Prospero's Half-Life (33 page)

He was a hard
man, there was no denying that, but at the same time Richard
reckoned that he was a fair man. Karl had purchased him because,
over the course of Richard’s previous three owners, he had proven
himself to be a trusted servant that could be counted on to
accomplish whatever tasks were set before him. Karl had thrown him
into the thick of things; Richard had been set to making sure that
the man’s makeshift arena was set up and ready to go for every
fight. He was also set in charge of the other servants, to ensure
that the kitchen was being run efficiently and that the betting
counter was being run without anyone trying to skim money off of
the bottom of Karl’s earnings. When Richard failed at one of these
tasks, Karl would let him know with swift and painful force; when
Richard outperformed his normal duties, however, Karl was generous
with his praise and with rewards. Richard was, for the most part,
well-fed and well-kept.

Still, he was
at the end of the day a slave, and as the billowing canvas tents of
the market appeared down the road before him he felt a tide of
gloom come over him. He had been an owned man for twenty-five years
now, and the worst part of it was that he was coming to accept it.
He could rationalize to himself that Karl was a hard but fair man;
he had, on any number of occasions, and he assumed that he would
likely continue to do so. That rationalization would not change the
basic course of his life, though: he was a slave, and he would die
a slave. He tripped on a jagged chunk of asphalt and cursed
bitterly. As he made his way over the rougher portions of the road
and into the market, he felt a pall over the day.

The market was
fairly busy; the farm families from miles around were finishing up
the purchases they needed for the day, and were socializing in the
wide central common area. Weathered wives and muscled farm lads
conversed on the splintery picnic tables, gabbing about weather and
growth over relics of days long gone. The servants of the richer
farmers did not join in the conversations but stood off to the
side, resting up for the journey back and passing the occasional
low-spoken word amongst themselves. Richard could tell the servants
apart from the others by the simple expedient of their hair: the
servants had none. It was a mark of Richard’s worth and prestige as
a slave that he was granted the affectation of his natural
hair.

Surrounding
them, tents ringed the common area with rickety booths set up in
front of each one. Men and women stood behind these booths
silently, eyeing the crowd; some, those who were not locals, were
already packing their goods into crates for the long journey to the
next market place. Had Richard come to the market hours earlier, in
the height of the morning, all of these merchants would be
hectoring the crowd, loudly hawking their merchandise to a much
larger group of potential buyers. Richard preferred to come late in
the day, however; he hated large crowds, and he hated being sold to
in such an obvious, crude manner. There were parts of his former
life that still held fast, he reflected.

He approached
the booth of a merchant he knew well; he was a local man, silent
but trustworthy, who dealt in both restored goods of the old world
and substitute items for goods that could no longer be made. The
man had a selection of oils pressed from various plants and
animals; they were always good quality and the merchant had assured
Richard on any number of occasions that they all came from highly
reputable sources. This was not something Richard was inclined to
care much about, since the oils always seemed to do what they were
intended to do. He asked the man his advice and quietly paid for
the suggested oil with a handful of irregular silver coins; the man
weighed them expertly in one hand and nodded his acceptance.
Richard pocketed the oil and headed into the common area to find
something to eat before he began making the trip back. He would be
cutting it close with the schedule but he reckoned that he could
afford to grab a bite before he began to walk back out into the
wastes.

As he walked
into the sparse crowd he noticed a tent that he didn’t recognize.
This was not a completely unknown phenomenon, as roughly a quarter
of the tents in the market were of the mobile variety, following
the caravans that made their slow way around the Great Lakes. This
one was different, however; there seemed to be a low hum coming
from it, a force of some kind that drew him towards it. He forgot
about getting food and decided to investigate this new tent. He had
no money of his own and would not be able to afford any of the
interesting merchandise that this new tent might offer, but he
would at least be able to browse, until the merchant kicked him
out.

The flap was
heavy and the interior was dark; Richard had to wait awkwardly for
his eyes to adjust to the much lower light levels. This was not
helped by the flare of light that came from something on the other
side of the tent. He covered his eyes, pained, and began to regret
his decision to enter. Once his eyes adjusted however, he felt a
peculiar, gripping shock run through him. The tent seemed to be
filled with old electronic devices, a veritable smorgasbord of
things that Richard had forgotten about. There were laptops piled
up on each other in shaky stacks; bins full of circuit-board odds
and ends; a shaky-looking rack that seemed to be displaying flat,
grey batteries of various sizes and shapes. What had flared light
at him upon entry, however, was what looked for all the world like
a large LCD flatscreen monitor. Around the monitor was a neatly
put-together rack of hard drives, servers, UPS batteries, and
daisy-chained USB hubs studded with a panoply of USB drives in a
rainbow of colours. He stood in the entryway with his mouth open,
too shocked to understand what he was looking at. The hum that he
had heard from outside had grown louder, but there was no
indication as to where it was coming from.

Part of the
tent wall pulled away and after a moment’s gaping Richard realized
that it had been a curtain. On the other side of the curtain a
large man in weathered cowboy boots and nothing else was riding a
stationary bicycle for all he was worth. Sweat was flying off of
his lean, muscled form and running down onto the frame of the bike.
He panted and looked at the person who had entered his tent for a
moment without speaking, continuing to pedal.

“
Hold on a second,” the man called out, and something about his
voice tickled at Richard’s ears. The man seemed
familiar...

Then he was
off the bicycle and walking towards Richard, his chest heaving and
his manhood swinging back and forth loosely. Richard found that his
mouth simply would not close, and that heart-attack shock of
recognition shot through him like an old friend. Richard had last
seen the man over a quarter-century ago, buying up the entire stock
of Richard’s electronic storage inventory. The past walked into his
present and left him speechless.

Troy Larkson
stopped in front of Richard and put his hands on his hips.

“
Well, now,” he drawled. “Don’t I know you from
somewhere?”

TWO

Richard stuck
his hand out automatically. “Richard Adams, Mr. Larkson. Do you
still have any of the equipment I sold you all those years
ago?”

Troy grinned,
and then began to chuckle with an awkward, uncertain tone. He
accepted Richard’s hand and rubbed the back of his head with his
other.

“
Well, uh, let me get some pants on, ok?” he suggested. He
walked back to the area with the bicycle and pulled the curtain
shut. When he stepped out a moment later he was wearing a pair of
ragged denim shorts covered in black, sooty stains. His grin had
also become much more certain, and he was wagging his finger at
Richard.

“
You’re the guy from that electronics store in St. Catharines!”
he exclaimed. “I got the collection started at your
place!”

Richard
nodded. “You did, bought every last one of my hard drives as I
recall. You were going to, uh, download the internet, was it?”

Troy laughed
and clapped his hands. “I did just that, as a matter of fact!” he
replied exuberantly. “Well, the parts of it that mattered. I mean,
you aren’t just going to go download all the message boards, right?
What the fuck would the point to that be?”

Richard
laughed and it was with considerably more delight than he’d been
accustomed to lately.

“
So what
did
you download then?” he asked, and then stared around with a
sudden thought. “How are you getting power in here? We’re nowhere
near an electrical station – miles and miles, really”.

Troy looked
uncomprehending for a moment and then he realized what Richard was
talking about. He gestured around vaguely.

“
Batteries, man, all sorts of batteries. So many batteries we
had. I scavenged them from warehouses and rigged up the whole thing
you see over there. I use the bicycle as a generator and charge
them about once every other day or so when I’m stopped”. He
shrugged. “Want to look up something? I usually charge for access
but I’ll let you use it, seeing as how we go way back and all. I
grabbed all of Wikipedia, and the eHow wiki, and as many
infographics archives and ebook stashes as I could find. I have any
book that was ever translated into digital form, most of the movies
and music that was on there...the useful stuff and the artsy stuff,
you get me?” Richard nodded. “Alright, so is there anything you
want to look up?”

Richard
suddenly felt extremely shy. “I...I don’t really know. I have no
idea. It’s...it’s like you’ve offered me the sum of human knowledge
to choose from. How can any one man choose what to pull from
that?”

Troy nodded
sagely. “Infinite choice, man. That’s why most people who come to
me are looking for something in specific, and are willing to pay
for it”. He looked around. “Tell you what, since you’re here and
all, look around the place. If you see something you like that’s
not too expensive, it’s yours. Deal?”

Richard
chuckled. “I don’t know how much of a deal that is for you, but I
accept”. He looked around. “You have a lot of stuff in here”.

“
That I do,” Troy said as he turned his attention to a
mouse-and-keyboard set that he had mounted in front of the monitor.
He made some clicks and a smattering of keystrokes and a
sugar-sweet tinkle of Debussy filled the tent at a low volume. It
threw Richard’s concentration off as he browsed; it had been so
long since he had heard recorded music that it seemed unreal to
him. He picked through a small bin of cracked and chipped junction
points – switches, hubs, routers, and the like – and tried to catch
up to his thoughts. He felt as though he had stepped into the
temple of a shoddy, run-down deity that still had the ability to
perform miracles.

“
Can we change the music?” he asked suddenly. Troy laughed and
began clattering at the keyboard once more.

“
Sure thing,” he said amiably. “What are you in the mood
for?”

“
Hah,” Richard laughed, “we come back to the same problem as
before. When I can choose anything, I can choose
nothing”.

“
Well, give me a feeling, then”

“
A feeling? Well, give me something that rocks, I guess. Some
old rock n’ roll”. Richard stopped and considered his words.
“There’s a phrase I haven’t said in a while”.

Troy rubbed
his chin. “Rock n’ roll, eh? Bottomless hole, rock n’ roll, take me
on a blatant doom trip, yeah?”

Richard turned
his head to stare at him quizzically. Troy searched through a list
of artists and albums and stopped on one. He gave one last
double-click and the long-lost sound of a thick electric bass and
drum filled the tent with demonic force. Richard grinned as soon as
he heard it, and then nearly split his face in half when the
distorted electric guitar kicked in. He listened along to the song
with rapture, and as the album continued he returned to his
browsing, with a much more positive outlook on the task. Every song
that came out of Troy’s speakers seemed like the best song Richard
had ever heard; the hooks were always massive, epic affairs and yet
the songs still managed to get in and out in about three
minutes.

“
Who
is
this?”
he asked finally, his finger tracing the outline of what had once
been a high-class laptop, the kind he would have once sold to an
aspiring mobile gamer. He reran those words lovingly through his
mind multiple times; he seemed to latch on to them as though they
possessed some sort of talismanic property.

“
This is Guided By Voices,” Troy replied, “no big deal, just
the greatest rock and roll band ever to walk the Earth”.

Richard
snorted. “If they were the greatest I would have heard of them at
some point, I think”.

“
You sure about that?”

Richard
stopped in his perusal and turned to look at Troy.

“
Yeah, probably,” he replied, although he didn’t feel confident
about this assertion. He had never really been more than a casual
music fan, and he’d normally just put on the radio and listened to
whatever was on there. He supposed that there must have been other
music being played beyond what he’d heard, but he’d always just
assumed that the best stuff got filtered onto the radio. He’d never
heard this stuff, though, and that gave him some pause.

He came to a
table piled with old tablets; he remembered that they had been the
big thing in computing right before the plague. They had been
little computers you navigated with your fingertip, and they’d been
cheaper than a laptop. His mind had just gotten around to dredging
up the memory of the tablet that he’d made fun of Samantha for
bringing along on their journey when it was suddenly there, on the
top of the nearest pile. He stopped and traced the outline of it
with his finger, amazed and a little frightened.