Merry-Go-Round: Prologue

It seems to be the thing to do, these days, to actually just go ahead and post an excerpt of one’s current work-in-progress (“progress” in either the actual writing or in the getting-it-to-market senses).

So then. Here goes…

Prologue

Maroon-proof. Mikey would wonder about that for a long time. It barely sounded like English.

But at the moment, Mikey hadn’t met maroon-proof. Now, on his ‘skater, he was bursting through the bushes in the big city park, nearly airborne already. He hooked an arm around a fluted utility pole — might be a peevie tracker, but he thought it was probably just a plain old street lamp — swung in a circle around it, and landed with a crash on the sidewalk, wheels clattering.

In a year or two, he would get his learner’s permit, finally be an adult in training. Then the State would finally, finally take away the ‘skater and all other forms of individual transportation. He’d be on the high-speed up-escalator to adulthood, where he would take his place on foot or jammed into cabs, buses, and ‘rail cars, alongside all the other pre-teens of his generation. School almost behind him. His first job straight ahead.

He couldn’t wait. The mere notion of mass transit thrilled him; if he could afford to subscribe to that, he could afford subscriptions to movies, cell phones, cable TV, and an Internet connection. And then he’d have made it.

But for now, on this crisp morning in his ninth autumn, he’d have to settle for the ‘skater. It zipped him across the park, rattled on the sidewalk, every few meters unnerving pigeons and pedestrians because the noise suddenly seemed to beset them from all sides; they knew something was coming, just not what it was or from which direction.

His favorite patch was coming up. The patch where the sidewalk suddenly blended into the smooth asphalt of a path. Of course it wasn’t real asphalt, probably just ground-up compacted LCDs or Blu-Rays or something, but it was a lot smoother than the sidewalk’s old cracked concrete. There the ‘skater’s clattering wheels would suddenly assume a mature throaty rumble, the path would go straight ahead a little bit and then swoop to the right and then all he had to do was jump just a little and his momentum would carry him up the smooth rocky face of this incline here, launching him finally here, right here…

Now he really was airborne. Up over the startled heads of a gang of squirrels playing finger-me down in the shade of the outcropping, up, up, no more than two meters off the ground, really, but to Mikey it felt like the sky, the beautiful sky…

The slant of the morning sunlight caught on the window panes of a hotel bordering the park, dazzling Mikey’s vision just as he started the descent, when his attention was most critical. So while he knew it was down there somewhere, he couldn’t quite see the raised rim of the trash barrel and if he didn’t time it just right he couldn’t—

Crash.

The wind knocked from his juvenile lungs and the sense from his head, Mikey cracked his eyelids open. He stared up at the suddenly treacherous blue sky and forced his wits to recovery. He rolled over, looked down towards his feet.
Aw jeez. His jeans had a fresh hole torn in the knee, you couldn’t even tell anymore where the real tear was, the one his mom had paid extra for when she bought him these jeans last week.

And then the true disaster, oh no, the ‘skater, was it—

No.

It had caught on an upper corner of the trash barrel, tipping it and spilling its contents onto the grass. Loose paper and bottles and the complicated random detritus of fast-food meals were scattered in a ragged triangle spreading from the mouth of the barrel, and a balled-up grass-green wrapper had fallen atop the ‘skater in such a way that Mikey thought it had broken in two. Relieved, he kicked out at the wrapper, reached down for the wheeled stainless-steel board.

That was when he found what the ‘skater itself had landed on. It was an object of dark-gray hard plastic, maybe ten centimeters long and a couple thick, with a dot of bright-green paint at the end and a pushbutton on one face.

Mikey pushed the button. Nothing happened. Forgetting the hole in his jeans, he struggled to his feet, pointed the object’s green-painted end vaguely, out and up at the world in general, and pushed the button again. Still nothing. Street lamps did not shatter. Sirens did not shriek. Police satellites remained securely in orbit. He bent at the waist, absentmindedly scooping up the ‘skater with one hand and turning the little plastic thing over with the other. On the back something had been molded or engraved into the surface. He held it up to catch the shadows and light just right, peered at it, barely discerning the mysterious words:

ACME
Maroon-Proof
Remote Control

He pressed the button once more. Nothing.

Suddenly he remembered the trash scattered at his feet. Somebody would be along any minute, the cameras must have seen him, they’d know he’d done it, gotta get this stuff cleaned up!

He heaved the trash barrel upright. Tossed the whatever-it-was in first (it clunked against the bottom of the barrel, the first and only time Mikey had found it to do anything at all). Scooped up all the other trash and dumped it in too. And then he ‘skatered away just as fast as the wheels would carry him, in his mind’s eye even faster than the cameras could pivot in his direction.

Useless now, the ACME Maroon-Proof Remote Control would be even more so in another few days, after the barrel was emptied and its contents sent out of town for recycling.

But the little thing had been very useful once, and once only, and it had functioned exactly as planned. Even a maroon couldn’t have botched it.