Degranon

Chapter 16

By Duane Simolke. Copyright 2002 Duane Simolke and Writers Club Press.

Argen called his mother’s name from the kitchen as he opened his eyes. He wasn’t sure how long he slept, but he could still feel the effects of mixing confidence pills and meda squeezings. The veins in his forehead kept beating against his skin, as if attempting an escape. He tried to remember how he and Kryldon had gotten the squeezings this time, but his recent memories all blurred together. That happened to him a lot, starting the night he took his first confidence pill. He did remember telling Kryldon that he felt no different after taking his first confidence pill.

And now….

Now he had said the secret name. Instead of feeling like he was a part of the secret, like he finally found a way of relating to his parents, he felt ashamed for having said it. What right did he have to expose their secrets? What had they done to hurt him? They were only concerned, and understandably so. He couldn’t walk straight, talk clearly, think at all. And when his father mentioned Gazer’s name, Argen had almost repeated one of the slogans Gazer taught him: "Gazer is my friend."

What gave Gazer such power over his followers that they opened their mouths only to speak his words, that they never even questioned those words, that they treated those words as above questioning? Why had they merely replaced the Maintainers with another who also maintained them? Sometimes Argen imagined himself writing Gazer’s simplistic slogans on his clothes, on his walls, on the back of his parents’ hovercraft, or something else absurd like that, so he could see them as often as he heard them, so he could reassure himself and everyone else of their validity.

"Taldra?" Argen called. "Where are you? Is Hachen back?" He stood up and wandered into the video room. "Taldra?"

Instead of finding her, he found the collector’s blinking light. A message from Leader said that Life Unit might lose its funding. Argen wouldn’t allow it.

He ran up the spiral staircase, tripping twice, eventually reaching his room. A switch on his wall released one of the magnetized storage cases from the ceiling, slowly lowering it to the floor. Argen tossed out chip case after chip case until he found the one that contained the laser pistol Gazer had given him. He removed the compact gray cylinder from the plastic container.

From another case he retrieved an undermall version of a confidence pill, though he couldn’t remember how many he had already taken. Despite Gazer’s efforts at monitoring their distribution, the confidence pills quickly made their way into the drug undermall.

While trying to design a plan, Argen swallowed the round pill. It felt like a rock in his dry throat; he almost spat it up but managed to force it back down. He thought of possibly acknowledging Leader’s broadcast and asking how the discussion with Gazer was going, but he knew Leader could do nothing if the Supreme Science Council had made their decision. From there it went to the Maintainers, who listened to no one, stood above everyone.

Argen wanted to protect his parents’ work. He had failed them so many times in the past: the drinking, the vandalism, the legally un-permitted language. "Why did I do those things?" he asked himself. "And why have I trusted Gazer so much, but not my own parents?" Argen had attended every YFVR meeting for the past two months, learned every slogan, implemented every recruitment technique, learned the official argument for every issue, taken every confidence pill Gazer offered.