Canaan Read online

  “You think I’m going to get the door? He’s your friend.” She continued knitting with her wooden needles. Their deep brown color faded where her hands worked.

  Chris sighed and moved up to unbolt the door. The bolt was only one of a few metal objects in the apartment.

  The door opened and a man Chris’s age popped into the doorway.

  “Chriiiiis…how are you, pal?” said Jack Braukus, Chris’s childhood friend. He stood a bit under Chris and spiked his blonde hair for attention. He had a youthful face and a dazzling white smile. Myra would blush at the sight of Jack’s smile only because he had that factor about him. A charm most people on Canaan don’t have. She appreciated the boyish enthusiasm and the fact he was Chris’s only friend. It meant Jack must have a good heart.

  “What are you boys doing tonight?” Myra asked while firmly affixed back to her knitting.

  “Bar,” Chris said sheepishly.

  “Yep, Eros Pub. Maybe find a suitable mate for your son,” Jack chimed in. He nudged his friend, causing Chris to roll his eyes. They made way to leave.

  “Yeah? And what about you Jack?”

  “Oh, Ms. Menas, you’re the only gal for me.” He had a cocky smile when he said it.

  Chris absorbed the artificial advance. He was used to it. Jack’s flirtatious ways were always aimed at Chris’s mother for fun. She was a stunning woman after all.

  Myra snickered.

  “Okay, enough of that. See ya, Ma,” Chris said while heading toward the door.

  “Chris, wait,” Myra said.

  They stopped in the doorway.

  Myra put her hands on his cheeks and pulled his face toward hers. Mother kissed her child’s forehead, looked into his eyes, the ones she saw when he was first born, and smiled.

  “I love you, Christopher.”

  “I love you, Ma.”

  “Be good,” Myra said as the door shut.

  ***

  Jack strutted along the gravel road with an energetic jump to his steps. Chris casually walked beside him. This was their typical routine every few nights. Similar faces passed them each time. Each person had their monotonous nightly regime.

  A deep purple and blue sky hovered above them as Apollo’s residual light tapered off in the horizon and streaked through the atmosphere, causing the effect. Below, street lights affixed to Shanty Row’s homes dimly illuminated their walk. Chris was once told these were “LED” bulbs, the peak of the technology to date, both on Canaan and Earth. A clean humming sound emitted from each light. It was all one could hear on the road other than chatter from citizens. Still, the humidity reigned supreme like a thick fog in the evening.

  “One day, man. I’m going to be an Arch Canaanite,” Jack said. He pointed to the tower located at the center of the city. From any location in the limits, a Canaanite could see the monster monolith. “Maybe in the Magistrate’s office. Or a Councilperson. Heck, I could be military too. Strong hands.” He winked at Chris.

  “Yeah? It’s an entirely different world. One we don’t know,” Chris said. His eyes stayed forward. Part of him smirked as he said it.

  Jack smacked Chris’s shoulder. “Have you heard some of the stories from the tower? Money, women, drugs we’ve never taken. Really trippy shit, man.”

  “Yeah?” Chris played along nicely with his ambitious friend. He smiled at Jack’s enthusiasm and stayed the course. It reminded of him of their younger times, before they were forced into labor at age twenty.

  Several years back, Jack got Chris hooked on a sambastic narcotic drug. It was a leaf from a samba tree, deep in the marshes. You’d put it under your tongue and freak out for a good hour before you took another one. Arch Canaanites caught on after a while and decided to ban it among the populace. Yet, shipments from the marshes are delivered to Canaanite Tower every week. No questions asked. With it, a quiet black market permeated through teenagers. Their hidden secret to cope with their everyday bullshit, they’d justify.

  “Yes! I’m going to get there. Election maybe,” Jack said.

  Chris bursted out laughing. “Yeah, elections here are real elections.”

  “Okay, fine. Then maybe some heroics.”

  “Jack, the hero. I like that.”

  “Yeah, catch a Motus. Or maybe I’ll find their camp one day and destroy them once and for all!” Jack put his fists up to his face like a fighter and took a few swings in the air. His face gave a tiny snarl. He laughed and patted his friend on the shoulder again.

  Chris worried that compound effects from the samba rewired his friend’s brain. Jack went from mischievous to wildly ambitious as the years went on.

  “Yeah. Go for it,” Chris said. Eyes still forward.

  “Better to do the pushing than to get pushed, ya know? I can’t just be a carpenter for another eighty years,” Jack said.

  “Still not for you? You said they like you. That you’re pretty damn good.”

  “Canaan has enough carpenters. No one special ever was a carpenter.” He motioned to the side of a building, which was wood. All the buildings and walls were wood. “Look at this place. Nothing special. A bunch of wood.”

  “That means a bunch of work. You don’t want to be on welfare chips. That’ll leave you in exile. Then it’s to the Games, and no one wants that.”

  “I know. But that means plenty of ordinary. Plus, most of Canaan is built. The population mandate is nearly hit. No thanks, Canaan!” Jack shouted the last part. A few fellow Canaanites turned to see the commotion and recoiled.

  Chris raised his finger to his mouth to try to silence his exuberant friend.

  “They’ll extend the mandate. They always have.”

  Jack nodded in agreement. Then he pointed to their destination.

  The walk was over. All the same faces accounted for from Chris’s memory. They had made it to the Eros Pub, one of several watering holes spotted around Canaanite City. Nothing different about them. This one was just the closest to Chris’s apartment.

  Eros Pub was a story taller than the buildings around it on Shanty Row. Its sign, wooden and carved, creaked as it swung in the evening’s light breeze. More wood paneling ran up and down the sides of the street, but the pub was painted dark brown for distinction.

  A few Canaanites were outside smoking cigarettes packed with dried rapon leaves. Rapon was a native bush harvested early on during the first settlement. Despite warnings from doctors and Oscar Marian himself, an illegal market grew. Then it became legal because people like to smoke things.

  Puffs of smoke enveloped Chris and Jack as they reached for the door. They both coughed and ignored the aromatic smoky tar they had just inhaled.

  As the young men walked in through the pub’s red door, Jack said, “You still writing?”

  “Hey, quiet about that,” Chris said. He looked around and grabbed Jack’s shoulder to pull him back.

  “I know, I know. We are friends. I won’t out you. Just wondering.”

  Tables were crowded with all forms of Canaanites—ages, colors, and genders. Chatter filled the air. Nothing with a comfy seat at a table was available, so they found two open stools at the bar.

  Eros Pub was dimly lit like outside. Lonely light bulbs hung from a vaulted ceiling that captured the noise.. Everything was wood except for the glasses in hand and empty ones behind the bar. Circular tables filled the space, cramming most of the Canaanites close together with little room to wiggle through to get to the toilet or the exit. Dull music came from speakers that were tucked high in the corners, but no one cared. It was some “jazz” stuff that was meant as arcane background. They were there for the booze anyway.

  A bartender, a slender blonde woman with scars on her face, asked them what they wanted. Chris had known Erin for years now. She arrived at the bar when the young men were of age to drink. She had taken care of their inebriation needs since.

  Jack ordered two krakona beer pints. Erin nodded and went to the tap. Jack and Chris looked around without saying a word, scoping the social
scene.

  Erin came back with the order and a handheld device for fingerprint scanning. Her hands were calloused and rough. She must’ve had a different career before filling glasses at Eros pub, though she never spoke about it. Chris always noticed her dried hands, a very rare condition on their humid home.

  Jack pushed Chris’s hand away and put down all five fingers. Once approved, a small green button meant “accepted.” And then the chips were deducted from his account.

  “Ah, thanks, pal,” Chris said.

  “My pleasure, buddy,” Jack said.

  They always traded nights paying anyway. This was unsaid agreement.

  “I haven’t in a while, write that is,” Chris said before taking a swig of his newly-arrived beverage.

  The brew was made from leaves and roots of krakona trees. Bitter, flat, and dry, but it shot alcohol to drinkers’ veins quickly with a twinge of decent tastes. Because of the daily surge of humidity, cold beers were a welcome ingestion after a long day.

  Chris never liked the beer, but he had little choice. There was a whiskee from imported wheat, but the crop never grew well on Canaan. With what wheat survived, and because of the cost, it was there for celebrations, which were seldom among regular Canaanites. Rice whiskee was abundantly available, but Chris would just as soon drink his own piss. Most of the city’s crazies and mentally unwell resorted to rice whiskee. It was cheap and got the job done, including killing swaths of brain cells to forget reality.

  “I like your stuff. Even though I’m not allowed to read it.” Everybody had the ability to read and write, but couldn’t practice. It was the worst kept secret on Canaan. “And you’re not allowed to write it,” Jack continued while taking his own healthy pull on his glass. He always tried to beat Chris to the last drop, only to make a mocking statement afterwards. Jack’s gulp took nearly half the pint down.

  Chris knew Jack competed with pints, but he never engaged his playful drinking compatriot. He looked at him and did what he always did. He rolled his eyes and drank at his pace.

  Chris replied, “Thanks, man. Makes me feel alive, I guess.”

  “Don’t want to feel dead.” Seemingly out of humid nothingness, a strange woman spoke to them. She was seated to Chris’s right. Chris didn’t noticed her when they sat down. He jumped in his seat at the sound of her voice.

  “Am I right?” said the raspy voice. She wore ratty green clothes, far more than you should on Canaan. Edges were frayed at the hems. A gypsy.

  Jack leaned forward to get a look. He cocked his brow when he saw wrinkles and gray hair. “Okaaaay.” He leaned back and shot Chris wide-eyes.

  “Pardon me?” Chris said politely. He pushed his shoulders back so Jack could see, though Jack didn’t want to.

  “Don’t want to feel dead, do you?” she said again. In front of her was a rice whiskee. Jack covertly pointed to it for Chris to see.

  “I’m hitting the head.” Jack got up and whispered to Chris, “You can deal with the gypsy.” He weaseled his way to the back room where toilets were, but not before giving Chris another glance when looking at the woman. He mouthed “Fucking nuts” while using his index finger to swirl beside his head to complete his dickish gesture.

  “How do you mean?” Chris said, ignoring Jack.

  She reloaded with a deep breath, charged for a monologue, and said, “You boys sitting here. Every day the same. Every day the work. Every day the pay. Every day the same.”

  “Exciting, isn’t it?” Chris said sarcastically. He found his beer again and finished the pint. He glanced over at Jack’s to see a sip or two left. A few moments passed before he was forced to direct his attention to the woman again.

  “You don’t understand, Christopher,” she said.

  As she uttered his name, the haggard turned to reveal gray eyes, gazing calmly at him as if to say she had a secret message for him.

  Chris shot his focus to those gray eyes. “How do you know my name?”

  “I’m a friend of your mother and father.”

  Chris’s jaw dropped. No one mentioned his mother and father. Ever. Chris found himself breathing short whiffs of thick, booze-filled air while his heart pounded on his sternum with an excited fury.

  Finally, he eeked out, “You knew my father?”

  “Back during the Second Mutiny. Before you were born,” she said. Her face frozen and austere.

  “What happened?” Chris and the rest of Canaan knew the First and Second Mutinies happened, but not what happened.

  Replaying images in her mind, she took a moment. She then said, “It was a bloodbath. Horror beyond your wildest imaginations. People were murdered in the streets like dogs. Hanged at the gallows and swung on public display. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. None of it. The wars, the oppression, the division. This other world utopia crumbled almost as quickly as it was built by the First Mutiny.”

  The First Mutiny, when Motus was born. Fifty years into the settlement.

  “How’d you know my father?” Chris asked.

  Before the woman could answer Jack returned.

  “Who died?” Jack asked, rolling his eyes at the scene before him.

  “No one.” Chris wanted Jack to leave.

  “Then what’s up? You guys still talking about philosophical bullshit?” Jack said.

  The gypsy spoke before Chris could, “No. Oscar Marian.”

  “What about him?” Jack said.

  She continued, “You boys know about the Great Exodus from Earth, right?”

  They both nodded.

  “How do you know about it?”

  “School,” Chris said.

  “You believe everything you’re told?” she asked.

  “We see it on display outside of Canaanite Tower, lady. Black and white,” Jack said. He looked down at his drink to see a few drops left, then a glance at Chris’s empty glass. He quietly scowled at it.

  “Oh, right. The Oscar Marian Essays. Those are the ones Arch Canaanites want you to see. The glory of the Great Exodus. Our new civilization.”

  Jack scoffed her comment off and readjusted his body to face the bar.

  Chris, however, leaned in. “What do the other documents say?”

  Jack interrupted, “There’s nothing there. Why hide the other writings?”

  “It contradicts their current constitution. You see, when you have power, your grip is cursed into stone, and you know nothing else but what you want to keep clinched inside the palm of your hand.”

  A moment later, the doors to Eros Pub burst open. Two officers from the Military Force barged into the crowded hall and darted their eyes about the room. Both brutes, stunners in hand, dressed in their normally clad attire and equipment. Standard-issue uniforms and eerily similar musculature across the Force made the Canaanite population believe they were all clones.

  Chris whispered quietly, “Great, MF-ers are here.” Chris and Jack created the pun ten years ago before finishing school. It stuck. Mainly because the officers were assholes and always have been.

  Another unannounced inspection, and there wasn’t anything civil about Military Force inspections, announced or not. The music stopped and each bar patron turned their heads with wide eyes, except one. The gypsy held her head forward, which Chris noticed quickly before turning his attention back to the officers.

  Though everyone faced the officers, no one looked them directly in the eyes. That sort of behavior was considered a challenge. The brutes call it “questioning authority.” Over time the Canaanites took it as standard behavior.

  “Sirs, to what do we owe the pleasure? Can I get you something?” the bartender shouted across the hall filled with silence and fear.

  “No. We got word a Motus was housed here,” said one of the brutes.

  “This here is my place, sir. First I heard of it. I assure you…”

  “Quiet!” said the same brute. “We caught a Motus today, and we know she didn’t act alone. There are Motus spies out in Canaanite City right now.”

&nbs
p; Riley’s face entered Chris’s mind’s eye. A welcoming image for a hellish moment.

  While the officer locked eyes with the bartender, his partner patrolled from table to table. You could hear his boot bend the floorboards with each step. He’d snatch a glob full of a person’s mane, pin their head against the table, and check appendages for a tattoo—the Motus symbol. One by one, he’d smash a person’s face, strip search, and move on.

  “While he’s checking the veracity of your claim, let me ask you a few questions.”

  “Sure thing.” The bartender picked up a glass and started rubbing it with a frayed rag.

  The officer stepped forward toward the bar, but eyed a curious thing. One person, and one person only, in the bar was not turned to his attention. A haggard woman bellied up to the bar and kept sipping her rice whiskee.

  “Who is that?” the brute asked, pointing at the gypsy woman with a hairy and calloused finger. First he saw the bartender shrug confidently, then turned his attention to the gypsy’s drinkmates, Jack and Chris.

  “You know this woman?”

  They both shook their heads like children trying to get out of trouble.

  His steps creaked the floorboards, just as his partner did behind him. When he approached the gypsy, the stink of her rice whiskee made him instinctively flare his nostrils. He put his paw of a hand on her shoulder and turned her to face him. No fight from her as she calmly obliged.

  “Yes?” she said. Her eyes cemented to the floor.

  “You look familiar,” the officer said. “What are you doing here, gypsy?”

  “Here for a drink.”

  “A rice whiskee…freak?”

  “It’s what I can afford.”

  “Canaan doesn’t take kindly to travelers. Wreaks of Motus spy.”

  “Do they smell offensive?”

  “What’d you say to me?” He yanked her shoulder back and seized her collar to pull close, snarling like a dog. Still holding the gypsy, the officer turned again to Chris and Jack, who gave their attention, but diverted their eyes out of fear.

  Suddenly a musty smell arose in the air, like a dog urinating in the corner. Instead it was Jack who had a stream of pale yellow liquid streaming down his leg and onto the floor.