Disseminate
Stuck in time…is a feeling that has cropped up recently. I am ready to move forward so it is time to put the gears into motion. But first a peek into the past with a some flash fiction from Anarchy - Strange Tales of Outsiders.
Disseminate
Max took a long look in the cracked mirror. Youth had not totally forgotten him so the prisms told. Growing up after the war, his scars were from survival in Broken City. Angst and aggression of the punk music banged his head. He traced a scar from his last illicit delivery. The wound was reddish pink, no pain, no infection. Max pulled on a ragged shirt and ejected the data coin from the reader. The music stopped, leaving the noise of lost people and useless sirens to fill the void. Information of The Oasis was buried under the three chords of a punk song. Max had to deliver it to a blond stranger with ocean eyes in The Pit.
Punk used to be underground and almost forgotten until the world fell. Max ran a hand through his spiky black hair and slid the data coin to a snug pocket in his skin tight vinyl pants. I’m ready for this—the last one. I shouldn’t have looked at the data, but screw it. Now I know there is a way to escape the eyes and the enforcers. Tying off his used WWIII combat boots, he got up and left his hovel in a burned out building. Fires burned on the streets like they always did as Max rode his atomic bike out of The Zone—a section for undesirables—unseen. In no time, he was at The Pit with his bike hidden and locked in stealth mode.
Max tilted his head at the tribal gathering unsure of what the damaged building used to be. It doesn’t matter only the punk rock does. The crowd was thick in sweat and skin when the mosh pit kicked off. First, a couple of adventurous degenerates bounced off one another, then stranger after stranger joined in, forming a cyclone of punks clad in leather, vinyl, and torn cloth. Boots stomped and chains rattled as the tribe was connected by the fast chords. Max joined in, raising his arms to block his face from the assault of anti-humanity. Thrashing and turning, sweat poured into his eyes. I have to find the guy. A punk with a mohawk stared while a skin with a story of tattoos ran into him with a laugh and a shove. Max laughed back and bounced into the cyclone. The blond stranger turned—all muscle and angst—and joined him in the circle. A hand strayed across Max’s back and he thrashed away. The blond caught up, side by side in the madness. Max palmed the data coin. I hope he is the one. They pivoted and ran skin to sweaty skin through the pit. The blond’s hand grabbed Max’s, for a second he saw the lost ocean of legend in the stranger’s eyes, then let go. The blond winked and disappeared in a sea of skin. Max danced on, the adrenaline taking him round and round. Laughter left his lips. After tonight, a new world will be born out of punk.
DS
