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= ORWELL IN ORBIT 2084 =

Dystopia USA

by John Argo

Page 17.

Chapter 7. Kenny C. Del Sol

The factory was smoky and dark. Machines whined noisily in the machine shop. Kensington 'Kenny' C. Del Sol, a bearded and long-haired man of about 30, wearing dirty blue factory jumps and worn combat boots, looked at the calendar and the clock beside it clock. The calendar said 2084, if you were one of the few people who could read. The clock read 1:00 in the afternoon—two hours to go before he could go home and open a cold beer. It might be the Second World Depression, but you could still enjoy a few simple things in life.

Kenny wiped a sleeve over his forehead. It was too hot inside the factory. San Diego sweltered in a Santa Ana condition, with hot, dry winds rushing west from the desert pushing almost all humidity out into the sea. The air conditioning was broken, as usual. Nothing ever worked right. So much stuff was broken. The many broken cars, machines, old shoes, and what not created plenty of work for the many segments of Harrison Industries. But the company's main concentration, like much of the nation's, was the insatiable need for all sorts of defense industries. Night and day, the factories pumped out fighter planes, bombers, bullets, uniforms. Every tenth citizen was in the military. Everything else, from groceries to education, from healthcare to housing, took the back seat.

Grimy, with his hair hanging sweatily and his beard matted with flecks of oil, Kenny swept the shop floor with an extra-wide broom. He was new here, low man on the totem pole, just moved in from upstate New York, and checked in with San Diego Police to get his residence permit. Without that, you couldn't rent a shack, drive a car, or even buy a cup of coffee.

"Hey, Del Sol," called out his one new acquaintance, a big quiet man named George Beasley, who had a very scary gaze. Beasley was a senior machinist and really knew his stuff. Like the other men here, Beasley wore a dirty blue shop jumpsuit with torn sleeves and cuffs. He wore a pair of old, scuffed brown dress shoes with no laces, and no socks. Life was like that.

It was tough getting a new start. Something bad had happened in Albany, and Kenny had gotten away just in time. He couldn't remember what it was, but the police there would be looking for someone, and there were dead bodies involved. Whether he'd done something or not, he had no idea. But in today's world, even suspicion could land you in jail. At 32, Kenny wasn't old enough to remember anything about the Good Old Days that people talked about—when the lights always worked. When everyone had a car and a refrigerator, but nobody was happy. Everyone was angry all the time. They didn't know how bad things could get. The old folks talked about nothing else. Nobody dared talk about the Great Shepherd who kept America safe. It was okay to talk about the Good Old Days, because the Great Shepherd promised one day America would be rich and happy again. All other countries, those that survived the Big Meltdown, were in far worse shape after the economic catastrophe, and wars and diseases. Some places, like Canada and parts of Europe, were radioactive cesspools where weird and deformed creatures crawled around at night, trying to eat each other. The world had broken up into petty little kingdoms and dictatorships. Half of them were communist, the other half socialist. From what Kenny had learned over the years, there was little difference between the two. Both ways of thinking wanted to take bread off your table and give it to someone who didn't have bread because he was too lazy to earn any. Like most people, Kenny didn't have time for a lot of philosophy like that. He was too busy surviving from day to day. Somedays you had nothing to eat. Other days you had enough to eat double and make up for it. Most people figured—if you had shoes on your feet, and something to keep the rain off your back; if you had a full stomach and maybe a little beer for the evening ballgame at the tavern video show; and a warm, dry, safe place to sleep that night—what more did you need? Most people didn't have much, and there was a good deal of cooperation. Fear and hunger brought people together. Decent people, at least. There were always bad ones.

"Hey, Del Sol!" Beasley repeated.

Kenny looked around—was the foreman watching? It was easy to get in trouble and lose a shit job like this, and then what would he do? Satisfied he wasn't drawing any angry looks, Kenny pushed his broom down one oily concrete aisle, past the rubber extruders that smelled like cooking school gone haywire, took a right, and went to Beasley's corner with its complex machines.

"How you doing?" Beasley asked without looking at Kenny. He continued working on his numeric jigger.

Kenny kept moving the broom around without looking at Beasley.” Good so far, today. How you been?"

"All right." Beasley pulled a battered, dirty data tablet from under his table and laid it on the corner of his steel work surface, out of the way. "This mean anything to you?"

Kenny looked around furtively and edged closer. On the display, facing up, was what looked like a copy of an old news clipping from when news came out on paper, in The Good Old Days. It was from page 16 of the San Diego Union-Tribune, dated 2010—seventy-four years ago. Had two grainy photographs. One was of a young man in some sort of uniform, looking off in one direction with that vague smile and pleased look people have in all-purpose photos. The other was of a pretty young woman with medium, straight hair, looking in another direction. She was also smiling vaguely and generically. The little headline read:

DEA Agent Missing, Presumed Dead in Bomb Attack; Wife Murdered by Presumed Mob Killers.

Kenny could read pretty well, unlike most people. He glanced through the article, looking for anything of interest to him, but there was nothing. A Drug Enforcement Agency (what was that?) Special Agent Joseph Mackinson, 32, was missing and presumed murdered because his car had been found at a stakeout site near Ocotillo Wells, burned out and partially melted as if hit by an incendiary bomb. At the same time, around ten p.m., unknown assailants, presumed to be U. S. thugs working for Mexican drug cartels, entered the agent's home and savagely butchered his wife, Carla, 27, in a revenge attack for a recent drug bust. The Medical Examiner said her body was so badly mutilated that she had to be identified from dental records.

"That mean anything to you?" Beasley repeated.

Kenny shrugged and shook his head. "Why are you showing me that? It's over seventy years old."

"Someone gave it to me, and said to show you." He replaced the tablet under the table with a wicked grin. "I was testing your reading skills, that's all. You're pretty good. Now get lost before we both get docked. Keep your distance from me."

A man at a nearby press machine made low warning whistle, signaling that a supervisor was prowling in the area. Kenny quickly pushed his broom down the aisle and looked busy. The foreman, Mr. Durango, passed by. Mr. Durango was a short, angry man with dark hair and a white shirt with sleeves rolled up over brawny, hairy arms. He had a heavy beard shadow. His face had a sweaty sheen that made his beard shadow glisten like gun metal. With him was a tall, gray man in his 70s, a ghost almost, wearing a business suit and looking god-like. That would be Mr. Harrison himself, from the photos Kenny had seen hanging in the front lobby. Mr. Harrison was said to be a trillionaire, with plants all over America, but he still inspected his factory floors regularly. The foreman looked nervous and gave Kenny a mean look. "Put some snap in it. You look like you're sleepwalking. We don't need workers who are slow and lazy."

"Yessir." Kenny nodded frantically and leaned into it, pushing the broom. He wasn't sure why he had such good reading skills. Illiteracy was said to be at 93%, since the digital advances since the 1990s had made it possible for most people to conduct their lives without needing to read or write. Icons were everywhere, as were holograms. Doors no longer read 'exit'—a computer avatar woman's comforting voice told you the door you were near was an 'exit' in a voice laden with nurturing. It was all so much warmer than the cold, disembodied, printed word. A simple message like 'this is the stairway to the second floor' could be rendered in voices and symbols so sexy and nurturing that you lingered to listen several times before venturing upstairs.

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