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Ch. 5 Pt. 2
“Property known formerly as Shuhp Yee? Consider your ownership changed.”
Uh, nods, hating the sound of his formal name and knowing soon the pain will start. He is a maths-tech and can do the sum easily enough. Whether he wants to survive this, avoiding the pain will be his only desire soon.
Techy depresses a little red button connected to the circuitry inside and proves it saying, “follow close.”
Uh’ feels the shock start at the bracelet shoved through the flesh of his left wrist at birth. Left because he is right-handed, and work could get destroyed if he were beckoned that way. The shock works its way up his arm. It doesn’t stop until he steps into the buffer zone surrounding the wielder. Soya kept the buffer set at five paces and Uh’ finds himself there quicker than he thought possible to avoid the pain, which ceases immediately when he steps within range.
Aren’t you concerned at all about Universal Property? They will certainly want to curate Soya’s life.”
“Universal Property Collection will never even bother looking for you. This explosion is one of hundreds on this glimpse. Everything is getting blown up. Almost all the space- transportstations. Only way to get between bubbles is through the ancient caves. Trust me the only Upu that are going to survive this are the ones who can manage from the cracks. You being dead has its advantages and your new owner isn’t one to brag about his new maths-tech. How are you with Fruit keeping theory? Wonder if the terrorist will let the matches keep going. Don’t worry it’s a stupid game for stupid people with too much money and time to spend. We’ll figure out someway to use you. Important to soya must mean profit somehow. Speaking of which,” and Techy answers his connector.
Uh’ sees an ugly black and white-furred face before the tech lifts the device to keep UH’s eyes off. They talk and laugh and seem to be old buddies. A price is agreed, “a finders fee. You don’t know what it took keeping the vault safe.” Uh’ stands there in disbelief. Moments ago he thought he was free and it turns out this fool was misdirecting people looking for Soya vault.
And doing so he, himself, could sell Uh’ or use him. A desire to fight and plead against this fact bubbles up but he pushes it down, still, inside the beckoner’s reach, that might be a mistake and the resulting shock would become too painful, to function and he’d find himself incapacitated. As an experienced member of the chattel class, Shuhp Yee knows what's expected and allows himself to be guided out the door, with the painful itch of electricity scratching at the inside of his arm, “when Techy says good-bye to his fence and says, “Let’s go,” to Uh’.
“What about her?” Uh’ questions.
“This is where she rots, Naht. Let’s go.”
And Uh’ is forced to turn, giving the vessel that housed his beloved Soya one last glance before hurrying to catch back up with Techy guiding them both toward Grotto’s uncertain future.
Techy tells him, “I’ve been in charge of the crypts under Yee University for ten passes. Brasso is the University’s chief of services, my boss. If anyone survives this whole thing it will be him and me. Not likely anyone wants to worry about trash and dead-bodies, right? Almost like job security being as low as an Upu can go without being a Naht, like yourself.
Thinking about it, that makes sense to Uh’, that the grunt staff of the university would escape political persecution.
Techy continues, “The university’s administrative offices are on the other side of campus. Maybe a fifteen-moment walk. But we’ll use my magride. The whole world’s gone to hell, though, so don’t expect it to go smooth.”
But that’s exactly what they get and they arrive three moments later after whizzing along the carved red-stone passageway. They emerge from the catacombs and enter the magride passageways of Yee University. The magride is an open cart with four walls and two benches. Techy sits back relaxed after plugging in his destination and what makes the trip uneventful is that the University Complex is deserted. The smell in the air is of burning synthetics mixed with hair. Soft screams can be heard muffled as if blocked by an extreme weight. If he had any agency this is the last place he’d choose to be- inside the maintenance tunnels. He calculates how much weight is above realyzing at least death from that would be instant. This capture could yield him being used as a collection piece something to show off to those that could be trusted.
Remember Soya Yee? Meet her slave Shuhp Yee.
Or something like that.
Soya is dead and he has been reminded he has never been free to make his own decisions. The few souls he sees wandering about seem dead. Like they could be the ghosts of those trapped under the smoldering rubble. The giant structure that had been visible from everywhere on campus now probably nothing but a wall of smoke and haze, beyond which is more death than has been seen on Grotto in many generations. An eerie quiet settles on the air in the caverns suggesting horrible things were happening just out of sight. He tries to push it away and settle his mind on something else, but Uh’ has never enjoyed riding by magcart either. Even as a slave, he needs more control than these things allow. No noise gives him the impression of dreaming, which doesn’t help, because when Uh’ dreams, it’s usually in nightmares of events he participated in during his long life.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Silence like how the Naht-do died, scratching to breathe struggling with calcium sludge dripping from their every opening.
Also, he is smart enough to know how death works and while en route to the admin building, computes an equation in his head. Included are two X factors, one: engine noise, and two: maximum speed. Each contributes to how fast this vehicle should be going safely. Uh’s answer is much slower than the number visible on the dashboard in front of the operator. Then a pedestrian appears directly in their path. She stares as if she wants to be run over. Uh’ makes eye contact, certain he is going to watch this creature die but breathes a sigh of relief when she mashes herself against the wall to avoid the vehicle’s progress.
The ride continues like Techy wants to kill them all, like the only thing holding in Uh’s soul is his begging for his life to continue. Like if he can just stop wanting to survive it would all blessedly end. He felt dead already and maybe he just had to be patient for the living part to be over, but he just doesn’t want to. Soya’s dead and he wants to be also, but finds the actual doing far harder than he imagines it would have been.
Though confronted by the possibility of imminent death he finds himself surprised at the absence of the razor’s edge. The sliver of oblivion that sits just on the other side of fear. It’s like his existence is one flat plane that goes on forever and ever. He can actually see the equations summing up on the horizon, like a poor athlete selling their intention before making a play.
The creators- be-damned, he saw all this happening long before it did, but trusted Soya when she said, Uh’, there is nothing to fear but oblivion, and that is simply wrapped up in the inevitable conclusion of The Everything anyway.
Unsurprised, he decides Soya’s dead, and his remaining time is of him playing catch up with her death.
Which he fails to do by the time the magride stops and Techy steps off forcing Uh’ to rush to catch up. When he does, the sting of the beckoner’s shock running up his arm softens. He shuffles after his escort and together they walk through the administration building lobby to a waiting lift. The only sound is the clip-clop of their thick poly-laminated-soled boots echoing in the vast pink-marbled lobby. Two guards, wearing their fur in the military-style that gives them a look of heft. One fondles a universal beckoner. Uh’s feels it pull on him as they pass, remembering that from the last time he and Soya ventured here. He paid it no mind, it wasn’t meant as an insult, just business as usual. So long has it been since he felt one deliberately applied like the one wielded in Techy’s hand, there is a sense of dread attached, like any moment it could activate.
The other guard holds a stun-pole. An awful, brutal weapon that could crush bone and lay out ten attackers with a single blow of its inert energy pulse. Uh’ has seen it used with intention and the results are not pretty. A bits and pieces maker, perfect for riot control. Uh’ assumes that’s what’s happening as something far off explodes. He wonders if that’s where the Elder enclave palace is, his and Soya’s former home. It’s hard to picture the harmonious retreat embroiled in devastating combat. It’s hard to picture those once-great Upus struggling with survival. He hopes that the guards there are willing to use their own stun-poles.
“Don’t make eye contact, look at the ground. Anyone recognizes you, I promise, you’ll fry.”
And Uh’ believes his promise, watching as his captor turns the power on the beckoner to as high as it can go. The fuzz is agony all on its own, so he looks down. Bewildered by the idea that he is in such danger. He shakes his head knowing the math supports this, less the odds he should have heeded Soya’s advice and drank Rantira’s broth also.
But I’m not sick.
They step inside a lift when it arrives and the red chrome doors open. Techy hits the highest number available, and the doors slide shut and the ride begins with a high-pitched moan announcing the machine’s fight to do its work. Uh’ has been in many elevators, this is by far one of the oldest. He shudders thinking about this one ride ending all hope for Soya’s spatial-folding.
“The entire University admin complex needs an overhaul,” Techy says as if needing to excuse the conditions. “New additions are impossible though unless the transteel bubble is expanded and that would mean cooperation.”
Uh knew Cooperation on Grotto stopped right about when Nahtdo colonization ceased to be an option. Reduce and protect was about limitations and beyond mining concerns, nothing else was allowed on the surface of the Grotto sister planet, not even the Naht-do.
The history of the two planets was always linked. Once long ago they were each other’s Gods. Grotto was the Blood God who killed for the fun, Chaos. And Naht-do was a white speck in the hell of the constant night of Grotto red moss trees. Once a pass the planets are in opposition then speed off again heading opposite ways. For 30 glimpses it takes only two portions of a pass to get back and forth. Each on a retrograde orbit from each other, likely because Naht-do was a space body captured by the Grotto sun and balanced with Grotto’s own gravity. They served each other well, Grotto and Naht-do. Well except one side grew addicted to controlling everything and the other never gave up the idea only demons and monsters came from Grotto and it was best to appease them, if possible.
Reduce and protect. Soya, already echoing into the future, but that never meant giving up the worship and service they got from their Naht-do, those they could coax into making themselves slaves.
“Still, corners are cut. Things like esthetics and comfort. Every available crevice has to be used as we continue our climb out of the bedrock and deeper into the atmosphere.”
“Only the mining-class or intercity travelers stay underground anymore, Uh’ offers, as if being conversational. He knows the Collection Complex has used every piece of available space in its anastomotic caverns. It was impossible for it to grow more. From below the surface to above the ground plate up to the exact level the airspace turns restricted under the canopy of the transteel bubble itself. The building leers over Capital like a crooked shadowy finger. Some even discussed dismantling it because of the limitations it presented.
What if we need to raise the city even further? What if the gasses from the mines threaten even those we are unwilling to forfeit? Soya, so wise. But now she is gone, until he can finish what he promised her he would.
Let it go.
“No.”
“What?” Techy asks and Uh’ is aware he answered Soya out loud but as the door opens he realizes this is where the video was recorded from and points.
“Yah, impressive. I know.”
Uh’ has seen better, has lived the best life an Upu in servitude can live, but he doesn’t say that, instead, he agrees by smiling wide beyond his sharp seldom used blood fangs, a show of concession of allowing himself to be dominated, which was true- if not for a only a short time more.
Techy smiles back, but like maybe he senses the imbalance and steps off the lift.
On one of The Finger’s top floors, a vast red quartz room sparkles white and pink. Lights shine on a reception desk and a small sitting area with short-cut stone pillars set up as stools. On the other side of the sitting area is a giant black door. The air tastes bureaucratic, dusty, like cleaning would only move things around.
Uh’ notes a slight hum from the lights and the scratch of a writing utensil.
Techy moves towards the writing with loud echoing footsteps. Uh’ follows and soon enough he sees a female Upu sitting behind the reception desk. She looks up. She is middle-aged and maybe, long ago, pretty. Streaks of dark grey fur grow under dark indigo. She looks broken as she stares at their approach. Uh’ quickly diagnoses her with severe depression and notes Techy is nervous. Uh’ watches him smooth at his hair and give his breath a bit of sniff inside of a raised palm. His wings flutter excitedly as he approaches to tap on the counter with a claw, “Hello, Sherin.” The words drip, but he gets no real response, just wet-looking dull eyes pointed in his direction. So he pushes on. “I’ve got some property for the president.”