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.”
