The Outside: The Wild Empty
No one else should be out here; at the tip of an ancient endless march through mostly barren land northwards, a space that used to be called Afrika.
So what are they doing here?
I revved the Blade of Atropos, held it steady in both my hands and watched as the laser saw fired off sparks of intimidating flame, high into the murky clouded dawn sky.
Power.
Raw power.
The small group of five in front of me did not move, though – shadowy shapes of humanity – standing by what must be the last tree left, in this barren land.
It was a tall lime-green wood tree, topped with its parched, almost empty frond of leaves, thorny branches spread in surrender.
The tree had long skulked in a deep dip in a valley not that far from my Home – Camissa Dome. Hidden, almost, in full sight.
But not from me.
Not from us, Atropos.
This might finally be enough to finance my retirement. Thandi and I may even be able to move up a floor, to join the Exciting Elite, after this. Moving away, at last, from Level Two, the Mediocre Middle.
Thandi, a Level One Survivor and my DS, will love that, I’m sure.
The air was sour here, tasting like a vile mixture of bitter lemons and ash.
Gotta move quickly, in this poisonous clime.
The humans by the tree had still not moved, though, despite our obvious threat.
Time to step it up.
I held Atropos at a decreased angle and fired a short burst of flame above the treetop.
With this tree, I might earn enough to never have to go outside again.
Getting old, as they say. Harder and harder to lift this damn machine, as my hair greys and vague, shifting body aches sprout across my frame.
“They’re still not budging, Frank,” Atropos’ AI voice was as thin and fine as the lunar glassware the Elite flouted, in viral roof ads, designed to inspire us upwards.
I hitched my hot and sticky mask tighter against calloused mouth and nose, and sighed, as I levelled the laser-blade in front of me.
No more games.
The killing, now that I don’t enjoy.
Two dead, over thirty years of work, may not sound as lot, but it’s still two too much.
Still, you gotta do what you gotta do. This tree is mine.
A pair of white-necked ravens, large black birds with white napes, circled on the early morning thermals above the tree, as if waiting for the pickings to come.
I shivered, despite the heat.
Damn birds remind me of ghosts.
Just us and them, in this dull, dead valley, where the last of these Shadow-folk stand, eking out what little they can from the dust that puffed at my feet, as I stamped, with fresh impatience.
“Scan for weapons,” I muttered to Atropos.
The early sun was scorching the back of my neck, above the collar-line of my onesie overall. Sticky, itchy drip, down my bent and aching back. Time to move home, when the sun starts sucking my sap. Hurry up.
“Three women tied around the tree. Two men nearby have empty hands; the older man, he carries seeds in his pockets.”
“Seeds? How they gonna fight with that?”
Atropos said nothing more, so I hitched the haft of her grind-saw onto my sore hip and revved the engine with finality. If I cut and loaded tree wood into my G-backpack fast, I could get back to the Dome, much before the sun could flay my face any further.
The two men stood silent, dark, and thin, mere wisps of lingering humans in ragged cloth, but they stepped aside, grudgingly, for me and my giant roaring blade.
Fucking women look a different proposition.
They had made sure they couldn’t move.
I did not want to look at them too closely, in case I needed to slice through them, too.
What have they tied themselves to the tree with? Kidding me? Frayed fucking string?
I laughed, as I approached the two younger women, then, with a sharp wrench of my gloved finger, I snapped the string.
The women stood motionless, so I revved my blade again, gesturing them aside.
The old woman moved, slowly, to stand in front of me, only inches from my blade.
I could not avoid looking at her.
She made damn sure of that.
Tall, almost my height, with her dark face shrivelled hideously by the climate and lack of RS, that good old Elite resource in the ‘Dome, Restorative Surgery.
Nothing restored here.
She was old.
A lot older than me.
Very old.
Echoing signs of cancers on her cheeks, near her ears, grey tumours twisting like mushrooms from the crevasses in her dark skin.
She smiled.
Shit, no teeth either. How does she eat? Barely at all, by the look of her, too.
“What do you want? Why hurt the Fever Tree, when it has done you no harm?” Her voice was rough as rare bark, accented slightly, as if English was not her native tongue.
…like Thandi?
“I found it, the tree’s mine. I’m gonna cut and haul this shit, back to the ‘Dome.” Why am I even bothering to explain this?
“But we found her first,” she said, no longer smiling, “She is under our protection.”
She?
The smaller, and seemingly older of the two men moved to stand beside the woman, offering me something in his pale, cupped right palm.
Reluctantly, I looked.
Three long dry brown pods. With his left thumb nail, the old man cracked one pod open. Several dark…seeds, rolled out and he cupped his fingers, to stop them falling.
“They, this tree, they are with us, and share with us,” said the woman, nodding her head. “We can make new trees with these seeds, as they like company, and they have mosquito medicine in their bark.”
What are they saying? Plants like company? Trees are just trees, for fuck’s sake.
Enough crazy shit. To hell with sharing.
“Stun wave,” I said, swinging the blade to cover the group.
I heard nothing, but the humans in front of me staggered briefly, before crumpling to the floor. Sub-sonic neural shocks; set to stun, a line from my favourite archived show.
Good. If I move fast, no one needs to die.
I levelled my blade against the thorny yellow-green base of the tree, where it was thickest. I intended to maximise this harvest.
“My blade, Atropos, she can cut through anything,” I laughed.
As I said, raw fucking power.
With a guttural scream, the blade bit deep into the dusty yellow bark, grinding inwards.
I was squat-leg braced for the impact, as usual, but my goggles clouded with dust and…blood?
The tree — screamed.
I thumbed the controls on the haft of the blade, switching the blade into a sudden, silent stop.
I wiped my goggles clear, with a shaking left glove.
Atropos was lodged deep into the base of the tree, bark strips flayed off, and some…orangey sap, seeped slowly into ground dust.
No, not blood.
Then, deep inside my body, sobs surged, threatening to rattle me apart.
I dropped the haft, which had been a familiar home to my hands, for so long.
Atropos kicked up dust at my feet, while I sobbed and sobbed.
“What the fuck, Frank?” The Blade was pissed with me, and no wonder.
Stop this sobbing shit. What’s wrong with me – I am the… fucking… Cutter.
The tree was bare, leaves scattered around the broken base where Atropos had lodged.
Even though my G-pack was light, sticky moisture continued trickling down my back, rivulets echoing the trickle on my puffy cheeks.
Stop this crying shit. Sun’s getting mean. Time is a ticking.
People around me moved, groaning, and the tall young man lurched, somewhat brokenly, to his feet.
I knelt to pick up Atropos’ round haft with my right hand and wiped my wet cheeks, with a grimy left glove.
I sniffed.
The ashy lemon smell was laced with a softer, sweeter smell.
The younger man had dropped golden puffballs, flaked, and fragmenting into the dust, in front of my face. “Old flowers,” he said, “good to purify the air. Our tree, she gives much more, while she lives. Let her live. Please.”
Wasted too much of my own damn water here.
Let me go back to the clean air of the ‘Dome. To sit — in sterilised sunlight, on the Mid-level Two lounge, knocking back a pint of worm-bitter with an acquaintance or two – Cheryl, Andrew, maybe even Jack? Thandi never liked the drink, reminder her too much of her time on the Bottom, until she’d finally won the Lotto, at 45 years of age. The Big Exit Ticket for those poor bastards at the bottom – the annual ‘One up a Year’ DSLL – Designated Spouse, Social Mobility Lotto.
“Bingo,” she’d told me, when we first met, paired by digital chance, “Didn’t you win the fucking jackpot?”
I looked at the earnest young man, already sprouting some facial cancers of his own.
To hell with the Elites, with their faux fame, and their rich, but empty life-styles. So the top one percent even get to retire to the Moon. How different is that, anyway, to the desolation I see all around me here?
Way I see it, we’re all prisoners inside the Domes, anyhow, not just the Level One Bottom Bastards. These shadow guys, though, they move and drift freely, like the wind.
I nodded and he smiled briefly, before joining his group, as they collected gum and strips of bark and leaves left lying from my blade. They were frantically shoving the tree debris into cloth sacks slung over their shoulders, as if afraid I would challenge them again.
I’m tired of being visited by burnt bodies, stealing my sleep.
No more violence.
Thandi, I’m sure, would agree.
The tree itself had stopped…bleeding?
“Reverse blade,” I said, but Atropos did not move.
More movement, as the group gathered more closely around me.
The old woman stood next to the tall young man; family showing, in their similar smiles. “This tree,” she said, “they breathe through their bark, so this blade has choked their throat, but we can make use of these strips, for medicine. The fever tree is good, both for sore eyes – and bodies that burn inside.”
Fever tree? A tree is just a fucking tree. But, talking about burning bodies, I gotta cut loose and go, before those ghosts arrive again…or the sun cooks me.
“You need to find cover,” she continued, as if reading my thoughts, “I can see your pale skin has many melanomas. You can leave us be.”
I shrugged and gestured helplessly with my left hand at Atropos, locked and silent in the gouged crevasse at the base of the — fever tree.
“My name is Akhona,” the woman said, “Would you like some help?”
Behind the old woman, near the tree, the others were digging a small hole with their hands and scooping wetness from the ground, into a small pot.
Water.
Liquid gold.
Water is life.
Grudgingly, I nodded.
For a moment, as I glanced up, I thought she’d rolled her rheumy, ancient eyes.
“It would be nice to be asked,” she said, “and to know who is asking.”
“My, my… name is Frank,” I managed. “Please help me, Akhona.”
“I thought you looked honest,” she chuckled, “despite the fierceness of your act.”
Joke? She’s old, but she’s not always right. Two dead, at my hand, is no act.
Those two young men, one barely a boy, they’re always hovering near my eyes, even ten years later. Hiding in my head shadows, or tapping my shoulders, as if knowing I would never dare to turn around, and look at them again.
We’d gone for the same tree, so Atropos had roasted them, afraid they were armed.
I had left them burning by the tree, unable to do, or take anything, after hearing them scream — and smelling them burn.
I have been vegan ever since.
That had been the one and only tree I had not cut, before this one.
Akhona gave a sign to the others, with her right hand.
It took both the men and I several grunting minutes, before we dislodged Atropos from the injured trunk.
The group bowed at the tree and then me. They were bent under the weight of various burdens. The younger man stepped forward again, offering me something, with a gesture of his left hand at his open right pale palm.
I took the tiny object carefully, with some suspicion.
It was small, brown, and hard, with a slight incision in it.
“A seed,” he said. “Prepared to be a new tree, but you must love and feed them, first. Like us, they need soil, sun and water.”
This will be my last trip outside.
I pocketed the seed, with a nod of my head.
How can he be so generous, after I have threatened and assaulted them?
He leaned forwards, to whisper in my ear, “This tree’s real name is…”
I listened.
He stepped back and I could see they were all bent, almost broken, with their loads.
I shrugged off my G-Pack and offered it to the old man, straps held in my left fist.
Akhona stepped forward to take it, muttering, “siyabonga.”
They loaded the G-pack with their goods and then one of the young women shouldered it on, with assistance. Grav-resisters lighten the load, as if she were lifting on the moon.
She smiled.
I’d bought that, with my very first tree.
One less thing for me to carry.
And no more trees.
“If you can come back here, same time next week,” I said to the old woman, “I can bring you water. Inside, we have more than enough.”
She tapped her right wrist, and I saw a solar powered watch glint briefly. “Amanzi is precious indeed. But is there a way you can help water Mbaba Mwana Waresa instead?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, blankly.
Akhona explained.
“Ah,” I said, “Mother Earth.”
She nodded, smiled, and they all turned away with a parting wave, walking up the sandy slope of the valley, until they disappeared over the hill.
I must do something.
“Give me a week!” I shouted.
Laughter drifted over the hill, and then they were completely gone.
A week…what a fucking bonkers promise.
“Come on,” said Atropos, “Let’s go home, Frank.”
What is home?
Home is a hard word.
How often have I laughed, there?
And I’ve ended up with nothing from this trip.
No retirement.
Sorry, Thandi.
A cold, familiar touch dabbed against my right shoulder from behind, and my wet back curdled with pain.
Shit, the ghosts are back.
Good intentions to repair a bad past, are clearly not enough.
Just walk – go on, back to the ‘Dome, don’t look back.
Never look back.
No.
No more.
I climbed the hill and removed my left glove, fingering the cool, hard seed, inside my left pocket.
I’m tired of never looking behind me, never looking back.
Another icy touch, this time against my left shoulder blade.
No, don’t move, just ignore it as usual.
I turned, my breath, a hard ache within my chest.
A young man in red shirt and black shorts sat on the lower branches of the fever tree, eating a yellow apple. The boy with long blue overalls stood at the trunk, holding a basket, catching what was being tossed down.
But wasn’t it a grenade?
No. They had been after the apples.
So that tree – the first tree I’d ever left, had been an apple tree.
I bowed down the slope to the bleeding fever tree and wept again, briefly this time, for the two young men I’d never known.
“Come on Frank, stop wasting your fucking water. Let’s go back home, man.”
Hearing her voice, I remembered it was I, not she, who had given pressed the button to fire.
I am the killer…
…No. No more killing.
No more tree cutting, either.
I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and opened then again.
Two white necked ravens were perched in between thorns on the branches, close to the trunk, as if seeking shade, from the increasingly savage sun.
So we headed home, Atropos and me.
I may be Frank, but I’m no longer a Cutter.
The blade, I would sell. Enough to pay for a good retirement, Thandi.
The AI, she, I would keep. I can’t imagine a better butler, to the door of our tiny unit.
‘If you could name yourself, what would you call yourself, Atropos?’ I asked, panting up the last hill before the ‘Dome, that some called Table Mountain – even though there was no Mountain, only the endless sea beyond.
The sun, now high, burned the ‘Dome a brilliant white, and the sea a leaden, shining silver.
My skin itched, with what I knew was coming death.
“What kind of fucking question is that?” said Atropos, “you’re human, you can call me whatever the fuck you want to.”
…Atropos it is, then.
She’s clearly picked up her language from me – and Thandi!
As for me, I would become a planter, instead, a grower of things.
We have plant courts in the Foods and Water section on Level 2.
Speaking of water, why the fuck did I make strangers such a rash and impossible promise? A week to steal some water – and sprinkle the earth? What good would that do?
We headed into the covered entrance of the Camissa Dome – scanners beeping, to assess my right, for paid sanctuary.
There were worse things, than surviving in the mediocre middle.
Maybe some time left to even embrace mediocrity – and perhaps, to bequeath a sapling to Thandi?
Or a sapling for those, who struggle much harder, in the level below?
To friends, family, even foreigners — and to the UmHlosinga tree.
We walked into the shade of home, leaving behind us, the hot and brutalised Earth.
Behind me, I heard the flutter of wings.
I turned, again.
The ravens were flapping against an invisible barrier; the electro-screen that kept out most animals. Bees and other necessary insects, of course, have their own secured quarters within the Camissa Dome too.
Still, so fucking sterile inside.
I thumbed the gate release.
Let them in. The birds, too, are mine.
Nevermore, will I burn, cut, or deny.
Frank now, in name and deed.
For my death is coming.
Do good shit, while you still can.
I walked slowly along the DC, the grey and aerosol misty decontamination corridor, with a surprisingly heavy bird on each shoulder.
One, the slightly bigger bird, shat on my left shoulder – a rich spatter of white, decayed fruit, stinking like putrid peach.
I did not wipe it off.
I’m sure the baby UmHlosinga tree would like this crap.
As for me, I am now the Sower.
Ends
