Yes,

  yes, the killing of my brother. I’m getting to that. Now, it might

  not shock you to hear that I don’t have a full recollection of the

  details of the crime. I don’t know if this is because I’d

  consumed an ox’s bodyweight of the stoopy or if it is because my

  internal mirror smashed itself rather than reflect the enormity of

  the deed. It is true that I am a man with a propensity for

  disagreement. In those days especially, I liked nothing better than

  to wilfully misinterpret someone’s intentions, searching for any

  excuse to tighten my fists and start the rotors. I’d often wake up

  from a stoopy coma to find black and blue petals about my brow and

  I’d struggle to meet my harvesting quota with my knuckles chapped

  and sore.

  But

  this wasn’t the case the morning after Buchan’s death. It hadn’t

  been a particularly boisterous session on the stuff. I had only been

  out for one night. On a good session, I might be away for two or

  three. I had no fear of losing my job, since all work was casual. We

  needed only to show up in the morning at the place where the road had

  wound itself to a lane and the cobbles became dust and clabber, and

  someone would be there with a handful of tokens, asking to look at

  your hands and sizing up the breadth of your back.

  I

  was with Kargan that night. We gravitated towards each other, like

  ignoble, uncelebrated planets, dragging each other into treacherous

  orbits. How low would I sink on any given night? Kargan would decide.

  On

  this night, one of us had suggested stealing a multicycle, one of the

  vehicles that overseers used to transport field workers. There was a

  little cab with handlebars up front, then six or eight seats in the

  back, each with its own set of pedals. Behind these seats was a low

  bed with a wire cage for transporting tools. If the overseer pointed

  at you, you'd climb into one of the empty seats and start pedalling.

  You might also sit in the cage in the back, if all the seats were

  occupied, but workers avoided this, since passers-by would hurl

  merciless verbals at anyone sitting in the cage. If you really needed

  the work, you might cling to the side of the cage instead and hold on

  while the cycle took you to the site, your fingers glowing like logs

  in a fire. It was more dignified than willingly stepping into a cage.

  The

  stealing of a multicycle was acceptable stoopy-induced horsing, as

  long as you brought it back, and as long as no-one important heard

  about it. The overseer would be in more trouble than us if something

  were to happen to the thing. He was often just a casual, like us, the

  one who had been assigned the task of rounding up workers to assist

  his work.

  Someone

  higher up the chain had given the shed keys to Amar for the week.

  This had been an oversight. Amar was not quite as accomplished a

  stoopy as myself and Kargan, but it was a close-run thing some

  evenings. The undertaker, a step higher than the overseer, and

  someone endowed with a quantity of true responsibility, surely had

  not meant to press the keys into Amar's quivering palm. He was beset

  with nervous troubles, Amar. Whether the juice caused the issues or

  provided comfort from them was unclear to us. When we had seen him

  behind its oversized handlebars one morning, gasping with each push

  of the pedals, myself and Kargan had exchanged a look of stoopy

  conspiracy.

  We

  hadn't sought him out that night. It was a stoopy tour much the same

  as any other. Stoopies left their front door open, and other stoopies

  would be welcomed in. Fierce companionable stuff, the juice. We had

  found Amar slumped low on a settee cushion in Kane's backyard, his

  hands tucked under his backside, a parody of dignity on his features.

  Kargan and I had been to the Forge and to Mariano's house already and

  it was closer to morning than evening. Amar’s appearance was an

  opening flower beneath the receptors of a summer bumblebee. We shared

  the customary regard once again, then tumbled his pockets for the key

  to the shed.

  The

  next bit had to be told to me. It was very hilly in Jurckas then,

  maybe it still is. It used to be the garbage dump for the entire city

  many years ago, but its smell had begun to waft too enthusiastic into

  the city and it was decided that it should be moved further away.

  Great earth-shifting machines had come and pushed the precarious

  refuse mountains further out. My ancestors, along with other

  peripherals like them, finally relinquished their loosening grip on

  the city and moved into the space vacated by the garbage. Then people

  began to build tunnels through the mounds and bridges over them, and

  a fragile infrastructure took shape. People made lives for

  themselves. The limb from an ancient garment that reached out from

  the loose earth, or the package for a no longer useful product from

  some forgotten civilisation, were no hardship. The savoury historical

  smell that cajoled you as you went about your business was no worse

  than the industrial reek of the city.

  So,

  we were on the top of one of these garbage hills. I learned about

  this afterwards. Barty, the biggest hill in Jurckas, named for

  Bartlett Craney, the First Citizen whose idea it was to create them.

  I was in control, behind the handlebars, but the progress was slow.

  The vehicle required more pedal power than we two could muster, so we

  decided to take it up to the top of Barty to see if we could find a

  bit more tempo. As I say, this bit was told to me afterwards.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  So

  off we went, down Barty, with me struggling to keep a hold of the

  bars, the juice a few feet ahead of us, the wind yelling ‘more,

  faster, now,’ the stoopy mantra, into our flapping ears.

  This

  is how I see it happening. This is all plausible. But the story

  begins to lose plausibility. The story is that Buchan is out for a

  stroll. At the bottom of Barty.

  Right.

  

  Now,

  people don’t tend to stroll in Jurckas, as they might in Chiram

  Park. There are no trimmed lawns, there are no elegant ponds, there

  are no ducks following you, yapping for a mouthful of crumbs. In

  Jurckas, there are only garbage mountains. The garbage is hidden

  under a layer of earth, but it’s still there, you can feel it

  twanging on your receivers. And this is all supposed to have taken

  place in the middle of the night. Are we to believe that Buchan had

  declared to himself that he had to go for a stroll and that he

  positively needed to embark immediately, before the sun illuminated

  the desolation? Before humanity began to throng about it and among

  it, like columns of fat selfish ants? Had he overdone it on the dark

  air and sought out a horizon more distant than the four walls of our

  shack?

  When

  I think of the story, it is the stroll that jangles me most profound.

  A man out in the middle of the night, shoulder-to-shoulder with

  Barty, is a man with burdens. It is the burdens that keep me awake.

  Even now, forty-odd years later.

  We

  hit him. I hit him. Of course I did. Smashed into Buchan’s biddable

  trunk at an unnatural, gravity-enhanced rate. Bones broke. Jagged

  shards punctured vital organs. Blood flowed. A last breath evaded its

  captor, taking with it the necessary minerals and essences.

  I

  woke up behind the steering of the cycle, my hands loose on the

  reliefs of the handle grips. My injuries woke seconds later. Arms,

  legs, ribs, head – all shouted in competitive voices. Moistness on

  my vest. I asked my hand to investigate but it wouldn’t move. The

  black of night had become blue, but the sun had not yet raised

  itself.

  Before

  me, on the dust, was my brother. His eyes open. His mouth smiling,

  and his bearing open, as if he had just understood a punchline. He

  lay in a too dark, almost evaporated puddle. It is the kind of

  horrific coincidence that makes you believe that an unseen someone

  takes an interest in the things you do and the things you don’t do.

  

  I

  was neatly arranged in the cycle. My hands on the handlebars and my

  feet within easy reach of the pedals. Have I considered that perhaps

  Kargan was the person sitting on this saddle while the vehicle

  plummeted down the pyramid, and that it was he who lost control of

  its trajectory and sent it crashing into my brother’s body?

  Certainly, I have considered this. Kargan was a tall man, a strong

  man, who could easily have manipulated my unconscious body into the

  position it woke up in. The bruising and injuries I sustained

  indicated that I fell further than my positioning behind the controls

  would suggest. Perhaps I was in the back, sitting or standing in the

  cage, gripping tightly to its spider-leg frame, and thrown clear upon

  impact. Kargan had departed by the time I had woken up. If the

  orderlies were coming and you had a reasonable chance of escape, then

  it was wise to scarper. Sometimes I wonder if I would have done the

  same, even with my brother’s life abandoning him as he lay on the

  dusty floor. I’m ashamed to say that I probably would have.

  ***

  I

  never saw Kargan again. The discussion about whether he had a hand in

  my brother’s death dominated much of my thinking in my early years

  in Pokey. I swore I would exact my revenge somehow. The anger

  sustained me for a long time, gave me a reason to survive my

  circumstances, a reason to dream of freedom. It was only after the

  discovery of the earth’s power to aid deeper self-examination that

  I came to accept responsibility. The earth is a stern but

  straightforward progenitor – if you're out of your head on the

  stoopy, then you will do stoopy things. You can't blame the stoopy,

  only yourself.

  At

  court, when the top orderly declared where I would be going and for

  how long, he emphasised the fact that I was riding in a stolen

  vehicle when the incident had occurred. The cycle had belonged to

  Chem-Fresh Holdings, a sister entity of Animaspore Chemical, which

  was founded by the well-known industrial mister, Peter Graff, whose

  daughter Aneem had just paired with Tern Doville, who was a

  fist-thumping law-and-order advocate within the Demos of the city.

  Under these illustrious eyeballs, the orderly had no choice but to

  tower up the charges against me, one on top of the other. I was able

  to yawn twice in the space of time it took him to announce them. It

  was only after hearing charges such as conspiracy to steal, stealing,

  handling of stolen property, loitering, public stupefaction, bringing

  one's employer into disrepute, and so further, that the charge of

  murder was introduced. I had no defence. Whether I meant it or not,

  someone had died because of my actions. The eyes of the law could see

  it no other way.

  I

  was indentured to a life in the labour camp. I had expected nothing

  less. My mother, someone protect her, was too beset with nervous

  trouble to attend the process. I would have been happier if they had

  wrapped me up in a length of carpet and thrown me into the Fluck. The

  outcome would be the same, only quicker.

  I

  thought I had died that day, but that day would come a year later,

  when I learned that my mother had succumbed to her nerves a week

  after my transportation to Pokey.

  Most

  people die only once. At the time of this writing, I have died three

  times.