Systems In Chaos: Dissention

Chapter 20

Chapter 20

The world he had descended into was one of thick club smoke, bright neon lights, rank stinks and shadows. He was ten levels underneath the main platforms. He couldn’t really say that he was on or below the ground floor, as the city of Khaal Garr of Europa sat several miles above the ground. It was build in a large crater, the main level of the city was made to be level with the surrounding flatlands but the settlers and builders were still required to start the city’s base at the bottom of the crater and work their way up. Now only the bases of skyscrapers and abandoned homes, streets, tunnels and buildings were down here. Though, they weren’t truly abandoned, just forgotten or placed out of mind from those who lived on the higher floors above Platform Zero. Below that was this. Khaal Garr’s sister city wasn’t much different, though. Bastion’s Fate’s lower levels went into the ground under the city rather than into the space of a crater. It wasn’t as large or ‘city like’ as the lower city of Khaal Garr, more like a series of mining tunnels and caves that connected in a web of confusion.

Thank fully he wouldn’t need to go to Bastion’s Fate, at least he hoped. He’d been in Bastion Fate’s Undercity twice and he’d hated it both times. Down here wasn’t the first place he would have chosen to go either, but he had a mission to complete. The worst of it was the smoke. The lower levels were filled with clubs, brothels, bars, small dens and an assortment of other places of pleasure and they all exuded smoke of some sort. Cigarette smoke, cigar smoke, club smoke and incense smoke. They all mixed together to fill the streets with fine grey haze, a darkening film that set across the eyes. He couldn’t see more than twenty metres ahead of himself, just the glow of the neon lit signs and advertisements that cluttered the walls and the roofs of the tunnelled streets. The smog smelt awful, the mix of all the different scents turned it into something that could almost choke a maggot. It was true that he hadn’t seen any bugs and insects down here, just cats, rats, mice and a dog or three. The smoke burned his eyes for the better part of an hour as he made his way down level by level to the tenth floor of the Lower City before he sort of got used to it. He suspected no one ever really got used to it, they just dealt with it. On the eighth floor he had glimpsed a rat farmer, a scourge of a man ragged in torn clothes and dirty. The rats were a big as small dogs. Galvin didn’t doubt that they were a source of food down here. Even though food suppliers that sold to the Upper City didn’t deny any supplies and food to the stores of the Lower City, but food cost more and people were paid less down here. The homeless of both the capital cities would inevitably try and make a living down beneath the higher levels someway. Farming rats was as good a way as any he supposed.

In reality, the Lower City was not a whole lot different from the Upper City in terms of living standards, it was just that the levels were mostly cut off from the sun and so it had eventually turned into something like a perpetual night life city. A city for partying, sex, drugs, smuggling, black market trading and violence and thievery. There were plenty of jobs down here, but people were paid less or had to spend more than they should on security. The living essentials cost more but everything else was dirt cheap. He knew that the youths of the Upper City would come down here if they wanted to have more of a wild night than they were able to get at the clubs on the higher levels. Unfortunately, they were great targets from hustlers down here. Easy prey. When he wasn’t smelling smoke, he wasn’t far off from the smell of urine or shit or sweat. He found himself preferring the smoke.

Lines of blue, green, pink and red neon lights shined all around him. Most intertwining with one another to form pictures to advert the business they sat above. ‘Bar’ or glasses to show that they were pubs, a packet of cigarettes with smoke to show a cigar or cigarette store, a bottle for a bottle-shop or a winesink, coins to show general stores, bread and milk for a goods supermarket, a male and female gender sign linked together for brothels, two stick figures of pink and blue in a suggestive dance pose to show clubs and many more. He knew that people would be able to buy any number of illegal drugs at half the stores around here.