114: Gum

1. Today is demonstration day. The high-street is barricaded off and the side streets are clogged with arms and their bearers. Tourists still prattle languidly, largely unaware of the day’s significance, as queues of drably drawn locals start to form outside fashionable stores that have been marked in their mental calendars, accompanied by a whole entourage of exclamation marks, for a year. On the cicadas’ signal, revving their engines in unison like rally drivers at the start of a race, roof top floodlights spring into action, drowning the gum splattered streets in a confluence of shadows, damning its denizens as if on trial by light. The locals are syringed into the shops, forcing the invasive species out onto the street where they are met with the full splendour of the days events, as the heavily barbed fences onto the side streets are shakily opened by pasty faced newlings, unequal to the task, who are summarily taught a lesson in shorthand. The tourists barreling onto the street are caught by the glinting eyes of polished police issue rifles eager to shine. Coloured toxin tipped darts trace chartered flights to foreign destinations and down their prey, who slump into soundless Lethe. Once the bodies are cleared and the scores tallied up, the award ceremonies are ready to begin. 3. I was on the hunt for a new Multatron. The corner boutique on Lasqow Street stocked several brands so, like so many of my kind, I had lined up with docile excitement. Once we were in and the prices on the stock screens below each product had dropped to a level that was deemed affordable for us –– though the near 90% price drop was still not quite enough, even for a tenured professor like myself, but well, teaching has always been a mug’s game –– I panic-pocketed a sturdy Aston A5, as I could sense the digits were soon to start their re-ascent to the gut grinding alien appropriate heights. I was eyeing the safest exit route when rookie Richeffe Myrne, whose name I was only later to become acquainted with, caught my attention. Whilst his peers were all tapping their way to the top with easy fingers on triggers that just begged to be pressed, Richeffe stood in a daze, unsure of when or how to act. From the footage you can see me assessing him, his stiff belt still full of darts, giving him the look of a rose seller too morosely embroiled in the spectacle of romance to even attempt a sale. You see, out of my own morbid sense of curiosity, and an embarrassed acquiescence on their part, I was allowed to view the footage of those few fateful minutes. As you will be able to understand, I have no recollection of what I was thinking, but I could read myself like a picture book. Viewing the wall of screens, dividing me up into multiple vantage points, gave me an out of body sensation, like the slow motion footage of a splintering tree mown down by a 50 calibre machine gun. It’s a strange thing seeing yourself from so many angles and being able to predict your actions, to be able to read your own mind as if it were someone else’s; prophetic murmurings held aloft on the steady hiss from a mystic megaphone. An ambulance had pulled up outside and was slotting bodies into the bunks, like used trays in a canteen, when a shot was fired. Faces in the windows across the street could be seen gasping or wide eyed with hands over mouths. The driver slid out the door and belted it across the street as another shot was fired, detectable in the wincing faces of the onlookers. She didn’t return. I looked further down the street and saw a kind of panicked trigger pulling, not aimed at the official alien targets but seemingly at random. Desperation had filled the ranks and the rules seemed to have reverted to last-man-standing. A rumour had caught my attention during one of the reading groups for my course entitled “Reading The Streets” where, through a close textual analysis of radical texts, manifestoes, declarations of intent, manuals of insurgency, fringe fiction foisted on readers through fad or affectation, I guided my students to what I called “the axis of word and deed” where intent speeds through a red light at the junction of action. Apparently the unwritten rules had been re-written this year and the usual tip off to those tipped for the top had been scrapped for a trial by talent; a novel idea cooked up by one of the newly concocted chefs of propaganda. You see, as well as the ranking of new graduates by their final scores on demonstration day, the ultimate prize was awarded to the individual who detected and invalidated the insurrectionist threat that was annually thrown into the mix, like a penny in a celebratory seasonal pudding. As a cherry on top of this pudding, the individual who took out the insurrectionist threat was awarded a three tier rise in the ranks which almost guaranteed them an office of their own, subordinates in tow. But, as was our way, the guerrilla group participating would be vetted to such an extent that the police would largely be the designers of the atrocity, and those earmarked for senior positions would be invited into the briefings to guarantee the carnage was heroically baffled. This year things were rumoured to be different. As a concession to the calls for rigour in the ranks, the central committee had decided that the playing field would be levelled and none of the graduating force would know in advance who, when, or where the attack would take place. As we know, suspicion is infectious. The downed ambulance drivers were soon joined by curious shop keepers, journalists, street sweepers, and a number of police themselves. But none of these targets seemed viable to me, having read every terror manifesto on the market to date. A cat wearing a bow tie and nothing else jumped into a window display of running shoes. This was not unusual in itself, but when a heavily pregnant golden retriever wearing puppy pumps walked into the picture, I knew I had a lead. It was, after all, the toffee of my trade. The Alt-materialists had been turning their small book of maxims into praxis for a decade or so: Filling the temples with the heavy scent of aerosol cans and proclaiming Spirit to be “the invisible graffiti on human dignity” – wearing bald wigs into the temple in defiance of the head-covering rule, to fig the police when the inevitable arrests ensued; and claiming that “Flesh was the criminal element in the society of the Spirit;” Sculpting the heads of key temple officials out of butter and placing them behind the glass counters of sandwich bars along the strand to be whittled down throughout the day, as empty genuflectors “filled their holy stomachs with soft ideas.” It was obvious to me that they must have been invited to participate in this year’s graduation procession, though their guerrilla tactics were more in the vein of avant-garde performance pieces than genuine acts of insurrection and were only deemed dangerous by members of the group itself. I see myself following the dog with my ever-understanding eyes. The dog’s balls flashed monkey blue on the footage and the fake undercarriage of their confetti-filled teats – soon to be detonated on the steps of the magistrate’s portico – was quite hammily attached, but nobody was paying any attention. Benevolence fills my boots at the most inopportune moments and the rueful sight of Richeffe stricken by indecision had started the trickle. After all, who would one rather have on top: a trigger happy man of action with a taste for attrition, or a sensitive type who takes time to mull the next move? I chose the latter and strode across the tourist-strewn square to deliver the sacrificial dog up to the indecisive underdog. Running to dodge the darts that were flying in every direction, I looked like caprice itself being attacked by a swarm of fanciful bats. The sight of me and my imaginary pursuers must have shocked the hound out of his dither, for within a flash I was rudely turned into a target, and as hungry dogs are known to bite the hands of their feeders, Richeffe opted for a meaner treat. The retreat I beat was of a manic back-dance that foiled several of his devilish darts but could not escape the final encounter that came as I tripped over the lazing corpse of sleeping shopper Siminov Pankoff and his pile of paper bags, turning to mush in the soused street. We woke up in neighbouring hospital beds approximately 30 hours later under the amplified lens of speculation, trying to guess what had happened to us, as those blank hands made their rounds on tiptoes. I filled him in on certain truths that his kind are rarely fed, and he served me perspectives that uncommonly furnished my environs. As for the demonstration and its results, all I can say for certain is that there is an office in some building, sewn into the landscape somewhere by a heavily barbed fence, that remains unoccupied, unheated and unvoiced, at least until next year.