Hole Punch by Simmons, Garth (the dot read aloud TXT) 📕

“I'm not going to follow orders anymore!”

He kicks the burlap sack and its butcher’s contents off to the side. He walks towards the horizon away from the moons.

“I’m going to start a new life! I’m going to work for Cartoon Network!”

SPANIARDS

“Hola Pedro!” said Juan.

Juan clasped sweaty hands with Pedro.

“You going out with me to score some chicas Pedro?”

“Aye aye aye!” said Pedro. “Totalmente padre! Cowabunga!”

A thin, pale, blond-haired boy looked at them. A British boy from the holiday resort.

“Hola buddy boy!” said Juan. “What sort of chicas do you like?”

“Chicas?” said the boy.

“Aye aye aye. Chicas. You know? Babes? Girls?”

“I like ones with nice personalities that are kind and generous and have something real to offer.”

Juan ruffled the boys hair.

“So what do you make of that chica?” laughed Juan.

He pointed at a woman sunbathing.

“I don't know,” said the boy. “I've not had a conversation with her.”

“She's got something REAL to offer padre!” laughed Pedro, squeezing the air with both hands as if he were squeezing an invisible pair of breasts.

WRAX

Wrax was the king of the bird people of Planet Wrax.

Wrax had named his planet after himself.

“Squawk!” he squawked. “Watch me! Wrax! Fly in amazing loops and spirals! Wrraaaaax!”

He swooped and flew in amazing loops and spirals. He was king of MegaCoop City and all his subjects loved to watch him soar.

Suddenly, a bolt from the sky smashed into Wrax and turned him into a splodge of smoky, charcoal bone fluid.

The ground all around darkened in the shadow of a sky sized levitating War Brick from beyond the stratosphere. The bird people squawked in panic as the War Brick began to shoot more bolts: breaking apart the towers of the MegaCoop.

“YOUR PLANET HAS THE HONOUR OF BEING VISITED BY THE EARTH EMPIRE!” blared the massive speakers. “PREPARE TO BE EXPLOITED!”

* * *

The Earth Empire was merciful to the bird people and they were moved to the third moon of Wrax. They were all given jobs in a factory.

“Today is your training day,” said Mixelle, the compassionate and plastic-faced diplomatic-relations officer of the Earth Empire. “Your people are very soft of feather and firm of skin. The Earth Empire will utilise your bodies to their full potential.”

The bird people tore out each other's insides and stuffed each other's skin with their own feathers. They used each other's muscle sinew as threads with which to stitch the skin shut around the feathers. They turned each other into lovely pillows. If they resisted they were kicked into submission by the heavy boots of the Discipline Corp.

At the end of the day, supply ships would collect stacks of bloodied, inverted dead bird pillows.

At the start of the day, supply ships would bring in a fresh batch of newly cloned Wraxian bird people: straight from the gene plantations of Titan.

* * *

Mixelle’s marble eyes gleamed with plastic-faced happiness as she surveyed this perfect mass production.

Another diplomatic mission was complete.

A proud sign in front of the factory.

“PILLOW MOON ONE,” said the proud sign.

WATCHER

"Under the Freedom Of Information Act two-thousand," said the shuffling, twitchy-eyed, stalker man. "I demand to know the name of the woman who lives at forty-nine Sunderland Drive."

"Unfortunately," replied the Government officer. "Under the Data Protection Act nineteen-ninety-eight, I am unable to give you that information."

ME/THIS/HERE

Shoebox lives reversed. The hot beams of an indoor radiator leaked outside. The daylight arrived in all its gloom. Stone windows allowed no view of the outside. The workers slept with their heads plugged with plastic.

In Zone D43 the ''lower'' life forms flourished. They enjoyed killing one another. Killing was good sport and helped to prove who was best.

Hive-minded groups exist throughout the Zone E34. One hive-mind used its swarm to construct a huge, smooth-sided orb. A monument to single-mindedness.

In a deep crater, a cracked device ran circular programs through its neural networks. It had fallen from heaven only to be embedded in trash. It scanned for other digital life.

When it wasn't scanning for friends it looked at randomly generated images. It had developed a code that cut images apart only to reassemble them into different orders. Order through chaos. A sky of jagged teeth and shell fragments above a tidy world.

VICKY

Vicky Chode stood hunched and fat next to Jon Paul MacDonald who sat alert, slim and driving a bus.

"If you went directly down the motorway then you'd get there quicker you know?" said Vicky with snotty nose and gunky eyes. "You'd get there in no time!"

Jon Paul McDonald’s Yorkshire head nodded patiently.

"Ah kno’ that lass, but ah wunt be ayble t' take ewe an all dem den wud ah?"

That's what Jon Paul McDonald would say.

Everyday Vicky Chode rode the bus back and forth from Pontefract to Barnsley, Jon Paul McDonald was her favourite driver but she liked to talk to them all.

Except for nasty, old Jerry Stannibals.

"SIT DAWN YOU DOZY OWLLLD COOOOW!"

That's what Jerry Stannibals would say. Jerry Stannibals had thick rimmed glasses, a liver spotted scalp, shaking arthritic hands, Vaseline smeared lips: cracks and pits full of soil and sunflower oil.

EARTH TREE

The tutor stood under the tall, thick oaken tree at the centre of the town square.

“I was here when this was a mere sapling,” said the tutor to his class of children. “When Delawar Dost himself planted it in the soil with a carpet: five thousand years ago.”

“No way! You never did!” shouted a child with chewing gum in her mouth.

“Shhhh,” hushed the tutor. “Listen to the sound of the wind as it rustles through the leafs of the Special Tree.”

The leafs rustled in the wind.

“Boring!” shouted a child with chewing gum in his hair.

The old tutor didn’t hear him. He could hear nothing except the Earth Spirit.

“BO WAH WEEEEEEE WOAH RAAAAAH,” intoned the tutor.

BRONZE-CHESTED MAN

The grey haired, bronze chested man leant back on his