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“Too bad. They don’t exist.”

Sono peered at his grandpa with a thin veneer of victory glazing his caution. But Edgar didn’t appear disheartened in the least.

“Aaah, but they do now. You just gave them life.”

“What the fuck…you can’t be beaten.”

A serious shadow fell upon his grandpa’s face.

“Why do you want to beat me?”

“It’s just an expression…” Sono responded discouragingly.

“So you don’t want to harm me?”

“Again…” Sono grunted with displeasure. “
No
. It’s just an expression. I don’t want to beat you literally. Not even figuratively anymore...”

“It’s a strange expression.” His grandpa stated bluntly.

“No it’s not. To you, maybe. But, what isn’t…?”

Edgar suddenly slapped him, though playfully, on the side of his forehead, rustling his pull tab necklace as the tips of his longest fingers briefly scraped his skin.

“Before—wait! Before you hit back, remember, I’m an old man.”

“I was just gonna poke you in the gut or something. Do you think I’d hit you?” Sono grinned diabolically. “You surprised me there Grandpa, shit…just wait. I’ll do it when you least expect it. Live in fear, old man…live in fear.” Sono tightened his eyes impishly at his grandpa. “But not so much that you get a heart attack. You fucking scared me before…moderate fear, all right.”

“You have a strong spirit Sono, but don’t be fooled thinking that’s enough. They’re hijacking this with fixed images.” Edgar brought a finger to his own temple. “Implanting frameworks, shells, structure. Be wary of that.”

Sono found his grandpa’s sudden declaration a bit overpowering, even militant.

“Oh…kay…” he said for a lack of a better response. It seemed as though his grandpa has said all that he wanted to say. Glad for that fact, but still mentally muddled, Sono opened his mouth, and after a few moments of inaction, inhaled deeply.

“How are you breathing these days?”

He peered curiously at his grandpa.

“Uh…enough?”

“Breathe like a swan, with gusto and grace.” Edgar inflated his posture. “Crane your neck, don’t slump down. Bring your breath all the way down to the pits of your stomach. That’s where the energy is.”

“I don’t even know what a swan looks like.”

“You do know what they look like. We carved them when you were little onto the concrete.”

“We might’ve, but what am I now? I’m taller than you are, Grandpa. I’m not little anymore.”

“You do. You just don’t want to.”

Frustration slapped his composure senseless, but Sono managed to keep quiet despite it.

“Maybe I’m just really forgetful. Waaaah…”

Edgar looked down at Sono’s worn shoes. In view of his blatant disinterest, Sono closed his mouth, though reluctantly. It had been a perfectly dumb face he’d fashioned for his grandpa.

“If there weren’t any bones left of the dinosaurs, if we hadn’t found any of their remains, do you think anyone would’ve thought that such enormous creatures had even lived? That they once walked the very places we walk?
We
once had tails. Or if all there was left of them was a footprint. Nothing more. A hoax! That’s right. That’s what people would say. They probably saw themselves, just like we did, do, and will, the pinnacle of evolution, until we perish. It’s foolish. How about all the other animals that have perished? How strange weren’t armadillos? Bush vipers or zebras? Bats? Octopuses?”

“All right, enough…enough names, Grandpa.”

“That’s just the tip of it. What about narwhals? Penguins? Woodpeckers?”

Sono faced his grandpa’s fervor with a leveling somberness. “Do you have to show off by listing the most obscure animals? Who else but you know their names? You haven’t even seen
one
of those animals. I can play too; what about cats, and man’s best friend?”

Four

“Grandpa?” Sono called out a third time. “Grandpa, where are you?”

Bending over to sloppily brush the dust off the side of his right leg, he then lumbered toward the cloth door of his grandpa’s domed home. He had slipped on his way across the concrete, but fortunately, even though he at one point had more of himself down than up, only his shorts bore signs of the event.

He left his backpack beside the entrance. In it were four cobs of corn, an assorted mix of grilled insects; crickets, grasshoppers, cockroaches, larvae and a few cicadas, two small but alluringly redolent chocolate cakes, and a black pill bottle supposedly containing vitamin D from his chemist friend at half price.

Since the corn that was sold by the Core was grown inside the prison in giant halls by imprisoned Outsiders that labored day in and day out under strenuous working conditions, feeding both prisoners and those outside, he cherished it that much more. The same went for the insects, on occasions when he bought them in one of the Core shops and not from an industrious Outsider.

Meals in prison were given twice a day, a sort of watery corn gruel with a bitter chemical aftertaste. During mealtimes, in a charming voice, though grainy and unnecessarily booming, speakers occasionally blurted out that “
this delicious corn dish, both filling and thirst-quenching, has been caringly enriched by our diligent scientists with every nutrient that a model prisoner needs.”
Many refused it, but in the end, everyone gave in since it was better than dying from starvation.

Some days, meals came only once a day, some days in the form of moldy kernels in a plastic cup, and some days there was nothing at all to eat. From time to time the immense dining hall in the prison would quiver from upset Outsiders. The gates would shut, and a grainy piano song would start blaring out of the speakers. Not a guard was to be seen anywhere. Once the widespread anger no longer found expression outward, it took a few minutes before the piano song stopped as well. When it did, the ensuing silence was ominous; still to this day the memory chilled Sono to the bone. Thousands of silenced Outsiders, just piling on to their harbored hate, surrounded by concrete and sealed exits. When the piano song ended, it was like they snatched the breath right out of his lungs.

No one recognized the piano song. Had someone in the Core composed it solely for that purpose, to pacify unruly prisoners? Though it was something he had never shared with anyone, even shunning it when it popped up in his own head, still to this day, Sono thought the composition beautiful.

Pushing the cloth door aside, he peeked inside. His grandpa wasn’t there. Rolling his bottom lip across his upper incisors, he stood in the doorway for a while, his thoughts few and incoherent. Rejoining his lips, he turned around.

“Graaandpa…I’m about to take a puff from your pipe! Puff puff, puff away!”

He surveyed the vast stillness, trying to sniff out the presence of his grandpa’s pipe.

“Grandpa! Where are you? Come out!”

The concrete pieces were agonizingly silent.

“Edgar! Shaman!”

He leaned his head back in dissatisfaction, the ceiling of pollution immensely oppressive.

“I’m possessed! Cursed! Help. I’m sick. I’m insane. I’m hungry…and I’m talking to myself…”

He let his head drop straight down, staring at the ground.

“
Grandpa!
” Sono called out with all his might; expanding his chest, lifting his head, and straining the corners of his mouth as he roared.

The silence was uncanny, and the scene disorienting. It was a physically unpleasant experience, watching the far-reaching silence, as if his sight rebuilt the glum scene inside of him, one cumbersome piece after the other, weighing him down. He wondered how his grandpa survived all alone out here. Finding determination at a moment’s notice, he headed back inside.

He rolled the oil barrel to the doorway on its edge, set it down, and then pulled it outside, the heavy cloth door sliding over his back. The barrel screeched as he yanked on it callously.

He reconsidered not once, but twice. It felt incredibly strange without his grandpa around, like he was summoning ghosts against his will. Because no matter how illogical he found it, ghosts seemed to be the closest thing to another human he’d encounter around his grandpa’s home.

The drum itself wasn’t magical, and even less as an oil barrel, but, according to his grandpa, it was a way to
connect
to the magical. Edgar probably would’ve preferred spiritual, but then again he objected to spirits being ghosts as well.

Sono gave the drum a few meek slaps with the tips of his fingers, before banging the base of his palm on it twice. They were shallow, and yet strangely piercing sounds, its serrated echo almost sawing through him.

As he got something of a rhythm going, the sounds were, despite his initial qualms, spellbinding; damn near otherworldly even. The sounds blocked out everything attempting to enter, and filled to the brim everything that was already inside of him. His eyes were riveted on the rusty surface which he banged fluently with his hands.

No ghosts appeared; however, he did feel strangely calm, as if cleansed of his previous dissatisfaction. Perhaps it was the physical activity, or maybe the fact that his thoughts had been led astray.

Still, no sign of his grandpa. Leaving the drum right outside of his home, Sono wanted to have a look behind it. The drum would stand sentry before the crawling pieces of concrete.

On the side of his home; right next to the cast iron hand pump, its original black lacquer gone except for a patch or two, was a filtering device, a sort of scaffolding beside the curved wall. Despite the four gray plastic trays inspiring little hope, they did tremendous good, one atop the other.

The top tray tilted slightly to the right, so that the water that was poured into it would amass at the corner, and trickle through a slit down into the tray below, which tilted slightly to the left, and thus the water slowly zigzagged its way into the bucket at the bottom, fitted with a custom-made lid and a floating device to indicate when it was about to overflow.

The top tray, at about chest height, was filled with rather coarse gravel, the tray underneath it with slightly finer pebbles, the third with fine grains, and the last one with actual sand, something his grandpa purchased once every year through the same friend that brought him food once a week. Sono had never seen anyone selling sand in the market.

Under laws established by the Core, it was illegal to purify water; were one by chance to stumble upon a puddle with potential, even if it was the size of a plate, it was illegal to drain the liquid through a sock filled with gravel, let alone through a more sophisticated device. If one wanted to drink, one had to pay for it, with Core issued currency or anything in one’s possession they deemed to be of equal value. Though it looked reasonably clean, and didn’t taste at all terrible, no one knew what they did with it before it was bottled or spewed out of the faucet.

Outsiders had begun siphoning the Core’s water pipes long ago, as well as the power lines, running from the nuclear plants by the shore, hundreds of miles away, to behind the walls around the Core. It was a dangerous enterprise for the Outsiders involved, and sometimes even for those that had nothing to do with it. Since they guarded both their water supply and power supply scrupulously, they had to move around constantly to outwit them.

Very few paid the Core to have water ready when turning the faucet, and even fewer for electricity. Some bought bottled water, but the majority of the Outsiders paid one of the groups involved to have clandestine water. There wasn’t much of a demand for electricity among the Outsiders, which was a relief for Sono, since hooking was dangerous in and of itself without the help of the Core police. The downside was that any such activities, if discovered, whether the recipient or the one doing the siphoning, resulted in a minimum of 25 years in prison. But the more common punishment for those caught in the vicinity of power lines or down in the sewers were bullets, and all it took was one to render all future punishments useless.

The Outsiders paid for clandestine water and electricity any way they could, often with items, or in exchange for a skill that they possessed, and sometimes with food. Other than at the market, where almost everything without an expiration date could be found, Core money was rarely exchanged between Outsiders, which accounted for most of the spreading peevishness among them.

Still, far too many Outsiders spent their days hungry, and as a last resort some orchestrated their own imprisonment in the hopes of at least getting fed. A task so easy the ramifications took a while to catch up with reality.

There were two Core shops, one on each side of the market. There were Outsiders standing in line every minute of the day there. The line was rarely reduced and never empty, because being first in line meant getting the best things which one then could sell at the market at a much higher price. Scuffles often erupted, and arguments were daily occurrences.

The shops, built into the concrete walls, were set up with a microphone in the form of a metal mesh into which one’s order was spoken, and adjacent to it a hatch into which Core money or items were placed. If they deemed the items to actually be of equal value to the cash amount stated on the screen, which wasn’t often, a garage door to the left would pull open, where the items one bought would sit.

Behind the bought items, placed in the middle of the floor, another garage door, similar in appearance, was visible. It was always closed in both shops. An armed group of Outsiders had once tried to force through one of them, many years ago, but it had quickly backfired on them. It ended in a massacre.

If buying water or electricity for one’s home, a machine-typed receipt would slide out of a slit, not that one could do anything else with it, like complain or even inquire about it. It was just a formality. The only real evidence of the transaction was when one turned the faucet or flipped a switch at home. Very rarely did the opposite happen. Though sometimes the items one had bought did suddenly become unavailable. But whenever that occurred, the Core refunded the thwarted buyer promptly, giving back the same money or items one gave away a while before.

In the shops one could always buy food in the form of corn and dead insects, water in the form of bottled water, plain or flavored, as well as water to come out of the otherwise dry faucet in one’s home, and also, electricity derived from the nuclear plants by the shore. That is, if the cables had not been cut by the Core police. If one so desired, there were still vacant buildings where all the wiring was intact, but most people stayed put, relying mainly on candles for light, and insulation for those few who managed to freeze despite the constant heat. Even though most apartments had a makeshift fireplace, firewood had become harder and harder to acquire.

Along with food, water, and electricity, the following items were available more or less on a daily basis: cigarettes, shampoo, perfume, electric razors, mirrors, alcohol in various forms, televisions, DVD players, movies, video games, stereos, CD’s, karaoke machines, lamps, various sauces and condiments, synthetic sweeteners, synthetic flour, waffle irons, and electric kettles. Many, if not all of those items, were simply vile instruments to seduce Outsiders to pay the Core for electricity, water, and food.

The Core facilitated the travels many Outsiders embarked on by providing them with a whole host of things to make long journeys bearable. The traveling Outsiders, once outside the city limits, were also exempt from the law which prohibited the purification of water, providing them with iodine tablets and disposable water purifiers to take with them. All it took for anyone to become a journeyer in the eyes of the Core was the push of a button at the shops. Whether a ruse or just plain stupidity, the Core in effect enabled everyone to purify water, but since the prison time for such a deed implemented within the city limits was significant, who was the dumbass? Sono hadn’t yet come up with a satisfactory answer.

With varying availability, items such as these were obtainable for those who pushed the button with the words IN THE GLORIOUS CAPITAL’S SERVICE above it; cakes, candy, portable generators, battery-powered lighters, foul-smelling and often useless fuel, used car batteries, old tires, various spare parts, various carts, backpacks, sledgehammers, pickaxes, regular axes, crowbars, saws, various tools, rope, duct tape, patches of synthetic fabrics, garbage bags, vacuum-packed bugs, goggles, magnifying glasses, synthetic coffee, thermoses, cans, tents, sparse first aid kits, aspirin, uppers, boots, headlamps, candles, batteries, and tarps. Basically anything that could come in handy on an expedition hunting for materials that the Core desired.

The traveling Outsiders were the richest around since the Core paid generously for the items they desired, such as specific parts from factories and machines, and precious metals. Their list of desired items changed regularly.

The discarded items the traveling Outsiders brought back often ended up in the market, instantly becoming the most sought-after items.

But Outsiders didn’t always have to travel far, since on occasion the Core also paid for more common things that could still be found in the city, such as copper, aluminum, windows, appliances, dimension stones, old wood, and bricks. Entire city blocks had been demolished over the years, from top to bottom with sledgehammers and other handheld tools, and whole lanes of houses in the suburbs had been reduced to piles. But since a majority of the items advertised had already been taken from the city, Outsiders had to travel, often to the cities people had abandoned generations before to come to the Outsides.