A shape brash and inconceivable scurried across a blind, gloomy urban landscape.
Shadows yelped past gaping yet at once unaccommodating doorways like hurried stage hands
scrambling to get out of shot before the cameras began to roll. The celestial cinematographer
clicked his flaunting fingers and the whole rowdily rancorous panorama plunged into its
pugnacious performance; the fervent phantasmagoria of a fictitious film set filled with aspiring
bit part actors eager to impress their consecrated commissioner. Once world famous as a
symbol of prosperity but now renowned as one of notorious neglect, the New York skyline
towered like some demonic necromancer over the scampering sounds and feted forms which
populated a miserly and decrepit habitat. The Empire state, Chrysler and Twin tower buildings
clenched at a gray and sodden sky like craggy teeth grasping a grisly piece of blackened meat.
The dull presence of night crept over skyscrapers and tenements alike with neither discourse or
discrimination; every reclusive reach of society would bare the burden of the gradual
decimation of a once sparkling metropolis. An unchecked indulgence had spread through the
country since the democratic era. The horrible human tendency to demand more- to never be
satisfied with what one already possessed. More money, more business, more technological
development. In hindsight, it was all too clear that the constant consumption of superfluous
ingredients would negate the possibility of ever being able to bake the sumptuous cake of
capitalism to anybody's taste. This did not remotely resemble any desired model of social
satisfaction; greed would lead the pride pummeled populace only to loose the basic things which
held the whole dismal mess together. Equality; individuality; these things fitted the work ethic
like size thirteen Doc Martins on a tinsy ballerina, and the predictable abandonment of these
ideals meant chaos. Darkness swept like an icy blanket shielding the earth from it's glowing
lifeline so far above the fluctuating reality of the world below. Only a bold full moon survived
to shine with a deep and hidden radiance amongst an army of threatening storm clouds; paying
homage to it's long suffering child. This single source of light and nature drifted aimlessly in the
forgotten solitude of space as the deranged creations of the human realm scowled up at this
distant adversary with mixed jealousy and respect. To create a thing that lasts so long, that
gives life and hope rather than snatches it away in the same way as a cosh like cancer takes the steady
sculpting hand of a creator god rather than the shaking claw of a madcap totalitarian monarch.
Out of the pounding blackness, another spherical shape emerged, then another; moon like,
but not nearly so serene. A flurry of copycat bulbs of light burst into emphatic existence, each
illuminating an island of cluttered concrete which rose from the seething sea of prominent
darkness below like a stalking nuclear submarine ascending from the dismal and uncharted
depths. As these glowing miniature wheels of light flamed into life, more tiny fractions of the
stranded streets beneath them were plunged into visibility until every last street lamp and
apartment light in a cold and misty Manhattan was burning with a boisterous glare both fierce
and bright. Earth's lonely satellite rolled on in dismay as the ravenous industrial cogs of the
mechanical extravagance beneath it whirred on without regard for time, light or silence. A keen
businessman would never neglect the chance to sell his ill gotten wares, whatever unlikely hour
it may be. And besides, few knew of any other existence than one where to wriggle this way and
that like a hoard of festering maggots fighting to survive was the interloping imperative.
Smoke rose in blossoming silence as it crawled from regimental queues of bubbling
manholes, forming a neat row of steaming pits down the center of the road. Their clogging gray
output of smog pulsing into a calm sky with diabolical distaste, each chugged equivocally as if
a moving railway of belching steam trains leading their hopeful passengers through the arching
gateway of the new world. The cheerless honk of traffic, the ceremonial din of unidentified
sirens and the occasional muted blast of an arcane weapon collapsed into one grotesque stew of
noise and growled it's tortured plea for untimely release from the shackles of society as it
reverberated down every identical street. It penetrated through the houses, shaking the earth and
pounding the eardrums of a garbled populace which had gradually grown accustomed to the
noise. Their senses abused so systematically that functionality had become a hopeless memory,
they no longer even heard the din, just as if a person spends a long time in the arctic they get
used to the cold; just as if a person spends their life working as a state executioner they get used
to their victim's screams. But for some god forsaken reason all those empty adages of prosperity
and freedom continued to whiz around in the heads of the general public like a plump cuckoo's
starving, squirming offspring in a stolen nest. America still theoretically adhered to the
principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. But America as it was was no more. The despair,
anguish and abandonment of the animalistic struggle was all that endured. There was once
something else besides, but none of the habitual wanderers of this murky and methodical place
could bring to mind what it was that once adorned their otherwise pointless existence like
priceless jewels in a straw crown and somehow made it all bearable. They had been herded like
fattened livestock faced with the continual battle against base irrelevance. What was the point
of life? While scrambling and scavenging all the time just to preserve it, there was little time for
such questions.
Oblivious to the major part; symbolic if not practical; that fate had chosen him to play in the
salvation of such a wild and hellish abode, Martin Iron was an unusual character in a world of
street crazies, manic depressives and criminal governors. He had been fortunate enough to have
missed most of New York's recent history; imprisoned quite rightfully; in the Long Island
Mental Institute. He had been condemned there; a doomed and sedated inmate; since witnessing
his father, mother and sister's deaths at the hands of two petty criminals at the tender age of
nine. Ever since that day he had been reliving his torment; grappling unsuccessfully with his
trauma. Quite different fortunes would befit one half of that murdering duo; the debatable title
of head of state had fallen into the stained and greedy hands of that antagonistic assassin.
"Still;" Iron reminded himself with no great comfort; "you know what they say: power
corrupts...." Wheels do tend to turn full circle in the fullness of time. During his infuriatingly
prolonged stay in the place of his persistent nightmares, the growing multinational corporation
NYCN; an electronics company among other things; had effectively 'bought' what had since
been referred to as New York City State from the US government, whose local offices had been
slowly worn down while NYCN amassed increasingly powerful financial backings, an
abundance of properties in Manhattan and the political support of the most dubious
dictatorships in the world. NYCN had started life as 'New York City National'; a far from
modestly christened donut factory. This was in 1954. Now what was essentially the same
founder company owned it's own nation state on the once impregnable East Coast. "A donut
factory." Iron would have laughed had the thing not been indirectly responsible for the deaths
or forced exile of his parents and countless others besides. "Having a donut firm run a city is as
bad as getting an actor for a president, just as typical and probably in actual fact no more
dangerous. If only some wayward street kid had petrol bombed that donut factory all those
years ago.... Who knows; the world could be a better place." This unlikely exchange of power
had come about not out of decline, but bizzarely from technological progress. Capitalism had
ended up wiping the ideological board before proceeding to shoot itself in the foot. A short ten
years ago an obscure computing student came up with a ground breaking invention; a machine
which could break physical objects down into subatomic particles; even down to genetic level,
meaning that one particular gene could be isolated from the rest. But more than this, the device
could also mix and match particles; it could cut pieces of genetic material and paste them
together to create 'new' genes as if annotating a piece of text in a word processing program.
This meant that DNA strands, atomic particles and assorted protoplasms could become
virtually indistinct clones of others through a simple method of deconstruction and recycling.
The 'Gene Blender'; named not only because of its function but also its physical similarities to
certain Twentieth Century kitchen appliances; would appear to the untrained eye to be a quaint
science buff's plaything, but to the entrepreneur it was world shattering. Its implications proved
both illustrious and disastrous. It was a license to print money; literally; and a good few other
things to boot. It was the elixir with which metal could indeed be converted into gold; an ancient
alchemist's much sought after gift from the gods. Provided the operator knew the genetic or
atomic makeup of a given object; its blueprint; that information could be fed into a computer
and the blender would chew up any waste products one so desired, break down their genetic or
atomic base and reconstruct it using the blueprint; thus producing the desired item out of mere
household trash. Eventually, as people began to realize the implications of the device, the threat
to consumer society became horrifyingly apparent. Anybody who owned a blender could obtain
the blueprint of a desired object and produce that object ad infinitum at little or no cost.The technology
had existed for quite some time, it was just that it had taken a while for experts to realise
that coupling cloning technology and the internet may well prove a highly profitable venture.
Multinational companies and governments scrambled to ban the machines and furthermore
safeguard the atomic blueprints of the most valuable commodities; gold, oil and so on and so
forth, to prevent them from being systematically 'cloned'. But the damage had been done. The
blender could determine an object's blueprint itself, but would have to destroy the item to do so,
so thankfully it would be suicide to attempt to copy a human being; whose genetic code is
unique. But machines are different. One blender could quite easily duplicate another, making
the government's attempts to remove the things all the more difficult. In no time, the atomic
blueprints of an infinite number of objects from the sublime to the ridiculous began to filter
through the internet. All a pirate needed to create a gold bar was a blender, the downloaded
blueprint and, in the tradition of creative kid's shows, some sticky back tape and a yogurt pot.
The only cost involved was that of the initial cloner's real gold bar, which he could then
duplicate hundreds of times over anyway. This new 'business' decimated international markets.
The value of a commodity is based largely on its rarity, and not knowing how common gold and
oil had become, prices plummeted, which proved near fatal to even the biggest world
economies. Furthermore, this meant that trade was no longer a physical process; as long as you
had a modem and a machine you could trade by exchanging electronic blueprints; the actual
object could be constructed at your end like sending and receiving a fax. World trade had been
turned on its ballooning head. The NYCN was one of the first to exploit this technology;
dispensing with long and arduous donut deliveries then moving into less wholesome pursuits.
The policing of computer crime had always been a nigh on impossibility despite the
desperation which the gene blender machines provoked, and the practice of sneaking a blueprint
to a client electronically was soon dubbed a 'donut run' after the pioneering conglomerate.
Eventually, the donut kings and their allies had wiped out enough of America's resources via the
sales of false though indistinguishable 'raw materials' at undercutting rates to put themselves in
a financial position to bid for the island of Manhattan themselves as if it was some overgrown
property. Fatally wounded by the war in Europe and the Middle East, the Americans
begrudgingly accepted. It must have been a bitter kick in the teeth; a known criminal getting off
on a technicality and proceeding to frame the cop who apprehended him on the same charge.
The free market economy had committed virtual suicide; goods, natural resources and even
money itself had been superseded with an entirely technological breed of economics based not
on hard work, expertise or commodities, but on the cutthroat cunning of the pirates
governments in the Twentieth century had been too idle to deal with.
Exempt from US government control, NYCN proceeded to abolish the dithering local
political system and set up it's own government, dubiously entitled the NYOCC or 'New York
Organization for the Conservation of the Community'. As with legal buildings, basketball
teams, donut factories and the like, the American public liked their governments to sport titles
which would inspire the most bland form of social morale possible. And so, the seeds of
cultural reconstruction were sown. With a huge commercial enterprise stuffing hundreds of
billions of dollars into the place; while such things still existed; surely nothing could go
wrong....
City states were by no means new ideas; there were quite a handful the world over. In
fact, they were a huge attraction for certain sections of the community. All were owned by
mammoth corporations that had become richer and more prosperous than the countries that
housed their headquarters, and the rich, at least, saw it as a huge new business venture; the
conquest of an unknown world. A world where the sun blazed rays of real gold and twenty
dollar bills grew on trees. The emergence of new City States became more manageable through
certain corporations profiting from the war in Europe which had depleted the financial
firepower of a good many of the world's most powerful nations. Leading superpowers like
America put so much manpower into the faraway conflict that it ended up controlling territory
in central Europe while loosing land and populace at home not to the enemy, but to big
business.
Of course for many years technology had been the world's most significant money making
industry and New York, with the investment and foresight of NYCN, had become one of the
foremost technological centers in the world alongside Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore. Tokyo had
been the first to declare itself a city state; free from Japanese control. The computer giant
Densetsu had gained ownership of the business center and was allowed to set up its own
government and achieve true political independence. The apparent absence of democratic ideals
involved proved a formidable adversary, but somehow the profit margin always seems to
emerge triumphant- New Tokyo was utterly self contained; trade was done through satellite,
and since only information rather than raw materials or manufactured goods were being
exchanged there was little need for any industry, and the existing factories were soon
restructured into 'Gene Pools'; warehouse sized plazas jam packed with blender machines and
open to the prosperous public night and day. It was a miracle of environmentally friendly
recycling but a death blow to capitalism. All other personal and public amenities were
predominately computer based. This meant that only the exceptionally rich, who worked either
for the ruling corporation itself or could afford to exist indefinitely on their own savings alone
were able to live there. Elitist and unfair as it may seem, at the time this was seen as a radical
but acceptable move, especially for the Japanese government, who received countless billions
for their part in this unprecedented exchange of power. The influential businessman Yuri Na
Rikoteki, then head of the Densetsu group; declared himself president and set up a new
democratic system which in reality worked more like a company democracy than a societal one;
the remaining citizens basically choosing who should be next in line to run the company. All
this distanced Tokyo city state from the outside world; a private paradise for the wealthy and
privileged. But the very idea of such a state had two major flaws. Firstly, the poor would be
expelled into the financially crumbling nation state which could ill afford in the majority of
cases to provide for them, and secondly the system was open to extremism since for one
company to own it, true democracy had to be abandoned. This is precisely what had happened
in the youngest of the city states; Manhattan.
Desperately needing the money to finance the war effort, the American government decided
to allow NYCN to 'buy' the city and declare it a City State. Consequently though, the NYOCC
turned out to be a military dictatorship when Sergi Volscenzi; the chairman; died in decidedly
unlikely circumstances and his son Vladimir took the reins. His ideal society was quite simply
one which he controlled, and smashed by the war, the US government was in no position to stop
him and reclaim the former state capital. According to the new president, the City State was to
be an independent nation of a million or so people rich enough and loyal enough to him to
secure themselves a life of total luxury. But Volscenzi had done nothing in his grubby and
unenterprising life but walk in his father's shadow, and it was soon to be made clear that this
trend was not about to change. Volscenzi the younger had little idea about business, politics or;
quite crucially; how to run a government. He had been pampered like a prize pooch, and life
was little to him but an amusing stage play. By then though it was all too late, and Manhattan
quickly became a stalking ground for the violent on the pacifistic; the lordly on the humble. The
then US president; contemplating the possibility of being decisively defeated by the Arab
Confederation in the no man's land of South Eastern Europe; embroiled himself intentionally in
the conflict, pretended to forget all about Manhattan and instead reminded himself and his
scattered forces of the horrendous arsenal its sale financed. In American tradition, wars had
always decreed the direction of the public's vote rather the underhanded buying and selling of
properties. As for the so called 'community', it had long ago found out that the preferred
strategy of the sluggish majority was that everyone should work for their own shallow and
meticulous livelihoods at the expense of everybody else's. Since Volscenzi's rise to power, New
York city had been in a state of governed chaos; only the most notorious crime bosses, media
and business tycoons held positions in the new 'government', whose only real policy was the
systematic forced exile of those opposition elements who were either too argumentative to cut
their losses and leave or too late to escape through the by now boarded and barricaded airports
and highways. Opposition groups had been effective during the NYCN take-over, but after
objecting governments and world-wide peace campaigns gave up on the situation and pulled out
personnel much needed for the solving of more pressing humanitarian problems in Europe, it
became clear that the prevention of the impending NYCN patriarchy had always been a lost
cause.
Iron had seen none of this; he had only heard stories and watched the gradual exchange
of political power on TV, but when the new government turfed out the jails, hospitals and
mental institutes, this decimated city was what greeted him like some nightmarish movie
scenario set in a dead and bludgeoned world where humanity has been washed out by a nuclear
holocaust or some highly unlikely mechanoid revolution. The privileged were indeed rich; in
terms of being able to fulfill their most superficial indulgences as opposed to enjoying a
spiritual wealth; but the poor; who now made up a great deal of the burdened population of US
government held Brooklyn, were in desperate poverty and those who remained within the City
State were caught up in a process of gradually being flushed out by huge networks of spies,
troops, assassins, bounty hunters and population redeployment officers; all employed in some
capacity or another by the government itself. The rich enjoyed a bizarre form of happiness.
Known merely as 'Consumers', their lives were based around flaunting their great wealth to
purchase all manner of ridiculously needless material luxuries which were manufactured in a
local Gene Pool out of the most unsightly trash and dressed up to imitate all the designer labels
which had in actual fact been bankrupted by a combination of shrinking markets and expansive
wars some time ago. Imported blueprints from existing fashion houses were even more
luxurious, but Volscenzi had all the right connections, and unfortunately the odd military
dictatorship fails to deter the more determined multinationals. A mixture of enforced and
accepted social control facilitated by the use of strict education policy and less sightly methods
persuaded the population that the whole monetary system was still in place. In fact, bank notes
were printed by local militia and had no real value at all; they were produced only to keep the
blinked populace from hatching the bright idea of obtaining a genetic blender or two for
personal use. What they didn't know couldn't hurt them, but it could certainly be used to fill the
pockets of the heads of state.
In a world where nothing commanded any actual value, it may appear strange that a
dictatorship was necessary at all, but everything boiled down to the dictator's personal
entertainment. Life was a game; especially the lives of others; and Volscenzi prided his dark
heart on fooling all the people all the time; an achievement his democratic forefathers never
managed to accomplish. This left the so called 'elite' only to revel in the fact that they were
forever separated from the rugged struggle of life 'outside'; an aspect of reality which the state
went to great pains to conceal. They certainly never ventured out of their adopted home, and if
they suddenly had some unprecedented inclination to do so, they would probably find that the
attentive customs system and exemplary airline services they had gone through when they
arrived had been out of action since the political baton was passed to Volscenzi junior. He was
well aware of the US government's views on the influx of social 'undesirables' that leaked into
their over crowded land like a kind of political sewer system. He also knew that they were in no
position to stop it, and honestly held little regard for the people of the neighboring nation. As a
precaution though, Manhattan had had a stringent new security system installed which severely
limited entrance and exit. All possible escape and entrance routes were constantly policed by
military personnel, as were the majority of public amenities in the area. Protection he called it;
at least to his more wealthy subjects. They saw the constant presence of a jackbooted military
as a welcome one which would safeguard them from the terrible horrors of the poverty stricken
world. In actual fact, they would believe anything Volscenzi told them to believe. To Iron;
branded an 'anti-social' and a target of such 'protection' units, they were an obvious and ever
present symbol of the totalitarian regime.
Iron disliked the commonplace stereotype of the comic book hero but something; even if it
was simply some ironic jink in an already ominous sense of humor; made him make sure he
emulated one. In reality, he was far from heroic. He often questioned the morality of his own
actions, and seldom even agreed with himself, let alone anyone else. Still, despite an
uncertain attitude to life, he played his part with spotless efficiency. He was in truth a
concerned and thoughtful character; even a quietly depressed one. But dressed in assassin’s
black to blend in with his surroundings as he wandered this way and that hoping to stumble
across some sort of strife and injustice he could involve himself in, he was well aware that his
outward appearance proved an adequate facade. If the financial clout had still existed for
Hollywood movie moguls to reel off a patriotic flick about this odious state of affairs, it would
invariably have involved someone of low social standing achieving an unlikely single handed
victory against the junta judicature. Iron could well have qualified as that US patriot had the
stereotype applied. He had always been a rebel of sorts against the American constitution, had
very little respect for the military ideal and since the government's untimely 'selling out' to the
monetary maestros of the NYCN, had never met one of those moral standard bearing officers of
the law he used to hear about on TV to model himself on. Still, if you can't take life lightly you
only end up taking it far too seriously, and then you tend to live in the fear of it all coming to an
end; which it inescapably will, for the rest of your albeit very limited days. He readily admitted
that things were pretty grim, but grim quickly becomes fatalistic when you wallow in that strife.
There was no need to go and get suicidal; he'd been restrained from ever attempting that
method of 'escape' in the asylum years ago. "If only death was an escape it would be so easy,
but there's always the shadow of a vast and unsatisfiable responsibility," he thought to himself
in the cathedral of elegant darkness and spinning cloud which he waded through like a bowl of
Goliath’s soup; "it's true that the more people invent, the less they have left to do. When its easy
to achieve something there isn’t much drive to achieve it; there's really no sense of
achievement." The realization that profundity is obvious is the advantage of the inquisitive
child and the most inspiringly wise. Putting aside his thoughts for the moment, he stepped
swiftly around a dirty, dilapidated corner into a dank alleyway scorched by a bitter air and a
violent disregard for cleanliness, friendliness or architectural insight. Striding on with purpose,
he suddenly realized he was not alone, and his pace duly broke.
He could make out the rough shapes of two typical members of this so called 'community'
through the barrier of rising manhole steam as they hurried out of a ground floor window laden
with semi precious lootings. These were members of the 'under class'; employed by the
government to steal, mug, assault and murder. Like their compatriots, they were not granted the
luxury of pursuing their consumer desires through the use of advanced technologies, so had to
make do with objects which at least appeared to have been constructed out of true materials
and honest hard work. The targets available to them where limited since the consumer class
were exempt from the sphere of available victims, but the rewards were high, since each was
paid on top of the spoils they claimed from previously criminal activity. Of these two members
of the state 'Citizen's Law Insurance Unit', one carried a VCR, the other a bubble shaped
television set. Iron ducked under a handily placed trash can and noticed patches of dried blood
on one of the robber's jackets; clearly not his own judging by the manner it had been spilt like a
glass of red wine in the hands of a clumsy recipient who should have had enough of it for one
day. Truthfully, such detective's insight made Iron cringe, but if god grants you gifts, it's
advisable to use them. The billowing manhole just in front of him, he decided to take a chance;
as he often did; and use an impulsive, artistic approach to this; one of his many confrontations
of the day. Invisible to his would be opponents behind the foreground of neglected junk, he
waited for the moment to launch himself into visibility. And, as they unknowingly scrambled
onto a collision course with their would be assassin, Luis Poyet and Jeanluca Cicero; sprinting
straight into the tower of belching smog; soon found to shared shock and dismay that the cloud
was more solid than it had initially appeared.
The simple flick of a well placed foot sufficed to make the two collapse in full flight;
tumbling into the cold, concrete floor in unison. Poyet; forever the luckless member of the
couple, landed head first as the VCR and TV hurtled to the ground with a destructive thump
and a sizzling shatter of circuitry. And as the criminal turned victim began to roll over and over
like a napping hedgehog mistaken for a bowling ball with a series of low moans, Iron shook his
head and stood up; revealing his presence for the first time. Such kleptomaniac pursuits would
have appeared amicable if given a philosophical context akin to the notion of climbing a
mountain just because it was there, but in fact this was not theft for theft's sake; there were far
less enlightened motivations for this madness. By now the pitiful government adjutant had
inadvertently rolled back into the alley as if guided by some vengeful feudal autocrat waving
him magically back into the gladiator's arena to satisfy his own bloodlust. Iron recognized this
as a typical godsent. When writhing in fictional agony people tend to concentrate on the play
acting rather than on more vital considerations such as just what resulting agony such single
mindedness may entail. Meanwhile Cicero; complacently believing he had the situation under
control; drew a rusted flick knife and clambered to his feet yelling abuse; also unknowingly re-
entering the alleyway he had such a short time ago so wanted to leave as his nemesis lead him
there with a hypnotic step backward. "What the f*ck you doin'?" Cicero almost spat rather than
spoke as Iron began to count the inane repetition of curses on his fingers. Cicero continued
regardlessly; "You f*ckin'' mad, huh? What the f*ck you doin'? F*ckin' psycho!" Unimpressed,
Iron decided he had had enough already, and simply glared at him with an almost parental
expression more of concern than opposition. Cicero trembled with an anger which seemed to
pierce his skin as it leapt about in his body like a volatile electric current searching for an
outlet; "What? You ain't got nothin' to say, huh? You get in my f*ckin' way, 'an you won't be
sayin' nothin' no more...." Suddenly realizing he wasn't actually the least bit interested in what
this demented stranger may or may not have had to say for himself, he held his knife a little
higher and began to appreciate the welcome break from a laboriously boring normality that
such an encounter entailed. The 'don't care' mentality often has the effect of channeling all your
energies into doing the one fleeting and incidental thing you do actually care about at that
particular moment, and right now Cicero was hell-bent on getting his own back. But it had been
a long day for Iron, and he wasn't interested in slanging matches; they were no fun this time of
night. Unenthusiastically waving his arms in an inviting gesture, He fooled the stricken hoodlum
into throwing out just the attack his opponent had predicted. Iron simply raised his arm, evaded
the vague slash and blasted a knee into his opponent's stomach in what appeared to the injured
party to be an inescapable blur of light. Stooping down and moaning, he watched his weapon
clatter to the desert like concrete below him while he wondered what exactly it was that had hit
him. It reminded him of those accounts of extra terrestrial encounters he would have been
watching on the sci fi channel had that TV not come to such a gruesome end; bright lights,
dizziness, disorientation and the like. Poyet, meanwhile; playing dead, drew his trusty .45 with a
silent smile. 'Dumb mutherf*cker....' he muttered to himself, already planning where to shoot
his aggressor. Iron pretended not to hear the spineless petty criminal's self assuring jargon and
proceeded to lift Cicero onto his feet with a stern grip of the collar. Half frantic, half vengeful,
the latter attacked with an aimless hook and received a series of weak, gum loosening jabs to the
mouth for his trouble. Where his punch had gone he would never know, exasperating the
conspiracy theory which banged around in his head like the last cigarette in a box nestled in the
back pocket of a marathon runner who if he wanted to finish the race really should have given
up smoking. Iron was still not satisfied that the robber had realized the error of his ways, and
hopped into a relaxed bounce; performing a two point spin almost in slow motion and
thundering an uppercut into the unsuspecting two bit felon's jaw as he completed the eccentric
turn. Cicero's dizzied head struck a diseased brick wall then the austere alley floor as all cares
and contemplations sunk into a contented peace. But by now it was his partner; right behind his
despised foe; who felt as if he carried the weight of the nation on his tense shoulders with his
gun gawking at the stranger's head with abominable glee. "DON'T F*CKING MOVE!" Iron
thought of moving as much as he possibly could just to spite Poyet into a fit of chaotic
animation, but preferred to turn around slowly to see him shaking like a mouse in the arctic.
The volatile string of predictable profanities which followed made his eyes widen into an
expression of deranged discontent as he began to shake his head in dismay. Poyet's train of
thought though, felt as if it was carrying him down a tunnel of growing heroic grandeur at an
insurmountable pace. "You f*cked up piece of sh*t! You out your f*ckin' mind or somethin'? I
ain't never seen you before; you ain't on the f*ckin' protectorate register...." By now his voice
was beginning to trail into an almost comical squeaky wail; tears of furious aggravation and
bemusement pouring down a wounded cheek; "You mad son-of-a...." Regrettably, Iron had
come to the end of his normally taintless tether half a page of improvised screenplay earlier, and
just couldn't concentrate on his self appointed profession while anxiously wishing this particular
chore over. "You know what they say about sticks and stones...." Poyet, on the other hand, was
just beginning to psyche himself up. "What the f*ck's that 'sposed to mean?" He was now
beginning to realize that he was feeling so light headed that all logical interpretation was
melting into a nervous jelly, and his screams were now coupled with a debilitating inner dread
as if somebody had removed his brain without him realizing, microwaved the loofah like blob
briefly then crammed it back into his tumescent head to stew. His wincing grasp persuading him
to pull the trigger, Poyet shrieked as he emptied all his energy into one finger; clenching his
eyelids closed with grim adversity and missing the target by an embarrassing distance. He
would be forgiven for thinking he'd fired some kind of magic bullet as something jarred into the
side of his head. But Iron's fist had done a less wasteful but just as effective job. The
combination of being shocked into believing he had been shot and the assistance of a strike to a
delicate pressure point contributed together to instil in the ungrateful recipient’s woeful mind
the impression of his legs seeming to dissolve into the floor as a shriveling numbness overcame
him. He accepted unconsciousness with a hidden glee as his opponent shook his head in
dissatisfaction at the amount of lives that had been thrown away to pay for such base
aspirations. Still, a shock was often enough, and if that didn't work, there was the knowledge
that the same may happen again. Whatever the result, he knew deterrents worked wonders. It
was just a shame human morality had sunk so low that it needed them. Returning back through
the smog, he became engulfed in manmade cloud and vanished into the night beyond like an
unwanted ghost, all the while wondering why human beings created such a complex world only
to make a wretched ruin of it. He brushed the shorn grass like covering on his shaven head with
an arched palm and looked upon this disaster zone with partial distaste and partial humor. It
was a long forgotten corner of a long forgotten place in the eyes of the rest of the world. Just an
unfortunate mishap left to burn itself out. But Iron had not forgotten. He was caught in the
middle of this burnt out concrete zoo; leaping from one boisterous furnace to the next struggling
fruitlessly to douse the flames that endeavored to engulf him as he passed though and all the
while wishing a better world would be revealed underneath the smoldering furnace when the
dust finally settled. But as time plodded on it just seemed that it never would settle. His life was
a monotonous one of unconvincing ethical content; a simple story which nonetheless has to be
told.
On to next chapter
Back to Main Page
MAIL ME
All material on this and connected pages are protected by general copyright. Please do not thieve anything from these pages without my consent
