Quey picked up his sheet and turned it on. He accessed a game of Hungry Monkey and tried to tune out the savage orgy by collecting all the bananas, which is harder than it sounds on both ends.
Gunfire woke him with a jolt.
Quey took a moment to look around and remember where he was. It settled on him slowly, crumbling his hope that the Once Men and the bots had simply been a bad dream he was waking from.
He’d fallen asleep playing Hungry Monkey and now his sheet was dead.
More gunfire. It came from the other side of the building.
Quey looked to where the Once Men had gathered. They’d built a set of tents near the shore, and a large number had gathered under them and were face down in the dirt, blacked out from the drunkenness his shine caused and the ravenous sex. The others must be running about, looking for a way to get to the compound.
Whirr.
A robot was around the corner and it was coming closer. Quey watched that edge of the building unsure of what might happen when it came around.
Night was thick and cool in the wastes, above him hundreds of stars burned brilliant and distant, and two of Saffron’s moons were visible—he always thought the third to be a glorified pebble. He didn’t have to wait long for the fire turtle bot to come rolling around the corner. It paused and surveyed him for a split then moved down the hill and toward the river.
The bot stopped a handful of meters from a bit of weeds and dry grass and fired. A Once Man had been hiding in the brush, trying to use the bit of cover to inch his way to the building. What he planned to do once he got there was a mystery. As bullets tore through him, another Once Man leapt to his feet and got off a pair of shots that bounced feebly off the fire turtle bots body. He tried to pull the trigger a third time but the bots gun arm adjusted and erupted with a half second burst. Holes ripped through the savage and the force of the guns sent a spray of blood several meters as he tumbled to the ground. Quey could hear his breathing and the pleading tone in his grunts. He lay there twitching in the dead grass for nearly a minute.
Quey was satisfied that neither the bots nor their master was going to harm him any more than they were going to help him. Hugging himself and wishing he had a jacket he settled against the wall and watched the bot continue its patrol of the perimeter. It wasn’t long before he found a way to be comfortable nestled in the crook of the ground and the compound. With the cold of night fluttering around him he slept till morning, dreaming of his parents and his favorite of the stories they used to tell.
His parents first met on a Saturday afternoon, in one of Saffron’s many parks. His mother was ten then, sitting under a tree with her brand new sheet computer in her hand studying a poem by a man named Veron Holt for her literature class.
The sheet was thin in her hands, about as thick as a piece of paper but heavy—it wasn’t going to just blow away with a strong gust of wind—and could be rolled up and stuffed into a tubular case for easy storage. It also folded down to fit in a pocket or the palm of your hand if you needed. Its display was a type of holograph. The image was so perfect in the early days of this tech a common joke was to display something on a screen and watch people reach out and try to grab it. For most people, a sheet is the only computer they’d ever have.
Quey’s father was twelve when he spotted his mother from the playground. Still a boy then, he and some friends were playing a game of peg the rabbit. It was simple, one kid was dubbed the rabbit, and the other kids took small balls that they used to, well, peg him. He botched an easy throw when he saw the thin face framed by long golden hair and the perfect grey blue eyes that scanned the screen in her hand, shimmering slightly with emotion as she read the poem.
“New rabbit!” the boy shouted as he caught the ball and instantly threw it back. His dad hadn’t heard the boys shout and didn’t see the ball hurtling though the air until it smacked the side of his head. His friends teased him. “How the fuck could you miss that throw?” one hollered at him. “How the fuck did you miss that catch?” another added. “Or at least duck,” a third chimed in then tried to show him how to duck. “See, just a little to the left and-”
Quey's father had tuned the others out. Suddenly he didn’t care about the game anymore. “I just need some water,” he said and walked away. He got a sip from the fountain and waited for the game to pick up again before he walked over to the girl under the tree sitting on a blue blanket. “What are you reading?” he asked.
“A poem,” she replied, the shadows of the many leaves above dancing over her soft creamy complexion as a breeze gently pushed them this way and that.
“That’s good,” he said and instantly regretted the words. He saw her start to laugh a little, though she was polite enough to hide it as much as she could. “I mean,” he began to try again, “Is it good?”
She looked up at him and when her eyes met his they rustled his heart into a frenzy. She thought for a moment and answered simply, “No.”
She held his gaze for a brief, serene silent moment before he burst out laughing. In turn she smiled and chuckled as well. “What’s your name?” he asked, finding her eyes once again.
“Why?” she replied, coy.
The question took him by surprise. He’d never needed a reason to ask anyone’s name before so he simply shrugged.
“Hum,” she groaned thoughtfully before her eyes began moving toward her sheet again.
His chest grew tight and his breath caught at the back of his throat as he felt her interest in him slipping. As her eyes were about to leave him completely he knew they would never return with the same wonder they held now and so he blurted, “I guess because I’m interested.”
She smirked and nodded once, slowly. He waited patiently for a moment and she watched him. She watched him until she saw anticipation muster in his eyes and his lips began to acquire the courage to speak again. Then she answered, “Star.”
He smiled.
“How about you?” she asked, feigning slight indifference as she returned to her poem for a moment.
“Terry.”
She smiled slightly in his direction and then smoothed the blanket out on the ground beside her. His heart raced, and he took a deep breath to calm the tickle in his groin and the churning in his guts. She looked up at him invitingly and he walked over to and sat down beside her.
After that they never failed to say hello to one another, even if it meant going out of their way to do so, but they didn’t really become friends until high school, when she was fourteen and he was sixteen. Driving to school one day he saw her walking and stopped at the curb beside her.
“Walk or ride?” he asked.
She stopped and looked at him, playfully suspicious for a long moment. “People might think we’re lovers,” she told him with a smirk as the wind played with loose threads of her hair, shimmering in the sunlight like a streak of embers hammered from hot metal. He looked into the pale grey blue of her eyes and felt his heart hammer with a quick rhythm he longed to never be without, and answered with a shrug, “Whatever.”
She nodded once and walked around to the passenger’s side of the car. After that he took her to and from school every day.
Little more than a year later, at a time when both of them were coming away from short-lived infatuations, they began going off together, always alone, always someplace no one would ever think to look. It was two months before her sixteenth birthday that she finally let him kiss her. She’d known his desire to do so for months but had sabotaged any moment that might lead to such an event. She’d kissed other boys, had done a little more with a few of them, but never with Terry. For reasons she couldn’t understand yet, the thought of doing that with him scared her. Then, on that night, when he touched her hand and looked into her eyes she held his gaze despite the terror her heart pumped fiercely through her. As he moved slightly closer to her she felt the dizzying need to turn away but let it go. That night, as he leaned toward her, she understood that this was a good fear. She could s
ee his chest heaving, could feel his breath passing frantically past his lips as he leaned in slowly and she knew he was feeling it too and then the fear changed to excitement. It had been easy with the others because she didn’t care. The outcome and what happened after didn’t matter.
She grew warm and her head swam as his lips found hers. Drunk on the new excitement of the experience, she gave into the sensation, and they lay on the roof of his car making out for the better part of an hour before she finally said, “Okay.”
After that their meetings weren’t just in secret. Neither of them said anything but both of them knew, after that night, no one else would do.
Quey finished the last of his water an hour after sunrise while he watched the Once Men along the river shore drink. He wondered how long it would take him to convince himself he could have a sip or two and nothing would happen. How long after that sip would he drink, and how long then until he was them.
The crackle of thunder rumbled overhead and he knew it didn’t matter. Watching the clouds slowly roll in from the east, a wall of dark grey that flashed with lightning, he knew it wasn’t going to be long now. He wasn’t even going to have the option of drinking. The wastes, unfortunately for Quey, weren’t dead for lack of rain.
The first drops began to fall on the Once Men and Quey could see the waste darkening with moisture. Water fell to the earth, smacking the ground a thousand times a second and he could see it slowly climbing the hill to where he sat.
In the field below, the Once Men either stood out in the rain looking up at the sky or gathered under their tents and slept. The ones outside let the rain wash their pale, cracking skin, yellow and brown in patches, and they opened their mouths and stuck out their tongues. It wouldn’t be long now, he knew as he watched the rain inch its way up the hill, before that was him.
Watching the darkening ground move closer to his boots he suddenly laughed. It was just one little thing, some tiny microbe in the water that affected brain tissue. A thing so insignificant it could be filtered out of a half-year supply of water by a purifier the size of his thumb. He had three under the sink back at home.
Tears streamed from the corner of his eyes and he laughed again. What kind of world does a man live in where he can be done in by a little rain? A river of water rushing by him and his options are dying of thirst or madness.
“Saffron was a bad name,” he said as he felt the first bit of moisture. “Should have just called it despair.”
He took in the landscape, scanned his eyes across the horizon and felt disgust that this was his home. He remembered what his parents had wished for him, to see the world as they had when they were young. For the first time he understood why they’d been so sad, why they’d looked at him like he was dying from time to time. For him the world had always been this way, a hopeless mess, but they had known it another way. They had known the world that was supposed to be, and Quey knew that must have been so much harder. They just wanted him to have a home where he could live and be safe, a place that wasn’t a constant struggle, where simply drinking the water wasn’t dangerous.
Quey nodded for he agreed, that wasn’t too much to ask at all.
Two drops fell into his hair and his hands began to tremble. The worst part was the not knowing. He didn’t know how long it took for the water to absorb into your skin or how much of it was too much.
Quey looked up at the camera trained on him overhead and stared into the lens. “So, you’re just going to sit in there and watch me die huh?”
Rain thumped against his boots and he watched the dark leather bead with moisture. A handful of droplets pelted his shoulders and face and he closed his eyes. He heard a loud bang, metal slamming against metal, and then there was a sound that reminded him of his trash compactor at home. Quey opened his eyes as metal scraped metal. In the field below the Once Men sprang to their feet watching the compound.
Quey turned and looked over at the door, slowly opening in the wall beside him. Another cluster of sprinkles landed on him, one fell on his lower lip and he wiped at it vigorously before grabbing his sheet and scrambling to the door.
Just beyond was a small room and another door without a handle. Quey knocked on it and the outer door began to close as loudly as it opened. He watched it slowly emerge from the walls to the left and right, cutting him off from the world and slowly stealing his light. As the doors banged closed, Quey tried his sheet and it came on but instantly started flashing a red battery in the upper right hand corner. It wouldn’t last long, but-
Lights clicked on overhead and a pair of cameras over the inner door trained on him.
“Why are you here?” a tiny voice demanded from speakers mounted in the ceiling above. The voice was small but forceful.
“Names Quey,” he replied. “I broke down on the highway.”
The voice did not respond.
“Are you Ryla?”
“Why are you here?” the voice asked again.
Quey felt his throat dry. This, he knew, was the first time he’d been in real danger, because now this place had taken notice of him and it was asking questions, and the only reason to ask questions was to learn and then judge. “I need to trade with you,” he finally said.
He knew Ryla traded with towns and decided that might be the best way to play it. He’s not here asking for a handout, he wants to give you something for your help. Of course, what he had to give was petty at best and insulting at worst.
“What trade?” the voice finally asked.
“Well, I don’t know what you want but I need a truck fixed.”
“Make and model.”
“It’s a TH-147. Otherwise called a Road Warrior.”
“That’s old. Almost a decade.”
“Yeah, she’s old,” he agreed with a smirk. “But she’s still pretty to me.”
There was another long pause. “What do you have?”
“A bit of coin and a load of shine.”
“What is shine?”
“Moonshine whiskey,” he answered.
Again a pause. “Do you mean bar jugs?”
“Exactly. Mine’s better than any you’ll find anywhere else in the whole world,” he said with the proud smile Cal had taught him.
“That item does not perform a function I require. Anything else?”
Quey’s smile faded. He’d never met anyone on this shit hole of a planet who didn’t desire the function of his shine. “Well… just the coin.”
“How much?”
“Not… I mean, you could take the shine and sell it yourself if you’d like. It’s stamped with the Pickens and Zaul label so it’ll fetch you a fine price.”
Moments passed. “Will it clean?”
“I suppose so,” he replied with a shrug, insulted by the idea that his shine might be used to scrub metal rather than consumed and enjoyed. “It’s worth more as a beverage though.”
“Distributing intoxicating poisons is not my function. Does it burn?”
“Burn? Yeah it burns, pure and blue too, not a tinge of led in it.” Silence followed so Quey continued, “Is there any way we could, maybe meet and talk about it? Maybe we could work out an arrangement?” Quey asked, hesitant.
The speakers cracked and she answered, “I don’t understand.”
“I’m just saying if we met then maybe we could understand.”
The speakers cracked. “We have met. We are talking. Understanding is inevitable.”
“No, I mean… I find negotiations go better once people are introduced.”
“You are Quey. You know I am Ryla.”
“I mean in person, you know, look each other in the eye sort of thing.
“Irrelevant. Either I will deem your product desirable and make an offer or I won’t. You will either accept the offer or you won’t. Eyes are inconsequential.”
Quey sighed.
Ryla continued, “What is the TH-147’s malfunction.”
He looked at the cameras and replied with a shrug, “Gunfire?”<
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There was another long pause. “Assessment of the machine is necessary before an offer can exist. Do I have your permission to tow the TH-147 here for a diagnostic?”
“Yeah,” Quey agreed. “It’s just sou-“
“I’m aware of its position.” The door in front of him opened faster and less noisily than the one behind him had. Quey felt cold air rush over him and stood stunned. He sold shine to all sort of customers in all manner of cities and towns, some of his clients owned some of the finest hotels in the world and still Quey was strained to recall a lobby as fine as the one standing beyond that door.
He heard a whirr and noticed the fire turtle bot and question mark bot roll up to him. “Please place your weapon and sheet into question bot,” Ryla instructed from the speakers.
Quey looked up at the cameras and nodded as he pulled his gun from his belt and dropped it into the question mark bot, along with his burned-out sheet. “Now please follow Bowserbot,” the voice instructed him. “He will lead you to a waiting area where you can take advantage of our hospitality.”
Quey almost laughed. Hospitality? But then he thought if this was her being hospitable…
The temperature of the room must have gotten to him then because suddenly his skin was tight and goose bumped.
Without a word or smile Quey stepped forward. Though it wasn’t the sole cause of his skin’s state, it was true that he’d never felt a building so cold in his life.
The door closed behind him and he looked around at the lobby. Red carpet below his feet accented by dark brown wood and above him elegant chandeliers that glowed warmly. There was a greeting desk along the wall to his right with a bot standing lifeless behind it, probably active and waiting to serve its function. There was a grand staircase that led to a metal door. There was what appeared to be a dimly lit restaurant to his left with dark red and brown décor. On the other side there sat couches and chairs, black leather, scattered in a warm sitting room where a bot waited next to an elegantly stenciled sign that advertised coffee and snacks.
The Saffron Malformation Page 5
