STORY: Promised Land

[E. Jay O'Connell]

[Here's an oldie I'm giving up on. This has the distinction of being the
first story that my workshop really had any faith in at all. The character
*does* things, instead of just reacting to stimuli. I just lopped 1000
words out of it, in an effort to pare it down to something I could send to
the small press, and decided--fuck it. This had been in the mail long
enough. 380 days, to be exact. Nine markets.

I'm putting the bullet through it's temple now. BANG! There go First North
American Serial Rights! Gone in a puff of ASCII! Hee.

Serves the thing right for not selling fast enough.

I still think it's pretty good. It has some heart. Enjoy.

DISCLAIMER: The characters, religions, and situations in this story are all
made up by me, and aren't intended to piss anyone off. If they do, I'm
sorry, OK?]
____________________________________________________________

Copyright 1994 E. Jay O'Connell
All Rights Reserved (yeah, right)
4500 Words
258 Hampshire Street #3

Promised Land

By E. Jay O'Connell


The jackhammer bucked against the concrete, driving a familiar
numbness up Ry's arms. It was his last day on the road gang--in a week he'd
be in Africa. He repressed a smile at the thought, resisted the urge to
wipe at the sweat streaming around his goggles. Chips didn't do those
things.
Ry's nudge flashed, sending a streamer of glowing text along his lower
peripheral vision. WORKER 8129-CV MAY TAKE OPTIONAL FIVE MINUTE
BREAK--BASED ON MUSCLE FATIGUE FACTORS, DEHYDRATION--
It wasn't easy being a Witness. The Faith prohibited
consciousness-shunting implants, but there was precious little work for the
unmodified. So Ry had had the Mimicport installed in place of a real
control system. The mimic, while a sin, was a minor one. Not like becoming
a robot eight hours a day.
Ry's paused to finish the salty fluid in his oral rehydration jug
before collapsing in Control Van's shade, watching the machined precision
of his coworkers on program. The thickly-muscled forms carved tarmack from
concrete, concrete from steel, and hurled it into the gaping hoppers of the
front-end loaders.
The door of the Control Van banged open, and Ry immediately fell into
a stretch, touching his head to his knee, feeling the pull in his calf and
buttocks. Chips never really rested.
The supervisor's shadow fell over him as he reversed his position, and
began to stretch the other leg. Ry's nudge blinked red. SUPERVISOR RUNNING
CONTROL SYSTEMS DIAGNOSTIC. STAND UP IMMEDIATELY.
Ry stood stock still, heart thudding loudly in his ears, as the mimic
flashed streams of gibberish. Not now, he prayed. Don't let it happen now.
Mimics were illegal. He was staring at ten years chipped for real in a
prison program, with no downtime.
He could very well miss the Rapture.
HOLD YOUR ARMS OUT AT A 90 DEGREE ANGLE.
Ry complied as the supervisors mirrored faceplate caught the afternoon
sun, blindingly. "You a faker, boy?"
Ry struggled for calm as the sheer weight of his arms drove fiery
needles of pain into his shoulders and back. He checked the time in his
nudge--only an hour until downtime. An hour until Africa.
The supervisor lifted the faceplate of his refrigerated suit,
releasing a heady bouquet of body odor and tobacco. He stood insultingly
close, like a man inspecting a malfunctioning piece of machinery.
Vein-threaded eyes peered from a piggish face. He struck a cigarette
against the sole of his left boot. "Been watchin' you. You don't move quite
right. Could be an old chipset, sure. But still..."
He reached up and jerked down Ry's goggles. DON'T MOVE, the nudge
urged uselessly. The supervisor drew a long, deep drag on his cigarette,
squinting in the harsh sunlight. He brought the glowing coal towards Ry's
left eye, and held it there. "You fakin, Boy?"
The glowing tip loomed closer, the burning sensation slowly building
as his lower eyelid trembled, spilling a teardrop down his dust streaked
face. Ry stood perfectly still, cruciform, staring into the glowing
spotlight of ash. And prayed.
"If you're a faker, you're a damn good one."
He dropped the cigarette and ground it out with a wiggle of a booted
toe. Thank you, God, Ry thought, holding his breathing even. Africa. As
soon has the supervisor had vanished back into the windowless trailer, Ry
let his arms drop, picked up his jackhammer, and counted down the minutes.
His nudge flashed DOWNTIME--PROGRAM ENDING, his co-workers dropping
their handtools suddenly, as if they'd come to holding venomous snakes. One
of them, a tall, balding man with cheap aluminum replacement eyes, let out
a high pitched howl of ecstasy as he clapped Ry on the shoulder.
"Back amongst the living!" Somehow, his broad smile widened. "Let's go
get wasted, eh?"
* * *
Ry emerged at Downtown Crossing, blinking in the bright sun. Every
day, the gang invited him downtown for a drink, and every day he refused.
His workmates bounced from one kind of mindlessness to another, with hardly
an hour in between.
Ry made his way through the red light district with his eyes to the
ground. He strode quickly through the alley of pornographic VRs, nearly
colliding with the woman in front of Jack's Dollhouse. Ry's eyes traveled
up her body, from her black spike pumps and black fishnets, to the chromed
bodice that barely containing the spill of her pale silicone breasts.
Ry met her clear green eyes. Beneath them, a quivering vertical pink
slash took the place of a nose and mouth. He'd never seen the modification
before. The labia twitched, and a narrow pink shape slid from the opening,
moistening its edges.
"Hey muscle man, wanna date?" Her tinny voice issued from a
speakerport disguised as an onyx choker.
Ry brushed past her, flinching at the contact. Abomination. Shoving
through the crowd, he ignored the stream of obscenities rising in his wake.
Nobody did anything but swear. His construction gang build had its
advantages.
Within minutes he was clumping up the eight flights of sagging wooden
stairs and into the apartment he shared with his father. Pop was watching
TV, reclined in a vomit beige EZ Boy lounger. The set was tuned to the
lottery channel, as always. Twelve-digit numbers scrolled by continuously,
accompanied by the mindlessly grinning faces of the happy winners.
His father's dog-eared King James was open on the TV table next to the
chair, feathered with slips of notebook paper covered in a cramped scrawl.
One slip of paper trembled in his hand. His father's eyes flashed back and
forth, between it and the numbers scudding across the set.
"Buy any meat?" he burbled, not taking his eyes from the screen. He
wasn't wearing his teeth again.
"No, Pop. No meat. Can't afford it. Besides, it's bad for you."
"Nonsense. Meat's good, makes you strong." His voice bubbled up
through a layer of phlegm.
Ry filled a pressure cooker with a mixture of dried red beans and
rice, added two cups of bottled water, and three cubes of textured
vegetable protein. He covered it and set it on the propane burner.
"Beans. A man my age. Fought for his country, raised three kids,
eating beans. Enough to make you cry."
After a sponge bath standing at the sink--the bathroom in the hall
hadn't worked in months--Ry served the stew into two chipped china bowls,
and called his father to the table.
"Aren't you going to eat any of this slop?" Ry's father glared at him
over the steaming bowl of beans.
"I'm meeting Ginny for dinner."
"Oh." The old man's expression softened somewhat. "Such a pretty girl.
A shame you never got married."
"That's right," Ry said, his voice a controlled whisper. "Damn shame."
"She still living in sin with that boy?"
"I don't want to talk about it, Pop."
His father sniffed. "Suit yourself. What I want to tell you, son," his
voice took on conspiratorial quality, "is that I think I've almost hit it."
Ry grimaced. He was talking about The System.
His father ignored his expression. "I've converted the ages of the Old
Testament patriarchs into months, not years, see? There's some question
about those lifespans. In months, they come out normal. They may never have
lived any longer than our own allotted three score and ten--"
"I don't want to hear it, Pop," Ry said tightly.
"Quiet!" his father snapped. "I'm telling you I'm going to win your
damn money back. I can feel it. The Lord is with me on this one." His hand
strayed to the worn leatherette cover of the bible. "It's all in here, if
you only know how to look..."
Ry stood, shaking with repressed emotion. "I'm really tired of
listening to this crap."
His father frowned. "Don't use that language with me, boy, or--"
"--Or what? You can't throw me out of the apartment, Pop. I pay for
it. Your entire Social Security falls into the black hole of that damned
box." He pointed at the TV. "Nobody wins! You have to work for things in
this world. Work hard."
"You think I didn't work--"
"No." Ry said. "No, I didn't say that. You have a sickness, a disease.
It's like alcohol."
His father reached out with one skinny arm, and caught Ry by the
wrist, his grip surprisingly strong. "I'm going to pay you back every cent
I owe you, boy. Every cent."
Ry shook his head. They'd had this argument before. It didn't help
anything.
"I've got to go." Ry hadn't told him he was leaving in the morning.
He couldn't think of how to say it. He slipped out the door, wondering how
Pop could possibly survive without him. The Social Security wouldn't be
enough. And for the first time in a long time, Ry found he didn't really
care.
* * *
He met Ginny at a restaurant in Chinatown. She was wearing a white
peasant blouse and skirt, and sandals. Ry noticed she was using lipstick
and eye makeup, which he didn't like. She didn't need them.
She smiled up at him. She looked healthy, happy, clean, vaguely out of
place in the dingy Vietnamese place Ry had chosen. The liquid syllables of
that language flowed around them, creating a peculiar intimacy. They were
the only westerners present.
"How are you Ry?"
"Okay. I finished up my job on the gang today."
"Really? It doesn't seem possible..."
"Three years, Ginny." He smiled. "Three years."
"You don't know how I worried, Ty." She'd objected, strenuously, to
his implants. "And prayed."
He shrugged. "A man has to do something to make it in this world."
She met his eye grimly. "So does a woman."
He refused to accept the comparison of his compromise with hers. "So,
how's the college boy?" He tried to sound casual, failed.
"Peter's fine. You're not going to go off on that again, are you?"
"No. I'm not. I just wanted to say good-bye."
Ginny nodded, her belligerent expression melting. Ry reached out and
took her hand. She tried to withdraw, but he held on doggedly.
"Come with me, Ginny." He said quietly. "We can live there, really
live. No chips. No prison programs." Plagues of retrovirus had left Africa
decimated. Huge parcels of land had been snatched up by a variety of
groups, sold by decrepit governments starved for hard currency. The
Witnesses were one of many groups resettling the continent.
"We've been through this before, Ry."
"I know." Ry let go of her hand. "But I had to try."
She nodded seriously. "And I had to let you."
His request out of the way, Ry found that they could speak more
easily, even enjoy each other's company. She was still more or less keeping
house for Peter, taking a class here or there as her budget permitted. She
laughed. "At this rate, I'll be Raptured without a bachelor's degree."
Ry smiled. He'd given up on going to school when his mother died. It
had been more her dream than his, anyway. Even with a degree or two, you
often ended up just another migrant temp worker, trudging endlessly from
one company to another. Fewer and fewer jobs without implants.
"I'm going to be a farmer in Africa. Can you believe it?" Ry said.
"I've never had a windowbox, and I'm going to have forty acres."
"And a mule?" Ginny teased.
"No, a gene-tailored ox, I believe."
He walked her to the subway platform, where they parted pleasantly.
The hug went on a little too long. Ry began to feel the heat of her body,
seeping through his thin shirt, the gentle arcs of her breasts. He
remembered their sin together warmly. They'd been children, and he'd wanted
to make it right, afterwards.
After school, she'd said. After college.
* * *
On his way home, Ry stopped at an ATM, to confirm that his final
paycheck had made it into his savings account. The transaction log showed
that it had, but when Ry checked the bottom line, his heart shuddered.
The balance showed this week's deposit. Nothing more. The money was
gone. He hurried home in a panic, flying up the creaking wooden stairs. It
might not be too late. He might not have spent it all. Maybe only six
months worth. Maybe.
His father was still sitting in the chair, his head cradled in his
bony hands. All around him lay small scraps of paper, like confetti. The TV
was off. A sickening silence filled the room. He didn't look up as Ry
entered the room.
Ry stooped to pick up a shred of paper. It was covered in fine black
print. It took Ry only a second to recognize the passage from the book of
Revelations. The old man had torn up his Bible.
He rocked slowly back and forth, his head in his hands.
"Not again, Dad. Not again."
The old man nodded.
Ry closed his eyes and counted to twenty. Then he went to his room and
grabbed the suitcase his mother had given him for college from under his
bed. It had been packed for three days.
"I'm leaving now," Ry said. He didn't even sound angry anymore. "I was
going to go to Africa, but now...I don't know. I'll write." A surge of bile
rose in him. "Maybe."
His father looked up, his face a clouded ruin. "Africa isn't the
Promised Land, boy." Ry flinched at the sound of his password. "You can't
build paradise on your brother's grave--." Ry closed the door on his
father's voice. Good-bye, Pop.
He was halfway down the stairs when the lights went out. Ry thought
nothing of the outage at first; they were common in this part of the city.
He was out the building and halfway down the street towards the YMCA, when
he noticed the man on the pole outside the building, and the unmarked truck
parked across the street.
The man's eyes were hidden behind elaborate sunglasses, his uniform a
bulky, military gray. He started down the pole. As he hit the sidewalk,
four similarly dressed men jumped from the open back of the truck and piled
through the doorway into Ry's building, each carrying a large steel
toolbox.
Beneath a nearby streetlight, a boy was burning flies with a small
pocket laser. He would wait for one to alight, fix it with the red
targeting dot, and tap the discharge, the insect evaporating in a puff of
steam.
"Kid." Ry couldn't remember the boy's name. "Look," he pointed to the
truck.
The kid shrugged. "Yeah, it's a truck. So?"
"They're gangbanging my apartment building. Understand? You've got to
call the police."
"Why?"
"Because if you do, they'll put you on television."
The kid considered this. "Why don't you do it?"
"Because I'm going back in," Ry said. "To get my dad."
Muffled cries drifted through the darkened first floor apartment as Ry
shimmied through the narrow gap he'd pried between the bars. Once inside,
his hands tightened around the length of lead pipe he'd found in the alley.
He stood still in the dimness, listening.
The apartment reeked of urine. An ashen-faced man lay fully clothed in
the bed, his eyes open. Ry inched forward, felt for a pulse in the
stranger's neck. Nothing. A tiny spot of blood on the old man's yellowed
shirt showed where he'd been hit. His heart hadn't taken the strain.
The door into the blackened hall stood open a crack. The bangers had
nightvision, tasers, who knew what else. He had a length of pipe and a
child's toy laser. And yet, David had felled Goliath with less. But God had
seemed more responsive, somehow, in those days. He prayed silently for a
moment anyway.
As his eye's adjusted, he heard the sounds of struggle through the
ceiling, thuds, abbreviated cries, flashes of static. They were on the
second floor now, his floor. Ry inched into the hall. Ten feet away a
banger squatted over the body of a teenage girl, opening her dress down the
front with a short curved knife. He lifted the surgical drone from his tool
kit, its underside a glistening mass of blades, and set it on the bare skin
of her abdomen. It was the size of a large horseshoe crab, and could
harvest a pair of kidneys in ten minutes.
The banger looked up as Ry swung the pipe, flinching away at the last
second to take the blow on his collarbone. Ry felt the bone pop through the
kevlar flak jacket. The banger screamed once, a high-pitched yelp, as Ry
drove his boot into the man's throat, silencing him instantly.
As the banger clutched his crushed larynx, Ry scooped the man's taser
from beside the toolbox, and with trembling fingers pressed the firing
stud, sending a wired dart into the banger's left cheekbone. He thumbed the
discharge, and the choking man convulsed once, and crumpled. Ry pulled off
the banger's sunglasses and strapped them on, blinking as the hallway
erupted into bright, false color relief. Several bodies were scattered down
the hallway, glowing crimson pools of infrared. None were standing.
One down, four to go.
Why am I doing this? Ry thought, as he crept up the stairwell, taser
in one hand, pipe in the other. Honor thy father and mother? His mother had
died after losing both kidneys, but they hadn't been stolen.
She'd sold them. College money, lost to the lottery. A step groaned
loudly as Ry inched up the stairs, causing his blood to sing in his ears.
A goggled head popped from around a corner. "That you, Bobby?"
"Yeah," Ry said, firing the taser, the dart missing the head by
inches.
"Code 1!" the banger screamed.
Ry flew up the stairs, forgetting to release the wired dart, the
weapon jerking from his hands as he rounded the corner. Turning onto the
hallway, Ry felt the sting as a glowing red form in front of his apartment
fired the taser into his thigh.
A shaft of electric agony shot from the pinprick, toppling Ry to the
gritty floor, but dislodging the wire. The pipe slipped from his numbed
grasp, ringing against the wooden floorboards.
An explosion echoed through the confined space, followed by Pop's
voice. "Jackals!" he bellowed, "Vultures!"
Ry looked up to see a banger collapsing, the wall behind him
splattered with crimson patches of quickly cooling warmth. His father had
never given up his service revolver. The weapon sounded again, deafeningly
loud as Pop's stooped silhouette moved into the hall, the gun a spot of
yellow brilliance shaking in his outstretched hands. Ry crawled forward,
his right leg dragging like a ball and chain. Two scurrying blobs were
scuttling up the hall. His father turned towards them.
"Aim low!" Ry screamed, too late. His father fell, his third shot
shattering the cool violet window at the distant end of the hall.
Ry reached the old man at the same time as a single scurrying crimson
figure. He jerked the banger's ankle, sending him onto his back. Ry pulled
the penlaser from his pocket, and jammed the tip into the stunned man's
nose, fired. There was a sound like a bug zapper, the smell of scorched
flesh, as a high pitched scream escaped from the man's writhing
multicolored features. Then a dart hit Ry in the calf, and he was bucking
in response to the streamers of current. His head slammed to the floor near
his father's.
Ry could barely make out the voice over the ringing in his ears, and
he was never sure whether the words were real or imagined, because he never
spoke with his father again.
"You're a good man, son," his father croaked as the glowing shapes of
the remaining bangers appeared above them. "A damn good man."
* * *
The face hovering over Ry shimmered, gradually resolving into the
chiseled, gunmetal gray features of a beatcop. His bulletproof eyes
swiveled, and blinked down at him, acknowledging his return to
consciousness. Ry glanced around the blood streaked plastic curtained
emergency room. Blood!
The cop raised a scuffed metal hand. "We're taking depositions. I need
a dump of your sensory cache." His forefinger clicked open to reveal a
neural jack. Cool hands rolled Ry on his side, as he realized that he was
paralyzed from the waist down.
"Don't worry about that," the cop said, misinterpreting his alarm.
"They've got your legs blocked. You lost a lot of blood."
With mounting revulsion, Ry noted the scarlet IV drip snaking into his
arm. They'd given him blood! Against his will!
Ry felt the cop's finger slide into his mimic port with a metallic
click. "I didn't do anything wrong."
"Uh huh," the cop said. "SENSORY CACHE REQUEST FAILED," flashed Ry's
nudgeline. "Damn." The cop swore under his breath. "I'm getting a failure
on your sensory cache." Ry's nudgeline streamed hieroglyphics. After
several seconds, he said softly, "You don't have one, do you?"
"No."
The cop swore tiredly. "Why the hell didn't you tell me? This has been
logged downtown. Now I've got to take you in."
* * *
Ry became aware that he was conscious slowly. He was paralyzed, blind
deaf. There was a sensation of movement, and a brief surge of diffuse pain.
A liquid tone sounded suddenly, and a ribbon of text flowed across his
vision.
RY GREER HAS BEEN CONVICTED OF ASSAULT AND BATTERY, CONTEMPT OF COURT,
POSSESSION OF FIREARMS, AND ILLEGAL NEURAL IMPLANTS. RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY
HAS BEEN WAIVED. CONVICTION AND SENTENCE IMPLEMENTED BY THE SCALIA 2000
JUSTICE ENGINE. SENTENCE OF 85.126 YEARS TO BEGIN IMMEDIATELY AT THE
MITSUBISHI CORRECTIONAL FACTORY COMPLEX.
Ry blinked.
And years went by.
* * *
He awoke standing in a white windowless room with the conviction that
he had dreamed for a very long time, but with no idea of what. A technician
in a lab coat stood beside him, a gleaming neural jack in one hand, a small
plastic box glowing with readouts in the other.
"He's back on line."
Someone clapped him on the shoulder, an ugly, burly red-haired man
wearing a strangely old-fashioned suit. His fleshy face twisted into a
smile.
"Among the living!" He laughed. "Welcome back! I'm your lawyer, Kevin
Halloway!"
Ry shook the man's outstretched hand dazedly.
"You'll be happy to know the appeal has gone through. A tragic
miscarriage of justice has been corrected! Of course, no one can give you
back the last five years," he nodded at Ry's alarmed expression, "but I
don't mind saying, you'd have gone to the grave in this nipponized hellhole
if it weren't for me." The technician, a young Asian man, gave the pair a
nasty look as he let himself out of the room.
"All that's left now is settling your bill," Halloway said.
"I'm broke," Ry stammered. "I have nothing."
"Nothing? But of course! You wouldn't remember! Your father hit the
jackpot a month after your trial. Lucky in a way, that you raised that
ruckus in the courtroom. The judge, an intemperate fellow with whom I've
had difficulty before, tried to hang the weapons charge on you as well, in
spite of inconvertible evidence to the contrary. And so your father was
free to win your jackpot, and I was handed the all important procedural
error on a silver platter. I was retained after your father's death, you
understand. The conditions of his will were very specific..."
"He's dead?"
Halloway clapped his hand to his forehead. "I keep forgetting! To be
honest, I've never actually had a prisoner released. Now," he took a small
plastic pad from his suitjacket, its small display brimming with
microscopic text. "All I need is your signature and thumbprint here, and
our affairs will be settled."
Ry signed and pressed his thumb to the plate, which glowed and beeped
in response.
"So." Ry struggled to think of something appropriate to say. "The
jackpot. How much is left?"
Halloway cleared his throat. "Nothing." he said. "Not a cent. You
wouldn't believe my court expenses. Secretaries, Xeroxes, computers. That
sort of thing. I mean, it's taken five years, hasn't it?" He grinned and
hugged Ry, pounding him on the back heartily. "But just think, you've your
whole life ahead of you." He disengaged himself, wiping a tear from the
corner of his eye. "What's left of it, anyway."
He tucked the datapad back in his suit pocket. "Oh. There's a woman
outside waiting to see you. I've forgotten her name."
* * *
Ginny looked much the same. To be sure there, there were laugh lines
around her mouth and eyes, worry lines as well, and a tiny notch between
her eyebrows, as if she'd kept them furrowed for much of the last five
years.
But when she smiled up at him, it was as if no time had passed. He'd
left her at the restaurant hours before. She embraced him, and he thought
that maybe she'd lost a little weight. Her shoulder blades were sharp
against his forearms.
"I've missed you." Her breath was warm in his ear.
"So have I," he said. It was true. He always missed her.
"I got some e-mail from Mr. Halloway. It was in your father's will; he
wanted me to be here."
"No Rapture?" Ry asked, knowing there couldn't have been, not with
Ginny still on Earth.
"Not yet. New reasons."
Ry nodded. "How's..." He almost said Peter, but couldn't bear to ask.
"I got my degree and left Peter," She whispered, still holding him. He
pulled her back to look into her eyes, which brimmed with tears. "I've
saved some money."
"Good," Ry laughed, "I'm broke again."
"Do you still want to go to Africa with me?"
"Yes. I'd like to very much."

THE END

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BE ON THE LOOKOUT for the fabeled E. Jay O'Connell Anthology. After
literally a *handful* of requests poured in, I've decided to postpone the
release date of this sparkling gem of prose. It will contain, all the
stories I've sold, all the stories I've posted, and all the stories I'm
sick to death of mailing around, glued together with essays from
misc.writing, and me whining and nattering. Yes. All this for four or five
bucks, from a text-selling service as of yet to annouced.

I know what you're saying. Somebody pinch me, I'm dreaming. Well. I'll do
it but not till I get the five bucks. Seriously.
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Submission History:
*Market* Days
Random Realit 49
Tomorrow 11
Unanticipated 25
Harsh Mistress 16
Leading Edge 88
Amazing 33
Asimovs 41
Expanse 59
Strange Days 58
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