http://game of shells.fiction@.guimond
On the Gregorian calendar one could read 2014, and it was after having overcome crippling economic crises, wars, famines, droughts, earthquakes – lest we forget the mass relocations due to pandemics and the detonation of thermonuclear weapons – such that the demographics of the planet as we once knew them, were but a faded memory. Everything we had learned about the world was a myth, and it was alas forever at war against itself, in an ongoing struggle to depopulate, and even though all the statistics clearly indicated that overall numbers had been drastically reduced in a ridiculously short span of history, there appeared to be no end to the regimented slaughter in sight.
2. _http://black_winter-2010/.downtime
In the beginning of our mass awakening, soon after the first black winter of 2010, in or around March when the Union of the Americas had begun the transition towards socialism, each of the populated areas remaining had been renamed under the holy auspices of the Vatican. The seed shaped island, sitting squeezed at 45d30N 73d40W between the thighs of the Saint-Lawrence river – that which was at one point known as the city of Montréal, had thus been aptly baptised DuPont by none less than the last Pope. For us whom had been born here, this was a sign of never ending submission disguised as a white flag waved over a desert inundated with land mines. Since that time, the recurring unforeseen cold fronts had been so outlandish, the snow so abundant for most of the calendar year, that we had helplessly witnessed the horror of survivors from what used to be North America pushed beyond their very limits.
It had also been without incumbent warning, that a global cooling trend had set it’s grinding teeth upon us in nothing less than record time. The cosmological shift from a cometary impact in the Atlantic ocean had wreaked changes which translated into the oncoming of a new ice age. And it was as an ode to humanity’s capacity of absolute denial when faced with the dire facts of objective reality, that the ongoing sunspot minimum had been aptly called the Bin Laden Minima. In turn, most of the large cities of the Americas, had suffered such catastrophic levels of casualties, that once the local authorities had lost control of the situation, once there was no other straw at their grasp than to come to the realization that their dwellings, and the temporary design of the infrastructures supporting them, had not been adequately prepared for survival after such a free fall in the range of the earth’s climate. Various sections of the continental power grid had unequivocally crashed under the sudden rain storms followed by extreme cold peaks. Entire regions were without power, water or other essential services for the excruciating duration of long winter months. Things had gotten to a point such the death tolls on the news outlets were declared hearsay with a shrug of the shoulders. It was indeed high time to get out of Dodge, but where could they all have gone?!
For the most part, the steady stream of rumours of DuPont had come as somewhat of a surprise to the survivors spread across the vast killing fields of the continent. They had had a hard time fathoming the notion, that a french speaking nation, could have hidden in the depths of their America, and that for all those years no one had informed them of it. But as America had, this also came to pass. After the initial deluge from above had sternly tested them, they were left like the rest of humanity, for the most part stranded in their own footsteps. In those days, through the channels of what was left of the the internet, DuPont quickly became synonymous with survival and good luck, it’s simple evocation began to ring a bell.
Then, with the following spring, the flash-floods had come and gone, the chess board got readjusted. And while the rumours of mass casualties persisted, there also came a time soon after, when most people in their right mind, from as far as what used to be Seattle or Texas, begged at the doors of the Relocation Committees to be sent anywhere sustainable, anywhere at all! Many of which eventually, after a long harrowing journey, caught a ferry onto the island of DuPont. The waves of incoming internationals were in ever-expanding flux, but it was still possible to exist. Needless to say, in order to keep making room for the newcomers, the UNO’s primary concern was to regularly mow the herd of the useless felons, thugs and drug addicts. From the onset, all drugs had been rendered tolerable in the Restricted areas provided that they had been acquired from a safe source, that was to say the UNO dispensers. The attitude from above was that anyone could do what they wanted in the Red zones, as long as they payed for it.
650km of urban territory suddenly became home to population 3 million, the result of which had been a state of perpetual and spastic chaos, where everyone tried helplessly to rebuild a semblance of normal life for themselves. Once a bombing campaign had crippled it, the subway system had been re-allocated. The buildings surrounding the derelict stations now housed poor camps, camps for the sick, camps for the displaced, camps for the down on their last leg survivors of the earthquakes that had swept far and wide. Entire city blocks had been pulverized at sporadic intervals during the uprisings of the early days, leaving craters in their trail. This is where where many built makeshift housing for the summer months. The tents and teepees extended into the subway tunnels for kilometers on end and resurfaced near the Olympic Stadium, where the fatally afflicted went to end it all, in the die-in. It would have been impossible to keep track of the numbers in this array of cave dwellings spiraled out under the city, and we had already lost control of complete areas. The UNO basically kept barbed wiring off the exits, patrolling with intense focus these small islands of fresh air scattered throughout the city, where the in-dwellers resurfaced regularly to be captured and relocated.
The diaspora of these destitute wandering spirits constituted a wide ranging mosaic of peoples, from all walks of life and of uncertain origins, having to unite in the face of adversity. Their common bond was the fact that their world had been seriously rocked before they landed in DuPont. Translated from of the bridge in french, DuPont had been chosen as a moniker because bridges and tunnels were systematically destroyed when the army eventually quarantined the island. It was meant with a word of caution designed to represent a double-slap in the face to the predominantly french speaking québécois population. Hence, but a few years later, there were so very few of them left, that it was hard for one to even speak french without the raising of suspicious eyebrows.
During that same period, the news of undisclosed germ disbursement of the recent past, had been positively confirmed. This had been leaked first as a whisper, as it was too scary for most to face. Then as months went by certain sections of the populace – poor ones first – had started being struck by a virulent new ailment, that was dubbed Rats, which destroyed the human immune system in weeks. Everyone had to quickly adapt to the nightmare coming true, more so when the virus mutated and began affecting individuals simply in contact with the in-dwellers. A rat-flu pandemic was promptly declared, posters went up, freezer trucks waited at tactical target areas. Class specific individuals were vanishing at an alarming rate. In order to set the record straight on this particular conspiracy theory, let’s just say that this was perceived as a just sanction by the decision makers, in that if these tests had proven profitable, and it was not a secret among them that the method would have to be put to greater use. This preemptive strike was viewed as collateral damage, as mass starvation kept humanity on the near brink of the mother of all wars.
Most streets of DuPont were under round-the-clock patrols by riot-gear clad units in Humvee squadrons; known as the UNOWHO and their affiliate agencies. Different zones were cordoned off into color coded areas in function of their monstrosity level, guarded by various factions within the troops. It was the same system that was in place worldwide. Green stood for high-security and off-limits, it stood for government officials and for the working stiffs like me. Green also stood for the nouveau riche having been made wealthy with their private armies, or for dubious entertainment gimmicks. The bread and circuses of these times, no less…
After having had crept in the background and slowly overtaken our working environments during some years, the overt surveillance began to rise it’s ugly head with assured pressure in our homes. The new and endless trove of intrusive technologies had found their niche in plain sight all around us, and targeted everyone at all times. Every single detail of our daily lives was under constant scrutiny, yet there always appeared new schemes to undermine and push our crippled freedoms through the grate. There was a prevailing sense of powerlessness, and we all knew that it was Impossible to escape the permanent invasion of being watched day and night. The macro-computers having been revealed to the populace, UNOTV showed real-time security personnel using gruesome force against presumed terrorists 24-7, live from across the globe, with appropriate targeted voice-overs. And as anyone could see, these presumed terrorists were ordinary people like you and me, working their little tails off in order to keep their families afloat.
When the last crushing blow came, on the eve of the final putsch by the UNO and the WHO, as the apotheosis drew near, so much of what we considered to be this world had changed, that it was with bedazzled smiles on our long faces, that we hurriedly complied to the constant monitoring and the rest of their program. The micro-chips were alternately in high-gear into the younger generations, and we were aware that very few had been able to slip successfully through the grid. Our sleeper minority thus began living in a pharmacological daze of animal contentment, oblivious to the perpetual deluge of biblical proportions surrounding humanity’s dance. All the while making decisions of life or death that affected the majority who squandered in hell at barely a stone’s throw away.
Those were the vast and varying Yellow and Red communities. The technical training sector, where as far as anyone could tell, weeks were divided between curfews, searches, food shortages, food riots, terrorist manhunts, explosive retaliations from only Evil knew where, and clampdowns. This was such that constant utter terror was a way of life for most, on one level or another.
The Yellow zones were the settlements where the specially selected candidates were taken directly from the schools in order to train to become assets to the Greens. Basically, once there, after having been assigned to a specific field of endeavour, the individual either reformed from all illegal evil and proved that he could, and vowed that he would, to his fullest ability, live within the parameters of a pathological insanity called the New World. While at each misstep he was subdued through medication into serving as best as seen fit by his keepers, until such a time where further use for them would be devised, in the labyrinth of ever expanding keep busy tanks. The unwilling to submit, and those who knew too much to be released in the Red zones, were usually quietly terminated for medical experimentation purposes, where experts hoped to discover the genetic defect that made them sociopaths in the first place.
Although it had been exposed to the general population in the days of the internet – before the E-bombs, that we had long lived under a one world government, the anonymous ruling class – the Greenies as we were made call ourselves – continued to put on charades of government and endless TV programs on the politics of a sustainable society to sustain our very own brand of denial. The sports channels had been replaced by live extreme fights of prisoners on UNOTV, no holds barred porn followed. Since most had been sterilized by the faulty vaccines, to simply keep surviving from one day to the next, they just gloated in the save the planet programming, it’s all they had to live for. it gave them a goal to keep playing the game.
Suffice it to say that we had streamlined euthanasia accordingly, most of it in the name of better living conditions for the merry few who were healthy enough to hope for a future. All of the air, the land or sea transportation infrastructures had been taken over by the private armies and government agencies, controlling the coming and going of people, food, water, medication, booze, dope and the rest of it. Full out in the open corruption, had finally replaced the myth of a government. Corporations, with their armies, made it impossible for farmers to keep their land. All of the rural population worked for the agri-corps. For them it was agri-corps of the re-education camps of the Yellow Zone. All but for a few pockets of clandestine groups who were actively sought by the authoritarian regime, to be disbanded, more than likely soon after to be dismembered. But from where we stood, those of us in the Green zone, we were kept so busy keeping up with the process, that we had no time or valid reason to be prying into the reality of the slums. The system was keeping us too busy being watched!
For the vast majority however, life was the looming threat of being added to the Red list, that of the disenfranchised who had no apparent rights, none whatsoever of which could stand up for one another, and in no way could they presume even the hope of eventually acquiring services such as that of lawyers or doctors. Not even the roof over their head was ever to be their own, they represented the soon to be past, they were the dead waiting for a tear in the matrix in order to slip through it and finally disappear.
3. _http://sunny morning/draft9/sept_2014.now
Notwithstanding the sunny morning of this establishing description, I have avoided to ask of you one thing, and that is that you not get carried away on me, as there was a rough patch to go yet! Life in DuPont was if not somewhat harassing, most days it was downright impossible. And this had been so, from the on start of the experiment – be it for the best of us, even on the most precious of days. This day of all days was no exception, as I made my way through thick traffic towards the Medicorps facilities in the early morning, one snails pace a minute in the electro-car on rue Saint-Paul. As usual, knowing that this was definitely the safest place on earth to be at this particular time, made it’s utter havoc feel less infuriating. But not much less, not much less.
The permanent theater of operations on the streets kept self-duplicating permanently around us, everywhere we went there were screeching ambulances, sirens far and near, marching platoons of Kevlar bioenhanced killing machines, manned by the UNO, and never a moment’s reprieve. Endlessly… As soon as we stepped outside, there were search lights dancing in the polymer clouds, we had the sudden impression of slipping into a science-fiction story, or we felt like a child about to wake up from nightmares… It was a story about robots taking over the world, but the dream didn’t end, not at home nor at play. Then, at work, I was again faced hands on with the integral reality that the body is a shell game! I knew that when I went into this game, I just hadn’t extrapolated on all the consequences!
The few areas where we could still freely roam, where we could still buy food and get a drink, were wallpapered with cameras so to say. At the four corners we saw guard towers projecting early detection weapons. Trucks were piled up in every direction on the safety zones. It was a permanent film set, with marching troops knowingly in the midst. They knew our every move, where would we go? Yet the insistent crushing regime posted armoured vehicles and full-body suited units with weapons drawn on all corners, all in the name of our protection. One push of a button away from dematerializing enemies that didn’t exist.
Having been trained as medical assets on the front lines of poverty, Mathilde and I just had no other choice when the UNO came out of the shadow and grasped openly the reigns of power. We were an essential service that their minions could not live without. So it was, that from one day to the next we went from patching up the destitute, to providing additional years to the lifespan of the upper class. Even though, if for us it was a choice between fully cooperating or being next on the Red List. The final blow came when we were shown that they knew everything about us. They could make our lives hell, whether it be in private or in public. Though I was not fooled by their ways, as many colleagues were disappearing in a wave of reported suicides.
It was a do or die, a no brainer!…
Ever since the day that the Eschaton device was inserted inside my body, I have been able to observe myself retroactively, and while that has truly enhanced my life, it has also raised many questions. Deep questions… Since there was a silent, invisible echelon that had been surveying each one of us since our births, it meant just a further step towards accepting the Eschaton project. But then of course, this had meant that we acknowledged that the Consortium was monitoring our every move from the start, at least some of us. The girls had had a hard time adjusting to the self-awareness violation at first, but then they turned the whole principle into a game, which was the only good attitude to take at something so ridiculous an idea.
In my case, what I had until then expected, desired, my life to become, took a slow spiral after downsizing all my expectations. And once I had gotten my priorities up front again, my body had crossed the Rubicon. I was a middle-aged under exercised medical victim in the mirror, who was seeing his life go past but hardly participating, and the system which we had put in place was taken by major readjustments with sudden force. It became difficult to discern which was up and which was down, as entire departments were shut down to make way for the future sciences; the nano-tech, the lasers, the electro-pulse non-lethal weaponry, the biotechnology and other well disguised Grim Reapers.
Once it had been made crystal clear that all things medical were at the very core of the war effort, as it had been for millennium, they showed us all these horrors awaiting our fate on the screens. And each of us, with our little dark secrets, remembered fully well fragments of our lives that had led there. I, for example, was aware of the law books having been rewritten on a lot of levels for the coming of this new world, I had done diligently my home work, but I couldn’t have dreamt up the deep implications of such con, that which was being perpetrated on us since the beginning of time. This must have taken thousands of years to put into motion, from the higher worlds downwards, something this twisted proved to me the existence of a creative force, this could only be the work of higher powers.
Each living sentient being on this planet, all of the survivors, we each had a certain date with which we quantized the radical changes; a day stored in memory when everything started to steeply waltz. For most people it was when near countries were destroyed by natural calamities and freak storms, others it was when people everywhere started noticing strange lights in the sky, others yet again sensed that it was all tied in with germ deployment and bioweapons being disbursed on populations, until there was nothing left for them to measure. All the while, I had read the signs as the news kept coming down the pike, I had not yet suffered personally from the walk of life. I felt blessed, and was thankful for owing it all to Mathilde and Clo. Without them by my side, I would have given up long before.
For us, everything started falling apart a few months after the internet had been irrecoverably torn down. It was a gradual erosion that was hard to define. The incoming news sources from the rest of the colonies had been so few and far apart, that we had been cut off long enough so as not to know what to think about the outside world anymore, when the signs began to surface. There were also the strangest rumours circulating at our workplaces about dire events planned for the months ahead, stuff that was barely thinkable.
Mathilde and I had been having heated arguments over our respective involvements in highly sensitive research incorporated in our work, the very previous nights. In politics, nothing just happens, everything is carefully planned, and the bad guys were waiting in the shadows, that was a for sure.
That’s when there came a peculiar insistent knock on the door, one evening, as Clo was setting the table and I prepared some pasta, expecting Mathilde back from the clinic any time. These secret service types had barged in, knowing better who we were than we had known ourselves, or so it had seemed. They had made their way through the hall and had sat on the sofas armed with their CUNOTV terminals documenting it all. Of course, they had come knowing that I suspected that they’d been watching us, listening, hacking into our lives for more than a decade. There were grievances filed by Mathilde and I, that had made it to their supervisor’s desks. So they had come like diplomats, all relaxed in their dark suits and sunglasses, in order to tell us that in the name of her personal security and in the interest of the State, Mathilde had been temporarily relocated. And for this, that they offered no explanations, since her involvement was one shielded by the secrecy of the Defense Ministry. Just like that!
It was shortly thereafter that after having a near seizure, I spoke to Mathilde on the terminal, where her soft voice and radiant smile confirmed that she was quite okay, that it was a temporary measure; something sensitive to do with her work… She even went so far as to tell me that she had tried to warn me, but I was just too wrapped up. Then, as Clo had begun to calm down somewhat, during her alloted time with her mum, agents Lacroix and O’Toole, how could I ever forget such names? You couldn’t make this stuff if you were paid to do it! The head spooks, in fact, had taken me aside to thank me for my cooperation with the war effort. Those were their exact words, and there I again, I had thought : this is a classic!
This pathetic pile of mumbled molecules covered in blotches of synthetic-skin, and her partner who couldn’t make a proper knot in a necktie, were telling me not to worry, while wringing their hands, after deporting my child’s mother into a reeducation camp!!! By this time, Clo had barricaded herself to the nines behind her bedroom door, in justifiable total hysteria, if you don’t mind me saying so… The fucking animals!…
While on their way out, they entered their password so that I could look up the details on the Untranet at their level of clearance. This is called one hell of a favor, in their android reality… That night, Clo and I drank an entire weeks rations of wine and smoked as many cigarettes with our chairs facing the UNPod terminal on the micro-wave oven door.
As it turned out, everything did run it’s course as it was originally packaged, and Mathilde up kept a barrage of messages that maintained us in the loop. The last stage of her research was underway, and she would be home for Clo’s birthday in a month’s time. Although it pained me to think of the things that our daughter must be juggling at the idea of her mother being in a bad spot, Clo and I had managed to come to some understandings. But the month long separation had flashed by like lightning. Having never dreamt, that I would make it to age 40 standing on my own two feet – on the morning of my 50th birthday, like a grey bolt of lightning, I could truly say that I owed it to them, and that standing on six feet was better. Nobody was going to take that away from us.
I inched my way to work against the cramped circulation that morning at day break, waving my Green passport through the roadblocks at every third intersection. As I heard the clicking blip of the UNBoard computer, I was reminded me that stills were being sent in to the Topline so that I was being traced, and that my life was not my life anymore. I haphazardly glanced at the few rare teens huddled in packs, whom were awaiting for the electro-bus to school in the crisp morning dew. There was just something that was really striking; where had all the teens gone? At the mere sight of the sweaters over their uniforms, I was made aware of it’s pending sense of doom, and I cursed the coming winter.
Remnants of last season’s mental shrapnel still floated in the nip of the disinfectant breeze, as I passed the burned out storefronts. Poet at heart! I was in a sentimental mood. The car was under GPSteering carrying my numb body towards the dredges of yet another 18 hour day at the service of the needy. As it cruised along the buildings, I sat effortlessly, sneaking sporadic glances at my stuttering reflection in some shattered windows.
By the time I had made it to the Medicorps gate, major pandemonium had broken loose throughout the area again. The parking slots had been requisitioned by a plethora of armored vehicles and I was handed a special pass which sent me roaming the area for a while, through detours some of which were sealed off. So I rode without purpose until I ended up finding a safe spot to leave the car, a slight distance away from the hospital, near the Bonsecours Barracks. As I thought that it was the exact wrong thing to ask for, I probably should have turned on my UNOPod to find out was going on that morning, but it was my birthday and I couldn’t be bothered – for the first time in my working life; I thought that in this day and age, feeling fleetingly good about oneself was something akin to obscenity, especially on one’s own birthday!
Outside, the brisk walk made me feel a thousand feet tall, guided by the sun’s redeeming light. As though propelled by some unknown force, tears came streaming down my cheeks, all the while… Nonetheless, I warmed up my runners between the buildings of the Hôtel-de-Ville, I stretched there and inhaled methodically exhaling hard, staring into the distance past the razor wire desert, at the level of Saint-Catherine street, where the wall stood. The cinder block barrier was the only thing stopping me from holding Mathilde in my arms. It was hard to believe that I was at a point in my life where I hadn’t tried something foolish to make things right. Smoke was billowing in a few spots over the horizon, as rockets zigzagged through the sky like a flag of distant thunder.
From there, I walked through place Jacques-Cartier to a trendy café for my cappuccino on the water’s edge, making sure I was well scanned by the UNOTV cameras, barely an hour before surgery prep. Where I stood, it was as if nothing had changed; but across that wall, beyond the cinder blocks that signaled the Yellow and Red zones, nothing would ever be the same: not for Mathilde, not for Clo, nor for myself. Something would have to be done! We couldn’t go on like this, there were to be some luminous answers found…
6_http://office-day/2.unonu
The very second that I set foot into my office, after having dodged the girls at the reception desk, the phone was already ringing. An alarm also buzzed simultaneously on my wristwatch, which was a reminder to swallow my prescribed capsules facing the control monitor.
All the while, before the third ring, I asked:
- Oui?… Gabriel Francoeur à l’appareil; what can I do for you?
- Gaby?! Sir, your daughter is walking towards your office as we speak… And Docteur Ferron is on line 2. Oh, and happy birthday sir!
- Clo’s here?… Ha bon?… Thank you Mary!, click: Oui Ferron?! How can I help you?
- Bonne Fête vieille branche, ahaha!… So, is that a yes for lunch then?
- Okay, sounds good, let me get back to you, I just…
As I looked up, while I was putting the phone down, Clo was incoming through the door and throwing her arms around me. She moved so much like Mathilde at the same age, that I broke out into more tears, while she sang with a smile:
- Happy birthday Gaby!… Joyeux anniversaire!… Comment vas-tu, petit papa gâteau?!
- I’m holding the fort… by the skin of my teeth, be it! Listen, I was talking to your mother during the night and she wants me to tell you that she’s very very proud of your promotion! Elle t’embrasse! Don’t tell me you came to cancel for tonight?
- Course not! A date is a date, speaking of which, I’ve invited Declan… I hope that’s cool?!
- Cool?… You mean at last! How long’s it been again?
- Three months dad; it’s not like we’re engaged or anything…
- Mathilde and I didn’t wait Clo, you were already part of the team when we were your age. When something feels right and we know it will benefit one and all, we need to rise to the occasion, and try and live up to it.
- Gaby, please don’t start with that again! I’m not that old?
I began fidgeting through some files on my desk, then Clo said it:
- Declan knows of your work, he’s read some of your articles, heu…. He was wondering if he could postulate for Medicorps after his internship?!
- Declan is well read, as I far as I can tell; but you are the one doing the asking?… As long as you don’t quote me personally, ahaha… I can tell you this for the young man: Zero Tolerance is the current policy of the Medicorps where we systematically transplant from the lower breeds, to keep the leader’s class alive. All restrictions have been lifted, it’s all out in the open now, we’re putting band aids on a ship that’s sinking, if he’s ready to jump in, by all means… Aha ha!… The more the merrier!
- You make it sound so melodramatic Dad!… You love your work?!
- There is no other way to put it, there is what goes on around us all day and every day, and there is what we would rather believe is what goes on in order to keep the projection of our desires alive. Those are two very different perspectives altogether sweetheart! On the one side we cannot live without our strict minimum, but the price that it comes at is not a plausible option for everyone to grasp. Then there is the inescapable fact of gravity that makes it so what goes around, eventually comes around. Otherwise, life’s won-der-ful! Wouldn’t you agree?
- So is that a yes?!…
- What wouldn’t I do to see a smile on your happy face sweetheart; of course that’s a yes, any young boyfriend of yours that wants to slave in my surgery room, is a the perfect prospect of a future son-in-law of mine. Now why don’t we go out for a smoke, or have you quit?!
- No but I thought you’d quit?
- Oh I have quit; you never smell of tobacco at home do you? And I want to thank you for respecting that. But here, it’s like a sentimental thing, after a six hour intervention under the bright lights, I feel like I need one! And right now, before going in there and removing spare parts off a fresh corpse, I really deserve one!… Ah aha…
- Gaby… That’s gross!…
As her cellphone rang, one of her hands flagged out for me to understand that she had to go, all the while she was exchanging words in Russian with one of her colleagues. Then, on her way out, she blurted:
- I better go!… À ce soir!… Love you dad!
I watched her bright eyed silhouette disappear in the hallway towards the emergency room, wondering what my life would be like; had Clo been born a boy? Then at least, I could tell her the half of it, I thought: The half of it!…
In the impossibility of the present, I forgave myself once and for all for the future…
guimond.09.09
