Chasing Oranges Read online

rchapte

  They spent most of their time in the shadows. Looking up every so often to the light shining down, deep from the heights of the sky and the upper crust of the cube. Up there where the wealthy lot made ends meet. For them, on the other hand, existing with dignity was hard enough. Few of those who lived down under ever had the time or privilege of wondering what it might have been like if...

  Having little recollection of his previous life, he came into his new existence with the innocent ignorance that only children can be forgiven for displaying. He walked the streets in the days, bumping here and there and bouncing off shoulders. Wandering aimlessly about the place, not knowing how or where to look for something to eat, or where to suck for something to drink. All he could do was feel the thirst and hunger and cold, and suffer. And as the days went by he fell deeper and deeper into a mist of madness, hallucinating of little orange coloured beings talking to him from within the cracks in his dry skin. He was eventually picked up by some security agency or other, rubber stamped through some sort of system and duly processed for deportation.

  Unmarked, unknowing, unwanted. They cast him to the maze of buildings and sewers down beneath without too much ceremony. His loose tie still hanging round his neck and his light blue suit, ripped here and there, and that dozed look of his. His eyes were fixed into the distance, looking but not seeing or quite understanding. They may as well have fed him to the acidy waters of the bay, or for all purposes put a bullet in the side of his head. Releasing him into the underworld like they did would only prove to be rather unwise in most cases. There was no one taking records at the time, but if there had been they would show that the average life expectancy, of anyone stepping into the under world of society, was of approximately 7 minutes give or take thirty valuable seconds.

  The old drilling shafts of the elevators generally swarmed with hopeful criminals, waiting for their daily load of condemned individuals, forcibly sent to live with the rest of them down there, hoping to rid them of whatever could be sold and exchanged on the black markets. Most never made it past the first mugging, which generally implied a swift stabbing.

  Against all odds, there was no one there the day they stuck him in the lift, took off the handcuffs and sent him on his way. When the doors to the underworld opened before him he found himself all alone in the darkness. Standing there in the silence, the warm gritty, smelly taste of waste hitting him in the otherwise cold air, suffocating him in a manner he had only ever experienced before in some of his most recurring nightmares. There he was, a bystander to his new reality, unable to do anything to improve his immediate situation.

  Nothing would ever come close to making him feel the things he felt for the girl that came to his rescue that day. Banished from upper reality and cast into a very different world with the rest of them. It was a dire place down there, under the covers of darkness. The cold bit into the skin like blades and the frost stuck to the nose like glue. What fresh water anyone could get their hands on was used to distill whatever contraband they could force into a liquid liquor of sorts. And whilst there were those who abused it, others payed with their lives for indulging in the poorly prepared concoction. Food was scarce. Nothing fresh made it that low down. You had to know someone who knew someone. Then you might get a bit of a bit, if you hadn't been ripped off in the process. In which case you might end up with a piece of shit. And if you were lucky enough they painted it green and passed it off as a vegetable. No one had seen a real vegetable for decades. It was always worth a try. Few things are ever too outrageous for the desperate.

  The scavengers would rummage around among the vast fields of waste and whatever half nibbled scraps of dinner and lunch and breakfast they could get their claws on they would serve to heedless customers in their dinner joints. Roadside shacks where second hand meals could be purchased at premium prices. Still they lived a respectable life, within the boundaries of reason. And they did their business the old way. Some of this for some of that. A battery for some bread, a lightbulb for some spirit. Some copper for some ham. Of course there was no such thing as ham but news of that still hadn't reached all, especially down in the shadows.

  The corporations from the upper regions that ran the shit consuming establishments down under payed Kredits. Despite the allure money had, anyone desperate enough to visit one of the places was guaranteed a considerably shorter life expectancy than the already ridiculously low prospect of living past the age of forty. The ones that died in the streets disappeared quickly. They would come with black vans. Load them on the back like sacks of potatoes and drive off into the mist.

  Not all was bad down under. People came together in their attempts to survive. The worst of times brought out the worst and best of people. But they struggled. And so, occasionally, they would climb the elevator shanks and risk the prison sentence involved in being caught doing so. And up above they would go unseen. Lying on the sides of the road, starving, singing, chanting. Just sitting there, hoping for someone to drop them a few Kredits. A shot at a future.

  She had taken him in and showed him the ropes. And he had learned quickly. Mostly about himself. His true self. He was strong, they told him. Day after day he would learn that about himself too. He spent much time in the beginning sitting about on the road sides, by the bonfires, listening to the elders discussing and reminiscing. Learning, like a child. The old folks, the few who still remembered the days before the first gadgets were introduced.

  It was during one of those discussions that he learned about his father. When one of the elders noticed the distinct birth mark he had on the inside of his palm, there was no way of convincing them otherwise. He was unquestionably the son of Maleba they claimed. The great wizard. The man who had brought them so much hope all those years back. When the elders finally agreed on his true identity they began to call him Kayan, “New Leaf”. The phoenix, awoken from the ashes. The ashes that would otherwise keep it from seeing the truth. Whether he like it or not, the cloud of expectation and action would soon begin to take shape over his being.

  He seldom pondered on such matters when they were alone together. Instead time seemed to pass mystically. It wasn't all bad. At times they would manage for weeks on some generous handout. She would sit in the front room of their place, an old cement shack, painting.

  “What is it you paint?” he’d asked her once.

  “I paint the future,” she had told him smiling.

  Her hopes for the future. They coloured their living quarters with all sorts of flourishing objects. Anything colourful and lively they could get their hands on. Anything that would remind them, in every breathing second of their existence, that they were both alive and well. And they would sit in the shade, down by the sea front at times. Looking into the horizon, trying to catch a glimpse of the sinking sun, and they would fantasise about the day when they would leave that horrid place behind and build a house and perhaps have a family somewhere else. He knew full well it would take a hell of a lot more than her paintings and some wishful thinking. Still he smiled and held her in his arms.

  One day, pushed by the constant struggle to find something to add to their empty stomachs, they made the perilous journey into the upper levels. It took them over eight hours to climb the old steel structure. The unused, abandoned rig that had once led Lactobian miners to work, deep into the belly of the world. It had been a day like many others they had spent up above together. Smiling and sucking in the magnetic energy of the few sun rays that shined for a full fifteen minutes in the summer months. A young bright girl even dropped a rather generous donation into their cup. They talked about how they might be able to sell some of her art. Not everyone was a damn robot up there, they told themselves. There were still beings that could see the beauty in the world and would be willing to pay to appreciate it more. They were, after all, human like the rest of them, he figured.

  Had they seen the marching squadron of black shirts tramping down the street, they might have made a run for it. The
y never saw it coming. Instead they were rushed to their feet and held there by the scruff of their necks, as they searched their belongings, their few possessions. Throwing them around like they were toys to be had. How dare they, he whispered to himself.

  One of the young squadrons made the mistake of trying to play sweet with her. Held his hand up to her face, pulling her in close as if he might want to stick his tongue down her throat. Giggling as he did so. She kneed him there where real men once had balls. Funnily enough he fell to the ground. Then a gun. Quickly and professionally drawn, it appeared to the side of her head. He took a few steps forward to prevent an already troubling situation from escalating. Push came to shove. The sweaty hands of an underpaid officer of the uncharted law could only lead to something bad. A shot fired, the gun, the head. And she fell to the ground. Slowly, beautifully. Like a feather. He stood there, in the silence which his brain had chosen for him. Just like that, she was gone. All around him, grown men in black shirts, officers of the state squabbled like children, screeching. The mayhem. He could only stand there and observe. All around they blamed and shouted, pointing fingers here and there. The sound started to turn, steadily louder, then louder, then louder in his head.

  A flock of black armoured vehicles pulled up. A number of black suits rushed to the door of an old Mercedes with tinted black windows. From the back door he saw the tall figure emerge. First the feet, dark shiny shoes. Then the blue trousers and the navy blue suit, and the red tie. The dark briefcase, the strong looking hand holding on to it. And the eagle head. Its dark penetrating eyes, its bright yellow beak and its snow-white feathers hanging beautifully over the back of its white shirt collar. The big golden flashy chains hanging around its neck, its symbol of power. It walked stealthily towards them. The black suits opening before it like a curtain. A spine-chilling silence followed, as it walked towards the young Kayan. Then, when it was within spitting distance, it turned to face the still warm body of his true love lying there on the floor. The nerves in one of her legs caused her body to twitch reluctantly. A few breaths still hissed in and out of her dying vessel. The eagle reached into its jacket and to the side of its hip. It pulled out a rather rough looking semi automatic, cocked it and fired the gracing shot into her head, finally sending her on her way. The young Kayan Maleba noticed its overly long nails clawing into the side of the pistol as it whispered something to one of its crew. Kayan thought he heard its deep voice utter something, but he couldn't quite tell what it was. And with that the eagle man turned its back to him and walked into the adjacent building. He was left there to fend for himself, again. Without her. The fire of insanity and revenge beginning to boil and sparkle within him. Fueled by a nuclear furnace that would not show the least sign of ever burning out. Something cold and calculating within him urged him to be patient.

  It was in such tragic circumstances that he came to find his place in the world, his calling. Fueled by the pain that the loss of his true love would cause him. For her, and all other victims passed and yet to pass, he would call upon himself to destroy the one thing that stood between them all and liberty. The Eagle, the symbol of it all. That power-hungry, untouchable figure who ran the corrupt institution that still had the nerve to call itself the State. The iron fist in the silk glove, that only reserved its softness and goodness for a few lucky chosen ones, whilst the rest of them endured the might of its cold harshness. He would not settle until the day they would bring him the eagle’s head on a plate.

  SoMe tiMe LateR

  erchapt

  Something in him was half way through a rather heated discussion with Julius Caesar and Isaac Newton. Among other things, it regarded the logistical and physical implications of growing hallucinogenic water lilies on some distant planet. Then, whilst at the hight of the debate, he felt the cold, harsh hand of reality tapping him on the shoulder.

  He was on the intercity train again, bound for nowhere, ticketless. He’d fallen asleep, something he had specifically planned on avoiding. Considering the staggering fine for getting caught in the act, falling asleep, and hence prey to the madness which had engulfed them all, could be a risky and expensive business. It took a few seconds for the mist to clear in his eyes. The moment he met the soulless stare of the train conductor he knew he was in a world of trouble.

  A 900 Kredit fine would not, under normal circumstances have worried him too much. It was a reasonable and honest amount due for anyone dumb enough to get caught traveling without a ticket. However, given his recent cash flow problem, his chronic inability to find and hold down a decent job, added to the ever present dark shadow of his addiction to the OrAngE current, he figured 900 Kredits were just enough to propel him into a new deep pool of shit. There was no way he could afford the fine or the trouble involved in not paying one.

  “So how would you like to settle the score,” he heard the humanoid in uniform ask.

  Scrubbing the sleep out of his eyes he tried to act as nonchalantly as humanly possible.

  “Why don’t you just send me the bill sir?”

  “Very well,” it went on, scoping every inch of his putrid, drug ridden figure. “Name and address!”

  “Name, and address,” he repeated unconsciously as the inescapable effect of all the OrAngE current abuse came back to haunt him.

  “Name and address,” it poked on.

  He struggled to avoid his mouth from mumbling as he focused in on the small splashes of fluorescent orange body fluids he’d gotten all over himself a few hours earlier. He wasn’t sure it was even his own. The last few hours were clouded by a bright blinding fog. The colours pulsated vividly before his eyes, as if full of life. He would happily have sat there observing them for the longest period of time hadn’t the stern voice come to haunt him again. He wasn’t going to get out of this one easily.

  He’d grown accustomed to those passive observing moments of outer-body experiences, yet they still seemed to fascinate him now and then. He’d watch his body as somebody else took over his limbs and he could only observe from somewhere behind his eyes. Those were his fingers tickling away at his thighs, rummaging around in his pockets for something to bribe the ticket inspector with. The current had gotten to him again. Thoughts weighed down on his thinking operation. He was finding it hard to process the simplest of mental computations.

  Still unable to connect with his limbs he sat there, a solid grin imprinted on his face. He didn’t mean to smile, his face was just stuck that way. There was no immediate way of making it change. The muscles in his cheeks twitched as he struggled to comprehend the state of affairs.

  “Name and address, now!”

  Some primitive mechanism within his mind started the cogs and springs. Finally in motion, he came up with a name to give the inspector. One of his eyes went numb as he looked up to the imposing figure of authority.

  “Kayan. My name’s Kayan Maleba!” he said with some satisfaction. The creative juice. A welcomed side effect.

  “That’s it,” he heard a voice call from a million miles away. “You’re either paying up now or I’m going to have to hold you until we get to the next station where the Enforcement Unit will be notified and take charge of you.”

  “Christ,” he heard another voice burst out from deep within his chest. “No please, not those fascists sir. They would never understand, you see…” He paused as he looked for something remotely logical to express. Worse case scenario would land him a couple nights of cold, cemented prison cell, and not a drop of sweet OrAngE current to quench his needs.

  “Fascists?” the authoritative figure questioned.

  “I could hook you up with my sister. I will, I mean, I can.” The long single eye brow curled across his sweaty forehead, the expression on his face, unsuccessfully trying to appear uninterested. The incorruptible face of the institutions before him, unmovable.

  “I’ll hook you up with her. You’ll love the girl, trust me. It’s what she does best. She’ll take good care of you. Make you forget all
about this nasty ticket issue. What’a you think?”

  Forty hours later and a drill in the side of the head kind of a headache, sitting at a table in the coffee shop adjacent to some unknown train station. That jerk of a ticket inspector had kept his ID card as a guarantee until they’d meet later that evening. His right index finger poking into the coffee, desperately trying to find a solution. He had six hours to come up with a sister he didn’t have. One willing to stand in for him and take one for the team. He’d better hurry.

  The state of his gums had deteriorated considerably during the last forty-eight hours. He noticed it as he pulled out yet another tooth and laid it on the saucer next to the spoon. If only he could score some current. Get some creative OrAngE juices flowing again. There was only one place to make some quick money when one was down in the dumps. The answer was to venture under the surface and into the sewers. He figured a half a kilo of dump should sort him out just fine.

  They served him his human portion of excrement on a recycled paper tray. Didn’t even get a spoon to go with it. If that is what it took, he thought to himself, he was willing to take it. Doing his bit for the world. That was how it worked. All the shit and piss from the ones up above had to go somewhere. That somewhere was down there where the rest of them existed. They’d pay him two and a half thousand Kredits for consuming half a kilogram of shit. Human shit.

  Chances were it would give him an infection and kill him. That being the case, it was legal and cheaper to dump him on the outskirts of the solar system than it would have been to expel the half kilo of shit he’d ingested. The cunning of laws is always to be admired. Loophole after loophole after black hole.

  He hadn’t had anything to eat in three days. It was better that way. Anything laying around in his stomach was only going to make him sick. There wasn’t even enough bile left in him to make him gag. They gave him some dark rain water to wash his face out with when he was done, curtesy of the house, who incidentally always had an edge.

  As he picked up the first of thirteen frozen cubes and held it up to his mouth, he noticed the familiar colour, but was taken back by the seeming lack of smell. The odd, putrid essence had however been well preserved. He tried to swallow the ice cube in one go but nearly chocked on the thing. Unwillingly, he forced himself to hold it in his mouth until the thing melted. Then, when he thought he could force it down, he did so with the aid of the dark rain water they’d given him in a sawed off beer bottle.

  Some fifteen minutes later, he was two grand up and ready and revving to score some current. The ideas were bound to start flowing back once he’d had his doze. That was how he rolled. He still had to figure a way to get his precious ID card back off the ticket inspector. Failure to do so could land him in a world of strain.

  Six seconds. That’s all the current half a kilogram of shit and a possible lethal infection were going to get him at his local OrAngE current joint. Not to mention the mighty erections his blood sack of a penis was doomed to undergo.

  Six seconds was all he got. It took longer than that to connect the thing up to his arse. And before he knew it he was stumbling out of the joint, penniless and as high as six seconds worth of current could get him. For a moment he thought he’d gone blind. Then he realised his eyes had tilted back into his head and they were stuck. He was literally looking back into towards the darkness of his head. He swore he could see little orange sparkles shining, calling someone’s name. Cornelius, Cornelius, Cornelius.

  He could still feel the current in his veins, like a little army of ants, marching along his nervous system. Suddenly it was all so clear. His thought process stood clearly before him like a diagram. Every bit of it. The downside of such clear mindfulness was that once he managed to untangle his eyeballs, he still had to deal with his tongue hanging out of his mouth like a dead snail, and a general numbness in the left part of his body. Luckily, a pleasant and useful side effect of even the smallest amount of OrAngE current was that his erect penis had started to work as some sort of sonar homing device. He was again at last the master of his own fate, the captain of his ship. All he had to do was to trust his instincts and follow his penis, just like the rest of them did.

  Later that evening he stood across the street from the soulless ticket inspector. The same one who thought he was about to go on a date with somebody’s perverted sister. Of course he was. He wasn’t going to let him down, not an honest working state employee like him.

  The high heels hurt like a hell he knew well enough. The bra was a dozen sizes too small and it dug itself deep into his underarms. The florescent blonde wig was starting to itch like an army of ants. The rusted battery he’d plugged up his arse wasn’t giving him the desired effect. It was a cheap and desperate alternative to his expensive habit. There were OrAngE tears dripping from his eyes, and there was another loose tooth on its way to meeting the pavement any second soon. The OrAngE haze still messed within his vision but it gave him courage. The creativity was strong within him. The miracle of modern drugs he so admired.

  “Have you got the card?” He spoke in the highest pitched voice he could master as he walked up to the inspector, struggling to balance on his newly acquired high heels. The state employee answered with a grunt, not too convinced with what he saw before him.

  “What kind of a sick joke is this?”

  “What? What you mean?”

  “You sick son of a …”

  “Don’t you like what you see?” He asked, feeling his breasts. Breasts he’d put together with some dirty toilet role and two purple rotting fruits he’d found in some garbage can. The young lady he had become was starting to lose the plot. She started gesturing like she was willing to give him anything he wanted. She’d blow him for a few seconds of current. In fact she would do anything for the OrAngE stuff.

  The ticket inspector wasn’t having any of it. He pushed her violently in the chest sending her scrabbling across the floor. Then he turned his back to her and went to walk away. All she wanted was that bloody ID card back man. So he, she pulled herself back to her feet, removed one of the high heeled shoes she’d snatched off some poor girl earlier that night and did it. One swift swing and that was it.

  The ticket inspector went to sit down on a dust bin. He lay there with his back up against the wall as he felt the hard heel and shoe sticking out the side of his head, his blood and brain slowly succumbing to gravity.

  She didn’t look that bad after all. Of course the chest hair could do with some trimming.

  He searched his first victim for money. The two cold eyes staring at him in the dark back alley. He found some car keys and his ID card and a big lump of cash. He kicked the fellow in the leg to check if he was still of this world. He wasn’t. He was dead. He was a tough job to lift into the back of the car.

  A full minute of current would do him just right. He was up in the big leagues now. Where the money talked and no one cared why he was dressed like a drag queen, driving a banger of a car and crying OrAngE tears of insanity.

  “Plug my but up and send me on that ride,” he cried out to the winds as he drove, swirling across the road, his left arm hanging out of the side of the car. The car hit the curb just outside the front entrance of a renowned Notobian OrAngE haze boutique.

  “Ooh baby,” he cried out as he slammed the car door behind him and made for the club.

  He felt like pulling his lips up across the back of his head. Einstein and Julius Caesar sounded quite impressed with his proposals this time round. The whole thing made so much sense. If he pierced his brain to a meteorite and used his penis as a compass he might just be able to… The sweet OrAngE current oozed deep into his nerves.

  He couldn’t tell how long he’d been driving. It felt like he’d been away for the best part of a millennium.

  “Thing is officer, its all a bit of a mist at the moment.”

  “You realise you were driving without your lights on sir and 270 pesos over the speed limit?”


  “Ahh, ye. I guess so.”

  “You going to some fancy dress party or you on your way home sir?”

  “Ya well, sir. Thing is, I can’t really...” remember who he was, where he was going or what year it was.

  “You riding pretty low sir. You got anything in the trunk?”

  He remembered that much, as an annoying itch went shooting through his left cheek. An itch, or a bright orange lizard that had crawled under his skin, started a colony and had plans to take over his brain.

  “Sir, the trunk!”

  “Listen officer, I don’t see where you’re trying to get with this, I mean what I done?”

  “Driving with your lights off, that’s twenty thousand Kredits or an immediate ten kilo ingestion penalty, not to mention the speeding infraction. And now open your trunk sir.”

  “Now listen officer, there must be something we can do about this?”

  The battery up his arse was starting to make his tongue shake like a naked nun. The conversation better be over soon, for his own sake.

  Crooked institutions, some voice called in his head, everyone wants something for nothing. If it isn’t a cock, it’s an arse.

  “I could hook you up with my sister. I bet you’d love her. Trust me officer. She’s one hell of a blonde!”

  A good short story would probably stop here. And that would be that. But this was supposed to be a novel of sorts. So we’ll say the officer never really bought his bullshit. He was no simple train conductor, he was a copper. The corruption was always going to be that much higher.

  “Or maybe I could do you for something officer. Right here on the side of the road. Wouldn’t take a second and no one would have to know.”

  The pig looked ever so interested. He pulled his hand away from his unlocked gun strap.

  “I guess we could figure something out.”

  They moved to the side of the road in the shadows, where all the worst things happen. She got down on her knees and stroked at his legs. The pig looked around like he knew someone was going to come running round the corner waving an axe any moment soon.

  “Get on with it already you freak,” spoke the voice of the law. The same law that had all but forgotten the people it was always meant to protect.

  In the distance, all sorts of sounds coloured the darkness of the streets, as all manner of injustices were being carried out in a world where man eat man had long substituted the term dog eat dog. They’d eaten them all a long time ago.

  In a moment of total erectile excitement, the pig took a prolonged look to his left. A blissful mistake on his behalf, as she reached for his unlocked pistol, cocked it back and shot three rounds up his arse and through his helmet.

  Seventy thousand Kredits richer and two corrupt agents of the state less. He felt there had to be something in it for him, some kind of career prospect. The high heels were starting to drive him insane. His knees were sore. As he drove off into the night he looked into the rear view mirror and looked at his new self. He’d killed two people in less than twenty four hours. Not any given citizen, but two corrupt officers of the same cancer. It was the start of something new. It was the birth and christening of a legend. A terrorist and freedom fighter. A mass murderer and avenger. A monster and a brother. A symbol, for which many, like him, would take up arms, fighting mercilessly and most of the time without goal or ideology. Fighting against the only thing that could and would fight back, the state.

  In the months and years to come, the anarchist movement and the individuals that fueled it, would come to be known as Kayan Maleba.

  A coMinG toGetHer

  terchap

  The bar is where Jack Landan found the right strings on which to pull himself back into a life. A place he had romantically always seen for himself. Anywhere else would have hurt too much. The smokey surroundings, the smell of cheap perfume, the big tits, the fist fights, the constant humming of drunks, and that quiet corner of the bar, where they would keep a seat for him every night. The place where he could retire to with his thoughts, and put them down on paper. That is what he had always wanted to do in a way. Of course it would have been nicer had someone ever bothered to read any of the stuff he wrote, but the feeling that reading his own words gave him was good enough, most of the time. He did odd jobs here and there on the surface. The pennies they payed him there could be stretched a long way in the underworld. It wasn’t all that bad as they said it was. Of course there were rough patches here and there, but he soon learned to avoid them. The rest was a living hub of desperately normal people, most of whom had chosen to live the life of freedom, away from the poking eye of the state.

  For the first time in a long time he had discovered the pleasure of sitting down to talk to a total strangers, common human beings. To feel the warmth and softness of a female counter part, to take a second here and there to really enjoy the way the cracks on a face would spread when the mouth smiled, and the eyes contracted and the soul warmed. It was the life he could remember having lived as a child. The place where the stories his grandfather Gazillion Zorga had once told seemed to come to life again.

 

  Up on the surface, he managed a number of odd jobs. Under-paid, brain-draining work, that nevertheless allowed him to live the life of a free man down in the underworld.

  The scribbles and notes that he took during his working day would translate into the tales and pages which he composed at the bar down under at night. The paper he wrote on was a papyrus like sheet that he would fetch for relatively good prices off a chap down by the water front. The pens he purchased up in the city, where a few still fancied the old ways. Locals referred to him as The Pen, he was liked, but they left him mainly to himself.

  He rented a room down by the sea front, in an old terraced house that had withered its way into the modern area, taking with it the sweet characteristics of the old times. And the woman from whom he rented the small front room, on the first floor, was as old as the house. Sitting at his desk, watching the short lived sun set, he would suck in the energy from his surroundings and travel to places in time. Writing down the words to everything he saw. And when the lights would go he would light a candle and sit there. One word after the other, just him the paper and his pen.

  He longed for the day he might be able to get his hands on a typewriter again, but given the rough quality of the paper down there, he doubted it would work. The pen served him just as well. Though he had to learn to dictate the speed with which he wrote. The super zapping speed which the typewriter allowed for could not be sustained when writing by hand. And although at times he would feel the pull to write as fast as he could, he would reign it in, enough to allow him to see the words coming, permitting him to consider their quality and flow before putting them to paper.

  The drinks they made down there were of dubious origin, but they worked just fine. He’d seen enough time gone to waste. Now that he had all the time in the world, he made sure it was a focused effort. And then someday, maybe, if he pulled all the right strings, and he had enough luck, he might just write something good enough for people to read.

  He hung down at the building some called The Library. A colourful collection of books populated the crooked shelves of the little brick building where he would spend numerous hours reading and rereading the classics. From the philosophers to the economists to the political thinkers that had been forgotten by so many.

  The words that he so feverishly worked to put on paper, were an attempt to integrate the political reality that surrounded him into his fiction. He’d long left the self-righteous attempt at writing a novel behind. Instead he found comfort and joy in the simple purity of writing which generally took shape in short stories and politically charged manifestos which he would eventually begin to verbalise. He could no longer just sit and listen to grown men complain about the world with such little understanding of the workings of it. Born out of a need to educate, rather than to be condescending, he would talk and they would listen, for
it was obvious that they were in the presence of someone who saw things for more than they were worth to the untrained eye and mind. They listened, and they brought him drinks. And at times, when he sat, with his head held low over whatever new piece of writing he was pouring his soul into, some young gun would approach him politely wanting to ask a question, his opinion.

  People would come to hear him talk. “Is this the place?” they would ask, as they pushed their way through the crowds. And if there were too many of them there, he would have to stand on a table to speak to them all. And when matters got a bit grim he would read out one of his funny poems in which he would trivialise their dramatic reality, and they would laugh. It was good times, yet it pained him to see how little so many really understood.

  He spent the day-hours up above. Living the seeming life of a slave, locked into the tight clutch of a heartless system. And a liberal, inspiring orator at night, down in the place where he felt like himself. But when the door would shut behind him at night, and he would sit at his desk, looking over the silver flats and to the other side of the bay from where so many around him had come, risking limb and life, he would question the meaning behind his own struggle. Wondering where, when and how the real change he longed for would come.

  “So you’re the man with the pen and the big mouth,” a confident voice uttered to him one day, as a hand tapped friendlily on his shoulder. As he turned to look he saw the muscular, assertive figure of a man who looked like he had something going for him, that extra gear that lacked in so many.

  “You mind if I take a seat?” the fellow asked with calm demeanour.

  “Make yourself at home,” Jack Landan answered, intrigued at the possibility of exchanging words with someone he knew was going somewhere, with something to say.

  “Kazawhena no taore.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Means pleasure to met you, in the old tongue.”

  “What old tongue’s that?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Guess it doesn’t,” he said smiling and holding out his hand to the man.

  Jack Landan held up his hand to the loyal bartender and ordered two whiskeys. (They referred to the liquid as amber but it was far from resembling the colour or flavour of that assorted delicacy which had once been).

  “Make mine a double,” the stranger called out with a smirk of delirium.

  “Do you know what I do for a living Jack? May I call you Jack?”

  Jack Landan shook his head slightly with a firm, friendly eye contact. He was confident he knew who he was dealing with and acted accordingly. He’d observed and heard enough to know who was who down that way. The drinks arrived and the stranger sipped gently at his with a satisfied expression at Jack’s answer.

  “This thing, this movement, this whole thing, call it what you want,” he began as he ran his finger along the rim of his chipped glass. “It started off like many things do. A bit by mistake, a bit out of pure circumstance. One seeks to find meaning in this thing they call life. Hustling and bustling. Then, before you know it, the tables are turned and... Well, before you know it Jack, we’re caught up in something bigger than ourselves.”

  Jack Landan held his chin in his hand as he leaned on the bar looking and listening with focused attention as not to appear disrespectful.

  “I imagine you’re wondering what I’m doing down this way. I’m here to make you an offer,” he said, looking straight into the dark of Jack Landan’s eyes.

  “And just what might the offer be, if I might ask? I’ve noticed some of your people around the place these last few days but not one of them was kind enough to fill me in.”

  “For that I must apologise,” he said smiling. “Necessary precautions I’m afraid.”

  “I understand,” Jack Landan said, implying genuine humility.

  “The problem is Jack, I’m surrounded by good for nothings. Power hungry apes in search of nothing but power and the corrupting allure of rape. And that’s fine, no battle is won without those willing to do the dirty work. What I need now Jack, is the support of the people. Without them, our achievements will be for nothing.”

  “What makes you think the people will follow your way?” Jack Landan asked, tongue in cheek, a cheek he knew would only serve to gain him some sort of respect. The stranger let out a burst of admiring laughter as he took his last swig at the whiskey.

  “That is where you come in my friend. I hear they don’t call you the Pen for nothing. My people tell me you’re mighty fine with your words. Every movement has its reasons Jack, we’ve got ours. All we’re asking is your precious aid in putting words to paper in a way that will not leave any shadow of a doubt in the people’s minds. What do you say? I would hate to see your talent lost on this dark whole of a beer gutter?”

  “What you offering in return?” Jack Landan asked knowing he was pushing his luck well out there.

  “What is it you want Jack?”

  “What is it all men want?”

  “Ah ha, you got me there.”

  The answer confirmed Jack Landan’s impressions of the famous outlaw. He was indeed a man of wits and ways of the world. Not a mere thug and womaniser as portrayed in the Notobian propaganda.

  “Whatever it is you fancy yourself young man, I can promise you it once the struggle is over.”

  “Sounds too goo to be true,” Jack Landan said looking around with a subtle smirk on his face. He was enjoying this quasi flirting. Flirting with possibly the most dangerous man on the known cube.

  He’d noticed a few stiffs across the course of the night. Not Maleba’s men. Probably agency. Now there was one sitting directly opposite them in the corner. A subtle wire hanging from the back of his ear. Jack Landan stared him down until it was obvious he’d made him, then he lifted his glass to him.

  When Maleba caught eye of the same suspicious figure siting in across the room he moved to his feet with gentlemanly briskness.

  “I hope you’ll consider my offer with more seriousness now that we’ve had the chance to meet face to face Jack.”

  “I will indeed Mr. Maleba.”

  “Kayan, please.”

  “Kayan.”

  “Very well Jack, we’ll be in touch.”

  Kayan Maleba made a quick exit. A second dark suited individual made out of the joint after him. Jack Landan ordered a last drink and went back to his paper and pen. The first agent still there in the corner, but there always was. Somewhere, he figured, his name must be shooting to the top of a black list of people.

  He would never join them. Kayan Maleba fascinated him, but everything he stood for disgusted him. The Maleba movement was renown for its brutal and random use of extreme violence. There was no agenda in their acts. No higher calling. All Maleba wanted was war. A war to be fought on the streets, with the blood of the people. Change was possible and necessary but at what costs, and with what intentions?

  He knew he would have to play it by ear. One step at a time, it would pay not to disappoint such people. If the worse came to the worse he would at least have something original to write about. His stories were just about starting to get a little stale.

  ptercha

  Rudcock Nutter came to, suddenly awakening amidst a stormy sea like so many times before in his outspoken career as a dubious astro-analphysicist. His limp cock had somehow made its way halfway up some broad’s arse. The sweat pouring down the side of his head. The expensive scent of hotel sweat, and the colours of the strip lights beneath them in the distance. He could taste the stale air and flavour of tobacco that muffled the room. The semen stained carpet floors, unwilling witnesses to many a night of depravity and horror. How high could they possibly be?

  As one thought after another crept into the hollow cavity which was his head, he began to wonder where the hell he was, and what he was doing pounding away at the back of some broad he had no recollection of ever having invited into the shabby looking room. Then again, as he stared at the nauseating mustard col
oured carpet he noticed it wasn’t his own room but that it belonged to one of those fashionably disagreeable love hotels for perverts and degenerated soap suckers. He’d only ever heard about them, but now that he was in one of them something tingled under his skin.

  As his senses slowly began to slither back, he felt the hard metal butt of a hand pistol in his right hand. A dull black, heavy weapon like he had not handled in years, decades. He stared at his own hand, perplexed, as it held the dark menacing tool up against the back of the poor girl’s head. She didn’t seem to mind it one bit. Their looks met ever so slightly in the oversized mirror on the wall to their right. He looked at the reflection of their bodies meeting. Skin against skin, pelvis against butt. And as her rear thumped back on his pubic bone he felt a sudden rush of OrAngE bud induced adrenaline shoot through every cell in his body. The colourful powder, the evil companion of many a party goer, lay across the writing table just a few feet away. Its presence oozed of a guilty feeling, which he sensed was bound to get him into the kind of trouble he knew he would regret. His head bent over backwards and he felt the blood fill the capillaries in his eyeballs.

  One after another, uncontrollable attacks of misty pandemonium shot across his nervous system. Looking down towards her butt he noticed the guilty residues of OrAngE bud all over her back and the stained bed sheets. Still he held the gun firm to her head and pulled at her pony tail with his other, like a prop in some high stakes game of S&M. The girl let out a series of horrifying curses as she continued to pound back at him. Over and over again they clashed. He heard the high pitched music squealing in his head. His teeth biting down hard, he felt his jaw crunching. He was going on override. It was too much for his weak nervous system to handle, and somewhere between the back of his brain and his right index finger something twitched.

  The sound of the round exploded like a wave across the dull lit room and all of a sudden he awoke, as if by magic.

  Staring at his semi naked, blood splattered body in the mirror he let the gun drop. Looking down to his hands and penis he failed to recognise them as his own. The poor girl’s brains rested in peace, on the blood-drenched head rest of the king sized bed. It had once been pink. New tones of wine red had now been added to the décor.

  It was the pounding thump of his heart beat that spurred him on. Like someone banging at the door of his brain, he struggled to wipe himself clean and find enough clothes to look presentable. One last look into the infinite mirror which extended for miles beyond his field of vision. He realised he would have to try to control the noticeable OrAngE bud twitch in his neck and right shoulder if he was to make it out of the lobby unnoticed.

  The corridor was a merciless continuation of the same sickening pink and green theme he’d so admired in the room. The lift was even worse. It pushed all the wrong paranoia buttons a bud-head could ask for. The confined space, the dull brown colour and the annoying sound of the music playing in the background only helped to make the camera in the top left corner of the ceiling all that more menacing.

  He still had one hell of erection, pushing and thumping out painfully as he tried to hide it in the bulge of his pants. The corner of his vision was still blurred by a subtle film of orange. As long as his eyes didn’t start bleeding, he figured he’d be alright. He would just have to make it through the foyer and get the fuck out of there.

  The gentle jingle of a bell signaled he’d reached ground floor. The twitch grew steadily more and more uncontrollable as he stepped into the lobby. He heard his teeth screech as he bit into them with force to try to succumb to the electric burst of force that caused his neck and back muscles to spasm. He had only another forty feet to walk before he was out.

  “Mr Senator. Mr Rogers sir,” he heard a friendly voice call out behind him. He was in no mood.

  “Mr Rogers, sir,” still he ignored the voice, as he felt a mighty whip of a twitch build up in his neck. How long would it be before his arse gave in and he shat himself. Then a hand came crawling across his shoulder and he felt the dread of a newly baptised murderer as he turned to face the polite face of the concierge.

  “There’s no need for a cab, Mr. Rogers, there s a limo waiting for you outside. Compliments of the house.”

  He struggled to let out a meagre “Thank you,” as the concierge shook his sweaty hand.

  “They’re taking care of the room as we speak. Nothing to worry about,” he added with a smile.

  He squeezed his sphincter muscle with all his might in order to avoid filling his pants, before he retracted his hand from the handshake and rushed out into the frizzling heat of the day. A chubby valet held the doors of a silver limo open to him and smiled. As the door slammed behind him he couldn’t help noticing the remains of a few particles of OrAngE dust on the valet’s left nostril. He’d noticed it, there was no hiding it. He’d noticed everything. Everything.

  There were 62 floors in the hotel, but 59 buttons in the lift. The concierges’s name was Princeton. There were 16 people in the lobby the moment he’d walked through. 4 women, eight men, two kids, a prostitute and a transgender wearing a blonde wig and a rabbit in a grey military suit. A vase with 13 green velvet tulips singing by the window. The gun he’d accidentally fired into the poor girl’s head was a beretta .45. The girl wore a double D and had size 6 feet. Her name was Jenny DaZuna. It was on the driving license she’d used to cut the OrAngE bud. They’d met the night before. At the roulette table. He was winning. Then the drinks started. Then he got talking to her by the bar. She was a student. She was dead. Splattered all over room 169.

  “Where to Senator?” the limo driver asked, interrupting his visual memory recall.

  “Just drive,” he answered, as he peered into the future, trying to predict every move. It was a chess game. Then as he felt into the breast pocket of his suit he pulled out a card. It hand’t been there when he’d left the room, he was certain of it. He held it up into the light. His left eye was slowly sinking into the OrAngE mist, but he just about made out the message. It was hand written.

  “We can do that again any time. Thanks for the tip, Jenny.”

  “Anywhere in particular sir?”

  “Just drive already!” he burst out irritated at having to repeat himself.

  “Sure thing dirty boy,” he heard the limo driver say as the shivers ran down his neck. The same words the girl had spoken moments before he’d blown her head to bits.

  As he saw himself in the rear view mirror things started to pour back into his memory chamber. It wasn’t his body he was in, but he recognised the unmistakable smirk of Senator Rogers. The same individual they’d kidnapped a day earlier. What had they done to him? Turned him into a pawn and made their first move in the chess game against the almighty power of the state and its despicable individuals.

  His heartbeat took a few steps back as he relaxed into the leather limo seat. Rubbing the sweat from across his forehead he remembered that afternoon, a day earlier in Kayan Maleba’s hideout. The day they made the swap. Connected his neuro-kinetic wave patterns up with the Senator’s. Such was Maleba’s latest employment of the powerful drug with which he planned to black mail the leading figures of the power house of cards they were fighting. The senator was just a test run.

  The conscious takeover would last another couple of hours. The senator was still in there with him, but merely a bystander. He could feel him in the background, like some guilty pleasure itching deep within. An itch he knew he could not control for much longer.

  apterch

  “How you enjoying your freedom?” one of the guards called out to Jack Landan across the hall as the cell door slammed shut with the incredible might and force of a whole regime. They checked in on him from time to time to make sure he was suffering just enough to keep him on edge. The smell of the earth and the muck, the rusty piping and the drying blood oozed in every pore of his sweating body. The blood pumped hard and regular though the swollen parts of his face. That night he succumbed to the cold cement b
ed as he lay there in silence. The whispers of the wind blowing through the cracks in the walls. The same cracks that had been purposely put in place to give prisoners some unfathomable sense of hope.

  “We’re fucked man, I’m telling you,” someone howled out over and over again from the cell across the hall. All pointed to the fact that it was going to be one long night. The coldest of nights. He lay there with his arms crossed behind his head, looking up to the pale grey ceiling. He could hear the cracking sound of someone biting and ripping away at their dirty nails. The sound of fear starting to seep through in his voice as the wind blew through his prison cell.

  “What’s your name pal,” Jack Landan called out to the neighbouring cell.

  “What difference does it make?”

  “Just trying to kill time here. Relax. We’ll be out of here before sunrise. That’s the way they do things round here.”

  “The hell it will,” he heard the voice from across the hall cry. All he could see in the darkness was a pair of hands holding onto the rusty bars. Outside, in the corridor just the dripping sound of some leaking tap and the occasional cough in the distance.

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Understand what?” he asked.

  He struggled to finish his words. The other fellow never registered his question. Instead he held on tighter with all his might but the bars weren’t going to budge.

  “This girl turned up. She put her hand on my crotch and took me up to some room. Then she whispered something into my ear. Next thing I know I’m waking up with my trousers round my ankles and my portable generator’s gone along with my butt-plug and as if it weren’t bad enough there’s another broad with her head blown to bits across the back of the bed rest and I’m holding this fucking gun and the hell knows what else.”

  “They must have been on to me for some time. I’m sure of it. Fucking shit. Shit! Shit! Look here, hey man, I’m talking to you! Take a look at my neck and see if you can spot anything. I’ve got an itch. I’ll bet you whatever you like they’ve inserted me with a subcutaneous anus-ometer!”

  He held his neck up to the bars of his cell so that he could see, but Jack Landan couldn’t see shit.

  “Looks pretty good to me pal.”

  “Take a closer look will’ya. There’s got to be something back there. I can feel it for Andromeda’s sake.”

  “Looks just fine, that’s all I can say.”

  “God damn sons of bitches must have found another place,” he said returning to his feet and looking into the distance, which incidentally wasn’t further than eight feet away into the mist of the greyness of his cell.

  “Just take it easy alright pal. I guess the OrAngE mescala’s getting to you a tad. Take some deep breaths. Here, fancy a gum?” he said flicking one across the hall. “It’ll help the erection settle down.”

  It landed within arm reach of his cell but he ignored it like a gorilla would a winning lottery ticket.

  “There’s no time for this. They’re probably already on their way. They’ve used a forth generation sub-cutaneous tracking device. They’re already onto the others. It wouldn’t even leave a scar. I’ve been compromised for weeks, I just can’t figure out when or how the... I gotta get the hell outa here.”

  “Ye, good luck with that pal. Now listen man. I’ve told you. You’re on the juice. Take a knee and chill the fuck out before one of those guards comes in and gives you a good old hiding.”

  He showed no signs of calming down. Erratically the fellow started to search the spartan cell for something. He searched the corners, behind the bars, behind the toilet seat. Down the drain pipes and in his pockets. His pacing up and down picked up in speed and determination as he worked up a sweat and began to speak uncontrollably quick, lost on some ultrasonic train of thought that was dangerously close to derailing.

  “Fuck it! I gota get out. Gota find a way. You gota help me man. I mean it!”

  “Sorry pal. I’m out of here in the morning. There ain’t no six armed chick’s pussy that’s going to get me to do anything dumb before I’m out of here. Just take it easy already. I’m getting tired of telling you.”

  “Fuck you kiddo. Ye, fuck you. You one of them? Fucker!”

  “Serve yourself pal. Just keep it down,” Jack Landan said, “I wanna get some sleep before they throw me out to the streets in the morning. I don’t think I can take another battering.”

  He’d had enough of the ranting. They’d taken his statement. Played their gestapo bullshit card and got nothing out of it. He’d committed no considerable crime in hanging out with peek figures from the underworld resistance’s army. He’d fed them the same old story, the truth. It was research for a book he was writing at the time. His life’s work. Before he lost his house and job and all that went with it. They had nothing on him. He’d only met the resistance as an underground “enthusiast” no more than a few times. And even so, it was a mist of a memory. An orange haze of debauchery which he would have struggled to recall had they forced him to. They were just playing mind games with him. He’d be out in the morning. He still had three thousand Kredits hidden away in the seam of his trousers. It was enough to see him off for a couple of days before he’d figure out what to do with the rest of his time in existence. The other guy could knock himself out for all he cared. There were obviously bigger issues at play behind those OrAngE glazed eyes of his.

  “Will you just please pack it in already,” he cried out to him as he stood at the iron bars, biting down hard on them with a constant rhythm. It was too late. All contact had been lost. The fellow lashed for the wall and hit it hard. A huge thump reverberated in the darkness as he fell back onto the cold floor like a dead piece of hope.

  “The hell you doing boyo?” Jack Landan called out across the hall to him.

  “Just you watch and see Kiddo. You demented fuck. Just you watch.”

  He pulled himself back up to his feet and made for the wall a second time with just as much force.

  “You keep that up pal. You’ll make it out eventually,” Jack Landan commented sarcastically.

  “Just you sit there and watch. It’s been done before. You’ll have something to write about once you’ve seen this.”

  How does he know I write, Jack Landan heard himself think.

  “Only a dumb wit writer like yourself could be as nonchalant about being locked up in a place like this. Plus, you’ve got the look. The OrAngE stuff hasn’t quite gotten to you yet Jack. Ain’t it so?!”

  He spoke calmly as the bashing routine continued.

  “How you know my name pal? We met before?”

  “It’s a simple matter of physics.”

  “Sure it is. Hey! I’m talking to you.”

  “Atoms and forces and stuff.”

  “Of course. Hey,” Jack Landan called out, “how the hell you know my name?”

  “You wouldn’t understand anyway. Too much of a dum shit.”

  “Enlighten me,” he said angrily, kicking at the bars of his cell.

  “My name’s Rudcock Nutter. We’ve met. Not too long ago. You were out of your head. With Kayan Maleba’s crew. Writing your piece of post punk journalist shit or whatever the hell you were up to. Remember?”

  Rudcock Nutter. The name reverberated in his head a few times before it struck one of a many few bells in there and he realised who he was dealing with.

  “The Rudcock Nutter?”

  “No not The. Just plain old Rudcock Nutter,” he answered poignantly.

  Jack Landan could kind of remember having met the man before. That name. It belonged to a different age. The age of thought. Was it him? Quite possibly. Yes, of course. Now he remembered. One of a few surviving scientists from before the big meltdown. Physicist, turned resistance fighter turned most wanted criminal, topping the chart at number two after Kayan Maleba in the list of most wanted enemies of the state. Considered by many to be the resistance’s weapon of mass destruction. Most commonly known as the man who had solved the
belly tickling issue of diarrhoea attacks whilst travelling through wormholes. A common affliction known to have sent even the hardest of space travellers to an early decomposition.

  Another thump echoed throughout the cold prison block before he took a few seconds to recover his breath and began to explain his actions.

  “So what happened?”

  “They hung me out to dry, that’s what happened. For years that shit bag of Kayan Maleba’s been promising me this, that and start the other, look at me now!”

  “Weapons?”

  “Weapons? Hell no. What good would that do. They’d only go and build bigger ones. We’re talking serious messed up stuff here.”

  He talked, never taking his eye off the wall for a second, knocking it and checking it here and there for something in between words.

  “No, weapons wouldn’t solve anything.”

  “What then?”

  Rudcock Nutter looked around as if to check if anyone else was listening but there was no one around. Then he saw his face for the very first time. The heavenly look of someone who knew too much.

  “Dualistic Time travel. Simple as. I cracked it years ago. Just never thought we’d find a good enough use for it to justify the expenses.”

  “What do you mean by we? Who’s we?”

  “We, us. I mean us as a species. Too many unsolvable, mind boggling variables that would, could, probably will cause a total prolapse of reality.”

  “What you mean?”

  “Hard to say. Bit of a total shit show to be honest. Here’s the thing. Travelling back in time is all good as long as you stay there. Doesn’t matter if you alter the course of things because that will be the course your time river-flow-reality will take. Stay in your new reality and you’re the master of your ship. The shit show starts when you want to come back to the present or your old reality. The almighty great eye in the sky, she doesn’t like that one little bit.”

  “She?”

  “Ye she. She, Her, Elle. The creator of all things good, bad, hard and smelly, tickle your belly. Call her what you will. She doesn’t take too well to reversed time travel. Doesn’t fit in with her neat scheme of chaos theory, which incidentally is a load of bumble bee tit.”

  “What? She tell you or something?”

  “She did as a matter of fact,” Rudcock Nutter replied smiling in the darkness.

  “So what does that make you then?”

  “A genius.”

  “What was the deal with Maleba and the resistance?”

  “My wife.”

  “Your wife?”

  “My wife. She passed away in the explosion.”

  “The meltdown?”

  “The meltdown. Call it what you will. Maleba had the cash and manpower as well as copious amounts of pure Latobia. All I needed.”

  “So you’re building it?”

  “It’s finished.”

  “You fucking with me? A second ago you said there was nothing out there to justify building one.”

  “There isn’t! Well, not for humanity as such. It would only serve to mess things up for everyone. Especially in the hands of Maleba and his bunch of crackpots. As for me, I’ve built myself a one way ticket back to the my dear Elen-Marie.”

  “What with Maleba?”

  “Hah, Maleba. Ye, he won’t take it too well. Matter of fact, I think he hasn’t taken to it too well at all. I’ve been keeping him in the dark to say the least. Guess he ran out of patience in the end. Kind of explains how he sold me out this way.”

  “So what you gona do?”

  Rudcock Nutter proceeded to examine the wall again as if looking for a soft spot.

  “There was this professor. Austrian I think he was. From Brussels. I think that used to be in Europe. Anyways, the capital of Paris or something. His name was Flamacks. Professor Flamacks. Stank like a drunk beaver. I attended one of his lectures years ago. Fascinating stuff. The guy had all sorts of fancy theories. He confessed to me over a glass of the red stuff one night, that he’d escaped an interrogation cell during his time as a resistance fighter under the nazi occupation.”

  “Nazi occupation?”

  “Anyways. You gota see it to believe it. He proved it to me on the night. Fascinating stuff. Keep bashing to masses together until the atoms in them get too tired to care any longer, a little confused and before you or they know it, you’re passing through each other like ghosts.”

  “Is that your plan?” Jack Landan asked, laying back down in bed to admire the fascinatingly dumb ceiling.

  One. Every eight to ten seconds. Deep, low, piercingly monstrous thumps, like a drunken rhino, bashing into a tree. It nearly put him into a deep sleep. Every so often he’d turn to take a look towards the professor’s cage to see how he was doing. There he was, constantly wiping the sweat from his rugged forehead with his green handkerchief after every other thump into the solid wall.

  “How you getting on pal?”

  “Fuck you Landan,” was all he got out of the man. “How do I know you’re not one of them. That they haven’t turned you too?”

  “What you on about old sport? If I was one of them, wouldn’t I try to stop you?”

  “Perhaps. In the end it doesn’t matter. Where I’m going no one will be able to follow.”

  “What you mean? What you mean by no one would be able to follow you?”

  “The lady in the sky. She’s taken care of it all. When you cross into the past you kind of branch off the main river of time. Once that new reality is created, there’s no way for anything or anyone to reach that new point in time. It’s just the way it works.”

  Jack Landan’s hopes of getting any sleep that night were laid to rest, as the Nutter continued to pursue his mad hope of making it out of the prison block in one piece. For the next few hours he went on bashing, interminably and insistently, until suddenly a somber silence fell throughout the hall.

  “Rudcock? Yo, Rudcock!” Jack Landan called out in a pronounced whisper.

  “Hey boyo, that’s gona hurt in the morning,” he said jokingly as he pulled himself up to his feet. Gazing into the twilight of darkness that surrounded him, he felt the holy shit-giggles go firing down his bowels quicker that a sand pellet through a wormhole. There was no sign of Rudcock Nutter or anything resembling a crazy scientist in the cell across from his.

  Hanging his face in between the bars he pushed as far as he could, peaking into the darkest corner of the other cell. He squinted like a time traveling space wizard looking for something, a hole in the wall or something. There was nothing. No opening or cavity through which he might have made his escape. He had to punch, feel and pinch himself a few times. Kicking rather forcefully at the bars just to make sure he hadn’t been hallucinating, but he was gone. World famous, resistance fighter, wormhole diarrhoea syndrome solving physicist Rudcock Nutter had managed to disappear through a foot of thick cemented wall. Sure as the knuckles on his hands, the tray of cold soup and mouldy maggots still lay on the floor of his cell untouched, proof that there had actually been someone there only a few seconds earlier. He’d certainly had his fair share of bad trips, but what followed nearly sent his beating heart blasting out of the back end of his trembling netherlands.

  “Laaan daaan,” he heard an echo of a failing voice call out to him from the distant universe of the cold cell holding block.

  “Laaan daaan, can you hear me? I’m here.”

  “Professor?” Jack Landan whispered back. “What the hell just happened? Where d’you go? Did you make it through? Surely not!”

  “Landan, can you hear me? I’m in here. I’m stuck in the wall. Something must have gone wrong. I’m stuck. I never made it through to the other side,” he spoke with casual calmness.

  “What do you mean you’re stuck in the wall. What in the hell of gastric implosions are you talking about? Where d’you go?”

  “Landan can you hear me?” The professor obviously couldn’t.

  “Landan, you jerk of a humanoid shit ba
g. If you can hear me knock three times.”

  Unfazed by the fact that a ghost was trying to make contact with him he gently hit the cell iron bars with the steel cap of his boot. Three times.

  “Good,” he heard a voice speak from a ridiculously distant vicinity.

  “Something obviously didn’t work out. It was a risk I was willing to take. When you too will be in love I trust you shall understand. Now listen you shit bag for I do not know how long I will possibly continue to exist under these conditions.”

  “I like you kid, I always did deep down. We’ve kept eyes on you ever since your place disappeared. Maleba was quite keen on you in the beginning. Then he realised you were your own man, and that you were never gona go along with his crap. He wanted you dead the second time you came around. Never bought into your book writing bullshit. He figured you were selling him out to the men in black.”

  “Say, you still there Landan? Knock three times if you are.”

  He did so. Quietly.

  “There comes a time in every being’s existence, when the greatness and oneness of everything ceases to make sense and fuses into one wonderfully bewildering mess. If that’s confusing, it is because it is exactly that. It is your time to take this thing into your own hands and shine. You’ll have something to write about once this is all over. Trust me.”

  “Now, Kayan Maleba’s a fuck fest. A terrorist. I never liked him. He carries too much anger with him to do any good. Cares to little for the gift of life. All he wants, is to travel back and forth in the fabric of time and space with no concern for the destruction that such acts will entail. That, I, we, cannot allow. Now here’s the thing. Listen carefully!”

  The next three hours were a feverish experience of mystic proportions as Rudcock Nutter spoke to him from within the atoms of the wall. Pouring out his heart to Jack Landan, and more importantly revealing to him the location of his dualistic time traveling machine and the know-hows of how to operate it. Step by step, he revealed to him his plan. The plan he had drawn out for himself from the very first day. The day Kayan Maleba had ordered him to build a time travelling machine.

  His, their mission, was to destroy the thing. His gift to Jack Landan for doing so, a once in a life time, one-way ticket to whenever he wanted. The contraption would then be programmed to self destruct, saving the fate of so many innocent citizens in the process.

  The last words the crazy wall-imprisoned scientist spoke before the guards came with their heavy boots to drag him to an interrogation room would stick with Jack Landan forever. Like a galactic echo, forever reminding him of the importance of his very own existence.

  “Don’t fuck this up Jack Landan! I mean it!

  Good luck!”

  hapterc

  They dragged him and his aching body out of the cell, kicking and screaming by the sideburns and armpits hanging from his frail figure. Beating him in the sides and piercing his nipples with electricity. Torturing him with the high pitched sounds of an opera soprano as she sang, as they squealed and contorted their perverted, disease infested bodies around him. Demanding, ordering him to tell them where Rudcock Nutter had gone. All he could do was laugh and hope to make it through to another day as they drew first blood.

  “Your new friend seems to have disappeared in thin air,” he heard a deep menacing voice claim from behind the safety of a bright light.

  “You’re right,” he replied calmly, “he was there one moment and next thing I knew...”

  The next thing he knew he was being walloped across the face with what felt like the back of a bus. There was little place for humour within the four set walls of that one almighty institution.

  “Do you know what you are being held for Mr. Landan?”

  The boy within him still struggled to comprehend their lack of willingness to be entertained.

  “Well I sure as hell hope it ain’t because of my novel, ‘cos I haven’t even finished it yet.”

  Another whiplash of a bench came thrashing down on the back of his head.

  “Your maternal grandfather, a certain Gazillion Zorga of Pazanna. Ex freedom fighter, accused but never tried in seven galactic provinces for piracy, intergalactic terrorism and smuggling. Hell of a CV for one fellow. What have you got to say about that?”

  He took a moment to collect the spit and blood in the side of his mouth before spitting it onto the closest foot he could make out. The next few words he spoke would cost him a finger.

  “Potatoe, Potato”.

  “Mr. Landan,” he heard when he eventually regained consciousness and realised his testicles had been linked to the city’s power grid.

  “I hope you will appreciate the seriousness of the circumstances and the measures that this state is willing to use in order to protect the peace and calm of a system which has served and continues to serve so many.”

  Then he saw the eagle headed figure. The yellow beak, the strong physical presence. Clothed in that marine-blue suit. The skull and bones insignia hanging off its golden necklace. He noticed its erect penis protruding against its trousers. Its black leather boots squeaking on the linoleum floor as it paced around the small room.

  There was not enough energy left in that poor body of his to do anything more than look the thing in the eyes and listen to its dogmatic crap whilst trying not to swallow too much of it.

  “Your known affiliation to a certain Kayan Maleba, suspected head of the resistance army would be enough for us to fill that shit sack of your body full of dung and blast you out into the darkness of space. Of course we’re not going to do that. Thing is Mr. Landan, we know you’re a good man. We’ve been keeping an eye on you. And we trust that you too, would want to see a known terrorist brought to justice. That is why we’re offering you a way out of this. What d’you say?”

  Amongst all the pain he wondered why they hadn’t picked Maleba up when they’d had the chance. The agent sitting nervously in the corner. Then again, it struck Jack Landan all of a sudden. They had no idea what, who, when or why Kayan Maleba was, went, did or meant. To them, it might as well have been a coded word for an underground ballet society. A man, a movement, a name. They didn’t have the remotest clue. That would explain their sudden interest in him, but why him. His conversation with Professor Nutter. Surely, they must have listened in to every word. They must have been on to him for some time. He knew he’d been followed on a few occasions, but that it would lead to this...