Beyond the Rubicon Read online

  Copyright John Peaseland.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of both the copyright owners and the publisher.

  John Peaseland asserts his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  ISBN:9781976831584

  Date: January 2018

  Dedication: My thanks to Dan Quigley, without whom this book would not have been finished.

  Also, Mike Spavin, for the many hours he has spent proof reading this book, with little hope of reward. Doh!

  Chapter One. Pangropolis.

  I could just about see the top half of Pangropolis, if I stood on a chair that is, and stretched my neck far enough out through the ceiling light and twisted it sideways. It was not a comfortable position to keep, but I was bored, twitchy, and a little bit less than relaxed. You see, I was to attend an important meeting, a make or break affair upon which more than my life depended. I was in sore need of distraction.

  From my cramped nook, my eyes travelled edgeways, past the black slate rooftops of my own neighbourhood, that had of late become the roof of my own prison, and onward toward the great city. What I saw was evidence of an opulent world, a place, a far cry from what we, the Discreets, the people from The Abyss, were ever likely to experience. Images of ultra-modern buildings trembled and beetled through polluted skies. They were across and beyond the oily river and took the form of many and varied skyscrapers. Their outlines blinked a myriad of coloured argon. Put together they created a blue-green parabolic hue that stretched along the horizon of the night, the main sections of which advertised everything from drinks and cigarettes, to hover-pods and off-world trips. This was merchandise that to the average Joe, toiling as an inhabitant of Dark City - the place where I lived - would never afford. I say, ‘would never afford,’ but even if I squinted hard, I was still unable to see the small scroll that told of how much these luxury’s cost. Yes, we had alcohol here in Dark City and cigarettes too, but not like those advertised, not those coloured tubes that were held to cherry-red lips, by slender fingers at the ends of gorgeous women. Our cigarettes were brown rolls of filter-free carcinogens. Still, to us, death sometimes appeared a better option than life.

  I’d heard rumours about what it was like to live there, in Pangropolis: Pavements made of platinum, mined from distant asteroids. Sexual robots, so life-like that the authorities had tried to ban them as dangerous products, contrary to the well-being of the Vanguard. This, I was told, was on account of how birth-rates had dwindled and because of a succession of marital domicides committed by jealous wives. The rumours may have been true for all I knew, but that was all they were, rumours; my knowledge stretched no further than the roofline.

  My notice was drawn to a large plume of used gas as it belched from a distant homisphere. It swirled together with other pollutants and reflected a sickly green glare on the surface of the river. I always found my eyes resting upon the water when the crick in my neck became too much to bear. It was easier to study Pangropolis via its reflection, as I’d done so many times during my self-imposed incarceration. I twisted my neck back to uncomfortable and watched as more plumes of toxic grey vented off from tall exhaust ports, danced a while in a penumbra of flashing reds, and then dissipated. The cool of the night, was considered by the Vans, to be the best time for air exchange; less heavy carbons floated about for the conditioners to sift out. I wouldn’t know, the only air-conditioning available to us Scrits, was the sort I was experiencing right at this moment.

  My eyes settled on “The People’s Wall,” just as a hover-pod, patrolling its perimeter, banked away, perhaps checking something it found suspicious. After a moment of vacillation, it resumed its constant figure-eight holding pattern alongside several others of its kind. The Wall separated the haves, from the have-nots, and had sonic pulse laser plus conventional sensor cannons - armed with explosive tipped bullets - fitted to every protrusion, to make sure things stayed that way. It was capable of defending the structure from all-comers. Together with the hover-pods, or drones as we called them, they made mincemeat out of anybody foolish enough to try risk a crossing. Only the suicidal, wanting a quick and instantaneous death rather than the promise of a new life, tried their luck with The Wall.

  Here was a city to aspire to, or so The Vanguards would have us believe. Admittance of Discreets, or Scrits for short, from Dark City, was limited to a few persons a year via a spurious lottery gameshow. This promise of a new life was - I’m certain of it - deemed a necessity, by those in supreme authority. They would see it as a means of preventing the worst excesses of a restless population, a population without hope. The fortunate few winners, after they were last seen on TV - feted as heroes arriving at Checkpoint Nirvana, waving their winning tickets, smiling and sipping Fizzling - were heard of no more. I’m sure they never got passed the first immigration check, probably shot in the head and reduced to manure for the factory fields. Nevertheless, millions of tickets were sold for a piece of the promised dream that was the great gated city of Pangropolis.

  Ah, the memories that come flooding back. Have I mentioned already my status as that of a wanted man, under an automatic sentence of extermination? Well, if I haven’t, then this is where I will begin.

  My situation was desperate and daily becoming more precarious. I was a caged animal, dependant on the good-will of my fellow Scrits for my food and shelter, any one of whom might sell me out for a pack of those fancy cigarettes I mentioned. Daily I watched the police drones glide across the border lands, thinking that today was the day they raided my attic. I felt an overwhelming and profound hatred for the people of Pangropolis who enforced our separation and had sentenced me to death. I felt the dire need to do something about the injustice.

  I could go outside using face-fit technology, but public transport in Sector D required a breath sample before a ride. These and a myriad of other biometrics would probably catch me out sooner rather than later. I could just walk of course, but it was too obvious; walking the streets was dangerous, especially parts such as Blackchapel. If you didn’t get bushwhacked by the locals over the price of a coat without holes, then you had to contend with the remote operated Armasite drones. These were as thick as flies and watched everything through their malevolent compound eyes. They were not there for the safety of the inhabitants of Blackchapel, to stop the coat getting robbed off my back. No, they were there for the security of the Pangropolis population, who, ever frightened of the riots returning, didn’t mind leaving the shadows of vaporized Scrits sprawled across the sidewalks and walls. Night walking was nigh-on impossible. Nobody walked at night but for a block or two, and then only if they had to.

  Dark City did exactly what it said on the tin. After six, only TVs directly cabled by the People’s Parliament could be watched. All other electrical equipment became powerless. People had tried abstracting electricity from the TV cables, but the penalty, if caught, was transportation to a place so terrible, only Old Nick played court. The risk was deemed too great. The TV channel was a concession, based on the idiom that bread and circuses prevent disorder. Give the people TV and they will behave, no idle hands left to do the devil’s work and all that. Just in case though, security lights, the only other electrical source at night, glared along perimeters, shining stark whitewash in patches where darkness tried to settle.

  As I’ve indicated, a few mad, starving, or suicidal persons tried to cross the P-wall. In fact, their failed attempts were a high-water mark for TV viewing. We, The People, were allowed to watch the latest videos of poor w
retches, as they exploded into snowy mists of fine red gore. The footage was shown real-time and then slow-mo, so that the finer points of instant death could be savoured from the comfort of armchairs. It was deemed a really good video if you got to see the spectre of fear in freeze-frame, on the faces of the soon-to-be-dead, as they realized - what they must have known already - was coming.

  A few stray lines from the security lights managed to penetrate down the alleys of Dark City before they were cut dead by angles and ever more powerful shadow. People avoided living in the light if they could help it. It was safer. Deep in the darkness of the city it was said that some people had developed larger eyes to compensate for the lack of light. It might be true. We were ruled by sadistic bastards called Vanguards who had allowed Dark City to revert in all but intrusive technology to something nineteenth century Londoners might have recognised as the Rookeries. I know this because I have learned a little history, gleaned from reading fly-blown, dog-eared books; and have seen pictures. Written books and paper pictures did the rounds from time to time, but were getting scarcer and more expensive. They were confiscated by the Skree - more of them later. I gathered from the history books I had stashed away, that for a brief period before the Third War, egalitarian civilisation had reached its high-water mark. The historical ups and downs of civilisations it seemed, used to repeat themselves in cycles, but now, all that had apparently stopped.

  Some buildings in Dark City were propped up on metal stilts to prevent them toppling, and yet they still fell from time to time. They were like diseased trees with decayed roots, bracing each other until the weight became unsustainable and they collapsed. This phenomenon got worse the further in you ventured, so I was told. I saw one particularly horrifying carcass for myself in D sector, one time when was on duty at ‘Crow’s Nest’. What was left on the street was a rib-cage of twisted metal and compound fractures, compacted together with the blood and guts of its one-time inhabitants. It was cleared by the Skree using bulldozers and indentured labour. Nobody came to pay their respects; they didn’t have the time, and more tellingly, they didn’t seem to care.

  My neck ache got the better of me. I sat on my threadbare sofa and caught the last of the weather report as the “Eye in the sky” zoomed across the peripheries of the old docklands. Now devoid of cranes, they were instead, thickly packed with broken buildings, some twenty storeys high, owned and run by conglomerates to maximise profit for the Lucks - another name for the Vanguard. We, the Scrits, housed in this squalor, were required as payment for rent and food, to daily undertake labours such as farming, baking, brewing, fabric making and all other kinds of manufacture, and produce the luxury items the Vanguards required. Those who could not work and had no relatives, begged until they starved.

  Tomorrow’s weather, the pretty girl had said, would be “…fine and dry, ideal for working; not too hot, nor too cold.” As if I cared, or anyone else this side of the People’s Wall for that matter. I think the weather report was used to somehow normalise the unnatural. If you had a job, you got a bus in the morning; transportation to your place of work outside the city, where the great industrial sites were located. The farms and factories didn’t mind the weather. They were huge climate controlled hangers that produced crops and products under the glare of an artificial sun.

  I didn’t have a job, so lived a hand-to-mouth existence off the charity of those in my union, The Fifth Element, who knew of my existence and provided me with sustenance as a kind of a war pension.

  Chapter Two. Damned Harlow Blues.

  The old bell at Harlow, in what used to be Mitre Square, boomed eight times. It stood in splendid isolation; the last vestiges of the great church of St. Peter. The bell was always preternaturally loud when set against a background of machine silence. Like a pompous cockerel never tired of crowing, the dongs swelled and reverberated against the bleak facade of brick, concrete and slate. The bell was synonymous with daily toil.

  I put on a pair of cracked glasses that would fit nicely with my disguise. I lit my slush lantern and turned off the TV. It was reckoned that the evil smelling oil that burnt off in blackening wisps and stained the underside of chins was rendered from the bodies of dead animals, including humans. Some said that a shop-soiled chemist had proved the theory true; yet it didn’t stop us using the oil. What else could we use?

  Any meeting was highly illegal. My innards watered at each clunk my boots made, as I stepped down the bare, wooden stairs. Down and down I circled, passing urine smelling landings and TV flickering doorways. A homeless sleeper huddled in what passed for a bed in a corner.

  I reached the uncarpeted hallway where an occasional, colour-bleached, busted-framed picture hung from the wall, too roached out to sell. In daylight, I could almost make out the image of a girl in one of them, with a fleeting smile; she was in some kind of yellow field. She belonged to another world.

  I doused my light and like the half-blind, shuffled to the servo assist door, which was devoid of power. I muscled aside its edges, stepped into the street and into the lurid and unnatural refracted light of far off Pangropolis. A little raggedy girl, more doll than human, stood crying, thumb in mouth. I held the door open for her and she darted in. Once upon a time I would have stopped to give her comfort, find out where her mum was, but not anymore.

  Locating Mrs. McKell’s strategically angled drainpipe, at the far corner of the street, via its silhouette of black against a backdrop of grey, I saw that it indicated a low level of drone activity. More importantly, the brutal, Special-Kommand Corps, Skree for short, were not thought to be operating in the neighbourhood. The Skree were our own people, paid to inform on others and to restore order when necessary, without the Vanguards having to dirty their hands. We, the Fifth Element, or Fifths, had gained access to their communication system. Their radio chatter gave us good intelligence regarding their location and what drones supported them. Random drone patrols could be avoided by ducking into a building. Tonight Mrs. McKell had angled the broken drainpipe westward, a good sign. I walked further into Tenement 2A, Sector D, and beyond.

  Away from transport routes, streets were bare dirt. Money for repairs was always promised, but never realized. They were essentially riven potholes and cartwheel runnels that waxed and waned depending on rainfall. A few cobblestones still clung to the street-sides, holding the mud in a kind of middle order. There were no signs of plant life in Sector D because it was too far from daylight. The sun never penetrated these troglodyte depths. I was wearing the face-fit of an elderly man, grey-haired, beard, round rimmed glasses with a crack in one of the lenses. I affected a stoop as soon as I remembered who I was supposed to be. I don’t normally make these kind of slip-ups, but I was nervous, unable to concentrate.

  I made my way through Sector D without mishap and saw, from the frame of an open doorway, Mrs. Denison waiting at 17C. She knew my face-fit profile from a previous excursion and didn’t say a word as I brushed past her. She followed me inside where a baby in a makeshift crib was stirring noisily, a prelude to a full-blown racket for a feeding that may never come. There were pieces of wooden furniture to one side of the crib, leaving passage to some concrete stairs on the other side. Mrs. Denison’s living room had originally been the entrance lobby to the tenement, when it had been built. Now she suffered the indignity of tens of people walking through her living room, just to get in and out.

  I found my own way to the stairs, not the wooden variety like my old-build, that announced your progress with every tread, and began the long climb to the sixth floor. Breathing hard, I reached the correct landing and sloped down the corridor. I found Room 620 open, ready for my visit. A blue curtain of cheap, foul-smelling tobacco billowed from the framework.

  Bill sat on the massive, factory-sized windowsill, its casement blocked up with brick. He spoke to the young shaver standing before him, his voice thick and loud. “Take any of those turnings to the right and they’ll bring you out by 3A. Drive straight across George’s Yard and Maure
en will be waiting.”

  I took the vacant seat next to James and Connor and said by way of intro, “Hey Bill, how’s it going?” Bill was a good looking – for these parts – middle-aged man, greased back hair, thick, irony laden eyebrows and dark penetrating eyes. He was smoking one of those foul cigarettes the Vanguard passed off to us as tobacco. Bill assumed I was talking about the operation, not just asking about his health.

  “Everything’s fine, Paul. We got the go ahead. It might rain later, but we should be through before then.” Bill docked his cigarette butt on the windowsill, adding to a small army of others already there, all pinched off to the left by the same habit of his chain-smoking hand. “We go the way we planned. James, me, Paul - we take the exchange. Connor drives.”

  The Harlow bell chimed nine. “There’ll be no hurry.” Bill’s voice cracked a little, breathless, as if the bell had startled him and he was in more of a hurry than he’d like to admit. The blasted thing always seemed to ring out the words; ‘take your time but hurry up,’ in a metronomic verse that governed the lives of the workers. He didn’t say why there wouldn’t be a hurry.

  We’d been through his plan tens of times and were going through it one last time. “Let’s have a cup of tea, before we start,” Bill announced. He settled himself as best he could, waiting almost, until the next set of atonal chimes banged through our conversation in a one quarter of an hour. I got myself seated.

  There was a silence for a time and nobody offered to make tea. I asked Connor, “Did you manage to get the hover-pod okay?” Connor, a young man, always wore a tie and had his hair parted just so, replied, “Yeah she’s a beauty.”

  James looked across, smiling half-hearted. “Yeah, you never know, one of these days we might have our own cars.” James was the youngest of us at twenty years. He was still optimistic.