The Biomass Revolution (The Tisaian Chronicles) (6 page)

He pushed the thoughts of Lana and Varius out of his mind. Today his goal was to find something
; he just wasn’t sure what it was yet.

As h
e walked, he kept his eyes fixed on the aging brick street, the suspicious eyes of the impoverished following him. He was out of place; his dark black pea coat was new and expensive, not one easily purchased in the area.

Fortunately, t
here really wasn’t as much security guarding the border as there used to be. State employees rarely risked venturing to Rohania, and the Rohanians generally kept to their side of the city. Most people in Rohania knew their place. And the CRK had been forceful enough in the past to deter any citizens from Rohania from trying anything in the commons area. Thieves did risk burglaries in Lunia from time to time, but when the State made it a crime punishable by death, the number dramatically decreased.

A shiver crawled down his spine as he a
pproached the neighborhood he grew up in, the same wooden welcome sign creaking back and forth in the chilly breeze.

He stiffened and tucked his head deeper into his collar
, scanning the copper roof tops stained perpetually with white pigeon droppings. The past decade had camouflaged the shops and apartments with vines and fading paint.  Most of the windows were cracked and boarded up, empty except for the face of a child peering down at him like a ghost from the past.

Slowly
he made his way through the old town square, the heart of Rohania, and saw the boarding school he was educated in before the revolution began. The four pillars holding up its white stone roof were now cracked and broken, one of the pillars nothing more than a pile of broken white stone. A rusty sign hung loosely off the front of the building, peppered with bullet holes, but Spurious could still make out the name – The Rohanian Boarding School for Boys.

Spurious slid
his hands into his pocket and gazed at the sign, tucking his face back into his collar just in time to shield himself from a cold blast of wind. He shuddered, freezing, but did not move, his eyes locked on the old school house. The last time he heard the voice of his parents was also the last day he saw this place.

He could vividly remember
his teacher Elma, a little old demon of a woman with deep wrinkles and a nasty cough, coming to retrieve him from class and take him to the office of Superintendent Angelo. It was there, in that dimly lit room, he was informed half-heartedly of the untimely death of his parents. The next day he was shipped off to the Tisaian Academy for Youth. He had thought The Rohanian Boarding School for Boys was hell, but it wasn’t until he entered TAFY he truly understood what it meant to be miserable.

Another gust of wind
shook Spurious out of his trance. He was exhausted, freezing and petrified he would be caught, but now he knew he was close to his old apartment. Tucking his head back into his collar he pressed on, his walk turning into a jog down the narrow brick street.

He pushed his way through the citizens, ignoring their gloomy faces and disregarding the smell of
broiled cabbage filling his nostrils with every step. In the distance he could make out a market area where vendors displayed vegetables and fruits grown on rooftops and community gardens.

Spurious continued on, paying little attention to the shouts of the vendors who desperately tried to sell their goods. He would not let the noise of the crowd distract him from
his mission of finding the place he once called home.

The state of the buildings could not help but remind him of the refugee camp
he visited less than a year ago. The camp was called Halo by the State, but was known by the locals as The Inferno. Its purpose was to house all immigrants captured and awaiting deportation. The conditions at Halo were atrocious, and the State purposely built the camps far from Lunia, hiding the view from the State employees. Spurious had toured the camp to become familiar with the plumbing upgrades the State had commissioned to help mitigate the stench the camps created.

He
knew comparing Rohania to Halo was a considerable exaggeration, but he also knew many of the residents, especially those dwelling in the Boondocks, were not living to see the age of fifty. He’d seen the statistics himself in a report a few months ago. These few notorious blocks were a black hole, and he was being extra cautious not to drift into their dark alleyways.

By
mid-afternoon he was exhausted, struggling to make his way down the winding cobblestone streets. It seemed like he was traveling in circles.

Shaking his head
, he veered down one last street he hadn’t seen before, realizing he might never find his old flat where he had spent his youth.

He tucked his hands deep in his pockets, and surveyed the new alley for a sign from the past. And right when he thought about giving up he saw it — a metal door covered in two-by-fours.

His
calm stride transitioned into a jog as he made his way towards the door. Seconds later two gargoyle faces carved into the thick wood came into focus, their ugly faces barely recognizable behind the wooden boards imprisoning them.

Spurious stopped as he reached the door, raising his hand to the soft wood exterior and
running his fingers across the incredibly smooth impressions of the gargoyle’s faces. He remembered this place. It was the door he used to sneak out of when his mother had chores for him to do.

Finally, I’ve found it!

He paused, overcome with nostalgia. Moments later
, he was rushing back down the alley towards the front entrance, quickly noticing the red brick wall ended where he remembered the front of the building used to be. It was here a wall of white stone had been constructed and connected to the red brick of the old building. Puzzled, he took his first right onto a sidewalk, and looked up at what should have been the entrance to his old building. Instead, the same white stone wall towered over him; no door or windows, just stone.

His
eyes scanned the exterior of the building, stopping on the remnants of an old CRK poster flailing loosely in the wind. The ghostly blue glow of a Knight’s goggles stared back at him. It was the same image posted throughout Rohania and Lunia, one he was accustomed to seeing on a daily basis, but he read the words he had memorized nonetheless.

Do It for Your Future! Secure Your Spot in the World’s Last Honorable Army – Sign up for the CRK Today.

The poster, riddled with bullet holes, was in the wrong neighborhood. And its frayed edges implied it had been there some time. He shuddered at the propaganda, his eyes fixating back on the stone wall.

What was the State hiding?
The white stone appeared new, smooth and almost polished, like weathered bones. It was a clear error by whoever designed it, if their intent was to hide something. Or, it was a warning to keep away. Spurious wasn’t sure, but as he examined the exterior of the wall closely, he realized the material did not match anything he had seen in Rohania, which meant the State had hired a contractor to come in and build the wall to cover up the building.

Spurious plopped down on
a park bench across the street, studying the building, while questions raced through his head. He sat for what seemed like an hour, the urge to find a way into the building growing inside him. And yet he stayed, contemplating his past and watching the faces of strangers pass.

Ten years ago he would have recognized nearly every face, but now they were no different than the faceless Knights. He
realized it had been over ten years since he last saw Rohania. Up until today, he had no desire to remember the past, and especially not to revisit it. Yet for some reason, his conversation with Lana compelled him to seek answers to questions suppressed for years.

A group of children ran by him,
their laughter distracting him momentarily, and for the first time in the day he smiled. He remembered what it was like to be a child; to run and play and not have worries, and above all, to be free. The last time he felt any of those things he was living in the building across the street from where he sat, a building now covered by a mysterious stone wall.

A small piece of paper caught
his eye as he looked down at the brick street. His eyes followed it as it floated in the breeze, until it came to a stop next to his left boot. He reached down to pick it up, frowning as he realized it was just another advertisement for the CRK. In fact, it was the same image posted to the stone wall across the street from him.  The only difference was that the last sentence read “
Become a foot soldier.”

The
unmistakable sound of a loud speaker broke out in the distance, shocking Spurious from the bench. He instantly followed the noise, curious about the source. Carefully he maneuvered his way back into the crowd. He pushed through the patrons, catching the occasional sound of the loudspeaker in the distance. Standing on his toes, he tried to see over the heads of the people in front of him, but to no avail. A block later he came to the market area where his mother used to hunt for cheap food.

In the center of the cobblestone plaza
, a growing crowd gathered around a black truck bearing a CRK logo across its midsection. In the bed were two heavily armed soldiers, their machine guns pointed at the growing crowd.  Between the two guards, a man dressed in military fatigues handed out the same yellow flyers Spurious held tightly in his hand.

Spurious stood on his toes again, listening to the rhetoric spewing out of a loudspeaker mounted to the roof of the truck and into the desperate ears of the commoners.
The CRK never recruited in Rohania. At least not that he was aware of. If they needed soldiers then the war with the TDU wasn’t going as well as reported.

Spurious ducked behind a wooden trailer
full to the brim with tomatoes, realizing there could be Knights disguised as Rohanians combing the crowd for dissidents and State workers.

And yet he stayed, partly hidden from view,
peeking out from the protection of the trailer. His curious eyes followed the young men, who looked desperately in need of work, file into a line one by one.

“Sign up for the
world’s last honorable army!” the man from the pickup yelled into his mic. “Good pay. Time off. And food for you and your family,” he continued.

Within minutes Spurious had seen enough to realize Paulo was right. The State was lying to them about more than just the Wastelands. They were lying about the
Biomass Revolution.

He turned to head back the way he came,
tucking his chin back into his collar and diverting his eyes to the street. Everywhere he walked, he felt the eyes of curious observers burning into his back. And to make things worse he felt the sensation of someone following him. His suspicion intensified when he noticed a scruffy old man clearly on his trail.

Spurious rounded a corner, cocking his head just long enough to catch a glimpse of his follower. He looked to be about 60 years old, with a light grey beard latched to his face like a cobweb. He wore a ragged old blue coat riddled with holes.

At least I know this guy isn’t a CRK agent.

Relieved, he began to plan a route back to his apartment away from his new stalker. An hour passed and Spurious was still making his way quietly through Rohania. He checked the street number and saw he was almost back to the border. When he rounded the next corner he turned to see the same man discreetly hugging the walls of a building.

“Damn,
this guy doesn’t give up.”

It was getting late and Spurious knew if he wasn’t back in a few hours Anya would send an alert to the CRK.
And the last thing he needed was a visit from a Knight.

Overhead
, the distant sun began to disappear in the gray sky. Spurious pulled his chin out of his collar and gazed up at the tint of orange streaked across the horizon. He paused to catch his breath, watching a pair of birds hug the gray cloud line like dolphins catching a wave in the ocean.

He
shook his head, mindful not to let a distraction slow him down. At the end of the street he could see the alleyway he used to enter Rohania. He glanced over his shoulder and quickly scanned the street. His follower was nowhere to be seen.

A smile of relief crawled across his face, happy
the man had lost interest. He hurried towards the narrow alley, admiring the stone buildings one last time. The aging structures were plagued with vines, their green limbs attaching to metal pipes and loose gutters.  Rohania always reminded Spurious of the pictures he had seen of medieval Europe while studying art at the University of Tisaia, a year before they abolished the class. The area was designed to be a ghetto, housing as many people as possible. They were made almost completely of old stone and brick, constructed out of the rubble from the Biomass Wars.

A drop of water from a leaky rooftop plopped into a puddle in front of him
. The splash reminded Spurious of how poorly constructed the beautiful buildings were. The aging stone and oblique structures illustrated the division between Lunia and Rohania - the privileged vs. the impoverished.

As he turned down another street
, he realized how blind he had become. When had he stopped seeing the truth? He of all people should have known what the city had become, having grown up there. Within a decade the city had fallen into shambles, crumbling one building at a time, the citizens starving while the State workers and Tisaian politicians prospered in Lunia not a mile away. And it was then it struck him—the Biomass Revolution wasn’t just about energy, it was about greed. This was something he chose to ignore in the past. And it wasn’t the only thing he ignored. He had become so complacent he stopped questioning what lay beyond the gates of Tisaia. Paulo was right about everything.