Marvin heard voices talking through the thin walls to the hardware shop next door, something about rope. Then a clanging like metal on metal in the back alley outside his warehouse. No time to see what it might have been, he looked out another window in the back office, up at the Giant Crimson Cloud that seemed to slowly eat the city. What a strange phenomenon this was. He had seen dust clouds and even full-on haboobs before, but this moved as if it had will and volition, spreading from block to block in a manner that had to be guided by some malevolent intelligence. The screams and the smell of burning flesh told him that those lost in the cloud would suffer far more than dust in their throats. He cursed under his breath as he pulled a backpack and a scoped bolt-action rifle from a nearby locker. Then he went further into the office and examined some of the crates. He chuckled at what he found in one, a heavy crossbow with a four-pronged bolt and a length of rope affixing the projectile to the weapon. "Marv! Marv! What's happening, what's going on out there!" The statuesque redhead came running to him, tears streaking her mascara and her elegant black dress ruffled. While she looked on the verge of hysteria, Marvin noticed that she'd already grabbed her own go-bag and weapon, her high heels replaced with more practical running shoes. Good girl. "Your social with the Chamber of Commerce has been cancelled Larissa, and I've been double-crossed!" he growled. "And whatever the Hell that is, we need to get away from it!" His sister nodded, readjusting the large backpack and running to grab a second crate from near the back of the office. The hysteria was suddenly gone from her, replaced with the grimness of a mob consigliere ready to get down to business. "I told my boys and girls to take up their battle stations, we got on the radios and raised the alarm to anyone we could. We've got 25 people total here, ready to go." She tilted her head in the direction of the Wall, a thin grin forcing its way out of her face. "And that? You made up your mind yet? We going over it, or under it?" "Under." he said simply. Everyone and his brother will try going over it. Most won't make it, they'll pile up at the bottom and suffocate like stampeding cattle. And from the looks of the gate, it was like the guards weren't even trying to open the thing, so no going through it. Well, shit. He and his sister shared a brief hug. Far briefer than they wanted, they frankly wanted to hold still and cry in each others arms. No, time though. So many things to do, so many things left undone that can now never be done. In spite of himself, Marvin thought back to simpler, easier times. Times like yesterday's evening. *** Marvin the Art Dealer woke and showered in the cold gloom of an afternoon downpour. A late awakening by his standards, but living three lives left little time for such frivolities as sleep. Days and nights were blending into one with him and sleep, increasingly, came to him whenever he could get it. There was no rain in this place, a high-end art studio in the Burbs, resplendent in white florescent lighting irregardless of the energy shortage. The woman who had summoned him, the pampered wife of some mid-level bureaucrat, was going to forget his face the minute he left, and he likewise would forget her. She lead him to a back room where several large metal devices were laid out on display. "My late grandfather collected the things. I don't think he ever figured out what they were, and frankly I was going to have them scrapped. Someone said you could pay more than the scrapper, so I decided to call you." Marvin moved from one machine to another, probing, prodding, turning gears and pushing buttons and squeezing levers. "Remington, Underwood, Olivetti... interesting collection, and indeed worth *slightly* more to me than to a scrapper." "You know what they're called?" asked the woman. "You can read in Old Tongue?" "I can." said Marvin, ignoring her tone of wonderment. "I can offer you..." "Someone said that they're ancient writing machines. The buttons and the hammers somehow press words onto paper, like what a computer does. Is that true? I mean, it *looks* sort of like a computer." This woman and anyone she knew had probably never actually seen a computer before; only plebes were relegated to the drudgery of tapping out words onto screens these days. But she had made a rather good guess, and Marvin knew to be careful when lying to a State official's family member. "I don't know for sure. I don't think anyone does, but I guess it's possible." "Then should I call the Special Materials Service before selling them to you? I don't want to be accused of dealing in restricted equipment." "You won't be. These wouldn't be considered functional machines, they can't be used for anything in their current state." That was "arguably" true. The ink had long dried and many of them had broken keys, frozen carriages or loose drawstrings. Though any arguing would have to be done with an SMS officer, and that seldom went very well. "And I'm sorry ma'am, but I'm kind of busy with Savings Day coming up and all, and I really don't think either of us want to deal with the SMS. I mean, in it's not any trouble, I'm going to need to have a yes or no on this sale today." He held out a few crisp new bills for the woman, maybe a bit more than she had expected to get. She might call around after he was gone but, thankfully, she'd forget his face the minute he left. *** Marvin the Crime Boss/Michael Sunderland sat in the passenger seat of a delivery truck marked "Overlanders Machine Shop" as his men crated and loaded the writing machines into a small bit of free space in the back. He was talking on a special, encrypted phone only legal for members of the government and military. Gone was the demure, unoffending salesman. In his place was someone who could look menacing even over videocam, especially when dealing with an underling who displeased him. "Jimmy, look, I don't know why, but for some reason I like you, see? My boys like you too. My girl likes you, and I like your girl, and you got a cute little kid what don't need to grow up knowing her daddy's a limp-dick lil' shithead what wastes his time knocking off pissant little corner stores when there's still banks to be robbed and rich socialites to be nabbed. So you know what I'ma do? I'ma give you one more chance to clean up your act, hit a higher class of victim, and start bringing me in some real goddamned money. You do that, and maybe I won't peel your fuckin' skin off like an onion, see!? Now don't that show how much I like you, Jimmy?" He turned off the phone. Marvin had been trying to build goodwill for his organization ever since he took over. He involved himself in charities, he moved away from some of the more disreputable crimes such as prostitution and the drug trade, he reorganized the loan sharking wing to where they almost tried to help people work their way out of their financial problems. Above all, he tried to make sure that he only stole from those rich enough to afford to lose it. In the words of one old bandit hero, he "robbed from the rich and gave to the poor." In the words of another, he sought to be "like every other businessman. All I do is supply a demand." Marvin's truck was one of the city's few motor vehicles. The pinnacle of modern internal combustion technology, it could burn a wide variety of fuels in a highly-efficient engine. Petroleum, coal oil, hydrogen, acetylene, natural gas, ethanol, and biofuels could all potentially be used in the design. Right now it was burning biofuel harvested from the manure of several large cattle farms and piggeries he owned. But it was getting harder and harder to supply even the most easily produced of fuels, and he wondered how long the city would last on merely solar and human-power alone. The truck pulled into a warehouse and backed up to a loading dock. Larissa and her husband Danny stood by wearing greasy mechanics jumpsuits, one holding a clipboard and the other a wrench. "Get out of your silks as quick as you can, Marv. One of the reefer vans is down and we can't figure out what's wrong." He nodded. He was going to be tinkering today anyhow. "We got 'em, Lissa!" he called cheerfully. "Come take a look, I'll bet you never seen one before." Larissa and Danny opened a crate and looked at the machine. Lissa played the keys in curiosity, almost mesmerized by the strange, arcane workmanship. "Wow, they really are like keyboards stuck to printers, without a computer in the way." "What's so good about that?" asked Danny. "No batteries, no solar panels, they can't be hacked, they don't get viruses," said Marvin, "most importantly, you can print a document on one and you don't need remote authorization from the Office of Subversive Activities." "But you said they can only write in the Old Script, so what good are they to us?" "Oh, you can write a document in New Tongue using the Old Script" said Larissa. "Takes a little practice, but it isn't hard. But it'll make it that much harder for enemies to decode what we're saying." She looked at Marvin, thinly-veiled disgust forming on her face. "So, that mission worked out well, how about... the other one?" Marvin silently looked to the truck. The last of the material goods had offloaded and now his men were opening a hidden compartment towards the very front, where a number of gagged, tied, and crying men, women and children were gingerly removed and taken to a deep grease pit in the middle of the building, which held a secret passage leading to a number of holding chambers. They would stay there until their buyers arrived to collect them. Now Marvin shared his sister's look of disgust. He knew as well as she did, his attempts at building goodwill wouldn't be worth the grease in that pit if anyone knew what he was up to here. *** Marvin the Sage knew that the writing machines would be useful, especially since a few of his Followers counted as some of the only people outside the State security apparatus who could read in Old Script AND Old Tongue. That didn't matter right now. Those who broke the two-child law were never fined or arrested. They were never tried or sent to jail or otherwise openly punished. If they were identified, they simply disappeared one night, abducted seemingly at random and never seen again. Marvin didn't know what became of them. All he knew is that he'd been approached by some very strange people following the death of his old crime boss. They wanted him to do a little dirty work for them. If he was good at it and quiet about it, he would become one of the richest and most powerful men in the city. They were as good as dead anyway, he always reminded himself of that. Anyone not a Follower was a corpse who just didn't know it yet. This city was doomed and he knew it. The "Savings Day" everyone got so giddy about was a celebration of the day the rats in the ship had been locked into a cage to protect them from the ship's cat, then tossed into the darkest hold as it foundered and broke apart upon the reefs. There was no possible way to save everyone, he had to focus on getting what he needed to save anyone. Nonetheless, he noticed something very interesting as he did his new work. It started when he replaced a renowned researcher and his four kids with a wino who looked like him and three street urchins (claiming the infant had died in transit). Later, he replaced a martial artist who had fathered three kids with a thug from another gang whose face was pulped beyond recognition. At first he tried to match ages and appearances as closely as possible, though he increasingly realized that it didn't seem to matter. These people didn't give a damn about violators or their families. They just wanted warm bodies, ANY warm bodies. What for? Oh, surely a fate worse than death. Slaves and concubines to be used and abused in a foreign Territory until they expire, most likely. Human sacrifices to eldritch beings that some suspected the rich and powerful secretly worshiped. Maybe something even more horrible. The day's business concluded, he dropped into the grease pit, accessed a secret passage in the side of the wall, and walked into the holding chamber were a small number of people were now sitting. They had been clothed, fed, and offered little handbooks explaining their new life in The Following, which its informative material interspersed with odd and ancient references to a pilgrim's journey. So tossed and battered were they by the storms of their ordeal that they scarcely noticed his entry. His eyes settled on one in particular, a girl of about 19 years who looked disturbingly similar to his Lenora. Blond hair and blue eyes instead of brown and hazel, a little more tanned, a little skinnier, but similar face and nose and... ...dammit Marv, snap out of it! She looks nothing at all like Lenora! "Ladies and gentlemen, the other people you came here with are all dead by now, or at least I certainly hope they are. As the leader of The Following, I offer you life. And not just life, but a chance to build a new one away from the City of Desolation which had instructed me to kill you. I give you until morning to decided if you wish to join us." He turned in left the room. The answer was always the same. *** He walked through the building one last time to see that no one was left behind. In the corner of his eye he saw the ancient writing machines that he had started restoring last night, before he had went to sleep still sitting on the workbench. They were heavy and bulky and they would have to stay where he left them. Larissa and the others had all gathered in and around the greasepit. Some of the cinderblocks had been removed from another side to reveal a second passage, this one leading out and under the Wall and connecting to a long-forgotten storm drain, hopefully well out of sight and range from the parapets. Irregardless, the departing party was quite heavily armed. "Ok, I know we planned to do this at night or in bad weather, but just remember what we practiced. Pop off smoke if you're under fire and don't be afraid to kill anyone on that Wall who tries to hurt our people. Let's get going, boys and girls!"
