Scum of the Universe Page 8

  A projector that must have been four hundred years old rattled to life and began to spit static onto a white screen. For a moment, Bob was overjoyed. A TV! Of course, that joy turned to horror as the arch-nemesis of all small children who were expecting cartoons reared its ugly head: an Infomercial.

  Every kid groaned as they all realised the same thing at the same moment. Tricked!

  Bob spent the next hour and fifteen minutes of his life watching what must have been the most boring movie ever made in the history of mankind. It was narrated by Mister Drizzle himself in all his bright purple animated glory, which was a plus, but unfortunately the flick turned out to be about the history and business practices of The Dream Factory. Bob learned that this planetwide sweatshop manufactured the very best old-fashioned toys for children who were far luckier and more valuable than any indentured worker could ever hope to be. Also, it turned out that The Dream Factory had managed to keep the prices of its superior products at less than half that of their closest competitors thanks to the hard work of its child workforce. Bob and the other kids were also clearly informed of what it meant to be indentured servants for the rest of their natural lives and potentially beyond, including the (surprisingly few) rules and the terminal ramifications if you did something that was unforgivable. Some of the major breaches that wouldn't be tolerated included trying to make contact with the outside Universe, any attempt at escaping, any instances of squiffing that hadn't been officially sanctioned by the Warden, and one or two other concepts that were so bent that Bob couldn't comprehend them at such a young age.

  As Bob had already reached the understanding that he was totally boned the moment he woke up in a cell, he chose to sleep through the rest of the flick. Just as the movie was wrapping up and the credits started to roll, Bob's fine sense of hearing picked up a familiar ticky-ticky-ticky sound coming from a few metres away. His eyes snapped open and within a second they’d locked onto some sort of bug he'd never seen before. Reacting with instincts honed by a life of hunger and desperation, Bob leapt from his chair, snapped up a fat striped insect the size of a matchbox, scurried into a dark corner and crunched it into paste head-first with a big smile.

  All the small children screamed and retched. So did some of the guards.

  With some help from the cheerful application of a stun rod, Bob was “encouraged” to get up and lead the way into the next room. This large area was a wet, sagging mess of shelves that had been collapsing into each other for so long that they resembled an Escher painting, and they were all filled with precisely two kinds of apparel: grey coveralls and plastic Crocs. As you'd expect, everything was too large or too small by about six sizes.

  It took a few zaps and ear flicks, but eventually all the kids had stripped off their street clothes, placed their old duds in a large plastic barrel and shrugged on the only clothing they'd ever wear from now on. Slipping on the first synthetic fibres he'd ever worn, Bob only had a moment to wonder what sort of animal you had to skin to get this “plastic” stuff before he and all the other under-tens were rushed back into a massive common area outside their cells. They milled about aimlessly, apparently free to do nothing for a while. Some cried. Others scratched at their itchy coveralls.

  Feeling that somebody was watching him, Bob looked up, ready for a fight, but it was just some scrawny kid. Most of the stranger's face was hidden behind thick glasses, his mouth was gaping slightly open in a way that didn't exactly scream “intelligence,” and his hair was redder than a sunburnt lobster.

  “What?” Bob snapped after another few seconds, feeling paranoid.

  “You're the one what gave the guards a fright last night, what?” the kid asked with a surprisingly posh accent.

  “Yeah. Cos I'm the bogeyman,” Bob sneered.

  A few other children looked over. There was nothing more entertaining to do.

  “Why is your hair like that?” a larger child asked. This one was head and shoulders above the others, and Bob was having trouble believing he was younger than ten.

  There were a few zaps and yelps from the back of the crowd, and the crowd of kids started to move. Many of the child slaves were now looking at Bob’s head of hair, which resembled a greasy wild sheep after an abundant Spring.

  “I grew up in the desert.” Bob snapped. “I never had no hairdresser in the desert, or shampoo, or nuthin. Just roaches big as your fist and plenty of juicy moles to eat.”

  Bob felt a pang of sadness, already missing his simple life out in the sticks. And then that image was back: Ernest Fell pumping round after round into his Mum's back...

  “They shot my Ma and left my Da behind to die. I'll find them. And I'll get them rotten.”

  The much larger kid nodded, and so did a few of the others. It seemed that Bob's recent loss was something they could all identify with.

  “What's your name, man?” the big kid asked.

  “Bob Tuesday.”

  “Bob Tuesday?” the larger kid grinned stupidly. “What kind of idiot name is that?”

  Bob stopped walking and tilted his chin up in a hostile way. He'd seen enough jail movies to know that this was the sort of situation where he needed to act decisively, even thought he couldn't spell “decisively,” let alone define it. Other kids were looking over at the scene now, but were still moving quickly enough to avoid a shocking. Guards were watching from raised balconies with stun rifles ready. They knew the signs to watch for.

  “Boo hoo. Don't like it? Then piss off, spughead.”

  The brute bridged up. Bob believed that no ten-year-old should have muscles like that.

  “What did you say?” the brute growled very, very softly, leaning in close and baring his teeth. “Come again, midget?”

  “Didn't understand me the first time?” Bob smiled, getting on his tiptoes so he could get in the kid's face. “Then maybe you should take your dumb ass home, spend a couple of hours figuring it all out, and then cry yourself to sleep like the sad housewife you are. Right?”

  The big kid's anger slowly transitioned to confusion, then eventually to amusement. A big grin broke out on his face.

  “You got guts, Tuesday. I'm Brian.”

  “Bob,” he corrected. “Call me Bob.”

  As any chance of a fight had evaporated, the guards pushed and prodded their prisoners towards the next stop.

  “I saw Tuesday when he came in last night!” the redhead butted in, trying to score points. “He went all the guards at once like a total loony. It was magic.”

  “Shut it, you ginger-headed saffron-scented raspberry-flavoured ranga!” One of the teen guards barked skilfully, extending his shock baton. “Badmouth the guards again and see what happens!”

  “Leave him alone.” Bob sulked.

  The guard simply pointed a gloved finger at him in warning.

  “You better watch yourself, Tuesday.”

  And that was the end of it. The name had officially stuck from then on. In a matter of moments, Bob had died and Tuesday was born in his place.

  “Where are we going?” Tuesday grumbled.

  *

  It was a hell worse than he could have imagined: a barbershop.

  Tuesday loved his salt-and-pepper locks as much as his arms and legs, but having more than a third of an inch of hair in Cell Block Preschool meant that catching an infestation of paralysis lice was just a matter of if rather than when. This is why it was standard policy to shave all the newcomers bald on arrival and then buzz them again on the 33rd of each month.

  Tuesday didn't take the news well.

  Although the poor hairdresser shrieked like a pre-teen girl at a boy band concert when Tuesday used his teeth and dirty fingernails to show his distaste for a shaved head, Tuesday’s crown of hair was eventually separated from his scalp with a blunt pair of clippers.

  Tuesday cried for hours. But life went on.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  WORK, WORK, WORK

  Tuesday's career began less than an hour after his first haircut. His fie
ld of expertise had been selected for him by some hugely fat dude who'd simply rolled a die with twenty sides - the sort that you got in Dungeons & Dragons starter packs - and noted the results on a spreadsheet on a clunky old computer. An adult may have wondered who the nerd had slept with to get a sweet job like that.

  Tuesday's assigned task, one that he would be performing for the rest of his natural life, was to sweep up any loose stuffing, sawdust, fabric, thread, buttons and googly eyes that had been expelled from the numerous assembly machines of Manufacturing Area Forty-Five, separate the materials into piles, and jam everything back into the correct chutes and hoppers. It's worth noting that MA45 was the size of a football stadium, meaning that it took Tuesday a solid week to do a proper lap. He did this ten hours a day, seven days a week, month after month, year after year.

  Any moron could instantly understand that being an indentured employee in a place like The Dream Factory was dull drudgery of the highest order, the sort of thing that even a robot wouldn't do, but Tuesday had an ace up his sleeve, a primo tactic that stopped him going insane from monotony: it was a fine balance, but after a little practise Tuesday eventually figured out how to do almost no work without ever getting caught. It was as though avoiding manual labour was yet another sort of innate skill he’d inherited from his Dad, a trait that would make all of Darwin's clones spin in their graves.

  Tuesday now had one official possession: his broom. Tuesday loved his broom. It was a top-of-the-line synthetic ash-handled Sweepomatic headed by magnetised static fibres for maximum hold and strength, and it had an adjustable range of shapes and sweeping styles. It was the sort of broom that was designed to last a lifetime. It was highly likely that Tuesday wasn't its first owner, and the Sweepomatic would probably still be faithfully serving The Dream Factory long after he was dead.

  Tuesday went everywhere with his broom. He ate next to it, cuddled it as he slept, and even went to the bathroom with it well within reach. Occasionally, the broom even fought by his side, and had been responsible for more than one concussion. Tuesday and the broom were inseparable.

  Honestly, beyond the monotony and occasional stabbings, things turned out to be pretty good at The Dream Factory. Tuesday was far better fed than he'd ever been in the desert, the other kids didn't give him any trouble he couldn't handle, there was free medicine if you got sick (good luck missing a shift for anything short of four simultaneous limb amputations, though), and the slaves even got a few Amerikan pounds of pocket money to spend on luxuries each week.

  It wasn't long before Tuesday discovered the concept of gambling. It turned out that Tuesday liked to gamble. He liked it a lot. However, it soon became apparent to Tuesday that gambling was a stupid thing to be involved in unless you were the one running the games. He'd heard his Dad use the term “house always wins” since the cradle.

  Tuesday’s plans didn't work out straight away. After all, we're talking about the offspring of Jim Tuesday here. Tuesday’s first small attempt at a gambling racket went alright for a while, but it was hard to find live roosters anywhere on this rotten planet, and business soon dried up. So, by the time he was eleven, Tuesday branched out from cock fights to a human fight club. If there was something in abundance around here, it was humans and their nobbly little fists. As the participants were all pre-teens and would usually start to cry after the first punch, though, Tuesday had to rethink his plans yet again.

  Finally, when he was twelve, Tuesday came up with the most brilliant idea of his life: stealing stuff. It was a logical step, as the screws had a lot of pinchable perks that your standard pre-teen employee didn't have and couldn't afford, such as cigarettes, MacDeath burgers in self-heating cartons, proper soap and sweet, blessed, fresh underpants, and it was easy enough for a scrawny rodent like Tuesday to scurry around in the greasy ventilation shafts and swipe things. Tuesday always took just enough to fill his belly and sate his nicotine cravings before selling whatever was left without attracting attention. He had no shortage of customers, of course, and Tuesday was happy to receive everyone's allowance of Amerikan pounds each week. He refused to accept German yen or Scandinavian lira pretty quick, however, as both of these currencies had nosedived so badly that the paper they were printed on was worth a hundred times more if it was left blank. At the very worst point, crude photocopies of the German yen were worth more than the real thing, and the property prices of any neighbourhood across the Known Galaxy went down by ten percent if anybody said the words “Scandinavian lira” out loud.

  Although Tuesday was never caught for any of this pettiness, the final straw occurred when he foolishly filched an entire deep-fried elephant turkey from the staff kitchen. This near-extinct bird was so big and heavy that Tuesday needed assistance from the redhead in the cell next door just to get it all the way back, and they'd been forced to oil up the ventilation shaft to stop the monolithic bird from getting stuck.

  Later that same day, all the children of Cell Block Preschool were ordered over the PA system to array in front of their cells. Level after level of primary-school-aged children in grey coveralls and plastic Crocs lined up against the railings and listen in boredom as the Warden's voice boomed out of a million tinny speakers in a million concrete cells. The Warden wasn’t game enough to make a personal appearance, of course, as you can only be held hostage by ten-year-olds so many times until it just gets plain embarrassing.

  “One of you has taken my dinner,” the Warden’s voice hissed, getting straight to the point. “I might overlook petty breaches from time to time, but when my Thanksgiving gets interrupted I draw the line!”

  Tuesday rolled his eyes. What could he do, honestly? Make them double slaves?

  “And so I propose this,” the Warden paused for effect. “If any worker turns in the culprit right now, in the next ten seconds, I guarantee that you will be immediately reclassified as a guard with the full ranks and privileges that entails.”

  Tuesday’s pale red-headed neighbour tensed, glanced at Tuesday with wide eyes, and raced for the squawk box in his cell before the Warden had even finished the sentence. Tuesday effortlessly tripped the traitor over with his trusty broom and made it to the speaker first, stepping on the ginger's head as he leaned for the speaker.

  “It's the blood-nut, sir. He took your dinner.”

  “What? Who is this?” the Warden demanded.

  “Tuesday. Bob Tuesday, inmate 978,233.”

  Too late, Tuesday realised that his dobbing had just been broadcast over every speaker in the enormous tower at top volume. A million kids instantly started jeering at Tuesday, screaming out words like dog, rat, stool pigeon, gummo, traitor and skando. Doing his best to make his words heard over this violent chorus, Bob pointed at the redhead under his feet.

  “The ginger made me hide it under my sleeping pallet, sir, said we'd get a nice price for it. Never told me that it was your dinner, sir.”

  The Warden’s voice paused. Finally, after five long seconds, Tuesday heard the buzz of walkie-talkies and a platoon of guards appeared to escort Tuesday away from the mutinous hordes. They pelted bars of soap at Tuesday from every conceivable direction and spit-balls zipped past his face, but soon Tuesday was immediately led towards a RESTRICTED corridor and into the Special Equipment room. Tripping over quite a few outstretched feet along the way, Tuesday was somehow still alive by the time he arrived at his destination.

  Wordlessly stripped down to his stained longjohns and jammed into a black uniform, a walkie-talkie was attached to Tuesday’s new belt and a stun rod was slipped into Tuesday’s fist hand handle-first. Cell Block Preschool’s newest guard was then given an opportunity to proudly swan about in front of a full-length dress mirror.

  He was a rat at twelve. And he was going to love it.

  *

  As Tuesday had gotten in before the redhead, nothing that could be said by a mere worker mattered anymore, because now Tuesday was a guard, and this meant he would always be judged right in any disagreement. The entire corrup
t system was finally working in his favour.

  Being a child guard was more than comfortable. After all, they lived better in every way. They ate real meat, slept in soft cots, smoked freely, could often work a whole shift without moving an inch, and basically had their run of the place. Christmas and birthday presents were a thing for Tuesday now, though these gifts mostly consisted of contaminated toys that were only fit for burning out on Toy Mountain, a cluster of industrial smokestacks well outside of Cell Block Preschool and its factory lines.

  Tuesday also had great fun randomly zapping people with his stun rod, especially the bigger kids that used to pee on his sleeping pallet when he was just a mere worker, and he had endless opportunities to refine the valuable skill of petty revenge. He looked after the more unfortunate kids with the occasional pizza-flavoured milkshake or a box of Mac&Cheese, and used his position of authority to be the youngest and most crooked guard in the history of Cell Block Preschool.