novelxo Chapter 10: Immaculate Deception
“I tell you he had dark hair”, the irate man gesticulated down the street at where the robber had made good his escape. Jake’s father ran a fruit and veg shop on Mahoney street. He just wanted to earn a living like any other average Joe; but how could he keep going with all this crime going on under the very noses, of the police that were there supposedly to protect them.
“I hardly think a couple of pounds of fruit is a major felony”, explained the downtrodden cop at Mr Velowich’s statement. And instantly regretted his hasty words, as once more the shopkeeper showered him in a mixture of choice words and spittle. It really was a habit Jake despised in his father, as he turned away in embarrassment.
The latest delivery of Patooni fruit was a thing to morn the loss of; after all it was the biggest thing you never heard of. It use to be that only specialist shops could get it, the ones that traded on being able to get the exotic and the new, but you know how word of mouth gets round. Those darn things tasted so good, it felt like the buzz of a fizzy drink without the chemicals everyone knew went in to anything artificial. And it had to be good for you, you felt so invigorated after one.
But as so often happens when the demand outstrips the supply; the big boys stepped in. If there was going to be a profit to be made from stepping up production and shipping more of a good thing, they could be relied on to turn up eventually. And close on their heels the F.D.A. had to stick their noses in too; after all, this natural product might turn out to be dangerous or something. But they drew a blank; yes people wanted it, and then they wanted some more, but the fruit itself didn’t seem to contain anything the F.D.A. could say was harmful, despite what the other big boys who already made a nice profit from existing food products might say. Or at least as the old schools lobby groups told everyone.
And so the silent rise of the Patooni fruit marched on. It even had its evangelists; after all every argument must have two sides, other wise it wouldn’t be interesting, and the word couldn’t spread. Which brings us back to Jake’s father and the latest delivery. If you could get it, business was good. But if for some reason the shipment didn’t turn up, or in this case it got stolen from right under your noses as the delivery van had dropped it off, then you were up the creek so to speak, until your turn to get another shipment was due.
“It’s a natural product,” the calm voice of the shipment clerk explained. “Until it’s fully grown and ripe, our hands are tied. We can’t get it off the farmers any faster than nature allows.” That didn’t help Mr Velowich or the other vendors who still hadn’t got on the preferred list of outlets. But it did raise questions in the halls of power. Why was not more of this fruit being grown? Surely the resources given to traditional and some times out-dated crops could be turned over to this super fruit. And then the scientists were called in. Yes they had tried to plant this new crop on home soil, and prospects looked good; as any scientist might say hoping to buy more time. But there was always some snag or problem or delay. They just needed more time to solve it.
But time was not a commodity business cared to trade in, not with Franklin’s old adage. So it did the only thing it could do, and it invested in the farmers over there. Which was good for Mr Velowich, and in turn Jake, who had to bear the brunt of his father’s frustrations. And why you say? Because the time before the next delivery would shorten. It was a simple law of supply and demand. And the public demanded it. They got angry if they had to go to the next shop to get their Petooni fruit. Even Jake remembered a time when people weren’t so mean spirited, and he was only ten.
“You got any insurance?” the cop asked, hoping to allay the irate shopkeepers tirade of abuse; but as ever, margins were close and Jake’s father still had to put food on the table, no he didn’t have insurance. Despite this picture of depravation Jake had during his formative years, he still recalled it as a fond memory. Like the distinct aroma the robber had given off that day, you could still notice it back then; but nowadays the stench of humanity was as prevalent as the air you breathed.
Jake was only fifteen when he was conscripted, but by then he was glad to go. After all what was left for him at home. The father he had grown to hate was dead in the ground; and why, because he stood up to a thug in the street. Even Jake knew not to do that at fourteen, when he had to take over running the shop so his mother wouldn’t starve. You just didn’t tackle the faceless hordes that seemed to roam the darkened streets these days. Anger was their rhetoric, and a fist their argument. Jake’s father was in the wrong place at the wrong time; the trouble was that these days few places were right. And so Jake was led off by the recruiting patrol.
He only hoped his mother would be there for him, when he had made the world a better place. Or at least that’s what everyone told Jake and the other raw recruits, they were doing. That the evil aggressors over seas must be quelled, least they bring their brand of hatred to your loved one’s door. The basic training was just that; you got fit, you learnt how to kill, and they shipped you out. At least the horrors of nuclear and chemical warfare were things of the past. Both side’s propaganda machines were adamant of that. For this war to end all others would not stain the earth, except with the blood of their enemies.
It was Jake’s fourth year in this hellhole; and one cloudy day brought him to a deserted grove, an oasis of temporary peace. As the battle scarred warriors from a distant land scoured the empty buildings; for signs that the enemy lay in wait, or had even left a deadly trap for the unwary to fall prey to, Jake listened not only to the creaking of the shutters in the gentle wind, but also to his fellow comrades of the fifty fourth, as they too searched for signs of the enemy. “Tree line clear” came a radio message from Mervin; Jake only hoped he had done a good job, the cover those trees afforded could hold a host of trouble, and Jake didn’t want to be cut off from help.
He approached the open door, wondering if the shadows within were hiding some deadly surprise, and praying he would be lucky just one more time. That was how it went; one moment at a time, you lived or you died, it only took a moment. “Anybody in there?” the irony was not lost on Jake, alerting his presence to the enemy on the off chance that a civilian just might be sheltering in this hide away. No answer; Jake checked his rifle and wished he had been issued with a smoke bomb; that would clear out most targets, but supplies were low, and cunning was assumed by command to be an excellent substitution for actual ordnance.
What made those in control of this farce of a war turn away from the science of mass destruction, and pit flesh against flesh? It had become a more pressing topic the old hands over here bandied about, but it never got anywhere, never seemed to mean anything to the fresh faced cannon fodder, who either learn the rules of war fast, or learnt the hard way. Battle weary commanders sent wave after wave of troops to death or victory, to keep pressure on a seemingly unending foe. But today was a good day Jake thought, as he almost shut his eyes to gain some semblance of vision, while he advanced in to the darkness within. That split second when you were almost blinded by the semidarkness of an interior could mean the difference between life and death.
With a sigh Jake’s eyed adjusted to the squalid room; and he saw a form crouched in a corner. It was the eyes he saw first, or he might have just let rip with his automatic rifle. They held the fear of someone who had lost everything, and were sure they were about to lose the one thing they had left, their life. The eyes shone in the twilight, and Jake realised that it could only be a child from the size of it. Still Jake hesitated; was this poor wretch a decoy to draw his attention? He moved forward cautiously sweeping left, right, up and down. The room seemed clear as far as he could tell, but even then he paused; something at the back of Jake’s mind told him that danger still pervaded, and then he saw it. The child was sat on a square of metal, and Jake jumped back.
Back in to the light, back from the blast. And back in to a dark world where memories swam through his consciousness, like ripples in a tank. He knew he was dreaming, but a fear kept him from waking up. What would his world be when he left the comfort of his mindscape. The logic made some kind of sense to Jake; he had some feeling of control in here. He remembered the blast, that child had been left to set off a booby trap. Had it been threatened with more pain, if it didn’t wait for the enemy’s footsteps? Or was it an all too willing martyr, in this war to end all?
Jake swam back up this stream of consciousness, and gasping he sat up in his hospital bed. The nurse ran over to him and quietened the shell of a man back down with words of comfort, where little else could be given. It was as if the forces that ran head to head in to this conflict, could see no further than the next fight, either killing or be killed, and for what? A peace of land Jake thought. What a reason to die for, and then he sank once more in to that mind-set every soldier had. The war must be won, the enemy must be defeated, and the world made a better place.
So one day Jake rose once more from his bed, and took up his gun again. He would not stop; he could not stop, for there was no end for such as he. The wheel ever turned, and feet marched on. Perpetual war was the civilisation Jake’s generation handed down to the next, and the one after that, as the memory of those long dead faded from the minds of the brave warriors, who carried on the conflict. But now they carried spears and swords, bearing testament to the broken chains of command and supply, from a long forgotten homeland, perhaps itself lost in self-destruction, as this rag tag force bore down on the last of the enemy.
What was little more than a skirmish ended the final conflict in this war to end all others. Not because they had finally taken the land they sort, or brought the enemy to its knees. But because this final battle left one man standing, or at least alive, as he knelt retching over his fallen enemy. There would be no more wars because the dead did not wage them. As the last man died, the smell that had become the stench of conflict drifted away in the wind.
Yet still the trees swayed in that breeze. No hand lived to pick the fruit, and no beast seemed to want to touch it, yet still it did not grow rotten on the bough; instead the once prized fruit that so many had died to hold continued to grow, beyond what any human had seen. They had picked it when they wanted, not when it was truly ripe. One day long after the wind had swept all vestige of humanity’s aroma away, the now swollen pods touched the ground, and the branches of the Petooni tree strained under the weight of the burden they bore.
With a sudden blur of movement each pod burst on contact with the soil, as the branch that bore it whipped once more back up, free of its burden. And standing unsteadily on the now virgin soil, figures blinked in the harsh light, as they wiped away their protective coating. Had they sprung from the very earth? Or were the seeds of their birth carried from some far off world? They knew not, and the long dead would never tell the new rulers, who had inherited this world.