by B. York | Mar 25, 2006 | Story
Whoa, that was a long jump. What was that, a fifty foot drop? I don’t feel it right now, and that’s fine by me. This fucker running from me is going to taste my pain.
My boots hit the floor and ignorance runs thirty miles an hour. My heart is producing what was already injected but the long-term effects, I’m told, won’t be harmful like the natural juice. This asshole is fast but he picked the wrong officer to run from today. I’m on him like sweat on a desert whore, pounding my fist into the back of his head. They did say they wanted him dead, right?
Have to keep moving. I’m not sure there aren’t more like him and I’m not sticking around to get shanked by a wannabe juicer. I keep my life like I keep my heartbeat… fast and undeniably untamable. There’s something under the surface and if I stop long enough it’ll come back for me.
My patch reads Rhabia Program. I know I was hand-picked to be an injectee but the fuck if I care why I signed up. The only thing I care about is hearing more footsteps from around the corner and wondering if the exposed bone of my knuckle is ever going to hurt. People don’t run like I do, they don’t roll cars onto people in fits of rage. I say people, but I mean criminals. These fuckheads deserve every piece of curb I make them kiss before God hands them a tissue to pick up their own entrails on the way past his golden gates.
No more footsteps. Should I hide? Sit here in this alleyway and wait. Just wait.
Breathing is getting better now. They don’t give me a gun because, from what I hear, injectors can’t use them properly when hyped. Anyways, I much prefer to punch the night away and use a perps’ face like a heavyweight’s meat-locker practice session. Heartbeat’s slowing. I wonder if I’ll ever see Marie again. What happened to her anyways?
Oh, shit. She… cheated on me with that bastard O’Brien and I…
No. I can’t be one of those guys.
Another injection; perfect timing. Before I know it, I’m maxing my speed at around forty miles an hour. What was I thinking about anyways? Stop thinking, Corporal, and find the meat bag that shot that old lady and Jacob’s ladder his ribcage. Yeah, that sounds like the best idea I’ve had all day. Another drop from another overpass and I can see the fucker from here. I’m angry about something… and man, is he going to know it.
by B. York | Mar 21, 2006 | Story |
Before we go any further, let me stop to ask you some questions. I’m so excited to have met you, but there’s something I want to tell you before you enter the port. You see, I haven’t really been honest with you and you must have wondered why I was out here all alone.
Surely you have noticed by now that there are no fusion reactors. No glorious buzz of electricity and a lack of any sort of decent vegetation or animal kin. Oh, so you have noticed. Then let me skip to the worst part.
This is all that is left. You’ve come from so long ago and hoped that somehow life has improved itself? I’m sorry to disappoint you. I am not a proud man, nor am I any sort of leader. Just last week, the previous leader disappeared and the others voted for me to control everything that was left.
Noticeably, I am no handsome fellow either. No woman would bear my children, and I’m lost to a life of thanklessness and a tomorrow that is one day closer to my end. Did I mention how excited I am that you are here? Please, have a seat.
The Port was supposed to be grand once. Perhaps my grandfather said something about it, but now the dust clouds come and go and the nutrient reactors shut down years ago. Port Walden is nothing more than survivors who are losing at their daily professions. What is it you said you did…an engineer? You’ll find little use for your abilities without electricity.
I’m getting to the point, please be patient. I’ve seen children gasp their last breaths as the hunger overcomes them and becomes a deathly starvation. Scraps of leather became chew toys and after they were gone, well, no man calls dog their best friend any longer than he can swallow. Gruesome? That’s life. It is what it has to be so that we can survive. Survival is key.
Look up and see the grey clouds above you, stranger. Your time once held blue skies, I suppose, and purple at times, yes? The bark from these husks we once called trees are gone and I don’t need to tell you what use came from that bark. Look at my face, stranger. My face is more robust than anyone in the village but it by far much gaunter than yours.
Well, I suppose I’ve ventured further from my point. I came out here with this pistol to end the suffering. To watch children die is a nightmare and to know that others are watching the same happen to me is a slow agonizing hell. Perhaps they would have found me and taken what they could from me to help them survive just a little bit longer. I haven’t been honest with you at all. When I saw you I didn’t care where you were from. What I do care about is that you will feed many children for a few days at least; a few days for the hell to subside. Please, don’t run. I may be weak but I can still shoot and I’d prefer to aim somewhere that won’t spoil too much meat. I am so excited you are here.
by B. York | Mar 14, 2006 | Story |
We finally did it. For centuries philosophers both of science and religion wondered how much it would take to push ourselves to the brink. They hypothesized and prayed to what end man would come if they kept pushing the limits. All of the wars fought, the corruption broadcast and the sin rampant in environment and in our everyday lives could never have awoken us to the simple truth that we had been sliding down this inverted mountain since the day an ape chose a stick over its bare hands.
They wanted to know what would happen if we continued along our ways. Today they got their answer.
I was what you would call a believer in nothing. Nihilism wasn’t my game it was the mark of atheism that took me by its reigns. Being an atheist wasn’t my problem. Not thinking that there was something right in front of us that we’d all been missing that was. When I woke up today I didn’t question why things were different I just knew that they were.
Even when I walked outside I knew that something was missing more than the obvious and I felt cold and dim. The news yesterday had announced how many had died from the nuclear affair in the east and how many more had been killed in the name of having the almighty on ones side. Truly, I never thought that our time would be the last straw.
Everyone did the same thing upon waking up. Hell, I did it too. We all checked our clocks, we looked at the date and we tried to come to grips that we weren’t crazy. No, I knew it was more than just a lost point in our daily lives that was gone. I stepped outside and I didn’t have a shadow anymore. No one had shadows anymore.
The news didn’t come on today and I knew it was because they felt the same as I did. You wake up; you expect it to be there to greet you. It was right in front of us and we had it right a long time ago but science made it like unto a fairy tale.
All of us woke up today and found that the sun was gone. It didn’t explode and it didn’t fizz out. It left. The warmth that was lost was more than just from the heat the rays gave us. We felt empty inside, we felt cold in a way that not even electric heaters turned on high could fix. The wars might stop, they might not. Something gave up on us today and it left because we were beyond hope. I have to wake up tomorrow knowing I am hopeless; knowing this world is lost.
I woke up today and walked outside to a world with no sun and no warmth. I looked on the ground and saw that I had no shadow. No one had shadows anymore. We were the shadows now.
by B. York | Mar 10, 2006 | Story |
Stretching his thin arms, Xytherzuk slipped into his council chair, the last of nine to be seated before the chamber of balance. The high-council glared down upon the little grey being staring up with black eyes that were nervous and begged for mercy. A being in robes stood at the table and looked down to the little one standing beneath the eyes of the council.
“Eth, we have watched your experiment for seven cycles of the star system. Your efforts to weed out this humanoid evolution by pigment have failed.†The being sat slowly as the others began to whisper amongst themselves. The small being known as Eth spoke up.
“No! It is not too late high-councilmen! Let me explain! Their prejudice grows… it will eat at them and destroy them.†A loud boom shakes the sound within the room to a halt.
A smaller grey being leans forward. “They are inspired by the colors you have given them. This virus of yours has caused them to see their world with shades and hues. Yet it has also caused them to expand!â€
Eth whimpered and in his squeaky voice tried to make due with his case, “They have racism, high-council. And they have prejudice against colors that do not match. Given time this will cause more war and more hatred.â€
“We are done with waiting, Eth. Already our scouts are identified by their grey skin. Could your virus not have given us a better sensory projection than a mottled grey? And of the skies… you made the skies look as such and they have ventured forth to go beyond it. This, we cannot allow. We are cutting the experiment.â€
In truth, Eth never really wanted to argue much with the council. He knew his experiment was doomed to failure from the beginning and yet somehow hoped everything would work out. As he was escorted back to his chamber he thought of the reactions of pigment to the human race and how it had blossomed into more than he could have imagined.
Imagination, it seemed to Eth, was something missing from more than just the humans. He sat within his chamber cell and waited for the guards to leave. Underneath his pillow he slipped a hand to retrieve his hidden vice. A small booklet colored with an amber hue rested in his three-fingered hand. He pulled it open to reveal a slew of what was known to the humans as photographs.
Sitting back against the wall, his small body heaved with a long, drawn-out sigh. They would remove the color from the world, but the virus remained within him. Plucking a photo from the group he looked at the vision of his grey form coated in paint and behind him a smearing of color across a brick wall in a dilapidated city block. Eth sighed and smiled. The colors were his to enjoy.
by B. York | Mar 5, 2006 | Story |
Traditions are hard to break but the ones that mean something never go away. Today is just any other day for Marci except that today she walks to the store to get her groceries. Marci America is sweating after the first few steps of her journey to the store. She feels hungry because the vitamin booster won’t be regularly injected into her spine, and she feels tired because the anti-atrophying agent isn’t going to work for the next thirty days.
The streets of Union Crater, Mars are filled with people who hadn’t seen the grey skies in exactly a year’s time. People just like Marci are trying to remember how to walk more than ten feet in an hour, they are trying to recall how it is to be alive.
Some like Harold Dixon have been training for these days for months. He walks with a steady pace and even daringly lifts his arm to take a sip of Hydro-Oxy from a bottle. It’s people like Marci that really bring out the spirit of the Days of Remembrance. The ones that almost don’t make it are the ones who show everyone else watching what it means to truly understand these days.
Marci is fourteen meters down the street and she can feel her body wanting to give in. She tries to remember that it’s not her body giving in but her mind that wants to break down. If she falls she knows it isn’t the end. Those who fall on the way to do their daily activities are swept up by their neighbors and helped along every step of the way.
Mars dust is disturbed between buildings that have not been disturbed for an entire year. Some children who are naturally vibrant can spot marks they made the previous year and laugh at the lethargy of their progenitors. The red sand is marred with footprints on the way to work, school, and shopping. Upon entering the doors of these establishments there is a solemn silence at the deactivated teleportation consoles next to the entranceways.
By now middle-aged Marci is finding her strength again. She can walk with ease and ignores the stress of bones and muscle. Her eyes focus to the light outdoors, the sun they call Solaris that burns the eyes of everyone who dares to step beyond the threshold of their homes. Marci’s mind is challenged and it prevails. In her lucidity she remembers why they do such things for these few weeks and why it is important to always remember.
Union Crater is a good city with good values. There may be crime and there may be troubles of the family but everyone stops to stare at the grey tower on their walks towards their duties. A sign before the tower is dim without the power inside, letters spelling out in the dust: “Union Crater Power Matrixâ€. Marci is biting into an apple grown from dirt, not replication. She tastes the sweetness of a year of effort and she remembers to take nothing for granted.
