2084: Episode 1 -- Thanks to Georgy O.

It was a bright hot day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Dylan Jackson, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape meeting the gazes of a gang of begging children, slipped through the bullet proof glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a scrawny teenager from trying to enter behind him. As he headed down the hall Dylan heard one of the doormen yelling, followed by the sharp crack of what he imagined was a head hitting the reinforced glass door.

The hallway smelled of rotten meat and burnt plastic. At one end of it a large hole in the wall was patched over with wire mesh. Dylan made for the stairs. It was no use trying the elevator. Even if it was working you usually had to bribe one of the doormen to use it, and at present the electricity was cut off anyways. The flat was seven flights up, and Dylan, who was thirty-nine, and had a painful varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, a mat was laid down against the wall. The doormen usually rented them out at night in exchange for food or huffing glue. It meant that strangers were sometimes lounging around in the stairs, so you had to be careful not to be robbed on the way up. The army had recently stopped the doormen from running a full-scale whorehouse out of the first floor hallway after an operations officer had been killed on the stairs by a john, but it was simply too much work to stop them from letting people into the building to sleep in the stairway at night.

Once inside the flat Dylan carefully bolted the door and then walked across the room to open the window. Even with the window open it was hot inside. A warm wind blew in from the direction of the lake, but it didn't help much. A mile away the Ministry of Peace, Dylan's place of work, towered vast and black above the grimy landscape. This, he thought with a sort of vague distaste -- this was Chicago, chief city of Itipea, itself the administrative center of the central most province of Oceania. He tried to squeeze out some childhood memory that should tell him whether Chicago had always been quite like this. Were there always these vistas of partially collapsed skyscrapers, their sides shored up with steel buttresses, their top floors removed for scrap? And the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled in the air and weeds slowly spread over heaps of rubble; and the places where the bombs had cleared a larger path and there had sprung up sordid colonies of dwellings made with old tin sheeting and piled stones? But it was no use, he could not remember: nothing remained of his childhood except a series of bright-lit tableaux, occurring against no background and mostly unintelligible.

The Ministry of Peace was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous tower of glittering black glass, soaring up, floor after floor, 1451 feet into the air. From where Dylan stood it was not possible to see many of the missing window panes and poorly patched bomb damage. The Ministry of Peace contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding ramifications below. Scattered about Chicago there were just three other old towers of similar appearance and size still standing. So completely did they dwarf the surrounding architecture that from the roof of Victory Mansions you could see all four of them simultaneously. All four buildings were used by the army to house soldiers, and whatever supplies could be stockpiled. They were all impossible to enter except by members of the army on official business, and then only by penetrating a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests. Even the streets leading up the their outer barrier were roamed by soldiers with automatic rifles. Unfortunately, these soldiers were much better at defending the streets from unarmed gangs of towns people looking for food than they were at fending off other soldiers...

Dylan turned around abruptly and crossed the room again to a table near the door. By leaving the Ministry at this time of day he had sacrificed his lunch in the canteen, and he was aware that there was no food in his flat except a hunk of dark-colored bread which had to be saved for tomorrow's breakfast. He picked a bottle of colorless liquid up off the table, opened it, and smelled the contents. It gave off a sickly, melted-tar smell. Dylan poured a little of it out onto the sleeve of his uniform, buried his nose in the wet cloth, and inhaled deeply. Instantly his face turned scarlet and water ran out of his eyes. Breathing in the fumes was like being hit on the back of the head with a rubber club. The next moment, however, the intense headache went away and Dylan's consciousness was absorbed by a blinding white light. He stumbled back toward the center of the room, feeling his way in a sort of controlled fall, and collapsed into a dilapidated armchair facing the window.

The white light subsided and, looking out the window again, Dylan's eyes focused on several thick plumes of thick black smoke curling up into the sky far in the distance. He struggled to think -- to figure out what to do. The New Resistance Army, NRA for short, had invaded the western shanties in force only a month before and was already only thirty miles west of the central city. Right now they were in the process of burning the last army outposts before the river defences. If they managed to cross the river it would be over -- a total massacre. And, as only Dylan knew, the reports from the front were disastrous. The NRA would almost surely be outside the Ministry of Peace soon. If not next week, next month. Unfortunately, Dylan could not break the news of the recent defeats to the General without being shot. When he had been summoned to the central command office this morning to read an urgent message from the front he had flat out lied about its contents. He had turned a report of impending defeat into a prediction of an easy victory. He had to. The General hated bad news, and had already killed nearly every other officer in the Ministry of Peace who could read for reporting the content of negative communiques.

But all this was too much -- he would think later. Now, he had to relax and finally get some sleep. Dylan buried his nose in his sleeve again and breathed the last of the fumes into his lungs. His mind went blank, and he passed out into a heavy sleep. Not even the ever-present fleas biting his neck could provoke any response.

2084: An experiment in Community Fiction

Now that all three of us have demonstrated our interest in the blog, we are going to begin an experiment. All three of us are going to participate in writing a science fiction novel. The novel will consist of episodes, each of which will be written by one (or possibly more) of us. In addition, any reader comments will be considered for inclusion into the official story line. The end result should be a story which is not only of greater interest to more possible readers, but also more inclusive and responsive to readers' desires than traditional fiction. That is, assuming that there are any readers, and more than one writer...

The first episode will be appearing soon on a screen attached to a computer on a lap near you.

Owl Hunting in the City

Foraging

no skin

I started with no skin
Bile on open wounds

I'm the silent one of three. Sorry for that. Difficulty with motivation these days. Drove up north today after work, listening to Donna Summers. Very beautiful countryside. Small lakes bisected by the road. Northern boreal forest in the fall, nothing like it.