Hollow Life

So instead of more of Faux Toad, I am posting a submission for a Flashfic writing challenge over at Terrible Minds.
Comments are appreciated.
Genres used was Cyberpunk well influenced by Southern Gothic.

Please enjoy


Hollow Life
Genre Mashup challenge
Cyberpunk with Southern Gothic
Started 08/22/11 at 12:15 Pm posted at 2;30 PM
CW Kelson III (Tad)


Out past where the potholed concrete gives way to sinkhole threatened dirt roads. Past where high rise turns into decaying structures and then into diseased landfills and finally becomes runoff tainted swamps. Where heavy metals lace the food and the bones of refugees of the tax breaks and repatriation to the powerful, to the point where all that was left was the thin tip at the top, and the massive masses down below. Human life has been led back to the primordial ooze that is stagnant algae covered swamp water.

Here the flies, mosquitoes, and ticks far outnumber the human race at its peak. Along with the other natives staking a claim, comes the intruders, humans and altereds, squabbling among themselves in the heavy metal tainted byways and bayous. Each day spent there is more than a day closer to death from toxins or worse. Still it is a viable compared to most places on Earth.

A ways farther north comes our hero. Heading back down south to pay final respects to the dying. A message had arrived, on back channels and bounced packet, to come back where home is now, his father lies dying in a tin shanty out past where the factories end and diseased vegetation commences.

He sits on the tail end of an automated semi-convoy, rolling on wide fats over the massive imperfections that remain of the old highway system. Brush and industrial cutters line the front. There to remove impediments, whining into life when ground radar detects obstacles to be cleared. Once in a while a detour is needed, around satellite imaged sinkholes or underground coal fires and then one of these convoys roll through the middle of a shanty town. Over the tops of homes, animals, people too slow to move out of the way of multiple tons of computer and remote controlled steel and carbon fiber.

Limpet attached at the rear, heat blanket aiding to obscure his signature, couple of flasks of water and trail rations tiding over the growl in the belly, Sutton Spense, Lowkey to his peers, checks his location compared to cell towers and signal strengths and figures a few more hours at this rate then he will disembark to find transport heading more south than southeast. Destination home.

Time, hours, days, pass and after many changes in hitchhiked transports, finally coming into unfamiliar territory. On the edge of a swamp, far from prying eyes, a wooden dock sits, small punt there. The printed out directions sent when he was still up north, in the lights and glitter of death dancing along wires and nerves, sit in his pocket long memorized but retained for unfathomable sentimentality.

Getting into the small craft and unshipping the single long pole, Lowkey, heads into the swamps on the final leg of the sins of his fathers life. Over forty years ago Willie Spense, aka BasketWeaver, embarked on a life of fighting the system, striving for something more than what was possible for a person not born in the glittering towers of glass and ice. Instead of reform, he found a woman and nine months later his one and only child. Now almost forty years later, his son is coming to pay the debt his father owes, redemption for failure.

As the day progresses and distance into backcountry increases, the insect population multiplies. Finally the time comes to risk electronics and the low-grade background hum sets in, repelling most of the bloodsuckers from his immediate person. Small solar panels inset into the shoulders of his coat charging the ni-cads in his boots as he moves deeper and deeper into a world as far away as exists on this planet from his normal stomping grounds.

No connectivity here, no throngs of starving people amped up and looking for their next score.
No herds of mindless drones running the factories and sweatshops of the NE corridor.
No clubs laced with the latest designer entertainments, selected for maximum penetration into a cortex. Instead of civilization mixed with small arms fire, there is the drone of insects, electronic in similarity, interspersed with the splash of the pole into the water propelling the small boat closer to a final resting place.

It took only a few days to get this far, it might take almost that long to reach the center of the morass that used to comprise most of central Florida. Finally circuits are engaged, removing the need for rest, eliminating fatigue and boredom and time passes in a blur until the smartpaper inside his jacket pings, letting him know he was within a mile of his destination. Waking up to darkness, augments allowing for navigation, trees all around and rustling of animal life near and distant.

Not too long later he docks the craft, tree stumps fused together forming a pier and way to slightly dryer ground. Nestled within the hollow ahead lay his fathers home for the last thirty years, since leaving his son alone in an apartment surrounded by dead bodies and the stench of gunpowder and death's release. Now the two are coming face to face for the first time since that last meal they had shared.

Up to the wooden boards held together with bailing wire and pieces of pvc pipe, the shack was set into a space between several ancient trees, built into them as well as between. No obvious security, no defensive perimeter, no motion sensors that Lowkey could detect. Nothing protecting the old man, presumed to be inside, besides distance from the world he had left. Abandoned just as he had abandoned his son.

Pushing the door open, the pistol carried in the small of the back in a rig nestled into the left hand targeting devices primed, the once lonely child, that grew into a very lonely man, enters a room comprising a single handmade table, three simple stools converted into chairs, several oil lamps, a relic of a computer and the corpse of his father sitting at the table. A piece of paper folded around something in front of him.

Unfolded the paper simply reads, handwritten, Sorry. Inside the paper wrapped up is a single chipdrive, older but still compatible with most drives. His father had been dead at least a few days, and from luck or circumstance not defiled by insect or animal behavior. No pictures in the room, a single simple bed visible behind a hanging paper screen. Nothing of worth visible. Just an ancient man dead, hair wild and white, skin leathery with exposure to Sun and chemical burns on his hands and arms, likely from the water he was surrounded with.

Lowkey paddles away now, the chipdrive stored in a EMP lined pocket, waiting to be scanned before ran. One lone thermite on a timer waiting to consign his history to the pyre, as he heads back to the only life he knows, alone.


FINIS