One Day in the Simpark

Platt Meeler was so high on chalkwater and ginweed that Ari Blanque, who barely came up to the big Somecop's shoulders and was a good fifty pounds lighter, had to guide him through the shining glass and concrete alleyways of Redsinthe on Bimhills' lower east side. 

It was only a little after four in the afternoon, but the sky over Bimhills was so sooty dark it could have passed for early evening.  All the rad shops and fill bars back on Westfeel Boulevard, Bimhills' main drag out of which Ari had just pulled Platt, were lit up like the Vegas strip Ari had once seen in a film when he was just a smalltad still going to the Booker.

Those were the days, before the first Great Invert, before the Decades of Sand, when there had been a world beyond Bimhills, beyond Ebon and Meshica--one stretching into the unknown reaches of the forbidden Outworld.  Out where it was rumored the flesh eaters lived, animal-like men who preyed on anyone foolish enough to stray there.

Puffing for breath, Ari led Platt away from the entropic tug of Westfeel Boulevard and towards Platt's romspeed vehicle, avoiding a pack of five Fulljohns smacking wads of Day's Hash and whipping long night sticks around like they were members of some obscene, synchronized headbashing team, which they were.  Ari pushed Platt against the wall at the end of the smoggy but spotless alley until the FJs passed by, then lurched out onto Beatty Street, the weight of the big Somecop nearly knocking him to the ground.

"Damn you, Platt, wake up," Ari groaned uselessly at his barely conscious friend. 

Platt mumbled something about poonfire and getting more women, the spittle in his mouth and throat bubbling the words into mostly unintelligible sounds.

"Yeah," Ari laughed under his heavy load, "you're really ready for jammin' all right."

Ari finally pushed, shoved, and cajoled big Platt down Beatty Street to where it intersected with Gates by the simpark.  They had left Platt's car on Gates, in charge of a sturch whom Ari paid too much, while they stormed the plezone out on Westfeel.  Luckily, the smalltad sturch actually did watch the car and he helped Ari dump Platt into the rider's side of the two-wheel drive romspeed. 

Ari never could understand why a Somecop would want anything but a four-wheel drive.  He couldn't count the times his 4-Rom had saved him from marauding Ebons, Tokus, and even FJs when he'd gotten too chalked or ginned out on the fringes of Bimhills.

Finding himself an empty bench by a nearby simtree, Ari overpaid the sturch again and when the kid left took out a fat ginweed, fired it up and leaned back casually puffing. Ginweed was okay to smoke but nicsmokes were against the law. You could do time for that.  Time in the vats. 

The vats, where the nastiest Erads watched over the slimiest outcits. Even the toughest outwatch or outguard had it tough in the vats.  Everybody did time in the vats, even Ari had done six months for street criss-cross but you did your best to stay out.  The vats were crawling with prees and flakes and zoners.  The prees liked it and they liked new young meat best of all.  Ari had found out the hard way.  Halfway through his ginweed he cringed at the memory. The prees and the others could keep it.

Ari liked it out here with the rad shops and the fill bars.  He was a plezone kind of guy and he knew it.  The vats weren't for him.  And lately there was rumored to be a new kind of vatter.  Something called a radcit.  They got their name from being outcits who used Erad tactics in the vat and outside.  Ari had never seen a radcit but he was afraid of them.  It was said they wanted to turn Bimhills upside down and that some had been past Long Wound to the Outworld.

They talked about outcits and cits, Fulljohns and Somecops, even outwatchers and outguards, as being the same and they dared talk about fighting back against the Erads and Shadpols. They also talked about a place called New Columbia that was beyond the Outworld.  Thinking of it scared Ari and threatened to ruin his ginweed zone, so he tried to concentrate on his surroundings.

The simpark was covered above the tops of the simtrees, some thirty feet above the ground, by a camouflaged netting stretched tautly over the entire area of the small park.  It was there to protect you from the blazing sun that burned down and through you on those occasional days when the air was somehow clear enough to let those unblocked ultra violet rays shoot down onto the planet without absorption. The simpark in that way was like an outdoor shade house, those refuges for midcits and highcits, people like Ari, to escape to on sun days. 

Up in the simtrees, Ari could see several kinds of birds and even a couple of squirrels, all poised as if in motion, all sims like everything in the park.  Ari liked to zone in simparks--they were so quiet and tranquil. He liked sim things in general.  They were silent and motionless and clean.  Safe.  They didn't mess with your zone.

The only thing messing with Ari's zone was the heat. Despite the shade provided by the simpark it was still very hot and Ari was sweating heavily.  He decided to do another ginweed so he wouldn't notice the heat and sweat.  If you got far enough into the zone, you either got to where you didn't care about how you felt or you actually began to like it, no matter how uncomfortable you might have felt before. Ari wanted to get that far into the zone.

Halfway through the second ginweed, just as he was about to go fully into his zone, he heard a sound that jerked him back towards his senses.  It was a sound that terrified all but the most powerful of high cits: the startling, clapping noise of Erad body leather.  Ari crushed his ginweed out on the side of the bench and sat up alertly.

They were coming into the park from the street to Ari's left.  Four of them: big, muscled, ugly, arrogant, brutish--classic Erads.  Ari never looked them in the face, few people did, and they were all just Erads to him.  Duplicates of each other.  You stayed out of their way.  They had full Pol power and took advantage of it.  They made life and death judgments on the street.  It was easier, and cleaner, than taking some foolish outcit to the Bench and wasting highcit time and money.  Ari sat perfectly still but kept an eye on them.

The Erads, accompanied by a smaller, obviously far less potent, but still dangerous Fulljohn, were dragging two apparent crazer outcits--one a smallish late teenage boy, the other a pretty but bruised young woman--across the synthetic grass and concrete slabs of the park.

"Press on, scum," the biggest of the Erads, a particularly vile individual, said, "move through."

The other Erads bashed on the outcits to punctuate the big one's words.  The boy stumbled forward and fell; the girl cried out.  Another of the Erads, this one wearing very shiny leather, Ari noted, grabbed the girl by the hair and gave it a sharp tug to shut her up. Ari had become so caught up in the little scene, trying hard to act like he wasn't watching it, that he failed to notice that the FJ with the Erads had broken off from the group and walked away.  Suddenly, he was standing right beside Ari.

"Nice day, cit," the FJ said casually, his voice shocking Ari so much that Ari actually gave a start.

"Hmm?" he mumbled, not looking up.

Theoretically, Erads and Fulljohns--as well as all the other varieties of privatized security forces, collectively known as the "silver", who kept Bimhills' streets safe and comfortable--were supposed to kowtow to highcits like Ari.  But it was never an especially good idea to become the center of an Erad or Fulljohn's attention anyway.  They were too autonomous and too arbitrary to take for granted--ever.  That was one thing Ari had learned--and he hadn't needed the Booker to tell him about it either.

"I know you," the FJ said, not unpleasantly, "don't I?"

"I don't think so," Ari said, still not looking up.  His pleasure zone had been completely wrecked and now his nerve endings were tingling.  The simpark looked stupid and plastic now, false, not calm and peaceful.  Not restful.  Damn th

"No," the FJ said, "I know you.  You're highcit.  It's OK."

"You know me?" Ari asked incredulously, finally looking up at the FJ. 

The FJ was young, about Ari's age, medium height, a little thin, but very muscular.  There was something about the not fully vicious blue eyes and the shock of red hair that was familiar to Ari.

"I know you from the Booker," the FJ said.

"We went to Booker together?" Ari asked.

"No," the FJ said, almost smiling, "I was sanpure. Before I was picked for Somecop."

"Now you're Fulljohn," Ari said, his attention drawn back to the center of the simpark where the Erads had stood the boy and girl up side by side near a simtree.

The boy's face was bloodied and bruised and the girl's clothes were torn half off, exposing most of her left breast.  The Erads laughed crazily, occasionally taking turns at hitting the boy or fondling the girl, who slapped them away each time to a new round of laughter.

"Now I'm a Fulljohn," the red headed ex-sanpure said.

Ari barely heard; he was fully engrossed watching the outcit girl defend herself.  She was really remarkably pretty.  Ari wondered why he'd never seen her or the boy before.

"Who are those people?" he asked the FJ.  "What have they done?"

"They're radcits.  Rebels.  I don't know the boy," the FJ answered, "but the girl is Kara Felt.  You must know her. She was highcit.  From your area."

"My area?" Ari wondered, looking at the girl more carefully.

When he did, she looked over at him.  For the briefest of moments their eyes met across the concrete of the simpark and Ari saw a flash of recognition in the girl's eyes.  Was it a plea for help?  A challenge?  Ari quickly looked away, afraid of what the girl might have seen in his eyes.  Afraid of what he might have inadvertently expressed. When he looked at her again, she did not reciprocate.

"A real looker, ey?" the FJ said quietly by Ari's ear.

"Yes," Ari agreed, not looking at the girl, "a real looker."

"A looker from the old booker, huh?" the FJ snickered. Ari looked at the young man without understanding.  "Get it," the FJ repeated, "she's a real looker from the old booker, ha, ha."

Ari tried to laugh but could only muster a weak smile. The FJ guffawed at his own joke.  Ari wished that he had stopped at any other place on the planet than here just now. He'd rather face the outguards of Toku or Ebon than be in this simpark with this pack of Erads and the miserable rebel boy and girl.  Kara Felt, he thought, I don't remember her at all.  How could I not.  She---.

"Hey, watch it," the FJ suddenly yelled, jerking Ari back into the immediate reality. "Look out."

Frightened, Ari cringed down on the bench as the FJ pulled out his laser pistol and leaped past him.  In the center of the park, the rebel boy was trying to escape.  He had somehow broken free from the Erads and was stumbling away from them, reeling in the general direction of Ari and the fast moving FJ.

Fast as the FJ was, however, the Erads were faster. Before the FJ could shoot, two of the Erads opened fire on the rebel boy.  With a deafening explosion, the Erad in shining leather, the commander of the group, a scar faced Lt. Rankin, according to the name tag emblazoned above the left breast pocket of his uniform, let loose with his L-12, a laser powered, automatic 12-gauge shotgun.  Simultaneously, Lt. Rankin's massive second in command, a Sgt. Cage, fired his DC-40 assault rifle in single shot mode.

The rebel boy was torn apart.  By a millisecond, Lt. Rankin's 12-gauge rounds hit the boy first, blowing huge holes in his chest and right thigh.  But before the boy could fall, shots from Sgt. Cage's .40 caliber weapon hit him once, twice, three times in the lower stomach area almost cutting the rebel youth in half.  To the sound of Erad laughter and the girl's cries, the boy fell dead on the concrete floor of the park, blood draining from his limp, motionless body. 

Ari sat rigidly, stunned. In that moment just after the killing, however, while the Erads admired their handiwork and Ari stared at it in shock, the FJ strayed too close to the rebel girl Kara. Spinning loose from the Erad who no longer held her tightly enough, Kara kicked out at the FJ and connected with his gun hand, knocking his lasermag into the air.  The weapon spun across the park, crashing onto the concrete and sliding right up to Ari's feet.

"Grab it," Kara cried out, "help me, cit, shoot the bastards."

For a moment that seemed like an eternity, Ari looked down at the weapon.  He and it seemed suspended in time and space, outside the realm of the other events transpiring in the park.  In his trance, Ari did not see Lt. Rankin and Sgt. Cage turn their weapons on him, nor did he see the FJ and the other Erads once again corral and restrain Kara.  For Ari, all the world was his little space in the park and this moment of concentration on the weapon by his feet. 

He considered his options: grab the weapon and try to free the girl, an act that would certainly lead to his own death; attempt to flee himself, a move the Erads might misinterpret and gun him down before he took two steps anyway; or leave it alone, do nothing, stay uninvolved.  As Ari made his choice, he raised his head and looked across the park at Kara.

"Take it," she cried again, "help me!"

Ari sighed deeply and began to form some sort of verbal response.  But before he could, he saw movement at the edge of the simpark behind Kara.  There seemed to be a figure there, perhaps more than one, lurking just beyond the rebel girl behind a wall of real shrubs that ringed the rear of the simpark.  Mesmerized by the movement, Ari only heard as noise the yells of Lt. Rankin and Sgt. Cage.

"Hand it over, citizen," Sgt. Cage growled, aiming his DC-40 at Ari's head.

"He's highcit," the FJ yelled at Sgt. Cage.

"High citizen, then," Sgt. Cage corrected, "hand it over whoever you are.  Or die."

"Easy, sergeant," Lt. Rankin said, "he's going to do it. Right, highcit?  Just stay still, we'll get the weapon, don't move."

"Don't move," Ari mumbled, catching Lt. Rankin's last words.  "Don't--move."

But as Lt. Rankin hustled to retrieve the loose lasermag and as Kara released a string of oaths aimed at Ari, an explosion of light filled the park.  In a transfixing display, the simpark was suddenly, totally enveloped in sparkling, flashing colored lights.

Ari could see nothing but the lights.  But he heard the footsteps of several people rushing into the simpark and he heard bursts of wild gunfire and small, loud explosions nearby.  If he could have seen and understood what he saw, Ari would have been witness to a rebel rescue attack. 

Under cover of the sparkle lights, five rebels had leapt from hiding places beyond the simpark and, wearing wraparound infrared goggles to see past the sparkle explosion, unleashed a barrage of lasermag and exploding-tip arrow fire at the surprised Erads and FJ.  Two Erads fell dead before Lt. Rankin and the others could extract their own infrared lenses and begin to return accurate fire.  By the time they had, the rebels had wounded the red headed FJ and were making off with the girl, Kara Felt.

"Stop them," Ari heard Lt. Rankin cry out, but the battle had already been won. There were several more quick bursts of gunfire and then the little simpark was quiet again. 

Frozen with dread, Ari sat stock still, waiting for what he didn't know.  But at least now there was no more gunfire.  In a few moments the sparkle lights began to fade out and the shapes of the simpark formed again.

When at last he could see clearly again, Ari made out the bodies of the two dead Erads and one dead rebel.  Between Ari and the dead rebel, the red headed FJ rolled back and forth on the floor of the simpark, groaning and holding his left shoulder. Ari watched the FJ flipping back and forth and something like compassion began to awaken in him. 

He even began considering the possibility of helping the wounded man.  He tried to picture what he would do but no clear image came to mind.  The Booker never covered rebel attacks and it didn't teach First Aid.  Then, as Ari began to tire of his internal dilemma, two healthy FJs pulled up in a camo romspeed and solved it for him.  They hopped out of their vehicle and casually dragged the red headed FJ off--presumably, Ari guessed, to the nearest morpher.

Moments later, in a miraculously short time it seemed, Ari found himself alone in the simpark.  The rebels were gone; the Erads were gone, the wounded FJ gone.  There were no signs of the dead, neither Erad nor rebel.  It occurred to Ari that maybe all the chalkwater and ginweed he had consumed in the last few hours was causing him to hallucinate.

That's it, he tried to convince himself; I just got into a bad zone.  That's all.  There were no Erads, no FJ, no rebels.  No killings.  Only a very disturbing, very real hallucination.  With a sigh and his zone completely gone, Ari decided to head back to Platt's romspeed and drive his Somecop buddy home.  He stood up, stretched and started to walk off.

Then he saw it.  There was blood all over the park.  Blood where he had hoped he had imagined the rebel boy being shot, blood where the FJ and the Erads had been when he last saw them, blood all over the place. He knelt beside a pool of it.  Touched it cautiously with his fingertips.  It was blood all right.  Real blood.  It wasn't a hallucination.  The whole horrible scene had been real.

 Involuntarily, Ari shuddered from head to toe.  Shaking as if he'd taken a sudden chill, like that time years ago, when he was just a tad and there had been this strange storm with an even stranger cold wind, Ari hugged his arms against his chest to get warm.  Then looking around for leftover Erads or Full Johns, he darted from the park to the relative safety of Platt's vehicle.  The big Somecop was sleeping blissfully in the rider's side just like Ari had left him. With a deep sigh of relief, Ari cranked up the romspeed, bolted out into the street and raced toward his home.

J.B. Hogan is a free-lance writer currently living in Ft. Collins, Colorado. His latest publications include: “Your Poem (As If) and “You’re Always Back There” (poems), Poesia, Summer 2004 (forthcoming); “Papi” (short story), The Square Table, Volume II, Issue I, Winter 2004; “Out at Sea” (short story), Mobius, Winter 2003, pp. 11-12; “Angels in the Ozarks” (minor league baseball history article), Mid-America Folklore Journal, July 2002, pp. 25-43; and “Napalm Night” (short story), Viet Nam Generation, Fall 1994, pp. 146-148.

Email: J.B. Hogan

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