Going Shogun (14 page)

Flo #3
finds Forklift a knife, and he
laboriously digs and digs and digs, until a small metal lump flops out like a
toddler ejecting a marble from its mouth.  He holds it up for all of us to
examine in the light.  It’s warped and bent, resembles a mushroom.  Grayish
head, glinting brass-colored body.  Such a small thing.  Such a powerful
thing.  It’s amazing what approximately 8 grams of lead can do to flesh when
launched faster than the speed of sound.

Forklift stands, tucks it into that
magical pocket inside his gi.  “Souvenir,” is all he says.

Flo #3
looks up and I can tell she’s ready
to be rid of us.  “You guys go ahead,” she says.  Not ticked off, not upset
with us, simply ushering us out the door.  “I’ve got the rest of this, and I
kinda want to see what Ray has going on there in the back.”  She finishes it
off with a wink. 

We thank her, and head for the
door.  Forklift exits, followed by Bingo, but before I can flow out into the
cool night air, down this slippery slope of adventure, down our own stupid
rabbit hole,
Flo #3
takes me by the arm, stops me at the doorway.

With a mothering look of admiration,
she says, “I don’t care that I gotta clean up a gallon of blood.  I don’t care
that I’m covered in it.  I don’t care that I probably won’t ever get the smell
of it out of my head—”
she’s squeezing my upper arm so hard it hurts
“—what
you did in here tonight was
brave
.  Do you understand me?  You may look
at this and think, ‘O
h, some waitress got shot while I knocked some Board
Agent down
.’  No.  No, no, no.  Stop looking at that floor, stop shaking
your head.  I don’t care if your daddy sits on The Board or your grandkid goes
on to invent flying cars.  For those thirty seconds, you were
brave
.  Do
you hear me?  Nod that you hear me.  Good.  Good.  Now nod that you
understand
me, boy.  Even if you walk out of here and three blocks down, they catch
you and you go to jail for the rest of your life, can’t nobody ever take away
the fact that you stood up for yourself, big man.  You stood up for yourself,
and you stood up for somebody else.  You were
brave
.  You hear me?  And
can’t many people say that they’ve done that.  Not in these times.  Not anymore. 
Now go on.  Get out of here.  Go finish whatever it is you’ve started.”

I thank her, and walk out into the
night.

The thing is, we haven’t started
much.  There won’t be a rebellion, there won’t be an uprising.  I’m just a kid
from Waverly Heights that used to mow lawns for extra change.  I wet my bed
until I was seven.  I have a phobia of moths. 
Moths
, of all things. 
I’m no Dewayne Barker, who led The Militia March for Peace and got beheaded for
his efforts. 

Seriously, all I want is a shot in
this world.  Back there when I said none of it was worth it?  Dream Chasers? 
Ascension?  That was true in the heat of the moment, when Forklift was creeping
past the failsafe point.  But now that I’ve had time to calm down, to reflect,
to know that we’re clear, at least for the next few hours, I’m ready to keep
going.

Ages ago, when presidents ruled the
country, Calvin Coolidge said, “
Nothing in
the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more
common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is
almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has
solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
”

Teachers made us
memorize that, among other famous quotes, and in secret, some parents risk
their lives to have their children learn the Preamble to what
used
to be
the Constitution because it means so much to so many. 

The Board decided
long ago to wipe their asses with it and institute their own.

“To preserve the
harmony of the human condition,” they say.

I know on some
level that We The People could band together and form a more perfect union if
we tried, but I Don’t Want That.  An uprising could start, but that’s years and
years of tears and tears, and bloodshed.  And death.  And more sanctions.  It’s
happened before, and will happen again, but I won’t be a part of it.  Don’t
want
to be a part of it.

Regardless of what
Flo
#3
says, or thought I was doing, this isn’t about burning myself at the
stake.  None of it.  All I want out of this is for the Hope that’s been
dangling like a carrot forever to make the transition to Contentment.

As I stroll out
through the parking lot, walking toward
Machine
, I have to admit that
what I managed to do in there feels good.  I take a short moment to bask in my
own glow of a victorious battle.  Maybe her words did have some affect, because
this sense of self-accomplishment, this
pride
in myself, is something
I’ve never felt before.  It’s an entirely new sensation. 

I could walk away
tonight and know that I’m capable of making a difference in my own status quo. 
That I have that ability.  But will the feeling last?  There’s no way to tell.

At the moment, I’m
just an Educated Derelict, sitting at R11-2.

Which is why I have
to Press On.

Chapter 11

The parking lot is empty, so we
don’t have to climb into
Machine
through the soda-can opening of a sun
roof.  I practically melt into the passenger’s seat, and I can’t ever remember
being this tired before.  Bingo crumples into my lap like a set of clothes that
fell off a hanger.  I can feel her arms and hands shaking, whether out of PTSD
or from an hour of grinding blood off the floor with wet rags and dirty mops. 
She leans back into me, rests her head on my shoulder.  What could be a tender
moment is tainted by the fact that her cotton candy scent is replaced with one
of bloody, metallic crudeness that only Lestat would find enticing. 

The ever-present agitation of
Forklift’s being is no longer there.  I can tell he’s flat-out done for.  His
neckline is tinted with deep reds and hints of blue that bubble up from
underneath the skin.  I wonder where his mind is now.  If
he
even thinks
it’s worth it anymore.

I ask one simple question.  “Dude?”

“Zoomified,” he says.  “The ducks
are quackin’ and we are jackin’.”

Machine
growls to life as Forklift gets it
ready for takeoff.  No jammity-jam rockin’ tunes hurtle out of the speakers
this time, and even if they did, I doubt they’d be able to take the place of
the ringing in my left ear.

As Forklift plies his way out of the
parking lot, he doesn’t even squeal the tires.  It’s as if even
Machine
is weary from the night’s events.  For the first time ever, Forklift obeys the
speed limits and we sail along through the neighborhoods, weaving from street
to street, avenue to avenue.  A dainty rain begins to dapple the windshield,
adding a washed-out, glowing effect to every light we see, every reflective
surface.  It feels appropriate, like it’s gently showering away the bloody
effects of the last few hours. 

We’re cruising quietly through
tree-lined roads, passing R10 brick-built townhomes, some with completely
darkened windows, some with a lone lamp illuminating a living room, or a porch
light on that shows off white-wicker rocking chairs and pricey Adirondacks that
would take me weeks to save for and I can only dream of having.  It must be
Recycle Day for this section of the city because big blue containers guard the
ends of driveways like stoic sentinels, waiting to regurgitate their contents
that go on to make things like new Pow-Pow Juice bottles and Ascension Flakes
cereal boxes.

As we detour through this pricier
up-level neighborhood, I think back to growing up Sustained R11.  Nothing was ever
wrong
with it.  We had food on the table and a light green house with white
doors, the same one my parents live in to this day.  We were R11-1, Average
Joes, for the longest time, then my dad got a promotion to Lead Foreman at the
furniture factory where he worked, and even though he never really thought he
deserved the Nomination from his superiors, he got Approved and we became R11-2s,
Everyday People. 

Things didn’t change much, except
for the fact that my mother could afford 2-ply toilet paper and we were able to
pay for a once-a-month trip to the now-defunct Subway down at the end of our
street.  I remember being content with what we had.  A new toy now and then. 
An extra-large birthday cake the year I turned twelve.  A surprise bicycle that
had
real
rubber for the tires. 

I remember being happy.

Hell, I didn’t know the difference
because we never talked about it.  Ascending past our station in life was so
far out of reach that it wasn’t even the subject of dinner conversation.  Mom
taught kids in Pre-Level and Dad mowed the grass when it got too high.

Things were things.  It was what it
was.  We were in it, and there
wasn’t
anything above.

It all changed when my Uncle Dave,
this scrawny, scrappy ginger-haired man that everyone called Rooster won a
small lottery and got to spend about six months as a Cameo R8.  He bought a new
house in an R8 neighborhood with a perfectly perpetual pool and two perky
poodles that he named Fluffy and Muffy. 

We visited often and I was
exceptionally enamored with everything that came with the status, and I wanted
it.  Wanted that sense of easy contentment that I mentioned earlier.  If he had
invested wisely, and hadn’t blown the rest of his winnings on nighthoneys and
Blow Darts (the grandfather of Pop Roxy), he could’ve easily moved into
Sustained R8.  But, as it goes with so many that don’t know how to handle rapid
Ascension, he took a bobsled ride back to Sustained R11.  I remember thinking
that I never wanted that to happen to me if I ever got there.

But you work and you work and you
try and you try.  You hit Ascension dead-ends.  Life happens.  Plans are made,
jobs are lost, and most of us look up at R10 like it’s the apex of a roller
coaster, and you’re standing in a line that stretches back through eternity.

When it comes to Ascending, You Must
Be This Tall to Ride.

***

Approaching headlights snap me back
to the present and I get a small dose of fear that it’s some Board Agent out
prowling for a neon-green manhole scalper called
Machine
.  But it’s
not.  I can see in the car windows and notice that it’s only some guy in a
white shirt wearing a tie.  Out at 3AM, probably on his way home from some R10
celebratory party where they slap each other on the back for hitting this
month’s sales quota.

That’s only a wild-ass guess.  Maybe
he’s out planning his own heist and looking for any way possible to make it to
R9.  To Ascend, to make something better of himself.  And even then, it’s not
always an internal thing.  It’s mostly an external motivator.  Keeping up with
the neighbors.

Those that care, do.

With the possible drama passed, I
ease back into my seat.  I doubt Forklift even noticed.

He stays quiet.  I stay quiet. 
Bingo, the poor thing, has dropped off into dreamland because she gives a delicate
sleep jerk, and her breathing has slowed to a steady rhythm, slower than the
scree-whoop
,
scree-whoop
of the windshield wipers.

We know where we’re going.  We know
what we have to do from here, so it’s useless to wake her.  Finding LX is next,
and I trust that Forklift knows how to get there.

I can’t resist speculating that
there’ll be a muster of Board Agents and their rain-slickened black sedans
waiting for us outside of Cat’s place.  There’s the matter of the BAs being
deployed to LX’s apartment on High Water Road and I can only guess as to what
they’ve found.  What they’re analyzing.  Who they’re looking for. 

We left the knife in Shoobock’s
Adam’s apple, so it’s a lead, and if LX did it and they found something stable
to go on, surely they’ll scour the joint and find pictures of him and Cat
together, maybe smiling into the camera, a photo snapped from the length of an
outstretched arm.  Facial recognition software will identify her, they’ll track
them down, and she and LX both could be locked up and facing Article 3, Murder
of Resident in the First.  With the new laws The Board passed a couple years
ago, Accessory to the Fact counts as much as the actual act itself.

Yet, that remains to be seen.  They
haven’t tracked
us
down yet, which means either they don’t have anything
to lead them to Forklift and me, or they’ve decided to get a fresh start in the
morning when the sun comes up, or, they simply don’t care enough about a dead
gonzo to go chasing down his killer, or
killers
,  in the middle of the
night.  The BAs probably have more important things to worry about, like
someone running a key down the length of an R3’s fancy new car or an R2 that
lost his wallet.  And I’m not even hinting at sarcasm there.  The lower-levels typically
don’t get the attention they deserve when something bad
does
happen, and
from what I learned in my Crimes of Cultural History class, it’s always been
that way.