Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. It is a draft; there are mistakes, many misspellings and sometimes long periods of no updates. copyright: ion fyr 2025
The ship was nothing like the graceful bullets of his age. They were boyant, hanging in the gentle air, gliding over the lands and oceans like organic beasts, in their own way inspired by the leviatani of the unknowable depths, vast creations a kilometer long plodding along the aerial highways. Designs of the glorious future of humanity and human ingenuity.
In contrast, however, these hulking things, were inelegant conglomerations of rust, accumulations of decades or even centuries (Pool wondered) of grime and debris, lost luggage and screaming babies.
The air, unlike that of the dirigibles he had flown in, was stale and cut off from the outside winds. The infrequent windows were small and sealed, and though he had a chance to glance through one as he passed by to the ship’s latrine–a sort one would find in a unmapped back alley behind a pub–the view afforded him was that of endless, depopulated lands, punctuated in that instance by a broken and dark urban carcass on the horizon.
There must be three thousand wretched souls in this freighter. The experience was unpleasant, to say the least. For Pool, the novelty wore off after two hours. The unpleasant drudges did not like him leaning over them so he could stare out the window. Not one to make a powerplay when a simple infraction, like smacking a lolly-licking shit across the face, could get him sent to a gulag, the hell of which he could not even imagine.
“Thank you very much for letting me look out the window,” he said, trying to make himself heard over the neverending chatter emmanating from the ‘scrolls’ afixed to the seats in front of them. He realised quickly, and it was half the reason he wasn’t in his seat, that the screens….screams…couldn’t be turned off.
With broadsheets, “newspapers” as predended erudite borgiouse used, had many, many embedded articles, scrap for the furnace, if you will. Pool knew of them, and most generally read only the swill printed on the front page, and the local prison releases back in Londbridge. Here, though, what would have been a rough sketch or a photograph at best, was a living image, repeating blather and blistering blither. The filth repeated itslef while he was still seated, but curiousity and psychic offence over came him and he had to wander the ship.
Pool wondered where Philoctetes had gone, moved by the conveyor into the dark belly of the crude ship. (It would have been more elegant if it had been made from brick and mortar.)
The passenger decks were three, the upper and central decks being longer, extended forward. Pool walked a bit on each before deciding that the passengers were very much the same on all of the levels. Many of them wore the exact costume he wore. Kudos to Philoctetes. Damn, I want my tweed.
But aside from the scattered infrequent glimpse of some dead city or suburb through a higher-paying passenger’s window, Pool felt disapointed.
While boarding, which was somewhat different than the situation with the old airships which often required a long ascent up the stairs of an anchor-mast (or an elevator in civilized cities), this ship was boarded over a long, enclosed gangway. The passengers were herded along the narrow passage, wide enough for two abreast, and guarded at intervals by masked armed guards, who peered at them through dark goggles through which the faint glow light could be seen. Pool had seen enough of this world in his interactions with Nila and in the throng in the port, that he suspected the guards were viewing the passersby on miniature screens like the scroll he had brought along. What information they saw he could only guess at, but suspected they were seeing the same information as his new chipped identity revealed.
From the gangway’s glass walls, Pool could see adjacent gangways loading baggage and other cargo via conveyor belt. He imagined that Philoctetes was balled up being packed in like luggage.
He needed to ask him more about the level of surveillance here when they arrived at the destination. He suspects details were left out.
Ion Fyr 