The Rat King
Sam looked sideways at the dying, designer plant on the passenger seat, a very expensive Philodendron Birkin that Heather had, of course, ignored. He’d been an idiot to expect he could make a life with anyone as posh as her. They were from two different worlds. Neither one of them wanted to change, to find a middle ground. Their passion for each other existed only as long as the outside world never came creeping in. As soon as she wanted to take him on a friend’s yacht or he wanted to take her deer hunting, walls went up and perimeter alarms sounded.
Red light. He hit the breaks. The plant tipped forward, spilling dirt all over the seat of his pickup.
“Goddammit,” Sam hissed. He dumped fist-fulls of dry dirt back into the plastic pot. Someone behind him honked. The light had turned green. With the plant still in one hand Sam hit the gas. As he picked up speed, he chucked it out the window. Kinda like Heather had done to him. Like they’d done to each other, he had to admit.
Good riddance.
The plant tumbled down an incline and came to a thudding stop at the edge of a crumbling concrete retaining wall. On the other side of the wall yawned the entrance to a subway tunnel, long since abandoned, the trains long gone. Other denizens had moved in, rats, opossums, people with nowhere else to go. Nowhere else they wanted to go. Tennis-shoe clad feet dangled above the plant. A head covered by a mop of tangled brown hair hanging over rich brown eyes, older than they looked, considered the litter.
“Lookit that, George, something nice for the house.”
George, a large black and white rat, twitched his whiskers and gripped the collar of Alex’s ragged green canvas coat as Alex jumped down from the retaining wall next to the plant and held it up for George to see.
“Kinda nice how it’s striped, isn’t it? Gonna look nice with those curtains we found the other day.” Alex rubbed one of the drooping leaves. “Gonna need some water. Hard to believe someone wouldn’t know a plant needs water, right George? ‘Cuz the robots never leave their houses, or their cars, or their shopping centers. All chrome and automation. They forget the green.”
George squeaked and sniffed the plant. Alex pulled it away from the rat.
“No nibblin.’ It’s for the house.”
George scurried across Alex’s back to his other shoulder as the man made his way around the wall and into the tunnels, tennis-shoes crunching on glass and gravel.
Dark crept in around them as walked further on. Alex reached up and turned on his headlamp, a gift from an urban explorer he’d helped out of a jam a few months back. Gave him extra batteries, too. Nice enough lady, but she’d tried to get Alex out of the tunnels and into a shelter. Alex knew better, though, he had to stay away from those shelter people. They put you on drugs that smoothed your brain out and turned you into a robot. The lady explorer had furrowed her brow, as if she was trying to find the right way to explain to Alex that the drugs were for his own good. That he would be able to “rejoin society” and “be productive.”
“Exactly what a robot is,” Alex mumbled to himself as he replayed the memory, picking his way through rubble and wondering vaguely what kind of disaster it would take to collapse the tunnels altogether. Probably only a matter of time. So many people topside now days.
He could hear water dripping up ahead, that’s where he was going. A little drink for the thirsty plant. Alex had been part of society many years ago, but it hadn’t been the right place for him. Parents lied to you. Girlfriends used you. Friends stole from you. Everyone wanted you to be a robot with no feelings that they could order around and abuse. A metal machine that they could throw rocks at with no consequences. No, Alex wanted nothing to do with it. He had emotions, he didn’t want rocks thrown at him. And was love without strings too much to ask?
Down here, people helped each other out. There was community. Not that you could trust everyone, but if you couldn’t trust a guy, it was because his head wasn’t right, not because he was out to get you personally. Everything was shared down here, and everyone did their part. Even the guy whose head wasn’t right, he got help when he needed it. Down here they looked after each other. Though lately the tunnels had been pretty empty. Crackdowns and whatnot. Always happened on election years. Candidates promised to round everyone up and make them robots. Robots always want more robots. Something about living flesh makes them uncomfortable.
George’s whiskers tickled his neck.