Lies Worth Telling

Growing up on the farm, I loved the summers best of all. Morning sun bathed the land in light. The goats were unruly, always out of line. I was young, young enough not to have many chores. So, I played in the grass and ran through the hills.

It was heaven if it were true.

How was my childhood, you ask? You really want to know? I wouldn’t be sitting here with a shrink like you if it were idyllic. My childhood was rust, sludge, and machine parts. One that forced me to comb through trash for saleable parts. A dirty up-coming with no one to love.

I woke up in scum with the sun, the real sun, the dread one blocked by toxic haze, which shined pitifully. By the time my eyelids opened, you Corpos had already exited your chamber pods, commuting to and from wherever you go, getting all the credit for driving society forward. Meanwhile, I was one of many of the forgotten in Down City. An abandoned child striving to survive on contaminated streets littered with the previous generation’s discarded parts.

By the time I was coming up, the Corpos had long migrated into the skyscrapers. It was a convenient way to avoid the aftermath of the sludge flood that tainted everything it touched. When they left, Down City was lost.

I can’t tell you how I survived. I simply don’t know. The flood was before my time. I had no one who remembered my past. Perhaps I was abandoned as a baby, maybe as a little child. Perhaps my parents died or couldn’t afford the child tax. I have no idea of my age. No clue to my origin. Nothing left that could connect me to my past. In Down City, I was a lucky one, relatively unscathed, desirable. Many I knew were deformed beyond recognition. As if they were not even human.

My earliest memories are of the Coolie Gang. There were hundreds of us. All terrible. Scum of the earth. We lurked in the remains of what once was a beautiful place before it was desecrated following the deluge of toxic waste. Coolie children harvested abandoned junk from nearby Quadrants and ours. We sold or traded it with other gangs. The adults, who all had some deformity from the flood, bucked for power. And they ordered us, children, around. There were no parents, only a hierarchy based on age and one’s quickness to violence. Looking back all these years later, it is clear to me that they were just ruthless criminals, numbed by the toxic sludge. The worst of them took children into the ruins of the skyscrapers’ foundations and had their way. Some children allowed it, even encouraged it, for the hope of rising in the ranks. That’s what mattered to them. Not me. I never wanted to stay with those freaks. I wanted more than to be king of the trash collectors. I wanted to live among the Corpos in Sky City.

Rather early, I learned that lies were more powerful than truth. Believe what you need to, but lies saved me. The truth just kept me in trash.

What would you know? You stink of ease. Your privilege is putrid. So let me tell you how I rose from the rusty rubble of Down City to become a Corpos like you.

It started like an earthquake. Conversation coursed through the Coolie Gang. It had no particular source. It just spread like a virus. Soon we all were talking about it. But the children weren’t supposed to hear. I caught it early because I hid behind rust bins and listened to the adults talk. They had a plan to infiltrate Sky City and steal treasures from the Corpos.

“I’ll do it,” I said, stepping from the shadows. I should never have said anything. I hadn’t needed to. None had asked for a volunteer. Look, you can still see the scars from the whipping I took that day. But it didn’t matter either way in the end.

From then on, I kept my intentions secret. I learn that to survive, the truth must be shrouded like the sun. But I would not be kept low. I was not meant to be low. I would rise from the trash like iron filings to a magnet.

The gang planned to send members into the old pipes that led up the skyscrapers. From the inside, they’d steal the valuables Corpos amassed. It was an untested theory, a dangerous plan. I should have known that. But I was a kid; I had no idea how little the adults in the Coolie Gang knew. Or how their conversations were little more than fantasies fueled by a lifetime of living among contaminated filth. There was no treasure in the way they wanted. Just another way to live. I would find that out before anyone else.

“I’m going to Quadrant D to collect.” It was my lie. But it was the farthest quadrant the Coolies allowed the children to loot and only because it was littered with valuable plastics. It was a quarter cycle away. I could be gone the whole day without sparking concern.

As soon as I was out of sight of the Coolie Gang hotheads, I rounded back. The bases of the skyscrapers were massive. They were so big, I could not comprehend how humans, ones not far removed from me, could have ever conceived of them, let alone build them. In Down City, the skyscrapers were hollow like skeletons. But they still stood firm. The rest of the creations reached into the toxic haze and disappeared a few hundred feet up.

I trekked through the debris until I found the entrance to the pipe. Its metal was dry but smelled of lingering waste. Dusty grime stuck to my fingertips. When I put them to my nose, my fingers smelled sour. Rumors claimed the pipes carried liquids at one time. Impossible, I had thought.

I pushed my hands and toes against the circumference of the pipe. Then like a spider, I pressed my way up it. The bone-dry metal was rusted and gritty, which made it easier to climb.

I see the doubt in your eyes. You fear I lie now, as I have before. Believe me when I tell you that I was a spritely young one when I climbed the sewer pipes. With your soft arms and delicate legs, you never could have done it. Know that it was possible for me. I was hardened like a galvanized metal rope.

From my seat here in your office, it’s interesting to sit here and look back. To stop and reflect on my story. How I came to where I am today. I see that something beyond hunger drove me. I needed something I could never get from the unfaithful criminals in the Coolie Gang. I needed to belong.

Back in those disused pipes, I came to a sharp turn. I bent my body and crawled through on my stomach. It was much easier to travel horizontally, although I saw nothing in the blackness. My fingertips were my eyes, and they made poor substitutes.

And then I felt vibrating in the pipe, a shuddering. My body absorbed the tiny waves in the metal. And I heard laughter. Other children. From the Coolie Gang? Another gang? I had no way of knowing that nor the reason why they had come. But they were behind me and climbed faster than I did.

Their voices traveled like serpents through the pies. I stopped to make out their words. “Saw him go in,” one said. “Sewer rat,” said the other. They had no business following me. But they were children and doing what children do when they don’t want another kid to see something special first. They wanted bragging rights, so they climbed, battering the sides of the pipe with no regard to the noise or any danger, whereas I had proceeded with caution.

I shot forward on my hands and knees. The pipe took winding turns. All the while, their racket drew closer. I didn’t trust the adults in the gang, but I didn’t trust the children either. They were brutal. With no one watching, they’d bash in my skull to reach the Corpos treasure first.

Suddenly, the bottom fell out of the pipe. I dropped through the air, splashing into standing goop. The rancid sludge got into my nose, choking me and forcing me to cough. “Hear that? Here’s near!”

I had no time to stay and pity myself. I blew what sludge I could from my nostrils and plodded through the goop on my hands and knees. Its viscous meniscus bobbed up to my chin and down my throat, leaving a line of grime. I reached another bend. This one went straight up. I rose to my feet and reached over my head and could barely touch the top where it leveled off. I dug my fingernails into the rusted edge and pulled myself up until my stomach was flat on the surface. Then I squirmed into the pipe.

I heard two liquidy plops. I scrambled faster, scratching my knees against the rust and sewer grime toward a black hole in the distance, which I passed through into a cavernous opening. A trickle of water echoed about the space, and there was a distant, continuous roar. And the smell was putrid. The scent of something long dead. I walked through the large space hand-over-hand along its wall until I found a massive pipe. I hid behind it just in time for the others to emerge. Now I could recognize their voices. Two kids from the Coolie Gang. Their taunts echoed in the cavernous room.

“Little shit’s hiding in shit.”

“Stinky makes stinky.”

But the taunts proved harmless. Their voices drifted in another direction, and their footsteps echoed away. But I waited until they were completely gone. Then I went the opposite direction as their voices. I found my way to some kind of hallway.

I walked blindly for what felt like a cycle. My feet bumped metal objects along the way, sending loud thuds echoing in every direction. The smell grew fouler, and the sound of rushing liquid grew louder. At the time, I didn’t know it was a river of waste. But such smells were no stranger to me.

The space grew tighter around me. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel the walls turning toward each other. The rush of sewage grew louder and nearer until I had no choice but to put one foot on either ledge, straddling it. I shuffled forward like a bowlegged cowboy. The ledges were slippery with sludge and liquid. My feet barely kept a grip. As I walked, I pressed my hands to either wall as balance. But soon, the ledges disappeared. And if I wished to continue, for I did and was certain this was the way forward, I needed to plunge into the sewer rapids and forge my way. So I did.

Immediately the current took me. Bashed me against the cement wall. I lost my breath. Swallowed sludge, gagging it back up until I braced myself against the constant stream, which was only up to my stomach. I could reach the walls on either side. Like this, I trodded forward into the slime and gunk, away from the pollution I’d endured in Down City. I had no way of knowing if I’d find something better or if I’d drown in the rushing waste. Although I was a fledgling, the further I traveled, the more drowning in putrescence seemed preferable to another day in the Coolie Gang.

The source appeared before me. All the waste rushed from it, pouring like a spout into the trough through which I marched. It poured from a height above my head. If I could force my way through it, I thought, I could find something new, a new life. Or at least an end to this one.

I came around the side of the source pipe where it was dry. The pipe was new. This surprised me. Unlike all I had ever seen, this was not a byproduct of a previous time, but something recently laid down on purpose.

I climbed upon it. The rushing waste waterfalled below me. I had no way to know how long I’d need to hold my breath to find the other side. But I’d come this far, and fear could not stop me. Nor would it stop many in the Coolie Gang, for whom death was life.

My feet went first. I pressed them into the pressurized rush. Then the rest of my body followed. I inhaled a deep breath before I pulled my head into the pipe. With the rushing sludge around me, I pressed myself forward feet first. I felt submerged for cycles. Though in reality, it was much shorter. From the lack of oxygen, my mind screamed like a dying motor. But suddenly, my face broke the surface. I inhaled. And it was air, not shit water. The top of the pipe had opened to a large antechamber with ceilings that seemed as high as the Corpos skyscrapers. Later I’d learn it was the basement of Sky City, the cesspits.

Corpos in white jumpsuits approached me. They wore masks, hiding their faces from the fumes and toxic sludge. If they spoke, I couldn’t hear them, for my ears were still submerged in the rushing waste. I would not be surprised if they screamed. A child had emerged from sewage. Perhaps, they thought I was some kind of a sewer demon. But I was just a child. And the Corpos aren’t superstitious like those in Down City. They believed in science.

The people in white jumpsuits hoisted me from the pipeline and laid me on the cement floor. Sludge drained from my ears. They spoke in my language. I could understand the words, but the way their mouths formed the sounds confounded me. I’d learn it was called an accent.

I’d never felt safer in my life. I felt like no one would come up behind me with a blade and cut me. That’s when I realized I was exhausted. My body shut down with sleep.

Bright lights woke me. Corpos stood above me. These ones had their masks removed. Their faces looked just like ours in Down City, except that theirs were free of deformities, exemplifying the potential of what we could be. I had been hosed down and dressed, and they took me in. I learned to adapt. And I grew up in an orphanage. Despite their perfunctory acceptance, no family took me into their home.

Life improved that day in the sewer. You asked about my childhood. That’s it. That’s where I came from. Next question.