Harry Harnbrook harvested rotten looks for a living. Every single time someone came in to fill up their cars, they would glare at him like he was the one responsible for this bad joke, perpetrated at nearly everyone’s expense. The joke built on itself, too. Every day Harry felt the urge grow, the urge to just throw back his head and laugh and laugh and laugh about it. But Harry had not completely lost his mind yet. He made an attempt at understanding the joke to hold off the laughter, if just for a little while longer.

History books were piled on Harry’s cot, which took up most of the space that consisted of his living quarters, behind the station’s counter. At this particular moment Harry was staring at them with contempt. None of them had a satisfactory answer to the misery that was spawned by an inefficient transportation, living and energy system.

Harry’s sulking was interrupted by a light that went off on the security console, right above his cot. He checked the security cameras on the back wall of his tiny living space where he spent almost all of his time now. Harry didn’t think that it was safe for an employee to leave the gas station compound unless you were in a tanker convoy. The cameras revealed a detonated mine, or rather a crater, in the field behind the gas station. It was probably just an unfortunate rabbit, Harry thought. He leaned his butt against the counter facing away from the front of the store, where the former station keeper used to look out thorough a thin layer of fragile glass.

Harry looked up at the set of monitors covering the front of the store, cars lining up already. The road snaked around a little before it got to the interstate, and the line of cars had already backed up that far. Harry thought that they might dock his pay if he opened up a second early, so he stared at the clock with one hand on the button. As soon as the LEDs on the clock arranged themselves into a six and two zeros Harry hit the button. The first car in line only had a few seconds to pass through the gate before it slammed shut. Harry thought that the gate’s timing was intended to ensure that just one car at a time got through. He also thought that the people who designed the thing thought that it would be funny to make the customer use up just a little more gas by forcing them to accelerate too quickly. Probably both; things could get bad quick if too many people gathered around a pump now. Harry watched as the first customer walked up to the store’s door. Harry patiently waited as the customer stepped in between the metal detectors. As usual they went off. Henry reached under the counter and hit the switch for the intercom.

“Sir, please step away from the metal detector, remove any metallic objects, and then step back into the metal detector.”

The man backed up and took off his belt buckle and shoes. He put his key chain and can of mace in a tray and then took off his holster, combat knife, and rifle and placed them all in a separate weapons container. This man was only slightly more paranoid than most. He walked into the metal detector again and it didn’t go off this time. Harry placidly pressed the button and the man hurried in before the riot door slammed down after him. The man was apparently not interested in any of the items that the store stocked and went straight to Harry’s counter, fixed Harry with a loathing gaze that he knew all to well, and slid a fat stack of bills through the small half-circle that was cut in Harry's glass.

Harry counted the money. “Ten gallons then?” Harry asked, wishing they had not done away with the pay stations, but glad that the bullet proof glass served as a spit guard too.

Harry looked up and addressed the man as the bills were rapidly flipping through the cash-counter. “Will that be all?” Harry wasn’t really expecting that the man would want the stale Twinkies on the other side of his barricaded area, but liked to ask.

“No,” the man looked down at Harry’s name tag,

“That’ll be all today Harry... hay you’re that Harnbrook jackass that writes all those papers.”

“Oh, you’ve read them?”

“Hell no. I’ve heard enough about them though. Something about the revolution and collapse being everyone’s fault. Sounds like a lot of rubbish to me.”

“Well they did get published and one of them won an award...”

“It seems to me that people are just attracted to the oddity of a gas station attendant writing critical papers on the guys that he works for. Of course you say everyone else fucked up too so…”

“Well now, look here…”

“Forget it, I got to get to work and I’m not interested in talking to a guy that lives in a fish bowl.”

Harry fixed him with a nasty look; the man grunted, fixed him with an even nastier look then turned around and went out the riot door to fill his car. Harry watched on the camera as the customer speed out the exit gate.

The next car that came in through the gate took Harry by surprise. The car in question was an older model. It was the kind of car that wasn’t driven by the urban professionals that made of the entirety of the station’s clientele. Harry supposed that the poorer person driving the car had some very important business that warranted using gasoline. He shrugged his shoulders, one person’s cash is as good as another’s.

An older woman with short, mostly black hair exited the car and went up to the metal detector. Almost before she stepped into it Harry started his regular notice.

“Please step…” Harry stopped his intercom-statement mid-sentence when he didn’t hear the familiar beep from the metal detector.

Harry turned the possibilities over in his mind. Either the woman is the first unarmed person that I have encountered in several years or she wants to try something cute with a piece of glass or a sharpened stick. Maybe she hasn’t been to a gas station in a while and didn’t know about the six inches of clear, strong barrier separating me from my customers. Oh well, this could break up the day a little.

Harry buzzed the woman in, fully expecting her to rush towards the counter with a plastic butter knife and hit her head on the window as she tried to lunge for his neck. To his surprise she calmly walked towards the counter after the riot door shut behind her. Harry cursed himself for being so paranoid and got the loan paperwork out from the bottom drawer- someone driving a car like that wouldn’t have the cash on hand for gas, and the station stopped accepting credit cards when their fees started cutting too far into profits. When the older woman got to the counter she addressed him with an expression on her face that Harry barley remembered… was that what a smile used to look like? Harry attempted to address the woman in a like manner with out breaking into tears.

“Uh, hi how much were you thinking of… er I mean do you want a loan?” Harry said sliding the papers through the half-circle.

“No thank you,” said the woman “I’m set for gas.”

Harry couldn’t help it, he burst out laughing. Set for gas?! He fell forward and laughed until he, just barely, got his laughter under control.

Harry straightened up, wiped a tear from his eye and addressed the woman, ”Well then, if you don’t need gas what could you possibly need?” Harry stopped and changed his tone as he noticed that her expression was a little more serious now. “Ms...”

“What, you don’t recognize me Mr. Harnbrook?” She asked as she leaned a little closer to the glass.

Harry could see her breath on the other side of the glass barrier. He looked at her for a moment, trying to remember past acquaintances, friends, even people from the news and history books… he thought she looked like… but no he thought that doesn’t make much sense… but there it was, a character from his history books.

She was a leader of a past revolution, or attempted revolution rather. It was after the price per gallon went through the roof and there were semi-organized riots all over the country. But, Harry thought, all the leaders were killed, and this woman had different… well I guess she changed hair and got some fancy contacts… Harry realized that he was staring at her, with a suddenly stupid expression.

“Vanessa Vila…” Harry stopped as he saw the woman put a finger up to her lips. Harry suddenly forgot about the protective barrier, the panic button under the desk, and the fact that the metal detector didn’t detect anything. He backed away from the counter with fear written across his face.

Vanessa, calmly and firmly held up a hand then said “Wait.”

“Wait?” Harry stopped and looked at her. He suddenly remembered that he was in an indestructible glass cube.

“I need to show you something, outside of your suffocating little cube. Your articles, I have read them and they are good but they need something… you need something. You need to get out and see the slums.” Vanessa looked directly at Harry.

“Oh I need to see the inner city do I? I've read about it all them, and it’s not like I don’t ever get out, I’ve seen the slums with my own two eyes.”

“You mean from an armored convoy truck going sixty miles an hour on the freeway?” Vanessa replied regarding him with a raised eyebrow.

“Been doing your research? On me or station managers in general? Because I can tell you that I get out more than the piece in the Times suggests most managers do.”

“Come on Harry, you’ve written papers on me. I’m thorough with my planning and research aren’t I?”

“Yea, thoroughly crazy. Look this is ridiculous; I could probably be hung just for talking to you. Why shouldn’t I hit the panic button and…”

“Because I know that you care about what’s happening and how it’s happening and I’m here to help you out the door.”

Harry was about to agree and give up his argument when another thought struck him. Harry looked Vanessa in her eyes and asked “How do I know you won’t simply kill me? You’ve lead mobs that have killed station managers before.”

Vanessa regarded Harry with a serious look. “That was a long time ago; it wasn’t quite the right way to go about things. Besides, I came through your metal detector with nothing and you’re at least twenty years younger than I am. I came to get you out of here. Not kill you.”

Harry regarded her for a moment more and thought how nice it was to see a face with a smile on it. He decided that he wouldn’t mind harvesting something else besides nasty looks.

“Okay, it does sound like you might have mellowed over the years.”

“I suppose I have a little. You want to get going?”

“Yeah. I like your hair by the way. It looks better than that blood-red thing that you had during the revolution.””

Harry saw Vanessa smile as they left the station together.

#

Getting out of the station was easy enough: Harry simply hit the sequence to lock the station up. The sequence gave them a moment to drive through the exit door before the, large ‘closed sign’ light up above the store, sending everyone that was lined up to other stations. Harry was glad he didn’t have to see their expressions.

Harry was less pleased when they drove through the slums. After the great gas spike the working class could no longer afford to commute any distance. Harry had seen the beginning of it before he got a job as a manager in one of the new armored stations.

The beginning was bad enough; cheap hotels and apartments were already over-flowing with humanity. Families that had lived on the outskirts of town or the suburbs pitched tents on sidewalks outside of their work places. The price of food had just begun to follow the sky-high gas prices before Harry turned his back and got a job at one of the new secure-gas stations. From the station he had read about the food riots that followed, the overwhelmed government and subsequent brutal oppression by paid militias. Harry had read of the new economy where people barely lived on whatever the upper class wanted to give them in return for work. Harry hadn’t seen it, though.

It was a little hard to see the sidewalks now; there was a cement barrier with guard towers along a road that went from the interstate to some corporate offices deeper in the city. There wasn’t a lot of traffic so Vanessa stopped the car so that Harry could stand on the car’s roof and peer over the wall. The guards were only concerned with activity on the other side of the wall so they didn’t take notice.

Harry saw the sidewalks; or rather he saw the top of a thick layer of filth of all sorts. Harry supposed that the dumpsters and gutters eventually failed to keep up with the filth that was generated by the massive influx of new bodies, sweating, eating, defecating… there was just too much waste and not enough toilets to flush it all down.

The sight and the smell of the black slime on the sidewalk were not nearly as bad as the people. Distended stomachs, dead expressions… Harry remembered seeing pictures in a news magazine where the reporter wrote what he thought at the time: How could things have gotten as bad as they were in the worst places in Africa? But now he was looking at a boy and the boy was looking back at him. The boy had an expression on his face, a vacant look in his huge eyes with a partially open, toothless mouth. The expression cut into Harry like no gas station customer would ever want to, even on the worst of days. There was no hope, no loathing, there was only a deep and infinite hunger.

Harry climbed off the roof of the car and sat down on the passenger seat, beside the former revolutionary. He wanted to climb the wall and take the people away from their misery. He thought Vanessa might have a good plan. He looked to his left with a drained expression on his face and waited to hear what Vanessa had to say.

“Let’s go talk.”

#

They eventually reached a little corner of the industrial district. There weren’t many people left here, the only thing this place produced now was hiding places. Vanessa’s hiding place was impressive. She had power, which was a rarity in this part of the city. Harry wasn’t sure where or how she acquired it, he was even less sure about the plan that Vanessa presented him with.

“Look, Ms. Vilaramos-”

“Vanessa is fine.”

Harry blinked and continued. “Vanessa then, I don’t think that would help the situation that I saw in those streets. Yes, the people at the top are taking more than they are worth, but even if you were able to get rid of them and the price of fuel were to drop those people would still be starving.”

Vanessa grunted, “What about justice?”

“What about it?” Harry replied. “Justice wouldn’t solve things here. No, we need a new form of organization; people need to drag themselves out of the slums. Forget the CEOs, we can abandon them.”

“They have the very stuff that carries the food from the farmers to what’s left of the starving masses.” Vanessa sighed and begun a deliberate sentience that Harry thought may have been practiced. ”If we can kill the people on the top there will be a power vacuum, there will be chaos and then the people can take control. I’ve got a good plan but I’m old, I need someone who I can trust. All the other revolutionaries are dead. But then there is you…”

“Oh, and you can trust me?” Harry asked, honestly curious about her reasoning.

“Yes, your papers… you’re critical of everyone, from the poorest person to the most powerful. The people in charge don’t see you as a threat. They see you as an oddity. But I’ve actually read through everything you’ve written. I know you better than they do. You long to do something but feel stuck. Here I’ve presented you with an opportunity. Take it!”

Harry thought for a little while, looking out the window that he was standing by. There was a corpse rotting in a gutter that no one had bothered to clean up. “The death of a few individuals is nothing compared to the organization of many lives. I have an idea; it involves a good degree of organization and work, but very little in the way of your vengeance, outside of some missing workers.”

“Oh come on Harry, you can’t tell me that after all of those articles that you wrote about me that you really think I’d only be interested in Vengeance.”

Harry noticed Vanessa’s voice was as soft as the lighting from the smog-filtered light that was coming in through the window, he adjusted his accordingly. “No, I suppose not. But I know that you think violence can get results, but I’m telling you that it doesn’t.”

Vanessa looked hurt, for just a moment. “The partially organized revolution that I took part in didn’t get results, but my plan will. Besides Harry, you don’t want to go it alone any more than I do.”

“Then why don’t you help me rebuild…“ Harry stopped as he saw Vanessa’s face shift and loose some of the soft light.

“Because, nothing short of physically eliminating the oppressing class will turn the situation around.”

Harry stopped; he found he had to force the next words out through his throat. “I’ve seen enough violence. We just can’t work together.”

Vanessa’s face lost the last of the soft light as she turned away from the window and stared into her white hot electronic lamp. “Fine. Do what you will. I’ll try my plan alone.” Her expression softened slightly as she turned towards the window, and Harry standing next to it, “Do you need a ride somewhere?”

#

Vanessa dropped Harry off at his gas station, neither person wanted to know the details of the other’s plan. The good-byes were short.

Because the gas station had been closed for most of the day and would not reopen for a while yet the street and surroundings were vacant. Harry was sure that his supervisors would have radioed him. Harry also knew that he would have time before they sent anyone out to check on him. Harry set about his work. He went into the store and took the shotgun and the rifle from behind the counter. He then went into the large storage building behind the station and stripped it of all the food, water and spare mines. He then loaded everything up in the station’s truck and set off for the city.

Harry marveled at how easy it was. He supposed that his employers were counting on his fear of his own customers and the potential loss of a job to keep him locked down and behaving. The problem with the company’s psychological safeguards was that his fear of people had diminished since his trip into the city and he already had his eye on a new occupation. He filled up both the truck’s fuel tanks and then set off.

#

The farmers were pretty agreeable. Harry got quite a lot of excess seed and fertilizer stock in trade for the truck and the fuel that was left in the truck’s tanks. The farmers dropped his purchase off and Harry turned the keys over to them. Farmers weren’t hurting quite as much as the lower class city folk and former suburban dwellers, but gas was valuable everywhere.

Harry was now left in an abandoned part of suburbia with almost everything he needed to grow a good crop; there was even a good sized water tower in the neighborhood. Of course there were just two more things that he needed; open ground and a spare hand or two.

#

“Hay you want some food?”

The starving urban man sounded like he was tiring to laugh, although it came out more like a cough. “Naw, I’m good for food. Why do you ask? Is my dirt-and-shoe diet not working?”

“Err… let me start over. I’ve got some seeds and some food and I was going to go and start farming in suburbia. There is plenty of land and I could use an extra hand.”

“You are crazy.”

“Tell you what, take this” Harry handed the man a jar of peaches; “I’ll give you one more just for coming with me and seeing my plan first hand.”

The man shrugged, “Sure, if you want to give away a fortune I’m not going to stop you. Say what’s your name?”

“Harry. Yours?”

“Robert Tillings. I can help you find some more workers too.”

Both men had the beginnings of a smile on their lips as they started of towards their destination.

#

When the group of workmen reached the spot that Harry had picked, one of them, Robert Tillings, asked the obvious question: “Where are we supposed to plant stuff with all of these houses?”

“We’ll get rid of them.” Harry replied to the group at large.

“That’s an awful lot of labor. How do propose we even break up the foundation, Humm? Unless you’ve got some equipment around, and the gas to run it.” The workmen all had a good laugh.

“Like this!” Harry said, right before the first set of mines detonated, breaking up a house nicely.

The chatty worker adjusted his cap and said “I suppose that’ll do.” The newly promoted demo men all got to work.

Harry was sure that he saw some hope in their eyes.

#

There was just enough game returning to the erstwhile vacant suburbs that they were able to get by until the first harvests were in. They even managed to scrape enough spare parts together from the abandoned houses to trade for a few of the farmer’s mules.

Harry had half-expected the gas companies to send out some of their mercenaries to arrest him or attack his little community but none came. He thought that they were probably too busy guarding their last luxury condos and keeping what was left of the cities together. Who knew, Harry thought, maybe they figured that I’m relieving some of the social stress. From the looks on the faces of the people that he worked with, and of the people that they gradually brought out of the city, there was definitely a good amount of relief.

Yes, things were going well. There was news that something like what they were trying was being attempted elsewhere, with train tracks being run from the new farms into the cities. This decaying corpse of a nation may even start breathing again.

And then Harry got some bad news, while everyone else seemed to get good news.

#

“So, get this,” Robert started out, as he usually did when he had big news to impart, “Some old revolutionary found a way to kill all those pompous gas bags that ran the cities. Can you believe it?”

“Sure, I don’t know if it will change anything though.”

“Sure it does, their dead and we aren’t!” The rest of the crowd around the news carrier cheered and Tillings, now a leading councilman in the community, took the opportunity. He stepped up onto the nearest stump.

“Hear this! Today is Vanessa Vilaramos day!”

More ecstatic cheering, more ecstatic expressions, all of it was for Vanessa Vilaramos. Harry slipped to the back of the crowd and begun the long walk back to his farm on the outskirts of the settlement.

Harry thought things over, all the way to his farm. The gas companies had taken over the cities after the riots, after the migrations, after the government proved useless in the crisis. They had also been responsible for the massive wage cuts and, by extension, Robert’s starving family before he came to the suburbs and converted it into farmland. He thought it was still a little ghoulish to celebrate a collection of deaths which he thought would have little practical effect. But Harry figured it was just a passing thing.

#

She had changed nothing, Harry thought, several months after the assassinations, as he plowed his patch of ground. Everything has come from the slow, steady work of farming! Other people will take the place of those assholes at the top.

Harry’s inner monologue was interrupted by something that he had not heard in this part of rural-suburbia since they had switched to draft animals to get grain to the train station. It was a sound of a combustion engine.

“Hay man, check it out! The pencil necks are loosing their grip on things. Some of the station managers have dropped their prices!” Robert said as he got out of the car.

“You’re not planning to rely on that thing, are you Tillings?”

Robert regarded Harry for a moment. “No, not entirely. Man, you have to relax; the gas bags are dead! And call me Robert; we’ve known each other for a while now.”

Harry regarded his visitor for a moment. “You’re not being nearly cautious enough, what happens when the gas companies get their stuff together and come asking for that gas back?”

Robert shook his head “You really need to get off your farm once in a while. Things are okay now. There is a parade tomorrow; Vanessa Vilaramos is coming into town…” Robert stopped as he noticed his expression. “Geez, what’s with the sour look?”

Harry just shook his head.

“What, don’t tell me you are jealous? All you did was find a way to make us poor working stiffs work a bit harder and get a bit more out of it. Vanessa freed us with a pull of the trigger, and she could have died, she could still die.”

“They aren’t going to kill her Robert, even if they weren’t too busy with succession they wouldn’t want to make a martyr out of one sad little revolutionary.”

“You don’t get it. Come down to the parade and see what she means to us.”

Harry couldn’t pass up the potential cornucopia of smiling faces, even if they might hurt.

#

The next day Harry walked down to the community’s plaza. What he saw there struck him as absolutely obscene; going down the center of the road were farmers with floats, many of them pulled by draft animals but some were… Harry shuddered, driven. Everyone present, save for Harry, had absolutely joyous expressions and all of them turned to face a convertible. It was slowly going down the middle of the street with Vilaramos sitting in the back seat waving and smiling at her fans, at their smiling faces. Pleasant looks, all harvested by her work of wonderful violence.

Harry glared at Vilaramos, steaming. All these people want is a violent hero. I’ll give them one. Harry grabbed a hunting rifle from an unsuspecting peasant, aimed it at Vilaramos and harvested his last batch of rotten looks.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 05.05.2010

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