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.
The closer Nickel got to the side of the cliff, the better he could see that there were runnels and pathways carved into its side. Though many were worn down and caked with obstructive material, certain parts of the land had been cleared for travelers like himself to walk through. He found his way along a steep, winding path running through the side of the cliff. Walking up it, he lugged his bag of supplies and food that he had been given and made his way, step by step, up the steep pathway. He stopped once his stomach started to rumble with a gnawing hunger, reminding him of the mild stitches of ache leftover in his body from the ordeal with the Death Riders. He was surprised at how relatively mended his body felt. The aches, while an unpleasant surprise, were vastly improved from when he was last conscious during the encounter with the Death Riders. Whatever Rishi had treated him with or fed him—conscious or unconscious—he couldn’t recall. He plopped himself down, sitting against the incline of the sharply curving wall of the dirt and pebble-bound pathway, and dropped his bag of supplies next to him, reaching inside to see what extraordinary food and supplies Rishi had given him.
He rummaged through, finding a bag of wrapped food among other things. Opening it up inside the supply bag, he pulled out a small mushy object wrapped in tin foil. As he pulled it out and began to chew at what revealed itself to be a small sandwich, he took a whiff of the musty scent of the sour material wedged inside the sandwich and the dried, sweet-smelling scent of the bread. It was a stark contrast to the scents of burnt rock, gassy humid steam from below, and the earthy metal scent of the cliff. As he moved the sandwich toward his mouth to take a bite, a cry and a series of footsteps from just above stopped him. Nickel dragged his foot back through the dirt, instinctively moving back to flee, but stopped just short, ceasing the movement of his foot.
“Load coming through,” came a loud voice from above. It was immediately followed by the loud grating of mechanical machinery that sounded like a crane. It whined, a high-pitched sound in the air, followed by the movement of a large rectangular metal arm slowly rising above the cliff face. It was rusted and silvery, lifting itself high into the air. At its top was a large square-shaped container, ringed by a large fence that concealed whatever—if anything—was inside it. Footsteps crunched against the earth in swift motions, interrupting the low whine of the crane.
“Get ‘im up,” a man said.
“Hold on, now,” another said.
“What? It’s already up!”
“There’s someone coming through.”
The voices quieted, and the footsteps ceased. Eventually, the crane stopped moving as well, jerking to a halt in the air, clanging gently to a stop. Nickel stayed still, frozen. His heart pounded as he debated whether or not he was willing to climb out of the hole and talk to these men, ask them for the directions he couldn’t ask the homeless beggar. They sounded like Farrul or Steve, but more lucid than when Nickel had first met Steve and Farrul.
“Over there!” shouted the first man. The footsteps resumed, and other voices joined in the renewed din of conversation.
“Why didn’t you say anything before?” shouted a new voice, agitated. “We have a load waiting up on you dipshits—”
“No, not there! Who is that?”
More feet started stamping on the ground.
“For fuck’s sake! We get a visitor coming through every thirty minutes!”
“Visitor’s putting it a little too kindly.”
The crane started moving again.
“No, shut it off! Stop moving!”
“Stop moving? It’s in the air!”
“I prefer the word ‘tourist.’ And this ain’t an amusement park.”
“Ain’t an amusement park? That’s why we got those damn pilgrims to Hedonim coming in every time we manage to get a load up!”
Pilgrims to Hedonim? The Thraíha? Had they gotten here? Nickel felt the urge to look up, step up the last bit of the pathway, and peer over the edge to see who was there. Were they talking about him? Or a Thraíha walking another way toward them? Would they be able to tell the difference between an actual Thraíha and him?
“Then whaddya’ doing? Go and get him! Stop him from getting here! This ain’t an Ether chat! He could fuck up our load.”
“There’s somebody else! Down there coming up the side of the cliff!”
The voices began mixing together in a loud, agitated din.
If a Thraíha was up there, Nickel wanted to see that person. As the voices intermingled in a loud cacophony, Nickel put his sandwich back in his bag and slung it over his back as he continued climbing up the pathway. He slowly slid his fingers along the hard-crusted edge of the runnel rim and raised his head until his eyes could just barely see the men whose voices he’d heard first. They were walking away, as he had expected from their dimming voices. The crane was rolling away with them as well, on dusted track pads that trembled over the bumpy surface of the cliff. In the wake of the complaining workers, there were throngs of people in strange multi-colored clothing. Some groups of people were in uniform colors, others not. Some wore long clothes of dull army green, overalls meant for anonymity and tactical use. Others—large, reflective, and bright. Bulky. Flat. Extravagant. Minimalist. Nickel had encroached upon a strange replica of an underworld city district, an unknown place bustling with strange foreign outfits, strolling through the area that Merrix Depot belonged to, busy and undeterred by one another. Strange blue and green lights washed over the crowd from a distant vantage point Nickel couldn’t see. Many of the people paused, moved around the space where the workers had been, then resumed once the noise of the workers and the cranes faded to a dull sound.
Nickel slowly raised his head even higher, seeing more of what appeared to be a street of moving pedestrians, walking around signs and through terminals of steel entranceways. Had he made it back to civilization as Rishi said? After all this time, had he finally made it?
“Oy, look!” shouted a man from around the bend of the cliff street. “Look! It’s one of ‘em nomads!”
Nickel’s eyes widened, then he squatted back down immediately, letting his feet slide down the dirt of the pathway.
“Did you see his clothes?”
“What’s he doing here?” shouted a woman with a shrill voice. “Is he climbing up the cliff?”
“I haven’t seen one in a long time, but nowhere close here,” the man said.
“Take a look at him!” shouted the woman. Their footsteps neared Nickel, and they walked closer to him at the edge of the runnel.
Panicked, Nickel decided he had to run for it and brace whatever path and people awaited him along the cliff surface and through its terminals. As the footsteps of the man and the woman who had spotted him neared the edge of the cliff, Nickel tugged on the straps of his backpack and dug his fingers into the earth, clawing at the dirt that spilled out from the wall of the runnel, clasping for the top of the runnel edge. He pulled his body up, pulling dirt out of the edge alongside it, and stepped up, heaving himself onto the top, dragging his stomach over the surface before dragging his legs up alongside them.
The man and the woman were wearing strange sunglasses with golden-tinted visors and bright reflective clothing—his green and blue, hers purple and blue. He jumped off before he could see more of them and ran off into the crowd of moving people.
“Hey!” shouted the woman. “Where you going, brat?”
Nickel ignored them and the strange expressions he got from the people around him within the crowd, running around a group of men in large protruding ponchos with bulbous green vessels sticking out from the front of their torsos. He darted around others, accidentally jostling a few to their chagrin, some of whom shouted back at him. He ran through the terminal, bypassing someone who was checking in with a screentube. Running through the opening, he realized that he had run through the wide entrance opened by someone who had checked in. He had run through someone else’s accessed checkpoint.
He ran into an even larger square of more people, darting through and around a kaleidoscope of strange attires and colors. He ducked and darted, moving so quickly to escape the man and the woman that he found himself carried by the sway of the large knots of people moving in the same direction. The experience befuddled him, and he found himself disoriented by being in large crowds for the first time since leaving his hovercraft.
Where is Merrix Depot?
“Excuse me, can you tell me where Merrix Depot is?” Nickel called to a group of men in camo outfits, who ignored him. As they passed him, Nickel saw the audio-visual transmitters embedded into the sides of their temples, shaven and engraved by the circular blue-black metal device implanted into their skulls, filtering the audio-visual cortexes of their brains, rendering Nickel mute.
“Excuse me, sir, can you tell me where—”
“Get lost, kid!” shouted a woman he passed. Soon, there were so many people in the square, carrying Nickel’s footsteps in their currents, that he couldn’t see the boundaries of the street or where it ended. Nickel spun around, trying to re-center himself, get his bearings straight, but found himself endlessly disoriented.
How am I going to get home?
A wave of frenetic travelers, moving as a horde, swept by Nickel, pushing him aside into their ranks of onrushing yellow-robed men. Nickel found himself getting jostled around by the rushing people before he could better make out what they looked like. The yellow robes were glittering, soft, yet carrying gently enameled scales that were smooth to the touch. The robes were open at the neck to the chest in a long V-shape, showing the chests of men of varying complexions, their skin and hair often grazing Nickel.
Their voices were mutters and grunts, exasperated by Nickel, alarmed at his sudden introduction and interruption to the mix. Nickel shouted and tried to move out of the wave of men, pushing at their bodies and trying to run out of the crowd, only to find himself smacking back into other yellow-robed men whose bodies hurtled into him, sending him hurtling through the crowd.
“Get off me!” he screamed, pushing and kicking to no avail. He just kept getting tossed around, back and forth. The voices of the men got louder, more particular. The hard press of the men’s bodies against Nickel continued, an incessant pressing force of flapping robes and skin. The hard and often rough, blubbery skin of their chests skidded across Nickel’s face and his clothing. Often, bristling hair cut across his cheeks or his sides, disappearing as soon as it appeared. Nickel was getting smothered by the pressure of these men, and soon, by their touch. Their voices softened somewhat from agitation to curiosity as they grabbed at him, reached for him, and gently caressed him. The forces around Nickel started to engulf him. He was alarmed initially. But as the forces around him continued, the smothering he received began to take effect on him, causing him to become subdued by them. The men around him included young men, adolescent men around his age. They were caught in a strange trance, and their eyes were slightly bloodshot.
“Hi there,” many of them whispered in his ears. “Hi there. Hi there—” Adding on top of one another like layers upon layers of sonorant, husky voices, rasping with the timbre and baritone of manliness, but with a soft delicacy, a vulnerable invitation opening into a pleasurable ecstasy of embrace and feeling. The hands were no longer forceful but soft and caressing, a massage over his skin that made him feel warm and tingly. The bodies seemed to slow down. A pungent scent of sweet-sourness emanated from the men’s nostrils and open mouths. The smell wafted over Nickel, into and through him. The bodies slowed down, but they were all still moving. Nickel felt like he was being passed through and around the crowd, of his own volition and of others. They whispered in his ears, spreading rumors of a place called Hedonim and a new world where all boundaries would disappear.
Nickel reached out with his hands, caressing the men back. His fingers groped over their torsos, fingering their chest hair and massaging their skin. The scent of wafting minerals coming out of their mouths and nostrils was growing stronger, thicker. As Nickel inhaled the scents, the world became slower, and the people he was with came into sharper focus, even as they continued to walk. Nickel felt calmer every second. Freer than he’d felt in his hovercraft and freer than even when he was with the Thraíha. This wasn’t another vision, at least Nickel thought to himself, but he felt the boundaries closing on him in a way that was calming and introspective. For so much of his life, he had felt the stringent pressure of boundaries closing in on him—of prejudices and norms he’d felt at odds with, getting cut by. Here, he could be free. As the fumes entered his lungs, he felt the pressure of his life take a back seat in his consciousness. A lifting movement took hold of him, causing his head and mind to feel as if they were bobbing up in the air.
“Come with me,” whispered the voices.
“Come with us.”
“Be free of the Ether Wars.”
Nickel’s eyes widened, and for a moment, he felt a pinch of alarm rise through the ocean of calm he was wading through, like an object bobbing to the surface of the waters. What wars were they talking about? Nickel giggled, confused at the pinch of alarm now folding into his calm for a moment. How long had he been outside of the hovercraft? How long had it been? The men swept him away toward a giant altar that loomed over them from the right. Nickel watched the humongous statue emerge out of his drugged state of mind, out of his drug-addled vision to the left.
It was a giant statue of a series of balls, glued at each other’s sides.
“Be free of the Ether Wars,” came a loud baritone voice from audio speakers embedded into the sides of the giant balls. Out of the slight orange haze that covered the balls, Nickel came closer to them, spotting their pink marble statues. “Be free of the wars that plague your heart and soul.”
Nickel’s eyes widened, and for a moment, he felt a pinch of alarm rise through the ocean of calm he was wading through, like an object bobbing to the surface of the waters. What wars were they talking about? Nickel giggled, confused at the pinch of alarm now folding into his calm for a moment. How long had he been outside of the hovercraft? How long had it been?
G.R. Nanda 