It's the DU Dystopia Slam!

[Plaid Adder]

I can't be the only DU writer who's writing Bush-inspired dystopian satire right now.

So I'm curious to see what other people's dystopian versions of Mandate America look like, so I am proposing a slam: Grab 500 words or less out of your Bush-inspired dystopian story or novel and post them here!

Here's mine. It's from a novel in progress called *Redemption* and it takes place in a prison called the Ruthlin Redemption Facility.

**************
Kwenu glanced wearily up at the cameras, blinking at her from all the corners like black dislocated eyeballs. Probably there were cameras, and microphones too, where she couldn’t see them; but it didn’t matter. There was so much reflecting, intersecting, blurred and reverberating noise in the eating hall, thanks to its imposing but acoustically horrendous architecture, that no kind of surveillance equipment would ever be able to pull out a single thread of conversation and follow it. Kwenu had been the first to figure that out—that the cameras were there, mainly, to impress them all with the fact that they were being watched.

“Chandra says she thinks this is what that Lythril woman promised her,” Kwenu said, with a sigh. “Results.”

Malisha looked skeptical. Emme, on the other hand, looked excited.

“They say it’s dehicathana,” Emme said, smacking her lips over every consonant. “Six Correctors in one institution…that’s an epidemic.”

“You shouldn’t sound so pleased about it,” Malisha snapped. “We’ll get it too.”

Emme smiled. “Not if Chandra’s right.”

“Do you think Chandra’s right?” Malisha asked.

Kwenu put her head in her hands. “I don’t know. I don’t care.”

Malisha couldn’t pat her on the hand, or the shoulder, or touch her in any way, without inviting fire from the sureshots that everyone knew were stationed on the catwalk above the lights, hiding in the darkness with their eyes shielded and their RAFs trained on the prisoners below.

Kwenu looked up, hoping to find something above their heads in which she could take an interest. All she saw were the words marching around the band at the bottom of the vaults in the arched ceiling, gashed dark and sharp into the glare of reflected white light. _Repentance belongs to everyone, even the hardest among you. Repayment is possible for everyone, even the poorest among you. Redemption is within reach of everyone, even the wickedest among you._ The Ruthlin Corporation logo had been painted up there too, over the decorative medallions that separated the lines from the Book.

“Kwenu,” Malisha said, in that low urgent voice. “I really don’t think we ought to tolerate this, even if it is only a game in Chandra’s head. Do you?”

“What does it matter,” Kwenu groaned, leaning on one hand and dropping the other listlessly onto the table.

“What?” Malisha said.

“What does it matter?” Kwenu repeated, finding, somewhere, enough energy to raise her voice. “We have these meetings and take our votes and smuggle our messages and keep track of the outside on the palmweb and what does it matter? We’re still here, we’ll be here till we die, there’s not a thing we can do about it. We’ll always be here, forever, and you know what’s worse,” she went on, hearing her voice break but not caring.

“We were always in here to start with. There is no outside. They let us play around and think that what we did made a little bit of a difference to one or two people but we could never really change anything. You know the exterior walls of this building are eighteen inches thick? A hundred and sixty-four years ago these people were building prisons out of eighteen-inch slabs of solid stone. What the hell were we thinking, walking around in a nation with a place like this in it and believing it was a democracy?”

***********************************

Let the games begin,

The Plaid Adder

[erehwon2]

1. Back at ya

Hey PA, I've enjoyed your commentary and now I have had a chance to enjoy your fiction. Thanks for posting it. It appears you took your dystopian excerpt from a well developed context, and I look forward to seeing the character development before and after the exposition in your post.
Here's a bit I wrote trying to keep up with our ridiculous state of current affairs, but I fear it's no good: I can't keep up. It's sort of an updated Prisoner (the show from the 60's), and I hope someone somewhere can pick up the idea and run with it. It's called REALITY WORLD.

>>snip<<

6.
The you-are-here map was confined to the resort compound. Nothing beyond its borders was shown, there was certainly no indication of any exit.
Buck circled the building past the entrance to the private beach and soon came across the Outdoor Paradise, an air-conditioned fitness centre under UV-filter glass filled with puffing sacks of mayonnaise stretched on treadmills timed to buzz at the fabled fibrillation limit. Pumping away, burning more credits than pounds.
The TV music was the same on both the news and glossy lip channels, and through it Buck heard a firm voice announcing that we are “determinated to protract the freedoms that we owe to our children and their parents.”
Further down there was a smaller, less adorned path with a simple “Players Only” sign. It was a winding path, and after five minutes he couldn’t see any sign of the resort behind him. Soon he came to a checkpoint. On either side, much the same fence as the one around the airport; 20 feet tall and probably deadly. There were two guards, both heavily armed and clearly absorbed in the lipgloss channel. Apparently something happened on the screen to make them both abruptly stand up and take position.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“Perhaps. I’m looking for the way to the village.”
“You're not with the show?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Then you’ll need to proceed along the perimeter to the designated crossing. Please return to the main path and turn right.”
“Thank you.” You fucking cyborg.
He backtracked until he found the path and turned right. Just a few minutes later he faced a large ornate pair of tunnels, one marked In and the other Out. Between them was a large sign warning him in bold letters that he was leaving a safe area, keep your badge with you at all times, don’t drink the water, tip the waiters at your peril. He soldiered on regardless.
There was no one at the turnstyle. A quick glance through the window showed him the little booth hadn’t been used for some time. It had to be automatic by now; he looked for sensors. A couple of empirical attempts at waving the badge resulted in nothing but more dusty silence. Then, as if it had just reached an autonomous decision, the turnstyle clicked.
So it was more than a badge after all. Nice to have that settled. He passed through and walked to the end of the tunnel, where a wide street spread before him.

7.
It was Main Street. Gaudy awnings, bright balloons, a gazebo and a carrousel. Candy floss and sugared peanuts, a man on stilts raining chocolates to throngs of adoring adults, where were the children?
Buck ambled his way down three, four blocks and took stock. The streets spread out at an angle of 90 degrees precisely, each corner with a chubby, friendly Greeter. The commentariat on enormous 4-way screens agreed that all was well and the band played on with that same awful unmusic. Every hundred yards or so was a guard with the mirror helmet, posing silent with an AK-47 in ready position. Helicopters overhead. Banners over the rooftops: Freedom Is Our Profession!
He wandered down the crowded sidewalk, aware but unconcerned that he was the only person not in uniform and carrying his badge in his pocket. He noted the contents of the shop windows; soft drinks, brownies, glitzy kitsch. At the fourth corner he turned to the right to check out the side streets. Rows of wood-frame houses, brightly painted for the first quarter of a mile, then showing signs of deterioration and finally, toward the outer limit of the village, in the very shadow of the electric fence, these were mere shacks.
The glow of large TV screens emanated through greasy windows. A woman in dingy uniform emerged with a toddler, whom she sat in a puddle of stagnant muddy water. She craned her neck to view the TV through the open door, her face breaking out in a smile as the image of her child appeared for all to see.

[Plaid Adder]

3. Well, I haven't seen The Prisoner

but I think I have been to Reality World. Good and creepy, especially "FREEDOM IS OUR PROFESSION!" Fucking cyborgs.

Yeah, "well developed context" is pretty funny; the thing I quoted from is the 5th novel in a series, so no wonder it makes no sense. Here's something you don't need any context for, from a story called "Trees Do Not Grow To The Sky":

**********
Trees Do Not Grow To The Sky

It worried him that the muffin guy wasn’t there.

Warren looked around to see if maybe he had moved to a different spot. But everything was exactly as it usually was. Shining towers of bright stone and burnished glass still rose like polished but uneven teeth along both sides of Wall Street. All the skyscrapers were in their usual places. The sky was that wonderful brilliant autumn blue. Above the portal of Hintern & Woburg’s building, the white flagpole still jutted defiantly into the September air, with the red, white, and green snapping from its end. It was just the muffin guy that was gone.

Warren was pretty sure that he was standing on the exact spot that the muffin guy’s cart used to occupy. Traffic now flowed through the empty space. Warren stood like a rock in the stream, trying to remember.

He shifted his briefcase slightly in his grasp, perhaps just to remind himself that he was still carrying it, that he could still hold a solid object in his hands, that he was still standing on the concrete sidewalk outside the building that still housed Hintern & Woburg. That although the muffin guy from whom he had bought his breakfast every day for the past two years of his service had disappeared, he, Warren, was still there, all two hundred and fifteen solid pounds of him, filling out his heather-gray vestments and weighing down his black polished shoes.

In a week or less he would not remember that the muffin guy had ever been there. It was always like that after someone got smoked. At least it was supposed to be.

Already, as he passed up the steps and pulled open the heavy glass door, his mind was running ahead to the deadline he wasn’t going to make. The door closed behind him, trapping him in a glass box filled with the sun’s magnified heat. Then the sliding metal doors at the end of the vestibule opened, and he stepped into the proving room.
Once the doors shut the proving room was completely dark. Warren heard nothing, but he knew that one of the elders was silently moving into place, blocking the doors on the other side of the room. He could not see the elder and would never know which one it was. All their voices sounded alike.

Every house did it differently. Warren didn’t know how it worked anywhere else, except for the one house he had served in briefly before he was called to Hintern & Woburg. The brilliance of H&W’s tradition was in waiting for the adept to begin. A true believer shouldn’t have to be asked for the words. A true believer should simply know what to say—just as any elder should recognize the words of a true believer, even if they were not part of an established text.
Warren reflected quietly in the darkness. The unseen elder waited.

“Bulls make money,” Warren finally said. “Bears make money. Pigs get slaughtered.”

The elder paused. Warren thought he was probably nodding, but it was impossible to tell.

“Why are you willing?” said the elder.

Warren’s answer came back, prompt and clear.

“My name is Warren Parker,” Warren said. “My father’s father died at the work. The towers fall and the fathers die but as long as sons serve the work survives.”

Warren put his shoulders back, even though he knew that nobody could see him straightening up proudly, least of all the elder who was waiting impatiently to get back to the work.Warren went on.

“I am a Son of the Broken Line. This is where I serve.”

There was no acknowledgment of his faith, no word approving his worth. Just the doors at the other end sliding open to let him step through into the elevator shaft.

********************

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

[nostamj]

2. The Diary of Dan Frank

The Diary of Dan Frank

Outside Ithaca, NY. In the year of our Bush 2007

I know. Terrible joke. Black and bleak. How dare a queer compare his plight to innocent Anne. Truth? Never read it. Remember Shelly Winters in the movie. Right? It's been years. Never went for those black and bleak pictures.

But I'm a furious, frustrated, and frightened old fag. We say flip things like that when we're furious, frustrated, and frightened. Should I sing you the score to Jerry Herman's DEAR WORLD or amuse you with my Bette Davis impression?

Sorry. Can't.
Days without a cigarette: 107.
Days without a cocktail: 126.
Sorry. Can't.
A proper Bette Davis impression requires both a cigarette and a cocktail.

Imagine it. There are no gay bars left by now, surely. Nothing in the open. No piano bars where a bearded baritone belts out the Judy Garland songbook. No go-go boys with g-strings stuffed with singles. No gentlemen of a certain age surveying the working boys in the bleary hours.

I watched them remove the gay statues from Sheridan Square on the NewsChannel. Two couples in white plaster. No one could even show up and cry. You'd think that one, one last drag queen with visions of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion–(which happened just across the street)–would have shown up to toss a symbolic trash can or epitaph... (It's a prayer park now.)

But no. The 'lists' had been instituted. We had been out and proud. We had enlisted, marched, joined, donated and subscribed. And, we had been listed. New names crossed off every day. It's impossible to get a good haircut. Those who could, fled. Those who could not flee, hid. Or, were caught. Send to 'compassion camps' for healing.

I should be in Costa Rica (where everyone thinks I am). But, I hate to travel. Shouldn't I be pleased? Now, I can't travel at all. Legally. Can't even leave these rooms. My sister is too generous. Her husband is kind to a fault but his eyes betray his fears for their children.

My 'gentle' nephew must be coarsened, protected. He will never inherit my collection of show music. That was abandoned with the books and videos and... My entire gay life.

This morning I sat in the dark and tried to recall the original cast recording of HOW NOW DOW JONES straight through. Who can resist a Brenda Vaccaro musical? But I stopped at the suicide song. Oops. Forgot about that one.

For the record, I am not suicidal. For reasons somewhere between cowardice and curiosity, I'm not going that route.

Staying here is not possible. There are rewards, great and small, for those who assist in outing anyone from the 'lists.' Witch hunts for fun and profit! Hunting an endangered species! It's the new Lotto!

Oh, they laughed when I warned them. Mary! What are they going to do? Nuke San Franciso?

Of course, the nuke came to South Florida. By boat. In the frenzy that followed, any opposition to the 'lists' was seen as un-American. After film of the first protests, where it was reported that NG troops were fired on by the 'militants,' organized opposition became a deadly gamble that very few were willing to take.

Soon. My brother-in-law knows why I asked for the maps. Soon I will leave by night and try to find the underground. I hope they appreciate show tunes.

[Plaid Adder]

4. Wow, that's uber-depressing.

And not hard to imagine, either. Shudder.

Alas,

The Plaid Adder

[nostamj]

5. "not hard to imagine"

yeah, that's the UBER-depressing part... <sigh>

[patdem]

6. What great fear we have to look forward to...All of these are

frightening and wonderful at the same time! All this because of 130,000 people in Ohio!!!! That is indeed frightening!!!

Here is my humble offering ... I think, Plaid Adder, you are the one who introduced me to the meaning of the word dystopia..I have never heard of it before..

poverty

The rodents and roaches are attracted to it
they always find cavernous passages
into the walls of the run down tenements
and dilapidated dwellings.
They follow the path of least resistance-
those pests.
No expensive poisons laid in their way
but the sweet pungent smell
of yeast and barley beckons them welcome.
And they are here to greet me
when I too
join the ever burgeoning ranks
of the working poor -
paying more for less until I give all for naught.
Then what?
enlarge the holes and join the scavenger pests?
The sound of it surrounds me -
the car in need of a muffler-become-luxurious
rumbles it's way down the street.
My own car
endeavoring to sound like an aviary
under attack by an army of cats.
Human voices -
not of playful children's
unrestrained laughter
but of emasculated adults
begging to be heard -
even by the powerless.
And every night
the human inhabitants fight -
as if to proclaim their existence
each to the other
and their rising voices
take on the characteristics
of a heart monitor
attached to a corpse.
(loud, flat, hopeless)
the gunfire -
never followed
by the anticipated
sirenes-only cadavers are
favored with the blue light special
in these-
the hospice neighborhoods
where all those afflicted
with terminal poverty
can fill the back wards of the city -
inconspicuous,
unobtrusive.
Replete with pain killers
(cocaine, alcohol, crack)
and screams of the hopeless
and blood
and fear.