Vivian on 27/5/2013 at 10:13

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"So. You've done the manual checks:"

"Perceived temperature, pulse, pupillary response, flushing response, yup"

"So now we check her exo-stasis box"

"Hang on.... right. So. Intracranial pressure is down, body chemistry is within a tenth of normality, activity at the installation sites is picking up again."

"And so...?"

"And so... no wait. Forgot. Ok, so the multigram checks out. Her vestige is still approximating consciousness"

"So?"

"So it should be safe to dose her again, right?"

"Right. You want to check the dosage and vector sites on the box..."

" Ok... yup. Seems good."

"Right. So give it the ok..."

"Done"

"Good. That's the last in this ward. External restoration is next. When do we check this patient again?"

"Uh... Twelve hours. The dosage cycle should be twelve hours."

"Correct."

...

Stark Strictly
the Inhuman Human
the lock with human hands
but no key to turn
with his dreams of being steel and all-powerful
with his dreams of being soft-shelled and slept upon
with his dreams of a face and of no face at all
with his dreams of heavy traffic.

East of the ear-wash, south of the staring eyes and west-northwest of the great mouth that snores and splutters as it drinks the worlds rivers, Stark Strictly is waking up in the ruined city of Vomer. He stretches out on his small bed, blinks and blinks again.

Light.

Shining on his face.

He left the light on again.

It's brighter than he remembers. Why is the rest of the room dark? Another tube must have burned out. Second one he has had to replace. He rubs his eyes. He was told that the tubes would last an entire winter. Or several winters. Maybe he misheard. He licks the grit of sleep from his teeth with a dry tongue, sits up. Looks around. He is in a pool of light, yellowish light, a circular splash of it, lighting up the dusty air around his bed like a broad, pale ribbon. He looks up. The thick porthole in the sconce above his bed is flooded with the yellowish light, glowing so bright it takes a few seconds for his eyes to stop hurting. He rolls out of bed, carefully, stiffly, and fetches a stool from the small kitchen.

Craning his head into the sconce, tiptoed on the stool, he can just see outside. The street is still evacuated, empty and silent, a few scraggly remains of trees etching spidery shadows over the thin covering of scree on the tarmac. It takes him a few seconds to process. Shadows. The sky is clear, a yellow-tinged blue. The sky is bright. No smoke trails, no red on the horizon.

It is summer.

No prelude, no warning. Yesterday, and the yesterday before that, and what feels like an endless chain of yesterdays, hand-in-hand, stretching back as far as he can remember, the sky was either black or red. Was it always like this when summer comes? This abrupt?

Stark gets down from the stool and turns to his second wardrobe. His outside wardrobe. The door sticks and squeaks open like an ancient jar, sending a swirl of dust shimmering in the porthole sunbeam. His coat is covered in dust. His trousers creak. His boots have gone slightly green. He wets a cloth from the kitchen, does his best. He hasn't seen anyone outside of this building in a long time, doesn't want to look like he just clawed his way out of a grave.

He feels like he is clawing his way out of a grave.

Outside his door, in the main corridor, light floods in from the armored atrium, lighting up the stains on the carpet, the bare wooden patches worn through the varnish of the skirting, the water marks on the plaster. Two children sit in silence, staring at the dust dancing in the air under the apex of the atrium.
The door closes and the sun strikes his forehead and he turns away. Walks past the children, past the open door that their mother watches them through. Stoops through the shallow hall with a steadily longer stride, out of the clamshell door, out into the air. The world inside recedes into a rosy blank, its sound muted and high-pitched, it's people blurred and forgotten. The world outside settles into a diseased fact.

It rains rocks and fire for half of the year in Vomer. Most of the buildings are skeletal wrecks above the first floor.

He passes a dead man sprawled in the rubble, rucksack split and stuffed with Christmas baubles, yellowed and cracked by the fire. The remains of his hands, melted shreds of some kind of festive red glove still clinging at the wrists, are wrapped around a blackened wire frame that might have been some kind of reindeer sculpture. The ashy stump next to him must have been the tree.

Starks favourite cafe is on the opposite side of central Vomer from his subterranean flat, requiring half an hour of stumbling, rubble dodging progress to reach. He whistles old songs and shouts to himself as he goes, trying to scare away the zombies (there have never been zombies seen in Vomer or anywhere else, we must note - but, as Stark rightly reasons, you can never be sure. The nights are long, who knows what might have wandered in from the pockmarked wastes?).

The cafe is one of the few overground buildings still in use, lurking in the supernaturally strong shadow of an ancient motorway flyover like a shy fish. Stark bangs the door open with an unnecessarily clenched fist and announces his arrival by hissing like a swan.

"What's with the snake noises?"

The man behind the counter inquires, cleaning a mug with a cloth.

"It was a swan, an angry swan noise. I dreamt about an angry swan last night."

"Sounds like a snake hiss to me."

"Swans also hiss. You don't know your hisses."

(or was it a goose, he thinks to himself. Never seen either).

"What is a swan?"

"Big white bird, yellow nose, if you get too close it hisses, like a burning rock landing in a lake."

"I dunno about those."

The man looks sad.

"You want something?"

"Yes." The human lock tries a smile to cheer the man up, probably too much of a smile. Is it your top or your bottom teeth you show, or does it not matter? He tries both, the coffee man shrinks backwards.

"I would like some coffee, yes."

He finds himself rubbing his too-wide forehead and stops.

"Some Coffee and some... eggs? Do you have eggs?"

The coffee man does not comment, only nods and blinks.

"Boiled eggs and a coffee, right. You want toast?"

He was talking to himself, not waiting for an answer.

"Right. Five minutes! Take a seat."

Stark takes a seat by the edge of the cafe, where there would be a glass window if it did not rain rocks and fire for half the year in Vomer. Instead there is a mural painted on the reinforced concrete wall, cows and sheep standing next to a lake. The artist was not talented. The coffee machine ticks and clanks, shaking off months of disuse, the man fretting over the control knobs. After five minutes longer than the five minutes promised, the coffee man, now revealed as a cook also, strides arthritically over with the coffee and a white plate that is too small to fully contain the eggs. They overlap.

"There you go."

Stark takes a sip of coffee and chisels a section of egg with a fork. He puts it in his mouth and considers it. The egg. He knows what an egg is, of course. He is Mentally Equivalent, so eggs, bread, forks, coffee, the normal stuff, he is totally ok with all that. At the same time. Eggs. What made the eggs? He swallows. Coughs.

"What made the eggs?"

The man had retreated back behind his counter, is cleaning something. He looks up, pushes his thick, yellowish glasses back up the bridge of his nose with a thin, yellowish finger.

"What? A bird. That look like a frog egg to you?"

Stark looks at the closest egg. It is about the size of one of his shoes, long and nearly conical, white with a blueish shimmer. He has seen frogs, seemingly springing out of nothingness in the brief ponds on the surface. Funny things with nearly circular bodies and bright, white eyes.

"I don't know. Are these likely to be swan eggs?"

"I dunno. The box just said eggs. Bird eggs, mind. I dunno. I'd never heard of a swan before this morning. But they are bird eggs. So maybe?"

The man walks away, seemingly upset by this further mention of swans. Stark sips his coffee and considers his toast. Brown, fibrous rims around a foamy-firm whiteness. Toast, with which stark has an uneasy familiarity with. Toast came pleasantly with orange juice on some mornings, but on one occasion had come unpleasantly fast from the ruined shadows of one of Vomers alleys, aimed at his broad forehead by an unseen hand. Zombies, Stark conjectured, and he shivered a little. A small amount of bright red yolk was spilling from the egg he had partially consumed. The eggs were deactivated. They were no longer in a state in which a swan or a goose could potentially hatch from one. They smelled rich and firm, like a hot summer night.

Stark takes another bite, swallows. Eggs, then.

"What's going on at the moment?"

He asks the man.

"You mean as in news? Not a lot. Summer has only just started. The shield folk are having another one of their elections. Some girl, Shodan Rodan, seems to be the favourite, dunno about her much. Supposed to be a goodtime girl from way back, now some kind of hardcase. Don't make much difference anyhow, shield folk don't come out here."

"I suppose that's because you might get hit by a burning rock."

"I suppose you're right. Lemme see, lemme see. There was also one of their bulletins... oh yes. Chiselers. You heard've chiselers?"

"I don't think so."

"The chiselers. A new terrorist or anti gouvernment group, or maybe thieves, or maybe just kids fucking with everyone."

"They sound confusing."

"They been digging tunnels all around under the Shield and out here in the rubble, and even out there in the glimmer, they reckon. Says they found one tunnel, 'stretching for over a hundred vursts into the outer districts from an entrance located close to the seventeenth great stanchion interchange'."

"What are they doing digging tunnels? One hundred vursts is a very long way to dig. They must be doing something with their tunnels."

"Says here there are likely to be anti-social intentions behind the tunnels."

"Anti-social tunnels."

"That's what it says here."

Stark broke off another piece of egg and thought about being underground. Like most vomerites he was too poor to be allowed to live in the salubrious districts nestled under the giant, clear slab of the Shield, and so had lived most of his life in a tunnel of one sort or another.

He tried to imagine what an anti-social tunnel might look like. One too small to fit anyone else in? One which you have used as a toilet, or covered in personal insults and obscene slogans? These Chiselers sounded like strange people.

"Anyway, they're the big news at the moment, looks like. Course, summer has only just started."

"Yes it has."

"So Things will now be Happening, I expect."

"Yes."

The man finished rubbing his glasses, moved on to the cutlery. Hadn't been used all winter, Stark supposed. Dusty. He drank his coffee and thought about the tunnels a little more. "Maybe they're good people?"

"What? Who?"

"The chiselers."

"Say's here they are terrorists. Or thieves."

"Maybe they just want a bigger home. In the tunnels. I mean, no-one else can really fit under the shield, that's why it's so expensive to live there. And there has never been enough basements for everyone to really be comfortable."

"Nah, they're doing something anti-that. Anti-social. Says that they carry weapons down there. Police got into a fight or something, people got burned. Burning people in tunnels is anti-social. You wouldn't burn people in a house-tunnel."

"No. I guess not."

"So what are you going to do with your summer? You're the first customer in. But everyone must be waking up now. Gonna get busy. Not sure I have enough forks."

Stark hadn't really thought about it. Six months of summer. What was he going to do?

"I haven't really thought about it."

"Apparently... hang on" The man fishes a small slip of paper from under the counter. "Apparently, the shield park is expecting a flowering. First time in ten summers. Says that it won't be in full swing for a coupla weeks, but you can see the buds now. Says they're going to be brewing the sap as soon as the summer starts. Which is today. Sap wine. It's going to get busy. Very busy."

"I've never had sap wine."

"It's nice! It's really nice. It's going to be very busy. Once everyone wakes up and reads the bulletin. I should sell sap wine. Beats coffee!"

"Tree's don't grow out here though. They don't like the climate. Too much fire and burning rocks. You need sap, right? You'd never get the sap."

The man looked down at the piece of paper, and then at the coffee machine. Resentfully.

"... yeah. I guess so. No sap. Still -" he slaps the coffee machine with his other hand. "People also like coffee! You like coffee. You wannanother? Clean cup as well? On the house! First customer!"

"Yes please. Can I see the piece of paper?"

The man fiddles the knobs and the coffee machine rattles and slowly slumps out another coffee. He brings it over and replaces Starks cup with a full one, placing the piece of paper on the table. Stark picks it up. There is a picture of the shield park in bloom, must be from the last flower summer. Tall, translucent flowers bigger than a man, red veins on great greenish petal sails, blue sap visibly dripping out of the central schism. Trees reaching up to the enormous crystal ceiling of the shield, spreading out underneath it like barky stalactites. Flowers covering the entire lower surface of the trunks, with tappers suspended from ropes and harnesses installing, checking or emptying sap tanks. Shield people, wearing complicated clothing and strange, glowing glasses, walking through the wide boulevards between the ranks of trees, pointing at things, pointing at each other, laughing at life in general.

"It looks really pretty in the park. When it flowers. Really pretty."

"Yup. Like I said. Going to get busy!"

There is a small map on the lower half of the piece of paper. Stark studies it intently.

"Does it take long to get to the park? Can you walk?"

"Uh.... yes? I mean, I think so. I think you can walk. I've not been. Have to stay here, otherwise no-one can buy coffee. Or eggs."

"You think that is important that people can buy coffee?"

"Whatdya mean? It's what I do. This is a cafe. Cafe, coffee. That's how it works. What else could I do?"

Stark thinks about this for a few seconds. Sounds plausible.

"Ok. I see what you mean." Stark looks a the little map again. He thinks he recognises parts of it. The park is towards the southern side of the shield, near to where a broad, curving road running from the city outskirts meets the outer rim. That is the motorway. The motorway that this cafe is under. So the part of the shield that the park is under is fairly close.

"It looks like the park is fairly close."

"Yeah, I think it is. People come in here have spoken about it. They say it's really nice. Like, what was it you said? Pretty. They said it was pretty."

Stark folds up the piece of paper and sticks it into an upper pocket of his coat. A small amount dust falls off the pocket as he zips it back up, drifts down to coat his unfinished eggs and his coffee. Stark makes a face.

"Well... I think I have finished with my eggs and my coffee. How much money do I pay you?"

The man turns and starts prodding the till, which bloops quietly. "Six pounds." Stark fishes a wallet out of another pocket, adding another layer of grayish dust to his increasingly unappetising eggs. "Here you go, coffee man. Thank you!"

"Quibley."

"What?"

"My name is Quibley. Coffee man is my job, but I think there is even a better word for it than that."

"Barista!" Stark blurts out, then immediately clamps his hand over his mouth, shocked. He and Quibley look at each other.

".... yes. I think so. That sounds right." Quibley looks a Stark's mouth, suspiciously. Stark swivel's his eyes. Worried.

"I do not remember thinking that." Stark mumbles, through his hand. "I said that without thinking that. Is that normal?"

"I dunno. Maybe? Maybe it's ok." Quibley frowns. "I think I have said things that I haven't thought. I mean, I don't remember thinking about things I have said sometimes."

Stark takes his hand down. He is officially recognised as Mentally Equivalent, but it has been two summers since the shield people came to look at him. Maybe he has regressed? He doesn't feel regressed. But how would he know? Maybe you can't feel yourself regressing. Maybe that's part of it. "Maybe it is OK?", he asks Quibley, trying to sound calmer than he feels.

"Yeahhhh... yeah. Maybe it's ok. I don't remember thinking about asking you if you wanted more coffee. It just happened. So maybe it's ok to just say things. I'm sure it's fine."

Stark relaxes a little. "Thankyou."

"Don't let it worry you so much. Maybe you should go somewhere relaxing. It's always hard, after winter. It's difficult to be outside and not worry about burning."

"Yes. Maybe I should go somewhere relaxing." Stark thinks about the park. Sap wine is relaxing. Very relaxing, he has heard.

demagogue on 28/5/2013 at 04:05

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And the crotchety post of the day award goes to...


Edit: I just watched Upstream Color, and maybe it was in my mind and I was reading it through that lens, but I felt like you had some of the same kind of beats in the conversations & description & flow as Carruth has... It's a bit opaque or even alienating, but in a good sense.

SubJeff on 28/5/2013 at 10:50

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I really enjoyed that. Very atmospheric and it has a pretty unique feel to it. I'd read a whole novella or short story of it for sure.

I'm on a sci fi tip at the moment (again!), having just finished The Forever War and a Flashman. Book of Skulls up next.