Dimestore Soldiers – excerpt
I thought that it would be fun to share the second chapter from a cyberpunk novel that I've set aside for the time being. Who knows? If there's interest, I may pick it back up at some point.
What you're seeing here is a never-edited first draft. Errors may abound.
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Dimestore Soldiers
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RUTA
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The hiss of the engine steamed out into the early morning air, heat breaking the fog. Old trains still dominated the yards, rusted metal hulks coated with splashes of graffiti. Two sets of tracks crisscrossed the northern end of Tahoma—the old freight trains' wooden ties and steel spikes contrasting with the sleeker metals of the light rail lines, so new that they shone where the sunlight hit.
Just after dawn, it didn't matter how old the trains were. There was no one there to see it.
"Come on–" A female voice broke the silence, clattering over the fence that separated the station from the rest of the city. It was followed by the ringing of a steel-toed boot against a chainlink fence. "The 4:57′s about to pull out."
The whistle blew—one note, loud and long.
"What do you want with that old train anyways, Ruta?" A second voice echoed behind the fence, also a woman's. It was quick and breathy, words so labored they demanded interruption.
"We're going to jump it." Ruta hit the ground as she jumped off the fence, her weight shaking the dirt as her feet hit it. The other woman followed her, dangling before she dropped, then caught herself by flattening her hand against the ground. Juanita's landing was so unsteady that the taller woman grabbed her and pulled her upright. They stood there, breathing in the coal fumes and dirt rising up from the train tracks.
Neither of the pair fit the place in which they were standing. Juanita's clothing was so new that it glistened, the false leather on her jacket shining from the glossy coat on it. Ruta's was little better, rough only because she'd taken scissors to it herself, mocking new fabric with a few artfully placed rips and tears. Juanita seemed more aware of the contrast, brushing away imagined dirt from the collar of her shirt. Ruta sneered as she saw it, her lower lip twisting down.
"Jump what?" Juanita sighed. "That train looks slow. If this is for some zoomsite, I don't see the point."
"You seen anyone else trainjumping? I didn't think so." Ruta knew zoomsites better than anyone she knew. She tapped into them when she first woke up, scanning the feeds to see what new experiences were up for sale. Sex was popular but that was something anyone could capture, upload, and make accessible for direct download to any braindancer. It took creativity to find the new in a world that most people preferred to access from the net in their living rooms. People had started calling the sites where viewers could purchase a stranger's experience "zoomsites" because it was a way to "zoom" in on the life of another person. Ruta didn't think so. The only experience anyone ever shared was the lie.
"That doesn't mean that we have to be the first," Juanita said.
"Being the first is the only way we're going to get noticed." Ruta leaned down, checking the buckles on her runners. She'd had her joints replaced last year but all the running that she'd done had been on sidewalks and rooftops.
"Don't be so obsessed."
"Obsessed? What else is there?" The train was pulling out of the yard and Ruta put on her goggles, turning on the embedded camera. Juanita didn't but Ruta said nothing.
The taller woman began to run, her long legs picking up speed as she loped alongside the tracks. Juanita followed, slower but more graceful as she followed. Black smoke billowed from the engine stack, filling the air with soot as the train coughed its way down the tracks. Sun was beginning to break over the mountain that gave Tahoma its name, throwing golden-pink rays against the sky.
"Hurry!" Ruta called back, looking over her shoulder as she ran. Black hair whipped her face, slapping her goggles. She took a deep breath, then lept on the back of the caboose.
The metal slammed against her palms as she caught the handrails and clung, pulling herself up rung by rung. Juanita was still running behind, stumbling as the wheels kicked up gravel and dirt.
"Jump!" Ruta yelled at her.
Juanita sprang. The sound of her impact was dull, her chest hitting hard. She whimpered as her arms wrapped around the handrails, locking her body steady. Ruta continued her climb until she reached the top of the caboose. Her hands gripped the sides, steadying herself against the jerking rack of the freight train.
"Come on up," she called down to Juanita. "The view's fantastic." Ruta twisted her body halfway to see if that was true.
Even with the enhanced sight her goggles gave her, the line of boxcars seemed to stretch out forever. Most of the cars were enclosed, rust-red hulks of steel that followed one another in a straight line. Cargo was visible in a few—raw grains and rubble piled high, picked up by the wind and scattered into the concrete jungles they were passing through. The landscape that the freights traversed had been given up on long ago. What remained were the shells of ancient companies—buildings so small that no screens lit the outside. It was dark in this land, Ruta realized. This was the wilderness.
She remembered that she was recording and swiveled her neck, turning herself so that she could survey the road behind. Tahoma was growing distant, the sloping cityscape coated by the fog that crawled up from port and sewer.
"I can't believe we're doing this," Juanita said. She crawled up on top of the caboose, then laid down flat on the steel. "And you still have those goggles on."
"I'm catching the moment."
"Recording isn't living," the other woman told her. Ruta glanced down, reaching out to tug a strand of hair out of Juanita's collar. It was dusty with soot, glazed with bits of debris from the breeze.
"Define life." Ruta stood up, trembling as the force of the wind roared at her. Juanita squealed. "Is feeling the wind slapping your face so hard you can't breathe dying?" She inhaled deeply, half-choking on the smoke. "It doesn't feel like it." Her arms spread themselves out in the air as if they were wings. "This—this is alive."
"If it feels so good, why do you want to share it? With the whole world?" Juanita muttered.
Ruta didn't hear her.
She took a few steps forward, wobbling with the forward motion like she was walking on new legs. Her vision was jarred with each step, sight jolting down to her feet instinctively, then back ahead.
"Think I can jump to the next car?" Ruta asked.
"Don't," Juanita said.
Ruta gathered up her strength, coiling her muscles as she peered down at the corner of the car. Taking a few steps backwards, she ran, her heart pounding in her throat as she reached the edge and lept. Her body was adrift only for a second, air whistling past her ears, the ground just below, and then she hit, her feet landing solidly on the roof of the next car.
"Aiiii—yeah!" She screamed, the sound somewhere between cry and exclamation, pumping her fist in the air. Juanita walked towards Ruta, staring at the gap between the two train cars on which they stood. Her eyes slitted, measuring the distance between them. Ruta's fist dropped but remained clenched at her side as she said, "Jump."
"I don't think so," the woman shook her head. She kept looking at the gap, staring down at the tracks as the wheels rolled over them. It was nothing but a hissing steel blur.
"You're always such a coward," Ruta said. "All that talk about living and you're as bad as the rest of those vidiots." The words dripped from her tongue, forming slowly, then falling one by one.
"I just don't want to. I'm still on last year's cyber."
"So?" Ruta asked. "Just because Daddy can't get you an upgrade doesn't mean you have to be chickenshit."
"Like you paid for your own."
"I'm not scared to use it." Ruta lept up, landing neatly a few seconds later and remaining steady as a cat.
"I'm not scared," Juanita said and it was then Ruta knew that she had her.
"Prove it."
"Fine." Juanita's body shriveled, caving in on itself as her face turned again to the gap. The shiver of anticipation teased the back of Ruta's neck as she stared. She wanted to see the other woman jump, experience the adrenaline rush by watching it in someone else. Whatever Ruta claimed, she was a voyeur at heart and her entire self tingled as she saw Juanita come running for the edge, her feet picking up speed as they flew.
Juanita's runners lifted up, a buckle flying open as her body rose into the air. The look in her eyes was terrified. Her legs left the security of the steel under foot as she jumped, her limbs losing control and flailing. It only took a moment.
Her fingers caught the side of the car as she missed. Bone cracked as it slammed against the moving train. All Ruta heard was a sharp intake of breath as she stared towards the gap, running towards the dark fingers clutching the rail. Blood splattered Juanita's knuckles, all that Ruta could see.
Ruta reached for the hand, her arm stretched as far as it could go, her muscles bulging as she hit the car, knees first.
"Catch me, Ruta," was all she could hear over the roar of the wheels of the tracks. A whimper followed, then the fingers slipped away.
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Writing by Gwen Perkins (c2012). Find out more about my work at my website or at my Amazon author page.
The image is courtesy of weheartit.com.
