short fiction by Skrubly I've heard people tell stories about When It Changed, and they're all pretty much the same. There's been all sorts of variations, and most of them don't even talk about the same incident, but different ones throughout the history of mankind that have had a great impact on the eventually destiny of civilization. All the way from speculation as to how modern humans evolved, origins of language, and the advancement of technology to theorizing about the future, they all seem to take on the aura of something bigger than the individiuals involved. Something bigger than humanity, even. I'm a firm believer in the ability for man to shape his own destiny, but that doesn't mean I think that man has seized upon this ability at all of the opportune moments throughout history. On the contrary, I view the evolution of society and culture to be one of staggering and occasionally falling backwards, instead of the smooth-stepped progression others paint it to be. My name is Joshua, and with all of this aside, I'd like to tell you my story about a time of When It Changed. ------------------ I was in Eleventh form, and was thirteen years old at the time. I did not like school and school did not like me. I lived in a large tenament with my mother and older brother, who seldom took notice as to whether I was coming or going, which was fine with me. Needless to say, I wasn't the happiest person around. Most of my time was spent in my room with my computer. It was better than being out in any of the other rooms. Although the tenament we lived in was large, the individual apartments were not. My room barely had room for a mattress on the floor. My computer sat on a table I made out of half a piece of plasticrete I found at a construction site and two cheap foundation-blocks. I had decorated the room a few weeks before with some emulsion sheets I'd found in a dumpster. They were used at a newspaper of some kind; they were really shiny on one side, and if you looked really closely you could see the outlines of microtype. One had an ad for Mistubank on it. So I stapled them to one wall, and it was sort of like a weird mirror. It made the room look a little bigger, and actually, if you tried to focus on it too long it made your eyes hurt. So I usually faced the other way. My social life was primarily confined to the computer, although I did have one best friend in real life whose name was JC. I usually just called him Jay though. We've known each other all our lives, and is probably the only person I really trust. I guess you have to have someone to trust in the world, and he's it for me. But most of the time I would hang out online. I had a group there, I dunno if I would call them friends, more like associates. We fancied ourselves as runners, but we never really did much on the illegal side of things. We broke into the library branch and then the local hospital, but nothing big time. We weren't into warez or virii or anything like that, although we tried to make money selling code and stuff. It wasn't really that big a deal until we started trying to courier some drugs from a guy named Komi that Paco had hooked it up with. I mean, we weren't really the street hoodlum type, but what the hell? Money was money, I guess. I don't think we ever saw Komi himself. Paco said he knew him through some guys brother, and that he just picked up the package at the corner MaxMart every weekend which the shifty-eyed guy behind the counter handed to him with his coke or whatever the hell he was buying. Then Paco would slide across this little tin box that used to hold peppermints and it would be filled with the cash. We took a cut, of course. That was the whole point. What we were selling was basically buttons. They were actually just like the kind my grandfather used to tell me about, little round buttons of stuff attached to wax paper. They cost about two bucks each, and got you high for about five seconds, but they let you down real easy like, so there wasn't really a crash. You just felt sorta good for the next half hour. Not like great or anything, just like everything was okay in the world. Paco said that they had some anti-depressent stuff mixed in, but they weren't addictive. It's just that people wanted to feel okay now and then, right? That's what he told me when I started to get uneasy about this selling stuff. I mean, what if we got busted? I didn't realize at the time, but the cops had bigger things to deal with than a bunch of thirteen year olds that were basically just selling candy. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The man that sat at the polished desk was known by many names, not least of which was the Don, the Boss, and Slate. The last one was his taken name; the first two were given to him by those who feared him. The desk had a nice woodgrain, and he studied it momentarily with his eyes as if he could polish it by sight alone. He could see himself in the desk. The face that looked back at him had several facets, very similar to his various names. There was the Don, looking aged and respected, with deep lines running down from his eyes to his cheeks. There was the Boss, who had a frown that could kill a hundred men, and a smile that could assure the lifelong prosperity of a hundred more. And then there was Slate, who was the man he was supposed to be, but never really was. He had many ghosts inside him, and these were just a few. He rubbed his temples and pressed on the desk with his index finger; it recessed, and a small ebony panel appeared where the woodgrain once was. "Put me through to Allende." There was a small click, and Allendes voice could be heard in room. "Yes, Mr. Slate?" "I wish you to grant me an audience later this week. I have matters of utmost importance to discuss with you." "Yes, indeed. I will await your arrival with gracious anticipation." "Very well." Although, he mused, that asking to grant an audience with Allende could be looked upon as slightly facecious, respect is a two way street. In reality, he owned Allende and everything that Allende owned. Which was one of the reasons for the meeting in the first place. He smiled, releasing his finger from the surface of the desk. The small panel vanished, and the woodgrain appeared again, and the rolling and rippling facade was unfettered once more. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I first started noticing things going wrong when I started taking the buttons, too. I took about two a day, usually one in the morning and one in the afternoon. They really did make you feel good, or at least pretty ok. Not ok as in everything's boring, but ok in the sense of feeling everything is right in the world. But some stuff was sort of scary. I was walking down ninth when I started to stare into a billboard on the side of one of the flophouses. It was advertising some form of soap, and the light was bright, very bright, like it was trying to destroy me. I was scared, but I kept watching. In the end, a japanese woman held up a dish and smiled. Her smile reached out from the billboard, surrounded by the light, and struck me right in the forehead. I felt like I was falling, falling backwards through the street and down the sewer and below the water and all the way until I felt warmth, warmth like nothing before. And then I snapped, and some person was staring at me from a doorway with a weird look on their face, and I was walking down the street again. I still don't know how to describe it; it was strange, it was beyond strange, it was if that commercial had become my universe and I had become it, in a way. It's difficult, difficult to even think about. My mind tries to focus on it and it automatically wanders. It was at that point that I began to doubt not only myself but those around me. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Allende was sweating. That was fairly unusual in the respect that he never sweats. Perspires, maybe, but not sweat. Now, he was sweating. He wiped his forehead with a delicate silk cloth, and pushed it back into the breast pocket of his suit. No special clothing for this icon. He preffered the comfort of a nice italian suit instead of trying to instill some sort of individuality through outlandish dress. Because, after all, he WAS the individual. The man, even. He stepped out on the balcony, and the light from the holocrews almost blinded him. His kuroshis automatically adjusted the light to a reasonable level and also cut out most of the glare. He had had implants two months ago, although they looked just like his own. The only way you could find out he even had them was by a medscan, or by someone physically removing them. He shuddered inwardly at that last thought. The banners were strung across the square, half-crescents punched through them periodically to prevent the wind from ripping them away. And on them was emblazoned the stylized oil painting of his head and face, a smile beaming out upon the masses. The crowd cheered and yelled, until he raised his hands for silence. They consented, the slow ripple of noise sliding off into the darkness. "My people!" his voice boomed through the speakers positioned throughout the arena, bouncing off the walls in a strange ghostly echo. "Today is the first day of the new epoch! Our toil has brought us to this, the frontier of the rest of eternity.. and we shall not be turned away from the gates that greet us now!" Allende smiled. Just like on the poster. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I first saw a cultist on the corner of fifth and market, and he was standing with a sign that had "You are on the road to damnation!" lettered across it in green paint. He was practically frothing at the mouth, pointing at people that walked past and yelling "Repent, sinners!" and started to say something about how we were all puppets serving the wishes of the devil. I shrugged and walked past him. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Allende frowned. "You do understand, that there are certain persons who are in active opposition to the......movement." he said. The expression Slate was wearing did not change. "I realize this. The question is, what form of threat do they pose?" he said it almost as a command instead of a question. Allende paused. "They are basically regarded as religous fanatics, although they are gaining a greater following than expected. There have been several terrorist threats from some of the more vocal factions." Slate looked at the table for a moment. The woodgrain reminded him of the desert. "Very well. Terminate the key figures via whatever means you see fit." Allende was sweating again as he left the room. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I was making good money. We all were making good money, for that matter. The buttons sold almost instantly, and the price was whatever you wanted to set it at. I bought a new cpu, but kept the old monitor so my mother wouldn't get suspicious. Not that she could tell a computer from a coffeemaker; both of them talked. The news started picking up on the culty terroist threats a couple weeks later. They showed people like that guy on the streetcorner I saw, all yelling and preaching and storming around. Everyone thought they were just crazies until they actually had to shut down a muni station because of a bomb scare. The bomb squad blew up the briefcase that someone had seen sitting outside a cafe for too long. Inside it was just blank paper. Weird crap like that. Then the news cut to a story about how presidential candidate Allende had over 80 percent of the vote. Voting. What a crock. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------SAUCE00short fiction Skrubly Mistigris 201509 911