Fly, little story! Be free!
***
Last Man Standing - Part One
A Short Story by Hyrum Zaragoza and Dianna Zaragoza
“…I am the master of my seat; I am the captain of my sole.”
– Invictus (Reupholstered)
Dallas had just gotten word of the unmitigated disaster of a
defeat in the Battle of Ethan Allan. Another old, independent company lost to
the New Republic Chair and Table Company.
There now stood only one imperious conglomerate, unmatched
by any company in the history of the nation. All of Texas and Oklahoma had
succumbed to their comfortable office chairs, their overstuffed recliners, and
now…their high-tech hovering leather-bound chairs, from which no customer ever
returned.
Office workers throughout the Southwest raved over the
convenience and maneuverability of both the earth-bound and hovering versions
of their chairs. One by one, furniture budgets stretched to accommodate the
demand of the hovering crafts, with handicapped access removed to make way for
progress and the future.
As the odd news report here and there at WFAA-TV noted the
rising number of strokes and heart attacks, private agreements were struck, and
those sufferers were quietly removed from their workplaces and left to
convalesce. However, since the demand was clearly growing, new chairs were made
that could easily convert to hospital beds. Now no physical transfer of the
body was necessary at all. Their obese and pasty skin rolled back and forth in
place in their chairs, now in theory from the beginning to the end of life.
Once-active children grew ever softer and fatter at their
desks at school. Physical education now consisted of games played by wheeled
and hovering children, while those who remained earthbound were shamed, and
pestered their parents until they, too, were wheeling or floating.
And those who floated were in a different class than those
who wheeled, having more options than forward and backward. They flew over the
cars in the street, over trees, over their neighborhoods. The random mid-air
collision or two were hushed over and compensated by the company to pay for
their silence. Not that anyone really needed to be bought off. Who would use
their God-given legs when walking, standing or running were now obsolete relics
of the ancient past? Man could fly.
Some resisted this overwhelming wave of seated technology
that stood poised to engulf the entire nation. Farmers and ordinary workers became
soldiers; people who obeyed the law in the past were now criminals, their blank
faces up on posters in every New Republic store, forced into hiding and using
their legs to run from battalions of floating police, accurate and deadly.
There were stories about a mysterious crowbar guy, who could
not be contained in a comfy chair. Not everyone wanted to relax in comfort,
apparently. But these tales were little more than Internet myth and legend, and
no one knew his name. Still, they gave strength to the resistance, which
bothered the company.
So the Rebel Knees, as this group was loosely called, were
systematically rounded up and subjected to chairs of their own. Confined to hours of soft
upholstery, watching scientifically-tested documentaries of craftsmen creating
chairs as they always had for generations, these admitted that they’d never
known what they’d missed. They’d come to a realization of how wrong they had
been, and wondered now how they’d ever thought of getting up in the first
place.
Even though the cultural war was largely over, there were
still pockets of potent resistance remaining. In the towns of Mesquite and
Balch Springs, only a few miles from defeated Dallas, the news was met with
sadness. As they met in their secret location, walking through the now defunct Town
East Mall in the early hours before opening bells and hovering, watchful mall
security, they talked amongst each other.
Their leader, General Arthur Culatio, whom his friends
referred to as “Artie”, had a determined look about him. “We can’t be made to bend
so easily. Send email to Dr. Eames – he may have engineered sixty-three hostile
corporate takeovers, but he’ll find us to be a double challenge.”
Every morning, foot marches were organized beneath the
venerable chair-man’s window, signs in hand, saying ‘More than one crook here’
or ‘We won’t grovel to the New Republic’ or even ‘New Republic – the arch-enemy’.
These unofficial and unwanted demonstrations broke up and scattered as soon as
the company’s security detail buzzed them.
On the morning of November 25, Black Friday, General Culatio
went to his office, and sat in consultation with a young couple who’d never
stood on their own two feet their entire lives. He sighed as he looked at the
smooth, perfect, useless appendages at the end of their legs, and wondered how
the world had come to this. Already his podiatry practice was shifting to only
the occasional sudden-use injury or random infection – his family suffered on
the edge of poverty now for the past seven years. His wife had been forced to
take a job as a postal worker, and since she had refused the hoverchair that
came with the job, had walked every day through much adversity, both natural
and cultural.
Then one day, she vanished on her route. Artie hadn’t seen
her for weeks.
Dr. Culatio opened the door to his office, and gestured to
Mr. and Mrs. Mankey, these two handi-capable patients of his, hovering silent
and expectant in his office.
“Go on – get out! There’s nothing I can do for you…”
“But you see, it’s this tickling sensation that feels like
ants under my skin…”
“You’ve brought it on yourself. Get out of your chairs and
start walking like your body is engineered to do.”
“What? That’s radical! I can’t believe you just said that!”
“Long live the Rebel Knees! We will not bend, we will not
yield!”
The Mankeys cowered in one corner of the examining room for
a moment as the General rose up in his passion, shouting out for all the listening
ears to hear, then whizzed out behind him as he turned his back and leaned in
weariness over his standing desk. As the front door slammed shut, he ran to his
receptionist.
“Dede! Quick! My secret’s out – the hoverchair patrol will
be here in minutes. Get my sneakers – the fast ones. Also those ski poles and
my pedometer. I’ll be getting a lot of steps in while I run. Also, text B and C
and also D (his eyes darted to the Mankeys listening just outside the front
door) – have them meet me at designated Location A for Operation Achilles. Tell
them to make sure no one follows them.”
Mrs. Mankey poked her head back in. “Are you sure we can’t
get some more of that nice eucalyptus medicated lotion we got last week?”
Artie was grasping at keys and documents. His time was
running out. “I haven’t got time for your nonsense today. Can’t you see? This
is a war for the soles of men. Ask Dede to arrange a prescription and I’ll see
you in two weeks. That is, if I’m still walking free by then.”
“Good luck, Doc…General.” Dede handed him his ski poles and
the small white step counter, and he was out the door in a flash, hindered only
by the hapless patient in the doorway who zigged instead of zagging at the last
moment.
***
Part Two tomorrow...
***
Part Two tomorrow...
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