Chapter One
Breaking News

 

“Eli! Did you hear-”

Whatever Apple said was drowned out by an airship dropping low overhead. Its underside flared open, emptying out hundreds of tons of trash that crashed, broke and squelched down on the ever widening rubbish dump between city and desert.

Apple’s lips were moving the whole time, though none of his wild gestures were making any sense. Eli waited until the belly of the ship was empty and its engines roared, lifting it back up into the smoggy sky.

“I didn’t hear any of that,” Eli said.

“It’s all over the news vids,” Apple said, exasperated.

“I haven’t been watching the news vids.”

“I said: a thug from the Rift just robbed a bank with a meka. Lot’sa people were killed. They say they’re banning people from the Rim and Rift from owning meka!”

“Who says?” Eli demanded.

“The news vids!”

Eli hoisted his bag of scavengings higher up on his shoulder. “I’m going back to the troupe. I wanna see this myself.”

Together they clambered nimbly over the scree, watching the bellies of the ships as they meandered overhead like whales. Being buried in garbage was an unfortunate, but common way to die on the Rim.

In the distance, Eli could see the edge of the shanty; a wall of uneven, angular shapes like broken teeth, all pressed together and a uniform shade of filthy. Walls were made from signs and bits of furniture tied together with pieces of rope, string and cord. Roofs were tarps or doors and all the floors were dirt.

The city dominated the skyline to the west, rising up on layers of old buildings that had been paved over and buried as the city grew. In all other directions there was just the Rim.

Two young girls, both with dark hair and bare, black feet, ran to greet them, taking Eli’s bag to rummage through what he’d found. The boys continued on, weaving through the humpies on thin, worn pathways.

A few people waved as Eli and Apple reached the edge of the shanty. Everyone here was dirty and in a mismatched array of scavenged clothes. There were a lot of children and old folk living on the Rim. The able-bodied could usually find work in the city--they weren’t glamorous jobs, but they took what they could get.

There was only one person in this part of the Rim with a working vid screen: a withered, wrinkled old man called Dooge. He was sour and cruel, but the local troupes bribed him with food, and supplied him with batteries, so everyone could watch it.

In truth, all Dooge had was an old box-hover screen. Half the time the image was too transparent to see, but the sound was pretty good. It was kept under a large tarp on poles; the closest thing this part of the Rim had to a town hall.

“Come ta see, have you Eli?” the old man leered as the two boys slipped under the tarp. “Thought you might. Thought news about the meka might lure you in. You’ll have ta give up that dream now, won’t you!”

He laughed hard at that, but Eli ignored him, crouching down in front of the semitransparent image, waiting for the news items to cycle back to the meka story.

The pretty blonde news reporter, Tally Tamon, was all smiles, makeup and designer summer dresses.

“And in other news, officials are moving to pass new laws prohibiting anyone not holding a level orange citizenship or higher from owning meka; after nine people, including two young children, were killed in a bank robbery earlier today. The meka’s handler, believed to have lived in the Rift, held no citizenship card and used his meka to bash through security check points and throw the militia hovers that barricaded his path. The footage we are about to show you may be unsuitable for young viewers.”

The image cut to a shaky video that hissed with static. It showed a typical Topside street with the skypath running overhead--the carriages nothing but a silver blur as they whipped past. The street was clean, plastic trees sprouted from neat holes in the sidewalk, concealing tiny speakers that trilled out fake birdsong and classical music.

A militia hover blasted across the scene, thrown through the air with immense force. It smashed into a shop front, cracking the perspex windows and crumpling like foil, spitting flames.

People came into sight, running and screaming, trying to hide in shop doorways or behind fake trees. Lumbering behind them was an immense meka, knuckles dragging as it walked. It was covered in a thick, shaggy coat of fur that had picked up litter and filth in the Rift. Tusks as long as Eli’s hand jutted from its lower jaw, and when it roared, Eli could see a whole mess of jagged teeth.

In its shadow, Eli could make out a man dressed in an overcoat, face dark with stubble. He was cheering as the meka hoisted a woman into the air, dangling her over its mouth before--

--the image cut back to Tally Tamon, still smiling.

“A spokesperson from Lifesphere Incorporated joins us live from the Towerdome.”

The image on screen divided into two, the right half displaying a man in a suit with a flip of green hair over one eye. “Hello, Ms Tally.”

“Hello, Drant Ellis,” Tally countered. “Today Lifesphere Incorporated are facing a lot of criticism, and people are saying that the meka are unsafe and should be banned for use by people without level orange citizenship or higher. How does Lifesphere Incorporated respond to this?”

“The meka,” Drant said, “can not be held responsible for this. They are bio-organic constructs designed to obey the will of their handler. Their personalities, behaviour; even shape, size and appearance are all determined by the DNA of the human they are bonded to. Yes, some people are going to have more dangerous meka than others--it’s not, however, affected by income or location, but variances in their handler’s genetic structure. Incidents like this one are rare and meka are a multi billion dollar a year industry. This very vid station televises meka fights in Taramon Arena, and many of the city’s most famous handlers originated from the Blueline or the Rift.”

“Could that be because people from the lower castes are more inclined to violence, and thus creating meka capable of greater destructive power?” Tally asked.

Eli didn’t wait to hear Drant’s reply, his fury driving him out from under the tarp and back through the maze of humpies to the rising mounds of rubbish.

“Wait!” Apple ran after him. “Eli?”

“Leave me alone!” Eli snarled and Apple fell back.

For as long as he could remember, the meka had been Eli’s way out. His big dream. His only chance.

No one even remembered how Eli had ended up on the Rim. He’d just grown up running wild with the other children and now, here he was, thirteen and almost ready to look for work in the city. To say Apple and the troupe were his family was a stretch--there wasn’t much love in the troupes, just a lot of fighting over money and food.

All his life Eli had been saving, going hungry, stealing, begging for scraps--so that when he was just a little older, when he had just a little more cash, he would be able to get a meka of his own. If they passed this new law, it would never happen. He would be stuck on the Rim forever--always with one eye on the sky so he didn’t end up crushed by other people’s garbage.

It wasn’t fair.

#

It was dark by the time Eli made his way back through the towering piles of refuse to the humpies. There was no electricity in the Rim, but the looming bulk of the city towering overhead illuminated the world--the glow of its lights reaching into the sky for hundreds of miles. It bathed the Rim in blue, pulsing light and cast shadows deep into the wild reaches of the desert sands.

Here and there, among the humpies, small campfires burned, manned by those who actually had food to cook, rather than noodles in automatically heating cups.

Eli had not completely wasted his time and was returning with odds and ends: clothes, jabbers, some sofa cushions with coffee spilt on them and a box of plastic jewelry. All of these objects were for the troupe to sell, but everything Eli owned had once been trash. His clothes, for example, were an absurd mishmash of rejected styles: a faux-leather jacket that would have cost more new than the troupe earned in a whole year; big thick black boots--militia issue, but with chemical burns on the soles; pants that seemed to be made completely of pockets and a mesh and cord shirt that was ‘in’ with the teenagers in Celestial Plaza who liked to look tough. These were all things Eli could have sold in the markets, but it amused him to march around in the ridiculous styles of the upper-class.

He made his way through the maze of humpies to the circular nest of rooms he called home. His troupe called themselves the Red Hollows and they had a core membership of eight. Eli and Apple were the oldest of the scavengers. Pink was a savage twenty something punk who worked at the troupe’s stall in the Blueline, selling what the boys collected. People brought from her because she was pretty, but the troupe liked her because she could run down shoplifters and beat them bloody. Big tough guys, little kids--it was all the same to her. Brian worked the stall too, guarding it when Pink was bringing down the hurt on someone.

Yate, Dina and Pickle worked as labourers in a textile factory and Old Nicholas stayed in the Rim: sorting their salvage, defending their humpy from the other troupes and keeping an eye on the troupe’s other scavengers--the fluctuating array of children who came and went, depending on the food supply.

Eli dumped his bag near Nicholas and the old man pulled it closer, picking through what he’d found. Pink and Brian were nowhere to be seen, but Yate and Pickle were huddled under blankets, sullenly eating from steaming cups. They all had calluses on their hands; when they’d first started working they’d come home with bloody fingers for weeks.

Dina looked up, from where she was counting the day’s take, clearly in a sour mood. “Where you been? Runnin’ off all afternoon. We won’t come looking for you if you get buried.”

Eli glared, digging an unopened cup of noodles out of the box and pulling the tab to heat it before peeling back the lid.

“There was a news story about meka today, didn’t you hear?” Apple said to Dina.

“I heard,” she said. “Don’t make no difference. Eli wasn’t going to get a meka anyhow.” She turned to Eli, “You hear that? You is stuck here like the rest of us.”

“Shut it!” Eli snapped back. “I am going to get a meka.”

Dina scoffed. “Yeah, maybe if someone throws out their citizenship card.”

“You don’t know anything,” Eli muttered, but she was right. He ate his noodles in silence. They always tasted terrible, not much more than salty water, but tonight they seemed to taste like ash.

“I think you should take this stuff to Pink and Brian right now,” Nicholas said to Eli. “We had a bad day and this stuff might sell quicker.”

Eli sighed and put his empty cup of noodles aside. It was a long walk into the markets, but it was better than sitting around here, wallowing in his own misery. He scooped everything back into his bag and slung it over his shoulder.

This was his life. Might as well get used to it.

 

COPYRIGHT. TALITHA KALAGO. 2008