Work parties
It's grim up north
This is my ongoing scifi / fantasy / crime fiction serial. New chapter every week.
The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1980s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real
Previously: London is under martial law. Non-humans have been rounded up. Everyone is trying to survive.
London. Mid-Earth.
1980. May.
Thrankh could not remember a time when they were not tired. The reality of life within the walls of east London was one of desperation: for food, for security, for freedom. The rules were strict, and posters on every street served as ever-present reminders.
No flight.
No flame.
No fighting.
Every koth in the ghetto had clipped wings. For the most part an easily reversed procedure, often handled using equipment rather than surgery. The metal clamps of the early years had shifted to ropes and awkward harnesses. It would be trivial for a healthy koth to break their bonds, but there were no healthy koth remaining in London. Their energy had been left outside the barbed walls, such that few had the fitness to fly even if they wanted to, and motivation was in even shorter supply. Not when simply flexing one’s wings could get you shot in the head.
It was an alien experience, being ground-bound. Thrankh would sometimes dream of flight, of soaring above the rooftops, or swooping along the fields and hills beyond the city limits. All they saw now was the grey of east London, the carved-up wedge of land reserved for koth and aen’fa. Nobody had seen it coming, not really, and didn’t think much of the rehousing projects of the late-70s. Then the ‘protective’ walls started going up, and the regulations came in, and before anyone knew what was happening they had become an imprisoned population.
A fantasy played through Thrankh’s mind most days, of all of them rising up and smashing down the walls, or burning their oppressors to cinders. The aen’fa would come scrambling and leaping out of their confinement, and they would all of them flow across the city like a wave. They’d sweep aside the watchtowers and the searchlights and the surveillance vans, the guard units and the anti-flight turrets. Rushing upstream, they’d set the Houses of Parliament alight and bring the Joint Council tower crashing down.
None of them had the will for it. A spark had gone out.
Some of the luckier ones had got out already, accepted onto work programs elsewhere in the country. That was the only way out: to get selected and taken by train somewhere to the north, where the Mid-Earthers would give you a job and put you to work. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but it would be better than remaining in the crowded streets of the London koth zone. There was no food, no medicine. Diseases circled the cramped population, hunting the weakest. Children died before even leaving the nest. Getting out was always the best option, and any family members left behind would receive extra rations as recompense for your labours.
One day, Thrankh would get selected for a work party. They had to stay healthy and keep fit, enough to catch the eye of the work leaders. Outside of the ghetto walls, there would at least be the possibility of hope.
It was selection day. Volunteers lined up on the street, near the West Gate. In the watch towers and along the walls were armed humans, guns very visible. The strongest, most capable would be selected, while the weak remained in the city. The government-sponsored programme required koth who could work hard without dropping from exhaustion. Much of the local population was already too starved, too ill to be of use.
Thrankh muscled their way to the front, pushing through the crowd. They’d always been tall, even for a koth, and had been blessed with an array of horns and spikes that cut a dramatic silhouette. They’d not been noticed by the work party leaders on their previous visits, but the options available were thinning: all the biggest koth were already working up north, and of those left in London Thrankh was clearly a prime specimen. They had a good feeling that it was, at last, their time.
They stood straight, chin high, fighting back the weariness in their bones, forcing their eyes to be open and clear and eager. Ten years ago, Thrankh had been the leading athlete at their school — a mixed school, which had been unusual then, and impossible now. The teachers had talked of integration and multiculturalism and melting pots, had promised a prosperous future in which things got better, and koth and aen’fa and humans co-existed and supported one another.
Those teachers had ignored or been deaf to the calls from Earth First, for common sense and national identity and national security, the cries of invasion and replacement. Two worlds, existing simultaneously, until the tipping point and the election. Then everything had changed, faster than anyone could have imagined.
The prosperous future was now in the past, and so the work parties were all that remained. Thrankh stood to attention, like a soldier in an army, and stared straight ahead. Showing strength without appearing to be a threat was the key — they’d seen others pull it off, and be chosen for the journey.
A human male walked the line with a long wooden cane, jabbing at individuals. He drew closer, and Thrankh held themselves steady, breathing softly, being sure not to create an audible throat rattle. The humans didn’t like that. It was a fine line of acceptability.
The cane jabbed into Thrankh’s chest, and they nodded and smiled. At last! It was their turn. They’d board the train the same day, be able to nominate someone back in the city to send wages to in the form of food coupons, and then they’d be out in the countryside, beyond the smog of London, breathing fresher air and doing real work.
The train pulled into the single station inside the walls that still operated, albeit only for permitted work journeys. It was a long train, pulling carriages that were little more than corrugated metal boxes, strung together. There were no seats, no furniture at all. They were packed thirty to a carriage, which was physically almost impossible given the relative size of the space and the average koth’s bulk.
Thrankh found themselves pinned into a corner between two even larger comrades, leg trapped in an awkward position for the five hour ride as the train left the city and headed north, into the hills and through valleys and across bridges. There were no windows, but a row of small cracks and holes in the metal casing afforded Thrankh a sliver of a view of what was outside.
The temperature inside the box car soon increased to a level that would be dangerous for humans or aen’fa. Less of an issue for koth physiology, but that didn’t stop it from being deeply uncomfortable. The metal wall that Thrankh was pressed up against also started heating up, presumably from the glare of the sun.
On the train rumbled, the vibrations working their way deep into Thrankh’s skin and bones. The humans were shipping them across the country like cattle on the way to market.
One day, this would all end. They would pass out of the times in which they found themselves, and would be free once more. That’s what Thrankh thought about when failing to get to sleep each night, kept awake by cries and wailing and anguished, stifled roars.
They would never have tolerated this, a decade ago. Equal citizenship had always been far off, but the Mid-Earthers had always had an irrational fear of the koth. That had been half the problem, of course, but it had at least afforded them a certain grudging respect. Whatever that had been, it had evaporated overnight when Prime Minister Maxwell and his thugs had been elected. It was the human population shouting GO HOME in unison; except the portals were closed, and most of them could not return home even if they had wanted.
Time became skewed and slippery in the train carriage, but the journey did eventually end. The side doors were lifted up, hinged at the top, light blazing inside. Thrankh squinted against the glare, trying to get a sense of where they were.
“Everyone out!” came the order. There were humans, lots of them, armed and in a mixture of army and paramilitary uniforms. Earth First had its own militia, the Human Front, because apparently having control of the country’s official military force was not enough.
Thrankh jumped down, their legs nearly buckling beneath them. They leaned over and rubbed the muscles, trying to wake them up after being cramped in a single position for so long. They were on a grassy elevated heath, with what looked like the wide depression of a quarry up ahead. They’d be digging and transporting, then. There were worse jobs — even if it required underground mining, that was no bother for koth.
Looking over to one of the guards, Thrankh raised a hand. “When do we get to nominate who receives our food tokens?”
The guard ignored them. “Keep it moving.” They did as they were told, hundreds of them tipping out of the train carriages and shuffling towards the edge of the quarry. Straight to work, then. No hanging about.
Having been at the edge of the carriage, Thrankh was one of the first to reach the lip of the quarry. There were already koth below, lining the ridges down to the excavated base level.
“Line up,” came the shouts. “Spread out. We need to do an assessment.”
They did as they were told, Thrankh’s main concern being to avoid falling over the edge in the push and scrum. There was an acrid smell in the air, which they couldn’t quite place. Perhaps from whatever was being dug out of the quarry.
There was some nervous laughter, several apologies, while they shifted about trying to line up in an orderly manner as instructed. There was an energy, an anticipation, that was very different to the endless drudgery of surviving in London. That sensation, of new possibilities, was something Thrankh would remember for the rest of their life.
“Hold it there,” shouted the human in charge.
Thrankh cleared their throat, looked down at their feet, to make sure they weren’t about to tumble over the edge. Glancing behind them, down into the quarry, they tried to make out what the workforce was doing. Perhaps it was break time, or the workers had paused activity due to the new arrivals, but there was very little activity. Many of the koth in the quarry were lying back against rocks, sleeping or taking in the sun. Not a bad way to spend the day.
Another shout. “In positions!” It was odd, because they were already lined up as instructed.
“Take aim!”
A hush fell over the assembled koth.
“Fire!”
An eruption of smoke and flame, accompanied by staccato shots echoing out across the quarry in rapid succession. The sounds bounced back from the opposite side, dazzling Thrankh. There was shouting, and someone fell into them, and there were more bursts of machine weaponry, and the oddest thought occurred to Thrankh: They are shooting us.
They were dimly aware of koth falling over the edge of the quarry, tumbling end over end to the rocks below, and then something hit them in the arm, then the chest, then the leg. It was like being punched, repeatedly, and the pain kept coming, a red-hot fire that built up within. It felt as if one of their plasma sacs had been ruptured, the crippling sensation spreading out to their limbs, and down their tail. Still, the guns fired, and their head snapped back as if pulled by a puppet’s string. Thrankh’s vision smeared, and they blinked, and realised that their right eye was no longer working. A hand put to their face pulled away rivers of blood. Staggering backwards, first one foot and then the other slipped over the edge, and they were dropping like a stone, clipped wings flexing uselessly against metal restraints.
It was a silly thing to have happened, really. The humans were so weak, after all. Thrankh smiled briefly, then they hit the rocks and their skull emptied into the pooling blood flowing to the base of the quarry.
Meanwhile.
I watched this video yesterday and can’t quite get over it:
Rob Bredow from ILM delivers a really encouraging talk about the marrying of technology and artistry, of how visual effects have always been a their best when using a mix of old and new techniques. Artists + engineers = magic. It’s a great TED talk! It builds up to the showing of a test reel demonstrating how AI can be put to use by artists…and it’s absolutely awful.
Mind-bogglingly awful. Sure, it’s technically accomplished, as with most AI images and video, but there’s no real action: the animals don’t do anything. There’s no intentionality, no A to B.
It’s worse than that, though. The video is presented as a wildlife scout set in the Star Wars universe, yet has none of the imagination and top tier, internally consistent production design we expect from the series. It’s all Animal 1 + Animal 2 lol, with no real conceptualising or art direction.
In other words, it’s the perfect example of why AI generation is rubbish. Presumably that wasn’t what Bredow was going for, yet here we are. Very, very weird, and hideously embarrassing for all involved.
Moving on.
I’m judging the Lunar Awards! It’s quite the honour to be asked and I am very much looking forward to digging into the stories. If you write science fiction and would like to enter the competition, the details are here:
Elsewhere, if you’re publishing your own stories, this makes for an encouraging and exciting read:
Ever since I started writing this newsletter there’s been a constant back-and-forth about the newsletter subscription model, and how it’s unsustainable and fundamentally flawed because readers can’t afford all the subscriptions they want. I’ve yet to see meaningful evidence of this. This piece sums up my thoughts rather neatly:
Right, let’s talk about today’s chapter…
Author notes
Unsurprisingly, I didn’t enjoy writing this week’s instalment.
This and last week’s chapter serve two purposes. They have created a bit of a time jump and a bit of space between the museum heist and what comes next, giving our lead characters a chance to progress plans somewhat. And they also serve to show the situation on Mid-Earth, and in England specifically, which has developed largely off-screen. Today’s chapter and Zdan’s diary remind us of the stakes, and of what Clarke and the others are fighting for (whether they know it or not!).
Practically, writing these two chapters has also given me extra time to fine tune the main chapters that are coming up. While I’ve always had a good sense of Triverse’s ending, I needed to add detail and clarity to specific events, and make sure that all the relevant plot points marry up. Hence I’ve been doing a lot of pen and paper mapping:
There are more pages, all connected in this slightly mad flowchart style. I’ll write about that process down the line, once it’s no longer spoilerific.
What it meant was not being quite ready to dive in to the BIG STUFF. So today’s chapter was another opportunity to push that down the road slightly.
As for inspirations — history unfortunately has plenty of examples of this sort of thing. I’ve been listening to Origin Story’s two-parter on Partition, which is well worth a listen:
Horrific events take place in any war zone or internal conflict, and you don’t have to look far to find real life examples of more-or-less exactly what happens in this chapter.
There’s a discomfort there, in both the reading and the writing. Am I being exploitative by writing a chapter like this, transposed into a fantasy setting with dragon people? Am I appropriating history so as to enhance the entertainment value of my fiction? I’m not sure. What I hope I’m doing is using science fiction and fantasy to explore real world issues, in ways that provoke positive discussion.
It’s a tricky one.
I’ve said before that my fiction is optimistic. Hope is at its core, even if extremely bad things happen along the way. Today’s chapter is unusual in that it is entirely hopeless. What happens here is awful, and there’s no relief, no rescue, no silver lining. That’s something I struggle with immensely: that while I believe there is always hope, and a way forward, and brighter days ahead…it’s not for everyone. Many won’t live to see it.
Thanks, as ever, for reading.
Jumping in a random point and it just happened to be this one 😳. I can see how this would have been a difficult write. It was a difficult read, but I’m guessing a necessary one.
One thing that struck me was that even though this was a single episode there was enough to make it a complete story even without having read any other chapter. Great work. Really well done.
I know I've plunked myself down in the middle of this, but if this scene opened a novel, I would buy it. The story produced uneasy emotions and fear right away.
So good.