Anton's Odyssey Read online

  Anton’s Odyssey

  by

  Marc Andre

  Cover Art by Raymond Wang

  © 2012, 2014 all rights reserved.

  v1.3

  Chapter 1: Dark O’Clock

  When I was a kid, I had a state-issued multipurpose personal pocket module; the dorky, bulky, off-white kind public schools handed out to students who qualified for free lunches. I knew we were broke, but I was happy with what I had. I didn’t even want one of those slick compact models carried by the prosperous kids, the kind that came in all sorts of custom colors or that could morph into a small robot that could climb walls, dance, do back flips, and sort of clean your room. My only objection was that when I slipped my module into my front pocket, it looked like I was sporting a massive stiffy, but I easily circumvented this problem by wearing baggy pants.

  One morning my dorky pocket module woke me up from deep sleep, leaving me in a type of stupor. Finding myself on the couch and not in the lower bunk only magnified my confusion. I had to think hard for a while to remember why I had set my alarm so early.

  Cotton was sprawled out on the carpet in a position so awkward it looked like goons had tossed him out the back of a speeding truck. He, too, began to stir at the sound of the alarm. By the time Cotton was up and moving, I was finally lucid.

  “What’s the time?” Cotton asked.

  “03:07,” I replied.

  Cotton glanced out the window. The sun had yet to poke its shiny crown over the eastern horizon. “Dark o’clock,” Cotton muttered to himself.

  My legs ached a bit from sleeping with my knees drawn in. I couldn’t really sprawl out on our small couch. We had sold our bunk bed the day before at a yard sale along with most of our other possession, all of which ranged in quality from mediocre to downright shabby. Nobody wanted our sofa because one of mother’s former loser boyfriends passed out after drinking too much of Thurgood MacDougal’s Southern Style Bourbon and pissed himself, leaving a nasty stain on one of the cushions. That morning we simply abandoned the couch in our living unit, hoping the next tenants would want it. Of course they didn’t, and the Housing Authority later billed us a nominal disposal fee of $1500, which I’m pretty sure my mother never paid.

  In our small kitchen, I opened the pantry and removed what remained of our food stores, which was three individual serving sized boxes of either grits, oatmeal, or cream of wheat. The gruel was formulated by the Health Standards Division and given away for free by the San Bernardino County Health Outreach Program to drunks, pregnant teenagers, and families who qualified for public housing. Fortified with thiamine, folate, soy protein, yeast extract, and other healthful goodies, the mush had a high nutrient density but was utterly lacking in flavor. The cream of wheat tasted no different from the grits, which tasted no different from the oatmeal. Mother found out rather early during her long tenure on public assistance that if she smeared the mush with butter and salt, the flavor became more palatable, a practice that nearly negated the Health Standards Division’s intent of reducing the burden of nutrition-related diseases among broke people.

  Each box was more or less the same. Under the words “oatmeal,” or “cream of wheat,” (or whatever) was a photograph of three token needy kids: a white one on the right, a black one on the left, and some kid with intermediate skin tone in the middle. Underneath the photo was written, “Healthful food makes for healthy children.” I suppose the kids in the photograph were supposed to be from broke but loving families, but the cheerful demeanor on their unblemished faces certainly didn’t make them look like anyone from our block. If they ever ventured into our neighborhood, no doubt goons would roll them for the spotless clothes they were wearing.

  On the back of the box was the fine print, nutrition and health information that nobody ever read. The top was scored and popped open by applying pressure with a thumbnail. The rest of the box was impermeable to liquids so folks too broke to afford bowls or too lazy to wash dishes could simply pour in hot water and eat from the box, which was exactly what we did that morning because we had sold our bowls along with Cotton’s soiled mattress. (The buyer neglected to flip it over before he carted it away in a van).

  Absent from the box were the legal disclaimers that plagued products from the private sector, warnings that might read: “hot water can burn you;” or “the carton has no nutritional value and is not intended for human consumption;” or “do not prepare with n-hexane, heavy water, or kerosene;” or “do not feed to comatose persons or individuals who cannot swallow;” or the other usual nonsense intended to fend off the ambulance chasers that pedaled their services to the unemployed during advertisements that interrupted late night TV shows. As part of the federal government, the Health Standards Division was protected from lawsuits.

  Cotton took the carton nearest him, which I think was cream of wheat, and dug into it with the spoon that popped out the front of his personal pocket module. The eating utensils of the state-issued modules had a special nano-scale tantalum fluoride coating that was viral static, bactericidal, strengthened teeth, and was self-cleaning. The Health Standards Division’s intent was to prevent broke people with bad hygiene from spreading disease. As far as Cotton was concerned, the government had gotten it right. I never remember Cotton actually owning a toothbrush. Were it not for tantalum fluoride, his teeth would have probably fallen out of his head years ago. Of course, pocket modules sold in retail stores had no such coating. Prosperous kids had parents who took them to the dentist.

  Cotton shoveled some of the mush into his gullet. Too groggy to speak, he grimaced, a silent way to ask if we had any salt or butter. I shook my head to let him know we didn’t. My brother grunted and finished his breakfast.

  I opened the trash hatch and tossed our two empty cartons. We sat around for a few minutes waiting for my mother to get up. Years of poor job performance and subsequent unemployment had left her accustomed to sleeping in. Eventually, I decided we risked missing our train and woke her up. I had to shake her pretty hard, and she was pretty confused when she found herself lying on the floor. She didn’t touch her mush, so Cotton and I split it.

  We were out the door, each of us carrying his three hundred and fifty cubic decimeter capacity slate-grey mock-canvas travel bag issued by the Transportation Authority to those persons eligible for public travel vouchers. Though unstylish, they were actually much more durable than the ones prosperous people liked to buy at retail stores. The space marines used bags nearly identical to ours, only theirs were colored green, though I’m not sure why. People stopped fighting in the woods ages ago.

  To keep out of trouble, we followed a meandering path, sacrificing a quick direct route in favor of those avenues fully illuminated by overhead street lights. In the darkness of the narrower streets and alleyways, I could sometimes make out the faint figures of the hard-hitting goons, the dice-and-card hustlers, and the addicts that plagued our neighborhood. At that hour, most were wandering home after long hours of carousing. Tired and lethargic, they paid little attention to us. Had we ventured outside a few hours earlier, we would have most certainly been separated from our luggage.

  Ours was the first train of the morning, the snail rail that would take us to Ontario. My brother and mother propped their heads against one another and promptly passed out. I knew I had to stay awake lest we miss our transfer. The snail rail could take us all the way to the water’s edge at Santa Monica. Though I heard it was a nice place and always intended to visit, our destination was further south.

  My seat faced rearward. Periodically, I glanced out the window, desperately trying to distract myself from the unpleasant sucking noises that came from my brother and mother as they gasped for breath between loud snores. As I traveled backwards, I found myself lost
in contemplation. Notable landmarks seemed to trigger deep seated memories, somehow forcing me to relive moments from earlier days. We passed our school. How I hated school, the windowless bunker of a building, the boring lessons, the transient uninspiring and disinterested teachers desperately searching for a transfer to anyplace else. I hated the young toughs recruited into gangs the most. Fearing for my safety, I had no choice but to skip about ten days of school each semester, usually because some newly recruited thug felt the need to prove himself, looking for a fight, claiming I eyeballed him wrong or other such nonsense. I could hold my own in a scuffle, but fighting a gangster was a no-win situation. If you lost, he had no qualms about stomping your head while you were down, perhaps putting you into a coma for a few days. Worse yet, if you won, he’d come after you later with a knife just to save face with his delinquent buddies. Our lazy principal could never find the energy to expel anyone. No doubt the process was too laborious, requiring much data entry at a video terminal display. Fortunately, a gang member usually dropped out of school by junior year. Come what would have been his senior year, the guidance counselor would announce his death over the intercom. Down the hall you could hear cheering and shouts of glee, no doubt from a classroom where nobody wore affiliated colors. I hardly considered myself a people pleaser, but I certainly didn’t want to turn down a path that would cause others to celebrate my death. Though we never discussed it, I was sure Cotton felt the same way. We were glad to be leaving.

  Past the school, the train meandered through a few kilometers of rolling hills, not a park planned by civic-minded city officials, but rather the fortuitous consequence of events that took place long ago. The area was once a landfill. When the stink became unbearable to the citizenry nearby, officials finally had it capped. In accordance with state law, real estate hustlers and slumlords were forbidden from touching the place. The ground was unstable and could not bear heavy loads. Over the decades, nature sort of reclaimed the place, with scrubby bushes and brambles and all manner of creepy crawly taking root in the dusty ground. People still dumped their junk there from time to time, but for Cotton and me the place seemed like a nature wonderland. If we woke up early enough on a weekend, we could sometimes find a tarantula. The hairy spiders liked to hide behind the half buried corroded carcasses of long discarded household appliances. Broken mop handles and broomsticks were great for poking at rattlesnakes from a distance. Most were pretty placid and just lay there, but a few would hiss at us and rattle their tails, which was always a thrill. Compared to goons and gangsters, the venomous serpents never seemed very dangerous.

  Come noon the sun got hot and the animals hid in their burrows. The chronic fene users with rotten teeth would wander out of their shacks. In withdrawal or under the influence, their behavior could become erratic, violent even. When they started to stir, it was time to get lost. Despite the fene users, I would miss our nature wonderland. Where the train would take us, there wouldn’t be any hills to climb or spiders or snakes to find, which was a shame.

  In Mentone, the gaudy glow of the orange sign above the Juice and Jolt fuel cell recharge station was so bright that the image seemed to persist on my retinas even after I closed my eyes. Our friend Billy purchased Stardust Colas from the dark skinned guy who owned the place and who spoke with a heavy accent from some far away land. Some of Billy’s other friends claimed the owner was some sort of terrorist, but I never believed it. The guy worked hard, never taking a day off. He was very cheerful, always smiling as he complained about the heat. He often let Billy take the sodas home even when he was a few bucks short. None of the shop keepers in our neighborhood would ever do that. Billy lived around the corner from the Juice and Jolt with his father. He never spoke of his mother. I suspect she either died or ran away. Billy didn’t attend the same high school as me. Cotton and I met him one Saturday morning in the hills. We initially planned to roll him for his backpack. He was skinny and timid, and would never allow himself to get very near the snakes and spiders, so he seemed like an easy mark. But when he shrieked with delight as Cotton picked up a tarantula with his bare hand, we lost the interest to muscle him. Generous and quick with a laugh, Billy became a good friend. Unlike most other kids my age, he didn’t mind my younger brother tagging along behind us. There were much fewer goons on his block than on ours, and he lived in a single-family house instead of an apartment. Billy seemed prosperous to us, but he really wasn’t. His father worked long hours. When the man came home, he quickly fell asleep only to wake up and go straight back to work. During the years I knew Billy, I never actually spoke to his father. Cotton and I spent as much time as we could at Billy’s house and frequently slept there. We would definitely miss Billy, and I hoped he would miss us too.

  Cotton stirred briefly but didn’t wake up. I focused my attention back out the window.

  Henry’s Exotic Food Market in Redlands was hours away from opening its doors for business. The place catered to a more prosperous clientele, so we could never afford anything they sold. The staff usually deployed someone to sneak behind Cotton and me to watch our every move, so we never dared shoplift anything even though we wanted to. Around the corner was a skate park. Fit girls in tight clothes would perform tricks on stunt bicycles. There were boys too, but we never paid much attention to them unless they were particularly acrobatic. The girls would never talk to us unless Billy was there. They eyed Cotton and me suspiciously, the same way we probably eyed the goons and gangsters back at our neighborhood.

  The white communication spire on the roof of the medical center in Loma Linda was in the shape of a cross. The building dwarfed the neighboring residential structures. As far as I could tell, the whole city was occupied by an odd flavor of piety-freak. As piety-freaks go they looked pretty normal. They didn’t wear strange clothes or sport terrible hairdos, and they were nice. They didn’t stockpile weapons, live in gated compounds, or force fourteen-year-old girls into polygamous marriages like the piety-freaks that frequently made the national news. I never did figure out what they were all about other than they seemed to worship vegetables. They took Cotton in when he needed an operation. All the other hospitals nearby turned him away because we had cut rate, low paying, federally funded health insurance. They wouldn’t serve my brother meat though, no matter how many times he asked.

  Portly mansions dotted the landscape of San Bernardino. Billy told me the place was a giant slum once, but I’m not sure I believe him. Apparently the Bruno Burger franchise was started there. Cotton was a huge fan of their fries, but the current locals probably found fast food a bit too lowbrow for their taste. We only visited the city once. The private police force promptly kicked us out and told us never to come back. I’m not sure why. We never even got a chance to steal anything.

  In Colton, the surface of the public pool undulated and shimmered, bending the rays cast from the floodlights mounted in the depths below. Cotton and I had been there a few times. Neither of us could really swim. A lifeguard once pulled Cotton out of the deep-end with a huge hook mounted at the end of a long pole. My brother said he was putting on a show and only pretended to drown, but I’m pretty sure his fear was real. He even dropped a load in the back of his trunks.

  The west side of Colton was novel territory, a car dealership with hundreds of autos organized in tidy columns and rows. This was the farthest I had ever been from home, and we had only been traveling on the snail rail for about twenty minutes. We passed through cities I had heard of but never visited before, Fontana, Rancho Cucamonga, and Upland.

  In Ontario, I shook my mother and brother awake. We barely made it off the snail rail car before the doors closed. Down the stairs deep into the station, there was no attendant to process our transfer. An electronic kiosk scanned the digital tickets embedded in our pocket modules.

  Mother promptly passed out again after taking her seat on the southwest commuter. As we roamed away the stations were spaced further apart, allowing us to cruise at a much higher speed. The rising sun
cast an orange glow and long eerie shadows along the expressway beside us. Out the window, buildings zoomed by, images blurred as distorted streaks of red brick and grey masonry. Cotton didn’t do so well. He turned green every time the track deviated to the left or right. Unusually prone to motion sickness, he would vomit if I held him in a headlock for too long.

  “Brace your head back against the seat.” I advised. “Keep it really still and close your eyes.” He did as I said, and his sickly pallor faded.

  The train banked to the left. Through the window I could make out a city off in the distance. Skyscrapers towered above other much shorter buildings that seemed to stretch out nearly a kilometer each in width. Must be San Diego, I thought. I had never actually been there and it looked much different than on TV.

  As we got closer, I realized this wasn’t a city at all, but our destination, the San Onofre Station for Civilian Extra Solar Travel. What I thought were buildings were massive civilian starships, freighters, scavenge and extraction vessels, and pleasure cruise liners. The station was practically on the water, separated from the ocean by only a short rocky cliff. I remembered a documentary video from school about how San Onofre used to be a site of a fission reactor that melted down and leaked centuries ago after an embarrassing series of missteps that occurred during the plant’s decommission and shut down. A prompt evacuation saved millions, but the surrounding land became heavily contaminated by radioactive isotopes and was rendered uninhabitable. Because star ships in the old days were launched by nuclear pulse propulsion, San Onofre served as a suitable site for a spaceport because the location was already severely irradiated. Starships eventually converted to cubane reaction engines, and after a ten-trillion dollar clean up, the land and water became safe again. Real estate hustlers planned to develop the surrounding property into high rise slums for broke people, but the Housing Authority rejected the proposal, stating the noise from starships taking off and landing would cause residents to go nuts from sleep deprivation and knife one another. The Bureau of Land Management turned the coastline into a park. The documentary video showed people surfing, which looked really fun. If I knew how to swim, I would definitely become a surfer.