Requiem (4 page)

She gave a
mumbled, 'good morning', inaudible to anyone standing more than
half a metre away. She wasn't sure if he'd heard her so cleared her
throat to announce her presence. He remained occupied with the
boards.

'What's in
there?' she asked.

'The shortcut I
was telling you about.' He looked over at her after dropping a
thick wooden board to the ground and dusting his hands off.

'How did you
sleep?' he asked.

'Pretty well,
actually.'

'Good.' And
with that he turned and resumed his work.

Seline shuffled
her feet in the loose dirt and idly surveyed her surroundings. More
dishevelled rooms and houses lined the street. Large, glassless
holes for windows and dust for paint. They were all direct replicas
of one another, copied, pasted, and packed like toy soldiers
standing guard along the abandoned roadside. Broken and up-turned
pavement blocks lay where the side-walk once was. The stumps of
amputated trees, discoloured and poisoned, poked from bare patches
of dirt. She considered the etchings in the steps and noticed the
same thing in the neighbouring buildings.

'What's wrong
with the stairs? Why do they all have these deep markings in them?'
she asked.

'Those are
footprints.' Another beam was tossed to the ground. 'These are all
new-gen apartment blocks.'

'They've been
worn right into the concrete? How old are these buildings?'

'Most of them
are about eight years old. You can see that some of them were
repaired at some point. That's what these braces and clamps are
from.' He pointed to several heavily rusted brackets bolted into
the crumbling permacrete walls, most of which were bent and left
twisting into the air over massive cracks they were supposed to
have sealed shut.

With a loud
crash Sear cleared the last of the blockade away from the garage
door. He tugged at a frayed scrap of rope that had been crudely
knotted to a hole at the base of the metal sheet. The hinged joints
of the makeshift door creaked and shook as it opened outward in a
slow sweeping motion. The shed was almost empty apart from a large
shapeless form waiting in the centre of the dirt floor and a
smaller object pushed into the corner. Both objects were covered
with a thick canvas blanket. Sear pulled the cover off the large
centre piece and let it fall to the ground before kicking it aside
to rest against a collection of beams wedged firmly under a damp,
sunken section of the ceiling.

'So this is the
shortcut?' said Seline.

'As far as
shortcuts go around here, I'm afraid you won't do much better;
though you're welcome to try.'

Seline stood in
the doorway and examined the bike. Perished rubber seals, a heavily
dented and oversized metal fuel tank that looked as if it had been
hammered and welded into shape, bald, thick rubber tyres held
together like patchwork with thick trails of sealant.

'What does this
thing run on?'

'Ethanol.
Mostly.' Sear removed the fuel cap and looked inside the tank.
'They always dilute the fuel when they smuggle it in from the
Corporate Zones. It's been so long since we had any kind of fuel
out here, I'm beginning to wonder if their storage facilities are
starting to run dry.'

'Whose storage
facilities?'

'NeoCorp's.'

Sear screwed
the cap back on, kicked the stand up, and rolled the mummified
shortcut out into the street. He swung a leg over and seated
himself on the scraps of foam that had been attached to the bike
with a few reels worth of insulation tape. He fidgeted with a piece
of metal just below the handlebars and the bike shook off a fine
layer of dust as it sputtered into life. Seline waved the fumes
away from her face.

'Am I supposed
to fit on the back here?' she said as she approached the bike.

'Not quite,'
replied Sear.

He pushed the
stand down with his foot, stepped off the bike and walked back into
the shed. He emerged bent over and wheeling out her half of the
shortcut. A small side-car for the motorcycle. Unlike the rest of
the bike which was at least respectfully rustic, this odd,
jellybean shaped cart somehow managed to retain its original
baby-blue finish. Sear secured the small pod to the right side of
the bike with a thick but loose fitting metal bolt and two thin
rods. He looked at Seline and gestured towards the now three-legged
shortcut.

'Your chariot
awaits.'

Seline raised
an eyebrow at Sear before approaching the cart. She placed one foot
over it and gave it a solid thump with her heel to make sure it was
actually attached. It would probably hold as long as they didn't go
too fast. She cleared some cobwebs away from the opening above the
seat. The black leather still held a bit of shine. She checked the
inside of the hollowed out bean-cart for any signs of stowaways
before stepping in and seating herself. There wasn't enough room to
stretch her legs out so she kept them raised with her knees resting
against the rim of the opening into the cart. At least the cushion
was soft, she thought.

'There's
something under the seat you might find useful.'

Seline felt
tentatively under the seat and pulled out a pair of large circular
lensed goggles. The dark rimmed lenses protruded about an inch from
a heavy leather frame with a thick adjustable strap and metal
buckle for fastening the goggles around the head.

Sear seated
himself on the bike. 'They'll keep the sand out of your eyes,' he
said in response to Seline's apparent uncertainty. She still wasn't
sure if he was joking or not so placed the strap around her head
and rested the goggles on her forehead. She looked at Sear with an
expression more serious than what she felt.

'This says more
about you than it does about me by the way,' she said.

For the first
time she saw a slight smirk on his face but he immediately turned
away down the road. The bike shuddered for a moment before abruptly
lurching forward and accelerating like a beaten, three legged dog
off and down the road. They rode along the potholed surface of what
was, according to the old sign posts, once the highway 60. Seline
held on tightly to the rim of her side-car as they weaved between
holes and rises peppered over the road. The remains of abandoned
offices and apartments lined the roadsides. The whole place looked
like someone had tried to torch it down, like they left at some
point but forgot to turn the stove off.

The bike's
geriatric rattle was all that could be heard as they passed between
splinters of the day's new light. They were approaching Vale's
edge. Seline pulled the goggles on, turned in her seat and glanced
back at the city. They took a brief detour off the highway to avoid
the bridges that had beached themselves across the road. Several
pillars remained standing with massive sheets of concrete and steel
leaning, defeated, against them. The howling winds and rising walls
of dust were massing to the south, gathering strength for the
return to their familiar hunting ground. In the crispness of the
morning and the clarity that proceeded the approaching storm, the
whole city looked dead. The towers had become the sepulchres and
the streets had served as the noose. Planned obsolescence on a
grand scale. A city, a civilization, built on a scrap heap. It had
collapsed before it could stand. It didn’t even try to crawl.

The ride to
Sinn was about as eventful as the landscape would allow. Drought
ridden flat lands, drought ridden lake beds, drought ridden
hilltops; all coated with generous stretches of sand broken only by
uninspired carpets of spindling shrubs and weeds. The road they
travelled would periodically disappear beneath dunes of sand and
re-emerge whenever it fancied. The sky had been monopolised by a
featureless blue blanket. Seline watched the ground beneath her.
They weren't moving fast but she preferred watching the ground rush
past rather than stare at a constant, ever receding skyline.

'How much
longer will it take?' Seline asked over the whining of the
motor.

'Five minutes
less than when you last asked me that question,' said Sear.

With her
fingers, Seline began flicking a loose strap of leather that had
separated from the side of her seat.

'Yesterday you
mentioned that you had a long story,' said Sear. 'If you start now
you might just finish telling it by the time we arrive.'

Seline grunted
quietly. Her head was beginning to ache. Probably because the
goggles were too tight.

'Okay... so the
story isn't that long,' she began.

Sear looked at
her.

'But... you
know you didn't answer my question last night either.'

'What question?
You had several,' replied Sear.

'When I asked
you why you were on Earth – about what you do here.'

'That's two
questions.'

'Then that's
two questions you didn't answer. I was thinking we could trade.
I'll tell you why I'm here if you do the same.'

'Why the change
of heart?'

'You're the
only one whose ever really asked about it.' She shrugged, trying to
appear as aloof as possible. 'Hope you didn't get your hopes up too
high 'cause it's not that interesting.'

After a moment
of silence he nodded, indicating for her to go first.

'I'm looking
for someone. A woman named Abigail Shaw.'

Sear had to
prompt her to continue.

'She messaged
me a few days ago. Apparently she has information on my
mother.'

'You came all
the way from Yarfor Station just for information on your
mother?'

Seline ignored
the real intent of the question. 'Abigail wanted to speak about it
in person but I'm here because of Belameir mostly. He's a friend of
mine.'

'If I had to
make another guess it would be that you were afraid of what you
might learn if you came back here. If that's the case then I would
say that this 'Belameir' of yours is a wise friend if he managed to
convince you.'

Seline stifled
a laugh. 'If you ever happen to meet him, do me a favour and keep
that to yourself.'

'So the
question remains, why exactly didn't you want to come back?'

Seline
continued playing with the strap on the side of her seat. 'Some
things are just better forgotten.'

'This is a good
place to leave something if that's your intention but your presence
here tells a different story. This all must be important to you on
some level.'

'Probably more
than I'm willing to admit. I thought maybe coming back here would
help.'

'And has
it?'

'N- maybe. I
can't tell. Like I said, it's complicated... I think it's your turn
to answer now.'

When he finally
spoke, his words flowed with ease. Seline looked away, burying her
self-consciousness in the far away sand dunes, somewhere no one
would think to look.

'I was sent
here on a research project on behalf of the Yurrick
government.'

'As an
anthropologist?'

'That is the
most appropriate term.'

'And you're
looking for what exactly? To make sure we aren't trying to kill
you?'

'NeoCorp
is
trying to kill us, even if they don't state it
publicly... but, I'm here to learn more about the Insolvency.'

'And secretly
keeping an eye out for any weapons of mass destruction, right?'

'If we discover
something that might require our intervention, then we will act
accordingly.'

'So there are
more of you here?'

'No. Just me at
moment.'

'You said you
were here when NeoCorp targeted Vale. That means you've already
been here for at least ten years. You've been studying humans for
that long?'

'I've monitored
this place over an eleven year period.'

'So you must
have arrived here around the time that I left.'

'Yes. It seems
that way.'

'So... what's
it like?' she asked.

'What's what
like?'

'Living on
Earth.'

'You really
have no memory of it?'

'No... well I
might but-'

'It's
complicated?'

'Right.'

Sear was
silent. He turned the bike onto a small stretch of road that the
sand hadn't yet covered. The bike picked up a little more speed.
'When I first arrived here it was like watching a wounded animal,
in a blind and wild struggle, fighting for its last breath.' Seline
stopped playing with the strap. 'I knew then and it holds to this
day that no good has or ever will come of it. There is sorrow,
there is pity, but there's no doubt the wound was self inflicted.
At least that is the common view among my people. The ecological
collapse, NeoCorp, the Downfall Warlord, they're simply the end
products of a long line of causation.'

'The Downfall
Warlord?'

'He's the most
recent self appointed leader for this district.' The strip of road
was swallowed again. And so they continued their roadless trip
northward. Sear told Seline of the Warlord who had risen to power
within the Third Insolvent District several years ago and of the
types of policies he had enacted over Sinn. Psychological warfare
dispensed in a blind rage, sprayed in all directions like an acid
rain. Destruction was the only valid form of creation and through
it death became his universal prescription for social health and,
NeoCorp, for all the destruction it accomplished, was merely
another misguided attempt at survival and thus was to be purged
from the body of humanity.

Sear told
Seline to expect death as the first sign of life and that it would
indicate they were close to Sinn.

'Why do they
call him the Downfall Warlord?'

'He claims
that's what he wants. The downfall of your civilization. He
believes it is coming soon and I have no reason to doubt him.'

'This place is
exhausting.'