BEYOND THE LOOKING-GLASS: Book One in the BEYOND Series
Read BEYOND THE LOOKING-GLASS: Book One in the BEYOND Series Online
Authors: Gordon Rothwell
A future without fiction.
In a dystopian future, the totalitarian government bans fiction as subversive. Former rabble-rousing TV star Kellen Marlowe is now an ex-convict relegated to the menial task of sorting banned books to the government’s trash burners.
Marlowe’s ex-wife Aleeta Gentry, a world-famous developer of highly advanced VR technology, refuses to bow to oppressive censorship. She constructs a holographic chamber to amuse her children. But when they disappear inside the holographic program, Aleeta is forced to seek the help of her estranged husband.
The program could shut down at any moment. With time running out, and a team of government agents in hot pursuit, Kellen and Aleeta search desperately for their children, in a perilous and confusing world where Tarzan swings through Sherwood Forest, pirates and predators abound, and every turn in the yellow brick road leads to danger.
~*~
BEYOND
THE
LOOKING-GLASS
By
Gordon Rothwell
BEYOND THE LOOKING GLASS
Electronic edition published in the United
States of America by
Burgeon Press
Copyright (circle C) January 2016 by Gordon Rothwell
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-- electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other--except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the author or publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names and
characters are simply products of the author’s
imagination. And any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
To all those teachers, friends, and fellow authors
who convinced me that a writer’s life was not a silly or stupid path to pursue.
The aerobus lurched through the morning air, as the driver made sure to hit each and every thermal as he careened forward.
Damned abie
, Kellen Marlowe thought.
They
should have scrapped these relics years ago.
From his window seat, Kellen looked up from the bus lane to the commuter lane looming just above him. It was clogged with a flock of affluent office workers flying through the air to jobs in 200-story glass monoliths downtown.
He couldn’t get a clear look at the people soaring in the lane above. But he could see them in his mind’s eye. They’d be all decked out in their skintight, ermine-lined flying togs. Checking the morning news on their holographic goggles. And hitting their belt- hooked propulsion buttons to cut off any other commuter blocking their way.
What a bunch of elitist idiots. If I had a shotgun I’d fire off a blast and scatter them like cornfield crows.
Kellen switched his gaze to the horizon. Storm clouds were gathering there that
were almost as dark as his mood.
He felt a sudden sharp jab in his arm. A raspy voice bellowed at him.
“Hey, man, don’t I know you?”
He turned his head to see a giant hulk of a man sitting beside him. The mug had a face not even a mother could love. His bushy, unruly hair was slicked back with sweat and cheap pomade. He had an ugly red welt where his left eye used to be. And he hadn’t bothered to cover it with a patch. The joker sported a three or four day old stubble beard. And his grey uniform was severely rumpled and skunkish.
“What?” Kellen asked.
“Yeah. I remember you. Those sea dogs on Pequod Two thought you was something special ‘cause you’d been on TV. They all called you The Prophet. I was one of them cons manning the cleansing vats, while you and those other dogs was having fun diving for sunken treasure. That’s how I lost this here eye. Hydrochloric acid splashed up in my kisser. And it was so long eyeball.”
The man stared at Kellen with his one good eye. It was creepy.
“Don’t you know me? Name’s Jake Cardiff.”
Cardiff. Now he remembered. He wasn’t like the others on the Pequod. Not an author, poet, professor or politician. Jake was a street thug. A hired leg-breaker. And he must have flunked an assignment and got sent to sea on the next prison ship leaving Port Stockton. Cardiff was nobody’s pal.
“Sorry,” Kellen replied. ”I don’t seem to recall you.”
“I’m Jake. We were both on that old seagoing prison bucket that was salvaging steel plates off ships at the bottom of San Pedro harbor. And computer chips and copper wiring from all them sunken high rises on Wilshire Boulevard. It was right after the big “Crush and Gush” of Oh-Four. Man, I thought them quakes and tsunamis would never stop. Take another gander at this mug. I’m good old Jake.”
Kellen turned his face back to the window, hoping good old Jake would get the hint. It didn’t work. The ex-con kept yakking.
“Got my release three weeks back. After all I done for them guards during each voyage out, they still made me serve all my time. That’s gratitude for you. I remember you got your sentence cut to practically nothing. You must’a had some slick lawyer to pull off that trick.”
Kellen didn’t respond.
“My parole officer got me this here job. How is it?”
“You may wish you were back giving acid baths.”
“Aw, come on. They say it’s a cinch. Because I got only one good eye, they assigned me to the trash burners. Sounds like fun. I love destroying stuff. What they got you doing, sport?”
“I’ve got two good eyes. So they made me a reader and a sorter.”
“Lucky stiff. A desk job. You won’t get fallen arches.” He ran his meaty paw through his slicked back hair and stared at Kellen.
Kellen kept peering out the bus window, hoping the guy would take the hint. But after a long silence, Cardiff wriggled in his seat, and leaned over. “For a guy who made his living talking to folks on the boob-tube you don’t have a lot to say. How come?”
Kellen whispered back, “I learned to keep my big mouth shut. I’d advise you to do the same, friend.”
Before the beefy ex-con could reply, the
abie
driver stopped his vehicle and shouted out: “Okay, everybody. We’re at the MESA. On your feet. File out quietly.”
The grey-uniformed bus riders got to their feet and began shuffling toward the front door.
Once assembled outside the
abie,
the grim-faced office workers shuffled along the cement toward a huge red-brick and tin-trimmed building. The entire area was surrounded by a high iron-mesh fence with rolls of barbed wire on top. A large painted sign hung over the building’s entranceway:
M.E.S.A.
Media Evaluation Services Annex
As Kellen walked forward in the crowd, he could smell salt air mixed with the foul stench of dead fish and brackish backwater.
For a moment, a series of nightmarish images flashed before his eyes. Grunting and cursing men in canvas jump suits, hip boots and gas masks churning up acid stews to recover gold from piles of salvaged green computer strips. Clouds of hydrocarbon ash shooting up into the sea air that burned your nostrils and eyes And seagulls constantly flying and screaming above the ship..
A flock of gulls wheeled and dove in every direction above his head. Their racket snapped him out of his daydream. Those huge black clouds he’d seen earlier were rolling in toward the waterfront. It was just a matter of time until they hit landfall.
At the opening in the fence, a guard scanned the workers’ ID chip-implants as they passed by. But when Kellen came up to the guard, he was stopped and pulled aside.
“Just a minute,” the unsmiling guard said, peering at Kellen’s chest badge. “You know the drill, Number Four-Oh-Five. Like always, we gotta give you special treatment.
The brass has to take special precautions with dangerous characters like you.” Several other guards nearby snickered.
A technician in white lab jacket and yellow plastic helmet stepped up and began to run a small ekto-probe up and down Kellen’s body. Another tech opened the lunch cylinder and poked around inside.
“Watch out for my exploding nutrient bar,” Kellen said.
The guard was not amused. “You’d know a lot more about that stuff than I would Four-Oh-Five.” He waved his arm. “On your way, before I report you for insubordination.”
Kellen snapped his lunch cylinder closed and walked toward the annex front entrance.
Inside the building, Kellen saw Cardiff watching him from one of the aisles.
I do
remember you, Cardiff
.
A bully, a backstabber and a stoolie. I’m going to make sure I
avoid any dark corners with you lurking about like a hungry orca.
Before moving
to his assigned cubicle, Kellen stopped at the vending machine in the worker’s lounge. He was extracting a box of gumdrops when a tall blonde-haired woman came up to him. She looked at the gumdrop box and smiled.
“Be careful,” the woman said. “Those can give a little boy cavities.”
Kellen looked at her. She was about his age and pretty enough. But her eyes gave her away. They were red-rimmed and dead. She had the look of defeat. Her hair was unkempt and she wore too much makeup. Her mouth was a red slash. And there were large sweat stains at the armpits of her grey uniform.
“I’ll try to be careful,” Kellen replied. “These keep me calm when I get bored or nervous.”
“Are you bored now?”
“Constantly.”
The blonde peered at the choices behind the machine’s glass front. She smiled at Kellen engagingly.
“How about treating a lady to a pack of Chewies?”
Kellen fished in his pocket. He brought out a coin, made his selection, and dropped his money in the slot. A pack of candy dropped noisily into the metal tray at the bottom of the machine. The blonde grabbed the box. She put the small packet up to her crimson lips and licked it. “Thanks. You can munch on my Chewies anytime you want.”
Before Kellen could answer, a hall monitor floated over to them. In its flat and hollow mechanical voice it said: “No fraternizing. No personal talking permitted.” The robot stared at the blonde’s badge with its inset camera eyes. “You work in the red sector, Badge One-Oh-Seven. This is the yellow sector. Move along or I will have to report you to your supervisor.”
The blonde made a sour face and put her slender hands on her hips in defiance. The robot zapped her with a small stick resembling an old fashioned cattle prod. The blonde jumped back holding her arm. “Hey,” she shouted, “that hurt, Tin Man.”
“Move along now. Or there will be consequences.”
The blonde gave Kellen a small wave of her hand and disappeared behind a forest of cubicle partitions.
So long
, he thought.
Maybe at another time, in another life
.
But now I’ve got a mountain of subversive stuff to sort for burning.
A few minutes later, he settled down at his assigned desk and placed his REM-VISOR on his head. He remembered a line from one of those old books he destroyed in the past. How did it go?
Big Brother is Watching You!
That was it.
He shuffled through an enormous pile of paperwork accumulated in front of his computer monitor.
A small warehouse bot whirred down the aisle outside his cubicle. It stopped and deposited a cardboard box and zipped off.
Janice Kull, the sallow-faced brunette in the next cubicle, looked over her partition. She eyed the box on the floor.
“That’s another load of disgusting outlawed filth. I hear the IPA cops found it under some old couple’s attic floorboards. They’ll never live to serve out their sentences. Poor deluded fools.”
Janice disappeared from view as Kellen opened the box. Inside were a pile of old movie DVD’s and tapes, some yellowed copies of long-forgotten magazines, and a few dust-covered books. He looked at the book titles.
Grapes of Wrath, A Tale of Two Cities, Little Women, Lost Horizon,
and
The Razor’s Edge.
All subversive material destined for a fiery death in the annex incinerator.
As he leafed through the pages of one of the books, his supervisor poked his head into the cubicle. He frowned when he saw what Kellen was doing.
“Stop reading that porno-rot, Marlowe. Your job is to catalog the stuff and mark it for destruction. Not fill your head with a lot of poisonous claptrap. Get with the program.” The supervisor was about to leave when he stopped. “Oh, I almost forgot. You gotta call. From your wife. Hell, I didn’t even know you was married. She says it’s an emergency. I’ll have Central pass it through. But don’t gab too long. You know how management feels about personal calls on company time.”
When the phone rang, he picked it up quickly.
“Aleeta! What’s going on? You know I’m not supposed to get personal calls here.” He pressed the receiver more tightly to his ear. “What? Slow down, I can’t understand a word you’re saying.” He sucked in a deep breath as his hand gripped the phone. “Damn. Hang on. I’ll be right over.”
He tore off his REM-VISOR and ran down the aisle toward the annex front door. Once outside, he dashed by the guards at the gate before they could react. They yelled and chased after him. But he quickly hailed an aero-cab. The
acie
shuddered for a moment, rose into the air, and was gone before anyone from the annex could catch up.
~*~