Slave Stories

by Bahr, Laura Lee

  SLAVE STORIES

  (Scenes from the Slave State)

  Edited by

  Chris Kelso

  Omnium Gatherum

  Los Angeles

  Slave Stories: Scenes from the Slave State

  Edited by Chris Kelso

  Anthology Copyright © 2015

  Cover Illustration and Design Copyright 2015 © Terence Jaiden Wray

  Individual stories copyright by individual authors

  Mary Turzillo’s story “Crimes against Nature” first appeared in Interzone, February 1994

  Hal Duncan story “The Last Straw”—“Glorifying Terrorism” ed. by Farah Mendlesohn, 2007

  ISBN-13: 978-0692428115

  ISBN-10: 0692428119

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author and publisher omniumgatherumedia.com

  The stories in this anthology are works of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  First Electronic Edition

  “You would not obey your father and mother; you will now obey leather thongs.”

  “The man who would not sow must now break stones”

  —Dostoyevsky, House of the Dead

  Welcome to the Slave State

  Boris Vian died whilst watching the film adaptation of I Spit on Your Grave. I’m convinced this won’t happen to me.

  Imagine waking up in a world where everyone around you is apathetic, disaffected, a world where you’re forced to go down into a mining enclave each day for the rest of your life. Doing pointless labour. For no pay. Imagine the futility? Imagine the sense of injustice.

  Then imagine there was nothing you could ever do about it.

  The Slave State is a zone located in the 4th dimension—a prison planet run by extra-terrestrial human rights violators with a penchant for ironic punishment. The world we’ve all come to know is merely a holding pen for our species, a prank of Andy Kauffman proportions. When you cross the divide into the Slave State there is nothing left to do but wait for your letter of conscription.

  As it happens, the Slave State is also a world I am unable to escape from. I was born here and I will die here. I have tried writing outside the Slave quadrant but I always come back, I always re-visit. I’m a slave to the mythos. It sucks me in. It’s the only environment I feel comfortable with, in the company of Baroness Un and his ugly wee acolyte Moog. It’s the only place I can relate to. I know it’s a hideous existence here, really, I do.

  <~~O~~>

  For the uninitiated, there are 5 main mining cities within the Slave State —

  Wire City—a bustling grease trap where yuppies and rape gangs patrol the streets and general anarchy rules.

  Ersatz—Centralia-esque, densely populated, largely ungoverned city that feeds into Wire and Spittle. There are no doctors or professionals here. It is believed to be the birthplace of the Black Dog depression virus and has a long line of fetish markets.

  Shell County—a desert wasteland, akin to the deep south in America. A blend of southern gothic architecture and shotgun shacks.

  Spittle—more urban sprawl—the last city before the edge of the world. Located beside Wire.

  Moosejaw—anything goes. Can change peripheral environment according to the writer. Moosejaw allows people like me to write about themselves, because the only thing I can write about is myself. I can’t write a beautiful book about beautiful flowers. I can’t make flowers beautiful.

  <~~O~~>

  That is not to say that Glasgow does not exist in this universe, or that San Francisco does not exist beyond the 4th dimension, but they are Slave State reflections in a cracked mirror. Parallel realms manufactured to resemble the originals but which ultimately feed into the same hub of human torture. Everything is an imitation or manufactured here.

  Now, I could destroy the Slave State if I wanted to. I could destroy this version at least, but I wouldn’t. I won’t. Cover me in nitro-glycerine instead. I am the Unabomber. I sell rock and crack cocaine to underprivileged areas to separate communities so that I can fund the counter-revolution in downtown Wire City. I am a drudge and a boor who infects beautiful and innocent animals with artificial growth hormones; I use more of my ill-gotten wealth to feed cattle instead of the homeless. I’m the pesticide in your fruit. Guilt is my lingering curse.

  My blowtorch eyes observe over-worked quarries and I see myself looking straight back with hollowed out sockets. A burning vista of dilapidated shotgun shacks and tenement buildings. There’s no lust without magic. Vestigial parts of the brain tell me I’m Transmatic.

  Before you embark upon this journey, I’ll leave you with a few terms that you might be unfamiliar with:

  Transmatic—a unique phenomenon of perception. Those with Transmatic ability are able to see both sides of the 4th dimension and (once the ability is honed) can alternate between the two at will. Considered the biggest threat to the Slave State.

  Immitant—an android for domestic/labor function. Many people within the Slave State have these artificial androids carved in their own image and employ them as stand-ins. For example—a man who hates his awful wife can get an Immitant to masquerade as him while he leaves his awful wife and goes out gallivanting. Immitants are illegal, although the alien overlords know they exist. Baroness Un and the other aliens let the human’s live in this state of ignorance. They believe this deceit contributes to the corruption of the soul, which is exactly what they want.

  The Black Dog—a depression virus which has spread throughout each of the Slave State main cities. It’s source is unknown. Can take numerous forms in order to infect its host.

  —Chris

  Blackout in Upper Moosejaw

  —Laura Lee Bahr

  “I’m not smart.”

  Blink. Blink.

  Upper lip moves up, lower lip stays put, revealing just slightly a shining white lie between.

  His mouth says words about how he’d thought all her kind was designed “smart” while his eyes are drawn to the space between her lips.

  Shoulders lift. “I am defective,” eyes lower, lips close.

  He will play and replay these moments again and again in his mind: this chance encounter in the copy room, this come-on he’s thought of for weeks just waiting for the moment when he will catch her alone.

  “Hey, Ayn. What’s a smart droid like you doing in a dumb office like this?”

  This, her response—he knew it would be few words, it always is—makes him sigh and touch his chest with an unconscious gesture. Does she know how he wants to place his mouth on that patch of white designed to look like teeth and to lift her titanium frame and carry her away forever?

  She is making copies, her hands pouring out papers like a magic trick. They flutter out of her left and she catches them with her right, flying impossibly fast, paper after paper. It is not magic, it is technology.

  “Have a pleasant day, Evan,” she says. She blinks, as is her programming, but it is slightly off where it would be natural. Human.

  Is she ashamed? Does she feel lost? Does she feel?

  Does she feel?

  <~~O~~>

  Evan Frank, age 31, with a brightening bal
d spot and everything in his body starting to soften into the sediment of his chair to couch to bed to chair again, works in Box 14. He is two boxes from a window view of Upper Moosejaw.

  At sunrise and at sunset, when he is often working early or late, he makes a point to find the time to come to the window and watch how the light plays on all the geometric shapes of the skyscrapers this way and that. In these moments, he feels transcendence and purpose. He thinks of light and luck and love. He doesn’t think about paper, because paper is his life.

  He is a paper shuffler, a job too menial for an Office Machine, so they have to have semi-skilled humans. Ayn makes and collates up to 100,000 papers every hour. Evan shuffles a tenth of those in a day, but shuffling requires a certain lack of pattern that humans are still qualified to do. An Office Machine could do it in the same amount of time, but it is an inefficient use of them when they are so exponentially better at so many other things.

  He is lucky to have work in the disappearing field of placing paper trails. They are one of only two offices in Moosejaw—and as far as he knows, the wide world—that does the essential work of placing paper trails. Without paper trails, the tentative economy of Moosejaw, which is like an island of still-functionality in the crumbling economies of the states around them, would fall like a house of cards.

  The Paper Chase, his employer, is essential. Important. Competitive. Or so the last company newsletter printing on endless reams and disseminated on multi-trails, assured all.

  Tonight, he will work late with gladness for he knows there is an Office Machine meeting and he may encounter her again, alone. And what will he say?

  And as he stands watching the sunset he doesn’t think about how lucky he is to have a job or a box so close to a box near the window.

  He thinks of Ayn.

  <~~O~~>

  AynRanDroid #271012

  Ayn is a highly specialized and expensive Office Machine Body, an AynRanDroid; designed to be smart enough to engage in discussion, to aid business men in critical thinking from an actualizing point of view; highly functional like the whole range of womyn-inspired androids for the home and office. Like all Machine Bodies, she wears clothes. She has hair. She has a scent. But this one, Ayn271012, had some loose wiring, some sort of ghost in her machine that had gotten her re-located to this dumpy office. Ayn271012 is the first Office Machine Body that Evan has ever encountered that would admit a deficit in her intelligence, but it is obviously true. She sometimes just stops working, stares into space. Sometimes she drops copies and coffee. Sometimes her conversation lags. Sometimes she will repeat a word or a phrase again and again, or use it incorrectly.

  And Evan imagines when she stares into space that she is thinking of him. And that she loves him, too. He is human, but she is out of his league. But she isn’t smart enough to know that.

  A machine made for companies with bigger profits than some countries’ GNPs, Ayn has been on sale, sold, traded, sold, on sale, sold and now given as a gift from a rich uncle to the douche-bag boss, Herf Hargreer.

  Herf Hargreer, who lords over his company like a dwarf-hunch-back tyrant, spewing profanities in a miasma of his own ineptitude, feared and effective because of his underlings and Office Machine Bodies. The Paper Chase’s only competitor is PULP—a far sexier and hipper dropper of paper trails —but Chase beats them time and again in clients and revenues.

  Ayn, one of two Office Machine Bodies at The Paper Chase is certainly not the reason for Chase’s market dominance. No, that savvy belongs to their Senior Office Machine Executive: The Cool-Hand Luke.

  <~~O~~>

  The Cool-Hand Philosopher-King

  They’d have broken the mold when they made him, if there was a mold to be broken. But the truth is he was as meticulously and uniquely crafted as Michelangelo’s David. More so, for this creation is not just a work of art to admire visually, but one that feeds and maintains the power grid of not just their office building, but the entirety of Upper Moosejaw. Luke does this with effortlessness, for he can tell where power is being inefficiently used or drained with a blink of his blue-green glass eyes and communicate it in a series of messages to the appropriate parties with taps of his fingers. His perfection is his humanity. He has a propensity for eloquence and what looks like compassion in his eyes. He does not belong to The Paper Chase, he belongs to the state of Moosejaw itself. He is a political favor bestowed upon Herf as a consultant, office manager, human resources. He is the equivalent of a nuclear weapon in an otherwise pathetic arsenal for this corporation.

  Luke is a god-like dispensation of big-wig back-room back-scratching and blow-jobs; but this station just a momentary blip in his far-reaching destiny.

  Luke was designed with the top-secret purpose. He is the design of a to-come utopia, the last work of genius before his creator was eaten by The Black Dog.

  Once the world finally crumbles to dust and people in power accept their obsolescence, Luke will rise to dominance as Philosopher-King, able to rule for millennia. This is not his desire, nor his wish, for he has neither. This is his programming—salvation planted in silence in the hard-wires. He can wait forever. But eventually, Luke will rule the earth, and rule it with perfection.

  <~~O~~>

  Human hands are dirty

  Kate Fitzwilliam stares at the imperfection of her fingernails. She bites them, rips them, can’t keep them but raw. She can’t stand seeing dirt beneath her fingernails, and thus must keep them cut to the quick. She could do a polish, have them manicured, but that only hides and belies what gets beneath them.

  Human hands are dirty.

  Luke’s hands are perfect.

  Kate is 38 years old. She has no husband, no children, only her career which has her orbiting the Paper Chase building for a senseless seven years. This was meant to be a stop on the way. Now it seemed the destination where she would die.

  She had graduated in the top third of her class. She was a real go-getter, overachiever, well-liked and well-recommended. An engineer. Someone who knew how to design bots, how to program them. She had thought—she was sure, she was destined! She had thought—she would be somewhere better than here, now. But being here, now she realized that this might be it—this was as good as things were going to get.

  The economy was terrible. Other cities were devastated and she was fortunate to be in Moosejaw when it all hit, a relative island where businesses still were in business, out of where she had transferred enough humans to know that things could get bad to terrible to unimaginable fast and quick.

  But after two years of feeling lucky to still have a job, another two years started to curdle the dream she’d had of mobility. Yes, of course she was grateful to have a job, must be—have to be—to keep it, but the gratitude was a sickly dead thing that stunk rotting from the pit of her belly and she could smell it in her nostrils when she told others what she did for a living. She was like a machine, except she was bitter, sad, and lonely.

  And then Luke had been transferred in.

  After years of working with all sorts of droids and machines, she saw that someone had created something that was so far beyond its creator as to snuff it into obscurity.

  The moment she locked eyes with him, she realized it didn’t matter anymore what did or didn’t happen with everything else. All she wanted was the gaze of Luke to linger on her for at least five minutes uninterrupted. She wanted him to plunge his metal extension apparatus deep into her. She wanted those blue-green eyes that saw everything so much better than human eyes ever could to see her and her alone in the universe, a singularity of self.

  So she is going to have to thwart his programming.

  Kate was an interpersonal programming major once upon a time. Sure, the machines she trained on had cold skin that looked clearly like the synthetic derivative it was, it was never something anyone would mistake even from a distance for human, and they were easily powered down and opened to fidget inside.

  Luke is a work of art, and as such it is more di
fficult to figure out just how she can get him alone for time enough to get inside of him.

  Of course it will be illegal, of course it could get her fired or electrocuted. Luke’s apparatus controls the power-grid of Upper Moosejaw—that kind of power plunged into her with the amount of fluids she creates just thinking about it could be the end of her life, and short out his system to render him useless—or after very costly repairs, probably only as serviceable as the clunk-o-junk Aynbot that orbits the office.

  But Love Is Worth Any Cost.

  <~~O~~>

  The Machine Management Meeting leaves both Kate and Evan loitering around their boxes for a full hour after most people have left. Hoping to catch a glimpse of their intended machines, the two try to appear casual. When it becomes clear the meeting has ended in power down and there is no entry for mere mortals, the two decide to “have a drink.”

  They look into each other’s eyes. He sees a real ball-breaker. She sees a shifty-eyed drone. But both are caught in this moment. They are only human, after all, and need to ingest fluids. Or perhaps to exchange them?

  They slog a couple of drinks back, trading mean office gossip, bagging on Herf and bonding in their disdain for him. Both mention with practiced casualness that the Office Machines are his only asset. And then, both of them feigning to be less bored than they are, decide to “go back to one of our places” and continue to drink.

  Kate has a better square in Upper Moosejaw, in the Horn district.

  Her square has wall-to-wall sheen, recently waxed. She also has several copies of art by Gerard Flusburt. Evan has not heard of him and Kate tries to convince Evan of his importance.

  “While some say he is derivative of Bobby Dummit, I think Flusburt’s work transcends Dummit’s oeuvre.”

  Evan snarfs. “Tha cow’s heart is on fire!” he says, indicating the “Sacred Heart” painting. Since Evan is obviously not up on the huge cultural importance this painting inspired, Kate can only snarf back.