I have visions of a
world of ice, two dogs slipping on a frozen lake, chewing on a human corpse.
I staggered out of an AA meeting on 76 North, 42 Spinward. I
say stagger because I had been drunk going in and was drunk coming out.
It's wonderful how the traditions insist that even someone
like I be allowed in: stinking; dirty; interrupting everyone with foul mouthed
war stories.
Truth be told I'd chosen the Sea of Tranquility group for my
re-entry to the rooms out of spite. It was a high end group: lawyers,
engineers, politicians. Dressed well with the clear wrinkle-less complexions of
regular anti-senescence treatments.
They deserved a taste of life in North.
Once outside I began to hurry to the metro station. I was
sure that after my performance in the meeting some perfect alcoholic would call
the sheriffs. I didn't need getting picked up for vagrancy so I scuttled down
the middle of the cobbled street, saluting the Highlands with a bottle of
vodka.
I nearly missed him in the dark, silhouetted as he was
against the wall of a low eaved house. By skylight he looked like a pile of
shredded trash.
At first it was the dogs that alerted me, skeletons with
muzzles, one dirty white, one dusty black. They fought perpetually but neither
ever won and neither ever got seriously injured.
They did get hurt though. Thick dark blood spraying like
yard sprinklers.
They followed Neil like canine furies, destroying any chance
of reputability he ever had.
I always felt this contributed heavily to his alcoholism.
"Neil, get up! You can't crash here, the sheriffs will
get you!"
Another beating could kill him, it seemed to me.
"A white dog and a black dog fight, which one
wins?" he asked.
This was his standard greeting. I was sick of it.
"The one you feed Neil, as always. Now get up!"
I dragged him to the Metro station, dogs snuffling behind.
He looked the same as always, pinched unshaven face with
pale eyes. He smelled of lavender and alcohol, felt like a bag of bones hung
together with cartilage,
I pulled him upright and onto the next maglev tube. As it
pulled smoothly out of the station and away north, he suddenly sat up.
"So Michael, what's happening?"
I hated this about him. How he could self-detoxify at will,
often walking out of a bar while the rest of us could barely stand.
"I just saved you from another beating. I also lost
your dogs."
"They'll catch up somehow. And they aren't my dogs."
"Why don't you kill them then?"
Generally I like dogs, but those two rage fueled bone
machines couldn't really be dogs. Not the complicated bundles of fur, muscle
and love I was familiar with.
"I tried a few times. Beat them down, but I couldn't
bring myself to finish them. And they have the old full, true healing
treatment, biologically immortal, fast healing, strange progressive body
modifications."
I stared at him blankly. These weird bits of
techno-mysticism made me uncomfortable.
They could almost be used as an indicator of Neil's mental
deterioration. One that had been going on for a long time according to legend.
#
The tube slid into 326 North, 42 Spinward. To go
anti-Spinward we had to catch a methanol powered spider on wheels running over
the original, defunct track.
#
I had a trashed apartment down by the Sea. Not the pristine
Sea of the Tranquility crowd.
The wave engines here were running at half capacity; the
great lamps below and the oxygen pumps above had failed, killing our beautiful
upside-down coral reefs; the stagnant waters were covered in red algae caused
by nitrate run-off from the pointless and wasteful farms.
Simple maintenance, as available in the south, would have
avoided all this.
#
I'd trashed my apartment in some drunken rage.
The owners didn't call me on it because they were afraid of
me. They just took the rent and kept quiet.
I was very scary back then. Big with crazy eyes.
I was also rumored to carry a firearm, an object so illegal
as to border on the mythical for most people.
The rumors were true. I had a pistol. It was a one shot
antimatter directional containment field collapse device. It could make a hole
out to space 0.5km wide and that was all it could do.
Something of a last resort weapon.
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