The Voices of Martyrs

by Maurice Broaddus

  “Citizens of the universe, we are here to reclaim the mothership.”

  §

  They lie to you, George. You don’t exist. You’re nothing but a pack of baseball cards without gum. You are little more than the liner note drivel, ripped from the ravings of a fringe cult transcribed while riding shotgun on a bad LSD trip. This isn’t the real world. But you know that, don’t you? You aren’t some savior figure struggling to come to terms with your messianic consciousness. Look at you, George, you are a boy, not a man, having a drug-induced dream. If your mother could see you now, you’d be the death of her, George. You know what’s best for you, right? Get a nine-to-five. Get married. Consume. Obsess. Covet. Never question. Never wake up. Never wake up. Never wake…

  “… up, Shakes! Hump your ass!” Mallia had him by the wrist, dragging him behind an overturned table across the floor. Through the fog, all around him, he could see the trampled bodies, could hear the screams. His fingers scrabbled over the floor to gain some kind of hold for leverage, but his fingers only found discarded clothing, still warm, and the grains of sand that he knew had once been people. He felt sick, coming down off a bad trip.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Damn it.” Mallia leaned over, her breasts heavy on his chest, as she checked his eyes. “Their gas is still affecting you. I hoped you would be more immune to it.”

  “You’re beautiful.”

  “Apparently not.” Mallia palmed a rod in each hand. With a flick of her wrist, they extended into batons. She caught him staring at them. “For defense purposes only.”

  “Defending who?” Shakes asked.

  “Get up! We need to get you somewhere safe. The Star Child’s using the artifact to hold them off. I don’t know how they found us. They didn’t …”

  … think of your brothers, George. Of your sisters. Think of what would become of them without you. Think of your home. Think of your hood. Think …

  “… they’re sending everything they got at us.” A bad mama jamma, Mallia leapt into the fray, delivering a round house kick that shook the roof off that mutha. Then she battered him with the batons, twirling them with the ease of drumsticks. “That’s Professor Bereft of Groove’s lieutenant leading them. He must know that we’ve found you. He must know that …”

  … you can still have a future. There’s something more out there for you, but you must stop this nonsense. Get back on board with the real thing, George. Get your head out the stars and come back to earth. You need to …

  “… snap out of it, Shakes. We’re doing this all for you. You’re the real thing.”

  “The words are gone.” Shakes stared at his hands, making sure he had the appropriate number of digits.

  “They’re coming out of your mouth.”

  “Funk you. They’re not there. They’re not there, I’m telling you.” Shakes trembled. “No, wait, somebody’s in my head.”

  “Then fight him.”

  Unsteady at first, Shakes rose to his feet, letting Mallia’s voice pull him through the noise. Through the smoke, the screams of the people rushing past as thick and clunky suits of brightly-colored armor chased them. The high squeal of a dozen theremins laughed at them, cutting them down with glee. One of the Afronauts stood there, his fiery pink and purple Bop Gun aimed toward Shakes’ heart. He could sense the smile behind the obsidian orb, hear the cackling of laughter, and the mocking tone of his words.

  I am transmitting ideas directly into your reality, crooked and unoriginal. You fell into my grandest trap. Prepare to become the greatest story ever untold.

  The muzzle of the Bop Gun flared, but then the Star Child was there. He leapt, waving an object that looked like a flashlight. He screamed. He fell.

  But all Shakes knew after that was the light.

  §

  Who am I?

  Another pointless dream lost in a crowd of pointless dreams. Hunched over in the dark, gyrating, bumping, grinding, in dance to relieve that pressure. The ship. Hurtling through space. The ship was mother. My true mother. That knowing noise, the constant thrum, giving myself over to the music. The dance itself is the most intense rush, taking me out of this world to that place of possibilities. Holy funk, the engine of life and creation, like collard greens, KYs, and cornbread for the soul. Where everything that could happen, has happened, a cosmic conflagration, subatomic rhythms in collision. Where reality is the imaginary story.

  I am …

  “… waking up. I’m making it up. I’m … cosmically aware,” Shakes said. “Sweet Christmas, this is deep.”

  Vibrations poured through his body, a deep soul spasm, and leapt from him into the surrounding walls then reverberated back to him. Panels along the walls lit up. The walls hummed to life. Neon everywhere, blinking to life like the eyes of long-dormant beasts. Somewhere deep within the building, something pulsed to life.

  “This building … it’s the mothership,” the dark Afronaut said. Shakes felt his fear through the modulation.

  “Look here, Mr. Wiggles.” Shakes turned to the black-clad Afronaut. Its onyx-domed body seemed frozen in time, space-locked. “Y’all think you so slick, so cool, but you nothing but a daggone fool. Everybody’s got a little light under the sun.”

  Shakes felt his mind becoming a weapon of love, flexed it like fingers and reached into the Afronaut’s mind. He was struck by the image of maggot-laced meat. Shakes heard the music in his heart, the pounding drum. The bassline kicked through his soul. His feet took off with the groove, skating in a circle about the man. His skates never seemed to leave the ground, round and round he went. Shakes opened his mind, allowing more funk to wash into his soul. He watched it crash down in a great pink wave. A torrent of groove washed out the silt of Unfunkiness, whipping beneath the surface, brushing out the dead and breathless at the bottom.

  “No. No more. I hate water. I never learned to swim!” The Afronaut clutched at the sides of his orbed head, trying desperately to claw it open, and collapsed to his knees, then fell forward.

  Seeing Mallia cradling the Star Child’s head, Shakes rushed to their side. “If I’m going to be down with you, I’m down to the bitter end.” The Star Child’s eyes grew distant. “I can hear my mother call. I can hear my mother call. I can hear—”

  §

  Shakes stood within the bubble bridge of the mothership. Earth filled the viewscreen, growing smaller and smaller.

  “We’re prepared to leave orbit,” Mallia said.

  “I know. I was just taking one more look.” He thought about his momma, about his brothers and sisters. Had they known all along? Would they be safe without him? He couldn’t say, couldn’t worry about it. He shifted and turned to Mallia. “What’s the plan?”

  “We find more of the Funkateers, gather our forces. We will spread funk’s glorious message across the cosmos if we have to. Then we’ll bring it straight to Professor Bereft of Groove.”

  “In other words, we take it to that sucker.” He nodded, turned back to the blue marble on the screen. “Where’d you learn to fight, anyway?”

  “Shortest kid in the band and four older brothers.” Mallia slipped her hand into his and joined him in staring at earth. “It all seems so big. I don’t know where or how to begin.”

  Living and jiving and digging the skin he was in, Shakes stretched his mind out, touching so many, awakening them to the possibility of everything. He turned to her.

  “Free your mind … and your ass will follow.”

  Pimp My Airship

  “Who Stole the Soul?”

  “Citizens of the Universe, do not attempt to adjust your electro-transmitter, there is nothing wrong. We have taken control to bring you this special bulletin.”

  “Aw, hell nah.” Hubert “Sleepy” Nixon paused mid-keystroke on the pianoforte. A system of pipes ran from the back of the instrument to the ceiling, steam billowing in mild tufts from the joints. The low, arrhythmic notes slowly faded into a dull echo as he turned to the gleaming carapace of the electro-
transmitter with mild exasperation.

  A phlegmatic gentleman by nature, some mistook Sleepy’s somnambulant demeanor for muddle-mindedness. Given nuanced consideration, this was rather true after a fashion. Sleepy reached for his pipe, tamped the side to even the spread of chiba leaves, lit them, and inhaled. Holding the smoke in his lungs for the span of three heartbeats, he exhaled a thick cloud of noxious vapor. Only then was he prepared to amble his considerable girth toward the faded tapestry that concealed the descending spiral stairway. Wide-shouldered and bulbous framed as he was, each step creaked under his weight as he slowly made his way into the subterranean hollow. The basement smelled of a privy pit.

  “That’s right, today’s mathematics is knowledge. Let me break it down for you: Know the ledge.” A glass-fronted cabinet contained a rotating cylinder that gyrated up and down. A series of antennae lined the top of the device, electricity arcing between them, the charges climbing the spires like tendrils of ivy. Pipes splayed like pleats of a fan, groaned and gurgled as the home kine burned. In the undercity, Fortune—as much as the government allowed—favored a neighborhood possessing a single kine or two, much less a home laying claim to its own. The voice emanated from the darkened corner of the chamber and belonged to the spindly-framed gentleman behind the strange apparatus. Barely seated on the many-times-patched ottoman, was (120 Degrees of) Knowledge Allah.

  Knowledge Allah’s strong, handsome face was eroded by despair. His distant eyes had stared into the abyss of anger and hate for too long. A gold band pulled back his thick braids giving them the appearance of interlocked fingers. His thick cravat was tucked into his vest. The difficulty of Knowledge Allah was that one had to decipher the code of his thought language before he began to make any sense. Such a task rarely proved simple while under the effects of the chiba.

  “You don’t know who you are,” Knowledge Allah’s self-secure voice rang with steel. “Take on your true name. Arm. Leg. Leg. Arm. Head. You are the original man. You are gods. Yet, you sit there, blind, deaf, and dumb to your potential.

  “Few realize who they are, and those that do—and seek to wake the people from their neglected truth—are incarcerated by this grafted government. The Star Child, leader of the F8, is due to be executed in a few days, but none of you could be bothered. The time for revolution is at hand, brothers and sisters. The time is at hand. We only await a sign.

  “I exist between time outside time. In the between places. I am the voice of truth in these troubled times.”

  The clockwork gears ground to a gentle halt as the spindles of the machine wound down. The electric arcs sputtered, and the entire apparatus darkened. Knowledge Allah stooped from behind the glass cabinet, daubing his sweaty brow with a handkerchief, a smirk of zealotry on his face.

  “What the fuck, man?” Sleepy asked, his insistent steps catching up to him as he found himself winded. He eased himself into the nearest chair. Knowledge Allah poured him some brandy from a nearby decanter before pouring a glass of water for himself.

  “Are the mysteries I strive to illuminate too deep for you, my brother?” Knowledge Allah clinked Sleepy’s glass with his own then downed his water. He often regaled Sleepy with the idea of forming a band, being the frontman to the capacious Sleepy’s music with the hopes of using their act to spread his message. Like many of their ideas, it collected dust due to inaction.

  “The only mystery is my need to get high.” Sleepy ran his pick through his blond-streaked Afro, his beard barely tamed by a comb. His nose was too flat and too broad for his face, as if he’d been punched with an iron. His teeth, likewise, were too small for his mouth. Against skin like burnished onyx, a silver stud protruded from his chin. He puffed out another cloud. “Mystery solved.”

  “They set snares that have been prepared for you. Snares meant to lead you from your path of righteousness. You’ve let them cave you.”

  “They, who?” Sleepy asked, forgetting his oft-repeated lesson of not asking Knowledge Allah questions. The answers were rarely of any use. However, Sleepy couldn’t help but think there was an undercurrent of derision to Knowledge Allah’s tones, as if the other man stared down the thin beak of a nose at him.

  “Your so-called grafted government’s behind it,” Knowledge Allah continued. “The next phase is to destroy us. You think it stopped with Tuskegee?” The Tuskegee Institute. One of the few schools allowed in the undercities. The name sent a chill along the spine at the memory of the experiments done in the name of science. “No, they just got slicker. We don’t have poppy fields. We don’t have dirigibles. We do have wills sapped by opiate clouds.”

  “Sounds like we don’t have shit,” Sleepy said. “Speaking of, I thought we agreed on no more broadcasts until we got our act together?”

  “The truth cannot go unvoiced.”

  “Shit.” Sleepy pronounced the word as if it possessed three syllables. “You one of them long-winded niggas who just like to hear themselves talk.”

  “Look at how quickly you let their hate speech drip from your own lips, betraying your own. Don’t get caught up in the game of the 85. We need to—”

  “Blah, blah, blah, nigga. Blah. I hear you talking. What I don’t hear is a plan. You got all this ‘righteous knowledge’ … What we going to do?”

  “I’m going to free the Star Child.” Knowledge Allah stood up for maximum dramatic effect. “You driving?”

  Sleepy remained seated, as the implications of the words reverberated in his mind; their import required a few moments to digest. Knowledge Allah beamed, obviously quite pleased with himself, and wrapped his great coat around himself and nodded topside. Sleepy fastened a cape around his long, blue eight-button coat, the image of a flabby martinet.

  Smoke stacks belched poisonous clouds. The oppressive sky, gray as prison-issue uniforms, cloaked their furtive entry onto the streets. The air, redolent with a ferrous rock, was heavy with the stink of coal and sweat. He had bathed for an hour and a half to scrub off any trace of soot from him. Even the poor clung to their dignity. In the shadows of the steam trams of the overcity, a Hansom whisked by, held aloft by rusty trellises. Neither man dreamed of catching a cab in Atlantis, especially at night. A police trawler slowed as it neared them. Other denizens scurried away like rats caught in the light, quick to return to the burrow openings they called home. The pair held their ground, hard eyes unblinking at the passing vehicle. Sleepy spat a black-tinged wad of phlegm. Once out of eye line, Sleepy opened his garage door.

  The metal gleamed even in the wan moonlight, polished to a glassy sheen every day. Twin brass tubes formed the body of the car, curving down on both ends stitched together by copper rivets. Headlamps, jutting cans, burned to life. The suspension bounced and lurched in a frenzy of steam belches, jolting them up and down. The bemused pair enjoyed the weight of stares from their neighbors. The 24” rims, whirring fans, continuously shuttered like deployed armor. With a roar, the car took off, spumes of steam left in its wake.

  “Fear of a Black Planet”

  The slow and winding White River neatly carved the undercity in half as the Victorian architecture of the overcity known as Indianapolis gave way to the more dilapidated homes in the undercity the natives dubbed Atlantis. Billboards of smiling, brown faces endorsing opiate use sat next to adverts of money changers offering promises of quick loans. Both preyed on desperation and ignorance. America shone as the most prosperous colony in service to the Albion Empire. With its plantation farms and free labor force, America was the dirty sweatshop engine that propelled the Empire. Even the upper crust of the American social strata were held in tacit contempt by the Albion proper, unwilling to acknowledge how they kept their hands clean. The force of her colonialist spirit had long ago reduced the issue of slavery to a low simmer, and the much talked about threat of an American Civil War never came to pass. With the rise of the automata, however, the economics of the unseemly endeavor proved too deleterious, and the slaves were released.

  Those of an African blo
odline, no matter how much or little ran in their veins, were relegated to a state of vague emancipation. Not living in the massive, industrial overcities, but dismissed to ghettos—pacified by legalized, free-flowing drugs—a terra incognita somehow lost between the cartographer’s calipers. Or, they were imprisoned.

  Viceroy George II, who pandered without shame to the interests of the Empire, currently governed the land. Though high-born and privileged, he was no nobleman but rather a spoiled bloodline of nine generations of insular breeding.

  The buildings crumbled into screes of pebbles along rotted sidewalks under an air of imminent decay. Gas lamps produced forlorn shadows from the steeped darkness. Old men huddled in puddles of light, drinking brandy and smoking cigars blunted with opium by wan moonlight. Their garrulous conversation of the most impolitic kind filled the night with the bluster of oafs. A twinge of jealousy at not being able to join in fluttered in Sleepy’s chest.

  Knowledge Allah directed him to a two-story brick, Queen Anne home guarded by a wrought-iron fence. The house stood out from the rest of the neighborhood’s squalor as if someone had staked a claim to retake this spot. Drab green with fine terra cotta ornaments and lacy spindles, its conical-roofed turret had fish scale slate shingles. Stained glass sat atop curtained bay windows.

  “Whose place is this?” Sleepy asked.

  “An inventor’s.”

  “He down with The Cause?”

  “Do you even know what cause you serve?”

  “I was just asking.”

  “You assume a lot. The Cause is more than attitude, affect, and wardrobe. You need to be open to the mysteries life offers,” Knowledge Allah said.