Scum of the Universe

by Grant Everett

  Bored, Tuesday eventually got into a conversation with a dullard co-worker. One of the first things he learned was that the “Cricket Chow” they were feeding these glistening meatbags was made entirely from highly-processed waste materials. Cricket Chow could be refined from literally anything with an organic source: rotten food, unwanted pets, barbershop sweepings, sewage, medical waste, and worse. However, the dullard made it very clear that using human cadavers for such purposes was highly illegal, and that the protein recyc system would raise bloody hell if you attempted to feed a person into it.

  Tuesday closely watched one of the crickets during the next mealtime. From the way its stubby little vestigial insect legs wiggled in ecstasy every time another gout of grey slush was pumped into its brainless neck, the creature really didn't seem to mind what was on the menu. Once the nutrient paste stopped pumping through its neck tube, however, the squelching bag of pure protein started to thump like a beating heart...almost as though it was silently complaining that there wasn't any dessert...

  Tuesday was a little more interested to learn that there were hundreds of different flavours and textures of cricket available for any and every dish, from cricket pork to cricket prawns to the mind-bending concept of cricket-flavoured cricket, and that every source of consumable protein you could get on Seven Suns started off with one of these disgusting horrors. The co-worker went on to specify how these little ones would eventually to reach the size of a family minivan once they'd grown to an optimal harvesting mass, but Tuesday had zoned out by this point and didn't hear a thing.

  It was home time soon enough, as the civil service program only required citizens of Seven Suns to work a mere three hours each day (with a mini-break every twenty-five minutes) in return for appropriate housing, food, recycled water, electricity and public transport. Despite the fact that Tuesday's shift was so laid back that he could have fallen asleep and done just as much, he was already plotting his next move. There was no way he was going to keep getting whipped by acid canes and towelling down an endless line of gurgling pus-bags for the next two years, and so Tuesday did what he did best: he began to plot a way to scum his way out of all forms of responsibility.

  CHAPTER TEN

  TOTALLY SPUGGED

  Tuesday managed to clock up nineteen solid days of compassionate leave in a row thanks to a non-existent Crucian Plague on an invented world that had decimated his equally-fake extended family one by one. Twisting one of his hairy nipples in two complete revolutions, Tuesday managed to sob real tears into the vid phone as he promised an unimpressed Principal Hurrage that he'd get over this utterly real, totally-not-fictional tragedy around the same time the weekend started, so he’d be back at Elementary bright and early on Tonday.

  He wasn’t.

  With absolutely no idea how he was going to continue dodging both school and his civic duty for two years, Tuesday spent much of his time scheming petty schemes while lounging about in his crunchy underwear. If Tuesday put half as much effort into doing something productive with his life as he did trying to scum his way out of anything that required effort, the Universe would likely be shaken to its foundations.

  Tuesday's apartment was situated at the very core of the Welfare Sector, a crumbling dumping ground for defectives and bludgers, a dank hole designed to swallow up all the criminals that the more polite elements of Seven Suns liked to pretend didn't exist. For a world that was renowned for being almost totally bereft of crime, Tuesday had already witnessed dozens of new offences that he'd never even heard of before. He'd mentally noted a few of them for later use. So much for having the lowest crime rate in The Unison...

  His bachelor pad was small and horrible, just like he was, as Tuesday’s civil service allowance only managed to cover the lowest tier of rent and the most basic amenities with approximately zip left over. This slightly-curved rectangle was a standard-issue studio apartment which had been constructed with only one factor in mind: being able to contain the minimum a solo tenant would need while remaining just barely big enough to prevent triggering claustrophobia-related psychotic episodes. The steam shower was efficient, the pine-like smell of the chemical disintegration toilet was notably inoffensive, and the kitchen was equipped with six separate taps. These chrome faucets dispensed ice water, warm water, boiling water, English Breakfast tea, filtered coffee, and Soup Of The Day, all for free. As Tuesday was on the lowest of all welfare plans and couldn't afford to eat out anywhere, he'd come to loathe Soup Of The Day with a vengeance.

  Squeezing through the invisible line that divided the bathroom and his main living area, sipping sweet potato soup from a tin mug, Tuesday flopped onto the slab of memory foam that served as both his couch and his bed. There was a permanent Tuesday-shaped groove worn into its padding, and it had been splashed with so many flavours of Soup Of The Day that there were audible squelching noises whenever Tuesday shifted his weight. After a bit of a rummage under the cushions, Tuesday discovered an old piece of pizza he'd scummed from next door's bin, blew off the larger dust bunnies and happily munched away on the double-curried-sausage slice.

  The doorbell chose this moment to ring. Tuesday found this odd, as he didn’t have a doorbell.

  Stumbling sideways through a slot of a hallway, Tuesday opened his front door to the deepest depths of the Welfare Sector. This ghetto was so ancient and neglected that the looming apartment stacks were sagging against each other, threatening to collapse at the slightest heavy breeze. The neon yellow CONDEMNED tape that criss-crossed their broken windows and empty doorframes actually served to improve the vibe of the neighbourhood, as there was very little you could do to make things worse. Tuesday's mega-block had less redeeming features than his Dad, and you could physically feel the poverty here, the desperation, like the forgotten subnormals of this otherwise utopian world were ship rats scrabbling over each other for a piece of driftwood on the open sea, a bunch of no-hoper vermin with very short futures who were of no interest to anybody with the power to change their situation for the better.

  Blinking away white and black spots for a while as yet another glowing moon rose high above, Tuesday looked down on instinct to see that somebody had left a small white card on the stolen STOP sign he used as an Unwelcome mat. The card featured a cute yellow baby duck in a pretty red bow. Picking up the odd gift, immediately getting pizza sauce all over it, Tuesday found that it only contained three words.

  “Found.. your...song.” Tuesday eventually managed to say out loud, struggling to read the message. He blinked, trying to understand. He failed.

  Found your song? What did that even mean?

  Feeling paranoid, Tuesday scanned the street for movement. Besides the scurrying of rats and the flicker of dumpster fires, his cul-de-sac was in total stasis.

  Slouching back inside with a grumble, Tuesday lit up a cigarette and smoked for a few minutes. Thinking as hard as he could, Tuesday considered who could possibly have left him such a bizarre message: the screws from Cell Block Preschool, Jeeves and Ernest Fell, Brian, Cheddar, his Dad...

  Tuesday went misty-eyed. He still missed his Dad. Despite the fact that Jim Tuesday was a useless waste of protein with no redeeming features short of the fact he was probably dead and had already been recycled into something of more worth, like Cricket Chow, he was still the only family Tuesday had.

  “Dad,” Tuesday muttered gently, as though the word would break if he said it too loud. He screwed up his face until blood throbbed painfully behind his eyes. “Where are you? Do you even remember me?”

  Glaring at his Mister Drizzle clock, which had seven of its ten hands missing thanks to a direct hit from a beer bottle last week, Tuesday guessed that it was about ten past something. Sighing in resignation, Tuesday decided he'd pushed Principal Hurrage and Ms Humple far enough for now, and he went about the business of getting ready for school. Tuesday made a sandwich by folding over what was left of his slice of pizza and filled a thermos with a Soup Of The Day that smelled about as appealing as a
rmpit sweat.

  School days were here again...until he could invent some more dead relatives, at least.

  Tuesday attempted to shave his perpetual stubble, but despite having a dozen highly-keen razor blades on an UltraMax handle, a few annoying spots always evaded his efforts. Absent-mindedly plucking out a couple of hairs, Tuesday threw a few random books into his backpack - including a MacDeath menu someone had left in his letterbox and a dirty magazine called Salacious Strumpets - and slipped into his orange school uniform.

  Now came the hard part: finding transport to school. Despite the fact Seven Suns had a stellar public transport system that all citizens could ride free of charge, there was no way that any drivers would be insane enough to venture so deeply into the slums, let alone be stupid enough to land and pick somebody up. Needle trains, taxis, ambulances and even armed police cruisers never wandered this far into Tuesday's neighbourhood without a darn good reason, which meant he'd have to ride shank's pony to the closest transport nexus. Thankfully, Tuesday only had to stomp along the tarred blacktop for a mere five minutes before he stepped beyond the official core of the Welfare Sector. It was a sudden transformation: the walls were clean of gang sign graffiti, Tuesday didn't have to sidestep any chalk outlines, and there wasn’t a Shatter dealer in sight.

  Tuesday staggered backwards a step as something hairy and aggressive lunged over a fence to his left without warning. Strings of white saliva sprayed all over his uniform as the beast howled and snarled in his face. Tuesday could clearly hear a loud grinding noise as the feline's retractable claws sawed back and forth against the top of the wooden barrier, but the creature seemed to be unable to go any further thanks to a thick chain. Unsurprisingly, it was one of those damned barking cats that everybody seemed to own nowadays. While they were as territorial as velociraptors and needed to be leashed to stop them from savaging anything suicidal enough to come within range of their sharp bits, somehow they'd became the latest fad. Whatever had originally possessed somebody to upload the mind of a Timber Wolf into a Persian cat would be forever beyond Tuesday's understanding, let alone how the creatures had become so inexplicably popular. Then again, only the most desperate of criminals would try and rob a house protected by a barking cat.

  Cutting across freshly mowed lawns and smacking letterboxes with a stick, Tuesday hopped a few fences so he could take a secret route to the train nexus. Waving to an old lady who was probably known as Nanna to a clutch of cute kiddles, Tuesday received The Finger. Taking his favourite shortcut through an alley of dented trash cans and dashing across a white street painted by the neon of glowing signs, Tuesday only had one thought on his mind: who had sent him that weird little present?

  “Stupid card,” Tuesday muttered to himself, aiming a kick at a gutter. He missed it by a metre.

  Fetching the cute duck card from a sticky pocket, Tuesday read the message again and realised he’d gotten it wrong the first time. Holding his stomach, thinking he was about to throw up, his eyelid flickering and his pulse racing, Tuesday realised it didn’t say Found Your Song. No, what it actually said was...

  “Found You, Son.” Tuesday whispered.

  Without a second thought, Tuesday turned and ran for home. This would result in yet another day of truancy, but he needed to figure out what was going on, and he needed to do it now.

  His head was crowded with questions, with possibilities, and most of all with confusion. Could this cardboard fold really be from his Dad? Why wouldn't he just knock on the door? Was the card meant to signify something? Was his Dad in danger? Is that why he'd made contact in such a weird way?

  There was no telling why Jim would play such games, but Tuesday hoped he was about to find out.

  Hopping a puddle, Tuesday swerved through tight alleyways and hurdled the railing of somebody's porch. Angry residents yelled at him to go back to school, to cut his hair, to go and die in a gutter somewhere, but he wasn’t going to do any of these things.

  No, Tuesday was going to do one thing today: he was going to find his Dad.

  He'd bolted all the way back to his cul-de-sac in the Welfare Sector before registering that something was wrong. He didn't know what, in particular, as such feelings were more instinctual than logical. Skidding to a halt in the middle of the street and looking around in suspicion, Tuesday could feel eyes boring into him from somewhere, but had no idea who was watching him, or from where. So he disregarded it as paranoia.

  But sometimes, paranoia is there for a reason.

  Tuesday made it home untouched and unmugged, as usual, as his orange school uniform made him look far too poor and silly to bother robbing. Even the desperate Blink-poppers immediately voted him a waste of time on sight. Dashing past a black van covered in graffiti that had been parked directly in front of his hovel, Tuesday had already stumbled to a halt on his front step when his brain belatedly caught up with what he'd just seen.

  Van? What van?

  Turning slowly, Tuesday regarded the wreck of a vehicle: it was an old black Volkswagen hybrid that appeared to be made out of laminated cardboard, and it was probably three million kilometres past its prime. The dented box was emblazoned with dozens of crude white decals announcing the many torture metal concerts it had been to over the years, such as Cerebral Aneurysm, Live & Vile, Deadgarden and Malignant Testicular Tumour, among dozens of others. Stepping a little closer, Tuesday squinted at the Live & Vile decal from a distance and ice slithered about in his stomach. Wasn't Live & Vile the Scumbags concert where he'd been conceived?

  The tempo of his heart rate spiked, and Tuesday began to feel dizzy and sick with excitement. Stepping slowly towards the junker, taking in all of its crumpled details, Tuesday couldn't picture a more perfect vehicle for his Dad to drive.

  Tuesday tapped a chlorine-flavoured cigarette out of a softpacket, trying not to shake. He really needed a smoke to steady his nerves. This was getting all too much.

  The van's main sliding door was decorated by a big red triangle that didn't match the white concert decals either in colour or font type. The point-down isosceles contained words that began medium sized at the top and gradually tapered down until Tuesday couldn't read them without getting closer. After two hesitant steps Tuesday was able to make out that the top line of the triangle said IF YOU CAN READ THIS, but it took another stride to be able to see that the next line spelled out the words YOU ARE. Tuesday's curiosity was on fire now, but the final word remained totally unreadable until his face was a mere fifteen centimetres from the laminate door. Squinting a bit, Tuesday muttered the final, tiny word out loud at the same time his eyes took it in.

  STUPID

  Something hard pressed into the base of Tuesday's spine. Tuesday would have described his instincts as usually bordering on prescient, had he possessed any idea what the word “prescient” actually meant, but all of this excitement had blinded him to his surroundings. Knowing that he was probably in lethal danger, he stood totally still and waited for further instructions. Tuesday's smouldering chlorine cigarette picked this moment to drop hot ash into his left sock, where it sizzled against the wet green moss that grew on his feet, but he managed not to so much as flinch. As though on cue, the van's side panel rumbled open to reveal a darkened area, and whatever hard object was digging into Tuesday's lower back jabbed at him as wordless encouragement to step inside.

  Tuesday fought the urge to do or say anything stupid, well aware of the fact he was about to be abducted by persons unknown and that annoying them could result in a horrible death, but like with every challenge in life, Tuesday failed miserably.

  “So is that a pistol, or are you just a sick pervert like your Mum?”

  Tuesday's lower vertebrae exploded in agony as an electrical burning sensation flashed along every nerve in his body in a burst of paralysing heat. Tuesday crumpled pathetically, the cigarette dropping from his mouth as he went limp, and he wasn't even able to moan as his eye socket bounced off the van's dirty cardboard step.

  For once, Tue
sday managed not to pass out, but his brain spent an unknown amount of time operating at the raw cerebral power of scrambled eggs. Whatever hellish stunner had just been unloaded into his spinal column had also disrupted his mind to the point of uselessness, and it took an inestimable period of dancing colours and senseless patterns until Tuesday was capable of semi-intelligent thought again. It may have taken two minutes or two hours, but figuring out how much time had passed wasn't a priority right now.

  What did matter was that Tuesday was firmly cabled to a metal chair, a painful light was shining so brightly in his eyes that everything was an empty white, and there was what he assumed to be a gun clamped between his rows of brown teeth. The taste of its oiled ceramic barrel was very unpleasant.

  Blinking his watering eyes against the flashing lights, Tuesday mumbled a question around the weapon in his mouth.