Everything Abridged, page 12
Still, it was better than the funeral. I didn’t have to deal with anyone else that knew her. It was just me and her memory. Until the sirens.
I’d never heard the tone or pattern; the raid alarm must have changed since I left high school. Nonetheless, when a high-pitched alarm drowns out every noise in a wartime colony, people move. Human traffic pushed me toward the ships before I even resolved to find one. Sometimes you can trust the wisdom of crowds.
I searched the processing lines for Martin, or a friend, or even Zane. No luck, but they might have made it. There were too many faces to pick out anyone, and they kept better track of the news than I did.
Keep. I mean keep. I need to think present tense to stay sane.
Eventually, I wound up on a navy carrier called Ark 36. Humans were the only fauna on board, and there were significantly more than two of us. I barely had room to scratch my thigh, let alone lift my arm. I can only write this now that they’ve opened the engine rooms and gun bays to the general population.
The observation monitors provided our one source of information and hope. The colony design, which I didn’t think about 364 out of 365 days of the year, looked beautiful. Humanity had built a perfect metallic ring in space, kept it intact, and moved inside. I could understand why Mom had moved. The colony’s existence alone represented new possibilities.
Ships fled by the dozen, but we needed hundreds. Thinking of the people stuck on the ring gave me a headache. Realizing how many of them I knew made it worse.
Chisel worked quickly and quietly, as advertised. First, there wasn’t a hole in the colony, and then there was. The rods didn’t make for much of a show, flitting through and past my home in half a second.
The explosion provided more conventional drama. A ball of white fire enveloped everything that meant anything to me. The other survivors screeched in at least six different languages, begging and accusing their respective gods. I assume I screeched too. I may have even found religion. Memory has a way of protecting us from itself.
Then my left eye went dark. The navy grunts said the electromagnetic pulse from the colony reactor fried most evacuees’ implants. Fair trade for survival. I tapped my eye twice in the vain hope that turning it off and on again would make a difference. Nothing. I’m half-blind for the foreseeable future.
Soon we passed a memorial ship. A different model than Mom’s, but around the same size and company. At the rate we fled, we’d catch up to her ship in hours. We were racing the dead.
#OwnVoices: The division of writers into separate but equal categories.
oxen: Management slang for you.
Oxford English Dictionary: A strange reference text without a single cyborg.
oxygen: Nestlé’s next big acquisition.
Oz: The fantasy of free American housing falling from the sky.
ozone layer: A false flag for ecological recovery.
P
pacifism: Asking someone to stop kicking you very, very nicely with gumdrops on top.
pandemic: 1. A board game exposing the limits of human cooperation.
2. A crisis exposing the limits of human cooperation.
Pandora: Zeus’s first scapegoat.
panic: The default state of the well-informed.
patriot: Anyone willing to debase his country for his country.
Perry, Tyler: The innovator that proved that Black America could write, direct, and star in truly awful movies.
pickup artistry: The intersection of crushing human loneliness and video game strategy guides.
PictoChat: An innovative chat program dedicated almost entirely to drawing genitalia.
plagiarism: Whoever you are . . . I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.
poetry: Best done in private. Public poetry is punishable by fines or imprisonment in most American states.
policing: Fixed now.
Author’s note: My brother’s an officer, so I’m used to the beatings.
politics: The central facet of one’s personality.
Polo: See Marco.
populism: Syphilis for democracies.
pornography: 1. You’ll know it when you see it.
2. You’ll know it when you close it at 3:00 a.m., astonished at what you’ve seen and what you’ve become.
Post-Atomic Stress
1. The Apartment
2:00 p.m.
Nero’s neighborhood used to be in a place called New Jersey, until the Great Powers had a brief nuclear argument. Six major cities were lost before cooler heads prevailed. In the aftermath, North America quietly reorganized into the Free Dominion, the largest democracy in human history (by landmass, at least). New Jersey ceased to exist after its territory was folded into East Ward, along with everything else east of 81.6944° W (formerly Cleveland). Some mourned the change, others raged, and most simply kept on living.
None of this was on Nero’s mind.
————
On Saturday afternoon, standing in the corner of his basement apartment, he focused on looking attractive. Nero never left home in anything he didn’t consider presentable, but today he had higher goals. Goals that demanded more than three minutes in front of the vanity mirror he’d looted from an evicted neighbor. Spiderweb cracks covered most of the glass, but he could see half of his reflection. Part of him still expected to find his adolescent face, which had been bloated by a deep-fried diet. Ten years of bodyweight exercise and flavorless food left his face leaner and acne-free. He liked to think it was generically handsome, save the thin surgical scar running from the back of his ears to the nape of his neck. He’d have to wear something with a collar, or a hood.
“You can’t date this woman.”
Nero continued his early morning ritual of ignoring his roommate. Avery was made of opinions, and listening to all of them would be a full-time job. It was better to glean the important ones by waiting for repetition.
“You can’t date this woman,” Avery repeated. He sat in judgment of Nero from a red swivel chair covered in variegated stickers, the largest of which read “East Ward Workers Party” in stark white letters. This chair was mostly used for video games. On game night, Player Two typically enjoyed the comfort of the chair, while Player One enjoyed his minimal authority from the floor. After spending last night craning his neck up at the ancient sixty-four-inch 2D television mounted to their wall, Avery seemed determined never to abandon the swivel chair again.
“Why not?” Nero gritted his teeth as he pushed his comb through a rebellious patch of hair. He’d never grown it out this far before, and he was quickly learning that knots were a bigger threat to his daily happiness than any of the radical/reactionary/extremist/wingnut cells on everyone’s tongue. A bombing was a distant abstraction, while his scalp was real, immediate, and screaming.
“She’s a tool of the state, an enemy of the revolution, and has no fashion sense. You’re insulting everything we stand for.”
“Everything you stand for. I don’t do politics.” Nero pushed through the last defiant knots and discarded the comb. He thought the rest would be straightforward, but his disinfectant was nowhere in sight. He knelt beneath the worn plastic dresser to see if it’d rolled off again. The floor had a slight slant, so loose objects slid toward the south wall. Nothing.
“We’ve lived together for four years,” said Avery. “I know your values, even if you pretend they don’t exist.”
Nero let the declaration pass without judgment. Avery approached everything with an intensity that pushed most of the “somnolent masses” away. In his world, dates, elections, and flavors of ramen were all equally existential choices. Nero had some respect for that, tempered by the knowledge that it invited a heart attack or officer-involved shooting.
“Furthermore: if you don’t do politics, politics will do you.”
“Try selling fortune cookies with that line,” said Nero. “You’ll be a trendsetter.”
“Trends are a distraction, and selling is the cancer at the heart of the Free Dominion,” said Avery. His sneer turned to a smirk as he watched Nero paw around behind the furniture. “How about this: if you’ll at least think about abandoning this statist gorgon, I’ll find it for you. Since we’re a unit.”
“Hmm,” replied Nero. He checked under a stack of faded band T-shirts. Avery had taken to dressing like an old-school metalhead, even though blast beats gave him a headache. The aesthetic let him shave his head without blending in with white supremacists. Even if that club had gotten more popular, Avery was too cantankerous to join any group where everyone had the same tattoo.
“The bottle’s inside your closet. You tend to drop it there when you’re running late for wage slavery.”
Pride led Nero to check under his bed, inside his dresser, and above his laundry bin before giving the closet a cursory look. The electric blue bottle sat in the dead center, on top of a pair of abused running shoes.
“I’m still going. Can you help me with this?”
Avery grumbled something undiplomatic and let his chair roll to Nero’s side of the room. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Nero grabbed the bottle and returned to the dresser. He opened his container of eyes, which resembled a metallic egg carton, and picked out his favorite. The others had all kinds of bells and whistles that were useful for work (or dicking around during a slow night), but this one was his favorite. It looked natural, and spared him unwanted opinions from locals about the cost of mods these days, whether or not he was a government plant, or violating the holy temple of his body with fel machinery. It was also the best fit.
He dunked the eye in fluid, capped the bottle, shook it around, and plucked it back out. The eye was now the cleanest object in sight. Nero liked to blame the state of the (illegally) shared single-bedroom apartment on their age, distinctly single relationship status, and respective obsessions with hedonism and dismantling the government. But he was starting to suspect that they were slobs, would continue to be slobs as divorced retirees, and would die slobs.
Nero knelt down and dropped the eye in Avery’s palm.
“Ready.”
Avery put down his cell phone, squinted, and jammed the prosthetic eye into Nero’s left socket. He’d become an old hand at this, so the installation was relatively painless. Turning the implant on was another story. As the eye connected with the bugs in Nero’s brain—kids called nanobots “bugs,” and Nero wanted to at least pretend to be cool—he suffered a second-long flash of pain that traveled from his skull to his toes. Nero experienced a single, mild convulsion. His elbow knocked the disinfectant bottle back off his dresser.
“This isn’t natural,” Avery opined.
“Neither are your fillings. But I appreciate the help. It’d take me an hour by myself, and I need to get to Liberty Park by four. I’m meeting Diana under the arches.”
“I don’t see why you’re rushing. Statists are always a half hour late. It’s a reflection of capitalist methods of—”
Avery went on in this manner while Nero dressed himself. For him, the maelstrom of protests, counterprotests, police suppression of both, bombings, and show trials dominating local news feeds boiled down to two relevant headlines:
1. Everyone had gone crazy or given up a long time ago.
2. Nero Maxwell had a date.
“I don’t suppose I could convince you to reconsider.” It must have been the second time Avery had said it. Nero briefly considered mentioning his own government job before abandoning the idea. It was better to maintain peace in the household, especially if there was a chance he’d bring someone back tonight. “You’re trying to replace someone. It’s not healthy.”
“I’ll tell you how it goes.”
With his priorities sorted, Nero left the apartment behind. If the date went well, he’d gloat to Avery later. If it didn’t, he wouldn’t say a single word.
2. The Train
2:27 p.m.
Nero always enjoyed the walk to the subway. Rutherford Avenue had six straight blocks of real, non-plastic trees. He could taste the difference in the air. It put him in a floaty, positive frame of mind, which would be essential for meeting Diana.
Hopefully he wasn’t wasting his time. There was a small, constant fault line between Nero and the rest of his species. He had one good friend, but everyone else seemed to drift off. There were hookups, but no one stuck around for too long. The fault line wasn’t wide enough to attract a diagnosis or weigh down his professional life. Nero even prided himself on having a snake’s charm. But the note of isolation in the back of his head had gotten too loud to ignore.
The weather flirted with cold. They’d entered the month or so of fall that climate change had left intact, and the trees had traded green for red. Nero could still get away with a sweatshirt, which was merciful considering the fur-lined hoodie was the most fashionable item he owned. He wore a black dress shirt underneath, which he hoped gave the impression of being fun and disciplined at the same time. In his experience, veering too hard in either direction poisoned a first outing.
He hummed a pop song while he walked. It helped distract him from the lime-green Lindholf Security drone on his tail. The operator made a modest effort to hide their intent, occasionally circling the block or floating behind trees. But its presence still served as a major test of Nero’s otherwise Zen mood. Security companies were far less likely to brutalize someone than the East Ward Police Department—private entities were easier to sue—but just as overt about profiling. The drone followed Nero down six residential blocks before moving on. Nero had reached the hook of the song wherein the artist compared her love to a soaring brick.
Someone else might have gotten angry, but he was Tanya Maxwell’s son. Tanya enjoyed a long, successful life to this day under the mantra “Keep your head down and you’ll keep your head on.” She’d repeated it every school morning until it became part of the background static of Nero’s life. Today he found staying neutral as rote and reflexive as blinking.
Nero strolled down two more blocks and found the second test of his tranquility. Five teenagers (or twenty-somethings that moisturized) blocked the entrance to the 339th Street train station. Each was chained at the wrist to at least one other demonstrator and wore an expression of determined and premeditated recalcitrance. The women on either end carried cardboard signs in their free hands.
Together they recited a well-worn chant:
Monarchy now!
Democracy breeds degeneracy!
Monarchy now!
Communism already failed!
Monarchy now!
Fascism’s a bit intense!
Monarchy now!
The signs also read “Monarchy Now!” and their organization was popularly known as Monarchy Now! “Redundancy Now!” sounded more apt to Nero, but he wasn’t in charge. Politicians and rival ideological extremists preferred the term “neo-Monarchists,” which gave the concept too much weight for Nero’s taste. For all their vitriol, Avery’s post-Marxists offered a basic change in policy. The neo-Monarchists, on the other hand, seemed to be perfectly fine with a version of the status quo where the governor wore a crown.
Nero had seen hints of the movement online for years: it attracted the loudest brand of keyboard warrior, and reading flame wars was a personal sport. But it still shocked him to see it bleed into the real world. According to the news, the neo-Monarchists were the product of a complex variety of social forces acting on hopelessly disaffected youth. Nero did not know or care about any of them. The hopelessly disaffected youth were in his way.
“Excuse me, brothers and sisters,” Nero said warmly.
“Who the fuck are you?” asked Sign Wielder One.
“I’m with the West Ward cell. Your operation here’s impressive, you could definitely teach us a lot about chanting. Could I get through? I need to get to Liberty Park for a demonstration.”
“Why are you dressed like that?” asked Sign Wielder Two. “You look more like a scuzzy nightclub promoter than a revolutionary.”
“It’s a west coast thing.” Nero flashed a car salesman’s smile. Sign Wielder Two began shuffling to let him pass, while her counterpart eyed him with suspicion.
“Hold on.” Sign Wielder One lifted a finger to Nero’s nose. “Take off the sunglasses.”
Nero complied.
“That’s a fucking OdinEye. You’re the kind of body-warping degenerate we’re fighting against.”
“Do you have fillings?” Nero volunteered.
“That’s a stupid goddamn argument. And you’re not getting through.”
Nero shrugged and stepped aside; the debate was about to become moot. A pair of flashing red and blue lights sped past the intersection and parked at the corner. Four heavily armored East Ward Police Department officers emerged carrying media-friendly beanbag shotguns. Sign Wielder One went white and eyed her handcuffs with dawning regret.
Nero ducked behind a garbage can and checked his phone. In his college years, he might have tried to record the unfolding violence. Today he checked his messages. Diana had sent him a smiley face with a wink. A good sign. He typed out a smiley face with its tongue sticking out. Receptive but playful. After a few moments of thinking, and then thinking about overthinking, he sent the reply. Then he heard the sound of a skull meeting concrete.
The interaction between political youth and jackbooted enforcers that defined every era in history had begun. Nero tried not to spend too much time looking at the beatings. The officers clearly had received sensitivity training, taking special care to distribute an equal number of elbow strikes and rifle butts to all ethnicities represented. The newer, softer East Ward Police Department even avoided arrests, content to leave the demonstrators with a physical lesson.
Nero sighed, replaced the sunglasses, reconsidered, and pocketed them. At twenty-seven, he was at least two years past being taken seriously in them. He stepped over a sobbing Monarchy Now! partisan and entered the station. One riot officer offered a cordial wave, which he returned half-heartedly. “Community policing” was the buzzword of the month.
