serial fiction * chapters 1 - 3
BY ONE in the morning, the largest vice house in the Theta District was closed. Most Silver Palms patrons were either long gone or passed out in a dark corner.
I pushed the broom across the black resin floor of Acid Room #2. My workphones played their slow pulsing tone just slightly faster than the ambient pulse back home in the Delta District, what we call Slate Town. Its ambient sound was soothing and slow. Workphones were designed to produce methodical drones. I wouldn’t have admitted it, but part of me was thankful for them. When paired with a time dilating energy drink, work went quickly. It was like turning your brain off.
I removed my workphones. The heavy, driving thump of the Acid Room matched the pulse of its home district perfectly. For three generations, someone had the job of syncing all sound to the pulse that seemed to come from every building. Even the transition points between districts had their own
discordant rumble, as each district’s soundscape blended with the next.
A shadow passed the door and I put my workphones back on. The manager, Mr. Able, would have a fit to find me incompliant with the Worker’s Protection Codes. We’d both be fined $550,000 in “possible damages” to the Safe Labor Authority.
When I finished my shift, I hung the workphones on a hook beneath the ‘Custodial Curation Sexton (CCS)’ plaque in the ‘Employee Lounge’. The clear carbon-plastic card on my lanyard was old but showed little wear. Smiling in government photos was illegal so it looked like a mugshot with my name, Avi Park, printed in a large font underneath.
The weather outside was dry and hot, even at two in the morning. The street glowed dimly of pastel neon. Each convenience store, digital café, and vice house had its own sign. Silver Palms’ three story, bright white palm tree didn’t even bother to advertise the six bedrooms available. It took in most of its money through drugs and silence.
One block down was Vierkant House. I remembered my old roommate Rani every time I saw the glowing, violet ‘V’ outside. She’d been offered Personal Liaison Curatorial (PLC) work many times but always resisted, instead working at the racket box factory. The pay was awful, but she loved the job. One day she was fixing an out of service welding robot and the thing went nuts. It broke her ribs and punctured her left lung. Her medical bills were too much. She applied for corporate charity and was approved on the spot. Vierkant House won the bid for her medical bills. She signed their contract. Three months later, she disappeared into the Beta District. I had seen her in the newspapers and on the television news at first, but even that lasted only a few weeks.
I stepped into Pay n’ Go #13. The floor tiles, an un-patterned paving of silver-flecked black and white, were worn bare in paths to the malt liquor cold case, to the soft drinks, to the snack foods, and to the counter. I grabbed a large bottle of Scherzcouer City’s Own Beer, the cheapest available, and a bag of chips.
“Avi!“ Hector’s voice was warm as he greeted me. As usual, his shirt was smattered with an impressive variety of stains.
I slid the chips and booze forward. “How’s it goin’, Hector?”
Hector grunted as he reached out for his coffee cup. “Slow night, my friend. Everyone’s broke.”
“Still a couple days ‘til the stipends go out.” I nodded. “They said they’re delayed because they needed to replace all the racket boxes along the first sec-zone in Cirqmont.” I sneered as the methodical drone of Theta District stretched out between us. We shared a quick look of defeat.
Hector was suddenly bold. “Fuck Cirqmont.” And just as suddenly, he deflated. “Nevermind. Have a good night, Avi.”
I waved. “See you tomorrow, Hector.”
The transition zone between Theta and Delta Districts was an uncomfortable pocket of interference where the numbing pulse of Delta pushed out the productive thrum of Theta.
I counted the gray rectangles as they passed. Block #1, Block #2, Block #3, Block #4. Four buildings on each block. Three streets down from the gate was Block #11, my new building. It wasn’t new. In fact, it was one of the first efficiency housing units they’d built in the city. It was plain concrete and steel.
My phone vibrated as I walked up the path to the front door. It lit up as it detected my thumb and the world faded into black. I scanned through the news feed. It was the same as it ever was. It would still be there in the morning so I closed the app.
Social media was the same, day to day: the occasional anti-Cirqmont post that went viral but led nowhere, the counter argument posted by an Alpha District resident that asked Deltans and Thetans to remember all the charity Cirqmont gave to the needy, calls for civility and compromise, and complaints about teenagers being teenagers in public. And all of it was peppered with government sponsored posts: the newest Citizen’s Lit was a romance novel set before The Last War, Protest Park was hosting The Fraternity of Odin’s Sons and Love Everyone Now, marches open 5 to 7 p.m. on Saturday for anyone with an activism permit, job listings for custodial work.
My disappointment was palpable even as I snubbed out a joint. Slate Town’s effects were pulling me towards sleep but doing nothing to calm my restlessness. Just like every night before, I passed out in anxious haze.
SHAFTS OF sunlight filtered through my curtains and landed on my squinched eyes. I was still in my work clothes, considerably more rumpled, clutching my cell phone. I tapped the screen twice to make it light up. The face and retina sensors took no time recognizing me.
My news feed was the same as the night before. What was new wasn’t really new. I paused a moment and hovered over the icon at the corner of the screen. SummenR’s icon was readily identifiable by nearly everyone in the world. The orange ‘SR’, the most recognizable part of the logo, covered the face of a sky blue silhouette inside a solid white circle. I sighed and opened the app.
Two kids had vandalized a Future Fantasy machine at the mall. My cousin, Terah, was complaining that kids needed workphones from an earlier age to combat hooliganism. Test scores were dropping and kids were running amok, she lamented.
“‘It’s enough to drive you mad.’” I read her words aloud.
“That much is true.” I responded to myself.
I understood the impulse to trash a machine that charged $5 to dispense vague fortunes on cheap, drug-infused thermal paper. There was something disconcerting about a machine that changed your dreams. I tried it once. I dreamt I was a veterinarian from Uptown with a husband and kids. That had not been the sort of dream I anticipated. Hoping for something more abstract was probably asking too much from a vending machine psychoactive.
The alarm next to my mattress pile started playing the mediocre sounds of Scherzcouer Citizen Radio. The DJ’s voice was nervous and squeaky. “Gre- uh, good after noo- wait... Good exactly-noon, citizens, I’m Nina, your noontime citizen music picker uh… I’m picking the music today. Nina Mumbler’s got good taste.”
I scoffed at Nina’s ‘good taste’ as I dug through the clothes on the floor for a clean work shirt. Satisfied I didn’t noticeably smell, I headed to the kitchen. Raiding the cupboards yielded some granola bars and a bottle of VitaliTea!. Extra caffeine made me shaky but the time dilations were useful. It made work easier even if the shift felt longer. I stuffed the bottle into my pocket and headed towards the shop. There was always a chance Bob would have day old donuts for me.
I found Hector asleep behind the register, coffee cup in hand. He opened one eye and glanced over the counter.
“Coffee pretty weak today?” I teased.
Hector used his foot to tap the wake-up button at the base of Bob’s docking station. “You know that shit can’t save you on a twelve-hour shift.”
“Sorry.” I said around a mouth-full of granola bars.
Hector waved away my concern and handed me a bottle of water. He nudged it towards me when I hesitated. “Still can’t drink your tap water?”
I shook my head as I greedily drank half the bottle. “The city says our building isn’t a priority since we’re only a ‘Partial Assistance Domicile.’ They think we can afford to buy our own water.” I capped the bottle and stashed it in my bag.
Hector shook his head and handed me an unopened pack of joints which I accepted after the customary denial. “Stop by after work and I’ll give you a couple gallons to get you by.”
I felt the guilt warming my face but agreed. “They’ve got me cleaning the rooms in the Imperial Gradatist Hall tonight and tomorrow.” I said as I checked the time. “Ten hours of cleaning Silence Booths and bedrooms.”
Bob chimed as he rolled off his docking station, finally awake. “At least it’s an easy night, right?”
I shrugged. “It’ll be a boring night.” I opened the VitaliTea! and drank the entire three ounces in a quick gulp. “And I’ll only be busy for half of it. The rest of the time I’ll just be in the lounge with my thumb up my ass.”
“You’re smart, Avi. I’m sure you’ll figure out some way to occupy your time.” Bob rolled to his spot at the second register and plugged himself into a port on the side of the screen.
“Steal Hector one of those good joints,” Bob instructed.
“If I sneak a joint out of that place I’m keeping it.” I laughed and raised my hands in supplication. “But maybe I’ll share it with him.”
The afternoon light let through by the city’s UV filters was pleasant but flat. The city was about 80% paved. The cheapest way to fight the constantly climbing temperature was to encase the city in a special glass dome that the Climate, Environment, and Recreation Department could remotely control. The nanobot-infused glass could be made transparent when the season permitted, or totally opaque to block particularly harsh sunlight from baking us underneath.
The yellow-y glow gave the white Silver Palms sign a urine-colored quality. It made going to work a little easier. Even anticipating the earache I’d have after wearing workphones wasn’t so bad knowing I had a tin of joints in my pocket.
I HAD cleaned three bedrooms in a twenty-minute time dilation. To me, the dip, as it was called, felt like two hours. A spill of strawberry lube needed two buckets of sawdust. The artificial strawberry smell started to give me a headache so I went back to the lounge for a break. The empty hour took the wind from my sails.
A box of workphones beneath a desk captured my interest. They had been collected at the end of the week to be taken back to the factory for repairs or recycling. The first pair I pulled from the box looked normal enough but when I put them on I was assaulted by a deafening squeal.
“As if the normal sound isn’t bad enough,” I mumbled.
I sat the workphones aside and rifled through the toolbox until I found an assortment of small screwdrivers and pliers.
The second and third pair of workphones were the same. The sound was shrill and would make it impossible to work. They’d have made good prisonphones but as workphones they were useless. I removed three small screws and popped off the case on one set, wondering if I was the first unauthorized person to open a pair. Each ear held a thin lead-acid battery glued to the outer casing, connected via four wires to an inner circuit board.
My suspicion that the workphones were wirelessly connected to a larger system was confirmed by a group of overlapping stickers. One claimed the device had internal GPS to prevent theft. Another warned that the battery should be kept at least six inches away from the head and chest. A third warned that the wireless communication elements in the device were known to cause calcification of the pineal gland. This could apparently lead to ‘neuro-thermal trauma’ and something called ‘Somnolescent Hegiran Mutations.’ The workphones kept squealing no matter where I poked or prodded.
The fourth pair, however, were silent. It took a few minutes for me to realize that fact. The room itself was buzzing with Theta District’s standard productivity noise. The walls stopped all but the loudest laughter and carnal noises. I could even hear the music from the Heroin Rooms across the hall. The resulting cacophony made it nearly impossible to tell the headphones weren’t functional until I put them on. Even then, it took a time for my ears to stop ringing and accept silence.
I stared at my hands, trying to catch the thoughts spilling around my head. Once I calmed down, I pulled the workphones off and stared at them. The din of the room filled the recently empty space inside my mind.
I rushed to put the workphones back on. The absence of sound was exhilarating. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I could feel my heartbeat in my ears. I had to steal the silent workphones.
I pulled them off and squinted at them. I grabbed a screwdriver and removed the casing that hid the GPS device inside. The logo for DigiGalaxy, a small pixel Earth at the center of a purple and yellow galaxy, led me to a tiny chip near the upper edge of the motherboard. It was easy to pull off with pliers. I dropped it into the box. Whoever sorted through it later wouldn’t think anything of the random GPS chip.
Once the casing was back on, I tentatively slid the workphones back on. I closed my eyes as the silence covered me like a weighted blanket.
Stateless Militia series, Anupam Roy, from Locust #2.
A hand clasped my shoulder tight, ripping me from my reverie. My eyes shot open to see Hera grinning at my surprise. She motioned for me to remove the workphones. “Getting lost in the buzz?” She asked.
I stammered sheepishly for a moment. “You know how it is.”
Hera laughed. “Yeah, it can put you to sleep sometimes.” She nodded towards the door. “You gotta go clean up the IG Hall at the end soon.”
I rolled my eyes. “Why do I have to clean if it’s already clean?”
Hera shrugged. “Because rich people fuckery? Dude booked it a full week.” She waggled her eyebrows to emphasize the importance of the client.
I shook my head. “A week? That’s gotta cost more than I make in a year.”
Hera nodded. “I’ve seen your stubs. It’s twice what you make.”
I laughed. “Okay, I’ll go start on it before the VitaliTea! wears off.” I put my silent workphones back on. Hera gave me a thumbs up on her way out the door.
At the end of the hall, I hefted open a heavy, golden glass door. In the center of the room was massive, plush bed covered in shiny, gold silk sheets, blankets, and a mountain of matching pillows. The bed was suspended three feet off the ground by ornate golden poles attached to the ceiling.
To the left was an ornate bar stocked with several bottles of alcohol. I noted that the spice rack at the far end was still well stocked with all the illicit substances you could buy. Near it was a velvet cloth covered with paraphernalia.
To the right of the bed was a small kitchenette. I made mental note to dust and wash the few dishes and silverware and to dust the cooking and eating area. Rich people liked things to be spotless and shiny.
The last two dips were much shorter and less intrusive than the earlier one. The room was as clean as I could make it. Everything had been wiped twice with sanitizer that smelled hazardous and floral. My plastic sanitation suit fogged up quickly but without it I’d have woken up dead the next day from Cleaner’s Lung.
It occurred to me double sanitization was a rich person’s way of saying ‘fuck you’ to the Cleaning Class. I looked down at my ungloved hands. My nails were cut short, by requirement, and dyed a soft, lime green from scrubbing things with DetriBrite. My palms were calloused and hard. I liked cleaning. I hated cleaning for rich people.
I WATCHED Alderman Andrew Lemon sign the contract regarding his stay in The Silver Palms. He pushed the papers and fountain pen across the desk to Hera but refused to meet her eyes. He made no attempt to hide his disgust.
Hera and I watched him leave the office and exchanged a look before following.
“This was cleaned twice?” He asked, hovering a hand near the doorknob.
Hera nodded. “Cleaned twice by our most thorough employee.” Lemon cleared his throat. “Sir,” she added. She rolled her eyes when he looked away.
Lemon spun the spice rack of drugs and finally nodded his approval. “It’s fine.” He conceded. “I’m expecting two outside girls tonight.” He put up a hand when Hera started into the clause about fees. “I know, there is a ‘medium fee’ for outside girls. I accept the extra charges on my bill. As I was saying, I am expecting two outside girls tonight. One blond, one redhead. I would like them let in the side entrance. I’m having one of my men bring by some champagne. There are some things you are unable to acquire that I have had to source elsewhere.”
Hera sighed. “Okay.”
Lemon scowled. “I’ll need a list of your girls as well as their Liscentia ratings and birth codes. I don’t need to see their pricing.” He turned to me for the first time “And I don’t need your cleaners coming in here unless I call for one. They are on call, yes?”
Hera nodded again. “There are always at least six cleaners in the building.”
“I’d like this one on call for me.” Lemon looked around the room. “They’re obviously your most capable employee.”
Hera clenched her jaw for a moment to hold the anger in. “Avi isn’t on our call-in list.”
Lemon’s eyes were suddenly lit with anger. He scoffed. “You’re not contracted?”
“Contracted, yes, but they’re the top employee,” Hera interjected calmly, “and haven’t used their Refusal for the year.”
Lemon unclasped his hands behind his back and hugged them across his chest. “Why haven’t you used your Refusal?”
I shrugged and smiled. “I usually save it as long as I can.”
A refusal could be used to: A) Turn down one large, long-term job but with half the job’s pay, or, B) Be taken s a two-week vacation for a third of your wages. All jobs had a Refusal. As part of the Societal Functionality Laws, workers had to have an option to say ‘no’ at least once a year without repercussion. A worker could opt out of using their Refusal and, instead, get a bonus at the end of the year.
I did that my first year working, like all the other seventeen-year-olds. It became a rite of passage to take the bonus and be disappointed by the aluminum gilded plastic bust of your own head arriving from the Bonus division of Federal Art and Likeness Bureau. My head ended up with all the others: melted to the black and crumbling First Wall Memorial. Another part of the First Year Beheading, as the we called it. Every year, the wall grew more and more young faces pointed towards the smattering of mansions that dotted the top of Silent Mountain, radiating from the massive radio tower.
Lemon’s eyes were slits as he studied me. The pause stretched on a beat too long before he sighed and set his jaw. “Are you planning on using it to refuse this job?”
I shrugged and smiled wider. “I guess I’ll have to see the work order before I can make that decision, sir.”
Lemon rolled his eyes but nodded. “I suppose private compensation might sway you one way or the other?”
I shrugged again. “Section 7 of the work order covers tips and additional payment options.” I noticed Hera was watching me with wonder and amusement which only made me braver. “I can’t make any promises but thank you for appreciating my hard work, sir.”
Lemon shook his head. He did nothing to keep his feelings from scrunching his face up in a frown of contempt. “I feel good work should be rewarded to keep it consistent.”
I bit my tongue so as not to shout ‘Bullshit!’
“Well,” Hera finally broke the silence, “why don’t we go see about amending that work order?”
THE UNION hall, at the end of Services Boulevard, had a green neon sign that lit the pocked black stones of the building like a beacon. The green light meant it was for the Scrubbers Union, of which I had been a member since turning seventeen. After the aptitude testing, which consisted of several tasks performed at various frequencies and decibels, I received my letter of acceptance to the Municipal Union of Scrubbing and Rinsing Technicians.
MUSCRAT HQ was a catch-all for the needs of the cleaners in Scherzcouer City. The entrance led into the administrative offices for the volunteer cleaners who handled paperwork and bargaining requests. The basement held the small employee bar, as well as the child care facilities for union members.
As soon as I entered, the man behind the front desk stubbed out his cigarette.
“Park.” His voice was like gravel in a blender. “Some guy came in trying to buy you for a while. Got some stuff for you to look over.”
“Hey, Mitch.” I sat down in the chair opposite him. “I didn’t think he’d turn it in that quickly.”
Mitch’s voice was muffled by the sound of crinkling paper as he searched the piles scattered around his desk. “The fuck did I put that stuff?” He mumbled to himself. “Yeah, well, he sent in some of his men with three copies of the work order. You’re gonna want to see it.”
My shoulders slumped. “That good, huh?”
Mitch sat the slightly rumpled work order down and pushed it forward with a flourish. “You could take a vacation off this pay-off if you can get a travel voucher.” I reluctantly picked up the paper. “You’re a good cleaner, kid. I’m not surprised.”
I skipped straight to the section 7 and nearly dropped the paperwork. “Fifty-five hundred bucks on top?!” My jaw was in my lap.
Mitch’s smile was genuine. Any boon like this would get spread around. “You got a fan.”
I scoffed. “I don’t think Andrew Lemon is a fan of anyone but himself.”
Mitch shrugged but nodded his agreement. “He sure likes women.” He said conspiratorially, leaning in close as he spoke.
I barked a humorless laugh. “I don’t think ‘like’ is the right word.” I was sometimes too brave with my words for people old enough to remember The Balancing.
Mitch’s face fell. “Maybe not the right way, no.” He cleared his throat and went back to reading the news on his phone.
I watched him for a second. Mitch, and people his age, were much less willing to be critical of the way things were in the city. I wondered if it had really been so bad, before the reforms, before The Balancing, that even saying something critical had been forbidden. Almost everyone was critical now. Social media was an avalanche of discourse. Most of it was hypercritical. None of it was anonymous. There were no consequences for saying anything you wanted to say. It wasn’t like we could do anything.
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the desk between us. Mitch glanced from the corner of his eye then turned back to his phone. The buzz of the district stretched between us for a couple beats before I leaned back in my chair once more.
Mitch sighed. “What?”
I shook my head. “You were around for The Balancing, right?”
Mitch nodded. He squinted at me for a moment. “Why?”
“How come people your age don’t bash Cirqmont?” I asked.
Mitch’s mouth opened then closed. He shook his head as if to clear it. “They give us jobs.”
I laughed. “They’re also assholes.”
Mitch’s arms were suddenly up, waving wildly to dismiss me. “Get out of here, kid.” He thumbed towards the door and rumbled his annoyance. I knew he wasn’t really angry but he was finished talking.
I took a pen from the repurposed sugar tin on the corner of Mitch’s desk and checked the box to accept payment. Mitch softened as he watched. I stuck the pen back in the tin. Mitch took the papers. “I guess I can’t say no to a pay off like that.”
“You’d be crazy to.” His voice was small.
Mitch fed the paperwork into the old document machine. It would save a digital copy of the document for the union’s records. It would also send a copy to the relevant offices on Cirqmont as well as to the client.
I checked my phone. Once the paper disappeared into the machine, the calendar icon rotated twice and the phone chimed. A small exclamation point in a red circle pulsed in the notification bar at the top. I put the phone on standby and tucked it in my pocket. The information for the job was safely in my calendar. It would notify and track me for the duration.
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