Book I: Part 4: Sirius

    Sirius Silentseven was awoken by the thundring whirl of heliocoppers flying past his window.  He twirled and tried to quiet his mind.  In a clutch of minutes his alarm would go off, and he would have to get up.  There was a lump in the bed pressing into his kidnee.
    The alarm went off like an airaid siren.  Eight o’clock am.  Sirius shook, then stretched out feebly and pressed the button.  For a moment he lay there, hoping to suspend time, just so he could rest a little longer.  But the knowing that he had to get up, had to go to labor, lay across the bed staring at him, digging its nails into his scalp.  Sirius crawled to a sitting position along the bed’s edge.  He held his arms and quivered. 
    Sitting up steadied him.  He tried standing.  He tip-toed up to the window.  It was spattered with mudd and allowed a draft.  He listened for heliocoppers.  Why were they speeding down the street this mourning?  Were they seeking someone?  Sirius wondered who they’d spirit away this time. 
    He was throwing time.  He turned from the window and beated for the toiling room. 
    The rainer water was too cold.  The warmer must have malfunctioned over night.  He could go a day without a rainer, couldn’t he?  He soaked yesterday, after all. 
    He watered his face and scrubbed his teeth.  The paste made him feel like gagging.  He tried sorting his head but the brush kept getting stuck, so he just ran his fingers through the furry patch and gave up. 
    All his clothos were dirty and lying on the floor in the corner of his room.  He pulled on a black gool sweater and black trowsers, laced up his boots, and headed to the kitschen to have a bowl of pourridge. 
    Static radiowaves drafted through the air from somewhere, playing an orgin tune.  Had he left that on all night?  He went to the cubbord, took out a tumblr and a bottle of Vitamen Compound, poured a glaass and drank it in a gulp.  Grimaced.  It tasted of sour churries and rotten tomates.  Back to the cubbord, for the pourridge box.  But the aftertaste was stealing his appetite, and anyways, he felt a little nauseous to begin with, not to mention bored with the tedium of actually making a thing.  He decided just to leave. 
     At the base of the storyway, entering the complex’s commons, Sirius stopped to check for his sendings.  No arrival yet.  Did he?—yes, he had time: 8: 29.  He paused against the far wall, prickly whitewatered granite digging through the sweater and into his skin. 
    A small light came on in his toob, a subtle red: countdown.  The colour changed slowly to orange.  Then—bamph!  His sendtube lit up a dark yellow, shining light all around him and onto the granite.  Arrival. 
    He stepped over to the toob. Forcing his thumb against the button, he noticed a slight click, and the toob popupped.  He reached his arm in, seeking for contents.  He pondered idly of the timer: a warning.  Lambasting you not to stick your arm in yet.  Teleportation.  Pop your arm in right before the shining starts and it pops up where the sending popped from (wherever that was). 
    The doorbell jijangled.  ‘Halloo, Sirius O’ Silentseven!’ carried a voice.  Sirius twirled, and who was presented but Aloysius Dignam, of the Mechanical Arm.  ‘And how arh yeh dis foine Lludday mornin?’  Dignam dwelled two floors up, in partition 515. 
    ‘Ello, Alloy,’ sed Sirius.  ‘It’s Dagday.’
    ‘Trulay?’ asked Aloysius. 
    ‘Yes,’ sed Sirius, twirled and scanning at his arm, still reaching in the sendtoob. 
    ‘Say,’ sed Alloysius, ‘Yeh wouldn’t happen to by any chance posses dis mournins wrapper, would yeh?’
    ‘Why?’ asked Sirius, his fingers curling around the wrapping.  It lay in the back, a thick roll atop the sparse cards lying flat along the bottom.  ‘You don’t mean to contest the date, do you?’
    ‘Nah, I wish to check deh odds on dis afternoon’s mechafoight.’
    Sirius spun his eyes, creating a corpseface.    ‘Alloy, don’t you know that those battles are always rigged?’ He shot the wrapping out of the tube, leaving the cards behind, and palmed it into the waiting mechanical clutches of Aloysius.  He could retrieve those later.
    ‘Dat’s naught deh point, Sirius,’ sed Aloysius.  ‘Of course deh battles arh rigged!  Dear robuts! Dey’ve ben programmed ta specifeyclay be capable uv oonlee cirtin tings.  Pit eny two robuts tageddur, and yeh can add up the strengths and waekenesses of dem, en make a purfaect praydiction of who well wen. Saymple as Algybra.  I should know, I used to work en a robut factray. Guessin on the winner es all a matter of knowin enough to make a correact educated guess.  Dat’s deh point.’
    ‘I mean more that the robots are programmed ahead of time that one of them should lose. By the Colliseun.’   
    “Oh, no!’ sed Aloysius.  ‘Dat’s naught deh case at all!  Deh Colliseun has money ridin on deh outcome of dare canidates! If dey wuz runnin it all, why would dey ever let dare canidates lose?’
    Sirius shrugged.  ‘To keep people from being suspicious that they run the whole thing?  If they allow themselves to win every time it would be obvious.’
    ‘Aw, now dat’s just Paranoia talkin. Beysoides, even ef dat is deh case, dare is probably a pat’ern to the wens and loses dat you kin use to make a proper praydiction.  It just changes the techneyck, dat’s all.’
    ‘Sure, have it your way,’ sed Sirius.  ‘Anyways, I have to be going now. Labor.’
    ‘Do yeh desire yeh paper back?’
    ‘No, that’s fine, you can keep it.  I would likely just junk it without pursing it anyhow.  Say, did you say you used to work at a robofactry?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Did you get redundanated?’
    ‘No, I Quet.’
    ‘Quit?  Whatever for?’
    ‘Yeh cen’t bet on deh battles ef yeh labor for deh Colliseun.  Rules.  But as soon es I wuz oot, I wuz able to, usin all the data I caught on deh job.  A greyt loophole!’
    ‘Aye, great,’ nodded Sirius in agreement.  ‘Anyways, I have to be along now. Labor.’
    “Oh, yeah,’ mumbled Alosius Dignam from behind the paper.  ‘See yeh.’
    Sirius walked out the door.  How silly of Dignam! To quit his labor just for the liberty to gamble?  And didn’t Dignam lose more often than not?  Now he was out a job, and out money as well!  Or did he hold another job now?  Sirius frowned at forgetting to ask.  He must have held another job, but then, Dignam was bumming a wrapping … maybe it was just a matter of simpleness?  Anyways, it was jestery to quit your job just for betting; what if nobody felt to hire you?
    Sirius passed by the bildung with ‘Verve the proles’ graffitied on the side in large red block letters.   He turned left and sped to make the trane.  When he boarded, many of the other passagers backed away from him, either altering cars or passing to the other end. 
    The trane started traveling. He stared at his reflect in the window: furry black hare rising from a gaunt face the colour of milik.  Thats what the peeps were afraid of.  Thats what all the peeps whispered around.  ‘There is something wrong with the milkies’ they sed.  There was no real, concreet ration that Sirus had ever listened, but he had his own theorems.  He diagrammed maybe it was something about the skin.  Its opaqueness.  Like clownface: paynt.  Corpseface.  Didn’t look close natured: almost opposing that.  And the hare was kind of animal-like.  Fur.  Sirius had spied other milkies around the City. Always small, withdrawn.  There was a kind of haunted aura hovering around them.  That could willy people.  But then, milkies never seemed to actually act anything, did they?  They werent even an impermeable species or subspecies, with definable behaviors or cultured traditions.  They just had some odd genes, was all.  An unspecified flux in the homo gene pond.  Nothing special.  Just one more brand of mutant. 
    So why them?
    His eyes shifted past the ghostly reflection.  Bildungs rushing in a blur.  Another shift in perspective, and Sirius imaged that the bildings were horizontal, and the trane was falling, down a long, long pit lined with steel, concreet and glaass.  With some billboards along the way.  He imaged his feet floating, his body in freefall, and the trane at any moment crashing forward….
    The trane came to a stop, and Sirius, not holding on tight enough to the handhold, lost his grip and fell onto the floor.  Someone heckled.  ‘Stupid, stupid,’ thought Sirius.  ‘You never pay attention.  Something bad always appens when you don’t pay attention.’ He scurried off the trane.  It was his stop anyways. 
    Another block to pass.  From far away, Sirius could already see the line forming outside the factray.  He heard the whirl of blades, and a heliocopper passed over the street, the blast of air flattening his hare.  ‘More Heliocoppers ?’ thought Sirius.   Was some company in the area renting their services? Maybe some local had gotten some threats.  Or maybe some in the area was harboring dissidents and non-persons: coppers were on patrol nogoods. 
    Sirius made it to the back of the line, and started to look for his id card, to make sure he had it togo.  Fred was in line right ahead.
    ‘Morning, Fred,’ sed Sirius
    “Morning, Seer,’ sed Fred.  Fred was a tall and lanky with lidded eyes, a chroaky voice, and yellowy skin.  ‘Hey Seer, you hear about the budget cuts?’
    ‘Budget cuts?’
    ‘Yeah, man, the budget, it’s getting cut.’
    ‘I thought I heard they were ordering more parts.’
    ‘Oh, they are, man, its just the men uptown think they don’t need all these laborers.  Redundancies are upon us, man.’
    Sirius hung his hed. ‘Fecunt,’ he sed. 
    ‘Yeah, you sed it,’ nodded Fred.
    Milkies were usually the first to be redundunated, after those with obvious personality defects. 
    ‘Oh, and anyone left by the end of the day has to work an extra hour, man.  No excepts.’ 
    Sirius nodded.  The line began moving.  People filled in behind him.  Fred started speaking past him to the laborer behind him, spreading the wraps.  The line moved quickly, and Sirius soon found himself in front of the greeterbot, which was reeding peoples id cards. 
    The entranceway was set dead center along in the bildungs front wall, like a mouth.  He held up his id card, and red light from the greeterbot's eyes danced across the its surface.  
    ‘Good mourning, Sirius Osiris Silentseven,’ it sed, from a cheery boomvox. 
    ‘Good mourning,’ sed Sirius, though the greeterbot wouldnt hear him; he entered the bildung.