Spoils Of War Collection

Chapter 1-3

The tour group exited the room after lingering for a little to gaze at the Circlet. It exerted a powerful attraction on everyone who saw it, I followed the group out while my shadow remained. My shadow stood in front of the glass case, with arms crossed, as the members of the tour pressed around to view the Circlet.

“Lanken, forgive me, I’m dazzled by beauty every time I see this death warrant for my ancestors and the ancestors of others. This glowing clot of blood is the full stop to our history; from that point on, we’re lost amid human dust and can never be found. This little trinket did more than change the energy industry, indeed more than simply changing life in all the inhabited systems; it changed the possibilities of what could be done with lifeforms, and it took little time for this to be understood and acted upon. The lifeforms may have been drained of essential energy, but there were still breeding possibilities if a minute spark was left and then utilised to animate them. The lifeforms could be shaped them to any purpose. Not just a charm but also a set of living charms designed to fit any task. Work in the most hostile of environments, work in the most intimate of environments. The only boundary was imagination and the willingness to apply it. Humanity was never short of either. And look here, in all their splendid forms are some of those purposes—workers, slaves of every shape, size and capacity able to work under any conditions, ready to create waterfalls of money to flow into the mouths of their masters.”

My shadow always gave an extended tour and always came to this exhibit, and this was where the danger was greatest. It was a comfortable room that held a first edition, possibly the only surviving one. It lay open to the dedication page on the grand desk where its author had completed the work. The dedication never changed, no matter how often I looked and hoped the sheer weight of the lies it held would have made the words bleed off the page.

“The spark of life burns equally in all. Let it shine forth in freedom and dignity.” Such a shining lying truth or a blazing truthful lie.

“I stand before you a bottle born free citizen of the inhabited systems. I am exactly the same as you except for one matter, a minor one to be sure, I have no parents, yet I am not an orphan, humans made me but did not breed me. I do have a human ancestor and we are not his descendants. He had a name, but I won’t use it. Let it rust in silence. He wrote Radical Reason: The Spark of Life, a rallying cry that awoke the conscience of the human race and turned a great chapter of history. Here you see a very rare first edition, … which frightened those in power enough that they realized it was far better to have an enormous population of bottle born lifeforms on the inside pissing out, rather than risk a flood flowing in. So, any lifeform that wasn’t brewed to a single specific purpose, a general-use lifeform in whatever shape they might be, was granted full, equal and inalienable citizen status of the combined systems.

Radical Reason: The Spark of Life“I am expected, by some, to be grateful for my status as a free citizen of the combined systems, grateful for the opportunity to have a life utterly dependent on the process of stripping other lifeforms of their essential natures, grateful that this process pushed me out to one destination rather than another. Free citizen should be more important than bottle born. Naturals who would never accept me as an equal are deeply anxious that I should not parade my differences in case it makes them uncomfortable. I cannot undo history, we are long beyond recovery as we were, we need to live in this time as we are. I want to live a quiet life without having others seeking to des... Is that the time? thank you all for listening so patiently to me, I have to finish now. “

That was much further than I could afford to travel, the pressure can be so great that I need to release it and control it, one pushing fiercely against the other. What could happen if I lose that control is on the list of things I scrupulously do not think about.

* * *

I headed for the small staff room to get ready to head back to my space. I had some time off and was ready to rest. It was hard to believe that I was stopped at the exit when my pass didn’t open the gate. Returning inside, I walked as slowly as I could without actually stopping at the management offices. I turned the corner in the corridor and saw a long queue leading up to the Resources Office. I’d been Waved in and was now being Waved out.

The Standing Committee of Thiegler was composed of people with a finely tuned apparatus for detecting problems that might become a danger to their continued presence on the Committee. One of the most significant problems: a large standing, if not stagnant, pool of unemployed citizens. Agitating this pool was one of the major preoccupations of the SC members and the Wave Policy one of the ways they did it. Moving large numbers of citizens of every type and stripe though jobs at various organizations decreased the total number of actively unemployed. When a very small percentage of this group actually got full-time employment at an organization, it was a triumph of public policy.

For the rest of us pool algae, we got Waved into employment and Waved out again to make way for the next set of bodies. For the most part, we were never going to get substantial employment for all the reasons we were in the pool in the first place, unless fantastically lucky or much less fantastically, unlucky. By the time I’d made my way up to the counter at the Resources Office, I was still hoping to be marginally lucky and get a ticket for private sector job, or even a spell on a bench filling out forms at employment agencies. When I saw the smile on Philbean’s face after he noticed me, I knew I wasn’t going to be lucky; still, I had enough time to harbour completely fruitless hope that it wouldn’t be the worst. I was wrong.

unlucky“Mr. Mansard, how nice to meet you again. It seems that there’s going to be small change in your circumstances. Let me be the first to congratulate you.”

The malicious sarcasm that Philbean breathed with every word clung to me like damp fog. The only reason Philbean hadn’t been clubbed to death a long time ago was that he was a three-meter high lizard with a proven taste for blood and the willingness to take it in a fight. He never started one, but always finished one, and I’d been very careful during my time at the Centre to stay out of his way. Not that that did much good; he always seemed to want to take a well-placed stab at me. Maybe it was my lack of response that aggravated him. Certainly, I was an object of unusual attention. Nowadays, I just waited for the next jab.

“We received a Quota Requirement Notice and I naturally thought of you. After your sterling service here, I was happy to have the opportunity to ensure that you found permanent employment matching your talents. It took a little effort, but what’s that among friends when the results are so beneficial? I shouldn’t delay you, the Public Service Allocation Bureau waits for no lifeform and, I’ve heard, can get tetchy if applicants aren’t on time. Your appointment is at seven, so I’m sure you can make it if you don’t delay.”

It was a classic Philbean set-up. I could give in to my temper and jump him, and I’d lose, but I could do damage on the way down. I would be late for my appointment and be treated as an absconder, failing to report for legitimate employment. That would get me an automatic ten sentence in misery shackles, ten days in an induced for of depression that usually lead to suicide. Which was very convenient as death in service made you automatically eligible for the Involuntary Public Servant programme where you were revived and continued your career as an animated copse. I could turn and run with the already failed hope of getting to the Public Service Allocation Bureau on time and avoid a beating for being late. Beating was preferable to misery shackles so I ran, scrambling over the security gate to save time, hitting the street and trying to gain speed with every step as I raced across the square to the top of the moving stairs that dropped into the dark.

Dodging gargoyles, however, slowed me down. Now that I was no longer employed, protection had been withdrawn and I was fair game. Gargoyles infested the streets on Mengchi, one of the perks of employment was being shielded from gargoyle attacks. One of the miseries of unemployment was trying to fend them off. They were small, vicious and fast, swooping down on prey and when they landed biting through pretty much any material to get a mouthful of your blood. A very persistent gargoyle, perched determinedly on my back, bit me on the shoulder as I reached the entrance to the underworld of the Public Service Portal. I slipped on the steps and fell, hitting a hard surface with jarring impact. A voice muttered something as I exploded with body-filling pain and heard the gargoyle scream before passing out.

I woke up fresh and alert in a comfortable padded chair and looked across an impossibly beautiful desk at the most alluring woman I’d ever encountered. Soft amber lights emphasized multiple shades of red—crimson, scarlet, ruby, and berry—in her perfectly cut hair. Smiling, pale gray eyes caressed me with promises of sweet, shared pleasures. I had an erection that could have lifted her off the ground unaided, and the energy to do so as often as we wanted. All of which would start as soon as I’d signed the form she was presenting. I took it and my fingers brushed hers; more intimate contact would be a delicious, life-altering experience.

“My name is Shakbout Mansard, I am a free citizen of Thiegler. My residence number is 2269334789521.”

This didn’t please my beauty, nor me, but I had no control over my voice or my arms, hands and fingers, which refused to sign the form. A tiny but heart-rendering frown line appeared on her forehead and her lips pouted with disappointment that our blissful union was being delayed. I struggled to move my hand, to get on with the task. Instead, my monotonous voice droned on. “I fully and deliberately invoke the protection enshrined in Clause 7C, Subsection 36, Paragraph 78, and Item 2231 of the Establishment of Citizenship Decree, as amended by Decree AGMLZ500788453 and confirmed by ruling ODDETSGH7931 of the Standing Committee.”

I had no idea what I was saying and was desperately trying to stop; I could see that each sound was hurting my heart’s desire, and I’d never be able to make it up to her. The form was snatched from my hands and I found myself sitting in an old and worn office chair in a rather shabby cubicle, facing a Harvester across a strip of scuffed plastic desktop. The form was a charm that activated when I touched it. If I had signed the form, I would have given away precious rights and the Harvester would have earned a bonus. The Thiegler Public Service was not a generous employer and it systematically tried to recover value from those it employed by using very questionable means that just barely met the legal requirement for informed consent.

The Harvester didn’t look like my beauty, but like a sentient flower with a large blood-red cluster of small flowers serving a vague approximation of a face, hanging on a green reed of a body. The reed would be resting in a basin of swamp water fed from a tap in a wall. One of my previous jobs had been in a swamp-water fermentation plant and had gifted me with a weight of knowledge I’d have given a less vital organ to forget.

The flower cluster rippled, and I felt as much as heard the Harvester say, “Your Notice of Service will be delivered to your habitation before the start of the third shift tomorrow. Do not be late.” Before I could get up or move out of the way, the Harvester sprayed me with sweet smelling pollen. Harvesters were about the most mean-spirited lifeforms in the systems, which was exactly why there were so many in the PSAB; they were perfect for the work. Going forward, I’d have a hyper-reaction to any s****l attraction encountered, a massive and uncontrollable reaction that would ensure that wearing anything except very loose underwear would be a very serious and painful mistake for the rest of my pre-death life.

notI was on time for the start of my new working life in the sewers of Mengchi. The good was that it was paid employment, the bad thing was everything else. The sewers were old, complicated and in constant need of repair and cleaning. Everyone new started in cleaning and you quickly discovered that s**t was the very least of your worries, it was what was hiding in the s**t that you had to be very careful about. Not all charms are made equal, from the precision cuts at the top end to the illegal, unlicensed bashers at the bottom, you get what you pay for. A charm that does exactly what it should, a piece of junk that will do something without any idea or indication of what it will be. When they break, are stolen, lost, hidden, discarded accidently or deliberately they fall until they are trapped in the sewers.

Broken charms are not the same as deactivated charms, broken charms still have energy. Energy that can combine with the energy in other charms which can produce unexpected results. The most serious are holes that you can fall into that lead to anywhere and nowhere. There is no way back. Each sewer worker has an alarm that warns of the any rise in energy above background levels. Getting an alarm might mean standing still with your foot in the air or it might mean run or it could mean that you are approaching a safety fence.

What an alarm means the most often is that a s**t golem is approaching, a collection of charms has provided the power to move a mound of s**t. Sometimes these collide and form super golems. A crew of Involuntary Public Servant s with axes hack them into small pieces, sift through the lumps and smash the charms to bits. You as the team leader get to be splattered at a distance until everything has been neutralised. I encountered my first super s**t golem on day three, I got too close and nearly lost a foot to an axe blow. The Involuntary Public Servants do not discriminate, everything in range is a target.

With time it moved from being oppressively awful to being awful. There were always turds waiting to be stepped on. Then, in a depressingly familiar way I moved from stepping in s**t to being in s**t.