Note to readers: “2200 Blues” is a novel in progress, and each chapter is an early draft in its unfolding journey. Your thoughts and reactions are invaluable, guiding its evolution and refinement. 2200 Blues © 2024 by G.R. Nanda. All rights reserved.
Nickel’s head throbbed no matter how long or hard he rubbed it against his palm or the flimsy cot. He tried to remember the words of the Oracle—the confidence she taught him in the face of the mystic visions, the ever-present force of the acht-chi. He wasn’t quite ready to see her yet. Theren had to sequester Nickel inside his sleeping hut to keep him away from Li’s demands for him to be held at the smelting station for interrogation alongside the new foreigner who’d encroached upon Thraíha grounds. While Theren worked out his gripes with Li and with the tribal authorities to deal with the new visitor, Nickel was to stay inside the hut alone as the rest of his cohort were either out hunting like Farrul or dealing with the tumult of the new visitor.
Nickel had stayed in the canyons for five months. Outside of the Thraíha culture, all he’d known were Steve and Farrul, an eclectic duo from far corners of the Ether, as far from each other as they were from Nickel.
He wondered who this new visitor was and where he came from. The first people he’d seen since exiting his hovercraft residence of stasis were all those he’d met in the Atlantic Canyons. The relief he felt with interacting with humans and forming relationships was mingled with an ache for the familiar. He yearned for someone from the U.R. colonies, let alone the colony he grew up on. He yearned for someone who could understand and relate to more of his background—better understand his fears beyond the one of immediate survival. The anguish of losing his virtual hovercraft home and the panic of bare survival had once consumed him.
Now that he had found a reliable roof over his head and food to feed him, his mind had reopened the crevice of longing that had been gaping open when he had been cruising on his hovercraft.
While milder now that he had found company and a regiment, there was more he was searching for.
The visions he’d had, while terrifying and simulating the brink of death each time, had brought him closer to a larger perspective—an openness he couldn’t quite describe or even begin to comprehend. It was a consciousness without a form—a form he desperately wanted to reach, more so after his trip with Theren in the underground tomb.
Nickel had since calmed down from the delirious stupor he’d emerged from the cave in. He’d found the Thraíha culture he inhabited to be more attuned to a spirit world—more conducive to the visions and mirages stimulated by the fog. However, his throat still burned and was scratchy from all the screaming he’d done in the tomb.
Breathe. The Oracle’s voice was crystal clear in his mind. Pump your chest like Father Hawk before a flight. Her words guided him through the acht-chi trance he’d done with her. Breathe slowly and deeply through your nostrils. Reminding himself of her words had gotten him to calm himself, but he still felt at a loss to make sense of the old man at the table, the Last Supper, and the terrifying explosion of the atomic bomb.
He still couldn’t shake the paranoia. When he’d first left the U.R. on his hovercraft, he’d been fleeing from a world order on the brink of collapse. Here in the canyons, he found himself on the edges and outskirts of that collapse. The whispers of a collapsing—or an already collapsed world—teased at him.
He knew he looked like an artificial human to many of the U.R. He looked like the Pan Asian stock of genetically engineered humans, many sent to the U.R. colonies. In the ancient religious rat race, there was always another to fear.
He wanted to eventually escape the canyons, but what answer would he find to that situation—the experiences he held from the past?
Nickel squeezed his eyes, shaking his head and sighing. He rolled over on his cot, rubbing his eyes. An overwhelming anxiety threatened to engulf him whenever he was still or silent enough to think through the reservoir of thoughts and unprocessed dilemmas and experiences flitting through the back of his mind.
He reached over the side of the cot, grabbing at the book he’d stowed away underneath it. He plopped it on his bed in front of his chest as he lay stomach down on the cot. The book was open to a random page.
Nickel began flipping through the pages, scanning the bodies of text and the occasional diagrams interrupting them. He needed to take his mind off of his mind, and he searched for the right thing to do the job.
Nuclear Power Plant Construction Phase: 2099-2111
A gentle shiver ran through his scalp as he perused the starting page of this chapter. He had his finger at the corner of the page, hesitating to turn it over. He realized it was the same trepidation that had put him off opening the book.
From the moment he discovered it inside the temple’s wind tunnels and read its title, he’d known it held answers about the history of the canyons, the Hedonim project before the nuclear accident. It would give him answers he was looking for—help him piece together history and form insights about Hedonim. It would help him find a path to Hedonim besides the supernatural insights and limited geographical knowledge of the Thraíha.
He turned the page, flipping it over, but just before, a familiar voice called to him.
“Nickel,” came an old man’s voice, rasping with an uncleared throat. Nickel closed the book and looked up wide-eyed.
Steve looked at him from across the room in a long, flowing tunic instead of his grubby and stained aerial worker’s clothing. His left arm hung in a splinter of bandaged cloth. His long gray-white beard was even longer than it had been before he, Nickel, and Farrul had crashed Nickel’s hovercraft into the Thraíha compound.
His face was cleaner than when they’d last been together. His wrinkles and lines were crisper. His eyes, though wearier looking with his eyelids closer to one another, were beaming with a warm light. The wide-reaching, fuzzy, and hazy lines of his beard stretched to the side in a slowly stretching smile.
“At least one of us looks better than the last time we met,” Steve called, grinning and letting out a dry chuckle.
Silence followed as Nickel opened his mouth in a small “o,” too dumbfounded to speak. A rush of emotions flowed through him, mingling with surprise, fear, and the memories he’d formed with Steve. Seeing him here reminded him that despite the hostilities, desolation, and alienation of the Atlantic Canyons, it still held a semblance of home—and a familiarity bestowed by the man standing before him who’d given him warmth and care when Nickel had found himself all alone—without whom Nickel wouldn’t have been here, having traversed this far into the canyons or found the Thraíha.
“I was worried about you,” Nickel muttered. He felt suddenly bashful, shied by his fluttering heart and the wave of emotions he felt. A clatter of Thraíha and their hunting gear resounded across the walls of the huts; back from a hunt, though Nickel could barely recognize the source of the clapping sounds and beats of thrumming feet. “I didn’t know when I would see you,” Nickel said, letting out a nervous chuckle. He rolled his legs off the side of the cot, sitting himself up on its surface. “They told me you were seriously hurt, that I couldn’t visit you.”
“Well, the Thraíha really are serious ’bout their quarantine laws, aren’t they?” Steve asked, chuckling again. He shook his head. “They’ve lost their minds in the fog more’n me, Nickel! Believe in spirits and magic hawks, can ya’ believe that?”
The sides of Nickel’s mouth stretched high across his face into a wide grin. He couldn’t stop smiling, looking at Steve. His exuberance was overjoyous, overflowing.
“Well, are you going to stop smiling and come over here to help an old man walk acro—”
He need not finish the words, for Nickel leaped off of his cot, rushing at Steve, pushing the words out of his mouth in surprise.
Nickel grabbed him in a giant hug, wrapping both of his arms around Steve, careful to keep his left arm wrapped around his waist below his left arm hung in a sling.
Steve gasped, staggering back slightly as he shifted his feet ever so slightly. Nickel pressed the side of his face firmly into Steve’s tunic, savoring his presence.
Steve wheezed and emitted soft mutters, slowly inching back on his heels. He didn’t wrap his arms around Nickel in return. Understanding that, feeling a jolt of self-consciousness, Nickel let go of his arms around Steve, taking steps backward to view Steve’s disposition better.
Steve closed his eyes, wincing as he bit his lower lip, expressing pain and discomfort.
“Ohh! I’m sorry!” Nickel exclaimed.
“Ss’ okay,” Steve muttered under ragged breaths. “Good thing you didn’t hug my hurt hand over here.” He wiggled his left arm in the air.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Nickel said, taking steps closer to Steve.
“I know you didn’t,” Steve snapped, grunting as he shifted his weight. He smiled and eyed Nickel curiously. “Remember, I’ve been living in the canyons outside of hovercraft longer’n you.”
They both chuckled; Steve louder.
“I’ve had my share of injuries to go around,” Steve husked.
“What happened to your arm?” Nickel asked. “I ran like hell out of the hovercraft when the Thraíha ambushed. I didn’t see where you went after that—or what happened to you.”
“Ahggh,” Steve said, nodding his head. “Feels like ages ago… But so does yesterday… We split up, remember?”
The night of the Thraíha ambush came rushing back to Nickel, the stark and panicked memories.
“Ohh yeah,” Nickel said. “Farrul and I were supposed to run away together… Where did you run?”
“As far back away from you,” Steve said. “I went around the back of the Thraíha’s walls. Didn’t see a pile of rocks in the dark and—” Steve raised his left arm. “—that’s how this happened. Hurt worse than anything in years. I’ve been real careful to take care of myself here—stay safe in this world of rocks—and what do you know—I broke my arm falling on a pile of rocks.”
Nickel chuckled, and Steve smiled, causing Nickel to laugh even harder.
“Well, at least you got somewhere away from the flagpole,” Nickel said, grinning. “Looks like your arm turned into a pile rocks too!”
“Aaaaaaaaaarghhhhh!” Steve roared, feigning outrage. He took a few steps closer to Nickel, pretending to swat at him with his good arm. “Too soon! Too soon!”
Nickel giggled, walking back a few steps to lean on his cot.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Steve rasped through a grin.
“I’m sorry,” Nickel said through laughter. “But you’re okay, right?” Nickel’s smile faltered as he looked at Steve’s right arm. “Will it be back to normal?”
“Ah, this?” Steve rumbled as he raised his right arm and looked down at it. “This we don’t know.”
Nickel’s heart sank. He pursed his lips, feeling embarrassed for making light of Steve’s injury.
G.R. Nanda 