Instalment One Hundred

Getting older, he had come to realise, simply meant that things never got better. But it was his birthday and he was damn well going to get out of bed today, even if he hadn’t yesterday.

He swung his legs out onto the floor, gingerly testing his weight on them. His right knee yelled back that something was wrong. A persistent old injury.

Old people didn’t fall apart like people joke, it was more that nothing ever healed properly. It hadn’t for a long time. He had twisted that knee catching his son jumping out of the treehouse. That kid shot up so fast, it seemed like he grew bigger every breath he took. Funny, he hadn’t thought about that treehouse in years.

Taking a step his left big-toe howled. An even older malady, maybe 70 years, bent it backwards playing barefoot soccer at a BBQ and it never healed right. They were good times. He missed those friends and those drunken days.

These war wounds flared with every step, reminding him of years past. Centurion mourned all his fallen friends with a sigh, it was his 100^th birthday and with the next step he felt every day of it.

Instalment Ninety Nine

Lachrymose was the colour of rain, so pale as to be almost translucent. And like rain, she was liable to strike you in the face if you tried to look at her too long.

The ripples in her lips, if you examined them closely, were like waves. Or waves were like her lips. Cresting and falling, likely to drown you. When the blood ran out of her face, those lips were the colour of spray curling off the back of a wave, sharpened to a sneer.

She never used a mirror and refused to pass them by. She stood by puddles to catch her reflection. Glimpsing herself upside down with her head in the clouds was a rare joy. Sometimes, alone, when it all became too much, she would fill a basin with tears. Consumed by loathing, she would scrub the floors and counters to sparkling with those tears, entombing herself in sadness.

The one thing she knew was secrets need to be told, so she told them to the drain, which carried them out to sea, like a message in a bottle never to be uncorked.

“I am deserted,” she would sob to the sink, for none to hear.

Instalment Ninety Eight

They say you need a bushfire to create new life. That is what happened with my uncle and me.

It was years ago, my Dad’s family had a boat, a wooden thing called the Phoenix. Dad and his brother would sneak out onto it to drink and smoke. They were just kids really. One night my uncle passed out with his cigarette still lit.

Unlike bushfires, flame can only destroy so much of a boat before the water claims it.

The water claimed my uncle too.

The boat went down just off the dock in shallow water. My dad spent the next two days diving down to salvage fittings before the water ruined them. Deep breath, dive, hour after hour.

He took an ad out in the local rag, same day as the obituary, to sell everything he had saved. They had to pay for the funeral somehow.

Someone offered to buy the lot, so my dad took it round. He opened the door, this old bloke, and behind him stood his daughter. 

Dad couldn’t keep his eyes off her, he says, my mother.

So the flame from the cigarette that took my uncle’s last breath gave me my first.

Instalment Ninety Seven

The whole town lived in fear of it.

They wouldn’t talk about it, not anymore.

But they kept feeding it.

They had brought it on themselves.

They made a deal, hurried and fevered, fuelled by greed.

A stranger had appeared one day from the fog, as certain types of strangers often do.

He was cold, wet, in a bad way yet no villager offered him kindness.

Until his coin purse appeared. Then they offered. What could have been a smile briefly crossed his lips.

They all took turns, gleeful and eager. One coin for shelter. One for food. One coin for drink. One coin to take his dirty clothes, one to return them clean. They all took a turn.

“I have no gold left to give but feel you deserve something in return for your treatment of a stranger. Would you like a gift?” he asked.

The villages nodded in excitement.

“You must promise to look after it.”

“We do,” they cried.

He produced a small animal, the likes none had seen. And then he was gone.

They fed it and it grew fast, rarely moving from the Village square.

The Oh-Beast was grotesque creature, created by their own greed.

Instalment Ninety Six

Illustration by Alex Douglas  Embiggen

Much to everyone’s surprise, it was not the robots that fired first. The first shot, in the only Robot Human war ever fought, was fired by a man worried about his job. There was a strike you see, with a full picket-line of workers, so the bosses decided to bus in scabs. Only these scabs weren’t guys from the next town. These workers had been shipped in from farther afield and assembled out of state. Next generation strike breakers, The WageSlave Blue was programmed for industrial production functions, rested only 10 minutes in the hour on indefinite cycle and didn’t take sick days. The striking workers could offer no such benefits to their employers.

As The WageSlaves marched in a voice was heard, “They don’t call us battlers for nothing.” A crack rang out and a Robot fell. Archaic stared through the cyclone fence, smoking gun in hand, “They took our jobs,” he mumbled.

Following the war and its bloody aftermath, Governments decreed no robot could take a human job. An outcome none welcomed. Industry redefined robot.

HumUns were soon working custodial and service jobs. But every job is one some human needs.

Thus began the first Human HumUn war.

Instalment Ninety Five

Necessity is the mother of Invention.

Repetition is the father of Learning.

They meet. He walks up to her. “I normally don’t come to these single parent things, normally I don’t come,” he says. “I don’t either, not unless I have to,” she quickly replies.

Taking turns making fun of other attendees, their hands bump as they laugh.

Apart from both being single parents, the only thing they have in common is a shared love for the same types of music, but sometimes that is enough. And for Necessity and Repetition it was.

The courtship is slow, dates at the same restaurant, ordering the same meal, Repetition’s choice.

They introduce the children.

Learning does not take well to the change in his usually regimented day. “I should be studying, I should be,” he yells into Invention’s face.

She pauses in her work at straightening a paperclip.

“I think I can fix your calendar,” she says reaching past him to reorder his timetable.

“Nup, can’t do it,” she shrugs, giving up.

“You must try more, try more,” Learn admonishes her as they set to work together to make the perfect schedule. Repetition and Necessity now have a happy family, happy family.