QUOTE (wpri.com)
The RunGrey grass crunching under foot, you meander through the park following the AROs of various flower genera.
Clematis, Achyranthes, Corydalis, Desmanthus; it doesn't matter, they all look like patches of brown grass amongst the grey. Only the silver sprinkler sticking up startlingly out of the ground and the floating name tags give the impression of importance. The haze lays thick in the air, fog-like and hot, clinging strangely to the gnarled black bark trees and leafless branches. A few stormcrows have gathered in the treetops, fat beasts cawing and squalling about, impatient for the storm.
The bench beside the Nerium bushes.
The old man offers you some popcorn from his crumbled white bag when you sit down on the bench beside him. He shrugs when you politely decline and tosses a handful onto the cracked and dilapidated sidewalk, a knot of Chameleon Tail Squirrels dart out of the shrubbery to snatch the golden treats. Their wide, color shifting tails swaying hypnotically as they gnaw and chatter. You watch in silence a moment before a Bandit scrabbles out and pounces on the remaining kernels, scattering the squirrels. The old man, wirey beard aquiver, indignantly pulls a small taser from his bulky layers and takes a shot at the rotund raccoon, who dodges around, disappearing back under the tangle of bushes and flowers.
With a huff, he returns the taser to his pocket before spreading another handful of popcorn. "Let me tell you a story. It's an old story, one you might have heard," he begins, "But entertaining, and it has a lesson, even for young folk like yourself." The old man stretches, bones popping and aches chugging out his mouth. With a lick of his lips, he starts again.
"A mother comes home from work. It's a Tuesday. Or Wednesday. It doesn't matter. She comes home and her daughter, her precious little girl runs up and says, 'mommy, mommy, I'm your little slut.' Naturally, the mom freaks out, asks the kid where she heard such a thing. Can you imagine? Seems the girl's emo toy had a little glitch in it, a little easter egg. There was a few reports cropping up on the 'trix at the time, and the mom decided the corp in question should pay for some psychological counseling for her angel. Well, the corp in question didn't agree. They wrote up a little virus to erase the offending code from all their Hug-Em-Love-Em dolls, and then court ordered the mom in question into psychological counseling for her obvious delusion. I think she learned an important lesson, there."
Stopping to pick something from between his teeth, the old man looks at you and smiles. There's still something between his teeth, something black between the yellow crags of ancient bone, but he goes on, "That one always reminds me of another story, but I don't imagine you've got the time to hear it? I know young folk like yourself are always on the go. On the move. Running around doing who knows what. Not that I'm complaining, mind. Hm, you've got the time you say? Alright, one more story then; you might know this one, it's more recent. I think. But it's a timeless tale, really.
"A young executive pins his career on getting a hydroelectric damn built in a certain valley. He's sure he can convince the residence of said valley to move out. But, for some reason, they don't want to move. Now, it's a nice valley. Protected from pollution, it has orchards with real oranges, lemons, peaches, even. Juicy peaches that liquefy in your mouth. There was green grass and white clouds. People actually knew each other, would talk and share a cup of sugar. On a hot day you could take a dip in the river and not come out covered in ick and slime... My, how an old man rambles. But this young executive with his degrees and computers can't understand why these people don't want to leave and move into corp housing in some corp city.
"Well, the construction starts, even before the people move out, and there's protests, and sit-ins. Nothing works, the courts couldn't care less, the police are in the exec's pocket. Then the sabotage starts as the people figure out the damn will be finished soon. After that doesn't slow the construction much; they get desperate. Try to blow the whole thing up. You can guess the young executive didn't like that, and he decided to solve all his problems at once. He poisoned the valley, put a virus in the water supply. Pretty easy to do, actually. Just the one water tower, a virus with a few week eclipse phase. He even stopped construction, proposed that we work out our differences. Then he stalled, twiddled his thumbs. Made some great press releases. Then people started dropping. Fever, chills, vomiting. Then the boils. Swelling. Asphyxiation."
The old man's fist clench, his eyes are glassy with tears. "Terrible way to die. Within a week over half the town was dead, the other half sick. There were doctors, but they didn't seem to know anything. Plastic tents and beds showed up a week later, but by then there wasn't many left to fill them. Then with the question of the water taint, the government even subsidized the damn, so long as they would monitor the water quality. Make sure no nasty virus was in the soil, see. Hell of a thing."
He coughs then, a deep chest cough, and spits. Digging around in the grimy layers of clothing, he pulls out another white crumbled paper bag and looks inside. "Just before the virus kicked in, the valley sponsored a documentary. One of the local boys was off learning to be a director, and they called him up. Asked him to make the sim. Offered him thirty some thousand nuyen.
"So he brought his girlfriend, who was rigged up because she wanted to be an actress, and they started documenting life in the valley. Eating fruits, swimming with the kids, going to the festival, cooking with a wood fire. Working on a farm, feeding chickens, milking cows. Everything. And then people started getting sick. So they documented that, too. And then the girlfriend got sick. She got sick and kept recording. Right up until she flat lined."
The stormcrows flit around the park grounds, more numerous than before, and the air seems to thicken with heat and humidity. The squirrels chitter and look around, then they dart off.
"The local boy, with his collection of sims in tow, confronted the young executive in his office. Full of fire and righteousness. He demanded to know why they had done it, how could they do it and still be human? Naive, he was. Well, the young executive laughed at this. Offered to buy the sims and set the kid up with a nice advertising job. Can you imagine? Yes, I suppose that's the way of the world, nowadays.
"Needless to say, the local boy didn't take the offer, and the executive had him arrested. Sentenced to twenty years for being angry. Another twenty for a bad mistake in the pigpin. Forty years. It's a long time, time enough for anger to eat a man's heart out.
"The young executive did very well for himself, so I've heard. I understand he's a vice president, now. Got himself a pretty wife and a little girl of his own. Her eduction is important to him, as it is to every father. I've heard he buys her the most expensive tutorsofts on the market. Science, history, business.
"And I think it'd be a shame for her to not know her family history. The story of her father and the story of a valley," he rattles the bag, and puts it on the bench beside you. "Well, this old man is going to wander back home. They get antsy if I'm gone too long. You know, though, there's a mystery to my story. That local boy director, I mentioned, he never spent a single nuyen of that grant money. Not a single nuyen." Bones snapping, joints moaning, the old man ambles off.