Last Chance Saloon

Set in a near future amalgam of the US and UK, 'Last Chance Saloon' is a novella which examines what it is to be a person. It asks whether in a world in which our personal freedoms are so constrained, we can still be true to ourselves. Or do we have to be

Last Chance Saloon

 

It began to crush the life out of him, like he’d been thrown into some giant’s mangle. But he did not struggle, no, he submitted himself to his fate, as though amazed and grateful for the time he’d been allowed. As metal teeth closed in on him, as his body was screwed into a pulp, as his back was cracked beyond repair, they watched from the sidelines.

Clasping their polystyrene cups of piping hot tea for comfort, Sonny and Bess forced themselves to take in this heavy ritual, knowing all the while that this image would, like a palimpsest, be forever a part of any of their happier memories they might have had of him. Like parents who’d willingly turned off their child’s life support, it was their duty to be present. Through blurry eyes, they saw the last moments of his forbidden life. They’d hidden him well, they’d thought, but somehow his true nature had been discovered.  

Oh, maybe they could have pre-empted the strike by performing their own ritual. They could have let him be cremated, like so many of his kind, on the edge of dark moors, or in the middle of overcrowded housing compounds, or in the elephant’s graveyard of industrial parks. Or they could have let him slide unconsciously into the murky depths of the sea. But, even with the knowledge that he’d be found one day, they’d refused to do it themselves. They chose to live with their stolen time; a constant case of just one more. It had been an addictive, compulsive, last chance saloon.

 

Rip was one of the new breed of saloon cars; a cheeky little number with a big personality, or so the burly sales rep, Roger, told them.

“If your mind is made up on an environmentally conscious choice, then why not spend just a tiny bit more and you’ll get a whole lot more in return. The gains in performance you’ll get with him are incredible, as are the safety levels, of course,” he said stroking the model and leering at them. “Rip here has a top of the range specification; satellite navigation, cruise control, climate control… every other kind of control… No emissions.”

Bess looked doubtful, but didn’t want to say anything because Sonny was concentrating. He was circling round the car, making little appreciative noises, crouching down and tapping on the chassis and then the bonnet.

“Hmmm,” he said, knowingly. “Ahhhh.”

“Look, I shouldn’t be telling you this, because I’d be doing myself out of a job, but Rip here will see you right for a long, long time. Treat him right, and he’ll develop into your faithful servant for many years to come.”

The sales rep wasn’t your common-or-garden variety, in fact, his knotted beard, stained tie and the shirt which was straining to restrict guest appearances from his ample stomach, made him resemble some bum who watched too much MegaScreen. Maybe it was his tactic to get people to trust him; he looked just like everybody else these days.

“Ummm,” said Sonny, as though racking his brain to discover the most taxing question which he could for this sales bum. His brow creased, one eye closed in concentration; he carried on humming, before finally: “What other colours have you got? Green?”

            The sales bum’s face told it’s own story; he had these two just where he wanted them now. They were clearly brainwashed by the rolling commercials on MegaScreen; they cared little for what they were buying as long as it was an environmentally-sound choice.

“Colours, sir? Don’t be too concerned about the colour… after all, at the speeds this car goes, it’ll look like a blur anyway.” He tipped a knowing wink in Sonny’s general direction.

“But… but what about the restrictions?”

“As I said; the gains in performance you’ll get are absolutely fantastic… you’ll find that none of the restrictions apply to this car because there is no fuel. You can go wherever you want, whenever you want, at whatever speed you want. ‘Go green: or you’re going nowhere.’”

“It has no fuel?” said Sonny, who now looked as though somebody had told him that there was no moon; which of course, there wasn’t. But Sonny looked as though he’d never wondered why there was no moon, or how there was no moon, and any conversation about these technicalities would instantly induce this familiar blank expression.

“Aha, sir; not it but he,” sales bum said, with a faraway look in his eyes. “Rip here is pre-programmed to meet the highest government standards, but he’s also pre-programmed to care. Hell, if you wanted him to, Rip would go and plant a tree… if he had arms.”

“How stupid do you think we are?” said Bess, suddenly, interrupting the Roger’s reverie. At that moment, he’d been looking lovingly at the car as though it had just rolled over like a good house-trained puppy.

“I’m sorry?”

“A car that’s programmed to care?” she continued, arms resolutely at her waist in the universal body position which stood for- I am pissed off at you; if I had guns in a holster here, I’d pretty much have drawn one by now.

The showroom floor was suddenly hushed; for the first time, they all realised that they were all alone in this big barn of a place, with its mountains of metal, teems of tyres and savannahs of sleaze.

“That’s right,” said the sales bum, cheerily sweeping his arm across his body in a gesture which resembled a tick. “Our little buddy here is alive, or as close as you can get. See that bodywork you’re touching at the moment, sir?”

Sonny’s head jerked upwards in a flash of alertness: what, me? He was still crouched by the door of the car, hands tracing the smooth contours of the red finish.

“…that bodywork is in fact a highly sensitive silicon-based membrane which picks up messages from the environment that he’s in, and acts as a kind of… um… consciousness. Now, don’t ask me the exact science of this, but Rip works on some kind of particles which are present in the atmosphere around us. He responds to these particles of energy; they are what make him tick. Not, I might add, any other kind of banned fuel.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Bess. “We’d have heard about something like that, if it existed.”

“Well, ma’am; that’s where you’re a little teensy bit wrong,” said sales bum, as though relishing being able to say it. “Because at the moment, Rip and his friends are only limited edition models; testers if you will…”

“A test!” Bess almost shouted.

Sonny fell backwards a little, as though startled. So did the car.

“It moved!” he yelled. “On its own!”

“Yes sir; ma’am. You did just see Rip here move. He was perhaps just a little scared by your outburst. If he was in the mood to speak right now, he’d be able to tell you what I am going to tell you now; these models have passed every possible test known to humanity. The only thing they’ve not been rubber-stamped by is the MegaScreen Ethics Committee, and that decision will come any day now.”

“But you’d still sell it to us?” said Sonny, excited now, barely even looking at the sales bum, but staring, in awe at the car.

“Of course; I see no reason to stand in the way of what would be the perfect choice for you. And the Ethics Committee will find in our favour… all they are worried about is the loss of that great American pastime- driving. You see, they are worried that if cars start to do everything for us, then what is left for us to kill ourselves with? After guns, of course.”

“We’ll take it!” said Sonny, without a second’s hesitation, his face telling the story of how the first thing he was going to do was drive past his friend’s house whilst simultaneously reading the newspaper.

“Hold on a minute,” said the voice of reason. “We need to talk this over before we do anything.”

And right then, the car did something very, very strange.

“Mommy!” it cried, in a tiny metallic voice. “Mommy, can I go home now?”

 

            Sonny cleaned and polished Rip religiously. I don’t mean that he dutifully cleaned and polished the car on a regular basis, say, every Sunday, but that he cleaned and polished it with such devotion that it was like he was offering the car up to inspection by the gods, or that, in fact, the car was a kind of god. And if Rip was a god, then he was a decidedly feline kind of god. For the whole time Sonny applied wax to Rip’s powerful flanks with his limp chamois leather, Rip’s engine gave out a low, contented thrumming noise, which to all intents and purposes was a purr.

Rip liked nothing more than being so clean that Sonny could see the reflection of his face on the bonnet. I know; it doesn’t sound quite right to say ‘Rip liked’, but you could tell by the way that he carried himself, the way that he slipped sleekly along the city roads, that he was proud. You could also tell that he liked it by the fact that he was constantly pestering them to clean him; sometimes he’d purposely drive a little off course to the little garage he liked so much, or others he’d just sing the lyrics to that old Rose Royce track, ‘Car Wash’.

Sonny would pretend that he was annoyed by Rip’s almost pathological enthusiasm for cleanliness, but in reality, he just couldn’t resist these little pieces of personality which the car was starting to develop. Rip truly was an individual; as yet, neither Sonny nor Bess had seen another of the ‘testers’ on the roads, nor had they seen anything about it on the weekly newscasts. It made him seem even more miraculous, even more reliable, that his technology wasn’t duplicated on every driveway in their community. Sure, there were plenty of red, supposedly sporty numbers, but none of them were alive.

Of course, they had to keep Rip a closely guarded secret; encouraging him to only truly become himself on deserted country roads, or in the barren wastes of the early morning or middle of the night. In the Community, they had to pretend that his tinny little voice was the radio, and that the unused steering wheel and fake pedals were actually controlling the car. What was difficult for them to explain was the lack of an exhaust pipe, but they’d muttered vague excuses about Rip being one of those new-fangled electric cars.

So Rip was used to going incognito. Sonny had explained it to him as though it were some kind of game; they pretended that a mysterious, shadowy group of people were looking for him, and that he had to hide his true self for a lot of the time. In fact, Sonny and Bess started to hide themselves away as well; they saw less and less of their friends, and began to take longer and longer driving trips into the desert. Eventually, the desert came to symbolise what they thought of as home. On their occasional trips to their house for new clothes, or to keep up the necessary front for the Neighbours, the Community seemed more like the inhospitable place; the people the spiky cacti.

 

“Howdy pardner; Going away again?” said Good Neighbour Bob, over the high fence. From his position, kneeling behind Rip’s open bonnet, Sonny could only just make out the crown of Bob’s bald head. It looked like a giant, red egg and Rip said as much, giggling under his breath something about Humpty Dumpty. Honestly, sometimes he was like a naughty toddler.

“Hello there Neighbour Bob,” said Sonny, straightening, looking as though he was trying to swallow a fit of giggles.

“Well, I’m a-thinking that your trips might be curtailed a little soon enough,” said Bob, lending a sinister emphasis to the word ‘curtailed’; it was as though he enjoyed utilising a vocabulary which was laced with words which indicated sharp endings, or at least mutilation of some description. “Yip,” he ruminated, as though chewing a particularly tough piece of meat. “Yon wandering days may be over Neighbour Sonny. They’ve got the leash out again.”

“What do you mean?” said Sonny, tension in his voice.

“Looks as though they’ll be putting the ol’ kibosh on your gallivantin’ from now on; somethin’ on MegaScreen I saw only yesterday, and I thought of you straight away. I thought; no more flim-flammin’ through the countryside for you, Neighbour.” Despite his lackadaisical southern drawl, Bob seemed like the kind of man who would take great delight in being the first to tell you about some great disaster or loss of life.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t watch it too? Of course, you were probably out in your car… Every week… same time; it’s not difficult.”

“Just tell me what they said,” snapped Sonny, whose patience had clearly run out.

“Oh; just that they don’t want folk coming in and out of the Communities no more. As they said; the city, the desert, the country; they ain’t places we wanna be these days, so they’re helpin’ us out; putting guards on the check-points, closing the gates. It’s mainly to stop people getting in, though, which can only be a good thing.”

“Helping us out?” said Sonny, incredulous. Rip made a quiet moaning sound, like a sigh, and Sonny had to pretend to cough in order to mask the sound.

“Well; duh,” grinned Bob, as though he loved every minute of this long-drawn-out torture. He looked as though he actually wanted Sonny to vault over the fence and physically shake the information out of him, so that then he’d be able to shake his head and decry the impatience of youth.

“Can you imagine what it’ll be like when the food shortages really kick in? We can’t have every Wanderer out there just strollin’-on in here and chowin’ down on our food. The Community’s here so we don’t have to see all that ol’ begging on the streets. You young ‘uns should remember that… although you probably don’t even go back that far.”

            Rip made another sound; this time a spluttering eruption of what was unmistakeably laughter. He loved it when Sonny put on his Ol’ Bob accent when they were driving along the desert roads, and reserved his biggest guffaws for expressions such as ‘you young ‘uns’. This time, however, Sonny couldn’t react quickly enough to stop Bob from hearing Rip’s outburst.

“I’m sorry, Neighbour Bob,” said Sonny, stuttering, but thinking on his feet. “This car is giving me no end of troubles at the moment; got a blockage in his windpipe at the moment.”

Another eruption from Rip: windpipe… on a car!

“Well, think-on, young ‘un,” said Bob, slowly. “Maybe car trouble is the last thing you need at the moment. I saw some of them snooping around your yard yesterday when you were out. I wasn’t going to tell you; it’s none of my business, but I thought I better had. It’s what Good Neighbours are for.”

            The conversation had obviously ended; Bob turned his back and began shuffling back to his porch, but twice he looked back over his shoulder and fixed Rip with a frightening stare. Only perhaps it wasn’t so much frightening, as frightened. That stare was a concoction of painfully-learned knowledge and the fear of upsetting the natural order of things, seasoned liberally with contempt; it tasted just like a warning. Sonny shuddered, as though suddenly cold; so did Rip.

END OF PART ONE - FOR MORE OF AJ KIRBY'S WRITING, PLEASE VISIT: www.andykirbythewriter.20m.com 

 

Author's Note

Please note that this is only the first draft of the opener...

Reviews

[Regan Meade]

Wow! For a first draft this was pretty dang good! :) I'm excited to see where this goes.

It has a good flow to it. I was a little confused about how far into the future this was set in? I got the impression that while they were advancing the people had also when back a ways. I had a good old western feel to it But that could just be the characters ^^;

But i have to say I can't wait to read more of this! Great job!