Homer Milton Dante joins the New Egyptian Space Service (Astronauts and Snakeheads)
Service
A loaf of bread.That is why I ended up enlisting in the New Egyptian Allied Astronautics and Support Services.
A stale loaf of bread.
There is a myth that people join the armed services because they are patriotic. Maybe after getting your head stuffed with lessons straight from the Ministry of Doctrine and Enlightenment, if you are a citizen of the Holy American Protectorate; art from the Ministry of Art and Humanity, if you live on one of the Free American Islands; field trips to see the war debris that litters the Ring of Defiance, if you happen to live in the Free City-State of Denver, maybe after that you might be a patriot. Maybe then, you will join for patriotic reasons.
That was not me.
The closest thing I got to being patriotic was the annual block party celebrating armistice. I like watching fireworks, especially the Catherine Wheels and Thor Hammers. The only thing I like better on Armistice Day is the food.
Of course, that was because of my home life. Oldest of eight with a father that worked odd jobs out on the Middle Wastelands, and a mother who felt that it was her god-given right to secretly be sleeping with an Elder of the Congregation of the Righteous One Forty-Four, and an household budget that barely kept the roof over my siblings’ heads. How poor was we? Well, I remember being so hungry that I can tell you what dog biscuits taste like (much like an unspiced, unflavored, and unleavened brick of wheat and cornmeal that has been baked into a rock). I skipped a lot of school to take care of my siblings. Occasionally—more often than I would like—that meant making dinner with nothing more than a packet of egg noodles, some salvaged green peppers, hot dogs, and a bottle of Catalina salad dressing.
The day I got caught, we didn’t even have that much.
A fucking stale loaf of bread.
I had grabbed it from the day old rack—much of which were actually a day old a week ago. The owner of the corner store had been busy with a customer at the meat counter, and his husband was nowhere to be seen—I saw him on the way out when I run straight into the bastard on my way out of the door. This was not the first time, so the cops got called.
That is how I ended up in handcuffs cable-tied to a scratched up metal table in a room of filing cabinets. Well, I might have said some unspeakable words when the officials asked me why I did it. I am sure that my pointed silence after my initial outburst didn’t help any either.
“So where is your father?”
“Not sure. Last I heard, he was driving ore from Unavan to the possessing plant in Brush.”
“Your mom?”
“How would I fucking know? She has been gone three days.”
“Can we call one of them?”
“No.”
“Don’t they have cell phones?”
“No—yes—my mom never let me know the numbers. Can I please leave? My sisters and brothers are all alone.”
“Son, are you being abused by your parents?”
Silence.
My mom taught me well. I would rather die than tell them the truth. It was my sins that brought me here, not hers. Too bad that my silence spoke volumes.
The cops started talking to each other in some strange language full of odd sounds and the occasional click. Being only a high school flunk-out, I had no idea what language it was. Occasionally, an English word would bubble up to the surface, adding to the mystery. Words like “kangaroo,” “dollar-pound,” “social services,” and “suitable punishment.” Mom was going to beat me to an inch of my life, if the cops did not toss me into a prison cell and toss away the key.
Alone, cuffed and cabled, I had a good cry. Hot tears of fear and despair flowed down my cheeks. I wanted to yell at the top of my lungs, “Why me? Why am I being punished? Why did I have to be so fucking poor? What was I supposed to do?” Then came the thought, the thought that someday will cost me my life, the thought that arose from the depths of darkness—why not end it all? Suicide was a way out. Not the way I would prefer, but I simply had no more strength to argue with my depression and misery. No one should bear the weight of adulthood and parenthood before they are eighteen. And here I was, one month past my eighteenth, about to pay a price for my hunger and my need to provide for my siblings.
I managed to clean up my tears on my sleeves—hard work when you are tied to a ring bolted into a table—just a few minutes before someone new walked into the room.
He was a short middle-aged man, maybe only five feet tall, with a wiry build. His clothes consisted of a three-piece black suit, a cobalt blue dress shirt, a tie with a cartoon duck on it, and the shiniest shoes I ever seen in my life. On his belt was a holster with a steel rod, and a metallic ankh. A silver star clipped to his belt proclaimed that he was law enforcement. He was a very scary man.
His eyes made it worse. There was something wrong with them. They were dark brown with flecks of turquoise. And occasionally, in their depths, there were flashes of green light, neon and rising up like bottle rockets.
The man carefully took off his jacket and laid it over the back of the chair opposite of me. He took out a drab olive green plastic package out of a vest pocket, and laid it on the desk along with a couple of bottles of soda. Sitting down he looked at me in silence for what felt like an eternity, staring at something behind me. I looked behind me, and saw only a sign that proclaimed fortune telling within city limits required a fifty dollar a day license. I returned my eyes to his—staring back at him—two can pay that game.
“Homer Milton Dante. I imagine that name made you a target of every bully in your school. Of course, I don’t imagine that your classmates knew who you were named after.”
“I wasn’t named after anyone.”
The man chuckled. He pulled out a multitool out of a pocket, and cut the plastic cable tie before pulling out a key to unlock the cuffs.
“Am I free to go?” I asked. “I really need to get home and make sure my siblings are all right.”
“Oh no,” the man started to cut open the heavy plastic of the package. “I am afraid that the owners of the grocery store, Walnut Hill Foodmart, insist on pressing charges. To be honest there, I thought that for a second there, they were going to drop the charges—but after a good talking about the evils of poverty and how a crime like yours could lead to far worse crimes, they agreed that you need to pay a price for your crimes.”
He poked at the contents of the package before popping the seal on one of the sodas.
“Nice thing about police stations—they always have vending machines. Sure, it is not the healthiest of foods, but anything beats a MRE. Look at this.” He held up a bar of what looked like a piece of light blue plastic with patches of darker blue. “This is the variety measure. Can you believe it?”
I wasn’t sure what he was talking about.
“Hungry?” he asked. I did not verbalize my answer. He shoved the package towards me. I looked at it, not sure that it was really food—it looked worse than hot dog surprise. He pointed at the various food bars as he talked, “Protein, nutrients—that would be vitamins and all the rare minerals, plus all the salt and electrolytes a growing boy needs—calories, and fiber. And it all looks like it was made from Playdoh. Tastes like Playdoh too. Go on, taste it—they are horrible. I swear I would rather step out of an airlock without a spacesuit than eat another one of these damn things.”
I cautiously take a small nibble out of the brown bar with a red glaze on it. Tasted like meatloaf. I looked inquiring at the man.
“Be my guest,” he told me.
I wolfed down the MRE, barely tasting it. The other soda followed it. After I was done eating, there was that small voice in my head, the voice of familial duty, the guilt that whispered about how I should have saved the MRE for my siblings. My hunger looked around for any crumbs that escaped. I thought about licking the inside of the wrapper. Neither the guilt or hunger were helped by the coin.
Duck-Tie was rolling a coin across the back of his fingers. I was mesmerized. It was a simple trick—it just took practice. My eldest sister could do it, and she had no interest in sleight of hand. No, it was the coin that ensnared my attention.
It was two inches across, like those old silver pre-Collapse American dollars that occasionally showed up on the Antique Roadshow. Unlike the coins brought in by retirees looking for a little cash, a little history, and a little dinner talk—“Say Marge, did you see us on the Roadshow? You can stream it.”—this coin had value. Real value. So much value that it was rumored that the science teacher was trying to counterfeit them in the school science lab. But no matter how good the forgeries, the Neos would never accept them, calling them “Monopoly money.”
Duck-Tie held the barter coin up, covering one eye. Then he tossed it to me.
The barter coin was brown, made out of some form of wood, so hard it could be a fossil. On one side, it had the head of woman in a pharaoh’s headdress with a rocket rising upwards, launched from behind a set of three pyramids. On the other side, it had a loaf of bread in each quarter of the coin. Four loaves. Four loaves of bread from any New Egyptian facility. Real value when you are a starving wolf looking for food to feed your cubs back at the den. If I would have just a “piece of eight” of this, I could have brought the entire rack of day old bread and doughnuts.
“One a day, that is what you would earn. You could exchange a life of prison bars and hunger for a lifetime of service. Would one a day be worth it?”
“Yes,” I answered. Anything to keep the wolf away from the day. I could cut my wages in eighths. A piece of eight would be enough to keep me fed—the rest I could send home.
“Are you sure? You could end up dying in the vacuum of deep space, or in a ditch outside Cairo, or being eaten apart by rabid monkeys. Would one a day be adequate pay to dare such hazards?”
“Yes.”
So there I was, eighteen, the oldest of eight kids, willing to die for a loaf of day old bread.
“Thank you, Colonel,” one of the police officers shook Duck-Tie’s hand after he led me out of the room. Then both officers shook my hand, and told me that they expected me to do good things with my lucky escape.
My mother was less pleased.
Fortunately, the two cops decided that they should accompany the colonel. Honestly, I think it was so that they could catch up with one another—turns out that he had instructed the officers at “The Summer Camp.” Funny, I never thought that New Egyptian service vets could look like normal people. And just like normal people, they thought my mom was a little nuts.
“I am not going to have one of my kids shanghaied. My family, good believers in the one and only god, did not support the aggression that the city leaders inflicted on the army of the America, the real America—not that false one that we could not kick out of America fast enough. If he is going to serve in the military, he can seek a career in a proper army—not one that worships devils! Besides he can’t leave, who would take care of the kids if he leaves? I cannot do it myself—I have holy work to do. And just who are you to decide that he can escape charges, proper charges—the fucking little thief—why do you have to steal? What will the church think? And if you have to bring shame to the family, you could have the common decency to go to jail. In fact, I insist that you send him to jail. No son of mine is going to serve in some cursed pagan army!”
I considered obeying her. No son should bring infamy to his family. Better to die in an alley.
The consideration lasted about how long it took for my mom to realize the terms of the enlistment agreement. One wood-bread per day—a whole eight bits. That was all it took for my mom to decide to sell me to heathen sinners. Eight loaves of bread. She summoned each of my siblings to sign the indenture agreement—the youngest had to sign with an X.
One of the officers summed it up after we got back into the squad car.
“Gohram true believers.”
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| Coming soon, I swear! |
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