Rosco B (serious): I’m dying.
Charlie Ten (exhales involuntarily, eyes widen): ...
Rosco B: I’m sorry.
Charlie Ten (shakes head rapidly): No. No, you can’t die. They made you so you can’t die.
Rosco B (shakes head slowly): They fucked me, Charlie.
Charlie Ten: But, the telomethingy glands.
Rosco B: Telomerase.
Charlie Ten (pleading): Immortality. You said so.
Rosco B (sighs): When we left the London Arcology we escaped the Monarch, and the damned Beefeater Host, but I’ve been doomed the moment we set foot on true English soil.
Charlie Ten: What do you mean?
Rosco B: Radiation shielding in the Arcology walls, cancer suppressants in the water. Out here: none of that, and residual radiation levels. We were so naive to think we could be free.
Charlie Ten (swallows hard): Cancer? Cancer’s a disease of the old world, it doesn’t exist anymore. And we are free, look. This is what you talked about; trees, and free people, the ever-grey sky, wild animals.
Rosco B: Cancer doesn’t exist in the Arcology. But this is the old world we’re in now. Out here we may be free from the idealistic stranglehold of the Monarch but we become the subjects of a different power: the natural order; the way the world used to work.
Charlie Ten (lips turn down, voice pitches oddly): Then we both die out here. But at least we do it together; as the result of our choices, not the Monarch’s.
Rosco B (smiles sadly): No. You’ll be fine. I talked to the Free Celts medicine women; they’re quite advanced really. She says my healing system, the rapid cell regeneration, combined with the elevated telomerase levels in my cells is actually promoting the formation of cancers. The very thing that makes me and the other Beefeaters so formidable; it starts killing us the moment we step outside our jurisdiction.
(looks wistfully up at the unfamiliar sky): I have denied death for so long, ever since we escaped I have felt it circling nearer. It preys on everything without discrimination and now, finally, it has my scent.
Charlie Ten (blinking, a damp sheen to his eyes): I can’t do this without you. Why would I do this without you?
Rosco B (takes hold of Charlie’s face, looks deep into Charlie’s eyes): You have to. The longer you live the more worthwhile this was. We have a while together yet, but when I am gone, remember me. Honour me with your life.
****
Recommended Reading: Taken for a Ride by Colette Coen on The Pygmy Giant.
****
Words like Sharks: a short ramble on inspiration.
Flash fiction. Fantasy and science fiction. Magic, myth and machines.
Great title and an interesting premise here.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Aidan, I think I fell in love with the title and then worked hard trying to write something that lived up to it! =)
ReplyDeleteNeat concept. I must confess the screenplay style kind of throws me off, but I still liked it. Any particular reason you went that way instead of standard narrative fiction? Is it experimental on your part are do you write screenplays as part of your standard fare?
ReplyDeleteAnd again, welcome to #FridayFlash.
~jon
Thanks for the comment, Jon. =)
ReplyDeleteThat's just the way it came out. It's not how I normally write at all, but sometimes I like to try something different. I think some of the exposition would have worked better as thoughts over speech, but then experimenting is about learning and seeing what you can and can't get away with. =)