A Short Story
Favel only wanted to be left alone. She was content to push her shopping cart around, ignore the other homeless, and stay out of the way of the City’s upper class. But when her friend gets involved in a revolution against the City, she’s thrust into a conflict she wants no part of. Can she protect her friend, and herself, from the City, it’s Sentinels and atom blasters, or will she disappear as so many of the lower class do?
Average Reading Time: 15 – 21 minutes (about 5,300 words)
Fantastic Goulash in the Streets
Chuck Heintzelman
Copyright © 2011 by Chuck Heintzelman
Favel pushed the shopping cart containing her fake possessions into the alley next to the warehouse. She looked for a window to watch the gathering. If she couldn’t find one then Jesper could tell her about it afterward. One thing was certain, no way was she going to join dozens of Lowers in a confined space and be trapped like rats. Why make it easy for the Uppers to disappear them?
She could hear the speaker’s muffled voice, Mr. Grady, the vegetable merchant from the Eastside Market. Each week he brought goods from country farmers to the City to sell or barter from his market stand. He was a good man. A generous man. More than once he’d given Favel and other dwelling impaired damaged merchandise. Nothing wrong with a bruised melon or misshapen squash, but the Uppers wouldn’t touch them. Uppers were too good for anything but perfect produce.
The crowd inside the warehouse cheered. Once they quieted down Mr. Grady’s muffled voice continued.
Shadows created too many hiding places in the alley. Favel was on high alert, ready to bolt at the first sign of ambush. Her cart contained nothing valuable, well not much anyway. She’d miss the atom cooker, but the cart’s items were bait more than anything. If attacked, she’d abandon the cart, the attacker would search its contents, rifling through papers and cans and boxes of garbage she collected, allowing her time to escape. Lord knows she had left it behind more than once.
Some women were attacked for their bodies, but that wasn’t an issue with Favel. She wouldn’t let herself get pretty and she had a secret weapon, cheese. Stinky Grouden Cheese to be precise, the foulest smelling cheese in the City. She always kept a chunk in a pocket of her patchwork overcoat. She couldn’t even smell it anymore, but people on the street gave her a wide berth. Just the way she liked it.
She eyed the fire escape attached to the warehouse’s side. The rusty contraption looked ready to fall if a strong wind hit it. The ladder’s bottom rung hung a couple feet out of reach. If she climbed up on her shopping cart she’d be able to reach it. Second story windows just might allow her to see the goings on inside.
She pushed her cart against the brick wall under the fire escape and locked the wheels. Then she climbed over the handle, careful not to tip the cart. She stood in the basket, feet mashing the contents, and grabbed the ladder second rung from the bottom.
When she put her weight on the ladder, it groaned and squeaked and lowered three feet. Favel looked around, worried the sound may have attracted somebody. Nobody around. The crowd inside must have drowned out the noise.
She climbed up ladder to the second story landing.
The window over the fire escape was locked or painted shut and blacked out so she couldn’t see through it. She leaned out as far as she dared, trying to look through an adjacent window. She could see into the warehouse, down into a cavernous room. Mr. Grady stood on crates, addressing a crowd of at least a hundred.
Favel put her hand against the rough brick, bracing herself. She watched and listened.
“Why should we fear the Uppers?” Mr. Grady asked. “There’s more of us than them. We could overpower them.”
“They got the Sentinels,” someone answered.
“True,” Mr. Grady said. “But let me ask you, if the Sentinels were not a problem, would you be with me?”
Favel felt a warmth creep down her neck. They were talking revolution. If the Uppers discovered this meeting, the whole building would be wiped out. She climbed back down the fire escape, grabbed her cart and ran toward the alley’s entrance, pushing the cart in front of her. On the main street she turned left to avoid going in front of the warehouse. One cart wheel spun circles as she pushed it, creating a drag, but it didn’t slow her down. She crossed the street and went another block before stopping in front of a brick building.
What were they thinking? You can’t assemble publically and talk about overthrowing the Uppers. That was a one way ticket to disappear. Hopefully Jesper would wise up and leave before it was too late.
She felt the rotors before hearing them, a dull but rapid thump-thump-thump. Sentinels. Favel pushed her cart out of sight around the corner, stopped, peered back around the building, and watched the warehouse.
In front of the warehouse two Sentinel ships descended, clear bubbles with large spinning propellers on either side, like wings. The props rotated, providing vertical or horizontal thrust as needed. The bubbles each could hold three Sentinels.
Favel watched as three Sentinels exited the first ship, humanoid metal forms, a mockery of real humans. Two Sentinels exited the second ship. For the briefest second Favel was tempted to not watch, to continue down the street, but morbid fascination kept her focused on the scene.
The five Sentinels formed a line and marched toward the warehouse entrance, arms extended. Each arm contained a weapon, an atom blaster. Or maybe a laser. Favel didn’t understand the technology.
The Sentinels marched forward in unison. A bright red light flashed from one of the Sentinels, and the warehouse entrance disappeared, replaced by a smoky haze.
Then, as one, the Sentinels fell forward, crumpling on the street, almost as if a magic off button had been depressed.
Favel stepped forward from around the building, staring, not understanding what had happened.
Several people rushed out through the hole that had been the warehouse entrance. They went to each Sentinel and pried a box from its chest.
“All clear,” one yelled.
Mr. Grady exited the warehouse. He spoke, but Favel couldn’t make out the words. The people who had pried the boxes from each Sentinel’s chest boarded the ships. The ships rose straight up and disappeared from sight.
What the hell is going on? Favel thought. She grabbed her shopping cart and hurried away from the warehouse and pile of dead Sentinels. When the Uppers struck back, the warehouse would be vaporized and she wanted to be away when it happened. Far away.
~
Favel and Jesper sat inside a white plastic cube, one of hundreds, lined in rows in the free shelter area. The Uppers, in a brief moment of humanity, provided them for the homeless. Of course, six foot cubes with walls an eighth inch thick did little more than provide relief from the rain and wind.
“Mr. Grady is so smart,” Jesper said, through a mouthful of bread, gravy sliding down the grey stubble on his chin. He wiped his face with the back of his shirt sleeve. “I heard someone say he even reads books.”
“Really?” Favel said. “I wonder where he gets them. Last book I saw was months ago at the Eastside Market.”
“I don’t know, but it’s got to be true. He’s so smart.” Jesper tore off another chunk of bread and dipped it the saucepan of gravy Favel had warming on her small atom cooker. “This tastes wonderful. What’s in it?”
“I got it from Meadows. You don’t want to know what’s in it.”
Jesper shrugged and continued wolfing down the soggy bread.
“What I want to know,” Favel said, “is what disabled the Sentinels?”
Jesper shrugged again. “Just some box he had with a big red button on it.”
“Well I don’t care if he has a magic box. It won’t protect him from the Uppers. You shouldn’t get caught up in his mess or you’ll end up in jail, too.”
“Naw. It’s not like that. See, Mr. Grady has it all planned out. He has thousands of people to help him all over Eastside. They can’t wipe us all out. Then what would they do? Clean their own toilets? Pick up their own garbage? That’s the thing. Mr. Grady says the Uppers need us. They just don’t want us knowing they need us.”
Favel considered this. Maybe, but it didn’t pay to stir things up. She removed the saucepan from the cooker, setting it on the plastic floor, and turned off the cooker. The surface instantly cooled. She wrapped the cooker in an old shirt, stuck the shirt in a cereal box, and packed the cereal box back into her shopping cart.
“What does Mr. Grady want?” she asked. “I mean why is he doing this?”
“He says the Lowers should take part in the government just like the Uppers. We should be able to vote.”
~
The next morning pounding on the outside of her cube woke Favel. Without a back door you were trapped. She hated sleeping in the cubes, hated being around so many people, but it was safer than sleeping outside.
Annoyed she unlocked her door and peered out.
Bane, a tall, skinny, annoying homeless with a handlebar mustache shouted “They got him.” Bane couldn’t talk in a normal voice. He always yelled, but this time he actually screamed. He moved to the next cube, pounding on it.
Favel stuffed her bedding, a ragged sleeping bag, into her cart and went to see the cause of the commotion.
Jesper saw her and ran toward her. “They arrested Mr. Grady. They also got the men who took the Sentinel ships.”
“I told you,” she said. “Best not to get involved.”
“It’s on the screens. They got him saying it was wrong to go against the system. That the only way a system works is if each part does its job. They’re going to fast track a trial.”
Favel snorted. “Right. He’s already been found guilty. They’ll just put on a show to make it look good. You ask me, he’ll be tried, found guilty, and locked up before the week is out.”
She was right. Almost.
~
Later that day Jesper caught up with Favel at the Eastside Market.
Cars seldom traveled the Eastside streets. Most traffic was on foot, but a fair amount of bicycles and tricycles, both human powered and atom powered, wove in and out through the pedestrians. The City had closed off the Eastside ten years prior, allowing access only through monitored points. Over 90% of the traffic through these points were workers going to work and coming home after a long shift. Since being sequestered from the rest of the City, Eastside had become sort of a city within the City. Most people referred to this area as Eastside or simply the East.
The Eastside Market was the main point of commerce throughout Eastside. Vendors had tables and booths set up in a two block area which had a tall wooden fence around the perimeter. Favel sat at her normal spot, the curb across street from the market’s entrance, where she had a mostly unobstructed view of two different waste receptacles. She had disabled the incinerator on each and when she noticed a receptacle getting full or if she saw any other homeless lingering near, especially that blasted Bane, she’d rush over, empty the receptacle into her basket to dig through later.
“You hear?” Jesper asked. He sat on the curb next to Favel.
“I hear lots,” Favel said. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
“About Mr. Grady. His trial starts in the morning.”
“So?”
“So it’s going to be on the screens. A lot of people from Eastside are going to watch it from the park.”
“Okay,” Favel said. She spotted Bane walking casually, as if he had no destination in mind, but he was inching closer to one of her waste receptacles. “What does this have to do with me?”
“You want to go watch the trial with me?”
“Are you kidding?” Favel asked, keeping an eye on Bane. “It’s all for show. Why would I want to watch any of their propaganda?”
“But Mr. Grady’s one of the good ones. He was nice to us.”
“So? Lots of good people end up worse off the Mr. Grady. He was stupid. Look what he got. No upside to being nice. You got to watch out for yourself or something bad will happen to you.”
“Like your parents?”
Favel glowered at Jesper. She was not going to discuss her parents. “Mr. Grady isn’t watching out for you. You’re a chump if you think so.”
Jesper stood. “Sometimes you can be a real jerk.” He stomped off.
Bane pulled an armful of trash from a waste bin and sprinted away, leaving a trail of litter behind him.
~
The next morning there was a general exodus from the cubes to the park. Favel hung back and watched everyone leave. She decided to follow. Not that she cared about the trial, but there was no sense going to the market. Nobody would be there today.
Eastside park is a large rectangle, over fifty acres big, crisscrossed with paths and ringed with trees and bushes. An artificial stream meandered through one side, but the water had been turned off long ago. The grass had died, replaced by weeds. In the center of the park was an amphitheater. At the amphitheater’s bottom, on the stage, was a huge screen, the only thing in the park maintained by the City. After all, they had to keep the propaganda flowing.
Favel entered the park just far enough to see the crowd assembled before the screen. The homeless were there, sure, but many others had showed up. Factory workers, janitors, plumbers, auto mechanics, manual laborers of all types, the people who performed the jobs the Uppers didn’t want to do and couldn’t easily automate. They were the unwashed mass that kept the City running.
Favel had never seen this many people gathered together. The amphitheater overflowed, people stood ringed around the top, ten deep. She couldn’t have seen the screen if she wanted to. Not that she wanted to. Not really. She’d be able to hear the broadcast, which was more than enough to satisfy her curiosity.
A loud voice boomed “Hear ye. Hear ye. This trial will now come to order.”
The crowd’s murmur decreased to a smaller din.
“We have before us case DP1-405G, the case of The City vs. Mr. Anthin Grady. The Honorable Justice Cackett presiding.”
Favel tuned out the announcer’s voice and became lost in her own thoughts. Maybe she should just go. What was she hanging around for anyway? Did she really care what happened to Grady? He was a good man, just misguided if he thought he could change things. She couldn’t help him. Sticking around to listen to this farce of a trial was the same as watching emergency services when they came to haul away a body that had died in the cubes. You knew what was going to happen. It wasn’t going to be pretty.
She left.
~
Jesper caught up with her a few hours later. “They’re going to kill him.”
“Really?” Capital punishment was unheard of any more. Much easier to stick someone in jail, cubes of a different sort really, and forget about them.
Jesper’s head bobbed up and down. “Yep. Said inciting violence against the City was treason. They’re executing him in the morning.”
“Wow. I didn’t think they’d go that far.”
“And the crazy thing,” Jesper said. “They’re doing it here?”
“What?”
“They’re having a public execution in the park. Going to broadcast it live.”
Favel scratched her head. “I guess they want to scare everyone to keep this from happening again.”
Jesper rubbed his eyes with the palms his hands. “Can you go with me?”
“You know I don’t do public things.”
“Please Favel. Just this once.”
“I got my principles. A person’s got to have principles.”
“But I don’t know if I can handle watching it by myself.”
“Then don’t watch it. Why torture yourself? And you won’t be by yourself. I’m sure there’ll be hundreds, if not thousands, there with you.”
“I kind of have to go.”
“Why?”
“Because …” Jesper paused, looked distantly in the sky as if trying to see something far away. “I can’t explain it.”
“Well I don’t understand why you’d want to torture yourself?”
Jesper looked her in the eyes, something he never did. “Please. I need a friend with me.”
Favel sighed. “Okay.”
~
For some inexplicable reason Favel allowed Jesper to talk her into camping out in the park, sleeping on the first row, a long bench cut into the hillside. All the seats were carved into the side of the hill. She had her sleeping bag, but left her shopping cart with Cap, a homeless man she trusted. She didn’t know if his name meant “captain” or if he was called Cap because of the hat he always wore.
Several dozen people, not all homeless, slept in the amphitheater, staking out their spots.
People started arriving shortly before day break. They came in singles and small groups, straggling in, a mish-mash of Eastside people. Favel didn’t expect any Uppers. They wouldn’t lower themselves to sit among the Lowers.
The theatre was a quarter full when the Favel heard the thumping of arriving ships. The crowd quieted, entranced by the ships. The first two ships were Sentinels. They landed a short distance away from the crowd. Six Sentinels, shiny metal bodies reflecting the morning sun, marched to the amphitheater. Five of them spaced themselves around the perimeter, one stood on the stage, facing the crowd.
Favel elbowed Jesper. “Let’s get out of here.”
He shook his head. “No. You promised.”
“This feels like a trap.”
“You’re being paranoid. As usual.”
Favel chewed her lip, trying to decide whether to stay with Jesper or not, when the next ship arrived. It wasn’t like the Sentinel ships. No rotors, no visible means of propulsion. It was small, the size of an automobile. It landed on the right side of the stage and doors on each side of the ship opened, like a great bird raising its wings. A woman, dressed in grey, got out of one door. A man, also dressed in grey, exited the other. Favel had never seen these two before but knew at a glance they were the lowest of the Uppers, Bureaucrats. After the Bureaucrats, two extremely large men got out of the ship carrying a box large enough to hold another man. These men wore orange jumpers. Prisoners. Probably used as free labor.
The prisoners sat the box on the stage’s left side. Then they went to the large screen in the middle and pushed it back. The screen glided back, far upstage, out of the way for what was to follow.
While the prisoners pushed the screen upstage, the Bureaucrats went to the box. Favel had half a notion Mr. Grady would be in the box. Stupid idea, but it looked like a coffin. The man opened the box and removed a metal rifle. He detached the rifle’s butt, which he tossed back into the box.
The Sentinel clopped across the stage to the man.
The man handed the rifle, which now consisted of only the barrel and forestock, to the Sentinel, who twisted the rifle onto one of its arms. The man fetched a large magazine from the box and handed it to the Sentinel, who clipped it into its gun arm. The man and the Sentinel crossed the stage to the ship, stood backs to it, and faced across the stage.
“They’re going to shoot him?” Favel asked Jesper. The seriousness of the situation caused her to whisper.
“Yes.”
“That’s horrible. I thought with executions they just gave you a shot and you went to sleep.”
Jesper shrugged. “You end up dead either way.”
“This is so barbaric. They’re not even going to vaporize him. They’re going to put a bunch of holes in him.”
Jesper shrugged again.
The woman Bureaucrat closed the box’s lid and called the prisoners over. She had them move the box, just a little, maybe a foot downstage. When finished, the prisoners went across the stage and stood behind the ship. The woman fiddled with the box and a seven foot high curtain sprung up along the box’s left side.
Noise prompted Favel to turn around. While the Bureaucrats had been setting up the spot for the execution, two things had occurred. The amphitheater was now almost three quarters full and the news had arrived. So focused had Favel been on the stage that she hadn’t noticed the other arrivals. Newswoman Wendy Heart, “the Voice of the City,” worked her way down the center aisle toward the stage.
Favel rolled her eyes out of habit. The woman’s phoniness irked her, fake blond hair teased up to three times it’s natural height, fake eyelashes, fake tan, fake boobs, but worst of all was her fake sincerity. Couldn’t people see through her? Why so many adored her was a mystery.
A cameraman trailed Wendy Heart, his head covered by a large silver helmet with a single telescopic eye protruding out the front. A small man followed the cameraman. The small man wore headphones with a small microphone extended on a wire in front of his mouth and he carried on an animated conversation with somebody as he walked.
Wendy Heart went to center stage and checked her face with a small mirror. The cameraman knelt on one knee a few feet in front of her. The headphone man issued instructions to both of them before disappearing off stage.
Wendy Heart smiled, a fake smile, nodded, and looked at the cameraman. She talked into a large, black microphone held below her chin. “Citizens. Today we are broadcasting the execution of the traitor, Mr. Anthin Grady, convicted of crimes against humanity, crimes against the City, treason, inciting a riot with intent to cause harm, and another dozen offenses. Capital punishment is only used with criminals who have committed heinous acts such as these and when the criminal has no possibility for rehabilitation.
“Yesterday, five independent, certified physiologists confirmed, unanimously I might add, that Mr. Grady is beyond rehabilitation and capital punishment is not only warranted but indeed would be an act of mercy for poor Mr. Grady.”
Jesper whispered to Favel. “This is insane.”
Favel nodded.
Wendy Heart continued. “As is every citizen’s right, even a citizen so fundamentally flawed as Mr. Grady, the choice on the manner of execution is up to the citizen. Mr. Grady chose death by firing squad.”
“Bullshit,” someone yelled from the crowd.
The cameraman spun and focused on the crowd.
“If you’ll look here,” Wendy Heart said, pointing to the Sentinel. The cameraman turned back around and focused on the Sentinel. “We have a Sentinel to perform the execution. The City hasn’t used firing squads in well over a hundred years, but to grant Mr. Grady’s wish they have outfitted the Sentinel with an old fashioned weapon which fires single projectiles using gunpowder.
“Please show the weapon.”
The Sentinel raised its arm.
“Now, just arriving is Mayor Trebold and several dignitaries.”
The camera man turned and tracked the mayor’s progress down the center aisle and up to the stage. Three others followed him, all men dressed in suits. They crossed the stage, to the right, and stood forward of the ship. The mayor had a grim, serious look on his face.
Wendy Heart went to the mayor. “Would you like to say a few words?” She extended her microphone to him.
“Thank you Wendy. Let me just say this is a solemn, solemn occasion. I consider it a failure of our society to be at this point. We must strive to work harder, be better. My administration is hard at work to see this type of societal lapse does not occur again.”
The crowd murmured.
“But,” Wendy said, “you could have stayed the execution.”
“Yes indeed. I gave the matter grave consideration. Especially, since this is an election year.” The mayor chuckled. “I may have lost a few votes by not stopping it. But in the end, we live in a society of rules. I must allow the justice system to work.” He held out his hands, open palms. “Who am I to arbitrarily decide who lives and who dies?”
The crowd’s murmuring grew louder.
“Very good of you, sir,” Wendy said. “Would you like to speak on the nature of Mr. Grady’s crimes?”
“Oh no. I think the trial examined those well enough. Let me just say, when a person attacks the very structure of our government, that’s not an attack just on the government but on each and every one of her citizens.”
“There was no attack!” someone yelled.
“He was just getting a petition for us to vote!” another yelled.
The mayor cleared his throat. “This was all examined at the trial.”
“A sham trial!”
“Ah,” Wendy said, “here’s the man of the hour.”
Mr. Grady stood at the top of the amphitheater’s center aisle wearing a white jumper, a black bag over his head, and shackles on arms and feet. An armed, uniformed man led him down the center aisle. Another uniformed man followed close behind.
The crowd’s silence sharply contrasted its previous restlessness.
The uniformed men helped Mr. Grady onto the stage and then herded him to the box. They positioned him on top of the box, back against the curtain. Once there, they removed the bag from Grady’s head.
The cameraman had backward-duck-walked in front of the group as they proceeded to the box. Now he stood and backed across the stage until he reached the center, in front of the screen. He slowly swept his head from the mayor’s group, including Wendy Heart, across the audience to Grady and the two officers.
Jesper grabbed Favel’s hand and clenched it tight.
Wendy Heart stepped to center stage, back to the crowd, and waited for the cameraman to focus on her. Once he did, she spoke in a soft, serious voice. “As you have seen, Mr. Grady is now in place. Next the officer of the court will ask if he has a final statement to make.”
One of the uniformed men held out a microphone, inches from Grady’s mouth.
“Just,” Grady began, coughed, cleared his throat and continued. “Just one thing. I don’t matter. You can kill me. But you can’t kill the right of every man and woman in a free society to—“ They cut his microphone off.
The uniformed men stepped to the either side of Mr. Grady and the Sentinel stepped forward, loud clanking steps on the stage. The Sentinel raised its gun arm, leveling it at Grady.
In unison, the uniformed men nodded.
Favel closed her eyes. Why had she let Jesper talk her into this. His hand tightened even more around hers. Then the noise. Each shot a loud explosion magnified by the stage acoustics. There could have been five, maybe ten, the shots happened in such rapid succession she couldn’t have counted them if she wanted to.
Then silence.
Favel opened her eyes and saw Mr. Grady, eyes wide, eyebrows raised, as if surprised. His jumper’s front was no longer white. It contained several blossoming red patches. His knees buckled in a jerky sort of way, as if he were trying to keep standing but just couldn’t. He’d sink a few inches, then jerk up, then sink a few inches more. Finally, he fell forward off the box, landing face first. His body jackknifed up for a moment before crumpling and being still.
Somebody in the crowd yelled “Get them.” The audience moved forward.
Favel saw the mayor say something to the Sentinel. It swung it’s gun arm toward the crowd. She pushed Jesper to the ground and threw herself on top of him, one arm over the back of her neck.
A cacophony erupted around her. Yells and gunfire. The yells became screams. Favel heard a buzz and smelled ozone which meant the other Sentinels had joined the slaughter and were using their atom weapons. At any instant Favel expected to feel the horrible pain of a gunshot, or worse, feel nothing at all as she was vaporized. She lay trembling on top of Jesper.
“Enough! Stop!” It was the mayors voice.
The sounded lessened, a few people still screamed, in agony, but now most moaned or whimpered.
Favel raised her head and hazarded a look. Utter carnage filled the amphitheater. Blood everywhere, body parts, clothing burning, people writhing. A few had escaped injury. Only a few. Out of how many? Three hundred? Five hundred? The stage was better, but some of the crowd had made it up there and lay dead. Perfect Wendy Heart, stood mouth agape, eyes wide, as if in shock.
For some reason the scene reminded Favel of stew. A mish-mash of different colors in a tomato based sauce.
Off to the side the cameraman panned back and forth.
The man with the headphones grabbed the cameraman’s shoulders. “How much of this did you broadcast?”
“All of it.”
The man ripped his headphones off and sat, head in hands.
“I think we’re safe now,” Favel said, getting off Jesper.
Jesper didn’t move.
“Come on.” She rolled him over. His open dead eyes stared vacantly at her.
“Oh God.” She felt for a pulse. Tears blurred her vision.
She stood and wiped her eyes dry.
Favel stomped to the stage. “Mayor.” When he didn’t respond she screamed. “MAYOR!”
He looked down at her.
“This is your fault.” Favel opened her arm wide indicating everything around them. “It was all broadcast live. Too bad it’s an election year isn’t it?”
Favel didn’t wait for a response, she marched to the center aisle, stopped and looked over at Jesper’s body. This situation was too similar to her mother’s. She wouldn’t think about that.
She spun around, faced the mayor again. “Here’s the thing. My mother was a cook. A great cook. She made this wonderful goulash. People raved about it. They would come to our village from miles away just for her goulash. It had beef, onions, carrots, potatoes, all kinds of vegetables, and spices. Wow did it have spices. She never made it the same way, yet it always tasted wonderful. I asked her what the secret was. She told me there isn’t any secret. It’s everything together. The variety is the secret.”
The mayor stared at her. Silent.
“It’s the same way here. With the City. The strength comes from the people. The variety.” She shook her head. “Oh well, maybe the next mayor will have more sense.”
Favel didn’t wait for any response. There wouldn’t be. After all she wasn’t even a person in his eyes. She was a Lower, and worse, homeless. She trudged up the center aisle, stepping over the dead and injured as she went.
As she reached the top, the mayor called after her. “Ma’am.”
It took her a moment to realize he was yelling at her. “Ma’am,” he hollered again.
She turned, looked down to the stage, shielding the sun from her eyes with a hand.
“Ma’am. I thought you would like to know I’m going to have a bill introduced tomorrow giving all citizens the right to vote. Although, because Uppers use more resources they should have more of a say in the government, so I’m proposing that each Lower gets one eighth of a vote. “
He waited for a response. Favel didn’t care.
“Well,” he said, “it is a start anyway, isn’t it?”
Favel shrugged. “It’s not my fight.”
~ The End ~
How this Story was Created
Jan 30 – Found a site that generates random song titles and clicked for a while until “Fantastic Goulash in the Streets” popped up. What a wonderful title, I have no clue what it means but should be intriguing. I looked up Goulash on the Urban Dictionary and got a bit grossed out. Although, Goulash does mean mish-mash and if that has a meaning at two levels: 1) a mish-mash of street people somehow coming together and creating something fantastic and 2) the actual soup or stew.
So I brainstormed a bit. Came up with a vague idea of a homeless person as the lead and a future city where there’s a very clear and definite class division. There’s a story there somewhere.
Jan 31 - Spent ten minutes, wrote a paragraph. Have a vague notion of a homeless woman, a city in the future with two classes: Uppers and Lowers, a meeting of a group of Lowers, the idea that the Uppers have abandoned a section of the city to crime, and that somehow this all will come out with goulash. Don’t have a clue how.
Okay, well I don’t know where the hell this story is going. Time to just trust the process and get down at least 500 words a day.
Got 528 words, spent a bit over 30 minutes. The words aren’t great, editing will be heavy, but a character is starting the emerge. I need to remember to trust the process. The story will work itself out, probably.
Feb 1 – Spent a bit less than 40 minutes and added 600 words. The Word Count is now 1,167. I still don’t know where the story is going, but am doing my best to capture it, moment-by-moment. I spent 30 minutes creating a cover.
Feb 2 – Spent 40 minutes, added 600 words. Word count now 1,783. I really don’t have a clue where this story is going from paragraph to paragraph, but it’s interesting. Parts of the ending have formed in my head, but I’m still a ways off before the ending and I need to figure a way to make Favel important in the ending, to have her effort bring around the change. It’ll be interesting to see what happens. For now I’m just trusting my subconscious to step me through the story.
Feb 3 – Spent 35 minutes, got the word count up to 2396, that’s 613 new words so I hit my daily goal. I think I know how the story is going to turn out now. Hard to guess, but I’m thinking about 1500 more words. If I hit that, then I should wrap it Sunday which will keep me on track.
Feb 4 – Spent 30 minutes, got the word count to 3010, that’s 614 new words. I’ve got a couple mini-scenes and a bigger scene left. Should wrap it Sunday, maybe a bit over 1000 words left.
Feb 5 – Spent 50 minutes, got the word count to 3733, or another 723 words. I spent a bit longer on description setting up execution that I had plan. This probably puts the completion off until Monday. Maybe I’ll have time later to at least get through the climactic scene.
Feb 6 – Spent about an hour and 45 minutes finishing the first draft. It’s at 5,391 words. So that was 1,658 words to finish it. I need to do an editing pass though. In places it’s a bit raw. Wow. Spent 5 hours editing this bad boy.
So that’s 11 hours and 10 minutes over 8 days. A bit longer than I planned editing, but oh well.