The Port City
The men wandered slowly through the streets for the rest of the afternoon, through the burning cellar where the walls were greasy and sweating and the pale faces watched soldiers and sailors who straggled along with Boulevard. Out of the shadows of the arcade stepped a boy studded with brass rivets around his throat. The air was filled with the harsh, near-psychedelic sweat from the back of his neck. He approached them, smiling, and leaned a hand on the sailor near the river. He tried to speak but his throat was parched with dust. The bolted young man, skin greenish and laced with instruments mended and patched over the years, scored lines into the sailor with a knife. The young man’s thin lips tightened and he kicked the sailor around the streets like a rock, moving in the direction of his nest. He pushed the body carefully across the dim lobby, past the pink neon bar, trailing in a thin, black line across the wooden planks, dragging the sailor, oily and sweaty, into the centre of the room.
“They’re coming”, he said. “Just sit tight and act casual.”
From outside came the sound of footsteps moving closer. A dog, one of the many strays skulking the bar. His tongue fluttered. He lifted a hand and pointed in the distance. The sailor’s arm was trembling, his body shook from head to foot. The animal, its protruding ribs sharp as knives, clapped his hands loudly. The sailor lifted his hands wide, then bound and shot through the heart. There were low voices that witnessed this miracle and sat waiting to catch the latest ritual.
Priestess-Queen of Nature’s Revolution
A procession of workers moves from the jungles of New York towards the small community of survivors gathered on the coastline at West 23rd Street. The Mother of the Church sent the workers off on a journey to destroy the Technologies that escaped from the first AI war. Technologies, inhabiting a derelict tower, dumped white-hot minerals on people to protect against a deadly restoration of the old order.
“The Devil is in this house, blurring the boundaries of nature and software! The Almighty will work to remove this digression from His design!”
The AI translated the sound into data language, and then they all said “shut the fuck up” over and over.
“you never know when you will need your network.”
As I pulled into the parking circle at the Detroit Theatre Jacque Lecoq, five men stood around the mouth of the Elephant River. The water was light green from the intense heat of volcanic eruptions.
“You see? He’s a chicken hawk” laughed Ruby, a queer.
The men chuckled. Skin was peeling from his cheeks and around his neck. He kept picking off pieces of the loose flesh, lifting the dark upper lip of his jaws, exposing thin, razor-like teeth and technological markings.
“Oh, we go back”, he said. “A few favors here, and boys. A phone call, a small gift. I’m nobody important. The blow’s just about due.”
I sensed rather than heard a body moving nearer. Then a breeze.
“Them men in black!” he spluttered. “They’re coming this way! It don’t make sense!”
“Shutup,” Ruby said. He looked out and saw the flashlights playing over the theatre.
“Damn fool!” Alex gasped. “Damn fool, you!”
A man wearing pale green flesh suddenly darted into the chicken hawk. The bird flew around and around, descending still lower in fluttering narrow loops, subsuming the other men in their wings.