Guilty

Chapter 5-Blue

The smell of rotting fruit and the heated sewer stung my nostrils. People bargained along the sidewalk in dozens of languages and tongues, not a single one English, as far as I could tell. I couldn't read any of the signs on the stores and restaurants that surrounded me, and I was suddenly engulfed in a foreign world within a foreign world, one where the desire for modern technology and comfort had been replaced by the struggle for food and shelter. Shantytowns filed alleys and courtyards with cardboard and sheet metal "houses", if you could call them that. People huddled under them to escape the drizzle that was now making the cobblestone streets slick. No cars were allowed on them, but I doubt that most of the people there could have afforded them anyways. Sunken eyes turned to stare at me as each of my steps echoed between the building. My clothes were cleaner and different from theirs, I stuck out like a sore thumb. Many began to swarm me and tug at my jeans and shirt, crying "Money, money!" In barely discernible accents. It sickened me-- I'd learned about Europe in the SR, how it had been just like the United States in terms of wealth and technology before the war. I'd always assumed that it would show in the so-called "slums", and that the people would be living reasonably, with the sense of safety and comfort away from the nuclear risk they faced in their home countries. I'd been completely wrong. Most of them had probably lived a life similar to Americans before the war, but once they'd moved here, the government too advantage of them and forced them into poverty if they hadn't already lost everything from the bombs that plagued their origins.

I was here to visit Alain, who'd invited all of us to dinner at his house-- his father had found a job and they wanted to celebrate.

His brightly painted orange townhouse was sandwiched between a bakery and a bar. It was terribly run-down; it probably had never been fully repaired after the war. The area had received some damage, but it had not been leveled like most of the city. I knocked on the door and heard a woman call to me from inside, "Lock broken". The interior of the house definitely showed remnants of war. Bullet holes penetrated the dusty floral wallpaper, and the living room, which was to the left of the door, had a gaping round hole in the plaster that led into a small, scarcely furnished bedroom. A lumpy couch rested against one wall with a small, shoddy coffee table and an extremely old-fashioned television set that barely produced more than static. Refugee paperwork was stapled off-kilter on the wall by the door. On the right was a cramped kitchen with rusty appliances. A teapot steamed on the stove. The only piece of furniture that seemed to have any value in the home was an upright piano in the corner. A few family photos on the fireplace, vivid and sharp, were the only clues that the family lived in the twenty-first century. The wood floors creaked under my soft footsteps and groaned under the heavy treading of an ancient woman who grinned at me to show only one of her teeth, a gold one, remained. I returned the smile and she returned to flipping channels on the television to one in Spanish, but she kept shaking her head at whatever they were saying.

A woman stood in the kitchen, wearing a simple, pale pink sundress that reached just below her knees. She tended to a pan in the oven while a middle-aged man took the kettle off of the stove and poured himself a cup of tea. Both with the same caramel skin and dark hair as Alain. It wasn't long before Alain himself appeared from the one hall that branched off of the main area. His presence only further deteriorated any bit of hope that hid in the shadows of the house. His long matted hair had begun to fall out from the treatment, which had been going on for three weeks now, but he refused to shave his head, so there were patches where clumps had come out at a time. He hadn't brushed it in a while either, scared that more might come out in the bristles. His eyes drooped and words occasionally slurred, he occasionally mentioned headaches and often dazed of in mid-conversation; the cancer was taking its toll, but he continued to smile. He rejected the rules that Dr. Killdridge gave him about diets and smoking-- he figured he'd die before he'd have to serve the extra "punishment" years. It angered Rush, who wanted him to quit smoking in fear that it might make his cancer worse, but Alain knew that he didn't have much of a chance anyways. One year was unlikely. Two years a distant wish. Five years impossible. Alain pretended that five years was probable and ten years could happen. He and Rush were already planning some sort of elaborate government takeover that could take decades to fully complete. Secretly, Alain was putting any spare money he came across in an envelope to help Rush pay for college.