Midnight Tofu
Short word portrait that attempts to show (not tell) some of what's afoot in the world
I'd always had a funny feeling about chroming up, really most people did, even the ones who ended up doing it. But I was one of the few who hadn't done it, and now pushing 40, I supposed I never would. That was A-OK by me.
Still I knew that if they'd gotten me young I would have. The endless cycle of the panopticon-system - pressurization, conformity, pressurization - would have churned my vulnerable psyche like the wheat in the fields we passed by in the dark, until what was inside was broken. "Was the first domino to fall always the most important, what made the first domino different from the last?" I wondered.
The low and throaty growl of the engines was a comfort to me as we road. Such things were scarce outside The Cults control. And The Cult controlled pretty much everything on earth. They had to for our own good is what they liked to say, but I was sure they only said that out of habit carried over from the old days when they could still have been fought if they'd told the truth, that they liked it that way because it let them do whatever they wanted.
Funny guy that I was, the engines voice in the night made me think of the past. History has been dark to us since the collapse, and only a few books - like the ones my parents had given me to read on the long caravan trips across the wastes - were left. Otherwise we shouted into the black past, and it rarely answered with more than echo. I suspected that was saying something important all by itself.
My partner made a motion with his free hand, rolling his finger lazily around his earpiece which I understood to mean, heads up. Nis and I had ridden together a long time, so he knew what I was like, and I knew his instincts were good.
My fingers moved across the dash display in a well rehearsed pattern that activated our FFID. Then I let them fall back and rise up to my temple. I cast out to the four small and vulnerable minds in the back of the rover. They were asleep, so none of them felt the touch and I wouldn't have let my presence become perceptible even if they hadn't been. I was grateful for their sleep. Sleep didn't come easy to kids who'd been chromed, and the way out was hard: months of safehouses and smuggling along the railroad had taken all of their strength.
Why chrome kids? The Cult liked them that way, liked them made in the image of their sick minds, for their sick games. And nothing reminded everyone who was in charge more than the culls.
Some of them had been orphans, some of them - like myself - had been bred by their mothers to be sold, but most had simply been taken, to be chromed up and to fight for the lust filled crowds of the capitol.
I had heard about an empire long ago that did something similar, taking the children of a people they oppressed to be indoctrinated into ruthless weapons of their power. They had had some strange sounding word for the practice-devshirme.
A readout on a display projected on to the forward end of the cabin indicated the ambient light was building outside. It would be what they used to call dawn soon. But the Dusters had taken that wonder from Earth's bloodied poets a generation ago.
I wouldn't say it out loud, but the attack had been a perverse kind of victory for the species. The Cult had been driven into their cities, and without the benefit of their orbital platforms, the spaces in between could be moved through, like the before people had once moved through them.
Mars. Would it be a new Earth, and even if the Marsies pulled it off, who was to say they'd give a damn about what was left of us?
To be continued…
Writers Notes:
Devshirme (sometimes translated as blood tax) was a real practice under the Ottoman empire. And The Cult shouldn’t be too difficult to draw a comparison to from the present day for those who have been paying attention.
I’m very excited about where this story might be heading. Though I admit I don’t have a plan for it at the moment beyond the hope that I will steadily keep revisiting this place to explore it. Mars hit me out of left field and I was like… hellz ya I want Mars in on this.
Music is essential to writing, at least for me. Here is some that added a bit of backdrop to the above.
Thanks for reading, I hope this portrait inspires those who find it to make connections in their knowledge and understanding with the help of imagination.