Chronicles of The Omniverse Archived Rienzi

[Tiko]

as written by Ylanne

The wide street was home to several factories with jagged lines of stacks belching thick black fumes over the planet-wide city, which lingered for a few moments above the rusting pipes that produced them before merging with the atmosphere. Fahrali had always found it unsettling how the air itself seemed heavy with industrial waste, the clouds seeping poison. He tried not to think about it too much, because if he let his thoughts grow, they'd begin to fester and congeal, bringing back the nasty cough that had kept the other tenants of his bug-infested apartment up all night. They'd complained to the landlord when their line managers came down on them for slowing in the production lines for lack of sleep. No, Fahrali didn't want to bring the cough back.

He hurried on, drawing his threadbare, tattered coat about him. It offered poor protection from the stinging rains. The human had been taller, but years of scuttling about factories and drug dens had stooped him, sagged his face, carved lines in the deep brown flesh that now seemed a dulled grey. Fahrali was only forty and with each passing day, he felt more like the grey-bearded ancients sharing loose-wrapped smokes outside the factories where they were too weak to toil any longer. He stamped his feet on the ground, rustling some discarded papers -- they all had the same news in the same script he'd never quite learned to read -- and sending some overly fat rats scurrying in a flurry of squeaks for the dumpsters leaned against a factory wall.

This could be it. This could be his chance to find his way offworld without signing his life over to the Syndicate. Fahrali offered himself a rare smile, right up to the moment a rat darted forward, nibbling at the worn leather of his boot. In an instant, the smile disappeared, and the rat began squeaking desperately, writhing on its back with a fury, until finally, the creature was stilled. Fahrali unclenched his fist and continued onward, not flinching at the squish his steps made when he trod over the rat's corpse. Behind him, he heard others emerging to feed on their former brethren. Soulless creatures, the lot of them.

Dim light ahead greeted him. The warehouse was neatly tucked between several others where the workers would sort and store the materiel at the end of the day. For those weary of the long trek home on the rail, the warehouse served as meeting place, where those less inclined to drink themselves to sleep in solitude could find company and occasionally a bedfellow for the night. There were others there, too, not just the workers with faces covered in factory grime and hands greased and sooted, but offworlders. Fahrali had no use for the workers resigned to days, weeks, months, years more in the factories. He wanted his chance to see the spires, preferably behind him as he dragged his sorry ass the fuck offworld.

 

[Tiko]

as written by Krysis

Luzia Grober didn't mind working for the Syndicate, but she was more of a consultant. Computer to human interfacing, even through the chip in the arm that every registered citizen had in order to work, was not always perfect. Every hospital had their specialized staff, but some worlds required such consultants like Nurse Grober. Worlds where workers, soldiers and business could not be delayed for a faulty bit of computer programming.

The usual practice was essentially a soft reset for a malfunctioning chip, which was done with a special diagnostic wand that was waved over the area. This didn't disrupt any of the information usually, so all Nurse Grober had to do was a simple double-check. If there was a problem, the chip would have to be deactivated. When the chip had to be replaced, which took longer and was generally overseen by members of the Zivilwächter (police), she had to bring much more equipment.

That particular day was not one that needed the heavy equipment. At least, not yet. Clean and well dressed in a conservative blue skirt suit, the nurse stood out among the factory workers. There had been a knife fight that morning, and she was examining the wound of one man while listening to the rantings of the man's wife. If not for the grace of an education, Luzia had no illusions that she would be any different from the poor people around her.

"No. No ZW. No charges. That other man was crazy. We don't want any trouble." The dirty woman was saying while Grober patiently cleaned the sliced arm so it could be bandaged.

"No Zivilwächter, ma'am. I understand. I won't call anyone. But what about the other one? Wasn't he hurt too?" Luzia asked mildly, then stared in shock when the man suddenly stood up and pointed at Fahrali.

"It was him! His fault!" the man accused, quivering in righteous fury. Everyone else that heard the exchange seemed embarrassed, but not particularly surprised or upset. The man's wife tugged at his clothes, trying to get him to sit back down and stop pointing.

 

[Tiko]

as written by Ylanne and Krysis

It took a good several seconds before Fahrali grew aware of the silence and the stares, punctuated by the softer murmurings of the bleeding worker's wife. The wound was ugly, spattering the concrete with little droplets of blood. Fahrali knew, though, that he'd never seen the man to whom it belonged. His face was blotchy and scarred, like many of the longtime laborers. Common. Spittle flew from the sides of his mouth as he shouted, and for a moment Fahrali thought of turning tail and running back out the door from where he came.

He straightened, adjusting the collar of his coat, and amid unwelcoming, suspicious eyes, muttered, "Fucking hell. Had nothing to do with it." And now, slipping in unobtrusively was out of the question. Running out might only bring the Zivilwächter down on him later, if anyone cared to follow up on the accusation. And, despite a conspicuous lack of weaponry, Fahrali knew it would be a hard sell.

____

No one would directly bother Fahrali for several minutes, though some of the younger, more hot-blooded workers would grumble about it. Most of the older folks about knew about Otis Hoger's ways, and paid him no mind. It was a miracle that no one had gutted the fool years ago, for his violent temper if not his compulsive lying, and Sandra Hoger was the main source for his continued survival. Whenever someone got too angry at Otis, his wife would remind them that he wasn't always that way. An accident had scrambled his brain and left him broken that way.

Nurse Grober was less inclined to let it pass. Far too often she had been called in to clean up Otis' messes. She could see that the tendons in his arm were damaged, and was tempted to let them heal badly so the man wouldn't be able to hurt anyone else. Her training and her oaths won out over that temporary lapse though, and the bandaging was done correctly.

Wiping off her hands and arms with a sanitizing gel and a cloth that had been clean, she'd move towards Fahrali with an amused smile after she was done with Hoger. "Don't worry. Everyone knows you didn't do it. The old man is crazy."

Seeing someone that looked pretty healthy was a treat for the nurse, and her eyes would quickly travel over the man's sound limbs and painless breathing, though his posture was enough to make her wince. Then her gaze flicked down to his feet and her smile becomes concerned, "Are you well? You have blood on your shoe." Luzia had no way of knowing it was rat blood.


____

It stank of sweat and poor quality alcohol, the kind of stuff that looked and moved like tar, and tasted about as good going down. The kind seeping from bottles that were cheaply made, widely available, and effective for rapid inebriation and about nothing else. Smoke, too. He was thankful for that; it helped him disappear.

Fahrali had claimed a rickety stool in a corner for himself, where a handful of workers exhausted from the day's work had joined an offworlder in idle chatter. Fahrali worried a strip of salted meat between his teeth, feeling the stares without needing to turn to confirm them. He hunched his shoulders, ears attuned for even footfalls, evidence of the promised stranger.

By the time Luzia approached him, Fahrali had forgotten the nurse. He startled, flinching at the sound of her voice cutting through the otherwise muted conversations, half-turning to keep her in his line of vision. When he'd finally worked up a response to her comment about the man who'd singled him out, she'd moved on to a new question, leaving Fahrali stammering for words. "B-blood? I ... " He followed her gaze, catching sight of the drying, darkening blood. "It started chewing ... chewing on ... "

____

"Something I need to look at for you?" She prompted with a wry smile. Luzia checked her bag for what supplies she had while she waited for the stranger to gather his thoughts. She had to work hard to be blind to the details of the place, but since she could not change things, she felt it would be rude to notice the squalor. It didn't stop her from wanting desperately a chance to get home and get truly clean again.

The smoke would perfume her hair and clothes in the most unpleasant ways. Her shoes were a set she reserved especially for going into such neighborhoods. Even her bag was made of artificial cloth and she never sat on the floor so it would not accumulate filth or pests. Sometimes it made Nurse Grober's skin crawl if she let herself think about the fact that almost the entire world was like that.

It would be a relief to get back to her quarters, which were in a building with mostly Syndicate employees and other educated professionals like herself. She could not understand why it was so, that her home building was clean and well maintained but the residences and pubic places of the workers were not. The poor had no less leisure than she did, and she had no problem keeping herself and her home clean. Why was she expected to make the effort, while they apparently did not?

____

He stared for a moment, uncomprehending, with vacuous eyes, now narrowed into slits from suspicion and a well-conditioned wariness that had served him well enough to keep him alive and manageably functional, leveled at the surprisingly, inexplicably clean woman in front of him. The blood. She had asked about the blood. Was asking if he wanted -- no. If he needed her to look at something. He blinked, twice, then raised a fist to his chin, rubbing it there as if to strike a thinker's pose rather than to display outwardly the anxiety spilling from some cavity within him.

"It -- it was a rat." His voice already sounded more defensive than he wanted it to, the words misshapen, caught somewhere between throat and lips before leaving, guttural, unrefined, the consonants overpowering the vowels to mark his speech as foreign and poor. "Chewing. It was chewing at my boot." He twisted his features into a grimace, his speech marking him for what he was. "Stepped on it, I did. Dead now. Vermin." Fahrali averted his eyes, wishing to be seen by this cleaner, younger, prettier creature no more. "I'm fine. Not hurt. Fine. Fine."

____

"I see. Well, that's good then." Luzia gave him a distracted smile and was quite taken aback to be looking at the back of his head instead of meeting his gaze. As she collected her bag and what little had been pulled out of it, she was already sliding into the 'going home' mindset.

"Good luck then, and be careful. Rats carry all sorts of disease, even ones from other planets. They are notorious stowaways, and historical plague bearers." Nurse Grober admonished sternly, though her distraction was increasing. Home was calling to her, and the thought of touching such filth again made her pores pucker in distaste.

Soon she'd walk away, perhaps delayed on the way out by a few people asking for advice or help, but within minutes, Fahrali wouldn't have to worry about her looking at him again.