Greeted by the familiar sight of peeling plaster and the repetitive drip of an unidentified pipe
crying a colorful continuity of calligraphic tears somewhere within the clumsy cauldron of walls
and spaces lying in derelict desertion between the untidy collection of ramshackle apartments,
Iron groaned like a shabby cat in a downpour. Life was a dull and repetitive chore which just
had to be lived. It would have been nice if during his sleep his dreams would grant him some
alternative, happier existence, but even dreams had deserted him. He just woke up remembering
the last day which he had struggled to force himself through; forcing the lines of a plodding
script through his teeth as he played out the remainder of his contract. Wakefulness meant the
bell of self made duty was resounding once more in his head; fate pulling him out of his
commodious, cancerous apartment like a disbarring drill sergeant denying a perfidious private
of a canny carousal in the local public house when he should have been reporting in for more
wholesome pastimes; shooting down ill equipped guerrillas, plotting bombing raids and the like.
This was hardly luxury, but it was home. Now and again, he understood everything; the
sentiments of those unsightly elements of the community that he so regularly found himself at
propinquitous odds with and their cardboard cut out culture; morality, reality, life; sometimes
he understood it all. But sometimes he just felt like an abandoned child in a huge and
inauspicious playground of a world full of painful and perfunctory panoramas of things which
he really didn't understand at all. The hidden simplicity of it all was often too much for such a
broken and fragmented mind to handle. The garbled gift of insanity had allowed him to
comprehend the paradoxical, but had taken away his comprehension of the normal. "Why can't
people have it both ways?" he sighed to himself; indulging in this philosophical investigation as
an excuse to remain in his own private world and thus belate his impending migration to the
oedemous oubliette outside. Whenever luck allowed him to see things clearly he felt silently
privileged, but when blinded by the mental disjointedness which habitually plagued him, he felt
dismally constrained. The inherent meaning of things was a muffling mystery which perhaps
even the wholly sane could not understand. The mefmatious mechanics of the wistful, withering
world, his binding connection to it and the encroaching emotions that attachment entailed were
all a piebald puzzle to him. It was a puzzle who's nature the teleological trickster would today
give him a grail like glimpse of.
Utilizing a plenarously piteous willpower brought about by years of inforced patience, he
could switch himself off from the world as if an autistic automaton; lost in a state of
wakefulness devoid of thought; alertness without deliberation. He had always been a child of
premature adolescent angst, but at least since the onset of a tactless trauma he had an excuse to
dither in delinquency. His mind functioned with a fortuitous fluidity when ungainliny unhinged.
He had grown used to having to operate in a limited mental space, and would have resisted
trading his maligned mind for a more efficient model if offered the chance by a saintly
salesman. Years detached from the faults and fortunes of the world had made him who he was.
However, reality was far from cut and dry. He had lost that mechanism which distinguishes
between the real and the unreal, and without it the rest had followed suit; spinning into an
infinity of words and thoughts; ideas and images that somewhere along the line he had
endeavored to submit to what was a measly memory. It felt as if he carried around a heavy
internal purgatory of taut confusion; dragged along by the flimsy strings of personal albeit
directionless commitment which spluttered like a dried up truck begging for an end to its trying
trek down the recalcritant road of life. At least by taking that journey with a pinch of salt he
could award himself some measure of escape. Though his mind was forever crammed with
faces and events; agonies and regrets; one memory remained untouched. The family he had
once had; the life he had once had. He loved his family more than life itself, but had ironically
ended up with his second choice, and though he smiled as he lay there, a more dismal sentiment
dwelled deep inside and popped to attention as he put all that he'd lost and all that he had into
perspective. Nowadays, he didn't care for life; even his own sick and twisted one dimensional
existence. All he ever cared about was his family and friends. But they were all long dead and
gone. He saw beyond death, and regarded it as a reward, not a threat. He had a life plan; one
nowadays all too common. The simple matter of vengence was always the basis of a larger
offensive against what always seems to turn out to be grotesquely insurmountable adversity.
You could never really know how deep the odd murder could cut into the psyche of those
adversely affected. Iron found there was a kind of chain reaction when it came to these things; a
certain person pulled the trigger but someone else had a gun to the assassin’s head, and so on.
Someone else had ordered the assassins to carry out their allotted task, and someone else had
ordered their bosses and so on until it seemed that just about everyone on the Almighty's roster
was responsible in some indirect manner. It was likely that the coiling chain of blame could be
traced back to the Devil himself, who was usually responsible for such things. Vengence would
almost inevitably become a boundless venture. He really wouldn't feel morally right in himself if
he didn't then go out there and prevent the next wave of prospective victims from suffering what
he'd suffered. Truly, a long and laborious task beset him. After all that, if God was the vengeful
type he had read about in a placatory pentateuch back in the enunciating non-elysium of the
augering asylum before his patience ran out and he began to turn to violence, perhaps he'd get a
shot at a decent afterlife. The real downside was that he realized that to eradicate the sins of
humanity he would have to single handily battle that hoofed demon on its own terms. Mental
deficiency often grants the mundane a gleaning of grandeur. It can be kind of like the opposite
effect of the vision of a cow. They are lumbering creatures who because of the way their eyes
work believe that even the insignificant things; like humans; around them dwarf them when
really its the other way around. Iron's world saving task was huge, but insanity made him see it
differently. Even if logical possibility dictated that one man could not turn an entire world to the
straight and narrow, perhaps bringing down one particular doggerel dictatorship would have to
do. He saw himself as a hardly saintly samaritan with a daunting mission in life, though he
always heard stories about people who had achieved similar feats. They managed it in movies
and the like as if fighting such battles was an everyday occurrence, so why couldn't he triumph
against indomitable odds? Probably because those characters were fictitious and he was real.
Because their every movement was choreographed and his were of his own creation. Iron was at
heart an idealist; a perfectionist. An arrogant stance in some ways, but his own unintentional
humility disregarded that. A sane minded individual would either surrender to wallow in pity or
attack the individual responsible for his pains. But Iron's conquest was far further reaching than
that, and he himself was far from sane.
Pouncing onto his feet like a hunting feline, he gave the deformed front door a shoulder
barge; making it break away from the wall like thin ice. Hopping down the steps, he took a
fleeting glance through the grubby landing window before flinging the bland double doors open
and wandering into the ill placed sunshine which almost bullyingly doused an everlasting river
of vehicle and human traffic with a hounding spray of prolonged photosynthesis. He dived into
the flocking crowds and soon became another faceless face in the huddled, bustling masses. It
was a foreboding feeling to be alone in a crowd, but he at least had somewhere to go. With
aimless premeditation, he rode the tidal wave of indirection and headed for the mall on East
47th. He'd had a tip off from a reliable source; reliable as a source rather than a human being;
and was about to meet a top ranking official of the glorious government; something he'd been
looking forward to with reactionary venom for many years. A chance to make a real
impression.
As normal, thepettic maw of the mall was a hellish hustle. So many people going nowhere;
doing nothing worthwhile. So fiendishly busy; so incoherently cramped; though sporting
accommodatingly ample open space. The prosaic square gray form of this dominating but
empty building kissed the skyline as if at the feet as its master. Sarah Lincoln frowned and
realized how alone she was. She often felt like that if there were too many people around. You
tend to loose sight of your own identity when swamped by so many other contradictory ones.
Taking a deep breath, she slammed an obese pair of glass doors back on their promethian
hinges and plunged into the nauseous crowds like a courageous nautical explorer headed
towards unknown and unimaginable lands. She wondered how each caterwauling consumer
product in every junk laden shop window could fetch such huge and bank breaking sums, but
then realizing that these days money itself was as meaningless a concept as that which it was
used to purchase, she decided to wrangle with herself further on the issue. 'You exchange
something primarily worthless for something probably even less so.' Such captious casuistry
commonly cogitated her character; 'at least it's fair; or it would be if people didn't have to work
for a bundle of worthless paper promises we so conspicuously label wealth and fortune. If they
didn't have to waste life and limb searching for something equally worthless to exchange their
new found capitol for, the whole idea would be quite acceptable. Come to think of it, it's not fair
at all, it's abysmal. then again, even work is a forgotten luxury. At least if wealth was earned it
would carry some stifling stigma of purpose.'
'What's the obsession designers have with glass these days?' Iron strained to prevent himself
kicking one of the many millions of oblique windows, walls and doors to a sandy oblivion. 'I
guess people have got bored with the never ending stream of technology we've been swamped
with since the 'revolution', and think making everything translucent will 'bring us back to nature'
in some misguided way. Or maybe it's artistic; symbolic, even. The only thing this glass
catacomb symbolizes is that people may be primarily concerned with the tangibly solid in this
day and age, but with it they're transparent.' Every disinterested face and every mask like smile
drifted past him like floating spirits on their lofty pilgrimage to the heavens; a simile which
made him worry that here he was walking the other way. The only real difference between
himself and the stumbling masses was one of falsity. Through either doing exactly what their
neighbors did, or precisely what the powers that be suggested in order to maintain a false sense
of belonging, the 'consumers' felt they were somehow interacting in a civilized manner with a
real world. They thought having the same identity as everyone else meant they were part of an
equal and liberated society. They fought off their own hidden preferences and opinions in a vain
struggle to be identical with everyone else; to 'fit'. Iron was unconvinced by the material world
and its pentathlon of pernickity pitfalls. Reality appeared to emanate from different dimensions.
He was different, and liked it, even if the deviations in his persona really were attributable to
mental inadequacy. 'If everyone is pretending to be part of the whole, surely 'the whole' is a
fictitious creation.' Shrugging this incredulous question off like a whirring wasp, he
concentrated on the task in hand and leapt up four steps at a time towards the restaurant at the
top, where he'd been told his and the informant's mutual 'friend' would be having a recruitment
meeting. One good thing about commercialism and convenience is that everybody grows so lazy
and unhealthy that they flock to become sardines in a tin can lift and leave the stairways open
for the more energetic and less compulsive to use. How considerate; it was a shame all the
consideration a society like this could handle was that of the coincidental persuasion.
Rodriguez Lopez; an elite member of the military regime; had been given the
painstakingly uninteresting task of choosing which lower ranking officer should be promoted to
stand as head of the South Street Seaport home guard. There were two defensive bases in South
Manhattan; designed to keep the destitute out and the wealthy in; although the latter were hardly
likely to concoct a feasible escape plan should they wish to neglect their luscious lifestyles.
South Street fell just outside the exclusion zone; a supply depot which doubled as the first and
final port of call for encroaching refugees who tended to drift over to Manhattan from the
decrepit doldrums of Brooklyn like penury hosts of Vietnamese boat people. The missile array
would indiscreetly deal with such incorrigible immigration. But the seaport's primary purpose
was to relay troops and supplies to the militia training camp isolated on Liberty Island. The
second home guard unit; a last line of defense which had never in history been necessary; was
located within the parliamentary HQ at the Twin Towers; a debatably impregnable fortress
Lopez held high regard for only because its maintenance was his responsibility. In reality, the
idea of being part of a defense unit was a fallible one for the sole reason that there were no anti
establishment campaigns to defend against, let alone terrorists and assassins under the pay of
local dubious democracies to deal with. Nobody was stupid enough to voice opinions even if
they had any, and most were too afraid to even wish the government would fall in case at birth
the authorities had seen it fit to equip their idle minds with some kind of insidious recording
device, which sadly was probably the case. The real power that having a post like South Street
Defense chief entailed was the automatic seat in the so called 'cabinet' which the holder
received; an eight man committee which made all the decisions within the company, and to
receive such a prominent position without having had any prior experience in the political sector
raised the possibility of governmental fragmentation should that representative develop a
questioning mind. As a consequence, Lopez had been asked by his superiors on the committee
to appoint a tactical quango; an officer smug enough to suspend all moral consideration and
gullible enough to do whatever he and his boss required of them. This would outweigh any
disruptive elements within the government's senior ranks; the only reason such elements existed
within the organization being because of the government's policy of scratching top ranking
officials from the security rota; a practice akin to removing an alarm tag in a superstore. In
fact, only eight 'authorized' citizens had been relieved of their 'pulses'; micrometer thin silver
strips sprinkled with a multitude of tiny locators, sensors, information bands and all the
trappings of the most notorious science fiction autocracies. They were basically used to keep
tabs on people, just so that everyone on cloud nine of the political pyramid knew everyone else's
business almost first hand. Every 'consumer' had had one of these mechanical bar codes
scrawled onto their wrists either at birth or as soon afterwards as possible as a prerequisite of
scaling the most prosperous peak of a sanuinary society. This meant it was possible to locate
those who were not following orders to the letter and monitor every action of the less than
respectful populace. Those who were unmarked were consequently easy to spot and flush out
since certain 'safe zones' across Manhattan were hooked up with invisible laser like beams set
up in such designated areas to scan any uncareful enough to wander into them. Unmarked
intruders stepping across one of those sensors would immediately be found out and registered
on the black list, which was essentially a kind of death row without bars. Anyone on that list
was destined to die a quick and needless death whenever the security forces caught up with
them. This meant that 'anti socials' could easily be traced; setting off a high tech intruder alarm
at just about every step. Removing pulses was dangerous for government security, but
necessary to invoke an atmosphere of trust and freedom which authority supposedly dictated.
Afterall, being constantly monitored would not instill in top ranking officers an overwhelming
loyalty to their cantankerous king, those around them and the risk of them being lured into
deserting in favor of a more 'democratic' state had to be run to ensure obedience. Tokyo
especially; as a heavyweight rival; was constantly on the lookout for spies baring more than the
natural body of knowledge on opposition City States, but the Manhattan governors generally
had more mock money than sense and made quite sure their employees were left with far too
much of the former to worry about any offers which might come their way. Even Volscenzi
realized one man could not run an autocracy; and his advisors had to be gifted some
compensation of freedom to ensure they decided against seeking wealth, but possibly captivity
elsewhere.
Lopez unfastened a strangling clasp on his a dark blue uniform of regular junta design, but
embezzled with a leadership crest on the left collar, a stringy purple line across the shoulders
and pockets and an ID plate featuring a laughably mournful photo of himself. Each home guard
units and the set of four top 'ministers' had their own color coding; this reminded the oft
forgetful patriarch at least of their areas of expertise as well as their identities, and Lopez;
though not an avid fan of such differentiation; sat proud in the knowledge that everyone around
him was well aware of his rank and importance, and that many could probably identify him by
name. Afterall, he was mildly famous; when revolutionary incursions were scarce; which was
almost interminably the case; he doubled as media censor, and appeared on regular propaganda
TV documentaries and news reports. A little slice of manipulative humor in an otherwise
somber lifestyle. Benito Lorenzo, Roberto Carira and Nujoma Somja were today's three
candidates.
Meanwhile, Lincoln had got herself caught up in a regretful crowd, and soon found
herself directed towards one of two packed elevators; it's doors baring the churlish countenance
of an entrance to another world which invoked runaway daydreams about the gates of heaven
and hell. Jostled towards the pit by a gaggle of zombified fire breathing demons, she thought,
must be a somewhat similar experience. Staring inanely at the pristine polished glass doors and
furnished imitation gold buttons, she waited impatiently. "Cheapness were cheapness is due...."
she announced aloud, receiving a scolding suck of the teeth from an old woman behind, to
which she simply raised a blameless eyebrow and took a deep, argumentative sigh. Little
computer screens bleeped and squealed, drawing the attention of countless 'consumers' who
turned and looked up to them as if awaiting the word from their mechanical masters. Lincoln
looked on it all like a disenfranchised luddite surrounded by the modern spinning wheels which
had desecrated her profession; about to set upon the new inanimate 'employees' with an
agricultural hoe and somehow benefit humanity as a whole by silencing those chit chatting
bleeps. 'I may be socially backward,' she admitted to herself, 'but at least I've got my principles
sorted out. The almighty didn't make this world for us to build our own on top of it and obscure
his divine creation.'
The shabby red carpet seemed to sink beneath Iron's feet as if he were walking on water;
each foot wading deeper as if into a labourfully thickening bog. Looking down, he realized the
only danger here was that of damaging his eyesight by punishing it with a second glance at the
shoddy, putrid cloth which adorned the floor like the contents of a beheaded body, and
proceeded to march towards his giveaway target; four uniformed militia men; the 'big cheese'
cramming a cigar into his mouth like a double decker sandwich beneath a 'no smoking' sign.
Iron began a finicking running commentary as he drew nearer; "These guys want to be found."
Tapping the closest sullen subordinate on the shoulder, he was presented with an azure arsenal
of cigarette smoke which sent his vision into a giddy whirl he may have expected had he just
stepped into a tamping tornado. Blinking heavily like a perched and predatorless owl, he
struggled desperately to refrain from coughing while acrimoniously attempting to partake in
some sort of relatively civilized but ultimately hollow conversation; "Er.... that Cuban?"
"Colombian- what's it to you?" Iron considered answering Carira with a comment on his lack of
courtesy when meeting a 'guest', but decided that would be too direct a form of 'treason'; at
least, before his eyes cleared up. "I, er.... came for the job."
"Bullsh*t." Lorenzo often talked about himself.
"Yeah, I... er, was in a rush; left my uniform at home." Lopez wasn't convinced this stranger
was just another street crazy, and sat back in authoritarian self assurance. "I think our brother
here be playin' us f' clowns, boss." Iron took a minute to work out why; like Somja; certain
people found it necessary to state the agonizingly obvious as if reality can only be maintained if
you actively point at and proclaim the existence of every little thing, while the prospective
promotion material drew a hagerty handgun and cocked the trigger. Now he realized perhaps
this whole thing wasn't such a good idea, and took a soft step back behind a wooden bench; the
misplaced music in the background attempting to contribute towards a civilized clientele, but
adding only to the telltale tattiness which surrounded them like a sordid slum. Somja awaited
the command like a stoic sheepdog as Iron prepared for the starting pistol. "Waste him, officer."
The music seemed to stop for a moment as Iron bolted in an awkward diagonal past the
exploding bench and landed in a low sprint toward the glassy lift shaft at the opposite end of the
top floor. Everyone had bad ideas sometimes, and Iron had just familiarized himself with the
experience. Still, with some careful forward planning and a little good fortune perhaps he could
get himself out of a metaphorical hole which he wished would indulge in some immediate
metamorphosis, become real and swallow him up like a stack of scrumptious steaks on the plate
of a super heavyweight. Amid a beaming barrage of both physical and verbal projectiles, one
crooked bullet whizzed too close for what would have been stone cold comfort by his head like
a poisoned arrow. He let out an almost cartoony frown as he heard the unmistakable reloading
of a shotgun and zigzagged past wailing shoals of feverish shoppers who if he had been inclined
towards the siege mentality seemed to form a deliberate barricade. Cinders and splinters burst
behind him against tractable tiers of terse advertising hordings which tumbled like drooling
dominos while the tortured carpet spat canckered clumps of cuticle crimson as if lined with a
lupine litter of burbling blood bags at the whim of a slovenly slipstream of shearing bullets. The
melodic pattern of shotgun blasts and rattling, concurring cyclone of crashes and curses
continued; shattered glass, tenacious tremors and a generous glut of overall devastation
mounting in the wake of the escaping fugitive and his agaric aggressors. As a shell hit the low
wall above him, Iron covered his face from the falling debris of plaster and metal and initiated a
final boost of speed towards the lift doors, which casually retracted with an off key 'ding'. He
upped the pace as if attempting to pip his nearest rival on the line in some arcane Olympic
sprint final. He did tend to trifle with the trust of the creator as a matter of natural course, but
for once he was not entirely convinced that destiny would deliver the divine dictum which would
spare him. The crowds parted as if he was a mollycoddle Moses. A boom of musty gunpowder
and kinetic energy curved into the floor beneath his heel like a diving dolphin; the very back of
his shoe exploding into a smolder of billowing, burning rubber as he tripped into a forward roll
and was carried by this momentum into the lift; a wisping trail of smoke and all the
cacophonous sounds of the outside world shut out like a Jehovah’s witness at the door of an
astringent atheist as the soundproof glass doors slammed together with contemptible, unhurried
ease.
Lincoln was mildly surprised by the strange entrance of a second passenger, while Iron's
mind slowly concluded like an outmoded computer that he had escaped. Feeling himself for a
moment in a blissful dream reminiscent of the near death experience which a defeatist glitch in
his brain had prepared him for he was unexpectedly shuddered into full consciousness as the
elevator began it's stomach plummeting downward motion. Lincoln offered an instinctive hand
and helped him up; it seemed like the right thing to do, and besides, this didn't appear to be your
average, everyday legalized criminal, if such a thing was not a contradiction in terms. In fact, it
seemed the officers of the 'law' were decidedly on his case. "Lincoln; Sarah." she introduced
herself with caution, but an unprecedented feeling of automatic trust as if this whole accidental
circumstance was brought about by an incantacious intention not quite accidental at all. "Iron;
Martin." In all fairness, his preoccupation with glancing around this way and that like an
insecure gazelle in an open savanna for his pursuers was justifiable given that he still had not
quite yet deciphered where he had ended up. He had just been dragged along by his own inertia
and some governing force which had for some unknown purpose plucked him out of the wraggle
taggle warzone outside into a place where calm and quiet reigned as if he had dropped into a
sudden sleep. "Friends aren’t too pleased at you, huh?" As she suspected, Lopez and his
egregious mob were far from friends of this maladjusted misfit. "Friends?" Iron mimicked the
action of choking, which made Lincoln smirk for the first time in years to anyone but herself
despite the briefness of the retort. Strange how she had not noticed her continual depression
until confronted with the contrary. But the frying pan was still fizzling away with Iron standing
stock still in the center like a sitting duck; or more accurately a fried one. Catching a glimpse of
his pursuers between rungs of raffish pillars and walkways which had ostensibly been drifting
upwards as if he was in a huge tent being lifted by a haughty helicopter until he had realized it
was he who had been plunged into perpetual motion, he began to gesture to his newfound
partner in crime to duck, who had taken a fortunate glance back up at the top floor as Lorenzo's
shotgun unleashed a bloodthirsty burst of flame which seemed to move in slow, gradual freeze
frames rather than fluid motion as if a clumsy projectionist had misaligned the film reel of life.
Lorenzo clenched his teeth so tightly Lincoln grew worried that they might just crack as he
frustratedly thumped the rail separating the carpeted gangway from the towering, gleaming
depths below populated by cavalcades of scurrying shoppers, blaring store signs and
psychodelic window displays. The wall of glass caved in in front of the pair of under fire
revolutionaries as they dived to the floor in uncannily unison; a wash of glass cascading over
them with the elegance of a wraith like waterfall. Lorenzo altered his stance to accommodate the
near vertical angle this cunning if not chance escape had created like a barbaric and inaccurate
cupid. "What's this guy's problem?" Lincoln snatched her berretta from a jacket pocket and
wondered just what she'd landed herself in. Afterall, there she was minding her own business
and some grudge bearing military maniac sets upon her with a shotgun. Iron obliged with the
unnecessary reply; "They're government bodyguards;" to which Lincoln gave him a 'don't you
think I know that?' nod. Despite the unenthusiastic reception that revelation received, Iron
continued regardlessly; "yeah, well, I heard they're doing interviews for the South Street post."
"Personal curiosity or prospective candidate?"
"Well, honestly I just came to gatecrash." Lincoln flinched as his voice was quietened by the
deafening boom of exploding glass behind them. Lorenzo's next victim was intended to be more
of the carbon based variety. Meanwhile, Lincoln felt the strange impression of looking into a
mirror; this guy had the same principles; or the same lack of sanity; as her. Lorenzo leant back
to put his head out of the firing line. Behind the space age metal barrier he was shielded, but his
targets remained in mortal danger, or so he thought. Lincoln's aim and reflexes, though,
surprised him as much as the agony he received. Picking a crazily obscure spot between two
chinks in the glassy armor of the balcony barrier, she held her weapon at a precarious ninety
degree angle, pointed with the index finger and pumped a perfectly placed bullet through the
minuscule gap like a pigmy hitman shooting a dart out of a pipe. The bullet tore it's ballistic
path into Lorenzo's thigh; the caustic pain swooping through his body like a bird of prey and
tipping him over like a puppet deprived of its strings as a curt spring of blood burst out of his
leg as if it were a pin pricked water balloon. Lincoln cringed forgivefully at the bloodshed
though she knew the injury was a minor one of sorts, and twirled her gun around in a repetitive
figure of eight in a manner not quite either regretful or sadistic, to which she quickly added a
vestigeous grimace as she reminded herself that as unconscionable as her target undoubtedly
was, the illicit imprecation he had suffered had been of her own doing. Iron climbed to his feet
with a congratulating knuckle to the shoulder. "Thanks.... Done this before, right?" Lincoln
conceded an affirming shrug as the eldritch elevator dribbled onwards towards the ground floor.
Then it came to her; "Psychopathic rehabilitation ward!" Iron screwed his face up with a baffled
"Huh?", thinking he'd missed a vital sentence as the elevator doors scrolled apart with an
anointing crunch. "Psychopathic rehabilitation ward," she repeated herself as the pair began to
wind through the crowds; both intent on finding the nearest exit from this chasm of unrealizable
commercial dreams. However, the proclamation made no more sense second time around.
Lincoln decided someone's memory needed a peremptory pounding. "Long Island mental
institute? You were a patient."
"Yeah....?" Iron's train of thought wasn't the swiftest of vehicles when it came to resurrecting
suppressed memories, whereas Lincoln's enthusiastic pursuit of her own lost history made her
more desperate to enlighten him; "So was I! Long time ago, though; another life, almost. We
had a love-hate.... well, a hate-hate relationship, remember? It was your... our fault we each got
a nice little padded cell all to ourselves in solitary." Iron had not thought to recollect the whys
and wherefores of his crypt like confinement for as many years as he did purpose to remember
lest he slip back into the draining dregs of depression which had descended on him in those days
like a black shadow engulfing his soul. "You weren’t the mad one who broke my leg with the
baseball bat?" Lincoln nodded; pointing at herself with a proud nod which she respectfully
amended to a regretful one; "U-huh; you remember me."
"Not for the best reasons admittedly."
"You know I've still got the very bat!"
"Complete with traces of human cartilage."
"Aw, don't...."
"Unprovoked cripplings weigh heavily on the minds of young and impressionable children."
"Yeah; right. It was only hairline. But I still insist I was aiming at that doctor; I've been a
reactionary ever since. Those anesthetics; do something to your brain...."
"Brain... Right..."
"Anyway, I seem to remember a certain someone getting in a bit of retaliation."
"Attempted retaliation, and I was more than entitled to it." All these ill gotten memories were
beginning to brim back into activity like a bubbling pan in Iron's formerly locked and bolted
psyche. "You can't blame a nine year old kid for that, and besides, when you start fighting with
knives, someone's bound to get hurt."
"Namely me, huh? I don't normally snap like that; think it was something about someone about
my age suffering from the same mental condition turning up out of the blue; I lost half the
attention."
"Then all of it. If you; we weren't such nasty pieces of work we'd never have had to spend those
years locked up with no one but the old white walls to speak to, and they didn't offer much
comfort."
"Yeah, but maybe then we'd never have turned out the people we are today. Still, it's funny
when you think about it." Lincoln stuck a leg out to swing the exit doors open before the
denouncing eyes of a chastised consumer who scuttled through and began to look back
accusingly at regular intervals until the alleged culprit was far enough away to receive an
unheard comment of disappreciation. "Spending the best years of my life in a mental institute;
yeah; hilarious."
"Well, for the record I'm sorry;" Lincoln realized it may well have been thirteen years too late,
but it was the thought that counted; "as long as we start off on a happier note than last time."
Even the polluted atmosphere of the staidly streets seemed fleetingly fresh compared to the
hazy, lamentable bitterness of the mall. "Yeah; some people just click in the wrong way..."
Lincoln whacked a tin can into the gutter with a bat of the boot. "Hatred is the first sign of true
love, right?"
"Oh yeah; right." Iron whirled an oblivious hand one way then the other; indicating the fact he
didn't really know where he was going. He suddenly felt the pressure off himself. In such a
crazed and ravaged society it felt refreshing to know that at least someone shared your
sentiments. "Then you grow towards the same cause in life, or at least make the same enemies.
We're regular heroes, huh?" Like Iron, Lincoln wasn't her own biggest fan; "You wander
around thinking everyone’s suffering from the same decease; oblivious to the true ways of the
world; still blinded by star spangled blinkers. It's nice to know you're not the only one who's
immune, otherwise you might just shrink back into your shell, which isn't the best way for the
mentally... challenged to reintegrate into society."
"Well, psychological rehabilitation isn't a course in social development."
"It wasn't a course in mental development as far as I'm concerned."
"But then it's never the fault of the doctors, is it; they're just the hard working pawns. They just
stand on the front line."
"But it's someone higher up who wields the true responsibility. I know I don't exactly practise
what I preach, but its no good attacking the symptoms; you're better off annihilating the cause;
going for the monster's head instead of kicking at it's toes hoping the whole burbling beast will
topple."
"And you're a humanitarian, right?"
"Yeah, alright, alright; I'm a conscientious objector with a gun, okay? I've never killed anyone
in my life and I don't intent to start any time soon, or ever for that matter."
"Well, you know what they say about the best intentions...." Soon becoming concealed in
swirling clouds puffed like polemic plumes of opium by the perforating plinths of mandrake
manhole covers, the strange duet of alienated idealists wandered into the oceanic wash of
rambling pilgrims who had long ago missed the serrated signpost to salvation.
Iron glared reservedly at an old bearded man babbling ludicrously at a troupe of
startled shoppers who dispersed nervously like a gaggle of warring crustaceans across a sun
soaked beach as the would be pensioner came at them with a patchwork banner foretelling the
end of the world. "You ever wonder if this world is another planet's hell?" True to character,
Iron's testing of the philosophical waters was more a headlong plunge than a subtle dabble.
Lincoln raised an eyebrow as if to deflect the insubstantial blow; "Oh, heaven and hell, huh?
Well let's see...." A passing observation of the glorious squalor which appeared to swamp
around them even as they walked like an angry jungle proved an adequate prompt for an
answer- "If its another planet's heaven I'd be worried for them. But at least if this is life it has to
end, right? I mean, a 'better place'; a 'light at the end of the tunnel'; that's what they say. Some
tumultuous ending where it all makes sense."
"Do you believe in that?"
"If hope qualifies as belief then yes I do. You? Is this place a hell, a heaven, or some midpoint
purgatory we're determined to endure until our spirit becomes 'just so'; until it achieves what it
was supposed to and can somehow pass on?"
"Well, I can't really imagine another reality. I can only imagine Heaven as this world with all
the nasty things removed and the nice things amplified, and Hell as vice versa. Furthermore, if
I'm imagining these places, who's doing the imagining? My experiences in this world; an
aberration between Heaven and Hell; have influenced and determined who 'I' am. If I wasn't
here, I wouldn't really be me at all, so really you can't imagine either and if you do then who is
that you're placing in the center of the Heaven or the Hell, pointing at and saying about; 'that's
me'?" Lincoln chuckled at the insanity of the entire idea, but was neither convinced nor entirely
scathing of it's validity; "I think heaven and hell are pretty ambiguous concepts."
"Maybe it doesn't matter; you know. Maybe Heaven and Hell are just how we see them;
personally; uniquely. Maybe there's no world at all without someone to observe it."
"The participatory anthropic principle." The fact that there were terms for such things scared
Lincoln almost as much as the fact that she knew them by heart. "The what?" Iron was clearly
less burdened with knowledge. "Doesn't matter. We don't really live in a world where either
heaven and hell could be imagined. They would be so different to what we're used to that our
conjecture can never properly apply."
"So all we can have is continuation; rebirth into this same world; at least until we grow enough
to be able to conceive of Heaven and Hell."
"So what? We come back as gnats, birds; other people?"
"I dunno, Saz; maybe we come back as ourselves."
"Saz, huh?" Lincoln frowned like a kid embarrassed at a sibling's admittedly affectionate
nickname for her, then conceded she'd been called worse things; "To live the same live again
and again until we do something about it, you mean?"
"Until we veer away from the path we thought was set; until we break the mold. Well, yeah;
that would work. Until we realize ourselves; until we're no longer dependent on the world as we
think it is; the world that's convenient to us with it's nice, neat little laws and expectations; all
the routines of science and nature. We keep repeating until we no longer get fooled by those
things that coax us to stay; until there's nothing to cling to; no footholds to land on that we can
use to pull ourselves back up to purgatory."
"An ongoing process of trying to break the wheel of life. And what happens when the journey
stops?"
"Isn't that exactly where the journey really begins?"
"Ignoratio elenchi;" Iron pretended to understand the Latin; or whatever it was; with an
unconvincing nod and let her continue; "You know it's not quite comforting to think that we just
live and live again until we find our own way; not exactly an awe inspiring advertisement for
linear existence, is it? Live, suffer, die and live again?" Lincoln felt the environment around her
to be a badly animated fantasy world as one tends to when the philosophical bug bites. It was
like everyone else's lives were meaningless and superficial. Hell, so was her's, but at least she
knew it. "Shame you aren’t granted the luxury of looking back to see how you went wrong the
last time, whether each life you live is of the same identity or just that of yet another worrying,
desiring human being who just can't let go. Leaves us like actors with amnesia; forgetting we're
just playing parts so we play them over and over thinking each time it's a new adventure. We
know deep inside how our lives are supposed to pan out, so we don't even think."
"Stuck in some bland and stereotypical martial arts flick or a cheesy near future sci fi where
each and every mouse like twist in the plot is signposted so far in advance we've forgotten we
read the autoque. The storyline is so deeply ingrained into our heads we never deviate from it. If
only for once one of us would stray from it; unravel some subplot we weren’t supposed to know
about or make some leap of faith that would make us; the script readers; look up from the page
and look around at the real world instead of being so embroiled in the screenplay that we
actually believe it's life."
"Yeah, some revelation; a religious experience of sorts to shock us out of our everyday routine.
Some chance meeting or accidental chemistry the writer of the piece hadn't envisaged...."
"You know, Saz; that's a concept so far fetched it's probably true." Their voices began to
mingle anarchically with the thunder of traffic, the wail of nauseous pedestrians and the tired
stammering of subway trains in the shallow grottos below, all of which crumpled into a
monotonous whir like a faltering cog in the mechanics of the universe which whatever god
responsible had neglected to repair. Perhaps utilizing a mishmash combination of insanity,
insight and a homely familiarity with the childlike mind, a human being; or beings; could coerce
some measure of transition into existence.
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