I wrote this yesterday, I have not even proof read it. But the coffee I was drinking while writing it tasted great and the weather was spectacular. Leave a comment if you think I should continue.
***
Welcome to the future, That was what the sign at the arrival gate had said. Acid rain had faded most of the lettering – but if you squinted your eyes long enough you could make out the letters… just.
It really hadn’t seemed like much of a future. First
impressions were pretty dire.
After they had bundled us up into the bus a few of us had thrown up on the
floor. The bus driver didn’t look up – sick on the floor was a normal thing.
Both the driver and the bus together symbolised pretty much everything you
needed to know about Arkanis.
Jammed to one side of the seat was a broken plastic figurine – the original AI
driver, which long since had been
disconnected. From its askew body came a spaghetti of coloured wires, each
connected to a makeshift set of controls, the driver, tired, worn and working
well past what anyone might have ordinarily deemed a retirement age looked
ready to keel over.
When the first settlers had come to Arkanis, they had come seeking a paradise
away from all of the nonsense associated with the corps. The brain child of
Alexander Kisgard – he and his followers had come to “start society anew”. A
flat power structure, one where everyone stood on their own feet.
The law was simple. Don’t harm another person, don’t take more than you need,
stand on your own two feet. In a way it was PURE liberteranism. There were no
safety nets unless you built them yourself. Police ? No – but you could if you
could afford it – pay someone to protect you.
Land – who cared right? You had a whole
planet you could take. And the idea was – if someone was being greedy – you
would band together to remove the greedy person. That was the law of the land.
But life didn’t work like that, not when individuals and power structures
existed. Playing out like some late night reality flick – alliances quickly
formed – and while some stuck true to Kisgards values – many did not – and with
no checks and balances in place – power was over several decades consolidated
into the wholdings of three family groups.
Though calling them a family was generous
- they were more like the feudal kingdoms in old earth history. Each
having small tiffs, border clashes, but generally sitting in stalemate, waiting
for the right time to take the other.
I guess in the next 100 years or so one or two of the families will cease to
exist. Everyone knew it. Sure there were a few kisgardian communities floating
around the periphery some even held land and resources that the three families
really desired. But for now – trading relationships were keeping the peace at
bay.
But like any good fledgling settlement, and any good remote colony. What every
family needed was workers. Sure bots had come with the initial settlers, in
fact many of the buildings in what you might call cities had been built by
bots. But – just like humans, bots tend to wear out. The Kisgardians had sort
of counted on this, hoping for humanity to return to a state where you built
your future with your own two hands. Sure off world trading would enable those
on Arkanis to buy parts, but really what you needed was food and shelter – so
the bots could wait. Eventually most of them fell into disarray.
Plenty still exist – don’t get me wrong. But they were by no means ubiquitous
and disposable as you might have grown accustomed to on some of the central
worlds.
But, you know – back to the bus. We were a misterable lot.
“Recruited” by envoys from the Maldoons, we were washed out, crazy poor
inhabitants of many of the central worlds cities. For many there, Arkanis was a
hell hole of a backwater, but for us – it was just a different hell. When
everything sucks, you might as well change the scenery once in a while.
About three years ago the Maldoons had opened up a new mine.
The discovery of a bunch of rare sought after minerals – vital for interstellar
transport had rapidly turned the fortunes of the family. Plenty of those off
world had wanted their share of course. A few refining companies had even
refused to sell their equipment to the Maldoonians unless they gave up some of
their mineral rights.
But, some of that spirt of do it on your own survived and as a result they came
up with a refinement process themselves. Mostly out of sheer grit – but almost
entirely out of cheap expendable manpower. Which is where we came into the
equation.
Coming here was a bit like making a decision to never leave. You could get
twice the wages if you agreed to being
paid in family credit. Which of course everyone did. But no-one off world
really wanted family credit. The upside was three square meals a day, and a
generously sized house that you basically owned and could do what every you
wanted with and really coming from the crowded central worlds, that alone was
worth the risk.
The scenery changed a bit, we had gotten to the outskirts or
the built up areas. Gone were the smoke stacks from the factories, belching out
fumes with zero care for regulations (there of course were none) and instead we
farmland, with clusters of homes spread out through the valley. Each cluster
was a village, semi self contained, some had moved off world to tend the farms,
others had come to work in the mines. The harder the miners worked the more
script the village had to better itself. This was how the families kept control
over their domain. By keeping the villiages plactated – but not too wealthy
they mostly left the family alone.
Sure if war broke out – each village had to give its quota of able bodied
fighters – but for the most part – even though it was back breaking, you could
see the attraction of the kinsean philophy.
After a short drive the bus pulled up to some very recently built prefabricated homes. Each one came with four rooms, a kitchen and a toilet. Non of which was hooked up to anything other than power at the moment. You had to earn plumbing. But it was more than any of us had ever had before. Some villiages were filthy, their inhabitants leaving their homes to fall into disarray, while others had their own (sanctioned) emergency workers – sanitation and even bus service. We desperately hoped we could do the same.
Hoping out a very old and worn looking droid approached us, in his hand was a tablet with the prearranged housing arrangements. In short order we found our homes and began moving a few meager belongings off the rickety old bus and then with a wave – the driver and bot headed off into the distance.
Around us a sort of silence descended. We were the first wave
there would be four other busses arriving over the next few days. So this was
probably as quiet as we would ever experience. For some of us, me included, the
silence was completely novel. I don’t think any of us had at any point in our
lives experienced the complete absence of hand made noise. In the distance, the
native bird like creatures could be heard and sure the sound of imported cows
occasionally callout out could be heard, but for the most part, the silence was
more alien than anything we had ever encountered before. Once we were inside,
Tonk, Balei and I shut the door and sat down. We had made it.
Our journey across the stars that had taken us almost a year to achieve – was
done. Tomorrow we would report to work, but for now – we had our own (clean)
floor, walls and a roof. Furniture would come with time. But for now – sleeping
on the floor behind a door we could lock ourselves was a luxury none of us had
ever experienced in our lifetimes.
Balei pulled out some spirt he had bought with the last of his earth script in the terminal. He had even negotiated several small locally made cups in the transaction.
“Heres to breaking our backs and lifting ourselves up by the boot straps!” he cheered!
That evening, none of us cared that the floor was hard, or that the company would be expecting us all to report for work first thing in the morning. As the warm buzz of the local spirt spread throughout our bodies we each fell asleep, heads on our knapsacks content, for the first times in our lives.
It was Tonk that woke first.
“what the fuck man!”
The banging on the door was incessant. Robotic in its rhythm
and getting louder. Outside the windows a red glow could be seen filtering in
through the glass onto the floor.
“What the FUCK man” said Tonk again has he opened the door. Outside was one of
the other settlers, Jeri, I think his name was, we had spoken before getting on
the freighter turned space liner that had gotten us here.
“You gotta see this man, the whole city is ablaze, everything everything is on fire”
All of us got up and walked out side. Our bodies still full
of the horrid liquor we had gleefully consumed earlier.
It was true the entire port city was ablaze, but more than that large streaks
of light could be seen reaching up into the sky – no reaching DOWN from the
sky. Each time the light pierced through the clouds – another fireball would
erupt from the port and then – several seconds later the double crack of the
atmosphere being wrenched apart would reach our village and shake the windows.
You could almost make out the shape of something shilloeted by the stars high
up in space above the space port. What ever it was – it must have been massive.
In the distance similar streaks of light could be seen raining down upon other
cities too far away to see the glow, but there was no doubt they were taking
fire also.
In the surrounding villiages, those with power began turning
their lights on – almost instantly small pencil beams of bright light reached
down from space and smited the homes that had roused.
This time the explosions were closer – and the shockwaves and blasts hit our
faces.
“HOLY SHIT” said Belini
