Chasing Oranges



  ChAsinG OrAngEs

  a novel based on a dubiously true story

  by

  claude vicent

  This is a work of fiction. References to names, characters, places, events, incidents and rock bands are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Lyrics of the Great Song remain the copyrighted material of the Pazanna People’s Republic.

  Copyright © Claude Vicent 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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  0.1

  Whatever money his good for nothing brother didn’t steal from him to get that gooey OrAngE stuff blown up his backside he would spend on old stuff. Dust collecting stuff. The kind of things no one had any real use for anymore. Things like batteries, typewriters, umbrellas, lightbulbs, binoculars and all other sorts of marvelous gadgets. So he bought himself a medium wave radio transmitter from one of those old shopkeepers by the wall. The big grey thing that surrounded them on all but one side. The side where the sandy beaches looked onto the silver sea and all that lay beyond it.

  It was the kind of radio he’d seen as a kid. Before it all went pear-shaped and they turned the world into a seven sided cube, and with it changed the meaning of the word soul. One of the ear pieces from the headset was missing. It hadn’t help bring the price down.

  “Take it or leave it,” he’d said.

  Feeling into his back pocket he’d quivered for a second before handing the three-eyed cripple the stash of money.

  “I’ll take it.”

  The kid had smiled timidly and picked up the heavy thing and made for home. And as he walked along the seashore, the barbed wire fences lining the coral beach front where the fizzy waters met the grey sand, he’d seen one of those pirate rafts setting out across the bay. Carrying all manner of down-and-outs. Hopelessly lost people taking a desperate leap, an attempt to make a better chance of their already too miserable lives. Unknown to them they would soon be flipped head over arse into the acidy waters beneath, never to be seen again. No one ever made it across the bay. Anyone the pirates didn’t cast overboard the laser interception devices would take care of. And yet many chose to ignore the bloody statistics. The bay was a last resort for a few desperate men who had nothing left to live for, nothing to lose but for the heartbeat in their chest. As he stood there, holding the heavy orange and brown coloured radio transmitter, looking out over the silver flats, he could not help sparing a thought for those poor ones who would inevitably be turned to mince the second they’d fall into the sea. It was sad but he’d grown to learn to live with it like the rest of them.

  On Fridays his brother would leave the shack, for his weekly night bashing routine of three legged whores and OrAngE TwanG. It was a Friday. He rolled down the blinds in his shed-like room and pulled out the transmitter from beneath his bed. As he pulled and twitched at the rusty wires he knew the danger he was facing. Handling something as hot as a trans-border communication device could translate into a world of pain. Getting caught trying to cross the border, or making contact with anyone across the other side, meant sudden and unequivocal elimination. But like so many kids, the harsh taste of rules and regulations hadn’t quite stained his youthful gland yet.

  Rummaging around a wooden box, which he kept by his headrest, he pulled out a few leaky batteries and proceeded to hook them up to the transmitter. He removed the back panel and took a good look inside. Fixing here and there as best he could, like the old man at the bazar had taught him. Years ago, before he was taken off into the mist of the desert, taped to the back of a camel and left to rot in the heat of the sun. A dreadful punishment, handed to the old man on accounts of his wizard like skills.

  The box soon started to make the first sounds as the knobs turned and the antenna reached left, right and centre for anything that might be floating around in the brume of space. Nothing but the annoyance of the universe’s static graced the speakers for over an hour so he put it to one side and picked up his trumpet and went to sit down by the sea. And as he played a few tunes, the ones the old man at the bazar had taught him, he noticed the first lights from across the bay starting to appear, one by one. In the distance the unmistakable purple clouds engulfing the Lactobia extracting rigs lingered in the evening skies.

  He played himself into the night, eventually retiring to the shack and managing a few hours sleep. Dreaming of better things to come, only to wake up to the scene of his deranged, OrAngE TwanG infested brother tampering with the transmitter.

  “What the fuck you doing playing around with this kind of stuff? I should fucking well smash this across the back of your head before they do!”

  “Just you try it you sad piece of shit and I’ll wipe the smile right off your face,” he said ripping the precious gadget from his brother’s hands. He wasn’t afraid of the wimp whom nature had assigned as his elder, bigger, dumber brother. He’d been in enough fist fights to know he could take him down anytime. The old man at the bazar had taught him the hooks, jabs and upper cuts he’d used many a time. He missed the old man and thought of him often. He wondered if he was still of that world. Hard to believe given the harsh reality of the desert, but all was possible.

  Later that day, sitting behind the shack in the shade of the morning sun he began to play with the knobs like he had done the night before. He tried desperately to make it work. And yet, for all his efforts, all he got was the crushing sound of nothingness. Then suddenly, after a few more attempts of a twist and turn he heard something come across the speaker and held his ear up to the device, dampening his breath to listen. Yes, he thought, yes. It was indeed the unmistakable notes of a rock song that came thrashing through the speakers like thunder through glass. Having heard something like it before, he sat there smiling. The old man had spoken to him on different occasions of the heaven-like blasts of music that once used to move freely through the skies. Now, as he heard it for himself it filled him with joy. He knew that someone, somewhere was risking their life to transmit the forbidden sounds in the name of freedom. There was still some soul left out there after all. And as he looked over across the bay to the promised land something told him it was there the music was coming from.

  The rock music played in the background for a few more interminable instances. The squeaking sounds melding into a long scream which peaked in one, single, clear message at the end of the chorus, I’m back in black. He wondered what it might mean, what it could mean to anyone sitting across the bay. Then, just as it had come the music disappeared into the void, certainly the work of the border patrols who’s jamming devices worked incessantly across the line between the two realities.

  Picking up his rusty copper trumpet he played a few mellow notes into the breeze, as the winds blew the purple clouds in all kinds of directions. Tapping ever so gently on the valves he blew through the very core of the instrument. Another of the many toys he’d purchased off the wizard at the bazar. And as he played he questioned whether the time hadn’t come to finally make the leap. To take one mighty jump and make an attempt at a life. Something he could fall asleep to at night and wake up to with a sense of purpose and pride every morning. Surely he would find something to do. The sun always shone on that side of the quadrant. He would always have the old copper trumpet to play if all else f
ailed. There was talk of revolution in the streets. The pain and horror of the local regime were reaching new highs. He’d heard enough words spoken. It was time to put some of them into action. There was little left for him in that corner of the cube. For too long he’d sat there playing his tune, quivering at the lack of possibilities his dim future held. And all that wealth and hope just across the bay.

  There wasn’t much planning involved. Just enough time to put together enough cash to make the payment. Selling his few belongings, apart from the clothes he wore and his loyal trumpet. He knew where they would make the jump. Anyone who had ears and a strong enough desire for change did. Down towards the edge of the 16th quadrangle. The spot was never the same. It changed continuously. The catapults could be moved at a moment’s notice. They had to be. It was a daily game of cat and mouse between the two sides of the wall.

  It had started as a simple line. A line to delimit the edge of two very different realities. Like all such lines, it soon developed into a fence. When the time was ripe they added the barbed wire, and when one too many had been ripped to shreds, well then they decided to start building a wall. It had been done before.

  The tunnels, boats and hot-air-inflated cows which had failed miserably, offered low or inexistent odds. The catapults allegedly guaranteed the highest success rate. Of course you had to know what you were doing. Like in all well respected ex-democracies the wrongs are put right by the darkest forms of organised crime, who for a respectable fee, are always more than happy to assist people in all manner of unfathomable escapades, no questions asked.

  The catapults had taken off like wild fires. People making the flight over without a worry in the world. Then the other side had caught onto it all and started to build a wall where the fences once lay. The catapults got bigger. The wall got taller. They built bigger and stronger catapults. The wall got bigger. The catapults got stronger, more precise. The wall got bigger. Then the crooks on his side gave up caring. The wall stopped growing. Standing at a titanic 60 feet it would probably have continued to finance itself all the way up to the clouds had it only been given the chance.

  So the game plan on the kid’s side of the fence had changed. One was no longer guaranteed a clean jump. Depending on wind factors and other mysterious variables, as for example whether the guy in charge of the catapult was willing and capable of properly calibrating the thing. A 50 percent success rate was all one could expect. So claimed some old wise man who sat by the old brewery and professed to having had visions of the promised land. Many had laughed at him over the years but few had ever dared contradict his captivating tales. 50 percent however was good enough for some, for most. A flick of a coin. A lifetime of savings well invested for the chance to watch the sun come up on the better side of the cube.

  He had watched a couple of them getting splattered before. Unaware of their realistically poor chances of ever clearing the thing. They sat back in their seats holding onto the plastic bags containing whatever life belongings they wished to bring with them to the next life. The worried looks, yet the spark of hope blazing somewhere within the soul. He read it as a life-threatening ignorance.

  A full moon lit the border the night he made the journey out to the hideout. The old seaman, Kalombo, had known him since he was a lad. In the jungle of uncertainty which plagued the land the kid knew he could trust him alone. The man walked with a heavy limp in his left leg and his lower lip hung heavily as he muttered words that few could ever comprehend. He was proud of the young man the kid had become, who would come to him for advice and listen to his stories. Watching him there in the early hours of a new morning it hurt him to see him leave, but he understood his reasons for doing so.

  All along the wall the sound of slingshots being coiled, charged and released filled the otherwise silent fields. Poor, unknowing young men like himself meeting their end at a hundred feet per second on the cold unforgiving concrete of the wall. The grey monster they called it.

  They exchanged a friendly look as the cash switched hands. Kalombo looked over to one of his men across the catapult standing behind some pulleys and levers. The nod of the head was a signal that the next one up was a go. No messing around. It was to be a proper attempt at a crossing.

  “What you got in the bag boyo,” Kalombo asked him, picking the tar from under his lip. He sat at his rudimentary desk, his four-fingered hand holding onto the stained envelope containing the money the kid had handed him.

  “You got that sound thing of yours hey? The shiny tube? Is this all the money you have kido? You know it won’t come in handy on the other side. They don’t use the paper any longer.”

  “What do they use then,” he asked perplexed.

  “Beats me.”

  Dragging his limp across the platform Kalombo walked up close to where the kid sat, semi strapped into the catapult, his legs shaking nervously.

  “When you make it to the other side boyo, just start running. Run. No matter what you do, what you think, just you run boyo.”

  The kid could only nod to the old pirate. Then he took a good long look up to the moon and the stars. How many there were up there. Too many to count.

  “Bite down on this,” Kalombo spoke, feeding him a soaked piece of bark. “It’ll help with the initial whiplash. Remember, just run when you hit the ground. Run like you got the fever boyo.”

  “The OrAngE fever.”

  A lonely cloud appeared out of nowhere as if to bless the crossing, adding to the disguise of the night which the moon had tried to wreck. The old man limped across the stand to where his accomplice stood, by the pulleys. The sound of ropes coiling behind him squeaked and croaked, pinched and pulled. Then, holding onto his only possession, the kid felt the flinching sound of his motionless body being projected up and into the heavens.

  The dark leather case which held his trumpet went to float away from him but he was quick and reached out for it before they were parted. His legs, arms and head floated like a feather as he thought he could reach up to the moon and take one greedy slice out of it. Then the dread, as he realised he was on his way down.

  He hadn’t processed it yet, but he’d cleared the grey monster by over five feet and would soon be landing in the safety of the marshes on the other side. The unguarded portion of the wall. The empty guard turrets were filled with cobwebs, empty liquor bottles and abandoned magazines with photos of all manner of naked mammals. Abandoned long ago, when the almighty Notobian bureaucrats figured enough of them were hitting the wall without ever making it over. There was no real need to man the whole border. A few irregulars here and there would do little to alter their casual reality. If the weather wouldn’t take care of them, the city life sure would.

  JacK LaNdAn