Tides of Hysteria
The Neon City Trilogy
By
Adam J Smith
Neon City trilogy 2/3
Neon series 5/9
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Copyright © 2019 Adam J Smith
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, contact the author.
Everything is connected
Illiam
“I’m so sorry,” Illiam overheard his mother say. She was cooking his dinner with the videolink active on the refrigerator door, and it smelled like crispy chicken done in the oven. “I can’t believe you’re caught up in this.”
He didn’t pay that much attention, mother was always chatting with one of her sisters as though the world was going to end, his father said – “They just can’t leave a stone unturned in the quest for gossip.” His favourite show was on. Metal Maniac, hoovering the streets with guns of justice; an ex-cop gone rogue, doing what he must to keep the city safe. Illiam smiled as the opening theme began.
“So what are the options?” His mother said loudly, pans clattering. He looked frustratingly across to the brightly lit kitchen area, the window beyond opaque to the city. The noise was nothing new, just annoying and louder than usual. He turned the volume up.
“We have an appointment in two weeks at the clinic,” he heard aunt Florence say. “There’s nothing really to decide seeing as how all the orphanages are empty, not a damn child in the whole damn city without a home. If we’d only thought to check before. But no, Jon was like “It’ll happen, just gotta keep on trying.” Of course he’d say that – why wouldn’t he? Even tried the orphanages belowground – I don’t care, I ain’t got no privileged stick up my ass – but even there all the kids have been snapped up. There’s some whores selling their wombs – they come with a certificate and everything, signed and stamped that they ain’t infertile. For sure, there’s some ladies lettin’ their man fuck ‘em to get ‘em pregnant. Gettin’ weekend passes to go down to low town, while we – what? – fuck off to Chinatown? Get some gigolo action from central? Oh, I’d like to see Jon’s face then!” His aunt was so loud she drowned out the show’s music.
“He wanted to pay for a womb?”
“Not in so much as said it, but you know, you just know that’s what the man’d prefer, yeah. Rather than allow someone else touch my body.”
“Ain’t that a better option? I mean, when you think about it. If there’s no way you can adopt, then it’s either a surrogate or surgery, and surgery may be dangerous.”
“And have some whoreface looking up at me as I feed them? You don’t understand, May, you have Illiam. You have your family. I don’t want some imposter blood. I didn’t even really wanna adopt. I want Jon’s baby. I want it to be ours.”
“Of course I get it – I wouldn’t wish this infertility on anyone. We’re blessed.”
He looked away from the screen and saw his mother watching him through the shelves, eyes peering between stacked plates and bowls.
“We are truly blessed,” his mother continued. “There’s no other feeling like it.”
It made him feel weird; he knew she was talking about him, but he didn’t feel like anything special. He was just a normal boy in a normal home going to a normal school.
“Okay you can stop rubbing my nose in it now,” said aunt Florence. “I call up for some sympathy and all I get is me, me, me.”
“I’m me, me, me?” His mother turned back to the viewscreen and laughed. “You’re a leech, you know that? All poor little old me.” His aunt had struck and the snake had bit. Another one of his father’s sayings.
“Oh, get to the pits where you belong,” snapped aunt Florence. The viewscreen turned black.
“Bye!” shouted his mother.
He turned back to the show, ears ringing in the sudden silence. That didn’t last long. He could tell she was angry now – pans clattered with more shrillness, cups weren’t placed but slammed, doors weren’t closed but banged. When the food was ready she brought it over, putting the plate down in front of him on the coffee table. The dining table sat against the opposite wall, forever inset.
“Was I too harsh?”
He looked up at her and smiled. Thick black hair curled tightly down to her shoulders, a proud globe of a perm. Brown lips smiled back. “I don’t know,” he shrugged. “Thanks for tea.” He picked up a knife and fork and tucked in.
“I get so annoyed sometimes,” she slumped into her chair, a coffee cupped between two hands.
“It sounded like aunt Florence was saying mean things.” All that came back to him were the bad words that he could only say in his head, and even then it made him feel naughty. Like ‘whore’ and ‘fuck’.
“You shouldn’t listen to her when she’s talking like that. I should know better, myself. She’s a bad influence.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“It’s not your fault, sweetie.” She leaned forward and pushed her hand through his thick hair, scratching at his scalp. Then she pulled him towards her, just as he was about to put a forkful of chicken in his mouth.
“Mum!” he groaned.
“I love you,” she said, giving him a hug and a kiss.
“Yeah, yeah.”
She released him, falling back into her chair.
The metal maniac’s shoulder plates retracted and homing missiles ejected.
“I was harsh. I didn’t mean to gloat. I am so lucky; I didn’t think to rub it in her face. I just didn’t think.” His mother turned to the window and activated the videolink service. “I’ll tell her I’m sorry.”
Illiam groaned and picked up the pad and took it with him to his bedroom, plate in his other hand. He dropped onto his bed and propped the pad against the headboard, resting his head in his hands. Every now and then he grabbed a chicken piece and stuffed his face. He was always stuffing his face, his father said. It was a wonder there was any food left in the apartment.
He’s a growing boy, argued his mother.
That he is, said his father.
He was glad that was about as bad as the arguments got. The way his aunties talked, they were always arguing with his uncles, and when they had parties there was always a fight. A few hugs after – everyone always made up. Always some drama, though, enough to send a man crazy.
He wished his father was home more.
He was always working these days.
Things were bad out there, he’d say at night, through the crack of the open bedroom door. That’s if he even came home. Some nights he was out all night, Illiam falling asleep without the kiss and goodnight he tried so hard to stay up for. His father would come home just as he was having breakfast, or about to leave for school.
His mother hugging his father long and tight, her head against his chest.
Then it was his turn. The smell of sweat and a million other things on his father’s jacket. ‘The piece’ pressing like a stone in his shoes against his shoulder. Always afraid that if his father squeezed too tight ‘the piece’ would go off.
It never did. And never would, he was assured. Something called ‘the safety’ was always on.
“Dad, are you a metal maniac?” he’d asked once.
“Less of
the metal, less of the maniac. What a curious title. Is he meant to be the good guy?”
“He cleans up the streets with rockets for arms and lasers for eyes.”
“Well I don’t have rockets for arms or lasers for eyes but some of the bad guys do.”
“They do?”
“Henry,” said his mother, voice stern.
“Our rockets and lasers are even bigger. It’s not good being a bad guy with me around.” His father grinned and then proceeded to tickle him.
He wondered if tonight would be a late one.
***
He was almost asleep when he felt the covers of his bed across his shoulders, the tightness pressing down as the sheet was tucked under the mattress. Through the fog of half-sleep, his father bent down to kiss his head.
“Sorry I missed you,” he whispered.
“Dad…”
“Yeah?”
Illiam drifted away, this world disappearing.
“’Night, son.”
The words jolted him back to reality. “Dad.”
“Go back to sleep.”
“Did you get the bad guys?”
“You don’t need to worry about them. You just worry about school.” Illiam watched as his room darkened, the door closing until just a vertical strip of light remained, casting the shadows to black.
He pulled the sheet out and stood, tip-toeing to the door. There, he listened to the voices, waiting for his mother’s to become clear, meaning she was outside and he could get another cuddle out of her. There was something calming too about listening to his parents; late at night it kept the shadows in the corners and under the bed, made the world stay real.
His father sounded down when he spoke. Tired. “You know it’s bad out there when you have to take children into custody. Kids for fuck sake. Teens that should be looking at a future not burning and rioting in the streets. If it’s flammable, they’ll light it up. Take them in, and another twenty take their place. We don’t have room for them. No sooner do we release them, then they’re back out on the streets causing trouble for the riot squad. In and out. And if we don’t release them – if we keep them locked up – out come the parents and the liberal march band to demand their freedom. Out come the flares and firebombs and homemade missiles.
“And the worst part of it is I don’t blame them! I don’t want to be the one to take them in. They have every right to feel pissed off. I feel pissed off! For Flo, and for anyone else who is stuck in the same situation. They played us, May. And they still play us. For idiots. And there I am, hauling some wise-cracking ass to lockup when all they’ve done is speak up!”
“Someone has to try and keep the peace,” his mother said.
“When does it end?”
“These clinics they’re setting up. If they work and reverse the infertility, then everything will go back to normal.”
“Will it? Should it?”
“Flo’s waiting on an appointment.”
“Good for her. But she’s one of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Are they going to treat each woman and girl that comes to them? And we’re supposed to trust them to do it right, when they’re the reason for this mess to begin with?”
“What choice do we have?”
“I swear, sometimes I feel like taking off the riot helmet, dropping my shield and my baton, and taking up a Molotov. This is not some fantasy linkshow of yours. The authority is messing with people’s lives and it needs to stop.”
“You can’t do that. You’ve got a family. We have a son and we need to remember how lucky we are every day that this happened for us. I could so easily have been like my sister, but I wasn’t.”
“That’s the only reason I don’t.”
“Keep that thought right there. Everyone is angry right now, but it will all die down once people are given their futures back. It’s too exhausting to stay angry forever. People will move on. People will forget.”
There was a silence, in which Illiam thought he could hear his father’s loud breathing. He was young but that didn’t stop him from seeing the autocars and buildings on fire on the news channel. The blood on his father’s shirts. At school, the teachers would whisper in corridors and the corners of the playground. In huddles, his friends would share enough information to piece together the broken parts of the streets; fragments of a dying city. New babies couldn’t be made any more, which was fine by him – they cried and were annoying. If he thought about it though, he wondered what would happen to everyone if they stopped having all the babies. It didn’t seem real that it might be the end – the adults would figure something out. That’s what adults did.
“I won’t forget,” his father said quietly.
Henry
Against steel and concrete flickered the ghosts of riot and screaming. Transportation stops along the length of 32nd, from 49th to 51st, were ablaze; their flames meandering multitudes of colours as plastics and soft metals melted to the pavement in puddles. Steel carcasses remained, fire still throbbing around them. Storefront windows accepted the thrown heat, innards exposed and gouged, glass shattered and sticking to rubber soles. The rioters, not so much a scalpel but a battering ram. Autocars hadn’t travelled this avenue for weeks. Certainly not the municipal crews that kept the city clean. The asphalt scarred by the burnmarks of a hundred firebombs and the splashing, melting glass that was the bomb’s receptacle. Pools of dried blood, brown in daylight, black at night. A thousand casting baton blows across brows and breaking limbs. Somewhere, always a shout, of fear or anger or pain; or a chorus of chants soaring like songs against death throes, beating a march against the wall.
Where Henry stood. Riot shield raised in an immovable line drawn in the tarmac; one that wound around the inner High district three blocks out from the central tower. There was nothing particularly special about the central tower, other than it sat directly below the ring. The rioters’ wishful destination. An actual wall of block concrete and barbed-wire stood erected in some sections, but where transportation had to be allowed for, a human shield stood in its place, or riot vehicles.
It had begun further afield, down by 33rd, and rippled out through the avenues. The early days were manageable, but it snowballed out of control as one controlling group spread from block to block, picking up the angry and oppressed whose anger was suddenly validated. Violence legitimised. First it began as property damage – those institutions and services run by the city. Before long, collars unleashed, anything went, and that included the law enforcement trying to bring things under control. Rioters – some no older than fifteen – were mown down, and with media drones everywhere it was impossible to hide the truth. Violence begetting violence. More joined the cause and people on both sides lost lives, and before long a general convergence towards the centre ensued, and the authorities retreated to stand their ground.
It felt shaky to Henry. At best.
He listened as the latest chant carried across the night air, silhouettes in lit tower windows enjoying the show and throwing their own occasional abuse.
“We don’t want no fucking thumb
We just want to use your gun
Shoot you ‘til you’re dead and gone
End your fucking management”
He peered into the eyes of the rioters ten metres away, their placards thrusting into the air, eyes vehement. It had begun with the youth but had spread to all ages, now unbound it seemed. Black, white, young and old; they were all present. These young ones in front were wearing business suits and ties with tears purposefully torn into them, both the boys and the girls. Instead of placards, some carried torches. It was these he kept an eye on, for the moment they’d dip to catch the alcohol-drenched cloth.
That would be too obvious though. Behind the chanters were the true threat. Henry had a sonic rifle that could throw the chanters to their knees, but the moment he let boom, the Molotovs would fly. This was the stalemate. So they had to stand and listen. He had to stand and listen.
“Take our babies, ta
ke our lives,
You won’t come out of this alive.”
“Stand back!” shouted Jayson, turning his weapon on an approaching protestor. Jayson was tall and broad and had been in the service for over ten years, more concerned with the gym than the classes and seminars that were provided for service personnel on how to deal with confrontation, hostages, negotiation, and more. Spit flew from his mouth as he barked.
The protester, a woman about forty-five, hair long and turning grey, wore a purple high-collared dress suit more suited for an elite party than marching through the streets. Apart from the slashes showing bare skin beneath. “Turn around, child. Turn the other way.”
“I said keep away! One step closer and I’ll knock you to the ground!”
Henry stepped forward, breaking the line. “Do as he says, miss. Rejoin the others.”
“Don’t be the puppets. Cut your strings to the masters.” She held out her hands, palm up, a silver heart-shaped locket with its necklace curled up within almost luminescent under the street light.
The sonic rifles took about three seconds to charge, an escalation of whirring, and the woman spent those three seconds looking into Henry’s eyes. Then Jayson’s weapon discharged and the force knocked her back, clattering into the chanters. Their singing stopped and they roared and hollered, two men bending to lift the woman under the armpits to a standing position.
“Did you have to do that, Jayson?”
“She can count herself lucky we can’t use live ammunition. Fucking cowards.”
“We do that, there’ll be no-one left in the city!”
“Too many to begin with!”
Henry looked up and down the line, looking for support. All he found were stony faces, locked either in anger or boredom.
“When I say stay back!” roared Jayson. “I mean it!”
A ball of flame shot into the sky; Henry watched it rise, and rise, and rise, and for a moment thought it would just keep on going. Smash against the domed ceiling. And then it grew, and grew, and grew, until it was just a couple metres above his head. He raised his riot shied and felt the force and heat of the explosion as it landed, knocking him to his knees. Fire rained around him, spattering the road and his nearby colleagues. Eyes watered from the brightness of the dwindling flames burning away on his shield. They all wore fireproof clothing and masks, but it didn’t stop the force of the heat from sucking all the breath from his lungs. And it never got easier.
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