The Man With a City in His Head

by Maxwell Jameson

part 3

In the following days, even more people came. The Sharing billowed with hope and excitement. My establishment was filled to the brim with professionals of all stripes. But that was not all. There were also Takers.

I felt nervous when I first saw them come in. There were two, both of whom I’d seen before. They were known to come in and loiter from time to time. They were both young men, a few years younger than I.

One was tall, though not abnormally so, and had a wide, masculine frame. He always wore black dungarees, faded from many washings, and a tattered T-shirt and sweatshirt with a bandana tied around his neck, and a battered, sweat-stained army cap on his head.

Like all the Takers, his face was dour and less than handsome. His features were masculine — his face wide, his cheekbones high, his mouth and his lips full. They were covered by a dusty week-old beard of thin red hair, a prominent silver ring through the center of his nose and a multitude of light brown and red freckles. But his bright blue eyes seemed to walk in front of him and announce his arrival. I knew his name was James.

His companion was even taller and thinner. He carried himself with a hunch that suggested his will to live was low. His skin was even darker than Frederick’s. His face was long, pale and soft. But his eyes were deep and piercing. His clothes were baggier, hanging off what was obviously a slight frame, although his arms looked wiry and kinetic. He was dressed in tattered cargo pants with threads hanging off the bottom and to the floor, and a sweatshirt and bandanna just like his friend. He was Aaron.

Unlike the citizens, they made no effort to seat themselves as close to the old man as they could. They walked past the crowd, ordered black coffee and sat on the bench that ran along the window looking onto the street. They sat there for the whole day as Citizens filed in and out as their work schedule allowed. They simply watched and observed. I never saw them speak to anyone.

I was uncomfortable despite myself. I realized how accustomed to the new environment of my establishment I’d become. I liked the giddy and excited Sharing and didn’t care at all for the sense of discomfort their sullen and detached manner triggered.

But I admit, there was another source for this discomfort. It would be wrong for me to omit it. Because I had not been this close to any Takers since the night I was buried, and their appearance brought back memories of the feelings I’d had before that night. And in the following days, those two Takers returned and brought back more of their kind, and the memories intensified. They began to push at me from places I could not see, or did not want to see.

I remembered how I’d felt during mornings soon after that night, when I’d been afraid to venture out because I felt a residue of my dreams. I remembered drifting aimlessly through a world that no longer seemed to mean anything, where every day another truth I’d held onto my whole life dissolved.

I remembered looks of Citizens’ faces as they tried to avoid crossing paths with me, looks of fear and hate buried beneath insufferable politeness. I remembered the deep-set well of sadness that all to often turned to rage among Takers, the damming of your most basic instincts and the fear that they may burst out if you are not careful.

But the faces of these Takers told a different story. It was not that what I saw was happiness. Happiness and joy require unity with your surroundings. These Takers had never known that. No, their expressions were just a bit less laconic than normal, their manner a bit more animated. They said hello at the counter, they almost smiled when they received their refreshment, which was always black coffee, with no sweetener or flavoring added. They always paid in exact change. They spread throughout my establishment. They even spoke to some Citizens. I still did not know what the old man was saying that drew them together, but I could not deny it was happening.

The Takers were seeing a possible way in which they could take part in Our City. And that they could do it without giving up their beliefs, which they held to more rigidly than anything else.

I began to feel a burning sensation deep inside. I realized it was the residue of the feelings I’d left behind in the Takers’ culture. I’d left them behind out of what I thought was the strength of my new-found maturity. That holding onto those fantasies was just a refusal to live completely. Because to live completely would mean facing parts of yourself you don’t like.

I’d learned that the hard way the night I was buried. Before that, I’d never listened to the dark rumors, because I’d not wanted to believe that the people I’d surrounded myself with were the embodiment of everything I’d run from in Our City. That their detachment from Our City was caused not by a transcendence of the urge for domination and power but by a submission to them.

I was at a gathering of Takers at a park in these Outer Districts. There was a large bonfire made of factory pallets. Takers milled around in clumps. I knew most of them, but there was one sitting by himself. Like everyone else, he was dressed in ragged clothing covered in patches and stitches. Tattoos covered his body, including his face. Earrings studded his lips, ears and eyebrows. He was hiding as much of himself as he possibly could. He was drinking from his own bottle of liquor.

I sat next to him and began speaking to him. I believed I was helping him. That he needed someone to reach out. I believed at the time I had a talent for that.

We spoke for several minutes. He became quite talkative. He surprised me by stating that he was from the Inner Districts, that his father was a high-ranking member of Our City’s leadership with a sterling reputation. But that behind his father’s veneer was a domineering and abusive coward who called his son worthless, who beat him savagely. All because he could not keep up with the children of other prominent Citizens. Who called him an embarrassment to the family. Who cast him out.

He told me he’d turned his back on Our City and its callous lack of humanity. That behind their pleasant exterior, Citizens were nothing but animals. He told me a grisly story of the day he’d ripped his Sharing module from his head and recuperated in an abandoned warehouse.

He’d traveled far, even beyond the borders of Our City, to the other cities. He said they were basically the same as this one, that they all followed our example.

I remembered finding him passionate and articulate. His assurance of his own moral superiority seemed so steadfast. I needed it because my own was wavering. I assumed he had a choice.

So when he began touching me, I did not resist. I invited it. I often did in those days. I believed in openness. I believed in sharing myself completely in the way Takers always did. I was even the one that led him into the trees.

But he began to touch me in places more and more private. I felt my body retreat. I told him to stop. I tried to redirect his wandering hands. I kept kissing him. But they kept coming back.

Finally I pulled away.

He tried to pull me back.

I said “No.” I slapped him.

The frenzy came.

He grabbed me by the arms and threw me to the ground. Before I could stand up he was on top of me. He spoke in ragged, continuous sentences full of epithets. An angry, animalistic voice emerged.

He pushed me into the dirt. I could feel it billow in and out my ears and into the corners of my mouth. I felt as he tore off the skirt I was wearing. He greedily groped my breasts and midsection. He held me under his weight.

I felt the welling tears. But the dirt already covered me. I could see it all, though, from above. A part of me floated away, up near the tops of the trees and watched what happened from there. I watched as he growled and roared like the animals he believed he’d escaped. As I cried tears into the mud. As from above I saw the Floating Center lighting up the night sky, oblivious to what it had unleashed.

He finished after what seemed like a lifetime. Soon, he rolled off. I was trembling and crying beneath the layers of dirt. But that other part watched from above as he kicked dirt over my midsection and staggered away through the trees, his head heavy with liquor.

The next thing I remember is walking down the empty streets in the early morning light. I felt like a change of clothing moving by itself. I remember a Watcher buzzing up to me and stopping, seeing the blinking lights as it recorded and cross-referenced me. It was monitoring the Takers’ inroads to this neighborhood, this Citizens’ neighborhood.

I remember seeing passing Citizens eye me as the Watcher analyzed me. I knew there was no way to defend myself. I wanted to run to them, I wanted to reach out and touch them and plead with them. To tell them I was no Taker. That they took everything from me. I wanted to collapse into their arms and hear their condolences. I was no Taker. I was only lost. Hold me. Refill me with your gentle humanity. I am no Taker.

But I just walked to my dirty, decrepit apartment and curled up in my bed. I wept until I slept. I awoke different the next day. I cut my ratty, cake-like hair. I threw away my filthy, used clothing. I went out and bought myself new clothes. All of my pride at my ability to live without a job — without providing Our City with a function — was gone. I began to see that I’d let myself get caught in a dark, poison fog that obscured my destination until it was too late.

I wondered why I’d ever thought my questions could be solved through detachment. I began to understand, as soon as I re-entered Our City’s culture, that my gender and social positions presented certain obstacles that I had flown from instead of facing. I thought I could escape into another reality. But in that other reality, I was even more at the mercy of my physical limitations. Because you took only as much as you were capable of taking. Otherwise, you were taken.

I made up for lost time. I traveled back into the heart of Our City. My first job was at an establishment much like my own. I began to feel that I did indeed have a useful function. Citizens passed me without a second glance. I loved the sweet invisibility of competence, the total lack of knowledge of who I was or where I’d been.

And most importantly, I knew that in Our City you never took what you did not earn.

So, to see these Takers in my establishment made me uneasy. They reminded me of when I could still not run, but could only walk. But these Takers seemed to be hitting similar milestones. The shells around them seemed to break. They spoke openly to many Citizens.

In Our City, you learned to understand people by the way they moved. Takers loped and ambled slowly. To hurry was considered reckless. They often shuffled their feet. Citizens moved briskly. They stood with perfect posture. Their legs covered as much ground as possible.

But on one hand, I saw Takers moving with less trepidation and on the other saw Citizens seeming to take full notice of their surroundings. They were growing towards one another.

But there were exceptions. Adam the Banker was one. Though it was hard to know if he even held his position at the bank up the street any longer. He was at my establishment all day, every day. He was utterly ruined. He wore the same rumpled, stained suit he’d worn the day he told me his story. His wide, round face was covered with whiskers that grew out onto his cheeks. His hair was greasy and unkempt, sticking up in some places and matted down in others. He slouched in the same chair in that same alcove and drank the same cup of coffee all day with a look of horrified confusion on his face.

And that confusion hit its peak on the day Frederick the Writer made his announcement.

Near the end of the day, before too many people left, Frederick stood up on one of the tables. His shoulders seemed to reach to the ceiling. The brawn gained by years of hard labor was impossible to ignore. His figure filled the room, rivaled only when his voice ignited.

“Well, my fellow Citizens,” Frederick began, gesturing to make it clear he did mean everyone, “throughout the years of Our City’s history, we have seen many great things, and we have seen many horrific things. I have seen many of them myself. But nothing prepared me for this. Because this is the sort of event for which their can be no preparation: the return of John the Leader!”

There was applause and some cheers. There were several journalists there today, writing and taking photos and videos.

“Like all of you, I grew up reading the Complete History of Our City. I was enthralled by the unique history of Our City and how it became a beacon of hope as humanity recovered from the Annihilation.

“But of all the stories I read, none was more alluring, more tragic and more provocative than that of John the Leader. He came closer than any other Citizen towards realizing the a special, unique dream we’ve all shared at some point in our lives.

“Sadly, John fell short all those years ago. But Our City did not fall. Far from it. Our City persevered and grew into what it is today: the strongest, most successful example to all the other cities dotting the world. The greatest hope for humanity’s recovery from the dislocation of the Annihilation.

“But I think we all made a mistake all those years ago. One that compounded John’s unfortunate failure. We believed the dream died with John. And although our prosperity has grown, we have moved away from that dream. It has remained divided inside.

“There remain thousands of our Citizens, for everyone who lives within the borders of Our City is a Citizen, my friends who feel detached and disillusioned. Who wander in a confused fog, wondering why there is no place for them. And the more we disdain our fellow Citizens, the more we push them away, the deeper the division will dig until we once again cleave apart.

“But now the glue that once held Our City together has returned: the dream of John the Leader. He has ideas for how to radically change the direction of Our City, and tomorrow we will hear him again!”

Frederick turned to indicate the old man. My establishment erupted in applause. The old man watched the applause with a gentle, slightly detached look. I surmised he was uncomfortable with it. Photos and moving images were taken.

Frederick stepped down from the table and walked over to the old man. They were enveloped by a crowd of Citizens and Takers. I found it hard to tell the difference between them. They all wished to somehow insert themselves into this moment.

The old man took Frederick’s arm, and the two men made their way out the door. The general commotion continued for a few minutes, but soon most everyone had left. Soon it was just myself and the two Takers, James and Aaron, as well as Adam at his alcove.

As it had been busy, James and Aaron had begun assisting me with running the establishment. Their help was invaluable. I had offered payment, but they consistently refused, merely saying “Thank you.”

James was the one that first informed me of what became such a horrific turning point in my life.

To be continued...