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.
“You don’t know?” said Nickel. “What did the Thraíha say?”
“They had me stay with their shaman for a good while,” Steve said. “I don’t know where else I can go. They tried to mend it the best they could, but herbs and massages are all they have. Unless I can get a surgeon, this is it for my arm.”
Nickel felt like his heart dropped to the bottom of his stomach. His face grew solemn, and he looked at Steve’s arm, unable to say anything.
“It’s okay,” Steve said. “All I can do is move on. I’m used to it.”
“I’m sorry for joking about your arm,” Nickel muttered in a soft tone, meeting Steve’s eyes once again. “I didn’t know it was—”
“Ahh, don’t worry about it,” Steve said, walking to Nickel and placing his good hand on Nickel’s shoulder. “I learned a long time ago to laugh at what hurts. Besides, I’ve got better things to care about—like how we’re going to get to Hedonim.”
“Right,” Nickel said, gulping. Steve removed his hand from Nickel’s shoulder, wobbling over to walk across the hut. “There’s a lot that happened while you were—gone.”
“I think I know,” Steve said. “I heard from the shamans when I was resting. You chose to go somewhere else on a pilgrimage with the Thraíha.”
“Somewhere else?” asked Nickel.
“To the Windings,” Steve said, “where they say the Flower of Life has reappeared.”
“What?” Nickel exclaimed, frowning in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, I want to go to Hedonim,” Steve said, stopping at the end of the hut to Nickel’s left. He turned to look at Nickel through bristling eyes. “I don’t know what ideas they’re putting in you, but that’s where I’m going—and I thought we were going to use your hovercraft to get as far as we could to Hedonim.”
“No, wait,” said Nickel. “You’re forgetting—”
“—before you broke your hovercraft,” Steve interrupted.
“It’s broken?” Nickel gasped, staring wide-eyed at Steve.
“That’s what they told me when I asked,” Steve said, looking at Nickel more intently. He walked back over to him.
“Is it done for?” Nickel muttered, nearly whispering. His heart hammered with growing worry. “No fixing it?”
“That’s what it seemed like,” Steve said. His voice had taken on a more serious tone. “The shamans told me that it was too dangerous for anyone other than the blacksmiths to go into it.”
“That doesn’t sound like there’s no hope for the Eagle,” Nickel said. “They don’t let anyone there. They pull kids out of the area where they keep it.”
“They said it’s cursed, Nickel,” Steve said, growling. “Sounds like their way of saying it’s done for.”
“No, it doesn’t!” Nickel shouted, getting agitated now. “It just means what they say—it’s a part of the Past World—that’s what they mean.”
Steve sighed in exasperation, shaking his head. “I don’t care what a hawk-worshipping cult thinks,” Steve said. “I just want to get to Hedonim—and I thought you did too.”
“I do!” protested Nickel.
“Well, it sounds like you’ve been too busy trying to be a Thraíha.”
Nickel reeled with outrage. He fumed through his nostrils, feeling shock, anger, and a stronger flash of alienation than he’d felt before. He also felt confused. The feeling of loss and emptiness in the canyons returned to him. No matter how much time he spent in the canyons or with the Thraíha, he was still here by a dangerous accident. Steve and Farrul were strangers—the first people he’d run into after his hovercraft was dragged down into the Atlantic with no way back up.
It was a state of panicked isolation that had gotten Nickel to form bonds with them. Their desperation had in turn tied them to Nickel. They were survivors struggling to escape their hostile environment.
A new question flashed across Nickel’s mind; had they been more interested in escaping the canyons or returning to the Ether Realms? They’d been obsessed with Hedonim from the start. Was that more because it was the best landmark to escape the canyons or because it was the best way to return to the Ether?
Did they have a choice either way?
The question dawned on Nickel like a rock sinking to the pit of his stomach.
“Hedonim is something different to the Thraíha, Nickel,” Steve said.
“What?”
“Not what I see or what you see. Thraíha think Hedonim will let them bring their God to ours.”
“Our God?” Nickel frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“The Ether is our God,” Steve said. “The singing sorceress. Hedonim is our temple.”
“No, no,” Nickel said, shaking his head. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Nickel,” Steve placed his left hand on Nickel’s cheek. His palm was cold, grubby, and calloused. “I’ve been alive so much longer than you—much longer. You’ve only known the Ether Realms. I remember the world before the Ether. Not much of a world to begin with.”
Steve’s hand pressed closer on Nickel’s face, causing him to wince, tilting his head to the left.
“You know why I stay with you and Farrul?” Steve said. His face was haggard. Though cleaner than before, his face was worn and seamed even more up close. His face held the desperation and emptiness Nickel had been so disturbed by—in himself, Steve, and Farrul when he’d first met them. Steve’s face was distraught—it carried the distraught wildness that Nickel had been so used to seeing in Steve, except now he could see it closer, understand it better for what it was. It was the wildness in his eyes, his heavy breath. More than just a desperation to survive but a desperate, unquenchable hunger. Steve had been in the canyons for a long time. He’d found himself tripping into visions of the singing sorceress for much longer than Nickel—even Farrul. He’d had much longer for Hedonim to percolate in his mind, much longer to be enticed.
“You know why I take so much care of you and Farrul?” Steve asked. His mouth puckered, remaining open, his warm breath washing over Nickel’s face. “Because I know what it’s like to be a kid alone without the Ether.”
Nickel cringed upon hearing those words. Without the Ether. He’d spent so long in his hovercraft numbing himself from that feeling. From the despair he’d felt at his addiction to the technology that numbed him from that same despair among others, tracing down the rabbit hole of his life—his mind.
“I know what it’s like to be a kid—lost in the world with no one to fend for but yourself. You know where I come from, Nickel?”
Nickel didn’t answer. He was frozen, his face a grimace, wary of the man before him but too afraid and shocked to let go.
“I was born on the Pacific outposts,” Steve said. “Trash heaps. I had nothing to lose, and it seemed nothing to gain either. My sister and I—little sister, five years younger than me. We were sent to work on the trash heaps off the Eastern Seaboard. My parents were indentured by the companies making the waste. We barely saw them, but when we did, it was me and my mom made me swear I’d protect my sister. We had to go work to help ma and da buy our freedom. In order to do that, we had to buy our way out by making more money for the company than normal.”
“I was always supposed to keep my eye on my sister when we were out working, but one day, I had to go dump my load for the trash compactors landing round our lot from the sky. My sister was struggling under her load, trying to carry it up to where she was supposed to. I told her to wait until I came back to help her, to stop carrying it because it was hurting her. When I came back around, she was higher up the heap than she’d been before, lying dead under a pile of trash. The trash inspector had told her to keep climbing up, keep carrying more of the load. I was ten. She was five!”
Nickel looked up at Steve solemnly. He had taken his palm off of Nickel’s cheek, but he looked on at him with wide eyes. Nickel’s mouth hung open. Before he could respond, Steve continued.
“This is where we are. Where I was. A world that had given up before I had anything to give up. That’s why I take care of you!” He growled. His eyes were wide, fuming in anger. “That’s why I take you and Farrul under me. Keep you safe. Because I—” he pointed his thumb at himself, “couldn’t do that for my sister.”
Nickel still couldn’t find himself to say anything in response, numbed by shock.
“This world has nowhere left to go,” Steve said. “Except the Ether… There’s nowhere left in the Ether for me to go… except for Hedonim.”
“I don’t want to go to Hedonim,” Nickel said in a shaky voice, shaking his head.
Steve frowned, turning his head askance, glowering at Nickel from the side.
“What are you talking about?” growled Steve.
Nickel felt a heat rising through his chest, threatening to block out the words he was chewing on, attempting to voice.
“I’ll just be going back to where I was before—inside my hovercraft, wasting away inside the Ether,” said Nickel. Steve’s face writhed with emotion. Nickel sighed and rubbed his face in his palms, continuing to shake his head. He spoke before Steve could cut him off:
“That’s what I did! I did that for so long! Sitting inside my hovercraft, almost never looking out the window, looking through my screens instead. Everything was through Realm Five. The wars I had to support or be mad at—the war zones I couldn’t fly through. I couldn’t even get through to where I wanted to. When I wasn’t watching random BideoSute videos or 3D pornos, it was the world on fire—the places to avoid, where to restock on supplies, at what aerial ports would associate me with the wrong war efforts. Which war efforts to pay for to get the resources I wanted. I can’t do it anymore!”
Nickel glowered back at Steve, feeling the heat addle his politeness. Nickel breathed heavily. Steve, still wide-eyed, looked surprised.
“I can’t,” Nickel rasped in a quieter tone but still forceful. “I’m sick of it—I was sick of it before I crashed in the canyons—not just before we came to the Thraíha. I spent months in the Eagle, escaping from my problems—from the engineering program I was supposed to be in, trying to numb the pain but always feeling sick for doing it. But I had nowhere else to go, just the screens to keep me company. I’m done with that.”
“Which is why we’re going to Hedonim!” protested Steve.
“Hedonim is part of the Ether, you idiot!” snarled Nickel, pointing at Steve. He realized it was the first time he’d raised his voice at and spoke pejoratively to Steve. “It’s part of the same digital system! It’s just a different overlay!”
G.R. Nanda 