The Writers' Circle

ALL those pregnant trees, fat with fruit, swaying in the lilac breeze, so help me I'll cut them down, maybe not today, I haven't the strength nor heart to uproot them. I had considered growing more trees, where the parts are more sparse, where the weeds have grown, that was in better days, when the glow of artificial light seemed to promise something. 
	There are patches where nothing dares to grow, a nearby arbour from the larger oak trees has cut off all the vitality of light and strangled the greenery to a shade of mauve-brown. Best to be rid though, it's easier that way, this is after all the finality of beauty, and when beauty is final, it's painful in it's gradual death- and all things must die. I stubbed out my cigarette, turning away from the window. Today the Ortanic Calender reads- DISOLUTION IS THE MOTHER OF ALL CAUSE- 


	'Right you are!' I thought, as I skimmed the Tri-Daily Newspaper; it read:  

HYGEINE AND HEALTH: 

	RED-CURTAIN, TRADE districts have all been installed with black-light street lamps, the installation of black-light street lights will take place in COMMON, ANGEL districts during the Ortanic Month of Ruddiric*, the installation of black-lamp street lights will not affect your regular street lighting, the installation of black- light street lights will replace every ODD NUMBER of regular street lights, the installation of black-light street lights is oblique in areas and in accordance to surveillance needs-  
	Black-light, as you are aware is the new advancement in an ongoing battle against the Rad-Ether Junkies. Black-light aids Agents in highlighting the luminescence of Radium and other transuranic chemicals widely used by Rad-Ether Junkies. This service is brought to you by your Local Government and paid by Neutral Tax -- 002

	Questions? Contact your Local G-GOV Ordinance and Health Office

	Greigor Tipson -Secretary of Department of Ordinance and Health

	For several days I had wanted to see a movie called The Estrangement of One, it was supposedly another movie that the G-GOV Censorship Board had overlooked or in a moment of rare generosity given a Pass. The closest theatre was in the RED-CURTAIN district. Finally, I made up my mind to go considering my Pintoline stash was down to 2 sachets, and I knew all I would do was sit around shooting up.... killing time... 
Down on the streets and hitting that same familiar stench of encroaching dirt and stale air that hangs and sticks to everything in Tartarus Underground, never fails to remind me of tunnels in a coal mine. I turned up the lapel on my frock-coat and headed down 7th towards 8th.
	No vehicles, nothing too complicated, nothing that requires mass manufacture-  these are the secondary details you notice as you walk the streets, first it's the blue tint that hangs to the walls of the buildings like some phantom dirge, this is cast by the ultra-violet lamps some 4 miles up somewhere in the raft beams, too high and intangible to really discern the distance.
 	I headed to 9th on 10th and entered the a dilapidated brickwork building known as THE GRINDHOUSE, as I approached the counter, I was accosted by a rakish old man who wore the name-tag MORB, face like a cracked onion-
	"Gotta wait..." he said, wheezing into an overloaded ashtray, kicking up ash in a plume and repeatedly smacking his static- radio with a fly-swatter as it bleared dully 'AINT NO ... HOMETOWN BLUES..... THAT WHISKEY AND ... NOW MY LONESOME DAYS ARE GONE...'. 
	"What's the problem?" I asked, a flickering klieg light which they had rigged with blue/green copper wiring to the main outlet, fizzed with crude electric sparks-  he murmured  "They're rattin' out the place on 2nd... gonna be an hour, I can give you a ticket but.... Gotta wait"  
	(Ratting out is colloquial for fumigate; a regular enough occurrence, when diseases and  unusual pathogens from the swampland, and spores from new bryophyte species latch onto infected mushroom-bastards try to pass themselves off as human, infecting others in turn -- there are other causes, but this is by far the most common)**
	After I had taken the ticket stub I sat on a stained divan couch, scratching my junky arm, and watching the chequered orange jungle-carpet crawl with insects beneath layers of ash and dirt, it had an almost memorising effect like the surges of ineffable life you see in the cold light of an electro-microscope. The lull of elevator music from the Audit-110AB 50v Speakers pinned like lug-holes to corners stained white-red with regolith and moss- weighed the room with a sombre sound. I began to feel light-headed and then cursed myself for being here at all, after all, here I am still hoping to catch a rare glimpse of Upper-World like some new citizen, like some fresh-faced ingratiate still hungry for the taste of home, these rare glimpses are becoming as habitual as the Junk itself.
	The antechamber reeked of Formica, cigarette smoke and cheap petunia perfume, the latter emitted from a whore, sitting cross legged with her brutish-looking boyfriend, they were sitting opposite myself, both nodding and smiling inanely
	".....Movies"
	"--I'm sorry?"
	"Ain't that right sweety, these realist movies, really capture the pain of life on the outskirts of COMMONS, we got saved couple of rubecs, we'll be moving closer to the HUB soon I reckon..." he sucked in his teeth, showing the yellow grimace of a car salesman; this registered enthusiasm, but his eyes were tired, the life almost gone-- and there's no hiding that not in Tartarus Underground where weakness is usually terminal. His wife pulled at the ladders in her fishnet tights sighing with a distant 
	"Yeah...That's right Bert"
	Bert? The name would have been comical if it wasn't so desperately incongruous, I thought, he must be a 3rd generation child, at least, probably working in some meat vendor joint in TRADE down near Barbo's where all the simps end up eventually, gutting fish and caelocanths, anything that falls into the SWR from the main inlet above HUB-17.  
	"I hear they make these movies in Samco and Breeches-- down in COMMONS 7th" he continued "Got the whole damn place blacked out with aluminium paint on the windows, Agents too. Won't let you near the place, not fer' nothin'"

	The theatre entrance read:
	FUMIGATION 008 RED-CURTAIN DISTRICT - STAND WELL CLEAR - DANGER - DEATH- 

	The word Death was highlighted in a black triangle, and I could tell that a Butane-Ammonia combination was used by the fluttering of the green tarpaulin, which bloated out like a balloon and collapse back in, as if it were sighing heavily.  Anthrax bombs do not need continual pumping, but only need to settle. I could see this was a minor contamination.
	"Mushroom-bastards?" I asked, but neither knew, only the whore shuddered at the word, and the brutish fellow with a large head sucked his teeth in again, and said
	"I don't know why G-GOV don't take them out, it's not like they have any defences, just go into the Swampland and fry 'em! Eh? What's so 'ard about that eh, sweet-cakes?" turning to his whore, he tweaked her bottom, she yelped excitedly (almost all women in Tartarus Underground were whores- usually to pay for their own drug habit or their families)
	"I think the G-GOV need them in some way..." I replied "I'd even go as far as to say that  everyone is interdependent in some way, you know, down here least. As far as mushroom-bastards are concerned, their remains carry the cure to morass based diseases and help our scientist understand  the genetic modulation of their species, I've even heard that they can be used to locate natural oil wells"
	"Bah!" he spat "All they do is SPREAD disease! ...And take our jobs!" wiping the spittle from his chin with a brown hankercheif, he eyed me up and down with a cold look that read 'sympathiser'
	After a while the tarpaulin was removed by a pale looking steward, the diseased wreck was wheezing just like Morb, eyes deep shallow-yellow sockets (perhaps the start of a Barbiturate-9 addiction?) then more people arrived, a good 300 at least, dressed in their best flax and cotton-wear (since oil and coal are abundant raw materials down here products such as perfume, plastics, synthetics, paints and most importantly drugs, are cheaper than any field grown or natural by-products such as flax, cotton, wool, etc.). T.U has it's own fashion which resembles that of Chicago in the 1920s; zoot-suits, trilbys,  pin stripped jackets, the only difference is they are all sythentically made. Some new arrivals were stinking up a fuss in their expensive cotton-wear shirts, like the art-critics of Old Earth, tapping there notebooks. The contents of which systemically record ever known Old Earth appearance they had ever seen, trading and exchanging, arguing dates, debating:
	"The Ortanic month saw both the Aquanduct and the Asian Elephant in South Common More!" Rubbing his stubble, nicotine yellow eyes
	"My God sir! You've got it all wrong the Aquanduct movie was The True Blue in the Muddric '97!"
	Here the critic would either argue his point, or corroborate with others and amend his book, both never having set eyes on an Aquaduct, and only mishearing it from some new arrival- or receiving the name 4th-5th- hand, since new arrivals are extremely rare. Most were dubious of the existence of Old Earth believing it to be a conspiracy of others and more importantly G-Gov, and came simply to break boredom of T.U life, by ironically, watching a movie about life in T.U. 
	After the doors were opened, I vied and jostled to find a good seat, but eventually resigned to sit at the back and smoke cigarettes. As I was watching the plume dance across the projector beam, I was distracted by an attractive young inhabitant I have never seen before, she was wearing a black ribbon that tied her hair neatly, stylishly; a red coat... high cheekbones, she was carrying a small buckled hand purse, everything about her seemed new, I hoped to god the critics wouldn't get to her before I did, they would tear her to shreds, garbling all the while with white-eyed excitement.
	During the movie I kept an eye almost constantly on her, although she was undoubtedly new, she seemed to be assessing the scene, analysing reactions- she carried an air of confidence. The movie itself, as always, was terrible and a six second shot of Falconet's horse was all it came down to in the end-I felt robbed, there was not a touch of the old civilisation in the entire movie. You'd have to be new here to think the frames were smuggled, that's all part of a game G-GOV plays to increase revenue to the RED-CURTAIN district from time to time, but each and every time we fall for it-- lap it up like sop to wolves, cram ourselves into this stinking little theatre in the hope of a familiar ancient sight, the Old World citizens, a flash of clear blue sky, the sea, an empty newspaper stand on some deserted suburban district. During the blearing stifling hum of patriarchal music dictating the end of the movie and orchestrating the shuffle out, I fell behind the new girl and follow her back outside onto the streets of RED-CURTAIN where it had begun to rain, that means the Sprinklers were on-- water from the Salt Water Reservoir (SWR) was pumped up to the Sprinklers and desalinated via purification ducts en route; this needs to be done otherwise crops would not grow, not if the water remained salted, the water was then spread evenly out through Sprinklers over the Four Districts of G-Gov. She reached into her coat and brandished a black umbrella which she fluttered and moved towards the bridleway separating 8-9th, I took heel and followed her, making sure to stay at a distance, there was something of my old life in her, like the faint tread of recognition, or was it simply attraction? The thrill of the chase? 
	I almost lost her on 9th, when a rally burst forward, placards read: 'Free our Children!' Another read: 'Innocent for 1,967 years!' They were working their way towards the HUB there was a wild applause as the bullhorn bleared and they came to a halt.
	"All our lives we have failed! Lady and Gentlemen! Good people! Look around you!" the crowd quietened  "Our streets are crawling with disease and filth, with sub-human monstrosities, occasionally with new comers we hear tales of a better world, a world where much needed minerals are in abundance,  where every man is free, and water stretches as far as the eye can see, we are told we can not return to this world, but that we must stay, work, and feed our children JUNK as tonnes of meat and crops are left to rot, too costly and  prohibitive to the common man!" murmurs of assent wave through the crowd; a shiver ran down my spine, it has been 8 years and I still haven't gotten used to the junky children. 
	"G-Gov is cut off from H-Gov entirely, from this we can assume there are at least eight sectors like our own, and why is this, if it is not to hinder free enterprise, to circumscribe our movements, to secularise and eliminate corporate competition, to vet our communications! To set us apart from our fellow men lest we become too strong a force, become united as one, well I say we are united!" wild cheers sweep the street, she was still working her way through the throng, twice I almost touched her coat.
  	"Why should we be punished for the crimes of our ancestors! There are in fact very few criminals among us, but what is our crime I ask you? I'll tell you! Our crime is our pusillanimity! " The Cobbles where sinking through the mud, under the sheer weight of the protestors, and that blue- neon rain soaked the ever threatening presence of dirt and mud through the cracks

 [incomplete]

	She crossed the alleyway on 10th and you can see the regular junky haunt on the Corner of ReGrowth 12th the pushers and purveyors of filament, gauze strips, E-r-rosion and verticinone ester acids, bowing low under roods of dead saints flashing amber-green-yellow beneath neon signs and under the painful lurch of crippling isolative addiction, see them coming on with handshakes with
	"Got the high-junks boss--- Minos is alive! Gotta free the centaur man-- it's gonna eat me ALLIVVEE!!"	
	Or some other garbling concocted by threadbare synapses of some late night preacher of nonsensical esotericism. Sometimes in cleaner light, they come on all natural vibes and smiles with "Bud-- you got 5?" or "You got a light, pal?" a limp cigarette hanging from a dead-clam mouth, with eyes that await further movement but it's all been registered, they already have the Vitruvian Law on their side -- every possible reaction is accounted for within a circle of adjoined muscular jerks and twitches; inflection of the sartorius muscle is meted with the scapoid to the clavicle, the deltoideus to the cervical vertebrae, this equilibrium of forces is not down to any innate intelligence of the Eroser in human physiology or even the natural reflex of a well studied Xridoli artist, but rather an UNNATURAL predominance of experience, like field-insect psychology and the obliquity of reason, the craving for E-R Rosion precise. 
	The worst possible reaction is run, or worse still - give in to demands-- textbook procedure to stand completely still, this confuses the Erosers (who are natural drawn to movement), since continual and erosive use of the back-brain suppressant E-R Rosion has irrevocably damaged the cerebellum, the medula and cortex, affecting short term memory. The user essentially, in time, and after no visual stimulant forgets why he is standing under a street lamp on the corner of Gribson's 7-11 in the rain, and on seeing you in this wake of forgetfulness presumes you to be an Agent, and so takes to heel and flees.    
	The priests on 2nd towards the Eastern edge are the worse for decadence, human trafficking, malversation, conversion--- by use of contravenes tourniquets and ionised potetics with the hook-line of being somewhat 'closer to God', 'divine visions' and 'spiritual ascendance' leaves the customers lacking credit, and bodily fluids, only looks on with blank eyes and a 'What the Fuck?' expression, that like the bas-relief the Mitanni claim and plaster along with their 'Green Men' and Boreads along the coast of the Orontes, that blissful null-zero expression of pain and fatigue -- no one saved here-just another burnt out bum with a bitter dream. It's the sextons duty to clear the excreta and to buffer the floors with a sand-salt combination mixed with high grade ethanol called SILT-REED; swept by the lower-city inhabitants -- The Slugs, who like the commensalism of nature, feed on the shedding skin of beasts, finding second rate neutrinos in the evacuation of fluids and watered down vein junk, claiming still-life symbiosis with it's flora ... it's microbiota... it's undying surrealistic charm. So there is an economy here only it's silent; silent like the plastic rainfall now hitting my coat-frock and filling my shoes-limping in shadows--- an economy as shameful as simony. 
	This city is ripe extortion, usury, and malpractice, that is for those who have a mind to do so, I didn't have time to consider the use-value of commodities, or the inflation of market goods essential to the decent white-collar living, my mind is blotted with purple bile that sings like a rotten fruit and bronchial coughs and bleeds waves of Pintoline into my arteries, once the mallias has gotten this far, it takes a surgeon of the soul with tenter hooks of gossamer to level life back to statistical regularity.
	Junk sales pushes the (pIFC) Price Index of Food Commodities higher- down here it's the drug lords and pimps that run most of private services and trade -- so more and the irony is to avoided inflation and starvation, one becomes a junky to SURVIVE and so inevitably effects the pIFC. there is only one way to kick this is called The Smoking Diet***
	The best days here are like the worst days above, sometimes you pray for a riot of total anarchy from Old Earth-- a complete upheaval of the system, but it never comes, and the rioters like the haunting junkies of old, fall back into their own controlled addiction.