G.R. Nanda

2200 Blues Chapter 67

The concave walls of the dropship trembled with the friction of the howling atmosphere, sending tremors that rattled the exit pad. The men of the Eighty-Fifth Infantry were locked in their gear, their armor covering their entire bodies in large white and gray plates. They hung with grips from the rungs where the hangar walls curved into the roof. The shifting pink light filtered through the rectangular window in the middle of the roof, the beams of light gyrating with the movement of the atmosphere whipping past the dropship as it bulleted through the polluted heavens.

The shifting light illuminated the soldiers. Their helmets were black visors above a circular gas filtration unit—an advanced gas-filtration combat helmet. They had to be prepared for the radiation of the Atalantia Canyons. Their suits were studded with blocky gray plates over white joint pads. On their backs were laser rifles, locked into charging holsters attached to the backs of their suits.

They waited in silence for the intercom transmission from their mission commander.

“Air should be turning orange… any second now…” said a soldier in the middle of the right row, looking up through the window of shifting light—ebbing, flowing, ebbing, flowing. A few of his comrades leaned slightly to glance at him before peering up at the window. Instead, the light deepened into darkness as the dropship ruptured a thick cloud, the pinkish glow fading to a bloody red through the density of the new cloud impasse.

“Attention!” came the dull but crisply loud voice of the mission commander through the faint hum of the intercom, blasting his slightly muffled but distinct words through the circular loudspeakers embedded around the walls near the ceiling. While the commander’s voice was clear, it was softened by shock-proof casing. Like everything—and everyone—in this room, it was prepared and proofed for violence of the most extreme.

The soldiers raised their heads in reverence and attention, aiming to catch every word.

“You are about to enter the drop zone!” the commander announced. “The target has been identified, and you are to be unloaded within close proximity. Check the hangar display for a quick rundown of key diagnostics collected from transmission sonar.”

A bright blue flash of light washed over the hangar from the rear, shifting the soldiers’ gaze to a large flatscreen unveiled by a rising access panel that softly whirred as it slid into the curvature of the ceiling.

The screen stayed blue for a few seconds before a series of bullet points in white font flashed onto it in the span of a blink, as if the glaring white letters had been there the whole time.

The dropship continued descending, clanking against the air.

“The target area has a much higher population density and more sophisticated organization than previously estimated,” the commander intoned, his voice blaring over the ruckus of descent. “Life detection and radiologics from sonar indicate a Type B civilization with moderate to low technological capabilities. Stand by and prepare for a rank-and-file unilateral city invasion.”

“Damn,” came the soft, electronically muffled mutter of a soldier through his helmet as he and a couple of others exchanged surprised glances.

The bullet points on the screen disappeared, replaced by a new set under the heading:

Target Chain of Activity:

Smuggling network
Clustered in Merrix Depot

Human Targets:

Mynar Sidvak – Leader of commercial operations
Nixon Feel – Head of smuggling operations
Kevin Ronk – Mediary of cartel groups

“You will be fed general demographic and physical information about each target based on satellite compromise. We are looking at an entire city of canyon squatters. Reconnaissance sonar has discovered that, over primitive communication channels, the city is called Merrix Depot. Merrix reportedly hosts at least two million people at any given moment.”

“Jesus Christ,” muttered the same soldier as before, shaking his head at his comrades in disbelief.

“We’ve detected a near-constant stream of people and goods moving in and out,” the commander continued. “In the last week, there has been an anomaly—a continuous procession of people clustering in large plazas in Merrix and moving together through and out of the city toward Hedonim.”

“Are they trying to get caught?” the same soldier jeered.

“The uniformity of their clothing, chanting, and synchronized movements suggest that this is a religious group,” the commander went on. “Their movements have sharply increased smuggling activities, concentrated in Merrix’s main plaza. This religious procession is occurring out in the open, bringing key smuggling vectors well into sonar’s view.”

The screen changed again. Geographic markers appeared, highlighting hot spots in red circles.

“Thanks to this new religion, we’ve identified critical targets to Merrix commerce. These are your new targets for a unilateral assault.”

“Reconnaissance has already mapped out new coordinates for you. Turn on Heads-Up Displays to see them. I’m leaving it to Lieutenant Roger.”

The information on the screen disappeared, and the blue screen flashed out in the span of an eye-blink.

“Soldiers!” boomed the voice of the commander as the darkened screen’s access panel slid down from the ceiling with a long whine. “Today, history will be made on the side of the United Republic!” He seemed to spit out his last words in a frothing scream. “The security of the Ether, the United Republic, and the whole world depends on this mission.”

“Long live the United Republic and long live Realm Five!” roared the commander over the intercom.

“Hut!” drilled all of the soldiers, standing straight against the wall. They bent at the chest with a fist, holding their right arms diagonally against their torsos. “Hut! Hut! Hoo!” they intoned before a final smack of their fists against their chests and the screaming bout of Lieutenant Roger.

“File up! File up!” he screamed, breaking chest salute, removing his arm from the handhold, and marching toward the center of the room, violently whipping his hands through the air to move them forward. “Move your ASSES!”

A shrill buzzing siren ruptured the air, dulling Roger’s ordering voice. It was the buzzer announcing the opening of the drop hatch.

As the soldiers lined up in their drop-flank, a rumbling whine and creak of gears hissed through the floor as the large square platform of the drop pad formed a depression, sinking into the floor while the motors whirred against the inner walls. Roger continued screaming, pacing around the newly formed border of soldiers standing at attention around the drop hatch as its sunken platform slowly slid into the ship, unleashing a fury of howling wind—almost loud enough to overtake the intermittent sound of the buzzer.

The dropship had broken through the dark cloud impasse, and rays of clear light filtered through the domed window overhead, illuminating the torrents of churning fog below, its starkly inhuman, polluted color.

The lieutenant’s flight stabilizers switched on, causing his boots to weigh and cling more securely to the ship, gripping the surface via pressurized pumps spitting exhaust into the air, compressing the magnetic cleats he had stepped into. As he walked around, he tapped each soldier, ushering them to step over the rim of the opened drop hatch, lightly slipping over and down through the opening. Moving clockwise, each soldier received a firm pat on the shoulder and jumped off, vanishing into the fog of Atalantia—killer bunnies, militarized and armored to the teeth, dropping like fallen angels, demons summoned from hell, plummeting through the heavens.

Finally, the lieutenant stood at the rim of the hatch where the soldiers had stood, switched off his boots’ pressurizers, and kicked off his magnetic cleats, letting them tumble down the hatch, disappearing. Then, he hopped over, jumping higher than any of his comrades, betraying a bunny-like glee and frenetic locomotion in the bounding twist of his knees and lilting of his chest.

He disappeared through the hatch, his head cocked downward, leaving behind the empty skeleton of a dropship—its last organs expelled, the screaming wind pouring through the dead heart of a nightmare’s vessel, a harbinger of death.

2200 Blues Chapter 66

As Nickel entered the warmer air of the inn, a shiver ran over his scalp, slithering down his spine. Despite the musty heat of the inn’s gray-walled room, the sign of the ranch outside still sent a grave chill through him.

There was a group of men in large cowboy hats hovering around the front desk, haggling with an innkeeper who was speaking in frantic bursts, his stubby hands moving as furiously as his words in response to the taller, bigger men around him.

Beside Nickel, the throng of weary travelers moved through, mumbling quietly as they headed toward another innkeeper who guarded the entrance to a brighter-lit hallway—likely leading to the residential rooms.

Reserved and stooped over, people sat by the bar and the small diner area beyond the front desk.

The chill running over Nickel’s scalp turned into a queasiness the further he walked into the inn. He paused, perusing the inhabitants more closely, a growing suspicion gnawing at him. He was uncertain of his whereabouts, of the motives and worldviews of the people inside—both seen and unseen.

AND FUCK YOU IF YOU VOTED FOR HIM!

The words from the sign outside hung in his mind like a specter, shadowing his perception with fear.

“Where are you coming from, boy?”

Nickel almost didn’t notice the pasty man with bulging skin spilling out of a stained gray smock and apron, standing just to his left, barely behind him. Following the man’s craggy voice, Nickel met his eyes. He gulped but responded quickly.

“I’m from Merrix Depot,” Nickel said, furrowing his brows to feign resolve. He wondered what this man—or the others—would think of the Thraíha, but he wasn’t curious enough to find out.

The man’s brow pressed together, folding his blubbery skin and the scant wisps of hair on his forehead.

“Merrix Depot,” he rumbled through puckered lips. A woman with long brown hair pushed past him, carrying trays of food scraps over her head. “This is Merrix Depot,” he said. “Where were you before Merrix Depot, eh?”

“Uh—I don’t remember,” Nickel muttered. “I’ve been here my whole life.”

“Errrrr, Leuvisia!” the man called, twisting his torso to crane his neck behind him. “Come deal with this one. Looks like we’ve got another foreigner who can’t speak.”

The woman with long brown hair whisked her head to glance at him before returning her attention to the tray of food she carried. She stooped over an opening in the wall where a dish rack lay.

Leuvisia! the man called again. “Come here! I can’t deal with any more of these foreigners coming through.” He started toward her. “Hurry up!” he grated, coughing.

“Just a second,” she cooed from the back of the room.

“Hhhugh,” the smocked man rumbled once more. He turned his back on Nickel. “Understaffed—understaffed. What does it matter anyway, when everyone gets scared off by the farms…”

He walked away as the woman approached Nickel, asking him strange questions about his original language and what work he was here to do. Nickel remained vigilant, leaving most of her questions unanswered. When she asked if he was here for brickwork at the border between Merrix and the Wicked Woodlands, he said yes. When she pressed for more details, he pretended not to understand.

Eventually, she led him to a table where he was to be seated with residents of his assigned hall.

When he sat down, a bear of a man with a face crowded by a prodigious beard was seated across from him. A large hat and a hood concealed most of his features, save for the small dark pits of eyes warped through the grimy glass of a dark drink that he held by his face.

Nickel rummaged through Rishi’s sack, finding a thick pouch jingling with the firm, pocking edges and rims of coins. He sighed in relief. He would get to eat, after all. The relieved understanding was followed by a growing awareness of the hunger pangs gnawing at his stomach.

The same brown-haired woman returned, carrying a steaming tray of their starter meal. More men joined around the table, yapping amongst themselves, peering at and flirting with the woman—who ignored them. Her face had remained sullen the whole time, even when interacting with Nickel earlier. Her eyes carried a strange silvery glint, an almost glossed-metallic sheen that flickered under the dim, grimy yellow bulbs overhead. Her eyes reminded Nickel of the wares-seller he had spoken to briefly before entering the inn. But he never got a good enough look to study them, due to her fleeting appearances, the dim light of the room, and his own reluctance to meet her gaze for too long.

This place gave him the jitters, and he felt more comfortable keeping his head down, like the boorish man sitting across from him—still sipping from his large glass, still silent and reserved, leaving the large shared platter of food untouched.

The food’s warm, steaming aroma carried a salty touch that added an enticing contrast to the dusty, grime-filled mustiness of the inn.

Nickel stabbed at a bowl of dried fish, cutting into the caked, roasted flesh, through the flimsy bones of its ribcage. A cluster of murmurings and scraping chairs grew louder toward the rear of the diner, near the bar. Nickel looked up from his food, over the shoulders of the men sitting next to him, around their table, at a set of travelers perched on barstools. They were watching a large holo-screen projector, where a holographic newscaster walked across the holo-stage, using her fingers to pinch and zoom into the three-dimensional background behind her. The simulated imagery was splayed out from the back of the bar, next to the glass cupboards, drinks, and supplies.

Heads obstructed Nickel’s view of the News Deck, making it hard to see from where he sat, but he could still make out the flickering halos of violently shifting light and color. The background elements kept shifting, and the newscaster maneuvered the simulation with her hand, calibrating its movements to be as steady as possible. But there was only so much she could do for a shaky, handheld-recorded video—which was why the three-dimensional background proved useful. If only Nickel could see what was happening in it.

A red rectangle materialized from the back of the Holo-Deck, expanding as it moved forward to station itself at the bottom, merging with the newscaster’s legs. Words in all capital letters flowed across the rectangle.

Nickel wouldn’t stand up and walk to the Deck—he wouldn’t risk drawing more attention to himself. But he managed to make out three words:

IT., SOUTHSHORE, and RIOT

As more people joined the barstools or hovered around, the Holo-Deck became more obscured. The voices of the people originally seated at the bar hushed at the arrival of strangers, allowing the electronically configured flatness of the newscaster’s voice to drift further into the diner, making its way to Nickel’s ears:

“……………..with the election coming up, the Realms are coming outside more and more, leaving the Ether for the streets as pressure mounts to define the course of the next century……” The Deck was designed to project her voice into the room, filling it like a real person’s would, but the volume synthesizer adjusted dynamically based on the space of the room. Her voice quickly became muffled by the travelers huddling around the bar, breaking and interspersing among groups who knew each other and those who didn’t.

“……….while video footage is limited, the two-hour recording behind me has proven to us all that what the President claimed were just trolls threatening to create a new Ether Realm have shown that they can mobilize and stay true to their word…….”

A new holographic avatar appeared—an older, wrinkled woman being interviewed by the newscaster. Their voices sounded real, except for the nasally electronic twang filtered through the digital transmission. The men seated around Nickel grew louder, laughing and shouting at one another, overtaking the interview on the Deck.

Clacking footsteps behind him and the looming shadow of a tray announced the reappearance of the waitress. She asked if anyone was finished with their food. The men seated to Nickel’s left flirted with her, one of them calling her “sweetie” as she repeated her question about the trays in a cold, indifferent manner.

Nickel wasn’t done eating, so he kept his trays before him. The boorish man seated across from him handed his tray to the woman without so much as looking at her, then asked for another meal.

“Eh, hungry eyes,” one of the men jeered. “Haven’t had enough to eat?” He jostled the man beside him in the ribs.

“Shut it!” the man snapped before his friend could say more.

When the waitress asked for payments, Nickel offered her coins from Rishi’s pouch.

“Sorry, sir, we only accept digi-cash,” the waitress said, shaking her head.

Nickel looked around, mouth slightly ajar in surprise. He’d just barely started eating and had already checked in for the night.

“You can’t transfer the cash?” he asked, jostling the coins in his palm.

“No, sir. If you can’t make a payment in the next five minutes, I’m going to have to report you to Merrix Deputy.”

Many eyes in the diner turned toward Nickel, catching him off guard. This was a much bigger deal in Merrix than he had thought. Everyone at his table was watching him, anticipating his next move. Even the boorish man had looked up from his food, studying Nickel with small, pitted eyes.

“Pay up, kid,” came the grumbling voice of the smocked man from earlier. He emerged from the kitchen to the left, wiping his hands with a white cloth. His face beamed with sweat. He scowled. “Trust me, you don’t want an arrest warrant on your head… so pay up!”

“………….Finneban has promised to reward those who are willing to create a new Realm…………” The drifting voice of the newscaster became audible once again, save for a few seconds of hushed whispers and mutters.

Nickel sighed, closing his eyes and raising his brows in consternation, prolonging the moment before admitting that he didn’t have a digi-card and couldn’t pay.

A wooden chair creaked from the far corner of the diner behind Nickel, followed by a heavy rustling of thick clothes and a clinking of chains. The rustling softened, and heavy, padded footsteps approached.

Nickel turned to see a large figure with a strong, bearded face, shrouded by a wide-brimmed cowboy hat. The man pulled a card from his trench coat and placed it on the table, pushing it toward the waitress’s checkbook with a large, knotted, callused hand.

“No need for a commotion,” the man said in a cool, gravelly voice. “I’ve got the kid covered.”

Nickel looked up at the man, too flabbergasted to thank him. The man met Nickel’s gaze and smiled, giving him a wink.

“Don’t worry about it, kid,” he muttered, just loud enough for those at the table to hear. “I’m a friend of Steve’s.”

2200 Blues Chapter 65

Nickel shivered like he was in a tundra. Although, he couldn’t tell whether his tremors were from the flights of cold settling in or if the unsettling news was playing a part as well. Somehow, the world and its discontents were even more unnerving without the Ether to inundate him with its information.

Why didn’t I follow Rishi? Nickel thought, sighing. He couldn’t make sense of where he was heading, but somehow, that was both liberating and terrifying. He’d just found out that the canyons weren’t as free of the Ether as he had thought. He had passed a swarm of Ether farms overhead above Merrix on his way to the shopkeepers’ square. One of those farms was releasing Finneban campaign satellites, which meant he’d probably become the nominee of Realm Eight. If they’d pushed him to the Elector Ring, then he would be a final candidate to go up against Rixen, the president who had defeated Finneban thanks to cybernetic implants that decelerated his senile aging faculties.

Before Nickel had left the Academy on his hovercraft, he’d been told that the Ether Wars were just a legend—that they’d never happen. Their prospects had been destroyed and defeated alongside Finneban’s political ambitions. But really, the Ether Wars had been going on the whole time, brewing, until they were about to cascade.

Nickel tried not to think as he looked for Apple’s Inn. He was following the instructions of an old woman he had seen outside a mystic’s shop. He’d asked her about any places he could stay, and she had proffered Apple’s Inn.

“You looking to buy some wares?” came a crooning voice.

It was an old man standing by the side of a vendor next to the block of squat tenant buildings that Nickel passed. His voice caught Nickel by surprise, stopping him in his tracks.

The man wore strange visors over his seamed, hairless face. They were darkly tinted, but occasional sparks of yellow light shot across his lenses like polka dots, coming and going.

“No, sir,” Nickel said, waving his hand as if to shoo him away, but dropping it and leaning closer to ask a question:

“Excuse me, do you happen to know where Apple’s Inn is?”

“Oh, you won’t get any cyber-wares there,” the strange man said. He wore long faded purple overalls shot through with embedded silicon strips. The table at the vendor before him was filled with strange crystalline objects embedded with electronic equipment. “I have the best around—oh!”

His face lit up, nearly jostling his visors off as he ducked underneath and popped back up, holding a headset inlaid with a light strip so dark and purple that it looked like a tube of liquid encircling the headgear. “You’ll never miss a night of sleep with these trinkets,” he said, spinning the rizzler-cups embedded in the earmuffs. “Melatonin-enhancing membrane. You’ll be fast asleep over there—”

“There?” Nickel exclaimed, looking around. “—Where?”

“If you want a good night’s rest in the inns—”

Over the heads of a stream of huddled people pouring into an open doorway, a large sign read:

APPLE’S INN

No dogs, cats, lizards or

ANDROIDS

Permitted entry!

Ignoring the continued stream of words from the seller’s mouth, Nickel adjusted the straps of Rishi’s sack over his shoulders and bounded for the inn.

He turned back to look over his shoulder, shouting,

“I’ll be back! I like those mufflers! I’ll come back and buy them!”

As he bounded up the incline of the street, toward the growing crowd, it came into greater focus, revealing the headsets with glowing tabs strapped over the heads of a throng of people in large trench coats. Jacked in. This was where the Ether was on the ground level. Without the hovercrafts, people wore them.

As Nickel slipped into the crowd, the stench of grime and sweat overwhelmed him, emanating from the weary travelers. Dulled mutterings and conversations swarmed around him. Their softer voices indicated that they were in a hurry to get inside.

As Nickel walked underneath the large sign of the inn, a ranch building across the end of the street next to the inn caught his attention. Spangled over its right side were large banners that read:

FINNEBAN

2201

MAKE EARTH GREAT AGAIN!

On the front-facing side of the ranch, facing the street and every pedestrian and traveler on it, was another banner, just as large, with its font big enough for everyone present to read:

FUCK

RIXEN

AND FUCK YOU IF YOU VOTED FOR HIM!

2200 Blues Chapter 64

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.

It was the sound of chirping women dressed in faded coveralls, wearing darkly tinted visors under the tattered brown canopies of fabric beneath the Bay roof of a vending station that finally convinced Nickel he’d run far enough from the hedonistic pilgrims. He doubled over as he hobbled onto a sidewalk next to a large squat building beside the vendors. He stooped over, placing his palms on his knees, panting—catching his breath.

The adrenaline, the screaming of his legs, the rapid intake and exhale of breath, the desperate need for rest—it was delicious. A soothing, cool drink against the inevitable confusion and overwhelm at where he had arrived, both physically and mentally. He’d forked out on his own, traveling alone. No Rishi, Thraíha, or Steve to guide him. He’d also let go of Hedonim and the burden of many troubles he had carried.

Nickel coughed, raising his fist to clear his throat. His eyes stung from the disorienting foggy streetscapes. He didn’t want to think. He’d been feeling a freedom and release of abandon, but he could sense the anxious creep of uncertainty. Without Hedonim, where else was there to go? What was there to do?

The chirping of the women suddenly faded. A whirring overhead cut his attention away from the ground. When he looked up, he saw a small, oval-shaped vessel passing above him. It was rusted, and certain shafts surrounding its body were broken, torn asunder at the edges. Yet it was decked with bright, multi-colored bulbous lights across its frame, like a festive holiday. The lights flickered in a sporadic array, flashing specific colors at specific times in a sequential order.

Nickel smiled, letting out a laugh as he squinted at the vehicle looming over the street. Maybe the canyons weren’t such a bad place to be. It was teeming with more life than he had assumed. These places seemed unbound by the limitations and boundaries of the Ether Realms’ camps. Clearly, life—and cultures like the Thraíha—existed outside the constrained norms of the Realms. Nickel wondered if he could pick and choose the lifestyles and relationships with technology he encountered in Atalantia. Instead of trying to fit into the camps and Realms fighting for control of the Ether, he could travel the canyons, meeting new people and cultures, choosing which ones he wanted to adopt or live with. But then again, there were the Death Riders. How many more people like them lurked in Atalantia?

The air cooled as a long shadow passed over Nickel, darkening his part of the street as the vessel drifted past him. He continued squinting at it, noticing grids and protruding spindles but no visible apertures or windows for a clear-eyed pilot. Nickel frowned, watching it leave. Was it a hovercraft piloted by someone inside, or a satellite? A remnant probe like the one over the Thraíha temple, languishing in the air, left over from the days before the nuclear fallout? Or was it a satellite designed to spy on whoever had traveled this far into the canyons of Atalantia, this close to Hedonim?

Nickel shivered, his merriment at the festivity fading into unease. The faceless nature of the flying vessel unsettled him. Was it designed to instill fear in wanderers like him?

Nickel trudged along, lowering his head. The earth still sparkled along the cracked ridges, bumps, and crevices under the glow of streetlights and the fog’s illumination. Frowning, he looked up at the sky. Sprinkles of glowing light speckled the vast darkness. The contours of high-rises and additional layers of buildings around him became more visible. More satellites floated down toward the earth, smaller than the vessel from before. One clanked against the side of a building, tipping over and scuttling along the surface of a window, which was largely obscured by fog.

Muffled shouting echoed from behind the window, high above. The window scraped open, and the muzzle of a rifle slid through, emitting a flash of fiery yellow light. A thin laser beam struck the circular satellite, sending it careening toward Nickel.

“Who’d you shoot?” came a woman’s hoarse voice from the window, followed by muffled footsteps.

“Not who!” shouted a man. The muzzle of his gun disappeared behind the window. “It’s another fucking satellite!”

“From the Ether farms?” the woman’s voice returned.

“I thought the firewall would work,” the man said, his gun buzzing with the sound of a reloaded cartridge. “It’s these damn Finneban trolls…” His voice faded along with the woman’s.

The shot satellite wobbled in the air, its lights flickering and sparking out. Nickel stopped walking, watching it teeter through the sky. The area of impact was charred, warped metal encircling the damage. It screeched as it spun erratically, a dangerously volatile object spiraling out of control.

Nickel ducked as the satellite hurtled toward him, plummeting before suddenly swiveling left. He staggered back, nearly falling on his rear. He turned to run before the satellite finally crashed into the ground, spinning manically as it did.

The fizzling noises of its electronic equipment shorted out entirely, and the satellite fell silent.

Nickel ran to the fallen satellite. No flickering lights remained, but the rear compartment emitted a thin trail of smoke into the air.

Nickel kicked at it, flipping it onto its other side, then darted back in quick, frantic steps. He wasn’t going to touch the thing with his hands.

A logo with emblazoned words was spangled across the front. Walking closer, Nickel finally read what was on it. Emblazoned in large, thickly sized letters, it said:

FINNEBAN

2201

Below that, in slightly smaller yet still imposing letters, it read:

JOIN THE ETHER WARS!

TAKE BACK THE REALMS!

AND MAKE EARTH GREAT AGAIN!

2200 Blues Chapter 63

“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.

2200 Blues Chapter 62

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.”

2200 Blues Chapter 61

This is a re-upload of a previously published chapter that was mistakenly published before Chapter 60 instead of after it.

The sounds of a bustling city emerged to Nickel, but in broken fragments. Of a city in disrepair and abandonment maintaining itself. Coarse voices of maintenance workers appeared from afar, around the rim of the cliff and the Merrix Depot building high above. Clanking machinery echoed from disparate locations around the cliffs and canyons, interrupted or concealed by the bubbling geysers.

Nickel had walked over the land from Rishi’s fireplace, warily looking out for hot springs of water, many of which he had to walk around, keeping a wide perimeter to protect himself out of fear. The land coalesced together the closer he got to the cliff. He had no idea how he would reach above toward the cliff, at least not yet. The clumps of earth folded and stitched together in rising folds ahead of him the further he moved. The lines of people walking across the valley between two rising mounds of rock beyond the Depot’s cliff remained enigmatic, a broken haze. The closer he moved, the more details he could make out—clothes, colors, the occasional facial appearance and marker—but all fleeting, and many hard to distinguish in the ever-luminescent sheen of the steam that coated the earth, especially the farther ahead Nickel could see. He was separated from them by a hot spring of steaming water, among a long stretch of earth that rose and fell in many bumps and rises of rock and dried grass.

It was the grass that confused him the most. The first he had really seen in the Atalantia Canyons since crashing here. He warily, but eagerly, moved toward it, looking for more markers of civilization, of the U.R. He didn’t know where, what country had created Hedonim and the settlements around it, but this area he traversed was the closest he could find to the world he had left behind on his hovercraft. But it was incomplete, stranded in many different locations and situations across the rock, separated by what appeared to be miles of squares of nuclear blast zones.

The closer he walked, the harder it became for him to tell whether or not the land and the apparent city or town—or remnants of one—he was walking through had been ruined by a nuclear power plant accident or a series of fiery hot springs, rupturing the world in water, steam, and heat. What buildings remained appeared to be insulated from the hot springs and their gaseous eruptions. The pinpricks and occasional blobs of buildings appeared broken in clumps, cleaved and shaved, but insulated by withered blocks of walls and granite, set up like blocks or dominoes.

“Excuse me, sir,” croaked a strange old voice.

Nickel whirled around, startled. He jumped back a few feet from a hobbling old man, stooped over, who was walking around a series of chopped-off cinder blocks from around the bend of a cave that was inset into a larger wall of rock.

“Excuse me, don’t mean to bother you, sir,” the man croaked out of dried, chapping lips that stretched wide over his mouth. His dark, seamed face was worn with what looked like burn marks and patches of dried, withered skin or blisters. He was covered in a tattered, stained winter coat and waddled in broken, shuffling steps toward Nickel in long, baggy brown pants. Nickel could barely see the old man’s feet through the long fringes of his pants that dragged against the ground, like he was dragging his feet across the earth. “Don’t mean to bother you, sir,” he repeated, keeping his head stooped, only his kinky gray hair facing Nickel’s eyes.

Nickel clasped the bag of food and supplies he carried on his back from Rishi’s fireplace. He watched the old man, a mixture of sympathy and fear intermingling in him. He was afraid of this stranger trying to hurt him or steal from him, but he also felt slightly ashamed that this was his initial reaction.

“Can you spare some digits, young man, sir?” the old man said, hobbling over to him, raising his head to peer into Nickel’s eyes with his own. His eyes were a glassy gray, his irises barely visible through the film. He was a digi-hit junkie. His eye-film was that of those so addicted to Ether Installations that they bought eye-films to withstand the strain of the screens’ glare. The old man came closer, pulling a money transceiver out of his pocket. “I can pay you back… I-I-I, I just need to buy some food and a blanket to sleep. I haven’t eaten today.”

Nickel watched the man, unnerved by him and the situation he had put himself in. The man watched Nickel with a pleading, dried expression. It was a ritual for him. His expression and his motions seemed ritualistic to Nickel, like he was following motions set forth by habit and desperation, yielding nothing more than the potential for fruit.

Nickel inched backward, afraid of him. After the Death Riders, Nickel was increasingly wary of strangers. The man hovered by for a while, whispering something.

“If not today, then tomorrow for Hedonim… if I can find it,” the old man husked before he hobbled off, turning around and walking back toward the cave and the hobbled pavement of a street that used to exist there.

Nickel watched him disappear, shaken. He suddenly had the desire to ask the man if he knew a way to Hedonim or people who might, but by then it was too late. And Nickel didn’t know if he would have done so anyway.

Nickel watched for him a while after the old homeless man disappeared, not seeing him. He turned around, feeling a greater weight of apprehension, fear, and uncertainty as he continued his trek into this lost city. He was afraid of what others he would meet would expect of him and why—or whether they would be accepting of him. More desperate homeless people Nickel was too desperate himself to be able to help? More thugs? Or people who mistook him for an artificial human? Or suspected him of being one? He had no idea where he was and no idea whether or not the people he met believed in the same eugenicist ideas he’d run into on his U.R. colony.

Oh, how he wished Steve was here with him. A great sadness filled Nickel’s chest, unsure of himself and his whereabouts. If only he hadn’t fought with him. For all his faults, Steve was a nice person who did take care of Nickel when they were together. A large metal structure sticking out of the ground interrupted Nickel’s slow walk, capturing his attention out of the corner of his eye.

Looking up, he saw that it was a lopsided, dilapidated sign sticking out of a mound of dried earth filled with inlets of grass and plant life. The sign was half-buried in the ground, and it looked like grass, dirt, scarce plant life, and mounds of rock had grown around it. The rim of the sign was filled with electronic lights and colors that were dead—just sacs of liquid color held together along the rim with no lights to flash. The sign had words on them, with the last few letters buried, but Nickel could easily make out the whole picture:

THIS WAY TO HEDONIM

Along the bottom of the sign, Nickel could make out a few more words:

Unnerved, Nickel walked up the rising earth to the side of his path, looking around at the sign, finding nothing more than rust and pocketed holes inlaid into the surface. His heart beat fast, and he jogged down the side of the earth, continuing his walk, breaking his slow strut into a brisk run, toward the side of the cliff where Merrix Depot lay.

Maple Tree

Embalmed and enameled

By a century of fissures,

Snaking tendrils reaching up

To the sky, uprooting the earth

A chainmail of ridges

Encrusted by bark like veins,

Frozen by time,

Contours of tentacles,

Revealed by sun-shine,

Planting “samaras” by the waves of palmakes,

Shaped like maple

For a century at a time,

A nation underfoot,

The city swarming ahead,

Unperturbed the ancient tree speaks,

In silent, sullen whispers of

Rustling leaves, and imaginary

Bulbs, budding with each breath, coming to life

At the touch of the rough-hewn, and

Coursed, tree-bark, racing to the sky

2200 Blues Chapter 60

Nickel stared up at a wide open space. His eyes closed again. Red. Blue. A sun. He saw them wide open before his eyes, splayed out like clumps of cotton candy smushed together in a trash can after a carnival.

But now his eyes were closed. He was livid, waiting for someone to say something to him.

Instead, he only heard a soft, gentle smoldering—unrelenting, undisturbed. It was so soft, it didn’t seem to withhold the air that was gently crackling near him.

Nickel gently groaned, turning over to the side, his eyes opening a crack before he closed them again. He sighed, feeling his chest heave like it was relieving a stitch. With every inhale and exhale, his chest rose and fell, loosening the knot of weight inside it.

Oracle. Where was she? Was it her pot of stew that he could hear? What time was it? Were the Thraíha back from their hunting yet? It was too soon in the day to be cooking stew—unless it was the Oracle’s for another acht-chi meditation.

Nickel breathed sharply again, inhaling deeply, smelling embers like none he’d ever interacted with before. He exhaled sharply, opening his eyes, embracing the release. Opposite him, opposite the fire, was Rishi, standing as still as a tree, observing the long, shocking white flames in a still trance. Nickel was far away from the Thraíha, but he was also far away from Steve and Farrul. How far away from Hedonim?

He wanted to leave the canyons. He was now in a new part of the canyons. The rock expanding around him was flatter than what he’d experienced before. The fog was lighter and more distant, a shroud on the horizon encircling the rock basin they were in. The rock below the fire was smoother, but of an encrusted pale-brown surface. It expanded in rings, growing into encrusted circlets of peach and pink and tans. Nickel closed his eyes again, shifting his weight. Blankets slid over him.

He craned his neck and opened his eyes again, looking at Rishi.

“Where am I?” Nickel croaked.

The fire crackled, and Rishi continued looking into its flames. He slowly craned his neck to look at Nickel.

“You are where you were seeking, a place closer to civilization,” Rishi muttered, still standing still over the fire.

“What?” Nickel exclaimed, getting up from the ground. The stretch of bandages over his limbs alerted him to their presence. He slipped out of the blankets covering him, looking down at his body. The bandages were expertly wrapped over his limbs, protecting the areas of injury.

“Slow down,” Rishi muttered. “You’ve been gashed across your right arm, and any sharp, sudden movements could slow the healing process.”

Nickel scoffed in exasperation, looking at his right arm and remaining seated up. He opened his mouth to the new scenery before him. The land looked like the canyons of Atalantia where Nickel had crashed and met the Thraíha, but the fog was lessened and farther away in the distance, wrapping around rising cliffs, grazing the edges of the horizon. Inward, the land was flatter, with clumps of dried earth and multicolored granite rock, all stitched together in rising formations, intersected by pockets of rising steam clouding into the sky—a warm yellow ochre haze, colored by the molding of the horizon’s orange fog and a pale sunlight.

“Civilization?” Nickel scoffed, rubbing his face with his left hand. “This isn’t civilization.”

“There’s a depot station just around the bend,” Rishi said, motioning behind him.

“Wh-where?” Nickel exclaimed, shaking his head in frustration.

“Just around the bend of the first cliff closest to us,” Rishi said. Nickel watched Rishi’s hand point toward the nearest rise in rock elevation behind him, where the protrusions of the granite folded across the earth, growing to an encrusted fold so high that it formed a steep cliff, rising like a city building.

In the haze of the steam was a dark building over the surface of the cliff, almost unnoticed, mistaken for another boulder in the landscape.

Civilization? That wouldn’t take Nickel home. This wasn’t Hedonim; the city was nowhere to be seen on the horizon.

“Where am I?” Nickel said, turning around swiftly, looking for more buildings across the land and seeing none.

“You are where you have been seeking,” Rishi said.

Nickel looked at him, about to say something, then scoffed again.

“Why did you help me?” Nickel asked. “Who are you, Rishi?”

“I am where all Rishi have been and gone,” Rishi said, smiling gently and looking into the fire. “I travel the forgotten lands, bringing harmony to the nature of things.”

His eyes suddenly turned stony, as if he was looking somewhere Nickel couldn’t, beyond the flames he was focused on. Rishi grunted and grabbed a long wooden stick, pushing the coals at the bottom of the fire. The flames sputtered, crackling sparks at the bottom and elongating above. “You’re lucky you found the Thraíha, or else I probably would not have found you.”

“And the Death Riders would have,” Nickel muttered, sighing a shaky breath. Voices came from afar, close to the cliffside he was looking at. “Well, can you at least take me to Hedonim?” Nickel asked, looking up at Rishi.

“I take people nowhere,” Rishi said.

“You took me here,” Nickel said, scratching his head. “You brought me here.”

“I brought you here out of no other accord than my goodwill, boy,” Rishi said, poking the embers of the fire again. “I rescued you to harmonize the lands. That is the purpose of a Rishi.”

Nickel waited for more, but hearing none, sighed. He wanted to stand up but felt confused, looking around at the alien landscape. He was still unsure of where to go. This man would give him no further clues, but Nickel couldn’t have been more confused about where he lay in the order of his life. He didn’t know how he would return to civilization if he did. Which is why Hedonim was on his mind all this time. But the path to Hedonim was proving itself to be more difficult, dangerous, and confusing than he had wanted it to be—or had thought it to be in the first place.

Nickel sighed, looking down at his lap. His silence was interrupted by a loud clanging of tools from far away. He looked up, seeing a large crane-like vehicle moving around over the cliff high ahead. It bumped and clanged around the rock and earth before it until it bumped into a geyser, which showered it with an uproar of steam that clouded it completely. A line of moving figures diverted his attention to the far right. They were far ahead of the cliff, toward the rising mountains of the North—a line of people walking across the ground toward the right end of the city. Now that Nickel paid more attention, more people emerged into view, small vehicles and flashing lights interspersed around the landscape. This was a far less desolate place than Nickel had first imagined. But that wasn’t saying much for Atalantia.

2200 Blues Chapter 59

Nickel shuddered violently as Rishi approached him. Nickel had stopped moving, stopped walking toward Rishi, letting the apparition of the man move toward him. He was suddenly distrustful. He didn’t know if he wanted to meet with this new stranger anymore. He was done with strangers. They’d brought him to this place, to being kidnapped and dragged by the Death Riders. In that moment, Nickel decided that he was finished with Atalantia. He would leave for Hedonim as soon as he could, whether or not this man could help him.

“Stay still,” Rishi said, now even closer to Nickel, close enough that he could see his features in greater definition. As the dust settled and he neared Nickel, the man looked more worn and wearied, slowly losing the vigor of the visage of the strong warrior he had maintained when he was summoning his powers.

Nickel began breathing heavily, faster than before. His heartbeat had been accelerating and slowing with every new turn he’d been taken on. He was tired of the constant metronome shifting that he had to deal with.

“Can you hear me?” Rishi asked.

Nickel’s breathing became even more frantic, and he began making loud wheezing noises involuntarily. His vision doubled into blurriness, and his chest flared with a painful constriction like none he’d ever felt before. His whole body went slack in the span of an eye-blink, the sting of the earth falling into him emanating over his face. But it was soon eclipsed by the feeling of fire lacing his whole body.

“Nickel!” Rishi called, though his voice felt like an echo, and his running footsteps that followed like the ticking of a clock that was fading away, about to die like an electronic battery. Nickel’s mind was the battery. It went blank. He couldn’t perceive anything else except for the flaring pain all over him. His own hyperventilating became too loud for him to hear clearly before all gave way to darkness.

“Come for me, Father Hawk,” Nickel thought, the thought clearer than anything else that he could hear around him. It was so clear that it sounded like a voice speaking in his head. “Give me your strength. Bless me with the aid of the Huntsman as he aided you on your journey.”

Everything blacked out.

“Show me the wisdom of the stars.”

In the darkness, Nickel saw the pinpricks of many stars upon stars glow to life and coalesce into a ghostly blue man with a flowing white beard, rippling muscles, and a bow and arrow. He grabbed at a star, and it dragged down, turning into a shooting star, clasping it to his bow and arrow. He strung it back and let loose, letting the universe explode into light, all the stars following the shooting star from his bow and arrow, into a blinding flash of light.