(Tangential History

TW: Police Brutality

When Billy was a child, he lived in the decline of a different city, one not too far from the City.  In some respects, it was this city that spelled the end of cities as anything other than a niche concept, the last gasp for future generations to think of them as an institution rather than to be looked back upon with bemused befuddlement. It wasn’t one of the major cities, or even a notable minor one, but it was his childhood hometown nonetheless. Billy recalled having a good childhood. But then again, there are things even the most observant of children wouldn’t see.

The living conditions, for example, were less than ideal. Indeed, most people in the city would consider it cruel to subject a child to live on the streets, begging for money to get food. Then again, those same people would blame the parents for being bad at parenting because they couldn’t find a job like the rest of them did. Better, such normal people thought, the child raised by the state, where they can be put to work for the benefit of society, than to be raised by such irresponsible parents. Many a child froze to death on those streets in the long winter nights while most normal people locked their doors to keep those people out.

The only reason Billy’s family was able to survive such nights was because they frequently broke the law by sleeping in abandoned apartment complexes, which were growing by the week. There were a few other families who lived in those complexes with Billy’s, so it wasn’t a completely familial affair. The oldest of the children was a girl named Cate, who was also 8 and had the smile of someone who should be on television. Billy would spend most of his time tied to her like a tattoo. They spent their time spreading rumors about gangs of storytellers and untold creatures lurking in the margins of the outside world. If she believed in the concept, Cate would have considered him her best friend. There were other kids who lived in the building and she got on with them just fine, but there was a sense in her that personal relationships were an ending concept and it would be best to keep those to as much of a minimum as possible.

One night, while the children played in the snow lit streets of the city, the adults had to deal with a pressing matter. It seemed that some police officers were in the area looking for trespassers “loitering on private property.” While it was true that none of the families paid a dime to live in those damp and dingy rooms, it’s also true that they had been abandoned for a good six months before any of them moved in. If anyone truly cared about them, wouldn’t they have done something to them, even if it were just merely tearing them down?

“We can’t stay here,” said Jim’s dad with the worried tone of an addict.

“Oh,” sneered Billy’s dad with the mocking tone of a pessimistic revolutionary, “and why not? ‘Cause the big bad government’ll kill us? They’re gonna kill us one by one just for the sport of it? Or maybe the landlords finally realized we’re here living in their buildings for free rather than on the streets dying for the same price, so they’re sicking the pigs on us, hmm?”

“YES!”

“They haven’t come for us before,” Lisa’s mom pointed out in desperation, “why would they come now?”

“Maybe,” hypothesized Cate’s uncle, “it has to do with that rumor I heard-“

“Oh please,” interrupted Frank’s sister while rolling her eyes, “if a corporation of that size was going to set up shop anywhere, surely they’d pick somewhere with more people.”

“They’d also pick somewhere with a lot of space,” continued Billy’s dad as if it was his idea. “Somewhere they could fit all the machinery required to do the job at hand. And frankly this city’s as tightly packed as a fist.”

“But what if it’s true?” said Lisa’s dad from a dark corner. He wasn’t one for talking; indeed most thought he was mute. But when those words came out of his cigarette stained voice, everyone turned towards him. “Regardless of the reason, be it to make way for “the future” or because they just want to kill us niggers, what if it’s true?” There was a bitter silence when he was done.

“Language aside,” Jim’s dad said to fill the void with a twinge of fear [it’s better than nothing, he thought], “he’s right. We can’t just expect the government to ignore us forever.”

“They’d ignore us if we just died on the streets like we’re supposed to,” murmured Luke’s dad to himself, pretending the others didn’t hear him.

“They were bound to notice us eventually,” Jim’s dad continued as if no one had spoken. “We have to face reality.”

“And what are we supposed to do,” Billy’s dad snapped like a bag of eggs pushed from a great height, “get a job that doesn’t exist?” The room was dead silent, more so than before. It was as silent as an abandoned morgue.

“…When was the last time you saw a job opening?” asked Frank’s sister, afraid of her own implications. “I was walking down Elm, and I saw a bunch of small businesses closing. Some of the cars on the streets were abandoned with luggage and dead pets inside. I even saw some of the shelters herd people onto busses. And all the TVs in the few remaining shop windows showed nothing but the static of a post apocalyptic station.”

“…What are you getting at?” asked Cate’s uncle, despite knowing the answer. They were all aware of what she was implying, but some part of their lizard brains needed her to say it so they could believe it. For the idea to be real.

“I think the Fuzon Corporation found a way to make some space.” As if to punctuate her theory, a gas grenade shattered its way through the window. Smoke burrowed through the room like a sewer pipeline through the ocean. They thought it was mere smoke at first, but then their vision started to collapse into liquids. The adults coughed and screamed for their children. They tried to find their way down the stairs and out of the building, but there were people coming up them… people with sticks, gas masks, and a desire to hit people for fun.

By the end of the night, with one exception, all the adults were either with their fellow homeless people or dead [Cate’s uncle, Jim’s dad, Billy’s mom, and Luke’s dad]. Most of the deaths were the result of the homeless daring to think being alive was justification enough to be treated like people as opposed to stolen property. [Some could say that might be a bit unfair. Typically, it’s preferred to return stolen property with as little damage as possible.] The parents would never see their children again. They were aware enough of what was happening to run as fast as they could the second they saw the police staking out the area as opposed to having a meeting as to discuss whether or not they should run away from the police.

The building was torn down a good month after the residents were evicted. Indeed, the whole of the city was torn down and replaced with a factory to build technology for citizens of the City. All the inadvertent and unintentional artwork that made the architectural theme of the city was destroyed and replaced the monolithic mundanity of the factory. Most of the technologies they were ordered to build consisted of computer circuit boards “too small” for machines to properly build. What the technology did in those machines was unknown to the workers. Most assumed it was to prevent robot revolutions, or something equally clichéd. The people were separated into different parts of the factory via an algorithm that determined which people where best combined to prevent uprisings. Between the factory opening and the City dying, there were 197 riots and 37 strikes [the longest being 12 consecutive days without labor].

The adults were branded with a bar code on the side of their arm and forever referred to by their serial number. None of them lived long enough to see the City die. Billy’s dad lived the longest despite being the most vocal of the group. The algorithm that determined how to deal with the uprisings when they occurred repeatedly spared him in the hopes that he would one day succeed. It was saddened on the day before the City died, when he died peacefully in his sleep. It took some comfort once it realized how the City had died. Or, at least, that’s the Historical record of things.

Jim had fled eastward, as he heard that he had family on that coast of America. He did not know that most of them had either died or had no idea he was related to them [his father was a black sheep of the family on account of being a gay man. Both facts enraged his family immensely]. It was irrelevant as Jim died before he could reach anyone due to falling into a ditch in the desert, suffering from an acute case of heat stroke and starvation. He lasted three weeks on his own. His last thoughts were one of his few good dreams where the vultures flew him out of the ditch and they had such merry adventures in the cloud kingdom.

Lisa nearly died several times while traveling north towards the remains of Canada. Once, she came across a bear cub and was barely able to out run his mother. Another time, she met with some unsavory people who tried to do nasty things to her. She doesn’t talk about that night. She had nightmares that made her never want to sleep again for a few years. She had a look in her eye of complete despair. One day, long after she crossed the “border,” when she was old enough to have lost a child, Lisa came across a great gorge. It seemed to be as deep as forever. She considered it for a good long while. Then, a lad of her age came up next to her. He had the look in his eyes of someone who had been falling off of a gorge for years, hoping that he’d be lucky enough to reach the bottom. They looked at each other for what seemed like forever…

Frank’s sister was lucky to escape from the complex owing to a large amount of dumb luck and clever movements. When they were younger, the siblings made a pact to meet up at the miserable tree just outside of the city, within the confines of a different City. It was an odd looking tree, shaped like what one would think a tree would look like after being tortured for a couple hours. Its bark was only there in patches. Its branches twisted towards itself like someone trying to put out their burning hair. The carved love notes on its flesh almost made it look like it was screaming. Frank’s sister was lucky that he was there waiting there for her. Another minute, and he would’ve left. They departed for a place they had never been before. The letter they sent me shortly after finding out that I was working on retelling these events claimed that they are happy where they are now.

Luke had the misfortune of being spotted by the police as he escaped. The chase was long, nearly lasting five hours, but it ended with Luke being captured. As the police were taking him to within City limits [where things worse than death were bound to occur], an odd rumbling came around them. The world began to shake as clopping of hooves approached the officers and their quarry. Luke never believed the stories Cate and Billy would tell of the supernatural infecting the world like dirt does to an open wound. And yet, before him was a herd of beings with the general outline of deer. Their alien beauty awed him. But that awe turned to horror as one of the officers did one of the stupidest things in his life and shot at the deer. When the officers were all dead, the deer led Luke to his new life.

Quinn, one of two kids who lived in the apartment complex without a parent or adult guardian, was alone in the dark. The adults did not have a plan for where Quinn would go should the complex be uninhabitable. Indeed, they never thought it would be. Life has a way of catching up to people who think things will never change. Desperate and cold, Quinn jumped at the first opportunity they could for even the barest amount of comfort. They walked for what seemed like an eternity [but was merely a few hours] until they came across something shaped like a slender man in a black suit. The main difference between the two is that men are typically known to have faces and not have tentacles sprouting from some unknown part of existence. Somehow, without a face, the shape smiled. Quinn didn’t survive a week under its care. In some regards, they were lucky.

Johnathan, the other kid without a parent, was found nearly starved by a troupe of roaming Spiders. He was cared for and loved even better than he knew when he had parents. Sometimes he would share too much about who he was before he met the Spiders. Of what his parents did to him… of what he did to them when given the chance. He never told a soul within the apartment complex what he did and he didn’t know why he felt comfortable telling the Spiders. He always feared that people would toss him out if he told them the truth. And yet, these people didn’t. They held him close like a parent does to their child. These Spiders believed reacting with violence to pain and suffering didn’t inherently make one a bad person. For the first time in Jonathan’s life, he knew love.

As for Cate and Billy... in truth, the story of the pair is a bit anticlimactic. No matter how much they would like to believe there was, there was no moment of rupture that broke their hearts and made them hate each other forever. No tragic event that killed Cate and made Billy swear vengeance upon the world, motivating him to do what he was going to do in those final days of the City. There wasn’t even some disagreement between the two that slightly fractured them. They simply drifted apart from one another as the years went on. They didn’t even realize it had happened until it was over, and even then their reaction to this was just to shrug at the loss of something they once thought was important. They saw each other from time to time in the City, but those were moments of strangers walking the same street or eating at the same restaurant. In truth, they would never know each other as friends until long after the City had died.)

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