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.
“Pilgrims to Hedonim come in all shapes and forms,” said the pre-recorded voice from the statue. “You’ve been hurt by the Ether Realms. It’s time for you to free yourselves from the fragmentations that you have instilled within yourselves. From the lives you’ve lived inside of the hovercrafts and screentubes. As the world is tearing itself apart by the neck through the Realms, you have come to be at peace and embrace the physical touch of others, of real people. Free yourself from the touch of the Realms and the segregation you have all known through the screens you’ve called your homes for so long.”
“Hmmmmm.”
“Mmmmmmm.”
The voices of many men murmuring together took hold as they all swayed gently to a soft ambient melody playing from the speakers. Nickel found himself swaying and murmuring as well. Lost all sense of self-consciousness. Dissolved. Not fragmented. A single force. A single world. No self to bind.
Statue. A marble ball. Heavy. Rotund. Shaped like water. Yet sculpted to match. A solid ball in the haze of steam and fog. Nuclear war or not. Hot springs or not. The ball was there. Still.
“The United Republic was said to hold together the last remnants of the United States of America, the last great empire of our land called Earth,” the voice from the balls’ speaker said. The sudden realization emerged: the balls were shaped and glued together as if they were a pair of testicles. “The creation of something new was supposed to withhold from the inevitable fall of a civilization. The United States of America as you knew them was meant to crash and burn two centuries ago in the 21st century. The United Republic was formed in the wake of its destruction to cement a sense of control on the part of the hegemonies that be and to invoke a sense of maintenance of identity on the part of citizens continent-wide. The United Republic is and always was a dupe.”
Lifting. Shapes. Words made into shapes. Shapes made into words. All they were. The hands of Nickel and of others wafted over him and his body like smells in the air, floating and wafting.
“Rejoice in the death of your dying Republic. It has denied you from the beginning, chastised you for enjoying what is only natural since the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. Now, in the year 2200, you will embrace each other in your arms—”
The arms of the bundled group closed in further on Nickel, pressing harder as they slid across each other’s skin.
“—as you make your way to Hedonim, the final installation of the world as it was meant to be. As the Ether Wars kill what’s left of the United Republic, desecrating the tomb of the United States of America, join me and your brothers as you set sail to the world of your desires, free of conflict and suffering.”
A loud grating sound echoed from under the street. The sonorous humming of murmurs from the men around Nickel lost the lilting constant timbre of their voices, turning uncertain, lower-pitched, quieter, as the ricocheting grating rumbled like a thundercloud, rising into the air and vibrating against the side of the cliff. The voices of the men subsided, becoming quieter. Nickel felt a tugging uncertainty, confused, rummaging against the torsos of the men around him, following their jerking movements along the napes of their necks and the ridges of their ribcages, sliding, moving away toward something.
“Rejoice,” hissed the loudspeaker, melting into the rising rumble before them. “Rejoice for the year twenty-two hundred, the year of completion………………… completion of the human project. Salvation has arrived in the form of no form. When you step into the vessel of the Covenant, you will enter a new paradise, of no rules, no boundaries, no Ether Realms to control you, or war with you.”
A shadow passed through the crowd like a wave of water rushing over the heads in the crowd before Nickel. He looked up as the slight mirage of shadowed coolness washed over his head. In its wake was a giant sphere, blotting out the murky light of the sky in its dark, overwhelming rak-steel body. A flash of light, a bright effulgence, flashed in the sky along the edge of the sphere at the top as it grazed the zenith of the swath of sunlight, emergent through the fog-addled afternoon sky. Gasps rang out through the crowd, quiet and subdued in awe of the enormity of the vessel as it was revealed to them, shrouding more and more of the Merrix Depot square they were in, blotting out the entirety of the sun.
“Rejoice, pilgrims, for your passage to Hedonim has finally brought you to it,” the speaker boomed, to murmurs and gasps of excitement rippling through the crowd. “Your labors bear fruit, and never will you see a day without harmony again.”
A square patch of the outer surface of the Covenant became alight, revealing that it hadn’t been another extension of the dark steel surfacing outside, but a window that instantly glowed to light.
In the window, against a glowing yellow background as warm and honeyed as the sun, was a beautiful woman in a purple jumpsuit. As the crowd reveled in her appearance, she gazed out at them, warm but with sullen eyes, unseeing. She appeared waxen, though her chest moved up and down, breaking with a heavily dilating face, up and down, as if she was about to start panting.
A gentle hush flowed through the crowd, punctuated by excited, unintelligible murmurs that barely rose above the squealing pressure of the vessel as it slowly finished its ascent along the side of the cliff. When the squealing died, it turned into a soft hiss, and the vessel came to a gentle pause. The woman began to undress. She fingered the collar of her steep V-neck, showcasing a shadowed collarbone and a shiny bosom, contoured by shadows darkening between her breasts.
The crowd rushed forth, growing more energized by the sight, which quickly became less visible to Nickel as more men around him pushed him aside, jostling their way forward. Eventually, their force became unavoidable, and Nickel found himself prodded along in his drugged state, the uncoordinated hands around him becoming spots of heat and pressure, lifting him up. As he moved through, partly of his own accord, partly not, the woman became clearer to him again, this time her bare skin revealed where her clothes had been. This was what he’d wanted all along, he thought. In the levitated state of his foggy, floating high, a smile broke across his face. This was what he had really wanted the whole time. He could finally drop the pretenses of survival, having found civilization again. Merrix Depot was populated with others just like him. In fact, they were swarming around him in a disorderly mass, all searching for real pleasure.
Ether screens and holograms—even the ephemeral visions of the singing sorceress—all enigmas, all out of reach. Before Nickel, another opening revealed itself, emerging from above the heads of the men bustling before him. Their frames hid much of the glowing interior, except for the alighted flesh still visible over the heads of the men, who rushed forward faster, carrying Nickel as if he were surfing a wave.
“Come to Hedonim,” the booming speaker said. “Enter the Covenant and find the realest pleasure you’ll ever experience on Earth—or any planet,” he added in a snarky, mischievous tone.
It was realer than real. Nickel had been trying to survive in the canyons. That’s what he thought had been moving him forward all this time. He was stranded and needed to escape to return. All the Thraíha lore and lifestyle were just a pit stop on the way to the final destination of Hedonim.
Moans echoed from the room revealed at the top of the Covenant. Looking up, Nickel saw the first woman he’d noticed, but now she was with a man, also unclothed, their bodies locked together at the hips. They rocked back and forth, holding each other, holding something real.
But was it real?
It was realer than the pleasures of flesh he’d seen simulated on his hovercraft screens. This was the real deal.
Once Nickel stepped aboard that ship before him, he’d never have to worry about getting a girlfriend—hell, he’d never have to worry about having a mate!
The rumbling of the men in the crowd grew quicker, more forceful, carrying Nickel with them like a fast current.
But was it real?
The thought flared in his mind again as the crowd surged forward. Nickel didn’t know if it was real. Was anything real? He didn’t want to go. I can’t go yet. What else would he do? His parents’ expected lifestyle? No thanks—especially when Hedonim and its fleshly delights lay before him. A ravenous hunger coursed through his body as the open gate of the orgy neared, revealing more of the naked bodies inside.
IS IT REAL?
Nickel gasped, unsure of where he was going. He frowned. I never stopped to think—am I actually leaving for Hedonim? What if this is just like the Death Riders? Am I about to get kidnapped?
IS THIS REAL?
The footsteps thundered around him. The smooth, pale skin of a woman’s back arched in the air, a cascade of flowing blonde hair rolling over her other side, its wispy strands drifting over her shoulder.
ARE YOU REAL?
Nickel mouthed the words, hoping for a response, hearing none. Now, more than one woman appeared, their bodies writhing together, different skin tones awash in a flashing pink light.
Nickel hungered for them. Every preconceived worry attacking his mind dissolved in the froth of the wave spilling over him. Yummy. No meal he’d ever had before was as appetizing as the fleshly feast before him. The isolation of his earliest years—eight, nine, ten, eleven—disappeared like a countdown to something else. His formative years flashed away. This was better than any Ether screen he had ever gazed at. The burgeoning anxiety of puberty—its throes of awakening, humiliation, hurt, and uncertainty—vanished in the bliss of wholeness awaiting him. The women were even closer, even more visible.
The blonde woman caught Nickel’s eye the most. Her body was slim but filled with a fullness of girth, muscle flowing over her abdomen, teasing the dark inlet of her navel, just peeking over the last row of heads walking toward her. Nothing Nickel had seen in the Ether compared to the pleasure of this experience. The foxy woman flicked her head, a wash of dirty blonde hair casting shadows over her petite collarbones, sending inky streaks into the folds of her skin, depressed by the tautness of her toned body.
Below her dark eyebrows, almond-shaped green eyes gazed over the crowd, seeming to catch Nickel’s. When they did, she parted her lips slightly and looked up at him, slowly raising her leaning torso from a surface beyond the gates. A bubbling energy surged through Nickel’s chest, shooting from his groin. As a light ray from inside the room of women shifted, the blonde woman’s eyes changed against the light, shifting from green to blue.
Like the image of the idealized late-20th-century American woman Nickel had seen in the museum on Colony 5 during his STEM school field trip—blonde-haired, blue-eyed.
AM I REAL?
That was a media course he’d taken as part of the program, preparing him for the Ether Realms Media Production. Media. The domain that had overtaken not just the United States but the false United Republic. He had learned how to create the most powerful element of the Ether Realms—and of the world—the imaginary. This yellow-haired, pale-skinned, blue-eyed beauty before him wasn’t supposed to be real. She was a manufactured fixture of 20th- and early 21st-century pop art and culture—an ideal. But Nickel could see the light of the ship’s interior casting shifting halos over her glistening, moving, breathing skin. She was so close that, if he were just a few feet nearer, he could have touched her.
If this idealized, imaginary figure was real, then was she looking at a dark-skinned, black-haired, brown-eyed teenage boy in a tattered Thraíha tunic who was also not real?
Was he not real? What was real… in this world where the mind’s eye was stolen by screens? Nickel looked down, raising his hands, flicking his palm up and down, studying them, slowing the movement of his legs despite the frenetic feet of the other men. Nickel had lived with the Ether for so long that he didn’t know if he could trust what he saw.
Was Nickel real?
Nickel cried out in horror, flinging his arms out, accidentally striking some of the men around him. His breathing turned rapid, his chest rising and falling in unrelenting moans. Tears edged his eyes, blurring his vision, marring the exquisite image before him—closer than ever. His hands started shaking. It felt like the whole world was vibrating, the edges buzzing in and out of focus.
Was it all a joke? All the humiliation and pain? The isolation and suffering? Even the feelings of superiority he’d been granted by his parents in the past? The doomed plains of Atalantia? The struggle? The adventure? Was it all for nothing? The illusions of a life meant to amuse some unknown creator, as transparent as a holographic avatar?
Nickel broke into a sob, his heightened senses amplifying the anguish and tears, ever-flowing. The image of beautiful, naked women blurred into a garish wash of colors and burning light. He hated it—hated how pathetic he felt hobbling toward these women, like they were life preservers for a drowning man. But he wasn’t drowning.
Nickel squeezed his eyes shut, gritting his teeth, his anguish boiling into screams of anger. He hadn’t come this far in the Atalantia Canyons just to drown.
I AM REAL!
He clenched his eyes tighter, twisted his body to the side, and shoved into the mass of men, trying to break free.
Agitated cries and rough swats of hands assaulted him, but he pushed past them. “You are not your thoughts,” Rishi’s voice echoed in his mind. “You are the only observer you can be—a human.” Nickel knew he was real—he wasn’t the illusion. It was his thoughts that had been the illusion all along.
Like Mother Hawk had said, “The acht-chi of the fog summons what you summon, whether you think you are summoning or not. The only way to the mastery of a King-Ho Thraíha master is to let go. When you accept, you can use the fog.”
Nickel pushed through the men as if they were tendrils of orange fog, ignoring their protests. His chest jittered, the helpless horror inside him turning into an almost mindless elation—a more terrifying feeling. For once, the canyons no longer seemed so foreign. He’d treated his hovercraft as an unfortunate refuge from the canyons, his only link to the real world he was so desperate for yet terrified to return to. Bound by the expectations of his parents and the education he had left behind.
As he broke free from the crowd, sprinting into the swaths of fog pushed by new winds, the heart of Merrix Depot faded behind him. He ran into a new education—the unknown world—racing into him, and him racing headfirst into it.
G.R. Nanda 