Colm slept with his siblings in the living room. If anything else, he slept well, always, after a beating. His muscles don’t ache as much. He would sleep deeply and without interruptions and his dreams were pleasant.
But this night he noticed a rustle, and when he blearily opened his eyes he found his sister slowly closing the door. There was a click. Colm yawned, pushed himself up and grabbed his jacket. He went outside. She was there, on his bicycle.
“Pavetta.”
She turned to him. She was wearing a closed up jacket and a skirt and boots. “And you were sleeping so soundly too.”
“Where are you going?”
She sighed. “The twins lost two pounds this week, have you noticed? You and Robert haven’t eaten a day, if you discount that ice cream. Our clothes are several years old and they’re all torn in some places.”
“Nothing’s changed,” Colm reasoned. He hugged himself from the chill.
“Nothing’s changed,” she said. “It gets worse. Unless one of us do something necessary.”
Colm found a bench and sat down. He urged Pavetta to sit next to him, and there was a moment’s pause before he spoke again. The wind dried his lips. “Did Anatolius talk you into it?”
“Luna’s a big city. There are others.”
“Have you done this before?”
She bit her lip. “No. But I have to. It’s necessary.”
Colm stared up at the sky. The pollution in this city blocked any chances of stars. He wondered where he had gone wrong. “You want to do it out of necessity. That’s what people say when they run out of options. It’s what gets them into trouble.”
“...going to convince me out of it?”
“If you still want to do what you think you have to do, I won’t stop you. I know you’re worried about us. But remember this: for every night that you go outside, I’ll cut my wrists and let myself bleed. I can convince Robert to do the same. I’ll force him up and take him with me deep into the city to find a job, and I won’t let him sleep until we’ve robbed some poor drunk sod and taken all his money and clothes and sold it somewhere else.” He paused. “We don’t do it because we’ll be no different than the scum that lives here.”
She was flushed. “We’ll die here if we don’t do take any risk.”
“On that we agree,” he said. “Do me a favor, Pavetta. Not tonight. I’ll figure something out.”
----------------------------------------
At least for tonight, she decided to go back home. Colm stayed outside. He thought about her, and Robert, and the twins, and concluded that he had to do something. Pavetta wouldn’t sit still for long.
He biked to the city.
The city of Luna was a glowing dystopia of desire. It was a city that smelled of burning wires and pungent perfume. There were bridges that connected commercial buildings to government buildings to residential buildings, and so often he looked up and imagined a family never having ventured down to the ground streets their entire lives.
It was a vertical city, an underground city, where people lived like beggars and vagabonds and thieves and killers while sporting millions of credits’ worth of cybernetics. It thrived on feeding off each other in any way it possibly can.
Having no plan nor direction, Colm explored the crowded streets of Luna looking for hiring advertisements. He checked his phone, but the jobs had strict requirements he didn’t have, and in Luna, he couldn’t tell scam from the real thing.
He tried the small stores first. And then he went to clubs, where the bouncers laughed at him told him to fuck off. He found himself in construction sites, but he needed to be a qualified technician or have a cybernetic enhancement to his body.
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“I’m an eager learner,” he told them. “I’m young, and I don’t have much experience but I make it up for paying attention to what I’m supposed to do. If you hire me, I can assure you that you’ll find no harder worker.”
A scratch on the head, a frown, and a question: “Sir, this is a maid cafe.”
Colm knew that already. “Do you need a cook? A cleaner? Anything at all?” She shook head. Colm took out his phone and showed her a photo. “Well. Um. Here. Take a look. She’s also looking for a job.”
“Pretty. Your girlfriend?”
“She’s my sister.”
The woman asked how old Pavetta was. Colm told her. Her face morphed into something incomprehensible, and then she leaned in for a whisper.
“Oh,” Colm said. “Oh.”
He walked out of that cafe, feeling dazed and bearing an unnecessary fact he didn’t need to know.
He sat down at a bench and looked at his watch. It had been four hours since he started looking for a job. He did all that he could do and the results were disappointing. Colm realized he would have to come back here every day after school, and he would need to do it fast before another hideous idea creeps up to Pavetta’s head.
He looked around the bridge, found a beggar, and searched for his pocket. A small, blue credit. There was a clang as the coin hit the cup, and he knelt down before the haggard man.
“A coin for a question.”
The man looked up.
“How do I get a job?”
“Wrong man to be askin’ sir,” he said. His breath reeked. “I’d say you better start begging. Or if it’s too lowly for the likes of you, there’s always a few poor souls frightened of the pointy end of a stick. Not me though.”
Colm scoffed. He stood up and ambled around the streets. He contemplated his options. He started to think devious thoughts, then he stoped himself, and he cursed. It was a stupid, crazy thing, but the beggar was right. How much of a good man was he, truly, if he could convince himself to commit an immoral act. He wouldn’t be any different from the likes of Anatolius. But then again, that man must have issues of his own. Colm happened to be the scapegoat at the wrong place and time.
Like the man he was peering through the alleyway. A drunkard in a suit, who vomited and slumped against the wall. Colm thought he should help him before someone else decides to strip him down to his essentials.
After all, that was a very nice suit. It could probably go around for several thousand credits.
Colm set his bicycle aside and kicked the man. “Hey,” he said. “Hey. Wake up. You’re in Luna, and you’re sleeping here?”
The man muttered, obviously asleep.
Colm sat down next to him and leaned against the wall. He gently pushed the man to side, checking for his pockets when he pulled out a wallet. His heart was pounding. As he opened it, he found several 100-credit bills that might go up to 2000 credits.
There was a picture there. The man and a woman.
“Are you here to take me home?” The man slurred, eyes closed, yawning.
Colm didn’t want to answer.
“I don’t want to go back.” He sniffed, and pressed his face against the garbage bin.
Out of curiosity, Colm decided to ask why.
“They’re holding a wake,” the stranger said. “My sister’s. It wasn’t my fault, what happened.”
Colm asked obout it.
“The truck’s brake. It was fucked and she just happened to be there. Right in front of me.”
Suddenly, Colm felt a lurching in his gut. There—deep in the recesses of his mind, something recoiled in him. He leaned against the wall and sighed. He looked at the man, and he said, “Makes me wonder what’s holding you back from killing yourself.”
“Leave me here,” he sniffed, and broke into hiccups and quiet cries. “Leave me alone. I’m tired of everything.”
Colm placed the wallet back in the man’s pants and pulled him up but he wouldn’t budge. Colm found the man’s phone in his breast pocket.
He searched for the contacts and tried calling some of it.
After a while, a car stopped by and two men in suits walked over to him. One of them knelt down and checked the man’s wallet, and everything he had, while the other one talked to Colm.
“Where do you live?” He asked, pressing a switch from the cigarette. There was a puff of smoke.
“Around here.”
“You didn’t steal from the guy?”
He shrugged.
The man looked bewildered. “You’re in the wrong city, kid.”
“Who isn’t?”
The other man looked up. “Ask him how much he wants.”
“How much do you want?”
Colm thought about. “I’d appreciate it if you have credits. Or a lot of food, if you don’t have the creds. You’re holding a wake, right?”
“Well—“ the man smiled thinly. “We do have food and no one has the stomach to touch it. Get in. Is that your bike?”
Colm nodded.
“Put it up the trunk. That stupid looking fellow will help you.”
He watched them as they dragged the man back to the car. “Hey,” he called. “Do you have this ice cream that’s chocolate and has peanuts and marshmallows?”
“Now you’re asking for too much,” the man said.
“It’s for my sister.”
Colm stored his bike and stepped close to the car until he could smell it. There wasn’t anything unusual, not even a strong scent of perfume and cigarettes. he hopped in.
And, very quickly, he considered getting out now, but he froze. At the front seat was unmistakably a familiar figure—Anatolius, in all black, looking out of the window and grinning.