Saturday 22 March 2014

Flint and Steel: Episode Two

The second episode of a story I wrote for Nicky's birthday. Her birthday was ages ago, but the story hasn't ended. Apologies in advance, Nicky, but you don't star in this part... though I can't say the same for your future husband.

Click here for episode one.


Episode Two 
Flint sat, cross-legged, cross-browed, staring with anchored expression at the blow dart cradled in his hands.
The reasons for Flint’s crossed state were a) he found it more comfortable sitting on his bottom with legs overlapped than, say, standing or kneeling, and b) Flint was miserable. 

So miserable, that his next action would be to assassinate the president of planet Earth.

But who could blame him? It was the laws of this president that prevented him from returning to the moon to live with his wife, Nicky Brown.

*

In the year 2148, technology was buzzing; global warming was no longer a thing; 'overpopulated' was an understatement; and the government was corrupt. It had been ten years since the world's governments merged into Ozricks, one all-encompassing entity, and one hundred years since the end of World War Pi.

"This new government isn't all bad," many brainwashed individuals would say. "They've solved world hunger; they've fixed the economy; they've guaranteed no more wars; and everyone has a job!" 
But the minority who weren't brainwashed, nicknamed the Untainted, knew better.
"How foolish this brainwashed race of humans has become, stating facts as though only they matter. Have they lost sight of the bigger picture?" By 'bigger picture', the Untainted meant the swiftly diminishing water supply.

In order to provide every single human being with a job, Ozricks commissioned all those without jobs to scoop water from every lake, river and ocean, and dump it in water-removal hotspots located all over the globe. These hotspots, primitively known as 'pipelines', led to the Bravo Disposal Plant, where the water would be loaded onto space pods and sent into space. Ozricks decided that this venture was a genius plan in order to both give everyone a job (employees had an Ozricks bucket delivered free of charge, bar shipping, to their homes), and also to create more living space where there was once only water and strange creatures that couldn't survive out of water, known archaically as ‘fish’. For this reason, there were now more waste disposal pods in space than space itself, and, when one looked up into the sky, he didn’t see sky; he saw waste disposal pods.

The up-side was that Water Collectors - for such was the name of the profession in its most technical terms - were paid by the hour, and not by the bucket load, meaning that there were equal wages for all. Alas, the job was so tedious that some workers refused to bail water and instead play with schools of helplessly-flopping halibut whose homes were now puddles on the seafloor; but tedious or no, eventually only a tenth of the water on Earth remained. Also, Flint was miserable.

Over the years, as water levels receded, Ozricks decreed that those with gardens or orchards may only have their sprinklers switched on between the hours of 8 and 9 o'clock each morning and evening. Months later, as there grew to be more fish than water, the allowance applied only to Thursdays. When asked about the choice of weekday, Ozricks replied, "No more questions."

Finally, when 95% of Earth's water was in space, Ozricks decreed that sprinklers may only be used on a Thursday, between 8 and 9 at night, in winter, during which the moon was full. Since these conditions occurred almost never, orchards and gardens, even those with genetically-modified flora said not to need nutrients of any kind, quickly decayed.

Flint owned an orchard, but the dry months, which, without water on the planet, meant every month, were unforgiving. Columns of fresh tomato berries and broco-mangoes were now rotten stems and vines, tangled in hopelessness and rage – not unlike Flint's rage.

"I have to assassinate President Nathan," he said one day to his fellow Untainted Ones. "Because of him… because of Ozricks… I can't return to my wife." Flint spoke the truth. With his orchard rotting away, so was his bank account; and without money, he couldn't cross the Astroll Bridge to see Nicky, who lived on the moon. "I just want to go home."

Flint was a formidable and handsome young man. Short, russet brown hair, hazel eyes, perfect height and a medium complexion did him all the favours you'd expect. The drawback, ironically enough, was his chiselled jaw. His jaw was so chiselled that, whenever he tried to shave, the razor didn't trim the hair so much as his jaw trimmed the razor. He tried scissors, but the blades would now and then bump his jaw and take on all kinds of scratches and dents, which only served to make Flint angry. (Flint had a soft spot for metallic objects - also ironic). As such, he was typically clean-shaven on all parts save the jaw-line, where a U of constant, curly hair portended to troublemakers that they'd do well not to cross him head-on, literally.

Unfortunately, the same weapon that overcame his adversaries also warded off countless women who had liked every bit of him save his lethal jawbone. Nicky, his wife, was the exception, if only because she had a nose of equal lethality. You can imagine how hard kissing was for them.

In order to assassinate the president, Flint needed something a little more practical than a jaw-line of steel, so it was a good thing he had friends.

Ashleigh was both a weaponsmith and an inventor. Only a recent convert to the Untainted, she was at first hesitant about the whole opposing-the-government lifestyle. But at the point of no return, pondering whose side she should take, she saw Flint at his desk, sharpening his jaw with a whetstone whilst murmuring death threats about the people who opposed him. From there, the choice was easy. Muttering something along the lines of, "Oh, all right," Ashleigh signed the papers, and they welcomed her with open arms.

Douglas was Flint's loyal friend, proven when Flint made his bold and audible-for-all proclamation that he would assassinate the president, to which Douglas replied, "You'll need a gun." A man of few words, Douglas had subsequently been granted the role of 'sidekick'. Yet, the title was amended to the more favourable 'partner' when, during the mission briefing, he voiced his wishes to be neither kicked nor eaten as a side, and unveiled two automatic firearms as background supporters to his cause.

Nicole was the last in their quad, but certainly not the least. Otherwise known as Generic Tech Girl, Nicole was as reliable as she was nerdy. It was thanks to her that they knew exactly where President Nathan would be on Friday afternoon, the preferred time of assassination, because it was an hour before Ashleigh’s Zumba class, which she was most adamant about not missing.

Nicole had put it aptly when, from the generic tech van parked outside, she said, "A swimming event? Really?" In response, the others simply threw palms to faces, the sounds of which were amplified through their comms devices.
"We discussed this a week ago at the briefing," Flint reminded.
"Was I there?" Nicole asked.
"Yes."
"Oh. Sorry."

Like an Achilles heel to her unsurpassed intelligence, Nicole suffered from short term memory loss, a rare condition brought on from consuming space-recycled water, or water launched to space and then retrieved again. "It isn't the same," she said one day (and every day hence), comparing the stuff to ordinary water, of which there was none.
But she never forgot a thing when it came to computers, and she remembered every detail she saw on a monitor, which made her the prime woman for her generic yet vital role in the team.

"I've looped the security feed. Flint, you can make your way to the top floor."
By 'top floor', Nicole meant the fifth floor, from which Flint would take his shot.

It was the fabled words of an ancient philosopher, whose name was probably Pluto, which read, "Common sense gives way to common sense." So it was, during World War Pi, when the earth was a perpetually-live bombsite, those with common sense moved either to the moon or to Mars, leaving the remaining population to wander in aimless confusion or blow up. However, since the moon isn't particularly large, not every common sense-wielding human could move there without weighing it down from one side and forcing it to either a) crash into earth, or b) drift out of Earth's orbit and towards the-fiery-red-thing-in-the-sky, archaically called ‘the sun’. And of those common sense-wielders still in peril of exploding, not all of them could afford to move to Mars. Their only choice was to do what common sense-wielding people in the midst of war do, and grab a gun. Alas, many of these men and women still died, for, as another great philosopher once said, "Bombs > guns."
Three main tribes rose from the ashes: those who were yet unharmed - the strongest, as it were; those who were slightly harmed and fewer in number; and those who escaped death with severed limbs and hanging entrails – in other words, those who didn't really know what to do because they lacked common sense.
The strongest did what ones with both strength and common sense do, and decided to rule over everyone else. However, they found this plan to be far more difficult than they expected, as only those lacking in common sense would a) blindly do whatsoever they were told to do by strong-sounding organisations, and b) rapidly multiply. The rest, well, they would rebel.

Ashleigh, who only recently joined the Untainted, was, of course, born of a mind lacking in common sense. Flint hadn't realised just how much common sense she lacked until, reaching his firing position on the fifth floor, he sat down, crossed his legs, and opened the briefcase that contained his firearm. When he had asked Ashleigh to design him a 'long-ranged weapon’ with which to shoot the president, what he didn't have in mind was a blow dart. Yet a pipe and a single dart, both packaged in close-fitting polystyrene, was exactly what he beheld.
He gazed down towards the pews overlooking the huge pool. President Nathan sat talking to his wife beside him, stroking her hair. Through clenched teeth, Flint said, “A simple rifle would have sufficed.”
“But a blow dart will make it appear as though the president fell asleep,” Ashleigh replied. “No one will suspect an assassination until you’re long gone.”
Flint was now both miserable and furious. He swung the pipe into his jaw, shattering it into three pieces. “Why do you think I want to assassinate the president?” he asked.
“Because his laws stink?” Ashleigh guessed. “I don’t know. You never told me.”
“Because he’s with his wife and you’re not,” Nicole put in.
“What?” Flint snapped. “Nicole, I told you my reasons, and I told you to tell-” he remembered her condition- “Never mind.”
Spectators filed into the pews. Chatter filled the building.
“So, are you going to tell us?” Ashleigh asked.
Flint sighed. “The Ozricks Maximum Security Prison is situated on the moon. If I kill the president, I’ll be sent there. Nicky will bust me out, and we’ll be united again.”
“You want to be caught," Ashleigh said through a gasp. Stating the obvious was something she, lacking in common sense, did a lot.
Flint sighed. “A silent blow dart doesn’t make it easy.”
He felt someone’s presence nearby just before a shadow fell over him. He looked up to find Douglas outfitted in the uniform of a security guard. Douglas presented his handgun. “Take this.”
Flint took the gun and stared at it for a time. “A pistol? What if I miss?”
Douglas held a hand out. “Then give it back and I’ll do it.”
“No,” Flint said. In an instant, he adopted the tone of a clichéd protagonist whose ambitions had suddenly risen past the point against which no man could argue. Nor did his leaden eyes bear lenience. “This is something I must do.”

The first bullet missed, but the second punctured President Nathan's shoulder. The third cracked his ribs, and the fourth his skull.
Six bodyguards were in hot pursuit even before Nathan's widow had time to scream. They climbed stairs, ladders, and other ladders that Flint hadn’t noticed before.
“Give me the gun,” Douglas said.
Flint did as his partner bid. “Don’t miss.”
Douglas raised his eyebrows. “I thought you would want me to miss.” He took the gun and shot Flint near his abdomen. 
Flint collapsed almost immediately. The pain was excruciating. Nathan’s bodyguards reached the top of the stairs. Already his sight was fading, and the last thing he heard was Douglas saying, “We got him.”

*

Flint lay on his back. The surface beneath him was soft, but he was moving. A bed with wheels. His abdomen throbbed with pain, and in his mouth he tasted blood. There would be blood in his wound, too, yet when he tried to touch it, he discovered that his hand was cuffed to the bedrail. He blinked until his vision cleared enough to make out the white walls and lights of a corridor, and a man in police uniform trolleying him somewhere. The words, “Where am I?” were on his lips, but he remembered before he said as much.
His other hand was free, and dabbing his wound left it wet with blood. But he would live. If there was anyone who knew how to shoot a man and not kill him, it was Douglas. It’ll be easier to escape the infirmary if they think I’m critically wounded. I have to inform the others. Pain shot up his arm as he raised it to the side of his head. He pressed a button on the device in his ear and whispered softly enough that his captor wouldn’t hear. “I’m in.”

Monday 17 March 2014

TV series withdrawal

Living life is like driving a car that can't reverse. The farther you go, the more things you see that you'll never see again. Hindsight and reminiscence invade the recesses of our minds, growing up and up like weeds to pull us down. But going back is impossible. Even the weeds know that what’s been done cannot be undone. Still, the truth is hard to swallow.

I’m speaking about TV shows. When I finish watching a good series, my first desire is to erase my memory and watch it anew for the first time. But my hopes are short-lived. It cannot be done, my mind so reminds me. Instead, I'm transported into a pit of hopelessness, occupied by one thought: I have to wait thirty weeks for season two?

Torture, I tell myself, crossing day one off my calendar. Time couldn’t go slower if it, like me, had a mind to try. I re-cap the red marker when another truth intervenes. “You know, if you spent less time watching TV, you’d have less weight clogging your mind. The only weeds are the memories in which you’re doing something other than that which you should be doing. Make better use of your time so that one day, when your journey ends, you’ll step out of your car, you’ll look back and you’ll see, in amongst the weeds, an entire orchard abounding with fr---”
Thirty weeks? What am I going to do for thirty weeks?

Tuesday 4 March 2014

Column for Blacklisted: Chicken in a Rut

The second edition of a magazine called Blacklisted has just been published. I wrote a column for it!

The first edition's column is here.

---------------
Limbo
Chicken in a Rut

You are a godsend, a spirit of goodwill. Your mission is to serve, and you must snuff out every spawn of evil.

Last year you came home from a wedding only to find the tag of your underwear protruding full sail. You wondered if it had begun to show before or after your speech, as no one was bold enough to enlighten you. But you embraced your humility. You donned it like a sword, and now you’re loath to see any man’s cheeks reddened by the hands of shame.

Since then, life has been easy, and an absence of the enemy has dulled your blade. The café in which you now find yourself seems harmless enough, though your eyes are wary; the evil one can be as elusive as a whisper within shadows.

A chance meeting with an old friend promises to be a fine occasion, but you gasp when he opens his mouth to speak, for there, betwixt his lower incisors, the darkness festers.

“How do you do?” he asks, oblivious of the parasite invading his mouth. The simple-minded would call it a fragment of poultry caught between two teeth, but you know better than them. If left untended, this ‘fragment’ will become the peak of humility for your innocent friend. You could strike now – a clean and swift cut – but this friend isn’t particularly close, and spilt blood might wound skin and pride both. It isn’t my job to fix this, you tell yourself, but you know that it is. You don’t carry a sword for nought, and a blunt sword is still a sword. Rid him of shame now to spare a greater dose later. But what if he can’t carry on with his pride all banged up? The tension makes you shudder.
“You okay?” he asks.
“There’s something in your teeth.”

If only you’d said those words. Instead, you turned away and pointed to the waitress approaching with coffee and tea. You avoided eye contact with your friend as often as you could, and not once did you mention the affliction. Now, on the car ride home, your sword sits in its scabbard. The parasite has been allowed to feed, and when your friend discovers and removes it himself, confidence and trust will too be severed. Your friend will be scarred and your sword will be blunt, all because you chose not to act.

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