David Ohle - The Pisstown Chaos

"Nowhere. The word comes from the French, chauffeur, to warm.' You are made to lie on a pandiculating appliance, barefoot, while a small fire is lit under your feet and fed fuel until the flesh is burned away."

Ophelia was numb, sleepy, not fully attentive. The twoday pedal tram trip had left her exhausted, her muscles sore. "When is bedtime?"

"We shut our eyes at eight, we open them at four. First, slop jars are emptied and ablutions performed, then we breakfast at five. When morning duties are completed, a noon lunch is served in the refectory. As Machnov usually naps every afternoon, we suggest that time be spent in the library. Supper is at six, postprandial meditations until seven, nightly ablutions, then bed."

"The problem is, I'm not a Hookerite. Some mistake has been made."

"Everyone is a Hookerite, Miss Balls, in spirit if not practice." Ophelia was given a copy of the Field Guide. "I suggest you begin by boning up on Hooker's Sayings and be able to write them down in the morning."

"All one hundred and one?"

"Yes. Anything further need explaining before you fall silent for the duration of your stay here?"

"No, nothing more."

Ophelia lay in her cot half the night, reading the Sayings over and over by the dim glow of her gel can, hoping at least a few would stick in her mind. After silently repeating them dozens of times, drowsiness overtook her and she fell asleep. Neither the odor of urine salts lofting from her thin mattress, nor the ringing of the Templex bell every hour, disturbed her rest, as it would have under normal circumstances. Many a night she had lain awake at the estate, personifying sleep, angry at it, sometimes cursing it for its failure to overtake her. She imagined Sleep itself sleeping, snoring thunderously, unaware of her pleadings. After these nights, a fog rolled in and out of her mind all day, and she was constipated. Taken together, the two conditions made her peckish and withdrawn.

When the bell sounded at four, Ophelia awoke groggy and listless to a thin cloud of wood smoke drifting near the ceiling. She could hear the movement of other acolytes in the dormitory, coughing, spitting, nose-blowing and defecating into slop jars. One of them called out, "They're building a fire out there. I'm glad I know my Sayings."

Ophelia lit her gel can and, as its shadows played across the ceiling, struggled to remember the Sayings. Even after pulling her hair and rapping herself on the head with her knuckles, she could recall only two: "The meek shall not inherit the Earth" and "Nothing is good that ends well." Nor had she any recall of the numbers that went with them.

Already feeling the flames at her feet, she anxiously took her place at a long table in the refectory. A lively chatter had erupted among the acolytes in general defiance of the no-talk rule. One of them tugged at Ophelia's sleeve. "No need to be so glum. Machnov is dead of heart failure. Don't you smell the smoke? They're burning him now. The Templex is closing and we're all being shifted soon, perhaps today. From this strange place, most anything would be an up-shift."

Ophelia's shifting papers, a packet that included a voucher for a low-priced room at the Gons Hotel, were in her hands before sunset, assigning her to duty as an investigator for the Bum Bay Home Guard. She would inherit certain troublesome cases from a soon-to-be-shifted investigator, a Dutchman by the name of van Vliet.

She was on the late-morning pedal tram and on the other side of Bum Bay before noon to occupy van Vliet's office, though he showed no great haste in emptying his desk and leaving. Every item was carefully studied, thought about, and either tossed into the rubbish bin or wrapped in handkerchiefs and carefully packed in an impskin valise.

The Dutchman had a curious bump just above and between his eyebrows, which moved up and down as he talked. "One doesn't want to clean out one's desk in a feverish hurry. You never know what may lie in one of the hidden places behind the drawers."

"Where are they sending you this time?" Ophelia asked.

"To the Purple Isle. I've got a bad case of parasites. If I hold my hand over a candle, you can see them."

"My grandmother is there, in isolation, even with a light load of the little beasts."

"I'm sure they'll isolate me. My load is heavy. They make me fly into rages without warning. I salivate excessively. Sometimes you'll see me with one end of a twisted hankie sitting in my mouth. It wicks down into a sponge I keep in my top pocket. If I'm walking down the street I'll step into an alley periodically and wring it out."

"I wish you the best of luck."

"The, same to you, and if I were you, I'd avoid the night watchman. He reports at 9:10. Comes in the back door. He's a goon without a drop of sense and carries an ice pick. You see this lump on my head?"

"I've wondered about it."

"He stuck me with the pick. It put a dent in my skull. A cyst formed." The Dutchman began to salivate. He twisted an already damp handkerchief, tied a knot at one end and tucked it into his cheek. "Needless to say, my sponge is fairly soaked, and badly needs squeezing. This onrush of spittle can be oafish and offensive at social gatherings, on the buses, anywhere."

"My sympathies." Ophelia glanced at the clock that hung inside a steel-mesh cage on the wall. "Doesn't the pedal tram depart at 9:03?"

"Yes, but I'm on the 9:04 express, the one that's always half empty and the pedaling is brutal. Your best bet is the 8:07, the one that goes to Pisstown. It's got a new gear box and a well-oiled drive chain. You can pedal and sleep at the same time. And you rarely see a stinker on that route. You know how shameless they are about refusing to pedal. I don't know why the Reverend lets them get away with it. There should be a law."

"I'm rather anxious to take a look at these cases," Ophelia whispered.

"All right, then. I'm off to the Purple Isle."

"Before you leave, one question. This seems to be the only occupied office on this floor. I haven't seen anyone else. I've walked up and down the hallways. There are hundreds of office spaces, all empty. Except one. There was a bed in 144. A cot, actually."

"That's where the watchman sleeps."

"He isn't much of a watchman, then, if he's asleep."

"It struck me odd as well, but I never questioned him… there's a working toilet in 141. The water is turned on for an hour in the morning and an hour at night."

"Thank you so much for all that information."

"You're probably anxious to pursue these cases, but I'll warn you, you'll have little or no capacity to do it at anything but a snail's pace. If you want to interview a subject, it is up to you to make your way to their whereabouts by pedal bus, foot, Q-ped or other means, and at your own expense. You have the authority to compel subjects to travel to your office for interrogation, but you have no way to know their whereabouts either, or to notify them by mail. That, too, will be impossible. There is no stationery, writing instrument or stamps. And who would deliver it anyway? Postal service ended after the Chaos."

"Thank you again. I am curious about the cases. I'll do what I can under the restrictions."

The Dutchman lifted a pants-leg and shook out a few drops of urine. "Now look what I've done. I've pissed myself. Damn it to hell. I've got it on my shoe. I'll be laughed off the tram. Oh, well, what can I do? Those are your cases, now, Miss Balls." With a click of his heels and a victory sign, the Dutchman jerked the door open and left, leaving a small puddle behind.

Ophelia decided the puddle would dry of its own accord. She was finally able to sit down and have a look at the cases, to engage her mind in serious matters. The one recorded on the top form detailed the finding of a corpse in the street-"Clothing worn backward, clogs on the wrong feet. It is my thought that she had been dumped from a moving conveyance. A postmortem on the female subject was inconclusive as to cause of death. No identity could be established nor next of kin located. Her body was eventually committed to one of the lime pits at the Stinker Rest landfill."