Tuesday 12 June 2007

ASBO-Boy - Hero-ism Part 2

With a tumultuous heave Bark lifted the telegraph pole up onto his shoulders and plunged it into the hole in the pavement; then, just for good measure he channelled his strength through the wood until it sprung roots.

"Hippy." Arc-Light muttered. They were standing in broad daylight on Argyle Street repairing telegraph poles and the electricity supply. There was no one around. "So much for over-crowding." Arc-Light hovered in the air, concentrating on reconnecting all the wires, around her they waved like snakes in the wind. The street might have been empty but they knew they were being watched. Malady was behind them, going from door to door, window to window, drawing out their illnesses and swallowing them like sweets.

"How are you doing Mally?" Bark asked, moving broken pieces of pavement off the road and onto one of the many piles of spare rubble he'd built.

"Pony." Malady replied.

Bark nodded, scattering seeds in the cracks. Cars hadn't driven on these streets since before the Walls went up and all that remained of them were the rusty hulks in old gardens, since reclaimed by weeds and blackberries. Bark was keen to encourage life to return to the streets and turn the Sandfields into a Wood; in his wake, grass and flowers were springing up in the dead earth.

"You know, they use this road as a playground. I used to play here with my brother."

"Probably the safest road in Swansea." Arc-Light replied, descending. It was a bright November afternoon, a crystal clear sky and a sharp breeze from over the sea wall. They walked on to the next pole and Bark began to lift. Malady peered in through the boards covering a sash window. The room was filled with eyes.

Suddenly, she gasped and reeled backwards, tripping over the remains of a fire. The other two lifted her up and propped her up against a wall. Her skin had turned blue again and she was struggling to deal with something her power really didn't like.

"AIDS again?" Arc-Light asked, her voice a whisper. Malady nodded.

"Pony." She replied, her eyes bunched closed and her body quivering with the concerted effort, "Pony, pony, pony, pony, pony, pony, pony." Arc-Light rocked her back and forth as her body digested the infection and broke it down. When the convulsions stopped Arc-Light breathed again and cursed the day they'd got a twelve year old girl to cure Swansea on the strength of getting her a pony.

"Seren."

"What?" Arc-Light returned.

"Her name is Seren."

Arc-Light laughed. Malady had just cured AIDS for the second time today and probably for the fiftieth time since they'd started and still, all she could think of was the pony.

**

"You've got a nerve of steel, kid," David Self muttered, his eyes invisible behind a pair of red, shaded glasses, "I'm impressed. If you were doing anything other than trying to blackmail me I'd probably be offering you a job."

"Gutted." Squeeze replied, standing half in darkness on the other side of the grim office above the factory. Outside the window, the refurbished Vetch field glimmered in the cold winter light. Practising on its emerald surface were the Swans and watching them from all around were the members of committees, business-men, Self's friends and acquaintances. On the other side of the wall were the slums and not even the roar of the crowd could block out the smell on match day. Squeeze was pretty certain all slums smelled like that but he liked to think it was the smell of injustice.

"So," Self continued, leafing through the photos on his desk, "You've got one of me meeting this gentleman here, my aide, no less; you've got my aide, then, in several locations speaking privately to key members of the union. No prizes for guessing what about, eh? If this got out, I'd have a riot on my hands. Why on earth would you want to disrupt the infra-structure; something I've worked very hard to maintain for the past twenty years? The Spice, after all, must flow."

David Self, the oft titled Self-Made Millionaire, one of the richest men in Swansea, and, as it happened, one of the most corrupt. Then again, they were all corrupt.

"Because this isn't infrastructure, this is exploitation. This isn't a victory for the people, this is the reason you hold so much power at the council. These people are your tools." Squeeze had considerably less control of his temper than Self did and it began to unravel every time he opened his mouth.

"Ah yes," Self's anger seemed to dissipate at Squeeze's vitriolic outburst. "You're one of those pampered little boys who likes to think he's aware of what's going on; likes to think that he isn't pampered or lucky or well brought up; you see suffering around you and you feel guilty, so, of course, you don't blame the people who's fault it actually is – you blame your parents, you blame the people who've looked after you. You blame everyone but the guilty."

Squeeze had heard this rant before. It was one of his father's favourites.

"Had it ever occurred to you that the system we have today was brought about by a landslide victory; one which was fuelled by the votes of the poor, suffering people you claim to love so much? Had it ever occurred to you that perhaps your parents and their generation, the ones who could see what would happen, people like myself, voted against our current system?"

Squeeze hadn't heard that. It normally ended with a haunted 'Count your blessings', which he'd always assumed was as empty as the argument that preceded it.

"Boy. I love Swansea. I loved what it was before the Walls and I love it now, even though it took me a while to see how I could repay the injustice that had been dealt me and my family." Self said, standing up and walking to a case of medals. "Civic Duty, Civic Justice – awarded for National Pride and Influence." He continued, knocking the photos over. "Are you a nationalist, boy?"

Squeeze nodded, without thinking. Self laughed.

"When I was young, calling yourself a nationalist was tantamount to declaring you were bigoted. Now it simply means 'I care about my country'. And why shouldn't we, boy? Why shouldn't we? After all, we both care about our country. You seem to think that blackmailing me, because I'm 'obviously' corrupt, will solve all your problems. It wont. I'm not the guilty one. You are. The complacent generation who are being brought up to believe that Civic Duty is a bad thing because you've read some boot-legged copy of an old politics textbook and you think you know it all. You don't. If you just did what you were told, then we wouldn't be having this conversation.

"You know what annoys me more than anything else? You think I'm not trying to get more people into work; you think I'm exploiting my work force. In an ideal world the people of the Sandfields would all work in my factories because there is a place for everyone. It's not my fault they're lazy and ill and a waste of humanity. Definitions are changing boy, look at yourself for example, you are a prime example of what humanity is capable of. Physically, you're an evolved form and in spirit, you have the potential to achieve greatness. It makes me sick that people like you aren't fulfilling that potential."

Suddenly Self tore off his glasses and Squeeze's vision filled with bright light; it was too late to jump out of the way so he took the blast full in the chest and was propelled backwards into a shelf of glass. Dazed by the pain he sat there feeling the skin-suit searing into the flesh on his chest. All Others were kids, Squeeze thought, how on earth -

"I wonder," Self muttered, his eyes glowing, "If you know about how they breed chickens. It's an interesting, if sick little process where, in order to breed the best chicken, they encourage them to couple with members of their own family, thus producing a pure, 'better' chicken. Now, fortunately, I haven't had to couple with any of mine, but thanks to a little known process called the Euryale Cascade, this little ability I've picked up, well… let's call it a present from my son. I could've had water beams coming out of my eyes too, but let's face it. Fire is just cooler."

This time Squeeze managed to dodge the blast by propelling himself upwards. He was across the room and standing by the door in a single bound. Self returned to his table and picked up the photos, in a flash they were gone. "Next time you try to blackmail somebody, make copies."

Squeeze smiled, "It's a good thing I gave all your workers some before I came to see you. They've probably dealt with their moles by now." Self's face dropped and before he could open fire, so to speak, Squeeze threw his arms across the room and gripped Self by the collar, tearing him from where he was standing, through the door and down the steps, into the hands of an angry mob.

Squeeze found an obliging window as his exit but not before he listened to the screaming. With a feeling of grim satisfaction he stamped an ASBO flyer to the wall and left quietly, before the fireworks started.

**

Bark, Arc-Light and Malady were eating lunch. They hadn't spoken in half an hour and they were keeping their eyes exclusively on each other. Up and down the street the people were starting to emerge. They were talking in whispers, watching them in awe.

"Where's Squeeze?" Malady asked, voicing the question that had been irritating the other two for weeks. Bark shrugged and Arc-Light looked miffed. "Oh."

Malady looked between two of Bark's branches and saw someone stumbling over the uneven ground. Behind the man, his family were standing together pleading to him to come back.

The man stopped a short distance from their circle and knelt in the dust. He was facing Malady. She watched him move, his body was drained of its strength, his cheeks and eyes were drawn and sunken, his hair lank and greasy. "Thank you." He muttered.

Malady stood up and approached him. He looked ancient to her but he couldn't have been older than thirty. He was the man who had AIDS, one of the many she'd cured. She looked back at his family and knew that she'd taken the HIV from them too, they were standing in the dust, holding hands. "You've saved my family." She nodded, uncertain of what to say. In her mind she saw Seren in a field and felt her heart swell with joy but it was nothing, compared to how she felt that this man and his family were free. They were like lost souls, found after years of wandering. Uncertainty was gone, fear and ultimately their blight banished.

"You're welcome…" She said, taking his hand and lifting him to his feet. With his arm draped across her shoulder she walked him back to meet his family.

"Where's she going?" Bark asked.

Arc-Light watched the girl's gait change. She was walking slowly, assuredly. The skipping, bouncing, excitable little girl she'd met had become something else.

Then they heard the explosion.

Bark and Arc-Light were standing in an instant; Arc-Light launched into the air and saw a cloud of smoke and flame towering into the sky over the Vetch. The explosion set off a chain reaction in other buildings and like a scene from and old movie they went up one after another in quick succession. From here she could see Bark's little forest, the amount of wood on the streets and the tightly packed terraces. It wouldn't take long for the fire to spread.

The Wall around the Sandfields was circling them like a noose, she spun around to see where they could go. The farthest point from the fire was the Cwtch, a narrow shanty town built by the homeless. It was an old Welsh word that had since lost its meaning. From here she could see how the Walls narrowed together and formed a point at the farthest end. It was a bottle-neck and the fire would drive them into it. She descended and broke the news to to the crowd that had gathered around Bark.

"What can you do?" Someone shouted.

They shrugged silently, uncertain and scared. There was nothing they could do – neither of them had any control over fire.

"Bark! Arc-Light!" They heard a voice shouting in the crowd. It was Squeeze, lumbering over heads on legs like stilts. His face was white and it didn't take either of them long to figure out that this was his fault.

"What have you done?" Arc-Light demanded. Squeeze looked at her, scared and stupefied. He shrunk down to the ground and began stammering.

"I went back and tried – I did!" He began, nonsensically, but assuming they understood. "I didn't want this! This isn't what I –"

Arc-Light gripped him under the arm and gave him a look that could curdle milk. "Pull yourself together." He nodded. "These people need to be led to safety and we need you to help. Got it?"

He nodded again and wiped his jaw. "Right. Come on!" He shouted, turning to the masses, extending his legs so he craned over their heads. "We have to get out. Follow us and we'll lead you to safety."

This was his mess. He had to deal with it and bear the burden of the consequences; his pride had got him this far and now it would get him and everyone else out.

"Follow me!" He bellowed and began walking above the crowd.

2 comments:

Jom said...

If anyone can tell me why it's fucked around with my font and formatting, please let me know.

Jester said...

I'm not sure whats up with the formatting- it did the same to me yesterday and I had to go back and re-edit the whole thing- much to my great annoyance.

Anyway, what an interesting chapter! Bark is excellent, as always, I loved seeing the development of his powers in this one.

I liked the sinister reveal about the Euryale Cascade. I also like the irony that despite all their strengths, none of the Others had a power that could do anything against fire. Even Self chose to go for Fire beams, rather than water jets.

It will be interesting to see where you go next with the fire story- and if this is going to be part of a pattern of destruction of the old structures of the city, in this case through raizing in fire (in a Rome/ Nero way), but I still think could potentially also be through flooding of the Sinister Sea Wall, with its water level constantly rising up.

On the other hand, you might be going down the line of using this as something to unite the interests of the community: possibly some Others coming into the mix to extinguish the fire, or else just plain old humans.

Or maybe something completely different! Either way, I'm looking forward to reading the next few chapters.