Year of Storms, Chptr 2 – Xperience Fiction

Year of Storms, Chptr 2 – Xperience Fiction – by Liam Sweeny.

The steady hum of electricity through the walls floated up to the light panels and the sound washed over itself. They were trying to rob her of the sounds of degenerate humanity, but she had to wonder if near-perfect silence was worse. She stood in her doorway staring down the hallway toward the common area. Maybe she could get into a fight and salvage some of the weekend. Too bad she didn’t know one lick about giving lickings.

The pads of the feet on her jumpsuit were oddly comfortable as she walked down the hall on the balls of her feet. It really was the lukewarm porridge of a facility.

She opened a pneumatic door to the shrill sound of a girl yelling.

“So you all are going to sit there all day? Huh?”

She was animated, flipping her shoulder-length pink hair around her head and tipping her glasses. Cellie hadn’t seen glasses on a person except the Farmers when she went on her discovery outside the EastNode. They seemed to gravitate to the old crap.

Along the wall were seven women with glossed-over gazes, seeming to ponder what the woman was yelling at them.

“They’re noners,” Chellie said.

“I know that.” The woman sighed. “Fucking noners.”

“Why bother yelling at them?”

The girl walked over to the head of the row, took a sip of her drink and flicked her wrist, sending the liquid into the faces of three of them. They wiped off with their hands, appearing to ponder that too.

“One time I was in a transport stop, and it just just noners sitting on the benches.” She took broad steps over to the Go dispenser. “I was pissy that day, and I just let one have it. I mean, full vent, ‘cause who are they gonna tell, right? And out of nowhere, and God to fuckin’ Christ nowhere, this one starts screaming. Full blast; thought she was gonna break the glass, that loud. Full animated too.”

“A noner? Sure it wasn’t just a normal person with a blah day? Maybe they were medicated and they just looked… noner-ish.”

“You don’t know me, but believe I can pick a noner from a norm.” She said.

“So what was it, then?”

The girl took a sip of her Go and walked over to empty it in one of the noner’s laps.

“I think they don’t sell everything,” she said. “They want to. They think they do, but there’s something buried that even a flashback stim doesn’t find. Repressed shit. Total burial. Cause when it comes out, it’s scary shit.”

Chellie picked a cup out of the cupboard and filled it. She wondered how many cups of Go her de facto companion had emptied on the noners. She didn’t look forward to running out of Go in such a boring place.

“So you’re trying to get them to freak out,” Chellie said.

“Yup.”

“How long have you been trying?”

“What time is it?” She asked.

“Fuck if I know.”

“Same answer, then. I know it was light when I woke up, and they were in here then.”

Chellie tried to feel bad for the noners, but she knew you could light one on fire and throw it a birthday party and it would feel the same about both.

“I’m Cellie.”

“Alandra.”

“That’s a weird name. What’s it mean?”

“How would I know? Your name mean something?”

“My dad’s favorite dog.”

Alandra let out a belly laugh.

“That sucks. Sorry I asked.

“I actually liked Cellie… the dog. She died when I was six.”

“So you ain’t from EastNode, ‘cause I know dogs are frowned upon in the snoot snoot.”

“Frowned upon,” Cellie said. “Not forbidden though. And I’m from CenterLock, so we could’ve kept sewer monsters as long as we licensed them.”

Cellie sat down on a long polymer table with recesses for cups. A faux-wooden basket of nutrition bars occupied the center, and she grabbed two. They couldn’t have been more generic, but in the absence of choice they were the top shelf. Alandra walked along the wall of noners, pretending to go on the attack in the hopes of releasing a dragon. Eventually, she made her way to the table.

“How’d they get in here, anyway?”

Alandra aimed her thumb to point. “Them?”

“Yeah. What crimes do noners commit?”

Alandra adjusted her glasses. “Good question.” Sh craned her neck. “First one of you tells me why you’re in here gets…” She felt the space where her pockets would be. “Got nothing to give them.”

Cellie grabbed a controller of the bench and turned the wall panel on. It was a craft show on the main feed. It reminded her of her own channel, but the host was at least twenty years older and her base rate was 35 points up on Cellie’s base rate.

“You watch this crap?” Alandra said.

“I am this crap. Chanel Local 432.”

Alandra grabbed her own nutrition bar and opened the wrapper with one hand before dipping the bar in the remains of her Go.

“I don’t even have a wall panel,” she said.

“Are you a Farmer?”

Alandra adjusted her glasses. “These, right?”

“Well, yeah.” Chellie ran her index finger along her brow to scratch at her nervousness.

“I was,” Alandra said. “I escaped to EastNode three years ago.”

“Escaped? I didn’t know you had to escape being a Farmer.”

Alandra cleared her throat. “You do when you kill someone.”

Cellie didn’t ask Alandra anything else in the common room. She didn’t stay in there much after that. It was one thing to pass the time with another day tripper and have fun with noners. It was another thing to risk even associating with a killer.

As she sat in her room, she realized that associating with killers was going to happen if they’d thrown her in the real jail. Something about spending even a few minutes with Alandra was odious if she couldn’t use it to up her base rate.

She didn’t know what time it was, only that it was dark, and it was the second set of meals. She’d be let out tomorrow. She’d be back to her life, back to her show, and she’d have been well-advised to paint her graffiti enterprise as a success by some imaginative storytelling.

She went to sleep wondering what the noners did to get arrested.

 

 

 

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