Beyond the Land: A Future Fairy Tale

Chapter 1: This Winter Land

Chapter 1: This Winter Land
November 10th, 2075
New Rome 10:30 pm

Winter never ends here.
It has been winter for a thousand years.
It will be winter for a thousand more.
The cold, the sleet, the slush in your boots, the damp hair clinging to your brow are the definition of life.
Chill is the only feeling you will know, as long as you tarry in this country.
Chill has been here for forever.
It lives in every hollow of the City and it creeps into your bones and coils around your brain, whispering you to sleep at night.
The great concrete behemoths that stand there in the fog with frowning glass faces are the Chill People. The one immediately before you is a tavern – and they say, albeit errantly, that liquor warms the inward parts.
Look carefully now. Through the frosted windowpane of this tavern, you might still catch a glimpse of life unfrozen.
The tavern doors are a mouth and they swallow this old man, Peter, at night and spit him up again at the beginning of the workday.
Note this man Peter, and learn from him, you children of the cold; for he has begun to thaw.
---
The Sleepy Sailor was one of those rare places that lingered on after the War, where one could still find a pint of beer and good company. It had been overlooked when the Statue Garden was built on Grand Coliseum Street, and since then, it had become a strange vantage point from which to view the Statues, where one could still speak critically about them and reminisce about the Oaks that once grew up on that patch of land. Or were they Maples? Some of the old men still held that Maples had grown there once, and that syrup had poured out of their bark like water. But the details were not really what mattered in The Sleepy Sailor. All that really mattered in that smoke-filled room was the credo inscribed on Ernest’s old wooden counter: “Speak freely, mariners, and speak well.”
Peter had begun to spend his evenings in The Sailor since he had joined the Construction Crew at the extension project at the Miles High Tower. He had quickly become addicted – not to The Sailor’s beer, but to its conversation. Small though the tavern was, it had enough room for any thought to take shape and float about in the smoke of an old sailor’s pipe. Ernest claimed to have been a real sailor in his youth, and the red-haired Irishman certainly had enough scars to lend credence to his story. There was a debate as to exactly what sea he had sailed, and whether he had been a naval man or not. At times, even Ernest himself was unclear as to the details of his personal history, and so there had grown up two camps of customers – those who held that the proprietor was a genuine seaman, and those who held that the whole thing was merely an act to drum up business. And though Ernest would promise his detractors: “just wait ‘till I get out at sea again,” even that debate was allowed to rage unchecked within the walls of The Sleepy Sailor.
But now Peter had gone a step too far. He had become intoxicated by chatter and made one of those remarks that one makes under the influence of strong liquer that one hopes to forget the next day. Through the yellowed windowpane, he could see the three Statues on the opposite side of the road. The sun had crossed the street now and had begun to sink behind the black hummock of the East District HumaniTech Offices. Turning his eyes back to the bar counter, Peter glanced at the clock. It was 6:30.
“That clock has a name you know!” Ernest growled from behind the counter. “It’s Captain Stanley Carrington. And Captain Stanley, me grand-dad, says its time for you to head outside.”
Peter studied the six, the three, and the zero, projected in green light on the clock’s face. There was no way it could actually be Captain Carrington, whoever the hell that was. Captain Carrington had become anonymous; he was in the power grids now, united as one with his fellow man. The zero slid to a one. Peter ran his left hand down the side of his hip and stroked his leg in thought, the round barrel of the reclamation pistol brushing his fingers like a hardened tumor on his shin.
“After one more beer.” Peter found that someone had glued his boots to the ground, and so he stalled in hopes that he would soon get himself unstuck. Certainly, his boast had been well-made at first, but as the evening wore on and it became painfully clear that he was expected to follow through, the reality of what he was about to do – of what he was about to become – became no more palatable after three pints. He called for the beer in the hopes of stalling a moment longer – long enough to study Arvis’ hard face and serene blue eyes.
“I’ve given you enough beer to fill your water gun.” Ernest said. “The boys want you to get on with this three ring circus. And I want you to get on too, before I give away an entire keg.”
Arvis, Peter’s Foreman, looked up from his beer and shook his head. A quiet, white-haired man – one of the few white-hairs besides Peter to make an appearance in The Sailor – Arvis rarely spoke, except when he was giving orders, and then he bellowed and cursed more than he actually spoke.
“No work tomorrow, Pete, if you can’t follow through on your boasts.”
Peter only snorted and muttered: “I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing.”
“I’m with you on that one, Peter!” A stout man shouted from across the tavern. “I didn’t learn this craft just to haul steel to that blamed Tower all day. As if they really needed to add another mile to it, anyway; it’s so blinking tall it’s already poking the man in the moon’s eye out.”
“Then by all means, stay in bed tomorrow!” Arvis barked. “And wait and see how many people want craftsmanship this week.”
“We’re just tired of making laborer’s wages doing laborer’s work.” The man whined. “Things have gone from worse to worser – just a few years ago, they still hired folks like us to be carpenters. Then President Euller up and passed those new employment acts. Now if you ain’t born with the right looks, it don’t matter what skill you have.”
“Then get another set of genes.” Arvis said with a shrug. “If you ain’t human – ain’t Vril-Ya human, you know – then you’re a laborer. That’s all there is to it.”
“Ah, but I can’t say I don’t sympathize.” Ernest interjected from behind the counter. “They treat you boys like human forklifts these days.”
“And that’s what we’re all going to be, if we don’t do as we’re told.” Arvis murmured as he turned back to his beer.
Peter frowned, the last words sinking into him – if we don’t do as we’re told. At least he and Arvis had a common understanding; you did what you were told, you fought to survive, and you’d stay out of the power grids. It was the only way a 288 could get by. That was something she didn’t understand… the goddamn fool.
After a lengthy silence, in which everyone drank, the stout man spoke again.
“There’s going to be a big celebration tonight, what with the war over and all.”
“And?” Ernest asked.
“All I’m saying is that it’d be a prime night for Petey to hose down the President. Lotta people would see it; hope some will slip in it, too.”
Ernest gave Peter a hard glare and pointed to the clock.
“Grandpa says its almost seven.” The sailor said. “Time for you to head out.”
“Give me another ten minutes to think it over.” Peter replied.
“I’ve already thought it over for you.” Ernest said, raising his voice so the whole tavern could hear. “Tell me what you think of this, everyone: right on the boots of Benjamin Euller.”
“What about little Maxwell?” The stout man suggested. “Spray him down, too. He’s the reason we’re all here mugging down our poverty.”
“Why not all three?” Arvis added.
Ernest waved him off.
“Ah, leave Mr. Ozymandias alone.”
“Why?” Arvis asked. “If he’s going to do the deed at all, he should be thorough.”
“True.” Ernest conceded. “But Ozy’s a decent man, from what I ‘ere. It’s the Euller family that’s been takin’ all of his inventions and putting them to wrong use.”
“Sure, but then I wonder if that Maxwell kid even knows how to use Ozy’s inventions.” Arvis argued. “He’s been so busy waltzin’ around in his flashy white suits that he didn’t even notice the HumaniTech rates going up until we were all paying out our butts. Then, what’s the brilliant kid do? Go and start a reclamation war down there in the southerlands just to bolster our energy supply. At least Benjamin Euller knew how to run an ecnomy; but then, traits skip a generation, you know.”
“Even sailing skills.” Ernest added, with a wistful look at the clock.
“Wasn’t your father a sailor, though?” Peter asked.
“I don’t consider ‘dem nukyular submariners to be sailors.” Ernest grumbled.
“Enough talk!” Arvis yelled, pounding his mug on the counter. “I say we send Peter off to do his deed and get back to our drinks.”
Peter rose and stared out the window. The Statues were still there.
They should have vanished by now.
The whole scene should have vanished, and he should have awakened in a puddle of sweat.
“Listen…” He pleaded, as he passed by the bar counter, but by the looks on the men’s faces, he knew he had no choice but to follow through and hope for the best. At root, it was an ideological issue, a keep up of The Sailor’s sanctity as a place of straight talking honesty. Had Peter chosen not to act on his words, he would have been forgiven, no doubt, but he would not have been welcomed into that circle again.
As he pensively paced to the door, Peter caught Ernest’s sea green eyes looking at him with a deep – almost tender - glimmer.
“You wonder what would have happened if she hadn’t done it, don’t you?” The sailor whispered.
“I try not to.” Peter shook his head, his black hair, streaked with grey, falling down over his brow. “But whenever I see the warplanes flying over the city, I have ask myself what might have happened if she had kept a level head.”
“Peter.” Ernest snapped. There was a haunting light in the tavern-keeper’s eyes now, as though two green light-bulbs had been squeezed inside of his face. By the tone in the jolly old man’s voice, Peter knew that things had moved beyond casual jesting.
“You know that’s not true.” The sailor’s gruff voice whispered, as though he were imparting Peter with confidential information. “You know she was only the one in this world who kept a level head.”
If she had kept a level head, she would have done what she was told. Peter thought, as he left the bar and stepped into a puddle.

---
Peter’s fingers caressed the rough edges of the iron pedestal as he looked up into the eyes of Benjamin Euller - twenty feet of concrete in which had been captured the timeless smile of humanity’s messiah. Where once the pedestal had been smooth, its edges had become pitted with tiny ruts, which Peter’s hands, though themselves rutted far worse, ironed out with streams of hot sweat. Peter’s sweat glistened green and blue in a pool of algae green light that coursed from the spotlights at the statues’ base, crisscrossed the stone figures and rimmed the sky above Euller’s head with a halo of light. The figure’s left hand bore a tablet, inscribed with the Great Doctrine of The Culture, nails that had been hammered into the collective mind of the world since the day of their inscription - “There is no culture but The Culture.”
Preserved in stone, Euller had become a deity, ressurected from political assassination to speak to the world through every generation through the mouthes of The Culture’s leadership. His eyes, though sealed for fifty years, had never been blinded - they blinked in the statue’s face, glared from the legions of Blue Armors the patrolled the city streets, and stared from the sea of workers who labored with Peter at the Miles High Tower. At the point of their destruction, Euller’s eyes had ceased to be two and, scattered by the assassin’s cunning bullet, had become many.
On either side of the central statue two smaller figures stood in waiting, facing one another. To the left, Maxwell Euller, son of the statue - the current president, rich, spoiled, nauseatingly attractive, owner of an entire planet before the age of forty. To the right, Lucian Ozymandias, founder of the HumaniTech Corporation - old, stoop shouldered like a crow, spectacle wearing, “bookish.” They were a yellowing snapshot preserved in three dimensions; frozen, as it seemed, in a neverending dance beneath the bloodless feet of Benjamin Euller.
“Euller,” Peter whispered, running his red fingers over the President’s marble foot. “If only Arvis would give me a chisel big enough to bring you down.”
He could feel the eyes of The Sleepy Sailor watching him, and for once, he wished that The Sailor really was sleeping. Already he could hear Arvis taking bets on whether or not Peter would show up for work in the morning, or be found in jail somewhere, or vanish altogether in the night. For want of privacy, Peter moved behind the statues; it was the right side to be on, anyway, where one was face-to-face with the effigies, but already he could hear Arvis blabbering about “cheating” and wondering aloud how they could “prove” what Peter was really doing behind those statues.
The act itself was remarkably simple, given its ramifications.
The zipper was cold in his hands, and it became stuck once or twice, but he got it down without a hitch.
The sound of the unzipping was so loud that he was sure that they heard it in The Sailor.
“There’s your proof, Arvis.” He thought to himself.
A pause to reconsider, and then nature took over and it was too late to think the deed through any further.
Peter stood and watched, detached and unbelieving, as the boots of Benjamin Euller were baptized in a yellow spray that washed away all the sins of The Culture.
He heard footsteps on the other side of the pedestal.
“Arvis?” He whispered.
“Yeah.” The foreman’s familiar voice replied. “You done.”
“Yeah. Done.” Peter hissed. “Come around. I’ll need a witness when I collect my bets tomorrow.”
Peter heard the footsteps round the corner of the pedstal, and his body tightened as he saw a grey form emerge from the green light. He crouched down beneath the pedestal, his nose singed by the acrid smell of urine. His pressed his right knee to the wet ground, ignored his instictive disgust at the damp feeling that chilled his skin. Reaching under his left pantleg, he felt for the reclamation pistol and dug it out, the cold shaft dragging along his leg as if it were afraid to let go. He wrapped his coat around the shivering metal fetus that clung to his slick palms, comforting it against the sudden gasp of awakening that stole its electric breath.
“Hot damn.” Arvis said. “I’ve got to give you credit, Peter. You’ve got guts.”
“**** off.” Peter whispered, flicking the reclamation pistol out from under the folds of his coat.
“Pet….” Arvis began, but the words were muffled beneath the dull flop of his body falling to the pavement like a broken doll. A green light blinked on the barrel of the pistol, and Peter’s hands trembled.
Now it was complete.
He had broken the last commitment he had made to her. She was forgotten.

Rising to his feet, Peter looked at the pale hands, with their hard knuckles and translucent veins, that hung limply in front of his body. The green light flickered around him, hungry for the new Vril that he had reclaimed.
The strength of the many; the brotherhood of man. Arvis was a 288, but he loved to parrot the Vril-Ya propaganda.
Rot in an electric purgatory. Peter thought.
Arvis had gotten what he deserved. The Cartel had kept him alive for five years now. Some sort of agreement with HumaniTech, apparently – the Corporation needed a foreman, and The Cartel bosses thought they’d get their debt back eventually, as long as HumaniTech was employing the scum.
They thought wrong.
Arvis got what he deserved. And so did she.
He remembered a quote that she had penned inside the cover of her resistence manual: Oh Strength of the Many, that I must Labor Daily In the Shadow of Your Works. She used to repeat that often, as if it were a sedative prescribed to quell her anxiety. Somehow, she felt justified in saying it, and she anunciated the word “that” in such a way that it meant: “how utterly beneath me that I should be subject to the dictates an ignorant society.” She was arrogant; no doubt about that, but her arrogance was colored by the noble tenacity of a warrior fighting with her back to the wall. Daily she had counted the hours to her death, knowing that it was only a matter of time before she lost the war for her flesh, yet seeing herself victorious in a higher arena. Gunplay was only a matter of business for her; she tried her best to keep it from defining her character. She knew that the rebel-on-the-run girl with a gun would have to die one day, and so she refused to stake her identity on that gritty, vengeful girl who was only a temporal wisp. And so it was not surprising to find her, as Peter often did, with a loaded pistol in one hand and a book of poetry in the other. That was how she survived, kept herself sane.
There was only one time that Peter could remember seeing her free from anxiety. They had gone out to the countryside one summer weekend and managed to find a little corner that was still largely unaffected by industry. The trip had been her idea; she had said that something “big” was coming down the line next week and that she wanted to get away for a while. They ate lunch on a hill overlooking a small pond surrounded by hyacinths and then went for a walk in the countryside, the conversation turning carelessly to what they would do when “it was all over” – though neither considered exactly what it was or when it would pass. It was late afternoon by the time they returned to the pond, and Peter laid himself against a birch tree and dozed off while she went down to explore the hyacinth garden beside the pond. When he awoke, it had begun to rain; not the filthy rain of the city, but a warm summer shower, with crystal droplets that burned red in the setting sun. He saw her coming up the hill towards him, her arms full of plucked hyacinths and her hair wet and sticking to the sides of her face. She slipped in the mud and dropped her armful of flowers, and Peter sprang up to asisst her. Before he could reach her, however, she looked up and gave him a sterling white smile that stood out all the more against her mud-stained cheeks.
She held the flowers out in triumph, drawing Peter’s attention to their unspoiled colors.
“Look,” she said with a laugh, “ I managed to keep them clean.”
For that brief second, he finally felt that he understood her; that they were meeting again for the first time, free from the anxiety of life. A week later she was dead.
Not reclaimed, not called back to immortality. Dead.
There was a difference there that Peter could not even begin to fathom, but he knew that it was fitting. She had refused to march to the beat of the collective drum had fallen in isolation and been cut off from the unity of her brethren in the powergrids below. She had gone where there was no brotherhood, no comraderie, no fellowship – to the nearest thing to hell that Peter could imagine.
He glanced at the blinking green light that illuminated his fingertips.
Her failure was all too evident. The world had become a dirtier place than it had ever been before. He had become a dirtier person, who crouched in alleys like a predator, soaked in his own pee.
He had gone back to the pond once, last year. It had been drained of water and had become a landfill.
He shook his head, and wondered if she was happy now, alone in hell.