Bug Paste
An original work by Ricky Daytona.
April 15, 2022
I awake to the silence of the city. My hands reach in vain for the light switch. I stumble out of bed, almost stubbing my toe, and click on the light switch. Nothing. Shit. I forgot that it’s a blackout between 8pm and 6am. That came from the new Permanent Carbon Savings Bill Sec 1104 that Justin Castro Trudeau announced last week. In conjunction with that came the new curfew schedule. For your safety, because allegedly the city isn’t safe after dark with no streetlights, so everyone has to stay inside. Apart from the “special movement permit” crowd. That includes the Freedom Korp who signed up to help enforce the regime. Membership of the Liberal Uniparty is a prerequisite, of course. I heard a rumour that they are allowed to go out to the wild greenspace to hunt for unauthorized movements. But it seems more of an incentive to join than anything.
I squeeze what’s left of my monthly supply of bug protein out of its grey tube and grab a liter of soy milk. It’s not much but it will get me to work and halfway through the day ahead. At least with the regime in charge, I’ve lost weight. “For my health”. But 110lbs ain’t looking too good on this big old frame of mine. I feel like dry skin hung over a metal clothes hanger. Breaking and cracking.
I ensure the blinds are closed, and click the UPS supply and bring the old 27” iMac to life. Still shiny and brand new looking. If anyone found out I still have this and didn’t surrender it to the EcoKorp it would be jail time for sure. I hear the fan kick in and then log into The Grid. Using a few codes and special access features I can access “The Hack”. A global communications system to support The Resistance. It’s hard to keep up to the changing security levels and constant attacks from security services, but after a minute the black screen starts to show brightly colored text. My mind goes back to the 1990’s every time I see this pattern. Memories of the old times, and of my life with Kathleen. Before the Uniparty and the ironically named Global War for Freedom.
Lines of text appear one after the other, updates from Resistance cells all across the world. The last few US red states report first. After the 2028 revolution in California, we now have port access to the west coast. The only one of its kind but it’s a start. The infrastructure is crumbling again, it was rebuilt but the sheer numbers of people moving there to sign up has overwhelmed it.
Serbia gives up an update, as the new hub for the European Freedom Party vying with Hungary for the leadership role, both fully backed by Russia and China. The attacks on France, Germany and the UK continue and the sanctions are sustained and holding strong. Reports of thousands of migrants from the UK trying to cross the Channel in search of food and freedom, and we see grainy footage from Free Belgium of a constant flow of new arrivals. Starvation was a weapon first used by the evil ones in 2022 so we feel justified in using it ourselves.
I scan the lines of text looking for a mention from Kathleen but I’ve seen nothing for 2 years. The last communication was a scrawled note carried to me by a delivery driver, saying “I’m still free”. That code means she’s still in jail after being one of the last protestors rounded up in Calgary. I tried to warn her it was coming. The detention centers were expanded for a reason. I remember the sunshine on her blonde hair, her smile and the sound of her laughter. Tears fill my eyes as I recall what life used to be like and I can barely read the screen now. I begged her to escape with me. I told her it was all futile. That victory was to escape intact and fight again in a different way. The rest of my family is in South America in the southern free zone, hers went back to Slovakia and are all helping in the fight against the tyranny of the Global Uniparty.
Nothing else of interest appears in the rainbow-colored lines of random text filling the screens except an update from Maxime Bernier who is a protected person under BRIPUCS law, a dissident voice now living in Brazil. He looks old now, the weight of the battle against the Liberal Uniparty has taken its toll but I still see the fire in his eyes and his fighting spirit. I see a snippet of a speech directed at the people of “the old Canada”. After the last every democratic election of 2028 it wasn’t long before the allegations of impropriety and fraud landed many opposition members in jail for wrongthink. Max was smart and got out just before the arrests. After that, Trudeau’s Uniparty were merciless in suppressing opposition.
A ray of sunlight creeps through the blinds and so it’s now time to make a move. The same move every day until I see Kathleen again. One day. I go to grab my coat and from the hallway and see The Eye looking at me. A dead lifeless metallic glass eye, inert until you put it on and enable it. I never bother. Of course, it’s not compulsory, but like everything else these days that the Uniparty announces, there are consequences for not wearing it. Denial of access to certain priority areas such as public transit. Politicians made a fortune from shares in The Hood, which The Eye is a part of. The other part being The Mask which is now mandatory anywhere outside your own home. For our health, we are told that it filters the new virus. I despise the thing like the Devil himself. It suffocates my entire being. I feel inhuman wearing it, but 90% of the population wears the entire apparatus. Collective safety now trumps personal freedom. I’m fortunate that my work only requires The Mask. Of course, all the better paid jobs always demand the entire garb even out here in the SubCities. I don’t think it’ll be long before the incentives become so great that everyone lives in the NewCities as has been the trend for the last 12 years. I never thought Red Deer would grow to 5 million people. But government policy can do that. And now almost all of the Alberta population lives in that Edmonton-Red Deer-Calgary corridor. All else is wildlands.
Down the elevator from the 5th floor. I exit past rows of pods, the lowest level of public housing the Uniparty offers. Into the street, spotless as usual since the hover drones fine anyone who drops litter. The air is surprisingly fresh since fossil fuel vehicles, smoking, and fast food were all banned a couple of years ago. I see the humanoids, mostly replete in their Hood. Grim-faced and forbidding. Their faces closed tight. An angular mass of humanity. They chase through the streets of Calgary. Head-first humanity. Pause at a light. Then flow through the streets of the city.
I don’t belong here. I’m not one of their kind. They’re barely human, a herd of drones, logged in to their Globo-Metaverse subscription, some are working while they’re commuting to work. Some catch the latest Uniparty broadcast. There’s no mention of the war in southeast Asia, or the resistance movement building across Europe. Finally, someone nudges me on my right side and then winks with his left eye. The code! We walk together and I shake his hand at the red walking light. That’s a $500 fine under the biosecurity laws of 2027. But he wears a long cape. I laugh out loud and he looks sideways at me. “Like a Jedi”, I whisper to him. “We are many” he replies. “I know you”. My skin goes cold, I feel a shiver and I feel dead inside. A trap, surely.
As the herd thins out, I see we’ve both taken a detour to the edge of the SubCity. Towards the fence and the no light zone.
“You’ll be late for work today” he says. “I have news for you”. The hairs on the back of my neck bristle. “Remember Ottawa” he asks me? “Of course, it was a terrible event” I say cagily. “Yes” he says, staring blankly through the fence. It’s not really a fence, more of an impenetrable 12-foot-high electrified wall. “Yes it was”. I stare through the fence at a distant tree, eyes watering. I remember Ottawa, one of the last bastions of broad protest before everything was crushed by laws, mandates, and orders. “It ended everything and started everything” I reply.
“It did indeed. They showed their true colours didn’t they?”. I hesitate for a moment. “They did, we all did.”
“She’s safe Michael, and she’s waiting for you”. I blubber, I mean, literally blubber, like a child, and grab the fence for support. “How, where?” I manage to ask while holding back the flow of tears and amid an almost complete emotional breakdown.
“In Brazil. She got out. She’s there now waiting for you. She’s on a farm with 20 others. And you have safe passage. We got you on a freighter leaving Kitimat tomorrow at 9.00pm. You’re now a deckhand with a union pass. Via Colombia, then overland. Venezuela is safe, we have the Chinese and Koreans there helping us”.
I cross myself, another offence under the Uniparty. My knees have gone weak and I can barely speak. “How can I trust you?” I ask.
“One question, Michael. Just one. What was it you brought to Ottawa from Kingston, from the guy with the red hair. Do you remember?”
“Yes” I reply, I remember. I go to speak and he beats me to it. “Water, Michael. A van full of flats of water for the protestors”. At that point I just can’t stop myself. Tears from my eyes spill down my jacket. He pulls back his hood and shows me a few locks of hair. Red hair. “John…..you old bastard you”.
“We need to go, Michael”.
“Can we honk on the way there?” We both laugh like we’ve never laughed before.
RIP Neil Peart. Influenced by The Camera Eye.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l5q7uH_0xk
An original work by Ricky Daytona.
