Just a little bit of blue R2.08
2.08 - The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
Albert got out of the MS Sumatra with a handsome charge of credits to his Vlad id chip, which was quite an improvement, as he had none before. All he had from his previous life was gone with his identity. Three months of pay would take him a long way. Also, he got an unexpected bonus. While cleaning up the racks belonging to Mike and Rolf, he found two small rolls of pituri worth more that another month's wage stashed inside one of the pillows. He decided to forget his former name and assume he was stuck with the new one. The auspicious almost blue skies above Mogadishu, the realization that his change of identity worked and the freedom from the oppressive atmosphere he faced while embarked made stepping on land feel like the beginning of a new life. Albert Chatwin was now dead and born was Vladimir Orlov.
The good thing about Mogadishu is the close location to one of the terraforming engines, which makes for an almost blue sky above and a cleaner air than in most places on the planet. It does have a lot of bad, though. The main infrastructure in town is the Harbour and most of the people here live directly or indirectly from the commerce of numerous types of contraband. Large swathes of the city are ruled by crime families under the guise of religious sects that use one of the N'kolosera seers as idols and as a magnet for followers. This, of course, carries with it the ugly part: Human misery, religious fanaticism and all kinds of violent crime and punishment. Talion's Law still carries it's weight here, even after all these millennia.
Feeling pretty good about himself, "Vlad,"- he thought -"let's find yourself a place to stay until you sort out a way to the next stop". Ladden with his rucksack, he made his way out of the dockyards. It was a long walk. Never ending piles of empty containers filled the landscape. All sorts of cranes and cargo trucks moving around made it for a very lively environment. In the distance, he could see the cargo train that connected to the foundries, in Nairoby, waiting for the ore that was starting to be unloaded from the Ms Sumatra. "Going the right direction but there's no way I could pass unnoticed"- he considered - "and there's stuff I need to find before getting on with the journey. I still need a gun and some gold. Credits are worth nothing between Nairobi and Tunis."
The way out of the harbour was a huge unguarded gate. As he aproached it, he was swarmed by locals promising him a taxi ride to town. The noise they made had him feel uncomfortable and pressed into a decision. He felt uneasy and grabbed his rucksack tighter. Looking at the small crowd gathered around him, he selected an older, bearded man in a white tunic and turbant that looked the cleanest of the bunch and had a distinctively respectable look on his face. -"What's your name?"- "My name is Sallah, Sir." - "Let's go, Sallah. Take me out of here!" All the others fell apart and went to look for the next sailor exiting the port. The old man led Vlad to a centenary red Toyota. The interior was lined in impeccably clean embroidered white cotton covers. He got in and noticed a small sheep's horn hanging from the rearview mirror.
- To be continued
07.03.25 - @hefestus
To find the other parts, that have been published in Freewriters and elsewhere, visit the Just a little bit of blue Novel link.
It is an interesting proposal. You use literary resources very well. It is a very visual novel, you sculpt the characters directly on the stone. Which gives it that dimension of freshness and closeness. I remain a spectator to this universal theater that you are deploying. I feel that there are many characters, which will be difficult to resolve. That only points to the fact that it will be a story with more than one saga. To be able to give life and prominence to each one. Success, keep writing.
#wewrite #comment
As with all good stories, all characters are related and all the action will converge to a single climactic point in space and time. I already know where that is. Obviously, some spin-offs are possible, however, this story will soon turn into a race against time that will precipitate every one of these characters fates.