweight, some morbidly so. The place was like a country club for obese germophobes.

  They even had an above-ground golf course on the roof of the marketplace, with live sod planted over a fabric membrane. The marketplace was like a gigantic open-air shopping mall, with vendors of every description gathered under a roof like a giant parking garage.

  One shift, while transporting materials to the cool side, Vista caught sight of something shiny. She zoomed in with her implant. The Aldous! The magnificent ship that had transported them to the planet sat a few miles outside the city, past the farmlands.

  An idea formed in her mind.

  * * *

  Later, in the encampment, Vista and Darius were seated at a table in the tent that served as a pub.

  Vista asked, “What happens to the Aldous during the move? Do they move it as well, or does it stay in one place?” She had to speak loudly to be heard over the chatter of voices in the busy pub.

  “In the past, Captain Samuels would fly it deep into the Twilight Zone,” Darius explained, “as close to the Dark Line as possible. But he was old. He died recently, and the person who took his place doesn’t know much about the ship. On the last flight, it had a rough landing and now the engines won’t fire. We have nobody who knows how to fix it.”

  “Yes, you do.” Vista grinned.

  “You?”

  “I spent my entire military career working on that propulsion system. I know it well.”

  “The ship should be moved if possible,” Carl said, “We don’t know if it would survive the Scorch and the Dark Freeze.”

  “I can answer at least half that question. The Aldous was built for intergalactic travel, which means it was designed to withstand extreme temperatures. Yes, it would definitely survive the Freeze. That’s equivalent to the temperature of space. As for the Scorch, I’m about fifty percent certain it would survive that as well. Though the ships weren’t designed to fly into something as hot as a star, they are well insulated, in case of landings in harsh environments. I don’t know enough about this planet to say for sure. I don’t know how hot it gets. But that’s irrelevant, because we aren’t going let it get trapped in the Scorch. We want that thing accessible and operational, and I’m going to make it happen.”

  “Vista, what are you plotting?” Darius asked. “If the Uppers find out…”

  “Then what? Tell me, WHAT will happen if the Uppers find out?” Vista’s voice rose. “What will they do?” She gestured around the room. “What can they do to any of us that they haven’t already done? Is there some sort of punishment I don’t know about? Public beatings? Executions? Prison?”

  “No, nothing like that! But they could cut off our rations,” Carl said. “Without the crops, we’d starve. We need access to Summerland to survive, and the only way to do that is to work there.”

  “And what if you didn’t? What if none of you did?

  “What are you saying?” Darius asked. A murmur rose across the room. Vista had the attention of other tables besides theirs.

  “What would the Uppers do if everyone refused to move their damn houses for them? Would they pick up the tools and do it themselves? Of course not! They wouldn’t know where to begin. I’ve worked over a dozen shifts and haven’t seen one of those pricks set foot on the ground.”

  Vista stood and addressed the room.

  “Don’t you people realize you’re the ones with the power, not them? I say fuck the Uppers! Let them burn when the Scorch comes! We’ll survive, because we have tents and know how to move them. We know how to plant crops. Who would feed the Uppers if we didn’t harvest their crops or serve them their food?”

  “Fuck the Uppers!” came a shout from the crowd.

  More voices joined in until it became a chant.

  “Yeah! Fuck the Uppers! Fuck the Uppers!”

  Vista turned to Darius and said, “That, my friend, is what we Earthlings used to call a strike.”

  * * *

  Word of the strike spread through the camps, along with instructions that everyone was to work their normal shifts until told otherwise.

  Vista traded shifts with one of the farm Worker
s. The first chance she had, she slipped away, to the Aldous.

  Walking onto the bridge of the old ship was like coming home. Vista blinked back tears. If she forgot about the messed-up civilization outside, she could almost pretend she was back on Earth, back at her old job, before everything went to shit.

  The Aldous was easy to fix; just a loose connection caused by the impact of a rough landing. She completed the repair, then accessed the ship’s navigational system and reprogrammed it. If this strike went the way she expected it to, the Aldous would take care of their problem for them.

  * * *

  Workers gathered in the wasteland at the edge of the settlement where they awaited instructions and answers to their questions.

  Vista did her best to alleviate their fears.

  “In our old lives back on Earth, we were used to working for someone else. We all had Uppers to answer to. It’s natural to want to continue what we’ve always known. It feels safe.”

  Several heads nodded and voices murmured in agreement.

  “The rules have changed. This is a new world, and you have the power to write new rules. The Uppers are playing by the old rules. Their power lies in your willingness to obey. Take that away and they have nothing! If nobody shows up for work, the Uppers will be afraid. They will be in a position to negotiate, and we can ask for whatever we want.”

  “But what if it doesn’t work? What if the Uppers won’t negotiate?” a voice in the crowd asked.

  “We have the Aldous. We will threaten to leave, and tell the Uppers to take care of themselves. Believe me, they’ll negotiate.”

  “We could actually leave this place?” another voice asked.

  “I think that’s a question we need to ask.” Vista addressed the crowd, “Would you want to leave on the Aldous, and take your chances in space? There’s always the chance the ship’s navigation system doesn’t locate another hospitable planet, or that the one it finds is inhabited by a hostile race.”

  A woman spoke up. “I think I speak for most of us, when I say, we don’t want to leave. This is our home now. Our children were born here. We want to negotiate better living conditions for ourselves.”

  The crowd voiced its agreement.

  “Ok, it’s settled, then. We will leave only as a last resort. We are going to demand equal treatment for everyone. The Uppers will have no choice but to share Summerland and all its luxuries with us.”

  “How long will it take? What if we run out of food?” someone asked.

  “There’s nothing stopping us from helping ourselves to the crops in the fields. Nobody goes there except us.”

  The chatter of voices rose. Apparently nobody had considered the obvious.

  “Just give me three shifts. You all have enough food to last that long. Three shifts. I promise you, we’ll know the outcome by then.”

  A cheer rose from the crowd, followed by chants of, “Fuck the Uppers! Fuck the Uppers!”

  * * *

  When the next bell rang, all Workers went home, but no new shifts took their places. Even the Timekeeper left.

  The Uppers woke from their clean white beds to find no clean robes to change into. Their breakfast wasn’t made. Their household servants didn’t arrive with fresh goods from the marketplace.

  An eerie silence had fallen over the city. The constant sound of construction was absent. No Workers bustled in the marketplace. No Timekeepers’ bells marked the shift changes.

  Nobody did anything at first; they just waited for their servants to arrive. After the second sleep with no meal, they ventured out of their homes.

  The Workers had vanished. Only Uppers were left.

  They raided the marketplace, stripping it of anything edible. When the food was gone, what would they do? Nobody knew.

  There was plenty of food in the fields, but with nobody to harvest, how would they get it? With nobody to run the bakeries, who would make the breads and cakes the Uppers loved to eat? More importantly, who was going to move them away from the Scorch? They were going to burn to death!

  Panic gripped the city.

  BONG! BONG! BONG!

  The Timekeeper’s bell sounded in the courtyard.

  The Workers were back! They were saved! They rushed to their windows.

  A lone figure stood in the courtyard. A strange looking woman nobody had seen before.

  “Uppers! We need to talk!”

  * * *

  The meeting with the delegation of Uppers went as expected.

  Vista studied the row of ponderous, balding old men, lounging in their overstuffed armchairs. She recognized a few of them as former politicians from Earth.

  “I regret to inform you, that as of this moment, all work in the city will stop, unless our demands are met,” she told them.

  The room erupted in laughter.

  “Get back to work!” A man who looked like Colonel Sanders dismissed her with a wave of his hand, as if swatting a fly. “Everyone needs to get back on the job, right now. There’s work to be done!”

  Vista joined in their laughter.

  “What’s so damn funny?” Sanders demanded.

  “Suddenly I have a craving for Kentucky Fried Chicken,” she giggled.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Just a moment, gentlemen, before we get down to business, I need to take care of something.” She withdrew a small aerosol can from her pocket and covered her mouth and nose with a cloth. She sprayed the air above the men’s heads.

  “What is that?” one of them asked. He looked like an aging Cabbage Patch doll.

  “Just a precaution. A little disinfectant for your protection. I came from outer space, remember? I don’t want to expose you to any deadly space germs.” When Vista stole the mind control drug from the amusement park, she never imagined she would use it on an alien planet one day.

  Their eyes clouded with confusion. The atmosphere in the room changed from belligerent to complacent as the spray took effect.

  “Thank you,” Cabbage Patch said.

  “Kentucky Fried Chicken,” Sanders said.

  “I was from Kentucky, once,” a voice drawled. The owner of the voice resembled 500 pounds of sweaty melting wax. “Senator Roy Gubbles.”

  “I remember you, Mr. Gubbles.”

  “Senator Gubbles,” he corrected.

  “Whatever, Gumby. Actually, you were only a senator on Earth. Here, you’re just… I’m not sure what you are here. Jabba the Hut, I think. Such a shame your colleagues didn’t choose you to stay.”

  “What do you mean? Nobody stayed. That planet is dead. Destroyed by the asteroid.”

  “Vista grinned. “Oh, no, dear Gubbles. That’s what they wanted you to believe. The sad truth is, they chose the ones worthy to stay and blasted the undesirables into space. You, sir, did not make the cut. Did you piss anyone off, by chance? Money troubles, Senator?”

  Gubbles hung his head and she knew she had nailed it. He’d fallen into financial trouble and his cronies were tired of bailing him out.

  “Why should we believe you?” Sanders barked.

  “Because I was there. Long after you all got kicked off the planet, I remained, along with your old golfing buddies. If you don’t believe me, I have a little video you might want to see.”

  Vista clicked a button on her implant and turned around. An image projected on the wall in front of them. It was the phony broadcast shown on the ships, of the asteroid destroying Earth. Except this video wasn’t on a ship’s screen. It was displayed on the giant screen in Times Square, with a giant party of New Year’s Eve proportions in full swing below. Billionaires from around the world cheered and celebrated. Champagne corks popped.

  The Uppers watched in stunned silence.

  “Sorry guys. Hate to break it to you, but there was a big party, and you weren’t invited. They celebrated after you left. You were duped. Thrown away by your own kind.”

  “But… what…?” Sanders sputtered.

  “Chicken butt!” V
ista giggled. “But seriously, boys, if I were you, I’d be pissed off. I’d want revenge! Those bastards took everything you had! Your jobs, your property, your money!”

  “Those bastards!” Cabbage Patch repeated.

  “You know what I’d do if I were you? I’d go back there and take back what was mine.”

  “But we can’t! The ship is broken!”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I mean is, I can fix it. I can program a course for Earth and send you on your way.”

  The Uppers murmured amongst themselves.

  “Think about it fellows! The assholes who sent you away will be long dead by the time you get to Earth. But you – you’re still strong and… erm… healthy. You could take your families back home and take your rightful place on the planet of your birth.”

  “What do you want in return?” Gubbles asked.

  “Why nothing, really. Just leave this planet, this pain-in-the-ass, useless, always-having-to-move planet, to the less fortunate. The Workers have no place to go. You wouldn’t have to take them with you to Earth. You’d have the ship all to yourselves.

  * * *

  It didn’t take the Uppers long to reach a decision.

  Vista moved the Aldous closer to the city in preparation for boarding. The Workers built a walkway for the Uppers, leading from the city to the gangplank, and loaded their belongings, most of which were made of gold. Hopefully the alien overlords of Earth liked gold. Maybe they’d be able to bargain for their lives.

  The new citizens of Summerland gathered to watch the massive ship and its equally massive cargo rise into the sky, and then in a flash, it was gone.

  Donna gave Vista a huge hug. “I don’t know how to thank you. I can’t believe you convinced them to leave. How did you do it?”

  “Let’s call it the power of persuasion.”

  * * *

  Summerland thrived. Everyone did their share of work, and everyone shared in the benefits. The ridiculous golden towers were left to melt when the Scorch came, and the city was replaced with more practical, easily movable structures to suit the Summerlanders’ nomadic lifestyle. Aaron and Lucy grew up and had children of their own.