Davis Aurini - As I Walk These Broken Roads

Raxx continued cycling through the stations, spending a few seconds on each. He was leaning back in his seat as he did this, staring out towards the sky. Spears of lighting forked across it.

“Hey, I think I heard something on the last one.”

Raxx switched back and then he heard it too. He turned up the volume until the voice became clear. The background hiss was almost indistinguishable from the rain and he didn’t think it would wake up the two in the back.

“…waiting until such a time as a senate majority was in place. The Ayn Rand Corporation, at the time a powerful group of…”

“Hey,” said Raxx, “I’ve heard this guy before.”

“Where’s he from?”

“I don’t know, just listen.”

“…tensions were growing around the Glass Sea, the Eastern regions continued to hold onto primitive animism, while the African nations continued to struggle for regional dominance.

“All of this set the stage for the New Eugenics Program. The failure of democracy was self-evident; this had been noted and fought for during the twentieth century, ending in the triumph of the socialist-democrats. It was under their incumbency that the old order’s mistake came to light — deficiencies in the genome-analysis of the swarthy European races. With New Eugenics, or NEP, the focus was shifted, correctly, and analysis of each race’s deficiencies began at once…”

The voice faded for a moment as the beep of an SOS signal took over. Its sound was cold and lonesome. After several cycles, the voice returned.

“…the distribution of the new products was to be multi-longitudinal. Capitalism had perfected the distribution network, and this became an important tool which they fully exploited. Experiments first went underway at the beginning of the century, modifying cow-milk with hormones. This was deemed a failure due to the enhanced breast-development and sexuality of young women. Both are clearly evident from popular culture of that era.

“The root of the problem was that they were using the biological vectors. Two weeks ago I discussed Area 51, and how ultimately it was not the militaries that resisted the invasion, but rather the aliens’ lack of immunities to our home-grown virals and pathogens. This was the lesson the socialist-democrats needed to learn, but couldn’t know because of the cover-up; biology is negative in nature, not positive. There were a few radio broadcasts about the Area 51 event, but no print media was ever released. And those that heard the broadcast were convinced by government agents that it was in fact nothing more than a fictional program.

“So, without this knowledge, the first NEP experiments relied on biological agents. The anthrax in the water scares encouraged the drinking of bottled water, but these were all failures. Gradually they moved to more and more artificial forms of genetic implantation. In twenty-oh-seven the Kraft Corporation, in conjunction with Rand, created their individual processed cheese slices: these were just the solution that the NEP had been looking for. Individually wrapped in plastic, they each contained two litres of milk. The best of both worlds — the necessary biological vector combined with the technology of product placement. Government funding was diverted from the armed forces (as I mentioned last week, this forced the shift to mercenary armies), and was diverted to underwriting the cost of this new food item, to ensure its popularity. At first it worked as hoped, but then they found that tolerance was increasing.

“Before I go on, I must return to the matter of the bomb, and the myth of petroleum. Multiple projections charts show that on the one hand there was — and still is — plenty of this valuable substance laying underneath the Glass Sea surrounding Mecca, enough to have held out during the development phase of synthetic generation methods, while on the other hand it goes without question that the effectiveness of an ICBM at relevant velocities and altitudes…” the voice began to fade out again, falling below the background threshold. Eventually there was nothing. The static hiss jumped, and a clicking noise appeared in the background. Raxx turned down the volume.

“Huh,” Wentworth shook his head.

“I wonder how much of it’s true… I pretty sure he’s right about some of it; but then other stuff is hard to believe. I want to know why he’s doing it — the guy’s gone to a lot of work just to talk about ancient history. What does he think he’s going to accomplish? How does he get the energy for the transmitter? And who does he think is listening? It’s crazy, man.”

“You ever had processed cheese?”

“No. What is it?”

“The Kraft cheese he was talking about. You’re not missing much. He was wrong about the date — it was invented during the First World War. But it does taste like shit and messes up your bowels, so he had that.”

Raxx let out a soft laugh, but neither of them said anything further. The rain’s oppressive drumming was building once more. They sat there in silence until Raxx spoke.

“I grew up in a commune full of people just like those Mennites.”

Wentworth looked over, eyebrow raised.

“That’s why I had so much insight into the way they think, that’s how I knew how to talk to them. From what I gathered, back in the day my people thought the bomb was going to fall and be a judgement on the unholy. So they all packed up and headed north, starting a commune up in a place called Algonquin.

“Anyway, I’m telling you this to explain why I was acting the way I did back in Hope. That’s the reason those Mennonites pissed me off so much — I’ve seen how that kind of arrogance, those lies, can hurt people. I don’t have much tolerance for mysticism — and yet every so often I find a bunch of it in me that I didn’t even realize was there.”

Wentworth nodded, though Raxx couldn’t see this, and though about what he’d said. “So how’d you get out of it?”

“You know, that’s something I ask myself. Could I have escaped if the right books and people hadn’t been there to help me? I like to think so, but I don’t really know. Maybe in the end we’re all nothing more than the products of our environment.

“My uncle’s helped a lot — Uncle Xavier. He gave me my first non-parable book. At the time, reading wasn’t forbidden, but it wasn’t exactly encouraged either, you know what I mean? Uncle Xavier didn’t care, though. I always thought he was funny growing up. He was always cheerful, but my parents and lots of the other adults didn’t like him. When I was young I thought it was because he wasn’t serious enough for them, the way an adult is supposed to be, but looking back at it now it was because he didn’t really believe in the superstition. Not that he broke from it, like I did, he just didn’t worry that much — and he wouldn’t let it stop him from collecting his own library.

“The man really loved books. He mostly collected fiction, and that’s what I got most of my education from. He even gave me my first copy of that book I bought you — Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance — I was probably too young at the time, I didn’t take care of it and it fell apart, but I’ve got it all down in my head, more or less.”

“I’ve almost finished it.”

“Oh yeah? What do you think?”

Wentworth chewed his lip. “You know, when you picked it up I thought it was a joke — a joke about how we met. But now… I’ve got a few thoughts, but they’re not sorted out yet. Ask me again when I’ve finished.”

“Okay. Anyway, thanks to my Uncle I started asking a lot of questions. At first my parents and the pastor were happy about it. I tried to help by figuring out better tools for harvesting the grain, or a better pulley for the well, all that stuff, but that only seemed to make it worse. They were concerned with my ‘materialism,’ they said. You know, it’s ironic, really. What they saw as my ‘materialism’ was really me trying to understand how the world works — what the underlying rules are, the theoretical; asking ‘Why?’ It was anything but materialistic. But they didn’t see it that way.”